Another stunning Department of Homeland Security revelation surfaced this week. Last year, Corey Lewandowski, one of DHS Secretary Noem’s top aides, entered the cockpit of a government jet uninvited during the post-take-off period, when entry to the cockpit is legally restricted, complaining because Secretary Noem’s blanket had been left behind when the crew and passengers, including Secretary Noem, had to switch aircraft for mechanical reasons.

The crew notified Lewandowski that he could not remain in the cockpit during climb-out, and Lewandowski left. Later in the flight, Lewandowski asked who should be fired because Noem’s blanket had been left behind, and the pilot in command took the responsibility. Lewandoski fired him, but the agency had to reinstate the pilot because, at Noem’s destination, there was no one qualified to fly the aircraft back to Washington, D.C.

So, not only did Noem’s people try to fire a pilot for leaving a blanket behind, but no one apparently considered the ramifications.

Apparently, Kristi Noem can’t even hang on to her own blanket and then had an aide break federal aviation rules to complain before going on to fire someone else for either her forgetfulness or that of her staff.

Over a blanket, yet?

And this is the woman in charge of the Department of Homeland Security?

I come from an older and more formal background, as if my readers and friends largely don’t know that already.

In my collegiate first year English class, when we were reading/studying The Great Gatsby, Professor Mansfield looked me and said, “You’re quietly formal, like Nick Caraway,” or words generally to that effect. When I worked in Washington, D.C., I was perfectly comfortable in a tie, collared shirt, and a three-piece suit (if with polished boots), and I haven’t owned or worn a pair of jeans in more than forty years. If I’m doing grubby work, it’s in sweatpants and work boots.

That conservatism extends largely to my writing, except for a few years when I experimented with onomatopoeia in my first fantasy novels (which, as many readers know, was not received as well as it might have been). “All right” will always be two words for me, because I shudder and wince when I see “alright” in print. I also like the pluperfect, which my editor does not.

To me, a collared long-sleeved shirt was just a shirt, but for several years now, and possibly longer (since I don’t keep track of changes in fashion terminology), those plain shirts that went with suits are now what the menswear companies term “formal” or “dress shirts.” I always thought formal or dress shirts were the pleated white shirts that went with tails and tuxedos.

Since I work from the office in my house these days, I no longer wear suits to work, but my normal attire consists of slacks, collared shirt, and vest, and, of course, polished cowboy boots, certainly nothing I’d consider especially dressy. I may add a sports coat if I go out on a chilly day. But when my wife the professor and I go out to eat in our usual work clothes, more than half the time, someone wants to know why we’re all dressed up. Usually, I suspect, it’s more on account of what she’s wearing.

This amuses me, because what we wear now would have been considered excessively casual in our twenties and thirties. But then, what most people wear on airplanes today would likely have denied them boarding back then. Denying boarding for totally inappropriate attire still might be a good idea, even if it does come from a fashion dinosaur.

Why do so many Republicans oppose requirements for ICE agents:

To wear body cameras?
To wear name badges?
To obtain a judicial warrant before forcing their way into homes, churches, and other private spaces?
To be prohibited from wearing masks?
To be held to the standards and accountability of other law enforcement agencies for use of force, especially lethal force?

Right now, ICE often operates more like Hitler’s brownshirts than like a legitimate law enforcement body, and yet Republicans oppose any reforms to ICE operating procedures, despite the killings of protesters and the blatant lying about those events.

Could it be that immigration reform is secondary to establishing the practice of punishing citizens for speaking out against heavy-handed government.

ICE isn’t the only area where the current administration is violating the Constitution and established law.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) is the foundational, congressionally enacted legal system (10 U.S.C. Chapter 47) regulating the U.S. armed forces, and one of its provisions is that military personnel must not obey unlawful orders. A specific example of an unlawful order is one that suppresses lawful protest against suppression of First Amendment speech. Yet both President Trump and his Secretary of Defense/War have attempted to suppress the free speech of members of Congress, merely for pointing out this provision of the UCMJ. That’s certainly against the Constitution.

In addition, Trump has used the Department of Justice to attack political enemies, attempting to file lawsuits where even grand juries refuse to bring indictments. Federal attorneys (from both political parties) have literally resigned by the score in protest of such tactics, and at least one federal district attorney’s office had no attorney able or qualified to carry out such an indictment.

Trump has also flagrantly ignored the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the Constitution that bars officials from accepting foreign gifts or profits, although he’s paid lip service to it by funneling such gifts to façade foundations and family members (which at least one other President has done, not that such makes it legal, but never on the scale Trump has done).

So… why do a majority of Republican members of the House and Senate put up with such patent illegalities?

Is it because they believe that if the President (but only a Republican President) declares that something is legal, then it must be? Or are they simply afraid that their own President will attack them? Either way, what does all this say about the Republicans? (Not that the Democrats are exactly paragons of virtue).

Extreme idealism shouldn’t be enshrined in government or law, and certainly not in a democratic government. Ideals are fine for personal guidance. They’re even acceptable as governmental goals, but they become tyranny when turned into unyielding law.

Take abortion. Any policy that forbids abortion is going to kill a certain and not inconsequential number of mothers, as is already happening in Texas, and any policy that allows even restricted abortion to save the life of the mother will kill a certain number of viable fetuses. It also forces doctors to choose between disobeying the law or seeing women die unnecessarily. Why? Because extremist and absolutist laws can’t take into account all the possible health permutations.

Or take immigration. The current ICE policies, combined with the legal fallacy that immigration is a civil offense, effectively make no distinction in terms of guilt between someone trying to escape being killed by a dictator in their former homeland and someone who’s committed multiple crimes. They also punish infants and children who had no choice about where they were born or where they live. But then, why should one expect any more of the descendants of people who wiped out millions of indigenous peoples and enslaved millions of others for hundreds of years, who also just conveniently forgot that they are the descendants, essentially, of illegal immigrants?

And some of those who support ICE actions and policies even profess to believe in a God, whose professed Savior said, “Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me.” And one of those supporters is even a pastor, whose professed savior didn’t say, “just the children whose preferably white parents were born here.”

Then, of course, there’s the problem of selective enforcement of absolutist laws. We’re seeing ICE agents picking up U.S. citizens because they “look different.” Add to that an administration that changes the law, without the approval of Congress, so that immigrants who were here legally became illegal overnight, and not because of anything they did, while ICE unilaterally decides that agents don’t need judicial warrants to break into homes.

But apparently that legal absolutism being applied to pregnant women and once-legal immigrants doesn’t apply to white male sexual abusers or well-connected drug dealers or white politicians convicted of financial fraud.

Fancy that.

There is a story. It was written in 1973 by Ursula LeGuin, and it’s entitled “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” In its essence, the story presents a utopian city whose successes and virtues all rest on the misery of a child confined in a basement room barely larger than a broom closet. The people of Omelas fall into two groups – those who accept the child’s misery as the cost of maintaining all the virtues of the city and those who walk away.

This is obviously an artificial dichotomy, and a fictional device to raise a question, and what that question might be has been the subject of discussions and arguments about the meaning of the story, its moral issues, and various take-offs for more than fifty years. Now, I certainly haven’t read all the philosophizing and stories/novels arising out of that story, but those I have read seem to tiptoe around one other aspect of the story, an aspect particularly pertinent to the present social/culture issues of today.

The United States is facing and not handling particularly well a number of social/political issues, all of which have negative impacts on someone or some group of individuals. No matter how one handles the issues around abortion and maternal health, in a great many instances someone is going to get hurt and die. In the case of gender issues, someone is going to be disadvantaged, hurt, or worse – no matter what law or policy is adopted. The same is true of immigration.

LeGuin’s story unrealistically simplifies the issue – one child versus the greater good of an entire city, and those who cannot accept that price must leave.

More than a half century ago, when I was in college, one of my professors defined the goal of government as “the greatest good for the greatest number.” It’s hard to argue against that generality, but what’s always bothered me about that definition is that it doesn’t address the fundamental and largely untouched of issue of how society should define the “greatest good.”

According to the Constitution, Congress is supposed to define that greater or greatest good through legislation, but right now, we have a President who is redefining the greater good by his standards, and a Congress unable to oppose him because the institution cannot agree on what’s best for the country… and, unhappily, that makes fictional Omelas look better by comparison.

The other day I got to thinking – again – about how family affects children, sometimes long after they’re children.

My father was an attorney, but he’d just passed the bar exam and married my mother in June of 1941. After Pearl Harbor, he applied for a commission in the Navy. He was accepted and spent the next five years as a Navy officer, largely as communications officer on a fast troop transport that saw a great deal of action in the Pacific. After the war, he returned to law but remained in the Naval Reserve until multiple back operations required medical retirement. Although his legal expertise was securities law, he also loved literature and wrote a number of short stories on the side but was unsuccessful in getting any published. He also played the piano and wrote songs, and was offered a job in Hollywood, but chose law school instead. He became quite successful as an attorney and even was a town councilor and mayor protem of a small town outside Denver.

I definitely did not inherit any musical talent, but I was headed for a legal career and was two years into college during the early part of the Vietnam War when the Cuban Missile crisis occurred. I realized that as a healthy and athletic young man I was far too likely to be drafted, and I had no desire to be in the Army. So I joined the Naval Reserve in the ROC program (since abolished) which required regular reserve meetings and OCS training for two summers. I graduated on schedule and was promptly ordered to duty as an ensign assigned to an assault boat unit. I was soon deployed to Vietnam, but not before applying to be a Naval Aviator. I had a short deployment in Vietnam before my orders came through for flight school. Somehow, I survived flight training and four years as a helo driver (both carrier and non-carrier postings in the Pacific), after which I had to decide whether to go career or leave active duty.

Along the way, I realized that while I was a more than competent pilot, I was not a great pilot. So I opted for civilian life and applied to law schools. I was accepted… and came to the conclusion that I really didn’t want to be a lawyer. Instead, I took a job as an industrial economist, which didn’t work out, then failed miserably as a real estate agent, before spending a year writing short stories, and selling far too few to support a family (and four children by then).

I was involved in local politics and that led to a temporary job as a campaign researcher and writer, which turned into a position as a legislative assistant in Washington, D.C., followed by other political positions most often held by lawyers, eighteen years worth. All the time, I was writing and getting published on the side, until I finally left Washington for New Hampshire to become a full-time writer.

And, in a way, I ended up with a life-pattern far more like my father’s than I’d ever anticipated, or realized until recently, although he stayed married and totally in love with his college sweetheart from the time he met her until he died more than 60 years later, and it took me three tries on that front (but my wife the opera singer and college professor and I have been married for 34 years).

Then, as she, and my offspring, well know, I can be totally clueless about some aspects of life.