Month: November 2021

Post-Truth 

We live in a post-truth era.  What in any other time would be widely accepted as fact, today is a matter of “opinion”.  No matter what “science” learns, no matter what level of expertise someone has in a particular subject, everyone’s opinions about everything, all of a sudden, are valued.  You have yours, I have mine, and somehow, they both have equal weight.  

That’s because we can go “on Google” and find any justification for any theory we want.  And since that information is presented in a “smart” way, say with lab coats in front of the US Capitol, then “obviously” it’s the truth.  All of the credentialing that created trust in the past, from academic degrees to years of expertise, no longer count.  Joe Rogan has at least as much weight in the Covid debate as Anthony Fauci, if not more.  Ask Green Bay Quarterback Aaron Rogers.   Rogan (Newton South High School, U-Mass dropout) is an “influencer” with eleven million followers, and that status somehow lends more credence than Fauci’s forty years of scientific leadership and advanced degrees (BA from Holy Cross, MD from Cornell, Honorary Doctorates from 9 Universities).  

“Experts”

It is foolish.  We still want an “expert” to fix our car, or our broken leg.  If I had a question about pole vaulting, I’d go to Greg Hull (Arizona) or Jim Bemiller (Tennessee)  or my pole vaulting “guru”, Mark Hannay (Slippery Rock).  They are the best, the most experienced.  They are the proven experts in the field.  Of course folks outside the “pole vault world” don’t know their names.  And we didn’t know the names of Tony Fauci (National Institute of Health) or Mike Osterholm (University of Minnesota) or Peter Hotez (Baylor) before Covid either. (Except Fauci, we knew him from AIDS and Ebola). 

But our arguments about the pandemic aren’t really scientific ones anymore.  As we are post-truth and post-fact, we are post-science as well.  The debate is now clothed in political terms of “personal freedom”.  “You can’t tell me what injection I have to take”, is the argument now, based not in science, but in a narcissistic view of personal privilege versus civic responsibility.    

American Dis-Unity

America has a long tradition of unifying in the face of great crisis.   From World War I and World War II to 9-11, we have turned to national solutions to solve our national problems.  But we also have a long tradition of dissent to those solutions.  The Vietnam War started with national support.  That didn’t last.  As the war dragged on, Americans discovered that the Government wasn’t telling the truth about the conflict (The Post – Pentagon Papers).  That revelation didn’t seem to alter national policy or action.  The War continued, through the final years of Johnson’s Presidency and the six years of Nixon’s ill-fated stay in the White House. The Vietnam War didn’t end until 1975, after Ford’s ascension to the Oval Office.

While we have a tradition of unifying under crisis, the Vietnam Era taught a deep distrust of “the Government”.  That distrust is underlined in popular culture, from the Rambo movies to the heroic portrayals of activist protestors in The Trial of the Chicago Seven.  That distrust is also emphasized in The Report, which examined the actions of the CIA after 9-11, and Shock and Awe that looked at the false evidence that justified the invasion of Iraq.

Add that to the current post-truth era, and maybe it isn’t such a surprise that instead of unifying in the face of a pandemic virus, the United States is fractured.  But that division has a real cost in lives.  The United States still leads the world in Covid deaths, now nearing 800,000.  India, with a population four times the size, has only recently reached half that toll.

Oh, the Needle!!

It is logical for a nation faced with a health crisis to search for a way to prevent the disease.  It is logical for that nation to look to the most brilliant to find a preventative, a vaccine.  And once it finds that preventative, it’s more than logical for the nation to want it’s citizens to take it.  In fact, it is logical to protect the nation, just as logical as it was to draft soldiers for World War I and II, and to ration food and products.  Now THAT imposed on “personal freedom” – especially when they put a rifle in your hands and sent you to war.

But “Oh the needle – oh the needle in my arm!!!!!”  Clearly that infringement must be beyond “the pale” for some.  The science is irrefutable:  the vaccine works, and it would save lives.  But that all depends on facts that many don’t believe anymore. 

Natural Immunity

And the final illogic of our post-truth world is “natural immunity”.  Those who had the misfortune of getting Covid, now claim that are “immune” from the disease.  Again, science conflicts with that claim.  While prior infection does give some immunity, the level is dependent on how sick you were, and what variant of the disease you had.  And worse, instead of “risking” the vaccine, some are more willing to risk the disease itself, in order to gain immunity from – the disease. 

But those pandering to the anti-vaccine crowd are trying to place “natural immunity” as equal protection to vaccination.  The science, the facts, demonstrates that it isn’t.  But since all opinions are “weighed equally”, those that find political shelter in opposing vaccination are now clinging to “natural immunity”.  I wish they were right.  I wish that the almost fifty million Americans already infected by Covid were set.  

But they’re not.  

Omicron

It would be nice for the worst of Covid to be behind us.  Politically, it would be an advantage for President Biden to be able to say “…he cured the United States”.  We have weathered the original infection, then re-infection with the Delta Variant.  But viruses are all about mutation, and the global spread of the corona-virus  encourages genetic changes.  

The world-wide web of transportation means that what happens anywhere in the world, will be everywhere else in days.  So the discovery of the Omicron Variant of Covid 19, a variation with multiple mutations, is chilling.  We know we can’t stop it from getting into the United States. It’s probably here.  It’s already in Canada, with two cases identified in Ontario. What we don’t know is how infective it is, and how effective the vaccines will be against it.  Omicron may not change a thing.  It might change everything.

It would be better if we could handle this together; united as a nation against the disease.  That’s not likely.  The anti-fact machine is already churning out propaganda, claiming that somehow one side is “making the variant up” for political gain.  We don’t share the same facts, nor the same sources of information. Another viral crisis will deepen our divisions, not heal them.

In a post-truth world, that’s the truth.

Yellow Journalism

We live in a world today of “intimate” mass communication.  In the “old days”, communication was by reading; newspapers, tracts or books.  We had a “choice to know”,  short of the street corner cry of the newsboys:  “Extra, Extra, Read All About It, Spanish sink US Battleship!!!”  Want to know more – buy the paper.  And from the beginning, newspapers had their biases.  Some of the great newspapers of the mid-1800’s fought for abolition of slavery, like William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator and Frederick Douglass’s North Star. 

But the bias of the newspapers of the late 1800’s was more about selling papers and making money.  The great newspaper “war” between William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World wasn’t about ideology.  It became a national battle of sensationalism to sell papers.  Which paper could tell the “biggest” story, true or not?  We categorize that as the era of “Yellow Journalism”. It was when the United States actually fought a war driven not by necessity, but by public opinion stoked with outrage by the lurid stories of Spanish atrocities.  

Fredric Remington, the famous artist of the American west, was sent to Cuba by Hearst, to draw images of the war atrocities for the Journal.  The story goes that when Remington cabled Hearst that nothing was happening, Hearst replied:  “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war”.   

Intimate Communication

Today we are far beyond newsboys crying out in the city streets.  In fact we have surpassed the time of the television “evening news” (though it’s still available). Today our news is delivered individually, to our handheld devices.  We get our news in bed or the bathroom, as we drive or as we idle away time at work.  The newsboy is no longer crying out from the street – he is “pinging” on the bedstand or vibrating in our pocket.  But he still demands the same attention – “Extra, Extra, read all about it”.  

Just as the yellow journalists one hundred and twenty years ago used stories and pictures to drive our emotions, today’s “commentators” (such a neutral word, as if they were ancient Greek scholars) find key words to impress our views.  And that’s what today’s essay is about, the new “yellow journalism” of the Twenty-First Century.  I call it “critical word theory”. 

Legacy Americans

Let’s start with the “newest”, coined by Fox commentator Tucker Carlson:  Legacy Americans.  This term is part of an entire “school” of thought, based around the changing demographics of the United States.  The facts are that sometime in the next twenty years, white people will no longer be the majority of Americans.  For the first time since the colonization of North America, the country will be a “majority-minority” nation.   That means that no one group; not whites or blacks, Latinos or Asians or Native Americans or “others”, will be a majority of America.  We will be a nation of varying minorities.

That’s a fact.  But what Carlson means is what happens to the “legacy” Americans when they stop being the majority?  “Legacy Americans” are the white people who were here – before.  Before what?  Before the migrations of the twentieth century, before “brown people” became more populous throughout our nation, rather than just the Southwest.  Carlson uses the term like a crowbar to divide the interest of the soon to be minority whites from what will be the majority of the nation, non-whites.

Fix the Vote

And so the machinations of many states to reduce the voting power of non-white peoples and enhance those of whites is to protect “legacy Americans”.   It sounds so “proper”, like the inheritance left by some old aunt to keep the family fortune going.  But of course, the definition of “legacy American” is anti-democratic,  as anti-American as it comes.  It calls for the preservation of power regardless of electoral strength. 

Which brings us to Carlson’s greater thesis of “White Replacement Theory”.  This is the over-arching theme of his philosophy.  The theory states that, like the villainous organization in a James Bond movie, the Democratic Party is in favor of allowing “open borders”, because they want more brown people to come to the United States and vote for them.  They will “replace” the white voter, (and employee), to reshape the nation into something else – in Carlson’s mind maybe Venezuela.  

Which fits into the real propaganda, the “Big Lie” of “Stop the Steal”.  Because when Democrats respond that they don’t want open borders but legal immigration, and besides immigrants aren’t citizens and can’t vote – the Carlson thesis is that they already do vote.  His claim is that voting is already so corrupted in this nation that millions of illegal votes have reshaped our election results, particularly one.  The fact that this isn’t true, doesn’t seem to matter to Carlson:  He’s “furnishing the pictures and the war”.  

White-washed History

“Legacy Americans”, Carlson would say, should embrace their “Heritage”.  Heritage is another misappropriated term in our modern Yellow Journalism.  It stands for the literally white-washed history taught in the public schools of the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s.  “Heritage” means that the Southern “Lost Cause” of the Civil War was righteous, and that the villainous North (just like the Democratic Party) is trying to erase history by removing Confederate relics from town squares and flag poles. 

But the real erasing of history took place at the end of Reconstruction in 1876, when the white votes of the South were more important than securing the victory of civil rights in the war.  Robert E. Lee didn’t even want monuments.  He wanted the nation to move on from the disaster that he prolonged (though he certainly didn’t put it that way).  But it was in the “interest” of the white South to re-write the history of America.  

That’s what we (I’m sixty-five) were taught in school, the “Lost Cause” history that somehow put the “romantic” Confederates on an equal footing with the “industrialized” Union. Sure we learned about the heroic Irish Brigades who fought in the War on both sides. But we were taught about the brilliant “strategery” of the Confederate Generals, and the life wasting butchery of the Union Generals. And we learned very little about the 179,000 African Americans of the Union Army who battled to free their brothers from slavery. Where are their statues?

Leave it to Beaver

“Heritage” is used to define what I would call the “Leave it to Beaver” time, of the 1950’s.  It all seemed so peaceful, before the upheavals of Americans of color demanding equal rights.  The good old days when everyone “knew their place”:  women stayed at home, gays stayed in the closet, and people with disabilities stayed in the upstairs bedroom with the shades down.

Which leads us to the final “bugaboo” term:  “Critical Race Theory”.  No matter that critical race theory was a specific term used to define a study of legal processes at the post-graduate level, today it is now misused as the over-arching term for the “evil” of teaching that discrimination is wrong; that it benefitted and still benefits one race over another.  Because, as Mr. Carlson would have it, we are to roll back the changes to “Leave it to Beaver” times.  That way, we would make sure that “Legacy Americans” are protected, that their “Heritage” is saved, and that they aren’t “replaced”.  

The end of the Reconstruction marked the end of the dream of an America where color didn’t matter.  Yellow Journalism brought us an “imperialistic war”.  And the Critical Word Theory of today is trying to divide our nation, and make it one of minority rule.  

If that’s not Un-American, I don’t know what is.

Too Early

I was up early on Thanksgiving morning.   “The dogs” don’t recognize Federal holidays, but I was ready to get going at six, anyway.  It was Thanksgiving Day; there’s cleanup to do, turkeys to prepare (one for cooking, one for smoking), and tables to set.  So getting out of bed wasn’t so hard.  Besides, CeCe, the pit bull puppy, made no mistake about needing to go out.  The harder I tried to sleep, the more she licked my face.

The morning news shows on Thanksgiving are usually a compilation of earlier shows.  While the dogs don’t recognize Federal holidays, the crew at MSNBC definitely does.  So there were lots of interviews that I usually wouldn’t pay much attention to.  One was of a New York Times book essayist (I missed his name) who did a review of the 9-11 Commission Report, now twenty years after the attack.  

9-11

There was lots of talk about the failures of America after 9-11: black sites, torture, loss of privacy with government intrusion and America’s failure to export democracy.  But there was also a story (always looking for a good story), one that resonates on this day to gives thanks.

I’ve written about Flight 93 before, the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania near the little town of Shanksville.  The memorials there are powerful, a fitting symbol of American determination and sacrifice.  But this Thanksgiving morning I learned one more detail about what happened that Tuesday on Flight 93.  The passengers, well aware of the earlier attacks on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon, knew they were on a flying missile.  And they chose to do something about it.

And before they charged the cockpit door, they did something wholly American.  They took a vote.  The passengers determined by democratic agreement to “do something” rather than ride the missile to its fate, probably the Capitol Building.  Certainly they understood the likely outcome of their action.  And they were even more aware of their fate if they did nothing.  So they voted to act, to sacrifice, and to try to save America from another assault.  Flight 93 hurtled upside down into a field near Shanksville at over five-hundred miles an hour.  It was democracy in action.

Under the Rug

Wednesday, I witnessed another vote that renewed my faith in democracy.  In Brunswick, Georgia, just north of the Florida border along the Atlantic coast, a jury of twelve citizens unanimously agreed that three white men could not chase down a black man and cause his death.  It was a case that should have been a “no brainer”. One of the white men even videoed the final moments. But it also might have been swept under the rug.

The local District Attorney, a friend of one of the three, ordered the men not to be arrested.  Before she recused herself, she made sure the next District Attorney would agree not to find cause for charges.  Had an attorney of one defendant not “leaked” the video, charges would never have been brought.  Perhaps the scariest part of this case:  that lawyer leaked it because he thought the video justified the murder. In fact, it was the critical evidence proving the charges against the defendants. 

No Defense

The defense made it clear where they stood.  They called for black pastors to be banned from the courtroom, they denigrated the character and the physical appearance of the victim, they did everything they could to convince the jury that this “black man” was guilty – of something.  This was a trial about race, about a black man jogging in a white neighborhood, and about three white men taking the law into their own hands.  It was a case from the 1940’s or 50’s Jim Crow South.  But in our current political climate, there is a looming question:  where does America stand on race, guns, self-defense and vigilantism?  Just look at the result of the Kenosha trial.

Eleven white and one black juror made their answer clear.  For two days they deliberated, then reached a verdict in time to go home for Thanksgiving: guilty.  The defendants were guilty of varying degrees of murder, guilty of false imprisonment, guilty of assault with their trucks.  All three will spend most of their remaining lives in jail. 

Thankful

Yesterday was Thanksgiving.  I know that for some, Thanksgiving is symbolic of European mistreatment of the Native Americans.  And there are many things in our history we should be sorry for.  But there are also events we can be proud of.

Here are two where democracy won out.

Beginnings

We all know the story.  The Pilgrims, fresh from a sixty-six day crossing of the Atlantic and two hundred miles off course, landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts.  It was a harbor protected by the long arm of Cape Cod, stretching out into the sea.  The arrived in September, too late to plant the crops they needed to survive the hard New England winter.  So they suffered, surviving at the mercy of the local natives who helped provide them with food, and teach them how to gather the local plants, clams and lobsters.

Almost half of the 102 Pilgrims died in that first winter.  But when spring arrived, they went to work, planting crops and building a more structured settlement.  By the fall, they were prepared for the winter, and wanted to give thanks for the bounty of their harvest.  They joined in celebration with the Native Americans who helped them survive that first long brutal winter.  So it was in 1621 that the first “Thanksgiving” was celebrated in America, not just to give thanks to God, but to those Native Americans who helped them to survive.

National Holiday

That tradition lived on in the northern colonies.  And days of Thanksgiving were proclaimed for other reasons.  George Washington called for a national day of Thanksgiving after the ratification of the Constitution.  Individual states had their own scheduled days of Thanksgiving, though it remained more of a regional than national tradition.

It wasn’t until 1827 that there was a movement for a “National Day of Thanksgiving”.  Sarah Josepha Hale, a noted writer and magazine editor who authored “Mary had a little lamb”, began a thirty-six year campaign to convince the nation.  

It took until 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, that she found a sympathetic ear with President Abraham Lincoln.  He was searching for ways to keep the Union together.  The War was a time of ultimate mutual sacrifice, as almost every American was directly impacted by the casualty lists from the battlefields.  

And so Lincoln issued a proclamation, calling for a national “Day of Thanksgiving” on the last Thursday of November. The first “national” Thanksgiving was the week after Lincoln outlined the reasons for the Civil War in the Gettysburg Address.   As he said, the nation fought so that “…a government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”. The holiday was another way he held the Union together while he worked to bring the Civil War to a successful conclusion.  Even with the victories of Vicksburg and Gettysburg in the summer, that was still not a sure thing in November of 1863.

So Thanksgiving became a “National holiday”, ultimately in the South as well as the North.  It was a celebration of thanks, but also of unity:  a holiday we could all share, regardless of religion or race or region or creed. 

Breaking Tradition

The great “tradition breaker” in American history was Franklin Roosevelt.  He is the only President to ignore Washington’s precedent of serving no more than two terms as President (“Teach them how to say goodbye”). Roosevelt, elected at fifty years of age in 1932, was unwilling to leave as the country faced World War II in 1940, or while the War was still raging in 1945.  And Roosevelt looked at other “traditions” as way to help the US economy, particularly during the 1930’s in the Great Depression.

Even in those stressed economic times, consumer buying went up significantly before Christmas.  But the “Christmas Season” didn’t officially start until after Thanksgiving, the last Thursday in November, usually the last couple days of the month. The country knew exactly when that was: since 1924  the Macy’s Parade has been a wonderful commercial announcement of the beginning of Christmas.  That’s why Santa Claus was at the end of the parade – time to start shopping.

Roosevelt wanted another week of consumerism, so he made one.  He moved Thanksgiving up a week, to the third Thursday of November.   While the nation accepted Roosevelt running for President for a third and even fourth term, they didn’t want him to “pack” the Supreme Court, and they definitely didn’t want him “messing” with Thanksgiving.  In 1942, he bowed to public pressure and returned it to the fourth Thursday of November.

Thanksgiving Today

So here we are today, the day before Thanksgiving, 2021.  We have much to be thankful for this year.  The pandemic isn’t over, but we are learning how to live with it.  For many there are empty chairs at the table due to Covid, just as there were empty chairs in 1863 and the 1940’s from the Wars.  But Thanksgiving isn’t about loss, it’s about life.  The Pilgrims could look forward to a winter better than the one before.  Washington could look forward to a new nation, a new experiment in human experience.  Lincoln could finally see a road to victory in the Civil War.  And Roosevelt could get us to go shopping – for an extra week.

President Biden has already pardoned the turkeys, though not the two in our refrigerator.  And he’s releasing oil from the strategic reserve to lower the burden of soaring gas prices.  So there’s reason to be thankful this Thanksgiving as well.  

But what we should really think about as we gather round our family tables tomorrow, is that there still is so much more that unifies our nation than divides it.  For at least one day, we are all focused on the same subject:  gathering our loved ones and sharing a meal.  Regardless of our political differences, we can all share in that.  

And if the turkey puts you to sleep, no worries.  Close your eyes, the Bears and Lions football game really won’t be much of a contest.  But save some turkey for the “Game” on Saturday, and the Bengals and Steelers on Sunday!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

Here’s a list of the “Dog Stories” from “Our America” – They’re mostly about dogs – though somehow politics still might creep into a few of them

Here’s some of Marty’s dog stories –

• Dash 10/24/2017
• Affordable Dog Act 8/18/2019
• Camping with the Dogs – 10/24/2019
• Good Hearts  9/2/2020
• Friday the Thirteenth – 11/13/2020
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/2021
• A Dog Story – 2/25/2021
• Lou’s Saga – 5/14/2021
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 7/30/2021
• Dogs Lost and Found – 11/21/2021
• Jenn and I and our good dog Dash get a High School “Hall Walk” the week of our wedding

And then there’s always politics

www.dahlman.online

Belsaw

In 1963 we were living in Clifton, a residential section of the City of Cincinnati.  Mom and Dad had bought the house of “Mom’s Dreams”, an old English Tudor at 21 Belsaw Place.  It was all old oaken beams and plaster board walls, set into the hillside.  We didn’t have air conditioning, but a huge fan on the third floor pulled cool air up through the house in the summer. 

There was a big open field next door, perfect for a second grader to gather friends and play, and a wood behind to explore that was the shortcut to my friends on the next street over.  That house is still there, fifty-eight years later.  The little tree we planted in the front yard is full grown now, and there’s a house built in the big field, and I’m sure air conditioning has been installed.

Clifton School

Clifton was a nice walking community.  Our church was only a few blocks away on Clifton Avenue.  And the school, the ancient Clifton Elementary building, was also within easy walking distance for a second grader.  Rain, shine or snow, we walked to school, “uphill, both ways”.  It wasn’t really, just an easy walk past the church and the big yards with Osage Orange trees.  Those trees produce a “fruit”, the big green “hedge apples”.  They were perfect for throwing at each other, or kicking down the sidewalk to school.

Clifton School was so old it there was a large fountain out front, for watering the horses the pulled the streetcars as they made their way down Clifton Avenue towards town.  (No, I’m not that old, the horses were long gone even then). The more modern “Annex” was across the street from the old building, and that was “my school” for second and third grade.  In fourth grade we would move over into the old building.

Kennedy

I was a President Kennedy fan even as a seven year-old.  Mom had a direct connection to the Kennedy’s.  She went to boarding school with Kathleen Kennedy, the President’s sister, who became part of the family tragedy when she died in a plane crash in 1948.  So Mom was a huge Kennedy supporter, even as a British citizen, and I was wearing a Kennedy button at four years old in the 1960 election.

November 22nd, 1963 was a normal school day in Mrs. Meyer’s second grade class.  But sometime after lunch, we became aware that something was up.  The teachers kept slipping out to the hallway to talk to each other, and Mrs. Meyers had tears in her eyes when she came back in the room.  She didn’t tell us what was going on, but soon the Principal came on the PA and announced that school was ending early, and we were going home.

Rumors flowed as we walked out of the building.  I remember someone describing a huge monster that attacked Texas, though I didn’t take much stock in that.  But clearly something had happened, and it was bad.  They never let us out of school early.

Fighting Words

So I headed back home, up Clifton Avenue, along with the “regular” crew that lived along the way.  One boy, a third grader, seemed to know “everything”.  As we passed the Osage Orange trees with the hedge apples on the ground, he told us that President Kennedy was shot and dead.  I didn’t believe him, and we argued as only a third and a second grader could.  His third grade superiority was too much for me – I punched him in the nose.  He ran off towards his house.

I was filled with righteous anger – how dare he lie about my hero, President Kennedy.  As I walked up the steps to the front door, I was all ready to tell Mom how I defended him.  But as I reached the top of the steps, the big wooden door opened.  Mom was standing there, tears streaming down her face.  

In Black and White

The next few days are a blur.  We watched a lot of TV, black and white images of airplanes and crying people.  The President’s body and Jackie and the new President Johnson were whisked out of Texas and back to Washington.  And then there was the funeral, the lone horse, the boots reversed in the stirrups, behind a plain caisson with a flag covered casket.  John-John, the President’s son just a couple of years younger than me, saluted the flag as it went by.  And the final resting place in Arlington, the hats of the military laid carefully around a plain white cross.

The punch in the nose was forgotten.  

Yesterday, Jenn and I were driving around, moving signs asking folks to look out for a lost dog.  We pulled into a driveway to turn around, and the yard was covered with hedge apples.  Memory is a funny thing – especially on November 22nd, fifty-eight years after President Kennedy was killed.

Not Guilty

Eighteen year old Kyle Rittenhouse is free.  He killed two and took another’s arm in those fateful few moments in Kenosha in August of 2020.  This week a jury of the citizens of Kenosha, found him not guilty of felony manslaughter.  We can’t know what the full reasoning of the jury was – but we can imagine that they accepted his attorney’s claim that Kyle was; “defending himself”.  The doctrine of self-defense is one of the few ways our law justifies intentionally taking a life or maiming someone.

Kyle was not an innocent teenager, thrust into a situation fraught with danger.  He intentionally placed himself there, armed with an AR-15 rifle. (By the way, the “AR” stands for Armalite, the first company to make this type of rifle, not “automatic rifle”.  The AR-15 is not automatic, it is semi-automatic, and requires a trigger pull for each round fired).  

Attracted to Danger

Kyle went to “protect property” from the “rioters”.  He ended up in a car lot, and after shots were supposedly fired (not from Rittenhouse), one man came up and tried to take Kyle’s gun away from him.  Kyle shot him four times.

After shooting the first man, Kyle ran for it, pursued by about a dozen people.  He fell to the ground and was kicked in the head.  He fired two shots at the “kicker”.  Both missed.  Kyle got back to his feet, and a man struck him on the shoulder with a skateboard and tried to take the rifle.  Rittenhouse shot him in the chest, killing him.  A fourth person approached with a handgun.  Kyle shot him in the arm.

If Kyle had been in the hallway of his Illinois high school, Antioch Community, with that AR-15, the men who attempted to get his rifle would be hailed as heroes, and the seventeen year-old would be a “school shooter”.  By virtue of the laws of neighboring Wisconsin, it was legal for him to be armed with a rifle on the streets, in the middle of “civil unrest”.  And when it all came down, he wasn’t even placed in custody after the shootings. It wasn’t that the police didn’t know.  They simply sent him on his way, after taking two lives and irrevocably changing a third. The Kenosha police perceived Kyle to be on “their side”.

Scared Boy

Eighteen year-old Kyle Rittenhouse is neither the horrific villain progressives paint him or the vaunted hero of the Second Amendment set.  It is obvious that he was a scared teenager, a “boy in a man’s job”, who put himself in a situation he couldn’t handle.  The boy who clearly saw the Marine advertisement:  “we run towards danger when others run away”, saw himself as that heroic figure.  But when courage was really needed, all Kyle could do was hide behind the AR 15 strapped to his chest (so it couldn’t be taken away).

There is no question that, once the shooting began, Kyle was in fear for his life, one of the fundamental tenets of “self-defense”.  “Grown men” were trying to take away his gun, his shield, the symbol and tool of his assumed “heroic manhood”.  The question the jury had to answer was when Kyle took on the adult responsibility of bearing arms in a time and place of civil disorder, did he somehow lose some of that self-defense protection.  Those who backed him say that it’s common sense:  he had a gun, he was in fear for his life, and he used the gun.  He is not guilty, and those who tried to take his gun away from him assumed all the risk and responsibility.  Their lives were forfeited by their own actions.

Assumed Responsibility

But that reasoning is simplistic (though it obviously worked with the jury).  Again, if he were in the halls of Antioch Community High School there would have been no question that he did not have that right of self-defense.  If he were in the process of committing another crime, say robbing a bank, again he can’t claim it.  So the legal question was, does a self-appointed vigilante (in the defined sense – a civilian who takes on law enforcement duties without legal authority) have the same rights as a police officer might?

If Kyle had been a police officer, and someone tried to take away his gun, then we would all agree that the officer would have the “right” to protect it, and himself.  But Kyle wasn’t a police officer, he was a “wannabe” police officer.  And the police in Kenosha “on the streets” seemed to welcome Kyle and his vigilante friends to the scene.  So how much responsibility do they bear?

And there is the mostly unspoken question of “white privilege”.  Neither Rittenhouse, nor any of the people he shot, were people of color.  But if we closed our eyes and saw Kyle as a Black seventeen year-old with that AR-15 strapped to his chest, would the outcome have been the same?  Would the police have been so welcoming?  I think we all can agree that things might have been very different.

Precedence

That Kyle Rittenhouse was found “not guilty” (of course that isn’t the same thing as innocent) doesn’t establish a legal “precedent”.  The facts of the Kenosha event are narrowly defined, and local courts don’t set precedent anyway.  The same fact pattern with a different prosecutor, judge and jury might well have had a different outcome.  The real danger of the Rittenhouse trial is the perceived “precedent” it creates in the public mind.  How many “vigilante” groups will appear in the next time of civil disorder?  And if they start shooting – are they “school shooters” or “heroic helpers of authority”?  

We better figure that out.

Ella

The last few weeks were busy “dog weeks” for Lost Pet Recovery (LPR), and our household.  My wife Jenn was completely immersed in finding a nearby dog for two weeks, working to get a lost Great Dane back to her home in Kirkersville.  Ella was a new arrival there, and got out on her second day.  

She “disappeared”, but really didn’t go very far.  Thanks to the dozens of signs put out on the roads, “Lost Dog – Great Dane – DO NOT CHASE call (Jenn’s number)”, we knew she was still hanging around the small village.  And Jenn was just behind her, putting up cameras and leaving “bait”:  dog food, Vienna sausages, chicken broth, the occasional McDonald’s burger; and hoping to spot her on a trail cam.  The idea:  get her to come back to eat, then “drop” a trap (a really big trap for a Great Dane) and get her safe.

Corn Maize

The calls kept coming in for a week, but Ella never found the bait, and was never on camera.  There was no place to put a trap, because there no place where Ella stayed.  Then, as we drove to a birthday party for a friend on Sunday, the phone rang.  Ella was in the “corn maize” at Van Buren Acres, a pumpkin place right beside I-70.  Four LPR members converged in the pouring rain at the maize, and wandered the paths looking for a glimpse of the 150 pound gray Dane.  You haven’t experienced farm life if you haven’t been in a corn maize in a downpour. But Ella was already gone.

So more signs went up, and Jenn talked to the entire neighborhood on the access road by the Interstate and the farmer who owned the surrounding cornfields.  Trail cameras were posted, but it really was more sightings from the neighborhood that let us know that Ella was still hanging around.

Jenn and I were searching a cornfield on Thursday when the call came in – Ella is in the backyard heading west!!  We raced to get ahead of her to put down a trap, but we arrived just in time for Ella to look in the window of the home, and turn back into the corn.  We didn’t get her.  But finally, one pile of food disappeared, just outside of an isolated hay barn.  Jenn was adding more food and setting up a camera there when Ella emerged from behind the barn, sniffed the air, then sauntered off into the corn.  Jenn “dropped” a trap.  

Go Bucks!

It was a sleepless night, waiting for the phone alarm to go off – something moving at the trap.  But it wasn’t until the next morning that Ella was caught on camera, stretching into the trap and getting the food – but missing the trigger to set if off.  Ella ate, then wandered away.

Jenn reset the bait, this time with sausage biscuits, and carefully checked the trap. After the sleepless night before, she went to bed early.  Ella, a true “Buckeye”, must have been aware of the Ohio State football schedule.  She waited until just after the Penn State game was over, then went back into the trap for more food.  This time the gate slammed shut. 

 We raced the twenty minutes  to the trap and got there about 12:30 am.  Other members of the LPR team joined us, and we lifted Ella, trap and all, into the back of our pickup truck. We drove her to her “Grandma’s” garage.  At first, she was “shaking” scared, but as she came out of the trap in the garage, she relaxed, leaned on Jenn’s leg, and turned into the sweetest girl.  She gave Jenn a lick as we said goodbye.

That’s the high of finding lost dogs. 

Pearl 

But there are lows as well.  Pearl was a beautiful Golden Retriever who was rescued from a breeder.  She was never socialized to people, just kept in a cage to make puppies.  The Rescue had her checked out by the vet, then sent to a family in Dublin, Ohio.  Pearl was there nine days, when  she slipped out the door – and she was off.

Pearl was gone for weeks in the hot July sun.  But she didn’t go too far.  She stayed along a creek in a neighborhood park, hiding in the tall grasses.  LPR got involved and set up a feeding station, that Pearl, and all the raccoons in the neighborhood, were happy to use.  But when LPR put out a trap, Pearl wouldn’t even get near it.  She had spent much of her life in cage – no amount of food would get past the fear of the trap.

Bigger Traps

So if you can’t get a dog in a trap, and there’s no way to lure her, then what other alternatives are there?  There’s a bigger trap, really more like a kennel cage, called a panel trap.  So we started with one panel near the food.  The change threw Pearl off for a while, but she finally started eating again.  We added a second and a third panel, and in time Pearl would stretch into the area to get food. But she always ready to jump back and get away.   We hoped that we could complete the panel, and eventually close the door to rescue Pearl.

We hauled bags of food a couple hundred yards through the brush, three times a week.  Pearl would always show up on camera, nervously eating what was available.  Sometimes she was by herself, but often the raccoons and possums joined in the repast.  One afternoon, Jenn and I were bringing in the food, when Pearl and some deer emerged from the grass and ran off. 

We hoped we hadn’t scared her too badly, but we were glad she found companionship with the deer.  

This went from July through August and into September.  The park maintenance workers cut the tall grass, changing the environment, but Pearl eventually  returned to the food.  The nearby High School came into session, and on football game nights (and their home cross country meet) Pearl would disappear for a while, but she soon came back.

We were slowly conditioning Pearl to the panel-trap, and to a “schedule” of coming back for more food.  She was finally becoming “predictable”. 

Chased Away

Then one day, there was a human figure with a leash on camera.  Pearl was gone.  When we went back with more food, we found a tennis ball right beside the panels.  Perhaps “the figure” decided he could catch Pearl, maybe hoping he could entice her to “play ball”.  We don’t know what happened, but we are pretty sure she wouldn’t know what the tennis ball was for.  

Pearl ran off, far down the creek.  We had one more sighting, this time about a mile away down Indian Creek in Dublin.  Then Pearl was gone.  That was on October 1st.  We continued to leave food for her, sausage biscuits, her favorite, until it was clear that she moved on.  Then LPR put up more signs around Dublin, hoping for a sighting so we could get back to feeding her again.

High and Low

On November 1st,  Pearl’s body was found along railroad tracks in Marion County, about twenty-six miles away from where we last saw her.  We don’t know exactly how she got there, the creek meanders down to the Scioto River, and there are railroad tracks near where the Scioto flows across the Delaware/Marion County border.   She was a beautiful, fearful, dog, that that we were unable to save.  From the high of Ella on Sunday, we had the low of Pearl on Monday.  

There are other dogs out there.  LPR has been involved in over two hundred rescues just this year.  Sometimes we get the dog right away.  Sometimes we advise the owners how to find their own lost dogs. Then there are the projects, the “Ella’s” where we have to out-think and get lucky to bring a dog home.  But the Pearl’s stick with us, more than the successes.    It’s hard to get past that beautiful, scared, dog, running with the deer in Dublin.  

But there’s always another dog missing – time to go back to work.

Lost Pet Recovery is a non-profit organization.  We don’t charge for any of our efforts, and no one gets paid.  But these efforts do cost money – equipment, bait, cameras, gas, and more.  If you’d like to support our efforts, you can donate through Facebook, through PayPal at info@lostpetrecovery.org, or you can use the old fashioned way – a check to Lost Pet Recovery, PO Box 16383, Columbus, OH, 43216.

The Sunday Series

• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21
• Dogs and Medals – 8/8/21
• The New Guy – 9/5/21
• Stories of 9-11 – 9/12/21
• The Interview – 9/26/21
• Night Moves – 10/3/21
• Funeral for a Friend – 10/11/21
• National Security – 10/24/21
• Boots on the Trail – 10/31/21
• Taking Care of Mom and Dad – 11/14./21
• Dogs Lost and Found – 11/21/21

Too Much Information

File this in the “information I wish I didn’t know” category.  Sausage is a mix of ground meat, spices, seasonings, and some kinds of grain or meal; all mixed together.  But no one wants to eat a “mash”. So it’s shaped and stuffed into a tube called a casing. That’s what makes it “sausage”.  And what’s the casing made of?  Well, a natural casing is made of the sub-mucosa layer of animal intestines.  It could be pig, or cow, or goat, or even a horse!  That’s the “tastiest” kind of sausage.  The casing lends a flavor to the “innards” (or is the “innards” really the casing – I’m not sure).

More mundane sausage is now contained by a polymer coating:  nylon or polypropylene.  There are also cellulose and collagen wraps. Doesn’t that sound tasty.  Since the artificial casing holds the flavor in, and doesn’t lend any flavor of its own, they don’t become part of the “sausage experience”.  And knowing that might make you really think about eating bites of whole sausage anymore.  Maybe you should peal the edge off the bologna.  

These essays are often political, and very, very seldom explain gastronomic delights.  They do however, often deal with legislation, and we sure have been talking about “making sausages” recently.  It seems only fitting that we should have a better understanding what goes into the real thing. 

Raucous Caucus 

Today (or tomorrow), the United States House of Representatives will vote on the “Build Back Better” plan. This is not of interest to the Republican Congressmen; they will, to a woman and man, vote against it.  The Republicans aren’t interested in “making” this sausage, in fact, they are vegan when it comes to the “Build-Back-Better” bill.  Nope, the sausage making is a wholly Democratic affair, and, like most things involving the always raucous Democratic caucus, there’s a whole lot of sausage making going on.

The ”chefs” in this sausage-making game are much the same Democrats as those that “cooked” up the final “BIB” (bipartisan infra-structure bill) the was signed into law this week.  The “two” sides are the Democratic moderates and the Democratic progressives.  But part of the true art of sausage making, is that there isn’t just two sides.  There are shades of moderation and progressivism, and even some progressives who are extremely “moderate” on some issues (for example, Senator Kristin Sinema, progressive on the environment, almost beyond moderate to full Republican on government negotiating with “big pharma”). 

Dreaming Things that Never Were

So no wonder the “raucous, caucus” has struggled to figure out what goes into Build-Back-Better.  There’s so much they want to fix.  They want to  take care of people’s health: child care, cut prescription costs, Medicare hearing and eye care and home health.   They want to “fix”  the world:  improving the climate, energy, modernizing education and creating affordable housing.  And finally they want to improve our system of taxation, with the wealthy paying a fairer share of the burden.  

Amazingly, with all of those “wants”,  they managed to stuff their sausage in a casing that pays for all the programs.  The United States government, known for dipping deeply into the trough of national debt, particularly when it comes to national defense, has found a way to pay for what it wants.  The House bill spends $1.68 trillion over ten years (that’s $168 billion a year – less than a third of what we spend annually on national defense).

Inflation

For those of us (and that’s most of us) who are worried about all that spending fueling inflation, here’s the best part.  Inflation is normally caused by increases in the supply of money.  When the government heavily spends more than it brings in, it essentially creates more money.  More money in supply means that the money is worth less – prices go up.  But if the Build Back Better legislation is paid for, there’s no increase in money supply, and no inflationary pressure.

Technically, the Congressional Budget Office rates it as creating a ten year $160 Billion deficit – that’s $16 billion a year.  But the CBO does not count the program that improves the Internal Revenue Service so that it collects more tax monies.  That improvement should bring in more than $400 billion over ten years, actually making BBB budget positive.  And if you’re worried about the IRS “coming for you”:  then you’re making a whole lot more money than I am, and you’re cheating on your taxes.

A Blevit

No wonder the Republicans are against it.  No surprise that Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy gave a rambling eight and a half hour speech to hold up the final vote.  The Build-Back-Better bill does all the things the Republican Party is against – rich people paying taxes, poor people having housing, old people getting medical care, everyone paying less for medicine.  Oh Hell no – line ‘em up, every Republican in Congress will vote against this one.

When Speaker Pelosi finally bangs down the gavel on the Build Back Better bill, we’re halfway there.  The good news is that the Democratic House Moderates kept their word, the promise they made when the Progressives helped pass the Bi-Partisan Infrastructure Bill.  But the sausage making is only beginning.

The two most moderate Democrats in the Senate, Manchin and Sinema, have designated a “casing” quite a bit smaller than the House’s casing.  So when the Senate gets the $1.68 trillion BBB Bill, they’re going to have to split the House casing, and stuff what they can in Manchin’s casing (of course polymer based, though if they could make a coal-based casing, he’d use it).  It’s going to be smaller, maybe more like a trillion dollars.  

There is an old Yiddish word that’s incredibly descriptive:  a “blivet”.  Technically it’s ten pounds of…manure…in a five pound bag.  Joe Manchin’s holding the casing, and the Senate is going to decide what sausage fits in and what doesn’t.  In the end, like any good compromise, probably no one will be fully “happy”.  But Democrats are on course to deliver Build Back Better as a Christmas present to the American people.

It might be a “blivet”, but it should be tasty.

It is the common perception that being held in contempt means going to jail.  There isn’t much “due process”:  the “contemptee” gets a chance to follow orders or go to jail.  And when it comes to the personal power of a Judge to control their courtroom, that’s actually true.  

The Story  (of course there’s a story!!)

I was a high school government teacher, and for several years I took my classes down to the Franklin County Courthouse in downtown, Columbus, to observe trials in action.  After all of the class lessons about court procedure, criminal rights, civil rights, and rules of evidence, the “Field Trip” downtown was one of the highlights of Senior year.   The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees a “…speedy and public trial.”  Students could (carefully and quietly) slip into the back of courtrooms to watch trials in action.  It’s public – really – Constitutionally guaranteed.

Well, almost guaranteed.  I had a class of kids at the Courthouse.  The students spread out so that they didn’t overwhelm any one trial.   And I went to trials too.  I was sitting in on a civil trial on the fourth floor about a parking lot company, when one of my students slipped into the room, sat beside me and whispered, “A judge on the fifth floor wants to see our teacher, and sent me to find you”.  That couldn’t be good:  did my students disrupt a case in some way?  Where they in trouble?

Judge O’Neill

I raced up the stairs to the next floor, and entered Judge Deborah O’Neill’s courtroom.  The room was empty of spectators except for five of my students. But the prosecutors, the defense team, the bailiffs and the judge were all silent, and waiting — for me.  As I came in, the bailiff directed me to “the bar”; to stand at the front of the courtroom between the prosecution and defense table.  Judge O’Neill then yelled and pointed at my kids, “Are you the teacher of those students?”  I answered in the affirmative. She continued, “Do you know we are trying a rape case in this courtroom?”   I didn’t, but these were seniors in high school and all of them in the room were eighteen; legal adults.  

I asked if they had misbehaved in some way, but that didn’t seem to be the problem. The judge didn’t think the “subject matter” was appropriate for students, and she was furious that I thought it was.  I never got to explain it to her (she just kept yelling), but it’s a public trial and my kids are adults.  As their teacher, I knew that during the year we had discussed almost every imaginable  topic in class, including rape.  We even had to analyze then-President Bill Clinton and oral sex!

So I wasn’t worried about what they would hear or see. In a courtroom on the third floor there was a bloody murder case going on.  My students were stacking up to see that trial, and on a recess break, the judge there went into exquisite detail explaining the case to them.  Then the Prosecutors took the students back into a conference room to see the autopsy evidence.  Whatever was going on the fifth floor, it was our justice system in action, and it certainly wasn’t worse than that.  And, besides, by Constitutional guarantee, it was a “Public Trial”.  

Judicial Contempt

Though I couldn’t imagine it was a problem, Judge O’Neill definitely could.  She demanded my name, what school district I worked for, and the name of my Superintendent.  She berated me for “exposing” my kids to the evidence in trials.  Then she laid out her demand:  “If one more student comes in this Courtroom, I’m holding you in contempt and putting you in jail”.  One of the defense lawyers leaned over and whispered in my ear – “Go ahead, quote the Sixth Amendment to her. I’ll take your case for free!!!”

I had forty kids in the courthouse that day, and ending up in jail would definitely be a problem with the folks back at school.  Besides, we had a 12:30 reservation at the Spaghetti Warehouse. I wasn’t too worried about a phone call to the superintendent, but ending up in a Franklin County jail cell didn’t sound like a good career move, even if the Sixth Amendment guaranteed my class’s right to be there.  

So I sat outside Judge O’Neill’s courtroom for the remainder of the day, making sure my kids didn’t go in.  And I called my Superintendent to give him a head’s up (good thing, she called him on the next recess). In the long run though, paybacks, as always, were wonderful.  A couple of years later, it was with some joy that I heard Judge O’Neill was sanctioned for her unprofessional behavior (not just to me) by the Ohio Supreme Court.  She was removed from her judgeship.

Inherent Contempt

Judges have inherent contempt powers – they can just say “Go to jail” and you “go to jail”.  If someone refuses to testify, the Judge can hold them in jail until they do, or the trial is resolved some other way.  Congressional committees have contempt powers as well.  The first kind is exactly like the Judge O’Neill’s power, inherent contempt.  A Congressional committee could order a person to appear and testify, or produce documents. If that person refuses, Congress could order them held in jail or fined until they decide to testify or produce.  But Congress hasn’t done this since 1935.

The reason Congress hasn’t is simple.  While they do have a protective service, the Capitol Police, they don’t really have an enforcement service.  It would be difficult for the Capitol Police to go off Capitol Hill and arrest and hold someone.  Besides, they don’t actually have a jail cell in the Capitol building (though there are rooms that would work).  After all, they are the legislative branch, not the executive branch.

Civil Contempt

So instead they use two other forms of enforcing Congressional will.  The first is called “Civil Contempt”.  Essentially the Congress “sues” someone in Federal Court, to have the Court require them to testify.  If the Court agrees, then it is the Court that orders the person to be testify,  or be held in Federal Jail until such time as they agree to do so.  

They can be held for as long as Congress remains in session (it expires every two years).   But the problem with civil contempt is that it takes time, and  the Court’s decision can be appealed up the Federal chain. We saw that with the House impeachment committees and President Trump’s men.  And, civil contempt has a definite time limit:  stay in jail until you comply, or until the session is over.

As former Congressman Doug Collins was fond of saving, Congressional Committees run on a “clock and a calendar”.  If a “contemptee” can appeal long enough, the Committee would expire before the evidence is heard.

Criminal Contempt

The other form of Congressional contempt is a criminal contempt referral.  The Congress asks the Justice Department to file criminal contempt charges in Federal Court.  At this point, Congress is out of the picture, it is prosecutors versus a defendant in front of a judge and jury.  And the outcome of criminal contempt charges is different as well.  A guilty finding means that the guilty person pays a fine, or goes to jail for a specific term, or both.  But it doesn’t require them to testify or produce anything for Congress.  

Criminal Contempt becomes a crime just like any other crime.  Once the referral is made, and the Justice Department brings charges, Congress has nothing to do with it.

The House of Representatives committee on January 6th referred criminal contempt charges against Steve Bannon.  The Justice Department took on the referral, and charged Bannon with criminal contempt of Congress.  The committee knows that Bannon is likely to never testify.  And they also know that Bannon will stretch out the process as long as possible.  So if Bannon is never going to testify anyway, the greatest punishment Congress can offer is conviction for contempt.  That way, no matter which political party controls the House after the 2022 elections, Bannon still goes to jail.

Just like Judge O’Neill, that would be a wonderful “payback”.  

Bombs Falling

My parents lived an amazing life.  From the beginning,  they were an unlikely pair. Mom was a Londoner born and bred, who lost her fiancé to the Battle of Britain flying Spitfire fighter planes.  Her grief evolved into a desire to join the fight, and she became part of the Churchill’s irregular spy service, the Special Operations Executive.  Dad was from Cincinnati, with a degree in finance from the University there.  He became a finance officer in the US Army, and was sent to England to pay the troops.  

Their relationship began literally as the bombs fell on London during World War II.  They met on a blind date (after Mom secretly had Dad “vetted”) at a restaurant called the Queens Brasserie, and, by their telling, immediately fell in love.  They married more than a year later, two months before D-Day, then separated for another year to fight the war.  After, Mom came with Dad to America and Cincinnati.

Retirement Life

Dad knew finance and was the ultimate salesman, selling syndicated television shows across the nation.  He and Mom were a team in the business, and a team in raising three kids and taking care of their home.  When Dad finally retired, they looked forward to travelling the world.  And they did, from safaris in Africa, to Dad’s “famous” video on top of the Great Wall of China. (He got the on and off button on his video camera confused – so when he was videoing it was off, and when it was hanging from his shoulder, it was on.  The result could have been titled, “Chinese Bottoms on Top of the Great Wall”.)

They found a condo to buy in Florida; Sea Oaks on the Atlantic just north of Vero Beach.  It was a tennis “club” where Dad could find a daily game with a group of older gentlemen called “The Walking Wounded”.  The ocean was just 100 yards away, and Mom would walk miles on the beach most days.  Mom and Dad were social,  and always found a group of friends that often became more than friends, more like family.  They had that group in Cincinnati, and soon had a group at Sea Oaks as well.

Health

Dad had some health issues:  the inherited coronary artery disease that led to two different bypass surgeries, one when Dad was in his late sixties, and a second in his seventies.  The second surgery caused a stroke, and while he kept most of his physical capacities, Dad lost a portion of memory.  Mom stayed in great health, and the two of them continued their amazing life through their eighties.

It wasn’t until they turned ninety in 2008, that their health began to impact their day to day life.  Dad was driving in Vero Beach, and all of a sudden, couldn’t remember how to get home.  Mom was handling the bills, but it got confusing with bills from Cincinnati or Florida arriving late, forwarded from one address to another.  

And she had serious breathing problems, suffering from pulmonary fibrosis, a hardening of the lungs.  She was on oxygen in ever increasing amounts.  Dad valiantly tried to take care of her.  But the oxygen bottles were awkward, and required tiny washers placed in the connections.  It was tough for me to do, thirty-eight years younger, so I know Dad really struggled to make them work.

RV’ing To Florida

 By 2010 I was doing what a lot of children do for their parents, taking care of the “books”.  Part of that was trying to track the increasing number of Medicare bills for both of them.  Other than the thousands of dollars in prescription drugs they spent each year, Medicare and their supplemental insurances covered almost all of the bills.  Helping them was a family affair:  my sisters and their spouses were all deeply involved.  And when I fell in love with Jenn, she became part of the process as well. 

After Christmas of 2010, Mom and Dad were determined to get to Florida.  Mom needed oxygen for the plane, and airlines stopped carrying oxygen “on board” after the fatal ValuJet crash.  They still allowed oxygen concentrators, but Mom’s small unit couldn’t supply enough for the flight.  So we rented a bigger unit, carry-on suitcase size.  Delta was kind enough to seat us in First Class – and we made it to Sea Oaks.

But it was the last year.  My nephew Chris stayed with them and helped.  And by the spring, even that machine wasn’t enough to get her home.  Mom also suffered from back deterioration causing constant pain and needed a medical procedure.  Florida doctors wouldn’t do it, but she could come back to Cincinnati to get it done.  

A jet-ambulance was crazy expensive and “not covered” by any insurance.  So we rented an RV, and my brother-in-law, Jenn and I drove it down to pick Mom and Dad up and bring them home.  The RV generator would run the “big” oxygen machine Mom needed.  Fueled by Mountain Dew and Classic Rock, we drove all night to Florida, picked them up, and started for Cincinnati.  She wasn’t happy about it – I think Mom knew that she was saying goodbye to Sea Oaks for the last time.  That was in April of 2011.

The Last Summer

Things got only a little better at home.  Mom had the back procedure, and that did stop the excruciating constant pain.  But  Mom was constantly low on oxygen, even on the machine,  and it changed her personality.  She was often angry, and quietly scared.  It was impossible for Dad to keep care of her, and he was having his own difficulties.  Mom went into the hospital in June, and we thought that would be the end. 

But she was tough, and not ready to quit.  So when the hospital released her to a rehab facility, we knew they had to move out of their three story home of forty years.  We found a nice two bedroom apartment in a “step” facility, with assistance available.  But I don’t think she ever forgave us for moving them.  She lived there until the end of September, when her lungs just wouldn’t work anymore.  Mom went, as my niece put it, on her “final mission” on October 5th. She was ninety-three.

Dad lived on for another five years.  We moved him to Cleveland so that my oldest sister could supervise his medical care.  And he had a series of strokes that took away much of his memory, but also made him the sweetest man in the world.  There were still monthly bills, the condo in Florida and house in Cincinnati to close and sell,  and as the end approached in 2016, preparation for his final estate.  He passed on July 22nd 2016, two days before his 98th birthday.

Reminders

So what brought all these memories up?  

I turned sixty-five in September and signed up for Medicare Part B.  A month ago, I was doing something stupid, and jammed a pair of scissors into my hand.  It took four stitches to close the wound, and hopefully the feeling and function will return in my right index finger soon.  It was my first claim on Medicare.

And here I am, a month later, looking at the exact same “CMS Medicare – Explanation of Benefits” form, the ones that I still have stacks of on file for Mom and Dad.  But now, that form has my name on it.  

Approaching “old age” seems to be a process, rather than a crash.  It starts when the kids at the counter automatically give you the “senior” discount.  It continues as folks start talking louder to you, and the neighbors “check” on you when bad weather hits.  I was doing that, just last year.  And then there’s the great “sign-up” for Medicare, the rite of passage into senior citizenship.  No wonder “seniors” sound confused, Medicare is a confusing process.

But all of that didn’t really make as big a dent on me, as receiving that “Explanation” did yesterday.  If we’re lucky, like my parents, Jenn and I will have another thirty years to figure it out.

Want to learn more about Mom and Dad? Here’s a link to “all about them” – The Dahlman Papers

The Old South

It feels like sixty years ago – 1961 not 2021.  In a courtroom in the “Old Confederacy”, Brunswick, Georgia; a jury made up of 11 white people and 1 black person is hearing a murder trial.  It’s about three white men who accosted Ahmaud Arbery, a black man they chased down with a pickup truck for being in “their neighborhood”.  When  Arbery resisted, the white men tried to use a gun to subdue him.  In the subsequent struggle, Arbery was shot and killed.

A defense lawyer complained that there wasn’t “enough diversity” on the jury.  What he wanted was more “white males born in the South over forty without a college degree”.  As he said, “…Bubbas or Joe Sixpacks…seem to be significantly underrepresented” (First Coast).  That’s diversity, I guess, not a jury more reflective of a community where 26% of the people are black (US Census Bureau).  Even the judge in the trial admits that the defense has intentionally picked a “white” jury (though he says there’s nothing he can do about it – CNN)

But that’s not all.  The same lawyer is concerned that the presence of “black ministers” might influence that eleven and one jury.  “If their pastor’s Al Sharpton right now, that’s fine.  But then that’s it.  We don’t want any more Black pastors coming in here…sitting with the victim’s family…”  He then compared the black pastors to folks dressed like Colonel Sanders with white masks (Reuters). It’s hard to know if he was implying that black people like fried chicken, or that Colonel Sanders dressed like the Ku Klux Klan.

The Old North

But at least the attorneys in the Ahmaud Arbery Trial are allowed to refer to Mr. Arbery as the victim.  In the trial of eighteen year-old Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the defendant is accused of shooting three white demonstrators at a protest over the police shooting of a black man, Jacob Blake.  But the prosecutors aren’t allowed to refer to the two dead and one wounded demonstrators as victims.  They can be “…rioters, looters or arsonists”, the Judge says, if the defense can show evidence of that.  Of the twenty jurors selected in Kenosha, (ultimately twelve of the twenty will decide the case) only one person is of color. Kenosha is 80% white (Census).

Movie Trials

There are two famous “movie” trials where our nation’s race relations were exposed.  The first, the trial in To Kill a Mockingbird, is set in the 1930’s. It’s about an innocent black man, Tom Robinson (played by Brock Peters) accused of raping a white woman.  The black man’s white attorney, Atticus Finch (played by Gregory Peck), makes an impassioned plea to the jury. He tries to convince them that the courts are the place where “all men are created equal”.   But the all-white jury finds the defendant guilty anyway.  The film, made in 1962, highlighted the continuing racial discrimination in the United States.  What was true in the 1930’s was still true in the sixties, with all-white juries determining the fate of black men and women.

In the more recent film,  A Time to Kill, set in the 1980’s and filmed in the 1990’s, Matthew McConaughey plays Jake Brigance. He’s a young Southern white lawyer defending Carl Lee Hailey, a black man (played by Samuel L. Jackson) who actually commits the crime of killing the torturers and rapists of his young daughter.  Despite pressure on the jury and defense team from the Ku Klux Klan,  Brigance is able to convince the all-white jury to overlook the guilt of his client.  He has them visualize the crime against the child,  then pretend she was white instead of black.

The message of A Time to Kill was that times had changed, and that, with prodding, an all-white jury could relate to a black man’s anger.  But the two current trials have a different emphasis.  Both the Brunswick and Kenosha trials hinge on the accused’s right to “self-defense”.  

Defending Property

In Brunswick the three white defendants claimed they were making a “citizen’s arrest” of a potential burglar. When Arbery resisted, they threatened him with a gun, which he attempted to grab.  The “citizens” claim that they were first defending their property, then defending themselves from Arbery.

In Kenosha, Rittenhouse, then seventeen, took a semi-automatic rifle to the protest, supposedly to protect property.  When one of the victims (oops – protestors) tried to take the rifle away from him, he shot and killed him.  The other two victims then attempted to apprehend him, one with a gun (he was killed) and the other using a skateboard as a club (he was wounded).  Rittenhouse’s defense is that he was protecting property, then defending himself against the victims, and was in fear for his life.  

White Privilege

One aspect of both these cases is that of “white privilege”.  Three white men see a black man jogging down the street, and they have no problem chasing and accosting him.  One white boy sees a protest going on twenty miles away in another state, and decides he’s going to grab a rifle and  insert himself to protect someone else’s property.  It’s not hard to think that if the races were all reversed, Jake Brigance wouldn’t have the juries close their eyes. The outcome of both these cases would be pre-ordained:  guilty.

Atticus Finch is the “model” of an attorney fighting not just for his client, but for what America should be like – all created equal.  The two current trials will give us an answer to  how far has our society come since the 1930’s, or 60’s or 90’s?  

The answer, I’m afraid, is not very far at all.

Frozen Positions

We Democrats want to make the political issue of our time the Insurrection.  As a Democrat, it is the ultimate betrayal of our Democracy.  It’s easy to get fired up against those that manipulated the Nation into that crisis, just as easy as it was for those same manipulators to fire up their base to “Stop the Steal”.  That base thought they were acting to defend the country.  It isn’t the guy down the street with the “F**K Biden” flag that’s the problem, it’s the manipulators who continue to lie to him about our Republic.

What happened around January 6th, and what’s happening still today, are incredibly important.  But voters on either side of that issue are frozen in place.  Democrats, like me, are enraged by the Insurrection and will vote solely on that issue.  The guy with the flag down the street will too.

Slapped

But that’s not what’s deciding elections these days.  Democrats can’t be blinded by our rage at the betrayal of the Constitution.  For the precarious middle of our national politics, the small percentage of voters that decides who wins Virginia and Ohio and Pennsylvania and the other “swing” states; the issues are what they always were.  There’s a blindness in that as well, but it’s fact.  As Democratic Operative James Carville said back in 1992 – “It’s the economy, stupid”.

The economy is slapping people in the face today.  They see it in the price of construction. The cost of lumber and other materials have skyrocketed.  The cost of beef at the grocery store is up 40%.  But the most striking increase is visible every time you drive down the street – the cost of gasoline.  Gas today here in Pataskala is $3.35 a gallon.  So a fill up for my Jeep is now $50.  And the pickup truck is almost $75.

$75 for a tank of gas.  One of my early political jobs paid $75 a week (but it only  cost about $4 to fill-up of my 1967 Volkswagen).  Rising prices eat away at all of the “advances” people make in their jobs.  They are proud of getting a raise, but the end result is that raise is gobbled up (no Thanksgiving pun intended) and their standard of living doesn’t change.  And for those living on a fixed income – like old teachers who are retired – costs go up, but the pension check remains the same.

Shutdown Supply

What happened – why are we literally “all of a sudden” looking at 6% annual inflation?  It takes a look at the past nineteen months, America in pandemic.  We all remember the beginning, St. Patrick’s Day of 2020.  All of a sudden schools moved to online classes, hospitals braced for skyrocketing Covid cases, and places of employment shut down.  Service industry jobs in restaurants and gyms disappeared.  Other jobs became work from home, a good thing, as many children were at home in “online school”, and many daycare centers were closed.

We still needed police and fire, grocery stores and delivery drivers and healthcare workers.  But the shutdown was eerie.  There were those amazing pictures of New York City so closed down, that coyotes were wandering the streets.  Here in Pataskala, Broad Street grew oddly silent, even at rush hour.  But we still needed those folks to work in the meat packing industry, and the canning factories, and the bakeries, and all of the other “essential” areas.  They took the risks the rest of us avoided.

The economy was dramatically slowed down.  Unemployment approached 20%.  Gas prices hit a modern era low (of course, no one was driving much).  It’s the oldest rule in economics – supply and demand.  The supply of gas was high, demand for it was down, so the price went down.

Shutdown Demand

And that happened for a lot of other products.  We couldn’t go out, who needs nice clothes?  We didn’t fly much – airlines were near giving tickets away.  For those earning money, there wasn’t a lot to do with it.  So we stashed it, in bank accounts, and we added the Covid incentive payments, Covid pay increases, and even Covid unemployment benefits to that money “under the board”. (Remember Monopoly?  It was always good to stash some early money under the board.  That way if you had a bad run, you had some extra.  And if things were going well – your opponents didn’t know how well you were really doing). 

There were supply issues then too.  We lined up for toilet paper and paper towels early in the morning.  Some products, like cleaning sprays, were hard to find.  That made sense.  But other, odd things came up missing – like low calorie bread.  Beef costs went up too, as the workers at the processing plants came down with Covid.  Farmers had products, but couldn’t get them processed to go to market.   The “supply chain” was broken.  

It lasted through the spring, then eased some in the summer as we began to adjust to the pandemic.  But our economy was still restricted, unless you were selling campers.  Then it was a booming market – a vacation, outside, with a contained environment was one of the few ways out.

Back to Basics

It wasn’t until the vaccine arrived and larger percentages of the nation reopened that the economy started moving again.  While it seems like an eternity, that was really only six months ago.  People had money, they were ready to spend, and there were more jobs available than people who wanted them.  Again, basic economics:  demand for products went up, supply of products hadn’t even caught up to the pandemic level, so prices went up.  We have inflation.

There is a standard macro-economic definition:  if the supply of money increases without a corresponding increase in the supply of goods, the cost of goods will increase.  Increased supply of money is often a product of government spending more money than it brings in, deficit spending.   But our current inflation isn’t about government spending.  It’s being created by the imbalances of a pandemic world.   

Democrats are in control of Federal Government, no matter how tenuous that control may be.  Being “in charge” means taking credit for the good, and blame for the bad.  Getting our current prices increases under control is not only in the interest of Democratic success, it’s in the interest of the country.  Democrats must do something to take the credit, or prepare to bear the blame at the polls in 2022.

Day-Off

I’ve been subbing at the high school on and off for the past few weeks.  It’s good to be back in a school, but the advantage of my present situation is that today, I’m going back to being “retired”.  Unfortunately, no one told the dogs, so we were still up at 6:15, though it feels to me (and them) like 7:15 with the “falling back” time thing.

I’m sitting in our family room, dogs fed, with two huddled beside me on the couch.  Louisiana, our giraffe-like rescue, is restless. There are squirrels in the backyard that need to be chased away.  But it’s too early for barking.  The fire in the fireplace is taking the chill out of this early November day, and CeCe our foster pit-bull puppy is snuggling on blankets in front of it.  But we are still in Ohio.  Frost in the morning will give way to sunshine and mid-sixties this afternoon.  It’s a good day not to work, at least at school.  There are plenty of leaves to rake.

As usual I’m listening to MSNBC’s Morning Joe.  They must need a rating’s boost this week, they led the seven o’clock hour with Donald Trump.  Joe Scarborough learned from the 2016 election that  Donald Trump boosts ratings.   So they are talking about the Insurrection, and how the Justice Department isn’t moving fast enough, and what Congress must do.  My take:  all of that is going to happen, and when it does, we all will be watching.  Until then, let’s talk about what’s going on today, not what we wished was happening to Trump.  Leave him in petulant exile at Mara Lago, like Napoleon on Elba.  We will have to deal with his next Waterloo soon enough.

Level One Lockdown

Last week I was teaching a social studies class when the Principal put her head in the door. “Keep the door shut and the students in the room”.  It wasn’t a criticism, there was an unexplained emergency.  Soon a fire truck, an ambulance, two command vehicles and two deputy sheriffs were in the parking lot.  Next there was an announcement on the PA System  that our wing of the building was on a Level One lockdown.

I remember when we came up with the “lockdown procedure” back in the late 90’s.  There are three stages.  Level One – shut and lock classroom doors, no one in the halls, continue teaching.  Level Two – level one – but make sure outer doors are locked, and stay away from windows, there’s a threat outside the building. Then there’s Level Three – danger in the building, barricade the doors and hide.

Level One was an emergency, but not a threat.  When we came up with those definitions after Columbine, we recognized there were times when we wanted the hallways cleared, but we could continue education.  Maybe a student was acting out, or there was a health emergency.  This was one of those times.

Unlike the late 90’s though, today almost every kid in class can immediately communicate with the world.  It didn’t take long for the kids downstairs to let us know what was going on.  A substitute teacher was having a health issue – a stroke or a seizure.  It turned out to be much worse. He had a massive heart attack.

Mr. Pokorny

A couple of weeks ago I was checking out at the office from subbing, when the secretary asked if I’d had the chance to talk to Mr. Pokorny.  He was also a substitute, and was surprised to hear I was back in the building.  Now I could blame it on my “advanced” age, but I’ve never been great with remembering names.  There are former students that I can tell you their grades, their term paper topics, where they lived and what shirt they wore to school four out of five days a week – but I can’t remember their names.  So I didn’t remember Mr. Pokorny.  But he knew me, and I was curious to get re-acquainted.

We never got the chance to catch up.  Mr. Pokorny died last Friday, after both high school staff and then paramedics were unable to revive him with CPR.  It took until Monday for me to figure out who Chris Pokorny was.

Talking Shop

From 2006 until 2014 I was the Dean of Students at the school, Watkins Memorial High School.  My office was just outside of the main office complex with the door open to the front lobby of the building.  Folks would often stop by for a chat; kids, parents, and teachers.  And there was a substitute teacher who would stop in.  He was on the School Board for a neighboring District, Northridge, and was interested in how “we” (Watkins) did things to compare with his District.   We had long talks about discipline policy, individualization with students, teacher policy and how to pass school levies.  

But I actually didn’t catch his name. I just knew that he was a “good sub” for us, available for work and able to keep control of classes.  He liked to talk education, and he cared about kids.  And so did I.  So we talked a lot. 

No More Chalk

As an “older” teacher, there’s a “vision”: to “go out with chalk on your fingers”.  Well, first of all there’s no more chalkboards.  And you don’t really want to go that way – your passing would traumatize the kids in the room.  I know that Chris Pokorny didn’t want to do that, but fate didn’t give him a choice.  The Level One lockdown kept the desperate attempts to save his life in the semi-privacy of the emptied hallway.  

Substitute teachers often pass through those halls of school, and lives of kids, without a whole lot of impact.  They are “place-savers” more than educators, “keeping the door shut and the students in the room”.  But they are absolutely necessary – and if they are “good subs”, who are available to come in frequently, they begin to establish relationships with kids and staff.  Watkins lost a “good sub” last week, and I’m sure Northridge lost a good school board member.  My condolences to his family. 

And I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to catch up.

Since writing this essay I’ve found out more about Chis Pokorny: a retired Army Colonel, West Point Graduate, and an active member of his community. Here’s his obituary: Chris Pokorny – 1959-2021

Newark Advocate Article – Northridge Mourns the Loss of Veteran, Advocate and School Board Member

Common Sense

This is the America of the 2020’s.  In the “before times” sometime before the turn of the century, some things used to be just common sense.  Things like voting ought to be easier for everyone so everyone can vote. Or kids should get vaccinations to protect them from diseases.  Or you might not like the President of the United States, but you shouldn’t threaten to kill him.  But those things aren’t  common sense anymore. 

Big Bird, that 8’2” character on Sesame Street, has been on the air since 1969.  That makes him over fifty-two years old.  But Big Bird “identifies” (there goes the argument) as a six year old – and has since 1979.  Big Bird was first vaccinated for measles on the air in 1972 (Newsweek).  Kids relate to Big Bird, he’s the soft friendly voice explaining why things like “shots” are good for kids, even if they hurt, a little.  So it wasn’t a big surprise that, now that the FDA has approved Covid vaccinations for 5 to 12 year old’s:  Big Bird got his shot.  After all, he’s eligible, he’s six!!

Like many socially responsible celebrities, Big Bird took his shot, and tweeted about it –  cause he’s a – Bird!  Kids shouldn’t get Covid.  It can make them sick, and they can make others sick even if they don’t get ill themselves.  It’s part of the way to end the pandemic, get enough folks vaccinated to stop the disease from spreading.  It’s old fashioned I know, common sense.  And Big Bird let kids know that while his wing “got sore”, he was doing a good thing for himself and others.

Victims

Texas Senator Ted Cruz called it out as  “government propaganda”.  Just to clarify something. Big Bird, nor Sesame Street, nor the Children’s Television Workshop (now called the Sesame Workshop) aren’t now or never were owned by any government entity.  Yes, they appear on PBS, a government funded public broadcasting system, but the show and its characters are all privately owned and controlled.  So it’s not “government” propaganda.  In fact, it’s not propaganda at all.  Why not?  Because it’s science, not politics, that drives Sesame Workshop to let kids know the Covid shot is OK.

But it doesn’t fit in with Senator Cruz’s political strategy, though he’s vaccinated.  And it doesn’t fit with the Fox News narrative, who echoed the “propaganda” charge, and then claimed Big Bird should be shamed for not getting the vaccine sooner (but he’s six).  Fox News mandates their employees get the vaccine or get daily Covid tests since September (AP).  For Cruz and Fox, it’s a way to make the poor “victims” of our modern society feel further “victimized”.  “The Government, is trying to manipulate your child into wanting a Covid shot”.  As the MSD Kids say, I call BS.  You can’t have a shot, and then complain when others get the shot and tell people about it – even Big Birds.

Play Fake

I stand with Big Bird, not another celebrity, Green Bay Quarterback Aaron Rogers.  Rogers lied about getting vaccinated, then got Covid, and spouted real “propaganda” about why he didn’t get the vaccine, and his current treatments.  But the truth is in his actions.  He lied, saying that he was “immunized” (pretending that meant vaccinated) because he didn’t want to get “criticized”.  His body, his choice:  except that there are other team members now “not available” due to Covid.  Did Rogers give it to them – did he get it from them?  

The one thing we do know is that Rogers did not follow the NFL protocol for unvaccinated athletes.  The league fined Rogers and the Packers for it.  His desire to not be “criticized” led him to lie.  There’s an old saying “You know you’re doing something wrong when you have to lie about doing it”.  Rogers may be among the best at throwing a football, but as a man and a leader, he falls woefully short, especially when compared to – you guessed it – Big Bird!  Now, of course, he is a victim of the “woke mob”, cancelled by the “left”.  I guess better than being a victim of the Kansas City Chief’s defensive end Melvin Ingram.

Slaying Cartoons

And while we are on fictional characters, let’s talk about Republican Congressman Paul Gosar from Arizona.  He’s tweeted in “anime”, the Japanese cartoons.  Gosar has replaced the Japanese hero’s face with his own, using his sword to “slay” the monsters with the faces of President Biden and Congressman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.  

It used to be, back in the “before times”, that we recognized that threatening the President (or a Member of Congress) was a bad idea.  The “joke” of the 9-11 era was that the NSA was monitoring every phone conversation.  Mix two words in a conversation in any order:  bomb and bush, and you could expect an FBI knock at the door.  So don’t say, “I got bombed last night, and slept in the bush”.  All of that was too close to “bomb President Bush”.

But now a United States Congressman can “tweet” video of his image attacking the President with a sword. When many reasonably called out Gosar for the video, his staff tweeted another cartoon (Twitter).  A red-eyed, scraggly haired pale figure wearing glasses, obviously a “woke-lefty”, declaimed:  “Your cartoon anime scares me with jet pack flying and light sabers”.  A bearded, coifed and tanned figure answers:  “It’s a cartoon. Relax”. 

Hey, Fox News and Senator “Cancun” (can’t take credit for that, it’s from DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison):  Relax.  It’s a fictional Bird.  

And I stand with him.  I stand with Big Bird.

Wreck

My worst car wreck was on September 14th, 2001.  It’s one of those memories I can replay with exquisite detail: the sound of the crash, my head bouncing off of the door post, the crunch as my front wheels literally broke off the axles.  It was absolutely my fault.  I pulled out of a driveway onto busy State Route 16 on a Friday night at 5:45 pm, the height of rush hour.  I looked left, saw nothing, then looked right and saw my opening to turn left across the road.

As I pulled out, I glanced left once more.  There wasn’t even time to say the proverbial, “Oh Shit”, before the car hit my driver’s side door.  They were going about fifty or so, lucky for me in a compact car.  I was in my “new to me” blue GMC Suburban, a veritable tank.  Anything smaller, and I would have been seriously injured.

Aftermath

After the accident, I got out the passenger side door and found myself standing in a pile of beer cans.  They weren’t mine – maybe the other driver’s? I wasn’t sure, I was more worried about him and his family.  He was relatively unhurt, burned by the airbags on the insides of his arms.  His wife was bruised on her face.  Their young child, standing up in the backseat, was thrown at the dash. He had a split lip that would require stitches, but seemed OK besides that.

We stopped traffic on Broad Street at rush hour on a Friday night.   Not surprisingly, a crowd soon gathered, and eventually the local police arrived.  I told them everything I remembered, looking at but not seeing the on-coming vehicle, then pulling out in front of him.  And I made sure the officer understood that the accident was totally my fault, that the other driver did nothing wrong.  I distinctly remember hearing a spectator in the crowd:  “…That’s the most honest thing I’ve ever heard”.  Maybe it was his beer.

Injuries

They took the kid in an ambulance with his parents.  I was living alone at the time and when they asked if I wanted to get checked out at the hospital, I said that I would.  The world was still ringing, I wasn’t sure how banged up my head was.  But the worst injury was still to come.  Working in the ambulance were some of my former high school students.  They said they needed practice putting in IV’s.  So I got a few, and the next day had the dark bruises to show for it.   After that, my memory isn’t so clear. The other thing I distinctly recall was telling the ER Doctor that I wanted a blood alcohol test.  He said, “You’re not drunk”, and I replied “I know, but I want that on record”.  I was still thinking of all those beer cans.

It was my forty-fifth birthday, and it was three days after 9-11.  Looking back, the toll of that week:  learning and teaching about the Taliban, Al Qaeda, the melting point of steel beams, and helping my students through the trauma of airplanes striking buildings, definitely impacted me.  I was mentally exhausted by the end of the week. Maybe that’s why I didn’t see the car coming.  And I was distracted, getting birthday wishes from my parents on the phone at the time.  

Slow Speed Collision

I’ve been writing about my experiences, politics, and our world for the past five years.   And I’m starting to wonder; has the cumulative effect of the shock of a nation where nearly half of the voters are willing to support a candidate like Donald Trump caused that same kind of mental distraction?  Add the very real trauma of the Insurrection, of seeing the attack on the Capitol and the Nation, and I find I’m struggling with tolerance.  I’ve looked back at my writings for the past few weeks and I’m worried. Have I become inflexible? For a man who prides himself as seeing all the grays between black and white, my vision and attitude are polarized.  I feel a crash coming on.

Civil War

Donald Trump, and those who support him, were willing to overthrow the Constitution to achieve their individual power and money.  They, all of them, are at a point beyond forgiveness, or to put it in religious terms, beyond redemption.  I envision them as the same as those leaders of the secession movement before the Civil War, Edmund Ruffin or Howell Cobb.  Ruffin, who wrote essays advocating slavery, demanded that the South secede and fired one of the first shots against Fort Sumter.  Cobb, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives and Secretary of Treasury, led the Secession Congress and became a Major General in the Confederate Army.  For both of them, there should be no redemption.

Ruffin determined his own fate at the end of the war by committing suicide.  But Cobb, and many others, were redeemed.  After the War Cobb received a pardon.  He was even eligible to run for Congress again, though he didn’t (others did, like Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens).  But Cobb became a strong opponent of Reconstruction, speaking all across the South, even as one of those who caused the need for Reconstruction in the first place.

Search for Gray

And for those leaders of the Trump Administration, who plotted at the White House and in a nearby room of the Willard Hotel to thwart the US Constitution and the will of the people; today there is not only redemption, but vindication.  They continue to plan their return to power.  And those that enabled their treachery remain empowered in Congress, and by right-wing media.

I am struggling to find the gray.  I can understand some of my friends who went to Washington to “Stop the Steal”.  They were misled; told by their trusted leaders that the “Revolution” was against them. But that leadership knew better.  And we are getting clearer information about what went on. We know that the crowd was aimed and fired at the Capitol, and violence was a foreseeable and even desired outcome.

So it’s hard to look at Josh Mandel here in Ohio, or other Republican candidates throughout the nation who have “committed to Trumpism”, as legitimate seekers of office, rather than usurpers of the Constitution.  I can find no “gray” in that.  They allowed Trumpism to “happen”, and they have neither asked for or received absolution for the trauma our nation is still going through.  They are like Cobb and Ruffin, unreconstructed. How can they possibly be allowed to run?

Frustration

And the second issue I’m struggling with is those who refuse to get the Covid vaccine.  They don’t ignore the science – they deny it.  And they base their decision on their own set of “alternative facts” (at least Kelly-Ann Conway had the courtesy to disappear). It’s being fed  to them through pod-casts and the “alternate” media.  When confronted with the “real” data, they deny-deny-deny.  It becomes all about a giant world “plot” to enrich big Pharma and the government.  Need an example? Check out Covid infected Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rogers, following the medical protocol of that known “viral specialist”, podcaster Joe Rogan. It’s disappointing.

And it’s maddening – that normally reasonable people, capable of high levels of research and thought, are choosing information sources so poorly.  But they demand that I respect their choices as “valid”:  “You do you, I’ll do me”.  The problem is, “you doing you” is hurting the rest of us.

Polio 

Thank goodness my parents didn’t think that way.  As polio, infantile paralysis, was burning through children in the suburbs in the 1950’s, two vaccines were developed to stop its spread.  The first, by Dr. Salk in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was an injection.  The second, by Dr. Sabin who lived down the street from us in Cincinnati, was oral.  Both prevented the disease and  removed the specter of iron braces and iron lungs that made parents lock their children inside throughout the summer.

Mom and Dad took us to Dr. Sabin’s house.  He served the vaccine out his back patio door.  I suppose we were test subjects – but my parents, like many, were so worried about polio they would do almost anything to prevent it.  There were mistakes, including a bad batch of Dr. Salk’s vaccine.  But there wasn’t a “movement”, an anti-polio vaccine effort.  The disease was so much worse than the possibility of mistakes, people accepted the risks.

But today many are somehow willing to accept as inevitable a disease that has killed three-quarters of a million of us.  And the argument that their infection, while it might be mild, put others at serious and maybe even fatal risk, doesn’t seem to matter.  It’s hard to “keep my head” in those discussions.  Hard to accept their ideas even for the purpose of dialog.  It’s hard not to lose my temper, and say exactly what I think – they are being played for someone else’s benefit.  And that their decisions might impact and kill others.

Prayer

There Is a friend of mine who worked with the toughest kind of emotionally disturbed children.  She often quoted the “Serenity Prayer”:  

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

I’m not a prayerful man, and I am struggling to determine what I can and cannot change.  There’s not much likelihood of serenity in my head anytime soon.  But I do need to find the capacity to see “the gray” once again.  It may not lead to serenity, but it might allow me,  “…To keep my head about me, when all others are losing theirs” (Kipling).  In our current political world, that might be as close to “grace” as we can get.

School House Rock

Who would have “thunk-it”!  Democrats in the United States Congress actually got something done.  Friday night, after enough sausage-making to satisfy even the “Oscar Meyer Weiner” company, the bipartisan-infrastructure bill was passed.  For those who need the School House Rock play-by-play: the trillion dollar bill was already passed in the Senate. The House approved the identical Senate bill – so it’s done.  The bill now goes to the desk of the President of the United States, where he has ten days to sign it, veto it, or let it become law without his signature.

No worries there either.  President Biden is more than excited to get this bill signed.  He wants America on improved roads, rebuilt bridges, expanded ports, fixed railroads, faster internet, and driving electric cars.  It will get America moving even faster, and it will employ millions of Americans in “good-paying” jobs.  And it will also inject money all across the country, putting more dollars into local economies for concrete and guardrails, Big Macs and Tacos for construction workers and – especially here in Ohio, ORANGE BARRELS!!!

For those who need “granular detail”, Ohio doesn’t actually “own” many orange barrels – the state  leases them, by the barrel and by the day.  When last I checked, the rate was a $1/barrel/day. Drive any interstate highway –  someone is making some good cash in “barrel leasing”!

So expect that the bridges will get fixed, even here in Licking County, where forty-three bridges out of four hundred and thirty are categorized as being in “poor” shape (Bridgereport – look up your county).

Leap of Faith 

The passage of this bill was a leap of faith for Democratic House Progressives.  Speaker Pelosi needed almost every Democratic vote, with only thirteen Republicans voting in favor.  And six Democrats voted against it – the “Squad” plus one. They weren’t against the bill – but they don’t have the faith  of the other Progressives.  

And what did they have to have faith in?  Progressives linked the passage of this bill with the eventual passage of the even bigger “Build Back Better” bill in the near future.  The language for Build Back Better is complete, but moderate Dems want to see the “scoring” for the bill. Scoring is when the Congressional Budget Office goes through the entire bill and determine what it will cost, and what revenues it will raise.  CBO then generates a “bottom line” cost – a number that Congressmen can work with.

Moderate Dems wouldn’t vote the Build Back Better bill through without the scoring, though they did approve a procedural measure to move the bill along.  And they gave written assurances to the Progressives that they would vote for Build Back Better once it is scored.  So Progressives gave up their leverage and voted for this infra-structure bill. They trust that the moderates of the House, and ultimately in the Senate will keep their word.  And that’s what “making sausage” is all about.

Tweaked Sausage

The “Build Back Better” bill is going to be “tweaked” in the Senate.  And whatever the Democrats in the Senate determine is in “their” version of the bill, that’s what they’ll pass by a 51-50 vote (Vice President Harris casting the tie-breaker).   Then the House and Senate will put together a conference committee, to determine a bill that both chambers can pass.  Then it will go back for final passage, without amendment, to both Houses.  It’s back to School House Rock.

So there’s a long legislative journey ahead for “Build Back Better”. And assuredly the Progressives and the Moderates will tangle once again as the “sausage gets made”. What can also be assured though, is that Republicans will have no part in this. Whatever gets done, will be done by Democrats. Governing and progressing, isn’t what Republicans do these days. They are too busy whining about non-existent issues like Critical Race Theory, “election security” and paying down the National Debt to actually get anything done. They weren’t worried about the debt as long as they were the ones passing bills.

The Moderates didn’t just promise the Progressives.  They also assured the President of the United States that they would support his bill – Build Back Better.  So the commitments are made.  But until the votes are actually cast, nothing is certain.  

We can expect that negotiations for Progressives will be harder without leverage.  But in the end, as promised, Democrats delivered the first of two huge legislative efforts to rebuild America.  And if you have to drive over one of those “poor” bridge in Licking County or elsewhere in the nation every day, you’ll should be glad to hear it.

Disaster

Democrats got surprised on Tuesday.  While the vote differences were narrow, the Party took a hit in Virginia, losing all of the statewide elective offices and control of the House of Delegates.  Democrats went from  holding all of the levers of power, to just the Virginia Senate. And in New Jersey, the Democratic Governor maintained office by the literal “skin of his teeth”, though the final vote tallies aren’t complete.  From the Democratic standpoint – it was a disaster, but not a catastrophe (unless you’re a Democrat in Virginia). 

It’s a big hit for the Party (and I would argue for the country), but more importantly, there are lessons to be learned, before 2022 and even more before 2024.  

One – Forgiveness

I will never forgive the Republican Party for the agony of Trumpism.  I hold the leadership accountable for what our nation (and world) has gone through in the past five years, in part because of alleged leaders like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy.  At every opportunity to disavow Donald Trump, they did the politically expedient thing, not the courageous thing.

But it really doesn’t matter whether I forgive the Republicans or not.  Clearly the “swing vote” has granted absolution (or Amnesia) and is moving on.  It doesn’t matter what I think, it matters what the voters are going to do.  And the first lesson is the same lesson we should have learned from 2020, when Trump lost, but Republicans “down-ticket” did well.  Regardless of what we Democrats think, the “middle “ of the nation wants to get back to business as usual.  IF, and that’s a big IF, they hold anyone accountable for Trumpism, it’s Trump himself. 

Two – Proof

You will hear Progressives, many my good friends, use the Virginia election as “proof positive” that moderation isn’t the answer.  They will, with some cause, say that more Progressive candidates will energize the Democratic vote, and that moderates like Terry McAuliffe or Phil Murphy simply can’t succeed.  That lesson may be valid, but here’s the problem.

Progressives haven’t shown proof that they can govern, yet.  You will hear the McAuliffe team complain that Congress left Terry hanging, without either the infrastructure or the Build Back Better bill completed.  The perception is that Progressives can’t get “things” done (though it just as reasonable an argument that the “conservative” Democrats are at fault).  Rather than haggle as to who should bear the blame for the Virginia debacle, Congressional Dems need to complete something.

They need to get the bills done.  Build Back Better and Infrastructure need to go to Biden’s desk for signature. Democrats in the field cannot campaign on “we’re almost finished”.  They’ve got to prove it, and until they do, voters aren’t convinced anything will happen.  We’ve spent enough time waiting for the chaos in Congress to resolve – it’s time to close the deal. 

Three – Inexorable History

This may relate to Lesson One.  In my view Donald Trump was/is an inflexion point of American History.  Things were different before, during, and after the Trump Presidency.  Because of that inflexion point, I thought the historic “rules” of elections were altered.  But they don’t seem to be changed.  Traditionally, the party the won the Presidency loses the Virginia Governorship the next year.  That happened.  Traditionally the Party that wins the Presidency loses ground in the next Congressional election.  That may be coming.  Democrats, like Terry McAuliffe, are “swimming upstream”.  We better become stronger swimmers, fast.

Four – Governing is Hard

Every executive leader; from President Biden to state Governors, to Mayors and local school superintendents,  has tried to govern through the Covid pandemic.  They’ve had to do “hard” things:  business shutdowns, school closings, mask and vaccine mandates.  Those leaders (even Republicans like Mike DeWine in Ohio and Larry Hogan of Maryland) have followed the science, even when it shifted and changed, to protect their citizens.  

But America is really tired of Covid.  When we missed the opportunity to end our pandemic in 2020, and allowed the development of more contagious variants, many Americans had enough.  They decided to “live” with Covid, rather than protect themselves from it.  We’ve paid, and are still paying, a huge price for those decisions.  770,000 Americans are dead from Covid, almost 40% more than any other country in the world.  More than 8,000 are still dying each week (OurWorld).

But no one likes the bearer of “bad news”.  And those leaders have time and time again been that bearer.  Governors like Phil Murphy in New Jersey paid the price for that leadership, and while he survived, it’s likely that others, like Mike DeWine in Ohio won’t.  

Five – Final Lesson

We are still a nation of three camps.  There is the Trumpian Republican Party, and there is no hope for them.  They are who they are, and they will not be persuaded otherwise.  As a Democrat they are simply a block that will always be against whatever you are for.  The key is will they show up and vote, or believe their leader that the elections are rigged. By the way, I haven’t heard any cries of “election fraud” in Virginia.

Then there is the Democratic “block”, a little larger than the Trumpians. They too are going to vote in a mass. But they too need to be motivated to “show up”, and if Democrats don’t show success on the issues they care about, they won’t.

And finally there is still a “middle”, and that middle seems to be the one that decides elections in states like Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan (and maybe even Ohio).  The middle is sensitive to the “wedge” issues, even ones that are fake like Critical Race Theory (CRT – Bending the Moral Universe).  It’s easy for Democrats to say that CRT is a false issue, but that doesn’t change how the middle responds to it.  So we need to answer CRT, just as we needed to answer “Defund the Police”.  

And we have those answers.  We Democrats just have to “stoop down” to answer concerns that we feel are made up problems.  We think with Covid, the Insurrection, and all of the economic and real social issues we have, CRT and Defund aren’t worth our time.  We’re wrong. We need to answer to win.

On the Wall

When I was in college, politics was “my thing”.  I was involved in student politics, local politics, and even worked for the 1976 Jimmy Carter Campaign as a paid (not much) staff member.  Pasted up on my wall were different sayings to remind me of why I wanted to be in politics. “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”, and “I dream things that never were and say, why not?” were prominent.

But there were also phrases to remind me what was bad about American politics.  Remember, this was in 1974-75, only ten years after the Civil Rights Act was passed.  Nixon resigned the month I started college, and the Vietnam War was still going on, though “winding down”.  And a power in Southern Democratic politics was the Governor of Alabama, George Wallace.

Wallace

It’s easy to look back on Wallace and see him as the racist he was.  But in the early 1970’s, Wallace was still important, still a Governor, and had the sympathy of many as a candidate paralyzed in an assassination attempt.  Wallace had “smoothed the edges” of his racist rhetoric, trying to sound like a “populist”.  But like the proverbial leopard, he hadn’t changed his spots.  So I made sure George Wallace’s most famous phrase was on my wall. 

When he first won the Alabama Governorship in 1962, Wallace was sworn in on the State Capitol portico, intentionally standing on the same spot (marked with a star) where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as President of the Confederacy.  And Wallace’s speech that day was one that Davis himself might have delivered.

“In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

The “Seventies” might have changed Wallace into a more polished “media figure”, but he still was the man of 1962, and of 1963 when he stood in the “Schoolhouse Door” of Alabama University to prevent integration.

Dog Whistles

Racism  has smoothed its language.  No one is talking about segregation as a “good thing” anymore.  But Racism is a constant of American political life.  It has been for one-hundred and fifty six years, since the end of the Civil War.  In my youth, racism was more “obvious”, with physical segregation the law in many states.  My parents took trips to see the horse farms in Kentucky, and as we stopped for gas, there were “White” and “Colored” restrooms.  It isn’t “ancient” history – it is in my memory (though some of the students I see as a substitute might equate me and the word ancient).  

In the seventies it was no longer segregation.  The new term was “busing”.  The threat of “busing” students to integrate schools brought a new reality of racism to the North.  And it built the “suburbs”, as white folks fled the cities in order to keep their children from integrated schools.  The “threat” of busing pretty much ended when the Supreme Court ruled that while school districts needed to work towards integration, the Courts couldn’t force “cross district” busing.  So the “suburbs” were safe with their separate districts.  And politicians used busing as a cudgel, to threaten the community, and gain votes.  Underlying the term, like segregation, was racism.

Then in the eighties and nineties the cry was “affirmative action”.  How dare a person of color with fewer opportunities get some “advantage” over those that always had privilege.  We still hear that “dog whistle” today.  A reasonable accommodation to hundreds of years of discrimination has become a “battle cry” of victimhood for some white folk.  Their “whiteness” put them at advantage throughout US History, now when the tables are tweaked just a little, they cry with “righteous outrage” about the unfairness of things.

Heritage

In the early 2000’s the new term was “heritage”.  Preserving “our” heritage was a codeword for keeping the advantages that “whiteness” had always allowed.  Heritage was a carefully preserved and protected story of America that “white-washed” all of the hateful actions towards people of color and indigenous natives.  It was an America where slaves were freed by Lincoln, and then again by Lyndon Johnson.  The intervening century of discrimination wasn’t discussed.  

It was a land where sturdy pioneers went out into the wilderness and wrested a world of agricultural industry from empty fields.  It didn’t talk about the folks that lived in those fields before, or the culture that was destroyed so that the wheat could grow and the cattle graze.  Even the buffalo had to be eliminated – to, as General Phil Sheridan put it, “destroy the Indian commissary, and make the plains safe for the speckled cattle”.  American heritage didn’t talk much about that.

Critical Nonsense

Racism was supposed to “die out” in the new millennium.  We are a nation that will soon have no majority race, a nation that will be “majority-minority”.  And still the appeal to white voters is there, the “dog whistle” so high pitched that only white people can hear it.  This year, that’s being called “Critical Race Theory”.  

It doesn’t matter that “Critical Race Theory” really is an esoteric graduate level study of American law and procedure.  Critical Race Theory now is incorrectly applied as a watchword that covers all kinds of diversity training, and the rooting out of the more blatant racism of our past.  The words are used to evoke the same racism that “heritage” and “affirmative action” and “busing” and “desegregation” did in our past.  

The Moral Universe

It’s not really a “dog whistle”.  The incorrect use of the term Critical Race Theory has become a national clarion call for those white folks who are fighting their own inevitable minority-ness.  They are losing their privileged status, and some are kicking and screaming about it every step of the way.  And much like George Wallace, politicians from Senators to school board members are taking advantage of their discomfort, and appealing to their basest hatreds.

A phrase that was not on my wall at college, but should have been, is by Martin Luther King;  “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”   Time will cure America.  But like any disease, the sooner you start curing the illness, the sooner you can get better.  Right now, we are letting the sickness spread.  That IS our heritage, but it should not be and cannot be our future.  

We need to do some bending to make America just.

Election Day

It’s the first Monday of November.  Here in the United States, election day is always the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November – so America votes tomorrow.  There is always “hope” on the day before the election, hope for change, hope for things to get better, hope that Americans will go to the polls and with their “righteous might”  and mass wisdom make America…well hopefully not “great again”. 

But it’s the off-off year election.  Kind of like the non-Olympic years, this is a very preliminary election year.  Here in Ohio, it is elections filled with local offices:  the school boards and township trustees and local ballot issues.  There are no statewide issues here.  And, unfortunately, only around twenty percent of America’s “righteous might” will show up at the polls.  Only one in in five citizens will make these local decisions, choosing the leaders for the most direct and immediate jobs.  

Virginia

However, there is a statewide race in Virginia.  Republican Glenn Youngkin is running against former Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe.  The Virginia race is considered a “bell weather” state, a predicator of how the nation is reacting to national leadership.  In 2017, Democrats took charge of the state, supposedly in response to Trumpism.  Democrat Ralph Northam won the Governorship.  It’s easy to forget what happened soon after:  photos were found of Northam in college in “blackface”, photos that Northam denied, and then acknowledged, and then denied again.

National Democratic leadership (and this essayist: Equity and Absolution) called for Northam to resign.  But the Democratic Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General had their own issues, and if all three resigned the Republican Speaker of the House of Delegates would become Governor.  So everyone stayed.

Virginia bars Governors for running for consecutive terms, so Northam could not run again.  But the people of Virginia haven’t forgotten all of the controversy, even if the rest of the nation has.  When we see tomorrow’s results, remember that.  McAuliffe is running “uphill” against more than just Joe Biden’s popularity rating.

Moving On

But there is a greater question to answer in Virginia tomorrow.  Republican Glenn Youngkin is working to distinguish himself from Donald Trump.  While the former President endorsed him, Youngkin has carefully created space.  He hasn’t asked Trump to come in and campaign.  And while McAuliffe has done his best to make Youngkin a “Trumpian Candidate”, it appears that the Republican is “having his cake and eating it too”.  He’s benefitting from Trump’s support and issues, but constantly declaring he’s “not Trump”. 

The national Republican Party is still under the thrall of Donald Trump.  Local candidates, particularly in “Blue” states like Virginia, are trying to run away from Trump, while still getting his supporters.  That’s not true in more “Red” states:  here in Ohio Republican candidates are “doubling down” on Trumpism.  Josh Mandel, a former State Treasurer running in the 2022 Senate election, is running as close to Trumpism as he can get.  His web page leads with Trump’s “America First” rhetoric.  And just last week he disrupted a local school board meeting, standing up and demanding that “student be allowed masks” (Springfield).  He was escorted from the meeting by Sheriff’s Deputies, but he got the “sound bite” he wanted for his future advertising.

Absolution

And the rest of the nation is faced with a question of absolution or amnesia.  The four years of Donald Trump ended with the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans from Covid.  The groundwork of distrust created by the Trump Administration is still impacting us today – thus Mr. Mandel thought he could “make hay” by opposing mask mandates.  And even worse (hard to imagine worse than all those deaths) Trump led the nation to attempt to overthrow the Constitution on January 6th.  And just like Covid, that isn’t over either, as state after state attempts to restrict voting access.  

But candidates like Youngkin are trying to return to Republican “business as usual”.  They aren’t asking for absolution from the terrible actions of Trump.  They can’t, they still need Trumpist supporters to come to the polls.  So instead, they are asking for “amnesia”.  They want Americans to “move on”, to put the Covid failure and the Insurrection “in the past”. These post-Trump Republicans are trying to tap into Americans desire to “return to normalcy”, what they remember of politics before Donald Trump came down the golden escalator.

We went through two immense tragedies, one impacting each of us personally, and the other threatening our Constitutional order.  Neither of those tragic events are over.  One of the questions answered tomorrow in Virginia will be: is it absolution, amnesia, or accountability?