‘Strike from the Sea’

The first REGULUS II is launched from US Navy submarine USS GRAYBACK (SSG 574) in the Pacific, 17 September 1958.

Review by Bill Doughty––

U.S. Naval Institute Press has another winner in “Strike from the Sea: The Development and Deployment of Strategic Cruise Missiles Since 1934” by Norman Polmar and John O’Connell (2020). This carefully researched and documented book –– filled with photos, diagrams, statistics, and appendices –– presents a history of some of the world’s most dangerous tools of war.

Told from an American and largely U.S. Navy perspective, "Strike from the Sea" shows the development of Regulus and Regulus II, Rigel, Triton, Polaris, Vertical Launch Tubes, Tomahawk, and the Virginia Payload Module, among others. (Below, painting of an undersea ballistic missile by Walter H. Bollendonk from 1961 “Polaris Underwater Firing,” USNI.)

We see the evolution of submarines and the roles of USS Barbero (SSA317) and USS Medregal (SS 480) USS Grayback (SSG 574) and USS Growler (SSG 577), USS Halibut (SSGN 587) and USS Permit (SSGN 594, and USS Providence (SSN 719) and USS Pittsburgh (SSN 730). The authors also discuss missile development on surface ships, especially cruisers and carriers, as well as related training, refinement and deployment.

Since submarines are center point, Adm. Rickover is mentioned of course. But once again, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Elmo Zumwalt comes across as a true hero of forward-thinking leadership, including regarding the development of sea-based cruise missiles.

“In 1972, at Admiral Zumwalt’s direction, the Navy dropped [Rickover’s] concept but continued its separate strategic (Tomahawk) and tactical (Harpoon) cruise missile programs … Thanks to a strategic arms initiative of Dr. Henry Kissinger and the desire of Admiral Elmo Zumwalt to enhance the Navy’s war fighting effectiveness beyond the relatively few large-deck aircraft carriers, the U.S. Navy has generated a massive sea-based cruise missile strike capability.”

The authors show a strong influence of former Secretary of State Kissinger. They also touch on the comparative ambivalence or outright resistance of CNO Adm. James Holloway. “Admiral Holloway, a naval aviator and a former carrier commander, may have been reflecting that community’s disdain for land-attack cruise missiles that could threaten the carrier’s nuclear strike mission.”

Personalities of the people in power can affect policies and strategies. So it’s worthwhile that the authors include the influence of key players to explain how the hardware developed during the Cold War. Any hope of reducing the risk of nuclear weapons, for example, will require international collaboration.

“The Russian navy, despite severe financial, personnel, and other problems, continued a robust program of cruise missile development for surface ships, submarines, and coastal defense –– both anti-ship and land-attack weapons,” the authors note. The Russian initiatives, including development of other vehicles, “were articulated by President Vladimir Putin in March 2018.”

Collective leadership and cooperation have prevented a global nuclear confrontation despite several accidents, malfunctions, close-calls, and misunderstandings. The conclusion of “Strike from the Sea” is compelling and thought-provoking.

In a final section called “Dishonoring a Treaty,” Polmar and O’Connell write:

“The Reagan-Gorbachev Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty of 1987 was the only agreement of the Cold War era that eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons –– land-based ballistic and cruise missiles, with nuclear or conventional warheads, with ranges between 310 to 3,400 miles … In early 2008, the Russians began testing a nuclear-capable cruise missile, designated SSC-8 by Western intelligence (Russian designation 9M729). In 2014, after observing continued testing of the missile, the Obama Administration announced that Russia had violated the INF treaty. However, U.S. administration officials later said that although the missile had a range prohibited by the treaty, as of 2015 test flights apparently had not exceeded the 310-mile mark. Subsequently, Russia began a limited deployment of the missile, which has an estimated range of more than 3,400 miles, with various warhead options, some of which reduce its maximum range. In October 2018, President Donald Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the landmark treaty because of the alleged Russian violations; the withdrawal became formal on 2 August 2019. The Secretary of Defense at the time, James Mattis, a retired Marine general, had consulted with officials from the 28 other members of NATO, seeing their ideas on how to react to the Russian violations of the INF treaty … The Russian government denied violating the INF treaty and said that U.S. withdrawal would be dangerous and could spark a new nuclear arms race.”

This insight into the Trump-Putin implosion of the bilateral INF treaty leaves a huge question: what comes next –– not only in the evolution of earth-threatening missiles, but also in the re-creation of a world without nuclear weapons?

That question led me to a remarkably interesting and well-written book by French author Guillaume Serina, translated by David A. Andelman: “An Impossible Dream: Reagan, Gorbachev, and a World Without the Bomb” (Pegasus, 2019).

Former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev said, “We must demilitarize.” Reagan, with some advice from his Secretary of State George Shultz, told the world, “We proposed the most sweeping and generous arms control proposal in history. We offered the complete elimination of all ballistic missiles –– Soviet and American –– from the face of the Earth by 1996.”

Reagan quoted another great leader in his remarks: “Another president, Harry Truman, noted that our century has seen two of the most frightful wars in history and that ‘the supreme need of our time is for man to learn to live together in peace and harmony.’”

Serina’s book offers an introduction by Gorbachev, who says, “What we need today is precisely this: political will. We need another level of leadership, collective leadership, of course.”

Along with “Strike from the Sea’s” terrific history of cruise missile hardware development it is important to read more about the work of President Reagan, Gorbachev, and other leaders who confronted nuclear arms proliferation. What can be done to achieve nuclear disarmament and prevent global destruction?

PACIFIC OCEAN (Sept. 17, 2020) – Sailors inspect Harpoon anti-ship cruise missiles aboard the Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine USS Chicago (SSN 721) in support of Valiant Shield 2020. Valiant Shield is a U.S. only, biennial field training exercise (FTX) with a focus on integration of joint training in a blue-water environment among U.S. forces. This training enables real-world proficiency in sustaining joint forces through detecting, locating, tracking, and engaging units at sea, in the air, on land, and in cyberspace in response to a range of mission areas. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Derek Harkins/Released)

Trump’s Wars in His Year of Infamy

By Bill Doughty––

On Dec. 27, 2016, President Barack Obama and Japan’s then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe placed wreaths at the USS Arizona Memorial and spoke at Pearl Harbor. Obama said, “This harbor is a sacred place.”

Several months later, Obama again made history when he went to Hiroshima and brought a message of healing and understanding with –– and for –– the people of Japan. During that trip, the 44th president visited Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni (photo above by Cpl. Nicole Zurbrugg).

While Obama was in Japan, Donald Trump, then a candidate for president, tweeted: “Does President ever discuss the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor while he's in Japan? Thousands of American lives lost. #MDW” (Twitter; 28 May 2016).

Trump and First Lady place wreath at USS Arizona Memorial Nov. 3, 2017. (PO2 James Mullen)

On a tour of the USS Arizona Memorial in 2017, Trump asked then-Chief of Staff John Kelly to explain the significance of the attack, showing he was “dangerously uninformed,” according to The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, authors of “A Very Stable Genius.”

Kelly is a former U.S. Marine four-star general and a Gold Star father. 

Kelly has been quoted recently as telling friends this about Trump: ”The depths of his dishonesty is just astounding to me. The dishonesty, the transactional nature of every relationship, though it's more pathetic than anything else. He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.” Kelly praised retired Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who was belittled and persecuted by Trump, for telling the truth during Trump’s impeachment hearings. “Here right matters.”

Trump castigated Kelly in a White House press conference Sept. 4. “I know John Kelly, he was with me, didn’t do a good job, had no temperament. And ultimately he was petered out. He was exhausted. This man was totally exhausted. He wasn’t even able to function in the last number of months,” Trump said, adding he asked for Kelly’s resignation.

President Trump and retired Marine

Kelly is considered a likely source to a story reported in the Atlantic magazine; he has not denied the report that Trump called service members “suckers” and U.S. war dead “losers.” Also, Trump called the late Senator John McCain a loser. Trump denies it, but he actually did call McCain “a loser” in Ames, Iowa, July 18, 2015.

Trump has repeatedly attacked McCain for his record of support for the Veterans Administration. Trump claims credit for VA Choice, but Obama signed that bill in 2014, and John McCain was one of the bill’s originators. Cindy McCain, the late senator’s widow, endorses former Vice President Joe Biden, not Trump, for president.

Trump fails to condemn right-wing domestic terrorism. Trump, a conspiracy promoter, has supported Q-Anon, even defending his retweets of a Q-Anon theory that former President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden mistakenly killed the body double of Osama bin Laden, sponsor of the 9/11 attacks on the United States, including the World Trade Center and Pentagon. As part of that conspiracy, Q-Anon also accuses Biden of ordering the assassination of a team of Navy SEALs to cover up their so-called mistake. The commander in chief retweeted several related tweets.

Trump claims to love the military. But he belittles generals, including Gens. Kelly, Mattis, McMaster, McRaven, and McChrystal, among others. He takes away congressionally appropriated military funds to pay for his wall. He rescinds Pentagon orders and interferes in the military justice system, including pardoning war criminals.

U.S. Marines grind sections of the wall before installing concertina wire near the California-Mexico border, Nov. 14, 2018. (Lance Cpl. Jared Curtis)

He takes money from the military in order to construct a border wall, and he deploys troops inappropriately, including against migrants and protesters. 

Capt. Brett Crozier and Capt. Carlos Sardiello cut a cake at a change of command ceremony Nov. 1, 2019.

He belittled Navy Capt. Brett Crozier, former CO of USS Theodore Roosevelt, who called for help for his Sailors after an outbreak of COVID-19 aboard his ship earlier this year.

Trump refuses to confront Putin about reported Russian bounties on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan as he turns his back on the Kurds fighting ISIS and continues to offend NATO allies, South Korea, and other friends of the United States.

In 2020, Trump implies that pay raises to the military will buy their support. But he admits he likely doesn’t have the backing of senior, well-educated leaders. In fact, Trump accuses Pentagon military brass of being war profiteers.

Another of his former key administration officials, retired Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, one of Trump’s national security advisers, condemned Trump’s unwillingness to commit to a smooth transition of power after the election. “This is something that our founders feared," McMaster said. ”We have to demand that our leaders restore confidence in our democratic principles and institutions and processes.”

Trump and McMaster invited military service members to a luncheon at the White House, July 18, 2017.

On Sept. 7, 2020, at another White House press conference, Trump said, “I’m not saying the military is in love with me. The soldiers are. The top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else, stay happy.”

Is it possible Trump is projecting? He, himself, boasts about selling weapons and weapon systems to foreign nations, especially Saudi Arabia. He reportedly authorized selling F-35 stealth fighter jets to United Arab Emirates to persuade UAE to acknowledge normalization with Israel.

Trump famously boasted of being a “wartime president” in the fight against COVID-19. His “generals” in the pandemic war are CEOs of huge corporations, many of whom make a profit.

When he contracted the virus, Trump seemed to blame Sailors and Marines. A week later he appeared to blame Gold Star families. Here are some related haiku of Trump:

“It’s very hard when

you’re with soldiers, when you’re

with airman, … Marines”

+

“When they come over

to you it’s very hard to

say, “‘stay back, stay back.’”

(Fox News, 1 Oct 2020)

+

“Very, very hard

when you are with people from

the military”

(Fox News, 1 Oct 2020)

“would be a chance that

I would catch it … I met with

gold-star families”

+

“all came in and they

all talked about their son and

daughter and father”

+

“…an inch of my face

sometimes –– they want to hug me

and they want to kiss”

(Fox Business News; 8 Oct 2020)

He asks U.S. citizens to be “warriors” and to go into harm’s way without a unified national strategic plan, adequate testing, or mask mandates. 

HM2 Christopher Lopez inspects medical equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The United States has about four percent of the world’s population and about twenty percent of the world’s death from COVID. As Trump seems to surrender to “an invisible enemy,” he treats citizens, including children, as kamikaze “warriors” –– pushing them to go back to schools and jobs no matter what.

Now Trump seems to be waging a war against a free and fair election, the rule of law, the U.S. Postal Service, and the Constitution itself. Trump seems hellbent on winning by any means necessary. Will he create his own “infamy” before election day and/or before he leaves office?

On Nov. 3, Americans have an opportunity to return to decency, integrity, healing, and understanding by voting for military Blue Star father Joe Biden and helping to elect Biden/Harris.

"Haiku of Trump: The Chasm, Schism & Isms of Donald J. Trump,” is available on Amazon Kindle and is free through Wednesday, Oct. 21.

The Power of Hope … and Light

Review by Bill Doughty––

“Why do we struggle? Why must we, as members of the human family, immerse ourselves in the agency of turmoil and unrest to affect the evolution of humankind? Why participate in the work of justice at all?” With those words, the late U.S. Representative John Lewis frames the big picture of life. And he answers those questions in an illuminating way, filled with hope.

“I believe we are all a spark of the divine, and if that spark is nurtured it can become a burning flame, an eternal force of light,” Lewis explains in Reconciliation, the final chapter of his reflective “Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America” (Hachette Books; 2012, 2017).

“Thus, our purpose while we are here, in the most basic sense, is to be a light that shines –– to fully express our gifts so that others might see. When they witness our splendor, when we show them it is possible to shine radiantly even in the darkest night, they begin to remember that they are stars also, meant to light up the world. And if we are brilliant, like a Bobby Kennedy, a Martin Luther King Jr., a Jim Lawson, or a Fannie Lou Hamer, then the intensity of our flame can light the path of freedom for others.”

Lewis says we can "smolder with imagination, burn with creativity, reverberate with love, oneness, and peace. The infinite is possible, but this beauty can only manifest through us.”

Lewis calls for “forgiveness and compassion” in his message of hope, light, and unity. This is an inspiring autobiography of faith, patience, action and love –– which are just some of the chapter names. This book is a great companion to the graphic biography trilogy, “March,” and offers more than a dozen photos along Lewis’s enlightened life’s path.

There is a certain power in an autobiography that a third-person biography cannot achieve as easily. Nevertheless, master historian Jon Meacham comes close in “His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope” (Random House; 2020).

Meacham dedicates the book “for all who toil and fight and live and die to realize the true meaning of America’s creed.” Like Lewis in “Across That Bridge,” Meacham lauds heroes of the civil rights movement and contextualizes Lewis’s life in the promises of the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights, acknowledging the founders’ limitations in their space and time.

“If the framers were about limits, Lewis was about horizons. The men who wrote the Constitution believed that human appetites and ambitions were the controlling forces of history. Lewis believed hope shaped history –– the hope that Lincoln’s better angels could prevail if men and women heeded the still, small voice of conscience that suggested the country, and the world, would be better off if Jefferson’s assertion of human equality were truly universal.”

Meacham’s book opens in a terror-filled South of rape, beatings, lynchings, and other forms of dehumanizing African Americans, in a nation overcoming a depression and focused on a world war.

“Blood and death, pain and loss, sacrifice and the hope of redemption: Lewis was coming of age in the most intense of eras, an era the made this young black man in the South something of a child of wartime. George H.W. Bush –– who joined the U.S. Navy on his eighteenth birthday, married when he was twenty, and had his first child by the time he was twenty-two –– once explained the urgency of his generation of World War II veterans as a result of ‘heightened awareness, a sense that everything mattered, that life was to be lived, in Bush’s phrase, ‘on the edge.’ ‘It was a time of uncertainty,’ Bush recalled.”

Civil Rights icons and touchstones Rosa Parks and Emmitt Till

Veterans returning from the war demanded greater equality in society. Lewis was dramatically influenced by the horrible murder of Emmett Till. He was inspired by the heroism of Rosa Parks. He was appalled by the murder of “a kinsman of Lewis’s, Dr. Thomas Brewer,” a voting rights advocate who was shot to death while protesting police brutality. Lewis aligned with Martin Luther King against Strom Thurmond and Dixiecrats who suppressed votes and denied equality to black Americans.

As shown in this biography and in “March,” the highlight of Lewis’s life was attending the inauguration of Barack Obama and receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from the first African American U.S. president.

Meacham does a thorough job of showing Lewis’s struggles and achievements. His epilogue, “Against the Rulers of the Darkness,” seems to be a nod to Lewis’s own call for people to find their own inner light. 

Meacham’s book is good, but the hope and light shine brightest in Lewis’s own words.

WASHINGTON (Jan. 6, 2016) Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV) Ray Mabus signs a graphic representation of the future fleet replenishment oiler USNS John Lewis (T-AO 205) after naming the ship in honor of U.S. Representative John Lewis, a civil rights movement hero. USNS John Lewis will be the first ship of the Navy's newest generation of fleet replenishment oilers. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Armando Gonzales/Released)

‘Stand Back and Stand By’ for Autocracy

Review by Bill Doughty

Praising lawlessness of supporters, demonizing the media, lying to the public, threatening free elections, changing the meaning of words, and destroying institutions are clear signs of autocracy.

That’s according to two authors who discuss the threat to democracy in the fall of 2020: Masha Gessen in “Surviving Autocracy” (Riverhead Books, Penguin; 2020) and Anne Applebaum in “Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism” (Doubleday; 2020). These books are literary grandchildren of Hannah Arendt’s “The Origin of Totalitarianism” and close cousins of Timothy D. Snyder’s “On Tyranny.” Snyder, in fact, endorsed the books and authors as “extraordinary,” “penetrating, and “indispensable.”

Gessen takes a scholarly approach in laying out the case for an imminent threat to American democracy. He quotes from the works and words of Arendt, George Orwell, Michiko Kakutani, Ronald Reagan, and Confucius.

He pinpoints President Trump’s “contempt for excellence” and corruption. “Trump’s incompetence is militant. It is not a factor that might mitigate the threat he poses: it is the threat itself.” He adds, “Trump not only doesn’t know what he’s doing –– he did not even know what he was not doing.”

If impeachment had succeeded in removing Trump from office, Gessen writes, “it would have constituted a triumph of institutions over the autocratic attempt. It did not.”

Trump’s embrace of white nationalism and his failure to acknowledge the threat of white power terrorists –– including his call to arms to “stand by,” to “LIBERATE MICHIGAN,” and to come to polling places on election day –– are all part of a pattern.

Trump’s contemptuous disregard for military justice is also part of the picture. Gessen writes:

“The hero Trump chose during the fall of his impeachment was Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher. In the summer of 2019, Gallagher faced trial for allegedly killing an unconscious, unarmed captive in Iraq. The Navy fumbled the investigation, and in the last minute a witness who had been granted immunity testified that he, not Gallagher, had killed the young man; Gallagher was acquitted on most charges … After Gallagher was acquitted, Trump congratulated him by tweet. He then intervened to reverse the Navy’s decision to discharge Gallagher without honors –– once again demonstrating that the commander in chief can issue orders by tweet. Trump reinstated Gallagher’s rank and pay, and stripped the prosecutors in the case of their Navy medals. Ultimately, the struggle over Gallagher’s fate cost the secretary of the Navy, Richard Spencer, his job.”

Gallagher and Trump; SECNAV Spencer boxed in.

Gessen notes that Gallagher was turned in by members of his platoon, who were interviewed saying he was “freaking evil” and “perfectly okay with killing anybody that was moving,” intentionally targeting women and children, saying he “just wants to kill anybody he can.” Trump invited Gallagher to his residence at Mar-a-Lago and praised him as an American hero.

According to Gessen, Gallagher embodied the essence of the presidency: raw, unchecked power, contempt for rules, laws and norms, and an unbridled desire to act out of hatred.

Gessen writes, “Raw power can overtake moral authority, and perhaps today it is easier than ever before, but a determined effort to preserve ideals when they are under attack can serve as a bridge to the future.”

In “Twilight of Democracy,” Applebaum –– who describes herself as “educated conservative elite” –– takes a denser and more global view, building her own bridge from the past to the present and future to explain how autocracy continues to thrive.

She takes the reader on a tour of Poland, Hungary, England, EU, Spain, and France before landing in the United States. Like Gessen, she relies on Arendt and Orwell as bedrock literature, but she also cites Graham Greene’s “The Quiet American,” Marcel Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past,” and Svetlana Boym’s “The Future of Nostalgia.”

Applebaum laments that the “party of Reagan became the party of Trump,” noting, “Reaganite optimism disappeared and slowly hardened into apocalyptic pessimism shared by so many others.” Echoing Gessen, Applebaum quotes Reagan’s UN ambassador, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, who said, “To destroy a society, it is first necessary to delegitimize its basic institutions.”

In a timely insight, Applebaum warns of the threat of autocracy and tyranny in the time of a pandemic. “Throughout history, pandemics have led to an expansion of the power of the state: at times when people fear death, they go along with measure that they believe, rightly or wrongly, will save them –– even if that means a loss of freedom,” she writes.

She explains, “People are often attracted to authoritarian ideas because they are bothered by complexity.” “Restorative nostalgics” see the world in black and white, without nuance; they want a return to what they perceive as a simpler past:

“Restorative nostalgics don’t just look at old photographs and piece together family stories. They are mythmakers and architects, builders of monuments and founders of nationalist political projects. They do not merely want to contemplate or learn from the past. They want, as Boym puts it, to ‘rebuild the lost home and pitch up the memory gaps.’ Many of them don’t recognize their own fictions about the past for what they are: ‘They believe their project is about truth.; They are not interested in a nuanced past, in a world in which great leaders were flawed men, in which famous military victories had lethal side effects. They don’t acknowledge that the past might have had its drawbacks. They want the cartoon version of history, and more importantly, they want to live in it, right now.”

Applebaum shows that tyranny can rise from the radical left as well as the radical right. But extreme right-wing domestic terrorism is the greatest threat in the United States now, according to the FBI. There is a connection between racism and defending the Confederacy, Confederate monuments, and gun-carrying vigilantes.

Later in her book she shows how that world view, exemplified in “America First,” is a siren call to white nationalism and radical right-wing terrorists. 

“Like those who live on the extreme edges of the American far left, some of those who live on the extreme edges of the far right have long been attracted to violence. There is no need to rehearse here the history of the Ku Klux Klan, to tell the stories of Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh and Charleston shooter Dylan Roof, or to describe the myriad individuals and militia movements who have plotted mass murder, and continue to plot mass murder, in the name of rescuing a fallen nation. In 2017, an Illinois militia set off a bomb at a Minnesota mosque. In 2018, a man who believed Jews were plotting to destroy white America murdered eleven people at a Pittsburgh synagogue. In January 2019, a group of men calling themselves ‘the Crusaders’ plotted to put a bomb in an apartment complex in Garden City, Kansas, because they hoped to murder a large number of Somali refugees. These groups and movements were also inspired by a confection that democracy is worthless, that elections cannot bring real change, and that only the most extreme and desperate actions can stop the decline of a certain vision of America.”

Governor Whitmer at her Oct. 8 press conference.

Just this past week, the FBI and Michigan State Police busted a plot by right-wing terrorists to kidnap and possibly kill the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer. Whitmer thanked law enforcement and called out President Trump for his dog whistle calls to those among his supporters who are white nationalists.

In a press conference Oct. 8, Whitmer said, “Just last week, the president of the United States stood before the American people and refused to condemn white supremacists and hate groups like these two Michigan militia groups. ‘Stand back and stand by,’ he told them. ‘Stand back and stand by.’ Hate groups heard the president’s words, not as a rebuke, but as a rallying cry, as a call to action. When our leaders speak, their words matter. They carry weight. When our leaders meet with, encourage, or fraternize with domestic terrorists, they legitimize their actions and they are complicit. When they stoke and contribute to hate speech, they are complicit.”

Both Gessen and Applebaum cite Reagan’s openness to immigration and focus on optimism for the future.

President Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan.

Whitmer herself brought up the 40th president of the United States: “In 1981, President Ronald Reagan spoke to the NAACP’s annual convention, and his comments stand in sharp contrast to what we have seen on the national and state level from his own beloved party in 2020. He said, ‘A few isolated groups in the backwater of American life still hold perverted notions of what America is all about.’ Recently, in some places in the nation, there’s been a disturbing recurrence of bigotry and violence.  Then Reagan sent a direct message to those who still adhere to senseless racism and religious prejudice: ‘You are the ones who are out of step with our society,' he said. 'You are the ones who willfully violate the meaning of the dream that is America. And this country, because of what it stands for, will not stand for your conduct.’”

Applebaum offers this chilling conclusion that provides the title for her book: “It is possible we are already living through the twilight of democracy; that our civilization may already be heading for anarchy or tyranny, as the ancient philosophers and America’s founders once feared…”

But, like Gessen, she offers explicit and implicit antidotes to a muddy downward slide toward autocracy. Explicitly: Build cooperation and coalitions; embrace allies; promote “rational thought, rule of law and integration;” and be “rooted to a place and yet open to the world.” Implicitly: become educated, practice critical thinking, and take the high road –– in the face of hate and anger, show love and kindness.