Month: January 2024

Hey – I’m back!!! After a few days concentrating on Pole Vaulting (a whole different side of my life) – it’s back to politics and the great American sport – Football!!

Swifty

Taylor Swift is the most successful pop-star in  the world.  Her current tour grossed over a Billion dollars in sixty shows in 2023.  And she’s still going strong  To put that in perspective, it’s already the highest grossing show ever, beating out Elton Jon’s prolonged “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour which capped at “just” $939 million (Forbes).

The thirty-four year old was born in Pennsylvania, but at fourteen her Dad moved the family to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue a singing career (thanks Wikipedia!!).   She’s such a big “star” today, that internet hits crowd the screen search, and the “standard” Wikipedia page is more than halfway down.  I’m not a “Swifty”, but from the looks of it, I’m one of the few in the world who’s not.  Her business position in the “Pop World” is so strong, that when she couldn’t buy the rights back for her first album, she re-recorded and released it again.  And that was so popular, she’s doing the next five albums as well (Parade).   She’s released eighteen albums total so far.

NFL

It’s a fairy tale come true; a young, beautiful woman from Wyomissing, Pennsylvania comes to Nashville and makes it to the top.  And the tale goes on:  now Taylor is in love with future NFL Hall of Fame Tight End Travis Kelce.  Travis and his quarterback Patrick Mehomes of the Kansas City Chiefs, are arguably the best combination in NFL history.  They led the Chiefs to the Super Bowl four times in the last five years (winning two).  Only Joe Burrow and my Bengals stood in the way in 2022 (I had to put that in – look out for 2024 – Who Dey!!). 

The NFL ain’t stupid (usually).  And neither are the television networks covering the Chief’s games.  What’s not to like:  a Hall of Fame duo on the field, and the most popular singer in the world in the box, cheering on her man.  It’s the high school homecoming queen story writ large.  Everyone in the stadium is watching the game, and watching Taylor’s reactions as well.  (Even better when Travis’s future Hall of Fame brother Jason of the Philadelphia Eagles, comes to the game, hangs out with the crowd, and chugs beers shirtless in ten degree weather!!).  

Conspiracy Theory

So why would the MAGA-Republican Party align itself against the Swift/Kelce combination?  It’s football and pop music, Nashville and the Great American Game (sorry baseball), the stars aligned, a fairy tale of American life.  But that’s what they’re doing.

Taylor spoke out about Tennessee’s  MAGA-Republican Senate candidate Marsha Blackburn in 2018.  The thirty-four year old business success was against Blackburn, who stands against women’s rights to fair and equal pay and employment, and women’s health rights. Then in 2020, Swift came out for Joe Biden, and urged her fans to get out and vote.  Millions did.

And what about Travis?  He is a prominent figure in drug company Pfizer’s campaign encouraging folks to get the Covid vaccine.  And that makes for a toxic combination as far as the MAGA-Republicans are concerned:  a Biden supporter and a “vaxxer”.  

Now all of that sound fantastical to seasoned political observers.  Attacking the Swift-Kelce relationship, the Homecoming King and Queen of the Nation, is like attacking America itself.  But it’s happening, and not just in the dark corners of the Internet on Redditt or Telegram.  There’s even the “rumor” that somehow the “Biden Crime Family” and the “Deep State” conspired to raise Swift’s to the top of the charts, then place her with Kelce in the biggest sports venue in election year 2024 America, the Super Bowl.  A lot of fans (Bengal fans) think the referees are generous in calling penalties for the Chiefs,  but who knew that Joe Biden was behind it all? 

Deep State

Let’s see, rig Nashville (a MAGA stronghold), and rig the NFL.  If Democrats were that good, how did we ever lose the House of Representatives or all of those state Governorships?  It’s fantastical, and it must be to all but the most dedicated MAGA-hat owners.  But it’s still a part of a much bigger MAGA strategy.

It all goes back to Steve Bannon, and the “Deep State”.  Bannon believes that the “establishment”, the foundational institutions of the American government are corrupted by the “progressives”.  Every time MAGA-world can weaken those institutions in the eyes of Americans, it makes an autocratic leader figure look better.  And their strong-man, of course, is Donald Trump.

That’s why the MAGA-Republican House of Representatives is threatening impeachment for President Biden and members of his Cabinet.  Those impeachment charges are doomed in the Senate, but that’s not the point.  The point is to shake American confidence in the institution of the Presidency (while Biden holds the office) and his administration.  It’s also the way MAGA makes “lemonade out of lemons” in the multiple Court cases Trump faces.  Trump isn’t really an insurrectionist, or careless with classified documents, or a sexual assaulter, or a serial harasser or a crooked businessman.  No, he’s a victim of the Deep State, of progressive-infected institutions.  So if you can’t trust them, you must turn to an autocrat; because, as we “know”, “Only HE can fix it”.

The Congress, the Executive Branch, the Courts:  now the MAGA-Republican world is attacking two other American institutions.  They’ve already taken some runs against the NFL, we all remember Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the National Anthem.  Now they can double-down against that American institution, and get back at Taylor Swift in the process.  It’s just another “brick in the wall” (definitely not a Swift song) in deconstructing the Deep State.

If I were a betting man, I’d bet on Taylor and Travis against the MAGA nonsense.  But if I were a betting man, I would already have lost my shirt betting for the Bengals.

Profile in Cowardice

They did it.  The MAGA super-majority of the Ohio Legislature over-rode Governor DeWine’s veto of their cowardly bill to ban transgendered care for minors in Ohio and ban transgendered women from Ohio K-12 and collegiate sports.  So the Legislature has managed to pass a law that impacts our society – or at least the miniscule few that are transgendered minors (about 3300 in a decade) and the transgendered girls who play high school sports (7 to 10).  

I’m sure that it takes a law, and a veto, and an over-ride; in our state with 2.5 million children (under 17):  “By God, we’ll protect those millions from the few”.

It’s embarrassing.  And it’s disgusting – like watching a bully on the playground.  Even worse, like watching a bully on the playground and not being able to do anything about it.  All of these “Bully” politicians, making their MAGA political points, at the expense of the defenseless, the most vulnerable among us.  The blood of the innocents will be on their MAGA hands, and match their red MAGA hats.  We already know that the attempted suicide rate among transgendered youth is high.  But MAGA politicians don’t listen, and they don’t care.  They KNOW – beyond a reasonable certainty, what THEIR God created.  And so the rest of the state must now kowtow to their religious certainty, because in Ohio where “…With God, all things are possible,” is plastered in almost every school in the state, humanity is more than uncertain.  It is missing in action.

A Civil Right

This fight isn’t over.  Now it will move to the Federal Courts, a venue that will look at the civil rights violations inherent in this legislation.  If everyone has equal protection under the law, then the right of a transgendered child to seek medical care should not be denied.  If parents have that “RIGHT TO CHOOSE” so often trumpeted by the same MAGA Republicans in front of school boards, then surely parents have the right to choose the medical care for their child.  And what could be a more fundamental right then to have the right to choose sexuality.  The MAGA God of “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” surely cannot be rammed down the rest of Ohio’s throats.  The First Amendment establishment of religion clause must still reign supreme, even in the Buckeye state.

I hope the Courts agree.  And I thank the Governor, Mike DeWine, for trying to stand up for the few.  I won’t even say he’s not trying to get re-elected:  he did the right thing, I think for the right reasons, and that’s enough.  I wish other politicians in Ohio would learn from him.  Sometimes it’s more important to have the courage of conviction, rather than the cowardice of expediency.  

Out-Flanked

But that is the essence of the “new” MAGA-Republican Party.  To stay in power, politicians must not get out-flanked to the Right.  And nothing, ever, is more important than maintaining power.  We see the same thing nationally.  This week, a solution to the Southern Border crisis is fading.  Not because it’s unattainable, but because it’s not politically convenient for their one candidate for President.  So that solution goes “under the bus”, possibly along with support for Ukraine against Russian aggression.  Not because it’s right, and not even because it’s controversial.  In the end, the vast majority of legislators and Americans would agree.  But because it might be a “feather” in Joe Biden’s cap: then it’s Damn them all. 

And, frankly, the Democrats in the US Senate, and the Democrat in the White House, seem helpless.  At least here in Ohio, the few Democrats left un-gerrymandered in the legislature can cry out against the super-majority.  But what good is a Democratic majority, when a rump-MAGA caucus of crazies, the whole eight or so of them in the House of Representatives, can call the shots.   The MAGA minority are willing to burn every bridge, throw every victim to the wolves, to get what they want, nationally, and here in Ohio.

Charity for All

John C Calhoun, the pro-slavery Senator from South Carolina in the first half of the 19^th century, wrote eloquently about the “Tyranny of the Majority”.  He represented the “minority” slave-holding view,  one that kept the United States entangled until the Civil War.  He managed to create, through his eloquence and manipulation, a “tyranny of the minority”.  For over a decade, slavery was a “forbidden subject” on the floor of the House of Representatives.

And so we are living in a “tyranny of minority” now, both in the national government, and in Ohio as well. There’s little to do about it, except to rise up in November, and take action at the voting box.  The majority will can prevail, but only if the majority actual exercises its freedom – to vote.  

Then we can “throw the bums out”, and get on with, as Lincoln said:

“With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

It’s scary – the words of Lincoln, at the end of America’s Civil War, seem so appropriate today.

Victory

I listened to Nikki Haley’s  New Hampshire “victory” speech last night.  She’s got some smart speech writers.  Haley got around 130,000 votes (91% of the total in as I write this), about 30,000 less than Donald Trump.  In politics, that’s usually called “losing”, 43% to 54%.  But in Nikki Haley’s world – this is what a “winner” looks like!!!

Talk about making lemons into lemonade.  And when those numbers are broken down, Haley lost the Republican primary dramatically among Republican voters.  That statement sounds pretty confusing, and it is.  In New Hampshire voters can “declare” for the Republican Party, even if they really identify as independents or even as Democrats.  And among those groups, Haley did extremely well.  But among the actual “Party Members”, Trump won by huge percentages.

So if Haley lost with Republicans and lost the overall election – what did she declare victory about?  Is this just another example of post-truth world, where whites are victims and minorities are advantaged, and the world spins from west to east?   

Nikki Haley, the former Governor of South Carolina and Ambassador to the United Nations, did win one thing – the right to continue.  And that was enough for her to “jump in” soon after the polls closed, congratulate the twice-impeached, four-time indicted former President on his win, then declare her own victory.  She gave perhaps the best national speech of her career, sounding for all the world like New Hampshire was the first domino in a well thought out plan to win the nomination.

About the Dough

So what really happened?  The reason most campaigns “suspend” (give up) is simple:  they run out of money.  The DeSantis campaign is the latest example of this:  after burning through more than $100 million, after his Iowa showing, the money simply dried up.  There was “no path forward”, because the DeSantis campaign couldn’t pay anymore bills. 

But clearly, the “monied class”* has decided that the one remaining opponent to Trump needs to “soldier on”.  So Nikki Haley can stand at the podium and say “…Let’s go back home to South Carolina” to contest the next primary with some confidence.  The Republican money against Trump is coalesced behind the Haley campaign.  She is the “last, best” hope to stop the Republican Party from what many see as the unmitigated disaster of another Presidency lost by Donald Trump.

Does that mean that Haley has a chance of beating Trump, particularly in those states with “closed” primaries where independents and rogue Democrats will have little impact?  The answer by the MAGA Party is clear – a resounding NO!!!  They didn’t want the substitutes for Trump (DeSantis or Ramaswamy),  and they don’t want Haley:  they want the real thing.

Rapture  

So why go on?  On MSNBC’s coverage last night, they coined the political use of the religious term, “the rapture”.  In Christian theology, “the rapture” is the time when God’s Chosen literally disappear, called to Heaven.  The good are there, and then they are gone.  The MSNBC commentators applied that analogy to Trump.  There are lots of ways where Trump might “disappear”.  He’s an older man (ask Haley -she’ll be glad to list his cognitive gaffs), and maybe his health will fail.  And, of course, he is facing ninety-one felony counts in four different courts; it could take just one guilty verdict for him to “politically” disappear.

And if that happens in June, after the primaries but before the nominating convention, someone needs to step in – and “the money” is anointing Nikki Haley.  

No one expects a “miracle”, some blinding flash when MAGA-Republicans realize that Donald Trump won’t win against Joe Biden.  But, he’s a 77 year-old man, who can’t remember if he ran against Obama or Biden, and confuses Haley with Nancy Pelosi.  And then there’s those felony charges.  So someone has to be “in the wings”, and Haley staying in the race makes her “the one”.  

And as a Democrat, Haley does make me a little nervous.  She is painting both Trump and President Biden as tired-old men, ready for the green pastures of retirement.  Against Trump, that really isn’t an issue for Biden – Trump’s almost as old.  But against Haley, the age issue is real, and quietly powerful.

Postscripts

*This whole “class” thing:  the monied class, the political class, the elite-liberal-university class; what’s that all about?  Sure, there are people with money, there are those who are professional politicians, and folks have complained about Harvard-Yale-Dartmouth arrogance for years.  Why are they now all “a class”?  Is that just a way to “cancel” them?  If you are a “class”, then your different from me, and therefore I can “hate” you, is that the goal?

Hanging:  A couple of Sunday’s ago I left you hanging on a “Sunday Story”.  It’s now indoor track season and I’m officiating Sunday track meets for several more weeks in a row, so not much time to tell stories (just creating some more!!).   But our group, Lost Pet Recovery, was helping to trap two young Pyrenees who were out for months in Western Ohio (Rube Goldberg).  The short version is that, it took three days to finally get both dogs into the big panel trap.  Jenn and Don spent two long evenings sitting in the truck in sub-zero wind chill  waiting for the dogs to go in.  But it was on the third night, with the local trapper in charge, that the pups finally went into the panel, and the “Rube Goldberg” mechanism remotely closed the door (IT WORKED – WOO-HOO!!!!).

That was only the first problem:  next was how to get the dogs into smaller “traps” so they could be transported to a rescue.  It was cold, and the dogs weren’t mean, but not cooperative either. Eventually the trapper and friends were able to get them in the traps, and soon out of the cold.  Both dogs are now doing well in their new, and warm, home at the rescue. 

Who Are They?

I have to admit, nothing, absolutely nothing, surprises me about this new political party,  the MAGA Party.  I know, it used to be the Republican Party, the Party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Reagan, my father, and many of my good friends.  But it’s not any more.  It kind of reminds me of the opening scene in Men in Black, when the alien “bug” lands, then crawls inside the skin of Edgar, the poor farmer played by Vincent  D’Onofrio, and struggles to inhabit his body.

Trump crawled inside the Party, literally taking over all of the working mechanisms.  There is little difference between the Republican National Committee and the Trump Campaign.  And there’s no difference between the Trump Campaign and Trump himself.  Multiple millions of dollars of supposed campaign money is paying for Trump’s personal legal fees.  Money that might have gone to support some Governor or Senate candidate, instead is paying for the series of terrible, awful, lousy lawyers representing Trump in courtrooms in New York, Washington, Atlanta and (that hotbed of legal action) Fort Pierce, Florida.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that those candidates running against Donald Trump in the 2024 primaries are failing.  It’s Trump’s Party – why would anyone else “suit” the voters in MAGA world?   Sure, Donald Trump received 51% of the Iowa caucus vote, about 56,000 (out of the more than 800,000 registered Republicans in the state( SOS)).  The MAGA Party is definitely smaller than the “old” Republican Party used to be.  But ones who are still there and active, the vast majority; they are red-hatted Trumpers.  It’s really a surprise that 49% voted for anyone else.

Primary Season

Sure, Nikki Haley is “still standing”, but she looks a whole lot like John Kasich back in 2016.  The “fever dream” of non-MAGA Republicans was that if they could only get “one-on-one”, then the “majority” of Republicans could rise up against Donald Trump.  But there isn’t a Never-Trump majority out there.  If Haley does well in New Hampshire, it’s because the folks who are more likely to vote for Joe Biden (or Joe Manchin) in November, cross over to hurt Trump.  Even that’s a media fever-dream, but it doesn’t matter.

Should Haley win in New Hampshire, it will simply extend the agony.  The South Carolina primary is a month away, but there is no magic trick that will turn her own home state from Trumpism to Haley-ism.  All that Haley can hope for is the influx of all of the anti-MAGA money. But there’s just some things that money can’t buy.  South Carolina’s fealty to the twice-impeached, four times indicted former President is almost as strong as their addiction to the low country boil called “Frogmore Stew”.  

Paragraph Six

This is the beginning of paragraph six – a fitting place for the end of Ron DeSantis.  He was the “anointed one”, the boy-Governor picked to stand in for Donald Trump.  He had all of the “issues chops”; things like his stand against Covid protections, his attack on “Woke America”, and his abuse of LGBTQ children in Florida.  And he had none of the liabilities:  no one was charging him with ninety-one felony counts.  He wasn’t (isn’t) likely to see the inside of a Federal prison soon.

So he ran as Trump’s “mini-me”, with millions of dollars in funding to back him up.  And as he got out in public, we found that, like Democrat Howard Dean back in 2004, the more people saw him, the less they like him. DeSantis was just awkward and weird, when it came to “retail politics”,  shaking hands and kissing babies.    And he was running to be the “replacement” when the “real thing” was still there, Trump.   

It was the momentum of all that money that propped DeSantis up for over a year.  But, like Howard Dean, it was in the first taste of actual voting that “the Party” got their chance to weigh in.  And they did so, in small numbers in a snow storm – they wanted Trump. 

DeSantis didn’t face the public in the end – he left us a message on “X”.  Sure he said the right things, “…when there is no course forward, no path to the nomination, it’s time to suspend…”, but DeSantis also had the opportunity to lay a future path for his Party.  But he didn’t:  instead he “kissed the ring” of Donald Trump, one more time.  He still wants to be in the MAGA Party, even if he lost to the MAGA King.  

It was as awkward as the big white boots the DeSantis got caught wearing, or the “controversy” over whether he was “Dee-Santis” or “Duh-Santis”.  Even he wasn’t sure.  But the MAGA Party was sure about him.

Fore-Shadow

This as opposed to the end of the Chris Christie campaign, just a couple of weeks ago.  Christie didn’t hide behind “X”, he stood out in a town-meeting and talked to people, something DeSantis couldn’t do.  And while Christie has a kind-of New Jersey gangster “aura”, he made the purpose of his failed campaign clear.  He, like Haley, wanted to be the nexus of the “traditional Republicans”.  He still seems to believe that there are some out there.  And Christie made the important point, even in his toughest moment.  Democrat, Republican, or even MAGA:  Trump is dangerous for America, and stopping him should be the national priority.  

If you didn’t hear the speech (eleven minutes), you should check it out (Christie).

Christie, DeSantis, Haley:  the side-shows are almost over.  By the end of February we will be onto the general election; Trump versus Biden – the Re-Match.   It’s the crucible America needs to go through one more time.  And, if Biden wins, perhaps we can get back to the Republican Party of past generations.  Because if Trump wins, we will all be in MAGA world, perhaps for longer than just four more years.

Harper’s Ferry

The  looming shadow of the Civil War was clear in 1859.  It was then, in the soft October fall of the Potomac Valley, that radical abolitionist John Brown led his band of devotees and freedmen to the attack across the bridge from Maryland into Virginia.  Their goal:  to take the United States Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry (then Virginia, now West Virginia).  With the Arsenal’s weapons, Brown hoped to lead a rebellion of enslaved people against their owners.

It was the ultimate Southern nightmare:  well-armed enslaved people, led by a committed white man, taking vengeance for their servitude.  A whole series of Southern institutions were already in place to protect the slaveowner and their “peculiar institution” from attack. There were local militias that held monthly drills throughout the South. And organized “Patrollers” rode the countryside, often at night, searching for runaways.  They were early forms of “Law Enforcement” in America, the dirty  little secret of the beginnings of American policing. 

But, after all of that “preparation”, no one was ready for John Brown’s attack.  So the small standing US military was called forth, Marines led by Army officers Colonel Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant JEB Stuart.  They made short work of the “rebellion”,  and captured a wounded Brown as a result.

But with Blood

John Brown stood trial in a Virginia County Court in nearby Charles Town (not Charleston). The charges were treason, murder, and fomenting slave revolt.  America today, used to the “play-by-play” of “hot” criminal trials, would be familiar with the press coverage.  It was the first trial telegraphed nationally.  Every local newspaper had yesterday’s “highlights”, including the kind of Court illustrations we still see today. 

For many abolitionists, Brown represented laudable positive action to end slavery.  For many Southerners, Brown represented the kind of Northern meddling that “got people killed”.  Brown’s trial, and his ultimate execution, forced many Americans to take a side.  It was the very definition of polarization. There was no middle ground left on the critical issue of the day, slavery. 

Justice was swift in the 1850’s.  The attack started October 19^th and ended two days later.  Brown was dead at the end of a rope on December 2^nd.   The whole incident was as much a symptom as a cause.  It demonstrated the futility of American efforts to “solve” the issue of slavery.  Within a year and a half, Confederate cannons fired in Charleston, South Carolina, at Union-held Fort Sumter.  The Civil War began.

Insoluble Problems

Democracy could not solve the problem of slavery.  As Brown said, “I… am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”  The problem was a “snake under the table” in American history. It went back before the Declaration of Independence, and through every major governmental act thereafter.  No amount of oratory or compromise would solve the issue.  It had to be “purged in blood.”

Today, there are several issues that it seems American democracy cannot solve.  One example: the issue of mass shootings, what has an almost daily “Butcher’s Bill” of victims. It is entrapped in our Constitutional interpretation of the “right to bear arms”.    So, while we send our National “thoughts and prayers”, every time; any real action to end the problem is paralyzed.

On the Border

The problems of the Southern Border are similarly entangled, this time not in the Constitution, but by politics.  Both sides politically would “like” to solve the problem; but neither side is willing to let the other have “credit” for getting the job done.  Put simply, Republicans don’t want a Democratic President to “fix” the border, it’s too much of a “feather in his cap”.  Sure the issues are complex:  12 million illegal migrants already living in the United States, many with children who are born American citizens.  Hundreds of thousands more who were raised in the United States, the only country they have ever known – but are technically illegals (the Dreamers).   

The US worries about a lack of labor, particularly in the most arduous manual labor jobs, ones that migrants are willing and able to do.  We need workers, but some are concerned that somehow, they will “replace” the current workforce.  But few  already in the United States are “fighting” to pick vegetables in the fields of Central California, or fruit in Michigan and Ohio.  

There are solutions to the border – if only we really wanted to solve the problem.  But it’s too “big a political stick” to put down, to allow compromise to reach an agreement.

A Changing Nation

And there is the inexorable movement of America; becoming a nation where no one racial group has a majority.  That change has part of the Nation cheering, and the other part using every “trick” in or outside the law to maintain their power.

One of those “tricks” is that to move away from the principles of democracy.  Some are looking to autocratic solutions, where the right to vote is limited, and what we are allowed to learn and “think” is determined by the legislature.  That sounds like a rhetorical over-reach: but in Florida, state college courses are being cancelled because they are “too woke”, or “too ideological”.    The Florida legislature is now telling colleges what they can teach, and students what they can learn.

Our Nation is polarized, perhaps as much as we were in 1859.  And, like it or not, it’s nearly an even split.   The Insurrection of January 6, 2021 was a warning, without the “speed” of the John Brown raid and trial.  But does it foreshadow  a problem that cannot be “purged” except with violence, or can Americans overcome the siren song of autocracy to move to a new, multi-cultural and diverse nation?

This year, 2024, will tell the tale.

Brandon

If, somehow, you missed this “code word”  lesson from MAGA-world, let me fill you in.  At a NASCAR race back in 2021, the winner was a twenty-eight year old driver named Brandon.  He was doing his post-win interview, live on television, when the crowd behind him began to chant.  The interviewer did his best to “cover” what was going out on national television, and told Brandon that the crowd was chanting for him, “Let’s Go Brandon!!”  But it soon became clear that they weren’t.  Their cry, for the National audience was: “F##k Joe Biden!!”

So when you see a “Let’s Go Brandon” bumper sticker, you’re seeing a MAGA follower profanely declaring their public dislike for the current President of the United States.

And, for a while in 2022 and into 2023, everything that went wrong in the world was followed by “Let’s Go Brandon”.  Gas prices went up:  “Let’s Go Brandon”.  Troops withdrawn from Afghanistan; “Let’s Go Brandon”.   Russia invaded Ukraine – “Let’s Go Brandon”.  In fact, every negative thing that happened was appended with the epithet.  And since it was in a “code” that only MAGA-world understood, it became their cute little secret.

Tack to the Middle

But the code-secret wore thin in 2023.  Gas prices were down.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average set new record highs, protecting American retirement investments.  Inflation rates are now under control.  Russia is bogged down in World War I style trench warfare in Ukraine – estimated Russian deaths 120,000 (more than all the US deaths in all of the wars since World War II).  Over $136 Billion of student loan debt forgiven.  Health insurance reforms include capping the cost of insulin at $35/month.  

Sure, President Biden is walking a steep path in the Middle East.  He’s supporting Israel, while trying to temper Netanyahu’s politically motivated blood lust against the Palestinians.  Meanwhile, he’s using US military force to prevent the rest of the region from breaking out in war (the success of that effort is still unclear: finger’s crossed).   We are spending dollars instead of blood to support democracy in Ukraine against Russia.  And the United States, right or wrong, has learned to “live” with Covid, though 1500 are still dying from the disease  each week (ABC).   (One of the big “causes” of Covid death:  only 21.4% of American adults took the new vaccine (CDC)).

MAGA-world, and even the few remaining old-school Republicans; like to characterize President Biden as a moderate being driven by the “far-left”. But the reality is that Biden, a well-seasoned, master politician; tacked left as the Congress and the Courts veered right.  Ultimately he’s charted a “middle” course.   There’s a lot that the “left” wanted:  voting rights protections, abortion and LGBTQ  rights, environmental protections; left on the table.  If you’re “left” (like me), that’s unfortunate.  But it not Joe Biden’s fault.

Thanks Joe!!

There was another little “secret code” of MAGA-world.  When gas prices were soaring in the post-Covid recovery, little stickers of President Biden appeared on gas pumps with the words “Thanks Joe” on them.  It was MAGA sarcasm:  gas prices were going up – thank Joe Biden for that (just after you get done with the Brandon thing).  But those stickers went away soon after gas prices recovered from the post-Covid shock.  

I think we should bring them back.  I paid $2.53 at the pump last week, down a full dollar from last year;  thanks, President Biden.   My stocks have never been higher; thanks President Biden.  And while the world remains a precarious place, I feel confident in the decision-making process of Biden, Harris, Blinken, and the rest of the Biden National Security team; thanks President Biden.

And the apparent ideological alternative, as we enter (so soon?) the 2024 Presidential election year, remains unable to govern.  MAGA Republicans can’t get anything done in the House of Representatives, threatening to shut down the government rather than reach a political compromise.  If the new Speaker (“meet the new boss, same as the old boss”) does reach a deal, it may well take Democrats to keep him in the Speaker’s chair.   And the apparent Republican Presidential nominee is doing all he can to close the government.  He needs inflation, economic ruin, and international disaster, so he can claim that “only HE can fix this” – again.

Binary Choice

As President Biden often says – “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative”. Republicans are Hell bent to re-nominate Donald Trump.  This despite his facing 91 felony charges in four different jurisdictions, including attempting to disrupt the peaceful transition of the Presidency and failing to secure classified documents.  And for those voters who are put-off by Biden’s age, and see Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis as an alternative:  it’s time for a childhood “fable”.  It’s the one about a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  While Haley or DeSantis “package” the Trump program in “nicer” way, they haven’t moved an inch from MAGA-world.  

They can’t.  The Republican Party IS MAGA.  There is no way to get around that:  ask Chris Christie.  And why should MAGA take “sheep’s clothing candidates”, when they can have the real, battered, stinky, growling and groveling old orange wolf himself?  

So you don’t want these alternatives?   Are you thinking about sitting out the most important election (or the re-boot of the most important election) since 1864?  I hope not.  America is faced with a choice in November, beyond just two old white men on the ballot. 

 So make it. 

Who is Equal

I’ve studied politics since I was four years old in 1960.  Well, maybe studying might be too strong a word for that first decade, observing might make more sense.  But, really, since 1968, still one of the most horrific years in American political history, I’ve studied politics.  America is a push-pull of political ideology, and it has been since President Kennedy was assassinated on the streets of Dallas.  And it’s not so much conservative versus liberal:  it’s been a battle of America’s “destiny”.  

In the early 1960’s, the Civil Rights movement challenged America to live up to it’s mythology.  “All Men are created equal” was Jefferson’s founding phrase.  He absolutely knew the personal and governmental contradiction evoked by that.  Jefferson owned over a hundred slaves, and regardless of his personal “ideology” was economically unable to change that status.  And the Nation recognized slavery and racism as a structural doctrine.  “All Men are created equal” was an aspiration, a “dream” that for the Founding Father’s was some future generation’s problem.

Almost two hundred years later, Martin Luther King and many others demanded of that Nation their right to the Dream.  While the Kennedy Administration played around the edges, it took a racist President from Texas, Lyndon Johnson, to pass the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts that put statutory language to the Declaration’s key phrase and the results of the Civil War a century before.

Betrayal

Many white people saw Johnson as betraying their vision of the American dream.  They saw America’s destiny as a white majority Nation, the continuation of the Manifest Destiny brought over from the 19^th century.  It was that idea that drove the Native Americans to “land jails” called reservations, and propped up the Jim Crow Laws.  

George Wallace, the racist Democratic Governor of Alabama, embodied that tradition.  He led a “rump” party in the Presidential election of 1968, taking most of the old Confederacy with 46 electoral votes.  At that time, the South wasn’t ready to vote for a Republican, the Party of Lincoln.  But they were willing to vote for a Democrat who spoke their segregationist, state’s rights language.  And that opened the door for the Republican Party.  Nixon became President.

By 1972 Nixon consolidated his position in the South, beginning the Republican tradition of Southern electoral hegemony.  It wasn’t that Wallace’s philosophy changed:  it was simply subsumed by the Republicans; the Party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Rockefeller now the party of state’s rights and the language of white superiority.  Need an example?  Google Willie Horton.  

Since then little has changed.  Gerald Ford, Nixon’s successor, didn’t embrace Nixon’s change, and lost to a Southern Democrat and moderate Jimmy Carter.  But Reagan did, and so did Bush of Maine (the father) and Bush of Texas (the son).  In between was another southern candidate, Bill Clinton, assisted in his first election by a Texas billionaire who split the Republican vote.

2008

All of that changed in 2008. 

One last political “fact” to keep in mind.  Democrats have been a majority in this country since the 1930’s.  The power of Franklin Roosevelt’s coalition, and his thirteen years in the Presidency, echoes down the generations.  It wasn’t about which party has more “members”.  For sixty years there were always more Democrats than Republicans (Pew).   The critical factor wasn’t “identification”, it was always about turnout.

In 2008, the young Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, motivated Democrats to come to the polls in record numbers.  He symbolically changed the landscape of American politics.  A Black man as President, leader of the Nation, seemed to signify the arrival of Martin Luther King’s Dream.

But just as Lyndon Johnson’s Civil Rights legislation triggered the backlash of George Wallace, Obama’s election began the “Last, Great Fight” for America’s destiny.  “Last, Great” because a decade from now, America will no longer be a white majority nation.  The Manifest Destiny dream of the 19^th century will meet its end at the ballot box, that is, unless supremacists can alter the structure of our laws to protect their power.  And that’s happening:  voter suppression laws, extreme gerrymandered legislative districts, and the built in anti-democratic compromise of the electoral college might maintain their white power a little longer.

Imperfect Vessels

And in the last two decades, a new wrinkle was added to American life:  a “bifurcated” media.  There no longer is a single “truth”.  Just last night, 51% of Iowa Republicans believed that Donald Trump won the 2020 Presidential election (Register).   Our “post-truth” era allows the Trump “miracle”.

A miracle; because a single scandal, much less ninety-one felony charges, would have ended any political career just twenty years ago.  Look at Jonathan Edwards, leading early candidate for the Democratic candidacy in 2008.  Even the possibility of charges against Hillary Clinton were enough to tilt the 2016 results. But today, Donald Trump has made court appearances the core of his Presidential campaign.  He’s made “victimhood” an honor.  In Christian terms, Trump is the “imperfect vessel” who is “suffering” for his fellow man (at least, fellow white men).   And “his” media backs his story.  Even Fox News, after losing over $700 million is legal damages for lying about the 2020 election, is “back” to supporting Trump. 

Trump is placed as the hero, supporting the “common man” (read, white man) against the rising tide of change.  And he’s done a remarkable job of staying in that position, even if it’s mostly his attempt to stay out of jail.  Certainly the Republicans of Iowa believe him.

Which leads us to the election of 2024.  Some Democrats are struggling to “get behind” Joe Biden, another “imperfect vessel”.  But this election is about something so much more important than the “vessels”; it’s about what the American Dream should be. 

It’s going to be an election between two old white men.  But it’s really a choice echoing back to the founding of the United States in 1776.  Are “all men (and women)” really created equal?  November will decide our destiny.

Sure, it’s not Sunday. But this is definitely a “Sunday Story”, even on a Friday!!!

New Hampshire

So here’s the story.  There’s these two Great Pyrenees, big overgrown white Labrador looking dogs, roaming the flattened countryside of Western Ohio.  They’ve been “out” for months, two “puppies” (they don’t look like puppies anymore) that dug their way under their kennel.  And over the past couple of months they wandered across the now empty cornfields, from near Lima all the way to a tiny “burg” called New Hampshire, almost twenty miles away. 

In Allen County (and now Auglaize County next door) there’s a dog trapper.  She’s dedicated the past several years to rescuing the wandering dogs of the “plains” of Ohio.  And she’s incredibly successful; spending time, money and effort to find a way to bring those dogs in.  But the Great Pyrenees have eluded her, even as she tracked them twenty miles from Lima to New Hampshire.  Her regular trapping techniques didn’t work.  So, she needed equipment, and she needed help.  She called Don, the leader of Lost Pet Recovery, the group my wife Jenn and I belong to.  (All of this is volunteer by the way, the Allen County trapper, Don, us.  No one is making money in finding lost dogs).

Traps and Panels

Normally we catch wandering dogs in self-contained traps.  They look like cages, with a trap door at one end and a pressure-plate trigger at the other.  Often, a couple of McDonald’s double cheeseburgers (plain) at the back of the trap past the trip-plate is enough to make a lost dog “safe”.  Those traps come in sizes, from four-foot Chihuahua size to six-foot extra-large Great Dane size.  But some dogs: some that have been trapped before and “won’t get fooled again”, and some that just won’t go in “the cage”, need a different technique.

Panel traps are big kennels, six foot panels bolted together with an actual door in the front.  Instead of the “confines” of a trap, a panel can be as small as six by three, and as big as eight by eight.  A dog that won’t go in a trap, might well go into the “room” of the panel trap.  That is, if the bait is right, and the panels themselves don’t remind them of “bad kennels” of the past.

Slam the Door

The Allen County trapper was well aware of the “origin story” of the twin Pyrenees, and was reasonably concerned about the panels.  So she set them up, a couple at a time.  And she baited it with the Pyrenees “food of choice”, deer.  There are plenty of dead deer around this time of year, hit by cars or shot by hunters but able to hide away and die.  So it took a couple of weeks, and moving the whole operation to New Hampshire, to get the “pups” into an eight by eight panel trap.

Now it’s “just” a matter of closing the door.  In the past, we would string a rope from the door to a car, a couple of hundred feet away.  When the dog went into the trap, you’d pull the rope, and slam the door shut.  But there were always the locations where we couldn’t get a “straight shot”, and the rope just wouldn’t work. 

That’s only part of the problem with the Pyrenees.  The panel trap is out in a field, completely exposed.  There’s a barn fairly close, but it’s not a good place to “hide” from the hyper-sensitive instincts of the wandering dogs.  But the bigger issue is:  can we catch two dogs at one time?  If we get one, but miss the second, we’ll never get another chance to get her safe, at least in a panel trap.

Here’s where creative “engineering” meets dog trapping.  All we need is an “automatic” closer, that will slam the door shut when both dogs are in.  And we have one of those, with a “sensor” that detects the dog at the back of the trap.  The sensor is the kind to keep the garage door from closing on kids and dogs, a “beam” that shuts off the power when the light is broken.  When the power goes off, an electric magnet, holding the door open, goes off as well.  The door slams shut, and the dog is safe.

MacGyver’ed

But the “beam” thing won’t work with two dogs.  What you need is a “switch” with a remote control, and a way to watch the trap “real time”.  So what we “created” was a remote “switch”, operated from a remote control (from as far as a quarter-mile away).  The switch powers an electro-magnet, holding the door open against the pull of multiple bungees waiting to slam it shut.  And the old “latch” is now replaced by a big wrought-iron privacy fence gate lock.  Hit the button, the magnet goes off,  the door slams into the latch, and the dogs are safe.  And it’s all powered by a tractor battery, set up on an upside down milk crate on the side of the panel.

Oh, and there’s three cameras stationed around the trap, to give us the best view possible of the scene.  Both dogs have to be at the back of the trap, for sure, enjoying their deer, before the button gets pushed.  It’s kind of like that scene from the movie Oppenheimer, except that there’s really zero chance that the world will catch on fire.

Describing the whole setup depends on your age.  If you’re old enough, you know what a “Rube Goldberg” is.  That’s my Mom and Dad’s generation.  A little bit younger, and maybe you remember the contraptions of Wylie Coyote that came from the “Acme” company.  Younger still, and you’d say the whole setup is “MacGyver’ed”. Today, maybe it’s “jury-rigged”, or “jerry-built”, or “thrown-together”.  

Margin of Error

But there’s little margin for error.  The camera signals have to go to cell towers, then back to the button pusher’s phone.  There’s at least a three-second lag.  And there’s the real concern of changing weather in Western Ohio.  The forecast: high winds, falling temperatures, changes from rain to snow.  “Perfect weather” to sit in a silent truck, behind the barn, waiting to push the button and slam the gate.  And hope your finger’s don’t freeze to the remote control (the dogs won’t come if there’s a running truck nearby). 

And, of course, once the gate does slam shut and the dogs are “caught” – what to do?  It’s not like their “happy puppies”; they’re near feral, and enjoyed their months of freedom.  And they’ve never had a leash on.  So somehow, we’ve got to transfer the  dogs from the panel trap to a crate that can be transported.  That’ll be another trick.

The good news is that there’s a rescue ready to take them in, day or night.  The bad news is the temperatures will start falling tomorrow, and hit single digits by Sunday.  I’ll let you know how it comes out.

Post Script – I put this addition to a later essay – but here’s the conclusion to the “Rube Goldberg” story

Hanging:  A couple of Sunday’s ago I left you hanging on a “Sunday Story”.  It’s now indoor track season and I’m officiating Sunday track meets for several more weeks in a row, so not much time to tell stories (just creating some more!!).   But our group, Lost Pet Recovery, was helping to trap two young Pyrenees who were out for months in Western Ohio (Rube Goldberg).  The short version is that, it took three days to finally get both dogs into the big panel trap.  Jenn and Don spent two long evenings sitting in the truck in sub-zero wind chill  waiting for the dogs to go in.  But it was on the third night, with the local trapper in charge, that the pups finally went into the panel, and the “Rube Goldberg” mechanism remotely closed the door (IT WORKED – WOO-HOO!!!!).

That was only the first problem:  next was how to get the dogs into smaller “traps” so they could be transported to a rescue.  It was cold, and the dogs weren’t mean, but not cooperative either. Eventually the trapper and friends were able to get them in the traps, and soon out of the cold.  Both dogs are now doing well in their new, and warm, home at the rescue. 

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
• The Last Time – 2/7/22
• Olympic Miracles – 2/13/22
• Mind Numbing – 2/20/22
• Track Weather – 4/3/22
• What’s Missing – 4/11/22
• A Scouting Story – 4/17/22
• Waterproof Paper – 5/8/22
• Origin Stories – 5/22/22
• Origin Stories – Part Two 5/29/22
• Back at State – 6/5/22
• Out in the Country – 6/19/22
• Pataskala Downs – 7/4/22
• Car Stories I – 7/24/22
• Car Stories II  – 7/31/22
• Old Man Experience – 8/7/22
• Cross Country Camp – 8/14/22
• New to the Pack – 8/21/22
• Car Stories III – The Bus – 8/28/22
• A Day in the Life – 9/4/22
• Stupid Human Tricks – 9/18/22
• Fair or Foul – 2/26/23
• Immigrant Story – 3/12/23
• Busy Season – 5/15/23
• Of Jeeps and Bucks – 5/28/23
• A Pole Vault Story  -6/11/23
• End of an Era – 6/25/23
• Paybacks – 7/2/23
• Graying in Pataskala – 7/17/23
• Being a Goat – 7/23/23
• Toy Truck – 8/20/23
• Medical Terms – 8/27/23
• Missing Margaritaville – 9/3/23
• The McGowan – 9/10/23
• Who’s Watching – 10/22/23
• The Saturday Before – 10/29/23
• A Tale of Turkey, and Dogs – 11/26/23
• Bruno’s Story – 12/3/23
• Out in the Country – 12/10/23
• Christmas Eve – 12/24/23
• Rube Goldberg – 1/12/24

Awake in Class

Did you sleep through your American History class?  What about American Government; awake in those first long months as “we” dragged through the Constitution?  Or was it just about “old, dead, white dudes”,  and talking about “stuff”?  You dreaded the long test at the end.  

First of all, you were right about a couple of things.  They are all dead, for sure.  And they were all white, and all “dudes” (no dudettes).  But they weren’t all that old.  Madison, the primary author of the Constitution, was in his mid-thirties.  Hamilton, the man with all of the ideas (some good, some bad) was still in his twenties.  But they all listened to the “elder statesman” of the group, Benjamin Franklin, just past eighty years old.  And George Washington, the chairman and “head referee” was in his mid-fifties, already “the man, the legend,” that no one in the room wanted to cross.

You probably had two shots at the Constitution, one in eighth grade history, and one in your senior year Government class.  Like that “damn” Algebra II class; the Constitution unit was one of those times when you thought:  why are they teaching us this – when will I ever need to know it?

I’ve got the answer to that question, at least concerning the Constitution (I can’t speak for Algebra II).  It’s today.  Today is the day you need to know the Constitution of the United States.  It would help if you remember the granular details; but even the big concepts of separation of powers and Federal versus State are in play. It’s every day right now, every time you catch the news.  We all need to be Constitutional lawyers, but if not that, at least Constitutional scholars.  Here’s why.

Seal Team Six

“Can a President who ordered Seal Team Six to assassinate a rival, be held for trial on a criminal offense?”  That’s what a United States Appeals Court judge asked a lawyer in her court yesterday.  Sure, it was a hypothetical question, a dreaded “what if” scenario that those of us who spent a little time (one semester) in law school remember so well.  And the answer the lawyer gave:  only if the President had been impeached in the House, and convicted in the Senate.  Otherwise, the LAW could do nothing to that President, in office or out.

All of us old history/government teachers “took flight”.  Well then, the President could order the assassination of the Senators who might vote to convict them, and therefore avoid any criminal responsibility.  And that’s the definition of a dictatorship:  when the “leader” can kill their opposition with impunity.  Think of all of those Russians who took the big leap from the 14^th floor window at the “behest” of Vladimir Putin. 

Reality check:  we fully expect that Seal Team Six would never carry out such an order.  They too, have an obligation to defend the Constitution, and such a mission would be completely illegal.  But that’s not the point.

Richard Nixon

The point is that a real, live, $1000 an hour lawyer; tried to make that argument in the DC Appeals Court yesterday, claiming that the Federal case against Donald Trump for trying to stop the lawful transfer of power should be thrown out.  He didn’t see the absolute foolishness of the position.  He got cornered; and the scary part is, there are other lawyers, and one particular twice-impeached, multiple felony charged former President, who believes that’s true.  It’s not much of a stretch from “shooting someone on Fifth Avenue” to sending Seal Team Six to do your bidding.  As Richard Nixon infamously said:  “If the President does it, it can’t be illegal.”  That’s the basis of the argument the Trump lawyers are making.

You think that’s what young Hamilton and Madison, middle-aged Washington and elderly Franklin wanted? They were fresh off of a nine-year war for freedom from a monarch, King George III of Great Britain, who claimed that kind of Royal Sovereignty.  Do you think those guys, those “old, dead, white dudes” would have created a new form of Sovereign immunity for their own Chief Executive?   

Civil War Revisited

And then there’s all the Civil War talk.  First it was the definition of an Insurrectionist.  Did Donald Trump commit or support Insurrection on January 6^th?  And if he did, is he disqualified from the Presidency, just as if he was too young or not born a citizen?  There’s a famous Justice Potter Stewart quote about pornography: “I know it when I see it”.  (That quote always brings to mind the once-a-month “porn” showings in the basement of the Supreme Court, to see movies so they “knew” which to ban.  Those weren’t so popular with the Justices, but the Clerks, then an all-male club, enjoyed it). 

Does the 14^th Amendment require some legal “finding”, or is it like Stewart’s view of porn;  we know it when we see it.  That seems to be what the authors of the 14^th thought:  they didn’t put any kind of “due process” proviso.  Either you supported the Confederacy, or you didn’t.  Is that the legal definition to be applied to Trump?  Colorado and Maine think so, and the Supreme Court is going to weigh-in too.  Were you awake when they were going over the Amendments? (Admittedly, even when I was teaching the 14^th, I emphasized the first section.  The second and third were left-over Civil War business, at least that’s what I thought then).  

And now Trump is bring back the old “Birther” argument.  He’s “rumoring” that his distant Republican rival, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, wasn’t born in the United States, and therefore isn’t eligible to be President.   It’s the same line he used on Barack Obama.  Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants, was born in the USA (Springsteen); Bamberg, South Carolina in fact.  But facts have never been part of the Trump campaigns.  

Spinning in Their Graves

When I first started learning about government, impeaching a President was an historic anomaly.  Andrew Johnson was impeached, and avoided conviction and removal from office by one vote, back in 1868.   In modern times, no one seriously tried to remove a “sitting” President.  That was, until my senior year of high school, 1974.  Then there was the very serious possibility that Richard Nixon would be removed, so serious that Nixon himself resigned to avoid the permanent stain. 

No one then thought Nixon had some kind of absolute immunity from prosecution.  In fact, many of us, looked forward to the “Trial of Richard Nixon”, for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and offering bribes.  The new President, Gerald Ford, ended all of that with a pardon.  But we all knew then that Ford was avoiding criminal action against Nixon.  

Since then there’s been three impeachments, and three trials in the Senate.  Bill Clinton once, and Donald Trump twice; have faced the possibility of being the first President convicted by the Senate.  Both avoided removal.  The last time (Trump’s second), one of the excuses used was – we can always prosecute him in Court (Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell).  Even Trump’s impeachment lawyers said the same thing. 

Now “Trump World” is looking for every opportunity to avoid responsibility for his actions.  They are telling us, and America, we were all wrong about Nixon’s fate. Once a President; if you’re not impeached and convicted, you are always immune.  

There’s a rumble under Wall Street in New York, and in Montpelier, Virginia.  Hamilton and Madison are spinning in their graves.  And it’s time for all of us to “bone up” on our Constitution.

Facts Don’t Matter

I suspect I’m pointing out the obvious, but I need to say it anyway.  There is nothing easier to do in politics then to “create” a problem, and then be “the only one” who can fix it.  I spent last Sunday morning listening to the news “shows”. I found that “He is the Only One” is the single most “important” Republican talking point. 

Republican Congressmen Elise Stefanik of New York (Meet the Press) and Tony Gonzalez, Texas (This Week) didn’t outright claim that the 2020 election was stolen, though Stefanik came close.  But there underlying theme was this:

A significant percentage of Americans belief that the 2020 election was stolen.  It is important to investigate, and make changes to assure those Americans that the next election will not be.  In order to do that, Americans must choose the Republican candidate for President. Because re-electing President Biden is rewarding stealing the election. At least, that’s the belief of the significant percentage.

Both of the interviewers, Kristen Welker and George Stephanopoulos, pushed back hard.  They both pointed out the self-serving, circular logic of the response.   Over sixty court cases, two internal Trump campaign investigations, Department of Justice inquiries, hearings in front of state legislatures, and even the “Cyber-Ninjas” were unable to find evidence of the “steal”.  In fact, the “words” of the former President and his cronies are the only “evidence” presented.   

Facts don’t seem to matter.  The whole justification for delegitimizing the Biden Presidency and electing Trump for a second term, is that this “significant percentage” belief it.  That becomes the “cause of action” – the reason to vote Republican.  

Held Hostage

And then there’s the January 6^th “Hostages” (Stefanik, not Gonzalez).  The Republican Party would have the United States deny what happened before their own eyes.  We all watched on that fateful day three years ago.  There was nothing peaceful about the violence on the Capitol steps that day, nothing “legitimate” about defecating in the hallways and vandalizing the offices.  But, according to the Congressman from New York, those rioters were “patriots”, exercising their First Amendment freedom of speech to defend democracy. 

Well, the last part has a kernel of truth.  Many of those insurrectionists believed the lies they were told.  And since they believed it, then they were acting in “good faith” according to the politicians that fed them the lies, and they aren’t responsible.  Any court that holds them accountable is just another part of the “stolen” election, and the convicted are in fact “hostages”.  At least, that’s what a “significant percentage” of Americans believe.

Flies Aren’t Wrong

(Using the term “hostages” for the Insurrectionists so soon after October 7th, is inappropriate and disgusting. But it’s just one more way to legitimize Trump’s actions).

I’m tempted to return to my own childhood warnings : “…if Johnny jumps off of the Empire State Building would you jump off of the Empire State Building?”  Or the more graphic phrase, “Eat garbage, a million flies can’t be wrong”.   We built Our Nation on individual responsibility.  We have a national obligation to use our own minds to determine what is right or wrong, and to take personal responsibility for our actions.  

When I taught American Government, my most important goal was to get students to think on their own, to analyze and determine for themselves what they believe. I not indoctrinate my students in my own liberal ideology, but I worked to have them develop their own.  All I asked is that they could support those ideas with facts – the absolute counter to the “significant percentage” argument.

Fools and Foolishness

Stefanik is a graduate of Harvard.  Gonzalez has a master’s degree and is working on his doctorate in international studies.  From an academic standpoint, these are not “stupid” people, and can’t possibly be fooled by the “significant percentage” argument.  But it allows them to deny the facts, and stand for the false premise of victimhood.  That “feeds the fire” of the “significant percentage”, adding falsehoods without exactly lying.  And so they continue to make the argument, to justify the Republican Party’s complete sellout to Trump.

At this point it’s reasonable to use the words of Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican President:  “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

But quoting Lincoln to Republicans is now a dangerous thing.  As the twice-impeached, ninety-one time indicted former President Trump now says:  “Lincoln was wrong.  We should have compromised on slavery, and negotiated to avoid the Civil War.  I would have done it.”  And the former Governor of South Carolina, running for President against Trump, doesn’t even think slavery was an issue in the Civil War.

A “significant percentage” are fooled, and perhaps will remain fooled for all time.  But Trump needs to fool even more; enough to earn the slim margin of electoral votes for re-election.  And, if he can re-write the history of the Civil War, then getting us to ignore our “lying” eyes on January 6^th shouldn’t be that big a deal.  

At least, for a “significant percentage” of Americans.

Routine Procedure

Secretary of Defense and retired Four Star General Lloyd Austin had a “routine medical procedure” last Monday.  Something obviously went wrong, and he ended up in the Intensive Care Unit at Walter Reed military hospital.  The White House wasn’t notified until Thursday, in fact, even the Pentagon wasn’t aware that their commander was out of commission.  Rumor was that he was “on vacation”.   And Congress wasn’t told until Friday, when Austin resumed his duties. He was still in a hospital bed.  Adding it all up, for three days, a key member of the United States nuclear command and control was out of the loop, and no one else knew.

Well, not quite no one else.  The next-in-line, Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks, was aware and kept up to speed.  But she was in Puerto Rico, with a whole communications net established to keep her informed.  Meanwhile, the President of the United States was not informed that part of his command decision team, sixth in line for the Presidency itself, was unavailable, hospitalized in the ICU, for days.

So let’s start with this.  Who has a “routine medical procedure” on New Year’s Day?  There are only two possible reasons.  One, it was an emergency “routine medical procedure”, one that couldn’t wait for a “regular” medical day.  Or two, it was a secret, done on a holiday, while reporters and many staff members are home watching parades and football games.  The goal may have been, slip Austin into Walter Reed and then back home before any noticed.

Responsibility

Secretary Austin surely has a right to some privacy.  We, the public, don’t need to know whether this was a colonoscopy that went wrong or an emergency cardiac catheterization that turned into a heart bypass.   But the President of the United States should.  In fact, General Austin (or his staff) showed grave disrespect for the office of the Presidency by not informing him.  We don’t know which, whether it was the Secretary himself, or whether his incapacity left it to a staff decision.  But someone made a clear “call”:  don’t tell the press, the Pentagon, or the White House.  

Heads need to roll:  not a medical procedure, but as a career consequence. 

The United States is long past the time that President Woodrow Wilson could have a stroke, and disappear into the White House for months.  First Lady Edith Wilson made command decisions, leaving her disabled husband out of the process and acting in his name.  That wasn’t good in 1920, when the United States was deeply involved in debating whether to join the League of Nations or not.  But in today’s world, with affairs moving at breakneck speed in the Middle East, Ukraine, potentially Taiwan and everywhere else around the world; Americans need to have confidence in our command decision process.  

And there’s nothing that can shake that confidence more, than a key member being hospitalized and unable to perform his duties without notifying the President.  

Politics

Sure it’s a political football.  Republicans in the Senate are already calling for action:

“The Secretary of Defense is the key link in the chain of command between the president and the uniformed military, including the nuclear chain of command, when the weightiest of decisions must be made in minutes,” said (Senator Tom) Cotton in a statement, adding that if Austin didn’t immediately tell the White House, “there must be consequences for this shocking breakdown” (AP).

And certainly this marked disrespect for the President will become part of the fabric of the 2024 Presidential race:  even his own Cabinet members don’t honor him, why should the uniformed military?

Consequences

But it’s more important than just politics.  I can’t tell you any other issue where Senator Cotton and I agree, but here’s one.  It only required one phone call, to White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients.  The President, and the command structure, needs to know who’s in charge; and who’s available for emergency consultation.  There are lots of scenarios where the President says, “Get me the Secretary of Defense”, and the entire process is temporarily derailed as the Deputy has to take the call.  Tom Cotton is right, it’s unacceptable.

It’s likely that we will soon learn a lot about Kelly Magsamen, General Austin’s Chief of Staff.  If there’s a head to be sacrificed, it’s hers that’s most likely to be the first.  Everyone has the right to medical privacy.  But assuming high responsibilities in government requires acceptance of some loss of that privilege, in return for the trust of the American people.  They can have privacy, but Americans still need transparency.  We need to know that those in charge, are actually there.   It’s the only way to keep the conspiracy nuts at bay, and more importantly, to keep the Nation’s trust.  

Rerun

Look, it’s 2024.  It seems like this Presidential election year started about six months after Biden was inaugurated in 2021, but now we’re really, finally, (sadly), here.  Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee, “God willing and the river don’t rise”.  Almost inevitably, Trump is going to be the Republican nominee.  So, like it or not, we are in for a “rerun” of 2020, this time hopefully, without a world pandemic to upstage every other issue.

At first it seemed that James Carville’s wise intonation would hold the day; “It’s the economy, stupid”.  Biden was saddled with inflation, an unavoidable side effect of the successful efforts to avoid a Covid depression. Most Americans don’t remember the crushing inflation of the 1970’s, averaging almost 10% a year throughout Jimmy Carter’s Administration.  

The past couple years felt “really bad”:  2021 at 7% and 2022 at 6.5%.  But last year it was down near 3% and this year looks even better.  So the inflation issue won’t have the impact Republicans wanted. (Gee, gas prices were down to $2.53 yesterday, even here in the Amazon van bubble!)

Binary Choice

Biden used a phrase in 2020 that still resonates in 2024:  “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative”.  In the “binary choice” of Biden versus Trump, there are several key issues where voters face a black or white decision.  Trump embraced the results of “his” Supreme Court appointees in the Dodds case; abortion is now a state by state issue.  And the Pro-Life crowd made their goal clear:  end abortion care nationwide.  That’s mobilized voters, particularly women, even in Republican places like Kansas, Ohio, and Kentucky.  If women want to be able to control their own bodies, Biden is the only answer.

And in foreign policy the division is clear.  Support Ukraine, vote for Biden.  Want Russia to take over Ukraine, support Trump and his friend Putin.  The current Israeli War is more complicated.  The media makes a big deal about the Democratic split over the Israeli strategy of destruction of Gaza to destroy Hamas.  But the comparison (Almighty versus alternative) is obvious.  Trump would give his good friend Benjamin Netanyahu a completely free hand in Gaza, Biden is the only moderating force.  If you want to support the Palestinians and don’t like what Biden is doing, what’s the alternative?  Vote for Trump?  Or, don’t vote at all, and allow Trump to gain the Presidency? 

Caravan 

So Republicans returned to an old strategy, one we remember from the elections of 2016 and 2018.  There’s a “caravan” coming to the Southern border.  Thousands (Fox News says eight thousand) headed to the border.  They are still a thousand miles away, but when they get here, the border will be overwhelmed.  And Biden isn’t ready!

Republican Governor Greg Abbott of Texas has his solution:  militarize the border, arm it with razor wire, walls and armed troops, and arrest anyone who manages to get through for illegal crossing then send them back to Mexico.  Make illegal migration Mexico’s problem. 

The problem with that solution is twofold.  First, it creates a “death zone” at the border, that is guaranteed to kill some migrants trying to get through.  The “deterrence” concept that migrants won’t come if it’s “bad enough” just doesn’t work.  They continue to come, and drown in the Rio Grande, get tangled in the barbed wire, and their kids get sick and die from exposure.  Ultimately those armed troops will use their weapons, and we have the catastrophe of American troops shooting migrants.

And second, it creates a lawless zone on the Mexico side of the border, with towns overwhelmed with the humanitarian burden of hundreds of thousands of migrants.  Exposure, starvation, disease and crime will not remain just a Mexican problem.  It simply raises the stakes, and drives the migrants into the clutches of the “coyotes” who will offer them a way out through the wilderness onto American soil.  And more will die in the desert, trying to get to America.

Solutions

Fixing the border crisis is complicated.  We have treaty obligations to let people try to claim asylum in the United States.  The conditions in Central and South America driving migration are worse, far worse than even Governor Abbott is willing to create on the border.  So until that improves, folks are still going to leave their homes, risk the Darien crossing, pay extortion to the gangs, and show up in Juarez or Matamoras, or Tijuana; to come to America.

The United States absolutely must do a better job of administering the border.  It’s a legal, medical, ethical, issue.  And the United States can use more workers in the economy; there is a ready supply to be tapped at the border.  The political reality is:  a solution at the border isn’t in the Republican Party’s best interest.  With all of the other issues falling in Biden’s favor, Trump needs the Border.  That remains a “thorn in the side” of the Biden Presidency.  And besides, it’s all Trump’s got.

Start the Fire

It’s 2024!!!  We are almost a quarter the way through the 21^st century (and isn’t that still confusing – how did we get the centuries so screwed up that 2000 was the beginning of the 21^st, not the 20^th).  Just a thought:  the kids born on 9/11 are now the first responders to the next emergency.  Another thought:  Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire (1989) has been “updated” by a group called Fall Out Boy (2023).

I’m now an old retired guy, and that’s a great “gig”.  But I was born in the Eisenhower Administration, thirteen Presidents ago.  As a youngster I watched the Mickey Mouse Club in black and white on a big box TV with a tiny screen.  In fact, the family lore is that I was named for a character on that show, part of a boy’s adventure series called “Spin and Marty”.  Thank goodness I wasn’t called “Spin”!!!

Generations

As a history teacher, I was always amazed with the technological change that my father’s generation, the World War II “Greatest Generation”, went through.  Dad was born near the end of the First World War.  They had cars (Model T’s), electric lights, airplanes (biplanes) and gas stoves.  In fact, a gas stove of my parent’s youth is still in use in our kitchen today, a 1929 Magic Chef eight burner, four stove, half-a-ton, cast iron “beast”.  It works great, and it’s back in “style”.  That same style stove appears both in the movie Oppenheimer and in the Yellowstone series 1923.  

But in the near-century of Dad’s life – from 1918 to 2016 –  technology changed so much.  And Dad was a part of that.  He got into television in the beginning, the early 1950’s, when most homes did not have a TV.  And he changed what people watched; from selling syndicated shows like Highway Patrol, Sea Hunt and the Everglades, to pioneering the news/talk show with Phil Donahue, and getting way over the top with another guy named Jerry Springer. 

So Dad got tech, at least for most of his life.  Now I’m not approaching a century, in fact, I’m still a few years short of three-fourths of a century.  But today, on New Year’s Day 2024, let’s look at what the tech of those early days of 1950’s and 60’s television promised, and what’s been delivered.

New Tech

Dick Tracy was a cartoon and TV detective in a trench coat and fedora hat.  But he had a secret weapon, a “wrist radio”.  He didn’t need a lot of bulky equipment to check into the station, he simply talked into his wrist watch, and was connected.  

We can do that.  Apple watches can not only talk, but they can carry messages, read your blood pressure, tell you when to drink water, and, well, run your life.  I don’t have one of those, but it’s not because I’m a Luddite.  Apple watches can only be so big, and at my age reading small print isn’t my favorite task.  An Apple watch would require constant reading glasses.  Better to leave all the messages on my phone – I can make the font big enough to read on that.

And speaking of carrying computers in your pocket:  every smart phone is way smarter than the computers that landed men on the moon in the 1960’s.   My parents’ joke was that Mom was Dad’s memory, especially in the last few years of her life.  Well, I have my memory, right here beside me.  If I don’t have a picture of it, I can check it on the internet.  Don’t remember something, it’s all out there, and within minutes I can remember what year Billy Joel wrote “We Didn’t Start the Fire” and which group did the new version.  

Replicators

And what about the “replicators” of Star Trek?  We haven’t got quite to that point where a kitchen, with a button,  produces any desired food – but we do have microwave ovens, and we do have “three-dimensional” printers.  So we are working our way to being able to produce a given shape and form device on a “home replicator”.  The problem with that is; in our society the most produced 3-D products are “ghost guns”.

And about that food thing – today we don’t have to shop for food anymore.  We can sign up for a “meal service”, delivered to the front door.  Want “foodie” food – Hello Fresh, Blue Apron, or even Martha Stewart will take care of all of your needs.  Want groceries?  Get on your phone and order them (it’s a “click” thing, not a “talk” thing), they’ll be here before day’s end.  

And Christmas shopping has a lot more to do with the computer I’m typing on, or the phone in my pocket, then getting in the car and heading to the mall.  In fact, there are three malls left here in Columbus; Easton, Polaris, and Tuttle.  Easton is still making it, because it made itself into a “destination”, that has some stores. Polaris is trying to do the same thing, though they’ve been through one bankruptcy.  And Tuttle – well – I wouldn’t invest any money there.  

And what of Eastland, Northland, Westland, or City Centre?  Eastland’s still there, Westland and Northland are now strip malls, and City Centre closed fifteen years ago, and is mostly new urban “green space”.    

Cars

We didn’t get the flying cars promised by the Jetsons.  But we didn’t get the drab, lifeless ground of the Jetson’s either.  Maybe that’s why they all were in the sky, things don’t look so great for the homeless on the surface.

We are gradually shifting to non-gasoline cars, though my twenty year-old Jeep is still running strong.  And cars are doing so much more:  automatic braking, parking, lane assist and, just beginning, self-driving.  In another decade,  I  expect drivers will be the exception, rather than the rule.  Soon we will all be plugging in.  And the 1950’s designed highway system around Columbus, Ohio is being rebuilt.  Maybe a decade from now, it will be a lot easier to get around (though they’ve been building the I-70/I-71 interchange downtown longer than it took to build the Panama Canal).

Intelligent Machines

My grandmother had a vacuum cleaner.  We do too, but it doesn’t look anything like the hose, tank and broom that Grandma Dahlman (or Mom for that matter) used.  Our vacuum looks like a turtle, and does it work without supervision.  It knows where to go, on what day, and even knows when to empty itself.  And if something goes wrong – it sends us a message on our phone – “help!”  It doesn’t answer to its name – Roomba – but the dogs sure know who she is.  Roomba is unrelenting when it comes to cleaning, and the dogs have learned to get out of the way – or get “bumped”.  

Technology has a way of incrementally changing life.  And we are on the cusp of a whole new generation of tech, artificial intelligence.  AI will write for us, think for us, fool us, and maybe decide for us.  “Everything”, from teaching to medicine to manufacturing, will be “better” with AI – I guess.  An I guess most of the folks pushing AI never watched 2001 – A Space Odyssey or worse, The Terminator (one of Mom and Dad’s favorite movies – really!!).

So Happy New Year to you!! May 2024 be pleasant and prosperous and peaceful – oh wait – it’s an election year.  The fate of our Democracy is on the line.  So have fun!!!