THE FORK IN THE ROAD

Really, it’s down to just two choices: take the road on the left or take the road on the right.

The road on the left leads here:

Donald Trump is a master manipulator and is drawing everyone’s fire toward him, while quiet zealots like Paul Ryan and Mike Pence, methodically undo the social contract and create a two tiered America of Rich and white vs. minority and poor. That Trump made a grand bargain with the grand old party to create the most amazing distraction while the true leaders set about creating massive tax cuts for the wealthy and completely undoing Roosevelt’s New Deal, Johnson’s Civil Rights Act, Nixon’s Environmental Protection and Obama’s Healthcare.

Or,

The road on the right takes us to a place where all is exactly as it appears. The President of the United States is the same Donald Trump we’ve all come to know over the years. A huckster, a lazy, incurious, un-read, schemer who’s desperation to be loved and admired is only surpassed by his infantile need to be seen as great and powerful. He is without question, the least qualified person in history to become a national leader.

There is no third path. The path, we all thought might be true, that he would be a poor president but at least not an historic grease fire, is no longer operational.

It can only be one of these two options.

Yes, if I were handicapping this, I’d say there is a 99% likelihood that option 2 is the truth. To believe in the first option, one would have to also believe that Trump is a world-class actor and a true master of personality subterfuge. One would have to literally accept that Trump is some swirling combination of James Bond, Keyser Soze and Voldemort.

I’m unprepared to believe that. However….

I leave one percent chance open to hedge my bets. And - probably because I’ve read too much science fiction and seen to many plot-twisting movies - I can’t shake this feeling that Trump’s incompetence and ineptitude are almost too perfect. During every single crisis and right after every single mind-numbing interview and every single ridiculous tweet I roll my eyes and ask myself: “can anyone really be that stupid!?” Further there is this tine corner of my brain that lives in isolated terror that the orange-haired commander-in-chief is playing us all for fools.

What’s worse, I think to myself. Seeing Trump wreck the country due to his corrupt and stupid ways, or finding out that we were all played for suckers by the brilliant Mr. Trump? I guess it doesn’t matter. Either way leads to pain and mayhem.

A sign at the fork in the road we all find before us should have arrows pointing at both paths and should read: “madness that way lies!”

ON TRUMP AND RUSSIA AND THE STOMACH-CHURNING, PULSE-POUNDING STRESS OF IT ALL

Right now, if you had to bet $1,000 on which option is more likely to happen, which would you choose?

1. Aliens land on earth next Monday

2.  A thorough, fair and independent investigation into the Trump/Russia affair finds no collusion or wrongdoing.

It’s a toughie isn’t it?

I mean, I really, really feel confident that little green men are not going to show up in five days somewhere on the planet, but…….?

Seriously. The absolute biggest and most blockbuster story in the world over the next year would be that Trump and his administration were completely innocent of working with Russia to throw the election. The second biggest story would be proof that he and they did. 

That is where we are right now. The smoke is so think and powerful right now that a conflagration threatening to outstrip Watergate is building and building. We are all in at this point. It really is the political embodiment of the transitive property of math – If A equals B and B equals C, than A equals C.

A Trump needed help to win because god knows he’s not smart enough to do it alone

B Russia wanted a stooge in the White House;

C November 9^th brought us the previously unthinkable.

And it’s only been a little over 100 days!!!! Seriously republican defenders of the president…do you really have the stamina for another 3 and 2/3 years of this?!

One of my favorite football quotes comes from defensive guru Wade Philips who once said about playing football: “it’s an incredibly hard game because every play is a crisis.” And that’s fine for a contest that lasts about three hours. Then everyone can take a break until next Sunday.

Can we really handle a presidency where every day is a crisis – a self-made crisis?  My god! He hasn’t even been tested yet. No terrorist attacks, no economic shocks, no killer storms, no incursions abroad…relatively speaking, nothing.

Others have said this, but it bears repeating: we are at the point where we fear picking up our smartphones and checking social media platforms for the latest news on the administration. Every buzz of a twitter alert, illumination from an RSS feed or jingle of a text sends us all into panic.

“What now!?”we all reflexively think, “What has he done now!!!!”

Yes, I held lofty dreams of Clinton presidency, a democratically controlled congress and a 5-4 liberal tilt in the Supreme Court – only to have those velvety aspirations slapped down like a fly on one’s shoulder.

So yes, my wondrous visions of fairness, equality, environmental stewardship and economic justice have been bludgeoned to death.  But at this point, I’d just settle for a stretch of days where I didn’t actually fear Trump calling a nuclear strike against some third-rate state senator from Minnesota daring to tweet critically about healthcare premiums.

In the famous words of every A through D list actor over 50 in far too many movies to even count: “I’m too old for this shit.”

THE NECESSARY EYE IN THE SKY

Quick question: what is the one absolutely indispensable item every passenger must have when they board a commercial flight today? No, it’s not a neck pillow, no it’s not a credit card to buy outrageously priced snacks and no it’s not a pain reliever to help cope with cramped spaces and uncomfortable seats.

The one thing that every passenger simply must have when they board a plane today is a camera phone.

For a camera phone has now become a passenger’s last line of defense against an industry that has completely devolved into a dystopian hell-scape of customer disservice and outright abuse. A camera phone now plays the critical dual role of eyewitness and possible deterrent to the open hostility and civil rights-trampling that has become almost routine in the “Friendly Skies.”

And in case you think I’m exaggerating, please allow me to refer you to exhibit A, the Game of Thrones-esque behavior of United Airlines employees and complicit law enforcement personnel who bloodied a man and dragged him off a plane.

Of course you’ve all seen the video tape, and you’ve probably viewed it more times than you’ve viewed footage of the recent US bombing of Syria. According to Goggle, that piece of passenger-recorded video has been viewed more than 100 million times in less than three days.

But imagine if that reprehensible and potentially criminal behavior had occurred away from the prying lens of a smartphone? What would be the fall-out for United if there was no recorded evidence of its actions?

Indeed, if “The Great Airplane Dragging of 2017” had occurred without video confirmation, the entire episode would be a one or two day story that quickly fades into oblivion. United would make loud and numerous pronouncements of innocence and thinly veiled threats against the passenger’s “false accusation.” Ultimately it would be a contest where the word of one man would have to stand against a global juggernaut with billions of dollars and thousands of lawyers and consultants at its disposal. I think we all know how that would turn out.

However, this in-plane mugging was diligently recorded by several passengers with their phones. A few clicks later, mere seconds of upload time and suddenly, the global juggernaut is staggering back on its heels and frantically searching for cover. In one day, United lost $1 billion in value; its ridiculously tone deaf CEO is on the ropes; and cable news and the internet are skewering the hapless company like a winged pin cushion.

The other thing this particular camera phone footage has done is to rally most of the world against a common enemy – the airlines. Because this industry has sunk to such levels of outright customer hatred, it has fomented conditions which not only allowed this terrible incident to happen, but also to lower our incredulity toward it. As such, we are all appalled by the video, yet not too surprised that the act itself was conducted by an airline and an industry we’ve learned to despise. Not so much in a physical sense, but in a figurative sense, all of us have been dragged around by the airlines more than any of us care to remember.

And that won’t change anytime soon. With deregulation, terrible business models and a host of other problems, flying isn’t going to get better and certainly the airlines aren’t going to suddenly become even merely bad at customer service.

Therefore, I urge everyone to protect themselves as best they can.

Later this summer, my family and I are taking a big vacation to Europe and to my great horror, we are flying United. We have to as our choices are severely limited.

And so, when I get my kids ready for the flight I will instruct them as follows: pack only one carry-on so we don’t run the risk of the incompetent carrier losing our luggage; stretch your legs and back vigorously in the boarding area so you can prep for the crappy seats and ever-decreasing leg room on our long flight and finally - make sure your phones are charged and accessible.

If we’re lucky our phones will only record the splendor of the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre and not the heavy hands of a United flight attendant, but we’ll be ready all the same.

The "Barbed" Wire

Illicit drugs running rampant. Crime and violence out of control. Families torn apart. Whole communities scarred by the drug trade and the criminals who profit from its prevalence. 

Pretty typical narrative in America today, isn’t it? But if you read that first paragraph again and imagine the landscape it portrays, do we all not go immediately to inner-city Chicago or Detroit? And don’t we all envision the actors in this tragedy to be black and brown-skinned?

But we are wrong. This is the scene in Appalachia, and rural Mississippi, and the suburbs around Sacramento and the farm towns of Nebraska. This is the heartland in America today. Sarah Palin’s “Real America.” And the actors are mostly white, mostly economically disadvantaged, poorly educated people who long for the days when the farms and the factories and the mills and the plants were humming.

When hearing about the opioid problem in the nation today, I am always reminded of that great Richard Pryor line from decades ago: “The drug problem today is an epidemic. That means white people have it!”

If we were honest with ourselves – if Hollywood were honest with itself – the next wave of great TV shows would all feature stories about the opioid crisis in rural America. They would tell the tale of woe and drama of how white people in the heartland failed themselves and their communities and became a wasteland of drug-addled schemers. Instead of burnout city blocks and urban decay, the tracking shots would be of abandoned grain silos, rusted combines and meth dealers cooking their product in ramshackle trailers.

That is where the great drug crisis – and great drama – of the 21^st century America exists.

Instead of a black drug kingpin rolling through the streets of Watts or Oakland in a slick Cadillac Escalade with a glove box full of crack, we open with a white dude in a souped-up Ford F-150 splashing along a muddy two-track, checking in on his mules distributing Oxycontin to high schoolers.

Instead of the counter narrative of the one good black kid who is using his basketball prowess to escape the mean streets, we hone in on the white kid who is tops in his wrestling weight class fighting the good fight to get a scholarship and help his meth-addicted mother.

“Making America Great Again,” in part means returning to the era when they drug problem was confined to the urban core.

The narrative of how the “bad dudes” and weak-minded minorities destroying themselves and their communities is so easy today to transport to the “bad hicks” and weak-minded white trash who are destroying themselves and their communities.

In this dramatic series, would it be the ultimate irony to showcase a lead character who is a gruff, but big-hearted black sheriff chasing down the hillbilly drug dealers, but also helping the poor white kids say no to the drug trade?

WEATHER IS TO CLIMATE, WHAT THE NCAA TOURNAMENT IS TO COLLEGE BASKETBALL

A freak snowstorm in June or a heatwave in the Artic? That’s weather - unpredictable and hard to forecast.

A desperation heave that lifts some no-name school from the Midwest over a basketball Blue Blood or an unknown 20-something coach out dueling a legend like Jim Boeheim of Syracuse? That’s the NCAA Tournament – unpredictable and impossible to forecast.

However, an obvious trend line that 97% of all scientists agree shows the planet warming? That’s climate and it is predictable and easy to forecast.

Duke, Kentucky, Kansas, Michigan State, Arizona, UCLA all making the tournament year after year after year? That’s college basketball and it too is predictable and easy to forecast.

As the nation is about to dive headfirst into March Madness in basketball and Spring Madness that is the weather, I thought it might be a good idea to compare and contrast these two happenings within their unique relationship to larger forces, i.e. college basketball and climate.

Trying to accurately guess what is going to happen in the Tournament is folly. No one, not Joe at the bar nor the paid experts at CBS and ESPN know what’s going to happen. In fact, Joe at the bar has just as much chance of filling out an accurate bracket as Jay Bilas or Jim Nance or anyone else who makes his living handicapping college hoops. The reason is simple: a massively compressed tournament with 68 teams made up of teenagers and 20-year-olds fighting their guts out for eight days is the very definition of unpredictability. Wild and crazy things don’t just happen – they have to happen in this kind of frenzied chaos.

However, out of this chaos will come a champion that is almost 100 percent guaranteed to be one of the perennial powers in college basketball. The Dukes, the Kansas’s, the Kentucky’s the UCLA’s, the Michigan State’s, the Connecticut’s continuously win and continuously challenge for a national championship because the almost always pair the best players in the nation with the best coaches in the game. That is predictable and that is college basketball. Talent and resources win.

Like the tournament, weather is crazy and unpredictable. It’s a mere snapshot of the larger climate and there are way too many variables to contend with in order to always obtain accurate forecasts.  The meteorologist isn’t often wrong because he or she is stupid. He or she is often wrong because in most cases they are trying to predict the unpredictable.

But climate scientists aren’t playing the same game as meteorologists. Climate science is all about study that takes the long view. Patterns and averages calculated over decades and millennia and carefully categorized and tabulated. Massive data, massive time and massive patience are the hallmarks of climate science and its output is thoroughly predictable models.

You can’t confuse weather with climate. They are very, very different. One is a frustrating line graph of wildly swinging axis marks, the other is a steady chart of progression. One samples hours and days, the other samples centuries and eras.

Similarly, we have the wacky going’s on of March Madness, where a “Cinderella Story” underdog school will capture America’s heart for a couple of days. The crazy 5-12 seeded upsets, the tiny school sleighing a goliath.  But that craziness for eight days ends – and it ends predictably with a big time school stacked with NBA talent cutting down the nets in the Championship.

So when, for example, a politician like Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma famously tosses a snowball onto the senate floor on a chilly February to “prove” global warming is a hoax, he’s conflating weather with climate. It would be just as inaccurate if a sports prognosticator were to claim that tiny George Mason’s run to the Final Four in 2006 “proved” that little no-name schools were now dominating college basketball.

They call it March Madness because of its very nature of unpredictability. However, when the dust settles, the smart money will always be on one of the traditional basketball power schools to win it all. Similarly, weather forecasts rely heavily on educated guesses because of its very nature of unpredictability. However, the smart money –and indeed the very fortunes of our planet – rests with the predictable and hard truths of climate science. 

THE FALCONS AND THE DEMOCRATS

I had no real rooting interest in the Super Bowl. I am a fan of neither the Patriots nor the Falcons, but it certainly was a highly entertaining game for any football fan to witness. Entertaining because of the amazing way New England came from behind, and the amazing way Atlanta imploded.

And as any true fan of NFL football knows inherently down to their core – the Atlanta Falcons are doomed at least in the short term. For every true fan knows with the certitude of knowing the sun will rise tomorrow – the Falcons will not make it back to the Big Game next year. Further, their odds of even making the playoffs are very, very steep. History has shown with the clarity of the Arctic Ocean that if you lose the Super Bowl, you will not return the next year and most likely years later as well. It is as certain as death and taxes.

And when you couple this iron-clad fact with the historical choke job turned in by the loser of Super Bowl 51, the fate of Atlanta is sealed for at least the next five to seven years easy.

Yet, beginning the day after their historic loss, and continuing right on through next season, everyone who should know better: the owner, the GM, the coach, the players and the professional prognosticators will all join in unison to try and convince the world of alternate facts. That the Falcons will get back to work and launch a realistic campaign to represent the NFC in Super Bowl 52. Instead of admitting reality and engaging in a strategy of deep and profound change, they will all stick to the tried and true delusional path of “retool and reload.”

History screams for the Falcons to make bold changes and massive shifts. But they won’t.

The reason they won’t is simple yet profoundly frustrating. The NFL is an organization ruled by fear of the unconventional. It’s why coaches don’t go for it a lot more on 4^th down and why GM’s continue to hire retread coaches, and why franchises always copy what the Super Bowl winner of the previous year has done. Owners and GM’s and coaches live in fear of being second-guessed by fans or whoever signs their checks. For most leaders in the NFL, losing is not as costly as going against the grain.

Therefore, what the Falcons should do – but won’t  - is to embrace their fate and use the next several seasons to completely rebuild so that they are in a much better position to compete for a championship sooner rather than later.

And that rebuild must start with the man most responsible for their historic loss.

The Falcons have an MVP quarterback in Matt Ryan. He tore up the NFL this year, despite a history which seems to strongly suggest he is a big moment choker throughout nine years in the league. He is also 31-years-old. He will be 36 to 38-years old when the Falcons emerge from the purgatory between Super Bowl loss and return to prominence. Therefore, the next step for the Falcons is crystal clear: trade Ryan while he is at the height of his value, yet on the downside of his longevity, to a QB-starved organization with valuable assets.

“Trade an MVP, all-pro quarterback at the height of his career?! That crazy!,” you might say.

No, sorry, it’s not. The secret formula to win an NFL championship is a relatively simple math equation that can be expressed as such:

Good coach + cohesive and talented players + great quarterback/time = Championship.

Of course every fan knows you need good coaching, good players and a good QB, but what every NFL franchise often refuses to acknowledge is that every team has a narrow window of opportunity with which to exploit that good coach, good players and good quarterback. Further, the window on the QB is the smallest. After all, a coach can last for a decades, a quality franchise will always continue to restock with good players, but the window for a good QB is fairly short and to make it even more precious that window of time is divided into thirds where only about 33 percent of his career is available for a championship run.

Here’s how it looks. The first third is the learning curve years, say one to four where your QB is figuring out how to be great. Years five through eight are the prime seasons with which to take a shot at the brass ring of a Super Bowl. Years nine through 12 is the decline. Matt Ryan is now in the decline period. And Ryan enters the decline period at the same time his team is entering the Bermuda Triangle of Super Bowl Loser.

For the Falcons, the best chance they have for getting back to the Super Bowl is to embrace the hole they’ve dug for themselves by losing to the Patriots. They shouldn’t fight against history’s gravitational pull as Super Bowl loser. They are going to be wandering in the wilderness for the next several years – that is assured by their loss. They should use that time wandering to build better, younger and cheaper assets to make that run up the hill again. They shouldn’t squander their exile by denying they are in exile. They are wearing the scarlet letters “SBL” for Super Bowl Loser. They should use this time as outcasts to recast their future.

Unfortunately, their owner, their GM and their coach won’t do what is needed because they fear the backlash of taking the bold and unconventional path. And so, the Falcons will most assuredly limp along for the better part of a decade putting together, 8-8, 9-7 and 7-9 seasons with the occasional 10-6 and first round playoff loss mixed in.

Bad times ahead for the good people of Atlanta.

And speaking of bad times…let’s talk about another team that has been battered recently – the democrats.

In many ways, the democrats are a lot like the Super Bowl loser; blithely continuing forward under the delusion that business as usual is the correct strategy to pursue.

In 2016 the democrats got their teeth kicked in. They got their teeth kicked in because their leadership is old, out of touch and unwilling to embrace new ways. The 2016 election was the Super Bowl, and the democrats lost. I don’t know if that means they are doomed to fail in the next big game – the 2020 presidential election - but I do think the analogy is apt. The Falcons will not win a championship in the near future and therefore must fundamentally chance course. Similarly, the democrats are going to be out of power for several years and must also fundamentally change course.

For the Falcons, that means trading Matt Ryan and for the democrats, that means trading their current leadership for younger, hungrier and more entrepreneurial leaders.

Under the current leadership of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Harry Read and others, the democrats have lost everything. The House, the Senate, the presidency and most states – gone. Further they will continue to seat a minority on the Supreme Court. If the Falcons second half collapse was historic, so too has been the democrats collapse last year.

And just like Atlanta’s future, the democrat’s future hinges on bold, unconventional action. Trading their MVP quarterback during this window of opportunity is critical for the Falcon’s future. Replacing their tired war-horses for fresh blood and new ideas is critical to the democrat’s.

I fear however, that the democrats – like NFL franchises - are paralyzed by their fear of unconventional thinking. Instead of looking at the results of their shocking 2016 losses and admitting that a massive change in course is needed - right now - they will dither.

The good news for both the Falcons and the democrats? Their competition is flawed as well. The other teams in the NFL and the other political party are just as prone to screw things up. Their time will come again – for the Falcons they will amass the right combination of coach, team and quarterback to make another run and for the democrats they will amass the right combination of leaders, ideas and message to recapture power.

For both, I’m afraid it’s just a matter of later rather than sooner.

MY HAPPY PLACE

It’s strangely unsatisfying to be so happy at a time of national sadness

I’m a white, gainfully employed, college educated 50-year-old, happily married, father of two living in Oregon. My health is near perfect, my family-life is truly enviable, I like my job and love the city and region in which I live.

I am comfortably middle – to slightly upper – middle class, own a very nice home and have zero debt. Further, my wife and I have a darn nice nest egg in savings which will be able to pay for both of my kid’s college education and a large chuck, if not all of our retirement. Speaking of the kids, they are truly special young people who get good grades, stay out of trouble and bring my wife and me true joy. 

Finally, we are in our 21^st year of marriage and things are as great as ever. She also has a job that she enjoys and provides a steady income. We are preparing for a family European vacation later this summer.

In short, If I am not the happiest man in the word, then I am a whole hell of a lot closer to him than to anyone truly miserable.

Ironically enough, I have never been sadder about the state of our nation and the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

For I must add to my biographical information above that I am a liberal democrat, who greatly believes in diversity, equality, strong government, religious freedom, an independent press, a woman’s right to choose and tolerance toward all. And if you are all those things, you can’t help but practically weep openly not just at Trump and his cronies, but at the millions of fellow Americans who genuinely like the way he talks, acts and reacts.

So yeah, it’s weird. It’s weird to be so personally happy and to have so many blessings to be happy about – all in the shadow of the most regressive, repulsive and downright mean executive and legislative branches in my life.

My laptop these days is a schizophrenic collection of circuits, wires and plastic. One minute, my wife and I are booking rooms in really cool looking pensions in Munich for that trip of a lifetime this summer, and the next minute we are gaping slack-jawed at the latest constitutional crisis eagerly courted by the president. One minute we are celebrating the online postings of my daughter’s straight A report card, the next we are firing off angry letters to the editor.

My wife cried deeply on election night, I had a panic attack.  Three days later we were playing a rollicking game of monopoly with our kids and practically stumbling over the giddy domestic bliss of the scene.

In some ways if feels like winning the lottery and receiving a cancer diagnosis on the same day.  Thereafter, you are eagerly planning trips and purchasing dream cars, only to suddenly catch yourself and wonder, “but will I be around long enough to enjoy any of this?”

Recently, my place of business was bought be a larger entity. I joined with my colleagues for several days wondering if I was about to be laid off. I wasn’t. It turned out the new company likes my work and will keep me on. But not so, others.

This sets up a kind of survivor’s guilt at work.  I never talk about the new job afforded me, nor do I ask them about their status. We talk about the weather a lot and try and avoid deeper conversations.

It’s a little like that now with people I know who are or will suffer to a much greater degree than I am or will under Trump. As mentioned, I am white, I have a degree and a good job with good health benefits and substantial savings without debt. But I know a lot of people who are minorities, have debt, have deep reservations about their health insurance and are part of the LGBTQ community.

My family and I – at least in the short to medium term – will be fine under Trump. Yet, we will live in the same community, drive the same streets and breathe the same air as people who will decidedly not be fine under this president.

A few years ago we lived near an area that was devastated by fire. I remember touring the burned out neighborhoods with a friend and he pointed to a pristine house on a hill that was untouched by the blaze. All around it however, black earth and the smoldering wreckage of dwellings. He said how lucky that homeowner was, to be one of the few the fire left unscathed. Yes, I thought…sort of. But every day from now on, he will wake up and look out at a hell scape of destruction and wonder: “should I be happy that my house and stuff are safe, or should I be sad because everyone else’s is destroyed?”

Perhaps that might be the biggest difference between Red and Blue America today. Red America would chose to be happy because their home and all their possessions are intact. Blue America could not chose to be happy because of the isolation, loneliness and suffering visited unto others in the community.

I’m sorry, but there very much is an “I got mine” mentality emanating from Trump and his millions of supporters. Whereas, we progressives feel deep down in our hearts: “I can’t be truly happy if so many others are miserable.”

So I live like that person on the hill – reveling in the happiness of my near perfect bubble – yet knowing that right outside the window lies sorrow and bleakness.

It is indeed strange to be a happy little island in a sea of bleak.