Month: May 2019

When I see stories like this in the Wall Street Journal, it reminds me of nothing more than the days I spent in my youth reading ancient Latin and Greek texts and absorbing the lessons the Classics have to offer the modern mind. Two weeks ago, the same impulse caused me to write “Nero is Still With Us.” There’s just something about Donald Trump that I equate with the more dysfunctional Roman emperors. I can certainly picture, for example, Caligula demanding that a ship named after Tiberius be kept from his sight.

The White House wanted the U.S. Navy to move “out of sight” a warship named for the late Sen. John McCain, a war hero who became a frequent target of President Trump’s ire, ahead of the president’s visit to Japan last week, according to an email reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Of course, Trump is calling this Fake News, but we all know it’s true.

I was not informed about anything having to do with the Navy Ship USS John S. McCain during my recent visit to Japan. Nevertheless, @FLOTUS and I loved being with our great Military Men and Women – what a spectacular job they do!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2019

Perhaps it is unfair to the Julio-Claudian dynasty to compare even the worst of their emperors to the current American president. It feels less like we’re at the beginning of our empire than the end.  Tonight, I’m thinking of Petronius Maximus who was one of the last Roman Emperors of the West. He was responsible for the assassination of Valentinian III in March 455 CE, but things went badly for him once the foul deed was accomplished.

After gaining control of the palace, Maximus consolidated his hold on power by immediately marrying Licinia Eudoxia, the widow of Valentinian. She married him reluctantly, suspecting that he had been involved in the murder of her late husband; and indeed Maximus treated Valentinian III’s assassins with considerable favour. The eastern court at Constantinople refused to recognise his accession. To further secure his position Maximus quickly appointed Avitus as magister militum and sent him on a mission to Toulouse to gain the support of the Visigoths. He also proceeded to cancel the betrothal of Licinia’s daughter, Eudocia, to Huneric, the son of the Vandal king Geiseric, and marry her to his own son. Again he anticipated that this would further his and his family’s imperial credentials. This repudiation infuriated the Vandal king, who only needed the excuse of Licinia’s despairing appeal to the Vandal court to begin preparations for the invasion of Italy.

By May, within two months of Maximus gaining the throne, news reached Rome that Geiseric was sailing for Italy. As the news spread, panic gripped the city and many of its inhabitants took to flight. The Emperor, aware that Avitus had not yet returned with the expected Visigothic aid, decided that it was fruitless to mount a defence against the Vandals. So he attempted to organise his escape, urging the Senate to accompany him. However, in the panic, Petronius Maximus was abandoned by his bodyguard and entourage and left to fend for himself.

As Maximus rode out of the city on his own on 31 May 455, he was set upon by an angry mob, which stoned him to death. His body was mutilated and flung into the Tiber. He had reigned for only seventy-five days. His son from his first marriage, Palladius, who had held the title of Caesar between 17 March and 31 May, and who had married his stepsister Eudocia, was probably executed.

Thanks to the impetuous incompetence of Petronius Maximus, we now have the world “vandalism” to describe the wanton and purposeless destruction of property. But this sacking of Rome was just a precursor of the final collapse of the Western Empire in 476.

If you want to have some fun, you can peruse the list of Roman Emperors and see how each of them died. The majority of them were killed by their own armies or by the praetorian guard. Some died in battle and most of the rest were assassinated by family members, rivals, or conspirators of one type or another. It’s rare to see an emperor who died of natural causes. It makes one wonder why anyone ever aspired to that kind of power, especially when you consider that it was customary to kill all the close kin of a deposed emperor lest they seek vengeance or become pretenders to the throne.

The Founding Fathers of our country were steeped in this history, and they were all too familiar with the dynastic excesses and cruelties of the European monarchs of their own time. They did not want tyrants, but nor did they want their leaders disposed of by military coups and palace intrigues. They opposed the establishment of a standing army for a variety of reasons, one of which was that they could be used as an instrument of power to change the legitimately elected leadership. At the same time, Thomas Jefferson explained quite concisely in the Declaration of Independence that there are times when the leaders of a government must be removed from power:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

One can doubt the wisdom of their solution, and I have said that “The Founding Fathers Screwed Up the Impeachment Process.” Yet, they did provide a process. They did not expect the American people to suffer while evils were sufferable. They did not want us to be subjected indefinitely to a long train of abuses and usurpations. They assured that we, through our elected representatives in Congress, could throw off a despotic or hopelessly capricious and incompetent president.  They even envisioned a possible president who had become corrupted by a foreign government. That’s why the Constitution says “no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” That’s why treason and bribery are the two crimes expressly mentioned in the impeachment clauses of the Constitution. 

People take a lot of things for granted, and I think Americans often fail to appreciate that our freedoms and way of life are really quite tenuous.  We think our system can endure without any actual work or sacrifice or risk. People seem more likely to flee to Canada than put their own necks on the line. Politicians seem hesitant to exercise the only procedures we have for removing a dangerous and criminal leader. Republicans think people will respect the law and remain orderly even if the elections are transparently doctored in their favor through selective disenfranchisement or even the assistance of hostile foreign powers.

I think history teaches a different lesson. I think a quick look around the world should teach people to think again. People will not assent to unjust laws and phony elections unless their dissent is violently repressed. Militaries and intelligence agencies will not refrain from intervening in politics if the politicians can’t function competently on their own.

Trump claims that the Deep State is trying to take him out, but as Mueller tried to explain in his press appearance on Wednesday, it’s not the Deep State’s job in our Republic to take out a bad president. That doesn’t mean they or the military won’t get around to it eventually if the people through their representatives cannot stand up for themselves.  If history teaches us anything, it should teach us that despotic leaders don’t last long if they don’t keep the people who can wield violence contented with their rule.

How long will the military put up with things like this?

There were discussions within the U.S. military over the past week about how to handle the [USS John McCain], another U.S. official said. The ship is being repaired after a 2017 collision, and any ship undergoing such repair or maintenance would be difficult to move, officials said. A tarp was hung over the ship’s name ahead of the president’s trip, according to photos reviewed by the Journal, and sailors were directed to remove any coverings from the ship that bore its name. After the tarp was taken down, a barge was moved closer to the ship, obscuring its name. Navy officials acknowledge the barge was moved but said it was not moved to obscure the name of the ship. Sailors on the ship, who typically wear caps bearing its name, were given the day off during Mr. Trump’s visit, people familiar with the matter said.

In our system, the people have the responsibility to remove a president from office. We do this through our representatives. When our representatives don’t fulfill their role, the system collapses and the older and more common measures will be used.  It’s a two-way street. We ask our military leaders to stay out of politics and our military leaders ask us to make that possible for them.

What we’re doing as a country right now is destroying people’s faith in the integrity of our elections and the competency of our elected officials. We somehow think we can let this go on and people will stay docile and continue to maintain order.  There’s nothing in history that suggests that this is the case.

If people want to preserve this country, they need to understand their responsibility to act. We cannot assume that things will work themselves out. We have a president who resembles a weak, insecure and half-mad Roman emperor. Our inability to deal with this problem is a sure sign that we’re near the end of our run as a great power.

Donald Trump is famous for offering his own peculiar version of history, but in this case, his account actually matches the record.

…If Alabama does not elect a Republican to the Senate in 2020, many of the incredible gains that we have made during my Presidency may be lost, including our Pro-Life victories. Roy Moore cannot win, and the consequences will be devastating….Judges and Supreme Court Justices!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2019

The president is not denying that he endorsed Roy Moore’s Alabama senatorial bid, nor is he pretending that he never wanted him to win. He’s upfront about the fact that he has “NOTHING against Roy Moore.” His only concern now is that he wants the Republicans to win Sen. Doug Jones’ seat and he doesn’t think Moore can accomplish this time what he failed to do in the 2017 special election.

Donald Trump Jr. also endorsed Moore’s candidacy that last time around, and he joins in his father in trying to dissuade from Moore from making a second go of it.

You mean like last time? You’re literally the only candidate who could lose a GOP seat in pro-Trump, pro-USA ALABAMA. Running for office should never become a business model. If you actually care about #MAGA more than your own ego, it's time to ride off into the sunset, Judge. https://t.co/Twg9isFRkY

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) May 28, 2019

Here, again, there’s no sign of consternation about Moore’s alleged sexual misconduct with minors. The only character concern is that Moore might be seeking office for financial reasons, which is quite rich coming from a member of the Trump family.

As a reminder, there were many Republicans who said that Moore should abandon his 2017 bid. They may have taken their sweet time about it and they may have couched it in conditional terms, but they still said it.

“The allegations against Roy Moore are deeply disturbing and disqualifying,” said Arizona Sen. John McCain. “He should immediately step aside and allow the people of Alabama to elect a candidate they can be proud of.”

…”The allegations against Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore are deeply troubling,” said Colorado Sen. Chairman Cory Gardner, who leads the Senate GOP campaign arm. “If these allegations are found to be true, Roy Moore must drop out of the Alabama special Senate election.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell added, “If these allegations are true, he must step aside.”

These were hardly profiles in courage, but they weren’t saying that they have “NOTHING” against the sexual assault of minors. Yet, that’s exactly what Trump Sr. and Trump Jr. are saying by opposing Moore’s candidacy entirely on political rather than moral grounds.

Moore will face off against Rep. Bradley Byrne and possibly others in a bid to win the Republican nomination and the right to take on Doug Jones, who is clearly the most vulnerable member of the Senate who is up for reelection in 2020.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller stood at a podium on the seventh floor of the Department of Justice on Wednesday and broke two years of silence. He repeated two things that were included in the report he submitted to Attorney General William Barr.

“If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.”

“The Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.”

Taken together, this was a reiteration of the point he tried to convey in written form. The president committed crimes and it’s Congress’s job to figure out how to handle it.

This really shouldn’t be news to anyone, but there was something about him saying it in person that gave it more oomph. Now there are video clips that can be played ad nauseam on the news.

It’s doubtful that this was the primary reason Mueller decided to speak up, however, because the new information he provided was that he did not want to testify before Congress and will not have anything to say if he is compelled to testify: “The report is my testimony,” he said.

The performance left everyone unhappy. The White House had done their best to argue that he president did not obstruct justice and William Barr claimed to have cleared him of the charge. Mueller argued persuasively that due to existent DOJ policy, Barr could not have charged the president with a crime under any circumstances, so clearing him was essentially meaningless.  Only Congress can arbitrate a president’s crimes.

The Democrats were frustrated to learn that Mueller would not willingly testify and if subpoenaed would say almost nothing beyond what was already included in his report. To get a sense of how badly this will sit with congressional Democrats, you can read the letter minority members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent to chairman Lindsey Graham on May 8, 2019.  As Nancy LeTourneau pointed out at the time, by listing 60 separate questions they wanted to ask Mueller, the Democrats demonstrated how critical it is for the country to hear from him.

Here’s a sampling of just two of those questions:

Why did the office elect not to pursue an interview with Donald Trump Jr. and did his refusal to be interviewed impact the investigation? If so, how?

To what degree was your investigation able to determine whether the Trump Tower Moscow project was part of an effort to gain influence over Donald Trump?

The first of those seems like something Mueller should and could answer without it violating any internal DOJ policy. The second one pertains to the counterintelligence investigation, and Mueller stated in his brief press appearance that his office has no role in determining what underlying materials of his investigation will be provided to Congress.  In fact, Mueller was completely silent on the topic of the president’s behavior being explainable by compromise, blackmail, or financial considerations.  It’s a bizarre oversight to have an investigation spurred by the president’s unorthodox pro-Russian behavior conclude without any reference to the subject.

Mueller’s strange sense of rectitude is putting everyone in a bind. He just made it harder for the Democrats to avoid an impeachment inquiry but denied them the one thing that would give that effort some momentum: his personal assessment in televised hearings. As for the Republicans, he dented their talking point that the president has been exonerated. Instead, they have to reckon with this:

“When a subject of an investigation obstructs that investigation or lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of their government’s effort to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable.”

At a time when Mueller’s former colleagues at the FBI, DOJ, and the broader intelligence community are being accused of treasonous acts and threatened with the death penalty, you’d think Mueller would recognize his duty to be a little more forceful in his remarks. If the Deep State is engaged in a coup, this is a particularly weak effort.  William Barr has been authorized to selectively declassify material in an effort to bolster the president’s case that he’s been a victim of a concerted effort to unjustly remove him from office. Yet, Mueller seems content to watch his colleagues become victims of a concocted crackdown.

The Democrats now have to decide whether or not to demand that Mueller testify, and if so whether he should do so in public. They also have to decide if anything has changed as a result of Mueller’s press appearance that might lead them to begin an official impeachment inquiry.

As I said above, Mueller just made it both harder to resist impeachment and to turn public opinion in favor of impeachment. Nancy Pelosi is probably cursing him, and for good reason. Nonetheless, she should force him to testify in public. Even if he isn’t very responsive, just hearing him say in person what he wrote in his report will be beneficial to the public.

The White House will probably not be deterred in their effort to change the narrative from Trump and Russia’s crimes to the alleged crimes of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, John Brennan, and (yes!) Joe Biden.

Even if Mueller brought a pea-shooter to this knife fight, he did at least succeed in tossing everything up the air. We will have to see where things actually land before we’ll know if he did anything worthwhile.

You may have heard of bonafide Tennessee idiot and white supremacist (but I repeat myself) Rick Tyler. He spawned outrage back in 2016 with his horrible “Make America White Again” billboard, which he hoped would play a major role in his 2016 campaign for Congress. It did, in a way: he lost badly.

This week, the plucky little racist was at it again, holding a white supremacist rally at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. As you may imagine, security was tight. It must have cost a fortune.

Ahead of Tyler’s talk, police helicopters flew overhead as protesters gathered in the heat outside the student union to craft signs and protest his appearance. Dozens of Knox County Sheriff’s Office deputies, Knoxville Police Department officers, UT police officers and Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers lined the fenced-off area around the Alumni Memorial Building, waiting to screen anyone who wanted to go inside.

Frankly, if I was in charge of deploying all these state and municipal authorities, I would be sending the bill to Tyler himself. Because for all of his carrying on and making a ridiculous, hateful spectacle of himself, only nine people showed up to hear him speak.

That’s right: nine. But while more than one hundred people protested outside the event -the Knoxville News Sentinel reports that “protesters outnumbered attendees more than 10 to one,” which is typical of these kinds of events- the helpful folks at Tennessee Holler captured the sad and hilarious scene inside the auditorium. The video offers some of the best color commentary I’ve ever heard.

🚨NEW VIDEO: The Saddest White Supremacist Rally In Tennessee History

Existential Question: If a white supremacist holds a rally @UTKnoxville… and nobody shows up… did it really happen? 🤣

(Video by Chris Irwin) pic.twitter.com/YoEix9DiCH

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) May 29, 2019

It’s heartening to see that even in Tennessee -a state that has a bust of Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest prominently displayed in the legislature and where the Republicans are working hard to disenfranchise black voters- no one likes a Nazi.

In an otherwise bland but carefully worded statement, Special Counsel Robert Mueller offered clear instructions to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so,” Mueller stated unequivocally, knocking down both President Donald Trump’s insistence to the contrary and jabbing his former boss, Attorney General Bill Barr. He added that his investigation had made no such determination due to “longstanding department policy” that prohibits charging a president with federal crimes.

But citing the introduction to Volume Two of the report, Mueller made Congress’s duty clear.

“The opinion explicitly permits the investigation of a sitting president, because it is important to preserve evidence while memories are fresh and documents available,” he said.

“Among other things, that evidence could be used if there were co-conspirators who could be charged now,” he said with a pointed glance. “Second, the opinion says that the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.”

It is clear -as clear as the skies here in sunny Tennessee- that Mueller is sending a message to Pelosi and the House majority.

“How much more obvious could it be?” Mueller is saying in the vulgar English translation. “My hands are freaking tied here. Nancy, do your goddamn job.”

Mueller added that he didn’t intend to help any further, saying “I hope and I expect that this will be the only time I speak to you in this manner,” adding that it wouldn’t be “appropriate” to speak further.

But more experienced hands at parsing statements seemed to hope otherwise.

I betcha a million dollars that if Congress began impeachment hearings Mueller would testify. That’s because, on principle (which is how he operates), he would then be a witness providing info relevant to an official, quasi-judicial proceeding, not a political prop.

— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) May 29, 2019

For now, it’s as Republican Congressman Jason Amash says: “The ball is in our court, Congress.”

It’s now just hitting midnight on the East Coast, and I am signing on. I’ll start things off with a video by Wire right around the time of their first comeback in the mid-1980s:

And if you want the club mix, here it is:

They reformed again around the turn of the century and have been recording consistently since. I’ll post some more recent stuff as well. They may not have sold many records over the years, but they influenced many more famous acts, such as R.E.M. A mid-1990s hit by Elastica essentially plagiarized one of Wire’s signature songs from their classic first album (released in 1977).

So stay tuned. More music is coming your way. Hopefully the bartender is serving up some cool drinks.

Martin wrote compellingly of the political threat President Donald Trump’s attacks on climate change pose for both Republicans and Democrats. I would like to focus for a moment on the sheer insanity of deliberately ignoring reality.

That is exactly what Donald Trump is doing as he tries to roll back the very science of climate change itself

[P]arts of the federal government will no longer fulfill what scientists say is one of the most urgent jobs of climate science studies: reporting on the future effects of a rapidly warming planet and presenting a picture of what the earth could look like by the end of the century if the global economy continues to emit heat-trapping carbon dioxide pollution from burning fossil fuels.

The attack on science is underway throughout the government.

Philip B. Duffy, president of the Woods Hole Research Center, is quoted later in the article saying Trump’s attack on science “reminds me of the Soviet Union.” It is utter lunacy what the president, his party, and his associates are doing.

The president’s advisers amplify his disregard. At the meeting of the eight-nation Arctic Council this month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dismayed fellow diplomats by describing the rapidly warming region as a land of “opportunity and abundance” because of its untapped reserves of oil, gas, uranium, gold, fish and rare-earth minerals. The melting sea ice, he said, was opening up new shipping routes.

As visions of dividends dance in Pompeo’s head, the reality is that climate change will cost Americans and people around the world lives and property. It already is.

Already Louisiana is preparing for an “existential crisis” along its coast.

[I]t was with a certain sense of redemption that I read headlines from across the nation last week like these:

“Louisiana’s new climate plan addresses ‘existential crisis’”

“Levees won’t save Louisiana from a climate ‘existential crisis’”

“Louisiana unveils ambitious plan to get people out of the way of climate change.”

Those reporters were not quoting me, but words from a major report released by the state’s own Department of Community Development on what kind of future – if any — southern Louisiana has as seas rise and the land sinks.

Meanwhile, insurance in the state has skyrocketed as the industry has determined climate change is its biggest risk.

It’s a similar story in eastern Canada.

Climate change means that catastrophic flooding will only become more common, but experts say the events of the past week highlight the fact that Canada has still not done enough to prepare for such disasters.

The current mass evacuations have forced Canadian politicians at every level to confront this dramatic evidence of climate change in a federal election year. Speaking on Sunday night, Justin Trudeau, the prime minister, suggested that using federal money to help relocate communities affected by flooding was a possibility. “Once we secure the situation through this spring flooding season, we will have to have significant reflections and conversations on how we move forward,” he said, according to the Canadian Press.

This is not the first time Quebec has seen large-scale flooding: in 2017, Quebec rivers reached similar levels.

Indeed, the government is considering buyouts of up to $200,000 Canadian dollars (about $150,000 in US currency) to move.

Meanwhile in California, we just saw the city of Pleasure Paradise burn, as California’s fire season seems to shift into 365 days a year.

Y’all will have to permit me to get personal for a moment: I have close friends in Baton Rouge, Lafayette, and New Orleans who are at risk from floods. My son and his mother live in Montreal, where the boy completed his academically-required volunteer hours by directing traffic and helping with sandbags during the 2017 floods. A close friend of mine and his young daughter have been evacuated and relocated twice due to the fires in California. He’s now thinking of leaving the state behind.

These are real human impacts that are affecting us now. The result of Trump’s refusal to even accept that climate change is a real thing -and the active efforts to actually make it worse- will be a terrible legacy for our children and grandchildren. And while the will is there among the people, there’s this big ugly corrupt monolith called the Republican Party standing in the way of any change, like the entrance to the world’s biggest cemetery.

Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.”

That would seem to be the case.

But Vonnegut also once said, “as the world is ending, I’m always glad to be entertained for a few moments. The best way to do that is with music.” So here’s a little apocalyptic metal to calm your nerves.

Good night and good luck.

Awful Baby Trump by Matt Johnson. Purchase his work here.

California Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter spent the weekend defending accused war criminal Eddie Gallagher, who President Donald Trump is considering for a pardon. In so doing, Hunter boasted of committing war crimes himself, and said they were no big deal. In fact, he said he’d taken part in some of his own.

“Eddie did one bad thing that I’m guilty of too — taking a picture of the body and saying something stupid,” Hunter said at a border-issues forum with his father, former Rep. Duncan L. Hunter.

The younger Hunter, a Marine veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, said he’s taken pictures “just like that when I was overseas” — although he didn’t text or post images to social media. “But a lot of my peers … have done the exact same thing.”

For good measure the admitted criminal, who has also been indicted for misusing campaign funds, attacked both the military and civilian justice systems.

But Hunter also said he wanted the court-martial to go forward so the American people can “see how disgusting the military justice system is when it’s run by lawyers and bureaucrats [who] go after the war-fighter.”

Hunter said such a trial would embarrass the Navy and “maybe give an example of how they can change the system.”

Alluding to his own federal criminal case, where he’s charged with using campaign funds for personal spending and travel, Hunter said he would argue that “our regular justice system is just as abusive as the military justice system. It’s not about justice.”

None of this went down well with Iraq combat veteran and historian of the Holocaust, Modern Germany, and contemporary genocide at the University of Virginia Captain Waitman Beorn, who explained exactly why Hunter is wrong in an appearance on CNN.

“The bodies of enemy soldiers and combatants are to be respected,” Beorn said, citing the Geneva Conventions. “Why we do that? It comes down to dehumanization.”

Beorn acknowledged that soldiers need to be able to kill the enemy, but said that leaders had a greater responsibility.

“In the military, leaders manage violence. They’re not there to really commit it,” Beorn said. “Their job is to keep soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines on the positive side of that line, which means that you’re able to kill the enemy but you don’t become sort of an amoral killing machine that doesn’t recognize the humanity of what you’re doing.”

“We wouldn’t want anyone to treat any human body in a way that desecrates it, or makes fun of it, or uses it as a prop in the way that Hunter has,” he continued, taking aim at the congressman. “I should point out he was a leader at the time, so that makes it even worse in my book.”

Sounds to me like Hunter was as poor a soldier as he is a congressman, with the ethics of a sewer rat.

It’s probably a sign that the Democratic Party’s presidential field is too large that Beto O’Rourke’s flagging campaign is hoping that a documentary that features him calling himself “a giant a**hole” in front of his staff will provide a boost in the polls.  Some people saw the film in March when it premiered at the SXSW conference, but it will get a much wider audience beginning Tuesday night when it begins airing on HBO. They’ll be treated to several examples of O’Rourke using casual profanity, and not always in a self-deprecating manner.

In the doc, Beto comes off as charismatic yet controlling—its most revealing moments being ones where he is seen dressing down his clearly overworked staff for their perceived lack of preparedness. The person on the receiving end of most of the scoldings is Cynthia Cano, his road manager. At several tense points in the film, Cano is criticized by Beto—in front of her campaign colleagues—for not leaving enough time in his schedule for media interviews, having him be late to campaign events, and not adequately prepping him for those events. (Cano views Beto’s penchant for going long in his speeches and wanting to speak with every single constituent and/or person with a microphone as the reason for his constant tardiness and lack of prep time, which appears to be the more likely culprit.)

After Beto was narrowly defeated by Cruz, he delivered a concession speech in front of thousands of supporters in his backyard of El Paso, where he exclaimed, “I’m so fucking proud of you guys.”

It sounds like there will be plenty to like about O’Rourke in the film, and any publicity is better than none. I’m sure all of the other Democratic candidates would kill to have a movie about them airing on HBO even if there are some downside risks.

O’Rourke did land an interview on Face the Nation this past weekend, but his campaign has been idling in place for weeks. The RealClearPolitics average of polls has him at the back of the middle pack, polling in sixth place at 3.7 percent. That puts him a full 31 points behind Joe Biden. After his surprisingly strong challenge to Senator Ted Cruz in 2018, I don’t think he or his supporters thought he’d be struggling to catch some guy name Pete Buttigieg.

So, with little to lose and not much else working for him, the campaign is hoping a little bad language might get him the attention he so desperately needs.

The media is awash with articles and opinions pieces that focus on the shortcomings of and dangers for the Democratic Party as we approach the 2020 presidential election. Comparatively few pieces are written about the risks and problems Donald Trump is creating for himself and for the Republican Party.The same can be said for the analysis of the European Union’s parliamentary elections that concluded this past weekend. More emphasis is being placed on the warning signs for the left than for the right.

To some extent, people will find trouble only where they’re looking for it, but I believe both of America’s major parties should be concerned about the results from Europe, and probably in about equal degree. In country after country, Europe’s voters punished their establishment parties, although the details differed from place to place. In the United Kingdom, the Conservative (Tory) Party was decimated, while in Germany it was the center-left Social Democratic Party that took the brunt of the abuse. In Northern Europe, the Green Party was the main beneficiary of defections from the left. It came in second place in Germany and third place in France. Exit polls showed that climate was at or near the top of voters’ concerns, especially among youthful generations. They did not feel that their established left-wing parties were addressing the issue adequately, and unlike in America they were free to vote for the Greens without it automatically benefitting the right. That’s the advantage of proportional representation. For the first time, the center-right and center-left coalitions will not constitute a majority of the E.U.’s parliament, which means that the Greens will be part of Europe’s government.

America’s Democratic Party should take note that, given the option, the youth vote abandoned the center. Climate was a major motivator for them, but so was the economy. The center-left parties had become too associated with austerity policies. If the Democrats are hoping to play it safe with their nominee and believe that American millennials will turn out for their candidate out of opposition to Trump, they have to be at least a little concerned about how the millennials of Europe expressed their political preferences and priorities.

On the other hand, turnout was very high in Europe, and the American left knows it can’t flirt with third parties again without risking a second term for the president. This is because we don’t have proportional representation. It could be that 2020 will have record-high turnout and record-low third party voting.

The message for the Republican Party should be at least as dire. Young voters were extremely motivated on the issue of climate, which suggests that new voters will turn out and punish the party that denies the science of climate change. On that front, the Trump administration is moving in a very perilous direction.

President Trump has rolled back environmental regulations, pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accord, brushed aside dire predictions about the effects of climate change, and turned the term “global warming” into a punch line rather than a prognosis.

Now, after two years spent unraveling the policies of his predecessors, Mr. Trump and his political appointees are launching a new assault.

In the next few months, the White House will complete the rollback of the most significant federal effort to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, initiated during the Obama administration. It will expand its efforts to impose Mr. Trump’s hard-line views on other nations, building on his retreat from the Paris accord and his recent refusal to sign a communiqué to protect the rapidly melting Arctic region unless it was stripped of any references to climate change.

And, in what could be Mr. Trump’s most consequential action yet, his administration will seek to undermine the very science on which climate change policy rests.

Specifically, the administration is introducing a new policy that aims to undercut alarmist reporting from government scientists.

The attack on science is underway throughout the government. In the most recent example, the White House-appointed director of the United States Geological Survey, James Reilly, a former astronaut and petroleum geologist, has ordered that scientific assessments produced by that office use only computer-generated climate models that project the impact of climate change through 2040, rather than through the end of the century, as had been done previously.

Scientists say that would give a misleading picture because the biggest effects of current emissions will be felt after 2040. Models show that the planet will most likely warm at about the same rate through about 2050. From that point until the end of the century, however, the rate of warming differs significantly with an increase or decrease in carbon emissions.

The president is relying not only on petroleum geologists, but also on people funded heavily by Robert and Rebekah Mercer. The Mercers are perhaps the most generous of all the funders of climate change denial “research” and “science.” They have backed not only National Security Adviser John Bolton but also Princeton professor William Happer. We first took notice of Prof. Happer at the Washington Monthly in 2013, when we mocked an editorial he co-wrote with Harrison Schmitt for the Wall Street Journal that praised the benefits of higher carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Happer is now leading the government’s reporting on climate change:

However, the goal of political appointees in the Trump administration is not just to change the climate assessment’s methodology, which has broad scientific consensus, but also to question its conclusions by creating a new climate review panel. That effort is led by a 79-year-old physicist who had a respected career at Princeton but has become better known in recent years for attacking the science of man-made climate change and for defending the virtues of carbon dioxide — sometimes to an awkward degree.

“The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler,” said the physicist, William Happer, who serves on the National Security Council as the president’s deputy assistant for emerging technologies.

With the Trump administration going to these extremes to prevent any action to combat climate change, it’s a safe bet that they’ll invite a backlash from younger voters. If they also inspire higher than normal turnout, the combination could be lethal to Trump’s reelection prospects and also to many of the GOP’s downticket candidates.

Perhaps this is why Stephen Bannon is not supportive of Prof. Happer’s efforts.

Even Stephen K. Bannon, the former White House strategist who views Mr. Happer as “the climate hustler’s worst nightmare — a world-class physicist from the nation’s leading institution of advanced learning, who does not suffer fools gladly,” is apprehensive about what Mr. Happer is trying to do.

“The very idea will start a holy war on cable before 2020,” he said. “Better to win now and introduce the study in the second inaugural address.”

We’ve seen some new warning signs on the right in the past week. First we had Pat Robertson announcing that Alabama’s anti-choice legislation went too far, and now we have Bannon saying that the Trump administration’s anti-climate moves are too politically risky.

So far, the Republicans don’t seem to be changing course or moderating their policies despite the signs that they’re creating political dangers for themselves. To me, this is at least as big of a story as any risks the Democrats are taking.