What’s your name? Doesn’t matter that much anymore.

It all starts out simple enough. You are born and given a name. But before you’re placed in your mother’s arms, you have a different identity to the hospital system that ushered you aboard the planet, and then you’re in the mix.

The name is no longer enough. There are numbers that follow it and only multiply going forward.

Address, Social Security numbers, dates and place of birth including town, county, state and country. Driver’s license, school and college documents, government I.D. If you join the military services, they will give you a number and warn you that you had better never forget it, or else. I still remember mine.

To marketers, I am bank account numbers, my telephone, credit cards or a prospect list sold on the web. They will never forget me.

Life was easier when that was about the limit of it all.

Before the new and improved health care, you could call your doctor’s office, give a person your name, make the appointment, sign in at the desk and see the doc. Get the prescription, visit the pharmacy, pick up the meds, pay the bill. Go back to the bad habits of an uncluttered life.

These days, for most dealing with the medical world, a name is only the first step that will lead to filling out legal forms running more pages than a textbook on a tiny cellphone keyboard. If you do not fill out clerical work in advance of your appointment, you risk getting a nasty-face emoji. So, everybody lies and checks the boxes saying they read it and understand legalese that would stump a Supreme Court justice. Well, a real legal mind.

My parents drilled home the idea that I would be known for the company I keep, and so would my family name. A bookend to that rule was that your real identity would be reflected by values and character. What you do, more than what you say to be popular.

The Republicans have had their convention. They seemed to spend most of their time calling the Democrats names, talking about how rotten the world is and ignoring the sins of their beloved leader.

So far, the Democrats have taken a more positive, higher road to earn the responsibilities of leadership, and not just victory. They have faith in the future.

Which party stands for who we are? Who we aspire to be? Who we can be with the right effort?

We’re seeing the versions they want us to be. Which one reflects you?

Conventions and campaign slogans are little more than labels.

Labels are like those sticky things you can’t get off the coffee cup you buy; display and presentation are the first chapters in marketing.

Contents are found in the footnotes and, increasingly, in the small print of the warnings.

Dean Minnich writes from Westminster.

J. D. Vance exists on the public stage because he is a storyteller. He was picked by Donald Trump to run for vice president because he is famous. He is famous because of his version of his own story — everyone has their own story — and it was made into a movie.

We’re supposed to take for granted that nowhere along the line did the Vance story get inflated. But he’s calling out Gov. Tim Walz, a respected public servant, as misrepresenting his military record.

Vance has spent a lot of time defending himself recently. He has learned that shooting off your mouth about “childless cat ladies” living miserable lives ricochets more than that rifle he holds in a public relations photo of him in a battle helmet. I guess we’re supposed to assume the photo is an accurate image of Vance’s military duty.

He seems to have trouble deciding what is true and what is convenient fiction.

Vance told the truth about Trump — said for the record that the former president is a fraud and cheat and lacks character. But now that he’s running as the convicted felon’s vice president, he did a rewrite.

I know a little about rewriting and editing. Like Vance, I enlisted in the military and became a photojournalist. I was in the Navy during the Vietnam War; Vance was in a U.S. Marine uniform in Iraq a generation later.

You can look up the duties of a Marine combat journalist. The job description is the same as for a Navy fleet photojournalist. So, we did essentially the same work, which is to be where the troops are, including in combat zones or in harm’s way, telling their stories for media outlets in military circles and news media back home.

That means everything from battle stations to ceremonial functions, promotions, public relations, newsletters, press releases and the kind of stuff that comes in handy when you’re running for political office.

Happy news, mostly. As my recruiter had promised, my duty would be mostly to help the government look good at the job of war-making.

I enlisted in the Navy because I didn’t want to carry a rifle in Vietnam. The joke was on me; the Navy gave me a camera and sent me to Vietnam, doing interviews and features on Navy men and women on ships in hostile zones and in the Gulf of Tonkin.

I rode every kind of ship — carriers, supply ships, destroyers, tugs and salvage ships. Rode bosuns’ chairs on high lines from one ship to another, helicopters, seaplanes, jets, got catapulted off a carrier.

But mostly, the vice-presidential nominee and I shared the experiences of making the brass look good and creating the stuff of newspaper clippings for proud parents in hometown America. I don’t know about Vance, but I learned the difference between the bull and the evidence left by the bull.

So I won’t quibble about the value of the military service of Walz. The Democratic vice-presidential nominee was in uniform as a reservist, and at any time over 24 years he was on call to go to war. I respect that.

Not all those who serve will be heroes; but everyone who wears the uniform and takes the oath gets respect. That’s valor earned and payable on demand, and I’d be the first to admit the people I wrote about had more claim to it than I did as a reporter.

I don’t even have a photo of myself holding my weapon — er, camera.

Dean Minnich writes from Westminster.

Let me rephrase the question: Do you believe you have a right to enjoy the view from your property, and if so, does that carry more weight than your neighbor’s property rights?

A visitor to my home years ago asked me how I could stand to look out my front windows at a dissembled truck in a neighbor’s weed-choked yard. I said it was not my preference, but neither was it my right to tell someone else what to do with their property.

Later, I would become more engaged in things like homeowners’ associations (both the good and the evils); government planning and zoning rules; and other regulations from the federal and state governments that can change your life with a notice in a window envelope.

We have government because we need to referee the conflicting needs and wants of people with differing agendas, means and tastes.

We need local newspapers to give people the opportunity to keep up with something more consequential than Facebook or TikTok or the overwhelming volume of digital silliness that invades our lives daily — at our invitation, for the most part.

Government is wary of local media because it’s not always comfortable to be held accountable, especially when the only choices are between two evils.

You can restrict property rights to preserve the values of other properties, but that might keep a farmer or long-time owner from realizing long-awaited return on investments in time and fortune.

You can fast-track projects that masses are demanding, but haste might result in spending one-time income on an ongoing and increasing maintenance expense. Raise taxes for what people say they want and need, even if it creates anxiety, economic stress and hardship for others who will not directly benefit from more water supply or better bridges or schools or parks — make your own lists.

The predominant American trait is a desire to be governed just enough to safely enjoy one’s chosen lifestyle. To live and let live, with the least taxation for the most convenient services.

Honesty is demanded, but we all know someone who cuts corners on the rules when they can. Performance is held to high standards, even by people who are convinced their own contributions are not appreciated.

We want privacy, but the crash last week of a big tech update shows the costs of relying too much on digital everything. Life is all about passwords.

I like reading my morning paper (apologies to those offended by my seeming disregard for trees). I am grateful for the electric thing on the wall that lets me dial in some cool air on hot days and warmth on cold ones.

Everything that makes life better creates either more demand or challenges for less consequence.

I need to keep up with the ongoing balance of blessings and blasphemies with local news, and even the national bleating about power and money and the scores of last night’s games.

Controversy and disagreement are the cost we pay for freedom.

Dean Minnich writes from Westminster.

Can Harris beat Donald Trump? One thing is certain: She’s no Hillary Clinton nor is she Joe Biden, both of whom got more popular votes than the Bully from the Big Apple.

What she is, is Trump’s nightmare: A strong woman who can’t be intimidated, laughs off ridicule, made a living putting felons where they belong and has an engaging and confident way of wading into the work at hand.

She has confidence and positivity that shows up Trump’s dark and coarse negativity. She calls out the frauds of the world and lifts the masks off racists and idealogues. Carry a specious argument to her and she’ll hand you a list of irrefutable facts.

My first impressions of her a few years ago were reserved. Was she too ambitious? Too brash? Was the confidence approaching arrogance? Does she have the experience and credentials to back up the public image?

Harris has a little swagger, and some old-school conservative Americans have had trouble accepting that in “females, foreigners, people of color and those who aren’t from around here.”

Just as an aside, have you noticed that increasingly, non-Caucasian people speak positively of having opportunities not historically open to “people who look like me?” While the anger and hatred comes from those who lament the world is changing because it’s filling up with anybody who can be dumped in a category under “not like us?”

No one ever paid me to predict political battles; my job was more as a play-by-play guy. What I learned as a reporter and editor was that politics, more than sales or a career on the stage, attracted people who didn’t have to actually believe everything they said.

As of this writing, the donations to the Harris campaign set records. My take on public reactions to the past week or so is that people are encouraged to see some energy for a chance to restore candor, civility, enthusiasm and positivity again, replacing cult worship of personality, vulgarity, lying and brutality.

Trump reportedly asked to have a possible second presidential debate, but to have it hosted by Fox News, instead of the scheduled ABC network.

My guess is if he does not get what he wants, he will refuse to participate, claiming it won’t be fair. My other guess is he wants to cancel the debate because Harris has had enough experience in courtroom encounters with felons she might enjoy a return down memory lane.

Dean Minnich writes from Westminster.

And that’s just about where it stops, based on the stories appearing on these pages recently about second thoughts by commissioners on taxes and spending, and who gets to make the decisions.

Before you have a plan, you have to have priorities. The election is supposed to reflect the choices of citizens. They choose people they think will have a good plan to continue what’s going well, fixing what’s not and putting a team together to carry out the work.

Campaigns are like a visit to the carnival, listening to the music and the barkers teasing customers out of their money and good judgment. No good campaign manager is going to let their candidate bore the populace with a comprehensive vision of what needs to be done to build more school classrooms and fill them with more and better-paid teachers.

Campaigners are marching to the loud music of the partisans, sometimes dancing with optimism about the bright candidate on display, sometimes with salacious and incendiary accusations about the opponent and their partisan fans.

Citizens are essentially watching the parade go by for entertainment and a certain feeling of reassurance when they hear something that agrees with their own ideas. If it sounds good, it can’t be a lie.

Campaigning extolling the riches that come with growth — industrial, retail/commercial and residential — is usually vague about how the money is going to be raised for the increase in public services, finding adequate water and providing facilities. Maryland has adequate facilities laws, requiring sustainability in services. There is a limit to how much taxes can be cut.

Businesses like plans that don’t collect taxes but make the cash registers sing.

Schools eat a lot of cash, and the solutions on how to manage costs are complicated by the fact that by law, the elected school board is charged with running schools, but not with raising the revenues. The commissioners, county council and executives in some counties are responsible for raising funds to maintain adequacy, but they cannot dictate policies or curriculum.

More people means more drivers on the roads, which will affect commuter time for those already pounding the morning roads, more of the eternal pop-up repairs and accidents that require more and better emergency services.

Most people elected to the office of mayor or council of a town have little knowledge of the complexities of running a government, even a relatively small one. Same with the good citizens who run for the school board thinking they have the answers for running a school system.

On day one, most of them are totally clueless. Most local candidates never heard of a so-called master plan that is supposed to be like a combination shopping list, budget, wish list and crystal ball to be used as a continuing and regularly revised map for laying out the future of the county.

It’s like a big Christmas Garden with areas for farms, zoning for industry, schools, recreation, health and social care — all the needs and aspirations considered and funded by permission of the citizens through their elected representatives.

And all of the people who moved here for the view, clean air and lower taxes have to adjust to odors carried on the prevailing winds. And the people who arrived a few years ago and complain about the houses of other newcomers obscuring the views. And the road warriors who play bumper cars impatiently.

They all have some role to play in the next iteration of the county master plan, revised every 10 years.

Tell your candidate what you want to see in the future.

Dean Minnich writes from Westminster.

One was responding to anticipated questions rehearsed for days in advance and keeping the answers in context with the agreed format of the highly touted debate. He was obviously thrown off his game by the loss of spontaneity.

The other participant was less fettered with answers because he has never shown much concern for the truth. His strategy was not to answer the questions, but to deflect the questions and spin  his own agenda supported by his talent for blustering and bullying.

All of it was familiar to me as a former campaigner. Through two elections with half a dozen or so debates each, it became clear to me that opponents who have no qualms about following rules have a huge advantage if the goal is not to inform the audience, but to put on a show akin to a gladiator cage fight.

Like most of the candidates for county commissioner, I was a political outsider and ran for office because I had seen some dirty tricks by extremists at play in the partisan ranks. I didn’t ask the central committee for permission or an endorsement. I simply filed as a Republican, but a very independent one.

That made me a RINO — a term I had never heard — Republican In Name Only.

Most of us were novices, regular folks who thought we might have something positive to contribute to local governance. My first impressions of most of the people running was that they were all honorable folks, Republicans and Democrats, some better suited for the job than others. None of us were enemies.

But even small-town politics have their resolute partisans — the zealots — who shoulder their way into the processes in an attempt to wage a war instead of a civil and constructive campaign. Their first item of business is to ensure anyone seeking office toes the line of the party, as interpreted by those who donate the money for campaigning. The other party, or anyone else, is the enemy.

It’s not about serving the county or the state or the country. It’s about serving the party, at best, and at worst, serving The Leader.

Most of the candidates had some kind of coaching to prepare for the debates set up by the League of Women Voters (the Republicans didn’t like them; too liberal)  by various associations — teachers, emergency services workers, business interests and recreational volunteers.

It became clear in the first debates that those candidates coached by experienced partisans were not going to answer the questions from moderators. They were going to ignore the questions and always respond with a tirade against opponents’ responses or some other target designed to attack some vulnerability of opposing candidates or party.

A verbal brawl, not discourse. Makes you look strong, a take-charge leader type. The masses like fighters.

The strategy included putting hostile faces in the first row to glower at the enemy. The intimidating hostile faces turned into big friendly welcoming smiles when the home team was responding.

Debates were, in my opinion, charades, cheap shows and without much redeeming substance. I haven’t seen anything recently to make me change my mind.

Dean Minnich writes from Westminster.

Like the suitor who knows in his heart that the love of his life tolerates him while waiting for a better catch, fact-gatherers are less appealing than the colorful personalities and outrageous, swaggering illusions of heroes.

Yet we suffer public ignominy and abuse for bursting the bubbles of fantasy and faith with exposure of fraud and corruption.

To me, the most frightening aspect of the Digital Era (I predict it will become known as the Digital Error) is that too much evidence of incompetence or criminal deception will be swept under the rug of Artificial Intelligence. No printed trail will be left behind for future archeologists to sift through as they seek the cause of the decline of Western civilization.

If you see something in print that strikes your fancy as a nugget of truth you should fold it neatly and put it in a fireproof vault for future access because the alternative will be available only on technologies that are no longer available to the general population. If you think I’m wrong, try to find files of things written and stored on something called floppy disks, MPs or CDs.

But no matter how history is recorded, there is still a problem in comprehension. I find that even well-read people often are confused by the differences between news, analysis, opinion and just plain recreational reading.

When I learned the basics, a proper news story answered all of the following in the lede — or first paragraph: Who, what, when, where, why and sometimes how. That way, even if you had no time to be informed, you had the basic facts. Subsequent paragraphs were still in print so you could return to sort context among quotes, additional supporting facts and statistics and references to other sources.

Very simple, and the object of such direct simplicity is to inform a reader (viewer, listener) of the most important facts without bias or opinion. That’s old school.

I learned it from veterans of an even older school who espoused the idea that no reporter should get a byline — their name on the top of the story — until they had been around long enough to have the know-it-all kicked out of them. That’s because the most precious thing we had to offer was credibility. Past tense.

Modern news marketing differs from old-school journalism in that what is being offered is something they call “eyeballs.” News in printed form has ads all around — top, sides, beneath, but not embedded in the text of the article.

Online news begins with a hook in the headline that you will scroll for pages to see again, because the effort on social media and television is to keep your eyes on the screen and turn off the smart switch in your head.

Over the years, I’ve had the honor and opportunity to guide young journalists to write the news first; the five W’s, and only the facts and context. Then they’re ready to write features or some related story called a sidebar.

Next step on the ladder is the analysis — and here is where many veterans got their first bylines — with in-depth background into context and the why of the news topic, but not an opinion.

Ultimately, the management in the news department might choose to offer an opinion on a public issue. An editorial identifies a problem or failure and suggests a course of action. Opinion is supposed to be on the editorial page, along with letters to the editor and columnists.

Today, opinions are often the headline, if not the entire digital or video display. Most of the “news” on television, particularly the “shows” with a regular host and a changing cast of panelists, is an entertaining, show-biz approach to opinion and analysis.

Social media, from TikTok to Facebook, is propaganda with hidden political agendas, or just plain entertainment. Mindlessness has market value. This is where AI will fester and thrive.

Dean Minnich writes from Westminster.

You can sit in front of the TV for half an hour and still not know if we’re getting rain soon, but you will have all you need to know about five companies that will come in and cover up your old bathroom in one day.

I can’t get in to see a doctor in the ER in one day. But I can get a new shower enclosure and take the rest of my life to pay for it, which is the huckster definition of affordable payments.

If you need a lawyer, you can find a bunch of them on TV. Nice ones, nasty ones, lawyers who look and sound like they will be needing a lawyer sooner rather than later. And you know: If you have a phone …

Another reason we’re angry at everything and everyone is the people lining up on TV to tell us we smell bad. I have a wife for that. I don’t need some strange woman in her underwear leaning out of a 55-inch HD TV into my den to tell me in confidence that she uses this deodorant one can apply “anywhere.”

I see things that make me wonder why anyone would worry about their kids learning too much too fast from a library book. Forget the M-rated movies. Just expose their tender little minds to dinnertime ads and they’ll learn things.

A reporter shows briefly to announce that the Orioles have made a roster move, back with details after this …

He’s lying. I watch car ads for six minutes, three different dealers, and when they’re finished barking that I should get down there NOW because these deals will go away forever, the sports guy is back and says, “News from the Orioles, when we return.”

I yell at the TV: “You just said … ” but I’m cut off by another home improvement developer that appears to be one of the companies ripping up somebody’s bathroom and replacing a backyard pool and installing a new roof, all in one day. And at payments anyone can afford, if they just keep paying for as long as it takes.

It makes me want to jump in my car and roar off to the horizon, ignoring speed limits because there are no other cars on the road, no stop signs, no traffic lights, nothing to slow you down but a shortcut on the left that will take your $80,000 ride over rocks, crossing streams and racing trains to the crossings.

And you wonder why people drive like idiots, weaving from lane to lane and gunning on green lights on Route 140 or 97? Why aliens land daily on I-795 and the Beltway and seem bent on destruction or abduction?

They’re folks just like you and me who make the mistake of tuning in to the news for sports and weather.

The real burnouts among us also overdose on political news and advertising.

Never did catch the news about the Oriole roster move. The mute button is next to delete.

Dean Minnich writes from Westminster.

That’s the source of conflict over land, from the earliest conquests of raiding tribes from the East to today’s resistance to the threats of changes in neighborhoods.

Our politics and cultural hypocrisies are laid bare as we fumble for a response for people seeking a life in America.

New houses obliterate the fields and woods where “natives” used to hike and play. Traffic makes it harder to get around, familiar landmarks giving way to industrial use and other things that bring out the NIMBYs in protest (Not In My Back Yard).

There is no question that borders need to be respected and consistency through law and orderly growth is essential for security and stability.

The United States and European democracies have been conflicted about how to deal with the pressures of mass immigration. As pressures squeeze political leaders, some nations have caved and taken the easy way out — just appease the most militant and least compassionate elements.

Desperate people, families and children are turned away with the only real excuse a variation of the simple un-golden rule: Me first, and to hell with you — the authoritarian’s license for domination. There’s no shortage of aspiring tyrants and enabling bullies..

The idea of right-wing politics finding support in Europe came as a surprise to some who recall that it was support for strongman nationalist leaders that led to the disasters of World War II.

Americans have justification to be proud of our country, but there’s a tendency to rewrite some inconvenient facts. Like the legacy of slavery, and the unwillingness to let go of some need to justify it.

We like to think we have never experienced in this country the horrors of totalitarianism, the rule of a few over the many, the bullying of entire classes of people. Ask the American Indian. Ask the Chinese who came to build our railroads, the Japanese Americans who were forced into desert camps during WW II.

Ask the Catholics who were assaulted by the Protestants and the Jews who were assaulted by Catholics and Protestants.

America’s real threat is if we buy into the premise that there’s only one definition for an American favored by God. That our virtues are represented by flags and slogans and symbols and what we hate. That we are justified in using violence to dominate others, and the only thing we need to fear is change.

People want freedom to live in safety, the right to earn a decent wage, to own privacy and property, and to expect a show of respect from others across the social spectrum. The essential dignity of any human being is the basis of all our relationships — personal, political and spiritual. Some of us are better at recognizing that than others.

We need to control access across borders into our country. That’s a given. It is not realistic to demand that all those who look to come here be just like us. Nor can we accept all who want access to the U.S.

Purge our vocabulary of thoughts like, “they aren’t one of us,” or “there goes the neighborhood,” or “not in my back yard,” or “those people.”

It would also be a lot easier to fix immigration if our politicians were not more determined to keep the opposing party from succeeding than meeting needs and standards of common sense and human dignity.

Dean Minnich writes from Westminster.  

Abraham Lincoln said, “If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never again regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”

Think about this for a moment: Republican Senate candidate and former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said last week when the jury was considering the evidence against the former president on charges of 34 counts of fraudulent records, “Regardless of the results, I urge all Americans to respect the verdict and the legal process.”

I thought that was a classy and adult display of fairness, in contrast to recent muck-wading.

The response from the Republican National Committee’s co-chair, Lara Trump (it’s a family business, now), “ As the RNC co-chair, I think he should have never said something like that. He doesn’t deserve the respect of anyone in the Republican Party at this point.”

Why not? Isn’t the rule of law the clarion call of the G-Maga-OP? Justice, law and order, the constitution, fairness?

Others joined the MAGA chorus — I hesitate to use the term Republicans because I don’t like to associate all of them with those who blindly follow Pied Pipers of cult. I was a Republican for 40 years because I share the values of personal responsibility, the rule of law and not loyalty to a king, democracy and representational government instead of chaos by committee, where everybody gets a trophy (or a government job).

But when I ran for public office, I learned that one is supposed to pay dues before they can seek office. Earn favors, prove loyalty not to the public at large, but to the party. It made me more determined to be non-partisan if elected. And I was.

Some Republicans — especially the most zealous party-liners, dismissed me as a RINO —  Republican in Name Only.

I wore it as a badge of honor.

There was nothing in the oath of office Hogan took as governor to require him to serve only the Republican Party. Same with the oaths for county commissioner, or anyone sworn in as a mayor, town council member, delegate or state senator.

Federal candidates have become more and more marginalized over the past 20 years or so. Good, reasonable centrists who might lean a little to the liberal side, or to the conservative side, have been targeted by overly zealous partisans — mostly on the right — as demons.

Ironically, the same GOP soldiers who took up the sword and shields of Christian Soldiers against society’s slide into debauchery dedicate themselves to supporting liars, cheats, womanizers, warmongers and felons, in the name of God.

Fans of the MAGA candidate complain of the dangerous decline of law and order, but when asked what they’ll do if Trump is defeated at the polls or winds up being sentenced to prison, they wave war flags or allude to slogans that translate into a call for armed revolution.

So much for the constitutional construction of orderly succession of a government that can change without armed revolt.

Honorable and able Republicans, lawmakers and voters, are beginning to stand up to the MAGA radicals. Others are leaving, most choosing to register as independents, but are speaking out, as I did.

Dean Minnich writes from Westminster.