Bombs Away

            I feel like a soldier in a foxhole trying to take cover from all the bombs going off over my head. There are so many, I’m not sure I could list them all. But here are some of the big ones.

            President Trump has to be shell-shocked at this point from all the attacks aimed at him, not only from his customary adversaries in the mainstream media and Congress, but now from members of his own party and from former trusted associates like “flipping” attorney Michael Cohen and soon-to-testify accountant Alan Weisselberg. Even Jeff Sessions has thumbed his nose at the president, who would love nothing more than for his attorney general to pursue corruption in the FBI and Hillary’s collusion with Russia, both studiously ignored by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

            Meanwhile, Big Labor continues to make direct hits on Trump’s agenda. In May it gained a toe-hold in Boeing’s South Carolina operations by organizing machinists. Then, after unions got a sympathetic judge to side with union picketers in Ohio, the American Federation of Government Employees managed to get another sympathetic judge to overturn a section of a Trump executive order that would have made it easier to fire incompetent federal employees and cut down on government bureaucracy. Finally, earlier this month the AFL-CIO poured millions into a victorious campaign in Missouri to overturn that state’s right-to-work laws, the first state ever to do so.

            As for myself, I haven’t yet recovered from the effects of a mega-ton bomb dropped on the Catholic Church by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a former apostolic nuncio to the United States. His 11-page testimony accuses top church officials up and down the line, both in Rome and in the U.S., of covering up sexual abuses of and by seminarians and priests in Chile and Honduras and by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and others in this country. Worse, Vigano accuses Pope Francis of reversing sanctions imposed on McCarrick by Pope Benedict XVI. For this and for the pope’s role in the cover-up, Vigano calls on the pope to resign.

            Is “Bombs Away” to be this year’s universal call?

How Far "Me Too"

            The “Me Too” movement began quietly enough in 2006 when Tarana Burke, a black woman and survivor of sexual assault coined the term. She wanted to help other women and girls who had also been victims of sexual violence. She could not possibly have known how the term would explode into an international movement demanding the heads of famous people all over the world who have been identified as sexual predators.

            In the United States, “Me Too” erupted with the New York Times story on October 5, 2017, that exposed Harvey Weinstein for decades of sexual harassment against women, including Ashley Judd who described in detail the Hollywood producer’s assault against her. In rapid succession, accusations rolled in and claimed the careers of notables in the media and in Congress, as well as the entertainment industry. Even the worlds of sports, music, medicine, academia, and the military have not been immune. And new light was shone on the long-ignored or excused sexual predations of people like Bill Clinton and Roman Polanski.

            For me, as a Catholic, the newest revelations of the Church’s abysmal response to the widespread abuse of as many of 1,000 minors by 300 priests in Pennsylvania decades ago are particularly troubling. Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who was archbishop of Pittsburgh at the time, is accused of covering up the abuse instead of dealing with it forcefully.  Wuerl is also in big trouble with the pope for defending retired Cardinal Theodor McCarrick, his predecessor as archbishop of Washington, who reportedly preyed on seminarians and had a 20-year history of molestation.

            How much farther will the offshoots of “Me Too” reach? Will we see positive results like the end of the sex trafficking and pornography rackets here and abroad? Will the practice of sexual mutilation of women by Muslims earn the universal revulsion and condemnation it deserves? Indeed, what will it take to eradicate sexual abuse and degradation of women and children in this world?

            As the movement created by Tarana Burke has shown, victims must not be afraid to speak up. Silence, even in the most sacred precincts, is not an option when innocence and human dignity are at risk.

Making a Friend Happy

            A friend of mine, an avid Trump supporter, gets upset whenever I criticize President Trump. I voted for Trump and have often praised him for his domestic policies on tax reform, deregulation, judicial appointments, energy, and the environment; I support his foreign policy on Israel, Iran, and military action in the Middle East; and, with some reservations, I approve his show of strength on North Korea, Russia, and now Turkey. His list of accomplishments is impressive and deserving of praise. But there is another side to the ledger. Regrettably, it threatens to undo the positive results of the president’s first term in office.

            President Trump’s policies on immigration (sanctuary cities, the wall, law enforcement, etc.) are sound, but implementation has been shaky and inconsistent and often thwarted by a leftist judiciary. His trade policies (TPP, Nafta, import tariffs) are a disaster; the trade war with China is at best a stalemate that will have long-lasting consequences both on the American economy and on foreign relations with our allies in the Pacific.

            Affecting all these policies is the president’s management style. His unfortunate method of communicating with tweets and ill-considered off-the-cuff remarks may energize his base, but it fuels the Trump-hating media, divides the nation, and gives Democrats visions of surfing a blue wave to congressional majorities in the fall elections.

            And then there’s the Mueller investigation. It has been a millstone around the president’s neck for more than a year, but he has not found an effective way of dealing with it. Calling the probe a witch hunt is not it. The best way for the president to pull the fangs from Mueller’s vampires is to declassify all documents relating to the anti-Trump intrigues in the FBI and the Justice Department and order Rod Rosenstein to turn them over to Congress. “Sunshine is the best disinfectant,” as the saying goes. Let the sun shine on the intrigue and the corruption in the Deep State. And have Mueller’s prosecutorial powers turn to a real Russian collusion scandal.

            Maybe that will make my Trump-supporting friend happy.