Leadership?

-by Dan Levitin

I am a neuroscientist and a musician. An odd combination, perhaps, but one I come by honestly. I played in a series of punk and new wave bands, including The Mortals, which is how I met Howie Klein in 1981, when he came to see us perform at The Mabuhay Gardens, the On Broadway, and other clubs.

When I produced our first record, Deserted Eyes, he enthusiastically played it on his radio show at KUSF.

I had always been interested in science, and when I started working for the great producer Sandy Pearlman (Blue Oyster Cult, The Clash) I found a kindred spirit. We drove over to Berkeley and down to Stanford whenever we could and sat in on neuroscience lectures. When the music business started to implode, I decided to actually enroll in college and eventually earned my doctorate.

In my music and my science, I have tried to avoid being political. I believe science exists as a public trust and should be politically neutral, providing a reliable source of information from which people should draw their own conclusions. And I always wanted my music to be a source of emotional expression that would potentially reach everyone (although I have occasionally written and recorded some political songs). My efforts to remain politically neutral occasionally collide with firmly held beliefs. This is one such moment.

Around the world, I am stunned by the stark disparity in how different leaders are responding to the corona virus crisis. The largest chasm is between President Trump and Queen Elizabeth. Think about that: the man who wishes he were a monarch or dictator (he has made a number of assertions to prove this point, previously documented in DownWithTyranny) is being completely outclassed by an actual monarch. If you haven't seen it, I urge you to watch the Queen's address to the nation. It was so moving, my wife and I cried while watching it.

Her majesty begins by applauding health care workers, workers in the food delivery chain, and calls upon all Britons to face the challenges together, and to help one another through this. She references a similar radio address she made 80 years ago, in 1940.

This reminded me of Jimmy Carter's "sweater" speech from 1977 during the energy crisis, when he called upon Americans to help their neighbors, and to make sacrifices for the common good. And he set an example: rather than wearing the suit that all presidents before him had worn for presidential addresses, he wore a cardigan, while asking us to work together through the energy crisis. "Simply by keeping our thermostats at 65 degrees in the daytime, and 55 degrees at night."

The visual image of the president setting an example is a powerful one.

And it's not just Democratic presidents who have set a positive example for us. After the Challenger explosion in 1986, Ronald Reagan postponed his state of the union address to bring the country together to honor not just the seven astronauts who died then, but to honor the wonders of science, of exploration, "the process of discovery, of expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the faint-hearted." [If he were making the speech in 2020, he would certainly replace "man's horizons" with "humans' horizons.")





I'm contrasting that with Trump's selfish, and outlandish refusal to wear a mask. Rather than setting an example for the country, he is concerned about his image, about what other people will think of him. This is the opposite of leadership. A leader puts the interests of everyone else ahead of them. My friend Stan McChrystal, when he was a four-star general and head of the Joint Special Operations Command in Iraq and Afghanistan went out with his troops kicking down doors and capturing terrorists. He was among them, setting an example, not hiding behind a desk. "That beautiful, Resolute desk" as Trump describes it, in the oval office, a desk that official diaries show he rarely actually uses (insiders say he spends most of his time watching television). He goes on to say, in this remarkable video, "I think wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens... I don't see if for myself, I just don't." What he's saying in essence is that he is more concerned about vanity than about the 330 million people he supposedly leads.

(Did he really say that he welcomes dictators into the Oval Office? I had to watch this twice because I couldn't believe what I was hearing. But of course he does—he is trying to learn from them. Can you imagine any other president bragging about meeting with dictators?)

The Queen offers reassurance and a steady hand. Trump provokes uncertainty, he wavers, and he contradicts his own experts, ultimately firing them if they don't become the sycophantic yes men he craves. This approach has tanked the stock market, of course, and this is not just an issue for the wealthy: many working class Americans-- government workers, truckers, teachers-- have their pensions and retirements funds managed by large organizations that have invested in the stock market. I was curious to know if the last major disaster to hit the U.S. had a similar effect on the market. After 9/11, the market took a hit, but rebounded completely within a month. I, and most presidential biographers and historians I know, do not consider George W. Bush to have been a particularly good president. But in his address to the nation on 9/11, Bush offered a steadying message in a defining moment when Americans may have turned on many of our own.





Rather than looking to blame others as Trump always does, Bush called for us to work together and not to blame.

"The American people were appalled and outraged at last Tuesday's attacks. And so were Muslims all across the world... When we think of Islam we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. Billions of people find comfort and solace and peace. And that's made brothers and sisters out of every race-- out of every race... This is a great country... because we share the same values of respect and dignity and human worth. And it is my honor to be meeting with leaders who feel just the same way I do. They're outraged, they're sad. They love America just as much as I do. I want to thank you all for giving me a chance to come by. And may God bless us all."

There is a humility to Bush (I never thought I'd be writing those words) and a graciousness that we never see in Trump. And he emphasizes meeting with leaders who feel the same way he does, in embracing liberty, compassion, peace, and rationality.

As a musician, I always tried to take the stage with a sense of gratitude and humility. I knew that people had paid money to be there, that they had planned an evening around the performance, and that I had to do the best job I could in order to help them to get the most out of their interactions with me. I was in a great band once with a fantastic songwriter who somehow sabotaged every concert by insulting the audience. He was not there for them, he was there for himself. The band did not last long. Not nearly as long as the Trump presidency. But we can all come together as a nation in November and say "this is not good enough. This is not leadership. This is not the country we love." 

 --30--

 Daniel Levitin is a neuroscientist, musician, and best-selling author of a number of books including This Is Your Brain on Music and his anti-Trump, pro-rationality book, A Field Guide to Lies. His newest album is available free on most streaming platforms and his anti-Trump song, "Turnaround." is here:

The Importance Of Distinguishing Between Chronological Age And Physiological Age

About a month ago, we mentioned that Dan Levitin's new book, Successful Aging was about to be released. And now it is-- and #2 on the best seller list. This week he did an OpEd for the Wall Street Journal, A neuroscientist says these are the ideal ages for the optimal presidential ticket. "To a scientist or medical doctor," he told me today, "your chronological age is just a number that doesn’t reflect your health. There are 35 year olds with health problems that will vastly increase their risk of death before 40, and there are 80 year olds whose brains and bodies are perfectly fit. What’s important is not chronological age, but biological age, stress load, and overall mental and physical fitness. While it is true that 80 year olds are slower at tasks than most 35 year olds, speed isn’t everything, and not always a good indicator of overall health and potential for long and effective life."

Trump and Biden are clearly senile-- or at least rapidly approaching that state-- and unfit for the presidency. Bernie is older than either and fit as a fiddle and likely to be the best president since FDR. Mayo Pete and Tulsi are relatively young but the idea that either of them would make a decent president is patently absurd. Neither is likely to improve with age either. Bloomberg turned 78 last year and if you watched his debate performance Wednesday night, you could see he's even more unprepared for the presidency than Biden. None of that is a conclusion a scientist like Levitin would jump to but read between the lines of his OpEd and see if you can figure out who he's voting for on Super Tuesday.

One year shy of the constitutional age limit to be president of the U.S., at age 34, Finland’s Sanna Marin is the world’s youngest sitting prime minister. New Zealand’s Jacina Ardern is 39, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele is 38, and Ukraine’s Oleksiy Honcharuk is only 35.

On the world stage of both politics and activism, youth seems to be having a moment. Malala Yousafzai is a leading advocate for the education of women and girls at 22. A group of high school students is leading the charge for gun-law reform in the U.S. And the world’s most recognizable climate activist is 17-year-old Greta Thunberg from Sweden.

Presidential candidates Pete Buttigieg and Tulsi Gabbard are both 38, and vying to be the next politicians in their 30s taking on leadership roles. At the other end of the spectrum, Elizabeth Warren is 70. Donald Trump is 73. Joe Biden is 77. Bernie Sanders is 78. These candidates bracket the age range of presidential hopefuls. As a neuroscientist, people have been asking me “how old is too old to be president?”

Aging researchers (those who study aging, not those who are necessarily themselves old!) distinguish between chronological age and physiological age. Chronological age is simply how long you’ve lived. Physiological age is a subtler concept that reflects the various life events, stressors and illnesses you may have had.

We all know of older adults who hardly seem to show the effects of aging (like Jane Fonda, 82, Jane Goodall, 85, or George Shultz, 99), and others whose bodies seem to give out in their 50s or 60s (like John Ritter and Nell Carter, both of whom died of heart failure at 54). Chronological age can be misleading.

Take President Kennedy, who suffered from Addison’s disease, and served from age 43 to 46. Kennedy was in pain nearly every day of his presidency, and during the first six months alone, Kennedy suffered stomach, colon and prostate problems, spastic colitis, high fevers, dehydration, abscesses, sleeplessness and high cholesterol (above 300).

During his short term he took testosterone, high doses of antibiotics, hydrocortisone, antispasmotics, barbiturates, amphetamines, antihistamines, procaine for back pain and an anti-psychotic (although only for a few days). It would be reasonable to assume that he missed a large number of work days, and that he lacked the “vigah” that his image projected.

Woodrow Wilson had a stroke in 1919 at the relatively young age of 63, and he remained incapacitated for the final years of his presidency. The presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt was famously plagued by missed days due to illness. While in office, Dwight Eisenhower suffered a heart attack (at age 62), developed Crohn’s disease and suffered a stroke. So, clearly, chronological age is not the whole story.

Today, we tend to embrace a societal narrative that the human brain grows and learns from birth up to a certain point (60? 65? 70?) and then begins a steep and precipitous decline. Old age, in this telling, is a time of inevitable loss of function, decay and illnesses.

But this narrative has not kept pace with medical science. From a neural standpoint, there is no reason why an older adult would not be as effective as a younger adult. We are living longer and healthier than at any time in history, and most older adults will experience improvements in certain areas.

In particular, older adults are better at pattern matching-- at seeing common threads across what younger adults might view as unrelated or disparate events. This gives older adults a better ability to predict outcomes, and to solve problems, particularly those involving interpersonal conflicts-- this is because older adults, as a group, also experience increases in compassion, tolerance and empathy. Together, these might be called wisdom.

Research in organizational behavior on the science of problem solving and productivity shows that diversity yields a competitive edge. Work groups and teams that are composed of people from diverse backgrounds-- races, ethnicities, gender, skill sets, religions and, yes, age-- are better at a range of problem-solving tasks and tend to come up with more innovative solutions.

Younger adults learn more quickly and are more willing to take risks to achieve their goals (sometimes a good thing). They’re also faster thinkers and more comfortable with new technology. Older adults often exercise better judgment, have a more nuanced sense of risk and, through their experience and enhanced pattern matching, can see analogies from previous situations that may help to solve current problems. The combination is powerful.

Don't worry, Bernie has pledged to put a woman on his ticket

This strongly suggests that the ideal presidential ticket will include an older adult and a younger adult, and a cabinet comprising age, gender, and geographic and racial diversity. Of course, our own self-interest may want us to elect someone who “thinks like us” or “looks like us,” but the best governance comes from conflicting views. In the free market of ideas, we are all better off if every idea is given a chance to compete with others, so that the best ideas win out.

How old is too old to be president? It’s not a matter of chronology-- it’s a matter of biology. Thanks to medical advances and a focus on healthy lifestyle choices, many people in their 80s and 90s have the stamina, wisdom and compassion necessary to solve some of the biggest problems that face the world today. And the best solutions will come when their perspectives are combined with the curiosity, values, digital nativism and skills of the young.

UPDATE: Alan Grayson

Before he was elected to Congress, Grayson, who had written his master's thesis on gerontology, founded the Alliance for Aging Research, where served as an officer for 22 years. The organization was instrumental in increasing federal support for aging research by 500%, leading to breakthroughs in the treatment of blindness, weak bones, Alzheimer’s disease, and other afflictions of the elderly. Grayson's gave it the motto: "Living to 100-and Loving It." IN Congress, no one worked harder for the well-being of seniors than Grayson. This afternoon he told me that "One of the great shortcomings of modern politics is the absence of reliable information about to what extent political candidates (and CEO’s, and generals) may have identifiable psychological issues and deficits that would affect job performance, whether age-related or not. (And this is true even if you are not a sociopath who writes your own medical reports, like Demented Donald.) People joke about making candidates take an IQ test, but maybe that’s not the psychological test that you really want them to take. Within a month of being in Congress, I knew several Members (and one Vice President) who had such issues, but their constituents didn’t know, and neither I nor anyone else had any incentive to inform them. In Trump’s case, the painfully obvious diagnosis (narcissistic personality disorder-- not exactly what we need in a President) received far less attention than whatever it was that the Half-Twit tweeted five minutes ago. It’s a flaw in democracy itself. As FDR demonstrated, it’s your mind that matters in that job, not your legs."

Successful Aging

A little less than 2 weeks ago, the House passed H.R. 1230, Bobby Scott's Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act. Every single Democrat plus 34Republicans voted for it. Who could possibly be against protecting older workers from discrimination. Well, let's start with the 154 Republicans who voted against it, including the entire GOP House leadership, as well as extreme ideologues like Ken Calvert, Devin Nunes, Lee Zeldin, Greg Gianforte to mention a few. And then there's Mitch McConnell, who is refusing to even allow a debate and vote in the Senate, calling it "socialist." Where does this opposition to older workers come from?

Dan Levitin is a distinguished neuroscientist, psychology professor and author. His new book, Successful Aging was released Dutton last week. More about the book in a moment. While Dan and I were corresponding about H.R. 1230, he wrote that "In 2020, it is clear that we still find a great deal of bigotry and repression again our fellow citizens. Fortunately, most of the 'isms' have become part of the national conversation: racism, sexism, prejudice against LGBTQ individuals, members of various religions and countries. One pernicious and insidious form of bigotry persists without any significant organized national conversation: agism. It is desperately hard for someone over the age of 55 to receive a promotion or be hired into a new job. With the extraordinary advances in health and medical science, we’re not just living longer than ever, but healthier than ever. For the first time, there are more Americans over 65 than under 5. And neuroscience research is clear that continuing to work into our 80s and beyond is neuroprotective, helping to fend off Alzheimer’s and a range of diseases. As our societal narrative tends to marginalize older adults, it has not kept pace with scientific developments. Older adults have superior problem solving and pattern matching skills, tend to be more compassionate and tolerant, and to find solutions that elude their younger counterparts. What would it mean to treat older adults as a resource rather than a burden? It would mean harnessing the wisdom and compassion of a growing segment of the population whom we have tended to marginalize. Working older adults would continue to contribute to social security rather than drawing from it."

State Rep. Tom Winter is a progressive Democrat running for Montana's one statewide congressional seat. He told me he's well aware that our society’s ageism is a silent enforcer of wealth and class disparities. "People all over the country talk about the idea of the 'New West'-- cities like Bozeman or Missoula or Boulder or Boise-- that are driving growth and attracting new residents. But that growth is fundamentally unequal in so many ways. The hallmark of rural Montana beyond those growing cities is an aging population, and we need a politics, and a worldview, that responds to the needs of older adults and values the contributions they can make. We must stop viewing economic growth as keyed to younger workers. To do that is to perpetuate our society’s ageism and increase the inequality of opportunity in rural communities across my state and the country."

Dan wrote that his research reveals that our societal narrative about aging is false and out of date. The book's premise is that old age need not be a time of decline and irrelevance, but rather, a time of increased creativity, improvement in problem-solving skills, and full of meaning. He explodes several myths including the myth of failing memory, and the myth of old age depression. He wrote that "Across 72 countries the peak age of happiness is 82." He's hoping that the book will help change the conversation and he's trying to make the point that agism is one of the last biases that we tolerate in society. As he said above, it's difficult for older adults to get a job or get promoted. Two-thirds of American workers said they had witnessed or experienced age discrimination at work. "Employers should recognize that offering opportunities to older workers is smart business," he wrote, "not just a feel-good, charitable act. Multigenerational teams with older members tend to be more productive; older adults boost the productivity of those around them, and such teams outperform single-generational ones."




Singer/songwriter Rosanne Cash wrote that Successful Aging "is the book I need now. This is probably the book you need now. Levitin beautifully weaves hard science with more subtle, subjective agents of change-- compassion, friendship, the redemptive power of work-- into a refreshing guide for those of us navigating the penultimate stage of life."

Dan gave me three autographed copies of Successful Aging to help in our efforts to raise some contributions for Tom Winter's campaign. It doesn't matter how much you contribute but any contribution that comes in for Tom on this page or at the 2020 Blue America congressional thermometer on the right, before Tuesday at 6pm (PT) will give you a chance to win one of the autographed books. We're going to select three winners at random. You don't have to live in Montana and you don't have to be an older voter. Anyone can give it a try. Tom's a great candidate anyway and you can read more about him on his own website here. His campaign is fueled by issues like Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, expanding labor rights, housing for all and criminal justice reform.

Turnaround-- You're Hearing It First, Albeit Unmastered

Dan Levitin is better known for his books, particularly This Is Your Brain On Music, and for his scholarly endeavors in the field of neuroscience than for his music. But he has recorded an album, Turnaround, the title track of which he threw together a quick slideshow for, above. He wrote the lyrics with Christopher Harrison, a founding member of SONOS, who produced the album as well. Dan put together a credible and talented band, all of whom contributed their time to work with him on his songs. The album has been recorded and Dan has started a Kickstarter page to cover the costs of mastering, art work, printing and manufacturing of CDs and vinyl albums.

See if you can guess who exactly the song "Turnaround" is about:

When the truth gets buried deep
Beneath the thousand years asleep
Time demands a turnaround
And once again the truth is found

Where hate is free to rain on all
Today a child will hear the call
Time demands a turnaround
And once again the truth is found

When prayers are sins and lies are truth
When age can masquerade as youth
We find ourselves in dreams profound
And shine a light on the underground

When all around you lie and hate
When those in need are those who wait
Time demands a turnaround
And once again the truth is found

When prayers are sins and lies are truth
When age can masquerade as youth
We find ourselves in dreams profound
And shine a light on the underground

There are more songs available on the kickstarter page, as well as a list of "what you get" for contributions. For $15, for example, you get a free download of the album. Although there's lots in between, for $4,000, you're a genuine executive producer! Dan's hoping to have it all wrapped up and pressed by spring.

Is Climate Change Denial An Impeachable Offense?

"President" Gas

House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler was the ranking member of the committee but he didn't have a free shot at the chair when the Democrats won back the House. Pelosi ally Zoe Lofgren is the number 2 most senior Democrat on the committee and she decided to play "a woman should have this position" card. In a case like that, the House Steering and Policy decides with the guidance of the top Democrat in the House. In other words, Pelosi makes the decision. She knew it had to be Nadler. She just wanted one thing out of him: she'd call the shots, especially on impeachment. He agreed, became chair and she's not allowing impeachment to move forward. Everyone just spits out her idiotic, misleading talking point that they can't do anything until Mueller is finished with his investigation-- actually an outrageous, boldfaced lie, worthy of Trump himself. Yesterday, Nadler was on John Catsimatidis' radio show, where the takeaway was this Nadler quote:

"I view this president and his conduct as the greatest threat to the democratic system and to the constitutional government since the Civil War, whether it’s threatening the newspapers or threatening the judiciary or calling people who criticize him treasonous."

The "greatest threat," huh? "Since the Civil War?" And still no impeachment? And as horrifying as Trump's threat to democracy is-- which Nadler is supposed to protect us from-- there's an even more existential threat Trump has made himself to our families, our country, our world: his line in the sand stance that Climate Change doesn't exist. That's a big deal. The fake "president is going to kill us all.



Author Daniel Levitin isn't a Climate Scientist; his field is cognitive psychologiy and he is best know as a neuroscientist. This morning he told me that "Science has become very specialized, and scientists tend to be expert only in the narrow domains they’re trained in. You wouldn't believe what a climate scientist has to say about building a particle collider; you shouldn’t believe what biologists, engineers, and chemists have to say about climate science. And that’s exactly what’s going on here. If you look at the scientists who have come out against the idea of climate change-- I mean if you really look to see what field they were trained in, and what kinds of journals they publish in-- you’ll see that almost none of them are actually climate scientists. Nearly every climate expert agrees that (a) climate change is real, (b) it is caused by human activity, and (c) it is urgent to do something about it."



Today, just a few hours ago, Audrey Denney officially launched her 2020 congressional campaign for California's first congressional district, where the current incumbent, Trump ally Doug LaMalfa, might as well be wearing an "I'm With Stupid" t-shirt. Just before her noon launch, Audrey told us that she was "mortified when I read that article. This administration seems to be intent on systematically undermining our country’s trust in science-- all to give more money and power to their political allies. Climate change is not a partisan issue-- it is a moral issue. If we want a planet for our children to live on, we need to elect leaders at all levels of government who are committed to climate action."

Eva Putzova is running for Congress in Arizona for a seat held by an "ex"-Republican Blue Dog, Tom O'Halleran, who didn't get the message about what switching parties means. He's about as likely to embrace the Green New Deal as Trump is. "Trump's denial of climate change," Eva reminded us today, "is already costing our country lives and resources. Our President and Congress should do what we did in Flagstaff, Arizona-- adopt a climate action plan. We need urgently political courage at every level of government to take bold, meaningful climate actions, not more debates over the science of climate change." Progressive Chicagoland Democrat Marie Newman is in a similar situation-- running against a Blue Dog, Dan Lipinski, who doesn't back the Green New Deal and, in many ways, is more a Republican than a Democrat. "We need to support the Green New Deal initiative and support the development of this framework into actual programs and legislation-- we literally do not have a choice anymore. We must act," said Newman, in no uncertain terms.

Kara Eastman, the progressive Democrat running for the swingy Omaha-based Nebraska seat, has been completely clear on where she stands on Climate Change. Today she asked, "Why would an administration do this? There is overwhelming evidence of climate change, its causes, and its solutions. This is the way for Republicans to counteract the tremendous support for plans like the Green New Deal. It is a political ploy to undermine the Democrats and dupe the American public. Ensuring a new, booming economy with great paying jobs and true community development is how America can become a leader in combating climate change. There is simply no sane or moral reason anyone would be against this."

Mike Siegel, the Austin-based progressive Democrat taking on one of Trump's top allies in Texas, Michael McCaul, told us today that "Trump's announcement is one more example of the Republican Regime abusing government offices to push propaganda. Instead of developing rigorous, peer-reviewed scientific research, this will be a corporate front group designed to protect fossil fuel profits to the detriment of human life and our planet. I can only hope this panel will suffer the same fate as Kobach's election fraud commission. In the meantime, progressives will keep fighting for a Green New Deal, and winning the hearts and minds of the American people."

Yesterday, writing for the Washington Post Juliet Eilperin, Josh Dawsey and Brady Dennis reported that Trump is putting together a committee of scientists as fake as he is a president to discredit the science behind Climate Chance. Eilperin, Dawsey and Dennis wrote that Trump "plans to create an ad hoc group of select federal scientists to reassess the government’s analysis of climate science and counter its conclusions that the continued burning of fossil fuels is harming the planet, according to three administration officials." Looks like they already reached their conclusion before they've even been formed! It sounds like a joke. Nate McMurray, who came within a handful of votes of defeating Trump-enabler Chris Collins in an area of New York between Buffalo and Rochester last year-- and plans on finishing the job next year-- told me that Trump "is a little late. In Western New York we are beyond debating the obvious, as we deal with more intense storms, higher water levels eroding land on the Great Lakes, and changing farming patterns. This President tries to reshape reality. We live in it." I think there are few regions in the country where people would disagree with Nate.

The National Security Council initiative would include scientists who question the severity of climate impacts and the extent to which humans contribute to the problem, according to these individuals, who asked for anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The group would not be subject to the same level of public disclosure as a formal advisory committee.

The move would represent the Trump administration’s most forceful effort to date to challenge the scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions are helping drive global warming and that the world could face dire consequences unless countries curb their carbon output over the next few decades.

The idea of a new working group, which top administration officials discussed Friday in the White House Situation Room, represents a modified version of an earlier plan to establish a federal advisory panel on climate and national security. That plan-- championed by William Happer, NSC’s senior director and a physicist who has challenged the idea that carbon dioxide could damage the planet-- would have created an independent federal advisory committee.

The Federal Advisory Committee Act imposes several ground rules for such panels, including that they meet in public, are subject to public records requests and include a representative membership.

While the plan is not finalized, NSC officials said they would take steps to assemble a group of researchers within the government. The group will not be tasked with scrutinizing recent intelligence community assessments of climate change, according to officials familiar with the plan.

The National Security Council declined requests to comment on the matter.

During the Friday meeting, these officials said, deputy national security adviser Charles Kupperman said Trump was upset that his administration had issued the National Climate Assessment, which must be published regularly under federal law. Kupperman added that congressional Democrats had seized upon the report, which is the product of more than a dozen agencies, to bolster their case for cutting carbon emissions as part of the Green New Deal.

Attendees at the session, which included acting interior secretary David Bernhardt and senior officials from across the government, debated how best to establish a group of researchers that could scrutinize recent federal climate reports.

Happer, who headed an advocacy group called the CO2 Coalition before joining the administration in the fall, has challenged the scientific consensus on climate change inside and outside of government.

Public records show the coalition, which describes its mission as informing policymakers and the public of the “important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy,” has received money from far-right organizations and donors with fossil fuel interests.

In 2017, according to federal tax filings obtained by the Climate Investigations Center, the group received $170,000 from the Mercer Family Foundation and more than $33,000 from the Charles Koch Institute.

One senior administration official said the president was looking for “a mixture of opinions” and disputed a massive inter-agency report in November that described intensifying climate change as a threat to the United States.

“The president wants people to be able to decide for themselves,” the aide said.

Several scientists, however, said the federal government’s recent findings on climate change had received intense scrutiny from other researchers in the field before they became public.

Christopher Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute who served on the National Academy of Sciences review panel for the scientific report that formed the basis of last year’s climate assessment, said the committee met several times “to do a careful, page by page evaluation by the entire report.”

“The whole review process is confrontational from the very get-go, but it’s based in scientific credibility, in a traceable chain of evidence through publications,” said Field, an earth system science and biology professor.

Trump officials had weighed the idea of conducting a “red team-blue team” exercise on climate change, an idea espoused by Scott Pruitt, who was then the chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, during the early months of the administration. White House aides, including then-chief of staff John F. Kelly, blocked the idea, and at one point discussed whether to “ignore” the climate research being conducted by federal scientists.

Government researchers across a range of disciplines have identified climate change as a serious threat for the past two decades, under Republican and Democratic administrations.

In 2003, the Pentagon commissioned a report to examine how an abrupt change in climate would affect America’s defense capabilities: Its authors concluded that it “should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a U.S. national security concern.”

Last year, a military-funded study warned sea level rise and other climate impacts could make more than a thousand low-lying islands in the Pacific Ocean “uninhabitable” by midcentury, including an atoll where a missile defense site is located.

Just last month, the national intelligence director delivered a worldwide threat assessment that “climate hazards” including extreme weather, wildfires, droughts and acidifying oceans are worsening, “threatening infrastructure, health, and water and food security.”

Judith Curry, a former Georgia Tech climate scientist whom Republicans have sought to testify on climate change because she often highlights the uncertainties that remain, said in an email that she backed the idea of an independent assessment of government climate reports as long as the participants reflected a range of perspectives and are not activists on either side of the debate.

But retired Rear Adm. David Titley, who served as oceanographer of the Navy and chief operating officer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the new initiative could imperil national security by clouding “truthful assessments of the risks stemming from a changing climate.”

“I never thought I would live to see the day in the United States where our own White House is attacking the very science agencies that can help the president understand and manage the climate risks to security of today and tomorrow,” said Titley, who sits on the advisory board of the Center for Climate and Security, a nonpartisan group focused on climate-related risks. “Such attacks are un-American.”

Do You Want Trumpanzee In Your Child's Classroom?

When I read Jeff Flake's Enough OpEd for the Washington Post on October 24, I thought it should be mandatory reading material for every civics class in America. Every teacher I suggested it to reminded me there haven't been civics classes in America-- one of the reasons we're stuck with a Trump in the White House-- since I was in grade school. On top of that, regardless of their own partisan positions, none of them thought it was a very good idea or that it would fly with their school's administrators, never mind the kids' parents. Living history is tough to teach. You read though, right? Crucial reading, and, likely, the only thing history will remember Jeff Flake for.

Ever hear of Bright Magazine? Friday Ruben Brosbe, a public school teacher in NYC with a masters from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, wrote his own OpEd, Should Teachers Talk Trump in Class?. He thinks so. "Teachers are told to check their politics at the classroom door. But ultimately, I believe remaining 'neutral' is dangerous for an already polarized country." He sounds like the kind of teacher everyone wished they had. I asked some of my teacher buddies to read it.

One of my most powerful memories in nine years of teaching was January 20, 2009. I was sitting on a gymnasium floor in the Bronx, surrounded by Black and Latinx elementary school students, watching Barack Obama become president of the United States, wearing a black t-shirt I had bought in Chinatown emblazoned with a picture of the new first family. There was electricity in the air. Beyond the history of the moment, it felt like I was watching a giant, invisible barrier to my students’ futures crumble to the ground.

Eight years later, the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration was a profoundly different, but no less emotional, day in my classroom. My students in Harlem were angry, confused, and anxious. One student said, “I’m feeling disappointed, because if Trump is president I won’t have anyone to take care of me because my mom isn’t from this country.” That day I wore my usual work attire, a button-down shirt, tie, and slacks.

As a teacher, I understand the boundaries of professionalism means keeping my political beliefs to myself. And yet, teaching in New York City, in a community that’s considered one of the most Democratic-leaning in the country, I have found it is sometimes easy to blur that line. In New York City, Chancellor’s Regulation C-110 states, “Officials and employees shall not advertise their business, political, or professional activities on Department of Education property.” In keeping with that, I have never told my students whom I voted for, nor have I shared stories of my activism with progressive groups like Showing Up for Racial Justice and others.

The pressure for teachers to remain politically neutral comes at a time when political polarization is worsening and as Americans are segregating themselves into redder and bluer communities. According to the 2017 Cook Political Report Partisan Voter Index, currently there are only 72 districts in the House where the winning candidate won by 5 percent or less. That represents a 56 percent decline from 1997--  and a 20 percent decline from just 2012. A study released June of last year by the Pew Research Center found that Republicans and Democrats have grown more deeply negative toward one another, with more than 40 percent of each group seeing the other as a “threat to the nation’s well-being.”

The threat to teachers who appear to be pushing their own politics goes back at least as far as the 1930s, when anti-Communist hysteria was reaching a peak. As Dana Goldstein wrote in Teacher Wars, tens of thousands of teachers lost their jobs not only because of teaching that was construed as “anti-American,” but also due to out-of-classroom activism.

In The Classroom Wars, Dr. Natalia Petrzela wrote about the battles over bilingual and sex education in California in the 1960s. The stories of liberal San Mateo and conservative Orange County illustrate how different communities may fight against the same topic for different reasons. In Orange County, conservative families pushed back against a moderate sex education proposal. “Families got it in their mind that this was a communist plot to turn kids into anti-American sex slaves who would disobey their parents and disrupt the family unit,” Petrzela told me. Meanwhile in San Mateo, there were arguments about teacher quality and tax dollars.

Today tenure protections are much stronger than the 1960s, and yet there are numerous public examples of teachers who became targets by making choices some would consider political. In June 2015, North Carolina teacher Omar Currie was forced to resign amid controversy after reading an LGBT-friendly children’s book, “King and King,” to his third grade students. His story made national news after the Washington Times wrote about the controversy.

Whether it’s fear of crossing a district regulation, angering a student’s family, or becoming the focus of a cable news story, the end result is that most teachers avoid topics that could result in controversy. And as polarization increases, so does the number of topics to avoid. As Dr. Meira Levinson, founder of the Justice in Schools project, put it via phone, “Arguments in favor of certain forms of gender equality are seen as partisan. Claims that x is racist or anti-democratic are seen as partisan where they weren’t a couple of years ago.”

Curious about how other teachers navigate these questions, I spoke to educators in Amarillo, Texas, located in the most Republican-leaning district in the United States; Pinellas County, Florida, a swing district in a swing state; and the Bronx, in New York. Not surprisingly, I found that I was not alone in feeling strained by today’s hyper-partisan climate. I also found that many teachers struggle to remain neutral, whether their schools are in red, blue, or purple communities.

Shanna Peeples was named the 2015 National Teacher of the Year. Amarillo, where Peeples taught for 14 years, is located in Texas’s 13th congressional district, ranked the “most Republican” district in the United States by Cook’s PVI since 2012.

Peeples made news in her hometown and beyond in October 2016 when she co-signed a letter by a group of National Teachers of the Year opposing Donald Trump’s candidacy. Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post shared the letter under the headline: “Teachers are expected to remain politically neutral. These Teachers of the Year say they can’t.” Peeples’ hometown newspaper, the Amarillo Globe-News wrote, “In getting into the political fray, Peeples, a former Palo Duro High School teacher, breaks with a common expectation that educators remain politically neutral.”

According to Peeples, there was a strong backlash in Texas. “They hated that I expressed an opinion and broke my neutrality,” Peeples said.

In Pinellas County, Donald Trump edged out Hillary Clinton by one percent. According to Pamela Himmel, a middle school science teacher in Palm Harbor, on inauguration morning some teachers came fully dressed in red, white, and blue and had decorated the doors of their rooms. “There wasn’t a lot of mystery of who they supported,” she said. About three-fourths of her students are white. Himmel recalled some of her students of color “would walk up to me [and ask] ‘Can I have a hug today?’ because they just needed some reassurance in the world.”

Teachers I spoke with shared a desire to teach without pushing a particular political agenda. But they also expressed a frustration at feeling silenced from addressing important issues of the day.

Dan Strohofer is an elementary school teacher in Pinellas County. Leading up to the presidential election, his third graders would repeatedly bring up the candidates. When they did, it caused a lot of anxiety for Strohofer, who is in his fifth year in the classroom. “I had a fear of malpractice,” he said. He would tell the students, “We can’t talk about that,” rather than risk running afoul of parents or his administration.

Yolanda Cruz, retired after more than 20 years of teaching elementary school in the Bronx, disagrees. “I think if a topic comes up a teacher should be able to use their judgment and not run from it,” she said.

Ultimately though, treating politics and other controversial topics as taboo does a disservice to kids and to our future democracy. But facilitating these conversations isn’t easy. “Schools need to model and facilitate those discussions but there aren’t any hard and fast rules,” Dr. Levinson said. Teaching young people to engage in, rather than avoid, critical conversations may be a way schools can truly navigate today’s polarized national ecosystem.

Dr. Paula McAvoy, co-author of The Political Classroom with Dr. Diana Hess, sees schools as playing a crucial role in this era of extreme political polarization. “Schools are one of the few places where we might teach young people to go beyond the rhetoric of the campaign and examine evidence and these are the things we need people to do to live in a democracy, particularly a polarized democracy,” she said.

Rather than aspiring for neutrality, McAvoy prefers the term “fairness.”

Not all “controversial” issues are equal, or even appropriate. Discussing the pros and cons of police body cameras, for example, could lead to productive discourse. On the other hand, debating climate change--  a phenomenon with scientific consensus in spite of the surrounding political controversy--  would likely not.

The Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility’s Teachable Moments project provides 10 ways teachers can engage with controversial topics in their classroom. Generally, the strategies mirror recommended pedagogical strategies such as finding out what students already know, making connections to students’ lives and families, and creating space for kids to opt out of conversations that make them uncomfortable.

Still, there are several barriers to implementing teaching that tackles tough topics. To begin with, school districts and principals would have to choose to proactively engage with controversial topics, something they’ve been unwilling to do so far. Furthermore, many controversial issues intersect with race and other forms of identity. The fact that 82% of American teachers are white, despite a “majority minority” student population, exacerbates schools’ reluctance to have these conversations. This, combined with the “sorting” phenomenon --  Americans, including teachers, choosing to live in politically like-minded communities--  decreases the likelihood that more teachers will engage in this type of instruction.

In the end, when we are asking educators to be neutral, we are asking for something that’s unrealistic or at least nonexistent in practically any other public space. “Given how poorly it’s being done, if it’s being done at all, in the larger society it’s hard to expect schools to do it well,” said Dr. Levinson. “They would be extraordinary institutions.”

I asked my sister, an elementary school teacher in New York. She thinks it's important that teachers do discuss uncomfortable subjects-- she named "politics, religion and sexual preference"-- in their classrooms but cautioned that "there are some crazy old teachers out there. I would not want them to give their personal opinions on these matters." I responded so only liberals are allowed to talk and the crazy old teachers have to shut their mouths??? Her first answer was "Yes." But then she sent me an e-mail saying "I don’t know what the answer is but I do know a lot of those teachers are pro-Trump and I wouldn’t want my kids to hear their opinions."

Another very distinguished, award-winning NYC school teacher who I asked for a comment, said "Not into putting anything in print about him ["him" presumably referring to Señor Trumpanzee, who I hadn't mentioned]. Too paranoid. Seriously... Nice anti-Trump-Pence march just passed our building. We opened windows and yelled and clapped in support."

Dan Levitin has been teaching undergraduates at Stanford in Palo Alto and grad students at McGill in Montreal, two of the best schools in North America. I had to check in with him on this as well:

The issue of teachers espousing political beliefs to their students is an important one. This is true for students of any age, whether schoolchildren in K-12, college students, or adult education. I find it conceptually similar to the issue of teachers espousing religious beliefs. The classroom is a place for learning, for opening minds to alternative ways of thinking, but not for badgering and cajoling students to adopt the teacher’s views. The whole point of education is to give people the tools to think for themselves.

In my 25 years of teaching psychology and neuroscience classes, the religion issue has come up more often than the political one, but both come up. The teacher’s job is to help a student sort through the facts of a matter, help them to understand which are validated facts and which are not, and then allow the student to come to their own conclusions.

The case of Trump might seem a bit tricky but it’s not. It is certainly possible to separate politics from pedagogy and education. Left leaning teachers may oppose or even abhor much of what the right has as its platform, regarding climate change, taxation, health care, isolationism, to name just a few. An effective teacher will point out where an administration-- any administration-- is playing loose with facts or logic. This is not a political issue. We need to fact check Trump and relentlessly call out his lies not because he is a republican, but because he is a liar and someone who has no regard for truth or facts. I would say the same thing about a Democrat or anyone who adopted a similar ignorant and uneducated view of the world.

As a practical matter, in the classroom, the teacher needs to be sensitive to the fact that his or her students (and their parents) may disagree about which political party and which individuals will help us reach our goals (which for most people includes health, safety, freedom, and prosperity). How we can best achieve those is a matter of opinion. But that opinion should be informed by facts. Before we can decide whether to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on a new freeway, we need to know if people will use it. Before we decide on something like the death penalty, we need to know the evidence about whether it helps us to achieve our end goals (deterrence?). We need to agree, as a society, on what the facts are before deciding how best to set public policy. Trump is the first president in my lifetime who, to my knowledge, does not care about facts. Even Nixon cared about facts-- he may have tried to erase them or lie about them, but as a trained lawyer, he respected them. As must we all.

And I couldn't let this question slip by without asking at least one of the Blue America candidates, right? It's obvious why I turned to North Carolina congressional candidate Jenny Marshall:

For the past 4 years I worked at John F Kennedy High School, a high poverty school in the city center of Winston-Salem. The vast majority of my students are hispanic or black and they were very vocal about their dislike of Trump. Students have the freedom of saying what they feel in my classroom as long as they are using facts (we call them primary sources in history) and discuss it in a respectful manner (i.e. no name calling, etc). The day after the election I came back to my 8th and 9th grade social studies classroom and got ready to to teach whatever it was that I had planned for the day. My students were used our discussion format where we tackle the concept or issue of a time period and using point of view, bias, historical context, and other tools we used to find the deeper meaning. It was my job to help them understand not just the date and event, but why and how these issues thread across time. So, as I took my normal position close to the door to greet the students in the halls as they entered my classroom I could tell they were upset. We began class and the questions immediately flowed about what was going to happen now that Trump was President. They felt safe to share their fears of being deported, families being ripped apart because not everyone was documented, and panic about what kinds of future they would have under a President who said so many terrible things on the campaign trail. I scrapped my plans and each period my students and I sat down to talk about the election, both campaign's messaging and how to deal with people who didn't vote for the person they wanted. We talked about the powers of the President and his office. We talked about how to deal with the three teachers in the building who said they were going to vote for Trump and the betrayal they felt toward those teachers. Through it all I remained neutral in both my personal and political positions and even though they asked, I never revealed who I supported to win. I told them it was against the rules what those other teachers did and that as a social studies teacher I was held to an even higher standard because it is my job to be impartial in my teaching. I always stressed that they must make up their own minds based on the factual evidence and critically thinking about the issue. As an educator you wield enormous influence over your students. If you cannot check your bias at the door, well, then perhaps you should leave that topic for someone who can. Your classroom is not a bully pulpit.

How Much Effort Would Trump Have To Exert To Stop Lying? Would It Even Be Possible... Even With Intense Psychiatric Treatment?

Ted Lieu tweeted this old article by Alice Park in Time Magazine today, The Fascinating Reason Why Liars Keep On Lying. I can't read Ted's mind and I don't claim I can ascribe motivation to his actions on Twitter but... I'd put up money that he had a certain Señor Trumpanzee in mind when he tweeted-- possibly Paul Ryan as well. I certainly read Park's piece with Trump, Ryan and the post-truth GOP in mind. "Once a liar, always a liar, the old saying goes," wrote Park. "Turns out there’s some scientific truth to that: researchers have tracked down how the brain makes lying easier as the untruths build up, providing some biological evidence for why small lies often balloon into ever larger ones."

In a study published in Nature Neuroscience, Tali Sharot from the department of experimental psychology at University College London and her colleagues devised a clever study to test people’s dishonest tendencies while scanning their brains in an fMRI machine. The 80 people in the study were shown pennies in a glass jar and given different incentives to guide whether they lied or told the truth to a fellow partner about how much money was contained in the jar. In some conditions, both the participant and the partner benefited if the participant lied; in others, just the participant benefited from his fib, or just the partner benefited (with no cost to either). In another set of scenarios, either the participant or partner benefited, but at the expense of the other if the participant lied. In each case, Sharot documented the changes in the people’s brains as they made their decisions.

They found that when people were dishonest, activity in a part of the brain called the amygdala-- the hub of emotional processing and arousal-- changed. With each scenario, the more dishonestly the participant advised his partner, the less activated the amygdala was on the fMRI. That may be because lying triggers emotional arousal and activates the amygdala, but with each additional lie, the arousal and conflict of telling an untruth diminishes, making it easier to lie.

Sharot also found that the amygdala became less active mostly when people lied to benefit themselves. In other words, self-interest seems to fuel dishonesty.

“Part of the emotional arousal we see when people lie is because of the conflict between how people see themselves and their actions,” Sharot said during a briefing discussing the results. “So I lie for self-benefit, but at the same time it doesn’t fit the way I want to view myself, which is as an honest person. It’s possible that we learn from the arousal signal...with less emotional arousal, perhaps I’m less likely to see the act as incongruent with my own self perception.”

The researchers were even able to map out how each lie led to less amygdala activation and found that the decrease could predict how much the person’s dishonesty would escalate in the next trial. Biology seems to back up the warnings parents give to their kids: that one lie just leads to another.

Trump's amygdala is probably as shriveled and dysfunctional as his dick. We contacted our old friend, best-selling author, distinguished cognitive psychologist, neuroscientist and nationally recognized expert on bullshit, Dan Levitin. He told us that "there are many reasons that people lie. There are noble lies, to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, and other noble lies to avoid endangering people (the police might lie about their position if they’re trying to free hostages). Sometimes we lie to save face (“I didn’t break the lamp, mom, Dougie did”) or to make ourselves look more important than we are (“I invented the internet”). Some of us lie with the express intent to deceive so that we can have the upper hand in a business deal. And then there are people who don’t actually lie, but just make stuff up, what Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt in his book of the same title called 'bullshit.'

"Bullshitters are actually more dangerous than liars in many cases because they have a reckless disregard for the truth. Think about it: a liar respects the truth. He has to know what the truth is, and surgically, carefully, insert a lie at just the right spot in the edifice of information in order to mislead. But the bullshitter just says whatever thought comes in his mind, flip-flops, and has no respect for the way in which facts are gathered or verified, no respect for experts, and no appreciation for the fact that people may know things that he doesn’t. 'Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.' Yes they did! Lots of people knew-- people who are, um, actually in healthcare or in government agencies that have to do with health care. But again, the bullshitter can’t imagine that other people know things because he has no conception of how people come to know things-- through serious, rational information gathering, education, and systematic observation. There is nothing systematic about the way Trump absorbs or disseminates information. I met him six years ago, a week before the White House correspondent’s dinner that led to his decision to run for President. My impression at the time was of someone who had no interest in facts and an insufficient attention span to process details. A big picture guy, whose picture would change with the tides, the winds, or whatever whim caught that short little span of attention."

By the way, please send this video by Australian journalist Chris Uhlmann to everyone you know who has an attention span of at least 3 minutes. It's the best Trump take-down I've heard in at least a few weeks-- and it goes right to the heart of the danger he poses to our country:

Do You Have Time To Listen To A Two-Minute Song From My Childhood?

When Dan Levitin was working on his 2014 bestseller- The Organized Mind-- he interviewed former Secretary of Labor, Treasury and State, George Schultz, primarily about lessons Schultz had learned from his days as the president of corporate behemoth Bechtel from 1974-'82, before Reagan appointed him Secretary of State. During the interview he told Dan that when he thinks "about all the money we spent on bombs and munitions, and our failures in Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan and other places around the world... Instead of advancing our agenda using force, we should have instead built schools and hospitals in these countries, improving the lives of their children. By now, those children would have grown into positions of influence, and they would be grateful to us instead of hating us."

It's probably safe to assume Trump has-- if any notion at all-- just the vaguest idea of who George Schultz is. And it would be even safer to assume that Bannon might have Schultz's photo in the center of a dartboard in his West Wing office.

Trump's bombing of a fuel pump and a pile of sand near a Syrian airforce base sent the cost of oil futures up 2% the following day. Raytheon, the maker of the 59 very expensive Tomahawk missiles that Trump wasted, jumped around 3% (adding more than $1 billion to the weapons manufacturer's market capitalization) when the market opened the day after. Trump could have made a bundle on both, although because he's still refusing to release his tax returns-- despite repeatedly vowing to do so after he was elected president-- no one is sure how much he raked in as a result of that showy little stunt, which is generally assumed to have been an attempt to get the public's mind off Trump's myriad problems and disasters.

This morning Paul Krugman addressed the mindless cheers from the media peanut gallery for Trump's p.r. stunt. "[S]howy actions that win a news cycle or two," he wrote, "are no substitute for actual, coherent policies... The attack instantly transformed news coverage of the Trump administration. Suddenly stories about infighting and dysfunction were replaced with screaming headlines about the president’s toughness and footage of Tomahawk launches. But outside its effect on the news cycle, how much did the strike actually accomplish? A few hours after the attack, Syrian warplanes were taking off from the same airfield, and airstrikes resumed on the town where use of poison gas provoked Mr. Trump into action."

Trump may like to claim that the media are biased against him, but the truth is that they’ve bent over backward in his favor. They want to seem balanced, even when there is no balance; they have been desperate for excuses to ignore the dubious circumstances of his election and his erratic behavior in office, and start treating him as a normal president.

You may recall how, a month and a half ago, pundits eagerly declared that Mr. Trump “became the president of the United States today” because he managed to read a speech off a teleprompter without going off script. Then he started tweeting again.

One might have expected that experience to serve as a lesson. But no: The U.S. fired off some missiles, and once again Mr. Trump “became president.” Aside from everything else, think about the incentives this creates. The Trump administration now knows that it can always crowd out reporting about its scandals and failures by bombing someone.

So here’s a hint: Real leadership means devising and carrying out sustained policies that make the world a better place. Publicity stunts may generate a few days of favorable media coverage, but they end up making America weaker, not stronger, because they show the world that we have a government that can’t follow through.

Most people with minds that work without being distracted by brightly lit missile contrails, have noticed that the Blowhard-in-Chief accomplished nothing at all with his Syrian publicity stunt, which he now calls "sending a message to Assad." Few people know that he had crackpot Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard in Damascus a couple weeks ago asking Assad for his cell number for Trump, which she got. That would have been a helluva better way to send a message and wouldn't have cost American taxpayers $300 million.

As Will Bunch noted in his Philadelphia Daily News column yesterday, "sometimes in America, the rocket's red glare is all the proof through the night that you really need... The  reddish streaks of combustible fuel gave instant light and clarity to the muddled darkness of an Arabian night, and so they played over and over again on cable TV networks thirsty for pictures to illuminate the drama and importance of President Trump's most high-profile military adventure since taking office."

“We see these beautiful pictures at night from the decks of these two U.S. Navy vessels in the eastern Mediterranean...” Williams said. “I am tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen: ‘I am guided by the beauty of our weapons.’" (The song meant something different to Cohen, but I digress...) "They are beautiful pictures of fearsome armaments making what is for them what is a brief flight over to this airfield." Then the MSNBC anchor blurted out what almost felt like an afterthought.

“What did they hit?”

The pictures were beautiful, but the policy was a mess. No one understood exactly why the most politically inexperienced and most truth-challenged president in American history had just pulled a complete flip-flop in the world's most volatile civil war. No one could explain on what legal authority Trump had launched the deadly missiles, whether our allies knew this was coming-- or what happens next. There were no pictures showing the seven people said to be killed when those "fearsome armaments" slammed into the al-Shayrat airfield, the part of the video game we rarely see.

None of that mattered. Suddenly, cable TV's well-paid squadron of retired generals appeared out of nowhere to bestow their blessing. (Has any network ever hired a retired peace activist as an analyst?) The pundit class who'd made their bones jabbering about Iraq and Afghanistan from the safety of a soundproof studio-- and who for 76 days had been baffled by this strange new commander-in-chief and his pre-dawn tweets-- had found their comfort zone, and the relief was palpable. Everybody knew their marks. Finally, unexpectedly but happily, they were putting on the show that they know how to produce.

Three days later, it's impossible to say how history books will view the U.S. missile strike on Syria-- as a strange blip in a six-year civil war that's killed 500,000 people and created millions of refugees, as just another nocturnal emission of cruise missiles from a nation that's fired off more than 1,000 from Iraq to Libya to Somalia since 2001...or, less likely, as the Archduke Ferdinand moment of the 21st Century.

But in the broader context of humanity-- and this strange and sometimes, yes, beautiful world that we've created after millions of years of evolution-- I believe that what we witnessed on April 6, 2017, marked a dangerous turning point. Vital decisions of war and peace, life and death, have been sucked into our vortex of around-the-clock entertainment.

The most powerful military in the history of mankind is in the hands of a man who lives inside of a bubble, whose information and emotions are driven by the images he sees on a flat screen-- and who understands his own awesome ability to himself manipulate what he sees. To the bedazzled pundits, Trump's ability to change the narrative on that high-def screen by incoherently striking at Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad (just a few days after his government said it had no interest in Syrian regime change) instantly made him a leader. In reality, he was simply a cable TV president fighting a cable TV war. And there was no way he could lose.

"I think Donald Trump became president of the United States” enthused CNN Fareed Zakaria as the bombs were bursting in air-- just days... after the same Fareed Zakaria had shocked viewers by calling Trump a "bullshit artist" on live TV. But that was then. Bombs are beauty, and beauty is truth, and that is all ye need to know, apparently.

The only shocking thing, really, was that it had taken Trump nearly 11 weeks to realize he could bomb his way to higher approval ratings. After all, it was the power of TV that had saved him in the first place from becoming little more than a Trivial Pursuit: Totally '80s game card. By the dawn of the current millennium, it was clear that the Manhattan real-estate mogul was a terrible CEO-- beset by bankruptcies and selling scammy products like Trump Steaks and Trump University. The Apprentice saved him; reality TV taught Trump that he was 10-times better at playing the role of a CEO than the hard work of actually running a large company. And it taught him how to tell a story, to spin a plotline that could mesmerize viewers, first on NBC and eventually on the presidential campaign trail.

Señor Trumpanzee, also sent a message to a chubby little punk in Pyongyang-- though probably not the message Señor hoped to send. According to a report from North Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agency Sunday, a Foreign Ministry official said the "unpardonable" missile attacks illustrates why North Korea-- and other countries independent of U.S. hegemony-- are willing to take on the gigantic burden and the frightening risk of arming themselves with nuclear weapons. It is lost on no one that the U.S. invades and destroys countries that can't defend themselves-- like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, etc-- while steering clear of nuclear armed foes like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. The official said that North Korea "will bolster up in every way our capability for self-defense to cope with the U.S. evermore reckless moves for a war and defend ourselves with our own force."

According to Reuters, Trump has responded by ordering an aircraft carrier strike force, stationed off Singapore, to steam towards Korea. Korean TV has been running this clip: