Category: Uncategorized

Legal Forms

Our Courts are dedicated to following “the law”;  and the law takes several forms.  The first is statutory law, laws written by the legislature.  The easiest example of statutory law is statutory rape.  Rape is to have sex with someone without their consent.  Statutory rape is to have sex with someone who is legally unable to consent to sex, do to age or mental condition. That ability to consent is determined in law by the legislature.  So this becomes rape because of the statute, not necessarily by force.

The second form of law is precedential law, better known as “common law”.  It looks back at how past judges decided, and uses those precedents to determine the outcome of current cases.  On my first day of law school, my Torts Professor described an old English case, where two boys were throwing stones over a hill.  On the other side, a man’s eye was “put out” by one of the stones.  Neither the man, nor the boys, knew whose stone did the damage.  But the Court of Assizes found that both boys were equally liable for the damage, as they both were equally reckless.  If I remember correctly, their fathers were required to pay a pig each to the injured man.

That became precedent in English Common Law, which still influences US law today.  The  concept of “Common Law Marriage” comes from this, and  is still recognized in eight states. By simply living together as a “married couple” for a period of time an actual marriage is created with enforceable rights.  Other states have made marriage solely a “statutory” function, requiring a state license.

Precedence

The ultimate form of statutory law is Constitutional law, law written into “stone” in the United States Constitution.   But all laws require interpretation; a determination by the Court of what the written language actually means.  It is in that determination that Courts create precedent, the decisions made by Courts in the past about that meaning.  

Each state in the United States has a “highest Court” that determine the final interpretations of state statutes.  The United States as a whole has the US Supreme Court establishing interpretations of national laws and the Constitution.  Those final decisions are called “stare decisis”, the precedents used to determine how future decisions are made.

Courts in the United States and the separate states are bound by the decisions of similar cases at the highest courts.  And only those highest Courts have the ability to overturn the precedent and establish new “case law”.  Which brings us to the United States Supreme Court today.

Confirmation Pledges

When the last three Supreme Court Justices were being confirmed by the Senate, they all pledged to honor “stare decisis”.  Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett pledged to Senators, including pivotal vote Susan Collins of Maine, that they would honor the decisions made by early Courts.   This was particularly in relationship to the Roe v Wade abortion decision, but was also a general pledge to not “up-end” the law.

Supreme Court Justices received lifetime appointments, as long as they maintain “good behavior”.   Unless a Justice commits an actual crime, they will remain on the Court.  The process for removing them is the impeachment process we became so familiar with during the Trump Administration, and in our current political climate would end up with similar results.  Only one Supreme Court Justice has been impeached, in 1805, and he was acquitted by the Senate of the charges.

So whatever they say in their confirmation hearings, once a Justice reaches the high Court, they are virtually immune from prior pledges.  They are on their own.

Legal Domination

The Trump Administration bungled a lot of things, but in one area they were ruthlessly efficient:  appointing federal judges.  In four years 234 judges gained a Federal seat, 177 at the District level (26% of all District Judges), 54 at the Appellate level (30%), and 3 on the Supreme Court (33%).  Ninety percent of Trump appointees, and all three Supreme Court nominees, have one thing in common – membership in the Federalist Society.

The Federalist Society has a common cause, a literal interpretation of the wording of laws, and adherence to the “original intent” of the writers.  They do not believe that the law, particularly the Constitution, changes with time, other than through Amendment.  This “originalist doctrine” is dramatically opposed to the “pragmatists” who see the Constitution as a document to be interpreted in light of current society and culture rather than a strict adherence to its original intent.

Loyalty

The Supreme Court has signaled its intent to change the national abortion precedents, Roe v Wade and Casey.  The six conservative justices do not agree with those decisions, and they are going to change them – stare decisis be damned.  And in the same way, the Court is changing the voter rights in America.  In Shelby County v Holder in 2013, they undercut the enforcement provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. This week, they signaled that they might not uphold the section that prevented legislative districts from racial gerrymandering.  

Abortion regulation will soon become a state issue, no longer a national right.  And voting rights and gerrymandering will also be a “state” problem.  They will make their own determination, even if that puts racism into geographic law (see Alabama’s new maps).  No matter what “promises” the Justices made to the US Senate before their confirmation, their loyalty is to the judicial philosophy of the Federalist Society – originalism.  And that takes “precedence” over everything else.

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time” – Maya Angelou

Talking Point

It’s a recent “talking point” in the mainstream media.  Pundits point out that Donald Trump is losing his influence over the remaining Republicans, often citing the Virginia Governor race.  In that contest the victorious Republican, Glenn Youngkins, espoused Trump-like (lite?) ideas without actually being a “Trumper”.  He accepted Trump’s support, but didn’t let him campaign in Virginia.  The “talking point” is that “new” Republican candidates can appeal to the Trump ideology, but not be “Trumps”. 

This doesn’t seem to be the case here in Ohio. In the Republican Senate primary campaign Josh Mandel, a former State Treasurer and “normal” Republican, has adhered as closely to Trumpism as he can get.  His opponents are trying to be even “Trumpier” than he is. Mandel seems to be holding his own: the latest polling shows Mandel up by 6% on his nearest competitor in an eight “horse” race.

Legitimate Political Discourse

Every time a Republican seems to stray from the Trump-line, they get smacked back into place.  Senator Lindsey Graham is the latest, and perhaps, most frequent victim.  Graham had the audacity to say that January 6th insurrectionists shouldn’t be pardoned as the former President suggested.  In response, Trump called Graham a “RINO”, and said “…he doesn’t know what he’s talking about”.  Graham didn’t mention the former President in his response to that,  but held his position against pardons.

But to really see where the Republican Party is today, simply look at the actions of the Republican National Committee this week.  The Party censured Congressmen Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for participating on the January 6th Committee.  The Party went even further, saying that the events of January 6th, the Insurrection at the Capitol, was simply “…legitimate political discourse”.  They also gave their approval to Cheney’s Republican primary opponent, and promised funds against Cheney in the primary election (Kinzinger is not running for re-election).  

Maya Angelou said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time”.  The Republican Party has shown the nation, over and over again, who they are.  They are the Party of ex-President Donald Trump.  Not only do they fall in line with whatever the current Trump talking point is, but they are completely beholden to Trump financially.   Much of the Committee financing is done over Trump’s name, and Trump is getting his “pound of flesh” back.  In just October and November of 2021, the RNC paid over $720,000 in Trump’s legal bills (ABC).

Outliers

There are still Republican “outliers”; those who don’t genuflect to the former President.  Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, and even Ohio’s current Governor Mike DeWine all fit in that mold.  But all of them are in unique positions to get some independence from the “party-line”.  Collins has just won a new six year term.  Murkowski ran as an independent Republican in Alaska, against a “Party” candidate.  Romney is from a state where his religion dominates, and they don’t approve of Trump. 

And with DeWine here in Ohio, we’ve yet to see how his independence will do.  The seventy-five year old Governor has a long political history in the state, but faces a well-financed primary challenge from Jim Renacci of suburban Wadsworth.  Renacci is following the “Virginia model”, checking all the boxes from banning “critical race theory” in schools to cutting taxes and de-centralizing the state government.  He doesn’t mention Trump in his campaign (and has not received a Trump endorsement), but even his slogan, “Putting Ohio first means putting America first” echoes Trumpian faux-patriotism.

Who Are You

The Republican Party told us “who they were” this week, for the umpteenth time.  They even went so far as to rewrite history, and told us not to “believe our lying eyes” about the January 6th Insurrection – simply “legitimate political discourse”.   They have made a choice, to castigate Cheney, Kinzinger, and any others who stand for something that looks like what used to be the Republican Party of twenty years ago.

It’s not.  And for my Never-Trumper friends who voted for Biden and now feel betrayed that Biden turned out to be a “Democrat”, I am sorry.  We told you what we were, and you determined that it was better than Trump.  By the way, that is still true.

Somewhere out there there’s a core of a National Union Party, a center-right  Kinzinger and Cheney meet Joe Manchin alliance.  But the current Republican Party isn’t it.  This week they told us who they are – a Party that is willing to throw out the US Constitution in order to gain power:  legitimate political discourse at the end of a flag pole with bear spray.  Like it or not, if you call yourself a Party Republican, that’s your Party.

Elements

It takes three elements to prove a crime has been committed.  The first is the actual conduct, the “commission” of a crime.  The second is the intent to commit a crime – the “mens rea” or criminal “state of mind”.  And the third is the act: was the person accused of the crime the “proximate cause”, the reason the crime occurred. 

A guy enters a Seven/Eleven with a gun.  He walks up to the counter and demands money.  The clerk gives him the money in the cash register, and the guy walks away.  It seems completely cut and dried.  The actual conduct, the commission:  going into a Seven/Eleven with a gun and demanding money.  The “mens rea”:  he took a gun into a store to get money that wasn’t his.  The actual “proximate cause”:  the guy, the gun – the money was taken.

Unless, of course, he was wearing a “Brinks” uniform and it was the daily pickup.  The Brinks guy doesn’t have either the intent to commit or crime, nor was an actual crime committed.  But he did have a gun, and did demand the money.

True Confessions

Ex-President Donald Trump has publicly stated that he was looking for ways to change the outcome of the 2020 election. He wanted elected officials to “recount” the votes in his favor.  And he wanted to stop Congress from certifying the electoral votes in 2020, the votes that elected Joe Biden as the next President.  

There were multiple plans to prevent Biden from winning office. “Alternative” electoral certificates (some might say fraudulent) were provided from the states. If accepted, they would have provided a Trump victory.  A second plan called for the Vice President to “throw out” contested ballots that were for Biden. And there was even a plan for the President to declare a form of “martial law”, seize select voting machines, and hold a “do-over” so he could win.

Trump advisors Peter Navarro and Boris Epshteyn came on television and outlined their plan, called the “Green Bay Sweep”,  and how it would work.  As MSNBC commentator Ari Melber, also an attorney, asked at the time – “…Do you realize you are describing a coup?”  

From a non-attorney’s point of view, it seems that Trump, his Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, his advisors Navarro and Epshteyn (and attorney John Eastman and others)  confessed to criminal behavior of the worst kind.  They intentionally (mens rea) interfered with the lawful Congressional process (18 USC §1505), attempted to overthrow the lawful government (18 USC §2385) and interfered with the election (multiple US laws).  

Knock on the Door

So where is the FBI pounding on the door at 5:23 in the morning:  guns drawn, dogs barking, black SUV’s at the curb?  Where is the “perp walk” into the Federal Courthouse, and the preliminary hearings with “Not Guilty, your Honor” and bail set and monitors attached to ankles?  What is the Justice Department waiting for?  Where is the Roger Stone or Michael Cohen images that we all saw in the past six years?  Why did Navarro and Epshteyn go onto a television show and “confess”?  And why is Trump now using rallies to explain his actions – his crimes?  

Intent

The answer is simple:  they do not believe they committed a crime.   They think there wasn’t  intent – the “mens rea” of criminal conduct, and that their actions were, in fact, perfectly legal.  The “Green Bay Sweep” was a simple parliamentary maneuver.  They look back at the 12th Amendment and the contested election of 1876, and believe they just found a “better way” to win the election.  Ex-President Trump believes he was acting within his “powers” as President, and as a candidate for office, by devising any plan to contest the election.  

And – this is the real important part – none of them are willing to accept that they are the “proximate cause” of the attack on the Congress, the violence on the steps, or the vandalism in the building. They all say: they “aimed the crowd and pulled the trigger”, but they did not have the intent for them to attack the building. They only wanted the protests outside of the Congress to try to press Pence and other Republicans to go through with the “Green Bay Sweep”.

Garland’s Dilemma

The Department of Justice has a very long tradition of NOT prosecuting former Presidents or their administrations. Barack Obama did not allow his Attorney General Eric Holder to charge members of the Bush Administration for enabling the torture of prisoners at “black sites”. Gerald Ford went so far as to pardon his predecessor, Richard Nixon, to avoid the spectacle of a US President “in the dock”. Even the Trump Justice Department stayed away from indicting former Obama staffers (though they did go after the FBI agents who investigated the Trump campaign).

The Biden Administration got elected on the theme of “returning to normal”. Prosecuting members of the Trump Administration, much less the Ex-President himself, would be highly unusual. That doesn’t make it wrong, just “against the flow” of what Biden usually would do.

But there is a real question of whether the President’s plans, while completely outside of the norms and traditions of the US Constitutional Republic, were illegal.  And that creates three issues for the Department.  First, how to demonstrate that what Trump, Meadows, Navarro and the rest did was against the law.  Second, how to convince a jury of non-lawyers of that illegality.  And third, proving that the accused knew, or should have known, that what they were doing wasn’t just against the “norms”, but against the Law. 

Were they robbing the Seven/Eleven – or were they simply the “Brinks” guys?  That’s the question Attorney General Garland will have to answer.  

Bombs

I went to Denison University to study history and political science from 1974 to 1978.  The Vietnam War was just ending, but the larger Cold War was at its height.  The world was poised on the brink between the nuclear weapons of the United States and the Soviet Union, weapons that could destroy the world several times over.  “Moscow in flames, bombs on the way, film at eleven,” was a dark joke with way too much truth to it.

While I learned a lot about the American Constitutional system and the functions of American government, my favorite courses were about what led us to the current crisis of our time.  I took “War and Revolution in the Twentieth Century”, “Modern European History”, World Political Geography”, and “History of the Modern Middle East”.  But my favorite course was “Problems in American National Security Policy”.  The title was too long to explain – so the “shortcut” name for the course was “Bombs 360”.  

Cold War

The “Cold” of the Cold War was really more of a goal:  that neither the US or the USSR would use nuclear weapons to resolve their conflict.  Atomic weapons were used once, against Japan in the actions that ended World War II.  The damage done by those two bombs was comparable to the  conventional fire bombings of Tokyo, Japan (90,000 killed) or Dresden, Germany (25,000 killed).  But Hiroshima (90,000 to 140,000 killed) and Nagasaki (60,000 to 80,000 killed) were qualitatively different.  The Tokyo and Dresden attacks took hundreds of bombers and thousands of airmen to cause the devastation. Hiroshima and Nagasaki each required just one plane, with a crew of twelve, and one bomb. 

The power of nuclear bombs seemed virtually limitless.  By the time I was studying the subject in 1975, the B-52 bombers that took off from nearby Lockbourne Airbase (now Rickenbacker) had four nuclear weapons, each three hundred times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Japan.  Twenty megaton bombs were “standard”, well over a thousand times those first atom bombs.  The Soviets even tested a sixty megaton device.

Attack and Counter

Learning about foreign policy in the shadow of nuclear holocaust was all about maneuvering just short of the nuclear threshold.  Whatever the Soviet Union and it’s “allies” or the United States and its coalitions did, it couldn’t be an action that would “force” the nuclear hand of the other.  The United States tried to develop the “Star Wars” anti-nuclear missile project.  It didn’t work out (thirty-five years later we’re still trying to stop “a missile with a missile”) but if it had, then the Soviet Union might be forced into a “first strike” with nuclear weapons.  The would either use them before they were blocked, or lose their functionality entirely.

But both the US and the USSR played a worldwide game of conventional, non-nuclear military threats, attacks and feints.  The US was involved in the War in Vietnam.  The USSR was supplying the North Vietnamese military and fighting the Americans with Soviet pilots flying some North Vietnamese fighters.  The USSR invaded Afghanistan.  The US supplied the Mujahedeen (Afghan fighters) and ultimately drove the Soviets out.  (And yes, some of those Afghans later fought just as hard to throw the US out as well).

Iron Curtain

But the essential flashpoint of the Cold War wasn’t in Southeast Asia, nor even in Central America (Cuba, Nicaragua).  Those were the points of harassment, but not the real point of conflict.  That was the border between Soviet controlled Eastern Europe and the free nations of the NATO alliance.  That’s where the tanks were poised, the fighting planes were circling, and the thousands of American and Soviet troops stared across the barbed wire and walls.  Churchill aptly named “the line” the Iron Curtain.  

The American, British, French and German troops stood poised to defend.  The Soviet tank corps stood ready to roll.  World War III often was in the hands of junior officers, who might make the wrong move, and create a crisis that could engulf the world.  It was in this era – from 1948 to 1989 — that both the Soviets and the United States and NATO, learned to do “the dance” of Cold War diplomacy.

Reagan

I was never a supporter of Ronald Reagan as President, but there is one issue where he proved to be successful.  The Reagan Administration determined that the United States, with a GDP (gross domestic product) of $3 trillion, could outspend the Soviet Union with $1.2 trillion GDP.  So we began to build missiles and planes, tanks and aircraft carriers, advanced submarines and possible space weapons.  The Soviets might not want to compete economically, but they had little choice but to try to stay “in the game”.  After eight years, the financial pressure wrecked the Soviet economy, and caused the fall of the Communist government. 

When the Union fell, the Eastern European countries under Soviet control gained independence:  Poland, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic and Slovakia), Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, East Germany, and Albania.  Several other European states, integrated in the Union itself, broke away to be independent: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine set up their own governments. 

So endeth the history lesson. 

Putin 

The modern day President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, grew up in the Soviet Union as an up-and-coming member of the KGB, the Soviet spy organization.  When the Soviet Union fell, Putin “morphed” into a successful politician, using his Intelligence skills and making deals with oligarchs who got rich on the Soviet collapse to gain the Presidency.  He has been leading Russia since 1999 (though he installed a “puppet” President in his stead for four years).  His goal is to regain the power of the Russian Empire – the Soviet Union.

There are over 100,000 Russian troops on three sides of Ukraine.  They are poised to strike, to return Ukraine to the Rodina, the traditional Russian homeland.  While there are 170,000 soldiers in the Ukrainian Army, the Russians out-power them in weaponry, technology, and perhaps most importantly, supplies.  But make no mistake, an all-out invasion of Ukraine by Russia wouldn’t just be video of tanks streaming towards Kyiv.  There would be a fight, an ugly fight, that wouldn’t end when the Russians inevitably took nominal control.  The Ukrainians are already prepared for an insurgency after a Russian takeover.

Putin’s Dream

So if Putin is determined to have Ukraine, he will have it.  But it will have a cost, not just in Ukraine itself, but in the NATO reaction throughout Europe.  Russia is facing huge economic sanctions that could detach them from the world economy.  And NATO is making it clear:  while Ukraine is not a part of NATO, many of the other former Soviet states are, and NATO will defend them from attack.  Need a demonstration of that resolve?  3000 additional US Troops are shipping to Eastern Europe now.  They are a “trip-wire”:  attack them and “all bets are off”.

Vladimir Putin is a skilled negotiator.  It may be that he is simply playing out a “bluff”, that, with the right incentives, can be called off.  And the Biden Administration and NATO are giving him both some incentives to back down, and punishments if he chooses not to.  In the end, it comes down to whether Putin is “just” looking for an edge, or is determined to fulfill his dream of rebuilding the Russian Empire.  

The Cost

But Putin is also aware of why the Soviet Union failed.  Russia’s 2021 GDP was $1.7 Trillion.  The European Union GDP was $17 Trillion.  And the US 2021 GDP, was $23 Trillion (because you want to know:  China 2021 GDP $18 Trillion).  So while Putin may have more tanks and planes than Ukraine, he is in no position to “win” an economic war with NATO and the US.  

It’s not really about what Putin wants – it’s about the resolve of the US and NATO to protect those Eastern European states.  And it’s probably not a “blood” issue – it’s an issue of treasure. Will NATO allies will  spend enough of their treasure to “buy” the poker game that Putin is playing?  

And that’s an old “Cold War” maneuver.  Thanks for the solution, Mr. Reagan.

Two Sides

There are two sides to every issue – that might be the “theme” of this third decade of the twenty-first century.  And if you take one side, you aren’t supposed to “listen” to the other.  Take your stand, choose a side, make up your mind:  then don’t let an ounce of doubt ever make you question.  And go find “affirmation”, information that wholly supports your view. 

Like it or not, the motto of Fox News, “fair and balanced”, is what’s supposed to happen.  Not that Fox News has ever been “fair and balanced”.  Like a line out of Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth does nothing but spout propaganda, Fox News tries to take the high ground with their motto, then tells their tales of a biased world.

Fair

Fair means to tell both sides of the story.  That’s the original “two sides” to every issue.  There are “Gen X and Z” directed news shows, that make a big deal about letting their viewers make up their own minds.  They present the two sides, and then leave conclusions to someone else.  And that sounds eminently reasonable.  But it presumes something that often isn’t true:  that the audience has the expertise to understand and analyze the “two sides”.  

That plays into the conceit of the Google (or Duck, Duck, Go wouldn’t want to be tracked) generation.  They can become “experts” in any field, with a few clicks on the mouse and fifteen minutes on YouTube.  And that “faux” expertise makes them vulnerable.  That’s a flaw, whether it’s in Cheddar News or Fox News itself.  

Balanced

 Then there’s the falsehood in the second part of the motto: balanced.   Fox always “balances” it’s new analysis with “liberal” voices.  Juan Williams was the original.  A well-known NPR commentator, Juan was ultimately fired from NPR for his association with Fox.  He was the “one” on the panel, maybe the “one” liberal, maybe the “one” black man, that created balance.  But Juan’s balance was often, maybe always, drowned out by the chorus of “right-wing” voices on the other side.

And before you start writing your rebuttal, I’m well aware that some of the NBC news shows do the same thing.  Meet the Press often has two liberals, two “neutral newscasters”, and one conservative on their panels.  And those conservatives serve the same purpose as Williams does on Fox, to be the counter-point to the more liberal views of the others.  Rich Lowry, editor of the conservative National Review often plays that role.

So we can agree that both sides create a “faux balance” in some of their news shows.  

Preponderance of Evidence

But there is a more subversive form of balance, one that plays into the “internet expertise” so prevalent today.  For example, let’s talk about a subject most folks agree on:  climate change.  A fair newscast would present “both sides”, the scientists who carefully explain why human action is causing rapid climate change, and the scientist who says it’s all “just nature” and we’ve been here before.

But a balanced newscast would present the ninety-nine scientists who know that climate change is exacerbated by man, and then the one who disagrees.  That’s the real “balance” in the scientific community – the vast preponderance of climate scientists who can demonstrate humanity’s role in climate warming, versus the few “outliers”.  The outliers may be amplified by the massive industries, particularly oil, who finance their media campaigns.  But in the end, there are very few climate scientists who believe that climate change is natural without a major human component.  

Internet Expertise

Of course the debate doesn’t happen that way.  And since the climate scientist and the climate denier are “head-to-head”, they apparently start on an equal footing.   And that’s the problem.  Because when you look at the vast majority of science, they aren’t.  But since we can all be “climate experts” with a click and a view, we can pick and choose our “affirmative” data, or follow our trusted commentator’s opinion (even after he says that he doesn’t have “a side”).

While climate change may ultimately be the greater threat to humanity, and should be the center of scientific debate, that’s not what our current scientific crisis is about.  We all know the scientific “sides” we are taking.  It’s not about the atmosphere, it’s about the virus.

Set Up

We’ve been set up.  

We are told we can become experts ourselves, just by watching a YouTube video, or reading a synopsis of someone’s theory.  And as we invest our time and brain-width trying to understand virology (you could replace that with “rocket science”) the years of study  required gets condensed to a one hour podcast. And we believe.  I get it.

I’m a pole vault coach.  I’ve spent over forty years teaching and learning about the event.  I’ve “apprenticed” with some of the best coaches in the nation.   And I’ve had thousands of vaulters to teach, coach, and learn from.  The technique of pole vault I teach is proven to be effective, and not just by me (want to check that out – Ohio Pole Vault Safety).

But you can click on the internet, and find so-called experts teaching pole vault like they know what they’re doing.  And what they’re doing could ultimately get someone killed.  It’s dangerous, and even more so because they say:  “Just follow our internet instructions and you’ll be great!!”  You won’t be, you’re more likely to be broke (financially and physically).

I won’t in any way advance their cause, so I won’t publish the website.  But if it can happen in something as esoteric as pole vaulting, what about something as politically volatile as the Covid vaccine.

In my way, I’m trying to make pole vaulting safer.  The real “experts” in the field are with me.  And none of us learned how to coach from a website or YouTube video.  Maybe we should all be listening to the vast majority of experts about vaccines (and climate change) as well.

Fire and Rain

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

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

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

Pirate Radio 

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

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

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

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

Four Way Street

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

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

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

Old Man (I’m a lot like you are)

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

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

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

The Damage Done

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

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

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

Track Clinic

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

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

Old Friends

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

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

Jerseys

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

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

End of an Era

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

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

Mansfield

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

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

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

The Back Row

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

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

The Sunday Story Series

• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21
• Dogs and Medals – 8/8/21
• The New Guy – 9/5/21
• Stories of 9-11 – 9/12/21
• The Interview – 9/26/21
• Night Moves – 10/3/21
• Funeral for a Friend – 10/11/21
• National Security – 10/24/21
• Boots on the Trail – 10/31/21
• Taking Care of Mom and Dad – 11/14./21
• Dogs Found and Lost – 11/21/21
• Watching Brian 12/12/21
• Stories from Shiloh – 12/19/21
• Team Trips – 12/26/21
• Uphill, Both Ways  – 1/9/22
• Old Trophies – 1/30/22

Substitute Teaching

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

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

Snow Days

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

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

Recalculating

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

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

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

Wedding Vows

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

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

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

Guess I’m Working

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

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

I wouldn’t argue about it.

Teaching

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

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

State Control

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

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

In the Day

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

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

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

Teaching the Present through the Past

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

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

Talking to History

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

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

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

Unacceptable Risk

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

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

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

Conspiracies Abound

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

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

The ”Steal”

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

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

No wonder “bipartisanship” is impossible. 

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

New Foil Hat

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

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

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

Green Bay Sweep

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

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

Chaos Works 

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

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

Insurrection

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

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

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

Acts of Courage

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get the Interview

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

Skinny Dipping

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

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

Kid Gloves

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

Presidential Profanity

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

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

Fox in the House

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

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

Make the Point

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

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

False Flag

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

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

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

Soviet Dreams

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

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

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

The Cusp of War

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

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

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

Calculations

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

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

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

We do so at the world’s peril.

Lost Debate

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

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

Pre-Certification

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

Big-Box Voting

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

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

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

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

What’s “Fixed”

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

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

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

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

Right to Vote

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

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

What’s next?

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

Big F**king Deal

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

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

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

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

Irish Up

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

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

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

Cognitive Decline

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

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

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

Polarized

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

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

Kids

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

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

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

Gerrymandering

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

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

Base Rules

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

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

Media

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

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

For Profit

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

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

Information

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

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

Revolution

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

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

The Middle

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

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

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

Sinema

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

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

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

Biden

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

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

Debt Ceiling

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

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

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

On the Record

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

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

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

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

The Jeep

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

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

CRT

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

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

Ageism

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

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

Ableism

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

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

Perspective

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

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

Fight the Fire

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Farce

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

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

Marching on Main Street

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

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

Trump Card

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

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

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

Will of the People

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

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

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

Flickering

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

Come to the light!!!!

Rant

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

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

What are the lies – and what do we do?

Vaccines

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

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

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

Deaths

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

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

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

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

Not Prepared

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

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

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

Schools

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

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

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

I’ll Do Me

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

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

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

End of rant.

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

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

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

Jordan

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

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

Tactics

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

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

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

Mathematics

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

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

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

American Exceptionalism

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

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

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