(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog's Favourite Living Canadian)

LINCOLN, NEBRASKA—Above the main doors of the state capitol building here are carved the following words:

The salvation of the state is the watchfulness of the citizen.

For a week out here, I've watched what happens when citizens get watchful. It is entirely possible that, at one time, our old friend the Keystone XL pipeline, the continent-spanning death funnel and current conservative fetish object, would have sailed to completion. But some citizens got watchful and they noticed that TransCanada, the energy behemoth, was not acting in good faith at least in presenting the economic effects, and that their state government apparently didn't care very much about that, so they organized, and sued, and marched, and sued some more, and marched some more, and they finally jammed up the project to the point where President Barack Obama squashed it. Then the election happened, and the Keystone project got energized again because Americans elected a vulgar talking yam who doesn't care to know very much about anything. The citizens sued again, and they marched again, and, this week, they brought almost 500,000 public comments to the offices of the Nebraska Public Services Commission, all of which asked that the Keystone XL pipeline project be killed really most sincerely dead for good and all.

Getty Images

They may not win. It's still a pick 'em on whether the PSC will come down on their side or not. But their movement will go on because it lives up to the words carved into the capitol of their state. Consider, by comparison, the presidential election last November. If it was nothing else, and it really was Something Else, it was a stunning example of what happens when citizens stop being watchful, when they don't take the time to consider what they are doing and in whose benefit they may be acting. It was a stunning example of how badly representative democracy functions on automatic pilot. People did not vote at all, or they voted out of a desire to hock a loogie at all the things they'd been taught to hate and fear. They handed the country a president*at whom many of them look as though he were a cobra in their sock drawer. A watchful citizenry doesn't elect El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago. It laughs him off the stage.

Imagine if all the people who voted for him were as involved and as energized as the coalition that's been fighting this pipeline for eight years—a fascinating mix of Native peoples, ranchers, farmers, retirees, environmentalists, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, and plain old don't-give-a-damn types who suddenly realized that their land and their water and their livelihoods were being sold out from under them. Yes, Nebraska went for the president* with nearly 60 percent of the vote, and that was a shame. I suspect many of the people fighting the pipeline the hardest may have voted for him. America can be a puzzle sometimes.

I've watched what happens when citizens get watchful.

But the past week was a blessed relief from the incredible carnival of fools now playing out in our national politics. It is one battle among hundreds, but it is being fought with all the right weapons, especially that much-derided one…politics. It was refreshing to be around.

The salvation of the state is the watchfulness of the citizen.

I guess I'll remember that.

There's a lot of talk these days of "The Madman Theory," the tactic dreamed up by Henry Kissinger on behalf of Richard Nixon by which an American president would scare adversaries to the negotiating table by doing something so savage and inhuman that those adversaries come to believe the president is likely to do anything. I'd like to make a couple of points on that.

First, it was nothing more than a convenient measure of how big a pair of sociopaths were the two people who thought it up. It resulted in the infamous Christmas bombing of North Vietnam in 1972, the largest bombing raid undertaken by the United States since World War II. And, having unleashed fire and fury on the villages and cities of North Vietnam, Kissinger and Nixon wound up agreeing to pretty much the same terms President Johnson might've gotten four years earlier, had the Nixon people not ratfcked the Paris Peace Talks.

Second, the Madman Theory only makes sense if the United States is not governed by an actual madman, and, well…

I think a pretty good metric of whether or not new White House Chief of Staff John Kelly really has taken command of the situation is to see how long it takes him to kick Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Ph.D's ass out onto Pennsylvania Avenue. I would think Job One for Kelly would be to disperse the large cry of loons that has infiltrated the executive branch, and Gorka has proven to be the alpha loon.

(By the way, one of the alternative collectives for the loon is "an asylum of loons." Just going to leave that here.)

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "Weed Smokers Dream" (Shotgun Brass Band): Yeah, I still pretty much love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here is some footage of the invasion of Guam by the forces of the United States in 1944. Somewhere, on one of those ships, is Lt. John Pierce, USNR, of Worcester, MA. Hi, Dad. History is so cool.

In the summer of 1986, my job entailed hanging around the doomstruck Boston Red Sox as they sailed toward their inevitably grim Bucknerian ending in Queens that autumn. When they picked up Don Baylor, there suddenly was a new go-to interview in town. He had a terrific year—31 home runs and 94 runs batted in. Moreover, he was a big and sensible presence in an increasingly fractious and paranoid locker room. He was the chief justice of the team's kangaroo court. He had a big, encompassing laugh and a formidable glower. I was glad he was around. He passed away this week at 68 after a long fight with multiple myeloma. I can't do better for an obituary than the one written by his good friend and biographer, new Hall of Famer Claire Smith, who honored Baylor during her speech at her induction ceremony. He lived long enough to hear it, and that's a good thing.

We also lost Glenn Campbell, and I have been amazed by the number of people who didn't know that he was considered by many musicians to be one of the top guitar players of his time, a star among Los Angeles session men and a member of the Wrecking Crew. This remains my favorite clip of him displaying his virtuosity, largely because I consider the William Tell Overture to be one of the funniest pieces of music ever. Don't believe me? Ask Alice Cooper.

Is it a good day for dinosaur news, The Atlantic? It's always a good day for dinosaur news!

This was big dinosaur news, big dinosaur news about a big dinosaur. In fact, it was big dinosaur news about the biggest dinosaur we've ever found.

In 2013, an old Argentinian shepherd named Aureliano Hernandez found a fossilized bone protruding from a rock at the farm where he worked. The remains of giant dinosaurs festoon Argentina's landscape, and knowing the strict rules that govern such fossils, the farm's owners—the Mayo family—contacted local paleontologists. By the time the team arrived, Hernandez had passed away. He never knew that as one of his final acts, he had discovered the largest dinosaur ever known. The fossil he had found was so big that it took two weeks to unearth it. It was a thigh bone, and the largest ever found—eight feet from end to end. There are photos of paleontologists lying next to it for scale, and they look like bemused pixies, their bodies and imaginations dwarfed by what they had found… Team leaders Luis Carballido and Diego Pol from the Egidio Feruglio Paleontology Museum (MEF) estimated that the bone's owner would have stood 130 feet from nose to tail, and tipped the scales at 77 tons. Speaking to journalists, they compared it to 14 elephants, a seven-story building, and two trucks (with trailers) parked end to end.

All the best dinosaur stories begin with the accidental discovery. All the best dinosaur stories involve unimaginably huge creatures. This may be the perfect dinosaur story.

News of the new titan spread quickly. Last January, a cast of the sauropod went on display at the American Museum of Natural History, while legendary naturalist David Attenborough released a documentary about its discovery. And now, Carballido and his team have finally published an official scientific description of the dinosaur. They've also given it a name—Patagotitan mayorum. The first half refers to the Patagonian region where the dinosaur was found. The second half honors the Mayo family who kindly welcomed the scientists onto their land and into their kitchen.

All the best dinosaur stories have happy endings, because dinosaurs lived then to make us happy now.

The members of The Committee always have a sweet-tooth for science-based comments, so Top Commenter Peter Mikkelsen was a shoo-in this week for Top Commenter Of The Week, based on his uncovering a remarkable zoological coincidence.

Peter D. Mikkelsen Does anyone think it's mere coincidence that the study showing that the loudest howler monkeys have the smallest genitalia has just gained notoriety? Mysterious ways, I'm just sayin', mysterious ways. That's for sure.http://www.smh.com.au/.../the-loudest-monkeys-have-the...

I'll be back at shebeen HQ next week, assuming there is a Next Week. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line, and keep playing "Weed Smokers Dream." It may be the key to everything that's going on these days.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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