President signs a memo withdrawing the United States from sixty-six international organizations.

Sixty-six. With a six. That is the number of international organizations the United States, by presidential memorandum signed Wednesday afternoon, has decided are contrary to United States interests and from which we shall now withdraw.

I sat down with the list. I made coffee. I read the list.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC. The body that publishes the global scientific assessment of what the planet is doing, to itself, in our lifetimes. The United States helped found it. The IPCC does not have an army. The IPCC does not have a budget that takes American money. The IPCC has graphs. We are now, by federal memo, walking out of a room where scientists make graphs about the weather.

The International Renewable Energy Agency. The International Solar Alliance. The UN International Law Commission. The Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation. The International Union for Conservation of Nature, which is the body that maintains the red list of endangered species. We are, on Wednesday afternoon, no longer at the table where the lions get counted.

And then. And then, folks. Buried on page two of the list. The Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children in Armed Conflict.

Children. In. Armed. Conflict.

That is a body whose entire job is documenting, in writing, in named cases, with photographs, the children who get used as soldiers, the children who get bombed in schools, the children who step on landmines on the way to the well. Buddy. We pulled out of the children office. The office is literally about children. The office name says it on the door.

I have run a casino floor. I have seen managers cancel comps to break a streak at a card table. I have seen general managers fire pit bosses to cover up an audit. I have never seen anybody walk into a meeting and announce, in writing, on letterhead, that the company is now opting out of the children program. Out of principle.

Look. The withdrawals from the climate stuff, you can have the argument. I would lose the argument, but you can have it. There is a coherent isolationist position on a panel of scientists that publishes graphs.

There is no coherent position, in any voice, in any tradition of any country in any century, on opting out of the children in war office.

I’m arguing with the television. The television is dubbed in five languages and one of them is a UN press release.