I’m more or less back on an even keel save a certain level of writer’s block. I keep hoping I’ll balance this laptop on my knees and prose will simply begin to flow and weave itself into something really worth reading of making a piece of something grander. But it doesn’t. And I’m stuck with these occasional essays on the life and times of… Some of you seem to enjoy them. I cannot fathom why personally. But that’s probably as I am condemned to live them and the ideas that produce them keep ratting around in my overly tortured brain. I do have something that I have to finish up in the next couple of weeks as it’s a lecture I’m due to give on the 13th. An hour on what it has been like to survive in academic medicine as an openly gay man over four decades. I’m still working on just how much truth to tell.

As I look back over the last few days, what strikes me is how stagnant everything has been despite multiple screaming headlines about this, that and the other. Despite some cast changes, ICE continues to terrorize the citizens of Minneapolis with many well documented reports of thuggish physical attacks on immigrants and citizens alike with minimal, if any justification. The judiciary are apparently starting to wake up with multiple orders affecting ICE operations and individual cases which the agency seems to be blithely ignoring for the most part. I think we’re up to well over 100 judicial decrees that the agency has violated. Those over the agency appear to be doubling down with little care as to the perceptions (or realities) of the operation. There have been actions in other cities (especially Portland, Oregon where ICE was busy lobbing gas weapons at citizen families with children who were lawfully protesting ICE – a story that seems to have gotten minimal play in the national media). If ICE were sticking to their stated objective of finding and removing proven criminals under final order of deportation, there wouldn’t be much fuss, but they’re operating with a bizarre combination of impunity and immunity which is riding roughshod over pretty much anyone they feel like free of consequence. And Americans tend to hold their civil liberties sacrosanct and dislike it when they are trashed leading to the current situation.

As folk are pretty much fed up, every special election continues to swing between 15 and 30 points towards the Democrats these days which suggests that there will be a major change in congress and perhaps the start of a reckoning in a year. However, the story out of Georgia with the FBI kidnapping the ballots of an election of five years ago in an attempt to prove skullduggery gives me a bit of a pause. Once those ballots were removed, chain of custody and safety was broken and who knows what compromised federal law enforcement is going to ‘find’ and what they will try to do with that information. Fortunately, elections and election procedures remain the purview of the states and not the federal government although I imagine there will be significant attempts to rewrite that rule book and a free and fair election in November of this year is not a foregone conclusion.

Then there’s the gift that keeps on giving – the Epstein files. Millions of pages were released this past few days. Survivors names were not redacted but perpatrators were. If even a small percentage of the more explosive allegations contained are true, it suggests a level of complicit rot on both sides of the aisle that’s going to require an independent truth commission to root out. Will we get that? Not in the current political climate. There’s just going to be a lot shoring up of defenses and deflection as wealthy and powerful men who believe themselves beyond accountability and impervious to rules behave in the way that wealthy and powerful men have always done since the days of ancient Sumeria.

Today is the 1st of February, the traditional start of Black History month where we celebrate the contributions of the African-American community to our cultural development and highlight some of the hidden stories of our past – some shameful, some triumphant which deserve to be better known… except in Trump’s America where anything not aligned with a WASP-centric view of the world is DEI and suspect. I’m going to read Ta-Nehisi Coates even if he has been struck from the ‘approved’ reading list. (I read somewhere that MLK Jr’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail – one of the most foundational and best written documents of modern American history is being quietly removed from high school curricula around the country as being anti-white. Strikes me that those doing this haven’t ever bothered to read it.)

Tomorrow is Groundhog Day. I shan’t be tuning in to Punxsutawney PA as I have better things to do but I cannot help but wonder if Punxsutawney Phil isn’t the reason for the stasis we find ourselves in at the moment. Maybe, shadow or no, we’ll be able to begin moving forward following his pronouncement on the fate of winter. Perhaps tomorrow is the judgment day, tomorrow we’ll discover what our God in heaven has in store… And now that all of you, at least the theatre kids, are humming along. Get up in the morning, get dressed, go out, do good and stay warm.

Getting older is a bitch. I’ve known this intellectually for decades – how could I not given my chosen career path? But I’ve gotten to the age where it’s becoming more of a personal and less of a theoretical battle. In the last week, I’ve had a new pain in the right hip, worse with weight bearing, which is likely more arthritis acting up, another set of steroid shots in my cervical nerve roots in an attempt to get my left shoulder girdle muscle spasms to quit taking over my life and, to top it all off, I came down with something yesterday that knocked me off my feet by late afternoon with general malaise and various wonkiness. I did what I usually do. I put on my woolies, went to bed, put myself on soup and crackers and it’s mainly gone today. I’m assuming it’s just a weird winter virus. Fortunately it doesn’t appear to have major lingering effects.

But enough about me and my various ailments which you really had no interest in. Weeks like this, however, have made me adopt the English translation of a Norwegian idiom when asked how I am – ‘Still upright and not crying too much’. But that idiom could apply to the entire sociopolitical moment in which we find ourselves. We’re at an inflection point. They happen with regular periodicity in Western culture, roughly eighty years apart. Why that timing? Likely because it takes that long for adult living memory of the last one to disappear and for the social structures carefully created by the survivors of the last to prevent a future one to weaken to the point where the next becomes inevitable. We’ll come out of this one, one way or another and there will be much pledging of never again and a reshaping of society to new forms to curb the worse excesses. But somewhere around 2100, when today’s children are in their 80s and 90s, the cycle will likely repeat.

80 years ago – the early 1940s. World War II which led to the construction of social structures to protect the children who became the Baby Boom from the horrors their parents had endured. This included a sanitized Norman Rockwell vision of US history and society, minimizes or eliminating those pieces involving out groups such as racial, ethnic, religious, and gender minorities, which the current administration is trying to repurpose despite decades of cultural work to understand the complexities of our nation. (I read somewhere that the National Park Service has moved on from removing all mentions of slavery, Jim Crow and other mistreatment of African Americans at national historic sites to all mentions of Native Americans and how they were displaced, starved, and massacred). We have, just down the hill from me, the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument dedicated to the courage of sixty years ago which finally broke Jim Crow. I hate to think what has been removed there as DEI is kind of the point.

80 years before that – The Civil War. Telling that story without discussing the evils of slavery or the attempts of a wealthy elite to impose their economic and political world view on a population which was growing and changing in a very different way strikes me as counterproductive at best. 80 years before that The Revolutionary War, the Articles of Confederation and finally the Constitution which we have managed to live by for 225 years or so although the current administration appears to find it optional. 80 years before that the religious battles and schims which led to such things as the Glorious Revolution in England and the Salem Witch Trials in this country. 80 years before that, more religious strife which led to the Puritans fleeing England and ending up eventually in the Plymouth Colony. The rhyming if not necessarily the repetition of history.

The continued issues in Minneapolis seem to be causing rifts in both the administration and the Republican party. There’s been a lot of backpedaling in some quarters after it becomes more and more clear that the death of Alex Pretti was an extrajudicial execution and then there has been doubling down on obviously false narratives. Some of this has been awfully petty. Mr. Pretti’s coworkers tried to arrange a memorial gathering at the VA hospital where he worked as an ICU nurse. It was forbidden on administration orders. It doesn’t surprise me. After all, the VA police prevented even VA employees from parking in the Birmingham VA parking deck, just off the Pride Parade route, this past summer as that would be supporting ideologies with which the administration does not agree.

Some have said that perhaps the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti are a Kent State moment. Maybe. After all, there have been a total of three murders so far in Minneapolis this month, two of them committed by ICE/Border Patrol. I don’t think this is over yet by a long shot. I think there will be shooting into an unarmed crowd with multiple casualties, the murder of a child, or other atrocity before there is enough of a rift for things to really change. What is happening, however, is a recognition by people who have always been in the in group in society that they are not part of the in group under this administration and they can therefore be targeted. Those finding themselves in this position need to befriend and, more importantly, listen to members of communities who have been out groups for decades or centuries and who have always lived life knowing they are a target. There is so much wisdom available if we will only reach out – and not be surprised at some early rebuffs. Where have we been before when they were crying for help? But persistence and person to person networking has always worked and what we need now.

No one would be fussing about detainment and deportations if they were handled, as under previous administrations, by the book with judicial oversight and obeyance of court orders and honoring of visas, asylum claims, marriages and the like. But we have an administration which is run in order to create content for a daily reality show where what’s needed is optics and domination of the news cycle and, most importantly ratings. Bureaucratic processes in offices and courtrooms don’t make good TV. Undertrained people cosplaying as Call of Duty characters against a background of snow and ice with various quasilegal crowd control techniques are many things but boring it not one of them. It’s not a mode of governance that’s been tried before in this country and I don’t think it’s terribly successful. Documentarians of the future are going to love it as they’re going to have a wealth of primary source material to choose from. Those of us living through the creation of all of that – maybe not so much.

I’m taking one more early night to try and get rid of the crud and then, in the morning, I’ll get up, get dressed (with fewer layers as we seem to be out of the deep freeze), go out and do what good I can.

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Charles Dickens is on my mind as I’ve moved on to another one of the lesser known novels in my quest to have read all of his fiction prior to shuffling off this mortal coil. I am roughly a third of the way through ‘Dombey and Son’ and I haven’t yet made up my mind as to whether I like it or not. It has all of the hallmarks of Dickens. The little jokes placed in even the most somber settings. The lively supporting cast. Sharp social commentary. But it doesn’t rocket along the way David Copperfield or Nicholas Nickleby does from one adventure to the next. And it’s a bit thematically lugubrious, concerned mainly with misplaced priorities in life and how those damage relationships.

It’s too bad we don’t have an American Dickens at the ready to dissect Trump’s America. If I were to try my hand at fiction that’s the sort of thing I would likely produce. We have had some Dickensian writers – Patrick Dennis, Armistead Maupin, Barbara Kingsolver but no one that has been able to disguise social critique through the adventures of a family as they pass through the follies and foibles of modern American life. If anyone is aware of someone who is writing like this, let me know so I can give them a try. Because if there were ever a society that was due for a whipped cream with knives dissection via comic fiction, it’s this last decade in the USA.

Trump’s America is, of course, on full display in Minneapolis where yet another American citizen was executed by ICE on the street earlier today. The 3,000 ICE agents occupying the city now have two deaths of American citizens on their hands for a rate of 1/1,500. Given that the murder rate in America is approximately 4/100,000 and the murder rate by undocumented immigrants is roughly half that or 2/100,000, statistically ICE is about thirty times more dangerous to public safety than the undocumented community. Add to that the dozens whom have perished in ICE custody and the fact that ICE is not providing any medical care for detainees and I know which side I believe has the moral upper hand. DHS and the Trump administration have begun the character assassination of the deceased, focusing on the fact that he was armed. Interesting how the second amendment is sacrosanct except in this situation. Compare Mr. Petti who had a permit and did not appear in the films I have seen to be threatening anyone, but rather coming to the aid of a woman who had been attacked by ICE, to Kyle Rittenhouse. But then consistency has never been a particularly strong suit amongst the MAGA faithful.

There will be more blood and more death. The butcher’s bill may come due again in Minneapolis or in Maine or in some other American neighborhood yet to be named. It won’t stop until those with a sworn duty to defend the constitution – congress and the court system – shrug off their collective torpor and start demanding that the constitution (and especially the fourt and fourteenth amendments) are sacrosanct and not to be ignored for the sake of a few rapidly thrown together executive orders. And this is where the best of times comes in. Yesterday, a significant fraction of the population of Greater Minneapolis came together with a united message of what is happening here is unacceptable. And that’s all it really takes. Society standing together and demanding the rule of law over the rule of ego and whims.

The other thing that should be kept in mind is that ICE cannot win in the long run. Roughly 1/7-1/8 of the total number of ICE agents are currently on the ground in Minneapolis. And Minneapolis is the 46th largest city in the country. There are 346 municipalities in the US with a population of over 100,000 The number of agents that would be required to cow the population into full compliance is astronomical and unobtainable. Do not comply in advance and remember the Good Trouble of John Lewis.

I have a number of somewhat conservative friends who probably think I am a bleeding heart libtard when it comes to immigration issues. I have no issues with those found guilty of having violated law by a court being deported according to the appropritate civil procedures provided in law. I do have huge issues with racial and ethnic profiling, the death penalty meted out by officers with minimal training, warrantless searches and seizures, grabbing those who have done everything ‘the right way’ at their administrative hearings and tossing them into detention, detaining the spouses of American citizens, attacking random people on the streets for minimal cause, detaining people in inappropriate and unsanitary environments and all of the rest that’s going on.

Turning now to matters of public health. The nasty influenza A strain that was making people deathly ill around the holidays appears to be receding, just in time for influenza B to start making the rounds. Keep those hands washed and get your flu shot. It’s still not too late. Covid has been quiescent most of this winter. DHS and the CDC continue to be a mess under leadership chosen for ideology rather than science. The chair of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, Kirk Milhoan, came out this past week and stated that he wasn’t sure that we needed polio vaccines and that they should never be required if parents did not wish them given. Maybe I should buy stock in the manufacturer of iron lungs as that’s where this particular bad idea is going to end up.

I am finding it very difficult to write at the moment. I can turn out these essays but most of my other projects are stalled as I cannot turn off my brain, flooded as it is with the angst of the moment, and get those creative juices flowing. I don’t have much theatrical the next few months and it would be a great time to really get some work done on something meaningful but I get home in the evening, open up my laptop, and nothing happens other than scrolling through AI cat videos. I’m giving myself some grace. One thing I have learned about myself over the decades is that when the time is right, the words will flow.

There has been much hysteria the last few days about the weather. Apparently the fact that it gets cold in January and can freeze has never occurred to anyone before. I’ll walk to work if I have to. I’ve done it before. I did not rush out to the grocery store to buy bread and milk as I have no particular need of bread pudding.

Get up. Get dressed. Go out (but be careful if the roads and walks are slick). Do good.

I’ve been off from work all this past week due to the rehearsal schedule for South Pacific with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Chris Confessore which had its first performance last night and its last performance tonight at 7 PM (if you’re local to Birmingham, you still have time to make plans to be there – tickets at the door). I hadn’t had a decompress week for quite some time and it’s been good for me, giving me time to savor the compact rehearsal process for the show (five total rehearsal days – I was called for three of them) and two performance days. It’s also given me entirely too much time to catch up on the rather insane political machinations of the moment. I can’t say that’s been the best for my constitution and there’s something to be said about being kept busy by ordinary life so that all of the unmanageable events rocketing through the national character aren’t occupying too large a space in the psyche.

South Pacific has been a lovely experience. The majority of the cast are locals whom I have known and worked with for decades and we’re having fun together. I must admit to a heavy case of impostor syndrome. I know their credits and achievements on both a local and national level and then I look at myself as a performer and think what the hell am I doing up here with you? But I guess I know a little bit about what I’m doing as i was able to get the laughs and other audience reaction I wanted last night. The audience was well primed. That overture played by a full symphony practically brought the house to their feet and it was pretty clear they were going to follow wherever we led. And the antiracisim themes, even if they’re a bit creaky having been written in the late 1940s, make a significant impact given the current state of affairs in this country. I get to do it one more time in a few hours and then this, like the other eighty something shows I’ve been involved in since I began performing routinely some 23 years ago, will be packed away in the box labeled ‘happy memories’, to be replaced by another project. At this point, that looks to be a double bill of Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci in mid-April. I could squeeze something into a February/March slot but I have no plans to do so. I have a number of home projects that require attention.

At the moment, all eyes are on Minneapolis where the federal government has found it wise to send some 3,000 agents to conduct enforcement actions against undocumented immigrants. That’s roughly five times the size of the Minneapolis police department so there’s no wonder the city feels like it’s paying host to an unwelcome occupying force. Why Minneapolis? There are far greater numbers of immigrants in most Texas cities. I assume this is a need for the Trump administration to showcase their power for the cameras as a warning or deterrent to other American cities to roll over and let ICE do what they feel like doing. And so the news footage keeps appearing of operatives dressed like characters out of Fortnite (camouflage being so useful on American streetscapes), threatening anyone they please and skipping ahead to the whole ‘Papieren bitte… schnell schnell’ phase of authority/citizen relations. Minneapolis also gives Trump the chance to practice vindictive retribution against Tim Walz for being Kamala’s running mate and to use the Somali community, as exemplified by Ihlan Omar, as a convenient scapegoat. Haitians eating neighborhood pets is so last year. Somalis are apparently stealing suitcases full of taxpayer cash through fraudulent day cares and flying it out of the country. (I have yet to see any corroborative evidence behind most of the wild allegations permeating the right wing news sphere).

The process of acculturation by immigrants in the US has a long history and follows reconizable patterns. The initial immigrants arrive, often band together in communities with other immigrants for mutual support based around ties of language, religion and culture. Their children are often divided between heritage and the new opportunities America brings. Their grandchildren are generally thoroughly American. The process takes somewhere between forty and seventy years for each new group to assimilate. It happened with the Irish, the Scandinavians, the Italians, the Poles, Eastern European Jews etc. The Somalis arrived in the 1990s with the disintegration of their home country into civil war so they’re only about half way through the process. Of course they’re not going to be totally assimilated. Give them another twenty-five years. Nearly 90% of the Somali community in Minneapolis are US Citizens (either naturalized or native born). It’s not some invading army.

Why didn’t they pick some other city to unleash their onslaught? They weren’t about to choose one in a ‘loyal’ red state. In regards to blue state cities, they likely didn’t want one with difficult topography so Seattle and San Francisco were out, one that’s too large geographically (there go Los Angeles and Chicago), and one where they thought they could probably cow the locals (good bye New York and Philadelphia). I did not have on my bingo card that the wine moms of Minnesota were going to be the shock troops to first start offering some significant resistance to what ICE does but here we are. As much as the right would like to believe in some sort of devious Soros funded cabal of paid agitation, my read is different. I think the people of Minneapolis looked around at their city and at what was happening and more or less decided to publicly state that this is not who we are as Americans. This is not how we do things. We believe in the rule of law. We believe in our neighbors whom we have gotten do know over decades as being decent people and they are using their constitutionally protected rights of assembly and protest to let ICE know exactly how they are viewed. And the polling on the administration’s handling of immigration issues, once their strongest suit, is absolutely cratering. They’re likely to double down. After all, the Big Beautiful Bill, has given more money to ICE than most countries defense budgets. But they’re eventually going to run out of applicants willing to continually harrass fellow Americans. Especially when prospective agents start reading the fine print and figure out that vaunted $50,000 signing bonus is only payable after five years of continued service and, if they do not complete that five years, they must pay back any additional bonus monies proffered.

As for dear leader, who seems to have spent a lot of this past week falling asleep on camera, he managed to pull a true Rhoda Penmark moment with Nobel Laureate Machado in the Oval Office, only with fewer shoes involved. He can put his new shiny gold toy with all of his other shiny gold toys but it must gall him that it can’t truly be his. And I have to wonder about the circle of sycophants who arrange all of this, and the members of other branches of government whose inaction continues to enable the executive’s overreach. I assume at least some of their children are reading Harry Potter and recognizing their parents as so many Cornelius Fudges and Dolores Umbridges. There must be some uncomfortable conversations at home. Unless, of course, their children have been carefully taught.

Saber rattling regarding Greenland continues. Now it’s been awhile since I have sat down and read the entire constitution but I do seem to remember that it states that any treaty signed and ratified by the US shall be deemed ‘the supreme law of the land’. This, of course, would include NATO. Any military strike on Greenland, as a violation of NATO would therefore be prima facie illegal and unconstitutional and it would be interesting to see if the US military would be willing to follow such orders. I assume the more intelligent in the administration who understand that such a move would tank the US economy, if not lead to World War III, will keep all of this at a strictly rhetorical phase.

DHS remains relatively quiet. DOJ continues with its two current functions – retribution against Trump’s political enemies and protection for Trump and his circle against inconveniences such as laws. The VA, my deparment, hasn’t asked me to do anything immoral, unethical, or illegal as of yet. I’m going to continue getting up, getting dressed, going out, and doing good.

And our slow slide into fascism continues to accelerate. Dear leaders name and face on any institution or inanimate surface that takes his fancy. Propaganda posters on various federal websites deliberately aping 1940s style master race artwork and slogans. The appropriation of Nazi slogans, the most recent being ‘One of Ours, All of Yours’ on Kristi Noem’s podium at her most recent press conference regarding the state of affairs in Minneapolis. It stems from the Nazi’s reprisals against the citizens of Lidice, Czech Republic after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. It’s one of the best documented Nazi atrocities and I need not repeat the story here.

The actions of ICE and the killing of Renee Good continue to be a national Rorscharch test. Self identified Republicans are roughly 2/3 in favor of ICE’s actions while self identified Democrats are less than 5% in favor and self identified independents are less than 20% in favor. Translation, the majority of the US population is horrified at what is unfolding and the consequences of those policies while the administration steam rolls ahead and congress remains complacent. With numbers like that, most politicians begin back pedaling and self correcting with an eye on the next election cycle but there’s been little of that happening. Which makes me afraid that there is a plan in place which will prevent a next election cycle, at least one which is conducted in a fair and open manner. What is the plan? Who knows. The most likely is continued provocation of the populace until something happens which will justify a military response/martial law. But it could be something like an executive order ‘postponing’ elections until voting machines and processes ‘can be verified’. And congress will likely continue to roll over, at least as long as Mike Johnson remains in charge.

The Epstein files remain a wedge issue. Congress did pass a law requiring their release and DOJ has so far not complied with the terms of the law. This of course has now led to the slow wheels of the court system getting involved. I don’t think we’ll see significant unredacted files for quite some time. In the meantime, a new accuser, Sascha Riley, has surfaced with lurid and stunning allegations. None have yet been vetted through testimony under oath but I wouldn’t be in the least surprised to find out that there’s at least some truth behind the sensationalism. The longer the delay, the more the portion of the population who have bought into secret pedophile cabals running the world from the basement of pizzerias are going to get restive. And they tend to vote Republican.

The administration is pressing full steam ahead on trying to rewrite American history, both recent and remote, to suit their narrative needs. The laughable and easily disproven lies regarding January 6th are spreading throughout the administration and into the Smithsonian and are likely to end up in approved school textbooks shortly. More insidious is the attempts to undo the entire Civil Rights movement as some sort of discrimination against white males. It trivializes the sacrifices, the blood spilt, the survival of lynchings and other Jim Crow horrors as if that sort of domination should somehow be honored. The administration has decided not to pursue any federal investigation of whether Renee Good’s civil rights were violated, a standard procedure after any fatal incident involving federal law enforcement leading to the resignations of most of the senior staff of the Civil Rights division of DOJ.

Sabers continue to rattle in three different directions. First, in Venezuela where it’s completely unclear who is actually in charge, dear leader is running around stating he’s the president. The Venezuelans might disagree and I imagine there’s law preventing the President of the US from being the president of another nation at the same time (but I’m too lazy to look it up right now). The administration seems to think that they’ll be able to pump oil by the millions of barrels right off the bat. The large oil companies, who lost billions in contracts and equipment when Hugo Chavez nationalized the industry a couple of decades ago, aren’t so sure and would like to be paid back for their losses before they invest anything new and try to rebuild a thoroughly degraded infrastructure. This, of course, has annoyed dear leader who took on the chair of Exxon Mobil, Darren Woods, for daring to speak truth to power. I’m sure there are some small upstart companies headed by Trump cronies who will be more than willing to snare government contracts and taxpayer dollars but I don’t think we’ll see much ROI.

Second, there’s Greenland. Any actual attack on Greenland would destroy NATO and likely push the US into a war of some sort with the EU. I think there will be a lot of rhetoric and an attempt to buy off the population with a casket of beads a la Peter Minuit as that’s the sort of diplomay that dear leader can understand. Cooler heads will likely allow a greater US military presence than currently exists at some point but it will probably end there. The army is currently having trouble keeping the troops fed at Fort Greely near Alaska as DOGE cuts decimated their support staff. Not sure how they think they’re going to support more folk in the arctic. It’s not exactly an easy place to relocate a civilian work force.

Third is Iran which is going through another set of upheavals and rebellion against the mullahs who have been in charge since the 1979 revolution. This is hardly new. There have been multiple other uprisings, all of which have been put down. Is this one different? Time will tell. Iran has been severely weakened by it’s support for Hamas and Hezbollah which have been smashed recently by Israel. There’s also the issue of water. Iran is in a massive drought and the regime has seriously mismanaged water policy for decades by subsidizing monsoon crops like rice which require an enormous amounts of water. Tehran’s reservoirs are nearly out, it’s undergoing water rationing and there’s been talk of moving the capital. The current administration may not believe in climate change but it’s out there with very real world consequences. Then there’s the religious politics of the region. The Iranians are Shia and most of the Arab world is Sunni. The Shiites and the Sunnis have been sworn enemies for nearly 1400 years now but I don’t think most of the higher administration has any real understanding of Islam and they’ve gotten rid of most of the operatives in the State Department who truly understand these nuances.

That’s enough depressing news for the day. For those concerned about my personal health and pain level, I’m doing OK. I invested in a really good soft cervical collar and I have found if I put that on for about an hour or so a few times a day, it really helps keep the pain level down, far better than the various medications I have tried. Two weeks until shots in the neck and with luck that will be the end of that for at least six months.

Rehearsals for South Pacific begin in an hour. So I am getting up, getting dressed, going out, and doing good by creating some beauty.

I’ll warn you all in advance that my cervical spondylitis has been causing left shoulder girdle spasms for well over a week now and the constant pain is making me just a tad grumpy. I have various nostrums to relieve it but the things that work the best, like muscle relaxers, interfere with my cognitive processes so I cannot use them around working hours. If I’m a bit more waspish in my opinions than usual, I plead for forgiveness in advance. I get a new round of steroid shots in the left cervical nerve roots three weeks from yesterday and I am hoping that will bring me some longer term relief. It did this past year when I was awake and able to tell them when they had hit the right spot. We’re trying that technique again. Last night I had a double whammy as I had obviously eaten something that disagreed with me so there was misery all around and at least one of the cats got a free flying lesson off the bed when he sat on the remote and cut off the program I had been watching.

I have, however, been able to dodge the gamut of respiratory viruses that are making the rounds. I am desperately trying to stay out of harm’s way through Saturday night the 17th when I finish my commitments to the Alabama Symphony Orchestra and their concert production of South Pacific. Mine is a speaking, not a singing part but I still get to share the stage as a principal with a number of my favorite local performers including Lucas Pepke, Caleb Clark, and Chris Carlisle plus all the insanely talented musicians in the orchestra under the baton of Chris Confessore. Two performances only – Friday the 16th and Saturday the 17th at Alys Stephens Center – 7 PM. I’m willing to take whatever the cold and flu season dishes out after this is over. I have the rest of my performance season scheduled out. Symphony Chorus for a special concert piece commemorating Selma in Feburary. Chorus in Il Pagliacci/Cavalleria Rusticana for Opera Birmingham in April. Chorus for Carmina Burana with the Symphony and Alabama Ballet in May. Directing The Tempest for Bell Tower Players this summer.

I have looked up the Covid numbers. What else is a plague doctor supposed to do? They’re actually not bad and there hasn’t been a surge in early January as there usually is two weeks or so post Christmas. I suppose that its behaving in a more endemic fashion is good news, but we’re only one unusual mutation away from being back where we were a couple of years ago. The mutation in Influenza A from subclade J to subclade K is a bit of a problem as it’s anitgenically different enough to get around this year’s flu vaccine more effectively than normal. The combination of this and low vaccination rates explains why we’re having a terrible flu year. ERs and hospital wards are full. So far this season, we’ve had about 120,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths from the flu. It’s a fraction of the deaths we were seeing at the height of the pandemic from Covid but it’s still a good deal higher than usual for flu. (We generally have about 20,000 flu deaths a year in the US but we’re on track for more like 50,000 this year).

I really hate to wade into politics as it’s nothing but insanity and bad news, at least from my perspective. In the last few days the president announced he was going to take possession of Venezuelan oil, sell it, and deposit the proceeds in offshore accounts he would manage. I don’t even begin to know where to parse out the illegalities and corruption in that plan. Fortunately, in my remote youth, I took a course at Stanford entitled Introduction of Petroleum Engineering (easy A) so I learned a thing or two about the issues with extractive industries. Given the state of their infrastructure, not to mention their economy and politics, no significant Venezuelan crude is coming to market prior to the 2030s. He also announced that he is going to increase the defense budget from one trillion to one and a half trillion dollars. This from the leader of the party that was taking a hatchet to the government only a few short months ago on the pretext of deficit reduction and we can’t afford it. This is a non-starter as congress would have to figure out where that five hundred billion is coming from and I can assure everyone it’s not being paid to the US by other nations as tariffs. As a corollary to this, the president also sternly lectured the CEOs of the big defense contractors and floated the idea that their companies should be run as he desired and their compensation capped at a limit he determines. This sort of state capitalism would have been roundly derided as communist or Marxist coming from another direction. Then there’s his immediate family members using his control over finanical levers to set up cryptocurrency banks.

We seem to have backed down from invading Greenland (which would completely destroy NATO) in favor of potentially buying it by offering the inhabitants bribes of somewhere between $10,000 and $100,000 apiece to hold a referendum to secede from Denmark and join the US. As there are only 57,000 residents of Greenland, it wouldn’t be that expensive – only 5.7 billion dollars on the high end, but the Greenlanders seem to remain disinterested. If such a harebrained scheme were to go through, I wonder if I might ask Denmark to buy me for $100,000. I wouldn’t mind living in Copenhagen. My guess is all he really wants is the ability to build some new bases there to counter Russia and China via the polar route as Arctic ice continues to melt and the rest is posturing. Speaking of Arctic melt, he is also withdrawing us from all of the international climate change organizations and we will soon be the only nation not participating.

The big story of the day is, of course, the killing of Renee Good yesterday in Minneapolis. Looking through the comments on various news stories and social media channels it is, like so many other incidents of the last few decades, becoming a bit of a Rorschach test reflecting our own personal biases and political leanings back at us. The administration is doubling down on portraying her as some sort of crazed leftist agitator intent on mowing down ICE agents while the picture that is emerging from sources on the ground is that she was an apolitical young mother who had just dropped her son off at school and got caught at the wrong place at the wrong time in a situation that rapidly escalated. The administration is claiming absolute immunity for ICE officers as part of their official dute which is not how policing has ever worked in this country. Murder and manslaughter are state charges but the state is being edged out by the FBI. Unfortunately, the FBI has been so compromised by Trump through Kash Patel and Dan Bongino nothing will come of that investiagation.

There was a physician present who tried to render aid and who was prevented from doing so by ICE agents. I looked up Minnesota’s Good Samaritan law. In an emergency, under the Minnesota statute, a physician is not just protected from liability if they offer assistance, but they are also expected to offer assistance within the scope of their knowledge. In some states, preventing a physician from doing this is an illegal act. I haven’t been able to determine if this is the case in Minnesota. I didn’t go to law school. But it might be another way for the state and local authorities to reign in the bully behavior of ICE goons.

This is not the last person that’s likely to be killed by ICE who are operating outside of law and restraint. The number of detainees who have died in custody in suspicious circumstances is well into double digits and there have been other shootings and reckless force incidents involving protestors and observers. This is just the first one that comfortable white America can’t ignore as she was one of them. Is this a George Floyd inflection point? Probably not. I think it’s going to take a lot more blood on the pavement before the apolitical and the distracted and the narcotized by cheap entertainment start to stand up in enough numbers and demand that things change.

When I heard the news, I immediately thought of the movie, Schindler’s List. Not the horrific concentration camp scenes but a scene much earlier in the film, when a column of Jews is stopped by the Gestapo and made to clear snow from the street and an elderly man with one arm, proud to be an essential worker, is callously pulled out of line and shot in the head. It’s the first act of deadly violence in the film. Steve and I went to see it when it first opened on a Christmas Day showing (meaning that a majority of the audience was Jewish) and as that loud gun crack reverberated through the movie theater, you could feel a collective weight of sadness settling over those gathered. The rustles of weight shifting in seats, the munch of popcorn, all those other ephemeral sounds fell away from that moment through the end of the film some two and a half hours later.

Do I think we’re going to end up in the same place that Germany did in 1945? I doubt it. Too many of our eyes are open and too many of us stand up to be counted. But it’s a reminder that the road to perdition begins with baby steps and that even small acts of violence of the state against the citizenry have enormous power and consequence.

Wash your hands. Cover your mouth when you cough. Stay home if you’re sick. Avoid the obviously ill. Light a candle.

And so it begins… with the attack on Caracas, Venezuela last night and the arrest and capture of President Maduro and his wife who are being transported back to the US to face charges of narcoterrorism. I should have started with And so it continues… as it’s just the latest chapter of a saga that’s been going on for quite some time, both in Venezuela and in terms of American foreign policy in general. I can say that the whole narcoterrorist angle is a bunch of hooey. Even the most cursory look at where illegal drugs that cause destruction on American streets originate shows that the vast majority enter the country from Mexico where they are synthesized in illegal Mexican labs from precursors manufactured and shipped from China. Breaking Bad, especially the Gus Fring plot line, is a more accurate description of the drug trade than the propaganda issuing from the executive branch in defence of the current action.

I know a few Venezuelans. None have lived in the country for some decades but I’ll be interested to get their perspectives in what’s happening there these days as there are still family ties and they are likely to have some information on what is acutally happening on the street. I am becoming more and more distrustful of national media who seem to be doing a complex limbo dance under the bamboo of Trump’s will. I am no expert in Latin American history and politics, but if I recall the last few decades correctly, things have gone south between the US and Venezuela starting in the lat 1990s when former president Hugo Chavez came to power and, amongst other things, nationalized the Venezuelan oil industry, much to the consternation of US oil companies who lost lucrative contracts. There was a coup in 2002 which attempted to remove him, but it failed. I don’t know that the US was directly involved in the coup but the US government was quick to recognize the interim president as the legitimate ruler, only having to back down when Chavez was rapidly restored to power. Chavez went on to continue to be a thorn in the side to the US and Europe due to his consistent opposition to the dominant neo-liberal economic policies favored by the West.

Chavez died in office of cancer in 2013 and was succeeded by his vice-president, Nicolas Maduro who, in 2015, pushed through a number of political changes which made his essentially a dictator ruling by fiat. Maduro’s heavy-handed tactics seem to have turned most of the population against him and he has held onto power through intimidation, coercion, and fraudulent elections. He’s hardly a good guy but he is a sitting head of state and invading a sovereign nation and kidnapping the head of state is against international law. There are ways and means to accomplish this within international law but they would require competent diplomats and an executive branch run by intelligent individuals, neither of which seem to be in much supply these days.

But international law has never held the US back from fiddling with other countries sovereignity when there’s something it wants. The Kingdom of Hawaii, overthrown over the interests of the sugar magnates in 1893 and the various interferences in Central America at the behest of the plantation owners, especially the banana growers come to mind. Then there’s the times when the US has either gone to war or helped engineer coups over political and economic ideologies that are anti-capitalist such as Vietnam and the Chilean coup of 1973 that overthrew Salvador Allende. Our track record in recent years in regime change isn’t great. the human and economic disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria can all be placed at the doorstep of our foreign policy.

Is the current action a distraction against a failing domestic economy and the disturbing allegations of the Epstein files? Is this an attempt to unify the country on a war footing a la ‘Mission Accomplished’ in 2003 (for my younger readers – it wasn’t by a long shot)? Is it just a ploy for Trump and Hegseth to flex their alpha male muscles through beta male activities? I suppose we’ll all find out eventually.

On a completely different note, the flu is here and it’s bad. We have some years where flu activity is much higher than others depending on the circulating strains and this one is shaping up to be a bad one with near record hospitalizaitons happening in some locales and higher than usual death rates. Most of us aren’t in danger of dying should we happen to get it, just of being in for a rather miserable week. The antivax activity has driven down the number of adults receiving flu shots (currently about 45% of US adults have had one – it’s recommended for all adults unless there’s a contraindication). What this means is that it will be much easier for the virus to travel through the population. So, keep those hands washed, stay away from the obviously ill, remember your social distancing, and consider masking up in certain situations.

On the personal front, I’ve been rewatching Stranger Things over the last few weeks and am finally into the last season which recently dropped on Netflix. My takeaways so far. The Duffer brothers have an incrediblle eye for period detail. I’m roughly five years older than the teen characters (Nancy, Steve, Jonathan, Robin) so I have a young adult’s memory of the time and I have picked up very few flaws in their recreation of the world of forty years ago. The fact that the series was filmed over a roughly nine year period while only about four years elapse over the course of the story means that the kids are now much too old for the parts they are supposed to be playing – this is especially true of Will. The show suffers from some of the same issues as Game of Thrones. An enormous international fan base, invested in years of story telling and watching the young actors grow up before their eyes has led to feelings of ownership over the characters and storytelling and therefore disagreements with the artistic choices of the creators. I haven’t finished the whole thing yet, but I’m willing to go on the journey to its end. I’ll try to finish it up tonight and tomorrow, my last day off before I’m back to the grind.

Be the anti-administration: get up, get dressed, go out, do good, avoid breaking international law.

It’s New Years Day. New Years Eve is for looking back and the previous year and even further into the past. It’s a bit problematic for me (and if you want to know why, you can read the Prologue to Book 1 of the Accidental Plague Diaries – I’m not going to rehash it here) but I did pretty well and even put in an appearance at a friend’s New Years Eve party. I must admit that I did not stay all the way through the countdown as my neck and shoulder were bothering me and I needed to get off my feet and let gravity work on my body in a horizontal rather than a vertical position. This seems to be the best solution to my cervical stenosis and its pain complications but it’s somewhat incompatible with an active life so it’s acetaminophen and meloxicam and tizanidine and gabapentin for the next four weeks until they can shoot steroids into the problem areas again and hopefully make things improve.

So New Years Day must, in counterpoint, be for looking forward. What am I looking forward to? Various things. If all goes according to plan, it will be my last complete regular work year. I got my first job (data entry clerk) in 1977 so I guess I’ll have completed fifty years in the work force at the time of my retirement. I assume that’s enough. Something over 80% of that time was spent in healthcare in one form or other. I feel like I found my niche, helped a lot of people, and did some good in the world so I can’t be too disappointed with my career path over the decades. I have one more year to move it forward and then I’ll have to enter my Eriksonian stage 8 problem solving of figuring out what it has all meant. I’m in the process of cleaning out my academic office (as the whole department is moving and I am not moving with it as I don’t spend enough time in academic work anymore to warrant an office). I’m opening files that haven’t been touched in decades and launching most of the contents into the recycle bin. I am keeping a few things for sentiment’s sake – like the absolutely scathing review I received from the surgeons during my med school rotation. I haul it out occasionally to show discouraged med students that a bad comment or grade is not the end of the world and they’re going to be just fine.

I have performance opportunities to look forward to in 2026. South Pacific with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra is rapidly approaching in the next few weeks. After that, Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci with Opera Birmingham and Carmina Burana with the Alabama Symphony Chorus and Alabama Ballet are penciled in. And then there’s directing The Tempest this summer. I don’t have any plays on the calendar yet but there are a few holes and something is likely to turn up – it always does.

I have a trip to Eastern Europe on the books for the fall through Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. I’m looking forward to that one. I have a slot open for one other trip abroad but haven’t decided yet where it should be. I’m thinking maybe France. I haven’t been to Paris in more than forty years. But something else might beckon. I would really like to get back to Asia.

I don’t know how or what to look forward to in terms of writing for this next year. I’m having a difficult time buckling down as I don’t have structure or deadline. I do my best under pressure. If I’m left too much to my own devices, I put it away and get out a book or turn on the TV. I do have some projects with self imposed deadlines but that’s not quite the same. I really require someone texting me saying ‘I need those pages by Tuesday’ to get me moving forward with all due speed. I have been pulling pieces together from various sources that can be repurposed for my ‘Boom’ book so maybe that’s the first thing that needs to be pushed ahead.

Other things I want to fit in over the next few months: a theater week in NYC to catch up on various productions I have yet to see, a trip to Seattle to check up on the family, and some time at a beach somewhere so I can just walk along a beach and smell the ocean. Maybe I’m asking for too much. When I see the disasters befalling the country and how they ripple through my younger friends and my friends in performing arts careers, I realize I lead an incredibly privileged existence and maybe my energies should be put more towards healing the many hurts out there and less towards self care. I try to balance and do both but it’s not the easiest tightrope.

Get up, get dressed, go out, do good, then have some cornbread, black eyed peas and collard greens.

“What’s today my fine fellow?” said Scrooge. “Today?” replied the boy “Why Christmas Day”. The older I get, the more I understand Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ and why it has had such a hold on the English speaking world and its understanding of traditional holiday festivities for more than 180 years now. The book itself is not long, more of a long short story than even a novella and can easily be read in an evening. It gave to us all of those early Victorian trappings of Christmas that stay with us through the years – from the decorations, to the traditional feast menu, to innumerable strolling quartets of Dickens carolers popping up at a shopping center near you throughout the month of December. I doubt Charles, when he put pen to paper to write a ghost story about the holidays, had any idea what he was actually creating and the impact it would end up having on the world but most literary geniuses are writing to meet the needs of the moment and it’s only in retrospect that we completely understand their insights into the human condition which lift certain works above the mundane.

I played Scrooge on stage a decade ago. It’s one of those parts you don’t turn down if you’re an actor of a certain age. I’d love to tackle him again with another decade of living and life crises under my belt. I think I understand him better now. He’s not sinister, he’s not evil. LIfe just pushes him in certain ways which get his priorities out of joint and, at the end, he’s not a different person than he was; the visits of the spirits simply lead him to recalibrate. The results of loss and mistaken choices have embittered him over time and the making of money has become a maladaptive coping mechanism for dealing with the world. And one of the genius moves of Dickens is his not completely explaining Scrooge’s past. Did his business acumen destroy Fezziwig? What sort of business was Scrooge actually in? We know some of the superficial reasons why Belle breaks her engagement to him but what more was going on?

The ghosts, all four of them (yes four – Marley counts) each give him a different means of better understanding himself through the prisms of past, present, and future. What are ghosts? They exist in every human culture and folk tradition so they seem to be something that are created by human experience, no matter who we may happen to be. I know I am haunted by ghosts. They aren’t physical spectral manifestations but they certainly exist in my psyche, created by my thoughts, guilts, and regrets. I guess they’re a side effect of our prodigious brains and memories. There will always be roads not taken, bad decisions, old injuries to ourselves or to others and ghosts are a handy anthropomorphic shorthand way of dealing with all of that in narrative form.

Over the years, my ghosts have taught me a lot. They’ve helped me reevaluate my past, make different decisions in my present, and have hopefully allowed my future to unfold in ways that might not have been possible a few years before. They’re companions. Sometimes, late at night, they can make me uncomfortable as I ruminate over things that once happened and which are over and done with. But is that their doing, or is it me and how I am feeling and reacting to something in the present and processing it by seeing it through the lens of the past.

I’m old enough now that my life’s companions are starting to slip away and leave the party one by one. Some of them may join the chorus of ghosts in my head as they still have something to say or to teach me. I suppose one of the marks of true maturity is being able to homestly face them all and let them know that I have no regrets regarding where my life is currently headed. (Of course, I’m not absolutely sure where this is at the moment but does any of us really know)? I guess I just need to keep moving forward with enough momentum to keep their rumblings at a dull roar.

As I’m wise enough to be aware of my ghosts, I don’t feel a particular need to try and hold my life, or the lives of others in any sort of stasis. Those at the highest level of government don’t seem to have learned this lesson. The president continues to engage in puerile and awfully repetitive rantings, when not engaged in trying to engrave his name or image on whatever happens to be at hand. ‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works ye mighty and despair’. wrote Percy Shelley and yet the lone and level sands stretch away from a shattered visage. I see in him and in the other politicians of his generation a primal need to try and stop time while they try to secure their legacies and reorder the world to their liking. But that’s not how any of this actually works. We live on by allowing the succeeding generations to build on our legacies not by imposing things upon them. I’m teaching the young physicians who are going to take over my clinical practice how to think and problem solve, but not the exact ways in which I have done things. Those are mine and worked for me – they’ll have to come up with what works for them and a new generation.

Will Trump and his ilk reorder their thoughts after spectral visitations? Unlikely. Their public actions suggest that they are unwilling to listen to the ghosts already speaking to them . I can hope that eventually their hearts and minds will let in concepts such as empathy and equity but I’m not holding my breath. We can weigh our options as voters and decide who listens to the voices of the past and uses them to improve the future and give them our votes rather than voting based on an R or a D after the name but that will require engaging in the political process rather than treating it as a spectator sport. In the meantime, I’ve had my Chinese food so it’s time for a movie. May you and yours have a merry Christmastime (remember it lasts for twelve days – until Janurary 6th) and, in the immortal words of Tiny Tim. God Bless Us, Every One.

I woke up early. Generally I sleep until the alarm sounds, I hit snooze a couple of times and then I drag myself out of bed trying to remember what I have to do that day and then wander through the bathroom and my closet doing all those little tasks that make us presentable enough to be seen by other people. If I don’t do these things, I look a bit like Christopher Lloyd’s Doc Brown from Back to the Future and no one is going to take anything I say seriously unless it has something to do with DeLoreans, Flux Capacitors, or 88 miles an hour. I am fortunate that it takes me a total of twelve minutes from the time I walk out the door of my condo until I walk in the door of any of the three offices in which I might start my day. This allows me to set my alarm relatively late. ‘Not a Morning Person’ doesn’t even begin to cover it although I usually reach a point of equipoise after either a large cup of coffee or 10 am, whichever comes first.

At least part of the reason for early rising was a large number of ideas racing through my brain regarding various writing projects. Now that things theatrical are complete for awhile (with the exception of South Pacific in mid-January, but that being an Alabama Symphony Orchestra production, it has a very compressed one week rehearsal/performance schedule and I am taking vacation that week as many of the rehearsals are during business hours), I have several months in which I can get a good deal of writing done if I can make myself focus. Nothing else on my performance calendar goes into heavy rehearsal until mid to late March. Therefore, these musings may start appearing a little more regularly, my movie reviewing alter-ego should get busy again, and I have two major projects in mind on which I want to complete full drafts. As I write quickly when I’m in the zone, I don’t think my goals are overly lofty. We’ll see what emerges. One of the two projects is my long-proposed book ‘Boom’ analyzing the fallout when the immovable object of the older Baby Boomers’ attitudes toward life are hit by the unstoppable force of biologic and physiological reality and what the effects may be on our already rickety healthcare system. The other one I’m not prepared to discuss yet.

Some of my sleep issues are likely bound up with my cervical stenosis and consequent left shoulder girdle pain and spasm. It was worse than ever the last few days (and if I snapped at anyone backstage at Miracle on 34th Street, I apologize – it wasn’t you, it was a pain response). I do have an appointment for them to try steroid injections at the nerve roots again, this time with me awake so I can tell them when they’ve hit the right spot, but it’s not for another five weeks. I shall be consulting with my primary care about temporizing options today. Tylenol is only taking me so far. The problem is that most of the things that are likely to help are also likely to put me to sleep so I can’t use them on workdays. Just one more thing in life designed to give me additional empathy with my patients.

As we head into the holidays in a society very different than the one we had last holiday season, I have to keep repeating the mantra I made up in response to the initial barrage of really bad ideas flowing from the White House. Get Up. Get Dressed. Go Out. Do Good. It’s all any of us can do unless we want to run for congress or some such. There are people who have suggested that I should run for elective office as I’m calm, have a good head on my shoulders, and always look for the win/win when problem solving. Sorry to disappoint you. As an openly gay man in Alabama, I have far too many skeletons in my closet and would rather not see them batted around town like some sort of festive Dia De Los Muertos parade. Instead, I’ll just write about them here- some of them at least. I do curate what I write. Someday I may write a warts and all memoir but now is not that time.

The latest target of the regime appears to be the Smithsonian. I guess they’ve finished hollowing out the Kennedy Center with the official and illegal renaming. Notices have gone out that federal funding will be withheld unless exhibits which do not agree with the administration’s interpretation of American history (which seems to have come from 1940s elementary school history texts). What has made this country great and unique is the fact that it has been created by so many different peoples, each with their own story, coming together to make something far grander than could have been done in isolation. Some of those peoples came willingly in waves of immigration. Some were tragically dragged here in chains. Some were not allowed to achieve full potential due to various waves of xenophobia. But each is important in the American story. This idea that ‘Heritage Americans’ descended from European settlers and immigrants should be the official narrative does a huge disservice to the country. In the last few decades, due to the elevation of other voices and narratives, I’ve developed a much clearer picture of who we are, both positive and negative. How was it that I, incredibly well read and well educated, was completely unaware of the Tulsa race massacre of 1923 until the last decade or so? Trying to bury these stories because they may make some of European descent feel uncomfortable does no good to anyone. I am expecting the administration to close the Smithsonian’s African American history museum and the Native American history museum as they are full of painful truths. They’ll probably sell off the buildings as well. But they can be rebuilt bigger and better when the time comes. The work has been done. The truth is out there. You can’t bury it. Perhaps people will draw the line when Melania is presented with the Hope Diamond. The Resolute Desk has already been spotted at Mar-a-Lago.

Other items of note – the DOJ has once again flouted the law with their refusal to release all of the Epstein files as required by congress. And they have been so busy redacting files (also illegal under that law other than to protect the identity of victims) that all sorts of crazy mistakes are being made. We’ll have to see what congress intends to do. The House will do nothing as long as Mike Johnson is in charge, but his days may be numbered as he is losing control of his caucus. If only the Republican party had not encouraged absurd stories about the government being controlled by a secret pedophile cabal through Qanon. Those adherents are hopping mad at the lack of transparency, and the Republicans will need every vote they can muster to maintain control after the midterms as the average swing away from Republicans to Democrats over the last year is sixteen points.

Another item – CBS news can now no longer be considered a news organization with Bari Weiss having spiked the Sixty Minutes piece on CECOT due to her pro-Trump positions. Walter Cronkite is rolling in his grave. I imagine Sixty Minutes will be producing incisive Trump propaganda in the new year but it’s unlikely to be very interesting once all of the real journalists and talent in the CBS News Department depart for greener pastures.

Another item – Turning Point USA had their annual convention the last few days. You could have a selfie in a replica of the Charlie Kirk death tent. The widow Kirk appeared in her mourning sequins as expected. Most of the other speakers seem to have spent the time attacking each other over Gaza, antisemitism, conspiracy theories, and various purity tests. There wasn’t much discussion of policy or how to fix the rather enormous problems we’re all facing. It was a circular firing squad worthy of the Democrats. The more I see of it, the more I believe that MAGA and the alt-right will splinter on the death of Trump. There’s no one in the inner circle with the personal charisma to step up into that sort of imperial leadership role. When will that be? I have no idea, but this physician can tell that he is not a healthy man.

I’ve rattled on long enough and I have patients waiting for me at my clinic so I better wrap this up. Get up. Get dressed. Go out. Do good.