The Speech I'd Love to Hear (With Apologies to Francis Underwood)

Can you imagine someone stepping out on the stage at the Democratic national convention, wearing, say a baseball hat with "Live Free or Die" on it and maybe a plaid shirt and blue jeans or even blue jeans overalls and looking around and saying,

"I hate America!"
Pause for effect, allow for the gasps heard round the amphitheater.


"There, I said it. And you gasp. But isn't that what we've been hearing for the last few years from all those HUGE crowds cheering on the Republican candidate?
These folks SAY they LOVE America, but really, they hate their countrymen.
And what is a country, but it's people?  Oh, sure, its borders and values and laws and armies and all that, but, ultimately, when it comes right down to it, a country is its people. Without the people, you've got nothing.

"But you've got America, this grand experiment and how have Americans treated other Americans? 
Well, if you look down in Mississippi, you see a 14 year old  Black boy hanging from a tree by the neck because he whistled at a White woman.
That's America, too. 
When you see all the soldiers coming home from World War II, flooding back into the new homes they could buy with cheap government loans, unless, of course those soldiers happened to be Black.
That's America, too.
And you've got the Ku Klux Klan saying nobody belongs here but White Christians and you've got the secretary of state of Kansas saying essentially the same thing, saying there's hordes of dark skinned Mexicans straining to flood across the border and do ethnic cleansing on America and people in Kansas vote for him.
 
And you've got a sheriff in Maricopa County, Arizona rounding up dark skinned people and throwing them in jail and marching them down the streets in pink underwear to humiliate them and people voting for him and cheering.
That's America, too.

Of course, rounding people up and throwing them in camps because of the way they look is nothing new in America. Just ask the Japanese who got hauled off to internment camps in the West. We called them internment camps, not concentration camps and they were more humane than the camps the Germans had for the Jews, but still, America.

And then there's just the great American capacity for hate: Hate the Muslims. Hate the Blacks. Hate the Hispanics. Hate the Jews. Hate anyone who doesn't look like you. Hate anyone who doesn't worship your God the way you do.


All that is America. Land of the free, home of the haters.


But then, again. There's that other America. 
Martin Luther King saw it, when he looked over that huge crowd standing before him in front of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, and in a line you almost never hear quoted he said:




The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.

King knew that even in Alabama, there were some white people who were horrified by the lynchings and the hate.  He knew that even in Kansas, there were people who did not fear Negroes but were willing to give them a chance. He saw beyond the haters to that other sort of American.
That was an important moment in America, and it's had precious little attention. When you looked out over that crowd, it was just as White as it was Black.
There were white men from New York, freedom riders, getting murdered in Mississippi. And there were a few White people in Georgia and Alabama who had a special kind of courage because they spoke for Civil Rights and they could not get back on the bus and go back home up North. But they marched and spoke and voted.
 
I've seen that America firsthand, the America which resists hate.  I went to a cook out once in deepest, darkest Hume, Virginia, the kind of place you had to stop at the country store to ask directions and all you had to know was it was the Connolly farm you were looking for, and the owner directed you there.
Sitting out by the backyard grill, one of the guests said, "You know the thing about the Negroes is they are like stray dogs. You don't want to feed them 'cause they'll follow you home."
This was a lovely looking lady in a broad brimmed straw hat and a yellow summer dress which showed her pink décolletage to good advantage and her host said, "Now, Peggy Sue, you know that's unfair, not to mention sort of racist. We've come farther than all that."
That, too can be America.

It is that idea we ought not be determined to walk through our national life alone.
Oh, there's that fantasy of living off the grid, beholdened to no man, independent, strong and proud.


But that's an unhealthy obsession. No man survives alone.  We are all born dependent on others and while we strive to be as independent and self reliant as we can be, we cannot build our houses, electrify them, plumb them, alone, not if we want to live more than a subsistence life.
There is no glory in the mean, precarious subsistence life. 
Most of us cannot safely deliver our children into this world  alone, nor save them when they are injured or sick without help. We cannot care for our aging parents alone. We can try, but it's a fool's errand. Much as we may recoil from the idea, we need other people, or, at the very least, we do better when we connect with other people.
All those rugged individualists who fancy themselves as independent, truck right over to the emergency room when they are injured or sick. Then they don't seem so proud. They need help, and if they are even a little smart, they ask for it and live to fight another day.


People talk about American exceptionalism, as if it's some sort of magic blessing from on high.  I don't know about American exceptionalism, and I am no student of world history, but tell me: Has any other nation on the face of the earth ever fought its most costly war to free an underclass, a disparaged group?


If there is, I'd like to know about it. 
The Civil War may not have started to free the slaves, but as the war ground on, that's what it became about. Lincoln, who was in the best position of any man in history to know, said as much in his Second Inaugural, when he spoke of that "peculiar interest" which the slaves constituted and he said, "and we all knew, somehow, that was the cause of the war." White men died for four years to free Black men, is what it came down to.

So, yes, I hate America. I hate what it has become under the "Make America Great Again" banner. The fact is, America has been great and when it was great it was when it turned away from hate.  Hate makes us smaller, meaner, and diminishes us all.


Yes, we have to figure out how to manage our borders, how to deal with those who desperately flock here because we are the richest nation on earth. 
We can rejoice in our riches, although we do not share them among our people in any sort of fair way. Our billionaire class hordes the riches while the eighty percent fight among themselves for their droppings.


But even if we figure out a way to correct that injustice, we will still have to deal with those who are outside our borders, wanting to come in.


As we do this, we have to remember it is possible to gain the world, and to lose your soul in doing so."


Thunderous applause.

My Own Private New Hampshire

It is July 29, and it is so cool in Hampton, New Hampshire, people were wearing jackets on the beach, walking their dogs at Plaice Cove this morning. 

I was able to mow my entire lawn, without breaking a sweat.  My lawn  is far more extensive than any lawn I ever wanted to have, but in New Hampshire, when you buy a house they more or less force acreage on you. In the back yard, my neighbor's raised vegetable garden is flourishing without any sort of fencing to protect it against deer or ground hogs or rabbits. Even the fauna in Hampton seem to be careful to offer no offense. 

I walked down to the barber shop, where the lady who cut my hair told me about her Italian mother and how she cooked without recipes and her mouth was watering just thinking about some of the creations. 

Stepping out of the barber shop, I walked into the hardware store where one of the three men who seem to live there answered my questions about how to treat the spots on my lawn which I burned out with over zealous use of fertilizer. I know a lot about this hardware store guy, his career in the Navy, his wife's love of Fast Eddies, a 50's style hamburger joint two blocks down Lafayette Road, complete with juke boxes and real milk shakes made with ice cream and everything but the waitress on roller skates.

Then I walked back home and sat on my porch and opened my Kindle and plunged into "Follow The Drum," which is set in colonial India.

My favorite food is Indian food. I love Italian, Spanish, Middle Eastern, Thai, Vietnamese, but nothing can quite send me like Indian food.
My brother tells me I would hate India. Too hot. Too squalid. Too crowded, and he is likely correct. 
People I know who've been to India never fail to describe the Ganges River, a sacred river, where you throw the bodies of your relatives so they can float down river and out to sea. If you sit by the river, or walk over it on a bridge, you can always see a body floating by, often within yards of women standing in the water, washing their family's clothes. 
But I love their food and I love the novels--the best way, no doubt to experience India. Stay in New Hampshire, where the air is clean and crisp and read about it--travel there as if beamed up by Scottie.
The dog interrupted, demanding his walk. For reasons known only to the dog, he refused to turn down the street we usually take but he pulled me down Rte 27, back into town. He did one of those lower the center of gravity, get his belly on the ground and dig in with his back legs and drag me.  So, we walked back down Rte. 27, back to town, passing the semi porn sand statue of the girl getting her buttocks exposed by the dog. 

Makes you wonder

My dog marked the spot and dragged me off to his intended spots: He tried to drag me into the Hardware store, the confection shop a few doors down and the bank, on the same block because at each of these places someone behind a counter has given him a treat sometime within the past 7 years and he never, ever forgets the source of treats. 
At the bank, they will put a treat in the pneumatic tube which brings you your receipt and change if you are in the driving lane one lane removed from the teller's window.
He remembers that.
We fought through several blocks of downtown, and finally he relented and agreed to walk back home where I settled in back on the porch and went back to India.

In New Hampshire She'd Wear Blue Jeans and a Plaid Shirt

Growing up in the decade after the end of World War II, I was smitten with the plucky English, who I saw in movie after movie about the war. The Brits were always brave and funny and unflappable in the movies. By age 10, I was a confirmed Anglophile and I tried to imitate their accents, for which my brother teased me unmercifully.

But I did not know about the English in India and their other colonies. When they ruled colonies, they were something other than plucky and witty. They could be astonishingly cruel.

Of course, it's been noted frequently, that Gandhi would not have lasted five minutes had he been leading his non violent resistance against Hitler and the Germans--he only succeeded because he was protesting against the British. But, that said, the Brits were violent and racist and nasty to their colonial subjects. 
Their arrogance set them up for failure when confronting enemies who did not embrace the idea of chivalry.

Raptor talk with Owl at Churchill's Nursery

Here in New Hampshire, it's possible to commune with the world from a shire which offers the comforts of home.

Big Boy Donnie: Coddled Donald Wobbled

Okay campers, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, citizens, friends, Lomans and countrymen, we need to think about how to take down a marketer.

Here we have the most ubiquitous public presence since Big Brother, and the people, the public, the great unwashed masses are loving it.


It's the problem the Pharisees had in "Jesus Christ Superstar" when they were sitting around contemplating how to deal with this upstart who had captured the imagination of the crowds:

"How do you deal with a carpenter king?
Who is bigger than John was when John did his Baptism thing?"


Trump is bigger than Reagan was when Reagan did his antigovernment thing.


He is there in the morning when you turn on the news. He is there during the day, when you listen to talk radio. He is there at night on the evening news and late night shows. He is all anyone talks about.

So how do you diminish this master of the two word put down?Is he Hobbled Donald? Wobbled Donald? Plump Trump? Donald Gump?


Like Reagan, he's Teflon. Nothing sticks.


Where is Donald Draper when you need him?
Where is the big idea in dealing with this marketing tsunami?


Democrats are old, tired, cats incapable of being herded, bereft of new ideas, clinging to slogans and beliefs which worked before but got swamped by Donald Plump. Go door to door. Talk to your neighbors. Make phone calls from phone banks. Been there. Done that.

Donald has spread pixiedust across the rural heartland. He is the king of all those Alabama's out there between the big cities in every state.


He is selling say it's so and it's so. He's so-so Donald.  He changes shape and color with each block. He just flows around obstacles.  What do you think about transgenders using public bathrooms? Use whatever bathroom they want to use.  Ten seconds later, no, wait. They are sexual predators.

He appeals to that side of people which is always in there: The little kid who wants to believe in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.  But those same people had a side which prompted them to vote for Obama.
How do we grow that rich flower of rationality without fertilizing the growth of delusion, which is the weed which will kill the flower?




NB: Drawings by Pia Guerra

Climate Change Deniers and Climate Change Zealots

If Donald Snowflake rejects the Paris Accord on Climate, then I'm for the Paris agreement. This is the guy who insisted Obama was born in Kenya, or at least that his birth certificate was fraudulent, who insisted he won the popular vote, who insisted the crowd attending his coronation was bigger than any other President's Inaugural crowd. So, ipso facto, if Donald Snowflake says it, it must be wrong.

On the other hand, I have so often found that when I was most sure about something it often meant I did not know enough about it to doubt, and this may be true of the Paris accord.


Having heard some more dispassionate discussions on the subject, I'm not at all sure Paris makes much difference. The nations who signed on are voicing their concern, but they are in no way really committed, and may well be deterred from whatever efforts they currently anticipate by internal forces both commercial and engineering.

He thinks global warming is for real

Reading the analysis in Reason.org, I wonder whether lefties like me are not capable of as much irrationality, at times, as those inane nabobs of the Right.


The strategies and tactics of the Paris accord may simply not be the best choices to achieve the goals toward whcih some climate scientist think we should strive. Lowering CO2 in the atmosphere may be a good thing, but rising levels might also be a good thing, up to a point.  And achieving this goal might be done by changing behavior and technology in the high tech developed world, but trying to get a billion Indians in the subcontinent to stop burning wood in stoves may be wishful thinking.

As Julian Morris pointed out in his analysis in Reason, org., an obvious tactic which might help the planet would be for participating nations to agree to stop subsidizing fossil fuels, but, as Morris noted, slyly, there was no appetite for doing this.  What he was implying, of course, was signatory nations were eager to appear righteous, but not as willing to actually incur conflict or cost in pursuing climate friendly actions.


He also pointed out that as CO2 rises, forests tend to flourish, as they breathe the stuff in and crops growing more vigorously.


I am as guilty as anyone of freaking out at the suggestion forests might actually be contributing to climate change in an adverse way.
Some years ago, I wrote a snarky blog about Nadine Unger, the Yale forestry professor who had the temerity to suggest forests may not be the best thing that ever happened to our planet, in climate terms. I went so far as to characterize her as a blond bimbo, but was chastened by Ms. Maud's stern reminder I was being an insensitive male chauvinist pig and to stick to the science.

Prof. Unger, outdoor mode

"Writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, Professor Nadine Unger of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES) reports that large-scale forest losses during the last 150 years have reduced global emissions of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs), which control the atmospheric distribution of many short-lived climate pollutants, such as tropospheric ozone, methane, and aerosol particles.
Using sophisticated climate modeling, Unger calculated that a 30-percent decline in BVOC emissions between 1850 and 2000, largely through the conversion of forests to cropland, produced a net global cooling of about 0.1 degrees Celsius. During the same period, the global climate warmed by about 0.6 degrees Celsius, mostly due to increases in fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions."--Eurekalert


I wasn't the only one. That blog posting set the record for responses, most of which were from outraged liberals who did not like the implications of Professor Unger's science.

Prof. Unger, Academic mode

So all this is to say, when we travel the road of political diatribe, we run the risk of violating science and, ultimately, intellectual honesty.
The fact is Donald Snowflake may be right for the wrong reasons occasionally.
Paris may be one of those occasions, much as I hate to admit it.

The Myth of the Free Market

Americans love their myths, or, put another way, America is a delusional state.
There are lovely ideas which have never got close enough to reality to warrant anything but a mythical status, like unicorns and the tooth fairy, they bring a smile to the face of an otherwise beleaguered nation.

The myth of the virile tough guy

There is the myth of meritocracy, the myth of the efficiency of private enterprise, the myth of the citizen who pulls himself up by his own boot straps,  the myth of the home of the free land of the brave, the myth of the valiant policeman who wishes only to serve and protect, the myth of the patriotic soldier who wishes only to free others, the myth of justice to be found in courtrooms, the myth of health insurance companies who care about your health, the myth of Supreme Court justices judging cases as umpires call balls and strikes, the myth that any child can grow up to become President, (or should want to), the myth of America as the leader of the free world, the myth of the "role model," the myth of the President of the United States as the most powerful man in the world.

But the myth of the "free market" in America is a special case . It rises above all the others as an article of faith and an emperor without clothes.

Emission free car

If you ever believed we have a free market in these United States, just read the editorial in the New York Times which attests that lobbyists for automobile dealerships have managed to exclude the sale of Tesla electronic cars directly to the public in Utah, Texas and Connecticut.  Apparently, if these low emission cars are going to be sold in these states, the auto dealerships want their cut.

We can see what happens when markets become freer in the case of Uber and Lyft.  Once these ride services became available, the licensed taxis were nigh on annihilated. Just as horse drawn carriages gave way to motor cars, the taxi medallion went the way of the mastodon.
Makes one ask why there was any need for taxi regulation and licensing in the first place, although in the days before GPS, one might have argued you didn't want taxi drivers driving you if they were constantly lost. But the yellow cab in New York was the ultimate collusion between a monopolistic private enterprise and a governmental licensing agency. Everybody got paid. Everybody got happy. The consumer got taken.

Certification and licensing were sold as quality control programs, meant to protect a public which needed knowledgeable people to vouch for the competence of the electrician, plumber, doctor and dentist.  But that whole scheme has been so corrupted and distorted by the profit motive, whether it be profit for the government or for a non governmental organization, the whole notion of protecting the public has long since vanished.

Climate control is a Chinese Plot

I just got notified  my federal Drug Enforcement Administration license needed to be paid for. This DEA license is required for me to practice in any state, and which allows me to write prescriptions for codeine and testosterone and it allows some central DEA computer to track my prescriptions to be sure I'm not selling them wholesale.  But now,  I need a new and separate federal license for each state where I have an office, so I need one for Massachusetts and one for New Hampshire. This is like saying you need a separate passport for each state where you own property. So if you live in Massachusetts but have a summer cottage in Maine, you need two passports.

My wife is a certified nurse midwife. She used to have to pay the certifying organization for the courses she needed to pass the three biannual exams she needed to "maintain" her certification and she  paid for the exams and then the licensing fee.
Of course, they've been delivering babies pretty much the same way for centuries, but she needed to update her tests just to be sure she hadn't forgotten how; next they'll make us all take our driver's license exams every three years, just to prove we are competent drivers and to be sure we've kept up with all the new developments in driving on interstate highways. Did you know the road signs are color coded now? What does an orange sign mean?

She's retired now and the certifying organization, ever eager to seize a profit from somewhere, called her to ask if she would consider taking only one of the three required tests so she could continue to write "CNM" after her name.
"Why would I want to do that?"
"So you can be carried on our rolls as a 'certified midwife in good standing.'"
"And why would that matter to me?"
"Well, you never know."

I am a board certified coal miner

Electricians have to take exams with algebraic equations they never use in practice. Barbers have to be licensed, even though they no longer wield razors.
Pediatricians, who have to pass a whole variety of exams to be licensed, have to pass yet another exam to be called "board certified."
If you are board certified you can advertise that fact as a bragging right to put down those questionable practitioners who are not. And some hospitals, out of laziness, make board certification a requirement for hospital privileges--it's easier asking for the certificate than trying to evaluate doctors on their own. And some states now even require these certifications for licenses to practice medicine.
But the organization that sells this exam was not content to gouge these low paid doctors for the courses, the exams and the "educational" materials used to prep for the exams; the certifying association  realized  it could make the certifications and never ending source of revenue and profit and so they decided all pediatricians needed to be "re certified "every three years.
Finally, the pediatricians had enough. They discovered the CEO of the certifying organization made $3 million a year, while they were lucky to pull in $90,000 a year in New York City and they organized a resistance and refused to take any more exams.

Show Me Your Certificate

The Free State Project, that libertarian group based now in New Hampshire, has tapped into resentment about this sort of corruption and railed against all licensing. But they say this sort of protection can be done by private companies.  If experience is any guide, the private enterprise version of protecting the public is even more corrupt than the government version.

In an age where you cannot possibly assess the competence of people who perform services for you, we need something.
What we've got currently is not that.

Summer Comes to New Hampshire

Summer has finally settled in, in Hampton, New Hampshire.

When I first moved here, one of my neighbors told me there are four distinct seasons in New Hampshire: Almost winter, winter, still winter and road repair season.

I've got through 9 winters up here and only one was really daunting. That winter it started snowing in early January and it snowed every single day for two months and it was cold enough the snow did not  melt between storms, so it just piled up higher and higher until it reached the roof over my front porch, so I could clear that roof by simply standing on the snow without a ladder.

Illegal Norway Maple growing in Hampton

This past winter was not like that, but it did snow most weeks between January and March. They clear the snow efficiently up here, so I missed only one day of work. 

Spring this year, however was cool and apart from a few hot days, you wore light jackets until Mid June. 

But now it's really summer. I know this because the sand sculpture on Route 27 just arose. 

Route 27 streams down toward the Atlantic until it finally ends at the sea wall at North Beach and you find yourself looking out over the gray ocean. Three miles before that happens, however, the road rises as it passes over an old railroad trestle and then it descends to cross Route 1 at the main intersection of  town.

Plaice Cove

Hampton is actually two towns: There is the town the tourists know, which is "Hampton Beach" which is a honky tonk cluttered with T shirt shops and pizza pallors and, teeming with traffic along  a broad white sand beach and people crowding the streets in flip flops and bathing suits, flaunting tatoos, displaying bodies which would look better with a little less display.

And then there is the real town of Hampton, where the year rounders live. 
This is centered at the intersection of Rte 27 and Rte 1, with the restaurant, "The Old Salt" which might be better named, "The Old Fish Fry" as it discharges a cloud of fried food smell which hangs over the crossroads. Across the street is the hardware store and next to that is Hagan's restaurant and bar,  and on the other corner is the Bistro attached to Chez Boucher, a french cooking school and haute cuisine restaurant. 

The town has finally decided to spend the money to bury the unsightly power lines which mar the scene. Or at least, the town has appropriated money to study the prospect of spending the money to bury the wires.
Spending money in Hampton is always a fight: Only recently did the middle school finally get the vote to do necessary repairs, after years of denial at the town voting during the "warrants." So it is something short of miraculous the money for burying the power lines is even being considered.

The summer ritual on Route 27 is the fashioning of the sand sculpture.  The man who owns the house on the northwest side of the route commissions a sand sculpture which covers part of his front lawn right up to the sidewalk.
My favorite was a bare breasted mermaid, languorously posed with a come hither look, but mysteriously, after a few weeks,  the breasts got reworked to include a discrete  top, or bra, which ruined the look.

Since then, the sculptures have been forgettable, but this year there is a bastardization of the old Coppertone advertisement which showed a dog pulling down the lower half of a young girl's swimming suit revealing her untanned bottom. This evolved from a much tamer drawing, and became an iconic ad which may just smack of child pornography today. 

The girl was about three or four, clearly pre pubescent, and in the 1950's and 1960's when nakedness was embarrassing and unwholesome, this was accepted as "cute" much as naked baby photos were. 

Personally, I never got all the winking and smiling about naked children, nor the relevance of children to Coppertone. You might think, well, you don't want to expose children to sunlight for fear of inducing skin cancer later in life, but in the days this ad ran, it was thought sunbathing was healthy and the add was about getting a tan and exposing yourself to its healthy rays.

Of course, over the years, this ad has been parodied from Rolling Stone Magazine to Playboy.



















In this year's sculpture she's all grown up and her bare bottom may or may not be untanned, but she cups a well developed breast in one hand and looks angry.
 The dog is just as cute as ever, but now the "Just for the Sun of It " inscription carries a different sort of implication.

If the mermaid was enough to scandalize the townspeople, then this new image ought to send at least some church goers into orbit. 

This is one of those instances you wish we still had small town newspapers in New Hampshire. Wouldn't you like to know how these images are chosen? Is it the homeowner suggesting it or does the artist have carte blanche or do they get together over beers or do they present designs to the local Rotarian club? 

Really, there is so much to ask about this transitory edifice and what it might say about life in small town New Hampshire. 

The Donald Etiquette

My brother once remarked that when the medical profession could offer cures for the vast majority of diseases it treated, then he would stop wearing his white lab coat when he saw patients or represented the profession in formal settings.


Donald at a Cabinet Meeting: drawing by   Pia Guerra

What he was saying, of course, is doctors wear white lab coats to project an image, a mystique some might call it, for the sake of those who want them to be more than simple human beings.  For the same reason, judges wear robes, priests vestments and generals wear stars on their hats. 

People want you to perform a role when you are an authority figure. They need that.

In the case of the President of the United States, people like calling him "Mr. President." Staff members who knew him when, old friends call the man they knew before he was President, "Mr. President," much as, I imagine, people call the Pope "Your holiness" even if they knew him when he was just a humble priest in South America.


Pia Guerra took artist license: he's much fatter

What Donald Trump has done is to shred that practice, either intentionally or simply as a part of his oppositional  personality.  So Presidents are not suppose to say the word, "Shit" publicly. As George Carlin said, that is one of those forbidden words which is never, under any circumstances, acceptable in polite society. People use the word, all the time, but everyone understands, you are not supposed to.

When Trump addresses a crowd and says, "We gonna bomb the shit out of ISIS, when I'm President," the crowd reacts joyously, because, among other things, he has admitted them backstage--he is saying we are such good friends, we can say these things to one another. Additionally, he is sticking a thumb in the eye of all those up tight, rule obeying rule laying down types the members of his crowd despise.

The other night, Mark Shields, responding to a question about Donald Trump's tweets about Mika and Joe of the "Morning Joe" show shook his head and clucked and despaired about how low "we" have fallen.


Pia Guerra captures the essence 

You have a man in the White House who just isn't behaving "correctly." He is not obeying norms. He is indifferent to precedent. His fans love him for it, of course, but Mark Shields has spent decades playing a game of droll jibes at the powers that be, and now he is out of the game. He doesn't understand the rules. 

So what are the rules? We can only infer the rules. Observe.  Nobody is quite sure what Mika Brzeznyksi said to provoke Donald but here's a guess:

One segment that may have led to Trump’s tweets came when Morning Joe‘s panel was discussing the recent story that President Trump had put up fake TIME Magazine covers of himself at his golf clubs. Mika Brzezinski said, “Nothing makes a man feel better than making a fake cover of a magazine about himself, lying every day and destroying the country.”
(from the blog, "Heavy.")

So, Donald watches this derisive comment and follows his rule, as his Press Secretary explains, "When he is attacked, he hits back twice as hard," which in Donald's case is, "Oh, so you are really fat and ugly and you had a face lift and are still bleeding and nobody watches your program anyway, so there."
This behavior causes Mark Shields to despair. 
Not me. I think this is just swell. 

Oh, Pia! You got it.

We now know the rules. 
1. Call him "Donald"

This whole Mr. President thing is out the window. 
We no longer have to say, well you are the President and I respect the office, if not the person, so I will talk to you the way I talked to my third grade teachers, with "Ma'm" and "sir." 

In the military, you salute the rank, not the man. That is thought to be important to discipline. But in civilian life, we don't need that sort of discipline. Who are we trying to impress? Just call the guy, "Donald." Not "Mr. President," just Donald. And not Mr. Trump. You use that sort of formality as a signal of respect. But now we have doctors who go by their first names. They call you by your first name and you respond accordingly. Same for Donald.
 In Court, you call the judge, "Your honor" if you know what's good for you, but you can call Donald Donald because he doesn't have any real power over you, the way a judge would.
Actually, I like "Donald Snowflake."

2. Point to his personal characteristics:

He is not just chubby. The man is morbidly obese. Call him Fat Donald.
He is a comb over, bald guy. Call him Fat Comb Over Donald.
Hey, Donald, what is that dead yellow thing you're wearing on your head? Canary head-dress? 
He does not express himself cogently. He says he has all the best words and he claims to have a high IQ. Call him Dumb Donald. Donald Dimwit. 

Ouch, Pia.

3. Hammer away at his most obvious policy weaknesses.
--There is no such thing as "clean coal." There is no dark light, no tall midget, no immaculate stain, no fast sloth. There is just dirty coal, sometimes scrubbed and treated but never clean.
--Those factory jobs are not coming back.  The coal mining jobs are not coming back, not in any real numbers. The days of coal mining and assembly line work are going the way of icemen hauling ice on horse drawn carts, of coach men driving a team of horses, of outhouses, of lamp lighters on city streets. 

4. Refer to him without naming him, but unmistakably: 
The infant in the White House.
The thumbsucker who signs executive orders.
The phony tough guy who picks on immigrant kids and thinks he's beaten up a terrorist.

Who needs a White House Photographer when we've got Pia?

5. And do not react to his Tweets or taunts by expressing hurt or indignation. Do not claim to be offended on behalf of women or short people or any other group.
React by laughing. "Oh, that dimwit again. Donald Dimwit throwing his snowflake punches. The guy's got no class. He may be rich. He may be getting richer. But he's clearly got more money than brains."

And all like that. 
But most of all, read whatever Pia Guerra posts.