Category: Uncategorized

No Net

We, Americans, are walking a tightrope.  Our national experiment in a republican form of government is at risk.  Last night, the January 6^th Committee began to show us how close we came to our experiment failing a year and a half ago.  But that risk hasn’t ended.  The mob is still out there, ready to rise up and claim their “power”.  There are millions of Americans who refused to watch the hearing last night, already set in their mind that the lies of 2020 are true.  

We are on a tightrope, and there is no net.  Our democracy hangs in the balance. It only exists due to the brilliance of the flawed Enlightenment men who founded the nation, and it only continues by the heroism of today’s women and men who stand up to the “mob”.  We saw the evidence last night:  the thin line of Capitol Police Officers, representative of America.  They were men and women, black, white, Hispanic and Asian; the very few that stood against the thousands.  They ultimately fell, but they delayed the mob long enough to protect the Congress, and, very late in the day, let the “cavalry” ride to the rescue.

The Plan

And as we heard last night, it was not a crowd that “lost control”.  It was a plan:  from the White House, from the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, and from the headquarters at the Willard Hotel.   The Proud Boys scouted the defenses well before Donald Trump sent folks down to the Capitol.  The Oath Keepers had weapons caches just outside the District, ready for deployment. They had military like “stacks” with specific goals: Pelosi, Schumer and Pence.  The plan:  force the electoral count back to the states.  If Vice President Pence wouldn’t do it, then stop the count altogether, but whatever means necessary.  

And if you need more evidence that the “mob” is still out there today, look at what the Fox News Channel did last night.  They refused to cover the hearing, instead, giving a platform to those who still promulgate the lies.  And they didn’t even run commercials:  why risk that a viewer might switch over to almost any other channel to hear and see truth.  Their most popular figure, Tucker Carlson, wrote a long editorial, full of the same lies that filled the ether in 2020 (I won’t give him the “honor” of a link – it’s on the Fox News website). For him, and his millions of viewers, nothing has changed.

One Shot

Earlier this week, I stated that the January 6^th Committee had “one shot” to get this right with the American people (A Television Moment).  They certainly took that shot last night.  Two Congressmen from the heartland, a Mississippi  Democrat and a Republican from Wyoming, narrated the story.  They laid out the case against Donald Trump and his henchmen.  And they even revealed that United States Congressmen who supported Trump, then asked for Presidential Pardons before he left office.  They knew, even then, that their actions were wrong.

There are more hearings coming.  The Committee will present the evidence to the nation that there was a plot to overthrow the Constitutional government, led by the President of the United States himself.  There are three audiences for these hearings.  First is the Congress itself.  The Committee is charged with developing legislation to protect our Republic from further damage.  The second is the Department of Justice.  If the evidence is strong, then Attorney General Garland cannot turn away from prosecution, regardless of his (and President Biden’s) desire to return to “normalcy”. 

Final Arbiter

But most importantly, the ultimate audience is the citizens of the United States of America.  The whole point of our Republic is that we are not passive observers in our own government.  We the People of the United States have the ultimate control, the ultimate say.  We can vote.

Many Americans are tired of politics as usual.  Some demand that we place limits on the terms of our leaders.  But there is no need for term limits:  every legislator, every elected officer is term limited.  They are limited by the need to win the next election.  It only takes the citizens to vote them out of office.  

The January 6^th Committee is asking the final arbiters of American government, the People of the United States, to stand for their government.  We have a choice; continue to support those who still back the lies, or reject them and stand for the Republic.  It’s really as simple as that.  It would be good for Garland to bring charges against the conspirators, even including the former President.  But it isn’t necessary to protect the Nation.  What is needed, is that the citizens themselves stand, stand like Congressman Cheney, stand like the Capitol Police Officers, stand against those who think that the “Stop the Steal” movement is behind us.  

It’s not.  Our form of government is at greater risk than ever, because we have somehow “normalized” politicians and a political party that has accepted the “Big Lie”.   We are walking a tightrope, and the rope frays as the lies infiltrate the truth.  The January 6^th Committee hearings may be the last, best chance to repair those fibers, and keep our Republic.  The alternative, is a fall into authoritarianism: a loss of the America we knew, and were entrusted to keep.

Serious Men

Senator John Thune of South Dakota is a serious man.  A ranking member of the Republican Senate Leadership, he is one of the “prop men”. He’s always standing behind Minority Leader McConnell along with John Cornyn as the Leader explains why the Republicans can’t do one thing or another.   Thune takes his job seriously. And he’s made it clear that he’s not an extremist like the Josh Hawley’s and Ted Cruz’s of the Senate.

Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana stood up for what he believed.  He voted to impeach Donald Trump after the Insurrection. And he’s one of the “moderate” Senators, willing to sit down with Democrats to move legislation forward.  He’s an unusual politician, a medical doctor specializing in liver diseases, who gave up more than two decades of practice to go into elective politics.  

Congressman Ken Buck is a Republican from Colorado.  He is one of the Congressional leaders in anti-trust legislation, going against the trend of Republican obeisance to American business.  Buck is an Ivy-Leaguer, with an undergraduate degree from Princeton.  He received his law degree from the University of Wyoming, and served as a US Attorney and County District Attorney in Colorado before getting elected to Congress.

These are serious men, in serious times.  They are not the “hair on fire” Marjorie Taylor Greene’s or Rand Paul’s, easy to dismiss because of their constant outrageous statements.  They are legislators with demonstrated interest in passing laws to make America better.  

Varmints

And yet, all three of them made outrageous statements about AR-15 assault rifles this week.  

John Thune said: “In my state, they use them to shoot prairie dogs and, you know, other types of varmints. And so I think there are legitimate reasons why people would want to have them” (People).

Cassidy’s statement: “If you talk to the people that own it, killing feral pigs in the, whatever, the middle of Louisiana. They’ll wonder: ‘Why would you take it away from me?'” (People). 

And Buck: “An AR-15 is a gun of choice for killing raccoons before they get to our chickens,” Buck said. “It is the gun of choice for killing a fox, it is a gun that you control predators on your ranch, on your farm, on your property.” (People).

A Unique Problem

Massacre after massacre, from Uvalde to Buffalo and all the way back to Sandy Hook; assault rifles are the “weapon of choice” for killing victims as quickly as possible.  In speaking to a Congressional Committee, Uvalde first-responders gave graphic testimony of the condition of the fourth graders’ they found. They were literally blown into pieces and unidentifiable by the high energy rounds entering their bodies.

Those killings are serious, symbolic of a uniquely American problem.  We have a problem of mass shootings, unlike any other civilized nation in the world.  But these serious men: Thune, Cassidy and Buck; are defending assault rifles because they say they’re needed to kill prairie dogs, feral pigs, raccoons and foxes.

Why would “serious” men make such ridiculous statements?  Are they trying to drag us into the argument of what caliber weapon is required to put down a prairie dog, or a raccoon, or a feral pig?  An AR-15 is designed for war; designed specifically  to make the most grievous wounds possible in order to not only stop an enemy soldier, but require multiple other enemy soldiers to try to care for the wounded. Are they telling us that weapon is needed to kill a prairie dog?

Fear

No they are not.  What they are doing is laughing at the media.  They are sending us down a “prairie dog” hole, getting all of us to talk about their idiotic statements, and focus away from the real tragedy.  America is the only “modern” nation in the world where weapons of war are available at the local “sporting goods” store.  America, to paraphrase Justice Jackson, is making the US Constitution into a suicide pact, by including assault rifles as part of a “right to bear arms”.  

That’s the discussion that Senators Thune and Cassidy, and Congressman Buck do not want to have.  They can’t have it, not over the mangled bodies of children from Sandy Hook to Uvalde.  Not while the funerals for the folks at the Top Supermarket in Buffalo are just concluding.  Not when we know that the next mass shooting is today, or tomorrow, or soon.  And there’s nothing that they are willing to do about it.

And since they won’t take the political risks to save the next classroom of children, they’re going to keep talking about prairie dogs, and feral pigs, and raccoons, and foxes.   They’re serious men, and seriously afraid of the power of the gun manufacturers to end their political careers.  And of course, that’s more important than prairie dogs, feral pigs, raccoons, foxes:  and fourth graders.

Crisis

We are a nation in crisis.  Look at the list:

• January 6^th
• Inflation 
• Ukraine
• Baby Formula
• Guns – Guns – Guns
• Roe v Wade
• Policing and Crime.

Oh and there’s still the Covid 19 virus around.  Over 1,033,000 deaths since the beginning, and still averaging 320 deaths a day.  That’s almost as many people as get shot with a gun per day here in the US (321 daily), with 111 deaths.  More young people (children and adolescents) die from gun violence than any other cause including car accidents.  That’s far above disease, poisoning and drug overdoses.

Add China, the Southern Border, LGBTQ rights, and a host of other issues, and you can see why most US Presidents age quickly.  President Biden has more than just a few things on his plate.  

With all of that, the hope is that the American people will vote for solutions, not slogans.  The question that needs to be asked in the November election, is how the candidates are going to make things better, not what “wedge” they can drive into the body politic.

The Issues

January 6^th, the Insurrection, is not behind us.  The forces at work to overthrow our Democracy remain at large, and, in fact, they are still working to achieve their goal.  Until we have an accounting of what really happened and why, we won’t “get over” it.  In fact, those demanding we ignore it, are simply enabling those who see Democracy as an impediment to their gaining power.  

Inflation is bad, because it strikes us all.  Gas went over $5 a gallon yesterday here in Central Ohio; groceries are up, in fact, everything that “got here” costs more because it cost more to “get here”.  If the cost of gas is the fault of the Ukraine War, then Americans should and will bear the burden.  But that case isn’t clearly made by anybody, not by the President, nor the Congress, nor the “pundits”.   

And the baby formula crisis seemed to come, literally, out of nowhere.  It’s being resolved, but that message isn’t getting through either.  What should be a triumph of government intervention and ingenuity, is portrayed as a “fumble” in government prevention.  And all because a plant put out contaminated product, and that plant provided a huge portion of the supply of formula.  That also is a case of “bad” messaging by the current administration.

Guns-Guns-Guns

America is cursed;  cursed with a history of gun use, exacerbated by a political crisis where a portion of the nation see unlimited gun rights as a sign of unlimited freedom.  What they give up is their right to “life”, or more exactly, as the statistics show, their children’s right to life.  It is the worst public health crisis of our era, worse than Covid 19.  But, just like Covid masks, guns are so politicized that even common sense doesn’t prevail.  

You can’t drink until your twenty-one, you can’t rent a car until your twenty-five, you can’t even own a pistol until your twenty-one.  But you can buy an assault type rifle at eighteen.  That’s just the age where disaffected, mentally unstable young men, look to become “heroes” on the trigger of a gun.  There are simple solutions, but even those are embroiled in the political theatre created by the gun lobby and the right wing politicians.

Cars don’t kill people, people driving cars kill people.  Yet we regulate every facet of car ownership, from the purchase, registration and sale of the vehicle, to the training, licensing a and supervising of the drivers.  But an assault rifle; its only use being for protection or destruction, is virtually unregulated, unlicensed, and unchecked.  What sense does that make?

Choices

Our nation is at an inflection point.  We have one political party that sees America as it was in the 1950’s, a white majority in charge, a “Leave it to Beaver” utopia, that never really existed.  The leadership of that party is willing to sacrifice our greatest virtue, Democracy, in order to gain power.

And we have one political party, fumbling, brawling, unfocused, charging in multiple directions; that at least has a vision of a future that includes a diverse Democratic society.  This is the choice that faces America in 2022 and 2024.  It’s really that simple.  And it’s really that desperate. 

8:00 PM

At 8 pm on this Thursday night, perhaps the most important television “event” of the 21^st Century will air.  The House Committee on the January 6^th Insurrection will begin to present their case to the American people.  What they demonstrate then, and the next six hearings after, will determine how America will evaluate what happened on that day, and the events leading up to it.

The Committee will only have “one shot” at getting this right.  There are already a significant percentage of Americans who will directly decide NOT to watch this.  Their minds are already made up.  And there is another large percentage who won’t be bothered to watch.  They are the “pox on all your houses” crowd, blaming politics as a failed profession; “all crooked”.  Those folks are simply failing their own country, unwilling to participate not only in making “…a more perfect union”, but willing to allow our democracy to end.

But for the rest of the nation, this is the one shot that the Committee has to capture America’s attention.  Here’s what they have to show.

Structure of Insurrection

Americans watched in horror as the mob attacked the United State Capitol.  We saw the medieval battles on the steps and in the hallways, and the travesty of the Confederate Battle Flag parading through the Rotunda.  While the video footage of that day is compelling, there’s really nothing new in that for Americans to see.  We know why they were there.  The mob was convinced that the election was stolen, and in the grand American tradition, from the Whiskey Rebellion to Black Lives Matter, they took to the streets.  But instead of demonstrating, they violently attacked the center of American democracy.

And in that is all the difference.  

What the Committee must show, up front on Thursday night, is that there was more to the Insurrection than just an out of control mob.  America must see that the Insurrection was not just the unintended outcome of Donald Trump’s reckless statements, but an organized and intentional assault on American Democracy.   

Americans must see the structure of “administration” behind the screaming chants, flag pole spears and bear spray clouds.  They need to see the organization of rebellion, the finance of millions of dollars of “seed money”, the back room deals and “8 Chan” calls to violence.  

And the Committee must draw a straight line from that structure to the White House.

Opening Statement

This is the Committee’s opening statement to the American “jury”.  And there will be plenty of “noise” in the ex-President’s defense.  Elise Stefanik, Jim Jordan, and the rest of the House Republican leadership will do all they can to distract from the Committee’s story, and provide “alternative facts” to the narrative.  So the Committee better get it right, from the beginning.

We know the alternative.  We saw the debacle of a diminished Bob Mueller, the former FBI Director who re-molded the Bureau into an anti-terrorism force, testifying in one word responses about the Russia investigation.  Even the brilliance of Adam Schiff and the other Democratic Congressmen could not overcome the absolute failure of Mueller to respond.  From the moment he took the witness stand, the Russia investigation was over.

So Thursday night there cannot be a Mueller-like disaster.  From what we know, there is a clear path from the insurrection to the President’s Chief of Staff, documented in message after message.  And there’s a clear threat to the Vice President, not just from the mob chanting to “hang Mike Pence” and the gallows on the lawn, but tracing back to the Oval Office.  The Committee needs to make sure America gets the overview of those connections, up front, on Thursday night.

Norms and Crimes

Like any good criminal trial, the Committee can fill in the details over the next several hearings.  But they must capture America’s attention on Thursday night, to keep the nation involved, and to bring in the skeptics. 

And the final and perhaps most difficult task, the Committee must convince the American people that the organization behind the Insurrection was not just “violating norms”, or playing “hardball” politics.  The Committee must show that what the Trump Campaign did was criminal, violating Federal statute, and punishable in Federal prisons.  

It would be “nice” if they could show it going all the way to the “top”, but into the Oval Office is enough.  

The case has to be compelling and convincing.  And it all has to happen on Thursday night.

So if you noticed a couple of days without essays – here’s where I was.  It’s today’s Sunday Story.

Forty Years

For forty years I was a high school track coach.  Every year we would set goals as a team, like winning the league championship or our home invitationals.  We also set individual goals: improve on last year, score more team points, and for the few most gifted, talented and dedicated, compete at the State Championships. 

In Ohio it’s a difficult road to the State meet.  No matter how good you were during the season, it all comes down to head-to-head competition.  Only the top four in an event in the entry-level District meets get to compete at the Regional level, and again the top four at the four Regional meets earn a State berth.   Out of the thousands of boys who competed for the Watkins Track team from 1978 to 2017, only 77 gained the opportunity to be in the final sixteen competitors statewide, and “go to State”. 

Black and White

I’m not coaching anymore, but I found a way to “keep my hand in”. For decades I kept a “license” as an official, the “arbiter” of the sometimes obscure rules of track and field.  I originally got my license to make sure I knew all the rules of the sport I was coaching, but I didn’t do a lot of work as a practicing official.  Once I retired from coaching, I realized that I missed being on the track.  And I knew that there was a shortage of folks willing to put on the white shirt and black pants of officiating.  Black and white, shades without color, showing no favoritism to any side,  that’s what officiating is all about.  So I joined the “dark side” (as my coaching friends would say) and became a working official.

This year I officiated in twenty-nine track meets.  And for the past three days, I had the honor of being an official at the State Championship meet, returning to the Jesse Owens Track at “The” Ohio State University.  

Memories

There’s a lot of memories for me at the State Meet, bad and good.  I can remember the failures:  relay teams disqualified, the athlete who literally froze in the starting blocks when the gun went off, the jumpers who didn’t clear the opening bar.  And there were the struggles:  the athletes who reached the “podium”, the top eight in the entire state, but failed to achieve their own goals.  The ones who equaled the best, but lost on a technical tiebreaker, or whose legs failed them with only yards to go.  The strikingly sad faces on the podium, one step from the top.

And there were the successes:  the kids who did more than their best in the toughest competition, some who found their way to an unexpected state medal.  The relay teams overjoyed at just getting to the finals, the high jumper who was second in the highest competition in state history. And ultimately, towards the end of my career, the runner who dominated his race to stand atop the podium with a new state record (still stands today).  

Bill’s Crew

So when I stepped on the pole vault runway at the Jesse Owens track, there were a lot of memories to overcome.  I was the “rookie” in a highly experienced crew, led by a great official, Bill Swank, with years of state experience.  He set the tone:  we were there to help the athletes and the coaches have a great “State”, to do everything we could do to let them do their best, and to be the “calm” in the storm of competition at the highest level.  It’s not always been that way in the pole vault; for years my biggest worry at the state meet was how difficult the officials would make it.  But we wouldn’t be “those guys”, we would be the kinder, gentler officials.

As part of Bill’s seven-official crew I had a fantastic time.  We covered six highly competitive competitions on two different pole vault pits in two days.  We certified a national record clearance, and saw all of the struggles and triumphs of kids at the pinnacle of their high school careers.  And here’s the “inside story”:  we were silently cheering for every kid, on every vault.  We wanted them to succeed, all of them, and we were sad for the tears of failures, and joyed at the tears of success.

On the Team

Bill made sure we officials were “educated” as well.  All seven of us had handled many competitions single-handedly throughout the season.  But here we were part of an officiating “team”, each with a role.  Like any team we needed to play our part, not try to “takeover”.  And Bill himself stepped back and let us do our jobs, from the physical tasks of managing the pole mat, bars and standards, to the paperwork that is the absolute center of track and field officiating.  The paper “of record” determines the outcome – it has to be right. 

That’s a whole different level of track officiating for me.  I learned a lot, and we spent two full days in the absolute center of the Ohio pole vault world.  All of my old coaching friends were there as well, and some of the old vaulters that I coached along the way.  And a vaulter from Watkins, my old team, placed second in the state.  I coached her Dad.  She vaulted four inches higher than her best, performed better than she ever had, in the most important competition.  

And I got to call the vault.

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

Trust but Verify

Conducting elections in the United States is a “curious” process.  I guess if we were to create a new procedure, we would develop a “professional” class of vote counters.  They would be neutral, not aligned with any party, a kind of electoral “priesthood”.  They would be dedicated to preserving the integrity of the electoral process, our democracy.  But that’s not how America works.

From the beginning of Constitutional government, the United States was divided into partisan camps.  While George Washington tried to rise above the fray, directly below him in his Cabinet and Congressional leaders, the fight was “on”.  Treasury Secretary Hamilton and Vice President Adams became the Federalists; Secretary of State Jefferson and Speaker of the House Madison the anti-Federalists, later called Democratic-Republicans.  We were political partisans from the beginning. 

Americans are nothing if not practical.  In a democracy, counting the votes determines political power, and is too important to leave to chance, or to some “neutral” parties.  So instead, we aligned our election vote counters, now called Boards of Elections, to the political parties.  Here in Ohio there are an equal number of “card-carrying” Democrats and Republicans on each county Board of Elections.  And the department charged with supervising elections statewide, the Secretary of State for Ohio, is partisan, chosen by statewide election (and currently Republican). 

On the county level, the United States uses transparency to count votes.  Sitting in the room, making the decisions, are representatives of both political parties.  To quote a Republican President, Ronald Reagan, in elections we “…trust, but verify”.  

Keeping it Fair

And yet those Boards of Elections generally get the job done.  They recognize that while they are absolutely partisan, they are also entrusted with the basic “power” of democracy.  If the public doesn’t trust that the votes are accurate, then nothing else that happens in our government matters.  That’s what we see today: millions of Americans don’t trust the election results, so they don’t trust the government.

The partisan overview continues all the way to the precinct level, where voters cast their actual votes.  The poll workers themselves are neutral; they are hired based on a willingness to do the job.  Think of them like “voluntary” jurors.  But in the polling places the political parties can place “watchers”, absolute partisans who make sure that their party is treated “fairly”.  Those observers often have  legal rights to intervene if they feel the voting process is being unfairly applied.

We balance the neutral workers with the partisan observers.  And that goes all the way to counting the votes at the Board of Elections, where both parties carefully watch the process.  We’ve seen it: remember the 2000 election in Florida and the famous “bug-eyed” images of determining whether there was a “hanging chad” or not.

Subverting the Workers

We trust that the elections will be fair, but we verify from the lowest level.  Everyone in the polling place has a role in insuring a fair election process.  But what if one political party determined it was in their interest to completely disrupt the process, with the intent of creating delay and distrust in the actual vote?

That’s the goal of the Michigan Republican Party today.  Michigan is a polarized state, with a large geographic portion of the state Republican.  But geography doesn’t cast votes, people do, and almost half of all Michiganders live in the highly Democratic Detroit metro-area.  

Republican poll “watchers” in the Detroit precincts are nothing new, but the GOP is now trying a new tactic. They are recruiting partisan poll WORKERS, to serve as a Republican block to voting in the Democratic precincts.  They can slow the process, creating long lines, so that folks give up trying to vote.  Or they can challenge every step in the voter identification process, frustrating voters from casting their legal votes.  The effect will be fewer votes.  Fewer votes in the Detroit area precincts means fewer Democrats, and the Republicans can claim electoral victory.

Our Democracy

How do we know this is happening?  Thanks to Zoom-like technology, the meetings where the Republican strategy was outlined were recorded, and someone leaked the tape.  So we all now know that, in Michigan and in other states, the national Republican Party has taken the next step to disrupting the voting process.  They are now recruiting poll workers to do the job.

Is that illegal?  Not necessarily, but like a lot of other actions in the past several years, if violates the long-standing “norms” of the American electoral process.  It fits with the “Stop the Steal” plan to undermine confidence in the electoral process.  And it’s part of what evidently is the long-term plan of the Republican Party.  If they can’t win the majority of votes, then they can make sure that the majority of votes aren’t counted.

That’s not what a democracy is.  But it is where our democracy may be going.

Really not a Pink Floyd Fan – but their lyrics fit these times.

The School Solution

Whatever is wrong with our society, our “go to” solution is: let the schools fix it.  Kids aren’t getting fed – we feed them in the school.  Worry about child abuse – schools are the designated reporters, the first line of defense for kids.  Schools teach kids how to dress, how to share, how to behave.  Oh, and  there’s that pesky “readin’, ‘riten and ‘rithmetic” stuff.  And now schools are caught in the political crucible between our future diverse society, and our past majoritarian white culture.  Teach too far one way, or the other, and become the local, state or even national political punching bag.

We live in a society of anger and guns, a lethal combination unknown in any other modern nation today.  It IS a problem schools try to address.  They  encourage kids to “open up” about how they feel.  They tell them it’s OK to “tell” on friends who are angry, depressed, or suicidal.  And schools monitor social media, lunchroom conversations, teachers’ intuitions, hallway behaviors.  They are looking for a kid in trouble, or troubled, or a threat to himself or others.  

Lessons of Columbine

There were a lot of “school lessons” from the Columbine High School attack in 1999.  While some of us already knew it, schools “writ large” saw that there were “anonymous” kids floating through their buildings.  They weren’t “cool, smart, athletic,” or even “bad or loud”.  Nothing stood out, but some were leading lives of “quiet desperation” (Thoreau and Pink Floyd).  ). They were “Ciphers in the Snow”, a phrase taken from a 1974 short story.  And some fell into a lethal combination of suicide and notoriety.  A few of those were the ones that would come back as school shooters.

The boys who committed the Columbine atrocities had a “team picture” in the school yearbook the year before; the “Trench Coat Mafia”.  It was a joke, but a joke that had underlying issues that were more than serious.  After Columbine, each school began to look for their own disaffected, to see what might become of them. They banned trench coats, bandannas and chains, and they searched lockers for weapons and drugs.  It seemed that the many of the kids caught were often just looking for some way to get attention and help.  

How Schools Work

Schools are places where we want children to feel safe and comfortable, and less stressed.  That is the best attitude to have in the classroom learning new “stuff”.  The standardized testing regime of the late last century doesn’t help, but teachers learned to help kids deal with that. (Though the real stress may be on the teacher, as standardized testing becomes a large part of their teacher evaluation.  Kids sense stress in the adults in their lives – the tests don’t help).

The proposal is to “harden the schools” (ignore the sexual overtones that every fifteen year-old boy hears) and put armed guards at the “bulletproof” main entrances.   We already have government buildings that look exactly like that – we call them prisons.  They are “hardened”, inside and out.  And we know the attitude that creates with the inmates, trapped in a building with armed guards “watching over” them.   Why does anyone think that kids would feel any different, hiding behind barriers and guns?

The Shooter Equation

School shooters fit in a “mathematical” equation. They are invariably males, disaffected, usually cut off from family and friends.  These boys often have trauma in their life already; abuse and loss or bullying.  They seek out weapons in order to bolster their miserable self-image.  The “ultimate manliness” is the “Warrior”, with tactical body armor and high powered weapons.   They want notoriety, and they usually want to die (Politico).

We miss that last part of the equation.  Almost every school shooter is looking to die, whether they actually do or not.  In a warped mind, the school becomes the place where the guns are – or will soon arrive.  So to “go down in a blaze of glory,” go to the school.  If we put more armed guards there, then, of course, the “notoriety” might be even greater.

Without the disaffection and self-loathing, there’s no desire to “shoot-up” a school.  Without the weaponry, there isn’t the means to shoot fellow students.  The “real” solution to the uniquely American problem of school shooters, is to deal with both sides of that equation. 

Fix the Problem 

There is no question that school shootings are a mental health issue.  Of course:  no mentally sound person would commit such an act.  But only in the United States do we have the junction of mental illness and weapons.  And then we add not just guns, but the most powerful weapons available, for sale, with little restriction or control.

We can make our schools into prison-like fortresses.  We can spend billions of dollars to try to “defend” our kids from this problem.  But that action doesn’t deal with either side of the equation.  It simply says:  we can’t stop kids from becoming school shooters, all we can do is lock our kids away from them.  That’s just, “…another brick in the wall”.  

Or we can face reality, and deal with the real problem:  kids who get in a terrible mental state, and then have access to guns.  Schools can help with the first one.  It requires the will of a nation to overcome the second.

Tequila Sunrise

It’s Memorial Day, and an Eagles’ song comes to mind:  Tequila Sunrise.  We had the grown kids over for smoked ribs last night, and with our amazing Margarita machine (three pitchers at once!) made a lot of good drink to go with the good food.  Thank goodness the dogs were mindful of the evening – they didn’t get up until seven this morning. 

It’s Memorial Day, and for the first time in a very long time, I actually felt like calling Mom and Dad.  I do think about them a lot, but it’s not often that I just feel like picking up the phone and talking to them.  Mom passed away in 2011, Dad in 2016, so it’s really not possible to make the call.  But we talked a lot throughout their lives, often by phone, and always on Sundays and holidays.  So there’s that “motor memory” of connecting.  

You didn’t call before nine.  By nine they were both up, at the table, drinking coffee.  Before nine they’d answer the phone, but they weren’t really ready for a conversation.  We could talk about almost anything; Mom and Dad were always involved in the world.  This morning’s conversation would have been about school shootings and politics.  Mom would be happy that I retired; she always worried that something would happen at my school and I might get hurt.

Memories

And we would have talked about Memorial Day.  It was always a day of remembrance for them.   Mom and Dad both served in World War II,  it was the seminal event in their lives.  Not only did the offer up their lives for their country, but they met, fell in love, and married all in the crucible of world conflict.  Memorial Day is not Veterans Day; it’s a time to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice in their service.  But Mom and Dad lost lots of friends in their War, “the War” as they would say.  Memorial Day took them back to those times.  For them, like Dickens, it was “…The best of times, it was the worst of times”.  There was nothing worse than the losses, but there was nothing more involving, energizing, and intense than their war experiences.

“Their War” ended a whole lifetime ago, seventy-seven years.  Since then there have been American wars in Korea and Vietnam, Panama, the Balkans, Kuwait, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq.  We have asked our military to defend our national interest, and they have.  And there has been political turmoil about many of those wars, turmoil that has sometimes spilled over onto those just doing their duty.  It isn’t that every war the US has fought was “righteous”, but that’s not the fault of those soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice on all those foreign fields.

So on Memorial Day, we should remember those who sacrificed in all of those wars, whether we were in favor of them or not.  

There are two memories, “stories” I would share on this Memorial Day.  

Small Town Boy

The first is about my early teaching years living in the small town of Pataskala.  As a teacher I’d hear the kids talking about the “scary old guy” who would walk the streets of the town, talking to himself.  The kids didn’t know what to do, and made up all sorts of tales about him.  

I found out the real story.  He had been a kid, just like them, in 1943 in the middle of World War II.  He graduated from high school and went into the Navy to serve his country.  And he was on board a ship when it got torpedoed in the Pacific.  We don’t know exactly what happened on that ship, but we can imagine the terror of flames and explosions.  Eventually the order was given to abandon ship, and that young man, hardly a year out of high school, went into the sea.

Hours later he was pulled from the waves, physically undamaged.  But sometime in the crisis, from the chaos on deck and into the water, he lost his mind.  It turned inside itself, and he was never the same.  High school kids sign up for the military, and they know the risks.  They might die in combat, or come home injured or even disfigured.  But they don’t think about losing themselves out there in the battle.  But that’s what happened to him.

He lived with family here in town, and every morning he’d walk the streets, talking to himself.  The local restaurants knew his story, and he had a free coffee or breakfast whenever he stopped.  He was our little town’s “memorial” to the ultimate sacrifices of war.

A New Monument

And the second is about Mom and Dad.  It was around 2007, and they had not visited the new World War II monument in Washington.  So we loaded up in my Suburban, and did the trip “overland” along US 50 to the Capital.  It would be their last time to go, and we couldn’t walk the miles we used to in DC.  But we could go to the Mall, and Mom and Dad could see the memorial to “their War”:  to them.

Mom was in a wheelchair to save her strength, and the three of us explored the beautiful columns and water features of the monument to the “Greatest Generation”.  But what really struck them were the engravings on the wall, depicting iconic images of the War.  You could not only see them, but feel them, touching the figures in the bronze pictures.  Mom cried, Dad was solemn, and folks came up and thanked them for their service.  There were others from “the War” there as well, and Mom and Dad shared “the honor” with all those other World War II vets and all that did not live to see the monument. 

I’m glad I could take them to see it.  I’m honored that I was able to share that experience with them.  And I wish I could talk  to them about it on the phone today.

This is part two of a “Sunday Story”.  There’s no politics here, just stories about our “pack” of dogs here in Pataskala.

Every heroic Marvel comics character has an “origin story”.  Some are so familiar, they are in inscribed in the national memory.  Superman arrived on earth as a baby, a refugee from the planet Krypton.  Peter Parker was a teenager bit by a radioactive spider.  Batman was the rich kid Bruce Wayne who lost his parents to criminal violence.  

My wife Jenn and I have five dogs.  They are all “rescues”, and while we don’t have all the details, they each have their own “origin story”.  And those tales aren’t just “good stories”; their “origins” often explains their behavior later in life.  

These are their stories (“Chung-Chung” from Law and Order).

Lost Pet Recovery

Last week’s story highlighted our older dogs, Buddy and Atticus.   Both of them were “rescues” from the shelter, Buddy from Licking County and Atticus from Franklin.  About six months after we adopted Atticus, my wife Jennifer became involved in finding lost dogs.  It started locally, with a German Shepard that ran away from nearby Reynoldsburg in a storm.  Jenn was able to track the dog to the very busy intersection of Beecher Road and State Route 16.  She spent days and nights staking out a humane trap, sleeping in the truck in a parking lot and hoping to see and hear the trap door slam shut.

A took more than a week, but Jenn traced the Shepard to his “safe zone”, and he finally went into the well-baited trap.  The next day the Shepard was reunited with his family.  It was during that process that she met Don Corsmeier from Lost Pet Recovery,  the leader of the volunteer group that works all over the Midwest to help owners get their dogs back.  Don is a “master trapper”, and “LPR” helps hundreds of owners each year.

Rescues

There are lots of dogs.  Some are recovered for owners.  Some are rescued from bad situations, without any apparent owners.  For those dogs, LPR does all to find out where they came from.  But sometimes there just isn’t an answer.  Maybe they are strays (like Buddy), maybe they were abandoned, or maybe there was no way to reconnect, like Atticus.  I’m sitting at my desk now, typing this story.  Atticus is in his spot under the desk (Buddy is in his spot in the bathtub).  But on the couch are Louisiana and CeCe, and next to me is Keelie.  Those three were rescued without owners.  Once they came into our house (and into our bed), they had a home, and a pack, here.

Keelie

Keelie was the first.  She was wandering in the grass on the exit ramp between I-75 and another major highway in Northern Kentucky.  Once she was safe, LPR needed some place to “foster” her, while we searched for her owners.  But the search was futile, and Keelie stayed here while they looked.  Meanwhile, she fit into our “pack” from the first minute.  Atticus found a playmate, racing each other around our fenced-in backyard.  And old Buddy was perfectly happy to have a fellow young herding dog in the house.  When the word came back that we were unable to locate an owner, everyone in this house sighed with relief.  Keelie had a new home.

She is the “mother” of the pack.  But she’s not all-accepting.  It takes a bit for Keelie to warm-up to new people.  And, not surprising consider her “origin” story, Keelie is deathly afraid of large trucks.  A walk on the street is great, until the garbage truck comes by.  Then Keelie can’t stop shaking, almost frozen in fear.  She remembers those nights beside the busy Interstate, with the trucks roaring up the exit ramp, right beside her.  

Keelie must have had puppies in her prior life.  She is the caretaker dog to everyone in the house.  When Jenn or I get sick, Keelie is the first dog to try to comfort us.  When one of the other dogs gets “in trouble”, Keelie tries to intervene to keep them “safe”.  If there’s an ear infection, she tries to fix it, a “boo-boo” from rough-housing, and she works to heal it. 

Lou 

And her biggest project was our next rescue, Louisiana.  I’ve told Lou’s origin story in great detail in earlier posts.  The short version:  LPR read about a year old (or so) puppy, left abandoned and broken in the parking lot of Louisiana State University in Baton, Rouge.  He had two broken legs and a dislocated hip, and heartworms as well.  The rescue that had him in Louisiana couldn’t afford to fix him, and he was slated for euthanasia. 

His story struck the LPR crew, and three of them, including Jenn,  jumped in a truck, drove to Baton Rouge, and brought Lou back.  The folks at Ohio State Vet Hospital put him back together, relocating his hip and putting a plate in one leg.  The other leg healed on its own.  And then Lou needed a place and time to recover.  After all of this, it shouldn’t surprise you that Jenn’s office was “the perfect” place.

In the Pack

We had every intention of just “fostering” Lou.  But his rehab went from October to February.  And then another three months were required of heartworm treatment.  By the time all of that was over, Lou was “in the pack”, fast friends with Keelie, competitive ally of Atticus, and always respectful of Buddy.  By summer, his rehabilitation went from short walks around the front yard, to chasing and running with Keelie and Atticus in the back.  

Lou is fixated on the squirrels that share the trees in back.  The squirrels are smart, they sit in the high branches and taunt him, as he shows his full recovery by leaping up at them.  But he can’t catch them, and a ground to air truce persists in our little domain.

Lou is a talker.  When he wants something, he has a nasal whine to let you know.  And when he really is annoyed, he has the “pterodactyl” noise that grabs everyone’s attention.  He’s been through a lot, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that visits to the vet are always traumatic.  All those smells, all those noises, are only reminders of pain for him.  So we have to drug him up before we go, leading to “Stoner Lou”, a flashback to the months of drugs while he recovered from surgery.  

But Lou is also a lover, a snuggler who will walk up, drop his forehead, and place his head in your lap.  He loves the attention, and makes sure he gets his share.  

Four dogs – that was certainly enough – we thought.

CeCe

But then Don rescued CeCe, a young pup, from a rain filled drain pipe over near Dayton.  LPR was unable to locate an owner, and we placed her with a family with lots of young children.  It might have been a perfect fit, but CeCe was just as wild as the three and five year old’s. Reasonably, that was too much, and Jenn and I volunteered to go pick her up and take care of her for a couple of weeks – until another foster was found.

That was May, a year ago.  While LPR searched for a perfect fit, I think they knew that CeCe was already in one.  And while Jenn and I resisted the idea of a fifth dog, “Baby Yoda CeCe puppy” (she looks a lot like the Star Wars character) grew on us, and on the rest of the pack.

Glasses

Keelie found someone to mother.  Lou had a snuggle buddy, and a lower leg chewing tormentor as well.  Atticus had one more playmate, and Buddy, well, CeCe respects his elder status.  CeCe is a puppy.  She loves to chew glasses:  reading glasses, sun glasses, and Jenn and my prescription glasses.  There isn’t an earpiece in the house without some chew marks.  We’ve learned to make sure that all eyewear are safely out of puppy reach.  

But she’s selective.  She gathers loose shoes on her “bed” in the family room, more of a collection than damage.  And when she got my wallet, she left the leather and the credit cards alone.  She carefully extracted all of the cash and chewed it into small pieces.  I got to use the phrase at a concession stand that didn’t take credit cards:  “ But my dog ate my cash!!”

She’s a snuggler as well.  In the middle of the night we often find her pressed up against one of us, sliding under the blanket, looking to stay warm.  And when she needs to go out, we often find out by a careful lick in the ear.  But when there’s thunder, she’s even closer.  In fact they all are:  memories of nights out alone, searching for shelter from the storms.

Five Dog Nights

Five dogs can be a chore.  It’s ten meals a day, twenty paws to clean when it rains, always one who needs to go out in the middle of the night.  Setting up vet visits can be high order scheduling (and financing).  And it’s difficult for Jenn and I to travel.  They “pack” can do a full day at home, some in crates and some not, but that’s about as far as we go.  We did get away last month for a weekend thanks to our son and his girlfriend, but that was our first time in over two years.

But there’s always joy and excitement when we come home.  There’s the surprise “snuggle” in the middle of the day and the happy racing in the backyard on a sunny summer afternoon. And there’s the quiet calm, even in the storm, in our king sized bed when everyone’s found their place.   

And that’s the story of our five dog pack.

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

Pro-Choice

I am pro-choice, and always have been.  My thought process is pretty simple.  I’m a man, and I can’t put myself in the place of a woman who has to make the decision to have an abortion or not.  And, while I understand and appreciate that different folks have differing views on the beginning of life; that moment is an ethical/religious decision.  What is the belief of one person is not the belief of another.  And like all religious tenets, I don’t have the right to force my religious view onto anyone else.  That’s what pro-choice has always been about – the choice that others get to make, not that I or other “old white men” get to decide.

And I have always understood how folks get to be “pro-life”, or at least “pro-birth”.  I worked for a Democratic United States Congressman who was “pro-life”.  It was back in the 1970’s, and the partisan line that now divides Republicans and Democrats over this issue wasn’t delineated yet.  It was perfectly acceptable for  Democratic operatives in the office to be pro-choice, while the “boss” was pro-life.  The Congressman was deeply religious, an Irish Roman Catholic from the West side of Cincinnati, and he listened to his faith leaders. 

Pro-Life

But I do make a distinction between “pro-birth” and “pro-life”.  My Congressman was truly “pro-life”.  He was opposed to abortion, but in favor of early childhood care, Head Start programs, aid to women and children, and all the other issues that improved the lives of those children who came into the world, wanted or not.  He was “pro-life”.

But there are many today who are “pro-birth”.  They don’t want abortion, but they are unwilling to “pay the cost” of sustaining the lives they demand come into the world.  In Oklahoma, in Texas, and in all of the states that are moving to end abortion, they are doing nothing; nothing to care for the mothers that are forced into full-term pregnancy, or the children they are mandating to term.  That’s not their problem.  They are taking all of the credit for ending abortion, but none of the responsibility for what happens thereafter.

Pro-life means for life, not just for birth.  

We are two days after the latest massacre, of children, in the United States.  This is a uniquely American problem, a toxic mix of our culture, our politics, and the economics of gun manufacturing.  There are now nineteen more children who will not see a full-term life.  

Pro-Birth

Texas Governor Greg Abbott determined to place the blame on the lack of mental health facilities in Uvalde. He invoked the inevitability of a “madman with a gun”, a Satan-incarnate as inexorable and unforeseeable as the tornado.  Candidate for Texas Governor Beto O’Rourke interrupted the Governor’s press conference yesterday, to raise a “pro-life” point.  He called Abbott out – placing the blame on laws that allowed an eighteen year-old shooter easy access to semi-automatic rifles and ammunition.  It was an ugly but necessary encounter (CNN).  

The insurmountable grief of the tragedy feels like it should be beyond politics.  But, of course, it’s not.  The absolute failure of our government to protect us from these continuing tragedies can’t be ignored, and more importantly, should not be deflected as just “evil” or “inevitable” or a failure in mental health.  Every country has mental health issues, but only one country has this plague of mass shootings.  Governor Greg Abbott has done nothing but encourage Texans to buy more guns, bigger guns, guns with all the “bells and whistles”.  He can’t deflect from his own words and actions, and Beto had the courage to call him to task.

Butcher’s Bill

Abbott and his Texas cohorts claim to be “pro-life”.  But their actions are obvious.  They are “pro-birth”, demanding that their own religious views be followed by others.  But they aren’t pro-life.  It they were, they’d look at their own state: mass shootings in Uvalde, El Paso, Midland-Odessa, Sutherland Springs and Santa Fe High School.  The butcher’s bill in just Governor Abbott’s term is 87 dead in mass killings (Texas Tribune).   If they were pro-life, they’d do something about it and take action to literally stop the bleeding.

They would follow the basic founding rights of America:  the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  For 87 people in Governor Abbott’s term, and so many more, those rights were denied by a man with a gun.

They aren’t pro-life at all.

Old Sayings

There’s an old saying, “It’s as American as apple pie”.  That’s usually a good thing:  fireworks on the Fourth of July, family around the table for Thanksgiving dinner, flags at veteran’s graves on Memorial Day.  We Americans are proud of who we are, and the traditions we’ve created.  We believe in our nation, our “exceptionalism”, and the goodness of Americans despite the current political divisions.

But there’s definitely one thing that’s as “American as apple pie” that we should be ashamed of.  That’s mass shootings, now just ten days after the shootings in Buffalo.  Twenty-one victims, nineteen of them children, killed in Uvalde, Texas.  It’s as American as apple pie.

Thoughts and Prayers

The police were there as the shootings were occurring, just like they were in Buffalo and so many other mass shootings in the United States.  But the damage was already done, the children dead, the shooter “in charge”.  This is not a “police response” issue.  They can’t get there fast enough.  In Buffalo it was near a minute, sixty seconds.  But ten were still dead.  At Uvalde, the school resource officer was there, with his fellow officers right behind. The “good guys with the guns” just aren’t fast enough.

The word is already going forth from politicians:  sending thoughts and prayers, heartfelt sorrow.  And many are saying, “it’s not the time to discuss change”.  To quote the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas kids from Parkland, I call “BS”.  Politicians are elected to solve problems, and make our world safer.  For God’s sake, is there anything more basic than protecting our lives from absolute random violence, and even more protecting our children.

Awash in Guns

But we haven’t.  Schools have tried since Columbine back in 1999, and even before.  But there is no protection, no fortification, no counseling, that can keep mass shooters away from our school, our church, our grocery store.  This is not a world problem.  When you hear folks talking about “helping the mentally ill”, that too is a “BS” answer.  Every nation has mentally ill people, but not every nation, in fact, not any modern nation has the level of mass shootings as the United States.  Not even close.  This is not a mental problem, this is a gun problem.

We are a nation awash in weapons.  There are 120.5 guns for every 100 Americans.  There are so many guns, that “legal sales” regulations would only begin to resolve the problem.  The “black market” for guns is so big, it drives criminal activity.  If you have a pistol, I’ll get an automatic pistol.  If you have an automatic pistol, I’ll find a semi-automatic rifle.  You wear Kevlar, I’ll find “cop-killer” bullets.  

Solutions

Other nations have faced this crisis and solved it.  In 1996, a shooter killed sixteen children in Scotland.  The United Kingdom changed their laws, restricted weapons.  When six died in a mass shooting in 2021, it was the first in a decade.

In 1996 Australia had a mass shooting in Tasmania, killing thirty-five people with a semi-automatic rifle.  They banned automatic and semi-automatic weapons, and they instituted tough background checks. Since then there have been sixteen mass shootings in Australia.  In the United States, there have been thousands.  For a world comparison of school shootings – check this inter-active map.  The United States is, by several orders of magnitude, the worst.

Our Choice

Some Americans have made a choice.   They look at the 2^nd Amendment, and determine that it is the right of every American, no matter their mental state or intent, to own a high capacity weapon.  They have written off all possibility of controlling the weapons, claiming that “people kill people, not guns”.  But, if you look at the rest of the world, that simple “spin phrase” is not valid.  People kill people, but America have provided them with the most advanced tools to use in the process.   So Americans are choosing to live in a country where nineteen young lives can be snuffed out in an instant.

Supreme Court Justice Jackson once wrote, “…the Constitution is not a suicide pact”.  He recognized that an absolutist view of any part of the Constitution (in that case, the First Amendment) was never the intent of the Founding Fathers.  But it seems we are determined to commit suicide:  with guns.

Twenty-seven school shootings this year (NPR). Two hundred mass shootings (four or more shot or killed, excluding the shooter) already this year.  

It’s as American as apple pie.

My Constitution

My Denison University major was “self-designed”:  a Bachelors of Arts in “American Political Studies”.  Instead of the usual thirty-six hours or forty hours of classes (nine or ten classes) I had a whopping ninety hours in my major (I graduated in four years with 136 hours).  I studied politics, American and world history, geography and sociology in preparation for a life in politics.  And I even spent an entire semester in Washington DC taking courses and working in the Congress, and another whole semester as a professional campaigner.  

I took that knowledge and ultimately decided against a political career.  Instead, I taught Social Studies to middle school and high school kids for twenty-eight years.  Everything I learned at Denison, and in a semester of Law School at the University of Cincinnati, and in earning a Masters of Education degree at Ashland University; was aimed at getting more knowledge to take into the classroom (and onto the athletic fields).   

All of that to say that I am highly familiar with the Constitution of the United States.  It’s not just something I learned in high school and college.  It’s a document that I taught, year in-and-out, for two score and eight years.  

Suffrage

I listen over and over to the claim by many Republicans that the 2020 election was somehow stolen. And even those Republicans who courageously stood against the former President and said it wasn’t, still support laws that would make it more difficult to vote. This all after the 2020 election, where more Americans voted than ever before, a full two-thirds of those eligible. And they voted in spite of the pandemic.

There are several Amendments impacting the “right to vote”. The 15^th Amendment guaranteed the right to vote to every race, and the 19^th Amendment added every sex. The 23^rd Amendment gave the citizens of Washington, DC the right to vote and the 24^th prevented paying taxes to vote. The 26^th lowered the voting age to eighteen.

Less directly, the 14^th Amendment guarantees that every citizen is a citizen of their own state as well, with all the rights and privileges. Those rights and privileges cannot be taken away without due process of law, and they must be applied equally to all citizens. Certainly, one of those rights is the right to vote.

Electing the President

But when you look at how the President of the United States is chosen, the infamous “Electoral College”, there’s not a mention as to how states choose their electors. In the original Constitution, Article 2, section 1 states that the electors for President will be chosen in a process determined by the State’s legislature. When the process was re-written after the election of 1800, the 12^th Amendment mentioned the electors of each state, but made no mention of how those electors are chosen.

So on that basis, perhaps the former President’s supporters aren’t wrong. If the Constitution doesn’t guarantee citizens the “right” to vote for Presidential electors, then the entire “Green Bay Sweep” plan of January 2021 might have been, legal. That plan and other actions tried to get Donald Trump re-elected even after the votes were counted . The goal was to get the state legislatures to ignore the counted vote of their state, and chose to give the electors to the candidate who lost instead of the one who won.

So, is there a part of the Constitution of the United States that guarantees a citizen’s right to vote for President of the United States? 

Sort of.

The Twenty-Fourth

The Twenty-Fourth Amendment banned laws that forced voters to pay a fee (or tax) to cast their ballot.  That was the purpose of the Amendment, ratified in 1964. It guarantees voting wouldn’t be restricted by an ability to pay.  The actual amendment states:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.

24th Amendment – US Constitution

The wording is clear.  The 24^th asserts that citizens have a “right” to vote for “…electors for President or Vice President”, and that right cannot be denied for failure to pay a tax.  So if citizens have right to vote for electors, and it’s written into the US Constitution, then that means something.

It means an action of a State Legislature to take that right away would be un-Constitutional.  Or that to encourage state legislatures to ignore the votes, the “will of the people”, would also be un-Constitutional.  And while committing an un-Constitutional act is not (surprisingly) a crime, it definitely cannot have the force of law. 

For an un-Constitutional act to be a crime, there must be “enabling legislation” passed with criminal penalties. The 18^th Amendment banned intoxicating alcohol in the country, but it was a law passed by Congress, the Volstead Act, that prohibited its manufacture and sale, and created criminal penalties for doing so. 

Law Debate

My Constitutional scholar friends will say, “But the 24^th Amendment clearly is meant to ban poll taxes, not to guarantee a right to vote for Presidential electors”.  But as we all know, the language of the Constitutional Amendments cannot be simply ignored, can it?  I mean, look at the 2^nd Amendment, which clearly defines that: 

A well-regulated militia being necessary for the security of the free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. 

2nd Amendment – US Constitution

Does the 24^th Amendment say you can take away the right to vote for Presidential electors for other reasons, just not by charging a tax to vote?  That is not what the Amendment intended.  The Amendment states as a right of citizens:  the right to vote for Electors for President and Vice President.  The State Legislatures cannot just ignore that, nor can the Federal Courts of the United States, and certainly not the US Congress.

Oh wait: the Courts have absolutely disconnected the “well-regulated militia” part from the “keep and bear arms” part of the 2nd Amendment. They have re-defined the “militia” as every able-bodied citizen. That “disarms” it from “modifying” the “right to bear”. But they don’t ignore it.

The 24th makes all of the different state actions to ignore the peoples’ votes, un-Constitutional. Voting for Presidential Electors is a Constitutional right; and it’s our right. It’s right there in black and white.

Now all we have to do is fight to keep it.

Car Wreck

We’ve all been there.  You’re traveling northbound on I-71 from Cincinnati to Columbus, when, all of a sudden, traffic comes to a crawl.  You check all of your travel “media” to see what’s going on, but there are no reports available.  Should I be in the left lane, the right lane, which line should I choose?  And finally, after twenty minutes of crawling along, playing with the radio and watching the “lane-switchers” trying to get ahead – you finally see what’s going on.

There’s a semi on its side – but it’s on the southbound side of the highway.  There are no obstructions on the northbound side, just “rubber-neckers” slowing down to see the crash.  We could be on I-270 headed for home already.  But everyone needs to look, to see what happened, to analyze the accident pattern and hypothesize the cause.  We all want to watch.

If it Bleeds, It Leads

It’s frustrating to listen to the media discuss the 2022 primaries.  The Democratic candidates are generally considered an after-thought.  Sure, Tim Ryan was a shoe-in in Ohio, and John Fetterman in Pennsylvania had a stroke to make his Senate race a little more interesting, but there really isn’t much coverage of what the Democrats are saying or doing or how they’re voting.

And why is that?

Former President Donald Trump was not much good at governing, but he does have one “super-power” as a politician.  He is able to take “all the air out of the room”.  When Trump gets involved, he makes himself the center of attention, even when he isn’t the one running for office.  We see it time and time again.  Ohio’s Republican Senate primary had multiple candidates, with all but one trying to prove how “Trumpy” they were.  But the real question here in Ohio was, who would Trump himself support.  The winner, both with Trump and in the balloting:  venture capitalist and Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance.  

Media coverage wasn’t really about parsing the differences between Vance and former State Treasurer Mandel, or Matt Dolan or Jane Timkin.  It was all about which candidate would receive the anointment of the former President, and whether that would be enough to push him (or her) over the top.  It was.

Pennsylvania

The same kind of thing happened in Pennsylvania.  Dr. Mehmet Oz didn’t even live in Pennsylvania until a year ago.  His primary qualification for the US Senate is that he played a doctor on TV ( and actually is one).  The question in his campaign for the Republican Senate nomination should have been whether a “carpet-bagging” TV star was better qualified to run for Senate than Washington, Pennsylvania born and former Under-Secretary of Treasury David McCormick.

But that issue wasn’t really mentioned.  What was the “critical” point, leading to a near-tie in the Pennsylvania Republican vote?  Would the former “Apprentice” star endorse the TV Doctor?  When Trump did, it put Oz in the hunt for the primary win. Those votes are still be counted.

In Georgia, the Governor’s race should be a pitched fight between former Senator David Perdue and the incumbent Brian Kemp.  Instead, the race is about Trump backing a “loser” in Perdue, and former Vice President Mike Pence jumping on the Kemp bandwagon to “differentiate” himself from the former President.  

Rubber Necks

We are watching the cars wreck.  The media is focused on Trump’s influence.  The Democrats are waiting in the wings.  They have strong candidates in Stacey Abrams and John Fetterman and Tim Ryan, even though “history” shows us that the mid-term elections almost always go against the sitting President’s party.  

Some analysts are making a big deal about Republican versus Democratic turnout in the primaries.  “Republicans are motivated to vote, while Democrats are disappointed and disinterested” they claim.  But there is another way to look at this.  Democrats have many single strong candidates in play.  Whether it was Tim Ryan and Nan Whaley in Ohio, or John Fetterman and Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, or Stacey Abrams and Raphael Warnock in Georgia.  And Dems weren’t waiting for a “canonization” from Mara Lago, or even from the White House. 

The media recognizes a good car wreck when they see one.  And we Dems are all “rubber-necking” as the Republican Party continues to carene into a Trumpian nightmare.  The question is, will we drive to the polls in November and make a difference, or get stuck watching the wreck?

This is part one of a “Sunday Story”.  There’s no politics here, just stories about our “pack” of dogs here in Pataskala.

Marvel Comics

Every heroic Marvel comics character has an “origin story”.  Some are so familiar, they are in inscribed in the national memory.  Superman arrived on earth as a baby, a refugee from the planet Krypton.  Peter Parker was a teenager bit by a radioactive spider.  Batman was the rich kid Bruce Wayne who lost his parents to criminal violence.  

My wife Jenn and I have five dogs.  They are all “rescues”, and while we don’t have all the details, they each have their own “origin story”.  And those tales aren’t just “good stories”; their “origins” often explains their behavior later in life.  

These are their stories (“Chung-Chung” from Law and Order).

Buddy

Buddy is our oldest, somewhere around ten years old (as a rescue, your never quite sure).  When we got him, they said he was a three-month old puppy, but an examination of his teeth showed him to be closer to a year-old.  But he was small, so the “puppy” image was still there.  

We got Buddy from the local shelter.  He had already “failed” in another home.  He was definitely a “nipper”, not serious bites, but constant nips.  And when he arrived at our home, I wasn’t sure it was going to work here either.  He bonded with Jenn (literally in the car on the way home from the shelter) but for a while he wasn’t quite so sure of me.  We worked a lot on the nipping, and  Buddy began to settle in. 

But he really didn’t feel a part of our “pack” (we had two other dogs at the time) until one night, we let him sleep with the rest of us in bed instead of in his crate.  Overnight, his attitude completely changed, and it has stayed that way ever since.  There’s something in the “acceptance” of sleeping in bed with us, that seems to make all the difference to these dogs, all lost or rejected by others.  (Now with five dogs, we have a king-sized bed!). 

Clues and Miracles

We don’t know Buddy’s exact origin story, but there were some behaviors that gave us clues.  Buddy loves women, but he isn’t so sure of men, particularly men with hats and definitely men with sunglasses.  Make that hat a hardhat, and Buddy is definitely not a happy guy.  And Buddy cannot stand “beeps”, on phones, on TV, and most importantly, the backup signal on trucks and machinery.  Was Buddy found on a construction site, with hard-hatted workers and moving equipment?

What we do know is Buddy seeks shelter when he’s scared.  His two “safety zones”:  underneath our platform bed, and in the bathtub.  It doesn’t takes much to send him there, a truck on the street, or a TV commercial with beeps.  And when we have guests at the house, Buddy will often hit the bathtub, often to the surprise of those later using the facility!

Buddy is a medical miracle.  In 2016 he developed a lump on his throat, that turned out to be lymphoma.  In dogs, even with surgery, his life expectancy was no more than two years.  But the good folks led by oncologist Dr. Erin Malone at Med Vet in Worthington, removed the tumor, and Buddy went on an experimental chemo-therapy for eleven months.  He not only survived, he thrived.  Now more than six years later, he’s a fat and happy senior citizen.  He loves cheese, carrots, and whatever else he can get.  And he’s a great “bar dog”, happy to sit under a table without attention:  as long as a few spare French fries make it his way from time to time.

Northeast Rescue

We lost Buddy’s pack-mates, including his close friend and “mentor”, our amazing Yellow Lab, Dash.  Dash was an “old soul”, who showed Buddy the ropes of living in the Dahlman household.  When Dash suddenly died (cancer as well) Buddy was alone, and sad.

Jenn and I went to Florida for the winter, and Buddy was a great “camper” dog.  And we decided that one dog was just fine for us.  But when we got back home, the spirit and scent of Dash was still in the house, and Buddy seemed sad once again.  So we took it as a sign when a dog that looked almost exactly like Dash appeared on the euthanasia list of the Franklin County Shelter.

Shelters have an incredibly tough job.  Dogs arrive in all kinds physical and psychological conditions.  With limited budgets, there’s only so much the shelter can afford to do to help each dog, and sometimes the compassionate thing is to euthanize them.  This dog had severe ear infections that looked like they would require expensive surgery.  The Shelter wouldn’t adopt him out, but they would allow him to be taken by a Lab Rescue.  Otherwise – the Shelter couldn’t afford him.

So we became a “branch” of the Northeast Ohio Lab Rescue (with their permission, of course)  – and went and got our new guy.  The two year-old Lab was already named with the “dignified” moniker of Atticus so  we started  him as “Atticus Finch Dahlman”.   We took him to our wonderful vet here in Pataskala, Dr. Hickin, who diagnosed his ear issues as food allergies.  Atticus went on a diet of salmon and sweet potatoes (you can buy that), and his ears, itching, and hearing all improved immensely.  Soon, he too joined us in bed, and we had another Lab in the house.

Atticus

But we also discovered that while Dash had a “deep soul”, Atticus had a “screw loose”.  He was renamed “Atticus Baddicus Dahlman”; if there was trouble to be found, he could find it.  Atticus was incredibly anxious, and had serious separation issues.  While he’s better, now four years later, still if we leave the house for a few hours then come back in time for dog-dinner, he’s still too upset to eat.  He wants to – but he just can’t.

Unlike Buddy, Atticus wasn’t a good traveler.  It took him hours and miles to settle in the car, and he never really got used to the camper.  While he did spend several weeks on the road with us in Florida, in the end it was never a great fit for him. 

Old Memories

And we discovered quirks with Atticus that gave clues to his “origin” story.  Whenever Atticus gets anxious or excited, he spins in narrow circles.  Our best guess:  he was crated in a small cage, and the only motion he could make was tight circles within the walls.  And Atticus had scars along the bridge of his nose and is very “reactive” to chain link or slat fences.  Did he stick his nose through the cage, causing the scars?  And finally, Atticus is a wonderful dog, but reacts badly to being cornered, under a table, or between barriers.  Whatever caused that, it’s a memory he can’t get rid of.

Atticus in now five years old, approaching middle-age.  His life, and Buddy’s, dramatically changed during the Covid pandemic.  Not only did we stop traveling,  but both Jenn and I were in the house most of the time.  And our “pack” of two grew, as we gained three more “rescues”, all first as “foster dogs”.  But we (mostly me) are really failed foster parents. Once a dog is in our pack, it’s hard to let them go.

But that’s next week’s story.

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

Who Replaces What

“Replacement Theory” is the idea that those “liberal, progressive, socialist Democrats” (like me) want to bring People of Color into the United States in order to replace those “original” white people living here now.  By bringing in People of Color, either legally or illegally across the southern border, “them Democrats” are trying to “win”, because Peoples of Color will vote for them instead of Republicans.  

“Replacement Theory” is being pushed by the right-wing media, particularly Tucker Carlson on Fox News.   It amplifies the whole “threat at the border” routine, the idea that thousands, perhaps millions of Central Americans are poised to overrun the United States, taking all the jobs, and then “outvoting” the “original white” Americans.  It might seem laughable, like the non-existent “migrant caravans” that showed up only during elections, but it became deadly serious last weekend in Buffalo, New York. Ten people of color were shot down in the grocery store for being “replacements”.

Just because:  unless you can claim to be a Native American, there “ain’t no” original white Americans.  We are all descended from migrants:  mine came from Alsace, France in the 1870’s (they were Jewish, too), and London England in 1946.  So the very idea of being an “original white” American doesn’t really work.  And if there’s some sub-definition of “original”, like someone who immigrated in the early 1800’s, well that would disqualify most white Americans today as well.

And “Replacement Theory” is coupled with more “traditional” anti-Semitism.  People of Color are at the border, but Jews are somehow orchestrating this.  That’s how we ended up with Charlottesville and the Nazi-like torchlight march of sports-shirt and khaki clad men yelling “Jews will not replace us”, or the “Camp Auschwitz” T-Shirt at the Insurrection.

Theorem One

So here’s a Government teacher doing simple math.  This sounds like one of those “theorems” I vaguely remember from junior year geometry. (What I really remember is my teacher, Mr. Parker, dipping his fingers in the chalk tray, then licking them clean).  

1. People of Color tend to vote Democrat
2. If there are more people of Color, then there would be more Democrats
3. Democrats are in favor of more migrants coming to the United States
4. Migrants are mostly People of Color
5. Therefore, more migrants means that there will be more Democrats.

Of course there’s one major flaw in the logic between ‘D’ and ‘E’.  Migrants, legal or illegal, are not citizens of the United States.   They can’t vote.  (Of course, then you throw in the “Big Lie” of election fraud, saying that migrants are voting to “fix” that problem).

Theorem Two

1. There are migrants illegally crossing the Southern Border
2. Illegal migrants are coming to the United States to look for work
3. Illegal migrants take jobs that don’t pay as well
4. Therefore, Illegal migrants are taking jobs from “Legal Americans”. 

A, B, and C are definitely valid.  Most migrants (legal or illegal) do take jobs that don’t pay as well.  But the unemployment rate in the United States is just over three percent, as low as it’s been for years.  And there’s an obvious shortage of workers at the lowest wage levels.  In restaurants, the lawn service industry and other low-wage service jobs, you constantly hear the refrain, “There’s not enough workers, no one wants to work”.  But if that were true, why would the unemployment rate be so low?

And, by the way, if you need more workers – there’s thousands waiting right across the Southern border, ready to come to America to fulfill their dreams.  American citizens aren’t being “replaced” on the job market.  There is a labor shortage in the United States, which has allowed many Americans to take better paying jobs. Where’s the kid flipping burgers for $10/hour at McDonalds now?  She’s at Amazon, making $17/hour “fulfilling” orders.

Entitlement

So what’s really going on that causing people, particularly white males, to fall for this “Replacement Theory” nonsense?  There are two root causes to this.  The first is the loss of white “entitlement”.  

White entitlement was the “American Way” through the mid-1960’s.  White boys got into college, white men got the management jobs, white men were Mayors and  Congressmen and Governors.  It wasn’t just People of Color who were denied the opportunities, it was most women as well.

Then things began to change.  The Civil Rights movement drew attention to the fact that Black people were denied educational opportunities because of their race and the women’s right’s movement made the same claim.  So instead of white men getting ninety percent of the enrollment in colleges and jobs in business, the “opportunity pool” was divvied up among different categories.  Now white men (and boys)  competed with Black men and boys, and white women and girls, and all the other categories of human backgrounds.

And for some of those white men, it just wasn’t “fair”.  Their fathers and their older brothers got their “ticket” (schools, jobs) so much easier.  And instead of rising to the competition, some just took the loss, and looked to blame someone else.  They placed that blame on the someone else that “replaced” them.

History

The second cause is a false sense of history.  This is American education’s fault to some extent.  A traditional high school history can make it seem like there were only white men influencing the course of the United States since the Mayflower landed at Plymouth (but not on the “rock”).  That’s not a valid premise:  women, People of Color, Jews, Native Americans all played a vital role in American development.  But if you’re not taught that, there’s no reason for you to think differently.  And that creates another false sense of entitlement, as if “white men” were the only ones who earned the right to be “Americans”. 

That’s what makes the current nonsense over “Critical Race Theory” so dangerous.  It’s being used to literally “white-wash” school curriculums, so that the “white man’s place” in American history is secured.  It simply prolongs the false sense of “entitlement”.

A Truth

America is changing.  Within the next decade, the majority of the United States will not be “white”.  White people will still be the biggest racial group, but they will no longer be more than fifty percent.  We, the People of the United States, are becoming more diverse.  We are Black, we are Asian, we are Pacific Islanders, we are Latino, we are Hispanic, we are Islamic, we are Jewish, and we are White.  And like a lot of our kids today, many of us are mixes of many of those races and cultures.

And that truth can’t be changed.  It can only be denied, by those who are trying to keep old, unfair, and undemocratic ways alive.

Big Lies

To get people to believe propaganda, you get a “believable” lie, and you tell it over and over again with absolute sincerity.  It’s what the Nazi’s did so effectively in Germany, it’s what Orwell wrote about in 1984, and it’s what Putin’s trying to do in Russia now about his disaster in Ukraine.   The United States is not immune to big lies.  

We are living in an age of Big Lies today.  There’s the named “Big Lie”, that the election of 2020 was somehow stolen by the Democrats.  More than thirty million Americans BELIEVE that it’s true.  There’s the “Big Lie” of the so-called Critical Race Theory crisis.  There’s this Big Lie” of Replacement Theory.  And there’s the old lies of anti-Semitism – that’s somehow Jews really run the world.  

All of these would be laughable if they didn’t have such serious consequences for America.  Democracy depends on an educated electorate.  It’s why the Founding Fathers provided for public education even before the Constitution was written.  But educated means understanding reality, not seeing things through the prism of lies.  If we allow those lies to replace the truth, the loss of our Democracy may be the true “replacement”.

History Teacher

I grew up steeped in the history of World War II.  My parents were both veterans of the war, from two different armies.  Dad was a Warrant Officer in the United States Army, Mom a member of the British Special Operations Executive, Churchill’s “private spies”.   My parents old friends were World War II veterans as well. The after-dinner conversations often wandered back to those times.  

It’s no wonder I grew up to be a history teacher.  I was learning history from the very beginning.  I always took a special interest in World War II: the clear black and white contrast of Fascism versus Democracy, the sudden failure to the onslaught of attack, and the long struggle to a final victory.  It was personal –  the Nazi’s dropped bombs on my Mom. She hid in a “Morrison Shelter”, a metal box in the dining room. My grandparents and Mom climbed into it when the sirens went off.  In the daytime there was a cloth over it – it served as the dining room table.

And of course, but for World War II, I wouldn’t exist.  My parents fell in love in London, in the middle of the war, as the bombs fell.  

Staying Neutral

One of the fascinations of the War was how nations responded, first to the threat of Fascism, and then to the reality of war.  The United States, for example, tried to “hide” behind its oceans.  It wasn’t until the Japanese reached out to attack at Pearl Harbor, that the final decision was made to enter the conflict.  It was over two years after the Germans crossed the Polish border to begin their war of conquest. 

There were two nations in Europe that managed to maintain neutrality in this existential struggle between good and evil.  Switzerland was able to hide within its mountains.  It was obvious that to conquer the Swiss would require enormous effort tactically, and the Swiss were able to maintain their neutral position despite being positioned between Germany and Italy.  The world needed some piece of neutral ground, where the two sides could brush against each other without weaponry.  And the Swiss were also adept at finding ways to profit from their position.

Sweden

Sweden was in an even more perilous position. Just a short distance across the Baltic Sea from Germany itself, the Swedes were ultimately surrounded by German allies. The Germans conquered Norway, Denmark and Poland. And then there was Finland. We’ll come back to that later.

Sweden is the home to Alfred Nobel. He is the chemist who invented dynamite and the compounds that base almost all modern explosives.  Nobel saw his creations as benefits to modern engineering.  But they also developed into weapons of war, the modern explosives in bombs and artillery shells and even the powder that fired the bullets.  In realization of this, Nobel left his considerable fortune to the establishment of peace, what we call the Nobel Peace Prize.  

The Swedes took that same attitude, determined to maintain their non-combative status through two World Wars.  But they weren’t pacifists; the Swedish Army is well trained to protect their own nation.  Sweden didn’t “take a side” in World War II, and maintained its precarious position even as Germany swept through their neighbors.

Winter War

But Finland had a different enemy. As the Germans attacked Poland at the beginning of the War, the Soviets launched a counter-attack, seizing the Eastern part of Poland as a buffer against Nazi aggression.  And the Soviets also attacked into Finland, the “Winter War”.  Like the Ukrainians today, the Finns were able to hold off the Soviet Army for months, losing significant portions of their Eastern border, but preventing a Soviet takeover.  It wasn’t until the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union itself, that the Russian pressure on Finland relaxed.

The ancient proverb, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” directly applied to the Finnish situation.  For them, the invaders of World War II were Soviets, not Nazis.  So Finland loosely allied themselves with the Germans.  At the end of the war, when Berlin fell and Nazism was crushed, the victorious Allies recognized their dilemma, and didn’t punish Finland as a nation.  

Armed for Peace

Throughout the Cold War era both Sweden and Finland maintained their neutrality.  Finland still had an eight hundred mile border with the Soviet Union, and Sweden (not far from the Soviet border as well) saw no reason to enter the positioning between the Soviet bloc and the US led  NATO alliance.  While they both joined in the European Union, they stayed out of the Cold War struggles.  

But it was not a neutrality of weakness.  The Swedes developed one of the best Air Forces in the world, while the Finns, still cognizant of the Russian threat, has one of the most effective artillery capabilities.  They were neutral, but armed and ready.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, both the Swedes and the Finns compared positively with  remaining Russian forces.  There was no need to change their longstanding tradition of not taking a side.  But recognizing a growing Russian threat,  Swedish and Finnish forces trained alongside NATO units, so that if cooperation was needed, they were prepared.  And this week, the nations of Sweden and Finland asked for formal membership in NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the world’s largest military alliance.  

Putin’s Bad Day

Vladimir Putin didn’t like that Ukraine was not part of Russia’s economic and political sphere of influence.  So he launched an invasion of Ukraine, hoping to quickly topple the government.  But like Finland in the Winter War, the Ukrainians are surprising the Russians and the world by stopping and even driving the Russian Army back.

Putin seems determined to rebuild the old Soviet Union as a new “Greater Russia”.  That expansion directly threatens Finland again, but also Sweden as nearby Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are “under the Russian gun”.   Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are all members of NATO, as are Poland and Hungary.  To rebuild Russian hegemony, Russia will have to directly attack NATO nations. That will trigger Article Five of the NATO agreement:  an attack on one NATO nation is an attack on all.

Putin’s dream is in direct conflict with NATO.  His goal is to take away the self-determination of the nations of the old Soviet Union, and more.  Now Sweden and Finland have formally requested to join in defending the world from his aggression.  

It’s a good day for NATO, and a very bad day for Vladimir Putin.

Patriotism

I am an American patriot.  I believe in America, that it can be Reagan’s “Shining city on a hill”; the hope of the world.  I know: “American Exceptionalism”, the idea America is different than any other country established on earth, is “out of style”. But I still think it’s true.  America is exceptional in its dreams and its goals, if not in its current actions.  We are a nation dedicated to becoming “…a more Perfect Union”, aware of our flaws and the failures, but working to improve both.

But right now, in this particular moment of American history, we are in a toxic mix of extremism, frustration, tailored personal communication, and advanced weaponry.  And we are paying the price for that mix, almost daily.

Common Message 

First there is the “fuel”.  Americans no longer hear a common message of information.  The days of “Huntley-Brinkley or Cronkite or Jennings” are far behind us.  Even those names don’t resonate to the majority of the American people anymore.  There was once a time where we all received a similar message about what was going on in the world.  We had a common source of knowledge, what today would be called “mainstream media”.  And while that corporate media sometimes succumbed to government messaging, it could be critical as well.  The 1960’s; with the triple crises of the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the Watergate scandal, taught us that.

America changed because we all received the images of the attack on the marchers on the Edmund Pettus bridge.  We all saw the tragedy of the children killed in the church bombing of the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.  We all watched as the bodies of the four civil rights volunteers were uncovered at the dam.  It was a common message:  America needed to change.  

We changed when we saw the carnage in Vietnam, for no gain.  And we changed when the criminality of the Presidency was revealed, bit by bit, over two years of televised hearings.  

Fuel

But today, we have such a multiplicity of information sources, that almost any event is subject to under-cutting and re-interpretation.  Ten were killed at a supermarket this weekend, shot down by a crazed eighteen year-old filled with hate for Black people.  Most folks see that as terrible.  But there is a place in the “internet” where his actions are heroic, calling “the revolution” where “whites” will “re-take” America.  Even some major “news” networks are whispering the need for “action”.  “We (whites) are being replaced, and something must be done”, they say.  

Was the January 6^th attack on the Capitol an Insurrection, or just a “demonstration” that got out of hand? Despite the pandemic, was the election of 2020 the most successful in American history in terms of percentage of Americans voting, or was it stolen?  Are Democrats just folks with different views than Republicans, or are they (we) all pedophiles?  It all depends where you get your information.  It’s the gasoline spreading on the floor, the fumes seeping into every crevice of American political life.  All it needs – is a match.

And Fire

And then there is the fire.  We are a nation awash in weapons.  There are over twenty million semi-automatic rifles in our country.  There are  120.5 guns to every 100 Americans (BBC).  This weekend alone there were four “mass shootings”: in Buffalo at a super-market, in Milwaukee near the NBA playoff game, in Houston at a flea market, and in a California church.  

They all had different reasons, but there is a common theme – guns.  America has a “gun” culture, that not only accepts guns for hunting and sport, but as a weapon of personal protection, and now, one for “political” change.  The old arguments against guns were based on crime, “if you ban guns only criminals will have them”.  But now, the gun argument is about government.  For many, guns are now “protection” against a perceived over-reaching federal government.  The Second Amendment is now another form of “political speech”. A concealed gun under a jacket no longer even requires a license here in Ohio.  What are my political views:  look under my lapel and see.

Good Guy

We do not control mass shootings: in schools, in churches, in crowds and in places where folks are doing their grocery shopping.   We cannot armor our institutions enough to prevent the overwhelming tide of weaponry from seeping in.  Aaron Salter, the heroic retired police officer who charged into the line-of-fire in Buffalo did exactly what we expected him to do.  He was the “first man in”, part of the “defense” strategy we all know about mass shootings.  The first officer on the scene goes in to engage the shooter, to refocus him from killing his victims to defending himself from police.

Retired Officer Salter was the security guard at the “Tops” Super-Market.  He was outside the store when the gunman started, and could easily have walked away.  He did not, and certainly saved lives as he gave his own.  But his bullets didn’t penetrate the body armor of the well prepared shooter.  Salter was the “good guy with the gun”.  He valiant efforts, his sacrifice, wasn’t enough to stop the carnage.

More Perfect

America will have to “live with” this time of risk.  As a child, I hid under desks and in the hallways from atomic bombs.  That didn’t happen.  But our children today have a much better chance of hiding in the corner or the closet of a classroom, or under the racks in the bread aisle, or under the seats in the movie theatre, because of a mass shooter.   We drill them on what to do, but we really can do nothing to keep it from happening.  And that’s not a question of doing, it’s a question will, a will to take action.  America won’t.

We have a long way to perfection.  And we aren’t getting any closer by allowing our nation to remain a shooting gallery, and sending gallant officers to their deaths.  The fuel continues to spread, and the match is already lit.  How much has to burn is America’s choice.

Forms of Protest

In this nation, there are four levels of political protest.  The first, oratorical and written “speech”, was exactly what the authors of the Bill of Rights wished to protect.  Free speech in writing is steeped in American protest history; from Thomas Paine’s Common Sense to the abolitionist newspapers of Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison.  And free speech in oratory is also part of the American protest tradition, from Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty, or give me death”, to Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream”. 

The second, mass protest, is also an American tradition, as American as the American revolution itself.  Mass protests of taxes in Boston led to the Boston Massacre.  There have been “marches on”  Washington for labor, for veterans, for civil rights, and against wars and political changes.  While they sometimes degenerate into riots, like the labor protest that became the Haymarket Riot in Chicago in 1886, they all began as peaceful demonstrations of mass protest.

Both of those forms of protest were clearly envisioned in the First Amendment.  “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Against the Law

Civil disobedience, the intentional act of breaking a law in order to demonstrate its inequity, is not a “free speech” right.  That’s what makes it so powerful.  When a young John Lewis joined the “Freedom Riders” to take integrated public transportation into segregated southern bus stations, he knew he was breaking “the law”.  There was no “Constitutional protection” for that, just the moral authority of demonstrating how unfair Jim Crow laws were.  “Good Trouble”, as Lewis called it, was risky.  It put the protestors in open defiance of the authorities, and, after arrest, in total control of those same authorities.

And the fourth level of protest is violence.  That sadly is also an American tradition. The Whiskey Rebellion, where tax collectors were tarred and feathered (stripped, burned in hot tar, then covered with feathers) happened in the first years of the Washington Administration.  The President nationalized the state militias and marched them towards Western Pennsylvania, but the rebellion petered out before a set battle was fought.

Burn Baby, Burn

John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry was protesting slavery.  The historic view of Brown himself has gone from a crazy radical villain to a hero as Americans look back on enslavement in our past.  Radicals against the Vietnam war burned ROTC buildings on college campuses and protests that became riots were common in the late 1960’s.  And of course, the Capitol was defiled on January 6^th.  

In our form of political democracy, we legally protect the right to disagree – to an extent.  

The laws are in juxtaposition:  the First Amendment versus the government duty to maintain “law and order”.  The right to assemble is guaranteed, but so is the “right” to travel on the roads, without thousands of marchers in the streets.  Truckers can “convoy” in protest, but they can’t block commerce.  Protest outside of the Federal Court House in Portland are legal, but don’t burn it down. 

Laws and Norms

But the United States has also had “norms”; rules that apply but are not codified into law.  Martin Luther King Jr was held in jail multiple times.  The “authorities” had total control of him.  But he remained unharmed there, instead killed by an assassin’s bullet on the balcony of his hotel room in Memphis.  

Even politicians had “norms”.  President Adams truly thought Thomas Jefferson was the worst person to become President in 1801.  Yet he still turned the government over to him on inauguration day, and left early to his home in Braintree.  Even as the nation divided after the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1861, the Congress, with many soon to be Confederates participating, still certified his electoral vote.  

Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas demands that Federal police arrest protestors outside of the homes of Supreme Court Justices.  But that same Senator cheered on protestors outside of the homes of county board of elections officials who refused to change the vote in 2020.  Perhaps the “norm” once was that officials got “privacy” at home, but it was never the law.  

Senator Rand Paul used his authority as a single Senator to personally stop aid to Ukraine in their battle against Russian aggression.  It was the “norm” that US internal political dissension stopped “at the shoreline”. But even though the vast majority of his own political party voted for the aid, Paul used his authority to delay its passage.

The End of Norms

We are a nation of laws, and a nation of “norms”.  And we have depended on those unwritten norms to take us through some of our most perilous times.  

But recently, the Republican Party has been totally open about breaking norms, without breaking laws.  And the Democratic Party continues to be reticent to break similar norms.  In the language of war, it’s an asymmetric fight, with the Republicans using weapons the Democrats refuse to employ.  So it’s disingenuous to hear the cries of Cotton about the “unfairness” of protests, when he and his party has so often used them in the recent past.  

It puts Democrats in a strange position.  President Biden was elected to “return the nation to normalcy”.  It’s why Biden was chosen out of the variety of Democratic candidates for President, and it’s why he won millions of votes more than Trump.  The nation wanted to go back to normal.  But, to paraphrase Patrick Henry, “There is no normalcy.  The war has already begun”.   Because there are no longer a set of common norms, only the laws.  

And our laws are not enough to keep our national traditions intact.  That’s the dilemma Democrats are facing today.  There is intense pressure to “even up” the “war”, and employ the same kinds of “norm-breaking” actions that the Republicans have used so effectively.  Breaking the filibuster, or putting additional Justices on the Supreme Court, would be two of those. 

Knife to a Gunfight

But other Democrats argue that each time one more norm is broken, the United States moves farther from its traditions, and becomes a nation without norms, without normal.   

On any given day, I find myself on either side of that argument.  On the one hand, Democrats are “bringing a knife to a gunfight” on so many levels.  We cannot achieve what we believe without change, and the weapons on the battlefield of ideas have radically changed.  How can we not attack the norms that keep our nation from realizing the dream of full democratic representation, and full personal freedom.

And yet the vast majority of our nation wants things “back to normal”.  And the “norms” are what normal is.  

I do not believe the United States can be a nation of laws without norms.  But the norms are changing: we Democrats better figure out how to keep up with that.  Because it we don’t, someone else will re-write the norms into something that resembles the early 1950’s.  

And the struggle to overcome that may require more than our Republic can bear.

Getting Old

“I was coaching in the Ohio Capital Conference before you were born”.  

I did NOT say that to the young assistant coach from a school across town.  He was letting me know how the Ohio Capital Conference, the “OCC”, considered the premier conference in the state, runs their track meet.  I was officiating the pole vault, and needed two workers to help put the bar up.  He was making sure I knew that it wasn’t his problem. He needed the kids he had for his “hurdle crew”.  

I didn’t tell him that I was the meet manager for OCC Championship track and cross country meets for more than a decade.  I didn’t tell him that my own track teams won four OCC Championships.  And I didn’t tell him I was in the OCC Hall of Fame.  

I must be getting old.

At least that’s what some of the coaches in the pole vault competition said.  

Championship Week

This is the first championship week of May, and over four days I will officiate eight pole vault competitions.  Each takes a few hours, and the athletes and coaches are all fired up.  For some of the kids it’s their chance to “win the Conference” and to prepare for the State qualifying meets starting next week.  And for some, it’s their last competition of the season, the last chance to clear that “goal height” they been shooting for all year.  For the coaches – it’s their chance to show how much progress they’ve made this year.  And, of course, to score points for their team, to try to win their own team OCC Championship.

That energy can be infectious, and I find myself slipping back into coaching mode.  That’s not a “good thing”: as the official I need to take a calm, passive role. No one in my forty years of coaching  ever called me calm or passive.   My place now though, is, “Here’s the rules, here’s how we are getting this event done, Good Luck”.  I want the vaulters, already hyped by the meet and their cranked-up coaches, not to be distracted by me.

So I’m not quite halfway through the eight meet blitz, and I need to do a little better with the “calm, dispassionate” official thing.  There was one competition on Wednesday, two on Thursday, two more tonight  (Friday), and the final three on Saturday.  I find that when I start to get a little tired, I start to fall back into old habits.   I’m going to be a lot more tired before this stretch is over – so here on Friday morning I’m “re-grouping” a little bit.

Fair

Officiating is all about being “fair”.  But it’s also all about being organized.  There are lots of “pieces” that fall into a good pole vault competition, and any failure of one piece can create a lot of problems.  And there’ always pressure:  pressure on the kids to perform, pressure on the coaches (some I taught to vault) to succeed.  And there’s the pressure on the “workers” to get everything right, every vault.  

But there’s also drudgery.  The “kids” (or adults) who put the bar up and place it in the right place, do it over and over and over.  A “big” competition might have over 150 attempts.  That’s 150 times of putting the bar up, and placing the sliding standards to the personal preference of the vaulter, in the hot sun, without checking a cell phone.  It’s easy to lose focus.

I might stand on the runway calling out the order and whether a vault is good or not, but it’s those workers setting the bar and standards that make the event go – or not.  They are my “team” for the meet, and our “championship” is to run a fair and efficient competition.  And if we can have a little fun along the way – that’s fine too.

I did get my two workers for the pole vault yesterday.  And we completed two good competitions.  Time to get ready for the Licking County League tonight, and more OCC tomorrow.   Looking forward to being fair and dispassionate.

Just Tell Me

Folks who know me well; my family, my colleagues, my former students and athletes all know one thing about me. If you tell me you’re going to do something – then do it.  I’m one who needs an affirmative, “yes” or “no”.  I don’t deal well with maybes, and even worse, saying “yes” if you really meant “no”.  That’s where I get, well, annoyed.

I need to hear the “truth”, not what we all wish was the truth.

I think the nation would appreciate the same.

Edge of Power

Joe Biden, 46th President of the United States, was elected to the Presidency with a seven million vote margin over Donald Trump.  He won 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232, more than the amount that Trump declared was a “landslide” over Hillary Clinton.   But we all know the inside number:  45,000.  Flip 45,000 votes within three states, Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin; and Trump wins.

Democrats retained control of the House of Representatives.  Nancy Pelosi remained the Speaker of the House.  But the 2018 margin of 232 Democrats to 197 Republicans slipped to 222 to 213.  A change of five more seats, and the Republicans would be in control (and maybe Kevin McCarthy would become the Speaker, a job he has sold his honor and his soul for). 

Democrats gained control of the Senate, by the grace of God and the good people of Georgia, who sent two Democrats to Washington in a January runoff election.  But the control is as marginal as it could possibly be:  fifty Democrats to fifty Republicans, with the Democratic Vice President breaking the ties in favor of her party.  And what we discovered is how “empowering” that margin has been to the Kyrsten Simena’s and  Joe Manchin’s of the Senate.  They (and every other Democrat) individually hold the “keys to legislation”, enabled by Republicans who refuse to do anything other than block all Democratic proposals.

It’s a “Democratic Government”, but truly one on the “edge” of power.  

On the Record

No one knows that better than Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.  This week he is putting the Women’s Health Protection Act back on the floor, a bill that, for the first time, would put the Roe v Wade “pro-choice” rights into Federal law.  We know that there are 49 Democrats who will vote in favor.  We know there are 48 Republicans opposed.  And we know that, unless Sinema and Manchin change their minds, Democrats will not break the filibuster rule requiring 60 votes for passage.   So even if Schumer gets 52 votes (unlikely) he still will fall 8 votes short.

I understand why he’s going through this Sisyphean process, voting on legislation doomed to fail.  He did the same with the Voting Rights Acts.  With the Supreme Court likely to overturn Roe, Schumer wants every Senator, and particularly every Senator up for re-election, on the record as either for or against a woman’s right to make their own choices about their own body.  It’s all about the 2022 election, not creating laws to protect the people of the United States.

Let’s not pretend it’s something else.

No Fixes

President Biden gave a speech about the economy yesterday.  He acknowledged that inflation was the biggest issue in American economic life, despite the low unemployment rate and rising wages.  And he says he’s going to try to “fix it”.  But the President knows, and so do the American people, that most of the factors causing inflation are out of his hands.  The ultimate “fix” for inflation is time:  time to straighten out the Covid damaged supply system, time to end the war in Ukraine, and time deal with corporate profit-taking.

What the President did do is contrast how Republicans, led by Senate Campaign Chairman Rick Scott, would “fix” inflation.  Scott promises a tax increase on most Americans, taking the “inflation causing” dollars out of our pockets, and giving it to the government.  And that might fix inflation:  if people had less money, they can’t buy things.  But I’m not sure that it’s good for the American people, or a way to win votes.

When Biden called Scott out on this, the Senator from Florida’s response was to call the President, “incoherent, incapacitated and confused”.  I guess when you don’t have a “coherent” answer, insults are the best you can do.

President Biden can’t promise to “fix” inflation.  Schumer can’t promise to “fix” Roe, or voting rights.  Democrats with marginal power, can only offer marginal solutions.  So they should tell the American people that truth, and ask for more support for Democratic candidates to give them more Congressional votes.  That’s the only way to “fix” this problem.  

The American people can handle the truth.