I have come to the conclusion that Robert Reich is not human. That he must be an AI creation to be capable of writing more than one column per day, every day, all of which are interesting and appropriate to our perilous times. No human being I’ve ever known could do that. I believe that he is some sort of an ambulatory software consortium on two legs.
One of yesterday’s columns really hit the mark. This week the focus in Washington DC has been about what to do with ICE. They should wear body cameras, they should obey the Constitution and its application to law enforcement, they shouldn’t shoot people for jaywalking. You know, basic stuff. But this Reichian column discussed the novel idea that they should also obey all court orders. You know, like everyone else.
Under the prominent puppycidalist Kristi Noem, ICE has ignored such orders almost at will. Orders, shmorders, they say. Those apply to lesser beings. Nothing should be allowed to get in the way of our door and window-breaking, pepper- spraying, and gun-brandishing wherever and whenever we want.
But Reich says NO, THIS IS NOT OKAY. He points out that ICE and its leadership have shown themselves to be little more than a band of bloody vigilantes, a modern version of the notorious slave-catchers of pre-Civil War days. (Or a Gestapo, or a bunch of Nazi-style brownshirts … many descriptors have been applied to them, all of them unsavory and all of them having merit)
He makes this statement: Failure to obey any court order will immediately terminate all funding for ICE or the Border Patrol. Startling in its simplicity. Easy to understand. Fair to all. A good start. But it is something that probably won’t happen as long as the present dismal crop of Cluck-based toadies are in charge. That party does not exemplify clarity in its judgements or respect for our Constitution. Whatever the opposite of intelligence is, they have it in ample supply.
But that Reich … he’s a caution, ain’t he?
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Young goose remembers
Ancient paths whose endings
It has never seen
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I lost a good friend this past week, a cousin who was a very important part of the first half of my life. We lost touch after that, for complicated reasons that were not of his making. He was honest, funny, goofy, and courageous. An unfailingly good man, and can there ever be too many of those? He died of a cancer, which is rarely a pleasant way to leave this world. But when you get on in years and spend a bit of time thinking about the end of life, you realize that there aren’t that many comfortable ways to take that leave.
Shortly after Robin and I moved to Paradise, there was an item in the local newspaper about the disappearance of an elderly woman. One late autumn evening she got into her car and drove off from a friend’s house and then she was gone. There were concerns that she might have lost her way because she had been experiencing some neurological problems. When no trace of her could be found, her name eventually disappeared from the headlines as well.
Until the next Spring, that is, when her car was found by hunters up on the Uncompahgre Plateau, back in a wild area accessible only by a primitive dirt road. Searchers fanned out and found her body sitting on the ground and leaning up against a tree, where she had died alone, probably of hypothermia. It was concluded by investigators that this had been her choice, and was not due to some accident or foul play.
I was reminded as I read this last chapter of her story of a piece of writing that I have started and stopped many times over several decades. In this story an old man did much the same thing as this woman had done. The difference was that he had climbed into a canoe and paddled out into the Boundary Waters Wilderness, where he counted on the coming winter to help himself to end things quietly and without struggles in a beautiful place that held meaning for him.
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OMG! I have such a new hero. Her name is Elissa Slotkin and I would follow her anywhere. She was one of the six people who were in that famed video a few weeks back. The one where we were reminded that members of the military have an obligation to not follow illegal orders. The one where the entire DOJ the FBI and that executive … what’s his name … Flump? … Clump? … I forget … where all of these people got their knickers in a serious twist simultaneously. A mass knicker-twisting that would surely earn them a Guinness Book of Records prize if they bothered to apply for it.
And they are all still chewing on that bone. But my hero Elissa, an actual person in government who reads and writes, has pored over the Constitution and seems to like it a lot. Here she is responding to a request for an interview. See if she doesn’t win you over as well. I’m sending her a valentine for sure.
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There may be some who never saw the original video, and here it is. BTW, I am sending ALL these people a valentine!
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I read this morning that Cluck has promised to release a large chunk of funds to New York if they will name another couple of places after him. Hasn’t anyone told him that as soon as his feet hit Pennsylvania Avenue on the way out of the White House we’re going to change everything back to what it was? My further suggestions, which I admit haven’t been asked for, is that his name be redacted from as many places and documents as possible and that his official portrait be used as floor covering for a chicken coop in Minnesota.
The name Cluck will take its place right up there with others of infamy. Like Vidkun Quisling the Norwegian traitor, who sold out his countrymen to the Nazis. Or Attila the Hun, famous for slaughtering without mercy. Or Vlad the Impaler, who was the inspiration for all of the vampire foofaraw. I have learned from confidential sources that son Eric is quietly going about changing his last name to be ready the moment this regime falls. My sources say that the new name that he has chosen is Merde. He doesn’t know what it means, but knows that it is French and he very much likes the way it sits on the tongue.
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Let’s finish on a high note, okay? Here is Lucinda Williams providing her answer to the neanderthals of Project 2025 who would move women back to the class of chattels. Lovely song from her latest album. We might well memorize the words.
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Little Home In The Valley 