The Battle of Antigen

Samuel Flegel | The HollywoodBowles

My dearest Samuel,

I was going to write you a letter about how we’d grown old together; 21 years! We could legally have a drink.

But as I sat down to write this, I realized that I no longer think of you as just a brother.

When we met, I was 35, you 21. A generation apart, but close enough that we could have overlapped social circles, maybe come to recognize each other by name. Shake hands. Hug.

But on this date 21 years ago, you stopped aging. I stagger on: 55 now and still a scientific marvel. My body tumbles now and again, but you haven’t missed a beat. Our antigens must have fit like corner jigsaw pieces; even doctors shake their heads at our endurance.

And as we march onward, I see our roles differently. I see you now as a young recruit drafted unwillingly into the Great Gurney War. I see myself as a jaded sergeant who enlisted because he could see no other future. And when you fell, I affixed your bayonet to my rifle.

So now I wear your kidney and pancreas like dog tags, and keep them not around my neck, but deep within, just around my left rib cage. I plan to lay them as high atop Antigen Hill and my legs will carry.

Samuel Flegel | The HollywoodBowles

I don’t know the people who were blessed by your heart, or lungs, or liver. But I do know that no one guards you more fiercely than I. For all the threats that have surrounded us — viruses, infections, maskless and careless idiots — we have held the bunker. For more than two decades!

I know men about my age who have sons about your age. My oldest friend was born a week from me. His youngest son is about to turn 21.

I could be that man.

You could be that boy.

Samuel, my boy.

I’m not going to lie; snipers still abound. COVID looms like a shroud, gray as uncertainty.

The cavalry is on the way, we’re told, but we must patrol this front on our own until support gets here.

So I’ve got a plan. I adopted a dog you’d love, a happy and huge chocolate Labrador named J.D.

You create a distraction by feeding her slowly (she’ll bark her head off at that, but don’t worry; she’s all love and newness).

While she’s yapping, I’ll charge the front.

Cover me.

Trump’s Paul Blarts

US Capitol riots - In Pictures

I used to work the cop beat at The Washington Post. I covered the overnight shift of the Metro Washington Police Department, and the day shift of the sheriff’s department of neighboring Montgomery County. But when you cover law enforcement in that area, you cover countless police beats: Secret Service, FBI, CIA, etc.

But when I tried to get a “ride along” with The Capitol Police when I joined the paper in the early 90’s, my editors told me not to waste my time: the CP, they said, was so bureaucratic I would spend more time getting government clearance than I would covering real news. Besides, the lead cop reporter told me, they were mall cops anyway.

And true enough, I rarely came across them in crime scenes, though I bumped into them more than a few when I took my motorcycle though the picturesque city at night. In the early 90’s, you could park only a couple blocks from the Capitol, and ascend the stairs leading to a sweeping vista of the city.

They may have been mall cops, but they had the authority of any other cop in their jurisdiction: They carried guns, drove patrol bikes and cars, and ran traffic checkpoints if there was any disturbance of note in Northwest DC, where lawmakers live.

In other words, these weren’t Paul Blart wannabes. If anything, they were Secret Service washouts: capable, if not superlative.

And they handle their share of real crime. Because they’re responsible for lawmakers’ safety, they have to patrol NW DC just like Metro police, and the crime there is real. They have seen their share of terrorism, from gunmen seeking lawmakers in the Capitol to a shooting at The Holocaust Museum.

So how were they so ill-prepared for Wednesday’s attempted overthrow?

I suggest they weren’t.

All it took was five minutes of TV viewing Wednesday to see that the CP were in no mood to enforce law during the riot. Social media provide countless pictures and videos of insurrectionists and the CP posing for selfies, and the CP ushering in seditionists as if they were leading a White House tour.

Officer appears to pose for selfie with rioter - CNN Video

Which they may have been trying to do. Because the CP know how to secure a perimeter when it is instructed to do so.

Perhaps it never received instructions. Remember: The chief of police, Steven A. Sund, took office in 2019. He resigned in disgrace a day after the riot, having only described his department’s response as “valiant” on his way out.

How Trumpian. And would it surprise anyone if Trump left a Capitol Police force understaffed and overwhelmed in the face of a rally he promised to be “wild?”

After all, the president needed security to be weak to deliver the chaos he wanted unleashed on lawmakers counting electoral ballots. Perhaps he found his own Watergate burglars.