First, I have a small update to report.
Perhaps you remember Ms. Desiree Fairooz, who was found guilty of laughing at something that was said during confirmation hearings for Sen. Jeff Sessions, and who was arrested for it and dragged out of the hearing room.
I reported the fact that she had been found guilty on those charges, and was subject to six months or more in jail.
The good news is that on Friday, July 14, Judge Robert Morin of the Superior Court of D.C. threw out that conviction.
The not-so-good news is that he didn’t throw out the whole thing, but instead ordered a new trial.
Two others who were arrested and convicted with her had their 10-day sentences suspended, subject to six months’ supervised probation.
But for Desiree, there will apparently be a new trial — unless the U.S. Attorney for D.C. comes to his or her senses, and decides that there are plenty better uses for the taxpayers’ money than putting a woman on trial for laughing at a bloviating politician.
Because if that’s their priority, there isn’t enough money in the world.
Today’s bigger story is that, in spite of the weather, I made it to the beach … to Dunkirk Beach, that is, in the final days of May, 1940, where more than 300,000 English soldiers waited for rescue from the approaching German army,.
To put it another way, I saw the movie “Dunkirk,” written and directed by Christopher Nolan.
It is an amazing, harrowing, deeply moving experience which I highly recommend to everyone.
It was indeed loud, at times (though not loud enough to make me use the earplugs I had brought along).
It was, at times, confusing.
There were times I didn’t know what was going on, who was the enemy and who was the friend.
But that is what happens in war — or so I am told.
There were a lot of lessons to learn from the film.
But my biggest take-away is just the fact of how desperately the U.S. was needed.
Any movie or television viewer, these days, is surely familiar with the heroic scale of American military might.
Indeed, it’s hard to find a film or program that doesn’t end with the helicopters swooping in.
But for the men standing on that beach, that day, it hadn’t happened yet.
The soldiers were standing in pathetically optimistic lines, right out on the sand, exposed to anything the enemy chose to do… hoping that rescue would come for them before the enemy did.
They were waiting for ships that either did not or could not come, for the most part …waiting ultimately, as a nation, for us: as Churchill said in one of his most famous speeches, quoted at the end of the film, “until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”
This is how we earned our place as the first among equals, at summits like the G-20 and in the world, in general: by coming to the world’s rescue, be it from war, from famine or, more recently, from financial collapse.
Yes, it costs money and more than that, it costs blood and bone.
We rescued the world, plain and simple, and kept a great deal of it safe for the next four-score years…until somehow we ended up with a President who wants to piss it all away so we can be “America First.”
First? We were already first!
If Mr. Trump has his druthers, that’s when we’ll be 20th, or 40th, or 201st in the world…and he won’t even be able to shove his way to the front of the photo op, because we will no longer be important enough to be invited.
No one will care what trade deals he wants, or immigration policies, either.
I can’t believe he’ll be happy then, but it will be too late — for him, and for us. It is always so much easier, and faster, to fall down the mountain than it was to climb up.
