Hanukkah is a feast celebrating a miraculous event in Jewish history but it is now become a time when Jews worry about antisemitic attacks

The ugly face of antisemitism is showing once again | EDITORIAL published in the Baltimore Sun newspaper.

Australia was brutally shaken by its deadliest terror attack in modern history when two gunmen opened fire on a Hanukkah🕎 celebration at popular Bondi Beach, killing at least 15 people and injuring more than 40. 

Tragically, the horrible assault, allegedly carried out by a father and son, targeted Sydney’s Jewish community, gathered at Archer Park, turning a moment of joy into horror and grief. 

Authorities quickly declared the massacre an antisemitic act of terrorism, underscoring the vulnerability of minority communities even in nations long considered safe.

During this difficult time, we stand shoulder to shoulder with Jewish✡️ communities in Baltimore and across the globe. Antisemitism is a scourge that should have been consigned to history long ago, especially in light of the atrocities of World War II. Yet here we are, still confronting the same poisonous hatred that once fueled one of humanity’s darkest chapters. The persistence of this prejudice is a moral failure and a warning that silence and complacency allow old hatreds to resurface in new forms.

We must also encourage everyone to pay close attention to the significant voices in our media who have little or nothing to say about this atrocity. Silence in the face of such violence is complicity, full stop. And online, particularly in fringe circles, there are many who would prefer this story to vanish quickly, swept under the rug so they can continue peddling false and damaging narratives about Israel and the Jewish people. Their omission is part of a broader effort to distort reality, to minimize Jewish suffering and to redirect public outrage toward manufactured grievances.

Let this also serve as a warning to those who have taken the bait from individuals insisting that conspiracy theorizing about Israel is somehow separate from antisemitism. In fact, the truth is that they are inseparable. Extremists consistently hold all Jews accountable for fabricated grievances against Israel, collapsing the distinction between legitimate policy criticism and outright prejudice. Criticisms of the Israeli government are one thing; they belong in the realm of democratic debate. But, the conspiratorial narratives we have seen lately push far beyond that boundary, implicating Jews worldwide in the decisions of a single democratic government. This distortion is truly the oldest form of scapegoating dressed up in modern rhetoric.

Make no mistake: There are forces in this world, particularly concentrated in the Middle East, that openly seek Israel’s eradication. This is a stated ambition of extremist movements that thrive on hatred and violence. As Americans, we cannot accept such a reality. To do so would dishonor the sacrifice of our grandparents, parents, brothers and sisters who fought in World War II and betray the values of morality and justice that we hold dear. We must refuse to succumb to that hate, standing firm against those who would deny Israel’s right to exist and against the poisonous ideologies that fuel antisemitism worldwide.

The problem we face today is that social media has dismantled the barriers of traditional political discourse. Rhetoric that once remained confined to distant nations now flows seamlessly into American conversations, amplified by algorithms and shared without context. Free speech is a value we hold dear in this country, but it carries with it tremendous responsibility. That responsibility includes resisting the anti‑American and anti‑Jewish rhetoric that increasingly infiltrates our political discussions, often cloaked in slogans like “America First” or “Stop Genocide.” These mottos may sound patriotic or humanitarian, but in practice, they are frequently weaponized to disguise prejudice and to smuggle extremist narratives into mainstream debate.

For at least the past century, the United States has aspired to be the world’s leader in humanity, morality and human rights. That mantle has never been easy to carry, but it has defined our role in the global community. Today, our resolve is being tested in the very real struggle against antisemitism and extremist hate that threatens both our allies abroad and our neighbors at home.

We cannot shrink from this responsibility❗ To meet the moment means reaffirming our commitment to truth over conspiracy, solidarity over division, and courage over complacency. It means standing with Jewish communities everywhere, defending Israel’s right to exist and rejecting the poisonous ideologies that seek to erode our values. The free world is watching, and history will judge whether America rose to the challenge or faltered in the face of hate.

Baltimore Sun editorial writers offer opinions and analysis on news and issues relevant to readers. They operate separately from the newsroom.

France was snubbed on Constitution Day!

Echo report published in The Atlantic written by the David Frum:

Dining room of the French Embassy, Washington, D.C. digital file from original.

DATELINE: September 17, 2021, in the dining room of the French ambassador’s residence.  Constitution Day.

In fact, the location is one of the most beautiful places in Washington, D.C., a confection of frothed plaster overlooking a garden in the poodle-clipped style the French so love. Before COVID-19, the room was known for the discussion sessions held there, hosted by a gracious series of ambassadors. 

French Ambassador Philippe Étienne was recalled after the usurped submarine deal between the US and Australia was abruptly announced.

It’s been a long time since anyone was able to enjoy an in-person event at the residence. So when invitations arrived to celebrate Constitution Day, September 17, at the residence in a lunchtime discussion with a former justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and an equally distinguished French judge, well, the RSVPs returned quickly.

The timing, however, was unfortunate, as it coincided with an angry upset in Franco-American relations. The United States had snatched a $90 billion submarine contract with Australia from French shipyards. To add (security policy) insult to the (lost jobs and revenues) injury, the redirected submarine contract would consolidate a new U.S.-U.K.-Australia naval defense agreement in the Indo-Pacific, an agreement into which France had not been invited.

Worse still, the French received word only hours before the public found out, reportedly because the Americans and the Australians each insisted that the other deliver the bad news.

The French administered a symbolic protest by canceling a gala event planned for Friday evening: a commemoration of the 240th anniversary of a naval battle that helped secure the American victory at Yorktown in 1781. But lunch? Attendees hastily confirmed: Lunch was safe. Or so it seemed.

The first hour of the lunch event harkened back to pre-COVID days. There was champagne in the foyer and courteous welcomes by embassy senior staff, all as it used to be. 

Guests took their seats. Opening remarks were elegantly spoken, all off the record, but so guarded and careful that there would be no news in them even without an agreement not to quote them. 

Steve Clemons, an editor at large at The Hill and the whiskey-smooth master of ceremonies, set the conversation in motion. But about 15 minutes in, Clemons was obliged to make a regretful announcement: The ambassador had a very important meeting and would be leaving immediately.

Somebody loudly asked, “Off to the State Department?” (Maine Writer: Oh no, I don't think so!)

Only later did we learn where the ambassador was heading: not to the State Department, not to the Pentagon, not to the White House, but upstairs to pack before flying to Paris for “consultations.”

Earlier in the meal, somebody had cracked a joke about U.S.-French relations—how they’d sunk so low that they were now underwater. The Americans laughed. The French did not.

But on the plus side: They did not shove us out on the sidewalk. A powerful symbolic message was sent. France is mad, but not so mad that we will deprive our American friends of lunch and dessert. (Crème brûlée, in case you were wondering, under crackling crusts individually crafted by a sous-chef with a miniature flamethrower.)

It’s like a scene from a marriage that endures despite the quarrels. The aggrieved partner walked out in a rage, but not before ensuring that the other had been properly fed.

David Frum is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy 

Stop global warming! Climate change is baking the earth - Emergency!

I never thought I'd see the Australian rainforest burning. What will it take for us to wake up to the climate crisis? Joëlle Gergis

This is playing out much faster than many scientists ever imagined...

"Right now there are about 80 fires in Queensland and a further 60 blazes raging through the Australian state of New South Wales..."

These days as a climate scientist, the line of separation between the research I do in my professional life and the events unfolding in the world at large is growing ever thinner.

The extreme events that our community has been talking about for decades are now becoming part of our lived experience, season after season, year after year across the entire planet. What we are seeing play out now is much faster than many of us ever imagined.

Barely a week after sweltering through an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) lead author meeting, discussing the UN group’s sixth global climate assessment report during an unseasonable European heatwave, it’s been surreal to return home to find much of Australia’s eastern seaboard engulfed in an unprecedented bush fires crisis. In spring.

Right now there are about 80 fires in Queensland and a further 60 blazes raging through New South Wales. The maps show the east coast terrifyingly lit up like a grotesque Christmas tree. Many of these fires are burning out of control as the relentlessly gusty winds ground the firefighting aircraft needed to bring the blazes under control.

Australia’s second-warmest January to August on record has baked the landscape dry, turning usually wet rain forests into fuel under catastrophic bush fires conditions.

All of this comes off the back of summer of 2018-2019, which was Australia’s warmest on record. Extraordinarily, we broke the previous 2012-2013 record by a margin of almost 1C (33.8F), with 206 new records set across the country in 2018-2019.

The heat was particularly extreme in NSW (New South Wales), where monthly mean temperatures in January were 5.86°C (42.54F) above average, making it the state’s hottest January on record by more than 2°C (35.6F).

Just to be crystal clear: these record-breaking conditions are all signals of the warming trend we have been experiencing in Australia since the start of the Bureau of Meteorology’s records in 1910. Nine of Australia’s 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2005, and that long-term trend shows no sign of turning around any time soon.

As a scientist, what I find particularly disturbing about the current conditions is that world heritage rainforest areas such as the Lamington national park in the Gold Coast hinterland are now burning.

This region of eastern Australia is part of the Gondwana rain forests of Australia, which contains the largest remaining stands of subtropical rain forest in the world, and the most significant areas of warm temperate rain forest in the country.

These usually moss-drenched forests are packed with the oldest elements of the world’s ferns, and primitive plant families dating back to the Jurassic era, some 200m to 145m years ago.

It is shocking to see such extreme and widespread fire weather conditions so early in the spring. In fact, this year the bush fire season actually started in winter, two months earlier than normal. Most alarmingly, some of these fires are occurring in subtropical and coastal areas that don’t usually burn.

Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise, given about 98% of NSW and 65% of Queensland is currently drought affected. Many regional towns like Stanthorpe are coming close to running out of water, having to resort to trucking in supplies to avoid water shortages. And now, even more water is needed to fight the blazes bearing down on regions already struggling with severe drought conditions.

Although these remarkable rain forests have clung on since the age of the dinosaurs, searing heat and lower rainfall is starting to see these wet areas dry out for longer periods of the year, increasing bush fire risk in these precious ecosystems.

It has been hard to watch the news coverage of these exceptionally rare rainforests burning. Just like the dying off of 50% of the Great Barrier Reef, the potential loss of these areas is something I never thought I would witness in my lifetime.

The world has justifiably been grieving the recent accelerated destruction of the Amazon, but fewer Australians appreciate our own ecological disaster unfolding on our doorstep.

The Gondwana rain forests of Australia are evolutionary relics that have immeasurable conservation value to the global community. If rapid climate change destabilizes the cool and wet conditions needed for these ancient rain forests to survive, they may be lost to humanity forever.

Extreme events over decades are now are becoming a part of our lived experience, season after season, year after year across the entire planet.’ Photograph: Regi Varghese/EPA

Although there are natural seasonal fluctuations in the Indian and Southern Ocean that are influencing the dry and windy conditions we are currently experiencing, all of Australia’s weather and climate variability is now occurring in a world that is 1°C warmer than it was since pre-industrial times.

The human fingerprint on Australian temperatures has been clearly detected since 1950. This means that all natural variability is now being modified by human influences on the climate system, leading to changes in observed climate variability and extremes.

Since the 1970s, there has been an increase in extreme fire weather, and a longer fire season, across large parts of the country.

Under the world’s business-as-usual emissions scenario we are currently on, Australia’s average temperature will typically increase 4°C by the end of the century. To be blunt, the catastrophic fire weather conditions we are experiencing now will become increasingly common as the planet continues to warm.

It’s clear to me that the extreme events we are experiencing right now in Australia and all over the world, are a sign of things to come. Events that were considered extreme in today’s climate will become average in the future as records continue to be broken and the “new normal” emerges.

What we expect to see in our future climate is playing out right now, not decades in the future. As we begin to drift away from the safe shores of historical variability, the only certainty is that life in the “new normal” will be outside the range of human experience.

All of this begs the obvious question: what will it take for Australians to wake up to the climate crisis we now face?

The harsh reality is that this event is likely to be forgotten once the fires are finally out and the media interest has moved on.

Despite being one of the worst bush fires in Australian history, alarmingly, the Victorian Black Saturday bush fires of 2009, which killed 173 people, destroyed around 2,000 homes and incinerated millions of plants and animals, didn’t serve as a wake-up call.

The deeper we sink into denial, the more we commit ourselves to a reality where our children learn about environmental icons such as the Great Barrier Reef and our magnificent rain forests through history books, instead of being able to experience their wonder for themselves.

Choosing to turn away from this moment to act will be the ultimate betrayal of future generations.

Dr Joëlle Gergis is an award-winning climate scientist and writer based at the Australian National University. She is a lead author of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment report, and an expert adviser to the Climate Council.  (As the crisis escalates…)

Nearly 1,500 deaths linked to French heat waves:  CNN- A pair of heat waves in France are linked to the deaths of 1,435 people in the summer of 2019, by the country's health ministry.
Two bouts of record-setting heat hit France and other parts of Europe from June 24 to July 7, and July 21 to July 27, 2019. 

In fact, the French Health Ministry said in a news release that the death rate during the two heat waves was 9.1% percent higher than usual. France and much of Europe saw record-breaking temperatures this summer. France recorded its highest-ever recorded temperature -- 45.9 degrees Celsius (114.6 Fahrenheit !) -- on June 28 in the southern town of Gallargues-le-Montueux, according to the French national weather service.

Donald Trump pleads for help - Washington Post transcripts

Evidently, The Washington Post found a reliable "deep throat", somebody who knows how to get to the truth. Only one week on the job, and Donald Trump is calling on "Enrique" and "Malcolm", to plead for cooperation with his campaign promises.

Donald Trump would never've knowingly released these executive telephone conversations. As a matter of fact, even a Freedom of Information query (FOA) would've been buried in bureaucracy- but The Washington Post knows how to obtain information!

‘This deal will make me look terrible’: Full transcripts of Trump’s calls with Mexico and Australia

By Greg Miller, Julie Vitkovskaya and Reuben Fischer-Baum

Obviously, Donald Trump was anxious to hit the ground running during his first week, post inauguration.  Well, he sure didn't do his homework before making phone calls to Mexico and Australia. Apparently, Donald Trump didn't consult his international diplomacy experts before engaging in these two conversations, as he responded to the nation's leaders like they were children, rather than his colleagues.

The transcripts were prepared by the White House, but they haven't been released. The Washington Post is publishing reproductions, rather than original documents, in order to protect sources. The reproductions below also include minor spelling and grammatical mistakes that appeared in the documents.

President Enrique Peña Nieto

During the conversation with Mexico's President Enrique Peña Nieto, the leader of Mexico refers to "Mr. President" when speaking to Donald Trump. On the other hand, Donald Trump calls the leader of Mexico, "Enrique". It's not a conversations of two equals. Weird.

Trump tweets, once again, that Mexico will pay for the wall. 

Facing political pressure at home, Peña Nieto cancels his Jan. 31 trip to Washington."Okay Enrique," says Trump. "...when the press brings up the wall, I will say, 'let us see how it is going – let us see how it is working out with Mexico.' Because, from an economic issue, it is the least important thing we were talking about, but psychologically, it means something; so let us just say (to the press) 'we will work it out', And if you want to do that, then we will go back to the negotiation table with Jared and Luis. And I am sure they can work something out that is good for both nations..."

But, of course, Mexico won't pay for Donald Trump's border wall.

President Enrique Peña Nieto: "But it is an unthinkable that I cannot ignore this because we find this completely unacceptable for Mexicans to pay for the wall.."

Conversation with Australian Prime Minister Turnbull

Turnbull, a member of Australia’s conservative Liberal Party, took over as prime minister in 2015. During the phone call, Trump and Turnbull discussed an Obama-era agreement in which the United States would vet and take refugees who were imprisoned after trying to enter Australia, by boat.

Trump tells Turnbull that accepting the refugees “will make us look awfully bad.

Donald Trump: "This is exactly what we have done with the program to bring in 12,000 Syrian refugees, 90% of which will be Christians. It will be quite deliberate and the position I have taken – I have been very open about it – is that it is a tragic fact of life that when the situation in the Middle East settles down – the people that are going to be most unlikely to have a continuing home are those Christian minorities. We have seen that in Iraq and so from our point of view, as a final destination for refugees, that is why we prioritize. It is not a sectarian thing. It is recognition of the practical political realities. We have a similar perspective in that respect.

"Well, actually I just called for a total ban on Syria and from many different countries from where there is terror, and extreme vetting for everyone else – and somebody told me yesterday that close to 2,000 people are coming who are really probably troublesome. And I am saying, boy that will make us look awfully bad. Here I am calling for a ban where I am not letting anybody in and we take 2,000 people. Really it looks like 2,000 people that Australia does not want and I do not blame you by the way, but the United States has become like a dumping ground. You know Malcom, anybody that has a problem – you remember the Mariel boat lift, where Castro let everyone out of prison and Jimmy Carter accepted them with open arms. These were brutal people. Nobody said Castro was stupid, but now what are we talking about is 2,000 people that are actually imprisoned and that would actually come into the United States. I heard about this – I have to say I love Australia; I love the people of Australia. I have so many friends from Australia, but I said – geez that is a big ask, especially in light of the fact that we are so heavily in favor, not in favor, but we have no choice but to stop things. We have to stop. We have allowed so many people into our country that should not be here. We have our San Bernardino’s, we have had the World Trade Center come down because of people that should not have been in our country, and now we are supposed to take 2,000. It sends such a bad signal. You have no idea. It is such a bad thing.

(Again, Prime Minister Turnball calls Donald Trump "Mr. President but this recognition isn't reciprocated. Instead, Donald Trump calls him "Malcolm".)

Can you hear me out Mr. President?

Prime Minister Malcolm Turbull of Australia

The obligation is for the United States to look and examine and take up to and only if they so choose – 1,250 to 2,000. Every individual is subject to your vetting. You can decide to take them or to not take them after vetting. You can decide to take 1,000 or 100. It is entirely up to you. The obligation is to only go through the process. So that is the first thing. Secondly, the people — none of these people are from the conflict zone. They are basically economic refugees from Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. That is the vast bulk of them. They have been under our supervision for over three years now and we know exactly everything about them.

Donald Trump:  "This is going to kill me. I am the world’s greatest person that does not want to let people into the country. And now I am agreeing to take 2,000 people and I agree I can vet them, but that puts me in a bad position. It makes me look so bad and I have only been here a week."

Malcolm Turnbull: "These guys are not in that league. They are economic refugees."

A detailed transcript, with side bar explanations, is available at this Washington Post site here.

Donald Trump's cruel immigration policies continue to be worse than Americans could've imagined when he harped about building a wall and Mexico would pay for it (not!).  Obviously, Syrian refugees aren't bringing drugs from Mexico into the US. 

Moreover, thousands of honest Mexicans cross the border with the US everyday, to work and participate in economic trade- they are not transporting drugs.  Donald Trump is hasty about punishing innocent people in his quest to show how "strong" he is on immigration; but his cruelty is harming millions of innocent people.

Donald Trump insults Americans and allied nations but Russia gets a pass

Fake news isn't a new concept - Hitler called it 'lügenpresse'- writes Andrew Sullivan in NewYorkmag.com

The anti-American behavior of Donald Trump is alarming, all the while his cult supporters, who are victims of mass hypnosis, just can't hear the urgency.  Mayday! General quarters!  

General Quarters! Mayday! Republicans will have to take responsibility for ruining our national security and cruelly dismantling domestic, humanitarian, social safety net programs. Somewhere in this mess is a convoluted Trump to Putin secret code, ie, "Russia if you're listening!"

Donald Trump insulted China by calling the President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan before he was inaugurated; but, he said, she is the person who called him.  (Daaaaaling, it's not you, it's me....excuse).

Donald Trump insults Mexico President Enrique Peña Nieto by insisting on building a wall in Texas for the purpose of keeping out Mexican immigrants. Fortunately, President Nieto said, "México no pagará por el muro". In other words, "hell no!". Nieto cancels visit to Washington DC, by mutual consent, says Donald Trump. (Daaaaling, let's agree to disagree!)

Donald Trump hangs up during a telephone call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, because he disagrees with an agreement about the US accepting refugees.  (Daaaaling, this is clearly an irreconcilable difference!)

Now, on February 18, 2017, Donald Trump invented a false story about a terrorism attack in Sweden, knowing there was no such incident! Clearly, an insult to the Swedish people, but I'm pretty sure Vladimir Putin was chuckling. (There's not much trust between Sweden and Russia because, frankly, the Swedes know better.)

On the other hand, Russia's President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB operative and an expert at co-opting spies, is really an okay buy with Donald Trump. There's absolutely no problem with Russia's illegal invasion of the Ukraine, seizing the Crimea or saber rattling about borders with Scandinavia.  Oh, by the way, it's an annoyance to know there's a Russian spy submarine cruising along international waters along the coast of Connecticut because Donald Trump could easily just take care of the situation if he really wanted to do so, or so he says.

Unbelievable! Why is Donald Trump's relationship with Putin so chummy, when this bizarre camaraderie is clearly smoking with the stench of treason?

Of course, the question is about the motive, writes Andrew Sullivan in NewYorkmag.com.

Why on Earth would any campaign for president be in constant, secret touch with the intelligence agents of a hostile foreign power?

I cannot know. Maybe Flynn is a rogue loner. It’s also possible, I guess, that the Trump campaign just wanted to keep in touch with the intelligence services of one of this country’s nemeses, if only to wish them Merry Christmas — five times in one day. It’s also conceivable that Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort’s deep ties to the Putin regime were utterly irrelevant to the sudden amendment, this past summer, to the GOP party platform that removed a call to send arms to Ukraine. It’s also possible, I suppose, that deep down I’m straight.

But there’s one explanation that chills me even more than a foreign power’s potential blackmail over an American president. And it is that Trump and Putin are natural allies in their fight against the postwar, U.S.-led international order that has kept the peace for 70 years. Putin and Trump, after all, share a Bannonite foreign policy: a robust defense of nationalism; a view that NATO is obsolete; support for far-right parties throughout Europe; and the goal of smashing the European Union so that Russia can once again extend its tentacles into Eastern Europe, and the U.S. can play one European power off another. 

Maybe Putin has kompromat (short for literally "compromising material") on Trump’s actions, but no such motivation is even needed, writes Sullivan. Trump and Putin want to form a pincer movement to destroy what we have known for a long time as the West.
Trump and Putin want to form a pincer movement to destroy what we have known for a long time as the West.

Their domestic politics also have disturbing parallels. Trump would love nothing more, it seems to me, than to be an American Putin, treating the country as he long treated his own corporate fiefdom. He once explained he admired the autocrat because Putin has “great control over his country.” Like Putin, Trump would love to control the media. Like Putin, he has developed a leadership cult, devoted to the masses. Like Putin, he believes in a government that has “killers.” Like Putin, he threatens his geographic neighbors. Like Putin, he has cultivated an alliance of convenience with reactionary religious conservatives, to shore up his power. Like Putin, he believes there’s no moral difference between American democracy and Russia’s.  Like Putin, Trump is enriching himself by public office. And, like Putin, he has targeted a minority as a scapegoat — Putin targeted the gays to gin up support while Trump targets the Muslims and Mexicans. And as Putin has RT as his conduit, so Trump has the Murdoch empire.

I feel like I know Stephen Miller, the youthful Montgomery Burns who lectured the lügenpresse last Sunday morning in his charm-free Stakhanovite baritone. I feel like I know him because I used to be a little like him. He’s a classic type: a rather dour right-of-center kid whose conservatism was radicalized by lefties in the educational system. 

No, I’m not blaming liberals for Miller’s grim fanaticism. I am noting merely that right-of-center students are often mocked, isolated, and anathematized on campus, and their response is often, sadly, a doubling down on whatever it is that progressives hate. Before too long, they start adopting brattish and obnoxious positions — just to tick off their SJW peers and teachers. After a while, you’re not so much arguing for conservatism as against leftism, and eventually the issues fade and only the hate remains.

Stephen Miller - lügenpresse

Think of it, in some way, as reactionary camp. 

Think Ingraham and Coulter and Yiannopoulos (Breitbart News aka "barfcart-news". They're reactionaries in the classic sense: Their performance-art politics are almost entirely a reaction to the suffocating leftism that they had to endure as they rose through the American education system. 

As a young, lonely conservative in college, I now wince at recalling, I threw a Champagne party to welcome Reagan’s cruise missiles to Britain. Of course I knew better — and could have made a decent argument for deterrence instead of behaving like a brattish dick. But I didn’t. I wanted to annoy and disrupt the smugness around me. If you never mature, this pose can soon become your actual personality — especially when you realize that it can also be extremely lucrative in the conservative-media industrial complex. 

I think of Ann Coulter, whom I met recently, backstage at Bill Maher’s show. What struck me was her sincerity, searing intelligence, and grasp of the facts. In another universe, she could have become a reasoned defender of a sane conservatism. Instead she ended up writing In Trump We Trust. In exactly the same way, Miller really is a product of Santa Monica and Duke — their living, breathing, raving antibody.

Steve Bannon, on the other hand, is quite something. I’ve read and reread his 2014 speech at the Vatican to see if I can find any coherence in it, and I confess I failed. It’s a hodgepodge of melodrama, hysteria, and a defense of some kind of “enlightened capitalism” along Judeo-Christian lines, in the face of an imminent Islamist takeover of the planet. It’s the 1950s versus jihad, an attempt to convey the gist of the entire Drudge Report every day and turn it into a thesis. He argues that we are just “at the very beginning stages of a global conflict” that could eradicate 2,000 years of Western civilization. It reads like the apocalyptic, paranoid fantasies of someone who writes letters to the editor, single-spaced, in all caps.

Now, go check out this Vice journalist’s impression of Bannon in 2014. It does not reassure: “He’s buzzing with intensity, with two pens clipped to his shirt collar. Over the next 90 minutes, he barely touched his food and never took off his coat.” He just prattles endlessly and manically on. Among the gems that emerge from the conversation: Ebola requires a massive immigration crackdown or we’re all going to die; ISIS is plotting to assassinate the Pope; and then this calm overview: “The world is in a meltdown right now. I mean, the world is on fire. And all of a sudden it’s going to dawn on people, this is not a problem for guys in the Middle East. This is a problem for you in Kansas City.” You begin to realize that he called himself a “Leninist” for a reason.

It took me a while to get into HBO’s The Young Pope. I kept waiting for it to have a relationship with some believable version of reality — and then a kangaroo kept bouncing around the Vatican. At first I couldn’t understand what was metaphor and what was plot, what was dream and what was supposed to be real, what was a miracle and what wasn’t. In the first few episodes, the Trump analogy — of an unhinged novice accidentally finding himself in a position of supreme power — did the unforgivable thing of failing to distract me from the anxiety besieging Washington.

But if you let the series just lull you into acceptance, its themes are powerful. The filmmakers understand how attractive the most rigid orthodoxy can be for the young. Abandoned by hippie parents as a boy, Jude Law’s youthful Pius XIII insists that the Church needs to turn inward and embrace mystery and fear and obedience again. He’s Benedict XVI with charisma. His vestments twinkle and shimmer; the slippers remain ruby-red; and the full papal regalia is only slightly mitigated by the Holy Father’s inspired chain-smoking. He starts out as a vindictive, sadistic, and arrogant narcissist acting out his deeply buried childhood traumas (can we ever get away from Trump?). But he is also, the series slowly reveals, some kind of a saint. His prayer is like a controlled seizure of concentration. He performs quite astounding miracles. 

And in time, people of the modern secular world, at first repelled, find themselves drawn to him, smiles on their faces, relieved at last to be in the presence of divine authority, any authority that can make sense of their world.

I’ve often wondered if saints are actually like that: not holy in a conventional sense, and certainly not “nice” — but often unpleasant, antisocial misfits who are only subsequently seen for what they truly were.

Do you remember the days when president Obama predicted that at some point in his presidency, the “Republican fever would break”? It never did of course. If anything, it kept getting worse — from birtherism to jeopardizing the U.S.’s credit rating to Benghazi and then those fricking emails. But it occurs to me that the fever could only really break if the Republicans were no longer in opposition and were actually confronted with the difficult project of running the country. Yes, I know we’ve been hoping for this for years, chasing phantasms as the crazy gets crazier, but could the fever be finally breaking right now? The Republican base’s talk-radio politics, their Breitbart alternative facts, their railing constantly about Obama’s various alleged iniquities — none of that is enough to actually govern. But that is all they have known for so long. At some point, the Republicans are going to have to raise the debt limit; they are going to have to pay for the wall; they’ll have to replace the ACA with, well, er, something quite fabulous. They have no excuses anymore, after all.

And yet, lo and behold, Republicans seem paralyzed. (MaineWriter opinion here- Republicans are victims of mass hypnotic hysteria caused by Trump cult negative charisma.)

Legislatively, they are at a standstill, and the ACA endures and becomes more popular. There is no magic cure for bringing back blue-collar jobs. They will surely divide over tariffs. Even tax reform could be a liability if it isn’t directed at those low-earning core Republican voters, rather than Trump’s fellow plutocrats (and good luck with that). All the rabid rhetoric against Obama’s essentially moderate policies, in other words, is beginning to dissipate into thin air. Yes, they can deregulate. Yes, they could borrow even more to goose the economy. But it’s going to be fumes before too long. Maybe this is how the fever eventually ends — when, instead of constantly ducking responsibility, they actually have to take some.