In my last post, “Believing and Belonging,” it begins with a narrative about another “B”: Becoming. I explained that becoming is that moment, somewhere splashed in our formative years, that “is as if a new sun has risen that reveals something we have never seen before. It is our whole self, mind and body and spirit as one unique offering—as a fully differentiated being. A self that is just us.” Further, becoming can either be cause for jubilation, or trepidation, depending on whether our self-confidence had been established, or not.  As Paul Murray described in his novel of an Irish family, The Bee Sting, “Whenever you think this is your life now your heart bangs against your chest like you’re on a rollercoaster.” Like that rollercoaster ride, for some becoming is thrilling and for others, terrifying.

I also explained the significance of becoming to the balance of our lives, which is something I realized the hard way in my own life with the challenges of dealing with a partner in a two-decade marriage who suffered from depression anchored in self-doubt that had been with her since her teens. I observed, “If we have not had our self-worth ticket punched in these early years, our destiny will be fraught with the pain of self-doubt resulting in a fragility of ego that becomes a trap of cyclic self-destruction and suffering; inevitably also visited upon those we purport to love.” Several readers commented as to how resonant the reality of becoming was to them; a turning point for better, or worse.

I won’t evangelize the point further other than to say far too little attention is placed on this moment of becoming in the parenting and general development of our young ones. If we understood both the multitude and magnitude of its effects, we might deal with a whole spectrum of mental issues much better than we do; issues that absent significant therapeutic intervention haunt many people until the ends of their lives. Some become chronically depressed while others keep chasing external solutions—constantly reinventing their lives—that often becomes a churn of one calamity after another. Among other things, when one doesn’t fundamentally like themselves it makes it impossible to form a secure and durable bond with anyone else.

This idea of becoming for me occurred in my own bucolic summers spent at my mother’s family’s farm and ranch operations in South Dakota. Becoming was indeed a jubilation that occurred in the crossings I would make from my family’s home in Seattle to the Dakotas on the Empire Builder of the Great Northern Railway in the late 1960s and early 1970s; a two-day trip of western wonder where my train friends were kindly black gentlemen porters and the occasional young man headed west to ship out to Viet Nam from Fort Lewis in Washington. I would arrive in Fargo, North Dakota with a bellyache after two days of eating whatever came out of the deep-fat fryer in the dining car to be met by my favorite uncle, C.T., and driven south to Bruce, South Dakota. Then, I would spend weeks in the alfalfa-bloom scented fields of Brookings County before returning for school a tanned fit boy with saddle sores that had toughened into the calloused lessons of hard work.

If you are a regular reader, you know that I toggle between narrative and poetry in my practice of writing to utilize form as a tool to broaden and deepen my perspective. In this case, the poem, “That Boy Grown Gray,” which I wrote in 2022, preceded its expression as narrative in the more recent “Believing and Belonging.” Hopefully, I have rendered it into Substack properly to get the varied line breaks correct, but if not, I expect you will get the idea. This post can also be accessed at ameritecture.com.

That Boy Grown Gray

In my youth, I roamed.

The sea, then woods, mountains, the prairie

and back again.

My eyes transfixed on the telephone wires,

undulating from pole to pole,

as the Empire Builder sped eastward

through tunnels burrowed in granite.

A clackity-click, then a clickity-clack;

my train rumbled on

from Seattle, to White Fish, to Fargo.

It mattered who I was, mostly just to me.

Few thought I was worth an obligation,

fewer yet a worthy dependency.

Ah, freedom.

Youth; penniless and pure.

Me just for me.

No one’s prospect, no one’s cure.

And now here I am, that boy grown gray.

Just one shadow to cast,

just one meal to make.

I carry my own fire again.

Slower in both breath and stride,

I pause more than hurry.

No cards held; none to be played.

Quiet mind, I now see with my soul.

Embraced by the wisdom of eternity.

The arc of our lives, from becoming to just being (the last “B”), is a journey of both triumph and failure that hopefully ends in a state of peace. As the world today is as perplexing as it has ever been, we must always take care to rise above all moments of immediacy—whether joyful or painful—to contemplate our higher selves as we cast humble eyes across the expanse of nature and humanity that, while confounding at times, remains our domain of responsibility—at least until our last ticket of departure gets punched when we are no longer “embraced by the wisdom of eternity”; rather, we are tendered to it.

The amniotic sac that protects a fetus in its most vulnerable state of being is very similar to dignity. Once we are born, dignity’s job is to provide a protective barrier that surrounds our character where the good stuff—our virtues and values—reside. Dignity is the guardian of the soul; it keeps us whole and uncompromised. It reminds us as often as necessary that we are worthy while communicating a sense of resilience to those who might wish us harm. Our dignity is hallowed ground upon which no one should be allowed to tread. Those who either willingly discard their dignity, or otherwise sacrifice it in the face of adversity, expose the essence of who they are—their character—to manipulation and destruction. Without a dignity-emboldened character, we become pawns to be used and abused by others.

As the journalist Adam Serwer argued, for Trump and his lickspittle lieutenants, “cruelty is the point” of everything they do. Rather than giving much credit to Trump, however, Serwer illustrates how this appetite for cruelty has ebbed and flowed through human history and the Trump era is just a modern manifestation of the cruel-tool’s application. Machiavelli’s The Prince (1532) illustrates the utility of cruelty well. Five-hundred years hence, in virtually every form of oppression, from racism to misogynism to religious persecution to all forms of bigotry, cruelty is used to bend and break people to the will of the tyrant, even those wannabe tyrants who veil themselves in patriotism and populism while claiming democratic virtues which, of course, is all a con.

I take Serwer’s point, but I believe he misses cruelty’s more fundamental objective: to strip people of their dignity so they succumb to feelings of worthlessness and submit to the tyrant’s wishes. In most, if not all, of Trump’s history, whether in business, personal, or political endeavors, his approach is the same: tear people down to wear them out and take advantage of them. Have you ever heard of Trump lifting someone up and empowering their life? Where are those testimonials? He strips people of their dignity by any means possible, rips their character out, and feasts on their souls. His admiration for Putin, Kim, Xi, and Netanyahu are all evidence of his desire to out-cruel the world’s most cruel actors. His life’s ambition appears to be to win the title of “World’s Biggest Bully.”

Trump’s infamous claim that he can just “grab ‘em by the pussy” seems somehow quaint today as he is now moving on to destroy the welfare and lives of everyone from federal workers and public servants to immigrants to scientists to professors and allies with complete disregard for the rule of law, let alone intelligence and basic common sense. Crush people’s spirits to do with them as he wishes. It is bizarre that he is the president of what once was the “land of the free and home of the brave.” While he bloviates, Lady Liberty weeps. It’s no wonder France has asked for her return.

If we believe Trump’s appetite will be sated by his immediate targets, like federal workers or federal judges, we are fools. If you are a woman, person of color, disabled, older, a veteran, or LBGTQ—which collectively is most of America—you are a potential target for his wrath. Someday soon, just writing this essay may subject me to being classified by Trump’s Department of Justice or State Department as a domestic terrorist; our First Amendment be damned. Trump is the biggest glutton for power to ever occupy our White House. He will stop at nothing to consume his many targets of vengeance and to feed his ego. This is not a cry of wokeism, it is simple realism.

Meanwhile, Democrats fiddle and diddle weeping over their victim’s soup like orphans in a Charles Dickens’ novel; hardly a source of inspiration or comfort. It may be too soon to invoke the post-Holocaust warning of the German pastor, Martin Niemöller, “then they came for me,” but we must also be clear-eyed about what is going on and realize we may slip into anarchy more easily than we can stop the slide.

What is very clear, having now watched Trump ignore the orders of our federal judges, is that there is no roadblock to stop him. He is doing as he wishes regardless of our laws, justice system, or our Constitution. Trump apologists and enablers beware: you are not immune either. Once your utility is gone, he will discard you, too. See: Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie, John Kelly, Mike Pence, Mark Milley, John Bolton, Nikki Haley, Rex Tillerson, Mike Pompeo, and many more. As Machiavelli might warn Trump’s current cadre of sycophants like Musk, Vance, Rubio, et al, watch your backs—your throw-away date may be sooner than you think. For Trump enthusiasts still cheering him on, enjoy it while it lasts; he cares as much for you as he does your next vote, which he no longer needs.

It is jarring to realize that preserving our dignity must now be our priority. For most of our history in America, dignity has been considered inviolable—a right of being that needed no proclamation or law. It could certainly be lost, but usually by our own abdication. It was ours to lose rather than someone else’s to take. We must embrace new perspectives and practices to safeguard this essential armor of our character. The sanctity of our dignity must not be compromised.

Our most fundamental perspective must be resolute, reinforced with a simple mantra: we are worthy. As worthy (if not more worthy) than Trump, Musk, and his MAGA zealots. We can further preserve ourselves by the following practices.

1. See things as they are, not as you might wish them to be. Accepting things as they are is essential to our mental well-being. It also assures we don’t waste time and energy chasing false, or manufactured realities. We must suspend the many filters our ego places before our eyes to fool us into believing things are other than the way they are. In the case of Trump, our mistakes in the past have been disbelieving that he would actually do what he threatens, what some have called a “failure of imagination.” In his first term there were guardrails; now there are none. It is time we saw him for what he is and what he does rather than hoping it is not so. At this point, giving him the benefit of the doubt is not shame on him, it is shame on us.
2. Be highly selective with your engagements. One of the great skills in life is knowing what not to pay attention to. The old 80/20 rule holds that 80% of what we tend to has no bearing whatsoever on those outcomes we desire to realize. Whether people, organizations, and especially the deluge of media we encounter, we must be stingy with our engagement. Ignore the clowns. The test I have used throughout my life to gauge my willingness to engage with anything or anyone is, does the thing (person, organization, investment opportunity, or whatever) respond to intelligence? If it doesn’t, discard and move on.
3. Nurture the balance inherent in equanimity. Avoid the highs and lows. Live in a state of balance—of equilibrium. Being solid in your physical, mental, and emotional states produces a strength that is difficult to assail. Many years ago, during a wilderness skills course I attended through the National Outdoor Leadership School, I learned the value of the ABCs of backpacking. Your backpack must be packed with consideration of A for access, B for balance, and C for compression to affect a comfortable journey. In our current challenges, we should move through the world with a disposition of C for clarity, E for empathy, and F for fortitude with our shoulders back and our eyes on the horizon (or higher). Do not wallow or whine.
4. Support, defend, and protect others as you would wish to be supported, defended, and protected by others. This is an extension of the Golden Rule and the lesson offered in Matthew 25 regarding doing for the “least of these” as an act of service to God. Christ’s lesson was that the truly worthy of blessings act to serve others as a fundamental responsibility of a life well lived. Kindness cost nothing; the return on that investment is infinite. Making eye contact with a smile on your face to offer your support may change that person’s day, week, or life. Being seen and appreciated is the most basic form of love.
5. Focus on intent first, and results second (if at all). Although we may not be able to control outcomes, we can control our intentions, particularly with regard to the intention that guides our responses to outcomes. All we can do is to assure our intentions are pure and true. An elemental difference between western and eastern philosophy is that in the West we focus on results while in the East they focus on intentions. This difference is based in the importance in eastern philosophy of the present moment (as opposed to the future or past) where our intentions can be expressed with certainty. Of course, good intentions also often produce good outcomes, but what we do control—and should take care to form—is the intention with which we act.

If you happened to catch the show 60 Minutes last Sunday, March 16^th, you would have seen the story about many young musicians of color who had been selected to come to Washington D.C. to play in an orchestra with members of the United States Marine Corp Band. It was organized by the non-profit organization Equity Arc in an effort to expose these young musicians to other master musicians to inspire them to continue their love of music and performing as they went on to graduate from high school. In Trump’s DEI hysteria, he cancelled the event since these students were of color. But Equity Arc and CBS decided to make it happen with Marine Corp Band alumni who were not prohibited from participating by Trump’s proclamation eliminating anything that smells of DEI. In the end, many came together to protect the dignity of the students and make the meeting happen even while our president did what he could to wound the students and destroy the event. Listening to the kids and the mentor-musicians is indeed inspiring. I recommend watching the segment here. This is what is meant by protecting the sanctity of dignity in the face of a wannabe tyrant’s wrath, which leads to my final, sixth, recommendation.

6. Celebrate the victories. Like the story on 60 Minutes, we must all rally around those who, in the face of Trump’s wrath, defy his attempts to destroy our dignity. We must stand strong alone and together to get to the other side of this era of pointless cruelty. We must hold fast to what America was before the Age of Deceit that Trump has now fully co-opted as his own. We must prevail one day at a time and applaud those who rise above the madness. We must summon our best selves.

At this point, the only way out is through.

Power is a complicated subject. Even if we ignore the many types of power based in some form of energy (electric, fossil, solar, wind, nuclear, etc.), that leaves the state of, forms of, nature of, and consequences of, power in other realms of society to a scope of discussion that can occupy many hours of debate (which scholars often do). These discussions can produce many delightful hours of intellectual masturbation. Regardless of which locus of focus one settles into in the many splendid taxonomies of power that have been produced by legions of graduate students and their mentor-professors, at the essence of all power is the issue of legitimacy. Legitimacy is what makes power powerful.

In legal discourse, legitimacy is generally granted by authority as agreed to in, and proclaimed by, law. We point to a (hopefully) well written and clear law to assess the legitimacy of an act—of the expression of power. At the state and local (domestic) level of our societies, power is made legitimate by norms and laws backed by authority and resources which flow to entities based on their legitimacy. We empower the legitimate and reject the illegitimate by withholding our recognition and compliance.

At the domestic level of analysis, these touchstones (of norms and laws) are generally acknowledged and honored. And while we do organize into groups like political parties to contend for legitimate power through political processes like elections, the state of power and its legitimacy are protected within the guardrails of systems we honor. This practice is at the core of civil society; it is what puts civil at the heart of civilization. In the human ascent from the cave to the stars, we have learned (often the hard way) that our welfare depends upon our capacity for cooperation, and while competition is also important to sort out best products and practices, we must also cooperate to apply those products and practices to achieve the highest possible state of our well-being, especially with the public goods that animate the common good. So far, pretty simple.

At the international level, the legitimacy of power is a much more precarious subject. The first thing taught in graduate school about the nature of the international system, before diving into philosophers like Thucydides, or Machiavelli, or Hobbes, or Rousseau, or Kant, is that it is anarchical: there exists no highest authority recognized by the states that make up the system. The international system is a semi-organized anarchy. Moreover, there is no touchstone—no document or court or tribunal—against which legitimacy may be staked. Although we do create many fora like the International Criminal Court and the United Nations to attempt international governance, no nation-state carries any obligation of compliance beyond their willingness to do so. Even treaties, which are the foundation of international law (along with norms) can be violated without recourse; there is no enforcement mechanism. In the international system, it is like rock climbing hoping that the next crag of rock you grasp holds and doesn’t send you spiraling to your death. In the domestic system, we install reliable handholds in the form of enforceable laws on the rock face to ensure our safety. Yet, sometimes they also fail.

This issue of legitimacy is at the heart of much, if not all, of the problems America is facing today.

Legitimacy in America is fundamentally founded in the truth, and with honor for virtues as expressed in the many provisions of our founding documents, and in the many laws and interpretations thereof provided by our courts over the years. At both the domestic level and the international level, our current president, in an attempt to consolidate power in his hands and his hands only, is deploying deceit and dishonor to destroy the legitimacy of our power at home and abroad. If one were to place Trump’s contemplation of power on an arc of maturity, it would be somewhere between late grade school and early middle school. His recent address to congress was the first such annual address I chose not to watch in five decades because I was certain it would be composed mostly of lies. Based on reporting, he did not disappoint; he is, unabashedly, our liar-in-chief.

Trump’s is the dumbest and crudest concept of power there is, which is coercive power (whether waged with guns or tariffs or insults). Coercive power, which is the use of force often without regard for law, is stupid because it results in lose-lose outcomes; rarely win-lose and never win-win. I recognize that death and destruction appeals to many—most often those who have never worn a uniform. But any clear-minded assessment conducted as a post-analysis that considers both short- and long-term effects, shows that the costs of coercive power far outweigh the benefits. This is not an idealistic or woke notion, it is founded in a realistic accounting of events.

The most obvious examples of coercive power are violent conflicts like wars that very rarely result in any side of a conflict being better off once the fighting ends. All sides lose blood and treasure and whatever bounty is claimed falls well short of the total costs incurred. In heritable conflicts like those in the Middle East, the costs compound for generations. Of course, dumb leaders also rarely care about the costs since they are endured by others; there is neither dust nor blood on their boots. Smart leaders behave otherwise; they understand that the measurement of stupidity begins when the first shot is fired.

At the domestic level, Trump’s attempts to destroy legitimacy is why so many are warning of a constitutional crisis. By his many unlawful acts, which are now being judged as such in many of our lower courts, the larger question is: who or what will stop him? Even if the Supreme Court rules against him, where is the enforcement mechanism? Historically, we have never had to be concerned about a president who would behave in such a reckless and selfish manner. Even when Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus (a fundamental civil right) during the Civil War, it was done in the interest of the union, not in his desire to grab power for his own benefit.

In this new alliterative Trump couplet of deceit and dishonor, the anarchical nature of the international system will now be visited upon the domestic system focused, for the moment, at the federal level of the domestic sphere. A chaos of conflict at the domestic level is a likely development. These destructive effects will eventually cascade down to the state and local level. Once the legitimacy of law is lost, chaos ensues and entropy begets anarchy. Once legitimacy is destroyed, everyone’s gloves come off.

As the historian Niall Ferguson recently characterized, what Trump is doing in America is essentially Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal in reverse.” In Roosevelt’s first month in office in 1933 there was also a flurry of executive orders similar to Trump’s in number. FDR’s intent was to save the country from the effects of the Great Depression by building up government to create safety nets to arrest the fall of Americans and lift them back up—to empower them to survive and prosper again. Trump’s flurry is, however, intended to tear government down principally to give the appearance of reducing spending to allow the extension and expansion of tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. As we have now all seen, this is hardly a smooth or well orchestrated process. Whether one sees merit or malice in his intent, this much is clear: his aim is chaos and destruction and, moreover, to keep himself in the spotlight.

At the international level, we watched the legitimacy of American power evaporate in the Oval Office as Trump-the-thug and Vance-the-punk channeled their best impersonation of the Sopranos to bully a vulnerable ally in Ukraine’s Zelensky. It was a classic protection-racket shakedown and was most certainly not how a superpower behaves, but we won’t have to concern ourselves with that designation much longer. As disgusting and disgraceful as their performance was, the larger issue for America is how it sacrifices the legitimacy of our power accumulated since the end of World War II and our victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

Once you act against the truth and your own established values, you become unreliable as an actor in the anarchical international system where reliability and predictability are the only prophylactic to anarchy. Other states—both allies and adversaries—begin to discount and disregard your power. It starts with simple acts of disengagement with the United States, which is now occurring with allies across Europe. Then, adversaries, like Putin and Xi and Kim, and Khamenei move aggressively to seek advantage by attacking their adversaries and forming new bonds with our vulnerable and newly-skeptical allies. Former CIA director Bill Burns warned us that China would be capable of invading Taiwan by 2027. I expect that may now happen sooner. More immediately, expect Putin to increase the scope and magnitude of his attacks on Ukraine, and the Balkans could be next.

Therein lies the slippery slope to a worldwide conflict not, as Trump warned Zelensky, from his refusal to bend and bow to the shakedown in the Oval. A third world war will be on Trump’s head. Moreover, once American legitimacy is gone, no level of coercive power can fix it. Pax Americana—the assurance of peace and prosperity throughout the world led by America—goes poof! Such is the nature of empires: they collapse under their own stupid acts.

I pine for the days of enlightened leadership in our country. Leadership that understands that legitimacy is a paramount concern and that it most easily arises through the service to, and the empowerment of, others. Not by the coercion of others. But that’s not the MAGA world we are stuck with today. After the debacle in the Oval, they were the ones pounding their chests like schoolyard bullies with the occasional flexion of a faux Nazi salute. Lest we forget, it didn’t end well for the Nazis, but it cost the world some seventy-five million lives and destruction that spanned continents. It has taken decades of sacrifice and toil and innovation and creativity (and luck) founded in a deep sense of honor for the United States to become the world’s lone superpower, but it doesn’t take long to lose it. Legitimacy is something you either have, or you don’t. There is no such thing as ‘sort-of’ legitimate.

May God bless the souls of those who sacrificed so much for our country. May the suffering coming to so many Americans today be shallow and short. Today, I feel as many of you do: embarrassed and ashamed. As much as I miss my parents, I am grateful they did not have to see what they and their generation worked so hard to achieve being squandered by an egomaniac.

May we someday restore the legitimacy of what was the greatest nation in the modern era. Maybe our children will be able to rescue us from ourselves and turn our flag right side up, again.