It has been a week of dangerous precedents being set -- and it's not over yet.

One precedent that didn't get much media attention (but which is truly disturbing) was Donald Trump giving a nakedly political speech to American soldiers in uniform, where he pre-screened the crowd for both looks and ideology. One memo sent out before Trump arrived specified: "No fat soldiers." Another stated: "if soldiers have political views that are in opposition to the current administration and they don't want to be in the audience, then they need to speak with their leadership and get swapped out."

This is dangerous stuff, folks. The United States military has always been seen as completely apolitical, for a damn good reason -- because it sets us apart from countries where the military is used for political purposes. Which is a good thing. Or it used to be, at any rate.

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The most important battle over immigration policy isn't being fought on the streets of Los Angeles right now, but rather over the airwaves. This is the fight for public opinion, and it could go either way. If the public largely sides with Trump's immigration tactics, it will strengthen his hand. But if the public decides the tactics go too far then it will weaken him in the long run. How the events of this week are ultimately seen by the public could be the deciding factor. Is Donald Trump and his administration doing what the voters elected him to do, or is he vastly overreaching in a dictatorial fashion? That's the entire rhetorical battle in a nutshell.

Trump has always wanted to be seen as a strongman, of course. So to him, brutal tactics and overreacting are exactly what he wants to see. Trump, aided by the rightwing media echo chamber, would like the public to think that Los Angeles is in danger of being "burned to the ground" and that lawlessness reigns throughout the city. This is wildly inaccurate hyperbole, but that's never stopped him before. But he is in serious danger of people turning against him on the issue precisely because of the brutal tactics.

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This is really a "From The Archives" repeat, although I didn't use that title since I'm only re-running a portion of a previous column rather than the whole thing. Sadly, when I looked it up, it was published (10 years ago, in February) right after Leonard Nimoy died (and began with: "Mr. Spock is dead. Long live Mr. Spock!").

Today also marks a sad passing, as the world lost Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys today. He will be missed. Requiescat In Pace.

The Beach Boys were one of those rare iconic bands that pretty much everyone loved to some extent or another. To put it another way, you could play their songs at any random party and it'd be rare than anyone objected. There aren't many such bands around (Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Beatles, maybe the Steve Miller Band and a handful of others) and their rarity is due to their being able to create music that was pretty universally appreciated. It's pretty hard to hate a song like "Good Vibrations," right? Their harmonization was second to none as well. Their music was dated, to be sure (it arose from the surf craze of the 1950s), but it was the best of the era (although Jan and Dean fans might quibble with that statement, to be fair). For the most part, it just made people happy to hear it. Which is exactly why Brian Wilson will indeed be missed.

Personally, the only times I heard the Beach Boys perform live was at free concerts given on the National Mall as part of Independence Day celebrations in the early 1980s. Which brings me to the reason I am re-running the following column excerpt. Through absolutely no fault of their own, the Beach Boys became the center of a small controversy during the Reagan administration (when they were regularly performing at the July 4th celebrations). While researching a subject only tangentially related, I came across the controversy once again, so I included it.

This column was written in honor of protests. In fact, after it ran in the Huffington Post, I was contacted by one of the original Youth International Party (Yippies) founders, who not only thanked me for writing it and chronicling this history but also told me a few amusing stories about the earliest of these events (which I was too young to attend).

I figured, what with everything else going on this week it would be a good time for an interlude of music and fun in the sun. We'll get back to the much-more-serious protests currently happening tomorrow, but for now, I would recommend finding the album Pet Sounds on YouTube, cue it up, and travel back with me to when the Beach Boys became ensnared in Washington politics (again, through no fault of their own!).

An Incomplete History Of Washington's July Fourth Smoke-In
[Originally published February 27th, 2015]

What could be a better way to pass a summer's afternoon than to sit across the street from the White House and smoke lots of pot?

This very simple idea birthed an annual tradition that continues to the present day. Now that Washington has legalized recreational use of marijuana, one can only imagine how festive this year's gathering will be. The organizers even have a Facebook page, if you're interested.

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There has been a very dangerous development in the Los Angeles protests, although so far it seems to be a series of isolated incidents as opposed to any sort of blanket policy. Journalists covering the protests and the police response have been targeted by police using what is now being called "less-than-lethal" weapons (non-lethal rounds such as rubber bullets). And so far, it appears that this targeting has happened not from the members of the National Guard or U.S. military (who have now been deployed, in a serious escalation of the situation by Donald Trump) but rather from local and state police forces. Which is almost more worrisome, since it can't be chalked up to the federal militarization of the response to the protests.

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We seem to be quickly headed for a confluence of events that is going to produce a rather shocking split-screen moment next weekend. We could be simultaneously watching a parade that is ostensibly being given for the celebration of the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary, while we also watch the national military being deployed on the streets of American cities. That's a jarring contrast, you have to admit.

What's going on in Los Angeles is the result of an entirely-predictable escalation in Donald Trump's push to deport as many immigrants as he possibly can. Trump promised he'd go after all the criminals first, but once he ran out of immigrants who had been convicted of crimes (and whose location was known to the authorities, making them easy to pick up), it was inevitable that he'd have to start raiding job sites and schools and other places where immigrants are known to gather. We're in that second phase now, and it's only going to get more and more pronounced in the coming weeks.

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The world's richest man and the world's most powerful man got into an online fight yesterday, which began when Elon Musk tweeted out: "Donny Trump is a poopyhead!" -- to which Donald Trump immediately responded: "No YOU'RE the poopyhead Elon!!!"

Well, no. That's not actually how it happened. But it's not that far from the reality, sad to say.

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While I do realize that a very entertaining playground fight between the world's most prominent schoolboys is currently raging, I am going to exercise a monumental amount of restraint and not address the dustup between Elon Musk and Donald Trump today. Besides, by tomorrow, there'll probably be several more amusing developments to talk about, right?

Instead, I am going to stick to what I intended to write about today, which is to give some advice for Democrats seeking for ways to realign the party's fortunes. Partly, this is a question of style, although we're going to start with some substance that has been sorely missing from Democrats resisting what Donald Trump has been doing in office. This column should be seen as a companion to yesterday's column, which was more ideological in nature.

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So there's a public gathering in Washington this week that aims to fix what's wrong with the Democratic Party. It is called "WelcomeFest" and is yet another effort to make the party "more moderate" (they talk of being "partisan centrists"), while admittedly trying to emulate the amount of energy from the progressive side of the party. One of the founders of the "Welcome Party" summed this up: "We respect the very robust and multifaceted effort on the progressive faction of the party over the last few years. They had a lot of clear coherency behind it, and there was a lot of action. We are essentially just trying to emulate that faction of the party." However, one has to wonder what they really mean when they talk of being centrists and moderates, since the lion's share of the funding behind the effort comes from Democratic deep-pocket donors, instead of being supported by any sort of authentic grassroots effort.

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Elon Musk is back in the news. He's upset over the Republican budget bill and he's having a hissy fit about it online. Musk seems destined to lose this battle, since by coming out against the bill he set himself at odds with Donald Trump -- and Trump is a lot more popular with the Republican base than Musk. On the other hand, Musk has an almost unlimited amount of money and he's quite willing to toss millions at political causes when he feels like it. So it's tough to really predict how any of this is going to play out.

Just last week, Musk was apparently saying goodbye to politics. He left his job advising Trump and said he was going to devote all his time to his various companies. He also said he intended to pull way back on spending money on political causes. But since Musk is just as mercurial as Trump, he can change his mind at any point on any position he previously held. Which he may possibly be doing. Or not -- perhaps he's just having a hissy fit and it'll wind up being another little tempest in a teapot.

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In the annals of warfare, at times new inventions completely revolutionize how wars are fought. The full list of these is long, so here are just a few prominent historical examples: gunpowder, the rifle cartridge (as opposed to musket balls), the machine gun, airplanes, and tanks. War-changing inventions don't always have to be offensive weapons -- radar would certainly qualify. In each case, however, the introduction of something new onto the battlefield has completely changed how wars are fought. Battleships had to give way to aircraft carriers. Before that, cavalry gave way to tanks. So it goes.

We seem to be at such an inflection point now, which is not exactly an original observation, but it was brought into stark relief by the Ukrainian attack on Russian airfields this weekend. Because the war in Ukraine (as well as a few other conflicts around the world) has shown the evolution of warfare that is happening right now. Call it the dawn of the era of robot wars. Or, if you're not as big a fan of old-fashioned nomenclature as I am, perhaps calling it the era of drone wars would be more accurate.

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