Bondi's firing of top DOJ ethics official led me to decide it was time to turn my protest flag upside down

 

I was going back and forth about how to display my American flag at protests as I saw more people with their flags upside down signalling that the coutry was in severe distress. The next national protest is Thurday (link).

The photos above show our flags at the No Kings demonstration. You can see someone with their flag upside down.

I wasn’t sure whether enough people understood what the upside down flag meant for me to follow suit.

I wrote about this on April 26th here:

I didn’t want anyone to think I was disrespecting the flag, hence my indecision about how to display it.

I flew it this way at home on Flag Day:

I want to stop MAGA from owning the flag and their flying it as proof that it was them who were the true patriots.

There is no doubt that American democracy is in distress. Historically, at sea flags were inverted as a signal that the ship was in dire need of assistance.

If we’d been on a ship, the ship of state, and it was about to sink and we were trying to call for help by inverting the flag, we’d have already watched our vessel go down and the flag being submerged beneath the waves. We’d be trying to stay afloat in icy waters and we’d soon freeze to death, pun intended. The icebergs in our waters now carry guns.

Readers of this do not need a list of the reasons I say that Old Ironsides, the USS Constitution, and all it represents, has been cannonballed by Trump and MAGA.

I am just writing about the final wave which, for me, crashed over the ship of democracy.

We are going to one of the Thursday nationwide protests against the Trump administration which are planned for this Thursday, July 17th, to observe the five year anniversary of the death of John Lewis. We will take our flags (the USA flag above a smaller Pride flag) and signs. 

This HuffPost story was what made me decide to change the position of the flag.

See what Joseph Tirrell posted on LinkedIn in response to being notified that he was fired by clicking here 1

The term ethics is often used interchangeably with morality (see the Britannica). Ethics is typically associated with societal and institutional standards of correct and right conduct. I’ve never seen an American entity called “The Office of Morality.” The Taliban, however, does have a morality police (officially “The Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice”). It enforces strict interpretations of Islamic law in Afghanistan. They impose regulations on personal behavior, mostly suppressing the rights of women. They often severely punish those who violate their rules.

If we had morality police enforcing the views about how people should treat each other with respect, the old fashioned Golden Rule, Trump who fancies himself to be the golden president, would be severely punished.

In the United States we don’t have a Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Instead we have The Department of Justice.

I wonder what a Taliban scholar who believes that their version of a department of justice is enforcing righteous values would say about the values of a country whose own department of justice just fired their top morality official.

A certain irony:

Russian dictators sent their enemies to Siberia where the winter months were nothing to sneeze at (so to speak):

Reference.

Trump and henchman Homan, along with his henchwoman Kristi-cream Noem, are sending their enemies to a hellishly hot Everglades swamp with dime sized mosquitos (reference).

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On Friday, July 11th, I received the below letter from Attorney General Pamela Bondi.

Until Friday evening, I was the senior ethics attorney at the Department of Justice responsible for advising the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General directly on federal employee ethics. I was also responsible for the day-to-day operations of the ethics program across the Department. I led a small, dedicated team of professionals and coordinated the work of some 30 other full-time ethics officials, attorneys, paralegals and other specialists across the Department of Justice, ensuring that the 117,000 Department employees were properly advised on and supported in how to follow the Federal employee ethics rules. 

My career in public service has so far spanned a quarter of a century. I started as a United States Naval Officer, graduating from the ROTC program at the University of Michigan. After a 6-year military career, I earned a law Degree from the Detroit School of Law at Michigan State University. I started at the FBI in 2006 in the Presidential Management Fellows Program. At the FBI, I worked in a variety of offices thanks to the PMF program and eventually I went to work for the FBI’s Office of Integrity and Compliance. From there, I moved to the Departmental Ethics Office at Main Justice as Deputy Director. Finally, in 2023, I was promoted to the Senior Executive Service and the Position of Director of the Ethics Office. 

My public service is not over, and my career as a Federal civil servant is not finished. I took the oath at 18 as a Midshipman to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States.” I have taken that oath at least five more times since then. That oath did not come with the caveat that I need only support the Constitution when it is easy or convenient. I look forward to finding ways to continue in my personal calling of service to my country. I encouraged anyone who is reading this to do the same. I believe in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." I also believe that Edmund Burke is right and that "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing."

I received a number of calls and messages of support in the last few days. Thank you to everyone who has reached out. Be well.

Trump's message: Don't call me a ruthless dictator, I'm a shoo-in for the Nobel Peace Prize. By Hal M. Brown

Trump would never dare to don royal robes or dress like Vegas Elvis, but we do know how he loves his gold. He won’t give up his trademark dark blue suit and red tie, even though in his mind he feels like he wears a 24 ct. gold suit. Instead, he’s tackified the Oval Office with gold plated glitz. Gotta love that cheesy gold. (I’ll keep my gold color on actual cheese.)

Is it possible that Trump will decide that to really be the Golden President he can’t just enrich the oligarchs with tax breaks, but has do much more? You know, those old fashioned and quaint ideas about the value of human life. Don’t bring up the hundreds of thousands of lives his decisions, from Covid to defunding USAID, have cost. Pesky details…

We just learned that Trump is sticking it to Putin and making sure Ukraine has the weapons they must have to hold their own against Russia. It all boils down to Trump’s psychology. 

On MSNBC, when I wrote this, they were talking about Trump returning the middle finger that Putin gave to him with Russia’s most recent drone attacks against Ukraine. Putin said “fuck you, Trump” and apparently this was too much for our very own malignant narcissist.

We may not live to learn whether there was some real (not Comey fake news) “Russia, Russia, Russia,” effort to help Trump win his first election, or Putin blackmail, pee tapes or whatever, that Vlad was holding over Trump. Perhaps Trump just admired Putin as a fellow strongman. Maybe it was both.

Who the hell knows what is going on in Trump’s careening pinball mind as it bounces all over the place at any given moment in time? 

Maybe Trump has decided that he really, really, really wants to stick it to all his critics and win the Nobel Peace Prize.

I’ll show you sickos with Trump derangement syndrome, I can’t be the nasty meany you say I am since I won the prize awarded to those who have "done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” 

As I wrote this Trump was meeting with the leader of NATO for a dandy photo op, and was talking about how unhappy he was with Russia.

He repeatedly called the war “Biden’s war”and of course we’ve heard this song before, it would never have happened if he’d been president. He talked about how much he wanted to get out of the war to save all those lives. 

Then he went on to brag about our great military and the great success of the bombing of Iran. Read his as his great success.

“We make the best equipment, the best missiles, the best of everything,” he says. Then in the same breath he announced that he is going to sell this equipment to NATO and they would provide it to Ukraine. 

Best, best, best! 

When Trump talks about “best” he is referring to himself as being the best, better than the best, the biggest baddest, bestest beautiful best. He is the greatest, foremost, preeminent, premier, supreme, superlative, unrivaled, second to none, without equal, nonpareil, unsurpassed, unsurpassable, peerless, matchless, unparalleled, unbeaten, unbeatable, unexcelled, optimum, optimal, ultimate, surpassing, incomparable, ideal, perfect best. (Thank you online thesaurus.)

He said he used to be the apple of Putin’s eye… give me a fucken break… who the Holy Hell talks like that about a ruthless dictator… but I digress, I had Trump on TV as I wrote this. He distracted me with his self-congratulatory bloviating as I typed this.

Sheeet, then he threw in the Golden Dome that he’s very excited about. More gold… 

I was poleaxed… Trump seemed to be relishing taking the role of the compassionate peacekeeper who wants to save lives in Ukraine and, down the road, to helping rebuild their country. (Not for free… this will be a Trumpian version of The Marshall Plan which of course for the war torn country it won’t be a gift. Somehow you can rest assured that Trump won’t let the country be suckered in to actually giving billions to Ukraine so they can rebuild their infrastructure.1

He even threw in how he had a conversation with Melania about how awful things are in Ukraine because of Putin. Ah, the touching intimacy between husband and wife.

Could it be that Trump isn’t as turned on by cruelty as he was a few days ago? We know how he relishes inflicting pain on his enemies, from the people he is torturing in Alligator Alcatraz and everyone now living in fear of being sent there or to countries like South Sudan, to his critics at home. Hells bells, he even wants to revoke Rosie O’Donnell’s citizenship. She moved to Ireland to get away from MAGA,

There is a giant dung fly in the ointment of his quest to be the international statesman shoo-in for the Nobel Peace Prize. 

Trump, referring to Putin, said the line of the day: “I don’t want to say he’s an assassin, but he’s a tough guy…” You can’t make this shit up.

Back to winning the Nobel, note the word I’ve highlighted below about sending weapons to NATO for Ukraine.

Ah, The Art of the Deal… never give anything away that you can sell.

Can anyone imagine FDR saying that Britain had to pay the United States to help them deter the Nazis? And, although his cousin Teddy won one, FDR didn’t.

Addendum:

The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor, and armaments manufacturer Alfred Nobel. The name Nobel was connected with explosives and with inventions useful to the art of making war, but certainly not with questions related to peace. (Reference: Alfred Nobel’s thoughts about war and peace)

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The Marshall Plan, officially known as the European Recovery Program, was a U.S. initiative enacted in 1948 to provide economic aid to Western Europe after World War II, aiming to rebuild war-torn economies and prevent the spread of communism. It allocated $13.3 billion to help restore infrastructure and promote political stability in the region.

I'll be at the ocean for the next week. For my mental health I'm taking a vacation from Trump and from my Substack. By Hal M. Brown Plus: How I might have become a Hawaii surfer dude had I taken another path in my life.

I am leaving  for a nine day vacation on the Big Island, Hawaii, early Sunday morning. I will post it before we go. I won't be writing a Substack until I retrn.

Some of my readers may thinkI was hatched fully formed as a monomanical Substacker who writes about politics and often how it relates to psychology. This wasn’t always who I was. There was a juncture in my life where I had I taken another fork in the road I could have ended up as a surfer dude living in Hawaii, catching early waves, and giving lessons to tourists.

I grew up in a residential suburb of New York City in Westchester County. Every summer while all of my well-off friends went to summer camp, we went to Oakland Pool which, being of very modest means (my father was a self-employed upholsterer), what we could afford. It was private pool club in Rye, New York located on Long Island Sound. It had a giant salt water pool (below). You could also swim in Long Island Sound (behind me in the photo above) You had to walk down one of two stairways cut into a sloping concrete wall to reach the water. There was no beach. There was an always crowded public beach next door but we never went there. Next to that beach was a Playland, which was a large amusement park that also had an outdoor pool and a beach. We went to playland a couple of times each summer for the rides.

They had fireworks which were fired above the water Friday nights so on the few times when we stayed late enough we could watch them. Playland is still in operation (see website)

When I was 15 I was lucky enough to spend the entire summer in Honolulu with my Aunt Grace who had moved there when I was 13.

Above is her photo. You can barely make out the ocean in the background.

She had lived with us all my life but took the daring step of moving there without a job after a bad breakup with a boyfriend. It wasn't even a state yet. When she was younger she had a pilot license and during the war helped ferry military aircraft around the country and then worked as an air traffic controller and sold costume jewelry in some kind of enterprise I never understood.

In Hawaii she had some unusual jobs including drive a jeep that picked up the balls at a golf driving range and typing book manuscripts. She typed at least one for James Michener. She finally got a regular job at the public library which she kept until she retired.

She was a fantastic distance swimmer. In fact if you do a deep dive (no pun intended) looking for her online you will discover this NOAA article. It is about a sea turtle breeding area she discovered. It was named “Grace’s Ledge” in her honor. She’s on the bottom of page 12.

I’d never flown on an airplane when I went there. It was a long flight on a propeller DC6-B plane. I sat near the wing and was alarmed when I saw flames cming out of the back of an engine. “Nothing to worry about, it’s just backfiring” I was reassured.

As we were approaching Oahu I took a photo of Diamond Head and didn’t realize at the time that I’d taken a picture of my aunt’s house (arrow below) and other spots I would come to know well.

I learned to surf. I wasn’t at all homesick. Had my life gone a different way I could have ended up living there. 

Living in a one room apartment with my aunt wasn’t ideal, but it was doable. She had a few annoying quirks but she didn’t really drive me crazy. She was, to be colloquial, really a great lady and unlike anyone. Like my mother, her sister, she was kind and empathetic.

I made a few friends over the summer. I can easily see me having decided to stay there. Honolulu wasn’t nearly the tourist mecca that it has become. Here’s what Waikikki Beach looked like when I was there when there were only a few hotels:

The Outrigger Canoe Club is in the foreground and the Royal Hawaiian Hotel behind it. I had a kinda-not-really girlfriend named Star. B eing a shy 15 perhaps had I been a bit older that would have developed into a romance and it might have been what kept me there.

Living an entire summer in Hawaii, long enough to be really tan and have my feet so calloused I could walk anywhere barefoot, I felt that I almost fit it in. In the picture below I’m in a World War Two observation bunker on a beach not far from where we lived on the other side of Diamond Head.

This was the view from our apartment:

There was a condo across from our apartment but fortunately it didn’t block our vew of Diamond Head. 

This is what it looks like today (from their website here)

A neighbor friend and I used to walk to the top of it on weekends going up the no-railing stairs when construction workers weren’t there.

I took these photos of our place and of my aunt in her yard from there.

My aunt had a great Studebaker convertibe. If I’d been old enough to drive I strongly suspect I’d have stayed there. (The station wagon belonged to the people who own the attached house.)

Below is me on Waikikki Beach:

Here I am on the steps to my aunt’s one room over the garage apartment at the base of Diamond Head. Since then the house was torn down and replaced. It was on the corner of the main Waikakki Beach drag, Kalākaua Avenue where it ends at Coconut Street. This is what I looks like today:

I heard from my aunt after she moved to a care facility that James McArthur, who played Danno in Hawaii Five-O, lived there.

Above: That’s me on the stairs to my aunt’s apartment.

I was a fairly good surfer on waves as tall as I was, but you’ll have to take my word for it since I don’t have any photos. I could never hang ten, but I could catch waves from first break quite a distance from shore and ride them until they no longer were breaking.

I had a surfboard locker at Waikikki Beach and usually surfed several times a week.

 Sometimes I brought it home to surf in the ocean just a few steps from our place. This was somewhat dangerous because the waves broke over a reef which was less than a foot under the surface. Wiping out (how about that surfer term?) over the reef, called a reef break, could have caused a serious injury.

All the photos of me on a board which I have are the ones below. My aunt took them from a seawall near her place. They show me trying unsuccessfully to stand up. You have to take my word for it that I actually could ride a wave. In fact early one morning when hardly anybody was on the beach or surfing the movie star David Niven was trying to surf with another man. They were not far from me and were watching me to see how I managed to catch waves. He’d starred in the Best Picture Academy Award winning “Around the World in 80 Days” three years before and was a mega-star. By coincidence, Aunt Grace took my sister and me to see the movie in New York City on the huge screen when it opened. Now I wish I’d paddled over to talk to him.

I’ve always loved the ocean. 

One of the worst things about living in mid-Michigan, where I went to attend Michigan State and stayed for 20 years, was that the nearest big body of water was Lake Michigan and even that was a long drive. When we moved to Massachusetts, a lovely beach on Buzzards Bay was nearby. There were no waves to enjoy, which I would have liked, but the water was warm enough to swim in.

Off season, when it wasn’t crowded, we’d sometimes go to Cape Cod where the beaches with their dunes are beautiful, but the water was too cold to for me to go in and enjoy the waves, though some people did.

Below: Cape Cod beach in winter:

Moving to Oregon, the Pacific was also a long drive, 90 minutes on winding roads. The water there is way too cold to swim in.

Today we are leaving for an oceanside vacation on the Kona Coast of Hawaii (the Big Island).

As I write this on Saturday, I am seriously leaving my laptop at home. That way if I even want to write a Substack I won’t be able to. Of course, I can read and send emails on my iPhone and also look at the internet.

I know it is is psychologically the best if I just enjoyed the ocean and being with family and, plain and simple, getting the fear and loathing out of my head for nine or so days.

As I wrote yesterday, having the Secret Service investigate me won’t get the media attention Kathy Griffin got when she posted the image of the decapitated Trump head, but it could lead to more people reading this Substack.

If you don’t see a new Substack for awhile you can assume that either I succeeded in taking my mental health break or was arrested by federal agents for posting what I did (here) yesterday….. or both.

As I sit here at 3:00 AM (we call for an Uber to the airport at 5:15 but I couldn't sleep) I'm about to jolt my brain awake with my first gulp of morning coffee, I ask myself “how bad will things have gotten when I return to writing my Substack?”

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