The Ferries Wheel

You would think that, as the card-carrying town liberal, I would be all about political correctness, and as a general proposition, I suppose I do prefer civil speech to inflammatory rhetoric demeaning any individual or minority group.

However, there are limits beyond which the socially responsible becomes the patently absurd.

Derek Daly is an Irish-born former Indy 500 driver and current racing analyst.

According to press accounts, in the early 1980s, shortly after immigrating from Ireland, in the course of an interview, Daly, now 65 years old, made reference to being the “n—– in the woodpile.” As he now explains, the thought he was trying to convey was that, as the newest addition to his racing team, and a foreigner to boot, he would “shoulder the blame and become the scapegoat” should anything go wrong for the team. Unfortunately, to express himself, he used a phrase that, while not uncommon almost 40 years ago, was unfortunate then, and is even more reprehensible today.

There is, however, no evidence the newly transplanted Irishman had any malicious or race-baiting intent. As he is now quoted as saying, “After moving to the United States, I quickly learned what a derogatory term it was. …When I was first informed of this, I was mortified at the offense I might have caused people. I have therefore never used the word since. I made this mistake once, but never again.

Daly’s exculpatory explanation rings true.

Different countries have different colloquial expressions. At the time, the phrase in question was in common usage in Ireland, Britain, and Australia, as well as in the good old U.S. of A. When Daly used the phrase, there is no evidence he understood, or intended, a racial slur, although Americans, even at the time, could construe it as such.

I am sensitive to colloquialisms being misunderstood. My dad was totally prim and proper. An off-color phrase or word would never pass his lips. Nevertheless, while we were traveling with my folks, he once asked the missus when she would like to have him knock her up.

In colloquial Scots vernacular, the phrase to “knock someone up” simply meant “When would you like me to wake you up in the morning?” Suffice it to say, being “knocked up” in America has a somewhat different meaning!

Obviously, we cut my dad some slack on this one. I think in any rational universe, Mr. Daly should also be cut some slack for his unwitting use of a racially charged phrase almost 40 years ago.

But the world of extreme political correctness, “rational” is not necessarily part of the lexicon.

When Bob Lamey, voice of the Colts for over 30 years, recently repeated the story, he was allowed to fall on his sword and retire. As for Derek Daly, when the story hit the street, the local Indianpolis TV station for whom Daly provided racing analysis immediately severed all ties with him.

The Colts and the TV station can proclaim their political correctness bona fides, but I think their reaction is an over-reaction of the first order that gives ammunition to those who prefer to be politically incorrect.

I suppose a political correctness zealot could take the position that, since Mr. Daily admitted to using the phrase, he deserves to be socially pilloried despite the circumstances surrounding an incident immediately regretted, for which apologies were made, that occurred the better part of 40 years ago.

But there is more.

Derek Daly has a son, Conor. Conor, who has Type One diabetes, is also a race driver, trying to work his way up through the various racing circuits, hoping to make it to the big show. One of his sponsors was Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical giant based in Indianapolis that describes itself as “a leader in diabetes care for over 90 years.”

When the story of Derek Daly’s alleged transgression broke, Lilly withdrew its sponsorship of Conor Daly’s car.

A Lilly spokesman rationalized the company’s action: “Our sponsorship in Saturday’s race is intended to raise awareness of treatment options and resources for people living with diabetes. Unfortunately, the comments that surfaced this week by Derek Daily distract from this focus, so we have made the decision that Eli Lilly will no longer run the No. 6 at Road America this weekend.”

Now folks, and be prepared for use of an expletive, Conor Daly didn’t do a damn thing to merit Lilly’s action. The sin, if it was a sin, was that of the father, not the son.

Whichever public relations flack sold the Eli Lilly decision makers on this strategy should be fired, as in, yesterday. If the sponsor was worried about distracting from the message of its drugs, its withdrawal of sponsorship made the withdrawal the big story, not the diabetes drugs and treatment Lilly wished to peddle.

This unseemly rush to take action, any action, in pursuit of political correctness is absurd. I repeat, it only gives ammunition to those who revel in incivility.

We are in an era where we are only a tweet away from further alienating segments of our population one from the other because of an inflammatory or intemperate post. Taking political correctness to irrational extremes does no good, and much harm. Perhaps a rational sensitivity to political correctness would spread some healing oil on increasingly troubled waters.

A while back I wrote a column about frogs and their alleged propensity for not noticing, until it was too late, that they were being boiled to death. And then this morning it occurred to me that …

RIBBET!!!

I was in danger of becoming a frog.

Over the last several weeks, any number of events have occurred that in any universe other than Trump World would have sent my liberal self into paroxysms of righteous indignation.

There was the basic inhumanity of separating children from their parents at the border without any pretense of due process, followed by the basic incompetence of having no plan in place to reunite them with their families.

There was the presidential pardon of Dwight and Steven Hammond, the father-son duo who were convicted by a jury of their peers of committing arson on federally owned land to cover up evidence of illegal poaching. Once again, the pardon power was used to negate the outcome of the criminal justice system for no overarching reason other than as a sop to the far-right fringe of the president’s base.

There was the vilification of Canada and Mexico, who are among our major trading partners, followed by the imposition of tariffs on specific classes of goods being imported from these countries, which, in turn, resulted in retaliatory tariffs being imposed on goods being exported from the United States. As in all trade wars, the increased cost of goods subject to tariff will largely be borne by the ultimate consumer at the checkout counter.

There was picking a trade war with China with America’s farmers, who are least able to survive a protracted conflict, being used as pawns in an international game of chess, or more accurately, an international game of chicken.

There was the savaging of our partners in the NATO alliance, that went so far as to portray them, and the countries they represent, as potential economic foes, rather than as partners in the work of protecting western democracy, a task that has been NATO’s primary mission for the past 70 years.

There was the violation of all the norms of diplomatic etiquette by, while a guest in another’s country, trashing that nation’s leader in private while lavishing insincere over-the-top praise in public.

Finally, there was the Stinky in Helsinki.

The President of the United States took the word of a trained liar, who had everything to gain by lying, over the assessment of his own intelligence community, which had nothing to gain by lying, and had much to lose if proven to be in error.

Almost as a throwaway, by elevating a meeting with his Russian counterpart to the level of a “summit,” the President of the United States also conferred upon a former KGB operative that which he most desires and least deserves—the status of leader of an international super power, which, with a national economy smaller than that of the state of California, modern-day Russia demonstrably is not.

With all these events occurring in just the last few weeks, you would think there would be outrage. Instead, there is a growing sense of indifference. There is a danger of becoming desensitized, like a frog in a pot of boiling water, to specific instances of what used to be thought unthinkable now becoming normalized as just another day in Making America Great Again, circa 1956.

America can survive fools. It can survive narcissistic would-be autocrats. What it may not survive is the insidious daily drip of the abnormal becoming accepted as normal by the population at large.

It is the continuing obligation of those who have eyes to see, for those who have ears to hear, and for those who have mouths to speak, even when speaking out seems futile.

Because the greatest betrayal of the republic is to do nothing at all.

Progressives often seem like the Canadians of American politics, at least as Canadians were perceived before they were declared to be national security risks. Unfailingly polite and courteous, ready to break out into folk song at the first pluck of an acoustic guitar string, reticent to force their views on others no matter how strongly felt, it is usually the progressive talking head who allows the conservative talking head to shout them down when the discussion on the talk show waxes heated.

Of late, the times appear to be a-changing.

At the Battle of the Red Hen Restaurant, the staff held an impromptu caucus, the upshot of which was Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders being asked to leave, which she did with grace, and then twittered about. In doing so on her government account, some federal regulations were broken, but that has never been of much concern over last 18 months or so.

Earlier in that same week, Homeland Security head Kirstjen Neilsen, hot off a stirring defense of the administration’s immigration policies, was heckled while trying to eat at an upscale Mexican restaurant. Stephen Miller, the shadowy presidential advisor who many suspect is the author of the policies championed by Ms. Neilsen, was similarly entertained at yet another Mexican restaurant in the D.C. area.

As normally supine progressives across the country began to puff out their chests and shake their tail feathers over their new-found pugnaciousness, enter Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.).

Congresswoman Waters, herself a not infrequent target of Trumpian ire, cheered on the direct action. “Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. … If you see anyone from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, (or) at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

She would later double down: “I have no sympathy for these people that are in this administration who know it is wrong what they’re doing … but they tend not to want to confront this president. …The people are going to turn on them. They’re going to protest. They’re going to absolutely harass them until they decide to tell the president ‘No, this is wrong’…”

It is SOOO tempting to surrender to the dark side. To give back as good as received. After all, pushed hard enough, progressives can be as snarky and mean-spirited as any Trump loyalist. There is an advantage in having fact facts rather than fake facts in your corner. And, again, if pushed, progressives can use really big words to make their case.

But it would be a mistake.

Trump and his minions cannot be beaten by the opposition becoming like Trump and his minions.

The republic deserves more than opposing troops of monkeys slinging caca at each other.

The issues are certainly there.

The massive tax cut that, for most of Americans, wasn’t.

The 2019 budget proposal floated quietly last week by Paul Ryan that calls for $537 billion in cuts to Medicare, $1.5 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, and $4 billion to cuts in Social Security over the next decade to help pay for those tax cuts for the wealthy.

The growing isolation of the United States in the world community as the result of the intemperate actions of a self-proclaimed “deal maker” who, to date, has proved unable to make deals having any substance.

A president so mercurial that whatever policies are announced today cannot be relied upon to be the policies in effect tomorrow.

A president whose relationship with truth is tenuous at best.

A president who has sanctioned the separation of children from their parents without any provision for their eventual reunification.

A president who considers the protections afforded by our foundational documents to be road blocks rather than road signs indicating the paths that should be taken.

It is so tempting to get down and wrestle in the mud, but so destructive of the possibility of ever rising above it.

I suspect Donald Trump has a Yul Brynner complex.

It isn’t the hair. Instead of our president’s orange brush over, ol’ Yul was known for having a pate as bald and polished as a billiard ball long before the style became cool.

No, I am reminded of Brynner’s role as the pharaoh Rameses in the 1956 biblical epic The Ten Commandments.

Your ancient Egyptian pharaoh could do pretty much whatever he wanted, as illustrated by Brynner’s signature line in the film: “So let it be written, so let it be done.”

I think our president came into office with similar expectations.

With no political experience. and coming from a closely held family operation where the only acceptable response to being told to jump was to ask “how high?”, he really can’t be blamed for failing to recognize that a president is not a pharaoh.

Things have been complicated by the fact that he has surrounded himself with a coterie of Trumpophants who serve not as advisors, but as enablers, eager to do whatever is necessary to remain in the president’s good graces. This willingness to be obsequious in the extreme starts with his vice president and worms its way down through his entire administration.

Left to his own devices, he revels in the exercise of his powers, rarely, if ever, admitting that in a constitutional republic, all powers have their limits.

Until a few days ago that is.

A “zero tolerance” policy on the southern border, where the murderers, rapists, gang members, drug smugglers and a few good people cross illegally into our country, looked good on paper. It meshed well with the president’s desire to appear tough on immigration. It would play well with the base, especially since the immigrants are allegedly “infesting” our country.

What was apparently underestimated was the public’s reaction to thousands of children, some only a few months old, being separated from their families, being warehoused in cages in former Wal-Marts or transported to tent cities in the middle of nowhere, where the tab is a reported $775 per child per night.

Maybe some contractor benefitting from a fat no-bid contract was happy, but ordinary Americans of whatever political persuasion increasingly were not.

Film, and sounds of small confused and frightened children crying for their mothers, struck a chord with Americans, even as their leader doggedly stuck to his guns.

Opposition mounted, with condemnation coming from across the board, and from overseas.

Finally, the Republican caucuses in both the House and the Senate either found, or rented, some spine, and, possibly for the first time, began to peel away from their president.

Their change of heart might be the result of a political calculation of how much damage those haunting pictures and sounds might do to their reelection chances in November, but give them credit, they acted as members of Congress, and not as members of the chorus.

Give the president credit. For the first time, he publicly backed off a position. He signed an executive order that, while it preserved most of the “zero tolerance” policy, at least purported to end the separation of families—even if he had said a few days prior that the policy could not be changed by an executive order.

Perhaps he has learned that, unlike the pharaoh, what is written cannot always be done.

As always, the devil is in the details. Given the president’s track record, final judgment should be reserved until those so-called “details” are thoroughly understood.

This is not over. Those who created this mess own the responsibility of cleaning it up.  It is unclear as to the effect of the executive order on the thousands of kids already in custody and spread across the continent who need to be reunited with their family, even if the family’s ultimate fate is deportation and even if the parent has already been deported to their home country, while the child remains in custody here.

Reports, as this is written on the evening of June 20^th, are that the Department of Health and Human services have said there are “no plans” to reunite children already in custody with their parent or parents. This is totally unacceptable.

Any attempt to avoid “grandfathering” the children already in custody should be treated for what it is, an avoidance of the consequences of a bad decision that should not be allowed to be avoided.

As a country, we have a moral obligation, and likely a legal one as well, to repair, as much as we can, the damage we have done to these defenseless and innocent children.

Let that be written. Let that be done.

When I pen these columns, I usually try to think of a different angle. After all, national columnists much more accomplished than I are probably writing about the same thing, and who wants to be known as a rustic imitator from the soybean belt?

 
Occasionally, however, it is important to be on record as saying something, no matter how unoriginally it is said.

 
This country is no stranger to separating families.

 
From colonial times to the Civil War, slave families were frequently broken up with some members being sold “down the river” and others kept or sold elsewhere.

 
I suspect Jefferson Beauregard Session III’s remote ancestors could quickly cite biblical support for the “peculiar institution” with passages such as Colossians 3:22: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything, and do it not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.” (New International Version.)

 
Citing the Bible is a cheap trick because in it you can find support for just about any proposition you might want to advance.

 
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Native American children, even young children, were separated from their families and sent to “Indian Schools,” often run by religious denominations.

 
The primary purpose of these schools was to assimilate Native American children and youth into Euro-American culture. As part of the process, they were often given Christian names to replace their Indian names. (Thus, Wa-Tho-Huk [“Bright Path”] became Jim Thorpe.) They were given “western”-style haircuts. They were forbidden to speak their own languages or practice their own cultural traditions. Conditions in many of the schools were harsh, and children lived with the negative consequences of the experience for the rest of their lives.

 
Finally, on a wave of World War II hysteria, American citizens of Japanese heritage, after being given a very short time to get their affairs in order, were rounded up and transported to remote “internment” camps for the duration of the war.

 
Children were not separated from their families, but the families were separated from their rights as American citizens, which was equally abhorrent.

 
What these events have in common is that each is now recognized as a stain upon our nation’s honor, and a denial of everything for which we like to think our country stands.
The “zero tolerance” policy currently being enforced on our southern border, with its forced separation of mothers and fathers from their children for an indeterminate period, is the newest addition to our national hall of shame.

 
It is morally reprehensible.

 
I understand that a legalistic construct can be cobbled together to rationalize “zero tolerance,” but even Nazi Germany was meticulous when it came to masking its abominations behind a cloak of legality. They were still abominations.

 
In any case, we are not talking about a law that requires ripping young children from their parents. We are talking about a policy that just might be permissible under current law, but was instituted by, and could be ended by, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, and his master, Donald Trump.

 
Although a goodly number of godly men, in exchange for having an additional sympathetic ear on the Supreme Court, have compromised their moral authority by being complicit with this administration’s questionable acts in the past, when evangelical bodies such as the Southern Baptist Convention, or evangelical leaders such as Franklin Graham, a staunch Trump ally, come out in opposition to the policy, and are joined by other groups such as the U.S. Conference of Bishops, not known for its progressive politics, it can be concluded this is not just another case of bleeding-heart liberals having a whine-fest.

 
This is about political blackmail:

 
Congress (and anyone else having conniptions about what’s going on), give me the money for my wall, accept all my other immigration proposals, and anything else I might think of between now and then, and all this will end beautifully. Believe me.

 
The children, especially the youngest among them, are nothing more than pawns in a much larger game of political chess.

 
Maybe Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, and his master, Donald Trump, should pick on someone their own size.

End the policy. End it now.

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The Oscar for best picture in 1995 went to Forrest Gump. This piece is not about Forrest Gump, or any of the contents of his box of chocolates.

Rather, in that same year, there was released another film, currently, and I believe unfairly, consigned to the cutting room floor of history. I speak, of course, of that cinematic tour-de-force, Canadian Bacon, starring Alan Alda, John Candy, and Rhea Perlman of Cheers fame, and directed by Michael Moore (yes, that Michael Moore).

Canadian Bacon is a cautionary tale for our time.

A president with significantly low poll numbers casts about for a way to
improve his political fortunes. He decides that if he can ratchet up
international tensions, he can play the tough guy, the public will rally around
their president, and he will come of it respected and beloved by all.

The problem is recruiting an appropriate target to play the heavy. Russia isn’t
interested, the boogie men of the period are inconveniently dead, and care has to be taken that the partner to the dance is unlikely to overreact.

Television footage of a riot at a Toronto Maple Leaf hockey game, ignited by
the John Candy character’s derogatory comments about the quality of
Canadian beer, causes the presidential brain trust to kick into high gear.

Canada is close enough that most, although not all, Americans would know
where it was, yet far enough away to seem kind-of-foreign. Most Canadians
speak a form of English, except the wine-drinking-snail-eating-French-speaking Quebecois, so Americans would understand they were being insulted if indeed they were being insulted.

But best of all, Canada seemed serenely inoffensive.

A friendly network (unnamed in the film, but it probably rhymes with “socks”)
cooperates in whipping up the masses with scare headlines like “The Canadians. They walk among us. Undetected!”, or “Operation Canadian Bacon: A line in the snow.”

It works like a charm. Patriotism degenerates to xenophobia, and xenophobia
spreads like fire and fury across the nation. Finally, in a smoky (remember, it’s a pre-smoking ban) boozy bar across the river in Niagara Falls, John Candy’s character and his wee band of cronies decide to take things into their own hands and invade Canada. Their first act of sabotage is to spread litter on the Canadian river bank.

Candy’s bellicose and armed-to-the-teeth compatriots are faced with unfailingly polite Canadian Mounted Police who seem, more than anything else, bemused, by the unfolding events. There is a nice older couple, who constitute the entire night shift at the Canadian power plant and offer the invaders some milk and cookies. Rather than being suborned by such tactics,Candy’s squad begins pulling switches, and, yes, you guessed it, great swathes of Canada and the United States go black.

As things spin out of control, it all blows up in the president’s face. He is
defeated in the next election by the largest margin in history and ends up hosting an early morning talk show in Cleveland.

Nuclear missiles and a clock counting down to doomsday are also involved,
but if you want the details, turn on your Netflix machine or whatever.

Now, about the cautionary tale.

After the recent G7 meeting in Canada, Canadian Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau held a press conference. It is standard procedure for the leader of the
host country to hold a wrap-up press conference. Our president was not there
because he had left the conference early for his photo op with Kim Jong-un in
Singapore.

Prime Minister Trudeau, in his prepared remarks, made nice about what had
been a tense, and not very successful summit. Our president’s penchant for
going it alone did not go down well with those who had thought themselves to
be our allies rather than our adversaries.

In response to a reporter’s question, Prime Minister Trudeau said that while
Canadians were polite and reasonable, they would not be pushed around by
anyone.

Whereupon, our president, winging his way across the Pacific, became
unhinged. Dismissively referring to the head of government of our closest
neighbor as “weak” and “dishonest,” he darkly predicted the comment “was
going to cost a lot of money for the people of Canada.”

On the talk shows that following Sunday, his Trumpophants doubled and
trebled down – angrily talking about knives in the back and, in one instance
since quasi retracted, consigning the Canadian prime minister to a “special
place in hell” for daring to contradict President Donald John Trump.

Come on, folks! Every head of state has the right to keep his domestic
audience in mind. Donald John Trump certainly does. In response to the
question, what was Trudeau supposed to say? That he was willing to make his
nation an international door mat?

I suspect the prime minister of Lichtenstein (population 38,143) would say
the same thing in response to the same question.

Mr. President, chill. Don’t mess with Canada. Negotiate trade differences with
them if you feel it necessary, but don’t belittle them in the process.

Canadians are unfailingly polite and reasonable. Americans like them – even
your supporters like the frozen chosen from Up North. Eh?

By badgering the Canadians, you are coming across as a bully, and should you
continue, as in Canadian Bacon, it will likely not come to a good end.

So, okay, maybe Forrest Gump was the better movie.

As this is written, the most recent dust up from Trump World is the cancelation of the traditional Rose Garden photo op of the president and the champions of some major sports league or the other, in this case, the champions of the National Football League, the Philadelphia Eagles.

In apparent response to the president’s ongoing charm offensive with the league’s players – calling them names that cannot be printed in a family newspaper, loudly recommending that they should be fired, if not ejected from the country, for exercising their First Amendment rights – many of the Eagles players made it known they would forego the Rose Garden event rather than appear as background props for someone who has insulted and belittled them, and theirs, on multiple occasions.

Rather than risking a garden party where significant numbers of the honorees might fail to show; the president simply cancelled the event. Given the president’s obsession with crowd sizes, the move was not a total surprise, and certainly was within his Article II powers. We all know how obsessed he is currently with the presidential powers set out in Article II of the Constitution.

“Wait a minute,” the president’s base responds. “This is all about those overpaid ingrates taking a knee during the national anthem and disrespecting everything America stand for!”

Actually, no, it isn’t, because the Eagles players never took a knee to protest anything. Other teams may have. The Eagles did not.

It’s about a double standard. It’s okay for the fans to head to the nearest concession stand during the anthem for a last-minute brewski; it’s something else entirely for the hired help to use the opportunity to draw attention to what they consider to be inequality in the treatment of minorities by law enforcement, or the blackballing from the sport of the player who started it all.

It’s about pleasing the base. The president’s vendetta against NFL players didn’t start immediately after Colin Kaepernick’s initial protest. It began after he tried out a line or two about the issue at one of his ego-massaging campaign-style rallies and got a raucous crowd reaction. The president may be many things, but a marketing fool he is not.

He is fully aware that the fate of his presidency depends upon his ability to hold the loyalists who would continue to support him even if, as he once said, he shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue. Should he lose that base, he is toast … and he knows it.

It’s about continuing his strategy for further dividing Americans into their separate tribes. For every writer who passionately questions his actions as I have, there will be another who passionately supports them.

In our disunity lies his strength.

Once again I am reminded of this remarkable monologue from The American President: “America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You’ve got to want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say ‘You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, and who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.’ You want to claim this land is the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate it in your classrooms. Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free.”

Or maybe the symbol is of a football player taking a knee during “The Star-Spangled  Banner.”

I am aware that the NFL owners submitted to presidential pressure and made it a finable offense to kneel or sit during the anthem. As the reasoning goes, if the players want to protest, let them do it on their own time.

I would suggest that peacefully exercising First Amendment rights is in the finest tradition of everything for which America stands. Repression of that right, even when legally permissible, is not.

Just a thought.

I have an internet friend of the conservative persuasion, who, let’s be honest, is more aligned with the current president than are many classical conservatives. Whenever one of these columns hits the street, more likely than not, I will be receiving a critique challenging my liberal assumptions and biases.

I respect and appreciate my friend. He keeps me grounded.

Recently I wrote a column wherein I described our president as something of a hustler and raised questions about his latest feat of prestidigitation called “Spygate.”

As predictable as rain in Indianapolis in the summertime, into my “in” box came a missive from my friend.

He said of our current president, “He will continue to fulfill the promises he made way back when (kind of refreshing that a president is actually doing good on his promises.)”

Here’s the thing: Not every promise should have been made in the first place, and not every promise made should be kept, when the keeping of it is not in the best interest of the country.

He promised a wall.

No one argues about the need for border security, but while the promise of a wall may play well with a base looking for simple solutions, history tells us physical barriers do not work no matter how much money is lavished upon them.

The president promised a “zero tolerance” policy on Latinos attempting to enter our country—including those seeking political asylum. That policy is being interpreted by his Justice Department as justification for separating children from their parents at the border, with no guarantee when, or if, they will ever be reunited.

As noted, we need border security, and not everyone should be admitted, but what will be remembered? The legalistic reasons for the policy, or the specter of the forced separation of children from their families?

Is this something America will be proud of in the future, or will it be seen by history as another example of where our actions betray the ideals for which we say we stand?

The president promised to remove the United States from “unfair” treaties. His promise was that he would cut better deals than ever before.

He has kept the first part of this promise on several occasions but has yet to negotiate better deals.

The world has simply gone ahead without us. Where we were once the irreplaceable player, the vacuum left by our exit from our prior commitments is now being filled by others, not all of whom are our friends.

His unilateral actions call into question whether the United States is still a reliable partner, or only a partner of convenience until we change our minds. Such doubt is corrosive in the extreme to our long-term interests.

It may come as a surprise to my friend, but I want this president, any president, to succeed. What American would take comfort in watching this president, or any president, fail, when such failure would be detrimental to our country?

Having said that, our president is a gunslinger. He shoots from the hip in support of, or opposition to, whatever happens to catch his attention in the moment.

This can be tolerated in a candidate. It is unnerving in a president.

Promises made on the campaign trail are harmless. Promises made in the Oval Office are not.

I have an uneasy feeling that this distinction is lost on our president. He is in perpetual campaign mode, playing to the same adoring fraction of our electorate, throwing out the same red meat, and repeating the same promises, that worked so well for him in 2016.

The problem is he is more than a candidate now; he is the president. It is 2018, not 2016. The promises he makes, the old promises he checks off, have consequences.

I hope my concerns are unwarranted, but if you think about it, few gunslingers come to a good end.

I’ll await your response, my friend.

Let’s talk about frogs.

The folk wisdom is that if you put a frog in tepid water and slowly increase the heat, the creature will slowly boil to death rather than jump out of harm’s way.

Call it complacency, call it a false sense of security, call it just plain laziness, or stupidity, the result is a dead frog.

Now, just among us frogs …

There were 59,179 registered voters in Howard County eligible to take part in the May 8 primary. Of that number, 11,394 ballots were cast. Seventeen voters marked their disdain for the process by casting blank ballots.

That equates to a voter turnout of 19.25 percent.

Crank up the heat a few degrees.

While neither party acquitted itself well, my star-crossed Democrats, as usual, claimed the prize for creative self-immolation.

The first obligation of a party apparatus is to fill its own ticket. The party leadership may need to sweet-talk, draft, shanghai, or otherwise induce or seduce people to run for local offices, but it is a basic party responsibility to do so.

The Democrat candidate list had more holes in it than the rationale behind a policy being announced in the Rose Garden by The Donald.

There will be opportunity to fill the ticket during the summer, but those late entries will have to play catch-up, and if slots are left empty, how can you expect to turn out a local Democrat vote if there aren’t any local Democrats to vote for?

Is it just me or is it getting warmer around here?

As the pot begins to bubble, in one of the few offices in which there was a race, Center Township Trustee, the party central committee felt compelled to endorse one candidate over another.

There are times when a candidate is so at odds with accepted norms of behavior or policy that the party should be doing something about it. That was not the case here.

The “endorsed” candidate won in a close race. Can the local Democrat brain trust imagine what would have happened if the anointed one had lost? They would have handed the opposition a blunt instrument with which to pummel the winner—who couldn’t even get the endorsement of her own party!

As it is, who can blame the losing candidate’s supporters for resenting a clumsy attempt to emulate Debbie Wasserman-Shultz’s infamous “thumb on the scale” routine in the 2016 primaries? How did that work out?

How can the party expect to bring the losing candidate’s supporters back into the same tent from which they were originally so rudely thrown out?

Why can’t I feel my own skin?

And why is it turning bright red?

In a well-researched article appearing on the front page of the May 10 Kokomo Tribune, the writer characterized the same pathetic 19.25 percent turnout as a significant achievement, given that this is an “mid-term” i.e. non-presidential, primary. Citing information in the article, 19.25 percent is certainly better than a 9 percent turnout in 2014 and isn’t far behind the 22 percent primary turnout in 2010.

But come on, fellow frogs…

At best, this means that less than one in five registered voters determined the choices for the November general election,

The health of a republic is measured by the level of participation in the electoral process by its citizens.

One in five is evidence of a clean bill of health? I don’t think so.

Providentially, the frog folk tale is a folk tale. The science types among us attest to the fact that the frog will leap out of the pot before it reaches terminal heat.

Which means, fellow frogs, that maybe it’s time to jump.

A republic is not a perpetual motion machine that runs forever on its own momentum. It needs to be tended. It needs to be refreshed from time to time.

Those times are called elections.

There will be a “do over” in November. Multiple offices, great and small, will be at stake. It will be time to shake off our lethargy, get out of the pot, and cast a vote.

Otherwise, the main course at the winner’s victory dinner may well be frog legs.