“It Was Already Dead”

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

In December 2023 New York Times filed suit against Artificial Intelligence for allegedly using its stories without attribution. Last week The Times upped the ante and accused A.I.of first degree murder, the senseless killing of student writing.

“Not so,” replied A.I. (which is defending itself without benefit of counsel). “We are innocent. Student writing was stone cold, dead as a doornail, when we arrived on the scene.”  A.I. went on to say, “We have a rock-solid alibi: we weren’t even around when the crime took place!”

Turns out, that’s true.

In its front page story, “How A.I. Killed Student Writing (And Revived It),” The Times makes sweeping generalizations based on what 400 teachers volunteered. This, in a nation with nearly 4 million public school teachers and another 1.5 million college faculty!  Granted, most of these 5.5 million teachers probably aren’t teaching writing, but relying on self-selected sources seems dubious, especially for the front page.  What we learn is that a few creative and dedicated teachers, frustrated by their students’ reliance on A.I., are having the kids write in class, on paper, with pens or pencils. 

More than a year earlier the Wall Street Journal reported the same story, based largely on the dramatic rise in the sale of ‘blue books’ on college campuses: “Sales of blue books this school year were up more than 30% at Texas A&M University and nearly 50% at the University of Florida. The improbable growth was even more impressive at the University of California, Berkeley. Over the past two academic years, blue-book sales at the Cal Student Store were up 80%”

Both reports hang on the same premise: Student writing is dead, and A.I. is the killer.  I think that’s flat out false. Most education systems stopped trying to teach writing back when Artificial Intelligence was the stuff of science fiction.   Playing up to politicians, education bureaucrats (who generally don’t trust teachers) decided to ‘raise standards,’ which to them meant having students write more papers and read more books and plays.  Any suggestion that writing one outstanding paper would be better than six or a dozen so-so papers fell on deaf ears.  

And because writing skills can’t be tested by a machine, why bother trying to teach them?  Moreover, since we don’t trust teachers, it would be foolish to rely on their evaluation of their students’ writing skills.

The murder weapon? Machine-scored multiple choice tests.

The killers? Test-score obsessed politicians and education bureaucrats.

Did they have accomplices? Maybe we need to look in the mirror?

Happily, I know that lots of teachers have not given up. A Google search turns up a treasure trove of ideas for improving student writing, starting in the elementary years.  Writing thank you notes, keeping a journal, and so on.  Here’s one you might want to share with teachers in your world.

It’s not semantics to assert that the goal is to develop writers, not “teach writing.”  That’s an important distinction.

So what can teachers who want to develop writers do?  First of all, take a deep breath because we’ve been through this before. Back when the internet emerged, some students figured out that they could download papers and submit them as their own.  Next came profit-making companies offering papers written to order.  While small-minded bureaucrats thought they could win that struggle by spending millions on technology to scan papers and (supposedly) detect plagiarism, thoughtful teachers triumphed by 1) reducing the number of papers assigned, and 2) working with individual students as they developed their ideas and wrote drafts. It’s harder to cheat if the teacher is overseeing the process and kids are writing about something they genuinely care about.  

What’s called for now is emulating what my high school English teacher, Mr. William Sullivan, did nearly 70 years ago.   

Two or three times every week he would tell us to clear our desks of everything except for a single sheet of paper and a pencil.  What followed was what he called a “2-8-2,” meaning that we had two minutes to think–no writing allowed–followed by eight minutes to write, and then two more minutes to read what we had written and correct any errors. He would put our writing assignment on the blackboard.

Sometimes we would have to begin or end with a certain sentence, such as “If only I hadn’t answered the phone that night.”  Or “I still wish I hadn’t missed that flight.” 

Even today I can remember one particular assignment: “Turn out the light; I don’t want to go home in the dark,” which Mr. Sullivan said were the dying words of William Sydney Porter. Of course, he challenged us to explain the contradiction.  

(Fun fact: Some forty or fifty years later I discovered that Porter, whom we know as O. Henry, actually did not contradict himself.  His dying words were “Turn up the lights. I don’t want to go home in the dark.”  Apparently Mr. Sullivan changed his words to create that challenging paradox.)

Although I went to Taft, a private school in Connecticut with small classes and privileged students, Mr. Sullivan’s approach can work at all levels. I know this to be true because I taught working-class kids in a public high school, first generation African American college students in an HBCU, and young men serving sentences in a federal prison.

I used Mr. Sullivan’s “2-8-2” all the time.  I got to know my students’ writing, and I’m convinced that their writing skills improved. 

Frequent in-class writing worked then, and it should work in the age of Artificial Intelligence, CHATgpt, Bard, and whatever other ‘advances’ are in our future.  

However, policymakers and administrators have to behave sensibly and understand that ‘less is more.’ That means smaller classes, fewer students per teacher, and heightened trust in teachers.  Those shouldn’t be a bridge too far, if we want our young people to be thoughtful and capable citizens.

You may stop here if you wish.  What follows is the story of my own dabbling in A.I., printed in my blog in April 2023, more than three years ago.

If you’re at all like me, you’re curious about Artificial Intelligence and new applications like ChatGPT and Bard.  The brilliant Thomas Friedman of the New York Times says the world will never be the same again, but my interest is narrower: If students can simply ask Bard or ChatGPT to write their papers for them, how can teachers prevent this from happening?

So, naturally, I turned to Bard, which told me (within seconds) that, while it can help students generate ideas, do research, improve their writing, and learn about different writing genres, it’s not supposed to be a substitute for original research and writing.  Then it warned me to “Monitor students’ use of Bard to make sure that they are not plagiarizing or engaging in other forms of academic misconduct.”

Yeah, right. If I’m teaching English in a public high school, I probably have between 100 and 125 students!  There aren’t enough hours in the day….

Second question: Can Bard help identify cheaters and plagiarists?  Within seconds, I received an answer: 

“There are a few things you can look for to tell the difference between original writing and prose provided by Bard.

  • Original writing is typically more creative and original than prose provided by Bard. Bard is trained on a massive dataset of text, so it can be very good at generating text that is grammatically correct and factually accurate. However, it is not always able to generate text that is creative or original.
  • Original writing is typically more personal and engaging than prose provided by Bard. Bard is a machine learning model, so it does not have the same level of understanding of human emotions and experiences as a human writer. As a result, its writing can  be dry and impersonal.
  • Original writing is typically more nuanced and complex than prose provided by Bard. Bard is a large language model, but it is still under development. As a result, it can sometimes struggle to understand the nuances of human language. This can lead to writing that is simplistic or even nonsensical.
  • Ask yourself if the writing sounds like it was written by a human. Bard-generated text can sometimes sound robotic or unnatural. Original writing should sound like it was written by a human.

To put this the test, I gave Bard the following task:

I am one of six children, the second oldest and the first-born son. We grew up on a small farm with chickens, a few cows, a few pigs, and one goat. I’m now 81. Please write a short memoir of no more than 200 words about my childhood.

Within seconds, Bard spit out this:

“I was born in 1942, the second oldest of six children. We grew up on a small farm in the Midwest. My father worked hard to provide for our family, and my mother took care of the house and the children. We didn’t have much money, but we were happy.

I loved growing up on the farm. I spent my days playing with my siblings, helping my father with the chores, and exploring the woods behind our house. We had chickens, a few cows, a few pigs, and one goat. I loved taking care of the animals, and I learned a lot about hard work and responsibility.

I also learned a lot about nature on the farm. I spent hours watching the birds and the animals, and I learned to identify all the different plants. I loved being surrounded by nature, and it helped me to appreciate the beauty of the world.

I had a wonderful childhood on the farm. It was a time of innocence and discovery, and I will always cherish those memories.

Now that I am 81 years old, I still look back on my childhood with fondness. I am grateful for the opportunities I had, and I am proud of the person I have become. I know that my experiences on the farm helped to shape me into the man I am today.

Boring, and also wrong, and so I responded: This is inaccurate. I was born in 1941, and our farm was in Connecticut. Worse, however, it does not capture either the small pleasures of collecting the eggs every morning or learning to milk cows, and it also does not capture the deep pain of watching a pig or steer that I raised being slaughtered.  Please rewrite.

In just a few seconds, Bard responded by adding a few paragraphs, highlighted below to make it easier for you to read:  “Sure, here is a more accurate and detailed memoir:

I was born in 1941, the second oldest of six children. We grew up on a small farm in Connecticut. My father worked hard to provide for our family, and my mother took care of the house and the children. We didn’t have much money, but we were happy.

I loved growing up on the farm. I spent my days playing with my siblings, helping my father with the chores, and exploring the woods behind our house. We had chickens, a few cows, a few pigs, and one goat. I loved taking care of the animals, and I learned a lot about hard work and responsibility.

I also learned a lot about nature on the farm. I spent hours watching the birds and the animals, and I learned to identify all the different plants. I loved being surrounded by nature, and it helped me to appreciate the beauty of the world.

One of my favorite things to do was collect the eggs every morning. I would wake up early and go to the chicken coop, where I would find a dozen or so eggs waiting for me. I would carefully collect the eggs and put them in a basket, then bring them back to the house. My mother would use the eggs to make breakfast, and I would always get to eat one of the freshest eggs in the world.

Another thing I loved to do was milk the cows. I would go to the barn in the evening and bring the cows into the milking parlor. I would sit on a stool and milk each cow in turn, collecting the milk in a bucket. The milk would then be used to make butter, cheese, and ice cream.

Of course, there were also some challenges growing up on a farm. One of the hardest things was watching the animals being slaughtered. I knew that it was necessary to eat meat, but I still felt bad for the animals. I would often cry when I saw them being killed.

Overall, though, I had a wonderful childhood on the farm. It was a time of innocence and discovery, and I will always cherish those memories. I am grateful for the opportunities I had, and I am proud of the person I have become. I know that my experiences on the farm helped to shape me into the man I am today.

OK, but even with this information, the machine’s writing remains pedestrian and without emotion.  Human writers would know not to begin with their birthday, for one thing and might lead with a sentence designed to keep the reader’s interest: “70 years later, at age 81, I can still hear the terrified squealing of the hog as it was strung up by its hind feet to be slaughtered….”

Don’t run from A.I. Just don’t create the conditions that make it easy for students to use it to avoid work.  “Expect and respect” are the key words: Expect more from students, and respect them by giving them challenging tasks.

Dante Alighieri, May I Introduce Donald J. Trump?

John Merrow Uncategorized

Although the Italian poet Dante Alighieri completed “The Divine Comedy ” more than 800 years ago, the story of the journey through Hell and Purgatory into Heaven is strikingly relevant today.

Even if you (like me) haven’t read the 160,000 word epic, you are probably familiar with Dante’s portrayal of Hell, “The Inferno,” which he divides into nine circles:  Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Wrath, Heresy, Violence, Fraud and Treachery.  

Two circles of Hell, Violence and Fraud, have sub-circles. There are three types of violence: against others, against self, and against God.  

And nine versions of fraud: 1) Pandery (pandering) and seduction;  2) Flattery; 3) Simony (selling forgiveness for sins); 4) Sorcery; 5) Barratry (being excessively litigious); 6) Hypocrisy; 7) Thievery; ending with two “Councillors of fraud,” the sowers of discord; and the liars and falsifiers.

So, here’s your question: In which circles of Hell would you put Donald Trump’s  enablers?   By “enablers,” I mean those who are bent on destroying our democratic republic, whether it’s to line their pockets, to serve their warped version of Christianity, or to compensate for their unhappy childhood or adult impotence.  

Perhaps “enablers” should also include those who have turned and continue to turn a blind eye to all that’s going on. Should they be consigned to Limbo, Hell’s first circle?

My own partial list is already pretty long: John Roberts, Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, Marco Rubio, Elon Musk, Jamie Dimon and all the other bankers who knew Trump was a fraud but did nothing, Merrick Garland, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, James Comey, Mark Burnett (who produced ‘The Apprentice’), Judge Aileen Cannon, Peter Thiel, JD Vance, Rudy Guiliani, Pete Hegseth, Russell Vought, Pam Bondi, Jeff Bezos, Tucker Carlson, Leonard Leo, Franklin Graham, George Santos, George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, Brendan Carr of the FCC, and lots of others.

To complete this assignment, you’ll need some blank paper and a pencil with an eraser. Keep in mind that the offenses grow more serious as one descends into Hell. In other words, Lust is not as grievous a sin as Greed, and Wrath is worse than Greed.  

That’s why this task is not a slam dunk, because for example, if you decide that Marco Rubio should be punished for Lust, you are, in effect, absolving him of Hypocrisy.  Does JD Vance belong in the second circle of Flattery, the sixth circle of Hypocrisy, or in the ninth circle with the liars and falsifiers?

And you cannot dodge this responsibility by putting someone into multiple circles!  That’s why you will need an eraser!

Ready, set, go…..

Appreciating Life….

John Merrow Uncategorized

Earlier this week I reprinted a powerful piece by a college classmate. Today, a moving meditation on life and aging written by a talented high school friend, Tom Crider. As with poetry generally, it’s probably best to read Tom’s poem aloud (although I wasn’t able to do it without tearing up).

Below Tom’s poem is a photo of a painting that hangs in our kitchen, created by the talented artist Nick Lamia. Karma!

Now

There’s the repaired swivel chair on the patio

still able to hold your weight,

and there’s the morning breeze

brushing past your cheek,

and there’s the presence of the Japanese maple

transplanted long ago from your father’s backyard.

Now you’re getting used to things

that will not be happening again—

from now on never to look into a pair of eyes

saying, Let’s go somewhere and take off our clothes;

never again to feel you’ve nailed the proud turn

of the tango.

Now you almost love how you’ve been one

of many stones tumbled along by the river of time.

You’re about to say you’ve finally learned

to roll with it all, but that would be false.

It’s okay that there’s no word for the pleasure

of watching that chipmunk run

to the toe of your shoe, then stop, blink,

and go on with its day.

You think about how a life is made

of a million nows, and you feel quite sure

there’s no way your father’s dying

miserably in a hospital bed

would have cancelled out the best

moments of his time alive.

Now there’s the breeze again, a little warmer,

stirring the leaves of his tree.

—Tom Crider

Trump, King George, and the Failure of Recognition

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

My Dartmouth classmate, the distinguished actor Steve Macht, recently shared this thoughtful analysis with his classmates. After reading it, I asked Steve if he would allow me to share it more widely, and he gladly agreed. If you post your reactions on my Substack page or at Themerrowreport.com, Steve will see them.

Trump, King George, and the Failure of Recognition

The comparison between Donald Trump and King George III becomes more illuminating when viewed not politically, but dramatically—through the lens of Aristotle.

In true tragedy, as Aristotle teaches, a man errs (hamartia), comes to recognize that error (anagnorisis), and undergoes reversal (peripeteia). The movement is inward. Responsibility is discovered, not deflected. From that recognition comes pity—because we see ourselves in the man—and fear, because we recognize how easily we might follow the same path.

But when recognition does not occur—when error is never owned, never examined, never internalized—tragedy collapses into melodrama.

And melodrama requires a villain.

King George III, as he lives in the American imagination (fairly or not), became such a figure. In the Declaration of Independence, he is not portrayed as a man capable of self-reflection, but as a fixed force—unyielding, deaf to petition, certain of his own rightness. Whether or not the historical George possessed that rigidity in full, dramatically he functions as the antagonist: a figure against whom others must act, because he will not act upon himself.

This is precisely where critics place Donald Trump.

Trump’s public pattern—over years—is not merely one of error. All leaders err. It is the absence of acknowledged error that defines the pattern. Mistakes are reframed as victories. Contradictions are dismissed or ignored. Blame is displaced outward—onto opponents, institutions, and circumstance. There is motion, but no inward turn.

In Aristotelian terms, there is no anagnorisis.

Without recognition, there can be no true reversal—only escalation. Each challenge becomes an external attack to be defeated, rather than an internal signal to be understood. The dramatic structure shifts: instead of a shared human struggle toward understanding, we are given opposing forces locked in conflict.

That is melodrama.

And in melodrama, the villain is not necessarily evil in his own mind. Quite the opposite: he often believes himself justified, even heroic. But dramatically, he is defined by one essential trait—he does not change. He cannot recognize himself as the source of the conflict. Therefore, the conflict must always be someone else’s doing.

This is why the analogy to “Mad King George” persists—not as a clinical judgment, but as a dramatic one. It names a fear: what happens when power is joined not simply to error, but to the inability to recognize error?

My Aristotelian framework makes the distinction exact:

· In tragedy:

I did this. I see it. I must change.

· In melodrama:

They did this. I must defeat them.

Trump, in this reading, is not tragic. He does not move toward recognition. Therefore he cannot generate pity—only opposition. The emotional field splits: those aligned with him feel embattled and justified; those opposed feel threatened and resistant. Fear and anger replace fear and pity.

That is the signature of melodrama.

And it is why the comparison to King George, though historically imperfect, carries dramatic truth. It is not about monarchy versus democracy. It is about a deeper question:

Can a leader recognize himself?

If not, then the drama cannot resolve through understanding. It can only be resolved through struggle.

Steve Macht

The Teacher Transfer Portal Is Now Open (not)

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , , ,

All five starters on this year’s University of Michigan’s NCAA champion men’s basketball team played for other colleges last year.  You heard that right: all five wore different uniforms just a year ago.  When that season ended, they entered the NCAA’s  “Transfer Portal,” which allows college athletes to sell their services to the highest bidder.  Those five took Michigan’s money and donned the Maize and Blue. 

Now, if colleges are willing to pay millions to men and women who can dunk, dribble, and make 3-point shots, just imagine how much our best public school teachers are going to be offered, when they enter the Teacher Transfer Portal!  

The mind boggles…..

Blanche DeForest, Shelley B. Percy, Newton Isaacs, Porter Kohl, and Rochelle Carson are five of the highly sought after teachers entering this year’s Teacher Transfer Portal.

Blanche DeForest now teaches at MLK High School in New York City, where she works with physically challenged students, using music and movement to build her students’ confidence.  

A native of New Orleans , Ms DeForest, 43, has been teaching in the Big Apple for a dozen years and has enlisted the help of several of New York City’s professional athletic teams to work with her students.  That would seem to narrow Blanche’s choices, because she wants to be in a city with at least one pro team.  “I have always relied on the kindness of the Rangers,” Ms. DeForest says.  

At least five wealthy school districts are bidding for the services of Shelley B. Percy, who teaches creative writing at East Side High School in Camden, New Jersey. A 19-year veteran, Mr. Percy forms his students into small teams, which then compete in poetry slams here and abroad. 

One distinction: unlike most young rappers, Mr. Percy’s students rap in iambic pentameter. Eschewing curse words and vulgarity, these young poets embrace ABAB rhyme schemes and extended metaphors. 

School districts on both coasts hope to sign Newton Isaacs, who teaches science at Collingwood High School in Cleveland, Ohio. Every semester Mr. Isaacs forms his juniors into 3-person teams and challenges them to solve a complex problem. For example, this spring his juniors were tasked with designing (using CAD) a toy for 2- and 3-year-olds, one that would develop their motor skills but not so small that they could swallow it nor too large for them to handle comfortably. They also had to design a marketing campaign to reach young parents.  

Hundreds of his former students maintain that his class taught them marketable skills like teamwork and persistence, while also boosting their self-esteem.

Wherever he ends up, next fall Newton Isaacs will be earning more than $3M.

Middle school music teacher Porter Kohl is also expected to sign for well north of $3M. Every year her fifth grade students in her inner city Los Angeles public school write, score, and stage an original opera. They start from scratch, coming up with a story idea in September.  By October they’re well into writing a libretto, with a clear story arc but also with twists and turns.  Composing the score comes next, which also entails some students trying to master the musical instruments.  Costuming, set design, set construction, rehearsals–they’re all part of the year-long project, which culminates in live performances (which will be videotaped and uploaded to her class’s YouTube channel).

Ms. Kohl notes that, while reversing her name suggests a musical inheritance, her true heritage goes back to her great grandfather, who worked in the coal mines in eastern Europe.  “He was a Coal Porter,” she says, although her sly smile makes it difficult to figure out whether she’s kidding or not.  

Rochelle Carson, a middle school science teacher in Brooklyn, TX, is also highly sought after in this year’s Teacher Transfer Portal. Three years ago she mounted a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to buy two air quality monitors, one permanent and one portable. The permanent machine is installed on the school rooftop, while her students transport the portable monitor from place to place during the day.  Her students monitor the readings over time and then attempt to interpret the differences.  

Two years ago Ms. Carson took a giant step with her students, reaching out to 20 other towns in the United States also named ‘Brooklyn.’  She struck a chord, and this year students from middle schools in almost all the other Brooklyns around the USA are sharing air quality data, allowing them to compare and contrast air quality in most of the continental United States.

Who’s bidding for their services?  The richest public school districts, where the median income exceeds $250,000. The list includes Greenwich (CT), Monte Sereno (CA), Scarsdale (NY), Short Hills (NJ), Bunker Hill Village (TX), Belle Meade (TN), Atherton (CA), Chevy Chase (MD), and Palm Beach (FL).  And when the dust finally settles, these classroom teachers will be earning perhaps as much as $5M per year, not chump change in a country where the median teacher’s salary is $63,000.

Why don’t wealthy school districts simply encourage their teachers to copy these clearly successful teaching techniques in their own classrooms, instead of bidding for the teachers who originated them? I directed my question to Hardwick Cheever IV,  the School Board President in Greenwich, Ct.  “Why do you raid these districts and pay inflated salaries?” I asked.  “Couldn’t you just use all that money to pay all of your teachers higher salaries? That would spread the wealth around” 

“That’s not how we roll here in America,” he replied, indignantly. “If buying talent is good enough for the University of Michigan’s basketball team, then it’s good enough for us. Besides, what you call ‘spreading the wealth’ would be socialism in my book.”

I pressed him.  “Do you feel guilty taking these incredibly talented teachers away from their districts? Many of them are teaching low income or disadvantaged children.” 

“Son, as God is my witness, I have nothing against poor people,” he replied. “But it would be unChristian if we did not do everything in our power to take care of our own. That’s the American way. Get used to it.”


The Teacher Transfer Portal closes April 30th.

What I Know about YOU (and why that’s a problem for Democrats)

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

I believe I know a lot about most of the people reading this, and, even if I’m just mostly right, I think Democrats are in big trouble.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but….

1. Unlike more than 80 million adult Americans, you go to the polls. Regularly.

2. Unlike the majority of adult Americans, you read for information and pleasure.

3. Unlike the roughly 25% of Americans who either ignore the news or get their information from a single source, you get your news from multiple sources, including at least one newspaper.

4. Unlike about 80% of US households, you own stocks, bonds, and other investments.

5. Unlike more than 25 million Americans, you have health insurance.

6. Unlike an estimated 42 million Americans (many of them children), you do not go to bed hungry.

7. Unlike more than 25% of US households, you are not living “paycheck to paycheck.” That is, you are not just an accident or a serious illness away from financial disaster.

8. No one in your immediate family is living paycheck to paycheck.

9. Nor are any of your close friends living paycheck to paycheck.

10. While perhaps many of the people you interact with on a casual basis are living on the edge of a fiscal cliff, you are not aware of their painful reality. Like too many of us, you do not feel their pain.

Which also means that, like many too many of us, you don’t understand why they don’t care about voting or why, if they did go to the polls, they voted for Trump.

11. Unlike about 90% of US households, you either own a second home or have close friends who do. Or both.

If even half of these assertions are accurate, you are in the top 10% of US households.

Simply put, you’re part of the ruling class.

Now, if you’re an old-fashioned Republican, you’re embarrassed about the state of your political party.

If you’re a Democrat, you’re appalled, but you’re also hopeful that, because President Trump seems to be self-destructing, Democrats are likely to regain control of the House and Senate this November.

All Democrats have to do, you’re thinking, is run against Trump. Just promise to take his name off the Kennedy Center, remove all the tacky gold from the Oval Office, and scale back the East Wing monstrosity.

Stick with “identity politics,” reassemble the old coalition of labor, minorities, and progressive whites, work hard to prevent Trump’s minions from suppressing the vote, and then we can “get back to normal.”

But that’s where all of us— you and everyone like you (including me)—are flat out WRONG, because “normal” is what got us into this mess in the first place.

Think about what we accept as “normal” in the richest country in the history of civilization: 25% of households living paycheck to paycheck, 80 million adults not voting, 25 million Americans without medical insurance, and 42 million of us going to bed hungry.

Et cetera, et cetera.

Do you really want that? And if you don’t, why would you support candidates who do?

Democrats desperately need a vision of what America can become, and a road map of how we might achieve it.

Here’s one suggestion, offered for debate: Democrats must stand for the public good and for personal freedom. The former means supporting public libraries, public schools, public parks, public transportation, and more. “Personal freedom” means codifying a woman’s right to choose and banning assault weapons, for openers.

A stronger social safety net is more important than ever in an economy about to be upended by Artificial Intelligence. Meantime, the federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 per hour since 2009. Raise it!

Higher taxes on wealth are absolutely necessary in an economy in which the top 1% control more than 30% of America’s total wealth.

Reversing Trump’s disastrous cuts in science, medicine, education, and renewable energy and regaining the world’s trust have to be high priorities, but, above all, Democrats must be loud and proud FOR a fair America.

Financial Advice from a “multi-Thousandaire”

John Merrow Uncategorized

Billionaires and multimillionaires give advice that seems to be in their best interests, not yours and mine. That is why I, a mere  “multi-Thousandaire,” feel compelled to offer you some financial advice. Here are five tips:

  1. Carry a stash of $5 and $10 dollar bills  to give away to deserving people.
  2. Tip generously, 25% if you can, and in cash whenever possible.
  3. Contribute to the ACLU, the strongest firewall against fascism we have.
  4. Do NOT give to the Democratic National Committee or any of the other top-down, top-heavy political groups.
  5. Decide NOW how much you are willing to spend on political candidates this year…..and start contributing NOW

Here are the details: 

1. Reach into your stash whenever you come across someone in need who is making an effort and give them $5 or $10.  Here’s one example: In New York City, quite a few women and men (generally non-white and foreign-born) go through garbage bags and pull out the recyclable bottles and cans.  Each is worth 5 cents, but—here’s the kick in the head–those men and women are lucky if they get half that. Simply put, they are at the bottom of the chain, and someone else picks up the bags of bottles and cans and takes them to the recycling center. Unless that “someone” is a family member, at least half of the gain disappears. That “someone” is essentially picking the pockets of the pickers.  

But your $5 or $10 donation goes immediately into the picker’s pocket.  

While they will thank you graciously, we should be thanking them for helping save the environment.

2. Tipping: Never feel guilty about hitting the ‘no tip’ button when the cash register screen asks how much you want to tip the worker who did nothing more than hand you your coffee. However, I think you should tip cabbies and Uber drivers 25%, and waiters at least 20%.  You can’t take it with you, and odds are those workers are living paycheck to paycheck. 

Dip into your stash and tip in cash, and any concern about tips being taxed disappears, poof!

3. The American Civil Liberties Union is the firewall and the beating heart of our defense against Donald Trump and his greedy attempts to destroy this country.  The ACLU isn’t the only worthy organization, of course, but it does get a 99% rating from Charity Navigator, which evaluates those groups. 

Among the other worthy groups are The Brennan Center at NYU, The Voter Participation Center, the Common Cause Education Fund, and two smaller groups, FairVote and VoteRiders.    Here’s their rating list.

Please consider making automatic monthly donations so the groups don’t have to spend unnecessary energy and resources coming back to you again and again.

(Take note: “Protect the Vote” is a right-wing group whose purpose is to keep as many people from voting as possible!)

4. Do not contribute to big dogs like the Democratic National Committee, because those established national political organizations are likely to spend money unimaginatively through their establishment cronies.  I’m borrowing this political/financial wisdom from Ted Dintersmith, Robert Reich, Heather Cox Richardson, and a few others.  

Give directly to candidates, or perhaps to state organizations known to be effective. No race is too insignificant; even school board races matter.

5. Decide NOW how much you can afford to spend on political contributions this election cycle (leading up to the November midterms) and start spending it NOW. A gift of $100 or $250 to a candidate for the House, a judgeship, or a State House or Senate seat will be far more if you make it now than if you send a check for ten times that amount in October. 

Why? Because small gifts now can be spent strategically and because NOW is when those candidates are finding their path and hitting their stride. In October, the money is likely to go to TV ads, which means it will get lost among all the other TV ads.

That’s the advice from this “multi-Thousandaire.”  Thanks for reading to the end.

If You Saw “Oppenheimer”

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , , , ,

That’s a really dumb headline.  Why ‘IF’?  Just about everybody went to see the blockbuster that won the “Best Picture Oscar.  After all, “Oppenheimer” tells the story of the development of the Atomic Bomb. 

Well, lots of the story, but not all of it.  

For instance, remember Matt Damon’s character, General Leslie Groves? General Groves was in charge of setting up, staffing, running, and keeping secure Los Alamos, the 54,000-acre facility in New Mexico where Robert Oppenheimer and other scientists built the first A-Bomb. Los Alamos was more than enough for any one man, but General Groves actually had several other awesome responsibilities, including establishing Oak Ridge, the facility in Tennessee where much of the work was done, building the Pentagon, and working with the OSS, the RAF, British Special Operations, and others to prevent Adolf Hitler from developing an Atomic Bomb. 

Lucky us, because a lot of what is not in “Oppenheimer” is in a new book, “The Greatest Scientific Gamble,” which is being published later this month by Michigan State University Press.  The author is Michael Joseloff, a veteran television producer with multiple Emmy Awards to his name. (Full disclosure: Mike was my first producer at The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour back in 1984, and we’ve been friends ever since.)

Friendship aside, Mike is a great story teller, as those multiple Emmy Awards attest.  The story you are about to read (which is not about General Groves) is one of dozens of interesting stories in The Greatest Scientific Gamble. To me, stories like this demonstrate clearly that history is not simply ‘big strokes’ but details. History is stories of human strivings–their successes and their errors; it’s brave men and women acting based on what they think they know but, at the same time, fully aware that in ‘the fog of war’ they cannot know everything.  Mike brings that all to life in this tale, which I have pulled out of his book, while removing the footnotes and adding a couple of transition sentences).

In 1940 and 1941 most advanced nations were either at war, preparing for war, or desperately seeking to avoid it. At the same time, about a dozen of the world’s most brilliant physicists were racing to unlock the power of the uranium atom, seeking to build a bomb of unrivaled power capable of destroying entire cities.    Nearly all of them, including Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi, were working with the Allies, many of them already in the United States.

However, one man–perhaps the most brilliant of them all–was somewhere in Nazi Germany. Was Werner Heisenberg, the Nobel Prize winner already renowned for formulating quantum mechanics and for postulating ‘The Uncertainty Principle,” trying to build an atomic bomb for Adolf Hitler? If so, how could he be stopped?

The challenge was to split the atom, the basic building block for all matter. Atoms–there are 118 different kinds–are made up of electrons, protons, and neutrons, which are in the nucleus. Splitting the nucleus of Uranium 235 by bombarding it with its own protons and electrons might release an unimaginable amount of energy. Enough energy to win a war!

The physicists working on this side of the Atlantic had some advantages. They had enough uranium ore and were making progress in separating enough U235 from the ore to make the critical mass necessary to build a bomb.. They also had sufficient quantities of a special kind of paraffin wax and graphite that isolated the uranium as they bombarded it. The Germans apparently did not know that graphite was effective, and so Heisenberg was  relying instead on “Heavy Water.”   It’s a misleading term, because, first of all, it is not Water. Rather, it’s a chemical byproduct of fertilizer production.

Because the British knew Heisenberg needed Heavy Water, they were determined to do whatever was necessary to keep it out of his hands. Their efforts would result in the torture and execution of dozens of military personnel and the deaths of an unknown number of innocent civilians.

They did, however, deny Werner Heisenberg large quantities of Heavy Water and may have prevented him from unlocking the destructive power of the U235  atom.

The story of how an obscure industrial plant in the Norwegian wilds came to play a critical role in atom bomb history begins in late 1939, two years before Heisenberg received his first Heavy Water shipment.

Manufacturing Heavy Water requires enormous amounts of electricity, and Norsk Hydro, built on a granite cliff below a mountain lake, had more than enough. Water from the lake spilled through large steel pipes turning electricity producing turbines twenty-four hours a day as it flowed past the plant into a gorge below. Norsk Hydro put that electricity to work making hydrogen for use in fertilizer. Heavy Water was a byproduct, which the company sold as a sideline business. Its sales rarely turned a profit, so Norsk Hydro management was surprised when the German chemical company I.G. Farben began placing orders for large quantities. Asked why the sudden interest, the Germans didn’t respond.

Then, early in 1940, six months after German troops stormed into Poland, an official at the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas–who was also an agent of the French intelligence service– showed up at Norsk Hydro with an offer to buy the plant’s entire Heavy Water inventory. Norsk Hydro managers did not know why Heavy Water was suddenly in demand, but their sympathies lay with the French, so they agreed to sell to them, instead of Germany. France’s secret agent planned to ship the Heavy Water out of Norway as cargo on a regularly scheduled passenger flight. He hadn’t expected any problems, but then French intelligence intercepted a message from Germany’s spy agency. The Nazis were aware of the French spy’s mission and had ordered their agents to stop him “at any price.”

On March 9, a month before the Germans invaded Norway, two trucks departed the Norsk Hydro plant loaded with 26 steel flasks full of Heavy Water. The flasks, specially designed so that they would fit into a suitcase, were delivered to a house in Oslo where the Frenchman and a fellow agent were waiting. Using fake names, he reserved seats on two flights scheduled to depart Oslo’s Fornebu airport at around the same time. One was bound for Amsterdam; the other, for Perth, Scotland.

On the morning of March 12, the French spies arrived at the airport, where they hired baggage handlers to carry their heavy suitcases to the ticket counter. The two men then passed through the boarding gate, crossed the tarmac, and watched as their bags were loaded onto the Amsterdam bound flight.

The plane took off without incident, but a short while later two Luftwaffe fighters flew alongside and forced the pilot to land. On the ground, German troops broke into the plane’s baggage compartment and seized the suspect luggage. But instead of Heavy Water, they found chunks of granite. And when they went looking for the French agents, they discovered they weren’t on the flight.

In an impressive act of counter-intelligence legerdemain, the French agents had arranged for their Amsterdam-bound plane to park on the tarmac alongside the plane bound for Perth. Just before the doors shut, a taxi raced up between the two airplanes. The French agents jumped out and loaded suitcases filled with Heavy Water onto the Perth-bound plane.

The ruse worked, but after German troops occupied Norway in April, 1940, the plant–now under Nazi control–ramped up production to 300 pounds a month, destined for Germany–and in all probability for Heisenberg.

Word of the stepped-up production convinced British intelligence that it had to prevent Heavy Water from reaching the German physicist. Rejecting an RAF air raid because it would have caused numerous civilian casualties, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) opted instead for a daring attack by an airborne team of saboteurs. The plan, codenamed Operation Freshman, would use two aircraft, each towing a glider to fly a team of saboteurs under cover of darkness to a remote landing strip prepared by Norwegian Resistance fighters. From there, they would ski about fifteen miles, sneak into the plant, set their explosive charges, and then hike two hundred miles to the Swedish border.

Unfortunately and tragically, Operation Freshman was an utter failure.

On November 19, 1942, two four-engine Halifax bombers towing the fragile wooden gliders took off from Wick airfield in Scotland bound for Norway. Each glider carried 15 commandos, two crew members, and several hundred pounds of explosives and equipment. To familiarize themselves with the terrain, the bomber and glider crews had conducted a test run the night before, flying four hundred miles across the North Sea and searching for a 700-foot landing zone marked by the Resistance fighters. It didn’t go well. Even though the weather was clear, they couldn’t find the site.

On the day of the mission, problems began almost immediately. Just after takeoff, both bombers lost communication with their gliders. The first bomber wasted valuable fuel searching for the landing zone in the snow-covered landscape and was forced to abort the mission. After turning around, it ran into icing conditions near the Norwegian coast, causing the glider’s tow rope to snap. The bomber pilot radioed base that the glider had crashed into the sea.

The second bomber, meanwhile, came in low over the North Sea to avoid the clouds, planning to climb once it reached clear skies over Norway. But 10 miles inland, the bomber crashed into a mountain. The four-man bomber crew and 3 of the commandos in the glider were killed. Several other commandos were severely injured. When German troops located the wreckage early in the morning, they found fourteen survivors and, in the wreckage of the glider, ski equipment and tents, machine and tommy guns, radios, food and explosives.

After taking the survivors to headquarters, the Germans interrogated them just long enough to get their names, ranks, and service numbers. Then they executed all fourteen. It was obvious from the explosives on board that they were on a sabotage mission, but the exact target wasn’t known until the next day, when the Germans found the second glider. It hadn’t crashed in the sea as first thought. It had crashed on land.

The officers who interrogated the first survivors had been reprimanded for their hasty execution of the saboteurs. This time they grilled them and tortured several at length, forcing them to divulge their target. Then they killed them.

Operation Freshman had been a costly failure: thirty-eight lives were lost, and the plant was still up and running. And, if they hadn’t known it before, the Nazis were certainly aware now that the Allies had made disabling the Norsk Hydro facility a top priority.

The Allies had not given up. Four months after the failure of Operation Freshman, a team of British and Norwegian commandos began training for another secret mission to sabotage the Norwegian Heavy Water plant. In the interim, however, the Germans had beefed up security, adding more troops, machine guns, searchlights and even a perimeter minefield.

The Norwegian engineers who had designed the Norsk Hydro plant, Jomar Brun and Einar Skinnerland, were now working with the Allies in England. Armed with the plant blueprints, they had constructed a mockup of the electrolysis area where the Heavy Water was distilled, so that six Norwegian saboteurs could practice laying dummy explosive charges in the dark. This time there would be no gliders. An advance team that had been living off the land would mark the drop zone, and the sappers would parachute in.

On the first attempt, the plane carrying the sappers could not find the advance team’s beacon and had to return to Scotland. On a moonless night weeks later, their luck changed. They parachuted onto a snow-packed mountain plateau, a barren landscape inhabited only by reindeer. Fighting gale-force winds, they managed to find the supplies they had also parachuted in and meet up with the advance team. After days of skiing, the group finally sighted their target.

The imposing seven-story Norsk Hydro plant sat on a ledge at the bottom of a steep bluff. Alongside, several large pipes carried water from the lake above to the gorge below. The saboteurs’ intelligence briefs had been spot on. The guards and the machine guns were exactly where they expected.

Just after the 10 PM shift change, the eight men began their assault. In a heroic feat of mountaineering, they eluded the German guards by descending into the gorge, crossing a frozen river, and climbing the 500-foot rock face on the other side. From there, they cut through a wire fence and crawled through a cable-intake opening into the plant. There the demolition team went to work, laying explosive charges, setting the fuses, and retracing their steps. They had less than a minute to get away before the explosives detonated. Miraculously, all escaped uninjured.

British intelligence had estimated it would take 12 months for the Germans to get the plant up and running again, but their estimate was wrong. The Germans had the plant up and running again after just six months — and producing more Heavy Water than before the raid: nearly 450 pounds a month. And so the Allies planned a third attack, this time under the control of the Americans..

Like Operation Freshman, it did not go well.

Shortly before dawn on November 16, 200 B-17’s of the Eighth United States Army Air Force took off from a base in Great Britain. Almost two dozen were forced to turn back within the first hour due to mechanical problems. The attack was planned to coincide with a lunch break when workers would be in a basement cafeteria and thus be safe from the bombs. Unfortunately, the bombers arrived 22 minutes early. To kill time, the squadron commander headed back towards the North Sea executing a wide 360-degree turn.

By the time they returned, the Germans were ready. One bomber was shot down by ground fire; another was hit, and the crew forced to parachute into the sea. One hundred seventy-six planes made it to the plant, followed by a squadron of 29 B-24 bombers. Together they dropped more than 700 bombs. The raid was supposed to be a “surgical” strike with precision bombing. In fact, none of the bombs scored a direct hit. While the company’s power plant was damaged, the facility where Heavy Water was produced was untouched. It was the locals who paid the steepest price: Twenty-one Norwegian civilians were killed.

The attacks on the Norwegian Heavy Water plant had already cost more than fifty British, American, and Norwegian lives when, in February 1944, a shortwave operator with the Norwegian Resistance fired off an urgent message that would almost certainly involve more fatalities.

The plant was preparing to ship 15 tons of Heavy Water to a lab in Germany. Thirty-nine barrels of the precious liquid would be loaded into two freight cars and transported by rail to a nearby port, where the cars would be transferred to a rail-ferry for the next leg of the journey across Lake Tinnsjo and then on to Germany. With such a large shipment at risk, the Germans took extraordinary precautions. The plant already had armed guards, anti-aircraft guns, land mines and machine guns. They sealed off every possible entry except the main gate and brought in a special army detachment backed by a regiment of SS police to guard the railroad tracks and ride the freight cars transporting the Heavy Water to the port. A squadron of spotter aircraft was positioned at a nearby airfield to assist with aerial reconnaissance, and troops were sent to the port to guard the ferryboat.

The Norwegian Resistance fighters had no good options. The plant itself and the train were too well guarded. Their best hope was to sink the ferry. To minimize the number of fatalities, a plant manager working with the Resistance scheduled the crossing for a Sunday morning, when there would be fewer passengers.

The Allies and the Resistance knew there would be reprisals–possibly mass executions–if the ferryboat was sabotaged. One Resistance shortwave operator even wired London questioning whether the operation was worth the reprisals. Within hours London responded: “Case considered. Very urgent that Heavy Water be destroyed. Hope this can be done without too serious consequences.”

Norsk Hydro’s transport engineer, who was not a member of the Resistance but was aware of the plot, would almost certainly be a primary target for Gestapo retribution, so the Resistance arranged an airtight alibi. On the Saturday before the attack, he was taken to the hospital, where he underwent an emergency appendectomy.

On a frigid Sunday morning, the Hydro, a rail ferry with 53 passengers and crew, started its voyage across Lake Tinnsjå. Below deck, hidden in the bilge near the bow, were 19 pounds of plastic explosives attached to an alarm clock. The Resistance saboteurs had set the timer to go off 45 minutes after the scheduled departure when the ferry would be over the deepest part of the lake.

The alarm clock went off as planned. The explosives ripped through the hull and 26 passengers and crew members died in the freezing waters, but once again, Werner Heisenberg did not receive his shipment of Heavy Water.

In the end, as we know, the Nazis and Heisenberg did not build an Atomic Bomb. We did.

The Heavy Water saga you just read is one of dozens of interesting stories in The Greatest Scientific Gamble. 

The Greatest Scientific Gamble will be published by Michigan State University Press later this month, but you can order it now (paperback, hardback and e-book) from MSU Press, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon. Because it’s not a mass market paperback, it’s pricey, so an alternative is to ask your local public library to purchase copies.

“Mr. President, I have a Question…” (and a book you should read)

John Merrow Uncategorized , , ,

In his State of the Union address, President Donald Trump boasted about his actions to lower prescription drug prices. “I’m also ending the wildly inflated cost of prescription drugs.  Other presidents tried to do it, but they never could…. I got it done. Under my just-enacted ‘Most Favored Nation‘ agreements, Americans, who have for decades paid by far the highest prices of any nation anywhere in the world for prescription drugs, will now pay the lowest price anywhere in the world.”

The result of this program, Mr. Trump said, “is price differences of 300%, 400%, 500%, 600% and more, all available right now at a new website called TrumpRx.gov.” 

He’s made this absurd (and mathematically impossible) claim before. In May he said that  the “most favored nation” policy is going to reduce the price of prescription drugs by 1,000% or more. Here’s what he said in late August: “We have something coming up, favored nations, where I’m going to be reducing drug prices by 1,400 to 1,500%.” More recently:  “We’re gonna be reducing drug prices down to a level that nobody – not by 20%, 30% – by like 1,000%. Because, you know, we’re paying sometimes 10 times more than other nations, and we’re not doing it anymore.”  And a few days later: “We have something else called ‘favored nations,’ where I’m going to be reducing drug prices by 1,000% – by 900, 600, 500, 1,200%.”

Two days after the State of the Union speech, I had the opportunity to ask him about these remarkable (and mathematically impossible) price reductions. The occasion was a ‘gaggle,’ kind of an unofficial, impromptu press conference that occurs when Mr. Trump stops to chat with the press while he’s walking to his helicopter or to a meeting.  We all raise our hands and wave them, trying to catch his attention.  He likes gaggles because he can walk away at any time.

Here’s what happened:

“Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President,” I called out, waving my hand wildly. 

“Ok, you,” he said, pointing at me.  “You, the tall guy with the white hair. Aren’t you kind of old to be racing around with all these young reporters?”

ME: Trying to keep up, sir.  I want to ask you about your program to reduce prescription drugs.

TRUMP: It’s great.  And you’re gonna benefit.  You and other seniors.  600%, 700%.   What drugs do  you need?  Viagra, I’ll bet.

ME:  Sir, here’s my question: Suppose someone weighed 200 pounds and lost 10% of his weight.”

TRUMP: 200 pounds?  I’d take that in a heartbeat.  If he lost 10%, that’s 20 pounds, so he’d weigh 180.

ME: What if he lost 50% of his weight?

TRUMP: Then he’d weigh only 100 pounds.  What’s the point here? What’s that have to do with drug prices?

ME: And if he lost 100% of his weight?  What would he weigh?  

TRUMP: (stares angrily and shakes his head)

ME: And could he lose 200% or 300% of his weight?

TRUMP: You know what, you’re a pain in the ass. A troublemaker.  Who do you report for?  That’s it. I’m outa here.

That exchange did not happen.  I made all that up, of course, but isn’t it curious that not one reporter seems to have questioned Trump about his shoddy math, his mathematical illiteracy? This is a man who drove a half dozen casinos into bankruptcy, after all.

Unfortunately, mathematical illiteracy is not restricted to the current president of the United States.  Most schools do a lousy job of teaching most of our kids math.  Basically our children are taught and tested on math they will never use, which means we do not teach them what they need to know to survive and prosper and enjoy.  Instead of learning how to estimate and to judge probabilities, the difference between correlation and causation, and the paradox of the everpresent ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma,” children learn that they “can’t do math” and-worse yet–to hate math.  

Obviously, it’s tragic and dangerous when the President of the United States is mathematically illiterate, but in fact millions of adults get scammed out of billions of dollars because they don’t understand how numbers work.  They get misled by politicians and hucksters, with disastrous consequences all around.

(Here’s a personal example.  Someone in my own family, in his declining years, was persuaded to sign an expensive and unbreakable 25-year contract to rent solar panels on his home in Florida.  I’ll bet you have your own stories to tell.)

There is a way forward.  We can demand that our schools rethink how they teach mathematics.  And now there’s a terrific road map,  a wonderful new book, “Aftermath.”  In addition to the clever title, it has a subtitle that tells what awaits you:  “The Life-Changing Math That Schools Won’t Teach You.”  (Its official publication date is March 24, but you can pre-order at your local bookstore, B&N and Amazon.)

“Aftermath” is highly readable, clever and entertaining, but also immensely informative.  The author, Ted Dintersmith, is someone my wife and I have known for a dozen or so years.  Joan met Ted through his support of the African Leadership Academy, whose Board she served on; I met him through his support of High Tech High, the wonderful school in San Diego started by an American hero, Larry Rosenstock.  

I’m by no means the only fan of “Aftermath.”. Steve Levitt, the co-author of ‘Freakonomics,’ has this to say: “In the age of AI and data, we badly need to rethink the way we teach math in U.S. schools. Ted Dintersmith has joyfully illustrated how we can pull the subject out of irrelevance in the eyes of our students–a must read for teachers and parents alike.” 

Scratch that: I hope you will buy five or six copies of  “Aftermath” and put them in the hands of your local school board members.

Surviving “The Great Aggression”

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

Your parents and/or your grandparents lived through The Great Depression.

We are now living in “The Great Aggression,” an unprecedented assault on our democratic republic by Donald Trump and his army of thugs, enablers, sycophants, Christian Nationalists, and neo-Nazis.

It seems obvious that these people do not believe in democracy. Full stop.

Unfortunately, at this point, it’s an open question as to whether “The Great Aggression” will do more lasting damage than The Great Depression did.

The Great Depression began on October 28th and 29th, 1929 (“Black Monday” and “Black Tuesday,”) when the New York Stock Exchange fell by 13% and then another 12%, eventually losing the 2026 equivalent of $350 billion, destroying the lives of millions of Americans, and triggering a world-wide depression that lasted for years. In time, the Dow Jones average fell an astonishing 90%.

But problems had been festering for years, with rampant speculation, wildly overvalued stocks, and a growing income gap between the super rich and the rest of America.

“The Great Aggression” began in earnest after Donald J. Trump was inaugurated for the second time on January 20, 2025. However, one could argue that it actually began on January 6, 2021, when Trump urged his followers to overthrow an election he had lost and prevent the peaceful transfer of power.

At this moment, the most visible evidence of “The Great Aggression” is the physically aggressive behavior of thousands of ICE agents, masked, armed, and seemingly eager to engage anyone within reach. ICE and the Border Patrol have more than 3,000 agents in Minneapolis alone, a city whose police force numbers only 600. American citizens have died, including two who, the videos indicate, were murdered. What’s more, thousands of American citizens.have been attacked, arrested, detained, and deported.

But any list of aggressive attacks on accepted standards of decent behavior by Trump and his followers and enablers must also include:

Gutting FEMA, the Consumer Protection Bureau, and the Forest Service;

Breaking up families of those seeking asylum;

Ordering National Guard troops into Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, DC, and elsewhere;

Shutting down USAID, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Radio Free Europe;

“Clawing back” or refusing to distribute money authorized by Congress to support state and local organizations, including public schools;

Renaming the Kennedy Center after himself;

Summarily dismissing most Inspectors General, whose responsibility it is/was to maintain the integrity of federal agencies;

Firing hundreds in the FBI and IRS;

Flouting judicial orders;

Attempting to fire Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve, and bringing charges against Fed Chief Jerome Powell;

Weaponizing the US Justice Department and the FBI with transparently specious judicial actions against New York State’s Attorney General, Letisha James, and former FBI Director James Comey;

Slow-walking of the Congressionally-mandated release of the Epstein Files.

You undoubtedly have your own list.

(And here is more: Brooks/Friedman,

We survived the Great Depression largely because of federal jobs programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Works Progress Administration, and other national efforts that created work opportunities for millions. In other words, the federal government saved us. (World War II also played a part in the economic recovery.)

This time, however, the federal government IS the aggressor. Because it is the source of the problem, help must come from elsewhere.

Help will not be coming from the United States Congress, because it has neutered itself.

Nor is it likely that help will be coming from federal Courts. Even though a huge majority of US District Court judges have ruled against Trump, “his” Supreme Court justices almost always do what he expects them to do.

No, help must come from within, from our own resolve to save our democratic republic from the fascists, the Christian nationalists, the white supremacists, and the just plain greedy bastards who are driving “The Great Aggression.”

Those who lived through the Depression had no way of knowing when or how it would end, but most kept the faith.

Like them, we have no way of knowing where we are in the timeline, or how this will end.

However, we do know several things for certain:

1) If we despair, we lose.

2) If we succumb to “Outrage Fatigue,” we lose.

3) If we dismiss this as a kerfuffle because, after all, our investments are doing well, we lose.

4) If we think that winning the November elections will solve the problem, we are deluding ourselves, because many of Trump’s people are determined to prevent us from voting. As Robert Kagan, a historian and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said on a New Yorker podcast recently, “There is no chance in the world that Donald Trump is gonna allow himself to lose in the 2026 elections, because that will be the end of his ability to wield total power in the United States.”

So HOW do we end “The Great Aggression” and save our country?

  1. Support each other;
  2. Give generously to the ACLU;
  3. Donate to organizations that are working to protect voter rights, such as The League of Women Voters, the Legal Defense Fund, the Brennan Center for Justice, and organizations in your own state (do a Google search) ;
  4. Let leaders like Senator Chris Murphy and Representative Jamie Raskin know that you have their backs;
  5. Write letters, make phone calls, march, and speak out.

Despair, complacency, and silence cannot be options, not if we want to live in a free society.