Last weekend, Richard and Tracy invited us to join them, Tracy’s brother and Tracy’s parents on a tour of a Nike Hercules missile site on in Marin Headlands followed by pizza in Mill Valley. It was great fun and more than a little disconcerting. To explain let me give a little background, the Nike missile family was a Cold War-era family of SAMs – Surface to Air Missles – designed to protect what we are now calling The American Homeland. The last iteration of the Nike family was the Nike Hercules and there were 274 Nike-Hercules batteries and 10,000 missiles spread across the Homeland and more overseas. In the Bay Area, alone, there were 23 Nike Herc sites. All this I knew or sort of knew, because, for a short while, I was the driver for the General in charge of all the Nike Herc sites from Hawaii to Salt Lake City.

What I didn’t know – or remember, anyway – was that these missile sites were equipped with thermonuclear warheads. At least that is what we were told during the tour and the Internet seems to confirm it. The site we toured, Nike Missile launch site SF-88 in the Marin Headlands, was a typical Nike Missile site with seven of the nine missiles equipped with thermonuclear warheads, each warhead was hundreds of times more powerful than the bombs we used to kill about 225,000 Japanese. Theoretically, the thermonuclear weapons were required to take out massed groups of Russian Badger bombers, presumably loaded with their own nuclear weapons. As an aside, why the planners thought the Russians would be attacking in a mass is unfathomable to me, other than as a theory used as a way to sell weapons and make more money. When we destroyed both Hiroshima and Nagasaki we only used one plane each and one nuclear bomb each. If I were ordering the alleged attack, if anybody would order the attack, I/they would space the planes out. End aside. Actually, I just don’t want to believe that we had 161 thermonuclear warheads, each warhead hundreds of times more powerful than the primitive weapons we used on the Japanese, spread around the Bay Area. But we did, I guess.

In 2014, I visited the now-defunct Nike Hercules radar site on Hawk Hill, overlooking San Francisco and it brought back memories of being stationed there. I’ve reprinted part of that post (with some modifications).

Standing there, looking at the view of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco, I remembered one warm summer morning in 1965, when I drove a general up to this site. I was a Sergeant – a buck sergeant, E5 – teaching Germans Continues Wave radar at Orogrande, New Mexico, when I met General Lolli. He had recently taken over the 28th NORAD Region – NORAD stands for North American Aerospace Defense Command – and, because I was from the Bay Area, I was Lolli’s guide at Orogrande while he was on a tour of the various missile training facilities. At the end of the tour, Lolli asked me if I wanted to be transferred to Hamilton Air Base in California to be his driver. Duh! of course I did.

While we were stationed at Hamilton Air Force Base, neither of us lived there because neither one of us was in the Air Force. Lolli was an Army general – the only Army commander of a NORAD region – and I was his Army driver so I had to live at an Army facility. Fort Baker was the closest Army barracks and I had a private room near the entry (General Lolli lived at the Fontana West in San Francisco). Almost every morning, he would drive across the Golden Gate bridge and pick me up at Fort Baker, I would salute him and then drive him to Hamilton. On this particular morning, Lolli told me to drive him up the hill to the Nike Hercules Radar and Command Site overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge.

As an aside, this was the height of the Cold War and the country was in full, paranoic, war hysteria. Schoolkids would practice hiding under our desks when the air raid sirens went off outside; F 101 Voodoo fighters, would take off out of Hamilton Air Base, looking for nuclear-armed Russian TU-16 Badger heavy bombers; and our final defense was a series of twenty-three Nike Hercules Surface to Air Missile – SAMs to the cognoscenti – sites around the Bay Area. At the time, I knew the system was designed for nukes but I don’t remember if this battery had missiles armed with nuclear weapons. End aside.

As we drove up to the site, Lolli called in a mock attack and, when we got there, the klaxon was going off and everybody was running to their battle stations. The missile site had probably been at DEFCON 5, but Lolli had now called it up to a simulated DEFCON 1, Air Defense Warning RED. I don’t know if targets had been assigned, but, at the nearby launch sites, the blast doors were opened and the missiles were brought up on their elevators, ready to launch.

When the All Clear finally did come and General Lolli got back in the car, he was furious. It had taken about fifteen minutes too long to come up to DEFCON 1 and Lolli has just relieved a full-bird-Colonel of his command. As we drove down the hill, the General said, “If this had been real, I would have lost San Francisco.“

Now, almost 49 years later, we are in a warm spell, the only fog is across The Bridge, the Nike Hercules Missile Site is no longer operational, and San Francisco is still there, sparkling in the sun. I watch a freighter go under The Bridge and a Raven joins me. Maybe she wants me to give her – and I am saying her with no idea if it is a him or a her – some food, maybe he is just enjoying the view like me, maybe she wants to chastise me for all the harm my race has done to the planet. I tell her,  “Hey, it could be worse, we could have fired off those missiles, we could have destroyed everything in a flash, more than 10,000 flashes, actually. But since you are here, just stay still and look over here, let me get your picture.”

“I will say that the politics may or may not work out in the right way, but we’re a country of laws. You have to enforce the laws.” Andrew Yang

It seems to me that the Democrats are a little like the dog that caught the school bus; now what do they do? Putting aside, for a second, all the good reasons for Impeachment, there are lots of good reasons not to Impeach. Trump is, by reputation, an excellent street fighter, willing to escalate a disagreement to a wild Twitter attack that most politicians are not equipped to handle, the whole affair is too “inside the beltway” and too technical to be compelling to many, if not most, Americans are a couple. Pelosi’s assessment has been that the people are not really interested, they want the time spent on lawmaking – lawmaking which, in an increasingly toxic Washington, even without Impeachment, is almost impossible under Pelosi, Trump, and McConnel – and the Impeachment hearings, a Democratic action, will be blamed as a distraction. Perhaps, most importantly, Impeachment is a political act, a very Divisive Act. This impeachment is not going to be good for the country. Maybe it will be better than no impeachment, but it will not be good, it will not be healing.

I share those concerns. I was never a big fan of the Russian collusion story line. Yeah, Trump wanted the Russians to tap the Democrats’ computers and even asked for their help on National Television. And, sure, the Russians probably did help Trump – or tried to – but, so what? Don’t get me wrong, I do think that Trump may be a crook and he is surely a con-man but I don’t think the help he received rises to the level of an indictable crime. The problem with Trump is not just one thing, one crime he committed, it’s that he has committed hundreds of almost crimes, or sort of crimes, or should be crimes. He has slimed the Presidency more than criminalized it. He is, by nature, an autocrat who puts himself above the Government, and, in doing so, he is attacking us, us being Western Liberal Democracy. Our Courts, our liberal Constitution with its separation of powers, our liberal laws, and conventions, our professed ideals, are all under attack.

Trump was only a candidate when the Russian thing happened and, as much as I thought it was, at best, a worthless snipe hunt, the rules are and should be different for a sitting President. Even by the White House summary of the conversation, Trump seems to have strong-armed the Ukraine President. He refused to act in a way mandated by Congress, holding back the shipment of a much needed defensive weapons system to leverage a personal favor (or partisan political favor, if you prefer). And that’s according to the White House version which is undoubtedly a whitewashed version. The Administration knew this was illegal; they locked down the phone conversation records in as secret a file as they could, hiding it as deep as possible.  

By doing so, President Trump has given Congress no option other than Impeachment; the whole purpose of the House, the People’s Chamber, is to control or, at least, restrain the Executive’s actions. That is why the House is given the power of the purse, they control the money. I keep reading that the Impeachment Claus – The President…of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors – is unclear, but it’s unclear on purpose, to allow a broad interpretation. At the time the Constitution was written, the new United States were surrounded by tyrants. The Founders knew tyrants and they didn’t trust them; tyrannical rule is what they were revolting against and they wrote the Impeachment Clause as wide as possible; if the Executive became a Tyrant, acting in a way the people didn’t approve, the Founders said The President…of the United States, shall be removed.

An entire fox family wandered through and frolicked in our backyard. Well, that may be sort of hyperbole, but a couple of days ago, when I got a glimpse from the kitchen window of what I was sure was a fox and, looked out the door to get a better view, I saw fox three pups running and playing on the path to the compost thingy. They were adorable; I was so transfixed, I didn’t even get a picture. Precious Mae was not happy about it but everybody I’ve talked to in the neighborhood is thrilled.

The same afternoon I read a short news flash that a second Cougar had been spotted in Golden Gate Park, after my first reaction of How did that cougar get into Golden Gate park?, I started to wonder how our interactions with wild animals are changing. Because we are no longer killing wildlife, previously shy animals, like cougars, are adjusting and moving back in. In our area, they are being welcomed but not encouraged. I know that’s not universal – sheep farmers are not liking the increase in wolves, for example – but I suspect people feel similar in most places where nature has been thoroughly vanquished.

Still, how we adjust will be interesting, because there are real consequences to letting wild animals into our neighborhoods and, while I’m thrilled that it’s happening, I don’t think we’ve really thought this out. I once read that Racoons don’t become tame, they become brazen and I’m sure that is even more true for a large carnivore like a cougar. Lately, I’ve been listening to On The Media podcasts and one of them talked about how much the car industry influenced our National Thinking and the subtle but toxic belief that’s what’s good for people rich enough to own cars, almost always white, is better for the nation. That’s our default position. Our mindset has been that when we pay for public transportation we are subsidizing it but we never hear that about highways even though we spend much more subsidizing highways and the fuel cars use to drive on them. We take that mindset with us when we think about letting cougars in. When we think of potential problems, we think about them getting cats or small dogs, but we don’t think about it from the point of view of a poor person who can’t afford a car and often has to wait at a bus stop in the dark.

At the request of the Vice Premier of China, Liu He, and due to the fact that the People’s Republic of China will be celebrating their 70th Anniversary….on October 1st, we have agreed, as a gesture of good will, to move the increased Tariffs on 250 Billion Dollars worth of goods (25% to 30%), from October 1st to October 15th. A pair of tweets from President Trump on the day he fired Bolten. (Or the day after Bolton quit if you prefer.)

When I first read the two Tweets – Tweet thread? – above, from President Trump, I was sort of dumbfounded. They? It just seems so wacky. How does the Chinese Vice Premier do that? email? Ask through the ambassador? Phone? “Good morning Mr. President. Say, since October 1st is our 70th, would you mind putting off increasing the tariffs for a couple of weeks? Thanks.” “Oh, sure. I had forgotten it was your birthday. How would two weeks work?” I can understand if the President put off the tariffs for a couple of weeks because China and the USA were working on a trade deal, but for a birthday? It seems to me that President Trump might have another strategy – besides keeping himself in the constant limelight – and that is to change the subject.

Whatever the reason, what most tickled me – in a slightly disturbing way – were some of the comments. Matthew J Show who bills himself as host of the MatthewJshow podcast, Tweets: Leadership when it counts! Well done President Trump! for example, or RD – which, apparently, stands for real defender – and is a Conservative / Sports Fan / Proudly Retweeted by POTUS says: Always a gentleman and a master negotiator our president is (RD is also a fan of Yoda’s syntax, I guess), or Adas whose tag says Adas has been professionally diagnosed with winning personality disorder™ – I love the trademark, BTW – and wears a green MAGA hat in her photo, Tweets: Shows the CCP who’s the BOSS in this relationship. President Trump is very NICE and he’ll let them take some time off! Back to losing after Oct 15th! One of the problems with Tweeting and texting for that matter is that it is hard to detect sarcasm and when I first read Adas’s Tweet, especially, I thought that this must be sarcastic, but when I went to her home page, I see that she Tweets things like how much Sweeden doesn’t like its healthcare system or The American flag has always been the international symbol of FREEDOM. Now, the US President is one too! so I don’t think she is being sarcastic.

That brings me back to my question, Can These People Be Real? Who are they? Was anybody ever that head over heels in love with Obama or is this a new phenomenon? And the answers are Yes, They are outwardly normal people, and Probably, but there does seem to be something in the Trumpian universe that promotes sycophantry. Maybe sycophantry comes naturally to the kind of people who like authoritarian leaders. Contrary to what we are taught from childhood on, everybody does not want our democracy. Some people just seem to like having a Dear Leader who holds unlimited power and is way above them. Somebody who is infallible and, if nothing else, authoritarians have to be infallible. I, personly, like my leaders to be common people who rose to power, that is why I like Ulysses S. Grant over Robert E. Lee – it does help that Grant was a much better, more innovative, tactician and strategist than Lee – and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez over George Bush, but that is just my preference. So, yeah, they are real but, the good news is that there are not as many of them as they would have you think, which reminds me of one of my favorite Grant stories.

After the second night at Goliad, Benjamin and I started to make the remainder of the journey alone. We reached Corpus Christi just in time to avoid “absence without leave.” We met no one not even an Indian–during the remainder of our journey, except at San Patricio. A new settlement had been started there in our absence of three weeks, induced possibly by the fact that there were houses already built, while the proximity of troops gave protection against the Indians. On the evening of the first day out from Goliad, we heard the most unearthly howling of wolves, directly in our front. The prairie grass was tall and we could not see the beasts, but the sound indicated that they were near. To my ear it appeared that there must have been enough of them to devour our party, horses and all, at a single meal. The part of Ohio that I hailed from was not thickly settled, but wolves had been driven out long before I left. Benjamin was from Indiana, still less populated, where the wolf yet roamed over the prairies. He understood the nature of the animal and the capacity of a few to make believe there was an unlimited number of them. He kept on towards the noise, unmoved. I followed in his trail, lacking moral courage to turn back and join our sick companion. I have no doubt that if Benjamin had proposed returning to Goliad, I would not only have “seconded the motion” but have suggested that it was very hard-hearted in us to leave Augur sick there in the first place; but Benjamin did not propose turning back. When he did speak it was to ask: “Grant, how many wolves do you think there are in that pack?” Knowing where he was from,and suspecting that he thought I would over-estimate the number, I determined to show my acquaintance with the animal by putting the estimate below what possibly could be correct, and answered: “Oh, about twenty,” very indifferently, and rode on.

In a minute we were close upon them, and before they saw us. There were just TWO of them. Seated upon their haunches, with their mouths close together, they had made all the noise we had been hearing for the past ten minutes. I have often thought of this incident since when I have heard the noise of a few disappointed politicians who had deserted their associates. There are always more of them before they are counted.