Danger! Donald Trump is a dangerouos embarassment to himself and others: He must resign!

Echo essay and investigative reporting by Carl Bernstein with Nicole Gaouette published in CNN Politics. It's impossible for Maine Writer to understand how Republicans ignore the gross behavior and incomeptence witnessed by everyone who has worked for him.  Fire Trump today or ask for him to resign.

In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, President Donald Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America's principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials -- including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff -- that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States, according to White House and intelligence officials intimately familiar with the contents of the conversations.

The calls caused former top Trump deputies -- including national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly, as well as intelligence officials -- to conclude that the President was often "delusional," as two sources put it, in his dealings with foreign leaders. The sources said there was little evidence that the President became more skillful or competent in his telephone conversations with most heads of state over time. Rather, he continued to believe that he could either charm, jawbone or bully almost any foreign leader into capitulating to his will, and often pursued goals more attuned to his own agenda than what many of his senior advisers considered the national interest.

Congress demands answers from Trump administration on Russia bounty intelligence

These officials' concerns about the calls, and particularly Trump's deference to Putin, take on new resonance with reports the President may have learned in March that Russia had offered the Taliban bounties to kill US troops in Afghanistan -- and yet took no action. CNN's sources said there were calls between Putin and Trump about Trump's desire to end the American military presence in Afghanistan but they mentioned no discussion of the supposed Taliban bounties.

By far the greatest number of Trump's telephone discussions with an individual head of state were with Erdogan, who sometimes phoned the White House at least twice a week and was put through directly to the President on standing orders from Trump, according to the sources. Meanwhile, the President regularly bullied and demeaned the leaders of America's principal allies, especially two women: telling Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom she was weak and lacked courage; and telling German Chancellor Angela Merkel that she was "stupid."

Trump incessantly boasted to his fellow heads of state, including Saudi Arabia's autocratic royal heir Mohammed bin Salman and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, about his own wealth, genius, "great" accomplishments as President, and the "idiocy" of his Oval Office predecessors, according to the sources.

In his conversations with both Putin and Erdogan, Trump took special delight in trashing former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and suggested that dealing directly with him -- Trump -- would be far more fruitful than during previous administrations. "They didn't know BS," he said of Bush and Obama -- one of several derisive tropes the sources said he favored when discussing his predecessors with the Turkish and Russian leaders.

The full, detailed picture drawn by CNN's sources of Trump's phone calls with foreign leaders is consistent with the basic tenor and some substantive elements of a limited number of calls described by former national security adviser John Bolton in his book, "The Room Where It Happened." But the calls described to CNN cover a far longer period than Bolton's tenure, are much more comprehensive — and seemingly more damning -- in their sweep.
Like Bolton, CNN's sources said that the President seemed to continually conflate his own personal interests -- especially for purposes of re-election and revenge against perceived critics and political enemies -- with the national interest.

To protect the anonymity of those describing the calls for this report, CNN will not reveal their job titles nor quote them at length directly. More than a dozen officials either listened to the President's phone calls in real time or were provided detailed summaries and rough-text recording printouts of the calls soon after their completion, CNN's sources said. The sources were interviewed by CNN repeatedly over a four-month period extending into June.

The sources did cite some instances in which they said Trump acted responsibly and in the national interest during telephone discussions with some foreign leaders. CNN reached out to Kelly, McMaster and Tillerson for comment and received no response as of Monday afternoon. Mattis did not comment.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment before this story published. After publication, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews said, "President Trump is a world class negotiator who has consistently furthered America's interests on the world stage. From negotiating the phase one China deal and the USMCA to NATO allies contributing more and defeating ISIS, President Trump has shown his ability to advance America's strategic interests."

One person familiar with almost all the conversations with the leaders of Russia, Turkey, Canada, Australia and western Europe described the calls cumulatively as 'abominations' so grievous to US national security interests that if members of Congress heard from witnesses to the actual conversations or read the texts and contemporaneous notes, even many senior Republican members would no longer be able to retain confidence in the President.

Attacking key ally leaders -- especially women

The insidious effect of the conversations comes from Trump's tone, his raging outbursts at allies while fawning over authoritarian strongmen, his ignorance of history and lack of preparation as much as it does from the troubling substance, according to the sources. While in office, then- Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats expressed worry to subordinates that Trump's telephone discussions were undermining the coherent conduct of foreign relations and American objectives around the globe, one of CNN's sources said. And in recent weeks, former chief of staff Kelly has mentioned the damaging impact of the President's calls on US national security to several individuals in private.

Two sources compared many of the President's conversations with foreign leaders to Trump's recent press "briefings" on the coronavirus pandemic: free form, fact-deficient stream-of-consciousness ramblings, full of fantasy and off-the-wall pronouncements based on his intuitions, guesswork, the opinions of Fox News TV hosts and social media misinformation.

In addition to Merkel and May, the sources said, Trump regularly bullied and disparaged other leaders of the western alliance during his phone conversations -- including French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison -- in the same hostile and aggressive way he discussed the coronavirus with some of America's governors.

Next to Erdogan, no foreign leader initiated more calls with Trump than Macron, the sources said, with the French President often trying to convince Trump to change course on environmental and security policy matters -- including climate change and US withdrawal from the Iranian multilateral nuclear accord.

Macron usually got "nowhere" on substantive matters, while Trump became irritated at the French President's stream of requests and subjected him to self-serving harangues and lectures that were described by one source as personalized verbal "whippings," especially about France and other countries not meeting NATO spending targets, their liberal immigration policies or their trade imbalances with the US.

But his most vicious attacks, said the sources, were aimed at women heads of state. In conversations with both May and Merkel, the President demeaned and denigrated them in diatribes described as "near-sadistic" by one of the sources and confirmed by others. "Some of the things he said to Angela Merkel are just unbelievable: he called her 'stupid,' and accused her of being in the pocket of the Russians ... He's toughest [in the phone calls] with those he looks at as weaklings and weakest with the ones he ought to be tough with."
The calls "are so unusual," confirmed a German official, that special measures were taken in Berlin to ensure that their contents remained secret. The official described Trump's behavior with Merkel in the calls as "very aggressive" and said that the circle of German officials involved in monitoring Merkel's calls with Trump has shrunk: "It's just a small circle of people who are involved and the reason, the main reason, is that they are indeed problematic.

Trump's conversations with May, the UK Prime Minister from 2016 to 2019, were described as "humiliating and bullying," with Trump attacking her as "a fool" and spineless in her approach to Brexit, NATO and immigration matters.

"He'd get agitated about something with Theresa May, then he'd get nasty with her on the phone call," One source said. "It's the same interaction in every setting -- coronavirus or Brexit -- with just no filter applied."
Merkel remained calm and outwardly unruffled in the face of Trump's attacks —"like water off a duck's back," in the words of one source -- and she regularly countered his bluster with recitations of fact. The German official quoted above said that during Merkel's visit to the White House two years ago, Trump displayed "very questionable behavior" that "was quite aggressive ... [T]he Chancellor indeed stayed calm, and that's what she does on the phone."

Prime Minister May, in contrast, became "flustered and nervous" in her conversations with the President. "He clearly intimidated her and meant to," said one of CNN's sources. In response to a request for comment about Trump's behavior in calls with May, the UK's Downing Street referred CNN to its website. The site lists brief descriptions of the content of some calls and avoids any mention of tone or tension. The French embassy in Washington declined to comment, while the Russian and Turkish embassies did not respond to requests for comment.

Concerns over Trump's calls with Putin and Erdogan

The calls with Putin and Erdogan were particularly egregious in terms of Trump almost never being prepared substantively and thus leaving him susceptible to being taken advantage of in various ways, according to the sources -- in part because those conversations (as with most heads of state), were almost certainly recorded by the security services and other agencies of their countries.
In his phone exchanges with Putin, the sources reported, the President talked mostly about himself, frequently in over-the-top, self-aggrandizing terms: touting his "unprecedented" success in building the US economy; asserting in derisive language how much smarter and "stronger" he is than "the imbeciles" and "weaklings" who came before him in the presidency (especially Obama); reveling in his experience running the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow, and obsequiously courting Putin's admiration and approval. Putin "just outplays" him, said a high-level administration official -- comparing the Russian leader to a chess grandmaster and Trump to an occasional player of checkers. 

While Putin "destabilizes the West," said this source, the President of the United States "sits there and thinks he can build himself up enough as a businessman and tough guy that Putin will respect him." (At times, the Putin-Trump conversations sounded like "two guys in a steam bath," a source added.)

In numerous calls with Putin that were described to CNN, Trump left top national security aides and his chiefs of staff flabbergasted, less because of specific concessions he made than because of his manner -- inordinately solicitous of Putin's admiration and seemingly seeking his approval -- while usually ignoring substantive policy expertise and important matters on the standing bilateral agenda, including human rights; and an arms control agreement, which never got dealt with in a way that advanced shared Russian and American goals that both Putin and Trump professed to favor, CNN's sources said.
Throughout his presidency, Trump has touted the theme of "America First" as his north star in foreign policy, advancing the view that America's allies and adversaries have taken economic advantage of US goodwill in trade. And that America's closest allies need to increase their share of collective defense spending. 

Trump frequently justifies his seeming deference to Putin by arguing that Russia is a major world player and that it is in the United States' interest to have a constructive and friendly relationship -- requiring a reset with Moscow through his personal dialogue with Putin.

In separate interviews, two high-level administration officials familiar with most of the Trump-Putin calls said the President naively elevated Russia -- a second-rate totalitarian state with less than 4% of the world's GDP -- and its authoritarian leader almost to parity with the United States and its President by undermining the tougher, more realistic view of Russia expressed by the US Congress, American intelligence agencies and the long-standing post-war policy consensus of the US and its European allies. "He [Trump] gives away the advantage that was hard won in the Cold War," said one of the officials -- in part by "giving Putin and Russia a legitimacy they never had," the official said. "He's given Russia a lifeline -- because there is no doubt that they're a declining power ... He's playing with something he doesn't understand and he's giving them power that they would use [aggressively]."

Both officials cited Trump's decision to pull US troops out of Syria -- a move that benefited Turkey as well as Russia -- as perhaps the most grievous example. "He gave away the store," one of them said.
The frequency of the calls with Erdogan -- in which the Turkish president continually pressed Trump for policy concessions and other favors -- was especially worrisome to McMaster, Bolton and Kelly, the more so because of the ease with which Erdogan bypassed normal National Security Council protocols and procedures to reach the President, said two of the sources.

Erdogan became so adept at knowing when to reach the President directly that some White House aides became convinced that Turkey's security services in Washington were using Trump's schedule and whereabouts to provide Erdogan with information about when the President would be available for a call.
On some occasions Erdogan reached him on the golf course and Trump would delay play while the two spoke at length.
Two sources described the President as woefully uninformed about the history of the Syrian conflict and the Middle East generally, and said he was often caught off guard, and lacked sufficient knowledge to engage on equal terms in nuanced policy discussion with Erdogan. 

"Erdogan took him to the cleaners," said one of the sources.

The sources said that deleterious US policy decisions on Syria -- including the President's directive to pull US forces out of the country, which then allowed Turkey to attack Kurds who had helped the US fight ISIS and weakened NATO's role in the conflict -- were directly linked to Erdogan's ability to get his way with Trump on the phone calls.

Trump occasionally became angry at Erdogan -- sometimes because of demands that Turkey be granted preferential trade status, and because the Turkish leader would not release an imprisoned American evangelical pastor, Andrew Brunson, accused of 'aiding terrorism' in the 2016 coup that attempted to overthrow Erdogan. Brunson was eventually released in October 2018.

Despite the lack of advance notice for many of Erdogan's calls, full sets of contemporaneous notes from designated notetakers at the White House exist, as well as rough voice-generated computer texts of the conversations, the sources said.

According to one high-level source, there are also existing summaries and conversation-readouts of the President's discussions with Erdogan that might reinforce Bolton's allegations against Trump in the so-called "Halkbank case," involving a major Turkish bank with suspected ties to Erdogan and his family. That source said the matter was raised in more than one telephone conversation between Erdogan and Trump.

Bolton wrote in his book that in December 2018, at Erdogan's urging, Trump offered to interfere in an investigation by then-US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman into the Turkish bank, which was accused of violating US sanctions on Iran.
"Trump then told Erdogan he would take care of things, explaining that the Southern District prosecutors were not his people, but were Obama people, a problem that would be fixed when they were replaced by his people," Bolton wrote. Berman's office eventually brought an indictment against the bank in October 2019 for fraud, money laundering and other offenses related to participation in a multibillion-dollar scheme to evade the US sanctions on Iran. On June 20, Trump fired Berman -- whose office is also investigating Rudy Giuliani, the President's personal lawyer -- after the prosecutor refused to resign at Attorney General William Barr's direction.
Unlike Bolton, CNN's sources did not assert or suggest specifically that Trump's calls with Erdogan might have been grounds for impeachment because of possible evidence of unlawful conduct by the President. Rather, they characterized Trump's calls with heads of state in the aggregate as evidence of Trump's general "unfitness" for the presidency on grounds of temperament and incompetence, an assertion Bolton made as well in an interview to promote his book with ABC News last week: "I don't think he's fit for office. I don't think he has the competence to carry out the job," Bolton said.

Family feedback and grievances fuel Trump's approach

CNN spoke to sources familiar with the President's phone calls, repeatedly,

 over a four-month period. In their interviews, the sources took great care not to disclose specific national security information and classified details -- but rather described the broad contents of many of the calls, and the overall tenor and methodology of Trump's approach to his telephone discussions with foreign leaders.
In addition to rough, voice-generated software transcription, almost all of Trump's telephone conversations with Putin, Erdogan and leaders of the western alliance were supplemented and documented by extensive contemporaneous note-taking (and, often, summaries) prepared by Fiona Hill, deputy assistant to the President and senior NSC director for Europe and Russia until her resignation last year. Hill listened to most of the President's calls with Putin, Erdogan and the European leaders, according to her closed-door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee last November.

Elements of that testimony by Hill, if re-examined by Congressional investigators, might provide a detailed road-map of the President's extensively-documented conversations, the sources said. White House and intelligence officials familiar with the voice-generated transcriptions and underlying documents agreed that their contents could be devastating to the President's standing with members of the Congress of both parties -- and the public -- if revealed in great detail. (There is little doubt that Trump would invoke executive privilege to keep the conversations private. However, some former officials with detailed knowledge of many of the conversations might be willing to testify about them, sources said.)
In one of the earliest calls between Putin and Trump, the President's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were in the room to listen — joining McMaster, Tillerson, Hill, and a State Department aide to Tillerson.

"The call was all over the place," said an NSC deputy who read a detailed summary of the conversation -- with Putin speaking substantively and at length, and Trump propping himself up in short autobiographical bursts of bragging, self-congratulation and flattery toward Putin. As described to CNN, Kushner and Ivanka Trump were immediately effusive in their praise of how Trump had handled the call -- while Tillerson (who knew Putin well from his years in Russia as an oil executive), Hill and McMaster were skeptical.
Hill — author of a definitive biography of Putin -- started to explain some of the nuances she perceived from the call, according to CNN's sources — offering insight into Putin's psychology, his typical "smooth-talking" and linear approach and what the Russian leader was trying to achieve in the call. Hill was cut off by Trump, and the President continued discussing the call with Jared and Ivanka, making clear he wanted to hear the congratulatory evaluation of his daughter and her husband, rather than how Hill, Tillerson or McMaster judged the conversation.
McMaster viewed that early phone call with Putin as indicative of the conduct of the whole relationship between Russia and the Trump administration, according to the sources -- a conclusion subsequent national security advisers and chiefs of staff, and numerous high-ranking intelligence officials also reached: unlike in previous administrations, there were relatively few meaningful dealings between military and diplomatic professionals, even at the highest levels, because Trump -- distrustful of the experts and dismissive of their attempts to brief him -- conducted the relationship largely ad hoc with Putin and almost totally by himself. Ultimately, Putin and the Russians learned that "nobody has the authority to do anything" -- and the Russian leader used that insight to his advantage, as one of CNN's sources said.
The Kushners were also present for other important calls with foreign leaders and made their primacy apparent, encouraged by the President even on matters of foreign policy in which his daughter and her husband had no experience. Almost never, according to CNN's sources, would Trump read the briefing materials prepared for him by the CIA and NSC staff in advance of his calls with heads of state.
"He won't consult them, he won't even get their wisdom," said one of the sources, who cited Saudi Arabia's bin Salman as near the top of a list of leaders whom Trump "picks up and calls without anybody being prepared," a scenario that frequently confronted NSC and intelligence aides. The source added that the aides' helpless reaction "would frequently be, 'Oh my God, don't make that phone call.'"
"Trump's view is that he is a better judge of character than anyone else," said one of CNN's sources. The President consistently rejected advice from US defense, intelligence and national security principals that the Russian president be approached more firmly and with less trust. CNN's sources pointed to the most notable public example as "emblematic": Trump, standing next to the Russian President at their meeting in Helsinki, Finland, in June 2018, and saying he "didn't see any reason why" Russia would have interfered in the 2016 presidential election -- despite the findings of the entire US intelligence community that Moscow had. "President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today," Trump said.
The common, overwhelming dynamic that characterizes Trump's conversations with both authoritarian dictators and leaders of the world's greatest democracies is his consistent assertion of himself as the defining subject and subtext of the calls -- almost never the United States and its historic place and leadership in the world, according to sources intimately familiar with the calls.
In numerous calls with the leaders of the UK, France, Germany, Australia and Canada -- America's closest allies of the past 75 years, the whole postwar era -- Trump typically established a grievance almost as a default or leitmotif of the conversation, whatever the supposed agenda, according to those sources.
"Everything was always personalized, with everybody doing terrible things to rip us off — which meant ripping 'me' — Trump — off. He couldn't -- or wouldn't -- see or focus on the larger picture," said one US official.
The source cited a conspicuously demonstrable instance in which Trump resisted asking Angela Merkel (at the UK's urging) to publicly hold Russia accountable for the so-called 'Salisbury' radioactive poisonings of a former Russian spy and his daughter, in which Putin had denied any Russian involvement despite voluminous evidence to the contrary. "It took a lot of effort" to get Trump to bring up the subject, said one source. Instead of addressing Russia's responsibility for the poisonings and holding it to international account, Trump made the focus of the call -- in personally demeaning terms -- Germany's and Merkel's supposedly deadbeat approach to allied burden-sharing. Eventually, said the sources, as urged by his NSC staff, Trump at last addressed the matter of the poisonings, almost grudgingly.
"With almost every problem, all it takes [in his phone calls] is someone asking him to do something as President on behalf of the United States and he doesn't see it that way; he goes to being ripped off; he's not interested in cooperative issues or working on them together; instead he's deflecting things or pushing real issues off into a corner," said a US official.
"There was no sense of 'Team America' in the conversations," or of the United States as an historic force with certain democratic principles and leadership of the free world, said the official. "The opposite. It was like the United States had disappeared. It was always 'Just me'."
UPDATE: This story has been updated with comment from the White House.

CNN's Nicole Gaouette contributed to this report.

Truth-tramplings- serious consequences caused by Donald Trump’s assault on truth

An excellent echo essay published in the History News Network newletter, written by Walter G. Moss*.

Donald Trump uses a Bible for a photo-op but he obviously does not understand the Ten Commandments:  "You shall not bear false witness".

In May 2020, historian Jill Lepore began a new podcast seeking to answer the question "Who killed truth?" In her These Truths: A History of the United States (2019), she writes that “the work of the historian” includes being “the teller of truth.” And indeed what other task can be more important for us? Are we not society’s experts on telling the truth about the past? And, as H. Stuart Hughes once argued, that includes the recent past. 

“Tell the truth” should be as central to our mission, as “First, do no harm” is to doctors and nurses.

Truth is especially important in this year of a crucial presidential election. Competing versions of the truth are already battling each other. And President Trump’s actions and inactions regarding the coronavirus pandemic and post-George-Floyd murder are the main battlegrounds.

In a New York Times op-ed of 13 June, conservative columnist Peter Wehner, a frequent critic of Trump, wrote that even before becoming president Trump’s goal “was to annihilate the distinction between truth and falsity . . . to overwhelm people with misinformation and disinformation.”

Politicians are not especially known for truth telling. As Hannah Arendt wrote in 1967, “No one has ever doubted that truth and politics are on rather bad terms with each other.” But Trump has brought disrespect for truth to a whole new level, one that easily has surpassed that of any previous president. Early in 2018 his fellow Republican, outgoing senator from Arizona, Jeff Flake stated:

2017 was a year which saw the truth—objective, empirical, evidence-based truth—more battered and abused than any other in the history of our country, at the hands of the most powerful figure in our government. It was a year which saw the White House enshrine “alternative facts” into the American lexicon, as justification for what used to be known simply as good old-fashioned falsehoods. It was the year in which an unrelenting daily assault on the constitutionally protected free press was launched by that same White House, an assault that is as unprecedented as it is unwarranted. “The enemy of the people,” was what the president of the United States called the free press in 2017.

Later in 2018, Michiko Kakutani’s The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump wrote of the“monumentally serious consequences of his [Trump’s] assault on truth.” At the beginning of June 2020, Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth: The President's Falsehoods, Misleading Claims and Flat-Out Lies, by several members of The Washington Post Fact Checker team, appeared on bookshelves. It declared, “Donald Trump, the most mendacious president in U.S. history . . . . [is] not known for one big lie—just a constant stream of exaggerated, invented, boastful, purposely outrageous, spiteful, inconsistent, dubious and false claims.”

The book also insisted that Trump’s “pace of deception has quickened exponentially. He averaged about six [false or misleading] claims a day in 2017, nearly 16 a day in 2018 and more than 22 a day in 2019.” In 2020 the number continued to rise, reaching 19,128 by late May. Furthermore, Trump has reduced the capacity of many government agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to act based on science-based truths rather than political bias.

But rather than analyzing all Trump’s falsehoods and weakening of factual-based government operations, let’s just concentrate on his responses to our ongoing pandemic and the continuing protests following the 25-May-knee-on-the-neck killing of George Floyd. Following an examination of Trumpian truth-tramplings regarding those two 2020 events, we shall look further at the historian’s role in insisting on truth-telling.

Truth-tramplings!

On 13 April 2020, Trump exploited the daily White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing to play a four-minute video featuring TV clips and text which praised his coronavirus responses. On that same day, the Republican National Committee (RNC) began running ads in over a dozen battleground states praising Trump's coronavirus leadership. 

The main theme of both the four-minute video and the ads was summed up by a few quotes from one of the ads. “Our nation in crisis, but through the uncertainty and fear, our president is a steady hand. Bold action. Strong leadership. Uniting America,” and “From the beginning, President Trump was decisive. Stopping travel from foreign nations, gathering our best and brightest, slowing the spread of COVID-19. President Trump will relaunch our economy and fight for the American worker. Helping a nation in need delivering unprecedented bipartisan relief.” 

About the 13-April video CNN proclaimed, “TRUMP USES TASK FORCE BRIEFING TO TRY AND REWRITE HISTORY ON CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE.” Two of the networks reporters, Erin Burnett and John King, indicated some of the ways the video presented a false narrative. And CNN’s Jim Acosta declared that it looked like it was made in China or North Korea.

Thus, it appears that competing views of Trump’s coronavirus response, competing histories of it, are going to bombard citizens all the way up to the November presidential election. The same is likely to occur regarding the Trumpian response to protests stemming from the killing of George Floyd. Can voters’ get this history right? Can they distinguish between truthful history and fake history? The outcomes of the November Presidential and Congressional elections are likely to hinge on this capability.

A Pew poll released May 28 does not provide great hope. Only 33 percent of Democrats and independents leaning that way and 23 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents felt “highly confident in their ability to check the accuracy of COVID-19 news and information.”

Regarding Trump’s coronavirus responses, The Atlantic’s “All the President’s Lies About the Coronavirus” (27 May, 2020) and its promise of updating as needed provides a good overview. So too does Texas Congressman Lloyd Doggett’s up-to-date “Timeline of Trump’s Coronavirus Responses,” which includes such Trump gems as “We have it totally under control. . . . It’s going to be just fine” (22 January); “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus” (25 February); and “When we have a lot of cases, I don't look at that as a bad thing, I look at that as, in a certain respect, as being a good thing, . . . Because it means our testing is much better. I view it as a badge of honor, really, it's a badge of honor” (19 May, the day after U.S coronavirus deaths passed 90,000).

The most notable presidential response to the protests after George Floyd’s death was Trump’s short walk from the White House to St. John’s Church, where he

arranged a photo op of him holding up a Bible. To get to the church Trump used militarized security forces, rubber bullets, and tear gas to disperse peaceful protesters. After such tactics were criticized in the press, the Trump campaign claimed the press distorted the Trump response.

In general Trump and his administration have attempted to link the protests to radical leftists, including a loose group of anti-fascist activists known as antifa. Trump’s most outrageous claim was that a 75-year-old man knocked to the ground by Buffalo police and hospitalized “could be an ANTIFA provocateur.” Yet, as the New York Times indicated “Federal Arrests Show No Sign That Antifa Plotted Protests”

Of course, Trump and his supporters often damn media that are critical of him by calling them “fake news.” But this frequent and careless labeling, even against such conservative publications as the Wall Street Journal, is hardly credible. As historians, we often emphasize that in seeking truth we should rely on reliable sources. Can anyone seriously claim that Trump is such a source?

In a post on HNN last month, Christine Adams and Nina Kushner wrote that “to hold Trump and the GOP accountable . . . will require a shared understanding of what constitutes truth. . . . This idea of truth based on reason and evidence is what supports almost all research from life-saving medical breakthroughs (such as the coronavirus vaccine we are nervously awaiting) to the development of the iPhone. But it is not the monopoly of research. Rational evidence-based inquiry is the hallmark of journalism, the work of intelligence agencies, and even the legal system, however imperfectly.” Yet, the two historians realized, “it is exactly this understanding of the truth that is at risk.”

Historians stress on truth telling goes way back. A half century ago, for example, David Hackett Fischer emphasized it in his book Historians’ Fallacies (1970): “Every true statement must be thrice true. It must be true to its evidence, true to itself, and true to other historical truths with which it is colligated. Moreover, a historian must not merely tell truths, but demonstrate their truthfulness as well.”

Fischer’s book remains valuable because he reminds us of all the errors we as historians can, and have, made; and he is absolutely correct in emphasizing the centrality of truth telling to our profession. Seeking truth about past events must always remain our lodestar.

What former President Obama said in a July 2018 speech in South Africa is even more true today than it was two years ago. Still early in the Trump administration, Obama stated that “too much of politics today seems to reject the very concept of objective truth. People just make stuff up. . . . We see it in state-sponsored propaganda. . . . We see it in the promotion of anti-intellectualism and the rejection of science from leaders who find critical thinking and data somehow politically inconvenient.”

Although Obama did not mention Trump, it was easy to discern that the former president believed his successor was encouraging truth trampling. And, unfortunately, Trump’s Republican Party was descending into the lying pit along with him. Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth cites a 2007 Associated Press–Yahoo poll which “found that 71 percent of Republicans said it was ‘extremely important’ for presidential candidates to be honest,” but in a 2018 Washington Post poll only 49 percent thought it was important, “22 points lower than in the poll a decade earlier.”

The party that once prided itself on emphasizing virtues such as honesty (see, e.g. William Bennett’s 1993 Book of Virtues) was apparently now having second thoughts about a value Bennett thought “was of pervasive human importance.” But Obama told his South African audience that “the denial of facts runs counter to democracy, it could be its undoing, which is why we must zealously protect independent media; and we have to guard against the tendency for social media to become purely a platform for spectacle, outrage, or disinformation; and we have to insist that our schools teach critical thinking to our young people.” In the spirit of that speech, where four times he repeated the phrase “history shows,” we can also add that historians need to continue insisting on the importance of truth-telling.

*Walter G. Moss is a professor emeritus of history at Eastern Michigan University,

Donald Trump is a national disgrace: "The biggest detriment to our country."

Echo opinion published in The Patriot Ledger, a Massachusettes newsaper:

#Coronavirus #COVID-19

To the editor:  ....people need to remember how we got here. Trump fired the entire pandemic response team in 2018. He said that he dismantled this team because he did not want people sitting around. Scientists, who are trying to protect America and other countries around the world from infectious diseases do not sit around.

Trump fired the team because it was set up by President Obama to protect Americans against the spread Ebola and other infectious diseases. Trump dismantled this team, just as he has deregulated the clean water and clean air acts put in place by Obama to protect Americans.

Because of Trump’s hatred for Obama, he has negated all the good that was done for the health and safety of Americans.

Trump was responsible for the longest government shutdown that hurt Americans.

He put America and our allies in danger when he had General Soleimani assassinated.

He preys on people’s fears. He spews anger and hatred every day with his continuous lying. He is the biggest detriment to our country.

From Carol Massey, Braintree Massachusettes  

Failed Trump leadership exposed in the irreverant Bible photo-op

Republican voters who continue to intimidate others on social media are blind to how Donald Trump is the mirror reflection of the tyrannical lables they use in their relentless right wing propaganda posts, whereby they want to intimidate the "resistance".  This echo opinion published in the Berlin, New Hampshire Conway Daily Sun newspaper is a reality check on the Trump cult that refuses to see his failed, tyrannical and negative leadership. My only critique about this well written essay is to raise the question about whether or not Trumpzi's cult will ever read this metaphor and, if they happen to do so, will any of them understand it?

Trump's Bible photo-op during the George Floyd protests in Washington DC, will cost him. "One protester was shoved hard in front of us, stumbling backwards before slamming the back of his head on the road."

Opinion echo written by Charles Gywnne "Chuck" Douglas III, an American politician, a Republican, a jurist, and trial lawyer. He is a former United States Representative from New Hampshire and a New Hampshire Supreme Court Associate Justice.

(So, let's imagine......and then a reality check)  A couple of weeks ago in Central America, one of the dictators was irritated by the thousands of peasants marching in the streets, demanding justice, in front of the Palacio Presidencial, the leader's paid by tax money home, in the capital city.

One night, before a curfew went into effect, El Caudillo Maximo (the maximum leader) called on his Minister of Defense and his Minister of Justice to clear the protesters away.

Being “yes men” they humored El Caudillo and called on national and local armed forces to clear the area so the leader did not have to go to his basement bunker in fear of his people again.

The Minister of Defense said he would “dominate the battlespace” and rid it of peaceful protesters. They used tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and flash bombs to terrify the crowd without notice.

After the area was cleared, there was no objection from the leader’s party, the Partido de Sapos (party of toads), but some former generals did speak out about how bad this would look to North Americans.

However, El Caudillo stood triumphant with a jutting jaw like his revered Benito Mussolini and even silently held a random Bible in the air as if waiting for the hymn Onward Christian Soldiers to be sung at the great military victory long denied him.

(Reality check....) No, that really didn’t happen in a banana republic but right here in our capital, Washigton DC, on June 1, in Lafayette Square, long used as a public forum for expression of free speech and peaceable assembly.

The damage caused on earlier nights was not on the agenda of those on June 1, protesting the lack of equal justice for black and brown Americans. (The damage was done by Trump's photo-op!)

What led up to the clearing on June 1, includes a presidential tweet referring to civil rights protesters as “THUGS.” On May 31, President Donald Trump, as an astute observer of the exercise of First Amendment rights, said in a tweet “These people [the protesters] are ANARCHISTS. Call in our National Guard NOW.” He also did his best imitation of Juan Peron when he tweeted on the need for “overwhelming force” against them.

Earlier on June 1, Trump told the nation’s governors in a conference call to “dominate your city and your state.” He then promised that in Washington “we’re going to do something people haven’t seen before.” 

True to his (evil intentioned) word, Trumpzi amassed hundreds from the Secret Service, Park Police, D.C. National Guard and military police from the Army’s 82d Airborne Division.

At 6:30 p.m., before the curfew was to take effect, gas masks were donned and the police and military force rushed the assembled protesters without warning or provocation.

A reporter from CBS affiliate WUSA9 showed pictures of canisters of Skat Shell 37mm projectile and Spede Heat CS tear gas used on the crowd.

Trumpzi, of course, (as ususal, like General Colin Powell said....he lies) and denies that tear gas was used, calling it fake news.

On June 4, several of those injured (both white and black) as well as Black Lives Matter D.C. filed suit against A.G. Barr, President Trump and others alleging that “the officers hit, punched, shoved, and otherwise assaulted the demonstrators with their fists, feet, batons and shields. The police action ‘injected danger into what had been a calm protest as those in the street fled mounted police to avoid being trampled, struck by projectiles or gassed.’”

Law enforcement officers also made unprovoked assaults on journalists in Lafayette Square who were reporting on the protests. The reporting of these journalists spread the voice of the demonstrators to the world.

Mr. Kishon McDonald is a black plaintiff and former member of the U.S. Navy. He was repeatedly struck by the shields of multiple officers leaving bruises on his body. Tear gas stung his eyes and he alleges in federal court that he “witnessed the concussion grenades exploding with enough force to put holes into the ground.”

Mr. Garrett Bond is a white man living in Maryland, who came to Lafayette Square to support the Black Lives Matter protest triggered by George Floyd’s cruel murder.

Not a typical “THUG” in the presidential lexicon, Bond is an Eagle Scout train in basic first aid who brought first aid supplies with him. The only announcement he heard was that a curfew would take effect later at 7 p.m. and then he heard explosions and saw people fleeing in all directions. He went to aid a man with a lower lip pierced by a rubber bullet when they both had to flee baton-wielding officers.

Another peaceful white demonstrator plaintiff is Keara Scallan who lives in Washington’s Northwest section. She was hit by rubber bullets and saw tear gas thrown at her resulting in bruises and cuts.

Our macho Caudillo on June 2 tweeted his victory saying “Many arrests. Great job done by all. Overwhelming force. Domination.” If Twitter existed 200 years ago King George III could have uttered identical words after the battle of Bunker Hill.

The America of our founders set up a system of governance based upon the force of law, not the law of force. Only a constitutional illiterate like Trump could talk about “dominating the space” occupied by peaceful protesters.

Secretary of Defense Esper (pronounced yessir) showed his lack of guts when he humored Trump and brought in military police from the 101st Airborne.

Now, he and the President have been repudiated by former general and Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly and former Trump Secretary of Defense General Jim Mattis. They have stood up for First Amendment rights to assemble, speak and protest.

As General Mattis said: “When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”

As the Declaration of Independence observed “A prince whose character is … marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

I want our Bill of Rights back. Trump can keep the bananas.

Chuck Douglas is a former N.H. Supreme Court Justice and a former Republican member of Congress.

Wearing a mask is public health science- not political! Opinions support wearing masks

"...wear that mask!...Eleanor Ball in Keene, New Hampshire

Two letters to the editor echoes published in the Keene Sentinel, a New Hampshire newspaper.  By including two letters about the same important issue in one edition of the news shows the level of interest in support of wearing face masks in public to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

Are Americans proud that we lead the world in COVID-19 deaths? 

Apparantly, they hate science?

Studies have shown that masks work in halting the spread of COVID-19 (from 17 percent transmission rate to 3 percent). Going to a grocery store today during their so-called time reserved for at-risk groups, half the customers went without masks, along with a couple of associates.

Ignorance and lack of commitment are killing us.

Science is not political until politicians make it so.

From Matthew Kamarck in Marlow New Hampshire

What is all the fuss about wearing masks?

Personally I don’t like them at all, but in the interest of my fellow man, I do wear them. Because the virus can be asymptomatic, we owe it to others to protect them, just like we want others to wear one to protect us.

At an appointment at the clinic the other day, the folks working the “front line” were so pleasant doing their job that I was prompted to say thank you. The staff inside was just as courteous. It certainly makes their job more difficult because of the masks and face shields, but they do it. Being hard of hearing myself, it’s either laugh and say I can’t hear you or be a jerk and get upset.

We live in a time, my opinion, when just about everyone gets what they want and don’t think of others. Thank goodness there are some who DO think of others. Get on the bandwagon, think of others, wear that mask, help curtail the virus.

From Eleanor Ball in Keene, New Hampshire

When Republicans lose New Hampshire's high country then the party is truly derailed

https://www.conwaydailysun.com/opinion/letters/walter-davis-with-plea-to-slow-down-virus-testing-trump-commits-another-travesty/article_707f72ee-b4bd-11ea-9250-a7c674277728.html

An opinion echo letter published in the Conway Daily Sun, a New Hampshire newspaper:

With plea to slow down virus testing, Trump commits another travesty!

To the editor: He did it again. At his sparsely populated rally in Tulsa Saturday night, President Donald Trump said, “When you do testing to that extent you find more people, find more cases. I said to my people ‘slow the testing down, please.’ They test and they test. We had tests on people whom don’t know what’s going on. We got another one over there.”

Well, duh! How else can we find the hot spots, the spikes, the information the medical community needs to react and possibly battle and cure this disease? Gee, is the information getting to you, Mr. Trump? Is it hurting your re-election chances? Is it showing your inaction that caused over 60,000 needless deaths?

And, today, Trump and Attorney General Barr fired Geoffrey Berman, the New York investigator who sent one of Trump’s former lawyers to jail and was investigating Trump himself. And he wants to replace Mr. Berman with one of their toadies who has no legal background, Securities and Exchange Commissioner Jay Clayton. That is like having the cop who caught you robbing a house fired so he can’t press charges.

This is why we have to keep pointing out these travesties 45 (impotus45!) is foisting upon us.

Also, that much touted rally with “millions” of ticket applications? The arena was only two-thirds of the 20,000 seats full, and his planned outside speech was canceled due to lack of people, which was not reported by the propagada broadcasting Fox News TV station.

From Walter Davis, North Conway New Hampshire

This area in New Hampshire's White Mountains is the scenie ski area and adjacent to Lake Winnepasaukee, where Senator Mitt Romney and his family own a summer home.

Create political change by voting!

Echo opinion letter to the Conway Daily Sun in Conway New Hampshire:

To the editor:  In the interest of full disclosure, I do not get my identity from my political beliefs. Over the decades, my political opinions have evolved as the culture has changed. I have family members, friends, coworkers and acquaintances who hold a variety of political views. I respect them all.

"...we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation."- Martin Luther King

Like millions of Americans, I am concerned about the polarization and uncivil discourse in this country. While we may be speaking the same words, we are attributing different meanings to these words. Let’s look up the following definitions of “revolution,” “repentance” and “reconciliation” in the dictionary.

Revolution is “a forcible overthrow of government or social order, in favor of a new system.” The American Revolution overthrew a British monarchy for a republic. The French Revolution overthrew a French king for anarchy. The Russian Revolution overthrew a Russian Czar for communism. None of these subjects had the right to vote to influence or change their government. All involved violence, death, loss of property and imprisonment.

Repentance is “a call to persons to make a radical turn from one way of life to another.” It is much more than feeling sorry or guilty; repentance leads to an observable change. When we acknowledge that we are part of the problem, we can become part of the solution. Repentance is the first step toward reconciliation.

Reconciliation is “the process of two or more people or groups in a conflict agreeing to make amends or come to a truce.”

Revolution is fueled by anger, repentance by humility, reconciliation by concern. Revolution is symbolized by a raised fist, repentance by a bowed head, reconciliation with an outstretched hand.

Revolution shouts, repentance whispers, reconciliation listens. Revolution tears down statues, reconciliation erects new ones to overlooked heroes.

In revolution the oppressed become the oppressors. In reconciliation the oppressed become equals. Revolution draws a line in the sand and demands you pick a side. Reconciliation invites you to the table to express your views.

Revolution wants to destroy the Judeo/Christian foundation of our nation. Reconciliation acknowledges we have failed to live by the ideals we claim to believe.

In the 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. transformed American society without throwing a brick or hurling an insult. His weapon was the word of God. I challenge you to read the books written by him or watch his “I Have a Dream Speech” online.

America as we have known it is at a crossroads. It is not a choice between left or right, Democrat or Republican. It is a choice between revolution or reconciliation. I choose reconciliation.

From June O’Donal
Denmark, Maine

Physician Assisted Suicide: New Hampshire opion echo about danger warnings

Echo opinion letter published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette in New Hampshire:

From Jonah Carlson - For years, I had assumed the progressive position on physician assisted suicide was clear. But when I became involved in activism regarding disability rights and justice, several years after becoming disabled myself, I learned more about the issue and ended up changing my mind.

Every major disability advocacy organization in the United States that has taken a position on physician assisted suicide, opposes it. There are compelling reasons why, and legislators and the public can learn from listening to disabled voices about this issue.

Assisted suicide laws make it a legal and normal medical procedure that physicians may prescribe and health insurance may cover for terminally ill people. The biggest problem with legalized, normalized physician assisted suicide is how it interacts with the structural ableism that harms disabled people and disproportionately harms those who are multiply marginalized. 

Misdiagnosis of illnesses as terminal is common.

In Oregon, a model state for assisted suicide, both private and government insurance plans have been documented denying cancer treatment while offering assisted suicide as an alternative.

Data collected from Oregon also shows that pain is not close to being in the top five reasons for assisted suicide. “Loss of dignity” and “feelings of being a burden” both rank far higher, issues which should be addressed by improving support services and creating a culture that values disabled lives, not by a prescription for suicide.

Over 70% of disabled people report experiencing abuse during their lifetimes. Prosecution and conviction are less common when the victim of abuse is disabled. In Oregon, there have been numerous egregious cases of caregiver abuse-involved assisted suicide that resulted in no prosecution, perhaps most notoriously the killing of trans woman Wendy Melcher.

To quote Marilyn Golden of the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, “If assisted suicide is legal, some people’s lives will be ended without their consent, through mistakes, coercion and abuse. No safeguards have ever been enacted, or even proposed, that can prevent this outcome, which can never be undone.”

Please ask our state legislators to take time to listen to disabled voices on physician assisted suicide and to vote against physician assisted suicide. It is dangerous.

Jonah Carlson, Northampton (@DailyHamGazette)

Trump has no leadeship skills - he only knows how to divide: tripping without a strategic message

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-trump-water-ramp-west-point-speech-20200621-lqqibcey6bbqjfgtalbs2luz4q-story.html

‘Like an ice-skating rink:‘ Trump defends struggles lifting glass of water and walking down ramp at West Point,  Blame it on my leather shoes — and the hot sun! Trump crept along his stage in front of a crowd at the West Point graduation in New york, duiring a ceremony on Saturday. He also tossed back a glass of water in an efffort explain away his infamous struggles walking down a ramp and lifting (with difficulty) a cup during a graduation speech at West Point.

Considering there are few aspects of his job that Donald Trump seems to actually enjoy, besides speaking to his fervent (demonic!) fan base, Saturday’s rally in Tulsa was meant to help the rudderless president get his stride back.

Confronted with a much lower-than-expected turnout for an event the campaign had touted as being in high demand, the president was reportedly angered and dumbfounded. #TrumpDeathRally

A video of Trump disembarking Marine One back in Washington later that night captured the seemingly exhausted and defeated tenor of the president perfectly.

Trump also sought to explain away his difficulty lifting a glass of water to drink during the same commencement address.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/22/trump-sad-walk-shame-after-tulsa-rally-inspires-memes

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/01/trump-cog-decline/548759/

Trump claimed critics use the missteps to accuse him of having Parkinson’s disease or some other chronic ailment. Neurological experts say his occasional stumbles could be signs he’s suffering from undiagnosed brain problems.

Rather than speak about how to provide leadership to Americans, Trump's stumbling and mumbling about nonsense was evident as he failed to explain how he was unable to walk down the ramp at West Point without assistance.  

In fact, the slippery ramp at West Point was a metaphor for the stumbling Trump administraton.

Senator Susan Collins - an opinion letter reveals the "elephant in the room"

https://www.conwaydailysun.com/opinion/letters/arthur-heigl-except-for-romney-collins-and-all-republicans-should-be-shamed/article_4bab3d3c-b4bc-11ea-bf83-2f883d580fb3.html 

An echo opinion letter published in the New Hampshire newspaper Concord Daily Sun- Senator Collins alert! Just so blog readers know, the Concord Daily Sun circulates in a heavily Republican community including the Lake Winnepasaukee area where Senator Mitt Romney has a summer home. Although Senator Collins is a Maine senator, the newspaper's circulation (especially electronic readership) spills into nearby western Maine.

Republicans Recklessly Put American Lives in Danger

From Arthur Heigl: Except for Senator Mitt Romney, Maine's Susan Collins and all Republicans should be shamed.

In local New Hampshire and Southern Maine television stations, the political ads are awash with numerous messages paid for by or for Sara Gideon an/or Susan Collins. 

Most of these expensive political advertisements raise various valid points about the candidates themselves or their opponent.

Yet, I find it strange that, thus far, none of these ads has commented on what might be the so-called elephant in that room. 

In other words, that is the way Susan Collins supported Donald Trump in the impeachment trial and before then the way she helped get Brett Kavanaugh a seat on the Supreme Court. In each instance she feigned concerns for truth and justice but then simply towed the shameful (wrongminded) Republican party line.

Now that Bolton‘s book is out, we learn that there is considerably more evidence for other impeachable offenses by Trump. 

Lamar Alexander, a Republican senator, recently said that there was no doubt in his mind that Trump did the things he was impeached for. But he let him go because he thought the offense was not sufficiently impeachable. Interesting. Yet during the impeachment the Republican line was different. It was all about the charges not being true.

Regardless, in my view, Susan Collins and all the other Republicans deserve to be shamed and removed from office because of their having been quiet about almost all of Trump‘s outrageous behaviors, misdeeds, and programs. The only Republican I still respect is Mitt Romney.  From  Arthur Heigl in Intervale NH

Donald Trump failed in Tulsa because he ignored overwhelming advice: "Do not go there".

Trump had a meltdown and yelled at aides backstage when he realized how empty his puny rally in Tulsa was a failure.

Tulsa World wrote an editorial to warn Donald Trump about the political risk he was exposing himself to by holding a rally in the BOK Center during the increasing spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

A "furious" Donald Trump yelled at aides when he saw thousands of empty seats at his rally on Saturday June 20, 2020, in the BOK Center, Tulsa, Oklahoma, according to multiple reports.

Trump yelled at aides backstage at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when he realized how low the turnout was for his rally there on Saturday, The New York Times reported on Sunday.

About 6,200 people showed up to the 19,000-seat venue, despite the Trump campaign's confident assertions that nearly 1 million people had expressed interest in the event.

A person familiar with the discussions told NBC News that the president was already frustrated that news coverage of the rally had been dominated by the revelation that six members of his campaign team tested positive for the coronavirus. (Since then, two more workers have been diagnosed. In fact, 8 people actually tallies to 16 because of contact testing. Everyone who is diagnosed with COVID19 has potentially infected at least, minimum, one other person.)

He was warned on Air Force One about the disappointing audience numbers but boiled over when he saw for himself how empty the venue looked, The Times reported, citing four people familiar with what happened.

Four people told the paper that Trump yelled at aides when he saw the sparsely filled seats from backstage. NBC News reported that multiple people close to the White House described Trump as "furious."

Advisers told The Times that Trump's mood rallied as he gave the two-hour address on stage but that he appeared deflated afterward.

Citing officials with knowledge of the events, The Washington Post reported that Trump fumed on Air Force One on his way back to the White House and through the rest of the weekend.

Widely shared video footage showed the president arriving at the White House with a dejected expression, his red tie undone and a "Make America Great Again" cap in his hand.

Maine Writer post script:  Donald Trump has failed to make anything great again. He is a failed human being.

America has no leadership during pandemic or anything else

Here we are, barely a third of the way into June, 2020, and it’s already a rough month for our government. Uncle Sam must be sad.
Letter opinion

Right now, the American Dream is blurring into a nightmare.

The American dream is fading because Donald Trump has failed to provide patriotic leadership.

America deserves and desperately needs better leadership!

An opinion echo letter in the Idaho Moscow-Pullman Daily News

A major health emergency, coronavirus, which has killed two Vietnam wars worth of Americans, continues to stalk the the United States and the world. 

."...coronavirus has killed more than two Vietnam wars worth of Americans...."

Widespread social unrest generated by huge job losses, overt racial injustice (Black Lives Matter), and police brutality has sparked rioting in cities from coast to coast.

The final ingredient in this dysfunctional cocktail is an absolute lack of leadership from the White House. Other than tweeting and posing for ludicrous photos, Donald Trump has abdicated his responsibility to the nation.

With our current (failed!) president on the sidelines, the nation’s governors are doing the best they can with what they’ve got.

This sorry state of affairs begs some basic questions: 1) Is America prepared for anything? 2) Is there a shred of coherent leadership left in the #WhiteHouse executive branch?

With a penchant for upheaval and a ceaselessly churning roster of interim advisors, President Chaos has shown his disdain for measured, strategic thought. The entire apparatus of U.S. government now operates at the whim of one capricious man. His sole ambition is pandering to the lowest common denominator among poorly educated, white conservatives.

It’s a toxic formula in the best of times, and these are not the best of times.

COVID-19 has killed nearly 120,000 (++) Americans, which is the equivalent of erasing Allentown, Penn., or Abilene, Texas, or Berkeley, Calif., from the face of the earth. Despite cries of “Fake News!” from Trump’s toadies, those are 120,000 real deaths, with real tears and real funerals.

Statistically however, those deaths are just a drop in the bucket. In a nation of more than 328 million, the risk posed by COVID-19 is still pretty abstract for most Americans. For them, the pandemic is killing “other people,” who are “not like us” and “not from around here.”

Of more immediate concern to many people is the economic damage wrought by months of confinement and the inability to earn a paycheck.

The service industry has been particularly hard hit, as have the building trades. The upshot is millions of workers are going broke because of a threat that doesn’t seem like much of a threat.

In their eyes, the solution is wildly disproportionate to the problem.

Some people can “go to work” with a laptop computer at the kitchen table, but many others don’t have that luxury. For them, the extended confinement has been a government-imposed kick in the guts as the bills keep coming even though the paychecks ended months ago.

Unprecedented economic insecurity. Highly publicized assaults on people of color by overzealous white cops. An inflammatory president seeking to stir up conflict and division. Add it all up, and it’s hardly surprising the fabric of civil society is beginning to fray.

Just as 1967, spawned the Summer of Love, 2020, is shaping up as the Summer of Discontent.

With restrictions beginning to ease and more people returning to work, it’s tempting to assume the pandemic is on its last legs. Unfortunately, the worst is not behind us – especially in college towns such as Pullman and Moscow.

Here on the Palouse, our relatively low rates of infection have nowhere to go but up when tens of thousands of college students return in the fall. As a group, college undergraduates are as sociable as a box of puppies, so a second, steeper wave of infections is almost inevitable.

The bad news is that COVID-19 will be with us for a while.

The good news is that smart, capable people are providing sound leadership at the state and local level. Let’s repay that good work by heeding their advice.

As for national leadership, well, America’s current (fake!) president simply isn’t up to the job. Next time, Americans must elect a better one.

William Brock, lives in Pullman, Washington.

Archaeological pandemic research - data and population based contact tracing

Pandemics are a threat to the advancement of the human race. 

Published in The Conversation by authors Charlotte Roberts, Gabriel D. Wrobel and Michael Westaway

Data is needed to determine how past populations responded to infectious diseases and to analyze ways to prevent future and ineviable new infectious diseases. (In other words, archaeologists are population based contact tracers.)

The previous pandemics to which people often compare COVID-19 – the influenza pandemic of 1918, the Black Death bubonic plague (1342-1353), the Justinian plague (541-542) – don’t seem that long ago to archaeologists. We’re used to thinking about people who lived many centuries or even millennia ago. 

Ground penetrating radar shows mass graves from the small Aboriginal settlement of Cherbourg in Australia, where 490 out of 500 people were struck down by the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, with about 90 deaths. Kelsey Lowe, CC BY-ND

Evidence found directly on skeletons shows that infectious diseases have been with us since our beginnings as a species.

Bioarchaeologists like us analyze skeletons to reveal more about how infectious diseases originated and spread in ancient times.

How did aspects of early people’s social behavior allow diseases to flourish? How did people try to care for the sick? How did individuals and entire societies modify behaviors to protect themselves and others?

Knowing these things might help scientists understand why COVID-19 has wreaked such global devastation and what needs to be put in place before the next pandemic.

Clues about illnesses long ago

How can bioarchaeologists possibly know these things, especially for early cultures that left no written record? Even in literate societies, poorer and marginalized segments were rarely written about.

In most archaeological settings, all that remains of our ancestors is the skeleton (but there's lots of data available in the human bones). 

For some infectious diseases, like syphilis, tuberculosis and leprosy, the location, characteristics and distribution of marks on a skeleton’s bones can serve as distinctive “pathognomonic” indicators of the infection.

Most skeletal signs of disease are non-specific, though, meaning bioarchaeologists today can tell an individual was sick, but not with what disease. Some diseases never affect the skeleton at all, including plague and viral infections like HIV and COVID-19. And diseases that kill quickly don’t have enough time to leave a mark on victims’ bones.

Bioarchaeologists use a variety of methods to uncover evidence of specific diseases beyond obvious bone changes, often with the help of other specialists, like geneticists or parasitologists. For instance, analyzing soil collected in a grave from around a person’s pelvis can reveal the remains of intestinal parasites, such as tapeworms and round worms. Genetic analyses can also identify the DNA of infectious pathogens still clinging to ancient bones and teeth.

Bioarchaeologists can also estimate age at death based on how developed a youngster’s teeth and bones are, or how much an adult’s skeleton has degenerated over its lifespan. Then demographers help us draw age profiles for populations that died in epidemics. Most infectious diseases disproportionately affect those with the weakest immune systems, usually the very young and very old.

For instance, the Black Death was indiscriminate; 14th-century burial pits contain the typical age distributions found in cemeteries we know were not for Black Death victims. In contrast, the 1918 flu pandemic was unusual in that it hit hardest those with the most robust immune systems, that is, healthy young adults. COVID-19 today is also leaving a recognizable profile of those most likely to die from the disease, targeting older and vulnerable people and particular ethnic groups.

We can find out what infections were around in the past through our ancestors’ remains, but what does this tell us about the bigger picture of the origin and evolution of infections? Archaeological clues can help researchers reconstruct aspects of socioeconomic organization, environment and technology. And we can study how variations in these risk factors caused diseases to vary across time, in different areas of the world and even among people living in the same societies.

How infectious disease got its first foothold

Human biology affects culture in complex ways. Culture influences biology, too, although it can be hard for our bodies to keep up with rapid cultural changes. For example, in the 20th century, highly processed fast food replaced a more balanced and healthy diet for many. Because the human body evolved and was designed for a different world, this dietary switch resulted in a rise in diseases like diabetes, heart disease and obesity.

From a paleoepidemiological perspective, the most significant event in our species’ history was the adoption of farming. Agriculture arose independently in several places around the world beginning around 12,000 years ago.

Prior to this change, people lived as hunter-gatherers, with dogs as their only animal companions. They were very active and had a well balanced, varied diet that was high in protein and fiber and low in calories and fat. These small groups experienced parasites, bacterial infections and injuries while hunting wild animals and occasionally fighting with one another. They also had to deal with dental problems, including extreme wear, plaque and periodontal disease.

One thing hunter-gatherers didn’t need to worry much about, however, was virulent infectious diseases that could move quickly from person to person throughout a large geographic region. Pathogens like the influenza virus were not able to effectively spread or even be maintained by small, mobile, and socially isolated populations.

The advent of agriculture resulted in larger, sedentary populations of people living in close proximity. New diseases could flourish in this new environment. The transition to agriculture was characterized by high childhood mortality, in which approximately 30% or more of children died before the age of 5.

And for the first time in an evolutionary history spanning millions of years, different species of mammals and birds became intimate neighbors. Once people began to live with newly domesticated animals, they were brought into the life cycle of a new group of diseases – called zoonoses – that previously had been limited to wild animals but could now jump into human beings.

Add to all this the stresses of poor sanitation and a deficient diet, as well as increased connections between distant communities through migration and trade especially between urban communities, and epidemics of infectious disease were able to take hold for the first time.

Globalization of disease

Later events in human history also resulted in major epidemiological transitions related to disease.

For more than 10,000 years, the people of Europe, the Middle East and Asia evolved along with particular zoonoses in their local environments. The animals people were in contact with varied from place to place. As people lived alongside particular animal species over long periods of time, a symbiosis could develop – as well as immune resistance to local zoonoses.

At the beginning of modern history, people from European empires also began traveling across the globe, taking with them a suite of “Old World” diseases that were devastating for groups who hadn’t evolved alongside them. Indigenous populations in Australia, the Pacific and the Americas had no biological familiarity with these new pathogens. Without immunity, one epidemic after another ravaged these groups. Mortality estimates range between 60-90%.

The study of disease in skeletons, mummies and other remains of past people has played a critical role in reconstructing the origin and evolution of pandemics, but this work also provides evidence of compassion and care, including medical interventions such as trepanation, dentistry, amputation and prostheses, herbal remedies and surgical instruments.

Other evidence shows that people have often done their best to protect others, as well as themselves, from disease. Perhaps one of the most famous examples is the English village of Eyam, which made a self-sacrificing decision to isolate itself to prevent further spread of a plague from London in 1665.

In other eras, people with tuberculosis were placed in sanatoria, people with leprosy were admitted to specialized hospitals or segregated on islands or into remote areas, and urban dwellers fled cities when plagues came.

As the world faces yet another pandemic, the archaeological and historical record are reminders that people have lived with infectious disease for millennia. Pathogens have helped shape civilization, and humans have been resilient in the face of such crises.

Maine Writer summary- archaeologists are population based contact tracers!  The data collected contributes to learning how to identify the source of new diseases before they spread.