Do Look Up

(This is from 2021, but if you don’t feel like contemplating celestial apocalypse, just skip to the top link under headlines for the latest political update. Thanks to Leslie for alerting me to this disastrous Trump pick to head OMB.)

There's nothing like the thought an asteroid hurtling toward our planet on a trajectory that would end life as we know it to remind us that like it or not we are all in this together. 

With that unsettling thought in mind, it's worth noting that Politico has put together a thoughtful article about the lack of a planetary defense system, which is as good a way as any to say that we are still at a relatively primitive stage of our development as an "intelligent" species.

NASA is as close to a global defense department as we've got and it has recently begun tracking thousands of space objects that at least theoretically have the potential to knock us out for the count. So that is a start -- keeping track.

And NASA has identified 27,000 but as the article documents we have no agency that is responsible for knocking any one of those asteroids off its path of destruction should it target earth, although there is the promising-sounding Planetary Defense Coordination Office buried deep within NASA.

Accordingly, there are those who worry this effort may be too little too late. According to the article:

* “There are three million asteroids and we have not a freaking clue where they are and they are flying around us,” said Danica Remy, president of the B612 Foundation, which is building a database to track near-Earth objects. “We’ve barely made a dent.”

* Concerned Chinese government scientists published a paper this month proposing an “assembled kinetic impactor” delivered by missile to defend against what they call a “major threat to all life on Earth.”

* The Asteroid Discovery Analysis and Mapping program, a venture between the B612 Foundation, Google and Analytical Graphics Inc., is constructing a “Google Maps for space” to track near-Earth asteroids. That should prove helpful.

* Rusty Schweickart, a former Apollo astronaut who co-founded the B612 Foundation and has advocated for a greater role for the United Nations, recently outlined how “the political aspects of the whole issue of planetary defense are very serious.”

Schweickart was referring to the recent experiences we have had with the Covid and all of the divisiveness and disinformation that has arisen as a result of the pandemic. That arguably can raise reasonable doubt about our collective ability to prepare for the much greater existential threat of an asteroid collision.

Further viewing: Don’t Look Up. 

HEADLINES:Project 2025: 

• It's On (Predictably). (Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance)

• Trump selects Project 2025 contributor Russ Vought to run OMB (Axios)

• Trump's withdrawn attorney general pick Gaetz will not return to Congress (BBC)

• Hear Bondi's vow about prosecutors who investigated Trump (CNN)

• Trump picks Scott Bessent as Treasury secretary (Financial Times)

• Trump selects Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer as Labor secretary (CBS)

• Texas Board of Education votes to approve Bible curriculum in elementary schools (NBC)

• Musk, Ramaswamy lay out plans for ‘mass’ federal layoffs, rule rollbacks under Trump (The Hill)

• How Social Security Bill Could Change 2025 Benefits (Newsweek)

• New York judge calls off next week’s Trump sentencing in hush money case (WP)

• White Supremacist Incidents Are Rising Across the U.S. (NYT)

• Supreme Court steps into fight over FCC’s $8 billion subsidies for internet and phone services (AP)

• ICC Arrest Warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant Deepen Israel’s Isolation (WSJ)

• The new missile Russia is using in Ukraine and why it has NATO on edge (CBS)

• How a change in rice farming unexpectedly made India’s air so much worse (WP)

• 4,000-year-old canals used for fishing by Maya predecessors discovered in Belize (Guardian)

• MIT researchers develop an efficient way to train more reliable AI agents (MIT)

• Elon Musk emails reveal OpenAI’s history of struggles over money and power (WP)

• Trump Admits Entire Political Career Has Been WWE Storyline To Set Up Match With Cody Rhodes (The Onion)

 

Striking Back

The withdrawal of Matt Gaetz from consideration as Attorney General is the first hopeful sign from within the federal government that the traditional guardrails may partially restrain Donald Trump’s push for authoritarian power.

The particulars of Gaetz’s demise matter, as they involve allegations of sexual crimes with underage women. His replacement, Pam Bombi, may not make a better AG but at least she presumably isn’t guilty of statutory rape.

Next up is Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defense. His controversy involves an allegation of sexual assault as well as statements that women do not belong in combat roles in the military.

That the issues plaguing both of these men are sexist in nature fully illustrates the long-term reach of the #MeToo movement, and more broadly, feminism.

As I’ve written previously, I believe the two historical forces that will ultimately limit Trumpism are the women’s rights and the civil rights movements. Historically, they have been the most successful in transforming American society, so I expect them to resurface over time to challenge Trump’s most egregious power grabs.

But before that can happen, Trump’s mass deportations will begin. This will pose a more difficult challenge for progressives, because Trump has succeeded in riling up sentiment against undocumented immigrants and the Laken Rileymurder case has proved to be perfect timing in that regard.

The ACLU and related organizations will shoulder the burden of opposing Trump on deportations, and the L.A. city council’s recent move may presage a larger anti-deportation movement in blue areas.

With so many human rights issues converging, it will be more important than ever for people to support the organizations that form the backbone of that work, such as the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, which I have worked with for years.

There still are many other domestic vulnerabilities that will soon emerge, including LGTBQ+ rights, environmental issues and climate change, public health, freedom of the press and maintaining the critical line between church and state.

When it comes to democracy writ large, it may be helpful to think of it as a verb rather than a noun. What we’ve achieved as a civilization over the past quarter-million years is a partial, imperfect democratization and not a full democracy. The remnants of anti-democratic influences baked into the Constitution are ascendant under Trump so we will slide backward for certain but hopefully not all the way into a full state of authoritarianism.

The reaction from progressives cannot be similarly extreme, i.e., communism, because we know that doesn’t work and only ends up with the centralization of state power, which is equally bad whether it comes from the left or the right. What is needed is a pro-democratization movement that promotes class peace, not class warfare.

Two of the controversial areas of Trump’s agenda where I’m reserving judgement are the Elon Musk “efficiency” initiative and international trade policy. From my many years covering government regulatory efforts, I know that all those giant federal agencies could be much more efficient. But I fear Musk will choose to cut all the good and important functions in favor of enriching his billionaire class.

And that is the same risk involved with trade deals and tariffs. Both involve arguably the most difficult issue of all — global wealth disparity. In this matter, Trump & Musk et.al., represent an unmitigated disaster.

HEADLINES:

• Gaetz withdraws as Trump's pick for attorney general (AP)

• With Matt Gaetz's withdrawal, Trump's 'retribution' campaign hits the harsh reality of governing in Washington (NBC)

• Donald Trump gets a brutal reality check (Politico)

• Trump chooses loyalist Pam Bondi for attorney general pick after Matt Gaetz withdraws (AP)

• Trump Transition Live Updates: Greene of Georgia to Lead New House Panel on Government Efficiency (NYT)

• Police records reveal details about sexual assault allegation against Hegseth (WP)

• The vast tariffs President-elect Donald Trump has promised to implement will likely lead to price increases at major American retailers like Walmart and Lowe’s, the companies’ chief financial officers said this week. [HuffPost]

• Harris Loss Has Democrats Fighting Over How to Talk About Transgender Rights (NYT)

• Russia fired experimental ballistic missile at Ukraine, Putin says (Reuters)

• U.S. Casts Sole Vote Against Gaza Cease-Fire Resolution (NYT)

• Google stock hammered after DOJ calls for Chrome sale (Fortune)

• Our democracy needs a different model for journalism (WP)

• What will happen to CNBC and MSNBC when they no longer have a corporate connection to NBC News? (AP)

• You Know RFK Jr. Is Going to Be Bad. It Might Get Even Worse. (Slate)

• Musk, Ramaswamy vow ‘mass head-count reductions’ in U.S. government (WP)

• Solving a 40-year mystery, scientists ID chemical found in millions of Americans’ tap water (CNN)

• Relevance! Relevance! Relevance! Microsoft at 50 Is an AI Giant—and Still Hellbent on Domination (Wired)

• Massachusetts student's punishment for AI use can stand, US judge rules (Reuters)

• Lightning looks to make managing AI a piece of cake (TechCrunch)

• Apple Lost the Plot on Texting (Atlantic)

• The AI Reporter That Took My Old Job Just Got Fired (Wired)

• Marissa Mayer just laid out a possible business model for ad-supported AI chatbots (TechCrunch)

• Every Movement In Man’s Burrito-Eating Technique Informed By Past Burrito Tragedies (The Onion)

Digital Relics

(This one is from November 2020.)

This has been such a long year that I have to think hard to remember how it started -- with  the gradual  elimination of my possessions from a flat in the Mission District of SF, where I'd lived for 17 years. There is no other place where I lived much more than half that many years, and it was my last address in the city over a total of 49 years.

In that sense, and that sense only, you could call me a San Francisco 49er.

Most of what we discarded was paper -- files, news clips, books, drawings, documents, maps -- from the previous century.

But other discards were of more recent lineage -- laptops, cellphones, and a tablet. We tend to cycle through these digital devices so fast that our lives end up being catalogued like so many software development iterations.

There's mylife 1.0, mylife 2.0, and so on.

Only the most fastidiously detail-oriented consumer manages to transfer all of his or her documents and photos from one device to the next. There are cost issues, storage issues, timing issues. In the process, it's all too easy to just let the record of a particular stage in your life slip away, byte by byte, into the digital dumping grounds.

Recently, as a gaggle of my grandchildren were exuberantly playing a video game on six separate devices, one of my granddaughters brought an old cellphone over to me and asked for my Apple ID in order to unlock it.

It turns out it was one of my old castoffs. Improbably, I recalled the password and suddenly I was transported back a number of years to a time when everyone was younger than today -- my 20-somethings were teens, my grandkids were toddlers, I was fresh into a new job.

There were photos of events I'd long since forgotten. Old work emails were preserved there too.

Looking through this data, I realized that we really should hold on to those outmoded digital devices or at least their contents. Even if all you preserve is piecemeal, it can become part of a mosaic that reflects aspects of your history that might otherwise be lost.

My main point is to urge you to try and preserve the details of your life, value your past, guard your present, preserve as much of the record as you can for future purposes.

Somebody out there in the future is sure to be grateful. It might even be you.

HEADLINES:

• The Technology the Trump Administration Could Use to Hack Your Phone (New Yorker)

• Top war-crimes court issues arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Hamas officials (AP)

• Senate Democrats seek evidence from FBI sex-trafficking probe of Trump AG pick Matt Gaetz (CNBC)

• Lawmakers are concerned about background checks of Trump’s Cabinet picks as red flags surface (AP)

• JD Vance is bringing some of Trump’s controversial Cabinet picks to meet with Republicans on the Hill (Politico)

• Trans congresswoman Sarah McBride posts defiant response to bathroom ban (Guardian)

• How Nancy Mace went from LGBTQ ally to anti-trans culture warrior (MSNBC)

• Los Angeles passes 'sanctuary city' ordinance to protect migrants (Reuters)

• How Trump’s tariffs could spark a trade war and ‘Europe’s worst economic nightmare’ (WP)

• U.S. Pauses Operations at Kyiv Embassy, Warning of ‘Significant Air Attack’ (NYT)

• In the first detailed reporting of what Putin would accept in any deal brokered by Trump, Russian officials said the Kremlin could broadly agree to freeze the conflict along the front lines. (Reuters)

• Trump Expected to Name Vought to Lead Budget Office, CBS Says (Bloomberg)

• Traffic on Bluesky, an X competitor, is up 500% since the election. How will it handle the surge? (NPR)

• How little the former Twitter is actually worth now (Daily Kos)

• What’s stopping China from leading the world’s climate fight? (Economist)

• Neuroscience Has Discovered ‘Behaviorceuticals’ That Improve Brain Health and Mood Like a Natural Antidepressant (Inc.)

• Best Rom-Coms and Romantic Movies (Rotten Tomatoes)

• Why does Bob Dylan sound different on ‘Nashville Skyline’? (Far Out)

• There’s No Longer Any Doubt That Hollywood Writing Is Powering AI (Atlantic)

• A Chinese lab has released a ‘reasoning’ AI model to rival OpenAI’s o1 (TechCrunch)

• How Students Can AI-Proof Their Careers (WSJ)

• NASA: Potential Link Between Extraterrestrials, Giant Metal Claw Picking Up Earth (The Onion)

 

Compensating

Los Angeles declares itself an immigration 'sanctuary' — “The move is likely to put the city on a collision course with the incoming Trump administration, which has vowed it will begin a large-scale mass deportation effort from the very beginning of the administration.” (BBC)

This could be the first indication that a resistance movement to Trump’s authoritarian regime may be developing. If it is, what L.A. did may spread city to city and state to state. 

Stay tuned.

Of course I should be trying to remain neutral about all of this. That's what we, as journalists, always try to do. Until, that is, the moment arrives when in good conscience, we cannot avoid taking a stand. 

And this is that moment. One of JFK's favorite quotes comes to mind: "The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality."

The saying is sometimes ascribed to Dante; it may simply be apocryphal. Whenever a quotation like that comes to light, I like to think of it as received wisdom from ages past.

Most such pearls of wisdom come via our oral traditions, since writing covers only a portion of our time here on earth.

And when it comes to oral memory, I do have my own peculiar twist.

Where I grew up, the public schools placed kids into tracks, one of which was College Prep, and that's where I was tagged. My main goal in school at that time was simply to escape notice as much as possible. I rarely spoke out in class, hated when I had to give speeches, and kept a close watch on the clock for closing time.

For their non-academic classes, the girls were all sent to Home Economics while we went to Wood Shop. No exceptions. But working with wood didn't catch on with me; I bungled whatever candlestick or coaster we were expected to be able to create and probably flunked as a result.

Luckily, Shop didn't count toward your GPA, so it didn't prevent me from prepping for college.

Honestly, the main thing I remember about high school is how much my mind wandered; I rarely tuned into the formal proceedings because my brain was always drifting far, far away.

In retrospect, there were a few practical skills it might have been nice to learn, like (1) how to type and (2) how to take readable notes. But I didn't learn either one.

And I can't to this day. How, you may fairly ask, did I ever succeed as a journalist?

It's a good question, because I rarely used a tape recorder during interviews, either. My best guess is that I developed a very good memory for what people say and how they say it. Call it my own oral tradition.

Anyway, when today's professional reporters interview you, they often will do a soundcheck part way through, just to make sure their recording device is working properly. If it isn't they have to start over again. (BTW I don't know how to operate a recording device properly. I have issues with buttons.)

One time recently when I was the subject of an audio interview, the device failed to record my words. I surprised the interviewer by simply repeating them word-for-word the second time. She looked at me with a startled expression, one I've long become accustomed to -- that I must be some kind of freak.

It is oddly ironic, however, that I never learned to type or take shorthand, because my father could do both expertly, and unlike me he grew up on a farm. His typing skills led him to a seat as a witness to history, as he was one of the U.S. military's stenographers taking notes at the Nuremberg War Tribunal. 

I never was much good at learning things from my Dad, with the exception of how shockingly horrible the Holocaust had been to a boy who grew up on a farm outside London, Ontario.

Plus my Dad was really good working with wood. We have his candlesticks carved from rare woods as proof of that.

What my kids will inherit from me, besides those candlesticks, are words.  Millions of words

.

(This essay is from 2020.)

HEADLINES:

• Ukraine strikes Russia with US-made long-range missiles for first time (Financial Times)

• Trump ignores transition rules. It’s a ‘hostile takeover,’ ally says. (WP)

• Trump Has Not Won a Majority of the Votes Cast for President (Nation)

• Trump claims he has an ‘unprecedented’ mandate. Experts say it’s actually very small (Independent)

• Trump Picks Howard Lutnick as Commerce Secretary (WSJ)

• House Ethics chair: Panel’s decision on Gaetz report won’t be influenced by Johnson (Politico)

• Manhattan DA agrees to postpone Donald Trump’s sentencing in hush money case but opposes dismissal (CNN)

• Trump picks Mehmet Oz to serve as Medicare and Medicaid services administrator (WP)

• Trump taps Linda McMahon as Education secretary, a pro-wrestling mogul with little school experience (LAT)

• Trump vows to use US military for mass deportations (BBC)

• The industries that could be hardest hit by Trump's immigration crackdown (Axios)

• Trump's threats of mass deportations lead to hard discussions for families (NPR)

• What would Robert F. Kennedy junior mean for American health? (Economist)

• Trump picks former congressman Sean Duffy to lead Transportation Department (WP)

• Jeff Bezos Cracks Down on the Washington Post (New York)

• Saudi Arabia Is a ‘Wrecking Ball’ in Global Climate Talks (NYT)

• The upcoming housing battle that could roil mortgage costs even more (WP)

• Fossil from Germany unlocks history of ancient flying reptiles (Reuters)

• Google Gemini can remember things now (Verge)

• How AI Could Help Bring Down the Cost of College (WSJ)

• Tales of 19th-Century A.I.: Don’t Fall in Love With a Singing Robot (NYT)

• Want to speak Italian? Microsoft AI can make it sound like you do. (WP)

• Trump Locks Bathroom Door So Elon Musk Can’t Follow Him In (The Onion)

 

The Day Before Tomorrow

Everybody understands that holidays can be emotional, for better or worse. They can be especially loaded for those who have suffered a loss, are recently divorced, or are lonely and isolated without a solution at hand.

They also can be times of joy, especially for children who may be largely unaware of the concerns that cloud the minds of the adults in their lives. 

American folklore makes a big deal of the importance of family at holidays, but we all know that family too can be a mixed bag. Family histories at holidays include stressful conversations, anxiety swings and fierce political disagreements.

This last fear — of political fights — is so deep that there is a constant stream of nervous jokes and advice columns in the media surrounding family holiday get-togethers on ways to try and minimize rifts.

Why do we fear disagreeing so much? Maybe what we fear the most is losing each other, whatever our flaws and differences, forever. This year the additional cloud hanging over the holidays is that our countrymen have unwisely elected an authoritarian — a development that threatens the stability, security and survival of our democracy.

If we complain they say we are exaggerating. We face many dark days ahead.

I sometimes wish as a supposed patriarch that I had a great and original font of knowledge and wisdom to impart at times like this — for my own relatives and by extension for others.

But I don’t.

Except maybe this, a platitude. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow is unknowable. So all there is is today, and if you are able make today matter in some small way that brings a larger meaning and a glimmer of hope either for you or for someone else, do it.

And another thing. We never really lose one another, not completely.

Because like Irene, we’ll see you in our dreams. 

LYRICS:

“Lost Highway”

Song by Hank Williams

I'm a rollin' stone, all alone and lost
For a life of sin, I have paid the cost
When I pass by, all the people say
Just another guy on the lost highway

Just a deck of cards, and a jug of wine
And a woman's lies makes a life like mine
Oh, the day we met, I went astray
I started rolling down that lost highway

I was just a lad, nearly 22
Neither good nor bad, just a kid like you
And now I'm lost, too late to pray
Lord, I take a cost, oh the lost highway

Now boys don't start to ramblin' round
On this road of sin, are you sorrow-bound?
Take my advice or you'll curse the day
You started rollin' down that lost highway

)Songwriter: Leon Payne)

Old Forts

All around San Francisco Bay are the remnants of forts and bunkers built decades ago to secure the area from the foreign invaders who never arrived.

In recent decades, most of these facilities have been returned from the government to the public and now they are parks and recreational areas. One is Fort Baker, nestled near the Golden Gate Bridge on the northern side of the channel connecting the Bay with the Pacific Ocean, just around the corner from Sausalito.

One chilly night recently a group of us went there to set traps for crabs along the old wooden pier. As a large moon rose in the east, we caught quite a few in our traps. Many were Dungeness crabs, which you cannot keep in this season at this location, so we released them.

But others were browns and reds, and those large enough to fit the legal limit (four inches wide) went straight into the pail we later carried home to bake into crab cakes.

Like many of the nooks and crannies around Northern California, Fort Baker contains a set of particular memories for me. In the early 1990's it was one of the venues for the movie "Jack the Bear," starring Danny DeVito. My older three kids and I were extras in that movie, and I remember the shoot at this location vividly.

There was a lone public phone booth at the former fort, and during a break in the shoot I needed to use it for a work call. (This was before cellphones.) I had to wait in line behind a person who seemed to be intent on talking forever.

When he finally finished and I was proceeding to the booth, I suddenly recognized him -- Bruce Gilbert, the Hollywood producer of the movie I'd helped create a decade earlier for Jane Fonda called "Rollover."

Bruce was producing this movie as well. The phone booth is no longer there.

But my kids enjoyed being part of a feature film set on that occasion, with costumes, makeup, lights, and actors like DeVito (who was friendly) and whom they recognized from other films.

The kids were underaged workers at the time, so I had to secure work permits from the City of San Francisco, which probably cost more than the "wages" they earned that day, but who cared.

The West Coast has long been home to such experiences. Hollywood sets are common enough that they rarely cause you to turn your head. But they also are a reminder that all life can be seen as a movie and we're all actors in our own dramas.

So back to that recent night at Fort Baker. Shivering from the breeze whipping in through the Golden Gate, hearing the fog horns blaring, seeing the container ships leaving for Asia and the harvest moon lighting the scene, I tried to explain these particular sets of memories to my grandchildren while they rushed trap-to-trap to pull up the next load of crabs.

They listened politely to their grandfather sitting in the folding chair they’d thoughtfully set up on that old wooden pier, but a more urgent task clearly was at hand. Was that crab a Dungeness, or a keeper?

(I wrote the first version of this essay four years ago. My grandchildren have since returned to Fort Baker and caught more crabs, but I have not.)

HEADLINES:

• Biden authorizes Ukraine to use long-range US weapons in Russia (CNN)

• Israeli strike in Lebanon’s Beirut kills Hezbollah spokesman Mohammad Afif (Al Jazeera)

• Young Gazans Reach Global Audiences With Videos of Everyday Life in War (NYT)

• Trump’s early moves show he wants to disrupt government and exact retribution (WP)

• Trump taps Big Tech critic Carr to chair Federal Communications Commission (Reuters)

• After Flurry of Cabinet Picks, Trump Rethinks Candidates for Treasury Secretary (NYT)

• Republican senator calls for release of Matt Gaetz ethics report to chamber (Guardian)

• Musk appears to pressure Trump on Cabinet and tariffs, raising eyebrows (WP)

• Slash First, Fix Later: How Elon Musk Cuts Costs (NYT)

• How to make Elon Musk’s budget-slashing dreams come true (Economist)

• Chris Wright, an oil industry CEO and Trump donor, picked to be energy secretary (WP)

• The Stock Market Is Doing Something Witnessed Only 3 Times in 153 Years -- and History Is Very Clear What Happens Next (Motley Fool)

• Defense pick Hegseth paid accuser but denies sexual assault, attorney says (WP)

• Salmon return to lay eggs in historic habitat after largest dam removal project in US history (AP)

• A popular technique to make AI more efficient has drawbacks (TechCrunch)

• Google knows you like AI Overviews so much, it's putting AI Overviews in your AI Overviews (Android Authority)

• Study: Anxiety Natural Response To Suited Men Wearing Shades Closing In From All Angles (The Onion)

 

The Dream

“But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right.” — MLK

***

When it comes to democracy, it’s essential to recognize that democracy is a goal that the U.S. has never fully attained — that it is a work in progress. Those overly fond of paying homage to the “Founding Fathers” are celebrating a group of wealthy 18th-century oligarchs who denied women the vote and posited that enslaved black Americans would be classified as only 3/5ths of a person.

Nearly 250 years after the republic’s launch, thanks almost entirely to organizing efforts by women’s groups, civil rights advocates, labor unions and human rights organizations, we are substantially closer to an actual democratic society than they were in 1776.

But progress toward that goal has always faced opposition from entrenched groups of citizens determined to protect the inequalities baked into the Constitution, as if they were the word of God. It’s worth emphasizing that they are not the words of God but the words of a group of aristocrats, albeit relatively high-minded ones. 

The dialectic between forward progress and backsliding has defined the historical rhythm of our quest for a truly representative democracy.

Unfortunately, at the present moment we are in a reactionary period. It isn’t the first and it won’t be the last. Donald Trump has risen to power by relentlessly exploiting our society’s ancient flaws — internalized sexism and racism — that still animate one large segment of the population.

And although the immediate issues behind Trump’s electoral victory were the inflation triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic and fear of immigrants trying to escape oppressive conditions in their home countries, the underlying forces propelling him to power are the suppression of the rights of women and minority groups.

In other words, the fatal flaws in the vision of the Founding Fathers.

That is the explicit meaning of Trump’s slogan to make America great again. The question has always been, great for whom? And the answer is, for rich guys.

Martin Luther King, Jr. would have recognized this moment for what it is. His words quoted at the top of this essay were uttered on the eve of his assassination in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968. He was there to help lead a demonstration by the local black citizens to obtain their rights denied by a racist city administration. (As it happens, I was there too, as a young journalist covering that demonstration.)

Half a century later, during the first Trump administration, it was no coincidence that the Black Lives Matter demonstrations erupted nor that Trump’s inauguration was greeted by one of the largest women’s rights march in history.

These upheavals were the inevitable reactions to his ascension to power, and if history is our guide, there will be similar uprisings from the broad swath of the population opposed to Trump’s narrow vision of who matters in the years to come.

What can be stated with certainty is that our progress toward democracy, while facing a temporary setback today, will inevitably resume tomorrow, because that ultimately is what the American Dream is all about.

“I have a dream today.” — MLK

Recommended book: An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States by Charles A. Beard (1913). Beard contends that the Constitutional Convention was attended by, and the Constitution was therefore written by, a "cohesive" elite seeking to protect its personal property (especially federal bonds) and economic standing. Beard examined the occupations and property holdings of the members of the convention from tax and census records, contemporaneous news accounts, and biographical sources, demonstrating the degree to which each stood to benefit from various Constitutional provisions. Beard pointed out, for example, that George Washington was the wealthiest landowner in the country, and had provided significant funding towards the American Revolution. — Wikipedia