LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE

     August 8, 1974. I was tending day bar at Frank Peter's Habit, an establishment built from the bones of the old O'Connor's Tavern on Skid Road in Portland, Oregon. So named because that was where loggers, sailors, and other rowdy folks hung out in the old days. There was a secret passageway under the old O'conner's that led down to the river where sailing cargo ships were tied up long ago. According to legend a trusting logger would be drinking at the bar, someone would slip him a Mickey Finn and the poor sap would wake up moving westward on the Columbia River towards the Pacific ocean. One legend concerns a logger who received  an overdose. The captain accepted and entered, a dead man on the ships ledger, thinking he was merely dead drunk. No hard-hearted seamen on this ship, this crew preserved the body in a barrel of precious brandy so he could be returned to his family at Astoria.

     It was mid-afternoon, I was cleaning up after the lunch business, a thing that could not be described as a rush. A regular walked into the bar, sat down and said, "ya got a TV or radio"? Frank Peter's had purchased for the bar a new TV that could broadcast to a large screen on one wall, like an old movie projecter without the spool of film. It was his idea to carry sports contests (sports bars were not yet a thing). I flipped on the TV projector and turned to Channel 8 news, which had a Special News Program in place of the usual soap opera. We had a few regulars from Channel 8. There he was, the president of the United States, Trickey Dickey, sitting soberly at his desk and droning on about his not being a quitter. After he had covered the subject at some length, he quit. He resigned the presidency. And the image of the Nixon family boarding Helicopter-1 was preserved for posterity. The image of Richard Nixon performing an Academy Award portrayal of confidence. First Lady Pat Nixon stoically preserving her dignity, and the daughters holding back tears.

     There was much celebrating among the dozen or so patrons that afternoon. Shots were poured and downed, chased by a schooner of Budweiser in all of its mediocre glory. Oaths were shouted at the helicopter's chief occupant, and every person who watched this rare spectacle, knew through the fog of alcohol, that this moment is one of those historical moments that will not be repeated in a lifetime.

     A decade and a half later, I would celebrate news of Nixons death with a bottle of sparkling wine while preparing my garden. I may never attain my wish to piss on his grave, but I toasted his death with an Oregon sparkler.

     But I have forgotten of Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, The Plumbers, James Buchanon, Rosemary Woods, William Safire, and others. Because in Republican party history that was the apogee of democratic expression. That noble flame was passed off briefly to Gerald Ford. Between the end of President Ford's short term and Ronald Reagan, that flame was quenched. Each Republican administration thereafter became more tolerant of the racists among them, drifted ever rightward through the degrees of nationalism, until at length we arrived at Donald Trump. Nixonian republicanism seems almost pleasant by comparison. Fortunately Trump was not re-elected. Unfortunately he, and way too many in his party, believe the big lie that he was robbed. And they have set about, clumsily, to remove all barriers to a lifetime president for the Republican party. 

     And that brings me to August 8, 2022, the 48th anniversary of Richard Nixon resigning the presidency to escape sure impeachment. At about the same time of day when news stations were cutting over to the Whitehouse press corps to cover Nixon's speech, online news bulletins were announcing that the FBI had served  search warrants at Donald Trump's home in Mar a Lago, Florida. Of course rightwing media bleeted out how tyrannical it is that a former president with a shady, if not outright criminal history, could be treated in the same brutish way that a regular human being with a shady, if not criminal history could expect. The nobility that led Barry Goldwater and other prominent Republicans to confront Nixon with his fate should he not resign, no longer exists.

     It turns out that this former president walked off with a whole lotta boxes of sensitive Whitehouse records. As the story emerges, some of those documents contained Top Secret nuclear information. What could possibly be wrong with that? Top secret in this instance is spelled with all caps, there is a good reason for that. Back in Feb, 2022, government records people picked up 15 boxes of documents with the agreement that the rest would have been turned over forthwith. Whatever forthwith means. But civilian Trump had had such a busy summer entertaining shrinking crowds of empty minds with MAGA merchandise and empty banter, that he left the Federal Archives people no alternative. It didn't hurt that the Attorney General was at this time investigating this very act. They are sensitive records after all. And so at the culmination of this inactivity, FBI cars showed up at Mar a Lago bearing search warrents and a list of documents to look for. Meanwhile Tucker Carlson was becoming worried that his text messages might be among that trove of Alex Jones' documents that has now been turned over to the House Jan. 6 Committee. 

     Watching this drama play out has been both trying and humorous. You might think we've reached the end of this entertainment, and can have a parting bon mot at the expense of this continuing embarrassment. You would be wrong. Remember the Whitehouse Plumbers of Watergate fame? It appears that the Whitehouse of Mango Mussilini had some legendary plumbing problems needing a fresh group of plumbers. Toilets, some say there are 28 toilets in the Whitehouse, were getting clogged from what appeared to be shredded State Secrets. Plumbers sworn to secrecy were needed to clear the paper, and some poor sap had to dry the paper and tape them together. They are the people's documents for posterity, after all. We should honor those faceless people with the shitty job, but they must remain faceless, because they deal with sensitive public documents. Documents that the former president was too insensitive to respect.

     Among the items to be recovered were one hundred pages of documents that were marked Sensitive, a lesser level of secrecy, and some merely important to posterity. Speculating for a minute here, I'm guessing they are typed double-spaced on the page, not one document per page. Every dessert needs a dollop of whipped cream. The topping on this devils food cake of chicanery is that there were 3 pages of documents so secret that they could not be described. Take some time to revisit that statement. How do you describe something so secret it must not be described. We may suppose, given its seriousness, that the nuclear documents would be included on those three pages which could not be described.

     This too, will be a memory to cherish. Lighting has struck twice and I lived long enough to behold this moment.

    But there's more. Rightwing outrage at this invasion of privacy of a man who practices privacy very selectively, has led to attacks against the FBI. One trump genius attacked a FBI office, not in Florida, but in Cincinati, Ohio. And here is the most awesome, unsettling part of this whole story, he attacked FBI offices with....a nail gun. 

"Put your hands up or I'll fill you full of roofing nails!"

Did the MAGA genius know that something needs to depress the heel-plate before the gun will fire? An answer that has not yet been revealed.