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THE KIELTY KONSIDERATION - June 17, 2022

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Sometimes a week just doesn't give you a lot to jump and down with joy about, yet as Maya Angelou intoned, "Still, like dust, I'll rise."

Well, for sports fans in New England the week ends on a down note as our beloved Boston Celtics turned over a very winnable opportunity at raising an 18th banner to the TD Bank Garden rafters, losing in six games to the Golden State Warriors. And, make no mistake, this series was winnable but ultimately the youth that fueled a happily surprising campaign from the C’s was also at the root of a leadership void. In game 4 the home team held a 4-point lead with 5:18 left on the clock when the Warriors went on a 17-3 run during which NBA First Teamer, Jayson Tatum and his considerably celebrated teammate, Jaylin Brown, effectively disappeared leaving Defensive Player of the Year, Marcus Smart as the only one with the cajones to even hoist desperation 3-pointers. So much for the adage, “Big players make big plays in big games.”

Game 5 delivered a true testosterone test with Draymond Green fucking with Tatum on the baseline as Tatum walked to the Celtics bench. Larry Bird would have rifled that ball off Green’s head in that situation. I know the NBA doesn’t allow that anymore but what could have and should have happened was the last man on the Celtics bench bolting off it and laying Green out. Tossed from the game? So what, it’s already over. Suspended from the next game? Who cares, you wouldn’t have played anyway. Your value to the team would have been standing up for it, knocking Green on his ass and firing up your squad. Instead of Green strutting back to his own bench with a swagger he would have left your end of the floor thinking, “What the fuck?” So would his teammates. In retrospect that was not just the end of the Celtic’s run of not losing two games in a row in the post-season, it was the end to the series for me.

Last night played out to me like a little brother who came out of the gate full steam to start while big brother sat back and confidently thought, “Let him spin his wheels, I got this.” And, he did. At one point the Warriors scored 21 in a row, the most lopsided scoring streak of the last 50 years, and that was before halftime! For all intents, the game was over by then. The Celtics tantalized fans, but not really. Whenever the crowd energy surged as they cut the lead to the neighborhood of single digits the Warriors seemed to shrug and it was soon 13 or 14 again. One of their 22 turnovers in the game (Tatum had 100 himself in the postseason, an NBA record) or a poor shot that Golden State capitalized on the lead increased. This was game 6, at home, an elimination game, and it was decided in the first quarter.

New England is sports-spoiled. In the last 48 hours, the U.S. Open golf tournament began this week at the venerable Country Club in Brookline, MA. FIFA announced yesterday that Foxborough would be a host city for the 2026 World Cup and it was announced that Gillette Stadium would also host next year’s Army-Navy college football game. Even the timing of the end of their season ultimately works in the loser’s favor as sports radio will buzz for the remainder of the day today but dissipate by Monday, at least for fans. Hopefully, for the players, the idea that this was a squandered opportunity (and they don’t come often in professional sports) will be an inspiration to fuel them forward.

--I’d be remiss as a person of opinion to not just put the truth out there regarding the January 6th hearings on Capitol Hill this week. There’s obviously much to it but this fact is simple: Donald Trump will never love anyone or anything (particularly in this case his nation and the democracy on which it was founded) as much as he loves himself and he is proving that he believed this narcissism was above the law.

The most obvious comparison in a Pennsylvania Avenue resident during the modern age would certainly be Richard Nixon whose “Watergate” hearings were fifty years ago this summer. Even Nixon’s White House counsel, John Dean, sees Trump as far more nefarious.

“Watergate looks different through the prism of Trump,” Dean, 83, said in an interview. “Trump is Nixon on steroids and stilts. He took all of the post-Watergate norms and standards and didn’t honor any of them. Trump is a threat to democracy in a way Nixon never was.”

This is certainly high praise from a man who was eventually convicted of obstruction of justice, spent four months in custody at a government “safe house” and was disbarred for his role in the coverup of a break-in at the office of the Democratic National Committee where phones including those of DNC chair, Larry O’Brien were tapped. For those keeping score with our first entry that is the same O’Brien for whom the NBA Championship trophy awarded last night to the Warriors is named.

What often stands out between these two maniacal political figures is that while both were dominated by a third for hunger, an unrelenting sense of both paranoia and self-importance they were also in my ways different sorts of villains. Even to their point of entry to the White House.
Both men won close and controversial elections but whereas Nixon, a seasoned politician, wanted to make the government work for him, Trump, who had never held an elected position of any type wanted to remake some new form of government for his own needs. Nixon was a student of government, Trump by all indications had little if any understanding of even government’s most basic functions and thus when they didn’t work to his desire to either circumvent or rewrite established constitutional norms.

One area where the two line up frighteningly similarly is in the reaction of their parties to these scandals. Nixon apologists initially insisted that Watergate was merely a partisan distraction, much as Republicans view January 6th in the same light as midterm elections wait on the horizon. Nixon press secretary, Ronald L. Ziegler went so far as to term Watergate a “third-rate burglary.”

“Watergate finally does look like a third-rate burglary compared to Trump,” said former Massachusetts Republican Governor William F. Weld, who was a lawyer on the staff of the House Judiciary Committee that approved three articles of impeachment against Nixon. “Back in the 1970s it was unthinkable for a president to lie in public. President Trump made that the norm.”

Ultimately, it is not simply government that has changed, and not for the better. Voter reaction to Watergate was repulsion, whereas Trump remains revered and influential. The fact that Trump was impeached twice and now appears to any sane observer guilty of at least dereliction of duty while Nixon resigned rather than face the ignominy of impeachment speaks to a general regression of decency. Of course, this reversal of societal norms played a large role in Trumping being elected to begin with.

And, finally, before I step off the soapbox for the week I quote another wise Irishman with the birth name of Lawrence. Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC, had this to say about Trump’s disregard for his Vice President and what it inspired. “Before everyone starts saluting Mike Pence as a patriot for standing up for democracy keep this in mind: he could have stood up on December 6th instead of January 6th. He could have said, ‘The results of this election will not be overturned, and I don’t have the authority to do it in any case.’ He stood up… at the very last minute with his safety threatened.”

Pass that on to former Attorney General, Bill Barr, who stated that Trump’s claims of a rigged election were, “bullshit,” and that Trump had become “detached from reality” in the weeks after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden. A patriot doesn’t need a deposition to speak the truth, Barr needed one.

-A new friend has begun regularly appearing in my yard.  The northern flicker is a medium-sized woodpecker family and he's quite an interesting study.  It is native to most of North America, parts of Central America, Cuba, and the Cayman Islands.  The flicker is one of few woodpeckers that migrate and is so popular that he goes by a wide variety of names, among them yellowhammer, clape, gaffer woodpecker, harry-wicket, heigh-ho, wake-up, walk-up, wick-up, yarrup, and gawker bird.  While his common name is "Northern Flicker," he's prominent enough down south to the state bird of Alabama.  A mating pair has settled in my backyard and as one of the few members of the woodpecker family that scavenges on the ground, they're a fun distraction.  Keep an eye out for this good-looking avian, easily identified by the red "V" on the back of his head and his distinct (and distinguished) black handlebar mustache.  








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