One of the advantages of not having anything useful to do is that I have time to read. Here are a couple of books that I read this past year, or within a year or two, that I found particularly illuminating, informative, or otherwise notable.  I highly recommend them.

Death of Expertise – by Tom Nichols

America today is increasingly, “obsessed with the worship of its own ignorance,” writes Naval War College professor Tom Nichols. “Never have so many people had so much access to so much knowledge and yet have been so resistant to learning anything.”

Nichols notes that there has always been an undercurrent of anti-intellectualism in American life, but today that undercurrent is a growing flood, sweeping away respect for science and rationality and threatening the relationship between experts and citizens, which is crucial to the health of our democracy.

Good Kids, Bad City – by Kyle Swenson

The criminal justice system is not self-correcting.  Errors happen and some people spend many decades in prison for crimes they did not commit. 

This book tells the story of three young black men, wrongly imprisoned for decades for a murder they didn’t commit.  Swenson, who is now a reporter for the Washington Post, was formerly a reporter for a weekly newspaper in Cleveland. During that time, he covered the story of three men who were falsely convicted of the murder of a white man and served more than 30 years in prison before being exonerated and released when a key witness recanted his earlier testimony. Like any other disaster, the wrongful convictions were the result of a chain of errors, accidents, malfeasance, and carelessness on the part of numerous people and organizations – among them in this case, the police, the news media, the prosecutor, the defense attorneys, and the trial judge.

The most chilling aspect of the story is that the three were originally sentenced to death, but only a Supreme Court decision that led Ohio to temporarily halt executions saved their lives.

The Hidden Life of Trees – by Peter Wohlleben

While trees appear silently impassive, they actually communicate and cooperate with other trees and respond to changes in their environment in real time, according to German forester Wohlleben in this best-selling book. Wohlleben relates the findings of numerous researchers who have found evidence that trees are active participants in a dynamic social network that we are only now beginning to understand.  While Wohlleben’s book has been criticized by some naturalists for its “oversimplified and emotional” language, his relating of the current science is largely accurate. Readers of this book might think twice before ever again hammering a nail into the living wood of a tree.

Hiding in Plain Sight – by Sarah Kendzior

Kendzior is a researcher who spent years studying dictatorships in the former Soviet Union, where she observed the cooperative efforts of autocratic governments and criminal syndicates intent on looting their countries. Her book describes the Trump administration’s efforts to follow a similar path.

“In 2015,” she writes, “I predicted that Donald Trump would win the presidential election, and once installed, he would decimate American democracy.”

In her words, “The Trump administration is a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government, with operatives all over the world.”

Warriors Don’t Cry – by Melba Patillo

Melba Patillo was one of the nine black students that integrated Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957. Their story is best known for President Dwight Eisenhower’s deployment of the 101^st Airborne Division to enforce the court-ordered desegregation order. But less well-known are the details of the sustained year-long campaign of harassment and verbal and physical abuse that dozens of white students – actively supported by their parents, community members and some educators and tolerated by nearly everyone else – conducted against the nine beleaguered students. Patillo’s book describes in detail the harrowing year that the nine students endured.

The New World of Police Accountability (Third edition) – by Samuel E. Walker and Carol A. Archbold

It’s not a few bad apples. American law enforcement is structurally, historically, and culturally broken, and real reform will require fundamental changes to police organizations, practices, and culture. That’s the message of Samuel Walker and Carol Archbold, professors who have studied, written about, and consulted with American law enforcement agencies for decades.

Walker and Archbold present a compelling and, frankly, somewhat discouraging perspective on the challenges facing American police agencies today.  While not written for a general audience, the book accurately describes the current state of American law enforcement and the need for significant reform.

Social Media

And if you don’t have time to read books, here are a couple of folks whose work on various social media platforms will always be worth your time: Political Historian Heather Cox Richardson and Retired US Navy Chief Warrant Officer and political commentator Jim Wright

January 2, 2021

So now we hear that 21,000 dead people in Pennsylvania remain on the voter rolls. That’s bigly news that means, well, something bad, I guess. So sad. While there is no actual evidence that any of these persons actually voted, I am certain that this changes everything.

A more cynical person than I might ask if there is any actual proof of any actual wrongdoing anywhere in this story, but that would be ungracious to the many millions of people who are overjoyed to hear this latest example of electoral malfeasance. And I am no cynic. I live my life according to a few bedrock principles, one of which is, “if it’s on the internet, it must be true.”

So, thanks to the upstanding citizens at Breitbart and Rudy Giuliani for bringing this to our attention.

But as a county precinct official in the recent election, responsible for ensuring that all voters at our polling place were properly registered and were properly identified, I was horrified to realize that we actually had no protocol in place to process dead voters.

We had detailed and extensively-documented procedures for voters with expired ID, or with no ID, or who were not registered, or who had just moved, or who provided signatures that didn’t match the signature on file, for voters who couldn’t speak English, voters at the wrong precinct, voters with disabilities, voters who wanted to vote from their cars, voters who mis-marked their ballots, and half a dozen other contingencies. But there was nothing in the hours and hours of training or in the 37-page voting official’s flip chart that explained what we were to do if a dead voter appeared and requested a ballot.

More disturbingly, I realized that we didn’t even have a reliable way to identify dead voters. Voters had to have a current form of identification, they had to state their name and address, they had to sign the pollbook, and they needed to look like the person pictured on their ID. But we never checked or even asked if they were still alive.

It is not even clear that being dead makes a person ineligible to vote.

And if we couldn’t identify dead voters at the polling places, how could election officials who receive mail-in ballots identify votes cast by dead persons? Well sure, they could check signatures. Dead people tend to have scratchy handwriting. At least that’s what I’ve heard. Lots of people say it.

And they could rely on the fact that the dead voter had to first request a ballot, vote, and then return the ballot. That’s a lot of work – and signatures – for a dead person. And most Election Boards cross-reference their voter lists with other public records, including death certificates and social security databases that identify dead persons.

Of course, it has happened that a bereaved spouse or close relative of a recently deceased person has returned a ballot that had been requested by a living person but which had been received sometime after the unfortunate voter passed away. Typically, those ballots are identified by election officials due to mismatched signatures or other checks and are not counted.

As numerous articles and papers explain, “The consensus from credible research and investigation is that the rate of illegal voting is extremely rare, and the incidence of certain types of fraud — such as impersonating another voter — is virtually nonexistent,” according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan but liberal-leaning law and policy institute.

So, it seems the dead don’t vote very often. Which is not really surprising. Even in this election, with record turnout, 33 percent of America’s eligible voters didn’t bother to vote. Maybe someone should check them for a pulse.

November 9, 2020

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/14/fact-check-mailing-ballots-dead-people-not-leading-voter-fraud/3214074001/

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/08/tech/michigan-dead-voter-fact-debunking/index.html

https://www.wcbe.org/post/husted-says-trumps-objections-mail-voting-dont-apply-ohio

Its not up to Donald Trump.

Whatever the outcome of Tuesdays’ election, the way we as Americans respond, the steps we take to protect each other and preserve our future, do not depend on the selfish whims, dark fantasies, and conspiratorial delusions of Donald Trump.

It will be up to us.

We know how Trump will respond. Win or lose, he will lie, threaten, and cruelly demean other, better Americans. He will tear at the very foundation of our democracy, and he will attack the invisible chords that bind us together as Americans. He will place his personal interests above the well-being of the nation and of individual Americans. We know this, of course, because it is the way he has behaved every single day of his tragic presidency.

As Marine General James Mattis, Donald Trump’s first secretary of defense, wrote recently, “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us.”

But we don’t have to follow.

Our politics might be dysfunctional right now, and the threat of politically-inspired violence is growing every day. We are swaying on the very lip of the abyss, and once we topple into the void there will be no climbing back.

So, we – each of us, all of us – need to think about where we are and where we are going. We need to rethink our shorthand description of America as a collection of Red and Blue states and any notion we might hold that the third of the country that disagrees with us politically is somehow our enemy.  No state is red, no state is blue. That’s not how we really live, and we all know it. No matter where you stand on important issues, no matter which party you support, you share your community with people who disagree with you. They are not your enemy. They are your neighbors, your co-workers, members of your church, and more. Even today, the things that connect us are stronger than the forces trying to separate us.

We need to reject the politics of fear, and we need to focus on the things we can do as a people to ensure that all Americans can share equally in the promise of American life. The idea that millions and millions of our neighbors somehow want to see our nation destroyed is absurd and is incredibly damaging to our national well-being.

Tomorrow I will be working at a polling place to help ensure that every American’s voice can be counted. As a precinct official I can assure you that the foundations of our democracy are protected. Careful procedures and processes are in place and will be followed to ensure that the election is conducted fairly and openly. We do not expect widespread interference with voting, although we have plans to respond if necessary.

While I have no role in the vote counting that will occur once the polls are closed, I am certain that election officials are prepared to conduct the count honestly and openly. Keep in mind that actual vote counts are never completed on election night, and, in fact, no state is required to do so. The true deadline for states to complete and certify their voting results is December 14, 2020. (US Code: 3 U.S.C. §6). For details see the Congressional Research Service paper “The Electoral College: A 2020 Presidential Election Timeline” at https://crsreports.congress.gov Archivist.

We are in a dark place, and it is up to us to find our way back into the light.

In his first inaugural address, delivered in the terrifying days between secession and civil war, Abraham Lincoln pleaded with his countrymen, north and south, “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

We are not on the brink of civil war. The issues that divide us today pale in comparison to those that broke the nation in 1860. But Lincoln’s words can still guide us. Let us hope that they do.

November 2, 2020

BAY VILLAGE, Ohio — It didn’t have to be this way.

More than 220,000 dead. More than 12 million unemployed. The death toll rising. Retail workers murdered for asking people to wear masks. Death threats made against public health officials. Damage to the economy so severe that it will take years to recover. And now, the Trump administration has given up even the pretense of containing the virus.

Previously unknown, highly contagious, with no known treatment or vaccine, COVID-19 would have killed thousands of Americans no matter how smartly we responded. But we could have mitigated the economic impact, drastically reduced the death toll, and preserved millions of jobs had we responded differently.

We knew how to do it. The federal government, state governments, and thousands of local governments had spent decades preparing. Plans had been written. Surveillance systems were in place. Supplies had been stockpiled. Public health, emergency management, and public safety personnel had been trained. No nation on earth was better prepared to manage COVID-19 than the United States.

We know what could have happened.

Imagine an America led by a president who did not squander years of preparation and precious months of warning in a callous attempt to save his reelection bid. Imagine an administration that followed the pandemic response playbook they had been given. Imagine an America where officials carefully tracked early cases, tested aggressively, and took forceful steps to reduce transmission. Where the administration coordinated a nationwide response and provided critical resources to state and local agencies while providing timely and accurate information about the threat to the nation. Most importantly, imagine a U.S. government that valued data, respected science, and was focused on saving lives and minimizing social and economic disruption.

It was all possible. We were prepared to do it. Other nations did it. But Donald Trump chose a different path, and today our employment and health outcomes are worse than virtually all other high-income nations. Under Mr. Trump, our response has been uncoordinated, ineffective, and dishonest. The president’s mishandling of the COVID pandemic has produced the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression and has directly led to the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.

Paradoxically, a competent response would have boosted Mr. Trump’s electoral fortunes far higher than anything else he could have done this year. Every politician knows that nothing brings the country together more quickly than an external threat. Managing the pandemic properly would have boosted the president’s approval ratings and today he would be cruising along, ten points ahead in the polls, his reelection assured.

Now we face a grim future. The federal government has surrendered. There is no plan to reduce transmission rates to a level that supports full economic recovery. Instead, there is talk of relying on “herd immunity” and letting the virus burn through the population. Meanwhile, deaths continue to mount.

Yet, in spite of Trump’s cruel determination to ignore the ongoing disaster, we have made progress. Better treatments and widespread use of protective measures – even if openly derided by the president – have enabled us to avoid worst-case projections. Vaccines are being developed. But we remain trapped on a perpetual roller coaster, where infections and deaths rise and fall, but never fall far enough to stop the spread.

We are wearily waiting for a vaccine that is many months away. Even after an effective vaccine is developed, the logistics of producing it in quantity, transporting it, distributing it, and inoculating many millions of Americans will be brutally complicated. Tens of thousands more Americans will die.

We can still contain it. We can still save many thousands of lives. We know that masks, social distancing, careful hygiene, testing, concern for one another, and capable leadership will work. We need only to do it. If only someone could explain why we will not.

October 23, 2020

This post appeared in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and on Cleveland.com on October 23, 2020.

: https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/2020/10/we-can-still-change-course-to-save-lives-from-the-coronavirus-walter-topp.html

In the upcoming election, you can vote for whoever you want. But as a certified emergency manager and a former county emergency management agency director, I want to share with you my perspective on the US response to COVID-19.

In emergency management we work side by side with the public health community. We plan together, we train together, we exercise together. When I was a county director, our agency and the county public health department managed a joint response to the Ebola event. We were very lucky then, but sadly, we have not been lucky with COVID-19.

The tragic thing about the US response to COVID is that the United States was actually well-prepared. In fact, no nation was better prepared. Even under the current president, the plans, the pharmaceutical and medical equipment stockpiles, the training, and the preparation for an effective response which had been carefully developed under previous administrations of both parties, remained in place. Plus, we had two months actual warning! Two months! If there is a gift from God in this whole sorry spectacle, it was that priceless warning.

Which we squandered.

Because it was inconvenient for the president’s re-election narrative, the federal government took no action. Worse, the president actually took steps to hinder the response of state and local governments. The measures that worked in June to halt the exponential spread of the virus – testing, social distancing, masks, personal hygiene, travel restrictions, self-quarantine, isolation of infected persons, bans on large gatherings – would have worked in February to greatly reduce the spread. They would work today, too, to reduce the level of infections to a point where we could avoid a disastrous cold weather spike and lay the groundwork for a sustained economic recovery. But we didn’t do those things effectively in the spring and we aren’t going to do them now, because it remains inconvenient for the president’s re-election effort.

We hear a lot about Mr. Trump’s travel ban. Here’s the deal on that. The bogus ban was ten days too late and full of holes. It did virtually nothing. By the time it was enacted, community transmission was already occurring in the United States, so the ban was too late to prevent the spread of the virus. By exempting US passport holders and not requiring arriving travelers to quarantine, the ban was rendered almost totally ineffective. 40,000 people flew from China to the US after the so-called ban was enacted. Virtually none of them were actually quarantined. Most weren’t monitored by public health agencies.

And that farcical ban, we are told by the president, saved “millions of lives.”

Under the National Response Framework, the primary responsibility for emergency management resides at the local government level. State governments and the federal government stand ready to assist as needed.

But pandemics have always been recognized as events that would far exceed the capacity of local, or even state governments, to manage. Only the federal government has the resources to organize and conduct an effective nationwide response to a global pandemic. That’s why the federal government maintains the strategic national stockpile. That’s why federal agencies (the CDC, FEMA, the Public Health Service, HHS, and others) plan, train, exercise, and equip their staffs to respond to pandemics. And everybody involved in planning for pandemic response understands the critical requirement to act fast, before cases and deaths begin to rise exponentially. That’s why plans are written in advance; drugs, ventilators, masks and other items are stockpiled; and all those other preparations are made.

But this administration refused to act. It’s going to go away, they said. Nothing to see here. Their latest hoax. And now 210,000 Americans are dead.

Many thousands – if not millions – of Americans in the medical community, public health, first responders, emergency management, and other fields have worked heroically to save lives. And many have lost their own lives in the effort.

But the reality is that an honest and effective response in the beginning, bolstered by a commitment from the administration to prioritize the health and well-being of Americans over the re-election campaign of the president, would have saved many, many thousands of lives.

COVID-19 is a very difficult public health problem. Unknown before the end of last year, highly contagious, no known treatment or vaccine, the virus was going to kill a lot of Americans no matter how quickly or aggressively we acted. But the failure of the administration to act in a timely manner – when everything they needed was already in place – is perhaps the most egregious failure of government in the history of the United States.

It is not Trump Derangement Syndrome or partisan tomfoolery to look at what happened and say the president is responsible. And denying that reality is a disservice to the Americans who have struggled so mightily against this virus, and especially to those who have lost their lives.

October 12, 2020

See also:

https://apimagesblog.com/blog/2020/10/8/hes-fought-covid-19-for-months-can-he-ever-really-beat-it

https://www.propublica.org/article/a-medical-worker-describes–terrifying-lung-failure-from-covid19-even-in-his-young-patients

For the past couple of months, I have been working as a Census Field Supervisor, supporting a team of enumerators who are doing the heavy lifting of door-to-door census-taking for the U.S. Census Bureau.

The census, of course, is explicitly required by the United States Constitution, so it is obviously an important project. Every employee took an oath to support the constitution and to protect the confidentiality of any information collected.

While none of the enumerators I support have been assaulted, pretty much all of them have been insulted, harassed, yelled at, ignored, and treated with undeserved discourtesy by their fellow Americans.

And really, not just by their fellow Americans, but by their actual neighbors. During this phase of the census – called the non-response follow-up operation – enumerators are assigned to visit residences in their own neighborhoods. This increases the comfort level for enumerators, and, theoretically, encourages residents to cooperate. That’s important, because the folks the enumerators are visiting now are people who have already declined to respond by mail, telephone, or online.

While many residents are courteous and some are helpful, a distressing percentage are not. While some people are just rude, and others are justifiably frustrated because they already provided the information – or they believe they did – a fraction overreact wildly, becoming highly agitated at the mere presence of a census enumerator at their door.

It might take ten minutes to answer all the questions on the survey – two minutes if you simply provide the minimum information the Census Bureau needs. But that’s apparently too much to ask of some Americans. Instead, they are happy to harangue an enumerator for ten minutes about the evils of government or they feel compelled to yell, make a scene, and slam the door in their neighbors’ face.

For enumerators it can seem like a masters class in bad behavior.

Well, this is America, and if people don’t want to provide basic demographic information to the Census Bureau to help the nation, no one is going to force them. But, if you don’t want to answer, can’t you at least be civil about it? Do you think your neighbor standing out there, sweating under their mask, is responsible for the things that have gone wrong in your life? Do you think they personally added the census requirement to the constitution to irritate you? Does being discourteous to them put a few extra bucks in your pay envelope this week?

I have no idea if Americans are more discourteous and disturbed now than they were years ago, so you won’t hear me blustering about the decline of America. But regardless of how things were in the past, we can do better now. Its past time we started.

September 17, 2020

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/im-a-census-enumerator-each-person-i-count-feels-like-a-victory/2020/09/16/80a9813c-f847-11ea-be57-

We are currently wading through yet another slimy Trump episode, this time prompted by reporting in the Atlantic that Mr. Trump repeatedly disparaged veterans – including those killed in action – as ‘suckers’ and ‘losers.’

At this time the sources of the information remain unnamed, though several major outlets (including Fox News, the Associated Press, CNN, and the Washington Post) have reported that their sources have confirmed at least parts of the original story. Those sources, however, also remain unnamed.

So, naturally, supporters of the president have been quick to accuse the Atlantic of fabricating the entire story, even though Mr. Trump has in the past very publicly defamed prisoners of war, the parents of servicemembers killed in action, and the retired and active military personnel that served in his administration.

This type of knee-jerk support of a political figure is something we have come to expect, and no one should be surprised when partisans attack the reporter rather than address the substance of the report. But I do feel sad when I hear military officers rush to publicly defend Mr. Trump.

The US military places a very high value on effective leadership. The military services – all of them – teach leadership, train for leadership, mentor young leaders, and evaluate personnel based on their effectiveness as leaders. Service in the US military is perhaps the finest leadership training opportunity available on this planet.

So, it is disappointing that military leaders are so eager to praise and support Mr. Trump, who represents the complete antithesis of leadership as it is practiced in the American military.

The military values of courage, commitment, self-sacrifice, honor, truthfulness, comradeship, and placing the well-being of others before your own mean nothing to Mr. Trump. He demands fealty, yet offers nothing but contempt in return. He spurns advice, refuses to learn anything at all about his job, and refuses to take responsibility for his actions.

He boasts about his support for the military, yet when he lists his own accomplishments he mentions a Veteran’s Administration reform bill signed by his predecessor in 2014 (though Mr. Trump did sign an expansion of it), pay raises which he falsely claimed were the first in ten years but which, in fact, are set by Congress and which have been included in every federal budget for many decades; and an undefined improvement in the Veteran’s Administration which he neither documents nor explains. He did sign budgets that increased defense spending, continuing a trend that began under his predecessor, but it is hardly conceivable that any other Republican president wouldn’t have signed those same budgets and they were passed in Congress with bipartisan support.

Based on his disregard for the well-being of others, his untruthfulness, his refusal to learn the rudiments of his job, his disregard for professional ethics, his disdain for advice from experienced members of the military, his willingness to publicly excoriate anyone who disagrees with him, and his willingness to shift the blame for any misstep to his subordinates, Mr. Trump would almost certainly be removed from any position of leadership within the U.S. military.

If members of the military want to vote for Mr. Trump, that is certainly their right. But it is still jarring to see military leaders heap praise on someone who so completely rejects the values that are the bedrock of our military institutions.

September 7. 2020

“When you are commanding, leading [soldiers] under conditions where physical exhaustion and privations must be ignored, where the lives of [soldiers] may be sacrificed, then, the efficiency of your leadership will depend only to a minor degree on your tactical ability.  It will primarily be determined by your character, your reputation, not much for courage—which will be accepted as a matter of course—but by the previous reputation you have established for fairness, for that high-minded patriotic purpose, that quality of unswerving determination to carry through any military task assigned to you.”

– General George C. Marshall

https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2019/07/10/trump-draws-stronger-support-from-veterans-than-from-the-public-on-leadership-of-u-s-military/

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2020-08-31/half-of-the-military-disapproves-of-trump-as-commander-in-chief-poll

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/03/trump-is-most-anti-military-president-weve-hadand-he-doesnt-even-know-it/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/todaysdebate/2020/05/05/trump-achieves-major-victories-veterans-opposing-view/5173324002/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/todaysdebate/2020/05/05/trump-says-he-supports-troops-his-record-says-otherwise-our-view/4870524002/

This is a Twitter thread from an Army veteran named Charlotte Clymer. It is extremely powerful throughout, and if you are a diehard partisan you can skip the final paragraph and still be moved. Late in my military career I was trained as a Casualty Assistance Officer, which meant that I would have provided direct support to the families of deceased service members. I was never called on to actually provide the service, but the training itself was affecting and if I had performed the task it would have been the most important and honorable event in my career.

Here is Ms. Clymer’s post:

“The straight line distance between Washington, D.C. and Dover, Delaware is less than 85 miles. It takes a helicopter about 40-45 minutes to make the trip. I was 19 years-old, and it was my first time riding a helicopter. I barely remember any of it. I was distracted.

I was more nervous than I’ve ever been in my life about what was to come next, and so, as this Black Hawk floated above the earth with my casket team–me being the youngest and most junior–I could only think: “What if I mess this up? What if I fail? How will I live with myself?”

That’s how it should be in a moment like this. You should be nervous. You should let that sharpen your focus. Because there is no room for error when handling the remains of a service member returning to the U.S. after being killed in combat. You should strive for perfection.

The helicopter landed, and my anxiety spiked. In retrospect, I recall noticing the silence of the rest of the casket team. These were young men, mostly early 20s, loud and boisterous and chests puffed. Now, they were quiet. It was unnerving.

When you’re a new enlisted soldier in an infantry unit–the FNG–you’re treated like you know nothing. Because you don’t. Everyone around you is older and vastly more competent and confident. Yet, in this moment, despite having done this before, they were all nervous, too. Scary.

We were brought into a holding area near the tarmac on Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where the remains of service members who have died in a theater of operations arrive on a C-17 transport plane. We rehearsed our steps. And did it again. And then again. No room for error.

The plane arrived. The ramp was lowered. The transfer vehicle that would complete the next leg of the journey was parked. Our casket team was positioned. We were now each wearing ceremonial white cotton gloves we had held under the bathroom faucet. Damp gloves have a better grip.

We’re a casket team, but these are not caskets. They’re transfer cases: rectangular aluminum boxes that bear a resemblance to a crate for production equipment. Yet, the dimensions are obvious. Any given civilian would take only a few moments to realize that’s for carrying bodies.

It’s called a “dignified transfer”, not a “ceremony”, because officials don’t want loved ones to feel obligated to be there while in mourning, but it is as highly choreographed as any ceremony, probably more so. It is done as close to perfection as anything the military does.

I was positioned in formation with my casket team, and I could see the transfer cases precisely laid out, dress right dress, in the cavernous space of the C-17, each draped with an American flag that had been fastened perfectly. I remember my stomach dropping.

There is simply no space for other thoughts. Your full brain capacity is focused on not screwing up. The casket team steps off in crisp, exact steps toward the plane, up the ramp (please, oh god, don’t slip), aside the case, lift up ceremonially, face back and down the ramp.

During movement, everyone else is saluting: the plane personnel, the OIC (officer-in-charge), any senior NCOS and generals, and occasionally, the president. The family is sometimes there. No ceremonial music or talking. All silent, save for the steps of the casket team.

You don’t see the family during this. You’re too focused. There are other distractions. Maybe they forgot, but no one told me there’d be 40-60 lbs. of ice in the transfer case to prevent decomposition over the 10-hour plane ride. You can sometimes feel it sloshing around a bit.

Some of the transfer cases feel slightly heavier, some slightly lighter. The weight is distributed among six bearers, so it’s not a big difference. But then you carry a case that’s significantly lighter, and you realize those are the only remains they were able to recover.

It probably takes all of 30-40 seconds to carry the transfer case from the plane to the mortuary vehicle, but it felt like the longest walk ever each time. The case is carefully placed in the back of the mortuary vehicle, and the casket team moves away in formation.

I don’t know how to describe the feeling after you’re done and on your way back to D.C., but it’s a mixture of intense relief that you didn’t screw up and profound sobriety over what you’ve just done and witnessed. I wouldn’t call it a good feeling. Maybe a numbed pain.

From the outside, the most egalitarian place in America is a military transfer case. They all look exactly the same: an aluminum box covered with the American flag. We didn’t know their names, rank, race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation–none of it. All the same.

Whatever cruel and unfathomable politics had brought all of us to that moment–from the killed service member in the box to those of us carrying it to the occasional elected official who attends to pay respects–there were no politics to be found during a dignified transfer.

The fallen service members I helped receive and carry during this part of the journey to their final resting place were not “losers” or “suckers”. They were selfless and heroic, and I had the honor of being among the first to hold them when they returned home.

There are service members around the world involved in caring for our war fatalities. The mortuary specialists, the casket teams, the family liaisons–so many people who work to ensure that this final act is done with the greatest amount of dignity and honor, seeking perfection.

I suppose the one thing we all took for granted is that dignity would always be affirmed by all our civilian leaders to those service members who gave everything. I never would have predicted any official, let alone a sitting president, would insult fallen service members.

I cannot adequately describe my anger at Donald Trump for being so willing to send service members halfway around the world to die on his own behalf and then call them “losers” for doing so. This coward is unfit for his office and the power it holds. He needs to go.”

September 5, 2020

Though the COVID 19 death toll continues to climb, there are still a few holdouts who remain convinced that the pandemic is some kind of fakery intended to bring down the president.

Which is amazing, since if anyone had a reason for creating a fake pandemic it was Mr. Trump. Elected by razor-thin margins in a few key states, trailing in the polls, with negative opinions of his performance consistently outpacing approval, Mr. Trump needed a way to convince doubtful Americans that he was capable of leading this country.

A nationwide public health emergency would work just fine. After all, nothing brings the people together like a shared crisis.

For Mr. Trump, then, the actual pandemic was an unexpected and undeserved gift. He wouldn’t have to create a crisis or falsify one – his specialties – the crisis he needed was right in front of him. Any third-rate politician would have immediately recognized the potential for even a disinterested and semi-literate president to focus on the virus as a deadly serious public health threat – which it actually is – and to step forward as the leader that would guide Americans through a dark and perilous time.

And the best part for Mr. Trump was that he wouldn’t have to actually do anything. Thanks to decades of work by previous administrations of both parties, as well as by thousands of public health officials, state and local planners, the medical community, and private sector organizations, the United States was well-prepared for this pandemic. Plus, the virus’s origins in Asia gave American officials priceless months to prepare. The administration needed only to give the nation’s highly-capable public health machinery a gentle shove to activate the plans and procedures that were already in place and the professionalism and skill of the public health and medical communities and the resourcefulness and resilience of everyone else would do the rest.

Managing the coronavirus pandemic was never going to be easy. The virus was unknown, and its ease of transmission, multiple health effects, and especially the fact that asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic infected persons could spread the disease for many days without even knowing they have it would have meant that many thousands of Americans would die, even with a well-coordinated and well-resourced response. But that, too would have worked to Mr. Trump’s benefit. The pandemic would have been widely recognized as a real threat, successful containment would have been seen as a significant achievement, and Mr. Trump’s re-election would have been assured.

But, somehow, that’s not what happened.

Lacking any political sense whatsoever, and heartlessly indifferent to the human cost of the pandemic, Mr. Trump responded with denial, lies, inaction, and ignorance. He squandered years of planning and months of preparation time. Worse, he actively impeded the efforts of public health and medical community experts, turning an extremely serious public health crisis into a full-fledged disaster. We’ll never know how many Americans died needlessly because of Mr. Trump’s callous and selfish disregard for the well-being of Americans. But it is clearly many tens of thousands, and the number is growing every day. There can no greater proof of Mr. Trump’s utter unfitness for the presidency.

Now, with election day nearing, Mr. Trump is desperate to deflect attention away from a mishandled pandemic that has killed 190,000 Americans in six months and will likely kill a hundred thousand more.

Incomprehensibly, Mr. Trump’s abysmal performance in response to the pandemic seems not to have hurt him at all among his fervent supporters, many of whom are at high risk for serious complications or even death from the virus. One more undeserved gift, apparently.

September 3, 2020