Month: January 2022

Fire and Rain

I turned twelve in 1968.  My first record was a “45” by James Taylor, Fire and Rain on the “A” side, and “Anywhere Like Heaven” on the “B” side.  (So fifty-four years later, a “45” was a small vinyl record, with a single song on each side, played at forty-five RPM on the record player, versus the multiple song “albums” played at thirty-three).  I wish I could say I still had that record, but I wore it out before the seventies.

I’ve gone to see James Taylor live several times over the years, the last time this past December.  He does Fire and Rain at every concert.  Where ever in the show his “masterpiece” is placed – it’s always done with a blackout – a pause – then James alone in the spotlight.  It’s almost like a prayer, a tunnel through time as the audience goes back to that first time, the record spinning fast on the turntable, an era when everything was possible. We could get Civil Rights, we could end a War, we could change the World.  It was “…just yesterday morning…”. 

Fire and Rain isn’t a protest song.  It’s about personal loss.  But it introduced an entire genre of music to my young ears.  Soon I was listening to Carole King, Bob Dylan, and Simon and Garfunkel.  As I progressed in my teens, I wanted something more “aggressive”, more electric.   And I found a “super group” called Crosby-Stills-Nash and Young. 

Pirate Radio 

My first introduction to CSNY was soon after the shooting of student protestors at Kent State in May of 1970.  We got most of our “new” music on the car radio, and I was a fourteen year-old getting shuttled around Cincinnati in the back seat, usually by one of my older sisters, and far from the radio controls.  We heard about a song that was supposedly “banned” in the state of Ohio, a song with the refrain “…Four dead in Ohio”.  Rumor had it that Ohio’s Governor, James Rhoades, threatened the broadcast license of any station that played it.

It was also in the early days of FM Radio (music was on AM then – mostly talk and sports now).   There were small “pirate” FM stations, that played the cutting edge music we were looking for.  The signals weren’t very strong and you had to be relatively close to the broadcast tower to hear them. Their channel numbers were passed around almost like a secret code (“try 102.7, Jelly Pudding Radio”).   It seemed like listening to Radio Free Europe or the BBC during World War II.

But if you could “catch” the station, you could hear CSNY’s grinding protest of the Kent State shootings – “Ohio” by Neil Young.  I was hooked, and I’m still hooked today.  

By the time I was a senior in high school, my friends and I had become CSNY aficionados.  I was more towards the acoustic David Crosby and Stephen Stills side, while others were definitely Neil Young fans.  We all liked them all, and we all had their albums, both as a group and individually.  But I didn’t get around to getting the “live” CSNY album, 4 Way Street, until my freshman year of college.

Four Way Street

In 1974, a college dorm room in Crawford Hall at Denison University was a just a single room, maybe sixteen by sixteen, with two beds, two desks with chairs, two chests of drawers, one window and one hard “lounge” chair.  The bathroom was down the hall, just past the “grand stairs” to the front lobby.  My roommate Charlie was a veteran of dorm life, having gone to prep school at the famous Deerfield Academy.  But it was all new to me.  We shared my record player, a combination of turntable and speaker.  

Charlie was in love with a group called Bread.  Hearing their songs today brings back good memories, but at the time he played it so much that I threatened to spin the record out of our second floor window into the Quad.  Charlie had the answer – Bread goes, then so goes 4 Way Street.  I played that album so often that I literally wore it out, and had to buy a second copy.  I dubbed it for my tape cassette in my Volkswagen Squareback, and it was always the go to, middle of the night on a long journey, play.  

CSNY was the last, great musical voices of Vietnam protest.  By 1974 the war was almost over, Nixon resigned, and Denison students’ music turned to some guy from New Jersey singing about love and motorcycles – Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen.  But I was still steeped in the music of political change, of an era now past.  I hoped I could make a difference, first in politics, and then through teaching.  

Old Man (I’m a lot like you are)

CSNY are old men now.  They toured together on and off until a decade ago.  While their incredible harmonies still resonated, their personalities clashed to the point that they can hardly speak to each other today.  But their influence still is powerful, particularly among those of us who grew up on their harmonies.  They collectively and individually have weighed in on almost every major issue of their time, from wars to saving the environment to the failures of a materialistic world.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that Neil Young has taken a stand in the current Covid information crisis.  He is incredibly aware of the influence of communication, whether it’s a song about campus protests, or a podcast featuring Covid deniers.  And Young has always been divergent, even from his bandmates.  He sees Joe Rogan influencing younger people to ignore science, and risk both their own health, and the health of those around them.  

Neil Young is willing to lose 60% of his current revenue by pulling his music from the digital music and podcast giant, Spotify, unless they control Rogan.  He has determined not to associate himself with the same service Rogan uses, and he’s encouraging others to do the same.

The Damage Done

Some of Young’s old friends have followed his lead, like  Joni Mitchell and Nils Lofgren.  Others no longer control their own music, David Crosby for example, sold his entire catalog.  But Crosby voiced his support for Young’s action.  And Spotify says it will “warn” folks who listen to Rogan of unfounded or inaccurate information.

Neil Young is seventy-seven years old.  His generation is most at risk from Covid denial.  He’s always been irascible, and he’s never backed away from a fight, even with his friends.  So it’s no surprise to me that he’s made a very public stand.  The man who wrote Needle and the Damage Done , about the loss of friends to drug abuse, would certainly stand up against those who are killing folks by spewing falsehoods.  

There are already more than 33,000 dead in Ohio.  Just like in 1970, Neil Young doesn’t want there to be more.

Track Clinic

I worked in the high school last Friday, and substituted for a friend.  He’s the coach who took over when I left the track program five years ago, after forty years.  John went to the state Track Coaches Clinic. I’m sure he went to hear what the speakers suggest are the “best” practices in track and field.  But it’s also “old home week”, time to catch up with all the coaches you’ve met along the way.  

There’s always something to learn, though. John’s had decades of experience and success. He probably has the same goal I had towards the end of my forty years.  I sat through the speeches, and hoped that I’d walk out with just one thing that I could use, or change, or add to make my team better.  Some years it happened, some it didn’t.  

Old Friends

I don’t attend the Clinic as a coach anymore.  I do teach the two-hour Pole Vault Safety Certification class. That’s been shuffled to first thing, 8 AM on Saturday morning.  It’s usually well attended, a combination of anxious rookie coaches and bleary eyed veterans who need the three-year renewal and joined in the “social” events late into Friday night.  My goal is to teach them to coach vaulting safely – and to keep everyone awake.  I’m not always successful, at least in the staying awake department.

There are many old friends there as well, guys I’ve coached with for decades. And almost always, a surprise. This year: one of my favorite vaulters from the 1990’s. It’s been decades since we’ve seen each other. Now his kids are in high school, and he’s taken on a head coaching role. He wasn’t the best vaulter I ever coached, but he was always the best future coach I ever coached. And now, twenty-seven years later — it’s come true.

Jerseys

Walking into John’s classroom brings back a flood of track memories for me.  Not because it’s an “old” room – it’s the first year for the new high school, so everything is brand-spanking new.  No the memories are hidden in the corners, or high on the shelves, or sitting in the back rows of the classroom.

Like any good track coach in season, John has track jerseys stacked in the corner.  It’s indoor season, and even though John is deep in with his swim team, he still has the uniforms out for the indoor track team.  Those are the “Spider Jerseys”, the “signature” Watkins track jerseys for the past decade.  They came about from a conversation at a football game between the sprint coach and myself, about some little kid’s shirt.  I think we scared the kid – but the shirt was a black and gold “Spiderman” shirt, and we both thought it would make an amazing track jersey.  

End of an Era

The ”Spider Jerseys” were distinctive:  we could pick our kids out across the field or on the backstretch of the track.  And they were special – no one had anything like them.  It made our kids stand out.  They might have been “a little” cocky, but in those years, with multiple Conference and District Championships, so were we.  The Spider Shirts replaced the black and gold “Speed Suits” that much of our team wore before, and there was nothing more exciting than watching the kids light up when they got to first wear the new apparel.

It’s been a decade, and time for the next generation of kids to get excited about something new and different.  John is replacing the jerseys this year with a new (and more modern) design.  As a coach, you need to make each team special, and each era its own.  So it’s high time for new jerseys.  But I’ll still mourn the end of the era of the “Spider Jerseys”. 

Mansfield

Up high on the shelf is the championship trophy from the Mansfield Relays track meet from 2016.  That was the best team we ever coached, strong in almost every event.   On that Saturday at Mansfield we fought a team from Grand Rapids, Michigan to the wire, the points lead altering from event to event.  Finally we  won in the last event, the 4×400 relay, running one of the fastest times in the State, to secure the championship.  

Winning Mansfield was a huge deal for the kids, but an even bigger deal to the team coaches. We grew up in the era when Mansfield was the legendary Ohio meet, with hundreds of teams and thousands of participants over two days.  Placing at Mansfield was a huge deal, and winning an individual event sometimes even bigger than winning the state.

That era was over, and Mansfield was down to one day with “just” forty teams.  But it was still a big deal to come out of the meet, not only with that trophy, but with the medalists in fourteen out of seventeen events.  It was the early high point of that amazing year, one with incredible peaks and valleys.  I remember most of that meet like it was last week, standing on the backstretch trying to coach both the girls pole vault and the 300 Hurdles.  I even can recall the bus ride home down I-71, the immense pride in those kids, and just a few minutes to enjoy the moment.  Then the “clock” of coaching kicked in, and I began to plan for the next meet down the road, Lancaster’s Fulton Relays.  We won that one too.

The Back Row

This is the fifth season since I retired.  There’s only a few kids in the school that even know who I am.  But looking at the back row of one of John’s classes the names are still there:  echoes of older brothers who competed for the “Black and Gold”, who went from young freshmen fighting to just get a varsity letter, to kids standing on the podium at the State Track Meet.  I must be getting “old” – those memories come flooding back, with all the struggles and the ultimate successes.  

Memories aside, there is a job still to be done in this classroom. John actually set up a lesson that I could help the kids with.  That’s unusual for me subbing a science and math class.  But we did some “measuring”, and I got to practice my other former profession, being a teacher, just for a bit.  I’m definitely an “all in” guy when it comes to teaching.  Like coaching, it’s hard to be “in” just a little bit, but it’s still good to be a small part of the learning process once again.

The Sunday Story 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 Found and Lost – 11/21/21
• Watching Brian 12/12/21
• Stories from Shiloh – 12/19/21
• Team Trips – 12/26/21
• Uphill, Both Ways  – 1/9/22
• Old Trophies – 1/30/22

Substitute Teaching

I’m subbing at the High School today.  One of the differences between “subbing” and “working”, is not having a pattern.  For me, every “sub day” is a Monday.  My retirement normal day is a 6:30 wakeup “call” from Keelie, our black Australian Shepherd mix.  Then it’s a casual morning of feeding five dogs, doing the “chores”, then settling down right here in front of the computer with an endless cup of coffee for whatever idea I need to get on “paper”.  

But “sub days” are different.  The alarm changes; instead of a lick and a paw, it’s the more traditional claxon alarm from the IPhone at 5:30.  There are still dogs to feed, but this early it requires some rousing.  Buddy, our oldest, doesn’t really like to come out from under the bed until the sun is up, and Lou and CeCe, our youngest rescues, are happier cozied up by the fireplace.  So getting them all to eat takes some persuasion.  After that it’s high speed chores, including filling the thermos with enough coffee to caffeinate the day, getting the “brown bag” lunch together, and warming up the Jeep, all to arrive at school by 7:00.

Snow Days

For a thirty-six year teaching career, “snow days” carried the same joy that they did as a thirteen year student.  “Snow Days” were days of endless possibilities, from sleeping to sledding, to rehearsing what retirement might look like.    There was nothing better, really, than waking up to the message – snow day!!  Even when I was working out at school early in the morning, already up and moving and often running out in the drifts before the call was made, “snow day” meant go find breakfast and “chill” for the day.

But as a “sub”, snow day means no pay.  So while it’s still nice to get an extra hour or so of sleep, in my life I can have a “snow day” anytime I want, so, as the song goes, “The thrill is gone”.

Recalculating

What has always been a dilemma for me, ever since I began as a professional educator, is the dreaded “two-hour delay”.   First of all, usually the “two-hour delay” announcement is late in the game, after the claxon alarm and the dog feedings.  The first two cups of coffee are “on board” and it’s too late to head back to bed.  Even if I did, the dogs are already rolling, there’s no “go back to bed” for them.  

And there’s the “time disfunction” that a two-hour delay requires.  So let’s see:  the plan is start the Jeep by 6:40, make lunch and drink one more cup of coffee by 6:50, then pack up and go, getting to school by 7:00.  Now all that’s altered, 6:40 becomes 8:40 and the rest, and I’m all dressed up with nowhere to go.  I keep recalculating the equations in my head, making sure I don’t somehow show up too early, or worse yet, too late.

And why am I writing about all this?  It was 6:40 when my friend John, the teacher I’m subbing for today, texted.  So here I am, with the five dogs wondering why we’re up so early, sitting at the kitchen table, all dressed up – recalculating my schedule in my head one more time.  Today is a two-hour delay.

Wedding Vows

How disruptive are two hour delays?  When Jenn and I first got together, we were both still working.  I went to work early, and we only had one bathroom at the time anyway, so she stayed in bed until I was out of the way.  She timed her morning based on me.  The first time I had a two-hour delay, the call was made early enough that I just went back to bed.  Since I didn’t get up, she didn’t get moving, even though HER job didn’t “do” delays.  She ended up rushing to work late, and it was definitely all my fault.  

It was such a big deal in our lives that it made it into our wedding vows.  I promised her not to close my eyes when she was driving.  She promised me not to be angry if I forgot to tell her I was on a two-hour delay.  Then we both lived “happily ever after”.

So “back in the day” we had a “telephone tree” to let everyone know about school closing or delays.  Even from the earliest days, my name was near the top of the list.  So I had to make sure the “tree” remained intact, and get through to the next down the list so everyone was warned.  But now, there’s an “app” that supposed to text out school closings and delays.  Since I’m subbing, I signed up for it, but that hasn’t made a difference.  I still haven’t received a notification.  Last week I checked the school website, saw nothing, and arrived at school to an empty parking lot and ice covered sidewalks.  So I’m checking back frequently now.

Guess I’m Working

It’s now 8:00 am.  That calculates to 6:00 am on the regular schedule.  Daylight has arrived, though the snow is falling so saying the sun’s up is a matter of faith, not observation.  Buddy has made his morning appearance, but Jenn, who  spent most of the night watching cameras for lost dogs, is still sleeping.  

Channel Ten’s phone app still has a two-hour delay, so I’d better stop writing and get back into “work mode”.   But you never know here in Licking County how the roads are holding up.  There’s always still a chance for a last minute “Snow Day”.  

I wouldn’t argue about it.

Teaching

I was a classroom teacher for twenty-eight years.  If you read these essays on “Our America”, it won’t surprise you to know I taught social studies:  American and World History, Government and Current Issues, Economics and even Sociology.   And I taught every grade level from sixth through seniors, at a time when our community was transitioning from farm town to “the suburbs”; 1978 until I finally left the classroom for the front office in 2006.  

Teachers today are carefully scripted by the state and local administration.  Each learning “objective” is outlined in detail, so that everyone teaching the same subject has near identical plans, lessons, and outcomes.  In some states, that literally means every eighth grade American History teacher is teaching the same lesson, on the same day.  While Ohio isn’t  quite that strict, the whole goal is to have near daily control over what goes on in every classroom.

State Control

There are lots of reasons for “controls”.   We are a highly mobile society, with kids moving in and out of classrooms and schools all the time.  To have a student stay in one school system kindergarten through twelve is the exception rather than the norm.  So those kids deserve some continuity in their education.  

And there is the obvious reason:  making sure teachers actually teach.  By standardizing classrooms, then there is an “objective” scale of success and failure.  As I saw it, ‘D’ and ‘C’ teachers did improve, forced to teach at a higher level.  But the price was that the ‘A’ teachers were forced to change a lot of what made them exceptional, pulling them “down”.  So  the end result was ‘B’ and ‘C’ teachers and fewer failures, but fewer exceptional teachers as well.

In the Day

When I started teaching, “back in the day”  there was a general understanding of what the subject matter was, but no specific controls.  There was the “textbook”, and there was a set of maybe twelve “objectives” for a course, but after that what, how and when you taught the subject was solely left to the classroom teacher.

That put the burden of planning on me.  I’d sit down at the beginning of each school year and plot out a time-line for my courses, figuring out how long I could spend on each topic and still make my way through the entire curriculum.  That was a lot of work, but it gave me the freedom to pace my class to take advantage of the “real world”.  In Government, in even-years I taught politics and elections early in the class, to take advantage of the “real world” elections that happened in November.  In odd-years, I taught that part of the class in the spring, leading up to the primaries.

It also gave me control to respond to world events.  In January of 1999, we learned a lot about impeaching a President (and Presidential sex).  In November of 2000, we extended our examination of elections as the ballots were counted in Florida.  And in September of 2001,  I altered my time-line to learn about Islam, and radicals, and American policy in Southwest Asia.  

Teaching the Present through the Past

When I was teaching History in the 1980’s, I built in extra-time to spend on World War II.  It wasn’t just to tell stories about my WW II spy Mom  (one year, I actually got her to come speak to my classes).  But in the 1980’s in Pataskala, I felt it was important to give “my kids” an understanding of racial bigotry.  We spent time talking about the Nazi persecution of Jewish people, leading up to the Holocaust.  And we contrasted that with the US persecution of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

I was careful to avoid “equivalency”.  While the “re-location camps” now seem very un-American, they were not “the same” as the Holocaust.  But what I really wanted my kids to understand is that even “the good guys” could fall into doing “bad things”.  I wanted them to be on guard, as US citizens, for that kind of racial prejudice.  Those historic examples lead us to discussions about current issues of race and religion in America.

Talking to History

In those days, we could meet folks who survived the experience.  One year we had a Holocaust survivor, a sweet lady, come in and talk.  Her life before the Holocaust was a simple childhood that all the children could relate to.  She didn’t tell too many “horror stories”, but it was enough to see the tattooed numbers on her wrist and the tears in her eyes when she mentioned her lost family.  

And we had a survivor of the re-location camps, a high school second-baseman for East Los Angeles high school who ended up under lock and key in Arizona.  His only way out was to volunteer to fight in World War II.  He was in the mountains of Italy with one of most decorated US Units of the War.  

I know that the survivors of the War are almost all gone, but I’m not sure you’d “expose” eighth graders to that today anyway.  Not only would it disrupt the “planning”, but in our current educational climate, why would any teacher take the chance of “upsetting” someone in the community?  Any deviation from the “set” plan, the state approved curriculum; especially one that would emotionally impact a child, is just an unacceptable job risk for a teacher to take.

Unacceptable Risk

In Virginia, there’s now a state “tip line” to let them know if a child is “uncomfortable” in class by discussions of racial bias.  In Tennessee, they are banning a graphic novel that explains the Holocaust, Maus.  The book shares the experiences of a mouse, gently telling that horrible story. I had a copy of Maus in my classroom since the mid-1980’s.  It’s still on my bookshelf today.

In our era of “sensitivity”, how could a teacher possibly talk about the Holocaust, or the Trail of Tears,  or the reason for the Bill Clinton impeachment?   In our polarized society, what lesson can teacher’s give about the Nisei internment without being “unpatriotic”, much less John Lewis on the Edmund Pettis Bridge?  And how foolhardy would it be to even bring up the two impeachments of Donald Trump, the Insurrection or Covid; the biggest “teachable moments” of the recent past?

There is a lesson for teachers here.  Stick to the script, or risk losing your job.  It’s happening all over the country.  And it’s failing the future.

Conspiracies Abound

on April 29th, 2019 I wrote an essay for Our America (then Trump World) called “Put On My Foil Hat”.  It was about the possibility, confirmed in part by the Mueller Report, that Russia had actually interfered in the 2016 election.  That issue was never “concluded”, other than to say that no one proved that Russia ever “changed votes” in 2016.  But it was confirmed that they hacked into the voting systems in multiple states.  And even if they had altered the votes, by 2019, I wasn’t confident we would be told.  The whole concept was on the edge of “conspiracy”; and for just a minute, I put on my “foil hat”.

If Russia did change votes in 2016, they weren’t changing them into Hillary votes. But what surely did happen after the 2016 election, is that Americans on all sides of the political spectrum felt a little less sure about our elections.  That might have been the whole reason for the Russian electronic incursions.  They weren’t trying to rig the election, they were trying to shake our faith in the election results.  And, if that was the goal, they succeeded.

The ”Steal”

They also succeeded because one candidate for President in 2016, Donald Trump, began to call the results into question months before the vote.  Trump, over and over again, told us how if he lost, the election was “rigged”.  He even said that in a national debate with Hillary Clinton (in answer to a Chris Wallace question).  So even though Trump won, and Hillary conceded, there was the lingering question:  what did the Russians do.

Going into the 2020 campaign, Trump redoubled his efforts to undermine American faith in the election results.  The “Big Lie” campaign, that the election would somehow be “stolen” from Trump, could have been the next phase in the Russian subversion plot.  It really doesn’t matter whether Trump was a “witting” or “unwitting” participant, he was the critical component in getting nearly 40% of Americans to believe the “Stop the Steal” lie.  Think about that.  Nearly 40% of our nation today, on January 26th, 2022, believes that the election was illegitimate, that Donald Trump won, and think that Joe Biden usurped the Presidency.

No wonder “bipartisanship” is impossible. 

I think we can all, all 100% of us, agree on a few things.  First, that both sides have lost some faith in the validity of our election system.  Second, that Russian Intelligence goals are to make America not only less powerful in the world, but less of a “role model” for the world. The present election chaos does it.  So after all of that, it really doesn’t matter whether this was a Russian “Op” or not.  If it was an “Op”, it worked.  But either way it’s just where we are.

New Foil Hat

So let’s put our foil hats back on.  Let’s put together the information we now know about what happened after election day, 2020.

We now  know that the “ground was softened” by the “Stop the Steal” campaign that questioned the election results.  We also know that the results would not have been questioned by the Trump Campaign, and probably not the Biden Campaign either, if Trump won.  But he didn’t, and immediately, the day after the election, the Trump Campaign went from re-electing the President, to trying to alter the election results.  

We know that President Trump, Senator Graham, and others openly tried to persuade election officials in the pivotal seven states to change their vote count, after those counts were done.  Charitably, we could say Trump was exercising his “right” to question the results as the losing candidate.  But, after listening to the Georgia call, it sure seemed like the President of the United States was threatening the Secretary of State of Georgia if he didn’t change the vote count.  Whether that was a crime, will be a question for the Georgia legal system to resolve.

Green Bay Sweep

There were a series of “legal” plans created to try to alter the certified electoral votes in the Congress January 6th.  Those plans included developing “alternate” delegates to those confirmed, and to offer those “alternate” documents for the Vice President’s consideration as the “President” of the Electoral certification proceedings.  They thought that Pence would accept them and toss the Biden electors.  Or at least use their presence to disqualify all Electors from the seven states.  If he did that, and the Senate (still under Republican control) agreed, then the House would choose the President.  In the Presidential tiebreaking procedure, Republicans controlled the House.

The authors and executors of these plans are already on the record.  Eastman, Navarro, and Epshteyn not only are saying what they did, including creating the “alternate” electors, but seem proud of their “Operation Green Bay Sweep”.  They claim it was all legal, and even necessary because the election was “stolen”.   They believe that Vice President Pence betrayed their cause, and their President.

Chaos Works 

But even if Pence wouldn’t go along, if there was enough chaos, enough disruption of the electoral counting process, there was another alternative plan.  Trump could, by Executive Order (already written then and now out in public), use the military to seize control of the election machinery in those seven states, declare that the election was “under question” and delay the outcome.  

After the November election, the Trump Administration purged the Defense Department senior civilian leadership, putting extremely loyal Trump-men in the key positions.  If the President ordered it, and the civilian leaders of the Department backed it, how could the Generals disagree?  Wouldn’t they, by refusing civilian commands,  commit insubordination and even further weaken the government?  And if they complied, and the 82nd Airborne showed up in Atlanta, the Fourth Marines in Phoenix,  the 10th Mountain Division in Lansing, and the rest; wouldn’t their mere presence bring the election into question?

Insurrection

All that was required was a pretext,  an insurrection if you will, to draw out the Executive Powers of the Presidency.  In fact, it’s actually called the Insurrection Act of 1807, and it predates even the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 that prohibits use of Federal troops to enforce US law.   The Executive Order was already written.   It was just waiting for enough “insurrection”.  Would a three day disruption of Congress be enough?  Or the kidnaping of Pence or Pelosi, or Schumer?  

Could it happen?  History says, of course.  The US Army enforced the Supreme Court Brown v Board of Education decision in Arkansas and Alabama.  We all remember the grainy black and white video of little black children being escorted into the school house, through crowds of jeering white folk, surrounded by soldiers with rifles.  And the military was sent into some of the riot torn cities in the 1960’s.  So the precedent was there:  enough unrest, enough destruction, and the military would be called in.

So come to Washington on January 6th, and have a “wild time”.  That’s what then-President Trump tweeted to his followers, and that’s exactly what happened on the steps and in the halls of the Capitol.  They were searching for Mike Pence – there were gallows erected on the lawn, the noose waiting for the Vice President.  They were chanting for Pelosi and for Schumer and for the ultimate “RINO”, Mitt Romney.  Was it all just “symbolic”?  There was no reason to think so on that day.  And there’s no reason to think so today.

Acts of Courage

But for a few courageous people, and the process would have stopped.  If the Secret Service had whisked Mike Pence to an “undisclosed location” and kept him under wraps (their standard operating procedure) Congress would not have met again that night.  Pelosi and Schumer, McConnell, and even for one bright shining moment, Kevin McCarthy, determined that Congress would walk through the broken glass and feces and blood to meet and conclude their business.  If they had not done so, that would have given the pretext for the Insurrection Act to be enforced, and the Executive Order implemented.

How close did the United States’ government come to a full-blown Constitutional crisis on January 6th?  Pence’s decision not to leave the building.  Pelosi and Schumer’s decision to continue the certification process.  Even McConnell and McCarthy’s courage to stand up to Trump.  

None of this is “foil hat” business.  The evidence is all there, in the public eye, now.  It is the reason that so much of this was done “in the open”.  That makes it seem like maybe it wasn’t a crime.  Surely “conspirators” would hide their actions better than that.  But the most blatant acts are the ones done in broad daylight, with heads held high.  And that’s what the Trump people were doing.

What does it take to overthrow the government:   Storm the Bastille, burn the Reichstag?  

How about the occupation of the United States Capitol?  What about US troops seizing the voting machines?  What about a President who refuses to leave office?  

In the end, the Constitution is just a piece of parchment.  It is the people that enforce it, or tear it apart.  No “foil hat” needed for that.

Get the Interview

The battle between the press and the President has been going on just about as long as there have been Presidents.  It all began with the supposed encounter in 1829 of President John Quincy Adams and journalist Anne Royall.  What we know is true:  Adams took almost daily summer swims in the Potomac River or it’s tributaries.  It was his ritual; walk from the White House(about a mile or so), leave his clothing on the shore, swim,  and walk home. That went on even after his Presidency, almost to the end of his ninety-seven years.  And in those days, going for a swim was a bathing ritual; men seldom wore clothes.  We would call it “skinny dipping”.  

Skinny Dipping

So we know that the President of the United States would regularly “skinny dip” in the Potomac, early in the morning in the summer months in Washington.  We aren’t the only ones who were aware of that, in fact it was a well-known fact throughout Washington that the President could be found near the Potomac Bridge with a “full moon” at the dawn’s early light.  And we also know that Anne Royall was a woman journalist who was known for her honest, frank, and sometimes scathing stories about the folks in Washington, DC.  She was even taken to Court for being a “common scold”.

So legend has it that Anne Royall wanted an interview with the President, but was refused because she was a woman.  The story goes that she wandered down to the Potomac shore one morning, and found the Presidential clothing neatly folded on the shore.  So she sat down on the pile, and waited for the man to swim back to shore.  When he realized that his clothes were held hostage, Adams stayed in waist high water, and, as fitting the former Secretary of State, negotiated:  an interview for access to his clothing.

Kid Gloves

By the way, Adams wasn’t the only skinny dipping Chief Executive.  Teddy Roosevelt was known for his exercise regimes.  The French Ambassador wanted a “moment” of TR’s time, and accompanied him for his daily long hike.  But this hike ended at the River shore, and TR stripped down, and dove into the River to cool off.  The French Ambassador was reticent to join in, but finally succumbed to Presidential pressure.  He managed to maintain the dignity of France, by keeping his kid-leather gloves on, saying, “…in case we meet the ladies”.  (For more about skinny dipping Presidents and politicians, click here. No pictures, I promise).  

Presidential Profanity

Harry Truman was known as “Give him Hell, Harry”.  He was a “plain-spoken” Missouri man, which was another way of saying, Truman knew his way around profanity.  In fact, Truman actually physically threated a reporter for writing a negative review of his daughter’s  piano recital.  “Someday I hope to meet you,” he wrote. “When that happens, you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!” (UVA).

George W. Bush called a New York Times reporter a “major league a$$hole”, and Richard Nixon left hours of White House tapes with varying forms of profanity about the “Press”.  

Fox in the House

So Joe Biden is in pretty good company (and, as far as we know, he keeps his clothes on!).  When you listen to the questions some reporters ask the President, it shouldn’t be a surprise that sometimes they say “out loud” what everyone is thinking anyway.  Peter Doocy is the Fox News White House correspondent, and, as befitting being the Fox in this White House, asks “contrarian” questions. His last one was if Biden thought inflation would impact the 2022 mid-term elections.   Biden as first came back with sarcastic remark, “It’s a great asset, more inflation”.  Then he quietly added – “What a stupid son of a bitch”. 

Presidents live under a microscope, with every public movement videoed and recorded for posterity.  Like the Secret Service agents, microphones and cameras are always present; so much part of the scenery, that it’s easy to forget they’re on.  “Hot Mic” moments become fodder for the national media, whether it’s Anthony Fauci calling a US Senator a “moron”, or President Biden’s last remark.  And Biden is no stranger to “hot mic” moments.  As Vice President at the announcement of the Affordable Care Act, the mic caught Biden “whispering” into Barack Obama’s ear, “this is a big f##king deal”.  

Make the Point

Biden is a “stand-up” guy.  He later called Doocy, and told him not to take it personally.  And while he didn’t apologize, he wanted Doocy to know that they will continue to “work together” in their adversarial roles.  But don’t be too surprised that Biden said this into an open mic. The press has asked him recently whether he’s senile, or if his son’s under control of China.   There’s been a lot of frustrating time with the press, and the maybe he wants a message out, not to the press, but to the nation.  

There’s serious work to do, and serious challenges for our nation.  Reporters should ask the important questions, the hard questions.  But don’t waste America’s time with stupid “gotcha” questions.  Stop being  a “stupid son of a bitch”.

False Flag

In the late days of August, 1939, tensions grew on the German/Poland border.  According to the Nazis governing Germany, there were a series of Polish military “incursions” into the German province of Silesia, including an attack on a radio station near the border.  A Polish “soldier” was killed in the attack, his body displayed in full uniform to underline the “facts”.

It was a complete Nazi plot, codenamed “Operation Himmler”.  The body was actually a German citizen arrested for supporting the Poles.  He was not in the Polish military, and in fact his sole crime besides his support was to get arrested at the exact time the Nazis needed a body as evidence.  He was drugged, dressed in a Polish Army uniform, then shot and killed.  His body became the “flagrante delicto”, the primary evidence of a “Polish” attack, that triggered the German assault on Poland.  Russia soon invaded Poland from the East, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany, and the Second World War began.

That’s called a “False Flag” operation, when one country operates under the “flag” of another in order to place blame.  It comes from ancient battles on the sea, when a ship would fly the flag of an allied or neutral country in order to get close in to the enemy, then “run up” it’s “true colors” and open fire.

Soviet Dreams

President Vladimir Putin of Russia is determined to rebuild the old Soviet Union.  At the end of World War II, the Soviet Russians “incorporated” several formerly independent states into their “Union”, including Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Other would-be nations were part of the old Russian Empire before the Soviets:   Belarus, Ukraine, and Georgia.  With the fall of Communism in December of 1991, all of these nations broke away to form their own individual countries.  

Much of Ukraine had been a part of the Russian Empire dating back to 1793.  And Russia’s main access to an ice free seaport both for shipping and Naval operations is in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula.  When Ukraine broke away from Russia, the Russian Navy continued to lease the port as the headquarters of their Black Sea Fleet.  In 2014, President Putin sent Russian troops to occupy Crimea and  maintain control of the port.  They are still there today.  He also invaded other Ukrainian provinces, sending “false flag” troops dressed as partisans, to control parts of Eastern Ukraine.

For the past eight years, Russia has maintained control of Crimea and  the two provinces in the East.  And today, Putin has poised 100,000 Russian troops on the Eastern and Northern Borders of Ukraine, clearly threatening to invade.  He only needs a pretext, but, like the Nazis on the Polish border, he can always create a “false flag” whenever he chooses.

The Cusp of War

I don’t think this is the eve of World War III, despite the dire predictions of some experts (Alexander Vindman, of the Trump phone call fame, for one).  NATO stands to support Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia and the rest of Eastern Europe, and the Ukraine is not part of the that treaty.  A Russian invasion of Ukraine does not invoke “Article Five”, the clause of the NATO treaty that triggers military retaliation.  

And while Russia still has the second most powerful military in the world (Global Firepower), they are 11th in the world economically, behind Canada and just ahead of South Korea (Economist).  In a long term conflict, Russia would be at a complete disadvantage against the NATO powers, led by the United States.

Vladimir Putin may be a lot of things, but he is not foolish.  He can gain advantages and prestige by “playing around the edges”, but there is no advantage for him to start a full scale land war in Europe.  He knows that, and so do the NATO allies.  Putin may dream of the return of the Soviet Union, but remembers the 24 million deaths of World War II that allowed for that expansion.  Putin is a cold, calculating technocrat, not a Stalinist, an “at all costs” empire builder.

Calculations

 Russia also represents a major source of energy, particularly natural gas, and that dependence requires NATO to act carefully.  The Nord Stream pipeline runs through the Baltic Sea, far from Ukraine.  There are “stop valves” at both ends.  Sure Russia could dramatically impact German life by cutting off the gas.  But Germany could just as effectively impact the Russian economy by turning off their end.

So Putin’s calculations are narrow.  How much can he indulge his desire to re-acquire Ukraine (and the other former Soviet Republics)?  Will NATO offer only economic sanctions in response?  At what point will Russian actions trigger a military response along the lines of that terrible day in 1939 when the world descended into war?  

There’s little room for miscalculation on any side:  Russian, Ukrainian, NATO, or the United States.  And here in America, still focused on Covid, Insurrection, and the politics of 2024, it would be easy to miscalculate, or just ignore the problem.

We do so at the world’s peril.

Lost Debate

The “Great Voting Rights” debate in the United States Senate is over.  Despite having the narrowest of majority in the Senate, last week the Democrats failed to pass the “Freedom to Vote Act” and the “John Lewis Voting Rights Act”.  

Since the 2020 election, a significant portion of the American citizenry mistakenly believe that the voting process was corrupted.  This has actually become the sole “reason for being” of the Republican Party in multiple states:  pass laws to make sure that voting is harder, especially on those who live in urban areas and are economically disadvantaged.  The facts are that Republicans have targeted a particular group to “control” when it comes to voting, people generally of color, and who tend NOT to vote for Republicans.

Pre-Certification

Up until 2013, changes in election law in states with demonstrated prior discrimination had to go through a “pre-certification” process.  The US Department of Justice had to agree to the changes, otherwise the state was required to go to Federal Court to prove those changes weren’t discriminatory.  The “burden of proof” was on the state, placed there by the 1965 Voting Rights Act passed by Congress.  But in 2013, Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority on the Supreme Court, declared that “discrimination was over”, and reversed the burden of proof, requiring the Justice Department to prove discrimination on laws already in effect.  

Big-Box Voting

This opened the door for electoral changes made to “save money”.  Polling locations were consolidated, so that they were “more efficient”.  The old local school or church or firehouse was closed, and the locations went from “retail” to “big box”.  In Georgia, a law was passed capping the total number of voters at a given polling place at a huge 2600.  But by 2020, in urban precincts that number was actually closer to 3600.  And since the Justice Department no longer was able to rule prior to the law’s enactment, the consolidations went into effect.

In the June 2020 primaries (during the height of the pandemic), the Atlanta Journal Constitution noted the following:  

“ On June 9, the last day of voting in Republican and Democratic primaries, the average wait time after 7 p.m. was six minutes — if you were at a polling place where at least 90% of voters were white. If you found yourself at a polling station where 90% of voters were Black, the wait time was 51 minutes.”  (AJC)

Some might make a racist trope from that statistic, suggesting some kind of “laziness” or waiting to the last minute.  But the reason for the “crowds” are in the numbers:  the “big box” polling places were overloaded and understaffed, and the voters didn’t have the option of voting during work hours.  They couldn’t vote “at lunch”.  The location was too far away, and the wait was too long.   They had to come after work.

What’s “Fixed”

Many election officials reasonably found ways to make early voting easier during the pandemic.  But since 2020 in the State of Georgia, laws are in effect that:

• Give voters less time to request absentee ballots
• Place strict new ID requirements on absentee ballots
• Make it illegal for election officials to mail absentee ballot APPLICATIONS to all voters
• All but ban drive-up drop boxes, and mobile voting centers
• Expand early voting – but only in the less populous counties
• Threaten misdemeanor charges for offering food or water to those waiting in line to vote
• Make it even more difficult to vote if you go to the wrong polling place
• Restrict extending voting hours if there are technical voting problems (NYT).

And that’s just in Georgia.  In Texas, a Republican controlled state where the GOP had success in 2020, their new laws include:

• Ban twenty-four hour voting
• Ban drive-thru voting
• Require additions vote-by-mail ID mandates
• Ban election officials from mailing unsolicited mail-in ballot applications
• Empowers “Poll Watchers” and their activities
• Make it more difficult to assist voters with disabilities
• Requires the State to make monthly checks of the voter rolls for non-citizens (CNN).

Right to Vote

Essentially, both Georgia and Texas (and seventeen other states) have made it harder to vote for those who already struggle:  with disabilities, with childcare, with transportation, and with job hours.  In 2020, more people voted in the United States than ever before.  In fact, Donald Trump received the second most votes ever for President of the United States.  But Joe Biden received more – and the Republican legislatures can’t have that!!

There are lots of problems in America, from Covid to pre-school education to 5-G towers at airports.  But no issue cuts “closer to the bone” of the American democracy (little ‘d’) then the right to vote.  Not since the end of the Reconstruction Era in 1877, has there been a greater movement to restrict that right.  As America continues into the Twenty-First Century, it’s hard to imagine we are moving “backwards” – but that’s where we are.  The ”Great Debate” failed, but that doesn’t change the imperative to fix the problem.  

What’s next?

Inflation, Covid virus variants, Russian threats to Ukraine, Chinese transparency and tariffs, supply chain improvements, infrastructure repairs, arcane rules of the United States Senate, criminal insinuations about a son, political ideology, Central American policy, America’s divisions:  President Joe Biden stood in front of the press for almost two hours, and answered questions.  He showed an in-depth knowledge of all the issues facing our Nation.  And President Biden demonstrated an openness to the press, and the Nation, about the crises of our time.  

Big F**king Deal

Biden has been accused of three failings.   First, the famous Biden “faux-pas” (“Barack this is a Big F**king Deal!”).  The only possible “faux-pas” in this two hour grilling on national television, was Biden musing about what actions Russia might take against Ukraine.  Some suggest that he was signaling to Russia that the United States and NATO would “tolerate” a small incursion, but not a full scale invasion.

Maybe he was, or maybe he was simply laying out for Vladimir Putin the levels of retribution that the US and NATO were considering.  Or maybe President Biden was giving the American people some insight into his own thoughts.  But what the President made clear was that Putin had not signaled his own intentions, and that consequences would depend on provocation.   It’s just as possible that he was communicating to Moscow, rather than just “slipping up”. 

Others, notably Peter Baker of the New York Times, hammered Biden for not “staying on message”.  The Biden message, according to Baker, was supposed to be a White House “re-set”, after the failure to pass Build-Back-Better and the Voting Rights bills in the Senate.  Biden started down that path, placing the blame over and over again for failure firmly on the Senate Republicans who voted against as a block.  Biden spent much less time talking about Democrats Manchin and Sinema, Democrats who favored the bills, but refused to break the filibuster rule.

Baker felt that Biden went on to long, leaving the “re-set” behind.  While The Times is welcome to their opinion, Biden did demonstrate a wide ranging knowledge of all of the issues, and laid out a case for other Democratic accomplishments, versus Republican intransigence.  

Irish Up

The second failing Biden is accused of is having a hot temper.  Biden is known for harkening back to his heritage, including “getting his Irish up” when angered.  And the President had several good reasons to become angered, as certain media representatives (not really reporters, more provocateurs) made statement trying to bait him.  Newsmax asked whether the President was in “cognitive decline”, while Fox asked why he had trended so far to “the left”.  

Instead of losing his cool, Biden gave a one word answer (“No”) to Newsmax and moved on.  As far as the Fox question, Biden answered coolly, saying that while he was friends with Bernie Sanders, he wasn’t Bernie Sanders and was and remains a moderate, mainstream Democrat.  He didn’t get red in the face, nor did he fall in the trap of the predecessor and start attacking the questioners.  Fox News, of course, claims that the conference was a “total disaster”, and even suggested Biden “lost his cool” with a reporter when he told him to “go back and read” a speech that Biden made about the voting rights bills.  But as a direct observer myself, I didn’t see that.  I saw the President refusing to accept the “factual” premise of a question.

And when a reporter suggested that Biden didn’t demand tough answers from China because of an alleged relationship between Biden’s son Hunter and China, the President didn’t take the bait.  Instead, he ignored the “Hunter” part of the question, and corrected the reporters “facts” about his conversation with President Xi.

Cognitive Decline

Biden spent two hours in the hot light of the national media.  Biden answered questions on every topic in front of him.  He mused on the state of America, and sympathized with a people “fed up” with the coronavirus.  By the end of the conference, the biggest complaint may be that he gave too much “fodder” for a hostile media to swallow.  Reading this morning’s press, it’s clear the “right” will give him no credit, and the “left” won’t let go of Manchin and Sinema.

Biden made his point.  He is a man of the middle, perhaps in a time where the middle doesn’t exist.  He is a leader who believes that America will join him in change, if he can simply explain what he’s trying to do.  There’s no “cognitive decline” in that.

It’s the picture of a President trying to bring America back to a “safer” center.  We’ll see if that works.

Polarized

There are a whole lot of things to disagree about in America today. We align on our sides, from voting rights to Covid .  We’re right, they’re wrong, and they must be idiots to think the way they do.  Polarization is the watchword of American politics, and life, in 2022.

When I was an eighth grade American History teacher back in the 1980’s (forty years ago!!), one of the key concepts I taught my students was that polarization led to the Civil War.  America was divided, riven by the issues surrounding enslavement. There was no turning back.  All of the “tricks” of the legislators, from Henry Clay’s Missouri Compromise to Stephen Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Act, were unable to resolve the issue.  

Kids

Back in “the day”, my kids didn’t quite get it. How could America be so divided, that Virginians would fight Pennsylvanians, and Missourians fight among themselves?  Why did best friends like Winfield Scott Hancock and Lew Armistead lead armies into battle against each other?  It just didn’t seem possible, even after Vietnam, and Watergate, that Americans couldn’t find some common purpose.  It wasn’t just the “pathos” of brother versus brother. There was the sheer waste of lives, blood and treasure over what seemed in hindsight to be an inevitable outcome.  

Kids in class today would get the division just fine.  They would feel right at home with the hate of the 1850’s, the justification of “my side is the right” and “you’re in the wrong”.  Look at today’s arguments pitting “freedom” against public health, and you’ll get the idea.

I’m not predicting another civil war (but I’m not discounting that possibility anymore either).  And while I certainly have a “side” on the issues of today, the purpose of this essay is to examine  how we got here.

Gerrymandering

Ohio is in the throes of another “gerrymandering” debate.  The majority Republican State Supreme Court just turned down its own Republican plan as being too partisan and ignoring the expressed desires of the people.  But as a national issue, gerrymandering has significantly contributed to our national division.  That’s not an issue of blame, just fact.  We’ve divided ourselves in a way to encourage more division.

How does that work?  Gerrymandering for political gain is simply drawing the district maps so that one political party or the other is guaranteed a win.  Take Ohio’s 4th Congressional District, carefully etched into the countryside by the Republican controlled 2011 re-districting.  It goes from the outskirts of Dayton east to the edges of Columbus, up north to near Toledo, then again east almost to Cleveland.  It is the tenth most Republican district in the nation.

Base Rules

So when a Republican runs for Congress in the 4th, they know that winning the primary election is a guarantee of winning the Congressional seat.  Primary voting turnout is notoriously low compared to general election voting. Only the most “motivated” voters show up, the Base.  And the most motivated are usually those more extreme voters, the ones who are “fired up”.  Gerrymandering has put the power to select legislators in the hands of those few extremists, not intentionally, but practically.  And to keep getting re-elected, the legislator must continue to pander to that Base, the few that vote in the primary, versus the many who vote in the general.

Multiply that by the sixteen districts in Ohio.  And then add many of the states in the Union, both Republican and Democrat.  Gerrymandering fills the Congress (and the state legislatures) with members who have little to gain in compromise, in “making sausage”.  Instead, their personal interest to remain in office pushes them to the extremes, to non-negotiable stands.  Look at Jim Jordan from Ohio’s 4th, or Alexandria Ocasio Cortez from New York’s 14th.  To what common purpose could those two work?

Media

In 1996, Media mogul Rupert Murdock hired Republican campaign consultant Roger Ailes to set up a new kind of “news” channel.  It would represent the “conservative” view, despite its promise of “fair and balanced” news.  Ailes, who campaigned for Nixon, Reagan and HW Bush, did a remarkable job of creating Fox, a news source for “the right” and  the supposed counter-balance for CNN.  But to have an effective strategy to gain “the right” viewer, Ailes needed a better bête noire, an opposing network that was more obviously “left” than CNN.  

When Microsoft and General Electric came together to create MSNBC about the same time as Fox, Ailes had what he needed.  The market was calling for a “left” news source to counter-balance Fox, and MSNBC slid that direction to pick up viewers.  Ultimately both Fox and MSNBC eclipsed the older CNN, and both served to further divide the viewing public.  Today there is “a balance”:  Fox has a little more than half of the cable viewing share, MSNBC and CNN split the rest.

For Profit

With the expansion of cable broadcasts, other networks have tried to gain shares by outflanking Fox to the right.  Newsmax and OANN joined the right, challenging Fox to skew even more.  But Fox found the ultimate viewer enhancer, a political candidate who was already a television “star” (created by NBC oddly enough) who became the President of the United States.

But it’s really all about money, not politics.  I learned that at a very early age.  My Dad, a “Rockefeller Republican” back in the 1960’s, put a very liberal Phil Donahue on television in Dayton.  Donahue and Dad didn’t agree on politics, but they both knew a good thing when they had one.  By the end, the Donahue Show was in every television market in the country, all 210 of them, and lasted twenty-six years.  It was about money and success, not politics.

Information

And now in the past two decades, there is an entirely different source of information.  Mass use of the internet and social media has allowed everyone to “silo” their information.  They get what they “want to hear”, with little alternative or criticism.  The infamous “algorithms” of Facebook (and Google, and Twitter, and, and, and…) constantly pour gas on our fires of ideology.  That’s all about money as well.  Social media is monetized by “clicks”, by the number of people who view a particular site.  And nothing drives “clicks” like outrage.  From a financial standpoint, the more outrage – the more clicks – the more money.  

And so the wedges polarizing us are pounded in deeper by the unseen mathematical forces that keep appealing to our emotions.  It isn’t “love” that drives us to the next site or the next message – it’s negative. Hate, anger, and indignation are the powers that make social media the place for profit.  Tired of hating McConnell – move onto Manchin!!  Tired of hammering Biden – try despising Fauci!!

Revolution

The “theory of revolution” postulates that people don’t “revolt” when they are at their lowest.  Instead, they “revolt” when their lives improve, or they see “hope” for the future, and then that improvement and hope is dashed.  The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States might be one example of this.  For a significant number of Americans, the election of a progressive Black man as President was a “bridge too far”.  They were shocked, both by his politics and his race, especially after the conservative administration of George W Bush following “Republican Lite” Bill Clinton.  That shock soon became organizational anger, and the “Tea Party” movement began.  It wasn’t all “racist”, but it was definitely encouraged by the racial issue.

Should it be any surprise that their ultimate response was the election of the diametric opposite t0 Obama, an opulently rich White man who voiced “Tea Party” like views, and had the support of the “right’s” media?  Especially when the alternative choice was another ground breaking candidate, a woman for President? And with Trump’s election there was a predictable progressive response to that “outrage”, from Inauguration day on, culminating in the elections of 2018 and 2020. 

The Middle

Enter Joe Biden, quite literally a man “of the middle”.  And for many, there was hope that his electoral success would bring our nation to a “middle” where common purpose could again be the driving principle.  But Biden ran into the realities of 2021-22 American politics.  We are polarized by all the other forces in our lives – politics, healthcare, media; the phones we spend so much time on (my daily average an incredibly low 2 hour and 17 minutes this week).  

In an environment where magnifying failure is so much more profitable than touting success, and where much of the “middle” has been wedged to the sides, it’s no surprise that Biden is struggling.  Look at the Senate of the United States.  They can’t even manage to reaffirm the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1965.  The no-brainer of a decade ago is now controversial.  Even some Democrats don’t support it (or at least, won’t support a means to pass it).

I wish I had a “good answer” for what we need to do to “fix” all this.  But to start, we must at least recognize where it began, and why it continues.  My bet:  when the money can be made by fixing rather than dividing, we might be on our way to a common good:  Capitalism at its finest.  I’ll hold my breath.

Sinema

She seemed almost in tears as she stood in the well of the Senate.  Arizona’s Kirsten Sinema was committing the ultimate political insult. She was telling the President of the United States, the leader of her party, that she would not support him.  And she was doing it as publicly as possible,  as his motorcade was driving to the Capitol and to her, the Mountain coming to Mohammad, to ask her and fifty other Senators for help.   It doesn’t politically get more “in your face” than that.

But the “almost” tears weren’t for the possible consequences of her insubordination.  No, she was choking up for the need for bipartisanship. She is trying to end the dramatic divide that splits the American body politic into two immobile forces.  She was speaking in favor of the filibuster, an arcane rule of the Senate that, in its present incarnation, required sixty Senators to agree to even discuss any piece of business, any issue.  The “greatest deliberative body in the world” is shackled from even talking about something, anything, without a super-majority agreeing to do so.

Before we confer sainthood on the second year Senator from Arizona, recognize that she has made an objective political calculation.  The President is “weak” politically, with a current approval rating of 45% (Reuters).  And Sinema is from a “purple” state,  depending on the support of “McCain Republicans”. They are still angry at their Party for the insults poured on their deceased hero by former President Trump.  Sinema’s mathematics obviously conclude that insulting Biden costs fewer votes than standing for the Senate’s 
“regular order”, a frequent talking point of McCain in his last few years.  This was Sinema declaring independence from the Democratic establishment, her “thumbs down” moment.

Biden

Joe Biden himself, was a “man of the Senate” who stood with McCain for “regular order” (including the filibuster) for his thirty years there.  The President has made a journey since his inauguration speech a year ago, when he called for unity and common purpose.  In his first year in office, he was struck with a fierce reality:  in the US Congress there is no common purpose.  

Republicans have made it clear:  no matter how reasonable, or necessary, or even common sense a proposal might be, if the Democrats are for it, they are against it.  Not a Republican voted for the first Covid relief package.  Only a handful voted for the “bipartisan” infrastructure bill.  In fact, the Republicans in the Senate were willing to temporarily break the filibuster itself, so Democrats could raise the debt ceiling and keep the Nation from going into financial default. Just as long as they didn’t have to vote for it.

Debt Ceiling

That requires just a bit more analysis.  Clearly every Senator with the exception of the “hair-on-fire” crazies like Ron Johnson and Rand Paul, recognized that the debt ceiling had to be raised.  They all, Democrat and Republican alike, knew that it had nothing to do with future spending.  They were simply paying the bills from what they ALL had voted for in the past two years, the heavy Covid relief bills that kept the Nation out of financial depression when the pandemic hit. 

But the Republicans recognize that the American public doesn’t quite get the “debt ceiling”.  It looks like spending, like getting a bigger credit card limit so more money can go out.  In fact, it is getting a bigger credit limit, but to cover money already spent. But that distinction will be lost in the 2022 campaigns, when Republicans will rail against the “big spending” Democrats. 

So Republicans forced Democrats to break the filibuster, in order to pass the debt ceiling. That way, no Republican had to vote for it. That might be “smart” politics, but it definitely denies the common purpose of good governance.  That doesn’t matter anymore, the “men of the Senate” just want to win.

On the Record

So last week, Biden called out the Senate, and especially Sinema and Manchin, the roadblocks to defeating a filibuster.  Biden said they had to make a choice:  support voting rights or be listed with the great racists of our history:  Strom Thurmond, George Wallace, Jefferson Davis.  It doesn’t get starker than that.  The President, the “man of the Senate”, is calling members of his own political party racists.  The unity and common purpose of a year ago is lost in the raw political calculations.

Chuck Schumer is doubling down on the President’s threat, forcing the Senate to vote on breaking the filibuster to debate the Voting Rights Acts.  Schumer knows he doesn’t have the votes to win, but is “putting everyone on record”.  He’s making sure that all the Republicans are “against voting rights”.  But he is placing his “purple” Senators, like Tester of Montana and Kelly of Arizona, in a bind. Like Sinema, they depend on Never-Trump independents to get re-elected.  It would be different if the votes were there to do it, but Sinema and Manchin have made it abundantly clear they are not on board.

It is a symbolic  vote, for the record, and thirty-second ads  in the 2022 campaign.  But it is another move of division, not one of common purpose.  That doesn’t make it wrong, just sad, on this Martin Luther King day of 2022.

We Didn’t Start the Fire – Billy Joel  (an amazing “ballpark” concert last fall!)

The Jeep

I was driving around in my 2004 Jeep yesterday.  Though it’s an older vehicle, I updated the sound system to “modern” times – blue tooth connectivity, all new speakers, no CD player (or tape or eight track).  On longer trips I use my phone to select what’s playing.  Sometimes it’s classic rock, especially on those summer excursions with the top down and the sun tempered by the breeze. Often, it’s MSNBC keeping up with the constantly shifting politics. And sometimes its lectures:  the Civil War, the Federalist Papers, Constitutional Law, and all cued up for this spring’s travel season, the American Revolution.

 But if I’m going on a shorter trip, I don’t go to all the technical trouble of setting my phone for the audio presentation.  I just listen to the radio – either a classic rock station, whatever ballgame is on WLW (like my father before me), or National Public Radio (NPR).  All that, to explain the brief excerpt I heard on NPR that led to consideration of the “isms” of our time.

CRT

We all know about Critical Race Theory (CRT). It’s a study of the impact of legacy racism on the legal system.  The term was intentionally misappropriated to become the “watchword” of the right.  They use it to explain any attempt to diversify our educational system, or correct the injustice of history lessons written to intentionally protect racist actions.  It’s an inappropriate “shorthand”, but because it sounds bad: “critical” like near death, “race” with winners and losers, and “theory” like the science that the “right” disparages, it works for them.  It’s sounds so much better than just being “racist”. 

CRT is just another battle of the soon to be minority white culture warriors, trying to maintain power. Gerrymandering and voter suppression are two more battlefields in the same conflict.  And while I sometimes despair for what my country has become, there is an inevitability in the census statistics:  America will ultimately be a diverse nation without a single “majority” racial or ethnic group.  We will change, willingly or not.  

Ageism

But there are other, less well known “watchwords” that try to explain our cultural behavior. “Ageism” is used to describe the discounting of the older generation, what in slang seems to be defined in a single, now pejorative term, “Boomer”.  The impact of ageism is subtle. As I arrive at the “age”, I’m just beginning to notice it. It’s not just the slightly slower and louder speech pattern some take with me.  As a highly qualified sixty-five year old who didn’t get a job to a highly qualified thirty-eight year old, the thought can’t help but creep into my mind – was it the gray hair and long resume?  

The other day there was a long Facebook response to my “rant” about Covid (I’m Done).  Part of their argument compared the total US death rates from the flu (pre-Covid) to Covid deaths of those under sixty-five, trying to show how the flu and Covid were kind of the same.  My first thought was that those sixty-five and over were part of the flu deaths, so the argument was inherently flawed.  But even more, why would discounting the deaths of those sixty-five and over from Covid be an “OK” argument to make?  Are their lives less valued by their gray hair or slowed gait?

Ableism

Or the term I heard on NPR the other day, “Ableism”.  That’s the watchword used by those who have disabilities to explain the inherent bias against them in many physical and social areas.  What we think of as infra-structure issues:  ramps and elevators versus stairs, the “jokes” about braille on the drive-thru banking machines, are only part of the issue.  Like the gray hair, does a wheelchair change the opportunities for employment?

The speaker pointed out that those who are disabled are often “written-out” of the conversation about Covid.  For example, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the Centers for Disease Control, stated that those with “co-morbidities” had the highest risk of dying from Covid, but that for most others there was less risk.  While the statistic is certainly true, it includes many people with disabilities.  Her using it to justify how well the vaccines are doing seems to them that, like the “sixty-five and over” crowd, they are somehow in a different category that discounts the importance of their deaths.  

Perspective

I’m sure that’s not what Dr. Walensky meant, but hearing it from a different perspective is important.  Just like the casual “sixty-five and over”, the “co-morbidity” argument denies humanity.  Sure Colin Powell had a long-term cancer.  Sure he was weakened by the treatments.  It made him “less-able”.  But to say his death from Covid was somehow less tragic or less important is wrong.  But for Covid – Colin Powell would still be alive.  The blood cancer didn’t kill him: Covid did.

And a final point on “ableism”.  Millions of Americans had Covid infection.  Some are left with “Long Covid”, varying symptoms that don’t go away.  So the ranks of “persons with disabilities” are likely to swiftly increase from the impact of Covid.  How will they be treated in the future?  Will our current national desire to “forget” Covid include forgetting them?

Fight the Fire

Racism, Ableism, Ageism, Sexism, Audism (against the deaf), Cissexism (against transgendered), cultural appropriation; are all just some of the list.  It all reminds me of the Billy Joel song, We Didn’t Start the Fire, with his verses of lists:

…Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal suicide
Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shore, China’s under martial law
Rock and roller, cola wars, I can’t take it anymore.

We didn’t “start the fire” of these “isms”.  As Billy Joel put it:

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning, since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it.

Labeling is always the first step in a battle.  The “right” won on that count: Critical Race Theory now means so much more than an obscure legal theory.  All of these “isms” represent real issues for the American future, for an America that should welcome diversity and differences.  That’s what makes a better.

To get there, we’ve got some fighting to do.

The Farce

You know, it hasn’t been a great week.  It looks like President Biden and Majority Leader Schumer were leading us on.  I know, both of them kept saying “how hard this was going to be” and “we have lots of work to do”.  But you had to think they wouldn’t have raised our hopes, without some hope themselves that they could succeed in convincing Manchin and Sinema to play ball.  Now it looks like it was all a farce, a show put on to demonstrate “how hard” they were trying.  

We don’t need shows, and we don’t need false hope.  All that does is solidify the view that “the enemy” isn’t the Republicans, but the two recalcitrant Democrats.  I’m struggling to see why that’s a good idea for my Party.  The reality is the fifty Republicans stand rock solid for voter suppression.  Former Attorney General Eric Holder stated yesterday that the average white voter in Fulton County (Atlanta) waited eight minutes to vote in 2020, while the average black person waited over fifty.  If that’s not discriminatory, what is?  But those conditions will be made worse in 2022 by the legal changes made in that state. A total of nineteen states passed thirty-three bills to do the same.  And more laws and states are in the “suppression” pipeline.

Marching on Main Street

But that’s not where Democratic ire is directed.   The Republicans are getting a “pass”.  Manchin and Sinema are taking the “heat” for all fifty-two opposing Senators from both parties.  The idea was that the pressure would somehow move “the two”, but looks now that it’s made them “stand firm” for the filibuster.  Wow – I’m sure the good folks in Flagstaff, Arizona and Beckley, West Virginia are proud:  “filibuster or bust” they cry out as they march down Main Street – not.

I know it’s not over “until the lady sings” (we will not be body shaming here!) but it sure sounds like she’s warming up.  How proud Senator Sinema looked yesterday, standing in the well of the Senate of the United States and defending “tradition”.  She might as well have said she was defending “heritage”, a word that has come to stand for the “old, racist” days.  And Manchin with his “elevator” interviews, always leaving a tidbit of room to wiggle, and reveling in the attention.  They’re both raising campaign funds on this issue, though it not regular Democrats giving the money for this.  You have to wonder; who is?

Trump Card

On top of that, the Supreme Court played their “Trump” card, and took another weapon out of the vaccine fight.  Government can’t mandate businesses keep their employees safe by vaccination.  At least five of the Justices agreed that medical workers ought to not infect their patients – duh.  

So this has not been a “winning” week – more of a “whining” week in reality.  

But there is one small light in the tunnel, though it too is flickering.  A few years ago, the voters of Ohio passed two State Constitutional Amendments calling for an end to political gerrymandering of legislative districts.  One was for the state representatives and senators, the other was for Congressional districts.  The “people” made it clear that districts like Jim Jordan’s, which stretches from the outskirts of Dayton to the outskirts of Toledo to the outskirts of Cleveland, aren’t really representative.  Even worse, the “snake on the lake” district, stretching from Toledo to Cleveland, fifteen miles wide along Lake Erie.

Will of the People

But when it came time for the Republican majority to redraw the maps, they went right ahead and kept doing what they always did.  Their new district maps would guarantee even more Republicans elected.  Ohio averaged 54% Republican to 46% Democrat in the past decades elections, but the Republican gerrymander would guarantee over 80% of the Congressional seats and more than 60% of the state legislative seats.

Ohio Supreme Court Justices are elected, not appointed.  There are four Republicans (including the Governor’s son) and three Democrats. The “betting” was that the Court would allow the maps, by a four to three decision. 

But there was a pleasant surprise.  Republican Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor flipped, citing the intent of the people in passing the amendments. The state legislative maps were tossed out, and the mapping committee has ten days to come up with something less partisan.  The Congressional maps will be up for the same review soon.  

Flickering

So in a week of disappointment, it’s good to see one government official take a stand, and try to do what she sees as the “will of the people”.  Her willingness to cross “the line” and side with the Democrats on the court, is refreshing.  She didn’t do it because of partisanship, but in spite of it.  A flickering flame of hope, for a generally dismal week. 

Come to the light!!!!

Rant

This is a Covid rant.  We all have them, no matter what “side” of Covid you’re on.  And let’s think a bit about that sentence.  Here in the “modern world”, where we have made amazing progress and found vaccines for a killer disease in less than a year, we have made the “disease” a political issue.  No wonder the world looks at the United States with head shaking amazement.  The nation that thinks it’s the best – is still leading when it comes to Covid deaths.  The United States leads the world with over 860,000 deaths in the past two years.  Brazil comes in a far second with 620,000.

Remember the first few months of Covid?  Some said it was no worse than “the flu”.  In the worst year in the past decade, it’s estimated 50,000  died in the US from the flu.  Covid – averaged over eight times that number.  OK, so where do we stand now?  We are a Nation “sick and tired” of Covid.  As a whole, we seem to not care anymore.  800,000 gone, a million on the horizon, and why not?  Certainly our politics are so much more important than people’s lives.

What are the lies – and what do we do?

Vaccines

The Vaccines don’t work:  except they do.  The first area is in prevention of disease, protecting us from Covid.  For the original Covid variant here in the United States, the Beta version, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were 90% or better in preventing infection.  In the six months from the vaccine rollout to universal adult availability, we could have gotten control of Covid.  But, since only around 60% of American adults got vaccinated, we remained vulnerable to the next variant – the Delta variant.

The Delta was more than twice as infective as Beta, and the vaccines worked at about 80% effectiveness.  Not quite as good as against the Beta version, but still preventing a lot of disease.  And then the Omicron variant arrived, just in time for Christmas.  Omicron was even more infective than Delta, a “ten” to Delta’s “seven”. The vaccines showed diminished protection from Omicron, unless a third “booster” was included.  Then protection was back to 80% or better.

And, in the works, is a vaccine that could actually protect against all corona-viruses.  It may still be a year away, but is the next “best answer” to Covid variations.  So the bottom line is while the current vaccines aren’t perfect, they do provide increased protection from the current Covid variants.

Deaths

Covid deaths are exaggerated – but they aren’t.  What about those break-through infections, despite vaccination?  Vaccinated folks are much less likely to be hospitalized, or end up in an ICU, or dead.  The toll in the United States is averaging almost 2000 Covid deaths a day.  Of the 2000 dying from Covid, it’s estimated that more than 90% of them are unvaccinated.  

The unvaccinated are dying from Covid.  For the vast majority of those dying; they made a choice, “exercised their freedom”, and died as a result.  If that’s not the definition of…well, however you categorize that decision, it’s probably best not to go there.  

Just an aside.  Over 90% of Americans regularly wear their seatbelt in a car.  Statistics show that almost half the people killed in car accidents were not wearing their seat belts.  So of the more than 22,000 killed in car wrecks in 2019, the 10%  non-belt wearers made up half of the deaths.  The moral of the story, you have an astronomically better chance of surviving a wreck with a seat belt on –  you get it.

72% of Americans have at least one dose of a Covid vaccine.  Just like with seat belts, of the 2000 Americans dying each day from Covid, over 90% are unvaccinated.  That means that the vast majority of those who die from Covid are from the 18%.  The conclusion seems crystal clear.  You can refuse to wear a seatbelt.  You can refuse to get vaccinated.  I guess you are exercising your “freedom of choice”, to risk you own life.

Not Prepared

We weren’t ready for Omicron.   That’s not a lie, it’s true.  Why wasn’t the US government, read those “Democrats” in the Biden Administration, ready for Omicron?  Didn’t they realize that the next variation would be more infective (if less deadly)?  Why weren’t they ready with millions (or billions) of tests?

The answer to that is simple. They can’t solve a problem that they don’t know about.  It was Thanksgiving, less than two months ago, that the newest variant was detected in South Africa.  Now, with astonishing speed it is the dominant strain of Covid worldwide.  Before Thanksgiving, the Biden Administration strategy was sound:  vaccinate as many as possible.  With the Delta variant, vaccinations worked well, and kept people from getting Covid, or if they did, getting seriously ill.

But Omicron was more infective, so more people got sick.  It was different enough that the vaccines didn’t do as well in protecting from infection (through it still prevented serious disease).  If vaccinations aren’t the answer, then prevention of spread, through testing, is.  And that’s the pivot we are in now.  Vaccinations are still critically important, but testing will allow the economy to continue to boom.  Test negative, and get back to work.  Test negative, and go to school.  Or, test negative and go in the game.  All of that depends on the availability of tests. And they are coming.

Schools

Teachers are looking for excuses to stay home.  We hear national “commentators” condemning teachers, in Chicago and Cleveland and now in Columbus.  Teachers are concerned that the Omicron variant is so pervasive, that full classrooms will simply speed infection.  Most schools are at full capacity.  Mask mandates were dropped, either because of vaccinations, or because of the community threats in the Board meetings.  And, of course, we don’t test either the teachers of the children. So teachers are faced with classrooms literally full of infection.

Chicago’s Mayor Lightfoot, herself sick with Covid, basically called the Chicago teachers cowards for not “doing their civic duty” and teaching in their classrooms.  I get the costs:  if schools aren’t in session, kids aren’t learning (even online), and more importantly, parents aren’t working.  They are at home with their kids.  No one is pretending that online teaching is a comparable experience to being in the classroom, but the real issue is childcare.

But how many teachers are in schools that are decades old, with poor ventilation, in packed classrooms?  In spite of the billions of dollars in Covid aid, a 1960’s building is still a 1960’s building.  Teachers, especially in the big cities, have a legitimate grievance.  And, unlike the universities, no one is being tested at the door to the school house. They are just being dropped into an “Omicron stew”.  

I’ll Do Me

You do you, I’ll do me, it doesn’t matter. But one problem:  your choice impacts others.  Our hospitals are filled with Covid patients, the vast majority of them unvaccinated. So filled, that it impacts care of “regular” emergency patients – heart attacks, strokes, accidents, even those who didn’t wear their seatbelts.  And others who are having “elective” surgery, can’t.  Those are postponed, waiting for a more “appropriate” time.  Let’s hope your heart pacemaker can wait.

And there’s one other issue.  As Omicron rips through, it thrives and gets the opportunity to mutate.  That’s what “successful” viruses do.  So the more infection there is, the more opportunity for the “next” variation to appear – creating a whole new set of problems, just like Omicron did.

 Many are ignoring the testing, ignoring the vaccines, ignoring the pandemic.  They live life without their “seatbelt” on, somehow assured that the laws of statistics will never confront them with Covid.  And for many, they’ll “get the ‘Vid’” and get over it.  Only a few (approaching a million) will go through the windshield and get smeared on the pavement.  Let’s hope they don’t take too many of the rest of us with them.

End of rant.

“Me thinks the Lady doth protest too much”  (Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2)

“The American people are tired of Democrats’ nonstop investigations and partisan witch hunts. Your letter of December 22, 2021, unfortunately continues this Democrat obsession…The American people deserve better than the Democrats’ incessant focus on partisan investigations. Rampant inflation is hurting American families, an unmitigated crisis at the southern border threatens American communities, the Biden Administration is weaponizing counterterrorism tools against American parents, and President Biden’s weak leadership endangers American service members overseas.” 

– Congressman Jordan’s letter to the January 6th Committee.

Jordan

Republican Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio refused to appear before the House Committee on January 6th yesterday.  The Committee already has multiple communications that link Jordan to the decision-making process at  the White House during the hours of the riots and mob invasion of the Capitol Building.  In fact, Jordan was in direct contact with the White House Chief of Staff at the time, and may even have communicated with the President himself.   They want to know more.

Instead of coming forward and sharing what he knows with the Committee, he’s choosing to fall back on the standby Republican excuse:  “It’s a partisan witch hunt”.  That’s a case of, what my Mother would  say is “…the pot calling the kettle black”.  Jordan was a leading figure in the three year, $7 million Benghazi investigations. And when the majority Republican Judiciary Committee dragged FBI Director James Comey to testify during the early years of the Trump Administration, Jordan led the attack on him and his investigation into the Trump campaign contacts with Russian Intelligence.  I guess you could say, he should know a witch hunt when he sees one.  He’s done enough hunting himself.

Tactics

There seems to be three different tactics taken by Trump “associates” in response to the January 6th investigations.  The first, taken by Trump advisor Peter Navarro and others, is to openly admit to their desire to overthrow the legitimate results of the 2020 vote, and explain how they thought they could “legally” do it.  Navarro is unrepentant in explaining the plan, “The Green Bay Sweep”.  He was perfectly happy that the mob on January 6th was directed to the Capitol, though he quickly adds that the violence and vandalism disrupted “the Sweep”. 

The second tactic is to tacitly acknowledge they may have committed a crime.  Author of the “Green Bay Sweep” attorney John Eastman, and others are “Taking the Fifth”, claiming that any testimony they gave might incriminate themselves.  That is not legally a “confession” to illegal activity, but it surely opens the possibility that such activity occurred.

And the third tactic is to simply try to bluster through the Committees requests and subpoenas.  Steve Bannon, the supposed executor of the entire January 6th operation, completely ignored the Committee’s legal summons, and was indicted for criminal contempt.  It’s now up to a Judge and jury to determine his guilt.

Mathematics

Jordan is taking a different tack.  He’s simply saying he’s “too powerful” as a United States Congressman to be summoned to a committee hearing.  And he’s doing everything he can to create a smokescreen of Trumpian rhetoric to go with it.  Thus the laundry list of Republican complaints about the Biden Administration in his refusal letter.

It’s a matter of simple math. Over half who identify as Republican (as if party were gender) believe the 2020 election was “stolen”.  And many believe that the violence at the Capitol was justified.  In total terms, they may only represent 15% of the total voters, but in real numbers that’s still twenty million people. If America is to avoid a “revolution” after every Presidential election, we as a nation must understand what happened on January 6th, and the months that led up to it. 

In our present state of absolute polarization, those “true believers” aren’t just going to change their minds.  But all of those other millions of voters who are NOT “true believers” need to know the truth of what happened.  

American Exceptionalism

America is at a fork in our national journey.  It’s easy to think that we are in some temporary historical phase, like the Civil War or the McCarthy Era.  Part of “American Exceptionalism” is a firm belief that America will ultimately “win out”, even after dark periods.  After all, we always have.

But “winning out” isn’t just a matter of fate.  Ending McCarthyism required people to take real risks, like those taken by attorney Joseph Welch (“…have you no humanity?”) and broadcaster Edward R. Murrow.  We cannot just “ride out” Trumpism, and hope that the sheer momentum of the American experiment will guarantee success.  It is just as likely that our Democratic institutions are permanently altered to maintain the privileges of the few.  

Jim Jordan will never testify before a committee. He will continue to be the man who “… doth protest too much”.  But America needs to discover what “…game was afoot”, (more Shakespeare), or we will be doomed to repeat it.  And the next time, the plotters might be successful. 

Hardball

Politics is not a “recreational sport”.  Politics, at every level, has real consequences.  Ask your local school board about mask mandates during the Covid pandemic, or the state of Virginia about I-95 snow removal.

The United States Senate has two voting rights bill under consideration in the next few weeks.  One, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, would modernize original Voting Rights Act passed in 1965.  That law protected the voting rights of minorities from state actions that restricted voting, by allowing the Justice Department the “right” to pre-certify state changes.  If a state law restricted voting, it didn’t go into effect.  The 1965 Act put the burden on the state to show it was NOT discriminating, rather than on the Justice Department to show discrimination.  

The Voting Rights Act was re-enacted several times since 1965, usually by huge margins in both the House and the Senate.  However, in 2013, the Supreme Court gutted the pre-certification clause in the case Shelby County v Holder.  The Court made it clear that the Congress had the authority to control voting, but that they thought the reasoning underlying the 1965 Act was out of date.  

Freedom to Vote

A second bill, the Freedom to Vote Act, is also under consideration by the Senate. This Act would do a lot to standardize voting across the United States in Federal elections, including:

• Allow for same day voter registration,
• Establish automatic voter registration,
• Protect and expand access to voting by mail,
• Establish 15 days of early voting, including at least two weekends,
• Restore voting rights to individuals previously incarcerated,
• Prevent partisan gerrymandering, and
• Protect against voter intimidation.

Both of these bills will counter the Republican state-by-state insurgency. It’s fueled by the “Stop the Steal” lie, and “legally” prevents many Democratic supporters from voting at all.

Fifty Plus One

There are fifty US Senators who agree that both these bills should become law.  They are the forty-eight Democrats, and the two Independent Senators (King of Maine, Sanders of Vermont).  There are fifty US Senators united in opposing both these bills, all of the Republicans.  Were these bills to get to a final vote, a fifty-fifty tie would be broken by the Vice President, Democrat Kamala Harris, and both bills (already passed by the House) would be signed into law by President Biden.

But the Senate has the procedural rule allowing a “filibuster”.  While many think of the  movie scene with Jimmy Stewart speaking for hours in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, in practice today’s filibuster is simply a vote count.  To allow for debate (and subsequent vote) on a bill, it requires sixty Senators to agree.  Otherwise, the bill is considered “filibustered” and blocked even from discussion.

The filibuster is not in the Constitution, and not even written into the original rules of the Senate.  It was added later.  As a procedural rule, it can be altered by a simple majority of the Senate, fifty votes (plus the tie-breaker).  That alteration is the so-called “nuclear option”, but it actually is already part of the process.  On budget bills and Presidential judicial appointments, the Senate already debates and  votes on a simple majority basis.

So the question isn’t about “ending the filibuster”.  The question is:  can voting rights be added to the list of issues that are “exempted” from the filibuster rule.  And that is where the politics begin.

Forty-Eight plus Two

There are two Democrats who, while they claim they are in favor of the voting bills, stand opposed to adding voting to the filibuster exemptions:  Kristin Sinema of Arizona, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia.  There voiced reason is simple:  if Democrats add voting rights to the “exempted list”, there will be nothing to prevent a future Republican controlled Senate from adding something else.

They aren’t wrong.  Democrats added non-Supreme Court judicial appointments to the exempted list during the Obama Administration.  When Republicans gained control of the Senate and the Presidency, they added Supreme Court appointees, allowing for the three Trump Justices now on the Court.  Democrats have since added “debt ceiling” votes to the list.  So when Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says that “Democrats started this”, he’s right.

But regardless of what Democrats do now, there is nothing to prevent a future Republican Senate from adding issues to the “exempted” list, or getting rid of the filibuster all together.  The Sinema and Manchin argument:  “If we do it now, they’ll do it later,”sounds good. But “they” could do it later anyway.

Sinema

The political question is what can Democrats do to pressure their own Senators Sinema and Manchin to allow voting rights to be added to the exempt list, and then passed into law.  Kirsten Sinema is more “vulnerable” to internal Democratic pressure.  She is up for re-election in 2024, and there are several progressive Democrats in Arizona interested in challenging her in the primary.  Sinema’s “theory” of re-election is that she can appeal to the “middle ground” of Arizona politics, what she calls the “McCain Republicans” who crossover to her as a result of Trumpism.  Her stand on the filibuster is based in that “McCain” tradition.

But those “McCain” voters won’t be voting in the Democratic Primary.  Sinema needs financing for the primary, and would like her opponents to be “underfunded”.  This is where pressure from the national Democratic Party can make a difference.  The Party can offer, or refuse money, both to Sinema and to her potential primary opponents.  So the road to Sinema’s agreement goes through the 2024 Arizona Primary.

The Unicorn

Joe Manchin is a different issue. He too is running for re-election in 2024.  But as the only statewide elected Democratic official in West Virginia, he holds a unique position.  While Democrats could challenge him in a primary, there is little likelihood of them defeating Manchin, or a Republican candidate in the general election. Donald Trump received two-thirds of West Virginia vote in 2020.  Manchin is a “unicorn” in West Virginia, and like any “unicorn” he must be coddled and cared for, or he will cease to exist.

So it is difficult to pressure Manchin, and there’s not much weight that can be brought to bear.  But Congressman Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, I think, has the answer.  He suggests that Joe Manchin doesn’t want to go down in history as “the Democrat who stopped voting rights”.  Manchin himself re-wrote the John Lewis Bill to try to gain some Republican support.  And while there were a few Republican Senators who showed interest, there was nowhere near the needed ten to avoid the filibuster.

History’s Eyes 

Look at two famous figures in American Senate politics.  The first is Strom Thurmond, a Senator from South Carolina who served past his one-hundredth birthday and married a twenty-two year old woman when he was sixty-six.  He was an original “Dixiecrat”, a Democrat who switched political parties because he was so opposed to civil rights.  Thurmond led the filibuster of the 1957 Civil Rights Act, setting the “record”  of twenty-four hours and eighteen minutes for holding the floor.  When he switched parties, he became a senior Republican Senator.  Like the removed statues of Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson, he is a symbol of the segregated South.

The other figure is Lyndon Johnson, a master Senate tactician who became President of the United States.  Johnson was a Southern Democrat from Texas, also a segregationist for most of his political career.  But Johnson as President, masterminded the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights.  Along with his Great Society Program, they were the highpoints of his political life.  

Google states that Unicorns eat “…grass, plants, flowers and berries”.  What can Democrats offer their “unicorn” from West Virginia?  All they have for Joseph Manchin III, besides whatever campaign financing he might need, is a place in history.  

He can stand for civil rights with Lyndon Baines Johnson. Or he can stand for discrimination with James Strom Thurmond Sr.  

It’s the unicorn’s choice.

This is the next in the “Sunday Story” series.  No politics here – just a story about  snow, and cold!!!!!!

We are in the age of global warming – right?  Doesn’t that mean the weather should be warmer in the winter?  Isn’t the theory that someday Ohio will be like Tennessee or Georgia, and that Upper Ontario will have the “typical Ohio” winter weather? 

It’s 13 degrees outside right now (with windchill – 0) so you can’t convince me were living in Chattanooga yet.  But it does seem that our weather was so much worse “back in the day, when we walked to school in the blinding snow, uphill, both ways!!!”  And here’s a story about it.

Winter Camp

I was in a “hard core” Boy Scout Troop in Kettering, Ohio, in the late 1960’s, Troop 229.  It was the height of Boy Scouting, with over six million Scouts nationwide.  We Boy Scouts were not scared away by a little cold, or snow, or freezing weather.  In fact, we took great pride in our “winter campout”, an annual January event.  We went out in February too, that was the annual “Klondike Derby” with the younger Scouts acting as the sled dogs.  (Maybe that’s where I got my later attitude about track and cross country meets. Except for lightning we always ran!!).

I was in sixth grade when we went out on what turned out to be the coldest day (and night) of the year.  I was still a “novice” camper, and didn’t have the down sleeping bag that would protect me in the mountains later on.  My equipment was what every Tenderfoot Scout had at the time:  a Sears and Roebuck sleeping bag and high topped boots.

During the daytime on Saturday it wasn’t too bad.  The temperature hovered in the single digits above zero, and we Tenderfoots spent a lot of time gathering as much firewood as possible in preparation for the night. We also learned how to erect canvas wall tents, looking much like they did in a Civil War Camp.  The canvas was stiff, from age, and even more from the cold.

We put four kids in a tent, lined up parallel to the entryway.  If you were the kid “in the back”, you wanted to make sure you did your nightly “duty” in the woods – before everyone got settled in.  Otherwise, you had to try to walk out over everyone in the dark.  If you did that, you learned another important lesson of Scouting, the appropriate use of profanity.

The Fire

So there we were, huddling around the fire, as the sun went down early and the temperatures began to drop. The “Dinty-Moore” Beef stew was tasty, but froze to the side of the aluminum pot before it was cleaned. We had to boil more water to melt it off.  

How cold was it?  You could stand a couple of feet from the fire, so close that the tips of your Sears boots were starting to smoke, and still feel the icy cold on your backside.  Turn around to warm that up, and now your whole front was shivering.  We dressed in layers, thermal underwear, blue jeans and sweatshirts.  I added my Uncle Buddy’s Navy Arctic jacket, good for wear on a World War II destroyer’s bridge in the North Atlantic, but it was still really cold.

The Experiment

We Tenderfeet had a mission. Mr. Fella, our Scoutmaster, brought a thermometer, and it already had dropped below minus ten.  We heard a rumor, that once it got past fifteen degrees below, your pee would freeze before it hit the ground.  This fascinated us – a story for the ages!  (By the way, we weren’t the only ones interested in the topic – Google it, something we couldn’t do back in 1969.  There are lots of answers, with temperature gradients and values for volume and angle of release).   

So we shivered and shifted around the fire and drank a lot of hot chocolate.  One kid melted the toe of his boot, another lost a glove (that was serious, one of the older kids had backup gloves).  But in the dark, under the amazing stars that made it feel like we were in outer space itself, we waited for the mercury (do thermometers still use mercury?) to shrink past the 15 below mark.  And finally, it was there.

Scientific Method

So it was really cold, and there were several layers to get through, but a gaggle of eleven and twelve year-olds lined up with flashlights to proceed with this advanced scientific investigation.  We were all primed to find out the answer – hot chocolate will do that to you.  The first discovery we made was that whether or not our urine would freeze before it hit the ground, other parts were freezing from the moment of contact with outside air.  The mercury wasn’t the only thing shrinking.

So the experiment was a quick one.  What we hoped would be a “frozen rope” really didn’t work out.  Later academic investigation when I was in my twenties (involving beer at a bar on a very cold and snowy night) showed it would have to be much colder, even more than 25 below, for that to happen.

But we discovered that, on contact with the snow, the pee froze solid.  So while it wasn’t “clinking” as it hit the ground, it froze soon enough.  And soon enough satisfied us, as we realized how cold our exposed parts were getting.  We closed up, and headed back to the fire. 

Cocooned

That night I slept in my clothes, hat, and gloves. I used my Arctic Jacket to close up the top of my sleeping bag, and huddled in a hopeful cocoon of Sear’s “Satisfaction Guaranteed” warmth. Any leak brought frigid air pouring in, so sealing up the top was critical. But even sealed, there still was the zipper that ran the length and bottom of the bag, and that was icy no matter what I did. It was a long, shivering night, talking to my brother Tenderfeet about whether we should re-evaluate our experimental results, or our choice to be in Troop 229.

The early light raised another question for us.  Sure, we were freezing in our sleeping bags.  But to get up, pull on frozen boots, and go outside required even more exposure to the cold.  The only answer was to build a fire (Jack London wrote a short story on the subject), and our theory was that the Scoutmasters should do that for us.  After all, they needed coffee more than we wanted to face more cold.

So we huddled, sharing the little warmth in our cocoons wadded next to each other.  Shivering, we talked in jerks and starts, staying quiet less someone in authority might “order” us to move.  And soon we heard axes of the wood being chopped, and smelled smoke and coffee, the aura of every good Scouting adult I ever knew.  We finally staggered out of our frozen solid canvas tent, drawn to the fire like moths, hoping for a little heat.

A Little Numb

That day my toes went numb as we marched a five mile winter hike.  Two of them remain numb to this day, some fifty-three years later.  But I learned so much from our experience, and not just about peeing in the cold.  The next time we went winter camping, there was a down sleeping bag, and double socks in my boots, and even more layers on the rest of me.  

I bet they don’t do those kind of winter campouts anymore.  Parents would be “helicoptering” in to keep their child from such brutal exposure.  And maybe they’d be right.  But those kids will never have the stories to tell, of huddling in the cold, staring directly into space, overcoming adversity – and of course – watching pee freeze on the snow.  

You don’t need to feel all your toes anyway.

• The Sunday Story 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 Found and Lost – 11/21/21
• Watching Brian 12/12/21
• Stories from Shiloh – 12/19/21
• Team Trips – 12/26/21
• Uphill, Both Ways  – 1/9/22

Facts

A year ago yesterday, a mob attacked the United States Capitol, with the express purpose of stopping Congress from certifying the election of Joe Biden as President.  In a nation that prides itself on a history of calm transitions of power:  from Adams to Jefferson, from Carter to Reagan, and even from Obama to Trump; this was the absolute opposite.  It was what the Founding Fathers worried about and the reason George Washington voluntarily gave up the Presidency in 1796 in the first place (teach them how to say goodbye).  Remember when we were upset (or amused) when the Clinton staffers stole all the “W’s” from the keyboards as they left the White House?  Now that was a real “rebellion”. 

It wasn’t just a riot.  It was a crime in and of itself – attempting to disrupt the Congress.  Had it been just slightly more “successful”, and actually captured Mike Pence or Nancy Pelosi or the “Old Jew” Chuck Schumer (his words yesterday), it would have succeeded in decapitating our legislative branch of government.  Don’t forget, the gallows were already erected on the Capitol lawn.

Fox

It is a truth of our current political world, that there are two different universes of what we call “facts”.   So here are the Fox News headlines from yesterday, the first anniversary of “the Insurrection” (just a “riot” to them).

• Kalm Before the Storm
  • Harris announces new shake-up after VP office plagued with reports of dysfunction and infighting
  • Ari Fleischer rips Kamala Harris for comparing 1/6 to 9/11, Pearl Harbor.  ‘It is a ridiculous comparison’
• Mission Failed
  • Biden ripped for continued COVID failures after presser
• MSNBC anchor flies off handle after Republican stands firm on GOP Future
  • MSNBC’s Wallace ‘gob-smacked’ more kids haven’t gotten COVID vaccine
• Teacher’s Pets
  • Watch hosts on liberal squawk box defend unions refusing to work
• Get the Buc Out
  • Whiplash from player’s future after another 180 over shirtless tantrum
• Watch:  group holds candlelight vigil on one-year mark of Capitol Riot (first mention of ceremonies other than Fleischer criticizes Harris)
• Pence does not join in Democrats Capitol Riot Events
• Former President responds to Biden’s sharp criticism in Capitol riot speech
• Dems, media demand you think of Capitol riot in same way as 9/11, Pearl Harbor…even the Holocaust

The Middle

I’m not going to compare that to MSNBC.  Not to be snarky, but it isn’t MSNBC’s leading commentator being asked to testify to the January 6th Committee (though that is the lead article on the MSNBC website).   But let’s look at the “center” of the “media bias” chart – Newsweek.

• Republican Rifts on display as GOP Lawmakers respond to Jan 6 Anniversary
• January 6 Anniversary live updates:  Vigil Underway on Capitol Steps
• Donald Trump didn’t run the January 6th Riot.  So why did it happen?
  • Jan 6 timeline – from Trump’s first tweet, Speech to Biden’s Certification
  • Donald Trump was the true winner of Jan 6
  • Remembering the January 6 Capitol Deaths, from Brian Sicknick to Ashli Babbitt
• Biden’s Former Health advisers urge him to change COVID strategy.

The Lead

Just out of curiosity – which news outlets “led” with the President’s speech?

• The New York Times – Year after riot, Biden denounces Trump as divide endures
• The Wall Street Journal – Biden assails Trump over Jan 6 Riot, Efforts to Overturn Election Results
• The Washington Post – Biden blasts Trump on Jan 6 Anniversary
• NBC News – Biden condemns Trump’s ‘web of lies’ and directly blames him for Capitol riot and election turmoil
• NPR News – President Biden blasts Trump for ‘spreading a web of lies’ in Jan 6 speech
• St Louis Post Dispatch – Democracy held on Jan 6, Trump failed: Biden marks anniversary of attack on Capitol
• CBS News – Biden’s denounces Trump’s ‘web of lies’
• Los Angeles Times – Analysis:  For a year, Biden has mostly refused to go after Trump. Until today.
• Washington Examiner – Avoidance and Remembrance – GOP avoidance and remembrance:  GOP attitudes vary on Jan. 6.

So most of America’s media, even those in the middle and some on the right (Wall Street Journal, Washington Examiner) recognized the obvious.  What happened on January 6th, 2021 was important, and is not “over”. President Biden recognizes that, and so do the Law Enforcement Agencies who are tasked with protecting our government.  But if your primary news sources are Fox News or Newsmax, or The New York Post, I guess nothing happened. According to the Post, the first mention of January 6th was six stories down, about Ashli Babbitt, the woman shot by Capitol Police.  Her mother is defending her actions.

Two Worlds

The problem always was, different points of views, different visions for America.  That’s what our country has been about since before Hamilton and Jefferson started arguing in Washington’s Cabinet.  And even they found a “middle ground”: the Capitol in the South, the Federal government to fund the American debt (In the Room where it happens).   

But when they are different bodies of “facts”, it’s hard to find any common ground.  Here’s the obvious example.  How do we explain what happened on January 6th?

To one side, there is a sincere belief that they were following the “orders” of the President of the United States.  They were told to “defend their country”,  and as  believing Patriots, they thought that’s what they were doing.  They “legitimately” felt betrayed by Vice President Pence, and saw the actions of Speaker Pelosi and Democrats in general as literal traitors.  And they select (or the algorithms select for them) the media that reinforces their view.

To the other side there is a similarly sincere belief:  that they won the election and saved the Nation from a catastrophic second term of President Trump.  They know there wasn’t a “stolen” election, and they don’t understand why the other side thinks there was.  And the media – from center to left, supports their views (and the algorithms make sure they keep seeing it).   

I’m Right

It is easy to say, “I’m right, you’re wrong, get over it”.  But, of course, there is no way to prove who’s right to the other side, if there are no commonly accepted facts.   Joe Biden hoped to find a way to unite “the middle” against the edges, but it seems that the information bias has made that impossible.  Hillary Clinton was excoriated for her “basket of deplorables” description, but she was only saying “out loud” what her side is still thinking.  

Biden, in his speech today said:

We are in a battle for the soul of America. A battle that, by the grace of God and the goodness and gracious — and greatness of this nation, we will win. Believe me, I know how difficult democracy is. And I’m crystal clear about the threats America faces. But I also know that our darkest days can lead to light and hope.

I’m not sure how we’re going to do that. 

 I sure hope Joe Biden can figure it out.

One Year Ago

It was just a year ago today, that Jenn and I sat down to watch the results of the Georgia Senate runoff.  The balance of power was at stake.  We were depending on the improbable outcome that both John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock would win, two Democrats taking statewide seats in Georgia.  But we knew it was possible.  If Joe Biden could win Georgia, so could they.  We stayed up late that night, cheering when the positive results came out.  But that was only the “first act” in politics for those twenty-four hours. 

 The second, and more important action, was the Congress of the United States certifying the results of the 2020 Presidential election.  We were worried.  Unlike any other President in our history, Donald Trump denied the election result, claimed the election was stolen, and openly tried to subvert the outcome.  And in true Trumpian fashion, much of that subversion was done in the full light of day.  So we weren’t sure what the next step would be.  

Insurrection

We watched the speeches on the National Mall, and the crowds carrying their Trump flags and chanting “Stop the Steal”.  At the same time, Vice President Pence gaveled the joint session of Congress into session, and they began to read the electoral votes.  It only took three states to get to Arizona, and objection to Biden’s victory there by both House and Senate members.  The  Houses adjourned to their chambers, for two hours of debate and what was a pre-ordained vote to accept Biden’s victory.  It was the first of seven different objections:  we expected the pro-forma certification to go late in the night.

And then the Insurrection started.  Security whisked Pelosi from the House dais. Pence, looking a bit confused, was vanished by the Secret Service.  The other Congressmen and Senators seemed left to their own devices as the doors and windows were smashed and the halls literally desecrated with human feces.  The Confederate flag, kept out of Washington for four years at great cost in blood and treasure during the Civil War, was paraded through the building.

We all know what happened after that.

Lying Eyes

As horrifying and tragic as January 6th 2021 was, not much has really changed.  The Congressional leadership and Vice President Pence came back in the middle of the night, and despite  even more Congressional objections, Biden was finally confirmed.  Trump was impeached by the House again, and tried by the Senate, but not until  after Democrats gained Senate control on Inauguration day.  Trump was found “not guilty”: though fifty-seven Senators voted to convict.  It took sixty-seven.

And for the past twelve months, we have watched folks try to rewrite what our “lying eyes” saw that day.  First it was “Antifa and Black Lives Matters” rioters in the halls of Congress, then it was just a few individuals, looking “…just like tourists”.  Then the topic kind of went away, submerged into battles about public health measures to save people from Covid.  Now it’s back, both because of the anniversary, and also because of the January 6th Committee of the House.  Only the House, because Senate Republicans couldn’t be persuaded that the event even needed to be investigated.

False Equivalence

The new talking point is “what about”.  What about Hillary Clinton, did she ever confirm the “legitimacy” of the 2016 election?  What about the Russia investigation and all the talk of foreign interference?  Will Democrats do the same thing if they lose in 2024?

I remember election night of 2016 very well.  It was the beginning of a long national and personal nightmare for me, one that merged into the pandemic and  won’t seem to end.  Hillary Clinton stood on the stage, flanked by her husband Bill, staff and friends.  She talked about not breaking the final glass ceiling, and conceded the election.  And she spoke of her conversation with President-elect Trump: 

“Last night I congratulated Donald Trump and offered to work with him on behalf of our country. I hope that he will be a president for all of our country. I’m sorry that we did not win this election for the values we all share.”

She did concede, and urged her supporters to work together for the country.  

Democrats did try to object during the certification proceedings in the Congress.  The Vice President refused to hear their objections, ruling them as improper. They did not have both a member of the House and Senate signed on.  That Vice President was a Democrat, Joe Biden.

Pussy Hats  

Many Democrats did go to Washington to protest the inauguration of Donald Trump.  They went the day after, the “Pink Pussy Hat” protests with hundreds of thousands of women and men exercising the First Amendment rights without violence or destruction.  They came to make their point, not stop the government.  

The day before there were a few hundred “black-clad” (Antifa) rioters who looked to clash with DC police.  It was violent, but it was small, and not likely to disrupt the government.  217 were arrested.   By the way, very few (any?) were arrested on January 6th.  It took most of the past year to get 727 facing federal charges.

The 2022 and 2024 election results are in jeopardy.  Twenty-seven states have passed laws making it harder to vote.  Some have even taken the ultimate power to determine the outcome of elections from the voters and given it to the State Legislature.  Our future elections are being “rigged”, legally rigged.  It’s hard  to “Stop the Steal” in the future, when the thief is the government itself.  

When Democrats believed that the election might be “rigged” in 2016, they put on their “Pink Pussy” hats and demonstrated.  When Trump supporters believed the same in 2020, they tried to overthrow the government. There is no “equivalence” in that.

So “what about” that?

Place Blame

If this were a card game, Democrats still hold a (sorry) trump card.  The Federal government can pass the two voting rights laws now in front of the Senate, to control the state changes restricting the vote.  It’s all about two Senate Democrats, and whether they will stand for procedure, or stand for justice.  I’m still a believer, but more skeptical than before.   

We can hope the Senators Sinema and Manchin will “see the light” and allow the voting rights acts to pass.  But recognize that the reason that it comes down to those two, is that every, single, Republican Senator is colluding in the states’ legal hamstringing of the vote.  Put the blame where blame is due.  The “legal steal” is wholly owned by the Republican Party.

So what will happen in 2022, and 2024?  Until the rules are determined, there is no way to know.  But there is precedent.  In 2016, pink pussy hats or not, Donald Trump became President.  Republicans controlled the House and the Senate. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell represented the “normal” GOP.  Democrats didn’t revolt, there was no “Insurrection”.  We went to work, and won back the House in 2018, and the Senate and Presidency in 2020. 

Get the Job Done 

In this twenty-first century, when most folks don’t even have paper checks to pay bills anymore, it seems more than ridiculous that anyone would have to wait in line for hours to vote.  And it’s even more suspicious that those lines aren’t in the suburbs, and are made up mostly of Americans of color.  But we Democrats will find a way to “get the job done”.  

Our Democracy has an opportunity, right now, to protect itself.  We can protect voting rights, nationwide.  And we can put those that plotted to overthrow our Constitution in the full public light of day.  But if we don’t, if the Senate filibuster “wins” and the results of the January 6th committee are ignored, it doesn’t mean the end of our experiment in government.

Pink Pussy hats are a powerful force.  So are the voices of Reverend Barber and Stacy Abrams, and all of those others toiling to make America better for all.  The nightmare might last longer, but we will wake up.  

So what about that?

A Year Later

It’s January 3rd, 2022; a year since the Insurrection that almost kept Donald Trump in office against the will of the American voters.  I’ve been looking back at my essays here on Our America from that week.  The overall theme was:  we are in a time of crisis, a time when our Republic is at risk – what will we do?

And the answer to that, so far, is nothing.  Sure, they tried to impeach and convict Trump,  but “after the fact”, after the inauguration of Joe Biden.  The fifty Democrats/Independents who made up the majority voted to convict, as did seven Republicans.  But that fell well short of the necessary sixty-seven needed.   As Republican Senate Minority Leader McConnell told us at the time, the “Courts” were the “proper” place to hold Trump accountable for his actions.

But a year later, we are far from seeing Donald Trump “in the dock”.  He’s still raising hundreds of millions of dollars.  That money is ostensibly going to his 2024 Presidential Campaign, but it’s also his “legal aid” money, and used to buy political influence throughout the country.  In fact, a year after the shock of the Insurrection, we are just about back to the “normal” of pre-Insurrection Trumpian times.  It’s as if that was a bad dream; one to be shrugged off and forgotten.  

Bad Dream

The “bad dream” is that there has been no justice, no apportionment of responsibility for the Insurrection. Sure, hundreds of the “pawns”, the “soldiers” who followed their mistaken cause up the steps of the Capitol and into the hallowed halls, are being put on trial.  But they are exactly that:  pawns in the game.  Not even the rooks and bishops have been charged, much less the King.  It’s as if the pawns played the chess match all by themselves.  

And this weekend on several of the national Sunday shows, I heard a new “Trumpian” talking point, just like the old Kelly Ann Conway days.  “It was Trump’s fault, but now it’s Joe Biden’s fault.  He was elected to ‘heal’ the nation, and instead he’s pushed all of these Roosevelt-like New Deal changes.  So it’s Biden’s fault that folks are still turning to Trump”.   Remember what the Majory Stoneman Douglas kids chanted, after the shootings and the pablum served by the Republican leadership?  I call BS.

Mythical GOP

Republicans: if it was Trump’s fault, then call him out for it.  If it was Trump’s fault, then denounce his actions.  If it was Trump’s fault, then Republicans take your own Party, and purge the evil from your ranks.  Then you’ve “earned” the right to complain about Biden.

Here’s a little “inside baseball”.  When NBC’s Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd suggested on Sunday, that there were many Republicans who, whispering behind closed doors, speak out against Trump, NBC’s Congressional Correspondent Garrett Haake literally rolled his eyes and shook his head.  He’s on the Hill, talking to Congressmen all the time.  He knows.  

The myth of the “closet anti-Trump” Republican is just that, a myth.  Either they are the few that are “out”, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger and the like; or they are co-opted into Trumpism.  There is no middle ground, no “backroom reasonableness”.  The myth of the “Grand Old Party” that will someday return to reason has sold out to the votes that Trump represents.  Ask former Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, who is molded into a Trump-clone, in hopes of being a US Senator.

History Rhymes

After the American Civil War, there was a period of time called the Reconstruction.  It was a time when the changes to the South, the end of slavery and the citizenship of the Freedmen, was enforced by Union military presence.  There were Black Congressmen and even a Black Senator from Mississippi (Hiram Revels), backed by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the US Constitution.  Reconstruction, was not, as my generation was taught in our sanitized history classes, a time “undeserved military occupation of Southern soil”.  It sought to consolidate the gains won by the hundreds of thousands of dead on the battlefields of the war, including 40,000 Black men.

Who Won

But changing society seemed a bridge too far for the politicians of the 1870’s.  In the contested Presidential election of 1876, a deal was cut.  The apparent winner, Democrat Samuel Tilden of New York, was denied southern electoral votes.  Instead, Republican Governor of Ohio Rutherford B. Hayes became the President of the United States.  In return, the troops were removed from the South, and a law written to prevent them from returning, the Posse Comitatus Act.  Soon the South disenfranchised Black voters, and  created Jim Crow Laws to build a segregated society.

It’s been over one hundred and fifty years, and we are still struggling with the results of those decisions in the 1870’s.  After the Insurrection that was the Civil War, the Union won the battles, but lost the peace.  After the Insurrection of January 6th, 2021, who won?  

That question is still not answered.

Essays After the Insurrection

• No Guardrail – 1/7/21
• The 25th – 1/8/21
• Revenge – 1/9/21
• Politics and the Republic – 1/10/21
• Compromise or Revolution – 1/11/21