Senator Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and a retired Navy captain, joined with five other Representatives and Senators, all Democrats, who had served the nation either in the military or the intelligence community in releasing a statement that said military officers had the right to refuse to carry out “illegal orders.”

Trump immediately denounced the six and called their actions “seditious” and supported the idea of hanging all six. Subsequent to that, Secretary of Defense/War Hegseth began action to “court martial” Senator Kelly.

First, none of the six suggested disobeying an existing law. They only expressed an opinion that the Constitution laid out rights and duties and that military officers should not obey orders by the President that were illegal under the Constitution.

Trump and Hegseth are taking the position that any order by the President is, by definition, legal, despite the words of the Constitution that suggest that a President is not omnipotent. In the case of Richard Nixon, the Congress clearly rejected Nixon’s contention that any action by the President was, de facto, legal.

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech. In addition, the Constitution clearly states that the opinions of Senators and Representatives in pursuit of their duties are protected speech.

Trump had a temper-tantrum over being told that it was possible that not everything he “orders” may not be legal, and that if he issued illegal orders, senior officers had the right to refuse such orders. Hegseth then followed up with a statement that all members of the military should presume that ALL orders are legal and should be followed and that those who did not agree would be investigated under military law.

When a President declares that opinions and advice contrary to his beliefs and wishes are seditious and treasonous and should result in capital punishment, particularly when those opposing his views are citing the Constitution, he’s not behaving as the President of the United States but as third-world dictator. And, of course, loyal lackey Hegseth immediately followed orders to prosecute Senator Kelly for exercising his rights as a citizen and a Senator.

That should tell Americans something, but will it?

Pardoning the national turkey dinner,
Even if he’s not a millionaire sinner.
Who’s the chump?
You… or Donald Trump?

Proposing a peace for Ukraine,
But all of it for Russia’s gain.
Who’s the chump?
You… or Donald Trump?

Some eight years ago, I wrote a blog post about the swallowing of Thanksgiving by the commercialization of Christmas. From what I can see, at least here in Cedar City, Thanksgiving has almost vanished, and Christmas decorations are proliferating in early November, along with greater hype of special buying days like Black Friday, Black Monday, and cyber-whatever-the-hell-day it may be.

Now that the Christmas commercialists have vanquished Thanksgiving, which isn’t totally surprising, given that Thanksgiving is based on expressing thanks and gratitude for what one has rather than spending more and more on everything for longer and longer, those self-same Christmas commercialists appear to have taken aim at Halloween.

Or perhaps some other group has, and the Christmas commercialists are merely taking advantage of it.

We’ve lived in the same house for thirty-two years, and, on average, the number of trick-or-treaters has declined over this period. Part of that I attributed to the aging of the homeowners in our area, but for at least the last five years, more and more younger families with small children have been moving in, yet the numbers of trick-or-treating children have reached the point to where we had exactly two this year, leaving us with an inordinate amount of individually wrapped candy.

I’ve wondered if it was just a cultural peculiarity of our area, but I did an informal canvass of friends in Cedar City and of our offspring spread across the United States (if predominantly on the coasts), and they’ve all noticed the same phenomenon.

Now, possibly this diminution of Halloween decoration and trick-or-treating may also be the result of internet-created isolation, ICE-induced fear of public spaces, and growing public paranoia, or it just might be an outcome from internet-created laziness, because trick-or-treating requires costumes, parental supervision (at least for small children), and lots of walking, and candy can be ordered with a mouse click or iPhone tap and delivered to the door.

Whatever the reason, from what I can tell, there definitely is such diminution, no doubt to the delight of the accountants of the Christmas commercialists.

Over the past two months, I’ve had email after email from various “book clubs,” each praising a book of mine recently published and saying that it really deserved more acclamation and attention. While I had to agree with that (what author wouldn’t?), it was clear that these were blatant scams, some even suggesting that paying a few “influential readers” would spur greater attention. Others were more indirect in their initial “inquiry,” not that I pursued any of them.

The most recent, and most ironically amusing, came from an individual purporting to represent the Washington [D.C.] Science Fiction Association and declaring that WSFA wanted to highlight Haze and The Hammer of Darkness for the association’s 2025 “Autumn Author Spotlight.”

Having lived in the Washington D.C. area for nearly twenty years, at time when I was active in attending WSFA conventions – primarily the long-vanished Disclave, I was rather skeptical about an “Author Spotlight,” given that WSFA doesn’t promote books except through its convention.

In addition, I’ve retained loose ties with individuals prominent in area conventions and was the Author Guest of Honor at Balticon in 2024, where a number of convention functionaries were also involved with WSFA, and it would be highly unlikely for them to spotlight me so soon after Balticon. Add to that the fact that conventions take a year or more to organize of fans and someone offering to “spotlight” me for a fall event this year was preposterous. Then add that the book they wanted to spotlight was a mass-market paperback reprint published nine years ago that contained two novels – The Hammer of Darkness (first published in 1985) and Haze (published in 2009). At the time, Tom Doherty thought that the reprint would be a good idea, because he thought neither book had gotten the support it should have, but even then, there wasn’t that much publicity.

And, finally, WSFA had to put a warning on the WSFA website that scammers were impersonating WSF.

Obviously, these scammers are targeting authors who don’t seem to be best-selling authors and are playing on authorial vanity, and no author is without some vanity, including me. But scammers annoy me, and as a semi-public service, I thought I ought to bring up the matter.

Criminals strike in the dark
But ICE patrols the sunlit park.
Who’s the chump?
You… or Donald Trump?

Most of the people in the United States, if you asked them, would say that they’re for individual freedom.

The first problem we face in maintaining freedom lies in the definition of “freedom,” because each individual has a personal definition of what freedom should be, and that makes it difficult for government to come up with laws define liberty or freedom in a fashion satisfactory to all Americans.

The second problem lies in population density and the need to maintain order.

As Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers pointed out, one cannot have freedom without an ordered society, and the greater the population density, the more restrictions that are necessary to maintain order.

Those restrictions don’t have to be imposed by law, and, in fact, in the past many restrictions maintaining order were socially imposed through manners and customs. Those manners and customs were essentially based on British culture, and as more and more Americans come from other backgrounds and/or question “the old ways,” customs have become less effective in maintaining social order.

So, governments impose standards of behavior through laws. This has created a growing attitude of believing that, if something isn’t prohibited, it’s acceptable to do it, an attitude taken to extremes by Donald Trump and many of his followers. As I’ve pointed out before, this trend leads either to anarchy or authoritarianism.

It also leads to more people wanting to use government as a means of imposing their beliefs on others, contrary to the views of the founding fathers that government should provide a basic framework of laws, as opposed to a legal structure regulating every aspect of life.

Such an all-encompassing legal structure, of course, effectively limits freedom, yet few people seem to realize that, if we just behaved ourselves and respected others, we wouldn’t need so many laws and regulations.

The problem with that is that there’s always someone who wants money and/or power and has no respect for others, or for what others have built or created, and believes that they are entitled to do anything that isn’t prohibited… and when they get away with it, it encourages others.

All of which is why Benjamin Franklin said that the founding fathers had created a Republic… if future Americans could keep it.

In this time of shutdowns, continuing inflation, and economic and political news so complex that even learned savants can’t simplify matters, I’ve decided to post a short four-line poem every Monday that simplifies an issue. The first one is more general, but after that, they’ll get more specific.

Sporting overlong red ties
And endless overflowing lies,
Who’s the chump?
You… or Donald Trump?

P.S. Feel free to share.

Recent data and reports by a number of economists and financial institutions tend to confirm what last Tuesday’s election results also suggested – that the United States effectively has an economy with two branches, one for those who have decent-paying jobs and financial reserves and another for those who have neither, a condition described as K-shaped, where the same financial conditions have differing impacts for different people.

Higher interest rates and rising stock prices benefit those who can save and invest, but those higher interest rates punish those with mortgages, credit card balances, and student loan debt. Higher interest rates also discourage businesses from hiring and encourage streamlining and economizing, which usually means layoffs.

The youth (ages 16-24) unemployment rate increased to 10.5% by this past September, and that’s three times the rate for Gen X and Millennials. Average new car prices topped $50,000 for the first time ever, and an indication of the impact on the less fortunate is car repossessions, which have increased 16% over last year and are at the highest rate since 2009. Add to that the rising cost of student loan repayments, which have increased by six percent over last year.

When you consider that the average cost of a basic one-bedroom apartment in New York City is $4,000 a month, that might just explain the results of the recent mayoral election.

On the other side, the gross profit margin of the pharmaceutical industry is over 70%, compared to 2% for the pharmacies that dispense and sell those prescription drugs, which might explain why the pharmacy clerks are having a hard time of it, while the drug company executives are rolling in dough… and why more than a few people, primarily younger adults, still openly back Luigi Mangione… and why Zohran Mamdani managed to attract over 90,000 largely youthful volunteers to support his successful campaign for NYC Mayor.

Over the past few years, I’ve seen more than a few complaints about the cost of books, particularly the cost of mass market paperbacks. So I did a little analysis. My first book, The Fires of Paratime, was published in 1982 as a mass market paperback, for a price of $2.95 (which would theoretically cost $9.81 in today’s dollars). In 1993, Tor published The Towers of The Sunset (the second Recluce book) in mass market paperback format for $6.99 (costing $12.50 in today’s dollars).

But those comparisons fail to take into account the length of books. The Fires of Paratime was only 239 pages long (for a price of 1.2 cents per page), while The Towers of the Sunset was 536 pages long (for a price of 1.3 cents per page).

Over the next ten years, the price of my books increased fairly consistently at the rate of inflation while the price per page rose to around 1.5 cents. That per-page-price remained around that level until 2023, when it jumped 33% to 2.0 cents per page. Even so, that increase didn’t cover inflation. When my last mass market paperback was published (Contrarian in 2024), it listed at $14.99, but for Tor to cover the increased inflationary costs would have required a price of $16.25, which most readers are unwilling or unable to pay without sacrificing something else.

Historically speaking, the price of paperback books has pretty much tracked inflation over the past sixty years – until 2023. While a mass market paperback still remains the same in inflation adjusted dollars as it has for the last twenty years, the income of the average middle-class or poorer American hasn’t kept up with inflation.

And that’s not a problem that the publishing industry can solve, because the industry is low margin, where the majority of editors make less than legal secretaries.

Until recently, i.e., until the arrival of Donald Trump and his MAGA clones and the Woke speech police, the United States was a democracy legally balanced (more precariously than most Americans realized) between law and long-standing custom.

Over time some of those customs were changed by law or codified into law, but far from all of them. Although the separation of church and state is mandated by the Constitution, that separation was maintained as much by custom as by law.

What we’ve seen over the last few years is a war between the extremists of the right and the extremists of the left, a war exploited for his personal benefit by Donald Trump, which is bad enough, but what is even worse is the tactic he’s used to great effect.

That tactic is simply seeking out customs and practices that used to have a certain force, almost of law, and overriding them because they’re not enshrined in law. This is nothing new. It’s happened before, but never on the scale pursued by Trump.

Trump tears down the east wing of the White House because there’s no law specifically forbidding it. He orders the militarization of national guard units and attacks on foreign boats and ships as part of a “war” against supposed drug cartels, because there’s not a clear legal definition of “war.”

The U.S. legal system was never designed to have to respond to such acts on a short-term and timely fashion, which is one of the principal reasons why he’s getting away with so much.

The other reason is because extremists control too much of each major party, and the two parties are deadlocked because the party leaders are effectively controlled by their extremists, even though most Americans don’t want the extremes of either party.

As a result of Trump’s tactics, even without Trump, the U.S. will still face the problem he’s exploiting, and that’s the fact that, at present, it appears as if corporations, presidents, and bureaucrats can damn well do anything that’s not definitively prohibited by law – and that to stop that will effectively require an authoritarian state controlling everything because the majority of Americans either don’t care, don’t understand the problem, or support one or the other extreme.

I suspect we all have TV commercials that rub us the wrong way. I know I do, one in particular. It not only irks me, but I find it offensive and dangerously subversive at the same time. For those who can’t guess from the blog title, it’s a commercial for an insurance company that tries to ridicule the behavior of “parents” and ends with a statement along the lines of “we can’t save you from becoming your parents,” but we can give you good insurance.

Admittedly, some “parental” behaviors are easy to caricature and ridicule. After all, who doesn’t have or know of a parent who has gone to excesses? The other aspect of the commercials is that all of those I’ve seen feature men becoming their parents.

But just as there are parents whose behavior is either abominable and/or laughable, there are those who have done well by their offspring. I also don’t know any parents who are perfect, who never made a mistake.

What bothers me most about this series of commercials is that it presents grown men (unless I’ve missed those that feature women) who adopt mannerisms and behaviors (supposedly from their parents) as foolish, out of touch, and laughable. The first time I saw and heard one of these commercials, I found it slightly amusing. After months, if not years, of repetition, I find the series both disturbing and dangerous.

That’s not to say that parents haven’t done foolish things – and in too many instances dangerous and criminal acts – but ridiculing an entire generation in order to sell insurance irritates me. More important, this approach also contributes to the ongoing practice of polarizing society, in the sense that it implies that older people are inept and foolish and that younger people should know better.

While insurance companies have the right to advertise their product in any fashion that doesn’t defame specific individuals, this kind of sales pitch strikes me as a “softer” version of Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans.

But then, I’m an “outdated” parent and grandparent.

Let’s see. For the moment, Trump’s latest dictator-like act is to rip the east wing off the White House, supposedly the “people’s house,” without any authorization from Congress in order to add a palatial ballroom that may well dwarf the rest of the White House complex.

At roughly the same time, Secretary of Defense/War Pete Hegseth attempted to require news reporters to sign an agreement not to print anything he hadn’t approved or to lose their Pentagon access. Virtually, all the reporters refused, turned in their press badges, and left the Pentagon. In return, Hegseth then issued an order to all military that no military personnel could speak to or provide any information to the press, Congress, or apparently anyone else that the Pentagon Office of Legislative Affairs had not approved.

The Trump Administration is citing a 1956 law as the basis by which the Secretary of State can unilaterally deport virtually anyone who the Secretary finds poses any danger to the U.S., without any recourse for an individual so cited, even if they’re a citizen or a legal immigrant.

Hegseth is ordering the Navy to attack and sink “suspicious” boats in the Caribbean before ascertaining what they really might be transporting.

Trump is still pressing for the Supreme Court to allow him to federalize state national guard units and to approve his “declaring war” on cities he doesn’t like, without the vote of the Congress.

ICE continues to round up large bodies of people, including U.S. citizens, on the slightest provocation.

Trump continues to fire federal employees that he doesn’t like, with little or no legal basis, to selectively defund federal activities he dislikes, while shifting funds, again illegally, to programs of which he approves.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is choosing which recently-elected members of the House he’ll swear in immediately and which he won’t – and all the Republicans were sworn in expeditiously, and the sole Democrat is still waiting – possibly because she represents the vote that would require Johnson to call a vote on a measure to immediately release all the Epstein files.

That’s just what I know, but even that sounds an awful lot like what goes on in a dictatorship, and what I want to know is why so many Americans don’t even seem to care.

The last time there was a possibility of a government shutdown, the Democrats gave in and attempted to work out something. The result?

The Republicans pushed through Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” with the result that less affluent families will get stuck with less (and in some cases no) healthcare, or much higher health insurance premiums, while the wealthiest of Americans got massive tax cuts, and the poorest essentially got none.

Now the Republicans are saying, “Stop the shutdown, and only then will we negotiate.”

The last time the Democrats agreed to that, they got rolled – badly. The Republicans have no real desire to negotiate, and the odds are that, even if they do, they’ll screw the Democrats.

In a special election in late September, Arizona elected Adelita Grijalva, a Democrat, as a replacement representative from Arizona. That was almost a month ago. Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, refuses to swear her in until he reconvenes the full House, but he’s already sworn in three Republican replacement representatives this year, immediately after their election without bringing the House into session. Yet Johnson has vowed not to seat Grijalva until the shutdown is over.

So why on earth would the Democrats want to give up the only power they have right now and trust Johnson and the Republicans?

Often, history is written by the victor. More often it’s written by the survivors, who may or may not be the victors. More often than that, it’s written decades or generations later by someone with an agenda.

As a result, it’s wise to be skeptical of the “lessons of history” and to pay more attention to verifiable facts and a wider range of views. “History” also changes, depending on who’s presenting it, as one can easily see by looking at the versions of U.S. history presented today by those with different views and agendas.

This has been the case throughout history. The battle at Kadesh in 1274 BCE, between the Egyptians and the Hittites, was a bloody and brutal draw, but Ramses II had celebratory inscriptions of victory chiseled into stone all over Egypt. It wasn’t until the last 50 years or so, with the discovery of the massive clay tablet library in the ruins of the Hittite capital of Hattusas, that historians were able to sort out what really happened.

For generations, there was a widely held view that Europe suffered the “dark ages” from the time of the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century CE until roughly the Renaissance. Except… it didn’t. What it did suffer was a massive fragmentation of governance. Later, the term “Middle Ages” was adopted, but there was still a perception of darkness and plagues, even though the Roman Empire also suffered darkness, anarchy, and plagues.

Recent archeological studies have shown, for example, that after the Romans withdrew from England, very little changed in people’s everyday lives over the next few centuries. The same was true in France under the Merovingian kings. Fewer massive buildings and roads were constructed, most likely because smaller kingdoms couldn’t muster the resources, especially when there was more local warfare.

In the United States, as everywhere, history has often been distorted or “revised.” Historical revisionists have persistently claimed that the Civil War was not about slavery. This persistent myth claimed the war was fought over states’ rights or economic differences, but in reality, the protection and expansion of slavery was the central cause of the Confederacy because the entire economy of the south was based on slavery. After reconstruction, a set of lies permeated the south portraying the Confederacy as a noble and heroic cause and whitewashing the history of slavery and elevating Confederate leaders like Robert E. Lee to undeserved heroic status.

In the mid-1930s Hitler and other right-wing German nationalists propagated the false claim that the army had not been defeated on the battlefield, but that it was betrayed by enemies on the home front – specifically Jews, Marxists, and other leftists, who undermined the war effort and forced the military to surrender, an agenda designed to shift blame away from the military and the politicians.

History is messy and multifaceted, and to come close to understanding any period takes a great deal of study, which is why most people go with generalizations that often bear more resemblance to what they want to believe than to what actually occurred.

I haven’t posted anything for a while for various reasons, but largely because others had said/written what I had in mind or because I had the feeling that no one was interested in listening, only spouting their pat “solutions.”

Right now, too many Americans are demanding instant solutions for problems created by cumulative actions and inactions taken by politicians over the past several decades. They’re angry, and they want instant solutions here and now. Nothing else will do.

Trump fills that need, helped in large measure by the inability of Democrats to understand the depth of festering anger with the inability and or unwillingness of government to address the larger concerns of the majority of Americans. He came up with simplistic slogans and has pushed violent “solutions” that not only go against the spirit of the Constitution, but in far too many cases also are patently illegal. In some cases, he’s also been aided by a compliant Supreme Court, which has, upon occasion, even indicated, if indirectly, that it is making decisions because Congress will not or cannot do so.

In any form of government, instant solutions are seldom possible, not without persistent and often severe adverse impacts, and that is what is already occurring with ICE, the Department of Defense/War, and the unilateral and likely unconstitutional reductions in government services and work forces. U.S. citizens are being locked up until they can prove they’re citizens. Small children are being zip-tied and detained, at times left without parents. What about the old idea of being considered innocent until proven guilty? Or is guilt being assigned by skin color and/or speech? Armed troops are being forced upon cities, based on the political leanings of local government.

Bizarre and unreasoned tariffs are hampering all manner of U.S. industry. Alternative energy facilities under construction are being defunded willy-nilly. Exactly how does that reduce the deficit or cope with skyrocketing demand for more energy?

All this is, understandably and unfortunately, the result of anger and frustration, leavened by a significant amount of hatred, but simplistic and ill-thought-out instant solutions will only make matters worse over time. If unchecked, they’ll also destroy democracy.

Right now, neither party appears interested in well thought out solutions that address the situation, only soundbites that inflame and exacerbate, and from what I see, few are listening to voices of moderation and reason, who are being drowned out by a tide of frustration and anger that is more interested in revenge and punishing the other side than actually addressing these problems in a practical and humane way.

It’s past time to dump all the efforts to use government to enforce ideology (of any sort) and to get back to a real, practical, workable, common sense approach to government, while we still can.

And yes, for all the quibblers, “practical” can also be taken to extremes.

So… President Trump can say, “The radicals on the left are the problem, and they’re vicious and they’re horrible,” but those on the left can’t say that Trump and conservatives want a dictatorship that forbids criticism and limits free speech?”

Now, I’ve certainly criticized the “speech police” of the far left, and their mandated pronouns, and I’ll continue to do so. But I believe they have the right to advocate for their pronouns; they just shouldn’t have the right to fire people who don’t use those pronouns.

Ultra-conservatives have the right to eulogize the late Charlie Kirk, but they shouldn’t have the right to fire commentators and others who think that Kirk was the devil’s tool or worse.

In the United States we already have libel laws which allow someone to sue for damages if another person publishes a statement about an individual, either in written form or by broadcast over media platforms such as radio, television, or the Internet, that is untrue and threatens to harm the reputation and/or livelihood of the targeted person.

In past practice, the “tests” of allowable speech have limited speech advocating the violent overthrow of the government but have allowed speech advocating peaceful change and criticizing public officials for the way they carry out their duties – provided that criticism is factually based.

Currently, Donald Trump is suing The New York Times for $15 billion because the Times has criticized him. He also threatened ABC with a lawsuit and effectively extorted $16 million as a settlement, which most likely encouraged him to sue the Times as a way to stop press criticism. His actions there illustrate the dangers of appeasement. Trump only backs down to superior force, and too many politicians and businesses either can’t muster that force or are unwilling to do so, even when Trump is now stating that anyone who says anything negative about him or his policies should be removed from the media.

But allowing the President to use his powers to destroy or to attempt to destroy or mute his critics is yet another step toward a dictatorship, something that the Republicans in Congress either refuse to face or believe is necessary to enact their policies.

And those very same Republicans ignore past examples by saying, “This time is different.” Of course it is, but as Mark Twain observed, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes, and, unchecked, that rhyming will lead to an authoritarian government or a dictatorship.

With all the furor about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and all the rhetoric about how political violence needs to stop, and how we’re a “better people” than that, I thought a little perspective might be helpful.

To begin with, political violence has been, if not common, certainly prevalent in the United
States over the last 175 years. We fought a Civil War over differences in basic political views. Following that, we had well over a century of violence and civil unrest over civil rights, complete with shootings, hangings, and lynchings, not to mention rampant vigilantes, certainly a political issue if ever there was.

On the political level, we’ve had four Presidents assassinated, and four others attacked with lethal force.

Former President Theodore Roosevelt was shot and wounded in 1912 while running for President on the “Bull Moose” ticket. President Gerald Ford was attacked twice in 1975. In one case, the shooter mischambered the pistol and in the second, the shooter fired twice and missed. President Ronald Reagan was shot and came close to dying in 1981, and five others were wounded, several seriously. President Trump has suffered two attempts on his life but only had a minor gash on his ear from the first, while the would-be assassin was caught before he could act in the second attempt.

I don’t know about you, but to me, eight out of forty-seven Presidents seems rather high, and that doesn’t include Presidential candidates.

Robert F. Kennedy was shot and killed while running for President in 1968, and Governor George Wallace was shot and partially paralyzed in 1972 while seeking the Democratic Presidential nomination.

Over 28 recognized U.S. civil rights crusaders have been shot and killed, most notably Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers.

Just recently, two Minesota Democratic lawmakers and their families were targeted: one was killed, and several judges have been attacked as well.

Now we’re having what can only be called an epidemic of school shootings, and we’ve always had a problem with violent domestic abuse, which is why experienced police officers always worry about being summoned for domestic abuse calls.

So all the rhetoric about our being a better people than that is exaggerated. The facts are clear. We haven’t got that good a record when it comes to violence.

One of the key questions is whether, as a nation, we’ll be willing to admit that we have a fairly high level of violence. Or will we continue to deny the facts and cling to the illusion that we’re peace-loving, while we continue to attack and shoot those who don’t agree with us.

Yesterday, an eloquent but hard right political influencer – Charlie Kirk – was assassinated, and almost immediately everyone, particularly Republicans, began to talk about the need to stop political violence.

That’s all well and good, but it’s also hypocritical and worse.

Assassination has no rightful place in a democracy, but neither does sending troops and ICE agents into Home Depots, churches, and schools and arresting and carting off people based on their color, speech, or dress, all too often sweeping up people who are American citizens in the furor of activity to deport as many people as quickly as possible, while trying to “flood the zone,” i.e., to overload the courts and local government to the point where they can’t stop illegal and quasi-legal deportations.

That sort of behavior by the federal government is also political violence, no matter how Republicans rationalize and cover it with the quasi-legal veneer of Executive Orders. Even undocumented individuals who have committed no crimes, other than being here, deserve the protection of the law.

Violence begets violence. It always has.

The way to stop violence isn’t to commit violent acts, but to follow the law – and the Constitution – in enforcing the law.

Right now, in the frenzy to deport, Trump and his allies are stirring up more unrest, fear, and violent reactions. Equally important, too many of these measures aren’t getting rid of immigrant violent criminals. That takes patient, deliberate, long, hard effort. It also takes spending money on preventive measures proven to work.

The fifty-thousand-dollar bonuses for joining ICE are turning immigration enforcement into often-violent bounty-hunting, with the greatest appeal to would-be thugs and toughs.

More empty rhetoric and more forceful measures applied indiscriminately won’t stop or even reduce social, criminal, and political violence, except momentarily where the force is being applied, and if all that force is applied continuously, it will cost far more than funding local law enforcement and community support structures efficiently.

But then, Trump’s never been interested in building strong and effective local government; he’s only interested in building a national power base to become a de facto dictator, and over time that can only increase the violence.

I listened to Robert F. Kennedy’s testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, but could only bear to listen a short time, largely because what I heard revealed that the majority of the Senators and RFK appeared either to suffer from near-complete innumeracy, or were so locked into policy positions that they appeared to suffer terminal innumeracy.

The discussion over national life-expectancy data was more than a little revealing. The life-expectancy for Americans is lower than all other western industrial countries, yet the U.S. spends more than twice as much on health care per capita.

There are several reasons for these figures. First, one of the factors lowering average lifespans of a population is high infant mortality, i.e., the death of a child before his or her first birthday. Compared to the rest of the world, the U.S. infant mortality rate is fifty-fifth, and is at least twice as high as all other first-world nations. Add to that that the U.S. maternal death rate is close to five times that of all other major industrial countries and is continuing to rise.

The second factor lowering average lifespans is the percentage of the population lacking basic health care. In the U.S., roughly 25 million Americans lack health care insurance and over 100 million do not have a regular health care provider. Yet of those uninsured Americans, 74% have a full-time worker, and another 11% are working part-time. While 62% of uninsured American adults have health care debts, as might be expected, 44% of Americans with health insurance also reported health care debts.

When roughly a third of the U.S. population does not have a regular health care provider and almost half the population cannot afford even routine health care without going into debt, one might think these factors just possibly might contribute to a lower life expectancy for Americans, but for some reason, so far as I could tell, the only factor that was touched on was the high cost of medical care for those who can afford it, when the reason for lagging life expectancy lies in those who cannot afford or obtain adequate medical care.

In addition, there’s been no significant increase in the number of MDs graduating from U.S. medical schools over the past five years, despite an estimated population increase of nearly five percent.

So why don’t Senators and Representatives know these numbers… or is it that they don’t care?