I don't know about you but I'm pretty sure I aged at least a decade in 2018. This accelerated political news cycle in the Trump era has the effect of making every day feel like a week and every month feel like a year. With all the chaos and perpetual motion, it would be easy to simply dismiss the whole thing as one big mess. But it isn't. It's all bad, but some things are much worse than others. And yes, the president of the United States is responsible for all of them. Nobody else even comes close.

Trump hurled some personal insults this year that were truly obnoxious, even for him. He called adult film actress Stormy Daniels "Horseface." He said dozens of times in his rallies and his twitter feed that Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, is "low IQ" (while at the same time declaring himself a "very stable genius"). He called his former staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman "that dog" and cruelly mocked Dr. Christine Blasey Ford for her testimony during Justice Brett Kavanaugh's nomination hearing. He tweeted, "Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made Lebron look smart, which isn't easy to do. I like Mike!"

Members of his own administration weren't spared, including former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who Trump tweeted was "dumb as a rock" and didn't have the "mental capacity" for the job. We can assume that 2019 will bring similar tweets about soon-to-be-former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, whose resignation letter angered Trump greatly once the pundits on TV explained to him what it meant. His insults toward former members of the intelligence community are too many to list, but one of the big low points of the year was his impulsive decision to pull the security clearances of former CIA director John Brennan in a fit of pique.

It goes without saying that Trump has spent most of the year decrying Robert Mueller's investigation and making wild accusations against anyone and everyone he believes threatens him. (He often simply tweets "Witch Hunt!" as a sort of primal scream into the void.) Nothing threatens him more than the media, which he calls the "enemy of the people." This is an ongoing low point for the presidency -- no single comment or tweet stands out. His Twitter freak flag flies on a daily basis, every day bringing a fresh outrage.

But there have been some specific low points in 2018 that merit acknowledgment for their seriousness. Trump's infantile rhetoric is one thing. Perhaps the republic will be able to restore some semblance of maturity and decency to the office once he's gone. But his policy decisions and behavior on the world stage are something else.

Trump hit the ground running in January with a series of belligerent tweets taunting the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un. The most memorable would be the one in which he wrote, "please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!" The president later cast aside all normal protocol and met with Kim in an elaborately staged but substance-free meeting in Singapore which Trump later described as the moment he and the murderous dictator "fell in love."

This qualifies as a low point for a number of reasons. Despite the fact that Trump's bizarre approach to diplomacy, more or less by accident, temporarily ratcheted down the tensions he had ratcheted up, he showed the world that he's a sap. If that only embarrassed the U.S., that would be one thing. Americans can take it. But the consequences could be a lot more severe if other ambitious leaders with a little more savvy decide to push the envelope.

That brings us to another low point: Trump's "summit" with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. Remember: That came on the heels of him making an utter ass of himself, first at the G8 meeting in Canada and then the NATO meeting in Europe, where he went out of his way to insult every one of America's allies and even showed up late to meet the Queen of England. It was a performance that made the Singapore pageant looks downright stately by comparison.

It was clear Trump was champing at the bit to get to his big meeting with Putin. The two leaders met in private in an unrecorded session for two hours and then emerged for a press conference in which Trump behaved as if he were the Russian president's majordomo. In one of the most memorable moments of his presidency thus far, he made it clear that he did not believe his own intelligence community was more credible than the Russian leader, even saying at one point he didn't see any reason why the Russians would have tried to sabotage his rival in the 2016 election. (He later fatuously asserted that he'd really meant to say that he didn't see why they wouldn't, which made no sense at all.)

That press conference was a turning point for a lot of people, I think. Trump's performance was so outrageously weak and sycophantic it became hard to deny that something was extremely awry in that relationship. Putin seemed very pleased, however.

All those things and many others too numerous to list are low points of 2018. In fact the whole year is a low point. But to my mind nothing is lower than the fact that Donald Trump believes that separating children, even infants, from their parents at the U.S. border -- putting the kids in cages and then losing track of hundreds of them as their parents were deported -- was a justifiable "deterrent." Trump reportedly calls their nations "shithole countries" and threatens their leaders with a cutoff of aid if they don't somehow keep their citizens from seeking refuge in the U.S. (Does he want them to build a wall to keep their people in?)

Trump has created a crisis where none existed -- illegal immigration and asylum claims are quite low by historical standards -- out of bigotry and rank political opportunism. His administration has changed the rules and procedures, forcing people to take more and more dangerous risks. And now children are dying. Two kids under age 10 have died in government custody under dubious conditions in the past month.

This is what the president of the United States had to say about that:

Yes, you could say I'm trying to put lipstick on a pig. 2018 was a year of whiplash, a never-ending series of assaults on our environment, immigrants, people of color, Muslims, Jews, the poor, international law. But there is light at the end of the tunnel, and here are some rousing points of light from 2018, both domestic and international.

1. The election of the progressive new members of Congress, particularly women of color such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Deb Haaland, Ayanna Pressley and Sharice Davids. Before even taking office they are shaking up the D.C. establishment: Calling out lobbyists for briefing new members of Congress? Refusing to take the "mandatory" AIPAC trip to Israel? Paying congressional interns? Calling for a Green New Deal and Medicare for All? It's head-spinning for the establishment and thrilling for the rest of us. With these new progressive allies, with Democrats now controlling the House, and with an expanded and invigorated Progressive Caucus, we have a chance to drag centrist Democrats into supporting policies that might not be popular with their big-dollar donors but are wildly popular with the public.

2. 2018 was a year of awe-inspiring youth activism. The Parkland school shooting two days after Valentine's Day led to a massive student-led movement for tougher gun laws. Students mobilized in Washington, D.C., at March for Our Lives and in schools across the country. This same kind of energy and creativity exploded with the Sunrise Movement, a youth movement determined to make climate change an urgent priority for U.S. elected officials with a Green New Deal. And just as the year was coming to an end, a sensational 15-year-old student from Sweden, Greta Thunberg, captured world attention at the UN climate summit with her call for youth to hold adults accountable for the mess they've created. In a fabulous example of synergy between young activists, Greta's school strike (she sat in front of the Swedish Parliament instead of going to school) was itself inspired by the walkouts initiated by the Parkland students.

3. An historical turning point was reached this year to start breaking up the 75-year U.S.-Saudi alliance. With three years of relentless Saudi bombing of Yemen leading to the world's greatest human catastrophe and the barbaric murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Congress and business leaders finally began to question their relationship with this retrograde kingdom and its brutal de facto leader Mohammad bin Salman. In an unprecedented vote, the Senate approved a measure to halt U.S. support to the Saudis in Yemen, which is helping promote a negotiated settlement. The effort to curb Trump's support for the Saudi war in Yemen comes at the same time that Trump announced the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria and a halving of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Maybe, just maybe, 2019 will mark the winding down of the disastrous wars that have marked U.S. policy since the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

4. Labor organizing has been on the rise, from teachers to high-tech workers. The audacious 13-day strike by teachers in West Virginia won a 5 percent pay increase and launched a wave of similar actions from Oklahoma to Arizona. West Virginia teachers stood with bus drivers, janitors, school kitchen staff before calling an end to the strike, refusing to take a pay increase until everyone's demands were met. In the tech industry, Google employees pushed the company to end its contract to help with Pentagon with artificial intelligence that could be used in drone strikes. They also demanded that Google not cooperate with Chinese censorship. Microsoft employees are pushing the company to break its contract with ICE; Amazon workers want Jeff Bezos to stop supplying facial recognition technology to the police.

5. Florida's restoration of voting rights through Amendment 4, the ballot measure lifting the state's permanent ban on voting by anyone with a felony conviction, received overwhelming support from nearly 65 percent of voters. It restores voting rights for some 1.4 million people, potentially changing the Florida-and national-electoral landscape, since most formerly incarcerated people vote Democratic and the 2000 president election was determined in Florida by a mere 537 votes. Iowa and Kentucky are now the only states that must change this retrograde lifetime ban. But with the myriad examples of voter suppression in the 2018 election, voter rights must be a key focus before 2020!

6. Stopping the Keystone XL pipeline is a victory for the coalition of environmental and Indigenous groups that have been opposing the pipeline for years. Among the opponents is the Cheyenne River tribe. Like Standing Rock in the case of the Dakota pipeline, the Cheyenne River tribe fears a tar sands oil spill from the pipeline would contaminate its waters. President Obama, under tremendous pressure from the grassroots, halted further work in 2015 but Trump started it up again in 2017. Thanks to legal challenges, in November a federal court blocked any further work until the Trump administration undertakes a serious review of its climate impact. This reprieve gives organizers more time...to organize!

7. Medicare for All has the highest level of public support ever recorded. An August poll found that a whopping 70 percent of Americans, including 85 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of Republicans, back the single-payer plan. When Senator Bernie Sanders promoted this idea during his presidential campaign, he was pilloried by liberal commentators. Well, guess what? Medicare for All now has support from 124 House members and 16 senators, including most of the high-profile likely 2020 presidential contenders. Even Barack Obama, who eschewed single-payer in favor of the Affordable Care Act during his presidency, has now endorsed Medicare for All. In 2018, the Congressional "Medicare For All Caucus" was launched with 76 members. Since health care was the top concern for voters in the 2018 midterms, Medicare for All should be a no-brainer for politicians who care more about their constituents than Big Pharma.

8. The election of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) in Mexico is a bright spot. In a dismal landscape in Latin America, where right-wing governments are on the rise. Crushing the two old dynastic political parties, the PAN the PRI, AMLO's Movement for National Regeneration, or Morena, was just founded in 2014. Ruling a nation mired in drugs, violence and poverty will be tough, but check out the incredible policies he has already put in place! Also, Mexico City elected its first woman mayor, who is also Sephardic Jewish, a leftist, a climate scientist, and a Nobel Peace prize winner. Her first act was to disband the riot police, who have been responsible for much of the political violence in Mexico City.

9. Ethiopia's new prime minister, 42-year-old Abiy Ahmed, took office in April and immediately went to work ending the 20-year war with Eritrea, releasing thousands of prisoners, allowing dissidents to return home and lifting censorship. Then he appointed a cabinet with 50 percent women and the nation's first female president! His astounding reforms have won him adoration among millions, but he has been challenged with an assassination attempt by the old guard and ethnic clashes. His message to the nation's 90 ethnic groups remains one that Donald Trump should hear: "Take down the wall, build the bridge."

10. Armenia experienced a dramatic, people power uprising against corrupt, autocratic rulers, in which one out of every three Armenians participated. The campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience was led by a young member of parliament, Nikol Pashinyan. After initially attacking the protesters, the police later joined them. In April, the massive street protests were so powerful they pushed the prime minister to resign and coerced the ruling party to elect the opposition street leader, Pashinyan, as prime minister. In December, the new political bloc went on to trounce the former ruling party 70 percent to 5 percent in parliamentary elections. This "velvet revolution," which represented the climax of a decade of peaceful protest focused on human rights, women's rights, workers' rights and environmentalism, succeeded in taking power without shedding a drop of blood!

So there you have it. Despite Trump in the White House and the rise of right-wing movements around the globe, 2018 was chock full of good things-most of which went underreported because of all the attention on Donald Trump. And oh, speaking of Trump, I left out probably the most important development of all: the wagons encircling Trump, making his presidency seems less and less tenable. So...put on your seatbelts and hold tight-or better yet, prepare to take to the streets. If you thought 2018 was frenetic, 2019 promises to be one helluva ride.

So, over the weekend, another child died in the custody of the United States because of the president*'s brainless immigration policy. The president* flew halfway around the world for a 30-minute photo-op with some soldiers because he was shamed into doing so, and this was shortly after he was shamed into submarining a deal on the southern border by Rush Limbaugh and a chorus of lower primates. At this point, I think he could be shamed into jumping off the Truman Balcony dressed as Queen Mathilde of Belgium.

Nonetheless, out in the country, his administration is doing damage that will take years to reverse, even assuming we can, and likely will cost the lives of people he sees only as members of his most recent constituency of suckers.

On Thursday, The New York Times took a vast and comprehensive look at the consequences of this administration's assault on decades of environmental regulation and protection. It is an incredible compendium of neglect and deliberate vandalism. It is a calendar of destruction and disease. And it's only a snapshot. None of these horrors are going to stop until the political power of this administration is broken and scattered to the four winds.

With this running start, Mr. Trump is already on track to leave an indelible mark on the American landscape, even with a decline in some major pollutants from the ever-shrinking coal industry. While Washington has been consumed by scandals surrounding the president's top officials on environmental policy - both the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior secretary have been driven from his cabinet - Mr. Trump's vision is taking root in places as diverse as rural California, urban Texas, West Virginian coal country and North Dakota's energy corridor.

While the Obama administration sought to tackle pollution problems in all four states and nationally, Mr. Trump's regulatory ambitions extend beyond Republican distaste for what they considered unilateral overreach by his Democratic predecessor; pursuing them in full force, Mr. Trump would shift the debate about the environment sharply in the direction of industry interests, further unraveling what had been, before the Obama administration, a loose bipartisan consensus dating in part to the Nixon administration.

And there is a particularly grim tale of how a Native American community in North Dakota got caught in the nutcracker between short-term money and long-term illness over natural gas drilling on its land.

A 75 percent surge in oil production in the past two years has left Fort Berthold lighted by towering shafts of flame. Hundreds of controlled flares burn so bright in the cold night air that the sky turns a weird orange yellow, even as snow falls onto the frozen ground. An estimated three billion cubic feet of gas is burned or released each month here - a volume that could heat about 600,000 homes. Energy companies have figured out a way to capture the oil, but their pipelines are not big enough to handle all the less valuable gas that comes out of the ground. Much of the excess is torched.

President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump leave Marine One on Wednesday.

As oil and gas operations have intensified in this isolated stretch of North Dakota, so have residents' concerns. The venting of unburned methane fouls the air with chemicals that are not only in some cases carcinogenic but over the next 100 years will be 30 times as potent a cause of global warming as carbon dioxide. At the same time, the improper burning of methane can create pollutants that cause a variety of respiratory problems... The Obama administration, concerned about the effects on health and global warming as well as the wasteful practice of simply burning off energy, moved to curtail leaks and flaring on federal lands and Indian reservations. But in September, under pressure from the energy industry, President Trump's Interior Department eliminated the rule's most important provisions.

The leaks and flaring are an increasing source of tension at Fort Berthold. Many are focused on the cash from the energy industry that is pouring into community and tribal government coffers. The tribes and some families are paid royalties for each barrel of oil pulled from the ground, revenue that has changed many lives for the better.

Donald Trump announces his decision for the United States to pull out of the Paris climate agreement in the Rose Garden at the White House June 1, 2017.

"Sovereignty by the barrel," is the slogan used by the M.H.A. Nation's Energy Division, which both regulates and promotes oil and gas drilling here. Yet others are backing a lawsuit challenging Mr. Trump's rollback of the federal rule, while also pressing tribal leaders to move aggressively on their own to confront the consequences of the burning and leaking of gas.

Even a stunning defeat in the 2020 election will not be enough. The philosophy behind these acts of destruction has to be wrung out of our politics, and the vehicle that is the Republican Party as it is presently constituted has to be torn down to its foundations and rebuilt before that philosophy and that vehicle destroy the viability of the planet.

In the words of Walter DeVille, who lives on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, "This is our reality now."

(c) 2019 Charles P. Pierce has been a working journalist since 1976. He is the author of four books, most recently 'Idiot America.' He lives near Boston with his wife but no longer his three children.

Forty years ago, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and I normalized diplomatic relations between the People's Republic of China and the United States, putting an end to three decades of hostility. This led to an era distinguished by peace in East Asia and the Pacific region. China's spectacular economic growth, in conjunction with its continuing integration with the much larger U.S. economy, has enabled the two countries to become engines of global prosperity. Scientific and cultural exchanges have blossomed, and the United States has since become the top foreign destination for Chinese scholars and tourists. The 40th anniversary of this relationship is a testament to the ability of countries with different histories, cultures and political systems to work together for the greater good. Yet, today, this critical relationship is in jeopardy.

I hear Chinese elites claiming that Americans are conducting an "evil conspiracy" to destabilize China. I hear prominent Americans, disappointed that China has not become a democracy, claiming that China poses a threat to the American way of life. U.S. government reports declare that China is dedicated to challenging U.S. supremacy, and that it is planning to drive the United States out of Asia and reduce its influence in other countries around the world.

If top government officials embrace these dangerous notions, a modern Cold War between our two nations is not inconceivable. At this sensitive moment, misperceptions, miscalculations and failure to follow carefully defined rules of engagement in areas such as the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea could escalate into military conflict, creating a worldwide catastrophe.

The U.S. imposition of tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods, and China's retaliatory tariffs, contribute to the deteriorating relationship, hurting both countries. The 90-day pause in further escalation of tariffs, agreed to at the Group of 20 summit in Argentina, offers the possibility of reaching a permanent agreement on U.S.-China trade. What can we do to build on this progress, and to repair the U.S.-China relationship?

First, the United States' long-standing complaints - about trade imbalances, intellectual property theft, forced technology transfers, and unfair barriers to U.S. investments and business operations in China - must be addressed quickly and effectively. Neither country should use "national security" as an excuse to obstruct the other's legitimate commercial activities. China needs competition for its economy to innovate and grow; pursuing a fair and reciprocal relationship is the only way for both countries to remain economically strong.

Second, Americans must acknowledge that, just as China has no right to interfere in U.S. affairs, we have no inherent right to dictate to China how to govern its people or choose its leaders. Though even countries with the closest of relationships may critique each other at times, such engagements should never become directives or edicts; they should rather serve as a two-way street of open dialogue. China's achievements in sustaining economic growth, alleviating abject poverty and providing developmental assistance to other countries need to be celebrated. At the same time, we cannot ignore its deficiencies in Internet censorship, policies toward minorities and religious restrictions - which should be recorded and criticized.

This balanced approach is key to ensuring that the United States and China continue to work together toward solving some of the most intractable global problems. Despite current tensions on other issues, Chinese support has been essential in our ongoing efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. Beijing also could offer crucial help in post-conflict reconstruction in the Middle East and Africa, countering terrorism and extremism, and mediating other international disputes.

The United States should return to the Paris climate accord and work with China on environmental and climate-change issues, as the epic struggle against global warming requires active participation from both nations. But I believe the easiest route to bilateral cooperation lies in Africa. Both countries are already heavily involved there in fighting disease, building infrastructure and keeping peace - sometimes cooperatively. Yet each nation has accused the other of economic exploitation or political manipulation. Africans - like billions of other people around the world - do not want to be forced to choose a side. Instead, they welcome the synergy that comes from pooling resources, sharing expertise and designing complementary aid programs. By working together with Africans, the United States and China would also be helping themselves overcome distrust and rebuild this vital relationship.

In 1979, Deng Xiaoping and I knew we were advancing the cause of peace. While today's leaders face a different world, the cause of peace remains just as important. Leaders must bring new vision, courage and ingenuity to new challenges and opportunities, but I believe they also must accept our conviction that the United States and China need to build their futures together, for themselves and for humanity at large.

"But why are they calling this the Camp fire?" I asked an old-timer selling souvenir T-shirts in Chico yesterday.

"Because it started on Camp Creek..." Oh. Of course. "Plus that will be $20 for the T-shirt." I plan to take it home and tack it to the door of my disorganized and overstuffed closet -- to remind me that material possessions don't really mean all that much if your whole freaking life is about to be snuffed out.

Here in Paradise, it's kind of bizarre. All along the main street, for over two miles, the same pattern is repeated block after block. Two or three buildings will be standing untouched and yet two or three buildings next to them will be totally destroyed. The Walgreens and the CVS came through with hardly a scratch -- while the McDonalds, the Big-O Tires and the Jack in the Box are totally wiped out.

I talked to one woman who had lived in Paradise all of her life and had just returned to the sad ruins of her home. She told me about her own personal experience with the fire. "We were driving through a wall of flames and the car directly behind us simply exploded. We watched in horror." But then it got even worse -- she and her husband had to get out of their car and try to outrun the flames. "We stopped to help a group of older men and women standing in front of their burning convalescent home. We flagged down a school bus to help get them to safety -- but it was already too late and once again we watched in horror as even the bus caught fire. We ran for our lives." Geez Louise.

"As you can see, we finally made it out alive -- but just barely. A truck came by and picked us up." She showed me a video on her phone but all I could see was fire, a solid wall of fire. "We were the lucky ones. We lost everything. But we are still alive." I cried. She cried. I will never again worry about having too much stuff ever again. At least I too am alive.

What was I doing up in Paradise? I went up there to volunteer to help out with the extensive and excellent refugee-relocation program. But that's a whole other story, one which I am now still absorbing and am still in shock about too. Maybe I'll write about it after Christmas. But, hey, at least I still had a Christmas tree, a roast turkey and some eggnog to come home to.

PS: I am a witness to the recent horror that has befallen the little town of Paradise. I myself was horrified. And all of America was horrified too. And it's even worse when you actually see it up close with your own eyes.

However. I have also witnessed this very same type of horror -- of a city mercilessly destroyed -- in other places as well. Places in Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Afghanistan and Lebanon -- and even in Guatemala, Vietnam, Juarez, North Korea, Honduras, South Dakota and Ukraine. And yet most Americans don't seem to mind about that.

When these horrors are caused by wildfires or other natural stuff here at home, Americans react in horror, right? But when similar horrors are caused by American cluster bombs, American armies and/or America's proxy death squads, mercenaries and al Qaeda "rebels"? Nobody in America seems to mind.

And yet, just like the American victims of the Paradise fire never asked for these horrors, the tragic victims of America's "wars" never asked the United States and its allies to come clean out their closets either.

Dear Unterfuhrer Pallone

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling, and last year's winner Volksjudge John (the enforcer) Roberts.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your stopping the Green New deal in it's tracks, Yemen, Syria, Iran and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Democratic Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Trump at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker,"formally the "White House,"on 02-16-2019. We salute you herr Pallone, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Pence

The nature, power and cost of civil disobedience, along with the understanding that confronting evil is the highest form of spirituality, is the subject of the play "The Trial of the Catonsville Nine," written by Dan Berrigan. Transport Group will present a production of the play at the Abrons Arts Center in New York City from Jan. 16 to Feb. 23. It will be performed with three actors, one of whom is my wife, Eunice Wong. Our daughter was baptized by Dan Berrigan (1921-2016).

The men and women who became known as the Catonsville Nine pleaded guilty to the charges leveled against them-theft and destruction of property of the U.S. government and "disrupting the official activities" of the Selective Service. The Catonsville Nine used the court to indict the now-omnipotent war machine, which as Berrigan wrote "has come to include the court process that serves it." The courts, the presidency and the Congress, he noted, have calcified and turned to stone. "The 'separation of powers' is proving a fiction; ball and joint, the functions of power are fusing, like the bones of an aged body," he wrote.

"For you cannot set up a court in the Kingdom of the Blind, to condemn those who see; a court presided over by those who would pluck out the eyes of men and call it rehabilitation," Berrigan continued.

The defendants in the Catonsville Nine trial declined to question or challenge any potential jurors during the selection process. Later they would use their testimony not to attempt to prove their innocence-they freely admitted they were guilty of the prosecution's narrow charges-but to put the nation on trial. They argued that to abide by a higher law they must confront the law. Breaking the law was a function of conscience.

"The law, as presently revered and taught and enforced, is becoming an enticement to lawlessness," Dan Berrigan wrote in his book of essays, "No Bars to Manhood." "Lawyers and laws and courts and penal systems are nearly immobile before a shaken society, which is making civil disobedience a civil (I dare say a religious) duty. The law is aligning itself more and more with forms of power whose existence is placed more and more in question. ... So if they would obey the law, [people] are being forced, in the present crucial instance, either to disobey God or to disobey the law of humanity."

"The courts, up to the U.S. Supreme Court itself, are unwilling, especially in wartime, to consider seriously the moral and legal questions of war itself," Berrigan wrote. "So we felt that civilized [people] must seek to use the courtroom in order to achieve some public audibility about who we were and what we were about. The issues raised by the war-issues of constitutionality and morality of the war, of free speech and freedom of protest-might thereby be separated from our personal or corporate fates."

The law, Berrigan saw, is used to strengthen "a corporate system bent in the direction of more and more American hegemony abroad, more and more firmly imbedded poverty and racism at home." This capitalist machine, he said, had to be "taken apart, built over again." The Nine understood that it was "spiritually absurd and suicidal to be pretending to help the poor at home while we bombed the poor abroad." Mass incarceration and widespread poverty were the inevitable results of endless war and unchecked militarism. If this militarism was not curbed-and it has not been curbed-the Nine predicted it would exacerbate racism among dispossessed whites, expand lethal, militarized police forces and transform the Congress, the judiciary, the presidency and the press into handmaidens of the corporate state. The trajectory, Dan Berrigan wrote, would lead to "an interlocking dance of death, a celebration of horror."

The Catonsville Nine were indifferent to their fate. "We were obliged in fact to attain some kind of personal liberation before acting at all," Berrigan wrote, "a certain spiritual detachment from the fact of prison." They did not expect miracles. They were not deceived by the roller coaster of emotional highs and lows that characterize a consumer culture. Patience, as the Vietnamese in Hanoi told Dan Berrigan, "is a revolutionary virtue." It was the truth that was on trial. The point of civil disobedience, Berrigan said, is not that people will agree or even follow. It is that such actions foster among the wider population "a deepened consciousness."

"Still," Berrigan wrote in his autobiography, "this or that court, no matter what its crimes against justice, its stacked cards, its vindictive blindness, would never succeed in closing the dossier on conscience. And this was exactly our hope. Time would work in its imperceptible way, mysterious, invisible; other lives would be touched as the stories of the courageous and nonviolent were heard, often by word of mouth only. Time taking its own sweet time, so to speak, the motion and motive of a larger soul."

The Berrigans, who identified as religious radicals, had little use for liberals. Liberals, they said, addressed only small, moral fragments and used their pet causes, in most cases, not to bring about systemic change, but for self-adulation. Liberals often saw wars or social injustices as isolated evils whose end would restore harmony.

"But the consciousness of the radical man is integrated," Dan Berrigan wrote in "No Bars to Manhood." "He knows that everything leads to everything else. So while he works for the end of the war, for the end of poverty, or for the end of American racism, he knows that every war is symptomatic of every other war. Vietnam to Laos and on to Thailand, and across the world to Guatemala, and across all wars to his own heart."

"Our act was aimed, as our statement tried to make clear, at every major presumption underlying American life today," he wrote. "Our act was in the strictest sense a conspiracy; that is to say, we had agreed together to attack the working assumptions of American life. Our act was a denial that American institutions were presently functioning in a way that good men [and women] could approve or sanction. We were denying that the law, medicine, education, and systems of social welfare (and, above all, the military-paramilitary styles and objectives that rule and overrule and control these others) were serving the people, were including the needy, or might be expected to change in accord with changing needs, that these could enlist or embody the sources of good men [and women]-imagination, moral suppleness, pragmatism, or compassion."

Phil Berrigan (1923-2002), a highly decorated infantry officer who fought in Europe in World War II, was the driving force behind the Catonsville Nine. He had already broken into a draft board office in the Baltimore Customs House in October 1967 with three other protesters-they would become known as the Baltimore Four-and poured blood over draft files. The event was well publicized. He and the artist Thomas P. Lewis, one of the Baltimore Four, were awaiting sentencing for their Baltimore action when they participated in the act at Catonsville. Phil Berrigan and Lewis knew that their participation in Catonsville meant their sentences for the Baltimore protest would be harsher. But they understood that resistance cannot be reactive. It must be proactive. Phil Berrigan convinced his brother Dan to join the protest at Catonsville at a time when Dan believed that his work was "standing by the students [protesters] in their travail; nothing more." "In comparison with him," Dan wrote of Phil, "I was a coddled egg indeed." But Dan Berrigan knew that "if I delayed too long, I would never find the courage to say no" to the war.

It was clear, Dan Berrigan wrote, that the government "would allow men like myself to do what we were doing almost indefinitely; to sign statements, to picket, to support resisters in court. Even if they did pick us up, it was the government who were choosing the victim and the time and place of prosecution. The initiative was entirely in their hands. But in the plan under discussion, the situation was entirely reversed. A few men [and women] were declaring that the initiative of actions and passion belonged to the peaceable and the resisting."

The Berrigans excoriated the church hierarchy for sacralizing the nation, the government, capitalism, the military and the war. They argued that the fusion of secular and religious authority would kill the church as a religious institution. The archbishop of New York at the time, Cardinal Francis J. Spellman, in one example, sprinkled holy water on B-52 bombers and blessed the warplanes before their missions in Vietnam. He described the conflict as a "war for civilization" and "Christ's war against the Vietcong and the people of North Vietnam."

Phil Berrigan, the first priest to go to jail for protesting the war, celebrated Mass for his fellow prisoners. The services were, for the first time, well attended. The cardinal of Baltimore, in response, stripped Phil Berrigan of his priestly functions. The Masses celebrated later by an assigned outsider were boycotted by the prisoners. "There seemed to be some connection, too subtle for those in power to grasp, quite lucid to the imprisoned, between the Eucharist and a priest who was a fellow prisoner," Dan Berrigan wrote.

"In sum, in a time of crisis, the Church had waited on the culture," Dan Berrigan wrote in "No Bars to Manhood." "When the war-making society had completed its case against a nonviolent, protesting priest, the Church moved against him too, sacred overkill added to secular. Indeed, Christ made common cause with Caesar; religion preached a new crusade, a dubious and savage war. The Church all but disappeared into the legions." Those of faith, Berrigan wrote, should be content to "live and die 'outside the walls'; they are men [and women] without a country and a church. They can flee the nation or languish in jail; the curse of the inquisitor will penetrate the jails to strike them there."

It has been 50 years since Catonsville. And yet, often unheard and unheralded, the steadfast drumbeat of nonviolent religious protest against the war machine continues. Elizabeth McAlister, of Jonah House in Baltimore and the widow of Phil Berrigan, along with the Jesuit priest Steve Kelly and Catholic Worker Movement members Carmen Trotta, Clare Grady, Martha Hennessy (the granddaughter of Catholic Worker Movement co-founder Dorothy Day), Mark Colville and Patrick O'Neill, will be put on trial next spring for trespassing onto the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in St. Marys, Ga., to protest our nuclear weapons arsenal.

The activists entered the base on April 4, 2018, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who thundered against the "triple evils of militarism, racism and materialism." They carried hammers and baby bottles of their own blood to defile the nuclear weapons storage bunkers. The Kings Bay naval facility is the largest nuclear submarine base in the world. Five of the group were released on bond and are forced to wear ankle monitors. McAlister, who turned 79 last month in jail, and Kelly remain incarcerated in the Glynn County Detention Center.

Dan Berrigan reflected on the burning of the Catonsville draft records in "To Dwell in Peace: An Autobiography":

The act was pitiful, a tiny flare amid the consuming fires of war. But Catonsville was like a firebreak, a small fire lit, to contain and conquer a greater. ...

For the remainder of our lives, the fires would burn and burn, in hearts and minds, in draft boards, in prisons and courts. A new fire, new as a Pentecost, flared up in eyes deadened and hopeless. ...

"Nothing can be done!" How often we had heard that gasp: the last of the human, of soul, of freedom. Indeed, something could be done; and was. And would be.

We had removed an abomination from the Earth. It was as though, across the land, a series of signal fires had been lighted. The first was no larger than a gleam of an eye. But hill to hill, slowly at first, then like a wildfire, leaping interstices and valleys, the fires flared. ...

In the following years, some seventy draft boards were entered across the land. Their contents variously shredded, sacked, hidden out of sight, burned, scattered to the winds. In one case, the files were mailed back to their owners, with a note urging that the inductee refuse to serve.

That morning! We stood in the breach of birth. We could know nothing. Would something follow, would our act speak to others, awaken their resolve? We knew only the bare bones of consequence. ...

The act was done. We sat in custody in the back room of the Catonsville Post Office, weak with relief, grinning like virtuous gargoyles. Three or four FBI honchos entered portentously. Their leader, a jut-jawed paradigm, surveyed us from the doorway. His eagle eye lit on Philip. He roared out: "Him again! Good God, I'm changing my religion!"

I could think of no greater tribute to my brother.