A Break
I’ve been away from “Our America” for four days – the longest “dry spell” as I’ve taken from writing for the past four years. It was a wonderful vacation on the Atlantic Shore of Florida, our first time away together without “the pack” (the dogs) since February of 2020. Jenn and I got suitably sunburnt, drank (several) wonderful Mojitos at pool side, and revisited old haunts from our camping days. And we slept, a lot. We owe a special thank you to our son and his girlfriend, who offered to take care of five dogs for a long weekend. I hope the task wasn’t too arduous.
Beach vacations are nothing without a good book, and I’m deep into Congressman Jamie Raskin’s Unthinkable. The title represents two separate events entangled in Raskin’s life: the suicide of his brilliant twenty-five year old son, Tommy, on New Year’s Eve of 2020; and the January 6th Insurrection a week later. As he wrote about it: he was a father who lost his son, and a Congressman, an American and a Constitutional scholar, who faced losing his country.
Congressman Raskin was appointed by Nancy Pelosi to lead the second impeachment of Donald Trump, just a week after he buried his son. While I’m a little more than halfway through the story, Jamie Raskin brings a true immediacy to the Constitutional crisis they faced in Donald Trump. With heart shattered by his son’s death, Raskin turned to fix a Nation shattered on the Capitol steps and hallways.
Florida, Florida, Florida
And while it’s been well over a year since the Insurrection and the second impeachment of Donald Trump, I can’t help but think that Jamie Raskin’s work, and our own, is far from being over.
As I traveled in Florida, and prepared to return to vote today in Ohio, our Nation is in the same place it was on January 5th, before the violence in Washington and the threat of a coup d’état by the President of the United States himself. Trump is still trying to “pull the strings” to invert the “Big Lie” into his “Big Comeback”, even if he can’t seem to remember which Ohio Senate Primary candidate he endorsed (was that JD Mandel or Josh Vance?)
What was determined by then Attorney General Bill Barr and over sixty judges to be untrue, or as Barr then said, “bull-shit”; is now Republican orthodoxy. Even candidates who spent 2020 defending the electoral system, like Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, now echo cries for better “election security”.
In Florida Ron DeSantis plans on being “Trump 2.0”, a smarter Harvard-educated Trump, appealing to the worst instincts of his constituency to gin up votes. He’s expanded the “Big Lie” from elections to the “Critical Race Theory” hoax in the classroom, and to homophobic and transphobic fears. And, sadly it’s working, at least so far. He leads former Democratic Governor Charlie Crist by eight percent in current polls, a landslide in Florida’s taut political world. DeSantis wants a big win to thrust him into the 2024 Presidential fray, with or without Trump.
Angels
I fear for our Nation. I fear Donald Trump has unleashed the “worse angels” of America’s character. And while I’m fond of Martin Luther King’s favorite expression: “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice”, for the first time in my life I’m not sure we’ll “bend towards justice” anytime soon, maybe not in my lifetime.
What kind of society are we that we allow our government to attack the most vulnerable in the “name” of getting votes? For the first time in American history, we are allowing rights to be taken away, from women, based on economic standing. We are regressing back to an ugly past, not progressing towards a moral future.
The Insurrection is going on today. The January 6th Committee will not be presenting history to us as they bring the story of conspiracy and violence to light next month. They will be holding up a mirror to our present.
All of this sounds hopeless, like I found my answer in the bottom of an empty mojito glass alongside the squeezed lime peel. That’s not the case. Because in Florida, the home of DeSantis, we also found many folks living a diverse and exciting life. We found lots of kindness and care, whether gay or straight, black or white or Latina, young or old. There were hundreds marching in protest against DeSantis’s ploys, in Melbourne, the heart of “Red Florida”. We honked as we drove past the marchers, they cheered us as we cheered them. They are still here, as they are in all of America.
The Work Goes On
Senator Edward Kennedy quoted Lord Tennyson in his final speech as a Presidential candidate in 1980. He said:
“I am a part of all that I have met
To (tho) much is taken, much abides
That which we are, we are—
One equal temper of heroic hearts.
Strong in will,
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end.
For all of those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on,
the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.
We must gird ourselves for the “long fight”, taking heart from those who are giving their actual lives for freedom in places like Ukraine. If we do not fight for our own progress, our own freedoms, we concede to the undercurrents that have always been a sad part of American life, the “worse angels”.
We need to listen to our better angels, who tell us that America will not give up so easily. As Lincoln said it:
You can fool all of the people some of the time, and
You can fool some of the people all of the time,
But you can’t fool all of the people, all of the time.
Our fellow Americans won’t be fooled all of the time, not by the “Big Lie”, nor “Critical Race Theory”, nor all of the other propaganda and falsehoods. We will find a way to “bend” to justice, even if it takes a long time. And it’s time we got on with the bending – because, “The work goes on, and the dream shall never die”.
Back to it.
