The Education of Graham Platner

June 09, 2026 by James G. Blaine

"The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are."
- Joseph Campbell

Momentum is a terrible thing to lose. And it appears that Graham Platner has done just that. On the eve of Maine’s primary elections, the presumed Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate has been battered with accusations of misogyny, sexual abuse, antisemitism, communism, fascism, “sexting” women other than his new wife, and who knows what else. All of this did not emerge suddenly in one blockbuster story; rather the revelations came in a series of drips. And much like the so-called “Chinese water torture” (which was not Chinese at all but first documented in 16th-century Italy), the drips keep coming. Platner’s campaign has become a huge national story, partly because he is such an intriguing character and partly because this election could decide control of the Senate.

For those who have somehow missed the brouhaha, Platner is an oyster fisherman whose only previous political experience has been as chair of the planning board of Sullivan, Maine (population 1,200). He is a former marine and army veteran who served four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and came home deeply scarred. A progressive candidate, backed by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, he has said, posted, and been accused of some deeply offensive things, perhaps most famously his now-covered-over Totenkopf tattoo. He has opened up about many of his past behaviors, attributing them to the PTSD that followed his years of combat. The combination of an intense campaign and the cascading allegations have been hard on him and on his wife of three years, Amy Gertner, even as they struggle to have a child.

Janet Mills, Maine’s governor and Platner’s only serious challenger, suspended her campaign last April. But she remains on the ballot. It’s extremely unlikely she will win, but if she receives a significant protest vote, it will be an indicator of Platner’s slowing momentum. Meanwhile, Republican Senator Susan Collins already has millions in hand to assail his mounting vulnerabilities over the next five months.

Platner says he has no intention of bailing, and it could well be that all the revelations will actually make him a better nominee. Despite all he has been through, both personally and politically, Platner needs to grow as a candidate. He is only 41, and it’s a big jump from a small-town planning board to the United States Senate.

To me one of the most troubling aspects of his campaign biography has been his efforts to polish his working-class credentials, which are at the core of his image and his message. Yes, he is an oyster farmer, but he is an oyster farmer who went first to a prestigious boarding school and subsequently to a private high school in Bangor. His father, an attorney, went to an even more exclusive boarding school and graduated from Dartmouth College; his grandfather was a Cornell-educated, world-famous architect. None of this is remotely disqualifying, but it has led Platner to shave the truth, presumably to protect he authenticity of his working-class image. And it runs the risk of turning him into a caricature, rather than the complex person he obviously is – and it is the latter I would far prefer to have representing me in Washington.

Many of his supporters have moved beyond his past behavior, not condoning it so much as accepting the context in which it happened. But these are serious allegations, and the stench remains. If we have learned anything from the current presidency, it is that character matters – its essence is the willingness to own your shortcomings, learn from them, and move forward with both humility and determination. Graham Platner has five months to show the people of Maine that he can do that.

Power v Rights

May 23, 2026 by James G. Blaine

“Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.”
- Lord Acton

Power, in the political sense of the word, has but only aim: to impose your will on others. It is the dominant feature of a dictatorship; but it is also characteristic of a pure democracy, where the majority can ride roughshod over the minority. The nation’s founders were very much aware of both these threats; and while their disdain of mob rule has often been ascribed to their contempt for common people, I think what they feared far more were the events that unfolded on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021.

Early America’s most famous observer put the matter succinctly:

“Now, if you admit that an individual vested with omnipotence can abuse it against his adversaries,” wrote Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America, “why would you not admit the same thing for the majority? Have men, by gathering together, changed character? . . . So when I see the right and the ability to do everything granted to whatever power, whether called people or king, democracy or aristocracy, whether exercised in a monarchy or a republic, I say: the seed of tyranny is there and I try to go and live under other laws.”

To guard against each of these seemingly contradictory threats, the founders tried to design institutions to protect the nation from both of them. To that end they established a republic in which checks and balances sought to place limits on power, whatever its source, and to rein in the appetites of tyrants in whatever form they emerge. For the founders believed that the fundamental purpose of government is not to amass power; it is to protect rights – a concept they embedded in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The Declaration could hardly be clearer:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Individual rights are not granted by government; they are inherent in the people themselves, who then form a government to protect them. In 1789 the Constitution set forth a road map for how to do that, one that included keeping in check the power of the government itself. For many, even that wasn’t enough, and two years later the first 10 amendments were added to the Constitution. Known collectively as the “Bill of Rights,” their objective was to safeguard the rights of the people from the power of their own government.

As we gear up to celebrate our 250th anniversary, such a notion seems a bit quaint. All the talk these days is about power, and its military stepson, “lethality” (which rhymes so inharmoniously with “legality”). There is very little talk of rights. While we may be the most powerful nation in the world, we are far from the happiest.

It has long been an axiom of history that a government that prioritizes projecting its own power cares little for the rights of its people, whereas a government that prioritizes protecting its citizens’ rights sets limits on its own power. If America continues on its current path of political gerrymandering, suppressing dissidents, enriching insiders, and sowing fear, we will soon have both a real dictatorship and a fake democracy – as Germany did in the 1930s, and have so many other countries – from the Soviet Union to Venezuela – whose elections regularly return landslides for the ruling party. “Authority that does not exist for Liberty,” wrote Lord Acton, “is not authority but force.”

Our Vanishing Wilderness

May 19, 2026 by James G. Blaine

“In wildness is the preservation of the World,”
- Henry Thoreau

When she was in her early twenties, my daughter Gayley announced she was going off for a three-month NOLS semester. Since I had no idea what NOLS, I smiled and said, “Great.” I soon learned that NOLS stands for National Outdoor Leadership School, and Gayley had just signed up for three months of backpacking, rock climbing, and kayaking deep in the Wyoming wilderness. When I dropped her off at the Philadelphia airport a few weeks later, my child looked barely bigger than the backpack she wrestled out of the trunk. Driving home, I wondered when the call would come to drive back and pick her up.

That call never came, but three months later a tan, healthy, and newly self-confident woman walked into the house. “Dad,” she said, “you have got to do this.” These were not exactly the words I wanted to hear. I was not a young man, and the closest I’d gotten to summer camp as a child was Allan Sherman’s “Camp Grenada” (“Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah).

Less than a year later I found myself at the NOLS staging area in Fairbanks, Alaska, preparing for a two-week stroll through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or ANWR. Our group consisted of two guides and 12 students, of which I was the oldest by roughly two generations. My nickname, of course, was “Jerry” – for geriatric. That afternoon we emptied our backpacks and watched the guides confiscate everything they deemed non-essential, which was pretty much everything. One girl was allowed to keep two of the 14 pairs of underpants she had brought. We then refilled our packs with food, camping gear, gas cylinders, pots and pans, a stove, first aid kits, and other requisites for survival. Each of us was to carry 70 percent of our body weight. When I hoisted my pack to my shoulders, I almost fell over.

The next morning we set off into what the 1964 Wilderness Act defines as “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” NOLS, and its fervent devotion to “leave no trace,” intended to keep it that way. Anything we brought in we either (1) ate (no matter how many mosquitos we found in the peanut butter) or (2) buried in 12-inch holes with the smooth rocks we used for toilet paper or (3) carried out. Not a grain of rice was left behind.

ANWR, all 19+ million acres of it, is as remote as any place on earth. It hasn’t the beauty of a conventional landscape: on the way up from Fairbanks we passed a lone spruce and a sign identifying it as “the last tree in Alaska.” But its vast stretches of tundra and mountains, rivers and wildlife took my breath away.

We hiked in 80-degree heat, and we sometimes woke up in snow. We saw grizzly bears and caribou, wolves and many birds. Three of us camped on the Continental Divide, which in Alaska runs east-west and is only 3,000 feet above sea level. Out there, so far from anything familiar, I understood as never before my cosmic inconsequence, and yet I felt connected to this vast place and all its inhabitants. Solitude and community seemed to me no longer polar opposites but part of a single spectrum.

And I saw how fragile we humans have made it all. Only a stump remains of the last tree in Alaska, which vandals cut down in 2004. Oil companies have been trying to drill in the refuge since 1977, and for 49 years coalitions of environmentalists, native groups, and climate activists have thwarted them. But now, as it pursues “energy dominance,”the current administration has leases drawn up and ready to sign.

It’s time, I think, to transcend this obsession with dominance and to redefine what we mean by progress. We are neither outside of nature nor in control of it. We are part of it, and we depend on it. Yes, it will be here long after we have gone, but for now at least, it also depends on us.

Enough

May 06, 2026 by James G. Blaine

But he hasn't got anything on!’ cried a little child.”
- Hans Christian Andersen, 1837

Almost 11 years ago, I inserted into my story of the rescue at sea of four septuagenarian sailors, the following interregnum:

“Little did I know, as we waited for Sparky’s mast to appear above the waves [and hopefully rescue us] that Donald Trump had that day ascended to Number 2 in the Republican presidential polls.

One of the reasons for going to sea is to get away from – perhaps even get perspective on – the minutiae that threaten to engulf our daily lives. In hindsight, how trivial now seem the rantings of this ridiculous man.

And yet, even as the media insisted he was not a serious candidate, Trump continued to suck all the air from the public conversation, getting more headlines than he could ever have dreamed possible. He needs not merely to be ridiculed but condemned.

He is a compulsive dissembler (“I’m really a smart guy”), intimating that he graduated from Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business (“the best school in the country”), when in fact he spent two undistinguished years in Penn’s Wharton undergraduate program, a decidedly inferior brand – and from which he received, not an MBA but, appropriately, a BS. When Timothy O’Brien wrote that his wealth was a fraction of the billions he claimed, Trump sued him – and lost.

His candidacy has been likened to Hitler’s, but the more apt – and worrisome – comparison is Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, an earlier buffoon who did terrible damage to America and for whom the term McCarthyism was coined.”

Two things strike me as wrong about what I wrote then, both of them blueprints for a future we did not take seriously enough:

Far from trivial, the rantings are a clear warning of how Trump intended to govern; and
I have been listening, on Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook’s podcast, The Rest is History, about the Nazis’ frighteningly quick transformation of 1930s Germany from a democracy to a dictatorship. It reads like Trump’s playbook.

A decade later, our country is in a shambles, and 250 years of an imperfect experiment in multi-ethnic democracy is on the brink of destruction. Our social fabric is unraveling, and instead of trying to find ways to knit us back together, Trump and his cronies exacerbate our differences for their own gain. In taking our common language to the gutter, they seek to make civic discourse impossible. In dehumanizing entire groups of people, they have set us against each other. A president who demands both the Nobel Peace Prize and the Medal of Honor has waged illegal and immoral wars that have killed tens of thousands of noncombatants – and somehow managed to do the unthinkable: turn Iran into Ukraine. By declaring that states can draw voting districts, not to protect minority voting, but to install political gerrymandering, his judges have reversed 50 years of racial progress and enshrined the grossest form of political partisanship. In insisting that power is the only virtue, the Trump administration has poured scorn on human rights – from our own Bill of Rights to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN in 1948.

America has become a country of distrust, in which our citizens don’t trust each other, and neither our allies nor our adversaries trust our word. A country in which the few are getting richer and the corrupt are getting bolder. A country in which beauty has no value and modesty has no place, where only the tawdry, the vulgar, the grandiose can satisfy our tastemaker-in-chief.

I could go on, but I’ll end where I began, with Hans Christian Anderson’s story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

"’But he hasn't got anything on!’ cried a little child. ‘Dear me! just listen to what the little innocent says,’ said the father; and the people whispered to each other what the child had said. ‘He hasn't got anything on!’ shouted all the people at last.”

How much longer will we refuse to see the naked truth of our own emperor?

Rebuilding the System

April 29, 2026 by James G. Blaine

“My Dad used to say to me, ‘Have you ever noticed how grateful you are to see daylight again after coming through a long, dark tunnel?’ Well, he'd say, ‘Always try to see life around you, as if you'd just come out of a tunnel.’"
- Jefferson Smith in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

After my last post, several people responded, “OK, that’s fine, but who are you voting for, Mills or Platner?” It’s a good question, and because I think the Senate race in Maine has national implications, it demands a thoughtful answer.

To cut to the chase: if the election had been held a month ago, I would have voted for Janet Mills; if the election were held tomorrow, I’d vote for Graham Platner. While I think that’s my final answer, things could change between now and the June 9th primary. In fact, I’m intrigued enough by both candidates that my mind could change before I finish this essay.

I have enormous respect for Janet Mills. I do not agree with her on every issue, but she is a straightforward, hardworking, and honorable person, and she has passed her eight years in the Blaine House* with remarkable dignity. She clearly thinks about issues before making a decision, and she stands firm once it is made. An accomplished poet, she chooses words with care. “She doesn’t just read over the top of things,” Maine’s former poet laureate Wesley McNair told Katy Kelleher of Downeast Magazine. “She reads deep down into things.” How refreshing would that be in the United States Senate?

Two points of concern for me are age and current campaign energy. I have absolutely nothing against 78-year-olds (I used to be one), but Mills’ pledge to serve only one term and her so-far lackluster campaign bring back painful memories of Joe Biden’s long goodbye.

Graham Platner came from seemingly nowhere – or at least from the shores of Sullivan Harbor in Hancock County – to captivate a lot of voters: men and women, young and old, liberal and conservative. Along the way he has hit some bumps, from old social media posts in which managed to offend a broad spectrum of people to having a tattoo on his chest associated with the Nazis. He has disavowed those posts and covered the tattoo, saying he was unaware of the Nazi connection. Nevertheless, several members of his staff resigned, and he seemed to be reeling. But he endured. In fact, his candid responses to his transgressions seem to have made him stronger, and six months later, he leads in the polls by a huge margin.

I won’t get into the specific issues, for this is not a state election blog, and voters can visit their websites to see for themselves. But broadly, Mills is a centrist and a pragmatist. Her policy prescriptions focus on reforming, restoring, and expanding things, rather than more radical surgery. Platner resists being labeled, but he stands on the left of his party on many issues, calling for universal health care, opposing war, accusing Israel of genocide in Palestine, and attacking the oligarchy. As for guns, both candidates veer right: Platner opposes banning assault weapons; Mills vetoed a bill banning bump stocks. This is not surprising, as Maine is as pro-Second Amendment as any state in the union.

With Janet Mills we know what we will get in the U.S. Senate. She is experienced; she is straightforward; and she is wise. We can’t be so sure what Graham Platner will bring, and that is both his strength and his weakness. For experience produces a record to be picked apart; inexperience provides an empty slate. But Platner has built a grassroots coalition that has brought together thousands of enthusiastic people from across Maine.

The question we face here and across the country is this: What is the best way to move forward and who are the best candidates to get us there? After my last post, a reader wrote, paraphrasing Platner, “the point of our government moving forward shouldn’t just be to defeat Trump, but to rebuild the system in such a way as to guarantee another Trump can’t happen.” I think that’s exactly right. We once thought we had that system. We have learned that we don’t.

*A birthday present from a more illustrious James G. Blaine to his wife Harriet in 1862, the Blaine House has been the governor’s residence since the family gave it to the state of Maine following the death of Walker Blaine Beale, who was killed in action at Saint-Mihiel, France, Sept. 18, 1918. He was 22.

The Race in Maine

April 24, 2026 by James G. Blaine

“As Maine goes, so goes the nation.”

Susan Collins was first elected a U.S. Senator from Maine in 1996. At the age of 73, she is running for her sixth term. Two very different Democrats are vying for the right to oppose her. How this primary and the subsequent election shake out could tell us a lot about where America is heading.

The two Democrats are: Janet Mills, Maine’s current governor, who is barred by law from seeking a third term; and Graham Platner, an oyster farmer who has put together an impressive grass-roots campaign. Mills is a soft-spoken, unflappable 78-year-old who, in addition to her two terms as governor, has served three terms in the state legislature, was New England’s first female district attorney, and twice Maine’s attorney general. Platner is a free-wheeling, earthy, unconstrained 41-year-old whose political resume is a bit thinner than his opponent’s: harbormaster for the town of Sullivan and chair of its planning board. He is also a marine veteran who served three combat tours in Iraq.

I am a big fan of them both.

Janet Mills made national headlines in February of last year when she stood up to Donald Trump at a governor’s lunch at the White House. The exchange concerned transgender rights. It ended with Mills responding to Trump’s threats to sue Maine, “See you in court.” Since their confrontation, Trump has predictably gone out of his way to damage Maine’s economy.

Graham Platner has also expressed his views on the issue: “I stand right in the fucking way of anyone who’s going to try to come after the freedoms of the LGBTQIA+ community.” That pretty well sums up the difference in their styles.

Mills has governed as a centrist Democrat, whereas Platner, who has been all over the map in his earlier years, seems to have settled into the populist wing of the party – although it is not really fair to try to pin a label on either candidate. Platner has been endorsed by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Mills is backed by Chuck Schumer, and it’s widely believed that the Democratic establishment in Washington recruited her to run.

The big question for most people here is who has the best chance of beating Susan Collins. But for me the more interesting, and ultimately more important, question is: which vision for Maine’s – and America’s – future do I want representing me in the U.S. Senate? This is not an easy question to answer, but my ideas came into much sharper focus while reading Josh Keefe’s article in The Maine Monitor: “I’m a Maine reporter who went to high school with Graham Platner. Here’s what explains his success.”

Mills made her reputation standing up to Donald Trump – and before him to Paul LePage‚ who for eight years was the worst governor in America. She is not cowed by Trump’s nastiness, and she wants to rescue and rebuild the institutions he is bent on wrecking and to restore the values on which he has trampled.

We need to clean up this mess, and I trust Mills to do it. America’s institutions never worked perfectly, but for 250 years they have been a work in progress that has inspired millions of people. We must continue in that work.

But is that any longer enough?

I am so tired of seeing Trump on the front page of every newspaper. It’s time to stop fixating on him and the damage he is causing and to think far more about how we want to build America’s future on the rubble he will leave behind. We can no longer reclaim America without changing her. That, I think, is Platner’s message.

I will leave you with something he said recently to Ben Rhodes:

“If the Democratic Party is to flourish in the future, it needs to be an antiwar party. . . .We are so broken emotionally when it comes to our politics that we’ve literally created this story that it’s inherent in being a competent political leader to kill civilians. If you’re not willing to do some hard things and drop some bombs, then you’re not up to the task of power. I think it’s the opposite. You’re not up to the task of being in power if you do not think about the cost of violence. If that’s not at the front of your mind, then I don’t think you are morally in the right place to be in positions of power.”

A Cockeyed Optimist

April 17, 2026 by James G. Blaine

“But I’m stuck like a dope
With a thing called hope
And I can’t get it out of my heart”
- Oscar Hammerstein II (“A Cockeyed Optimist”)

It’s not easy to be an optimist these days, especially for an octogenarian with nine young grandchildren who are constantly in his thoughts. And yet, despite the chaos and carnage our country seems bent on inflicting, both at home and abroad, the last several days have brought unanticipated good news.

First was Artemis II’s 10-day, 252,000-mile voyage around the moon and back. With Trump hogging so many headlines, this record-breaking flight got astonishingly little coverage. Yet this was the first trip to the moon in over 53 years ago, and it’s a sign that humans are daring to explore again. But what really thrilled me were the crew members themselves. Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen seem like four special and courageous people. As a white American male, a black American male, a white female American, and a white male Canadian, they represent the kind of diversity – of race, gender, and nationality – that we are told is weakening our country. And they didn’t just bring great technical skills, they talked about loving each other and they built a community in a small space capsule with a malfunctioning toilet. For me, the four astronauts are not “heroes,” a word we have trivialized by overuse. They are simply people of great courage, a virtue we have seen too little in this country of late.

Then came the landslide defeat of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s long-time dictator, who had become the poster boy for America’s far right. The Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) has even set up an office in Hungary. Sunday’s loss came despite a campaign visit from J.D. Vance and years of vocal support from Donald Trump. His close ties with both Putin and Trump made Orban the link between eastern and western fascism, which left Ukraine caught in the middle. That the Ukrainians have managed to survive in the face of military force should have been a warning about what we might face in Iran.

From Hungary, Vance proceeded to Pakistan to negotiate with the Iranians. He was joined by Jared Kushner and Steve Witcoff, two shameless private dealmakers who masquerade as public diplomats. The breakdown of the talks made Vance zero for two for the week (which is itself reason for optimism). But he wasn’t quite finished, as he went on to lecture Leo XIV on theology and suggested the pope “let the president stick to dictating foreign policy.” Finally, he said the president deleted the post of himself as Jesus “because a lot of people weren’t understanding his humor.” Did he just discover that?

I’ve asked my doctor start wearing scrubs like Dr. Trump.

So why is all this good news?

For one thing, the Artemis voyage and crew rekindled a sense, less of conquest, than of wonder, of the human desire to explore and to understand our small place in this vast universe. It was carried out by a crew who represented the diversity that has been the foundation of this country until it came under attack a few years ago.

In Hungary, the popular and peaceful transition of power, after 16 years of a dictator bent on destroying his country’s democratic institutions, can only embolden those here who seek to do the same. In the efforts to establish Christian nationalism in America, we got is a man of no fixed beliefs who thinks of himself as Jesus. At last, people are getting the joke.

I am an optimist today because I believe we are taking our country back, not only for ourselves but for our grandchildren.

The Kingdom of the Absurd

April 09, 2026 by James G. Blaine

“I do believe I will be having the honor of taking Cuba. . . . I think I can do anything I want with it.”
- Donald Trump

It’s a little after eleven on Tuesday morning, April 7th, fewer than nine hours before a man with an unquenchable ego, a penchant for cruelty, and the darkest vision for America in the history of the presidency, has threatened to “obliterate” Iran. The sky is blue here this morning, and the sun shines warmly through intermittent clouds. Spring finally seems on the way to midcoast Maine – but snow is forecast for this afternoon. The vice-president is in Hungary seeking to prop up its long-time dictator who is trailing badly in the polls, and the secretary for war (let’s call him what he is) has likened Sunday’s rescue of a US pilot shot down over Iran to the resurrection.

My mind has been going through a fallow period these past weeks. Since I was unable to produce much of interest even to myself, I decided to seek out the thoughts of others, which is how I ended up rereading, after many years, “The Myth of Sisyphus,” in which Albert Camus sets forth his philosophy of the absurd.

I won’t bore you with my pedestrian efforts to grasp the concept, but at its core is Camus’ search to understand the struggle of human beings to find meaning in a universe that is morally indifferent. “This world in itself is not reasonable,” he wrote. “But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational [universe] and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.”

Camus was born into a poor family in the French colony of Algeria and spent most of World War II in France, where he was an active member of the resistance. “The Myth of Sisyphus” was published in 1942. World War II was once called “the good war,” but by the time it ended in 1945, 80 million people were dead, the vast majority of them non-combatants. Almost three-quarters of all the Jews living in Nazi-occupied Europe were murdered; in Poland and Yugoslavia the number approached 90 percent. With numbers that size, and with propaganda from all sides bent on dehumanizing the enemy, it is hard to think of each of the dead as a unique individual with a family and a personal history. They are, collectively, victims. Those in unending rows of white crosses are heroes. The others are collateral damage. In the grand scheme of the war their lives made little difference; yet each was precious each irreplaceable.

At 8:06 a.m. on Tuesday morning, the president of the United States wrote: "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” adding somewhat gratuitously, “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” What he’s suggesting, of course, is a crime against humanity, the kind the world sought to outlaw after World War II.

That evening Trump announced a two-week cease fire. Some called this an example of strategic genius; most of us just felt whipsawed. Meanwhile, both sides claimed victory; their interpretation of the terms diverged widely; the Israelis kept bombing Lebanon; and the Secretary for War called the man who the day before had called for the obliteration of an entire nation a “president of peace.”

Americans have long believed that our institutions would protect us from a dictator. And yet here we are, the world’s oldest republic ruled by a man who mistakes himself for the state and treats the people, not as citizens, but as subjects.

Welcome to the Kingdom of the Absurd.

Suffer the Children

March 23, 2026 by James G. Blaine

“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”
- Jesus (Luke. 18:16)

March 22, 2026. One hundred and three years ago today, the most world’s most famous mime artist was born into a Jewish family named Mangel. They lived in the city of Strasbourg, near the German border in northeastern France. Seventeen years later, the Nazis invaded, and the family fled southwest to Limoges. There the son joined the French Jewish Resistance, which was engaged in smuggling thousands of children out of occupied France. After the war, and with his new name of Marcel Marceau, he would perform his “art of silence” around the world until his death in 2007.

Marcel Merceau as “Pip the Clown”. Photo by Yousuf Karsh

Recently I went to see Marcel on the Train, a one-act play in which Marceau escorts Jewish orphans to the French border, from where they will hike clandestinely into Switzerland. Only a few years older than his charges, Marcel must use all his incipient mime and dramatic skills to keep them quiet when Nazis search the train and to boost their spirits when they start to lose hope. Played by the astoundingly supple Ethan Slater, Marceau combination acrobatics, dialogue, and pantomime give the play an unremitting intensity. I sat mesmerized for all 100 minutes – and yet, almost from the beginning, I couldn’t wait for the play to be over.

Part of my discomfort stemmed from the world beyond the theater, where Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu had just launched their undeclared war on Iran. Among the very first casualties were 175 students at the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab. According to reliable reports, they were killed by a Tomahawk missile fired by U.S. forces.

My reaction to the play was not political, and I write, not as a critic of this war (which I am) nor as an opponent of this administration (which I also am), but as the father of four children and grandfather of nine, a man for whom my family is the epicenter of my life.

My reaction was at once visceral and deeply personal. As I watched Marceau try to save the Jewish children from almost certain death in Nazi concentration camps, it was impossible not to think also of the 175 Muslim schoolchildren who had just been killed without warning in their elementary school in Iran. Nor is it possible to think of the inexpressible sadness their families are suffering without thinking of my own young grandchildren and how much I love each and every one of them.

We hear much these days about the evils of empathy. Elon Musk declared it “the fundamental weakness of western civilization,” and last year one of a growing number of conservative Christians published a book called The Sin of Empathy. But empathy is a far more complicated and difficult emotion than simply feeling sorry for someone. It involves trying to put yourself in the shoes of those who may be very different from you and to understand, from their perspective, what they are living through. This is the task of art: to transcend the merely political and take us to a realm that is at once personal and universal – to unite us with humankind. So often in war, the objective is the opposite – to dehumanize the other in order to more easily kill them – and to insulate our consciences from the unconscionable.

Those who make war do not, as far as I can tell, think of children, and so children, like empathy, become the first casualties of war.

Whac-a-Mole

March 10, 2026 by James G. Blaine

Earlier this year, a dictator decided to overthrow another dictator. And then another. It was like the old game of Whac-a-Mole. When a mole raises its head, it gets whacked, but another one pops up somewhere else.

Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro was the first to get whacked. On January 3rd, U. S. military forces captured him and his wife, Cilia Flores, and flew them to New York City to stand trial for narcoterrorism. Emboldened by how smoothly that operation went, our dictator did it again. This time he was not alone, as Benjamin Netanyahu had been pushing him to join Israel and overthrow the government of Iran. Cuba is apparently next. In all these countries, the leaders are malevolent, the economies are in a shambles, and the people are suffering. There are a lot of countries like that.

By all accounts, Maduro is a very bad man. A repressive dictator, whose election was widely denounced as illegitimate, he was detested in his own country, and many people both there and elsewhere cheered his removal. The combination of his unpopularity and the efficiency of the U.S. military operation seemed to muffle critics who might otherwise have questioned the right of one dictator to overthrow another dictator.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was loathed even more than Maduro. He ruled over a brutal theocracy that viciously crushed dissent, killed thousands of its own people, most recently in January, and constantly sowed violence beyond its borders. An estimated 80 percent of Iranians oppose the regime, and millions of people in Iran and around the world celebrated Khamenei’s death.

As with Venezuela, the odiousness of the Iranian theocracy seemed to silence potential critics of its decapitation. No one wants to support a brutal dictator who foments global terror; almost everyone believes the world would be a better place without Khamanei; and there is at least the hope that the massive U.S. and Israeli air attacks might lead to improved lives for Iranians. And so, once again, the voices of those concerned about one man abrogating to himself the right to decide another country’s future were muted.

Do not be fooled. Despite this administration’s short attention span, these are not short-term operations. Donald Trump has said that he must have a say in choosing the governments of both countries. Nor are the based on America’s ideals: democracy, at least for now, is not an option.

Oil, of course, is a factor. Venezuela has the largest proven reserves in the world, and Iran ranks third behind Saudi Arabia. Trump has said the U.S. would control both Venezuela and its oil for a long time to come.

As for Iran, a week after the bombings began, and with no clear endgame – or even strategy – in sight, Trump demanded the country’s “unconditional surrender.” Traditionally, you’re supposed to declare war before you call for unconditional surrender. But Donald Trump doesn’t have the power to declare war, a fact our founders made unequivocally clear. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution states: “Congress shall have Power . . . To declare War.”

Why did they do this? They feared, above all else, a dictator who would substitute his personal will for that of the people.

Many media outlets do not report the military operations against Venezuela and Iran as American undertakings. They call them Trump’s wars – wars of choice, waged at the whim of one man. Nor do we need to look beyond our own borders to find an authoritarian leader who instigates violence against his own people and seeks by force of arms to impose his will on other countries.

The Price of Bread

March 03, 2026 by James G. Blaine

"A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."
- Oscar Wilde

Affordability has become the new political buzzword – as it should be. The Brookings Institution reported last year on what it called the “nation’s affordability crisis,” in which one-third of all middle-class families “struggle to afford such basic necessities as food, housing, and child care.”

“Life is considered affordable,” the authors wrote, “when a household’s income is equal to or greater than the total cost of living.” Not all middle-class families suffer equally, of course. About a quarter of white families fall into the unaffordability category, while half of Hispanic families do. Black, Asian, and Native families are in between. If you add the middle-class numbers to those of the poor, almost half the people in this country must spend more than they earn just to make ends meet. That leaves no room for saving.

The two political parties have so far responded to the crisis somewhat differently. In his state of the union speech, Donald Trump denied it even existed – and if it did, it was all the Democrats’ fault. The Democrats, by contrast, are all in on the issue, which they see as key to winning this fall’s elections.

Beware, however, of mistaking the price of bread for the value of the republic.

More than 2,000 years ago the Roman empire was at the zenith of its power. Its borders stretched from the British Isles to North Africa, from Egypt to the Caspian Sea. So powerful was its grip on the known world that the era became known as Pax Romana.

But the poet Juvenal saw deeper. Looking back to the days of the republic, he described a time “when we sold our vote to no man,” and the people decided who would be their civil and military leaders. But since the empire had supplanted the republic, “the People have abdicated our duties.” We are no longer citizens but subjects and have become a group who “anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.”

The Romans did provide grain to its citizens from crops grown in the colonies and paid to the government as tribute, just as President Trump has long promised us a $2,000 dividend check paid for by our tariff surpluses. And the emperors regularly filled the coliseum with elaborate and bloody games, often including gladiators fighting to the death. The intention was to keep the people quiescent.

On June 14th the White House will host a spectacular UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) match to celebrate the 250th birthday of the United States and the 80th birthday of Donald J. Trump. From reports I’ve seen, the event will include a full card of fights. The weigh-ins will take place at the Lincoln Memorial, and the fighters will later be escorted from the oval office to the South Lawn, where an enormous octagon has been constructed under a massive lighted arch. The cost of this extravaganza is expected to exceed $60 million and will be paid for by private donations. Although Trump has said 100,000 people will attend the event, a more reasonable figure, given the size of the area, is 17,000. Tickets are by invitation only and will presumably go to the largest donors. Unlike in ancient Rome, the public is not invited, but we can watch from large screens on the ellipse outside the White House and also on TV. The intention is to keep the people quiescent.

Happy Birthday, America. Have you become what the Founders envisioned 250 years ago?

The Pen is Mightier

February 24, 2026 by James G. Blaine

Travel back with me to Saturday, March 20, 1999, when Saturday Night Live had my all-time favorite “Celebrity Jeopardy” skit. On the stage are the host, Alex Trebek (played by Will Ferrell) and the panelists: Calista Flockhart (played by a very thin Drew Barrymore); Nicholas Cage (played by a very young Jimmy Fallon); and Sean Connery (played by Darrell Hammond), who always steals the show).

“It’s time for Double Jeopardy,” Trebek announces. “Let’s take a look at the board. The categories are:”

Potent Potables
The Pen is Mightier . . . “That category is quotes from famous authors,” Trebek explains, “so you’ll all probably be more comfortable with our next category” . . .
Shiny Objects . . . “continuing with” . . .
Opposites
Things You Shouldn’t Put in Your Mouth
What Time is It? … “And, finally,”
Months That Start With Feb.

“Mr. Connery,” says Trebek. “Why don’t you pick a category?”

Connery: “I’ve got to ask you about the Penis Mightier.”

Trebek: “What? [Pause.] No. No. No. That is, ‘The Pen is Mightier’.”

Connery: “Gussy it up however you want, Trebek. What matters is, does it work? Will it really mighty my penis, man?”

Trebek: “It’s not a product, Mr. Connery. . . .”

Connery: “. . . Because I’ve ordered devices like that before – wasted a pretty penny, I don’t mind telling you. And if the Penis Mightier works, I’ll order a dozen.”

Trebek: “It’s not a Penis Mightier, Mr. Connery. There’s no such thing!”

Nicholas Cage: “Wait, wait, wait, are you selling Penis Mightiers?”

Trebek: “No! No, I’m not.”

Connery: “Well, you’re sitting on a gold mine, Trebek!”

Fast forward 27 years to the winter Olympics in Italy’s Dolomite mountains, where, as The Guardian reported, “The World Anti-Doping Agency is investigating whether ski jumpers were injecting their penises with hyaluronic acid in order to fly further (sic),” all in search of a gold medal. Suddenly, Sean Connery’s words seem prophetic.

Hyaluronic acid occurs naturally in the human body, and its benefits range from arthritis relief to plumper lip. And also apparently to loft time – as some ski jumpers have allegedly been injecting it into their genitals to stay a bit longer in the air and gain a few meters on their jump. “Penisgate” has become my favorite scandal of these Olympics.

At first I wondered how this procedure could possibly increase a male skier’s hang time. But it turns out that the Hyaluronic advantage takes place long before the jumper is airborne. In fact, the Guardian reports, it happens before the games begin, when the skiers are measured for their suits, including crotch size – a process that “is tightly regulated to prevent any athlete having an aerodynamic advantage.” You’d think a wad of Kleenex or a tennis ball would be easier, but the official 3D body scanner would easily detect them. Scientific American reports that one centimeter of increased crotch size in the ski pant can add more than three meters to the jump. There are, however, a number of risks associated with the procedure, gangrene being the worst-case scenario.

Gary Cooper and his wife, Veronica Balfe, get a great view of five-time Olympian and decorated WWII bomber pilot Art Devlin jumping over them at Aspen Mountain. Photo by U.S. skiing champion Dick Durrance.

Although the scandal remains a “wild rumor,” Alessandro Littara, Italy’s leading practitioner of these injections, told USA Today, “I did in fact treat an athlete from that sport . . . and used a generous dose of hyaluronic acid."

Will he win the gold and vindicate Sean Connery after all these years? We may never now. He told Littara he wanted the injection “to avoid embarrassment in the changing room.”

The Courage of Gisele Pelicot

February 17, 2026 by James G. Blaine

“I always thought this man would protect me.”
- Gisele Pelicot of her husband, Dominique

Not long ago I wrote about the grace of Tatianna Schlossberg, who died from leukemia last December 30th at the age of 35, leaving behind her husband and two young children. Today I write about the courage of Gisele Pelicot, who, over the course of a decade, was drugged and raped by her husband and dozens of other men in the small town of Mazan in southeastern France.

On Saturday morning I listened to Ms. Pelicot’s searing interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro on the eve of the American publication of her memoir. A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides tells the story of Gisele lying unconscious in her own bed as unknown men assaulted her. Her husband filmed the ordeal, which inadvertently created a record of the crimes.

In France, as in many countries, rape trials are generally held behind closed doors, away from the press and the public, to protect the privacy and identity of the victim. One reason for this is to shield her from public shame. Another is that defense in such cases almost always tries to blame the victim.

Gisele Pelicot stunned the court and the nation by insisting on an open trial. She attended it every day, always elegantly dressed. “It was a way of me saying, ‘You will not affect me,’” she told Garcia-Navarro. “That was the strength I had within me.” And “it was also a way for me to prop up this tortured body.” But the defendants misinterpreted her courage. Far from making them feel shame, it emboldened some warped sense of their own innocence: “If she is here, she must be responsible for what happened.” It was not rape, insisted the 45 lawyers for their 51 clients (ages 22-70) – she was complicit, she was an accomplice. Besides, they argued, her husband had given his consent. These men have committed no crime. In the end, every one of them was convicted.

Why had Gisele endured so much with her head held high? She had come to understand, she said, that this trial was not just for herself. “Fighting that shame on an individual level also meant working for the collective.”

That collective, I believe, includes all the women who sat in the Congressional gallery last week and watched Attorney General Pam Bondi try to defend (or rather, deflect) her office’s cynical release of the Epstein files. Like Gisele, these women had been raped and sexual assault on a scale that still seems unfathomable.

Now Bondi’s Department of Justice – yes, Justice – had victimized them once again. The released files were meant to have protected their identities and identified their perpetrators. In many cases, they did exactly the opposite, showcasing nude photos and private information of the women, blacking out the names of the men. These women had come to Congress to bear witness, but Bondi didn’t even have the courtesy to acknowledge their presence, let alone apologize for their treatment. Why would she? This is what we do to victims these days.

With a supercilious sneer, Pam Bondi explained to the Representatives that “the Department of Justice’s core mission is to fight violent crime, protect the American people, and defend the rule of law above all else.”

According to its website, “The Justice Department’s mission is to uphold the rule of law, keep our country safe, and protect civil rights.”

In a nation that long ago lost any sense of nuance, these definitions might seem pretty similar. On closer reading, they could not be more different.

Gisele Pelicot stood up, alone, on behalf of every victim everywhere. She had learned from her nightmare that the health of the collective – of the community – depends on the recognition of the dignity of each and every one of its members. This is something that General Bondi will never understand.

Donald Trump is Destroying America - Part I

February 10, 2026 by James G. Blaine

Donald Trump is destroying the America in which I have lived for 80 years, and in which I continue to believe.

He has turned a democracy into a dictatorship, public service into private banking, and a beacon for immigrants into a construction site for concentration camps.

“You combine the threat of prosecution with armed troops in the streets. The picture is pretty clear for anyone who’s read a history book what kind of administration we’re dealing with,” Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan.

“But I have to say, certainly his actions, his administration's actions in the first year, in which they very rapidly sort of dismantled the federal bureaucracy, took over the Justice Department, took over the FBI, took over the CIA and then have created this brute squad, which is called ICE – these are the acts of a dictator, plain and simple,” America historian Robert Kagan.