If you are intent on getting even . . . then you’d better make sure you win. Otherwise, you look like a chump.

Democratic Senators sure look like chumps.

What did their Quixotic, Garland Crusade accomplish?

• Gorsuch is our new Supreme Court Justice. 
• The bar for the next Trump appointee, no matter how ill-suited a hack s/he may be, is lowered to a mere 51 votes.

Democrats lost two ways instead of just one -- they had no chance of denying Gorsuch knowing that McConnell would change the rules -- and maybe even three ways if Gorsuch subconsciously carries resentment of Democrat's into his judicial chambers.

Democrats failed to get even and they surely lost: chumps

Immigration, Migration and Me

(I know: it should be “I”, but I like the alliteration.)

This is a story of connections, coincidences, and disturbing discoveries.  The first string in the skein: immigration.

Wallers and Bogues settled in Massachusetts and then Connecticut in the early 17^th C, some moving on into northern Vermont in the early 18^th C.  Taylors and Morehouses appeared in upstate New York in the early 19^th C.  Cooks, in Nova Scotia in the 18th C, emigrating south to Rhode Island in the 19th.  These are the roots from which we Wallers grew.  Despite being here a long time and becoming thoroughly American “Damn Yankees”, they were, still and all, immigrants – without visas – having ventured here to find and take advantage of opportunity to freely make of life what they would.  And they did so, contributing to the American commonwealth all along the way.

My grandfather, Halley Templeton Waller, has always been held up to me as a sterling example of civic leadership, of crusading for social justice, of upholding the rights of newly arrived Americans.  In 1912, HT Waller was recruited by the Akron, Ohio rubber-barons to move from Cambridge, Mass and become Secretary of the Akron YMCA[1].  They were attracted to HT because of his record of success in creating the Cambridge Y’s Americanization program – teaching English and citizenship, civics and history to newly arrived immigrant labor being brought in and eagerly hired by industrialists of Waltham and Cambridge.  And from those industrialists, HT was able to raise capital and expand the Cambridge Y’s facilities and outreach; he was a Y star.

Immigration was a flood.  Between 1900 and 1914, some eleven million immigrants arrived on these shores, mainly from eastern and southern Europe.  In 1910, over 40% of New Yorkers were foreign born or the offspring of foreign born parents.  The burgeoning auto tire industry was centered in Akron; Firestone, Goodrich and Goodyear wanted their share of that unorganized, eager, cheap labor supply.  HT became the champion of turning these folks into Americans, teaching them English, encouraging their pride in their roots while acculturating them to American values and ideals, and teaching their responsibilities and rights as citizens (including the right to organize.)

In 1914, the European spigot closed.  Europe was at war; US industrial demand skyrocketing.  From where would the pool of (cheap) labor be replenished?

Second string in the skein: the Great Migration.  Those labor agents of northern industrialists, shut out of Europe, turned to the South – the southern United States with its huge surplus of exploited, uneducated, potentially cheap labor.  And northward they came, by the millions; between 1915 and 1930, over six million blacks migrated out of the south and into northern industrial cities of Pittsburgh, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit – and Akron. 

In 1939, a 20’s something African American artist in Harlem documented the Great Migration in 60 paintings that narrated the causes, tales and trauma of that mass movement.  Jacob Lawrence’s The Migration Series was competed for by two prestigious museums.  They finally divided it in two, even numbered panels going to MOMA and odd-numbered going to the Phillips in Washington DC.  Only twice since ’40 have the two halves been reunited in a show, and this second time it came to SAM, the Seattle Art Museum.  Why SAM?  Because Jacob Lawrence moved here to join the faculty of UW; he and his wife Gwen Knight lived and died at Horizon House, where I just finished my nine years as a Trustee.  Horizon House has many of their works.  Ann and I proudly display a lithograph of Lawrence’s “Windows”, a Harlem street scene.  My granddaughter, Liza Stoner, visiting from BC, came with us when Ann and I viewed the show at SAM.  For Liza, The Migration Series was a enlightening discovery, a window on a part of America she had known not of.

The third string: backlash.  Last night, Ann and I watched “Digging Their Own Grave”, a segment on CBS’s 60 Minutes that dealt with the use – I’d say, abuse – of H1B visas to replace American workers with low cost, no benefits, foreigners.  Indian in-sourcing companies account for 80% of these abuses, mainly in the IT sphere.  Indian agents recruit labor and sell them to US companies (as did our industrialists' agents in Europe and then the South).  Adding insult to injury, in most cases the displaced, fired American employee is forced to train their foreign replacement; if they refuse, they lose their severance payment.  Quite prestigious organizations are participating in this abuse of H1B, e.g., UCSF Medical Center, which terminated 20+ IT workers and replaced them with Indian imports.  The displaced interviewed by CBS feel, naturally, outraged and betrayed.[2]  They are angry at the Indians, at their former employers, at the system.

HTW and FCW (my dad): c 1920?

Nothing new about backlash: in Akron in 1919, as everywhere, demobilized GI’s were returning home to find foreigners, usually Catholics (in predominately Protestant Ohio,) had good wage jobs in industry and “Negros” were edging into their neighborhoods.   Jobs were scarce as the economy slowed.  The ground was ready to sprout dissension and intolerance.  And populists took full advantage.   In 1921, Ohio boasted the largest among all states in enrollment of Klu Klux Klansmen.  HTW, then both the Y Secretary and Chair of the Akron school board, became a visible symbol of the 'coddling of foreigners', the Americanization of 'these Papist aliens in our midst.'  Dad carried all his life memory of a KKK cross burning on their front lawn when he was about ten.

 

In 1921, the good citizens of Akron elected a KKK majority to the school board, a KKK mayor of Akron, and KKK’ers to important positions in city and county governments.  The KKK-dominated school board fired the school superintendent and replaced him with a totally unqualified KKK member.  Granddad HT resigned from the school board. 

His policies and programs at the Y also brought unwelcome attention and heat, which the Firestone, Goodrich and Goodyear pooh-bahs didn’t appreciate; he was asked to resign. Nationally, this was a time of retrenchment, of the Emergency Immigration Restriction Act of 1921 which put limits on total immigration and set quotas based on national origin and the number of immigrants from each country already here.  The act greatly restricted southern and eastern European immigration and favored northern European sources, for the Irish, German, English, French-Canadian and Polish were already here.  Asian immigration earlier had been shut down by the 1917 Asiatic Barred Zone Act. 

   

The KKK tide receded in the middle twenties and Akron slowly came to its senses, though discrimination, race riots and hate crimes continued to roil the mid-west throughout the ‘30’s.  In time, HT again came to be esteemed as a civic leader, heading up the War Bond drives of ’40 and ’41, chairing Akron’s wartime Rent Control Board. 

 But . . . my image of HT as champion of the underdog and social justice has been tarnished in my research on him and his times, first by discovery that African-American Christian young men were not welcome at the central Y; they had a Young Negro Men’s Christian Association of their own.  HT was not prejudiced; he supported them and participated in Secretarial training for African Americans, but still, he went along with separate but equal, which did not end in the Y until well into the 40’s in the north, well into the 70’s in the south.

Second, I have found newspaper reports of a speech HT gave to the Akron Chamber of Commerce calling for support of the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921.  His thesis was that the values of Western thought were rooted in the culture and beliefs of white, northern Europeans, and that America must act to protect the primacy of such cultural values and heritage to avoid their being subordinated to others.  HT had become a lesserly Christian as he matured, not churched, philosophic, a humanist deeply committed to the civic values of Western civilization; he wanted to protect that legacy and insure its primacy in America even at the cost of arbitrarily restricting access to our shores.  Even sub-consciously agreeing that some peoples are inferior to others.

So . . . no American tale is pure -- compromise, enabling, acting and reacting, backsliding.  These strings weave a repetitious pattern for my Waller family -- from my Grandfather to his great, great granddaughter – as they do for all of us Americans.  For here we are today, again – cheap labor agents at work, newly arrived aspirants with strange customs and religions, resentment and backlash, immigration control controversy, arbitrary restrictions by national origin, populist demagogues, prejudice and hate crimes, even KKK endorsement of the President of these not-so-United States.

Perhaps these inter-connected strings are an inevitable part of the warp and weave of the continuous fabric we call America, with our glories and flaws and, I hope, our belief that despite set-backs we will over time become stronger, more durable and more than ever a model to the world.  It’s now ours to look back and look forward, to repair and re-weave, to bind ourselves together in commonwealth, and to re-examine where we stand and for what.  Now is the time.

---

[1] A “Y” Secretary is the chief operating officer, equivalent to the Exec Dir. of a not-for-profit org.

[2] H2B visas are similarly abused.  E.g., there are 20+ Romanian low-pay, no benefit, part-time workers on duty at the Mar a Lago Club, the “Southern White House.”

Is Abnormal the New Normal?

I’m talking weather here (not politics, to my sons’ relief.)  Ever hear of AWSSI?  I hadn’t until an article in the Seattle Times explained that the Accumulated Winter Season Severity Index indicated that we were having abnormally low temperatures, unusual snow (more than Minneapolis in January and February) and abnormally persistent grey skies – duh.  My harbingers of spring are the vivid purple plum blossoms and perky crocuses which usually appear the second or third week of February; here it is, mid-March, and I am still waiting.

Nobody throughout the country needs an index to tell them something weird is going on – from cancellation of the Birkebeiner in Cable, from terrible tornadoes in the south, from green lawns in Duluth, from seventy-degree days in January in Madison, from ice and snow raging up the east coast as I write, from torrential, dam-threatening rains in California, from winter wildfires in LA., to mud slides and falling tree deaths here in Seattle.

And in Sun Valley?  Bleak skies and more snow already than since 1937, and it’s still coming.  Ann and I skate-skied and snowshoed there the last couple of weeks.  Ann’s sister Jan and bro-in-law Tom joined us for a few days.  It’s beautiful for we visitors (the real reason for this post – pretty pictures) but the natives can’t pile it up anymore and must arrange to have it trucked south.  It’s hell on the elk.

Jan, Ann and Tom at Galena Lodge

Ann snowshoeing on Pioneer Cemetery trail

I don’t know from climate . . . but as for weather, I borrow from our President to proclaim “I, Fletch Waller, hereby ban all weather for 90 days so we can figure out what the hell is going on!”

Has political polarization affected your relationships with others?

Last week, I asked my luncheon club companions that question.  To a man, the sixteen all said yes, to one degree or another.  Most of the responses described troubling effects; self-conscious constraint, avoidance of contact or subjects, guardedness in conversation.   A couple found positives in greater depth of communications and sharing of concerns.

After addressing the retirement community of which I am a Trustee, I got similar feedback: the heated political polarization is on the whole straining the sense of community, its commitment to being a gracious space in which assertive listening is to be practiced and the stranger is to be welcomed.

What’s is political polarization? Fundamentally, it’s one person judging another as “wrong”.  Is that what we are becoming – a nation of judgmental prigs certain that our views, values and understanding are superior to those of others? 

The Founding Fathers warned us of the poisons of “faction” yet it took only eight years to morph into factional parties.  Apparently clan, faction, party, sect – call it what you will -- are hard-wired into us sapiens.  But can’t we act in spite of?  Do we really need inferiors to look down upon; do whites really need people of color over which to feel superior; or Pennsylvanians, their New Jersey neighbors to look down upon; or Christians, their Jews or Muslims; or Democrats their Republicans and Republicans their Democrats?  Can’t we act in spite of?  Yes – and we must.

Polarization justifies, indeed, celebrates winning.  When we indulge our certainty of superiority, when we judge the other wrong, when we resist empathizing with their views and concerns, we may win but in doing so, widen the gulf of misunderstanding and harden the others’ rationale of rejection and desire for revenge. 

Our President (with whom I disagree on most everything) said last night that we can solve problems and improve our commonwealth only by finding common cause and coming together.  Couldn’t agree more – both in national and personal spheres.  Mind-numbing resistance to the other must be overcome by welcoming and listening for common concerns and values that can bind us together.  I’m not talking about mere tolerance; I’m talking about active engagement. 

On the national scene, leaders like Sanders and commentators like Krugman and Blow are inciting resistance and outrage, citing the example of Tea Party intransigence and McConnell’s treatment of Obama.  There is much to be outraged about, many policy proposals to resist, and McConnell is only a fool's role model.  But mindless outrage and blind resistance only prolong polarization.  It may bring a win, but winners and losers don’t count anymore; only collaborators can make progress in our democracy.  

And the same goes in the personal sphere: avoidance, being on guard, stereotyping and being judgmental are inhibitors of empathy and growth.  Friends and acquaintances are too precious to be sacrificed on a parochial political altar.

Refuge, Reflection, and Resolution

I’m proud today of my “home” states, Washington and Minnesota.  I’ve lived over 2/3rds of my life in these two.  “Hats off to thee” both, for taking the lead in tackling Trumpian overreach on immigration.  This past month has been devastating to one’s belief in democracy, one’s faith that reason will out.  Many others share my stressful, morbid fascination with watching our Republic‘s train wreck.  “Avert your eyes, avert your eyes” shouts C J Craig in West Wing; would that she were not fiction, that a real Jedidiah Bartlett had been at hand. 

What has helped me avert my eyes over the past month – a little bit – is taking refuge in physical exercise and music.  Ann and I skate-skied in The Methow in early January – no newspapers, radio, or cell phone.  Then it was back to Mt. Baker Rowing Club.  I had not crewed since Christmas.  It felt so good to be back in the boat, where the mind is singly focused on the rhythm of the teammate ahead of you; the sound of the oarlock; the strain in thighs, abs, and shoulders; the sibilance of rushing water.  Three days a week (including, last week, a double with Ann; if husband and wife can civilly crew a double then their marriage is surely secure.)  On our off-days, I do the New York Times’ Seven Minute Workouts. Check them out – all the major muscle groups, heart rate heats up, and only seven minutes.  Ann works those off-days in a rigorous exercise group.  In another two weeks we’ll be off skiing again in Ketchum, ID. 

We’ve also sought refuge and solace in music. The past 30 days?  Seattle Opera’s innovative and delightful La Traviata; a morning lost to Lohengrin: Woody Sez at the Rep, the life and times of Woody Guthrie told through his music; five Seattle Chamber Music Society concerts – Dohnanyi, Shostakovich, Shoenfield, and many more; a Seattle Symphony program of Ives and Beethoven; a children’s concert with Max and Molly – Mozart, Schubert, Dvorak and the rest; a Saturday spent Spotifying my jazz favorites – Davis, Evans, Peterson, Coltrane, Monk, Desmond, Mulligan, Tatum and all the others (CD’s are over for me.)   Escapist? Yes, but times to gather my wits, to reflect and to resolve.

I am inspired by Robert Burns in his cave, by the Women’s March energy, by Jerry Brown’s environmental defiance[1] and Jay Inslee’s ringing defense of immigration rights and non-discrimination.  But in Congress it will be tough sledding for the next four years.  In the 2018 election cycle, 24 US Senate seats now held by Democrats will be on the ballots while only 8 Republican seats will be at risk; we’re not likely to take back the US Senate.  Action will have to be at the State level until 2020.  So let’s take the “States Rights” shibboleth so often prattled about by Republicans, turn it against them, and set the national agenda through multi-state initiatives and solutions.

I have written to Senators Murray and Cantwell and to Representative Smith urging they hold the line in DC but not indulge in fruitless, knee-jerk rejection a’ la McConnell but to seek points of leverage on desirable changes in taxation and infrastructure investment -- to make deals with the deal-maker if possible.  Yes, and to confirm Gorsuch.  He’s a highly qualified, well-trained jurist and a very decent man, unlike Trump’s other scandalous appointees.  We’re not likely to get a better replacement nominee, and only further poison partisan resentments by filibustering him.  I don’t share Gorsuch’s ideology, but Bannon or Sessions and their claque are not going to offer a moderate. Show, by defeating DeVos, fili-busting Price but confirming Gorsuch, that we are pragmatists seeking solutions.

Now Olympia.  I’ve written Gov. Inslee, my Senator Wellborn and my Representatives Senn and Clibburn and urged them to:

•         Fully fund primary education, to increase support for technical, community, and four-year college tuitions, to build multi-state consortia to offer accredited on-line secondary education.
•        Reform taxation to adopt capital gains taxes, increase estate tax rates, reform B&O to reduce load on small and entrepreneurial business, and cease giving away state tax exemptions to entice employers.
•         Create an across-state-borders consortium of health insurers, pools of buyers and a multi-state insurance exchange.
•         Prioritize transportation infrastructure and fund deferred maintenance.
•         Pursue a multi-state, carbon emission market consortium.

Next steps: personal contacts and support of the Washington State Democratic Party and promising candidates outside my 41^st Legislative District.  A big order?  Yes.  But that’s what I resolve: to promote and lobby for big changes over the next four years. 

Taking refuge from the daily crazies, reflecting, resolving to make a difference.  I may or may not be here in 2020, but I resolve to go out fighting to confirm my faith in democracy and in the ultimate wisdom and decency of Americans.  I trust that Brown and Inslee, and many others, and I, on my small scale, can and will fit Horace’s call at the death of the Republic in Caesar’s coup d’état for

“the man who is tenacious in a rightful cause,

not shaken from his firm resolve by the frenzy

of his fellow citizens clamoring for what is wrong,

or by the tyrant’s threatening countenance.”

Don’t “just get over it” as a friend of mine counsels.  Find a refuge.  Reflect.  And resolve to act. 

---

[1] See link in prior post.

A Prescription For Our Party

Relax, I keep telling myself.  Relax.  Ann and I enjoy our health and financial security, our kids are healthy and productive, our grandkids have gotten/are getting good educations.  It’s hard to see how this new Republican era can directly and imminently hurt us.  So buck up and swallow the disappointment.  As Jacques, my Libertarian friend, counsels “get over it!” 

But . . . with each passing day and tweet, with each appointment of a federal dismantler, with each episode of power lust, my anxiety ratchets up.  

The Senate will prove to have been the key pivot point for the next few years.  I devoted all my political contributions to Senate races but the DSCC really let us down.  And looking forward, in the election of ‘18 there will be on the ballot three times as many Senate seats held by Democrats as those held by Republicans.  And in ’20, we may not face Trump, if he gets bored with being the world’s most powerful person, but Pence or Cruz or that used car salesman, Rubio.  And expect candidates -- House, Senate and Executive -- to take a lesson from Trump and Sanders and become populist panderers if not outright demagogues.  In the meantime, God knows what we will face on the Supreme Court.  We're in for a long dry spell at the Federal level.  It’s not a pretty picture.   We cannot afford to relax.

  

It’s tempting to renounce democracy and adopt the Founders’ skepticism of the mass.  But no, I have faith that wisdom and judgment reside among us regardless of our education or social station.  Our system can and will work given time.  So how do we buy that time and swing the pendulum back toward a democratic republic’s ability to forge compromise, to balance competing interests and to solve problems inclusively?

First, Democrats should not reinforce polarization.  Let’s not adopt a McConnell negativity, opposing anything coming out of the executive branch.  Instead, Democrats must clearly embrace and stand for something that works for those we lost to Trump, those who were unheard, those who are fearful and fed up, even if a program has a Trumpian stamp on it.  He says he wants to spend on transportation and communication; he wants to lower drug prices; he promises national competition among health insurers.  These are fertile fields for compromise and collaboration – for making deals with the Deal Master.

In the meantime, Democrats must adopt a clear-cut, simple-to-grasp mission, a bumper-sticker identity (take a lesson from “Make America Great Again.”) At all levels of government, local, county, state and federal, all democrats should stand for one, simple, over-arching idea. 

And wouldn’t you know – I have a suggestion: Removing Barriers.  

It ain’t original: Bill Clinton used it on occasion in the ‘90’s; Hillary talked it last April but then, unaccountably, dropped it.  I thought at the time, “Hey, what a powerful, flexible and memorable a positioning for Democrats.  What a great slogan; what a bumper sticker; what a lawn sign logo.”  This is what we should be about – locally, at state level, nationally: removing barriers to education for preschoolers and high school grads; removing barriers to equity; removing barriers to a living wage and family-wage jobs; removing barriers to health access. 

Removing barriers is not welfare but leveling the playing field and smoothing obstacles to an individual’s fulfillment of their potential.  Removing barriers is not a zero-sum game; you don’t need to deprive someone to remove someone else’s barrier  (except through equitable, progressive taxation.)

On whom should we focus?  Forget the fifty-state focus now so being talked up among aspirants to the DNC Chair.  Rather, let’s adopt a three-generation focus – the boomers and retirees, many of whom turned to Trump for answers; their middle age children locked in a stagnant middle class; and their grand-children.  Everyone wants to see their children and grand-children thrive and prosper.  Remove barriers that stand in the way of each generation.  Do that and the fifty states will sort themselves out.

Where should we focus?  At the state level.  These Republican ideologues want to weaken Federalism.  OK. Let’s take the force of their blow and turn it to our use, in the way my grandson does in his Tai Kwan Do.  Let’s remove barriers at the state level through a consortium of states, and the feds will have to follow.  Carbon pricing; climate science support; on-line public education collaborations across state lines; pooled state health insurance programs.  With assertive, pragmatic collaboration of states, we can create a new federalism centered outside the Beltway, outside Montgomery County MD, Arlington County, VA and the District of Columbia.  Listen to what Jerry Brown has to say about state responsibility and opportunity (my thanks to friend Brian who sent me this link,) Here Brown is welcoming this year’s annual meeting of climatologist and earth scientists, and he is fighting-mad: hear what progressive resistance sounds like.  (The sound track temporarily fades out at one point; just wait it out for 20 seconds or so.)

Two other suggestions.  Friend Frank always refer to “Republican President Trump.”  And use humor; nothing so demonstrates his malignant narcissism (from a second friend Frank.) Like a picador skewering a bull, madden him with humor.  The man can’t take a joke.  Where are our puppeteers when we need them?  (One of the first things the Nazis did in 1934 was to clamp down on cabarets and ban street puppet shows.)

So, those are my prescriptions for the long haul restoration of the Democratic Party: Focus on Removing Barriers, for Three Generations, through progressive State Consortia.  And in the meantime, skewer with humor Republican President Trump as often as we can.

What My Fellow Jurors Taught Me

When I was 28, I was pretty full of myself.  (I heard that; who out there said “. . .still are.”) I sported a graduate degree from Harvard, had three kids, owned a house, and had been promoted to dept. head.  Once, about that time, I had voiced in our book club doubt about the capability of ‘ordinary’ citizens to deal with increasingly complicated problems and choices, like those facing our new President. (Where were you 53 years ago today?) Oh, I said I believed in democracy . . . but it was tempting to embrace a politically incorrect elitism.  

So it seemed to me only right and proper that I was elected foreman of a Hennepin County jury sitting in judgment of a very unsavory character who had led an abduction and gang rape.  Ten of my fellow jurists were blue collar men, housewives, and retirees; only a couple of them might have had any college.  

But a few of them firmly scotched someone’s request to take a test vote right away.  We began to examine the case logically.  Had a crime been committed?  If so, was it believable that the defendant, the first of eight, was, as claimed, unaware of it?  If he was aware, was he involved, did he intercede, did he incite?  What constituted guilt?  What was reasonable doubt?

As discussion proceeded, my fellow jurists revealed diligence and thoughtful, logical and clear reasoning.  Finally, we came down to a lone hold out. Later, when she suddenly “gave in” and we questioned why, she said she was worried about catching the last bus to NE Minneapolis.  The group rejected her vote, four of us offered to drive her home, and we started over.  We spent another 90 minutes going back over the logic train; at 12:30am, she finally, and genuinely, bought it.

That experience changed (I just typo-ed “shamed” which is probably a better word) my snotty temptation to deprecate the ability of ‘ordinary’ people to fulfill the responsibilities of citizenship.  My fellow jurors were patient, thoughtful, reasonable, logical and determined to do right.  They exercised wisdom, regardless of education or social status.  

Many of them might have been Trump voters were they still around, as am I, more than half a century later.  They might well have been conflicted about the changing color of America, but they aren’t racist.  They likely would be anxious about a chaotic and dangerous world.  They would likely be very uncomfortable with the pace of change.  They undoubtedly would agree that America is on the wrong track – mainly at the hands of elite, highly-educated professionals, lawyers, bankers and business people – like me.   And, what we types didn’t realize, they were ready to act out Howard Beale’s howl, “I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"  Paddy Chayefsky forewarned us in 1976, as did Richard Rorty in 1998 (which my friend David S. brought to my attention,) and still others more recently.  But we didn’t listen; we didn’t get out there to see and hear.

 

Trump voters generally and in certain key states, overwhelmingly, expressed their judgment that the elitist leadership of the last couple of decades deserve to be tossed aside, even at the risk of not knowing what may replace them.  Put aside that the voters may have been conned, as I think they have, but attend to their judgment that something new must be forged.  That is their judgment, perhaps even their wisdom.

 

Rather than carp about Trump’s fearsome petulance, his inanities and lies, about his unsuitability to preside, we had better focus our energies on listening and responding to address concerns and reassure that we are hearing our fellow citizens – for we have been indicted and they are the jurists sitting on our case.  And I trust them, in the end, to do what's right.