Is there a more appropriate day on which to consider one of the most all-round takeovers of the U.S. Federal Government by the U.S. ruling class than May 1 (on which date this column was original written)? For that was the date chosen, by a briefly united U.S. labor movement in the 1880s, as the official founding day for its planned major campaign to improve wages, hours and working conditions. The first "May Day" was held on May 1, 1886. And yes, although in the 20th century May Day became associated the Soviet Union and Communist Parties around the world, in the beginning it was a U.S. holiday.

Back in the 1940's, when I first started getting interested in (U.S.) football, there were two common backfield formations in use: the "single-wing " and the "T-formation ." Some teams used both, in different situations, just as in modern football teams will use both the "I," with the quarterback standing directly behind the center, as in the "T" (which passed into football history many years ago) and the "spread ," in recent years called the "shotgun," with the quarterback standing off the line-of-scrimmage and receiving the ball from the center via a short, between-the-legs pass, as in the old single-wing. The change will sometimes come after the play-clock has started running, with the team in one formation until the quarterback calls "shift," when the move to the other formation is made. Easier to watch than to explain, but you could look it up.

As is well known, Donald Trump ran on what Steve Bannon calls "economic nationalism." (That it is really in major part a cover term for the racism/Islamophobia/xenophobia that was central to the Trump campaign from the beginning and so strongly reflected on Bannon's Breitbart, is another story.) Part of that position is that the US shouldn't intervene abroad, shouldn't get involved in "nation building," shouldn't be the "world's policeman," and certainly should try to get along better with Russia, for whatever reasons.

In a previous column, I discussed the appearance of the self-styled "scientific racist" Charles Murray at Middlebury College, VT, the content of his earlier, widely publicized work, The Bell Curve, the student response to his appearance that kept him from speaking, and the issues concerning the matter of "free speech" raised by the whole episode. The bulk of the column was devoted to an abridgment (long enough in its own right!) of Appendix VI to my book The 15% Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2002: A Futuristic Novel, which used the extensive academic literature that took apart the Murray hypothesis many years ago.

At the height of the bribery scandal involving the Chicago White Sox baseball team in 1919 heard around the country was the phrase "Say it ain't so, Joe." The reference was to one "Shoeless Joe" Jackson, a Chicago ballplayer of limited education who had gotten caught up in the scandal, apparently without realizing what he had gotten into.

Outside observers looking at U.S. foreign and military policy since World War II can wonder at its essential global imperialism, its heavy reliance on military force, either threatened or actual, and its many negative outcomes for millions of people, ranging from eternal poverty to premature death, all around the world. They may also wonder at the mentality of the tens of thousands of U.S. government employees who, over the years, have developed and implemented these policies. Mean, evil, totally unethical, totally lacking in principle, totally devoted to the expansion of finance/Petro capitalism, in total denial of what their polices produce. And then we might possibly add, none of the above but totally self-delusional.

Charles Murray is best known as the co-author of a tract called "The Bell Curve." It attempted to establish that "blacks" are intellectually inferior to "whites," because of their genetic make-up. It then went on to state that being the case, society as a whole (namely "white" society) shouldn't spend any money on trying to improve the lives of "blacks" in any way.

"The Russia House" was a 1990 movie starring Sean Connery in his post-James Bond mature period. Moviefone summarized the plot as follows:

"While visiting Moscow, British publisher Barley Blair (Sean Connery) learns of a manuscript detailing the Soviet Union's nuclear missile capabilities. British intelligence and the CIA consider the book to contain crucial information and recruit Blair to investigate its editor, Katya Orlova (Michelle Pfeiffer). As Blair learns the origin of the manuscript and discovers Russian military secrets, he falls in love with Katya and fights to protect her family."

First they came for the immigrants, but I wasn't an immigrant.

Then they came for the Muslims, but I wasn't a Muslim.

Then they labeled the LGBTQs, but I wasn't one of them.

Then they came for the true radicals, but I wasn't one of them either.

Then they came for the "Black Lives Matter" folk and their allies, but I wasn't one of them.

Then they came for the trade unionists who they hadn't bought, but I wasn't one of them.

Then they came for the just plain critics of the regime, and by then it was too late.

Well, yes, despite the protestations of the Trumpites to the contrary, the Ban was intended to be a Muslim Ban. Giuliani gave it away when he said that of course Christians from the Seven Countries would be exempted. Trump's xenophobic, Islamophobic base knows exactly at whom it was aimed. And so, do the far-Right acolytes like Frank Gaffney, who have their own followings. Trump wanted to make sure that they would be on board with him, about the Ban as well as other policy initiatives. And of course, the Ban had nothing to do with "security."