Three things from yesterday’s New York Times that had an effect on me:

First, sadness. “An 8 year old girl who loved dancing in a red dress at her dentist’s office. A 28 year old national equestrian champion. A young poet one week away from her 24th birthday. A graphic designer who worked at National Geographic. Grandparents in their 80s. All are among the civilians killed during Israeli airstrikes on Iran.”

Second, the department of “I had no clue”. “South Africa has for decades been a medical research powerhouse,yet its stature has been little known to people outside the field. South Africa’s scientists have been responsible for key breakthroughs against major global killers, including heart disease, H.I.V. and respiratory viruses such as Covid-19.” This article referred to the effect of American cuts on South African research.

Third, the category of “you gotta be kidding”.  “Even though Brian Wilson grew up only five miles from the Pacific Ocean, he rarely went to the beach. He’d felt scared by the size of the ocean on his first visit. Being light skinned, he also feared sunburns. He tried surfing, but got hit on the head by his board and decided once was enough.”

The article about Brian Wilson was the only thing I read yesterday that gave me anything close to a chuckle. Everything else was too heavy.

For example, how did Donald Trump commemorate June 19? By posting “Too many nonworking holidays in the United States. It is costing our Country $BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to keep all these businesses closed……..It must change if we are going to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”

And what about this odd deal between U.S. Steel and the Japanese company that purchased it? If you haven’t paid attention to it, you may be surprised to learn that the deal gives certain corporate governance authority to the President of the United States. I guess no one knows the full scope of those powers, but they include vetoes on matters affecting production in American facilities. Has this type of deal ever been done before? Is this a form of socialism? Of nationalization? What sort of new animal has been created?

Of course, the two most important issues today are the questions of whether the United States will formally enter a war against Iran, and how ICE is going about stopping people willy-nilly on the street, throwing them to the ground, handcuffing them and sending them to detention centers whether or not they have broken any criminal laws, or are legal residents or U.S. citizens.

As to Iran, Trump has said he (not “we”, but he) will decide within the next two weeks. I know what that means. That means it might be tomorrow morning, or it might be six months from now.

It means that he believes going to war is up to him, and that once again Congress has no role, Constitution be damned.

As to the detention activities of ICE, ICE employees should learn that one day soon (within the next 3 1/2 years at most), they will most likely be shunned by their fellow Americans.

The government’s sweeps have frightened the entire country, or at least large swaths of it. People are afraid to leave their houses or go to school or work. It obviously does not have to be this way. We know that there were very large numbers of people sent out of the country by prior presidents, and that the Obama administration sent out unauthorized people in larger numbers than has Trump so far. But there wasn’t any of this unbelievable hullabaloo then. It wasn’t done to spread fear or to make the daily news. We are involved with something different.

Fear is a prime focus of totalitarian regimes, and our totalitarian regime is trying to spread fear to make people less and less likely to protest against it for fear that they themselves will be placed under arrest as a result of their oppositional activities. And to expand fear, a totalitarian regime would make its officials look as frightening as possible. Over dressing them in military style outfits and masking their faces, and sending them around in large numbers, with no personal identification – that’s what this type of regime would do. Remember, as a recent example, the “little green men”, the Russians who ten years or so were infiltrating eastern Ukraine? That is what we are seeing here now.

After Pearl Harbor, we all know that the federal government began rounding up people of Japanese ancestry (American citizen or not) and sending them to detention camps. We all know how horrific this was. But I want to point out two things – first, I don’t think that families were broken up during these activities, and second, I don’t know that there were the “fear” tactics used, as opposed to tactics simply relating to following orders, I don’t know that people got roughed up as they are today, or that people of, say, Chinese or Korean ancestry were taken and detained just in case they might be of Japanese ancestry.

Going back to Iran, everything is confused. This isn’t surprising. Is Israel right when it concludes that Iran was on the cusp of having a bomb? Or was U.S. intelligence correct? And how do the conclusions of the International Atomic Energy Agency fit in?

I have also heard both that Israel is destroying Iran’s nuclear capacity, and – on the other hand – that no matter what it does, it will only be setting it back a year or so.

Perhaps Trump is actually confused here. That would be a change.

But let me ask a question. What is the endgame? Have you heard that question before? It is one that we never seem to be able to answer. What was the end game in Iraq, or in Afghanistan? We had none and suffered because of it. And we always say that we will make sure there will be no more military interventions until we know how the war will end, and what things will look like the day after. But here we are again.

And what have we learned about Israel as a result of their activities in Gaza? We have learned that they have no way to end a war because they, too, have no defined end game.

What we do know is that one day, the Trump administration will end. (Okay, we don’t really know this, but we have to say that we do, or they might not.) And we know something else – we know that after tlit ends, those who were involved in all of Trump’s illegal activities will have to face the consequences of their actions.

But that won’t be enough. We will have another problem. The United States will not be able to go back simply to status quo ante Trump, because things will have changed so much and in so many respects that this will be impossible. And we won’t want to go back to status quo ante Trump  in any event because, after all, it is status quo ante Trump that led us to Trump in the first place. So it will be very complicated. In other words, we do not yet know what our own endgame is.

But without a defined endgame, what chance do we have?