Two weeks ago, I gave a keynote presentation about anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) at a large sustainability conference in Chico, California. During the question-and-answer session following my talk, a student asked me what I thought the world would look like by 2050. His question stopped me in my tracks. I had to pause and take a deep breath, to prepare myself emotionally for what I had to tell him.

Here is the gist of what I said: Based on years of research for my forthcoming book, The End of Ice, along with my work compiling these monthly climate disruption dispatches for four years now, I know that by 2050, we will be inhabiting a dramatically different planet. I believe we will already have tens -- if not hundreds -- of millions of climate refugees from sea-level rise and conflicts born of lack of food and water. What we currently call extreme weather events (massive floods, droughts, hurricanes) will have long since become the norm. In the US, growing food in the Midwest and the central valley of California will be extremely difficult, if not largely impossible, due to shifting weather patterns of rainfall and drought. Some swaths of the world, including the Gulf states in the Middle East and parts of the US Southwest, will be largely uninhabitable due to simply being too hot. Greenland and the Antarctic will both be experiencing dramatically advanced melting, and most of the glaciers in the contiguous 48 US states will have long since ceased to exist. And given that we are officially already amidst the Sixth Mass Extinction Event of the planet, which humans triggered, the biological annihilation that comes with this is happening apace.

This portrait might seem far-fetched to some. But to understand that this is our future, all we need to do is look at what is already happening around the planet.

In early March, Arctic sea ice hit record lows for that time of year. Along with stunningly warm temperatures for the region (which scientists called "crazy, crazy stuff"), researchers there are continuing to scratch their heads about the dramatic ACD-fueled changes besetting the Arctic.

The biosphere is convulsing.

Unchecked ACD -- which appears likely to continue, since governments (particularly that of the United States) are not preparing to undertake the kinds of drastic mitigation measures that might have any impact -- will dramatically degrade global fish catch over the coming centuries, and may well reduce total oceanic plant life for a millennium, according to a recent study. The study also noted that these changes cannot be reversed until the climate cools.

The amount of warming humans have already caused on Earth is, according to a recent study, likely already enough to melt more than one-third of all the world's glaciers outside of Antarctica and Greenland, regardless of ongoing efforts to reduce fossil fuel emissions. The study analyzed the lag between global temperature increases and the retreat of glaciers and found a relatively slow response of glaciers to planetary warming. Researchers noted that it will take until 2100, at least, to see any benefits from serious mitigation efforts over the next decades -- assuming those efforts actually happen. One of the scientists involved in the study told Carbon Brief that this glacier loss is already "baked in" to the system and has been overlooked, which essentially means "we really are on course to obliterate many of these mountain landscapes."

Meanwhile, a recently published World Wildlife Fund report has predicted catastrophic losses in the world's forests: As much as 60 percent of the plants and half of all the animals are predicted to disappear by 2100. if temperatures rise by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (1.5 degreesC). The scientific consensus states that a 1.5degrees C rise is a given; in fact, some prominent scientists believe an increase of 3.2 degrees C by 2100 is most likely, given current national commitments. If emissions remain unchanged, which is the current actual trajectory, a 4.5 degrees C rise is the forecast. It is worth noting that oil giants BP and Shell are planning on 5 degrees C of planetary warming by 2050.

Taking all this information in is necessary if we are to see the world clearly and live our lives accordingly.

Earth

The World Bank recently warned that if dramatic intervention doesn't occur on the ACD front, 140 million people across three regions (sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Latin America) of the Earth will become refugees between now and 2050.

An example of one of the factors driving such mass movement of people can be found in California, where a recent report citing nearly 90 different studies found that warming temperatures could alter where key crops grow across that state. Bearing in mind that California produces roughly two-thirds of all the produce in the US, the report notes that ACD could decrease the yield of some of the crops grown in California by as much as 40 percent by 2050.

In Vermont, warming temperatures, particularly during the winter, are causing extreme weather events and unpredictable rainfall, which experts recently warned was making forests across that state particularly vulnerable to ACD. Boreal forests and moose populations will be the hardest hit, warned the study.

The world's northernmost regions have not escaped extreme weather. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, known as the Doomsday Vault, was created to protect the world's seeds in the event of cataclysmic ACD impacts or nuclear war, whichever comes first. Disturbingly, it is now in need of an upgrade, thanks to ACD. Norway, which built and maintains the vault, is having to invest $13 million to upgrade the vault to make room for more seeds and make it more resilient, given a recent flooding event there. Last year, flooding at the entrance of the vault prompted the Norwegian government to begin looking into the upgrade, which is now going to move forward.

Bad news also abounds for Earth's animal species. A recently published study in the journal Nature Climate Change showed that Antarctica's king penguins could be extinct by 2100, due primarily to ACD impacts and overfishing.

In Florida, research revealed recently that nearly all the sea turtles being born there are female, due to higher temperatures. Obviously, if this trend continues, which it almost assuredly will, there will be no more sea turtles in Florida.

Meanwhile over in Europe, the authors of a recent report out of France's National Museum of Natural History and the National Centre for Scientific Research showed a "catastrophic" decline in France's bird populations. The trend signals the possibility of Europe's farmland turning into desert, a situation that would ultimately threaten all human beings. The scientists warned of a wider crisis of biodiversity -- or lack thereof -- across that continent, with ACD impacts and pesticides to blame. This comes on the heels of concerning news of a 76 percent decline in the abundance of flying insects in Germany over the last 27 years.

Water

As is often the case in the spring, the watery realms of the planet are where the ACD impacts are most evident.

Widespread ongoing winter drought across the US, from Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri to the Dakotas, Texas and California, have many farmers worried about this year being a repeat of 2012, the worst drought in the US since the Dust Bowl. At present, the winter drought is worse than it was in 2012.

The problem extends beyond those states. In Colorado, at the time of this writing, snow would need to fall at 200 percent of the state's average through the end of April for its snowpack to catch up to normal. Water managers there are keeping a leery eye on reservoirs as summer looms on the horizon.

Colorado is not an anomaly. Snowpack across the Western US has been dramatically lower than it was a century ago. A recent study showed the average snowpack in the west has dropped by nearly one-third since 1915. That is equivalent to the decrease we'd see from permanently draining Nevada's Lake Mead, the single largest man-made reservoir in the US.

Changing weather patterns and warmer year-round temperatures have scientists in Western Canada -- a place you wouldn't think needs to worry about water issues -- worried about running out of water in the future. For example, in 2017 there was a record amount of snowfall in one region, but even all that snow was still not enough to prevent a drought on the southern part of the prairies below it. The changing climate there also means the snowpack is melting faster and earlier than usual, which means that water is moving through river basins faster and leaving them dry before the end of summer.

On the other side of the world, New Zealand is experiencing similar concerns. Its alps have become incredibly barren, as a recent aerial survey shows how the loss of snow there is now being called "extreme."

A recently released UN report on the state of the world's water warned that more than 5 billion people could suffer water shortages by 2050 due largely to ACD and increasing demand.

Furthermore, extreme weather events like major floods and extreme rainfall events have surged more than 50 percent this decade alone, and are now happening four times more often than they were in just 1980, according to a recent paper.

Meanwhile, seas continue to rise. A recent NOAA report warned that sea level rise will rapidly worsen flooding that is already happening in coastal communities around the US. The report warned that some cities will see flooding on a daily basis by 2100.

Adding to this, another recent study showed that lakes on the Greenland Ice Sheet are now forming further inland, meaning they are now potentially threatening to speed up ice flow once they drain to the glacial floor.

In Antarctica the news is no better. The absence of sea ice near that continent over the past six weeks (as of the time of this writing) has deeply concerned scientists conducting research there.

In addition to paying attention to large, continental changes, it's important to take note of ACD-driven shifts on the level of microorganisms. A recent report showed that excessive rates of carbon dioxide (CO2) affect the health of critical microorganisms in the oceans, which could potentially undermine the base of vital marine food chains. This is happening largely due to ocean acidification, a result of ACD.

Fire

Given the low snowpack levels across much of the Western US, this summer is already expected to be another above-average wildfire season for much of that part of the country. Since snowpack functions as a water source through much of the summer, when warmer temperatures cause it to melt off faster than normal, drier conditions ensue.

Meanwhile in Australia, more than 70 homes and buildings have been destroyed in a fast-moving bushfire in New South Wales, while separate fires destroyed 18 properties in Victoria. Local authorities there described the fires as the worst of Australia's summer season thus far.

As is always the case with extreme weather events, none of these fires can be solely attributed to ACD. However, climate disruption's impacts are a key contributing factor to how often they occur, as well as to their intensity.

Air

In Australia, a new study reveals that the country's record-setting 2012 heat wave was responsible for the destruction of roughly 1,000 square kilometers of seagrass meadows. which had acted as a repository for CO2. When the meadows were destroyed, the disaster released as much as 9 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Meanwhile, nearby New Zealand experienced its hottest summer on record last year. It definitively broke with normal temperatures, clocking in at a shocking 2.1 degrees C above the past 35-year average temperature.

Back in the US, USGS data has revealed how spring has arrived much earlier than normal for much of the country, a clear indicator of how ACD is continuing to shift overall climate patterns.

In the Arctic, in fact, spring is beginning an average of 16 days earlier now than it did just one decade ago. A study in the journal Scientific Reports noted an increase in the number of warm temperature records in the spring, along with changes to the timing of bird migrations, flowers blooming and other seasonal indicators.

What makes this even more disconcerting is the fact that scientists have found a direct and strong link between warmer Arctic temperatures and abnormally high snowfall amounts and frigid temperatures further south of that region. So, for example, the severe weather that has been impacting the northeastern US this spring, is linked directly to the ACD-related warm wave happening across the Arctic region.

Lastly in this section, but perhaps most importantly, thawing Arctic permafrost is now likely to release more methane than previously expected. Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, as it is 100 times stronger over a 10-year time scale. The new study found that waterlogged wetland soils will produce considerably more methane than previously predicted.

Denial and Reality

There is never a dull moment in the Trump administration's land of ACD-denial.

A recent and excellent article published at The Conversation outlined the four primary methods used by this administration to deny or hide the reality of ACD. These methods are, according to the article: making documents more difficult to find on government websites, burying web pages, altering language, and silencing the science. Truthout's Mike Ludwig also detailed how ACD, as a threat to the US, has literally "gone missing" under Trump.

Climate Disruption Dispatches

Meanwhile, the cabinet continues to be filled with ACD deniers. One of the more recent additions has been hardline climate denier Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State, who along with having longstanding close ties to the Koch brothers, in 2013 said during a C-SPAN interview: "There are scientists who think lots of different things about climate change. There's some who think we're warming, there's some who think that the last 16 years have shown a pretty stable climate environment." A Trump administration official even went so far recently as to say that USGS scientists went "outside their wheelhouse" by writing that ACD has "dramatically reduced" glaciers in Montana. One of the scientists who bore this attack responded, "This is what we do.... It is our wheelhouse."

Trump administration US Energy Secretary, Rick Perry, who thinks wearing thick-framed glasses makes him appear more intelligent, recently said that international efforts to reduce fossil fuel use were "immoral."

Meanwhile, EPA head Scott Pruitt, already an avid ACD denier, recently disputed evolution.

On the reality front, thousands of scientists from the 22 Commonwealth countries have urged that stronger government action on ACD needs to be taken if there is hope to keep planetary warming lower than 2degreesC.

Underscoring that urgency, global demand for energy increased by 2.1 percent in 2017 -- more than twice the previous year's rate, according to the International Energy Agency. According to the same agency, energy-related CO2 emissions also increased by 1.4 percent during 2017, reaching a historic high of 32.5 gigatons.

Despite glaring warning signs from around the planet, governments around the world are not taking dramatic measures to mitigate ACD impacts. In fact, the US government continues to refuse to even acknowledge that those impacts exist. The world's most powerful forces are taking a business-as-usual approach, as we are hurtled deeper into the Sixth Mass Extinction event.
(c) 2018 Dahr Jamail, a Truthout staff reporter, is the author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (Haymarket Books, 2009), and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported from Iraq for more than a year, as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last 10 years, and has won the Martha Gellhorn Award for Investigative Journalism, among other awards.

I was about to write an article about Pesach eve' when I remembered that I wrote exactly the same article six years ago. So I am sending the old article again - I just have nothing to add.

I AM writing this on Friday night, the eve of Passover. At this moment, all over the world, millions of Jews are gathered around the family table, observing the Seder, reading aloud from the same book: the Haggadah, which tells the story of the Exodus from Egypt.

The impact of this book on Jewish life is immense. Every Jew takes part in this ceremony from earliest childhood, and plays an active part in the ritual. Wherever a Jewish man or woman goes in later life, they will take with them a memory of the warmth and togetherness of the family, the magical atmosphere - and the overt and subliminal message conveyed by the text.

Whoever invented the Seder ("order") ritual, many centuries ago, was a genius. All human senses are involved: seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting. It includes eating a ritualized meal, drinking four glasses of wine, touching various symbolic objects, playing a game with the children (searching for a hidden piece of Matzo). It ends with singing several religious songs together. The accumulated effect is magical.

More than any other Jewish text, the Haggadah forms the Jewish conscious - or, rather, unconscious - mind today, as in the past, influencing our collective behavior and Israeli national policy.

There are many different ways to view this book.

LITERATURE: As a literary work, the Haggadah is rather inferior. The text is devoid of beauty, full of repetitions, platitudes and banalities.

This may cause wonderment. The Hebrew Bible - the Bible in Hebrew - is a work of unique beauty. In many places, its beauty is intoxicating.

The peaks of Western culture - Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, Tolstoy - are not its equal. Even the later Jewish religious texts - Mishnah, Talmud and so forth - while not so uplifting, contain passages of literary merit. The Haggadah has none. It is a text devised purely for indoctrination.

HISTORY: It's not. Though it claims to tell history, the Haggadah has nothing to do with real history.

There can no longer be the slightest doubt that the Exodus never happened. Neither the Exodus, nor the wandering in the desert, nor the conquest of Canaan.

The Egyptians were obsessive chroniclers. Many tens of thousands of tablets have already been deciphered. It would have been impossible for an event like the exodus to pass without being reported at length. Not if 600,000 people left, as the Bible tells it, or 60,000, or even 6000. Especially if during the flight a whole Egyptian army contingent, including war chariots, was drowned.

The same goes for the Conquest. Because of acute security concerns, after being invaded once from there, the Egyptians employed a host of spies, - travelers, merchants and others - to follow closely the events in neighboring Canaan, in every single one of its towns and at all times. An invasion of Canaan, even a minor one, would have been reported. Except for the periodic incursions of Bedouin tribes, nothing was recorded.

Moreover, the Egyptian towns mentioned in the Bible did not exist at the time the event is supposed to have happened. They did exist, however, when the Bible was written, in the first or second century BC.

There is no need to point out that in a hundred years of frantic archaeological searching by devout Christians and Zionist zealots, not a shred of concrete evidence for the conquest of Canaan has been found (nor that the Kingdoms of Saul, David or Solomon ever existed).

But is this really important? Not a bit of it!

The Passover story does not derive its immense power from any claim to be history. It is a myth that grips the human imagination, a myth that is the basis of a great religion, a myth that directs the behavior of people to this very day. Without the Exodus story, there would probably be no State of Israel today - and certainly not in Palestine.

THE GLORY: One can read the Exodus story as a shining example of all that is good and inspiring in the annals of humanity.

Here is the story of a small and powerless people that rises up against a brutal tyranny, throws off its chains and gains a new homeland, creating a revolutionary new moral code on the way.

Seen in this way, the Exodus is a victory of the human spirit, an inspiration for all downtrodden peoples. And indeed, it has served this purpose many times in the past. The Pilgrim Fathers, the founders of the American nation, were inspired by it, and so were many rebels throughout history.

THE OTHER SIDE: When one reads the Biblical text attentively, without religious blinkers, some aspects gives us food for other thoughts.

Let's take the Ten Plagues. Why were the entire Egyptian people punished for the misdeeds of one tyrant, Pharaoh? Why did God, like a divine Security Council, levy on them cruel sanctions, polluting their water with blood, destroying their livelihood with hail and locusts? And, even more gruesome, how could a merciful God send his angels to murder every single Egyptian firstborn child?

On leaving Egypt, the Israelites were encouraged to steal their neighbors' property. It is rather curious that the Biblical story-teller, who was certainly deeply religious, did not omit this detail. And this just a few weeks before the Ten Commandments were handed down to the Israelites by God personally, including "Thou Shalt Not Steal."

No one ever seems to have given much thought to the ethical side of the conquest of Canaan. God promised the Children of Israel a land which was the home of other peoples. He told them to kill these peoples, expressly commanding them to commit genocide. For some reason, He singled out the people of Amalek, ordering the Israelites to eradicate them altogether. Later, the glorious King Saul was dethroned by His prophet because he showed mercy and did not murder his Amalekite prisoners-of-war, men, women and children.

Of course, these texts were written by people living in times long past, when the ethics of individuals and nations were different, as were the rules of war. But the Haggadah is recited - today as before - uncritically, without any reflection on these horrible aspects.

Especially in religious schools in Israel today, the commandment to commit genocide against the non-Jewish population of Palestine is taken by many teachers and pupils quite literally.

INDOCTRINATION: This is the real point of these reflections.

There are two sentences in the Haggadah that always had - and still have - a profound impact on the present.

One is the central idea on which almost all Jews base their historical outlook: "In every generation they rise against us to destroy us."

This does not apply to a specific time or to a specific place. It is regarded as an eternal truth that applies to all places, all times. "They" is the entire outside world, all non-Jews everywhere.

Children hear this on Seder evening on their father's knee, long before they are able to read and write, and from then on they hear or recite it every year for decades. It expresses the total conscious or unconscious conviction of almost all Jews, whether in Los Angeles, California, or in Lod, Israel. It certainly directs the policy of the State of Israel.

The second sentence, which complements the first, is a cry to God: "Pour out your wrath upon the nations that do not know you...for they have devoured Jacob and desolated his home...Pour out your wrath on them! May your blazing anger overtake them! Exterminate them from under the heavens of the Lord!...

The word "nations" in this text has a double meaning. The Hebrew word is "goyim", an ancient Hebrew term for "peoples". Even the ancient Children of Israel were called a "Holy Goy". But over the centuries, the word has taken on another meaning, and is understood to refer to all non-Jewish individuals, in a very derogatory way. (As in the Yiddish song "Oy, Oy, Oy, / Drunk is the Goy.)"

In many translations, the word "exterminate" is changed into "pursue".

To understand this text properly, one has to remember that it was written as a cry from the heart of a defenseless, persecuted people who had no means to take revenge on their torturers. To raise their spirits on the joyful Seder evening, they had to put their trust in God, crying out to Him that he should take revenge in their stead.

During the Seder ritual, the door is always left open. Officially, that is to allow the Prophet Elias to enter, if he should miraculously rise from the dead. In reality it was to allow the Goyim to look in, so as to disprove the anti-Semitic libel that Jews baked their unleavened Pesach bread with the blood of kidnapped Christian children. THE LESSON: In the Diaspora, this craving for revenge was both understandable and ineffective. But the founding of the State of Israel has changed the situation completely. In Israel, Jews are far from being defenseless. We don't have to rely on God to take revenge for the evils done unto us, past or present, real or imagined. We can pour out our wrath ourselves, on our neighbors, the Palestinians and other Arabs, on our minorities, on our victims.

That is the real danger of the Haggadah, as I see it. It was written by and for helpless Jews living in perpetual danger. It raised their spirits once a year, when they felt safe for a moment, protected by their God, surrounded by their families.

Taken out of this context and applied to a new, completely different situation, it can set us on an evil course. Telling ourselves that everybody is out to destroy us, yesterday and most certainly tomorrow, we consider the grandiloquent bombast of an Iranian bigmouth as a living proof of the validity of the old maxim. They are out to kill us, so we must - according to another ancient Jewish injunction - kill them first.

The line of preachers stretched 100 yards to the door of Columbus, Georgia's radio station WOKS, where the pastors had each been allotted a few minutes to testify to their deep commitment to the ideals espoused by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., shot down in Memphis three days earlier. Nearly every Black minister in town was there, waiting his turn to lie. Although they would sound like an amen corner for "the Movement" on this mournful Sunday morning, the assembled clergymen had, in fact, acted as the front line of resistance to King's gospel of nonviolent confrontation with the white powers-that-be.

Both before and after the tumultuous Birmingham campaign of 1963, Dr. King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) had hoped to bring the movement to Columbus, the second-largest city in Georgia, 100 miles due south of Atlanta. The protocols of Black Baptist behaviour, however, required that ministers first receive an invitation from a local congregation before setting up shop in someone else's city. All 100 of Columbus' Black churches shut their doors on Dr. King, rejecting any outside interference in their long accommodation with white supremacy.

The same solid phalanx of Jim Crowed preachers kept King out of Georgia's other large cities: Macon, Augusta, and Savannah. Indeed, Dr. King's early southern campaign itinerary was shaped primarily by the places he was locked out of -- ultimately, almost everywhere except small backwaters like Albany, Georgia and St. Augustine Florida.

The myth of the "Black Church" as the central player in the huge social transformations of the 1960s begins with the false testimonials that poured from pulpits and Black radio microphones on that Sunday, April 7th, 1968 -- and have soiled the historical record ever since. Accommodation with Power -- not transformation or liberation -- was the watchword of the Black church, then as now. King and his SCLC were a rogue faction of dissident Baptists in a sea of petty capitalist hustlers in clerical collars whose mission was to reconcile Black people to life under apartheid.

I watched with disgust as the Uncle Tom preachers composed their mini-sermons for the radio microphone. An 18 year-old paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division, stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, I had been on field exercises with my unit the week before, providing security for the commanding general's headquarters. Under a big tent, company commanders and their executive officers spent that Wednesday, April 3, pouring over maps of Washington, DC, in the event we had to occupy the city. When King was killed on the evening of the next day, the division hastily packed its gear and moved back to barracks to prepare for deployment to burning cities. The general, however, somehow forgot to restrict all 12,000 of us to base. Some of us took advantage of the oversight, and went home for the weekend.

When I and hundreds of other paratroopers straggled back to Fort Bragg early Monday morning, April 8, the rest of my unit was sitting on an airfield near Baltimore, as the brass tried to decide whether we should be deployed in that city or nearby Washington. Both were burning, along with over 100 other cities. We wound up in the nation's capital.

The year before, Newark, New Jersey, had been occupied by nearly lily-white units of the National Guard, sent there to quell a four-day rebellion in which 26 Blacks were killed. The Guardsmen behaved like an Army of White Vengeance, joining the racist cops in savaging Black people and shooting up businesses displaying "Black-owned" and "Soul Brother" signs on the Springfield Avenue thoroughfare. However, the 82nd Airborne Division was a different social organism, entirely; our ranks were 60 percent Black, and we had been transformed. All of us (at least in my company) were aware of what had happened in Newark. As far as the Black troops were concerned, our division had only one mission in Washington, DC: to make sure the white soldiers -- especially the mostly white military police -- did no harm to the Black population. And they did not dare. Not one Black citizen of Washington was hurt by a soldier of the 82nd Airborne division -- or, to my knowledge, even verbally abused -- during the occupation.

Our officers took note, and were clearly disturbed by our protective postures. The same Black ghetto army that was rebelling in Vietnam, was showing that it would not be a party to abuse of Black people at home. It was the beginning of the end of the draft.

Dr. King's April 4, 1967, anti-war speech at New York's Riverside Church likely began the countdown to his assassination. A year later, as the fires of Black rage at King's murder burned in the nation's capital, it was dawning on the top brass that the entire institutional structure of the U.S. Armed Forces had to be scrapped. Not only was the genocidal U.S. imperial project in Vietnam doomed, but there must never again be allowed to arise a critical mass of Black ghetto soldiers to dominate the ranks of combat units -- men that fought pitched gun battles with military police outfits in Da Nang and other posts, burned down the military stockades at Long Bihn and Da Nang, and fragged (blew up with grenades) countless officers and sargeants. (See "Fear of a 'Black Street Army,'" The Black Commentator, July 3 2003, and "No Draft No Peace: Rangel and Conyers Are Right" July 9, 2003, The Black Commentator.) The Pentagon is the biggest booster of the all-volunteer Army, which allows it to socially engineer its globe-straddling foreign legions, now heavily weighted with whites from "Nowhereville, USA." The 80,000 strong Joint Special Operations Command -- the cutting edge of the imperial war machine, almost as large as the entire French army – is overwhelmingly white.

"We don't want a draft," said President Obama's Defense Secretary, Ashton Carter. "We don't want people chosen for us. We want to pick people. That's what the all-volunteer force is all about. That's why the all-volunteer force is so excellent."

Excellent for imperialism. Although Blacks still make up about a fifth of the U.S. military, they are now clustered in support units, rather than combat line positions. My old paratroop division, the 82nd Airborne, is now the whitest unit in the Army -- the better to project the power of white capital to all corners of the world.

The week that began with the murder of fervently anti-war Dr. Martin Luther King is but a snapshot in time. Yet there is no reason to believe that Dr. King would have abandoned his pro-peace (and "democratic socialist") principles if he were alive today, at age 89. King was a student of Gandhi and Marx long before he led his first demonstration.

The same social forces prevail as during MLK's time. The Democrats are still a wing of the Greater War Party, nowadays screaming louder than the Republicans for confrontation with nuclear Russia. The Black Misleadership Class was already emerging in much its current, self-serving form when King was alive. The first Black big city mayor, Cleveland's Carl Stokes, elected in 1967, appointed Black Air Force general Daniel "Chappie" James Public Safety Director. The General promptly issued "dum-dum" hollow point bullets to the cops. Maynard Jackson, elected mayor of King's beloved Atlanta in 1973, fired the mostly Black sanitation workforce carrying signs proclaiming, as in Memphis 1968, "I Am a Man." And, Republicans are still the White Man's Party, the identity they were busily crafting in 1968, through President Nixon's "Southern Strategy."

The major threat of Martin Luther King Jr to us is a spiritual and moral one. King's courageous and compassionate example shatters the dominant neoliberal soul-craft of smartness, money and bombs. His grand fight against poverty, militarism, materialism and racism undercuts the superficial lip service and pretentious posturing of so-called progressives as well as the candid contempt and proud prejudices of genuine reactionaries. King was neither perfect nor pure in his prophetic witness - but he was the real thing in sharp contrast to the market-driven semblances and simulacra of our day.

In this brief celebratory moment of King's life and death we should be highly suspicious of those who sing his praises yet refuse to pay the cost of embodying King's strong indictment of the US empire, capitalism and racism in their own lives.

We now expect the depressing spectacle every January of King's "fans" giving us the sanitized versions of his life. We now come to the 50th anniversary of his assassination, and we once again are met with sterilized versions of his legacy. A radical man deeply hated and held in contempt is recast as if he was a universally loved moderate.

These neoliberal revisionists thrive on the spectacle of their smartness and the visibility of their mainstream status - yet rarely, if ever, have they said a mumbling word about what would have concerned King, such as US drone strikes, house raids, and torture sites, or raised their voices about escalating inequality, poverty or Wall Street domination under neoliberal administrations - be the president white or black.

The police killing of Stephon Clark in Sacramento may stir them but the imperial massacres in Yemen, Libya or Gaza leave them cold. Why? Because so many of King's "fans" are afraid. Yet one of King's favorite sayings was "I would rather be dead than afraid." Why are they afraid? Because they fear for their careers in and acceptance by the neoliberal establishment. Yet King said angrily: "What you're saying may get you a foundation grant, but it won't get you into the Kingdom of Truth."

The neoliberal soul craft of our day shuns integrity, honesty and courage, and rewards venality, hypocrisy and cowardice. To be successful is to forge a non-threatening image, sustain one's brand, expand one's pecuniary network - and maintain a distance from critiques of Wall Street, neoliberal leaders and especially the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and peoples.

Martin Luther King Jr turned away from popularity in his quest for spiritual and moral greatness - a greatness measured by what he was willing to give up and sacrifice due to his deep love of everyday people, especially vulnerable and precious black people. Neoliberal soul craft avoids risk and evades the cost of prophetic witness, even as it poses as "progressive".

The killing of Martin Luther King Jr was the ultimate result of the fusion of ugly white supremacist elites in the US government and citizenry and cowardly liberal careerists who feared King's radical moves against empire, capitalism and white supremacy. If King were alive today, his words and witness against drone strikes, invasions, occupations, police murders, caste in Asia, Roma oppression in Europe, as well as capitalist wealth inequality and poverty, would threaten most of those who now sing his praises. As he rightly predicted: "I am nevertheless greatly saddened ... that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling."

If we really want to know King in all of his fallible prophetic witness, we must shed any neoliberal soul craft and take seriously - in our words and deeds - his critiques and resistances to US empire, capitalism and xenophobia. Needless to say, his relentless condemnation of Trump's escalating neo-fascist rule would be unequivocal - but not to be viewed as an excuse to downplay some of the repressive continuities of the two Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations.

In fact, in a low moment, when the American nightmare crushed his dream, King noted: "I don't have any faith in the whites in power responding in the right way ... they'll treat us like they did our Japanese brothers and sisters in World War II. They'll throw us into concentration camps. The Wallaces and the Birchites will take over. The sick people and the fascists will be strengthened. They'll cordon off the ghetto and issue passes for us to get in and out."

These words may sound like those of Malcolm X, but they are those of Martin Luther King Jr - with undeniable relevance to the neo-fascist stirrings in our day.

King's last sermon was entitled Why America May Go to Hell. His personal loneliness and political isolation loomed large. J Edgar Hoover said he was "the most dangerous man in America." President Johnson called him "a nigger preacher." Fellow Christian ministers, white and black, closed their pulpits to him. Young revolutionaries dismissed and tried to humiliate him with walkouts, booing and heckling. Life magazine - echoing Time magazine, the New York Times, and the Washington Post (all bastions of the liberal establishment) - trashed King's anti-war stance as "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi."

And the leading black journalist of the day, Carl Rowan, wrote in the Reader's Digest that King's "exaggerated appraisal of his own self-importance" and the communist influence on his thinking made King "persona non-grata to Lyndon Johnson" and "has alienated many of the Negro's friends and armed the Negro's foes."

One of the last and true friends of King, the great Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel prophetically said: "The whole future of America will depend upon the impact and influence of Dr King." When King was murdered something died in many of us. The bullets sucked some of the free and democratic spirit out of the US experiment. The next day over 100 American cities and towns were in flames - the fire this time had arrived again!

Anyone who's been observing American politics for any length of time will be familiar with the right-wing charge that the media has a liberal bias that makes it impossible for conservatives to get a fair shake. This has been around for decades, going back to speechwriter William Safire's famous screed against the "nattering nabobs of negativism" (written for Richard Nixon's vice president, Spiro Agnew) and backed up by studies showing that most journalists tend to vote Democratic, while ignoring the fact that most media companies are owned or run by wealthy conservatives. There are library shelves full of books on this subject on both sides of the argument.

As should be obvious, this is actually a clever political strategy deployed by cynical GOP operatives. Back in the 1990s, a powerful Republican official named of Rich Bond spilled the beans: This was really an effort to bully the press into trying to appease conservatives, thereby creating a rightward slant by default. He told journalists: There is some strategy to it. I'm a coach of kids' basketball and Little League teams. If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is "work the refs" [meaning the media]. Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack next time.

According to Eric Alterman, author of "What Liberal Media," Bill Kristol, of current Never Trump fame, once admitted this, saying, "The liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures." (Nonetheless, Kristol started beating the same drum again after George W. Bush was elected.)

This belief in liberal bias is such an article of faith on the right that to deny it is to deny that the sun came up in the morning. To point out that Fox News has become a Donald Trump propaganda network, with a hotline directly to the Oval Office, is perversely seen as proof of it.

As I wrote on Monday, Fox has become Trump's de facto kitchen cabinet and unofficial communications office, creating a tight feedback loop between the far right and the White House. The president reportedly dines with Sean Hannity and former Fox executive Bill Shine on a regular basis. He consults with Jeanine Pirro and various "Fox & Friends" hosts. Also Monday, the Daily Beast's Maxwel Tani and Asawin Suebsaeng reported on Trump's extremely close relationship with Fox Business host Lou Dobbs. This goes even beyond Hannity- or Laura Ingraham-level sycophancy:

What sets Dobbs apart is the degree to which the president views him as a political and populism godfather, the #MAGA Socrates to Trump's Plato.

Dobbs was with CNN for 30 years before he jumped over to Fox as one of the first cable news stars. He was always obviously a conservative and openly hostile to liberals, but he didn't toe the usual Republican party line. Over time Dobbs evolved into a hard right wing populist with everything that implies, including white nationalism, xenophobia and selective outrage directed at certain industries and trade policies. Starting around 2007, he became obsessed with illegal immigration and then morphed into a full-blown culture warrior and birther conspiracist after Barack Obama was elected.

Back in 2010 Steve Bannon had even tried to persuade Dobbs to run for president and he seriously considered it. But at the time he was seeing serious success with his rebooted Fox Business show, after having studied the bombastic styles of Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck, so he decided to stick with his TV career. Donald Trump's decision-making process was remarkably similar.

These days, aside from his usual impassioned nativism, Dobbs is obsessed with the "deep state" and believes it's "time to declare war" on the FBI and the Justice Department to "clear out the rot." In his supposed view, those federal agencies "have broken the public trust by destroying evidence, defying oversight and actively trying to bring down the Trump presidency." His obsequious fawning over the president is more over-the-top than a teenage fangirl backstage at a Harry Styles concert. It's embarrassing.

According to Tani and Suebsaeng, Trump sees Dobbs as more than just a fan and an adviser:

Dobbs doesn't get to just interview and socialize with the president; he is involved in some of the administration's more sensitive discussions. During the first year of the Trump era, the president has patched in Dobbs via speakerphone to multiple meetings in the Oval Office so that he could offer his two cents, according to three sources familiar with these conversations. Trump will ask Dobbs for his opinion before and after his senior aides or Cabinet members have spoken. Occasionally, he will cut off an official so the Fox Business host can jump in ...

"He cherishes Lou," a senior White House official told The Daily Beast. And the feeling is, evidently, quite mutual.

John Bolton's career of pushing for bombing countries like Iran and North Korea, and his having played an active role in the Bush/Cheney regime's criminal war of aggression that destroyed Iraq, makes him a clear and present danger to our country and world peace. He is about to become Donald Trump's personal national security advisor with a staff of 400 right next to the White House. He must be stopped!

This outlaw - the shame of Yale Law School-should have been cast away as a pariah if not prosecuted and imprisoned. A bully to his subordinates in the government and known as "kiss-ass" to his superiors, Bolton is aggressive, relentless, and consistently wrong, when not prevaricatory.

Under Secretary of State Colin Powell, during the imperial Bush/Cheney presidency, Bolton told the media that Fidel Castro was developing chemical and biological weapons. False. Secretary Powell, who believes Bolton is impetuous and dangerous, overrode his in-house liar and corrected the record. While in Cuba with a group, I heard Fidel Castro say he feared Bolton's words were a precursor to a U.S. attack until Bolton's remarks were dismissed by his superiors.

There is a remarkable liberal/conservative dislike and fright about Bolton having Trump's ear daily. Especially since Trump is susceptible to adopting the positions of the last person who reaches him. The added danger is that Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has privately told people that he, like many who have experienced Bolton in government, cannot work with him. So does that mean that Trump will have to choose between the restraining hand of General Mattis and the recklessness of the draft-avoiding torture advocate John Bolton?

Will Republicans, who refused to confirm Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 2005, assume some responsibility for opposing this sociopath? They could easily pass a joint resolution of Congress demanding withdrawal of the appointment by Trump.

There are many vigorous critics of Bolton's career and subsequent belligerent stances ; Just last month Bolton wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal demanding the bombing of North Korea. His juvenile, lethal positions avoid considering the consequences, responses, backlash and danger to our country's own safety. He likes to bet on the world-a Dr. Strangelove on steroids.

A lengthy New York Times editorial (March 23, 2018) declares, "Yes, John Bolton Really is that Dangerous." It begins: "there are few people more likely than Mr. Bolton to lead the country into war." Especially since Trump - mired in domestic scandals, investigations, and personal lawsuits-may wish to wag the dog and start wider, distracting, armed hostilities abroad.

The American Conservative magazine is stirring that segment of the political spectrum with Gareth Porter's article, "The Untold Story of John Bolton's Campaign for War with Iran." Trump didn't like General McMaster's (Trump's outgoing National Security Advisor) counsel that the U.S. remain in the Iran nuclear accord and not isolate itself from other major country signatories who say Iran is complying with its terms.

Then there is Bolton's bigotry against Arabs and Muslims and his alliance with Pamela Geller-the notorious Islamophobe. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) has elaborated on Bolton's outrageous falsehoods against Arabs and Muslims (the "other anti-semitism" in the words of James Zogby in 1994 at a conference in Israel).

How does such a deep hatred in the White House connect to Trump's repeated declaration that he allegedly seeks a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians?

Republican constitutional law analyst, Bruce Fein, presents a strong case that the powerful position of national security advisor to the President must be confirmed by the Senate. In which case, Bolton would be gone.

Fein argues:

The Appointments Clause of the Constitution militates against the National Security Advisor aberration. It makes Senate confirmation of "officers of the United States" the rule. But Congress may by statute create exceptions for "inferior officers." But it has not done so for the Advisor-even assuming the office qualifies as "inferior."

Fein recounts Bolton's "unmasking the names of Americans whose conversation has been intercepted by the National Security Agency under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)." He still defends the catastrophic invasion and occupation of Iraq (for more information see Madea Benjamin's "10 Reasons to Fear John Bolton"). How does such a madman like Bolton keep coming back? Two reasons stand out. First, the more aggressive parts of the military-industrial complex, bolstered by the neocons, see him as a useful tool-for bigger military budgets and empire. Second, he is a staunch collaborator with the Israel lobby's support of Israel's militaristic, increasingly autocratic regime that regularly works against a two-state solution (The majority of American Jews support a two-state solution). If President Trump gives Bolton a waiver while he works without a security clearance, as he has done, under wide condemnation, for his family and a few others already, the political firestorm may be enough, with other factors, to cause Trump to have Bolton bolt the White House with only his Trump-irritating walrus mustache intact.

One of the most consistent things about the current Supreme Court is the solid 5-4 majority for going the wrong way on issues of labor and management. There was another one of those Monday, a 5-4 decision in the case of Encino Motorcars, Inc. v. Navarro.

At issue was the right of "service advisors" at an auto sales company, whose job it is to identify problems with a customer's car and then sell that customer the solution. They were regularly worked over 40 hours a week and they went to court to try and get overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

(The FLSA specifically exempts "engaging in servicing automobiles" from the overtime pay regulations.)

In reversing a lower court decision in favor of Encino, the Ninth Circuit argued that, since the "service advisors" did not themselves do the work of servicing the automobiles, they were not included in the FLSA exemption and, thus, were entitled to overtime pay. Encino appealed to the Supreme Court and, two years ago, the Court sent the case back to the Ninth, which held for Navarro again. That was the decision that was reversed on Monday by the Nine Wise Souls in D.C.

(Note: the change in FLSA regulations in this regard occurred in 2011 under the Obama Administration, which is probably why this administration* declined to defend it. Back in January, Ms. Justice Elena Kagan found this situation curious.) Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, concluded:

Service advisors are integral to the servicing process. They "mee[t] customers; liste[n] to their concerns about their cars; sugges[t] repair and maintenance services; sel[l] new accessories or replacement parts; recor[d] service orders; follo[w] up with customers as the services are performed (for instance, if new problems are discovered); and explai[n] the repair and maintenance work when customers return for their vehicles." Encino I, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 2). If you ask the average customer who services his car, the primary, and perhaps only, person he is likely to identify is his service advisor. Let us be clear. The service advisor is the guy who greets you when you show up for new brake pads, tells you what brake pads are available for your particular vehicle, and then shows you where the vending machines are while you wait. According to Mr. Justice Thomas, who may have never owned a car, you'd think that guy behind the desk is going to be the guy who goes under your hood. This has not been my experience.

Service advisors, such as respondents, neither sell automobiles nor service (i.e., repair or maintain) vehicles. Rather, they "meet and greet [car] owners"; "solicit and sugges[t]" repair services "to remedy the [owner's] complaints"; "solicit and suggest . . . supplemental [vehicle] service[s]"; and provide owners with cost estimates. App. 55. Because service advisors neither sell nor repair automobiles, they should remain outside the exemption and within the Act's coverage.

Wisconsin voters on Tuesday sent a stinging rebuke to the state Republican Party, rejecting its hand-picked candidate for state Supreme Court as well as an effort to eliminate a key watchdog position.

By a margin of 56-44, an unusually high spring turnout of one million voters elected liberal Milwaukee County Judge Rebecca Dallet over conservative Sauk County Judge Michael Screnock. The election shifts the court's ideological balance, leaving conservatives with just a 4-3 edge instead of a 5-2 domination.

Wisconsin voters also rejected, by a 61-39 percent margin, a constitutional amendment supported by Republicans to eliminate the office of state treasurer. Both developments suggest that Wisconsin may have been jarred back into being a blue state after playing a pivotal role in delivering the presidency to Donald Trump.

"People are engaged, they are hungry for change," Dallet told supporters at an election night victory party in Milwaukee. Dallet had championed her determination to stand up for Wisconsin values, including those she said were being "attacked" by Trump.

"There was just great motivation on the part of people who were not comfortable with the status quo," says Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin. "It demonstrates a strong pull in the direction that Wisconsin could be headed in the fall election."

The state's Republican governor, Scott Walker, grumpily tweeted: "Tonight's results show we are at risk of a #BlueWave in WI. The Far Left is driven by anger & hatred -- we must counter it with optimism & organization. Let's share our positive story with voters & win in November."

Republican operatives ran Screnock's campaign, and fully 40 percent of the $1 million he raised for his own coffers in the officially nonpartisan race came from the state Republican Party. He was endorsed by the National Rifle Association and backed by the business lobby Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, which reportedly spent $1.6 million on ads painting Dallet as someone who protects child rapists. (She's actually one of the harshest sentencers in the state.)

One attack ad, aired endlessly by the business group, identified a grandfather as a molester who supposedly got off lightly in Judge Dallet's court because of her fondness for child rapists. Not mentioned was that she imposed the sentence recommended by the prosecution. The family of the victims, who were effectively identified when the grandfather was named, pleaded with the group to stop running the ad. It refused to do so, and Screnock uttered not a peep of protest.

"WMC set a new low, violating the privacy of children who were the victims of sexual abuse. And then they refused to take down their despicable ad when the victims' family publicly pleaded with them to stop," says Scot Ross, executive director of the liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now. "The voters have spoken, overwhelmingly rejecting these tactics."

Screnock was appointed to the bench in 2015 by Walker, after having served eight years as a private attorney, during which he defended the governor's anti-union law against legal challenge and legislative Republicans redrawing of voter boundaries to their own advantage. The U.S. Supreme Court is now weighing whether the extreme gerrymandering that took place in Wisconsin violated the Constitution.

The proposed constitution amendment on the state treasurer's office, which voters shot down on Tuesday, had already passed two consecutive sessions of the state's GOP-controlled legislature, with bipartisan support. Only voter ratification was needed to eliminate the office, which has existed since before Wisconsin became a state. The office has in recent years been shorn of much of its duties, but defenders have argued that it still serves an essential oversight role and could, with committed leadership, recover some of its lost strength. (The office's current occupant, a Republican, argued for its elimination.)

Earlier this month, Walker and legislative leaders abandoned plans to leave two state legislative seats vacant through the end of year, after three judges ruled in separate decisions that this violated state law.

"We know of no law that allows us to disregard the [statute]," declared appeals court Judge Paul Reilly. "Representative government and the election of our representatives are never 'unnecessary,' never a 'waste of taxpayer resources,' and the calling of the special elections are, as the governor acknowledges, his 'obligation.' "

Walker's transparent purpose in seeking to block the elections was that he feared Democrats would win. In a special election in January that made national news, Democrat Peggy Schachtner won in a district that had previously been considered safely Republican.

After the judges ruled against Walker, legislative Republicans planned to hold an extraordinary session to rewrite the law that the governor was breaking, and thus still keep the elections from happening. But this plan was abandoned under pressure.

"I think they realized that that would not go over well with the voting population," says Heck of Common Cause. "And Walker wisely just said, 'I've got to bite the bullet.' "

Why do you stand? they were asked, and
Why do you walk?

Because of the children, they said,
and because of the heart, and
because of the bread.

Because the cause is
the heart's beat, and
the children born, and
the risen bread.

Daniel Berrigan ~ "Some"

I have never been more frightened in my life. I have never been more hopeful in my life. The former I owe to the times. The latter I owe to the student activists who marched on 3/24, and to all the survivors of shooting after shooting who joined them, their memories crowded with the dead as they roared. Only an age so thoroughly repugnant could galvanize a response so perfectly righteous.

What happened last weekend -- in Washington DC, in cities around the country and the world, and in my own tiny town square surrounded by neighbors with my daughter's little hand in mine -- changed me forever. I have never seen the like, nor has anyone else living. The March For Our Lives was the grandchild of the civil rights movement, the child of every Vietnam and Iraq War protest, sister and brother to every march and every raised fist that came before, and it stood proudly with them all. It did not strut or preen. It owned.

The paving stones in Washington, DC are still whispering to each other: What was that? Days later, I'm not sure everyone fully comprehends what took place on Saturday. I'm not sure I do, not yet.

It is about gun violence in schools, of course, and the wide availability of war weapons within our society. I attended the local 3/24 protest with my daughter, who is of an age with the Sandy Hook victims when they were cut down. Volunteers had set up a table filled with pre-made signs people were free to take. My daughter picked a sign and held it up for me to see, a wide smile peeking from behind windblown hair. It read, "AM I NEXT?" in jet black ink. Part of my heart died on the spot, and it was just a sign. She's still here. So many children aren't.

School shootings and war weapons: These two despicable phenomena are what brought us to this mighty crossroads. There is so much more, though, and speaker after speaker at the march in Washington hammered that point home until the windows rattled. The long-ignored calamity of gun violence in communities of color -- including the violence of policing -- was the centerpiece of the most striking commentaries of the day. Tall among them was the thunder laid down by 11-year-old Naomi Wadler:

I am here today to represent Courtlin Arrington. I am here today to represent Hadiya Pendleton. I am here today to represent Taiyania Thompson, who, at just 16, was shot dead in her home here in Washington, DC. I am here today to acknowledge and represent the African American girls whose stories don't make the front page of every national newspaper, whose stories don't lead on the evening news. I represent the African American women who are victims of gun violence, who are simply statistics instead of vibrant, beautiful girls full of potential.

So I am here today to honor the words of Toni Morrison: "If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it." I urge everyone here and everyone who hears my voice to join me in telling the stories that aren't told, to honor the girls, the women of color who are murdered at disproportionate rates in this nation. I urge each of you to help me write the narrative for this world and understand, so that these girls and women are never forgotten. Thank you.

Reinforcing the challenge laid down by Wadler was 17-year-old youth leader and activist Edna Lizbeth Chavez. Her sorrow was fathomless, her demands straightforward:

Policymakers, listen up. Arming teachers will not work! More security in our schools does not work! Zero-tolerance policies do not work! They make us feel like criminals. We should feel empowered and supported in our schools. Instead of funding these policies, fund mentorship programs, mental health resources, paid internship and job opportunities. My brother, like many others, would have benefited from this. So let's make it happen. It's important to work with people that are impacted by these issues -- the people you represent.

We need to focus on changing the conditions that foster violence and trauma. And that's how we will transform our communities and uplift our voices. This has not, and shall not, stop us. It has only empowered us. Mi nombre, my name, is Edna Lizbeth Chavez. Remember my name. Remember these faces. Remember us and how we're making a change. La lucha sigue.

In an editorial published the Monday after the march, Gonzalez wrote, "We Stoneman Douglas students may have woken up only recently from our sheltered lives to fight this fight, but we stand in solidarity with those who have struggled before us, and we will fight alongside them moving forward to enact change and make life survivable for all young people. People who have been fighting for this for too long, others who were never comfortable enough to openly talk about their experiences with gun violence, or still others who were never listened to when opening up about their experiences with gun violence or were afraid to speak out -- these are the people we are fighting with and for."

Donald Trump's name was barely mentioned on Saturday, a fact that must have painfully dented his eggshell ego, but all he represents was cast down and denounced just the same. Thanks to Mr. Trump and those who serve him, fascism and overt racism have become fashionable again. What took place in Washington this weekend was, among other things, a giant middle finger aimed directly at the white nationalism of the age. Here is a generation of young people reaching out to each other, and to us all, from the funeral shroud.

This largest generation in US history is coming into its voting rights day by passing day, a fact that should strike mortal fear into the hearts of those who enjoy things as they are. Bought-off fools with muddy wits are trying to shout down these new activists, to little effect, and those with a financial stake in the violent status quo are leaving visible puddles of desperation in their wake. For the first time in a very long time, the country is stoutly on the side of the protesters, and the protesters have no intention of letting the grass grow under their feet.

Beyond all that is one unbending truth: Every time a school carries out an "Active Shooter Drill," another activist is born. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps, someone once said. Time always wins.

I have been attending protest rallies with grim regularity for a long time now. My experience of 3/24 was not nearly as dynamic as what was experienced in the capital or in the other larger protests around the country -- just a few hundred people standing together in unity at the rag end of a long New England winter... but one of them was my daughter, clapping and cheering and shouting, "Everyone should be safe!" She was part of something big, she knew it, and she was proud. When she saw the footage of the larger marches on the news that night, she turned to me and said, "That was us, Daddy!" It sure was, I told her. "Let's do it again!" Count on it, kid.

We stand before the confluence of history. Generations of violence, racism, greed and indifference have conspired to make diamonds forged by the crushing weight of failure and fear. These student activists are now in the headlines because of gun violence in schools and the availability of war weapons, but they seek much more. In their whole lives, many have never known one minute of peace. They are determined that this will change. They are hard, they are strong, they are the ones they've been waiting for, and like springtime, they are finally here.

Dear Vorstandsvorsitzender Ripley,

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 plans to take over all the TV stations in America and make them tell fascist lies, 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 "Rethuglican 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 04-28-2018. We salute you Herr Ripley Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Pence