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Resisting From the Left

CREDIT: Josh Cannon

Josh Cannon

The modish word “proactive” presumably says something both quantitatively and qualitatively more than “active” does, and there is compelling reason to believe that it and other linguistic transformations are not lapses or even inventions so much as they are collective and subconscious adaptations to revisions in reality.

That said, here’s a word with an established meaning that circumstances may contrive to give a new twist: “resist.”

That’s a word which, in one form or another, has spontaneously begun to multiply in headlines and articles and bold magazine blurbs and broadcast promos dealing with the current American political situation.

The Women’s March of January 21st, a day after the inauguration of Donald Trump as president, was one manifestation of a pent-up — and now exploded — urge to resist. The Women’s Marches, we should say, since the turnout of protesters was massive and everywhere. And so were the spontaneous outbursts that greeted President Trump’s abortive ban on free movement to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim nations. And many more parallel assemblies, for better or for worse — the angry horde that presented right-wing demagogue Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking at the University of California being a case in point of the latter, arguably.

The very word “resist” has now begun to expand its range even further. It no longer requires even an implied object. The current wave of mass actions is not merely a reaction to Trump — though it certainly owes much to his provocations. Trump himself was undeniably the beneficiary of angry collective energies in the election year just past. It can be argued that his campaign was the other side of the coin that also produced the left/socialist movement of Bernie Sanders.

Whatever its origin, and however bifurcated, anger persists, and it seems ever clearer that whatever shade of populism may have reared up behind Trump, it will not stand by the reactionary and wayward nature of the regime that his cabinet appointments and cavalier attitudes now portend.

One example of the mounting popular mood was on exhibit Saturday morning at a town meeting held by 9th District congressman Steve Cohen at East High School. (See Politics, p. 7.) Presumably as a precaution, there were numerous police officers on hand, but at no point was there anything resembling a disturbance amongst the thousand or so attendees, who manifested an impressive unity behind a diverse set of common goals.

The key moment of that event came when a woman rose to exclaim, “We are not fighting back! We need a grass roots growth like the Tea Party. We need a Democratic Tea Party now.”

Now, that’s proactive resistance. More is sure to come.

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From My Seat Sports

Q & A: Memphis Open Tournament Director Erin Mazurek

Erin Mazurek

The ATP World Tour returns to the Racquet Club of Memphis this week, the 41st consecutive year of professional tennis in the Bluff City. It is the third Memphis Open under the watch of Erin Mazurek.

You’ve got two tournaments under your belt. What have you learned about tennis fans in Memphis, and the community in general?

It’s been a learning experience. I didn’t really understand the state the tournament was in when I got here. It needed a lot of love. For this community, that means a lot of personal conversations and one-on-one meetings. Personal invitations to bring people back, whether it is businesses, box-seat holders, or sponsors. This market is different from the last market I worked in [Detroit]. It’s a lot more personal down here. The community is very tight-knit. You must have a compelling business case or branding case to get the partnership.

You’ve recently added live music to the Racquet Club food court, and the championship trophy is an actual guitar. Has the connection between tennis and Memphis music added to fan engagement?

You’ve got to have a strong brand that fits with your marketplace. This tournament, with all its great history, has had so many different names and partners. But nothing resounded as Memphis. But now with the guitar pick logo, the Gibson Guitar trophy . . . now the pieces fit in a puzzle that makes sense. We stand out on the tour now. These guys are playing in cities all over the world. Your tournament stop has to stand out and scream your local points of pride. [Among performers this week will be Blind Mississippi Morris on Tuesday and John Paul Keith on Saturday, each from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m.]

The music connection has recently been embraced by the Memphis Redbirds in their own rebranding.

All of our sports properties have to complement one another. This is too small a town to consider yourself a competitor. We have to partner and cross-promote. There’s definitely a partnership mentality.

The Memphis Open is one of only 10 ATP events in North America. What kinds of challenges do you and your staff face in keeping pro tennis on the radar of a market with a variety of entertainment options?

We have to drive home the message that we’re one of ten. Memphians are really proud of our town, our region, our giving, our hospitals. We have something that so many other cities have either lost or never had. One of ten cities where you can go to see professional tennis live. It’s a point of pride. We have a bit of a problem in that it’s been around so long that it’s become taken for granted [by some]. When you have four decades of history, people get a little spoiled, thinking it will always be the case. We need to change that mentality.

We’ll have a new champion this year, with four-time champ Kei Nishikori not in the field. Who should fans expect to see raising that big guitar on Sunday?

I’m never bold enough to call a champion before the tournament. But it will be good for us to see a new champion crowned. There are a lot of guys who will have a shot. If we’re lucky, we’ll see another young-gun American get his feet under him here. We have three of America’s “next-gen” stars: [2016 finalist] Taylor Fritz, Reilly Opelka, and Frances Tiafoe. I hope to see some good results out of them.

Do you have a favorite player in the field? Any style of play you enjoy watching?

Dustin Brown is fun to watch. He’s from Germany, but has Jamaican roots. He has dreadlocks that fly when he hits the ball. He has a crazy style, kind of chip-and-charge. He has wins against Rafael Nadal. And Reilly Opelka is nearly seven feet tall.

There’s no top-10 player in the field. What do you tell people who ask about the absence of some of the sport’s biggest names?

You can get on a plane and fly to New York to see them or fly to California. Or you can get in your car, drive 30 minutes, pay half the price for a ticket, and see players who would give those guys a tough match any day. We have players like Ivo Karlovic and John Isner who have been in the top ten; they’re just not sitting there right now. We’re the last indoor tournament in America. Comfort, convenience, and guaranteed matches.

Is the business community responding to the tournament’s new look and feel? Any closer to landing a title sponsor for the event?

That’s an ever-present thought, and a challenge we’re working on. We’ve had some great conversations around it. There’s still a need; we just haven’t quite found the right partner. Always in the works.

The connection to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital remains strong. Tell us about the Ball Kids program.

This has shifted our efforts for St. Jude into something a little more meaningful. The ball kids are doing peer-to-peer fund-raising. The top fund-raiser gets to go to New York City, all expenses paid, for an exhibition match at Madison Square Garden in March. Last year we raised over $40,000. FedEx stepped up to sponsor the ball kids. They know it’s the right reason and for the right cause.

And St. Jude is not our only charity. We benefit Tennis Memphis, the city-run nonprofit courts in town. And we have a new program with Blue Cross Blue Shield, helping Shelby County Schools students, bringing them out for field trips. We’re giving 500 kids their very own racket. We give a parking lot to the Boy Scouts to raise money for their summer camp.

Share something a sports fan will see or experience at the Memphis Open that can’t be found anywhere else.

Their most intimate sports-viewing experience. Unless you’re a courtside ticket holder [at a basketball game], you’ll never get this close to sports or professional athletes. People will come up to me and say how surprised and impressed they were after coming for the first time. I love hearing that. Give it a try, for something unique to do in February. You’re going to be delighted.

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Editorial Opinion

Memphis’ De-Annexation Deal

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

It is not quite a year after Memphis was able to extricate itself from what had seemed an inescapable fate, the Carter-Watson bill in the Tennessee General Assembly. It seemed to come out of nowhere, passing the House in a jet-propelled jiffy and seemingly destined, on the strength of rural members’ and suburbanites’ resolve, to sail through the state Senate, saddling the city with what looked to many like a death sentence.

The bill’s authors, both from the outskirts of Chattanooga, had already succeeded in passing a measure that abolished the former prerogatives of Tennessee cities to annex new territories at will, giving the residents of the state’s unincorporated areas what amounted to a veto over their possible annexation by adjacent municipalities. In the process, they had rendered virtually null and void a compromise agreement of 1998, which had provided significant brakes on the cities’ ambitions for growth but had acknowledged their right to certain areas as potential annexation reserves.

The measure proposed by the Hamilton County duo last year was designed not just to stall or hamper or regulate the growth pattern of cities. It was clearly and plainly meant to cut the cities down to size — literally — and Memphis had been a fairly blatant offender by the standards of the two sponsors, whose bill would have allowed any area annexed since that pivotal year of 1998 to escape its encompassing municipality with a petition signed by 10 percent of its residents, followed by a majority vote in a referendum.

It was only by the most heroic exertions by Mayor Jim Strickland and other city officials, in emergency collaboration with the local Chamber of Commerce and sympathetic allies in other Tennessee municipalities, that the bill was blocked in a state Senate committee and remanded off to summer study. The “study,” such as it was, is over, and, with the General Assembly back in session, the word is that Carter and Watson could bring their bill up again, as Draconian as ever.

An implicit condition of the bill’s tabling last year was a gentlemen’s agreement of sorts: The city of Memphis, which had from time to time considered the principle of de-annexation as a useful option and a means of conserving its resources, might submit an alternative proposal. Last week, a city/county task force presented a plan that would divest the city of several relatively uninhabited areas that are expensive to service, as well as two recently annexed areas — Southwind/Windyke and South Cordova — that have been champing at the bit to be de-annexed. According to the report’s authors, the bill would shrink the city’s population by only 1.2 percent and its annual operating revenue by a mere 1.1 percent, while allowing a “right-sizing” that would benefit the city now and in its future planning.

Among other things, the task force’s plan is a reminder of reality, a rebuff to escapism, a dose of brass tacks. It may, in fact, be the best option facing Memphis at the moment. It is, in any case, worth careful study by the city council, which can adopt and enact it this spring — perhaps pre-empting the legislature in the process.

Sometimes victory can be gained — and loss forestalled — through a judicious compromise.

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Editorial Opinion

Corker and Alexander: Stumbling Toward Leadership?

So what have we here? In this space previously, we have lamented the evasions and relative silences from our state’s two senators — Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker — regarding the out-of-control governmental efforts of billionaire ex-builder, President Donald Trump, who seems to be going about the business of running the country as if it were some sort of Lego project that he can’t find all the pieces to and can’t be bothered to look for.

Now it seems that both Alexander and Corker have, in fact, begun, however tentatively, to make remonstrations signaling at least a bit of discontent with the antics of The Donald. On the score of Trump’s ill-advised executive order abruptly banning from these shores the populations of seven predominantly Muslim countries, Alexander had this to say, finally: “This vetting proposal itself needed more vetting. More scrutiny of those traveling from war-torn countries to the United States is wise. But this broad and confusing order seems to ban legal, permanent residents with ‘green cards’ and might turn away Iraqis, for example, who were translators and helped save lives of American troops and who could be killed if they stay in Iraq. And while not explicitly a religious test, it comes close to one, which is inconsistent with our American character.”

All very sensible, even if filtered by an excess of caution that is all too typical of Alexander. His statement was followed forthwith by one from home-state Senate colleague Corker: “We all share a desire to protect the American people, but this executive order has been poorly implemented, especially with respect to green card holders. The administration should immediately make appropriate revisions, and it is my hope that, following a thorough review and implementation of security enhancements, that many of these programs will be improved and reinstated.”

This statement too, is much tempered by a wish to be diplomatic toward someone who is, after all, not only a newly installed president but the titular leader of the Republican Party, to which both senators are duty-bound to show homage.

Previously, Corker and Alexander had each, however back-handedly, expressed reservations about the rush by Trump and, for that matter, several members of the congressional Republican leadership to eviscerate and hastily abandon the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) before a substitute could be concocted. The GOP continues to search for a plan that would at least simulate the advantages offered to the uninsured and under-insured populations by the ACA. Ultimately, though, each toed the party line.

Now, perhaps, they’re a tad footsore from such exertions. It may even be that Senators Alexander and Corker are ready to join the likes of Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Marco Rubio in a readiness to talk truth to power, even if that power happens to bear the same party label as themselves.

Something might be lost in the process, but something more is to be gained. In this case, it might be some measure of public safety for the rest of us, and for Alexander and Corker themselves, a claim to real leadership.

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Editorial Opinion

The Gateway Project Has Great Promise

One of the favorite nostrums of the hard right in this country, as foolishly reductionist as it is misleading, involves a description of the social and economic landscape as consisting entirely of two groups — “makers” (aka “job creators”) and “takers,” whom they imagine to be the unwashed masses who remain perpetually on some kind of government dole financed by “confiscatory” taxes on the makers.

That American society, under whatever political administration and guided by whatever elective ideology, is a much more diverse and interrelated aggregation of people and social functions escapes these folks. A shining example of what the country and the system are really like, at best, was offered recently by a proposal involving the closest sort of cooperation between local and state government and one of Memphis’ — and the world’s — leading social institutions.

The institution in question is the justly famous St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which draws upon a huge and carefully cultivated private-donor base to maintain and expand its operations but which is not averse to working in close cooperation with government to accomplish mutually beneficial objectives.

A case in point is a freshly launched St. Jude project, known in some quarters as The Gateway Project — in speaking of it, Rick Shadyac, the CEO of ALSAC (American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities), the hospital’s parent organization, prefers to use the homier expression “front door” in describing what the project will do.

The less grandiose term is appropriate, considering that Shadyac is the first head of ALSAC, an organization founded by St. Jude creator Danny Thomas, to make his permanent home in Memphis. Shadyac’s residence is not far, as the crow flies, from the site of the new project, which involves close cooperation with state, city, and county government. What St. Jude wants to do is to carry out a six-year, $9 billion capital expansion, already underway, on its existing property, in tandem with modifications in existing downtown TDZ (Tourist Development Zone) and TIF (Tax Incremental Financing) projects that would accomplish a wholesale renovation of the Pinch district and Carnes neighborhoods.

Extension of the TDZ under the plan would generate overdue infrastructure improvements in the Pinch. “Our hope is that what we’re doing on our campus and in the Pinch district will serve as a catalyst for third-party developers,” says Shadyac, who notes that the plan involves relaxation of the current moratorium on new development. Simultaneous expansion of the adjoining Uptown TIF district is expected to fund $13 million of infrastructure improvements in the Uptown and Carnes neighborhoods.

If all goes as projected, St. Jude, which is funding its own parallel capital development, will have a handsome new front door, and so will the city, and, in the long run the TDZ and TIF projects are self-financing, since they are paid through increments in newly generated sales taxes and property taxes, respectively. It’s difficult to separate “makers” from “takers” in the arrangement. As is the case with most successful public-private partnerships, everybody — including just plain citizens — is a potential beneficiary.

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Editorial Opinion

The MLGW Groundhog

The issue of county participation on the board of the city-owned Memphis Light, Gas & Water is, for the time being, moot. Or as Shelby County Commissioner Heidi Shafer, one of the supporters of the now lapsed proposal, puts it, it’s a Groundhog Day matter that will surface again when the political weather changes.

The weather wasn’t right on the commission when Commissioner Terry Roland raised the issue of a county member on the MLGW board in an effort to include it on the commission’s official wish list to present to the Tennessee General Assembly, now in session. 

It became a city vs. county controversy, with commissioners representing inner-city districts, like Reginald Milton, defending the right of Memphis, which owns the giant utility, to operate it strictly according to the terms of its current charter, which limits direct participation in the administration of MLGW to a five-member board appointed by the mayor of Memphis. The board oversees a management corps that handles the utility’s various operations.

Milton and other Memphis members of the commission objected to Roland’s proposal for county participation because they saw the idea, in Milton’s words, as “a slippery slope,” something which could lead to further demands for direct participation from each of the county’s six separate suburban municipalities — Germantown, Collierville, Millington, Arlington, Lakeland, and Bartlett.

The Roland proposal met with resistance also from Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and with some concern from the county administration of Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell.

Given that MLGW is owned and operated by the city and is governed by a charter that specifically limits the manner of its administration, the kind of change sought by Roland and his allies would unquestionably transform the nature of MLGW governance. Roland invokes the vintage term “taxation without representation” to describe the voiceless nature of county representatives who pay the fees and submit to MLGW policies without having input into either.

One matter that exacerbates the issue is city council member Patrice Robinson’s proposal that customers’ bills be rounded off to the nearest dollar, with the additional revenues, estimated at $2.5 million annually, going to help the city’s low-income residents weatherize their homes. Roland cites the proposal — which has been amended to allow county residents to decline the rounding-off on their bills — as the very kind of matter that county customers should have a direct voice in. There may be equivalent needs among disadvantaged county residents, he and others note.

Though his effort to put the commission on record as lobbying for a change has failed, Roland says that state Senator Mark Norris and state Representative Ron Lollar (R-Bartlett) are even now looking into possible legislative remedies. And he himself intends to make an appeal for change to the Tennessee Regulatory Authority. One way or another, this groundhog is an issue that hasn’t gone away.

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Editorial Opinion

Geniune Vetting of Trump Cabinet Nominees Needed

CREDIT: Senator Jeff Sessions

At his annual “issues meeting” with constituents from his 9th Congressional District on Monday, Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen called the roll of what he saw as unsatisfactory or outright dangerous cabinet officer-designates named by Donald Trump, and Cohen’s list was fairly inclusive of the President-elect’s entire list.

Those singled out by the Congressman included Attorney General-designate Jeff Sessions, who, he said, had been wrong on civil rights and civil liberties issues when the Senate rejected him as a potential federal judge in the 1980s and was “no better” now; climate-change rejector Scott Pruitt as director of the Environmental Protection Agency; Betsy DeVos, an advocate of for-profit charter schools, as Secretary of Education; and former Texas Governor Rick “Oops” Perry, who has extensive ties to the oil and gas industries, for Secretary of Energy.

Senator Jeff Sessions

Not mentioned specifically by Cohen but equally suspect, surely, are Secretary of the Treasury-designate Steven Mnuchin, a banker with close ties to financial-industry members who advocate loosening government restrictions on Wall Street; Secretary of Labor-designate Andy Puzder, a disbeliever in the minimum wage; Secretary of Commerce-designate Wilbur Ross, an investor best known as a “turnaround artist”;  Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, who publicly confesses knowing nothing about his subject; Secretary of Health and Human Services-designate Tom Price, a former congressman known for his opposition to the Affordable Care Act and public health measures; and Secretary of State-designate Rex Tillerson, the Exxon Mobil oil mogul whose ties with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin are notorious.

Most ominous of all is probably Trump’s choice for National Security Advisory, former Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, whose erratic views caused him to be forced out as Defense Intelligence Agency head and whose son, with apparent paternal approval, has been a public advocate of some of the more monstrous examples of “fake news,” like the canard that Bill and Hillary Clinton were running a child-kidnapping ring out of a Washington D.C., pizza joint.

Unfortunately, the senior Flynn is not subject to Senate confirmation. The other mentioned Trump appointees are, however, and can in theory be rejected in the formal hearings that begin this week. The chances of that happening in a body dominated by Republicans is not great, but Cohen raised at least a modicum of hope when he suggested the names of several Republican senators who might be moderate or open-minded enough to join Senate Democrats in holding up some of the more noxious Trump nominations.

The names were those of Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona. Cohen added, with what sounded like genuine wistfulness, the names of Tennessee’s own Republican Senators, Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander.

Though it is axiomatic these days that no Republican will admit to being “moderate” or anything quite so sissified-sounding to GOP ears, Corker and Alexander do, like Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, enjoy a reputation for relatively fair-mindedness. We join Cohen in hoping that our two senators can rise to the occasion in applying a genuine acid test to the nominees of President-elect Trump.

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Editorial Opinion

Onward into Trumpland!

Well, here it is: 2017. And anybody entering this new year who is optimistic about the state of things in America and around the world is by definition a Trump voter. The rest of us have forebodings out the kazoo — no few of them having to do with the man whose two most famous resolutions are to build a wall and to make American great again.

The outlines of the wall are already evident. The problem is that the one Trump has already begun to construct is not the one he promised to build between the U. S. and Mexico. That one, we suspect, will remain within the boundaries of myth. We doubt that the GOP barons of privilege who rule Congress will sacrifice the revenues needed to finance that boondoggle — unless they can conjure up a way to siphon tax dollars to various well-connected construction companies. No, the real wall is the barrier the soon-to-be-president of all of us has erected between the separate parts of this nation. When Time magazine gave the Huckster-in-Chief his due, naming him Person of the Year, it referred to him on the cover as “President-elect of the Divided States of America.”

That’s about right. And the division is not just the one exposed in the widening electoral rift between the blue states of the two coasts and the red states of the hinterland, but between those of us who trust in some form of verifiable reality and those for whom such a regard is beside the point. Like the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Though the Looking Glass, the Donald  can say “Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” And said twice as many more.

Can Trump really believe, apropos his loss of the popular vote by the grand total of nearly 3 million voters, that that formidable gap consisted entirely of “illegal” voters? Does he have any evidence to support that, or his famous claim that climate change is a “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese? Or, most recently and notoriously, that the entire intelligence-gathering apparatus of the government he is about to head is mistaken in its painstaking conclusion that the Russian government engaged during the election in internet hacking on his behalf?

It is this last assertion, along with Trump’s dangerous and foolhardy reliance on the good faith of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, that exposes the sheer presumption of his campaign slogan about making America “great” again. There is nothing great or even tolerable about the concept of hitching our nation’s future to the whims of a despot who even now is bringing death and destruction to innocent civilians in Syria, undermining the independence of his neighbor nations, and doing his best to undermine the historic shield of NATO.

There is a silver lining, and it goes by the name of bipartisanship. Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham are now touring the threatened nations of Eastern Europe in an effort to reassure the worried populations and governments there that America will not forsake them. There are glimmers of hope, too, that there are enough concerned Republicans in Congress to join with Democrats in thwarting the more reckless domestic plans of the new president.

The statement was often made, after our nation had passed through the ordeal of Watergate, that “the system works.” We suspect it’s in for another test now — a big one. Happy New Year, and buckle your seat belts.

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Editorial Opinion

Van Turner: The Compromiser

In the course of years, individuals in organized groups start to differentiate into what anthropologists call “archetypes” — specific behavior types that can be discerned to recur periodically over the long span of human history. One of the best-known archetypes is that of the messiah — the would-be savior who emerges to attempt drastic alterations in the pattern or fate of a body politic. The scale for that archetype runs from benevolent saintly figures to charismatic demagogues. There has been no dearth of either sort in political history.

Van Turner

And then there is something we might call the Henry Clay archetype. Known as the “Great Compromiser,” Clay was a towering figure in American politics during the early 19th century, famous for resolving seemingly intractable disputes by finding and advocating middle-ground positions.

The Henry Clay of the Shelby County Commission is Van Turner, a Memphis Democrat who consistently interposes between squabbling factions and finds compromise solutions that resolve the quarrel. Such was the case again Monday when an intervention by Turner made it possible for the commission to approve an MWBE program requiring the county to give African Americans and Caucasian women special consideration to remedy what Equal Opportunity Compliance director Carolyn Watkins had determined to be discrimination in contracts and purchasing.

The measure almost hit a snag when Commissioner Heidi Shafer objected that, by not specifying all women as such, including Asians and Hispanics, the measure was “actually regressive.” Various other members of the commission insisted on an immediate vote on the measure as written, seeing Shafer’s objections as essentially semantic, but enough fellow Republicans sided with her to ensure further discussion. A largely unspoken issue was that, if the ordinance were amended, it would require an additional reading — meaning that the issue would have to be held off until the new year.

It was then that Turner materialized with a resolution that bridged the gap between the two contending factions, leaving the existing classifications of the ordinance intact but adding a provision that gave the EOC director Watkins free rein to apply the terms of the ordinance to such other groups as she deemed appropriate.

More debate ensued, but the key moment came when Shafer said she found the provisions of the resolution satisfactory. That allowed for a final vote approving the ordinance by a decisive 11-2 vote. The commission went on, by a 12-1 vote to approve a companion measure applying similar remedial provisions to locally owned businesses, strengthening their potential future share of county purchases and contracts.

The two ordinances together allowed the commission to end the year on a positive note and, temporarily at least, resolved a long-standing wrangle over the disparity issue. As audience member James Johnson said, appropriating a famous World War II quote from Winston Churchill, “This is not the end. It’s not even the beginning of the end. But it’s the end of the beginning.”

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Editorial Opinion

Donald Trump: The Manchurian Candidate

The outcome of the 2016 presidential campaign was already regarded as nightmarish by various blocs of Americans — and not just those who call themselves Democrats. But the persistence of President-elect Donald Trump’s bizarre affinity to and connection with Russia has become unnerving to increasing numbers of his constituents-to-be, including members of Trump’s adopted Republican Party.

As evidence continues to emerge indicating that Trump’s relationship with Russia, America’s longstanding national adversary, might be something more ominous than an unseemly flirtation of the mutual-admiration sort with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, the GOP’s congressional leadership itself is being forced to take notice. That includes no less a figure than Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose adamantine resistance to incontrovertible facts uncovered by the CIA prevented a pre-election joint congressional statement affirming Russian responsibility for acts of espionage and sabotage against Democrat Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Yes, we said “espionage” and “sabotage.” What other words are appropriate to describe the organized invasion of private email correspondence and the carefully directed leaks that clearly achieved the obvious goal of casting doubts on candidate Clinton’s bona fides and crippling her prospects? If there was communication or, worse, complicity between some members of Trump’s campaign entourage and the Russians, the question becomes whether treasonous activity took place.

Trump’s behavior bears undeniable echoes to the general circumstances depicted in the classic novel/film The Manchurian Candidate, which concerns an unfriendly foreign power’s Trojan-horse plot to implant its own man in the White House. Let us count the ways: Candidate Trump calls for a rethinking, perhaps even a scuttling, of NATO’s traditional function as a multi-national security buffer; he lets no opportunity pass to make fawning public statements about Putin or to suggest that a profitable strategy for the future is to make common cause with the Russians. (That word “profitable” is on purpose, too — especially for someone like Trump who imagines all international questions to revolve around “deals.”)

Trump not only went out of his way to douse suspicions that the Kremlin was the source of the unending Wikileaks revelations plaguing his opponent, he actually made (however facetious) a public plea that the Russians turn up missing emails from Clinton’s private server!

Now, he stands victorious, happily making fox-in-the-henhouse appointments to head every important cabinet post — none more eyebrow-raising than Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, an oil-and-gas tycoon whose background in foreign affairs consists mainly of his long-term friendship with Putin. 

Already there were Republicans such as Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham ready to pin down Trump for his breaches.  But for McConnell to come forward is revealing. Responding to Trump’s continued denial of untoward conduct and his spiteful remarks about the nation’s intelligence community, the majority leader said, “Any foreign breach of our cyber-security measures is disturbing, and I strongly condemn any such efforts. The Russians are not our friends. I have the highest confidence in the intelligence community,” and, most significantly, that “this simply cannot be a partisan issue.”

The smell of fish is in the air.