Archives for October 2017

Hesitantly, like a wanderer retracing footprints on once familiar ground, I lower my computer’s volume, shift my entranced attention elsewhere, and listen to the sounds outside. A return to nature, of sorts, if ever there’s been one in the modern age. My headphones succeed, sometimes too affectively, in making good on the manufacturer’s word. We buy them for their promises of noise-cancelation, isolation, or—if nothing else—a humble decibel’s worth of reduction. Life’s noises are nugatory in an over-stimulated world, or so the headphone has led us to believe. The day-to-day sounds, which surround and abound us, which we’ve deemed extraneous and undesired, really must be silenced.

Not only do we remit or omit the sounds—which you do depends on your headphones’ ability to censor and their cost (when one rises, so too does the other)—we replace them with something better. There’s always something to be heard more mellifluous than the everyday monotony. You can choose the digital rap of the shore while you walk through the city’s streets, or the synthesized sonata while you wait in line at the deli. We needn’t accept the daily auditory default; we have at our fingertips, in an endless digital disposal, the chance to pass our idle time with the ambiance of another; another time, another person, another place. The recording studio and its miniscule mp3 will blot out everything extra and take you where you’d rather be.

From time to time, I find myself caught between these virtual and visceral worlds, between sounds natural and newfangled. Like many others, technology has me in its grasp. And, again, like others, I’ve been abducted willingly. With my noise-canceling, isolating, reducing or whatever else you could call them headphones, I bask every day in my escape from the everyday. But, if like me you’re incautious, the synthesized tunes will subsume you. You might find yourself distanced from the original sounds of the world—the very sounds you seek.

I like to listen to rain falling, but it must be gentle. It also mustn’t be loud. It must drip and drip and drip at just the right clip—no faster, no slower. I’m quite particular about my precipitation. While I tap away on the keys, writing about the week’s issues, it’s the unhurried, melodic rainfall that puts me most at ease. A monsoon won’t do. Neither will a mist. The wind disturbs me and the thunder’s unnerving. A bird’s chirp is forbidden and a tree branch had better not break. My Hammurabi’s Code so too applies to any other unannounced, audible infiltrate.

It’s only a very specific rainfall cadence I’ll countenance. Somehow, I found online the perfect pacing and pitch. Never has there been a rainfall more smoothly sublime. It’s completely conducive to getting things done. It’s all the things I asked for above, and it’s available at any time. In one, ten-hour video, the conductor pieces together euphony and longevity that, when combined, transport me instantly to the forever wet American Northwest.

Hours in to the video’s loop, and paragraphs in to my story’s start, I needed to stand up and move around. My shoulders were slouching and so were my thoughts. I confronted the block that every writer knows and loathes too well. It’s that moment when inspiration, which so invigorates you at the start, gets replaced by improvisation before eventually desperation takes its turn. I removed my headphones—at this point essentially enrooted in my anatomy—and corrected my posture. A writer’s spine can become disconcertingly accustomed to a chronic kyphosis; such is the expectation of a career spent leaning relentlessly over quills or keys.

I noticed, though, as I arose, I was not without the familiar sound. The headphones had since fallen and YouTube had been put to rest, but I was once again surrounded with the sound of rain falling down. This time, however, it was more intimate than before. No longer was I listening to a mere simulacrum. I had, for my own immediate senses to enjoy, nature’s symphony in its purest form at my door. For how many minutes was I contented at my computer blissfully unaware? For how long was I left remiss, not noticing Mother Nature’s gift? She had replaced reality for verisimilitude, and I might not have known it.

I realized then, like Whitman leaving behind the learned astronomer to stand on his own beneath stelliferous skies, that there’s no better antidote to anxiety, or writer’s block, or any other technologically-induced ailment than a brief re-acquaintance with nature. And you needn’t attempt an ascetic, Rousseauian return to nature, nor a Thoreauvian wanderlust to Walden Pond. Sometimes, you just need to detach and listen. Don’t be estranged from Earth’s ambiance. Don’t make forever secondary her geophony. Take your headphones off, set them down as I did, and allow her inconspicuous chorus to course through your soul.

Lest we think President Trump stands alone when it comes to international imbroglios, a recent controversy connecting Russia, Canada, uranium, and Hillary Clinton has come to the fore. Unearthed from the annals of an administration past is this anfractuous tale. It began in 2010, but we are only now learning of its size and scope. It may be seven years after the fact, but such controversies are always better known late than never at all. And, in many ways, President Trump is correct in calling it “the biggest story that Fake Media doesn’t want to follow”. Truer words than these, he’s not yet spoken. Here it is.

Unlike most multi-national controversies nowadays, this tale begins in Canada. Yes, dear Canada—our quiescent neighbors to the north. What the country lacks in scandalous intrigue, it makes up for with breathtaking vistas, a landscape lush with verdant conifers and inexhaustible commodities. It’s the country’s natural bounty, practically begging to be tapped, that has for so long lured enterprising explorers and entrepreneurs down the St. Lawrence River’s mouth. It’s why Britain chose it, and not Guadalupe, when at the end of the Seven Years’ War, the choice was hers to make. The latter’s lucrative sugar fields and its balmy Caribbean clime certainly were appealing, but not enough so to persuade the crown to leave the north behind. Say what you will about that Hanoverian tyrant, but King George chose his territory wisely. The French secured their provincial sugar hub, while the Britons settled a frontier fecund with timber, fur, and eventually—as future Canadians would learn—uranium.

It wasn’t until after WWII that uranium mining in Canada became permissible. Before that time, in the early to mid 1940s, procuring the element was strictly prohibited. The wartime proscription was only sensible, as nuclear weapons experimentation took place due south by the likes of Oppenheimer, Einstein, Feynman, and Fermi in arid Alamogordo, New Mexico. During the post bellum days, however, prospecting and mining resumed and eventually flourished. The Saskatchewan Province proved to be particularly fertile, and for many years, Canada enjoyed market dominance with its sale of uranium. At one point, its uranium export accounted for nearly a quarter of the world’s output. And considering the many purchasers, who were motivated by the element’s applicability to an ambitious nation’s energy or military sectors—or both (the first tends to succumb to the second)—Canadian companies stood to profit handsomely.

For a while, Canada was predominant among the many countries whose soil invests uranium. Excepting South America and Antarctica, uranium is currently found and extracted in the world’s five remaining continents. Second to Canada in its quantity is Australia (yet another former British penal colony), Niger, Namibia, Russia, Uzbekistan, and then the U.S. Other countries with deposits, scant thought they may be, are China and Ukraine. The only country with more is Kazakhstan, that immense and oft-forgotten landmass abutting Russia to the north and China to the east.

While uranium isn’t ubiquitous, it’s certainly widespread. The nature of its extraction, therefore, has been for many years an international affair. Countless multi-national corporations are entrenched, both literally and economically, in its collection and sale. Which leads to the controversy at hand. To meet it head-on, we must complete our circumnavigation, eastward from Kazakhstan and China, and find ourselves back in Canada.

It is here that a mining company, called Uranium One, is at the center of our attention. Until recently, it was a mid-tier player in Canada’s expansive the mining industry. Not the biggest company by far, but no mom and pop operation either. At the height of its production, Uranium One’s assets included nearly twenty percent of America’s uranium fields. Much to most people’s surprise, the American southwest is relatively rife with the element. For decades, it’s been mined successfully in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. One-fifth of that yellowcake cache was Uranium One’s property. Or, at least, it was—until the company was swallowed by another.

Such is the world of business. What would an economy or a country be if not acquisitive? So, without further ado, the acquisition was approved and the purchase went through. Lo and behold, the proud new owner of nearly a quarter of America’s uranium assets became…you guessed it. Russia.

Specifically, the company is Rosatom, which, by happenstance, is Moscow’s state-run nuclear energy company. If the name “Rosatom” isn’t revealing enough, the company’s website describes itself as the Russian “state atomic energy corporation”. Their purpose is quite explicit. What was obscured, and what has the potential to be a sizable scandal, was the way in which this tenebrous transaction took place.

In 2010, Atomredmetzoloto (or ARMZ), the reputed mining arm of Rosatom, purchased a majority stake in Uranium One. The agreement provided Rosatom “no less than fifty-one percent” of Uranium One. In subsequent years, this percentage evolved such that it became a full acquisition. That assumes, of course, that it had not been just that from the very beginning. After all, “no less than fifty-one percent” might just as well apply to a statement like, “no more than one hundred percent”. The proprietorship could land anywhere in between.

Being that this deal involved American assets and foreign adversaries, Rosatom’s purchase was subject to administrative review. This was conducted by the Committee on Foreign Investments, a nine-member coterie that decides on international transactions such as this. The committee’s roster includes an administration’s sitting secretaries of state, treasury, defense, homeland security, commerce, energy, the Attorney General, and one to two other White House representatives. Through these nine dignitaries do all foreign monetary matters flow.

But the committee’s influence is ultimately constrained; it’s endowed with an affirmative capacity, not a prohibitive one. The Committee on Foreign Investments can’t stop acquisition proposals—it can only approve them when it considers “acquisitions of critical infrastructure” on American land. Removed from the committee, this prohibitory power rests with the America’s chief executive. It’s the president’s job to stop an acquisition or sale if he determines it indecent or otherwise injurious to the country at-large. The law states that “Only the president has the authority to suspend or prohibit a covered transaction”.

Neither the president nor the committee disapproved of the deal. Rosatom’s acquisition of Uranium One was sanctioned with unanimity. This is where the controversy sets in.

In her role as Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton simultaneously served as an ex officio member in the Committee on Foreign Investments. The claim is that Madame Clinton received a hefty kickback, one to the tune of $145 million, for green-lighting the acquisition’s approval. The claimant, as it were, is Peter Schweizer—an investigative journalist, author, and Breitbart News editor. In his 2015 book, “Clinton Cash”, Schweizer detailed the way in which the deal went down. If true, his conclusions would be damning.

To take Schweizer at his word, one walks away with conclusion that the Russians successfully compromised Hillary Clinton. In his not unlikely estimation, Schweizer believes Clinton’s approval was purchasable and her fidelity fungible. And the deeper one digs, the more plausible (yet incompletely proven) his conclusion becomes.

As mentioned, nine Uranium One investors poured $145 million into the Clinton Foundation’s coffers before the acquisition was approved. Perhaps said investors were feeling at especially eleemosynary at the time and nothing more than mere coincidence was at play. To take from Yogi Berra one of his famous koans, “That’s too coincidental to be coincidence”. All the while, this inordinate largesse remained hidden from public view. This was after then candidate Clinton promised all donations to her and her husband’s foundation would be, as requested, disclosed for all to see. A Clinton Foundation spokesperson contritely confessed that they “made a mistake” by not making this known.

In addition to the $145 million investment, former president Bill Clinton was commissioned $500,000 for a speech he gave in Moscow. His ever-profitable prolixity came at just the right time: It was after the Rosatom deal was announced, but before the deal was approved. His receiving that amount of money looks now like an implicit inducement for Hillary to vote in uranium’s favor. It’s a second not-so-subtle push to get Ms. Clinton to on the Kremlin’s side.

Mr. Clinton’s speaking fee was picked up by Renaissance Capital, a prominent investment institution in Moscow. Unsurprisingly, after the fact, Renaissance bankers were rather bullish on the Rosatom acquisition. They hyped it as the “best play” in the uranium commodifies market and a stock worth its purchase. Again, this was before the approval was signed and delivered. Renaissance Capital was assessing the situation less on speculation, and more on devious confidence, well-placed it doubtless was.

Most assuredly, more information will be revealed in the days and months to come. For now, the question is this: Did Uranium One and Rosatom’s “donations” to the Clinton Foundation influence the actions she took ostensibly on behalf of the nation? The evidence thus far is insufficient to convict, but the omnipresent plumes of Clinton’s skullduggery are thickening. If the allegations are true, and the forthcoming congressional investigation discovers indecorous quid pro quos, we’ll be left with not only one, but two party leaders who are themselves indelibly damned with Russian prints that paved their paths to the top. And, from that precarious pinnacle, they may just as quickly fall.

Man, as Aristotle once said, is a political animal. There’s nothing numinous about us in this sense; we’re merely acting by nature. Watson, Crick, and Franklin might have just as readily found encoded in our DNA city-states, jurisprudence, and communal decrees bound to nitrogenous bases and phosphate backbones coursing through blood blue and red. Politics is with us from cradle to grave, for better or worse. It’s therefore little wonder that all aspects of American life have been lately swallowed by Aristotle’s ancient aphorism.

But, just as any other animal in the kingdom is prone to do, the modern political man has a tendency to eat his own. It’s an atavistic urge that re-emerges from time to time. The only thing that slakes it is a brother’s blood.

It’s in this fashion we find fomenting within the GOP a noticeable split. Perhaps “split” is too strong a word, and, ever-vigilant with my verbiage, I’d rather not overstate things. More realistically, there appears at most to be strife within the party, and as such, the potential for an eventual schism (history proves, in more cases than not, the former tends to presage the latter). As of this week, there are now two sitting Republican senators who have come out openly against President Trump. Until now, trepidations and frustrations were only privately held. Since Trump’s inauguration, Republican congressmen and women have adhered to their usual uniformity.

Bob Corker, the Republican senator from Tennessee, was first to disrupt the GOP’s prevailing esprit de corps. Corker announced in late September that he would not be seeking re-election when his senatorial term ends in 2018. Liberated from an incumbent’s need to appeal to his constituency, Corker has since become provocatively candid and plainspoken. During an unscripted hallway interview with CNN’s political reporter Manu Raju, Corker relieved himself of many bubbling complaints and reservations regarding President Trump. Corker’s countenance was that of a man at once conceding his political future while confessing unimpeded. He appeared all-too comfortable to be doing so.

For nearly six minutes, Corker calmly inveighed against the president. It was clear from the dialogue that Corker has been marinating with revulsion for Trump’s behavior for some time. He said that he didn’t know why Trump “lowers himself to such a low standard and debases our country in the way that he does”. He must believe in man’s perfectibility and Trump’s capacity to be better. When asked if the president is a liar, Corker equivocated before saying that “the president has great difficulty with the truth”. Few in good conscience could dispute this.

Raju continued with easy click-bait questions—the kind that lack journalistic vigor but stir the conversation. He asked Corker if President Trump was a role model for children, to which the senator responded briskly in the negative. He then asked if Corker regretted supporting Trump in the election. Corker unsentimentally confessed that he did.

None of this was especially revelatory. Never was Corker’s support for Trump steadfast; he avoided from the outset giving then candidate Trump his full-throated endorsement. This lack of fealty didn’t stop Trump’s transition team from considering Corker to fill the Secretary of State position, though. That list of candidates, you’ll recall, included Rudy Giuliani, John Bolton, Newt Gingrich, and Nikki Haley. And, in the months to come, the aforementioned list may find its relevance soon revitalized. One of them, with CIA Director Mike Pompeo’s card also placed in the deck, is likely to replace Rex Tillerson when he leaves.

Corker lamented President Trump’s inability to “rise to the occasion”. He also noted Trump’s “lack of desire to be competent on issues and to understand them” in general. There is much to critique about Corker, and many conservatives are hastening to do so, but there is truth to what he is saying. In the past two months alone, no less than two occasions have passed where Trump failed to rise in such a way. Chronologically, those occasions would be his response to Charlottesville and, more recently, to the Gold Star families. It’s difficult to think less of Corker for having pointed this out. And as for the president’s competence and knowledgeability—I’ve resigned myself to the hope that erudition might pass through osmosis in this White House. It’s farfetched, but I like to think that the expertise of a Mattis, McMaster, or even a Mnuchin will somehow permeate through the president’s skin. Corker, for his part, acknowledged these men’s acumen when he said that they “separate our country from chaos”.

Corker’s unveiled attacks necessarily required President Trump’s response. Tis the plight, after all, of the consummate counter-puncher. In a tweet, President Trump said, “Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal and couldn’t get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting tax cuts…Corker dropped out of the race in Tennessee when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump”. Trump isn’t wrong to say that sans his support, a Corker victory in 2018 would be highly improbable.

The tit for tat continued when Corker responded with his own terse tweet, saying, “Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president”. Alliteration appreciated.

Finally, after Corker attacked Trump cap-a-pie on CNN, the president responded with this: “Sen. Corker is the incompetent head of the Foreign Relations Committee, and look how poorly the U.S. has done. He doesn’t have a clue as the entire World WAS laughing and taking advantage of us. People like liddle’ Bob Corker have set the U.S. way back. Now we move forward”. I must say, the redundant use of these diminutives for insults has become a bit stale. Little Marco Rubio, Little Rocket Man, Liddle’ Bob Corker are Trump’s Little Men, in much the way Beth, Meg, and Jo were Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.

Trump recommended we “look at his (Corker’s) record”, but doing so does approximates rather than polarizes the two. Between them, so far as the voting record is concerned, you’ll find scant disparity. Aside from the Iran Deal, which Corker helped to enact during the Obama years, he has since voted with Trump 93% of the time.

The feud’s most memorable line was this: “The debasement of our nation will be what he’ll be remembered most for”. Such vitriol is expected from the Left, but these were Corker’s words. They read like a preemptive strike against the president’s legacy, which is a concern Trump certainly busies himself with. Time will tell if this is mere pugnacity or prescience.

Until yesterday, Senator Bob Corker was the only discernable Republican detractor (save for Senator John McCain, whose enmity has never wavered and Marco Rubio from time to time) to weigh in against Trump. It was then that Senator Jeff Flake, Arizona’s other inauspicious congressman (he and McCain are inauspicious for very different reasons: McCain for his health, Flake for his diminishing favorability), stepped into the fight. He did so under the security of untrammeled circumstances much like his colleague Corker.

Flake stood before the Senate on Tuesday to deliver an emotional valediction. He, like Corker a month before, revealed he would forgo running for re-election this coming cycle. His retreat isn’t altogether surprising. Flake’s popularity in Arizona has declined precipitously in recent years. He meekly admitted that, “There may not be a place for a Republican like me in the current Republican climate or the current Republican Party” and on this point—and perhaps on this point alone—his constituency conclusively agrees.

Both President Trump and Steve Bannon have advocated overtly for Dr. Kelli Ward, an osteopathic physician and conservative politician in the Grand Canyon state. She is far and away more popular than the fleeing Flake, but her appeal to Arizonans isn’t ironclad. Although she would’ve likely defeated Senator Flake had he chosen to contest the Republican primary race, she is looking at much stiffer competition in the general election. Assuming she’s awarded the GOP’s nomination, Ward will face off against U.S. Representative Kyrsten Sinema in a state that saw Trump defeat Clinton by the narrowest of margins. Flake’s seat, in most sober analyses, is ripe to turn blue.

But for now, it remains red, and it remains his. He used his dais to deliver a jeremiad that began as such: “Mr. President, I rise today to say, enough”. This stirring introduction was both overly theatrical and obviously vapid. Like Senator Corker, Jeff Flake has voted with President Trump 92% of the time. His damascene “enough” moment comes only after ten months of exhaustive agreement with the man he now rebuts and detests. He said that “we have fooled ourselves long enough that Trump will return to civility”. He explained that his criticism of the president was “not because I relish criticizing the president…if I have been critical it is because I feel an obligation to do so. The notion that we should say or do nothing in such mercurial behavior is misguided and ahistorical”. It’s unclear to what end Flake said this, for bad behavior and caprice, while objectionable, are not impeachable. Nonetheless, he spoke his piece after having for so long held his peace.

Flake finished by speaking of progeny and the harsh judgment of history. “I have children and grandchildren to answer to” said Flake, “and so, Mr. President, I will not be complicit or silent”. Again, complicity only goes so far as your refusal to act otherwise. Continue to support an agenda and a president whom you purportedly disapprove of, and you continue to be a disingenuous knave. The calculus is simple and the children will understand.

It will be interesting to see if, moving forward, other Republicans begin attacking their own. One can’t help but wonder if Flake and Corker speak for a majority of Republican senators or only for themselves? Is what they’ve expressed publicly the same sentiment most Republicans hold privately? Most importantly, will their imminent departures—and the ways in which they’ve chosen to leave—cause a schism sufficiently large for new niches to form in the GOP? We can only speculate. It seems, though, that for the time being, Trump’s stronghold on the party is resolute. His popularity far exceeds that of most congressmen and women vying for re-election. Flake and Corker may fail to recapture conservatism—this much seems true. They may be doing little more than leaving the Senate as martyrs to the Left.

(This piece is a continuation of, Bixby to Kelly: A Call for a Fallen Son). And respond he did. Coerced by circumstance and directed by decorum, Chief of Staff John Kelly stood before the press on Thursday to address the matter. His wont to avoid loquacity and public appearances finally yielded to political necessity. Soon after Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders concluded her introductory remarks, Kelly took to the stage. There in the briefing room, standing front and center where usually he is least comfortable, the Chief of Staff delivered an extraordinary speech.

His words were, for the most part, extraordinary because of their poignancy and tact. This is what we’ve come to expect from Kelly, who bears the burden of being this administration’s moral rudder. It’s an uncommissioned and underappreciated role, but such is the life of the barnacled yet indispensable rudder; it places him forever beneath the surface and to the insuperable task of steadying the White House’s wayward turns. It’s his stoic solemnity and morality that we hope will steer the ship straight.

He began his remarks by describing the process whereby a soldier killed in action is treated in the field. He did so with neither prompt nor script. As a former Marine general, Kelly is uniquely privy to these painful details. He, more than most, knows intimately the macabre proceedings and explained them with mechanical acumen. With exacting detail, he described how a soldier, once pronounced dead at the scene, is quickly packaged in ice and transported to the European continent. It is there that the hors de combat corpse is chilled again. When sufficiently preserved, the soldier’s final transit begins. He is delivered westward—home.

Once stateside, the deceased serviceman is taken to Dover Air Force base in Delaware, where America’s largest military mortuary awaits. There, he is meticulously examined and embalmed. He is honorably dressed in his final accoutrements, which are immortalized with the iridescent additions of the Purple Heart or Gold Star. Properly outfitted, he is flown home to be venerated and laid to rest. A community mourns, a widow cries, and America gives her fugacious thanks to a young man’s sacrifice. The new entombment thus complete, the soldier lies in peace. While he deserves our diurnal respect, he’ll await our passing appreciation on Memorial Day instead of Veterans Day.

Kelly’s description was far from dramaturgical. He covered the process with surgical sobriety and forced those listening to recognize just how sad and real the process is. He provided the audience before him and Americans tuning in an image rarely seen in the military film. He showed what follows the soldier who pays the ultimate price. He cut through, if only for a moment, the political miasma that has since suffocated these soldiers’ deaths. The tragic part about this past week, aside from four young soldiers’ untimely deaths—which few chose to focus on—was that their stories were subordinate to another narrative. Kelly re-directed our attention and compelled us to think about the corporal implications of a patriot dying in combat.

This, he covered in the speech’s emotional strophe. The antistrophe and epode that followed were at best, unexpected, and at worst, exceptionable. He lamented the loss of yesteryear’s sanctity. He included in his list the following forsaken institutions: women, religion, and life. These three things get to the heart of every conservative’s discontent—not only in this generation, but perhaps throughout all of history. A conservative, in the purest, apolitical sense seeks above all to preserve the pillars upon which the culture is built. But culture, being the chameleon that it is, is forever riddled with radicals revolting for change and conservatives seeking stasis.

While it’s perfectly permissible to miss these institutions in the way Kelly does, one can’t help but feel like he was speaking in bad faith. Perhaps that term is too strong, or inappropriately applied, but it’s the first that comes to mind. Consider how General Kelly’s boss, President Trump, has approached these impenetrable institutions in the past. From Megyn Kelly, to Rosie O’Donnell, to Carly Fiorina, to Heidi Cruz, to Miss America adolescents, all culminating ignominiously in the Access Hollywood tape, Mr. Trump has played no small part in damaging womankind’s worth this year.

As far as religion is concerned, I think it’s safe to say Trump is more Epicurean than Nazarene. He hasn’t made a career of doing the lord’s work, and I see no camels fitting through needle eyes. Trump deigns to one deity and one alone—it’s the supernatural, omnisciently orange moue returning his gaze in the mirror. That said, he did humbly rank one book ahead of The Art of the Deal. The gospels might have Trump beat in both substance, syntax, and sales, but you have to admit, they’ve had an astonishing head start. As for life, I can’t see where Trump has recently failed to uphold it. Though he once favored abortion, he’s now committed to its alternative.

And as for gold-star families, which Kelly mentioned fourth on his list of sacred things of yore, Trump was the prime mover to politicize them. Who can forget his infamous defamation of Khizir Khan, the Gold Star father of Army Captain Humayun Khan. You’ll recall from last summer’s DNC convention, the elder Khan inveighed against Trump while waving a pocket-sized Constitution at the camera. Trump fought back and said his “sacrifices” in the New York business world were tantamount to a serviceman’s sacrifices abroad. This tit for tat was the first in recent memory featuring a presidential candidate actively attacking a Gold Star family.

With this in mind, Kelly’s comments fizzled a bit; they were heartfelt but inescapably hollow. I lament the loss of these sanctified institutions as much as he does, but unlike him, I don’t work for the man who has tarnished more than a few of them on more than a few occasions. Trump may yet improve upon these shortcomings, and I hope that he does (though my hope is guarded when I think about old dogs and new tricks). The irony was that while Kelly listed these lost institutions, he reminded us of who most defiled them in the past twenty-four months.

General Kelly then addressed the puerile pestilence that has engulfed the week. He spoke directly about Frederica Wilson, the Democratic congresswoman from Florida best known for her fantastically distracting array of hats. The Floridian fashionista is seldom seen in public without sequins adorning every inch and sundry, color-coordinated accessories draped head to toe. But this week, it wasn’t her ostentatious panache at the center of attention. She caused a stir when she spoke to the press about President Trump’s phone call to Myeshia Johnson, the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson. Sgt. Johnson was one of four servicemen killed in Niger under suspect circumstances. He, unlike his three compatriots, was retrieved days later and miles away from the ambush’s site.

While en route to the airport to receive her husband’s casket, Myeshia spoke on the phone with President Trump. This exchange, which he had promised to the make earlier that day, sparked an unanticipated controversy.

In the car, Myeshia had by her side Representative Wilson and her late husband’s guardian, Cowanda Jones-Johnson. She answered Trump’s call on speakerphone. You could say it’s imprudent to do this and I’d meekly agree. I think a call from the president is privileged and demands special privacy, but speakerphone, much like Snapchat and autonomic tweets, are all ingredients in modernity’s recipe.

Soon after the conversation was over, Representative Wilson divulged its contents. Its details were only too easily spun to shine a damning light on President Trump. She recounted that Myeshia was told by Trump that her beloved “knew what he was signing up for, but I guess it hurts anyway”. Would these words cut it for a condolence card? Even the least lachrymose would think not. But it’s clear Trump meant no harm with what he said. Reasonably read, he is saying that—like all servicemen before and after him who make this most vital sacrifice—Johnson knew that when he signed his future to the armed forces, this supremely sad potential lurked. In my assessment, it’s this reality that adds to a soldier’s mystic intrepidity, and deserves our veneration all the more.

For whatever reason, this message—that I think Trump intended but made inadequately clear—wasn’t well received. Frederica Wilson was quick to excoriate the president for having spoken so callously. She endlessly inveighed against him for all to hear. In response, because one forever must follow (Trump’s personality proves Newton’s third law), President Trump tweeted, “Democrat Congresswoman totally fabricated what I said to the wife of a soldier who died in action (and I have proof). Sad!”.

While it’s likely Wilson used this opportunity for an expedient political attack, Trump didn’t need to engage in this way. He might have taken Wilson’s words on the chin (which, ironically, were his own) and doubled down with contrition. He could’ve iterated in even stronger terms his personal sorrow, without succumbing to yet another personal spat. But his wonted “doubling down” took its reliable form and the president began his war with Wilson.

It turns out that Wilson did not fabricate Trump’s call. Sgt. Johnson’s guardian, Cowanda Jones-Johnson, corroborated Wilson’s account. She went further to say that the president “disrespected her son” and made Myeshia, the grieving military widow, cry. It was most important, however, to her from Myeshia herself. Today, she broke her silence and averred that Wilson and her mother-in-law’s accounts were accurate.

That said, the three certainly didn’t fabricate their retellings of Trump’s words. And as for the president’s “proof”, he’s persistently over-playing this hand. It was only months ago he alleged possession of tapes that would’ve augured ill for FBI Director Jim Comey. Said tapes and Trump’s proof didn’t exist.

At long last, we’re brought back to General Kelly. For the final part of his speech, he devoted his time to attacking Representative Wilson. His words were memorable, but above all, they were mendacious. He recounted a story from 2015, when he attended an FBI building’s dedication in Florida. Wilson, at that time a potent political voice but not yet an elected official in D.C., was one of the ceremony’s speakers.

Kelly told the gathered press corps of an appalling tale of Wilson’s audacity. He claimed that she hijacked the dedication ceremony in order to pat herself on the back. Based on his account, Ms. Wilson stood up on stage to flaunt the fact that she alone obtained $20 million in funding from President Obama to fund the building. The Sun-Sentinel, a local Florida newspaper, provided video that wholly refuted Kelly’s claim. In it, Wilson is heard to be rather gracious and apolitical. Never did she mention funding nor claim credit for securing it.

Is Trump’s tendency for taraddidles becoming contagious in this administration? I’m no diagnostician, but this seems to be the case. If a man like Kelly, who’s the last bastion of morality, can succumb to lying, a final hope for integrity could be lost. General Kelly would serve himself and the public discourse well if he came out and admitted his mistake. So far, he has not, and there’s no sign he will. At the very least though, it might be said, he hasn’t doubled down.

In 1864, after Antietam but before Appomattox, President Abraham Lincoln penned what came to be known as his “Bixby Letter”. Posterity places it with reverence amongst his best and most moving pieces. Surpassing its impact and immortality, only two speeches stand ahead: these are, of course, the Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural Address. The former, delivered some seven score and fourteen years ago, was the trite but enduring three-minute commemoration of the Union’s fallen sons. The latter, set to his presidency’s short-lived second act, was a divinely-infused plea, in which he insisted that the country’s sanguinary past yield to a forgiving future. That prayers from both Union and Rebel soldier couldn’t be answered fully was his everlasting lament.

While the words of those two speeches are inscribed forever where Lincoln sits stolidly in statuary form, the Bixby Letter remains a lesser-known relic. Neither the Gettysburg Address nor the Second Inaugural combines in equal parts the president’s sentiments so deeply, personally, or succinctly. Lincoln wrote it in 1864 and it was addressed to a one Lydia Parker Bixby. She was a New England widow who, after being bereft of a husband, saw five sons succumb to the ravages of war. Forlorn and missing spouse and son, President Lincoln sought to console her in the only way he could.

He wrote to her this message:

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln

His condolence is careful, but perfectly heartfelt. In one paragraph, and one alone, he combines parsimony and poignancy. It’s his epistolary idiosyncrasy; Raphael worked on canvas, Michelangelo on marble, and Lincoln on parchment with pen in hand. His letters were his finest art. The Bixby words convey his decency and decorum in their highest forms. Praised as such, some question the letter’s author and authenticity. Historians believe it to have been the scribbling of John Hay, President Lincoln’s personal assistant. Others consider Madame Bixby’s tale incredulous and the circumstances of her sons’ deaths unreliable. In either case, lacking persuasive corroboration, we’ll have to err on the side of Lincoln and eschew apocrypha.

I was reminded of Lincoln’s letter to Lydia Parker Bixby after seeing what’s transpired this week. It began Monday, when speaking before reporters in the Rose Garden, President Trump was asked to comment on the circumstances surrounding four American soldiers who were killed in action two weeks ago. These American Special Forces soldiers were surveying the border between Niger and Mali—one of Earth’s many inconspicuous crannies we so often forget house our bravest men and women. The American squadron, which was allied at the time with local African troops, was ambushed at the Niger’s western border. The hostilities erupted without expectation. The affair was intended to be one of reconnaissance and not aggression.

Unfortunately, though, this wasn’t the case. Within thirty minutes, a French helicopter arrived to the Americans’ aide but their air support was too late. Mali, you’ll recall, is a former French dependency, itself—along with Senegal and Sudan and so many others—a victim of Europe’s avaricious “Scramble for Africa” in the late nineteenth century. But the victims on this day weren’t locals or colonialists, but the four American troops stationed to promote peace abroad.

The ambush took place on October 4^th. A day later, the remains of the first soldier arrived in Dover, Delaware, whose Air Force base houses the military’s largest mortuary. By week’s end, all four soldiers’ identities had been disclosed publicly. In the intervening twelve days, not a word of recognition or commemoration came from the White House. Trump’s administration, known to be garrulous and glib, was peculiarly mute. The press was as well.

It wasn’t until the twelfth day that the silence was interrupted. Monday’s press conference in the Rose Garden marked the first time Mr. Trump was asked to comment on the African atrocity. Perhaps fault lies with the reporter for not seeking his response sooner, but the president tends to be preemptively forthcoming on matters such as these (while being frustratingly furtive on others). Many observers were surprised that, heretofore, Trump hadn’t commented. Considering his proclivity to tweet and share with the world his panoptic view, it was strange that he missed messaging about this story. On most occasions, he takes great pride, and perhaps takes away some humility, in venerating our military. It’s one thing he does with uncharacteristically unforced sincerity. Other gestures, by and large, appear empathetically devoid.

The cause for his costiveness remains unclear. The White House claimed it hadn’t received a fully verified report on the circumstances in Niger from the Pentagon until that day (the Monday of Trump’s press conference), but this appears to have not been the case. Supposedly, a statement was prepared much sooner, but laid undelivered.

We learned of this information late Monday afternoon. Before the White House could respond, however, the president had to address his inquiring interlocutor. He began by assuring us that indeed he had written letters to the affected families. His intention soon after was to phone them directly.

Then, with a completely gratuitous jab, Trump compared his compassion for dead soldiers and his unique style of commiseration with their families with that of his predecessors. It was an entirely tactless and unnecessary critique. Comparing his approach to fallen soldiers with presidents past, Trump said “If you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls. A lot of them didn’t make calls. I like to call when it’s appropriate”. Trump later softened his tone slightly, when he said that “President Obama, I think, probably did sometimes (make calls) and maybe sometimes he didn’t. That’s what I was told. All I can do is ask my generals”.

And of said generals, President Trump saw it appropriate to evoke the eminently sad tale of General Kelly’s son’s death. In 2010, Kelly’s son, Second Lieutenant Robert Kelly, aged twenty-nine at the time, stepped on a IED in Afghanistan. He was immediately killed. His father, the current Chief of Staff, was then the Marines’ lieutenant general and commander of the U.S. Southern Command. The loss was unutterably tragic. Kelly lost not only an essential piece of his Afghan personnel, but an inextricable piece of his own person. Since his son’s death, Kelly has seldom if ever mentioned the event publicly. What’s more, he should never have to. Having not lived through the experience, I can’t imagine the daily anguish a father bereft of his boy endures. If I try, I see a boundless grief gnawing at each day’s wakeful moment and each night’s torturous toss and turn. This is a despair beyond description, and it is embedded for life.

Surely, howsoever short my words fall, this must approximate General Kelly’s torment. The last thing he would want would be for his son’s death to become topical—he would want even less for it to become political. But so far as President Trump concerns himself, his Chief of Staff isn’t privy to his own privacy. The president acted shamelessly aloof to Kelly’s sorrow.

To Brian Kilmeade, who is a host on Fox News Radio, Trump said that as far as other presidents were concerned, “I don’t know…you could ask General Kelly…did he get a call from Obama?”

In trying to make an expedient political point, Trump doubled-down and dragged Kelly into the fray; he swiveled the spotlight and shone it directly on Kelly’s sorrow. The natural next step would be for Kelly to support or refute his boss’s claim. He’ll now be forced to speak to a pain he wanted perpetually kept private. It leaves one to wonder…what would Lincoln say?