Right/Left: Pat Buchanan and Thomas Frank ponder the Dog Days of August’s fizzling Populism this American Summer

I had kind of forgotten about 77-year-old Pat Buchanan, who in some ways was America’s resident right-wing politico kook before 70-year-old Donald Trump, running unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in the 1992 and 1996 primaries. He also ran on the Reform Party ticket in the 2000 presidential election. And then I came across this opinion piece by him last week headlined, “Yes, the system is rigged: Pat Buchanan to establishment overlords: ‘When do we have our American Spring?’ (http://www.wnd.com/2016/08/yes-the-system-is-rigged/) in WND (formerly WorldNetDaily), a far-right website founded by publisher Joseph Farah in 1997, as a project of his Western Center for Journalism.

Then I remembered some of the things that Buchanan was saying about immigration 20 and 24 years ago, during the two-term Reign of Clinton I, eerily presaged what Trump is saying today. But truth be told, Pat Buchanan, a Roman Catholic co-religionist who graduated from Georgetown University, is a very bright guy. That’s what makes him different than Donald Trump, and arguably, if he had arrived for his presidential quests in a different, later political season – like right now for instance – even more dangerous than Trump. Buchanan is and was an ideological hard-liner who wouldn’t have to go the dictionary to look up the meaning of the word ideological.

Buchanan was an original host on CNN’s Crossfire. In his early 20s, he was assistant editorial page editor of the old St. Louis Globe-Democrat and was a White House advisor and speechwriter in Richard Nixon’s White House from 1969 through 1974.

In fact, Pat Buchanan, in this article, which if you can overlook the fact for just a minute he’s pumping and stumping for Trump, makes some valid points about the political establishment and “system.” Writes Buchanan: “If 2016 taught us anything, it is that if the establishment’s hegemony is imperiled, it will come together in ferocious solidarity – for the preservation of their perks, privileges and power.” Yes, Buchanan even uses the H-word “hegemony,” which I don’t recall hearing coming from the mouth – or pen – of a right-wing Republican before. That’s a word I’d associate more with neo-Marxist theorists such as Antonio Gramsci.

But I’d suggest the core of Buchanan’s argument is not so very different than the one Thomas Frank, the political analyst and founder of The Baffler, who defies easy political labelling, made Aug. 13 in The Guardian in an opinion piece headlined, “With Trump certain to lose, you can forget about a progressive Clinton” (https://www.theguardian.com/…/trump-clinton-election-chance…). Frank writes, “Today it looks as though his [New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s] elites are taking matters well in hand. ‘Jobs’ don’t really matter now in this election, nor does the debacle of ‘globalization,’ nor does anything else, really. Thanks to this imbecile Trump, all such issues have been momentarily swept off the table while Americans come together around Clinton, the wife of the man who envisaged the Davos dream in the first place … the political process bears a striking resemblance to dynastic succession.”

Meanwhile, back at WND, Pat Buchanan’s near-ending the piece with the John F. Kennedy quote, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable,” was a particularly deft touch.

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The twilight freedom of John W. Hinckley Jr.

John W. Hinckley Jr. is soon going home on “convalescent leave” to Williamsburg, Virginia to live with his 90-year-old mother.

The process for his release is set to begin as early as next Friday.

Hinckley is now 61-years-old and “suffering from arthritis, high blood pressure, and various other physical ailments like many men his age,” noted U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman, who sits on the bench of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington D.C., in his 103-page opinion memorialized as an accompanying federal court order July 27.

While Hinckley suffers from some routine age-related physical ailments, Friedman found he has long been in “full and sustained remission” and no longer suffers in a dangerously demonstrable way from the mental illness that led to him shooting then President Ronald Reagan in March 1981, and the following year saw him found not guilty by reason of insanity, making him the most famous patient in the United States, innocent of criminality but still so dangerous in the eyes of the judicial system he had to be detained for the last 35 years at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C. His release process, with reporting and myriad other conditions attached, could begin as early as Aug. 5, the judge determined.

In his ruling last Wednesday, Friedman found that Hinckley has received the maximum in-patient benefit possible at the federal psychiatric hospital and that he is ready to be returned to the community in his 60s to live out his remaining years.

The hospital opened in 1855 as the Government Hospital for the Insane and was the first federally-operated psychiatric hospital in the United States. During the Civil War, wounded soldiers treated there were reluctant to admit that they were in an insane asylum, and said they were at St. Elizabeths, the colonial name of the land where the hospital is located. Congress officially changed the hospital’s name to St. Elizabeths in 1916. Other famous – or infamous patients depending on one’s perspective perhaps – confined to St. Elizabeths include Ezra Pound, the expatriate American poet who made radio broadcasts from Rapallo, Italy between 1941 and 1945 on behalf of Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Italian regime during the Second World War. Pound was committed to St. Elizabeths in 1946 and remained there until 1958, when a treason charge against him was dismissed.

John W. Hinckley Jr. is a name that will likely always be a name that conjures up historical flashbulb photographic memories for the vast majority of Americans outside of St. Elizabeths Hospital who have not seen him in press photos since his trial ended in June 1982 and he was 27 years old, although he has been rarely photographed in public since then, including in Virginia on an unsupervised visit with family in April 2014.

But to most Americans, he is still the 25-year-old John Warnock Hinckley Jr.  photographed in the famous UPI picture riding in the backseat of a police car after his arraignment in U.S. District Court on March 31, 1981 – the day after he shot President Reagan.

Hinckley was armed with a .22-caliber pistol loaded with six exploding “Devastator” bullets when he opened fire on March 30, 1981.  All survived the attack, but several were seriously wounded, including the president.

Hinckley shot Reagan in the driveway outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington D.C. at 2:27 p.m. from just 10 feet away after the president had addressed the Building and Construction Workers Union of the AFL-CIO. U.S. Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy turned into the line of fire and took a bullet for the president, while another Secret Service Agent, Jerry Parr, roughly shoved Reagan into the presidential limousine, and then, as the Lincoln roared back toward the White House – per protocol – with driver Drew Unrue not knowing the president had been wounded, Parr, however, noticed Reagan was having difficulty breathing and bright frothy blood was coming from his mouth, ordered Unrue to turn the limousine around and race to George Washington Hospital, with its trauma centre, instead. Doctors said later Parr’s snap judgment call to detour to George Washington Hospital instead of continuing on to the White House, as planned, saved the president’s life.

Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department officer Thomas Delahanty was wounded in the neck by the second of Hinckley’s bullets and suffered permanent nerve damage to his left arm.

But the most gravely injured was White House press secretary James Brady, who suffered a catastrophic brain injury, shot at point-blank range to the left-center of his forehead, the bullet passing through both hemispheres of his brain. ABC began airing footage at 2:42 p.m.  ABC, CBS and NBC all erroneously reported that Brady had died. Partially paralyzed, Brady did die many years later at the age of 73 on Aug. 4, 2014. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia ruled Brady’s death to be caused by homicide as a result of the 1981 shooting, but authorities opted not to prosecute Hinckley further as the result of the finding.

In his July 27 opinion, in response to the federal government’s move to continue Hinckley’s detention at St. Elizabeths, Friedman wrote, “In 1981, John W. Hinckley, Jr. was a profoundly troubled 25-year-old young man suffering from active and acute and major depression. His mental condition had gradually worsened over the preceding years – beginning as early as 1976 – ultimately resulting in a deep obsession with the actress Jodie Foster and the film Taxi Driver.

“Mr. Hinckley began to identify with the main character in the film, Travis Bickle, who unsuccessfully plots to assassinate a presidential candidate in order to win the affections of a young woman.”

Friedman goes onto say that Hinckley “has been under the care of St. Elizabeths Hospital for over three decades. Since 1983, when he last attempted suicide, he has displayed no signs of active mental illness, exhibited no violent behavior, shown no interest in weapons, and demonstrated no suicidal ideation. The government and the hospital both agree that Mr. Hinckley’s primary diagnoses of psychotic disorder not otherwise specified and major depression have been in full and sustained remission for well over 20 years, perhaps more than 27 years. In addition, since 2006, Mr. Hinckley has successfully completed over 80 unsupervised visits with his family in Williamsburg, Virginia.”

During those visits to Williamsburg, Hinckley stops in at Retro Daddio, a local music store, about once a month, where owner Jen Thurman told the Associated Press she is on a first name basis with him and a photo on the wall of a young Jodie Foster seems to go unnoticed. “I’m alone in the store frequently with him, and he’s never creeped me out,” Thurman told the AP.

Hinckley also joins his mother for Sunday services at the Williamsburg United Methodist Church when he’s visiting, and volunteers at the local Unitarian Church.

In arguing for Hinckley’s continued detention at St. Elizabeths, the United States government found itself grasping at some thin reeds, pointing out that when he was released on a work furlough in 2011 he twice told his supervisors he intended to go to the movies, when in fact he went instead to a Barnes & Noble bookstore. OK. Those were stupid lies, especially given Hinckley will be closely and rightly watched by the United States Secret Service whenever he is free for the rest of his life. Criminally responsible or not, that’s part of the price you can expect to pay for shooting a president. Last year, during a release, he deviated from his approved itinerary and visited a musician friend, instead of a photographer. He admitted to the lie. So, yes, 35 years have not cured Hinckley to the point he’s perfect and honest in every way. That would be a state of character few of the always sane could claim. But is he a danger? Is his continued detention in the public interest?

Case like Hinckley’s are extremely difficult. In 1981, he may not have committed a crime because he was insane at the time, but it is beyond doubt he committed a terrible deed by any objective standard, legally responsible for his actions or not. But what now? Is his continued detention justified simply because of his notoriety if nothing else? Of course not. John Hinckley Jr. was a mentally ill man. If indeed that mental illness is now in long, full and sustained remission, as Judge Friedman found, it is time to send the 35-year patient home, as unpopular with the public as that may prove to be.

That and only that is how the ends of justice are served.

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