Category: Uncategorized

This is the next in the “Sunday Story” series – no politics here – just a story about Mom and Dad and the Nightly News.

Thinking of Mom

I thought a lot about my Mom Thursday night.  She passed away ten years ago at the age of ninety-three.  Dad and Mom lived a marvelous life, up to the last couple of years.  Throughout it all there were “constants”; things that they did every day.  One of those was don’t go to bed before eleven.  They might well have slept on the couch in the family room in front of the TV, Dad probably since eight, but never went to bed, never before the local news came on.

And another of those constants was the network Nightly News.  Dad ran a television station in Dayton in the 1960’s, and the Nightly News was part of the business.  He watched how his local newscasters did with Ed Hamlin at the anchor and Omar Williams on sports. It was one of the main ways to evaluate the station.   The network news brought viewers to the program, and the television business was all about selling advertising.  So Dad watched the local and network news religiously.  It was the end of his business day, whether he was still at work that late, or already at home.

The Dayton station was an NBC affiliate for most of those years, and the network broadcast was the Huntley-Brinkley Report.  Chet Huntley and David Brinkley were “old school” reporters, out of the mold of CBS’s Edward R Murrow and his protégé, Walter Cronkite.  So NBC was the default choice for news in our household, with the exception of a couple years when Dad switched the Dayton station to ABC.  Then it was a young Canadian named Peter Jennings who anchored the network desk.

Anchor Man

But NBC stuck, even when Dad was promoted out of the Dayton station and we moved to corporate headquarters in Cincinnati.  Chet Huntley retired, and Brinkley moved to ABC.  But we were loyal to the new guy, John Chancellor, who took over the reins.  When national crises hit, from Watergate to Presidential elections, it was the NBC crew that talked us through the details.

For a decade starting in 1970 (“WLW-D, Your Stations for the Seventies” was the jingle), Chancellor led the way.  Then, after a “tryout” by Roger Mudd, the younger Tom Brokaw, the Today Show host, took over.  He stayed at the anchor desk for twenty-one years, and became the senior mentor of NBC News.  My Mom developed a close “relationship” with Tom Brokaw, as he brought every crisis and triumph personally to our family room.  But waiting in the wings was Mom’s favorite, the White House Correspondent for NBC News, a young, clearly ambitious reporter named Brian Williams.

In the last few Brokaw years it became obvious that Brian was the heir-apparent.  There was even a mock “press conference” with Brokaw as the subject, when Williams stood up and carefully inquired as to Brokaw’s health and well-being.  It was a joke – but it really wasn’t.  Williams was ready for the anchor chair, the senior position in NBC News.  And after twenty-one years, Brokaw was aging, and more importantly, struggling to annunciate.  The night time talk show hosts were putting marbles in their mouths, making fun of him.  Still – Tom Brokaw had the gravitas to take us through the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Bush-Gore election,  9-11, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Chair

Brokaw retired from the chair in 2004.  He didn’t stay retired long, as NBC suffered the incredible loss of their Chief Washington Political Correspondent, Tim Russert, to a massive heart attack in spring.  Brokaw took over Meet the Press, and helped lead Mom and the nation through the election of 2004.

But Brian finally had the Nightly News.  Mom no longer talked of NBC, or the evening news.  She waited to watch Brian.  

He led NBC for a decade.  Even when Mom was struggling, her lungs calcified and unable to absorb enough oxygen, she still watched “Brian” every evening.  She looked to him for guidance during the hurricanes of 2005, and celebrated with him the election of the first African-American President, and the passage of Obamacare.  Mom loved Brian.

Mom passed away in 2011. 

Brian Williams had a “memory conflation” in 2015.  He described a memory of a missile attack on his helicopter in Iraq.  But that really didn’t happen, and Brian was removed as the NBC anchor.  Lester Holt took over.

There was lots of discussion at the time about why Brian Williams did that.  Was he just embellishing stories to make himself more important?  Had he been warned so starkly in the war zone, that somehow the warning became an “event” in his mind?  Or had he described that exact same event so many times, that it became a real “thing” for him, an experience he thought he actually had?  He too became fodder for the late night monologues.  

Exile on Cable

After six months, Brian came back – but not to the Nightly News desk.  He was exiled to cable, the “breaking news” anchor whenever MSNBC went live to an event.  He was doing school shootings, hurricanes,  and tornadoes, directing coverage and commentary from New York.  Seemingly, he wasn’t allowed to leave Rockefeller Center, virtually strapped to the anchor chair.  

And then the election of 2016 got so convoluted, that MSNBC needed someone to summarize the daily events for their viewers.  Brian began a new program, The 11th Hour from 11 to midnight.  And for the last five years, Brian Williams helped to detangle the Trump Administration and the world.  He brought in the experts, from historians to commentators to doctors, to declassify all of the craziness that was Trump, Impeachment, Covid and now the Biden Administration.  Brian became our nightly ritual, instead of the comedians.  I learned a lot from him between 11 and 12, even if I seldom actually saw the end of his show.  

Brian Williams signed off The 11th Hour for the last time Thursday night. He says he’s headed into real retirement, but that remains to be seen.  I stayed awake to listen to others praise him, and hear Brian’s final words as an NBC anchor.  And at the end, I thought how sad Mom would be. 

 I know I am.

• 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
• Brian 12/12/21

This is a part of the “Outside My Window” series in Our America. No great political observations, just what’s going on – today literally outside my window.

Back to Normal?

Jenn, our son and I went to see a concert in downtown Columbus last night.  It was the band Genesis with Phil Collins, on probably their last tour.  Collins has a deteriorating nerve condition, and performs from a chair at the front of the stage.  He was the original drummer for the band, and taking over the drum set was always a part of his persona.  Now he can’t do that.  But he can still sing, and his twenty year old son Nic has taken over on the drums.  It’s a passing of the torch – the son honoring his father’s skill.  And it’s still a really good concert with three of the original Genesis members, old school mates Collins, Tony Banks on the keyboards and Mike Rutherford on guitar.

It’s another part of my “Dahlman Concert Tour”, seeing the great performers of the past before it’s too late.  This fall that’s included outdoor concerts with the Rolling Stones and Billy Joel.  But Genesis is the first time indoors since the pandemic changed the world.  Next up:  James Taylor and Jackson Browne. 

Going to a concert downtown is such a “normal” thing to do, but it’s been such a long time since we could. There was dinner “downtown”, and walking the streets of the “big city”.  Then  we were in in the crowd on the floor of Nationwide Arena, taking pictures, drinking beer, with the normal wafting of concert marijuana smoke after the lights went down.   We were on our feet for more than two hours for the show:  so very normal, and exciting.  

Back to the Pack

This meant a late night both for the three of us, and for our pack of friends at home.  The five dogs did their sleeping while we were gone.  So there was midnight dinner (our Lab Atticus was too nervous to eat), then a romp outside, and a couple of hours of chasing around the house in the middle of the night.  They didn’t calm down until two in the morning. 

But our elder statesman, Buddy, is the “keeper of the clock” when it comes to breakfast.  He was lenient this morning, letting us “sleep in” until 6:45.  Then it was time to get up and get breakfast – the late night was my problem, not his!  (Buddy, by the way, just went back to bed here at 8 am, the prerogative of an old border collie/shepherd mix  I guess). 

But I need to thank Buddy later today.  He got us up for a beautiful sunrise here in Pataskala, the reddened sky peaking over the Christmas lights of this little town.  It was worth the lost sleep to witness it, and it recalls one of my Mom’s old English sayings:

“Red sky at night, sailor’s delight, Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.”

Warning

What should we “be warned” about?  That could be quite a list.  Maybe it’s the weather, the temperature has been in the twenties, but will hit sixty by Saturday, with rain coming.  A mud mess for the “pack” in the backyard, I’m afraid.  Or maybe it’s the Omicron variant of Covid, so much more infective than the Delta variant which was more than the “original”.  To use another one of Mom’s expression, I feel like we’re waiting for the “other shoe to drop” on Covid.  We might be playing with fire when it comes to dinners and concerts – flirting with normalcy in an wholly abnormal world.  

Or maybe it’s the economy, or the Russian troops on the Ukrainian border, or any of the other national or world crises we face.  

There’s plenty to worry about, as our Lab Atticus can tell you. But there’s good news as well. My ears are still ringing from Phil Collins and the group; I’m glad we’re able to have those experiences again. And there’s plenty of coffee in the house. Other than getting the Christmas tree up (and fortified from the puppy CeCe) there’s not too much on our plate today.

Maybe a red sky in the morning is just a beautiful way to begin a new day.  

• The Out My Window Series
• Crisis in a Small Town – (3/16/20)
• St Patrick’s Day – (3/17/20)
• Plagues and Floods – (3/21/20)
• Stories from Lockdown – (4/1/20)
• Out My Front Window – Part One (4/21/20)
• Outside My Window – Part Two (4/23/20)
• Outside My Window – Part Three (4/26/20)
• Outside My Window – Part Four (5/13/20)
• Outside My Window – Part Five (6/3/20)
• Outside My Window – Part Six (7/3/20)
• Outside My Window – Part Seven (7/31/20)
• Outside My Window – Inshallah (8/13/20)
• Outside My Window – Part Eight (9/15/20)
• Outside My Window – Part Nine (9/25/20)
• Outside My Window – Part Ten (10/9/20)
• Outside My Window – Part 11 (11/29/20)
• Outside My Window – Post-Truth World (12/16/20)
• Waiting for the Shot (3/11/21)
• Outside My Window – Part 15 (5/26/21)
• Outside My Window – Part 16 (6/13/21)
• Outside My Window – Part 12 – (8/14/21)
• Sixty Five Doom (9/1/21)
• Red Sky at Morning (12/9/21)

Our Divide

We have a precipitous divide in American politics.  The numbers are available, stark, and essentially terrifying.  More than twenty million American voters believe the 2020 election was stolen from Donald J. Trump.  They know it in their hearts:  it was stolen, cheated, ripped off.  To use a football analogy, “…we won on the field, but lost on the scoreboard”.  And not because the other team scored more points.  No, they lost on the scoreboard because someone rigged the board to give more points for the other team’s touchdowns, and less points for theirs.  

They believe, because it’s a “prophecy fulfilled”.  Their leaders, with the 45th President of the United States in front, convinced them that if he lost, the election was stolen.  The “ground was softened” by years of preparation, from even before the 2016 election.  They could not trust the outcome, nor the counters, nor the ballots themselves.  They could not trust that their vote for Trump was counted for Trump.  The Democrats, or the Chinese, or the George Soros himself rigged the system. 

They aren’t the only ones who questioned the election process.  Those of us who voted for Hillary Clinton asked some of the same questions after the 2016 results.  Over two years later in April of 2019 as the Russiagate scandal broke, I wrote about those doubts in Put On My Foil Hat. But since even the “doubters” could never find final proof, most never crossed the line into “true-believers”.  But the twenty million have.

De-Construction

Steve Bannon, the “Svengali” behind the plan,  called it “De-Construction” of the government.  I wrote about it over four years ago in November of 2017, (The Bully and Bannon). But even as I did, I didn’t understand the full import of his goals.  When Bannon said don’t trust government, he didn’t make a distinction between Federal, State or Local.  He didn’t even divine out Republicans versus Democrats.  It wasn’t until November of 2020, when the “Stop the Steal” movement turned on Republicans running local and state election offices across the country, that I realized the full depth of his “De-Construction” plan.

If everything is corrupt, then it should be no problem that Trump, the sitting President, was on the phone with the chief election official in Georgia demanding “just enough” votes to win.  Because, according to him, it’s all rigged anyway, so rig it for me.  And since the counters are all crooked; they deserve the threats and the screamers, the folks with semi-automatic weapons parading on the sidewalks outside of their homes.  

Seventy-Seven Minutemen

And speaking of weapons, the twenty million need to arm themselves.  There will come a day when their weapons may be needed to make sure their “truth” is revealed.  It’s no mistake that Stop the Steal and the Second Amendment are totally intertwined.  The idea: Don’t let them get your guns; it’s the only way you will be able to fight back. Bannon doesn’t believe  “The Establishment” will go down without a fight. There were Seventy-seven Minuteman on the Lexington Green. They started the American Revolution.  It’s the true import of the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag.  So be ready.

That’s because it’s really true.  The guy down the street from me is ready to hold his AR-15 up against the 82nd Airborne para-roping from the Black Helicopters.  It’s like a scene from the original Red Dawn, as the brat pack of Patrick Swayze, C Thomas Howell, Jennifer Gray and Charlie Sheen stood up against the entire Soviet Army.  They believe it.  And they have legal armories where they practice, right  down the road, right out in the open, because it IS legal to do so.  

Gospel According to Fox

That inherent mistrust, fueled by years of Fox News and other propaganda spread like a slow pandemic. And  when the real pandemic hit, the logic became convoluted.  President Trump seemed to lose the election because of Covid, so Biden won because of Covid, so anything he does to stop Covid is benefitting his illegitimate Presidency, so don’t get vaccinated.  And since Fox and the rest can provide “facts” and “experts” to back why vaccines don’t work, they have their “proof”. 

The Alternative to the gospel of Bannon, otherwise known as the mainstream media, are part of the “Constructed Establishment”.  So don’t believe, don’t listen, don’t even engage with those that mistakenly trust what the AP or New York Times or other independent news organizations might say.  As one of my friends once told me; “do you wonder why no one reads your “blogs” anymore?”  I don’t wonder, I see the statistics behind each essay.  I know people read my essays.  But the early years of great debates about Trump World, mostly on Facebook,  are over.  Don’t engage, because it might cause you to question. 

A Rising Tide

They are “true believers”.  Don’t underestimate their power, will and desire.  After 2016, they thought they had it made.  When the 2020 vote came in, they reacted. But January 6th was a small disorganized protest compared to what’s coming.  Now, their power is represented by the co-opted Republican Party.  They are legally rigging the states, so that Trump/Republican legislatures can LEGALLY overturn the vote of the people.  And come 2024, they will be so much better prepared, and financed, and determined.  

Democrats do have a chance to counter at least the “legal” rigging of the state elections.  But that chance is right now, and will quickly slip away unless action is taken.  The House is ready, the President is sort of ready, but the Senate is not.  So many of our nation’s critical issues are dependent on two votes in the Senate.  And there is no sense that those votes will come, even though they claim to be Democrats.  

But don’t be fooled – even if the voting and election certification issues are fixed, there are still twenty million true believers. That won’t change, even as Democrats get excited about Build Back Better and the January 6th Committee.  Like standing at the edge of the sea, the sand is slipping beneath their feet, and the tide is rising.  Will Democrats happily watch our boats go to the horizon, enjoying the view – until we drown?

Christmas Present

Ethan Crumbley was a fifteen year old sophomore at Oxford High School in the Detroit exurbs.  His parents gave him an early Christmas present the weekend after Thanksgiving, a semi-automatic pistol.  His Mom took him to the shooting range so he could enjoy it.  And on Tuesday, November 30th 2021, Ethan put the semi-automatic pistol and several clips of ammunition in his backpack, and took them to school.  Later in the day, he attacked his fellow students and teachers.  Four students were killed, seven more students and a teacher were wounded.

16 Year Old Hero

Before we go any farther into this tragedy, we need to recognize a hero.  Tate Myre was a sixteen year old junior, and a star running back on the football team.  The weekend before the shooting, he visited the University of Toledo as a scholarship prospect.  When Crumbley started firing, Tate charged, trying to stop the shooter.  Tate was shot several times, and died in a police car on the way to the hospital.  But his actions bought other students’ time to get away. He saved lives, at the cost of his own.  

A Threat

On Monday, a teacher was disturbed to observe Ethan searching for ammunition on his cell phone.  The next day, the day of the shooting,  a note was found on his desk.  It had a drawing of a gun, a bullet, and a bleeding victim, and the words “…the thoughts won’t stop, help me”.  The teacher did exactly the right thing:  Ethan was sent to the office.  The administrators called the parents in for a conference, and required that Ethan receive counseling within forty-eight hours.  They suggested that the parents take Ethan home.

But the parents demanded that Ethan stay in school. We don’t know how that conversation went, yet, but clearly administrators didn’t feel they had “enough” to require Ethan’s removal from school. And, they either didn’t think of it, or felt they couldn’t, do a search of Ethan and his backpack, the backpack with a gun and ammunition clips. And they didn’t call in additional social services, or call the police.

We also don’t know if they asked the obvious question:  does Ethan have access to weapons, particularly guns.  If they did, we don’t know if Ethan or the parents lied or told the truth about his new present.  Certainly Ethan didn’t tell them the gun was right there, in the office, in his backpack.  So Ethan went back to class, and ultimately, four students died and six more and a teacher were wounded.

What Would We Do

I was the Dean of Students at a suburban high school for eight years.  If I was working in Oxford High School, Ethan and his parents likely would have been in my office.  

What would we have done?  So the note, the pictures and the cry for help, would have been considered a threat. That creates the “reasonable suspicion” that a school legally needs to act.  In our situation, probably the entire administrative staff, the Principal and the Assistant Principal and the Dean would have been involved.  We also would have called in the School Resource Officer (SRO), the Sheriff’s Deputy assigned to our school, in the years when one was available.

I retired in 2014. While there were political divides then, the current climate is far more polarized than it was even seven years ago. So we don’t know what the conversation with the Crumbley’s was like. We don’t know if the Second Amendment was mentioned. We don’t know how concerned the Administrators of Oxford High School were with parent complaints, and student removals. And finally, we don’t know if Ethan was a student with a status which made it difficult to remove him from the school building.

Reasonable Suspicion

But I do know what would have happened in our office.  One of us, probably me, would have searched Ethan’s pockets, and his coat, and his locker, and for damn sure, his backpack.  He made an identifiable threat, on paper, and asked for help.  Our staff, including the SRO, would want to do everything to help him.  But first, we would have made sure he was safe, and so were our students and staff.

And if the parents refused to allow the search?  Then a couple of things would have happened.  The SRO could have raised the threat to a legal issue, and then handled at as a police matter. In the years when we didn’t have an SRO on site, a Deputy would have been called in.  Here in Licking County we have deputies specially trained in crisis intervention.   

Or we would have done an “emergency removal”, requiring the parents to take Ethan home.  There might have been yelling and screaming.  Things might be ugly.  But Ethan would have gone home, and those ten students and a teacher would have been safe, at least for Tuesday.  And then the Sheriff’s Department would have been notified, and they would have done a “home check”. 

Hindsight

I can imagine how the Oxford High School administrators are feeling right now.  No matter how you look at it, they failed the most important mission they have for their students, to keep them safe.  They must be devastated, perhaps beyond recovery.  They not only have to live with their failure, but also with the national scrutiny of their actions, including by armchair quarterbacks like me.  But I have been in their position.  There are lots of pressures:  parents, school boards, district office staff, local, state and national politics.  But none of that compares with their duty to stop what happened in the halls of Oxford High School on Tuesday.  

Somehow, they missed that.

Film Noire

I guess you have to be a “certain age” to remember those old movies.  I certainly don’t remember them from the theatre, but on Saturday afternoons or late in the night, they were on TV.  They were “film noire” and some of the favorites of my parents’ generation.  But for me they were grainy, black and white cops and robbers films, with an anti-hero as a criminal or a shady detective, who always had a “femme fatale” on his arm.

The great players of Mom and Dad’s generation were all there:  Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Becall, Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner, Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer, William Holden and Gloria Swanson, Orson Welles and Joan Crawford.  They had offices in seedy buildings, chain smoked and talked out of the side of their mouths, and double crossed each other time and time again.  The cops were often as bad as the criminals, and there was no such thing as a “happy ending”.

And no one ever got to “take the Fifth”.  They were shot, or tricked, or a confession was “sweated out” of them under the swinging light hanging from a single cord. Getting justice wasn’t usually the issue, revenge was.  And the moral of the story – there might not be any morals in the world at all.

US Constitution

So what is the Fifth? 

The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution outlines the rights of someone accused of a crime.  The portion we’re concerned with is:

“ No person…shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.”

In our criminal process, no one can be required to answer questions or make statements that could incriminate themselves, that is, help prove their guilt.  It’s such an important part of our Constitutional process that, since 1966, each time law enforcement questions a suspect, the officer is required to notify the suspect that they do not have to answer questions – the famous  Miranda Rights from the Supreme Court case of the same name. “You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a Court of Law.”

And the Fifth Amendment right crosses over to almost every government interaction with the public.  A Congressional Committee can require a witness to answer questions.  But they cannot require that the witness “confess” to a crime.  So it shouldn’t be a surprise that some former Trump officials are seeking the protection of the Fifth Amendment.  In fact, the surprise is that they took so long to do so.

“Taking the Fifth” is NOT a confession.  In fact, juries are instructed that they cannot infer guilt because someone refused to testify, invoking their Fifth Amendment right.  It’s a right every American has, guilty, innocent, or somewhere in between (like the Film Noire anti-heroes). 

Executive Privilege

There are several laws they may have been violated by the Trump Administration and their supporters in the two months after the 2020 election.  Certainly those who led the crowds to attack the Capitol on January 6th are likely candidates for criminal charges.  And the “leaders” who developed the entire strategy of trying to undermine and overturn the 2020 election results may have criminal exposure.   

When former Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark was called to testify in front of the January 6th Committee, his first defense of  “executive privilege” was unlikely.  That law is clear:  executive privilege, the idea that a President ought to be able to get confidential advice, only applies to the current executive.  

Clark, and the “legal mind” behind “Stop the Steal’, attorney John Eastman, now realize that they may have broken the law.  So their best bet, and most effective way to avoid questions, is to “Take the Fifth”.  And they have every right to do so.

Money Talks

So why didn’t they do that in the first place?  Why start on a shaky legal foundation, the “privilege” argument, when they had firm footing in the Fifth Amendment?  The answer lives at Mara Lago in Florida.  While legally “taking the Fifth” doesn’t imply guilt, in the mind of the general public, someone who does must be hiding something.  Invoking the Fifth Amendment raises the question of criminality, that somewhere in their actions laws were broken.  And, of course, the man in Mara Lago cannot stand the concept that something in “Stop the Steal” was illegal.

And this isn’t just a legal question, it’s a financial one as well.  Those lawyers sitting beside the witness get paid, probably $500 an hour. Someone has to pick up the tab.  All of these potential witnesses needr help for legal fees, and the obvious answer is the hundreds of millions raised by the Trump Campaign of 2020 and 2024.  Implying crime is not a way to reach those funds.

Immunity

However, unlike the shaky “privilege” argument, the Fifth Amendment protection does have one vulnerability.  The Fifth only applies if there is a risk of criminal action.  So the January 6th Committee has the ultimate “cure” to the Fifth.  Like every Congressional Committee, they have the power to grant immunity from prosecution.  Once immunity is granted, then the Fifth Amendment no longer applies.

Immunity can be transactional, question by question, or it can be “blanket” over an entire testimony.  There are often questions a witness can answer that do not incriminate, and those don’t need to be “immunized”.  That high priced lawyer sitting beside the witness has “just one job”:  to make sure that if an answer will be incriminating, the witness either “Takes the Fifth” or gets immunity for the answer.  

The question for the Committee:  if everyone gets immunity, the Committee gets answers but no justice; no one to take responsibility for what happened in those two fateful months.  But if no one gets immunity, there will be a lot of information that never comes out.  And that’s problem the Committee members will need to solve.

Like those old films, there probably won’t be a “hero” on the witness stand (and no femme fatale).  No matter what the Committee reveals, there’s not likely to be a happy ending either.  But, unlike Film Noire, the Committee may get justice.

Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization

The United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the case Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization this week.  It is a direct challenge to Roe v Wade, the 1973 case that allowed women to legally access abortions throughout the United States up through twenty weeks of pregnancy.  The essence of the Dobbs argument, was that Roe was “wrongly decided” by the ’73 Court, when it discerned a Constitutional right of women to control their own bodies.  The state of Mississippi (Dobbs) argued  that the United States Constitution is “neutral” on the that issue, and therefore their state should be able to regulate it under the Tenth Amendment as “a power not delegated” to the Federal government.   

There is a singular reason why Mississippi brought this direct challenge to Roe: the changes in the Justices who will decide the case.  Due to two deaths, a resignation, and the machinations of Mitch McConnell; President Donald Trump was able to appoint three Justices to the nine judge panel.   All three were historically against Roe, but pledged “loyalty” to the precedents set by prior Courts. Now that they are “in the chair” though, their arguments demonstrate a willingness to throw the Roe decision out.  Along with two already sitting Justices, they have a five vote majority.

Legal Weeds

The politics aside, the Court is on the cusp of making a major change in direction.  The “discerned right” of women to control their bodies is only one case. There’s a series of decisions made by the Court about greater personal freedoms, all based on similar legal reasoning.  The Court reasoned that States could not ban interracial marriage (Loving v Virginia), use of birth control (Griswold v Connecticut),  abortions (Roe v Wade and Casey v Planned Parenthood), homosexual activity (Romer v Evans) and most recently gay marriage (Obergefell v Hodges).  

The basic argument is that the Constitution contains a right to privacy and to equal protection under the law.  Since that right is in the Constitution, the individual states do not have the authority to control those private behaviors.   Mississippi is directly challenging that concept. If the Court accepts the reasoning, all of these other precedents are at risk as well.  It doesn’t mean that abortions, interracial marriages, gay marriages, birth control or homosexual activity could become “illegal” nationwide.  But it could mean that individual states would regulate those actions differently, depending on the state.

Divided America

We already see that occurring with abortion laws in the United States.  In many states, the  legislatures are dominated by those who want abortions completely banned. Some of those states have done everything they could, within the scope of the Roe and Casey decisions, to regulate abortions from within their borders. Missouri and Texas, have succeeded.  Other states recognize the “spirit” of Roe and Casey, and only regulate abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy, when the baby could survive outside of the mother.

We saw the same thing prior to the Obergefell decision, where some states allowed gay marriage, some states established a second form of “union” to encompass it, and many states, like Ohio, went out of their way to pass laws banning same-sex unions.  A couple could be married in Massachusetts or in a “union” in Vermont, but their relationship was not recognized in Ohio or Kentucky.  

Let Freedom Ring

This case is an outgrowth of the great crisis that America is facing today.  We are a nation of change.  The dominant majority of “white people” will no longer be the majority in a few years.  The United States has always prided itself as a nation of immigrants. But when those immigrants stopped looking like “everyone else”, they were perceived by some to be a threat.  

I can sit in a classroom today in little Pataskala, Ohio, and have students who are Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh; as well as Southern Baptist, Catholic, Presbyterians, Lutherans, a couple of Jewish kids and a whole lot of non-believers.  Even this “white ‘Christian’ suburban community” has changed. 

Also in that high school classroom are straight kids, gay kids, trans kids, and lots of kids who don’t “identify”.   For some in America, all of this change is incredibly threatening.  It challenges their vision of what “America” should “look like” and “act like”.  Their state legislatures are enforcing that vision of human behavior. And they are threatened by women choosing to have abortions.

Who Decides What to Believe

Their argument is that they are protecting a life by preventing abortion.  And they have every right to have that belief.  The question the Supreme Court answered in Roe and all of these other cases, is that “personal beliefs” should not be enforceable by law when they are about private behavior.  The Roe decision carefully parsed when the state had an interest in the growing fetus, and determined that its rights outweighed the privacy rights of the mother only after it could physically survive outside her womb.  

If a pregnant woman believes that she should protect that life and carry to term, that’s her choice.  If she determines that she does not want to do so, and it’s the 20th week or before, then the Court said she can make that choice as well.  The Roe decision said that the individual state legislatures shouldn’t be able to determine her choice for her.  

Consequences

It’s likely that the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v Wade.  Thirty or more states will say what the ‘correct’ belief is, and ban most abortions.  But don’t think that “correct-ness” will stop there.  

What we thought were “inherent” rights of Americans to be themselves, love who they want, and have their own personal beliefs, may all be at stake.

The Gag Rule

It was called the “gag rule”.  From 1835 until 1844, the United States House of Representatives banned debate on the pivotal issue of the time – slavery. The Nation spiraled down for nine years towards the depths of secession and Civil War. And the legislature refused to allow discussion of the topic.  Former President John Quincy Adams, then a representative from his native Massachusetts, again and again tried to get the “gag rule” lifted.  But it took until 1844 to gain enough votes to allow just a debate on slavery.

The rationale: there was nothing but acrimony to be gained by debate.  There were not enough votes to change anything, to somehow make the issue “better” for either side. So better to not even bring it up.

School Shooting

Tuesday four Michigan high schools students died and another seven injured at Oxford High School, about thirty miles north of Detroit.  They were killed by a “typical” school shooter; a fifteen year old white boy with a semi-automatic pistol.  He went through two “clips” and was loading a third when the police arrived and quickly apprehended him in the hall.  They captured him uninjured.

While information is limited, we know it was his father’s gun, purchased four days before on “Black Friday”.  We don’t know the reasons for the shootings, or what connections the victims had with the assailant. What we do know is this. Nothing more will be done to prevent the next school shooter .

Again

I wrote my first essay on school shootings in “Our America” on February 15th, 2018, almost four years ago.  It was called “Again”, and it was written the day after seventeen high school students and teachers were killed in Parkland, Florida.  The title was prophetic, the shootings at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School weren’t the first of 2018, and it wouldn’t be the last either.  It just happens, again, and again, and again.

It’s so common that it hardly breaks into the news cycle.  Yesterday’s catastrophe was the  twentieth of this school year (NYT).  The word “catastrophe” speaks of some infrequent and overwhelming event, not something so commonplace as “just” another school shooting.  But for the parents of those four murdered children, and the wounded, and the students of Oxford High School, their world will never be the same.

Inaction

But what have we done to prevent this?  What actions have we taken to protect the students of Oxford, or Parkland, or Pataskala where I am substitute teaching today?  As a former school administrator I can tell you there are three answers to that question. First, we have done a lot. Second,  we have not come close to “solving” the problem.  And third, our students are still at risk, perhaps just as much as they were before Parkland, and even before Columbine, almost twenty-two years ago.

Don’t fault school administrators, or police departments with School Resource Officers, or even the parents of the “shooters” who don’t know what’s going on.  Schools have spent millions of dollars and thousands of hours of time trying to protect our kids.  Police (or in the case of this school, the Sheriff’s Department) are willing and able to lay their lives down to protect our kids, I have no doubt.  So are the teachers in the building, as I was when I was the Dean of Students.  But none of that has made much of a difference – twenty school shootings since last August.  

Acceptance

There is an old public relations trick.  When asked if you’ve solved a problem that you can’t fix, you talk about man-hours, dollars, construction changes, contingency plans.  You talk about how much you’ve “worked” the problem.  But in the end, none of what we’ve done in the past twenty-two years, or the past four, have made much of a difference.

Some will argue that you can’t know what you stopped; how many schools avoided the “school shooter” experience through all of those “man-hours, dollars, construction changes and contingency plans”.  And they would be right.  But in the end, we have obviously failed.  Failed those four kids who died Tuesday, failed those seven, some still battling for their lives, and failed the kids who huddle in the corners of classrooms in every school in the nation practicing “school shooter” drills.  We have not even come close to solving the problem.

Lead from Behind

America is a nation awash in guns.  On this, the fifth day of hunting season, here in Pataskala rifles are everywhere.  But it’s not just hunting rifles.  Our nation is filled with handguns, rapid change ammunition clips, semi-automatic “military style” rifles, and all sorts of ways to more effectively kill not just deer, but people.  In our polarized nation, there is no chance that we might find a real solution to school shootings.  Oh, politicians on all sides will “say a prayer” and “hold the students in our hearts”.  But nothing can be done.

There will be speeches on the floor of the House of Representatives about the need for gun law reforms.  There isn’t a “gag order” preventing it.  But we are bound by “politics” from acting.  That inability is a direct reflection of America’s division over the issue.  Just a little more than half of Americans are in favor of more restrictive gun legislation, but 40% live in a household with a gun (Pew).  In our time where “leadership” is politically dangerous and politicians read the polls before they determine any “stand”, it shouldn’t be a surprise that we can’t find a solution.  

Americans accept this level of gun violence in our schools.   We are so determined to have “our guns” that, unlike anywhere else in the world, we allow our children to die. Our inability to even address the problem creates “collateral damage” – the four dead of Oxford, the seventeen dead of Parkland, and the fear every student feels in school in the United States.  

It’s our choice – and the good citizens of the United States have made it.

Post-Truth 

We live in a post-truth era.  What in any other time would be widely accepted as fact, today is a matter of “opinion”.  No matter what “science” learns, no matter what level of expertise someone has in a particular subject, everyone’s opinions about everything, all of a sudden, are valued.  You have yours, I have mine, and somehow, they both have equal weight.  

That’s because we can go “on Google” and find any justification for any theory we want.  And since that information is presented in a “smart” way, say with lab coats in front of the US Capitol, then “obviously” it’s the truth.  All of the credentialing that created trust in the past, from academic degrees to years of expertise, no longer count.  Joe Rogan has at least as much weight in the Covid debate as Anthony Fauci, if not more.  Ask Green Bay Quarterback Aaron Rogers.   Rogan (Newton South High School, U-Mass dropout) is an “influencer” with eleven million followers, and that status somehow lends more credence than Fauci’s forty years of scientific leadership and advanced degrees (BA from Holy Cross, MD from Cornell, Honorary Doctorates from 9 Universities).  

“Experts”

It is foolish.  We still want an “expert” to fix our car, or our broken leg.  If I had a question about pole vaulting, I’d go to Greg Hull (Arizona) or Jim Bemiller (Tennessee)  or my pole vaulting “guru”, Mark Hannay (Slippery Rock).  They are the best, the most experienced.  They are the proven experts in the field.  Of course folks outside the “pole vault world” don’t know their names.  And we didn’t know the names of Tony Fauci (National Institute of Health) or Mike Osterholm (University of Minnesota) or Peter Hotez (Baylor) before Covid either. (Except Fauci, we knew him from AIDS and Ebola). 

But our arguments about the pandemic aren’t really scientific ones anymore.  As we are post-truth and post-fact, we are post-science as well.  The debate is now clothed in political terms of “personal freedom”.  “You can’t tell me what injection I have to take”, is the argument now, based not in science, but in a narcissistic view of personal privilege versus civic responsibility.    

American Dis-Unity

America has a long tradition of unifying in the face of great crisis.   From World War I and World War II to 9-11, we have turned to national solutions to solve our national problems.  But we also have a long tradition of dissent to those solutions.  The Vietnam War started with national support.  That didn’t last.  As the war dragged on, Americans discovered that the Government wasn’t telling the truth about the conflict (The Post – Pentagon Papers).  That revelation didn’t seem to alter national policy or action.  The War continued, through the final years of Johnson’s Presidency and the six years of Nixon’s ill-fated stay in the White House. The Vietnam War didn’t end until 1975, after Ford’s ascension to the Oval Office.

While we have a tradition of unifying under crisis, the Vietnam Era taught a deep distrust of “the Government”.  That distrust is underlined in popular culture, from the Rambo movies to the heroic portrayals of activist protestors in The Trial of the Chicago Seven.  That distrust is also emphasized in The Report, which examined the actions of the CIA after 9-11, and Shock and Awe that looked at the false evidence that justified the invasion of Iraq.

Add that to the current post-truth era, and maybe it isn’t such a surprise that instead of unifying in the face of a pandemic virus, the United States is fractured.  But that division has a real cost in lives.  The United States still leads the world in Covid deaths, now nearing 800,000.  India, with a population four times the size, has only recently reached half that toll.

Oh, the Needle!!

It is logical for a nation faced with a health crisis to search for a way to prevent the disease.  It is logical for that nation to look to the most brilliant to find a preventative, a vaccine.  And once it finds that preventative, it’s more than logical for the nation to want it’s citizens to take it.  In fact, it is logical to protect the nation, just as logical as it was to draft soldiers for World War I and II, and to ration food and products.  Now THAT imposed on “personal freedom” – especially when they put a rifle in your hands and sent you to war.

But “Oh the needle – oh the needle in my arm!!!!!”  Clearly that infringement must be beyond “the pale” for some.  The science is irrefutable:  the vaccine works, and it would save lives.  But that all depends on facts that many don’t believe anymore. 

Natural Immunity

And the final illogic of our post-truth world is “natural immunity”.  Those who had the misfortune of getting Covid, now claim that are “immune” from the disease.  Again, science conflicts with that claim.  While prior infection does give some immunity, the level is dependent on how sick you were, and what variant of the disease you had.  And worse, instead of “risking” the vaccine, some are more willing to risk the disease itself, in order to gain immunity from – the disease. 

But those pandering to the anti-vaccine crowd are trying to place “natural immunity” as equal protection to vaccination.  The science, the facts, demonstrates that it isn’t.  But since all opinions are “weighed equally”, those that find political shelter in opposing vaccination are now clinging to “natural immunity”.  I wish they were right.  I wish that the almost fifty million Americans already infected by Covid were set.  

But they’re not.  

Omicron

It would be nice for the worst of Covid to be behind us.  Politically, it would be an advantage for President Biden to be able to say “…he cured the United States”.  We have weathered the original infection, then re-infection with the Delta Variant.  But viruses are all about mutation, and the global spread of the corona-virus  encourages genetic changes.  

The world-wide web of transportation means that what happens anywhere in the world, will be everywhere else in days.  So the discovery of the Omicron Variant of Covid 19, a variation with multiple mutations, is chilling.  We know we can’t stop it from getting into the United States. It’s probably here.  It’s already in Canada, with two cases identified in Ontario. What we don’t know is how infective it is, and how effective the vaccines will be against it.  Omicron may not change a thing.  It might change everything.

It would be better if we could handle this together; united as a nation against the disease.  That’s not likely.  The anti-fact machine is already churning out propaganda, claiming that somehow one side is “making the variant up” for political gain.  We don’t share the same facts, nor the same sources of information. Another viral crisis will deepen our divisions, not heal them.

In a post-truth world, that’s the truth.

Yellow Journalism

We live in a world today of “intimate” mass communication.  In the “old days”, communication was by reading; newspapers, tracts or books.  We had a “choice to know”,  short of the street corner cry of the newsboys:  “Extra, Extra, Read All About It, Spanish sink US Battleship!!!”  Want to know more – buy the paper.  And from the beginning, newspapers had their biases.  Some of the great newspapers of the mid-1800’s fought for abolition of slavery, like William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator and Frederick Douglass’s North Star. 

But the bias of the newspapers of the late 1800’s was more about selling papers and making money.  The great newspaper “war” between William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World wasn’t about ideology.  It became a national battle of sensationalism to sell papers.  Which paper could tell the “biggest” story, true or not?  We categorize that as the era of “Yellow Journalism”. It was when the United States actually fought a war driven not by necessity, but by public opinion stoked with outrage by the lurid stories of Spanish atrocities.  

Fredric Remington, the famous artist of the American west, was sent to Cuba by Hearst, to draw images of the war atrocities for the Journal.  The story goes that when Remington cabled Hearst that nothing was happening, Hearst replied:  “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war”.   

Intimate Communication

Today we are far beyond newsboys crying out in the city streets.  In fact we have surpassed the time of the television “evening news” (though it’s still available). Today our news is delivered individually, to our handheld devices.  We get our news in bed or the bathroom, as we drive or as we idle away time at work.  The newsboy is no longer crying out from the street – he is “pinging” on the bedstand or vibrating in our pocket.  But he still demands the same attention – “Extra, Extra, read all about it”.  

Just as the yellow journalists one hundred and twenty years ago used stories and pictures to drive our emotions, today’s “commentators” (such a neutral word, as if they were ancient Greek scholars) find key words to impress our views.  And that’s what today’s essay is about, the new “yellow journalism” of the Twenty-First Century.  I call it “critical word theory”. 

Legacy Americans

Let’s start with the “newest”, coined by Fox commentator Tucker Carlson:  Legacy Americans.  This term is part of an entire “school” of thought, based around the changing demographics of the United States.  The facts are that sometime in the next twenty years, white people will no longer be the majority of Americans.  For the first time since the colonization of North America, the country will be a “majority-minority” nation.   That means that no one group; not whites or blacks, Latinos or Asians or Native Americans or “others”, will be a majority of America.  We will be a nation of varying minorities.

That’s a fact.  But what Carlson means is what happens to the “legacy” Americans when they stop being the majority?  “Legacy Americans” are the white people who were here – before.  Before what?  Before the migrations of the twentieth century, before “brown people” became more populous throughout our nation, rather than just the Southwest.  Carlson uses the term like a crowbar to divide the interest of the soon to be minority whites from what will be the majority of the nation, non-whites.

Fix the Vote

And so the machinations of many states to reduce the voting power of non-white peoples and enhance those of whites is to protect “legacy Americans”.   It sounds so “proper”, like the inheritance left by some old aunt to keep the family fortune going.  But of course, the definition of “legacy American” is anti-democratic,  as anti-American as it comes.  It calls for the preservation of power regardless of electoral strength. 

Which brings us to Carlson’s greater thesis of “White Replacement Theory”.  This is the over-arching theme of his philosophy.  The theory states that, like the villainous organization in a James Bond movie, the Democratic Party is in favor of allowing “open borders”, because they want more brown people to come to the United States and vote for them.  They will “replace” the white voter, (and employee), to reshape the nation into something else – in Carlson’s mind maybe Venezuela.  

Which fits into the real propaganda, the “Big Lie” of “Stop the Steal”.  Because when Democrats respond that they don’t want open borders but legal immigration, and besides immigrants aren’t citizens and can’t vote – the Carlson thesis is that they already do vote.  His claim is that voting is already so corrupted in this nation that millions of illegal votes have reshaped our election results, particularly one.  The fact that this isn’t true, doesn’t seem to matter to Carlson:  He’s “furnishing the pictures and the war”.  

White-washed History

“Legacy Americans”, Carlson would say, should embrace their “Heritage”.  Heritage is another misappropriated term in our modern Yellow Journalism.  It stands for the literally white-washed history taught in the public schools of the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s.  “Heritage” means that the Southern “Lost Cause” of the Civil War was righteous, and that the villainous North (just like the Democratic Party) is trying to erase history by removing Confederate relics from town squares and flag poles. 

But the real erasing of history took place at the end of Reconstruction in 1876, when the white votes of the South were more important than securing the victory of civil rights in the war.  Robert E. Lee didn’t even want monuments.  He wanted the nation to move on from the disaster that he prolonged (though he certainly didn’t put it that way).  But it was in the “interest” of the white South to re-write the history of America.  

That’s what we (I’m sixty-five) were taught in school, the “Lost Cause” history that somehow put the “romantic” Confederates on an equal footing with the “industrialized” Union. Sure we learned about the heroic Irish Brigades who fought in the War on both sides. But we were taught about the brilliant “strategery” of the Confederate Generals, and the life wasting butchery of the Union Generals. And we learned very little about the 179,000 African Americans of the Union Army who battled to free their brothers from slavery. Where are their statues?

Leave it to Beaver

“Heritage” is used to define what I would call the “Leave it to Beaver” time, of the 1950’s.  It all seemed so peaceful, before the upheavals of Americans of color demanding equal rights.  The good old days when everyone “knew their place”:  women stayed at home, gays stayed in the closet, and people with disabilities stayed in the upstairs bedroom with the shades down.

Which leads us to the final “bugaboo” term:  “Critical Race Theory”.  No matter that critical race theory was a specific term used to define a study of legal processes at the post-graduate level, today it is now misused as the over-arching term for the “evil” of teaching that discrimination is wrong; that it benefitted and still benefits one race over another.  Because, as Mr. Carlson would have it, we are to roll back the changes to “Leave it to Beaver” times.  That way, we would make sure that “Legacy Americans” are protected, that their “Heritage” is saved, and that they aren’t “replaced”.  

The end of the Reconstruction marked the end of the dream of an America where color didn’t matter.  Yellow Journalism brought us an “imperialistic war”.  And the Critical Word Theory of today is trying to divide our nation, and make it one of minority rule.  

If that’s not Un-American, I don’t know what is.

Too Early

I was up early on Thanksgiving morning.   “The dogs” don’t recognize Federal holidays, but I was ready to get going at six, anyway.  It was Thanksgiving Day; there’s cleanup to do, turkeys to prepare (one for cooking, one for smoking), and tables to set.  So getting out of bed wasn’t so hard.  Besides, CeCe, the pit bull puppy, made no mistake about needing to go out.  The harder I tried to sleep, the more she licked my face.

The morning news shows on Thanksgiving are usually a compilation of earlier shows.  While the dogs don’t recognize Federal holidays, the crew at MSNBC definitely does.  So there were lots of interviews that I usually wouldn’t pay much attention to.  One was of a New York Times book essayist (I missed his name) who did a review of the 9-11 Commission Report, now twenty years after the attack.  

9-11

There was lots of talk about the failures of America after 9-11: black sites, torture, loss of privacy with government intrusion and America’s failure to export democracy.  But there was also a story (always looking for a good story), one that resonates on this day to gives thanks.

I’ve written about Flight 93 before, the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania near the little town of Shanksville.  The memorials there are powerful, a fitting symbol of American determination and sacrifice.  But this Thanksgiving morning I learned one more detail about what happened that Tuesday on Flight 93.  The passengers, well aware of the earlier attacks on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon, knew they were on a flying missile.  And they chose to do something about it.

And before they charged the cockpit door, they did something wholly American.  They took a vote.  The passengers determined by democratic agreement to “do something” rather than ride the missile to its fate, probably the Capitol Building.  Certainly they understood the likely outcome of their action.  And they were even more aware of their fate if they did nothing.  So they voted to act, to sacrifice, and to try to save America from another assault.  Flight 93 hurtled upside down into a field near Shanksville at over five-hundred miles an hour.  It was democracy in action.

Under the Rug

Wednesday, I witnessed another vote that renewed my faith in democracy.  In Brunswick, Georgia, just north of the Florida border along the Atlantic coast, a jury of twelve citizens unanimously agreed that three white men could not chase down a black man and cause his death.  It was a case that should have been a “no brainer”. One of the white men even videoed the final moments. But it also might have been swept under the rug.

The local District Attorney, a friend of one of the three, ordered the men not to be arrested.  Before she recused herself, she made sure the next District Attorney would agree not to find cause for charges.  Had an attorney of one defendant not “leaked” the video, charges would never have been brought.  Perhaps the scariest part of this case:  that lawyer leaked it because he thought the video justified the murder. In fact, it was the critical evidence proving the charges against the defendants. 

No Defense

The defense made it clear where they stood.  They called for black pastors to be banned from the courtroom, they denigrated the character and the physical appearance of the victim, they did everything they could to convince the jury that this “black man” was guilty – of something.  This was a trial about race, about a black man jogging in a white neighborhood, and about three white men taking the law into their own hands.  It was a case from the 1940’s or 50’s Jim Crow South.  But in our current political climate, there is a looming question:  where does America stand on race, guns, self-defense and vigilantism?  Just look at the result of the Kenosha trial.

Eleven white and one black juror made their answer clear.  For two days they deliberated, then reached a verdict in time to go home for Thanksgiving: guilty.  The defendants were guilty of varying degrees of murder, guilty of false imprisonment, guilty of assault with their trucks.  All three will spend most of their remaining lives in jail. 

Thankful

Yesterday was Thanksgiving.  I know that for some, Thanksgiving is symbolic of European mistreatment of the Native Americans.  And there are many things in our history we should be sorry for.  But there are also events we can be proud of.

Here are two where democracy won out.

Beginnings

We all know the story.  The Pilgrims, fresh from a sixty-six day crossing of the Atlantic and two hundred miles off course, landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts.  It was a harbor protected by the long arm of Cape Cod, stretching out into the sea.  The arrived in September, too late to plant the crops they needed to survive the hard New England winter.  So they suffered, surviving at the mercy of the local natives who helped provide them with food, and teach them how to gather the local plants, clams and lobsters.

Almost half of the 102 Pilgrims died in that first winter.  But when spring arrived, they went to work, planting crops and building a more structured settlement.  By the fall, they were prepared for the winter, and wanted to give thanks for the bounty of their harvest.  They joined in celebration with the Native Americans who helped them survive that first long brutal winter.  So it was in 1621 that the first “Thanksgiving” was celebrated in America, not just to give thanks to God, but to those Native Americans who helped them to survive.

National Holiday

That tradition lived on in the northern colonies.  And days of Thanksgiving were proclaimed for other reasons.  George Washington called for a national day of Thanksgiving after the ratification of the Constitution.  Individual states had their own scheduled days of Thanksgiving, though it remained more of a regional than national tradition.

It wasn’t until 1827 that there was a movement for a “National Day of Thanksgiving”.  Sarah Josepha Hale, a noted writer and magazine editor who authored “Mary had a little lamb”, began a thirty-six year campaign to convince the nation.  

It took until 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, that she found a sympathetic ear with President Abraham Lincoln.  He was searching for ways to keep the Union together.  The War was a time of ultimate mutual sacrifice, as almost every American was directly impacted by the casualty lists from the battlefields.  

And so Lincoln issued a proclamation, calling for a national “Day of Thanksgiving” on the last Thursday of November. The first “national” Thanksgiving was the week after Lincoln outlined the reasons for the Civil War in the Gettysburg Address.   As he said, the nation fought so that “…a government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”. The holiday was another way he held the Union together while he worked to bring the Civil War to a successful conclusion.  Even with the victories of Vicksburg and Gettysburg in the summer, that was still not a sure thing in November of 1863.

So Thanksgiving became a “National holiday”, ultimately in the South as well as the North.  It was a celebration of thanks, but also of unity:  a holiday we could all share, regardless of religion or race or region or creed. 

Breaking Tradition

The great “tradition breaker” in American history was Franklin Roosevelt.  He is the only President to ignore Washington’s precedent of serving no more than two terms as President (“Teach them how to say goodbye”). Roosevelt, elected at fifty years of age in 1932, was unwilling to leave as the country faced World War II in 1940, or while the War was still raging in 1945.  And Roosevelt looked at other “traditions” as way to help the US economy, particularly during the 1930’s in the Great Depression.

Even in those stressed economic times, consumer buying went up significantly before Christmas.  But the “Christmas Season” didn’t officially start until after Thanksgiving, the last Thursday in November, usually the last couple days of the month. The country knew exactly when that was: since 1924  the Macy’s Parade has been a wonderful commercial announcement of the beginning of Christmas.  That’s why Santa Claus was at the end of the parade – time to start shopping.

Roosevelt wanted another week of consumerism, so he made one.  He moved Thanksgiving up a week, to the third Thursday of November.   While the nation accepted Roosevelt running for President for a third and even fourth term, they didn’t want him to “pack” the Supreme Court, and they definitely didn’t want him “messing” with Thanksgiving.  In 1942, he bowed to public pressure and returned it to the fourth Thursday of November.

Thanksgiving Today

So here we are today, the day before Thanksgiving, 2021.  We have much to be thankful for this year.  The pandemic isn’t over, but we are learning how to live with it.  For many there are empty chairs at the table due to Covid, just as there were empty chairs in 1863 and the 1940’s from the Wars.  But Thanksgiving isn’t about loss, it’s about life.  The Pilgrims could look forward to a winter better than the one before.  Washington could look forward to a new nation, a new experiment in human experience.  Lincoln could finally see a road to victory in the Civil War.  And Roosevelt could get us to go shopping – for an extra week.

President Biden has already pardoned the turkeys, though not the two in our refrigerator.  And he’s releasing oil from the strategic reserve to lower the burden of soaring gas prices.  So there’s reason to be thankful this Thanksgiving as well.  

But what we should really think about as we gather round our family tables tomorrow, is that there still is so much more that unifies our nation than divides it.  For at least one day, we are all focused on the same subject:  gathering our loved ones and sharing a meal.  Regardless of our political differences, we can all share in that.  

And if the turkey puts you to sleep, no worries.  Close your eyes, the Bears and Lions football game really won’t be much of a contest.  But save some turkey for the “Game” on Saturday, and the Bengals and Steelers on Sunday!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

Here’s a list of the “Dog Stories” from “Our America” – They’re mostly about dogs – though somehow politics still might creep into a few of them

Here’s some of Marty’s dog stories –

• Dash 10/24/2017
• Affordable Dog Act 8/18/2019
• Camping with the Dogs – 10/24/2019
• Good Hearts  9/2/2020
• Friday the Thirteenth – 11/13/2020
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/2021
• A Dog Story – 2/25/2021
• Lou’s Saga – 5/14/2021
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 7/30/2021
• Dogs Lost and Found – 11/21/2021
• Jenn and I and our good dog Dash get a High School “Hall Walk” the week of our wedding

And then there’s always politics

www.dahlman.online

Belsaw

In 1963 we were living in Clifton, a residential section of the City of Cincinnati.  Mom and Dad had bought the house of “Mom’s Dreams”, an old English Tudor at 21 Belsaw Place.  It was all old oaken beams and plaster board walls, set into the hillside.  We didn’t have air conditioning, but a huge fan on the third floor pulled cool air up through the house in the summer. 

There was a big open field next door, perfect for a second grader to gather friends and play, and a wood behind to explore that was the shortcut to my friends on the next street over.  That house is still there, fifty-eight years later.  The little tree we planted in the front yard is full grown now, and there’s a house built in the big field, and I’m sure air conditioning has been installed.

Clifton School

Clifton was a nice walking community.  Our church was only a few blocks away on Clifton Avenue.  And the school, the ancient Clifton Elementary building, was also within easy walking distance for a second grader.  Rain, shine or snow, we walked to school, “uphill, both ways”.  It wasn’t really, just an easy walk past the church and the big yards with Osage Orange trees.  Those trees produce a “fruit”, the big green “hedge apples”.  They were perfect for throwing at each other, or kicking down the sidewalk to school.

Clifton School was so old it there was a large fountain out front, for watering the horses the pulled the streetcars as they made their way down Clifton Avenue towards town.  (No, I’m not that old, the horses were long gone even then). The more modern “Annex” was across the street from the old building, and that was “my school” for second and third grade.  In fourth grade we would move over into the old building.

Kennedy

I was a President Kennedy fan even as a seven year-old.  Mom had a direct connection to the Kennedy’s.  She went to boarding school with Kathleen Kennedy, the President’s sister, who became part of the family tragedy when she died in a plane crash in 1948.  So Mom was a huge Kennedy supporter, even as a British citizen, and I was wearing a Kennedy button at four years old in the 1960 election.

November 22nd, 1963 was a normal school day in Mrs. Meyer’s second grade class.  But sometime after lunch, we became aware that something was up.  The teachers kept slipping out to the hallway to talk to each other, and Mrs. Meyers had tears in her eyes when she came back in the room.  She didn’t tell us what was going on, but soon the Principal came on the PA and announced that school was ending early, and we were going home.

Rumors flowed as we walked out of the building.  I remember someone describing a huge monster that attacked Texas, though I didn’t take much stock in that.  But clearly something had happened, and it was bad.  They never let us out of school early.

Fighting Words

So I headed back home, up Clifton Avenue, along with the “regular” crew that lived along the way.  One boy, a third grader, seemed to know “everything”.  As we passed the Osage Orange trees with the hedge apples on the ground, he told us that President Kennedy was shot and dead.  I didn’t believe him, and we argued as only a third and a second grader could.  His third grade superiority was too much for me – I punched him in the nose.  He ran off towards his house.

I was filled with righteous anger – how dare he lie about my hero, President Kennedy.  As I walked up the steps to the front door, I was all ready to tell Mom how I defended him.  But as I reached the top of the steps, the big wooden door opened.  Mom was standing there, tears streaming down her face.  

In Black and White

The next few days are a blur.  We watched a lot of TV, black and white images of airplanes and crying people.  The President’s body and Jackie and the new President Johnson were whisked out of Texas and back to Washington.  And then there was the funeral, the lone horse, the boots reversed in the stirrups, behind a plain caisson with a flag covered casket.  John-John, the President’s son just a couple of years younger than me, saluted the flag as it went by.  And the final resting place in Arlington, the hats of the military laid carefully around a plain white cross.

The punch in the nose was forgotten.  

Yesterday, Jenn and I were driving around, moving signs asking folks to look out for a lost dog.  We pulled into a driveway to turn around, and the yard was covered with hedge apples.  Memory is a funny thing – especially on November 22nd, fifty-eight years after President Kennedy was killed.

Not Guilty

Eighteen year old Kyle Rittenhouse is free.  He killed two and took another’s arm in those fateful few moments in Kenosha in August of 2020.  This week a jury of the citizens of Kenosha, found him not guilty of felony manslaughter.  We can’t know what the full reasoning of the jury was – but we can imagine that they accepted his attorney’s claim that Kyle was; “defending himself”.  The doctrine of self-defense is one of the few ways our law justifies intentionally taking a life or maiming someone.

Kyle was not an innocent teenager, thrust into a situation fraught with danger.  He intentionally placed himself there, armed with an AR-15 rifle. (By the way, the “AR” stands for Armalite, the first company to make this type of rifle, not “automatic rifle”.  The AR-15 is not automatic, it is semi-automatic, and requires a trigger pull for each round fired).  

Attracted to Danger

Kyle went to “protect property” from the “rioters”.  He ended up in a car lot, and after shots were supposedly fired (not from Rittenhouse), one man came up and tried to take Kyle’s gun away from him.  Kyle shot him four times.

After shooting the first man, Kyle ran for it, pursued by about a dozen people.  He fell to the ground and was kicked in the head.  He fired two shots at the “kicker”.  Both missed.  Kyle got back to his feet, and a man struck him on the shoulder with a skateboard and tried to take the rifle.  Rittenhouse shot him in the chest, killing him.  A fourth person approached with a handgun.  Kyle shot him in the arm.

If Kyle had been in the hallway of his Illinois high school, Antioch Community, with that AR-15, the men who attempted to get his rifle would be hailed as heroes, and the seventeen year-old would be a “school shooter”.  By virtue of the laws of neighboring Wisconsin, it was legal for him to be armed with a rifle on the streets, in the middle of “civil unrest”.  And when it all came down, he wasn’t even placed in custody after the shootings. It wasn’t that the police didn’t know.  They simply sent him on his way, after taking two lives and irrevocably changing a third. The Kenosha police perceived Kyle to be on “their side”.

Scared Boy

Eighteen year-old Kyle Rittenhouse is neither the horrific villain progressives paint him or the vaunted hero of the Second Amendment set.  It is obvious that he was a scared teenager, a “boy in a man’s job”, who put himself in a situation he couldn’t handle.  The boy who clearly saw the Marine advertisement:  “we run towards danger when others run away”, saw himself as that heroic figure.  But when courage was really needed, all Kyle could do was hide behind the AR 15 strapped to his chest (so it couldn’t be taken away).

There is no question that, once the shooting began, Kyle was in fear for his life, one of the fundamental tenets of “self-defense”.  “Grown men” were trying to take away his gun, his shield, the symbol and tool of his assumed “heroic manhood”.  The question the jury had to answer was when Kyle took on the adult responsibility of bearing arms in a time and place of civil disorder, did he somehow lose some of that self-defense protection.  Those who backed him say that it’s common sense:  he had a gun, he was in fear for his life, and he used the gun.  He is not guilty, and those who tried to take his gun away from him assumed all the risk and responsibility.  Their lives were forfeited by their own actions.

Assumed Responsibility

But that reasoning is simplistic (though it obviously worked with the jury).  Again, if he were in the halls of Antioch Community High School there would have been no question that he did not have that right of self-defense.  If he were in the process of committing another crime, say robbing a bank, again he can’t claim it.  So the legal question was, does a self-appointed vigilante (in the defined sense – a civilian who takes on law enforcement duties without legal authority) have the same rights as a police officer might?

If Kyle had been a police officer, and someone tried to take away his gun, then we would all agree that the officer would have the “right” to protect it, and himself.  But Kyle wasn’t a police officer, he was a “wannabe” police officer.  And the police in Kenosha “on the streets” seemed to welcome Kyle and his vigilante friends to the scene.  So how much responsibility do they bear?

And there is the mostly unspoken question of “white privilege”.  Neither Rittenhouse, nor any of the people he shot, were people of color.  But if we closed our eyes and saw Kyle as a Black seventeen year-old with that AR-15 strapped to his chest, would the outcome have been the same?  Would the police have been so welcoming?  I think we all can agree that things might have been very different.

Precedence

That Kyle Rittenhouse was found “not guilty” (of course that isn’t the same thing as innocent) doesn’t establish a legal “precedent”.  The facts of the Kenosha event are narrowly defined, and local courts don’t set precedent anyway.  The same fact pattern with a different prosecutor, judge and jury might well have had a different outcome.  The real danger of the Rittenhouse trial is the perceived “precedent” it creates in the public mind.  How many “vigilante” groups will appear in the next time of civil disorder?  And if they start shooting – are they “school shooters” or “heroic helpers of authority”?  

We better figure that out.

Ella

The last few weeks were busy “dog weeks” for Lost Pet Recovery (LPR), and our household.  My wife Jenn was completely immersed in finding a nearby dog for two weeks, working to get a lost Great Dane back to her home in Kirkersville.  Ella was a new arrival there, and got out on her second day.  

She “disappeared”, but really didn’t go very far.  Thanks to the dozens of signs put out on the roads, “Lost Dog – Great Dane – DO NOT CHASE call (Jenn’s number)”, we knew she was still hanging around the small village.  And Jenn was just behind her, putting up cameras and leaving “bait”:  dog food, Vienna sausages, chicken broth, the occasional McDonald’s burger; and hoping to spot her on a trail cam.  The idea:  get her to come back to eat, then “drop” a trap (a really big trap for a Great Dane) and get her safe.

Corn Maize

The calls kept coming in for a week, but Ella never found the bait, and was never on camera.  There was no place to put a trap, because there no place where Ella stayed.  Then, as we drove to a birthday party for a friend on Sunday, the phone rang.  Ella was in the “corn maize” at Van Buren Acres, a pumpkin place right beside I-70.  Four LPR members converged in the pouring rain at the maize, and wandered the paths looking for a glimpse of the 150 pound gray Dane.  You haven’t experienced farm life if you haven’t been in a corn maize in a downpour. But Ella was already gone.

So more signs went up, and Jenn talked to the entire neighborhood on the access road by the Interstate and the farmer who owned the surrounding cornfields.  Trail cameras were posted, but it really was more sightings from the neighborhood that let us know that Ella was still hanging around.

Jenn and I were searching a cornfield on Thursday when the call came in – Ella is in the backyard heading west!!  We raced to get ahead of her to put down a trap, but we arrived just in time for Ella to look in the window of the home, and turn back into the corn.  We didn’t get her.  But finally, one pile of food disappeared, just outside of an isolated hay barn.  Jenn was adding more food and setting up a camera there when Ella emerged from behind the barn, sniffed the air, then sauntered off into the corn.  Jenn “dropped” a trap.  

Go Bucks!

It was a sleepless night, waiting for the phone alarm to go off – something moving at the trap.  But it wasn’t until the next morning that Ella was caught on camera, stretching into the trap and getting the food – but missing the trigger to set if off.  Ella ate, then wandered away.

Jenn reset the bait, this time with sausage biscuits, and carefully checked the trap. After the sleepless night before, she went to bed early.  Ella, a true “Buckeye”, must have been aware of the Ohio State football schedule.  She waited until just after the Penn State game was over, then went back into the trap for more food.  This time the gate slammed shut. 

 We raced the twenty minutes  to the trap and got there about 12:30 am.  Other members of the LPR team joined us, and we lifted Ella, trap and all, into the back of our pickup truck. We drove her to her “Grandma’s” garage.  At first, she was “shaking” scared, but as she came out of the trap in the garage, she relaxed, leaned on Jenn’s leg, and turned into the sweetest girl.  She gave Jenn a lick as we said goodbye.

That’s the high of finding lost dogs. 

Pearl 

But there are lows as well.  Pearl was a beautiful Golden Retriever who was rescued from a breeder.  She was never socialized to people, just kept in a cage to make puppies.  The Rescue had her checked out by the vet, then sent to a family in Dublin, Ohio.  Pearl was there nine days, when  she slipped out the door – and she was off.

Pearl was gone for weeks in the hot July sun.  But she didn’t go too far.  She stayed along a creek in a neighborhood park, hiding in the tall grasses.  LPR got involved and set up a feeding station, that Pearl, and all the raccoons in the neighborhood, were happy to use.  But when LPR put out a trap, Pearl wouldn’t even get near it.  She had spent much of her life in cage – no amount of food would get past the fear of the trap.

Bigger Traps

So if you can’t get a dog in a trap, and there’s no way to lure her, then what other alternatives are there?  There’s a bigger trap, really more like a kennel cage, called a panel trap.  So we started with one panel near the food.  The change threw Pearl off for a while, but she finally started eating again.  We added a second and a third panel, and in time Pearl would stretch into the area to get food. But she always ready to jump back and get away.   We hoped that we could complete the panel, and eventually close the door to rescue Pearl.

We hauled bags of food a couple hundred yards through the brush, three times a week.  Pearl would always show up on camera, nervously eating what was available.  Sometimes she was by herself, but often the raccoons and possums joined in the repast.  One afternoon, Jenn and I were bringing in the food, when Pearl and some deer emerged from the grass and ran off. 

We hoped we hadn’t scared her too badly, but we were glad she found companionship with the deer.  

This went from July through August and into September.  The park maintenance workers cut the tall grass, changing the environment, but Pearl eventually  returned to the food.  The nearby High School came into session, and on football game nights (and their home cross country meet) Pearl would disappear for a while, but she soon came back.

We were slowly conditioning Pearl to the panel-trap, and to a “schedule” of coming back for more food.  She was finally becoming “predictable”. 

Chased Away

Then one day, there was a human figure with a leash on camera.  Pearl was gone.  When we went back with more food, we found a tennis ball right beside the panels.  Perhaps “the figure” decided he could catch Pearl, maybe hoping he could entice her to “play ball”.  We don’t know what happened, but we are pretty sure she wouldn’t know what the tennis ball was for.  

Pearl ran off, far down the creek.  We had one more sighting, this time about a mile away down Indian Creek in Dublin.  Then Pearl was gone.  That was on October 1st.  We continued to leave food for her, sausage biscuits, her favorite, until it was clear that she moved on.  Then LPR put up more signs around Dublin, hoping for a sighting so we could get back to feeding her again.

High and Low

On November 1st,  Pearl’s body was found along railroad tracks in Marion County, about twenty-six miles away from where we last saw her.  We don’t know exactly how she got there, the creek meanders down to the Scioto River, and there are railroad tracks near where the Scioto flows across the Delaware/Marion County border.   She was a beautiful, fearful, dog, that that we were unable to save.  From the high of Ella on Sunday, we had the low of Pearl on Monday.  

There are other dogs out there.  LPR has been involved in over two hundred rescues just this year.  Sometimes we get the dog right away.  Sometimes we advise the owners how to find their own lost dogs. Then there are the projects, the “Ella’s” where we have to out-think and get lucky to bring a dog home.  But the Pearl’s stick with us, more than the successes.    It’s hard to get past that beautiful, scared, dog, running with the deer in Dublin.  

But there’s always another dog missing – time to go back to work.

Lost Pet Recovery is a non-profit organization.  We don’t charge for any of our efforts, and no one gets paid.  But these efforts do cost money – equipment, bait, cameras, gas, and more.  If you’d like to support our efforts, you can donate through Facebook, through PayPal at info@lostpetrecovery.org, or you can use the old fashioned way – a check to Lost Pet Recovery, PO Box 16383, Columbus, OH, 43216.

The Sunday 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 Lost and Found – 11/21/21

Too Much Information

File this in the “information I wish I didn’t know” category.  Sausage is a mix of ground meat, spices, seasonings, and some kinds of grain or meal; all mixed together.  But no one wants to eat a “mash”. So it’s shaped and stuffed into a tube called a casing. That’s what makes it “sausage”.  And what’s the casing made of?  Well, a natural casing is made of the sub-mucosa layer of animal intestines.  It could be pig, or cow, or goat, or even a horse!  That’s the “tastiest” kind of sausage.  The casing lends a flavor to the “innards” (or is the “innards” really the casing – I’m not sure).

More mundane sausage is now contained by a polymer coating:  nylon or polypropylene.  There are also cellulose and collagen wraps. Doesn’t that sound tasty.  Since the artificial casing holds the flavor in, and doesn’t lend any flavor of its own, they don’t become part of the “sausage experience”.  And knowing that might make you really think about eating bites of whole sausage anymore.  Maybe you should peal the edge off the bologna.  

These essays are often political, and very, very seldom explain gastronomic delights.  They do however, often deal with legislation, and we sure have been talking about “making sausages” recently.  It seems only fitting that we should have a better understanding what goes into the real thing. 

Raucous Caucus 

Today (or tomorrow), the United States House of Representatives will vote on the “Build Back Better” plan. This is not of interest to the Republican Congressmen; they will, to a woman and man, vote against it.  The Republicans aren’t interested in “making” this sausage, in fact, they are vegan when it comes to the “Build-Back-Better” bill.  Nope, the sausage making is a wholly Democratic affair, and, like most things involving the always raucous Democratic caucus, there’s a whole lot of sausage making going on.

The ”chefs” in this sausage-making game are much the same Democrats as those that “cooked” up the final “BIB” (bipartisan infra-structure bill) the was signed into law this week.  The “two” sides are the Democratic moderates and the Democratic progressives.  But part of the true art of sausage making, is that there isn’t just two sides.  There are shades of moderation and progressivism, and even some progressives who are extremely “moderate” on some issues (for example, Senator Kristin Sinema, progressive on the environment, almost beyond moderate to full Republican on government negotiating with “big pharma”). 

Dreaming Things that Never Were

So no wonder the “raucous, caucus” has struggled to figure out what goes into Build-Back-Better.  There’s so much they want to fix.  They want to  take care of people’s health: child care, cut prescription costs, Medicare hearing and eye care and home health.   They want to “fix”  the world:  improving the climate, energy, modernizing education and creating affordable housing.  And finally they want to improve our system of taxation, with the wealthy paying a fairer share of the burden.  

Amazingly, with all of those “wants”,  they managed to stuff their sausage in a casing that pays for all the programs.  The United States government, known for dipping deeply into the trough of national debt, particularly when it comes to national defense, has found a way to pay for what it wants.  The House bill spends $1.68 trillion over ten years (that’s $168 billion a year – less than a third of what we spend annually on national defense).

Inflation

For those of us (and that’s most of us) who are worried about all that spending fueling inflation, here’s the best part.  Inflation is normally caused by increases in the supply of money.  When the government heavily spends more than it brings in, it essentially creates more money.  More money in supply means that the money is worth less – prices go up.  But if the Build Back Better legislation is paid for, there’s no increase in money supply, and no inflationary pressure.

Technically, the Congressional Budget Office rates it as creating a ten year $160 Billion deficit – that’s $16 billion a year.  But the CBO does not count the program that improves the Internal Revenue Service so that it collects more tax monies.  That improvement should bring in more than $400 billion over ten years, actually making BBB budget positive.  And if you’re worried about the IRS “coming for you”:  then you’re making a whole lot more money than I am, and you’re cheating on your taxes.

A Blevit

No wonder the Republicans are against it.  No surprise that Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy gave a rambling eight and a half hour speech to hold up the final vote.  The Build-Back-Better bill does all the things the Republican Party is against – rich people paying taxes, poor people having housing, old people getting medical care, everyone paying less for medicine.  Oh Hell no – line ‘em up, every Republican in Congress will vote against this one.

When Speaker Pelosi finally bangs down the gavel on the Build Back Better bill, we’re halfway there.  The good news is that the Democratic House Moderates kept their word, the promise they made when the Progressives helped pass the Bi-Partisan Infrastructure Bill.  But the sausage making is only beginning.

The two most moderate Democrats in the Senate, Manchin and Sinema, have designated a “casing” quite a bit smaller than the House’s casing.  So when the Senate gets the $1.68 trillion BBB Bill, they’re going to have to split the House casing, and stuff what they can in Manchin’s casing (of course polymer based, though if they could make a coal-based casing, he’d use it).  It’s going to be smaller, maybe more like a trillion dollars.  

There is an old Yiddish word that’s incredibly descriptive:  a “blivet”.  Technically it’s ten pounds of…manure…in a five pound bag.  Joe Manchin’s holding the casing, and the Senate is going to decide what sausage fits in and what doesn’t.  In the end, like any good compromise, probably no one will be fully “happy”.  But Democrats are on course to deliver Build Back Better as a Christmas present to the American people.

It might be a “blivet”, but it should be tasty.

It is the common perception that being held in contempt means going to jail.  There isn’t much “due process”:  the “contemptee” gets a chance to follow orders or go to jail.  And when it comes to the personal power of a Judge to control their courtroom, that’s actually true.  

The Story  (of course there’s a story!!)

I was a high school government teacher, and for several years I took my classes down to the Franklin County Courthouse in downtown, Columbus, to observe trials in action.  After all of the class lessons about court procedure, criminal rights, civil rights, and rules of evidence, the “Field Trip” downtown was one of the highlights of Senior year.   The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees a “…speedy and public trial.”  Students could (carefully and quietly) slip into the back of courtrooms to watch trials in action.  It’s public – really – Constitutionally guaranteed.

Well, almost guaranteed.  I had a class of kids at the Courthouse.  The students spread out so that they didn’t overwhelm any one trial.   And I went to trials too.  I was sitting in on a civil trial on the fourth floor about a parking lot company, when one of my students slipped into the room, sat beside me and whispered, “A judge on the fifth floor wants to see our teacher, and sent me to find you”.  That couldn’t be good:  did my students disrupt a case in some way?  Where they in trouble?

Judge O’Neill

I raced up the stairs to the next floor, and entered Judge Deborah O’Neill’s courtroom.  The room was empty of spectators except for five of my students. But the prosecutors, the defense team, the bailiffs and the judge were all silent, and waiting — for me.  As I came in, the bailiff directed me to “the bar”; to stand at the front of the courtroom between the prosecution and defense table.  Judge O’Neill then yelled and pointed at my kids, “Are you the teacher of those students?”  I answered in the affirmative. She continued, “Do you know we are trying a rape case in this courtroom?”   I didn’t, but these were seniors in high school and all of them in the room were eighteen; legal adults.  

I asked if they had misbehaved in some way, but that didn’t seem to be the problem. The judge didn’t think the “subject matter” was appropriate for students, and she was furious that I thought it was.  I never got to explain it to her (she just kept yelling), but it’s a public trial and my kids are adults.  As their teacher, I knew that during the year we had discussed almost every imaginable  topic in class, including rape.  We even had to analyze then-President Bill Clinton and oral sex!

So I wasn’t worried about what they would hear or see. In a courtroom on the third floor there was a bloody murder case going on.  My students were stacking up to see that trial, and on a recess break, the judge there went into exquisite detail explaining the case to them.  Then the Prosecutors took the students back into a conference room to see the autopsy evidence.  Whatever was going on the fifth floor, it was our justice system in action, and it certainly wasn’t worse than that.  And, besides, by Constitutional guarantee, it was a “Public Trial”.  

Judicial Contempt

Though I couldn’t imagine it was a problem, Judge O’Neill definitely could.  She demanded my name, what school district I worked for, and the name of my Superintendent.  She berated me for “exposing” my kids to the evidence in trials.  Then she laid out her demand:  “If one more student comes in this Courtroom, I’m holding you in contempt and putting you in jail”.  One of the defense lawyers leaned over and whispered in my ear – “Go ahead, quote the Sixth Amendment to her. I’ll take your case for free!!!”

I had forty kids in the courthouse that day, and ending up in jail would definitely be a problem with the folks back at school.  Besides, we had a 12:30 reservation at the Spaghetti Warehouse. I wasn’t too worried about a phone call to the superintendent, but ending up in a Franklin County jail cell didn’t sound like a good career move, even if the Sixth Amendment guaranteed my class’s right to be there.  

So I sat outside Judge O’Neill’s courtroom for the remainder of the day, making sure my kids didn’t go in.  And I called my Superintendent to give him a head’s up (good thing, she called him on the next recess). In the long run though, paybacks, as always, were wonderful.  A couple of years later, it was with some joy that I heard Judge O’Neill was sanctioned for her unprofessional behavior (not just to me) by the Ohio Supreme Court.  She was removed from her judgeship.

Inherent Contempt

Judges have inherent contempt powers – they can just say “Go to jail” and you “go to jail”.  If someone refuses to testify, the Judge can hold them in jail until they do, or the trial is resolved some other way.  Congressional committees have contempt powers as well.  The first kind is exactly like the Judge O’Neill’s power, inherent contempt.  A Congressional committee could order a person to appear and testify, or produce documents. If that person refuses, Congress could order them held in jail or fined until they decide to testify or produce.  But Congress hasn’t done this since 1935.

The reason Congress hasn’t is simple.  While they do have a protective service, the Capitol Police, they don’t really have an enforcement service.  It would be difficult for the Capitol Police to go off Capitol Hill and arrest and hold someone.  Besides, they don’t actually have a jail cell in the Capitol building (though there are rooms that would work).  After all, they are the legislative branch, not the executive branch.

Civil Contempt

So instead they use two other forms of enforcing Congressional will.  The first is called “Civil Contempt”.  Essentially the Congress “sues” someone in Federal Court, to have the Court require them to testify.  If the Court agrees, then it is the Court that orders the person to be testify,  or be held in Federal Jail until such time as they agree to do so.  

They can be held for as long as Congress remains in session (it expires every two years).   But the problem with civil contempt is that it takes time, and  the Court’s decision can be appealed up the Federal chain. We saw that with the House impeachment committees and President Trump’s men.  And, civil contempt has a definite time limit:  stay in jail until you comply, or until the session is over.

As former Congressman Doug Collins was fond of saving, Congressional Committees run on a “clock and a calendar”.  If a “contemptee” can appeal long enough, the Committee would expire before the evidence is heard.

Criminal Contempt

The other form of Congressional contempt is a criminal contempt referral.  The Congress asks the Justice Department to file criminal contempt charges in Federal Court.  At this point, Congress is out of the picture, it is prosecutors versus a defendant in front of a judge and jury.  And the outcome of criminal contempt charges is different as well.  A guilty finding means that the guilty person pays a fine, or goes to jail for a specific term, or both.  But it doesn’t require them to testify or produce anything for Congress.  

Criminal Contempt becomes a crime just like any other crime.  Once the referral is made, and the Justice Department brings charges, Congress has nothing to do with it.

The House of Representatives committee on January 6th referred criminal contempt charges against Steve Bannon.  The Justice Department took on the referral, and charged Bannon with criminal contempt of Congress.  The committee knows that Bannon is likely to never testify.  And they also know that Bannon will stretch out the process as long as possible.  So if Bannon is never going to testify anyway, the greatest punishment Congress can offer is conviction for contempt.  That way, no matter which political party controls the House after the 2022 elections, Bannon still goes to jail.

Just like Judge O’Neill, that would be a wonderful “payback”.  

Bombs Falling

My parents lived an amazing life.  From the beginning,  they were an unlikely pair. Mom was a Londoner born and bred, who lost her fiancé to the Battle of Britain flying Spitfire fighter planes.  Her grief evolved into a desire to join the fight, and she became part of the Churchill’s irregular spy service, the Special Operations Executive.  Dad was from Cincinnati, with a degree in finance from the University there.  He became a finance officer in the US Army, and was sent to England to pay the troops.  

Their relationship began literally as the bombs fell on London during World War II.  They met on a blind date (after Mom secretly had Dad “vetted”) at a restaurant called the Queens Brasserie, and, by their telling, immediately fell in love.  They married more than a year later, two months before D-Day, then separated for another year to fight the war.  After, Mom came with Dad to America and Cincinnati.

Retirement Life

Dad knew finance and was the ultimate salesman, selling syndicated television shows across the nation.  He and Mom were a team in the business, and a team in raising three kids and taking care of their home.  When Dad finally retired, they looked forward to travelling the world.  And they did, from safaris in Africa, to Dad’s “famous” video on top of the Great Wall of China. (He got the on and off button on his video camera confused – so when he was videoing it was off, and when it was hanging from his shoulder, it was on.  The result could have been titled, “Chinese Bottoms on Top of the Great Wall”.)

They found a condo to buy in Florida; Sea Oaks on the Atlantic just north of Vero Beach.  It was a tennis “club” where Dad could find a daily game with a group of older gentlemen called “The Walking Wounded”.  The ocean was just 100 yards away, and Mom would walk miles on the beach most days.  Mom and Dad were social,  and always found a group of friends that often became more than friends, more like family.  They had that group in Cincinnati, and soon had a group at Sea Oaks as well.

Health

Dad had some health issues:  the inherited coronary artery disease that led to two different bypass surgeries, one when Dad was in his late sixties, and a second in his seventies.  The second surgery caused a stroke, and while he kept most of his physical capacities, Dad lost a portion of memory.  Mom stayed in great health, and the two of them continued their amazing life through their eighties.

It wasn’t until they turned ninety in 2008, that their health began to impact their day to day life.  Dad was driving in Vero Beach, and all of a sudden, couldn’t remember how to get home.  Mom was handling the bills, but it got confusing with bills from Cincinnati or Florida arriving late, forwarded from one address to another.  

And she had serious breathing problems, suffering from pulmonary fibrosis, a hardening of the lungs.  She was on oxygen in ever increasing amounts.  Dad valiantly tried to take care of her.  But the oxygen bottles were awkward, and required tiny washers placed in the connections.  It was tough for me to do, thirty-eight years younger, so I know Dad really struggled to make them work.

RV’ing To Florida

 By 2010 I was doing what a lot of children do for their parents, taking care of the “books”.  Part of that was trying to track the increasing number of Medicare bills for both of them.  Other than the thousands of dollars in prescription drugs they spent each year, Medicare and their supplemental insurances covered almost all of the bills.  Helping them was a family affair:  my sisters and their spouses were all deeply involved.  And when I fell in love with Jenn, she became part of the process as well. 

After Christmas of 2010, Mom and Dad were determined to get to Florida.  Mom needed oxygen for the plane, and airlines stopped carrying oxygen “on board” after the fatal ValuJet crash.  They still allowed oxygen concentrators, but Mom’s small unit couldn’t supply enough for the flight.  So we rented a bigger unit, carry-on suitcase size.  Delta was kind enough to seat us in First Class – and we made it to Sea Oaks.

But it was the last year.  My nephew Chris stayed with them and helped.  And by the spring, even that machine wasn’t enough to get her home.  Mom also suffered from back deterioration causing constant pain and needed a medical procedure.  Florida doctors wouldn’t do it, but she could come back to Cincinnati to get it done.  

A jet-ambulance was crazy expensive and “not covered” by any insurance.  So we rented an RV, and my brother-in-law, Jenn and I drove it down to pick Mom and Dad up and bring them home.  The RV generator would run the “big” oxygen machine Mom needed.  Fueled by Mountain Dew and Classic Rock, we drove all night to Florida, picked them up, and started for Cincinnati.  She wasn’t happy about it – I think Mom knew that she was saying goodbye to Sea Oaks for the last time.  That was in April of 2011.

The Last Summer

Things got only a little better at home.  Mom had the back procedure, and that did stop the excruciating constant pain.  But  Mom was constantly low on oxygen, even on the machine,  and it changed her personality.  She was often angry, and quietly scared.  It was impossible for Dad to keep care of her, and he was having his own difficulties.  Mom went into the hospital in June, and we thought that would be the end. 

But she was tough, and not ready to quit.  So when the hospital released her to a rehab facility, we knew they had to move out of their three story home of forty years.  We found a nice two bedroom apartment in a “step” facility, with assistance available.  But I don’t think she ever forgave us for moving them.  She lived there until the end of September, when her lungs just wouldn’t work anymore.  Mom went, as my niece put it, on her “final mission” on October 5th. She was ninety-three.

Dad lived on for another five years.  We moved him to Cleveland so that my oldest sister could supervise his medical care.  And he had a series of strokes that took away much of his memory, but also made him the sweetest man in the world.  There were still monthly bills, the condo in Florida and house in Cincinnati to close and sell,  and as the end approached in 2016, preparation for his final estate.  He passed on July 22nd 2016, two days before his 98th birthday.

Reminders

So what brought all these memories up?  

I turned sixty-five in September and signed up for Medicare Part B.  A month ago, I was doing something stupid, and jammed a pair of scissors into my hand.  It took four stitches to close the wound, and hopefully the feeling and function will return in my right index finger soon.  It was my first claim on Medicare.

And here I am, a month later, looking at the exact same “CMS Medicare – Explanation of Benefits” form, the ones that I still have stacks of on file for Mom and Dad.  But now, that form has my name on it.  

Approaching “old age” seems to be a process, rather than a crash.  It starts when the kids at the counter automatically give you the “senior” discount.  It continues as folks start talking louder to you, and the neighbors “check” on you when bad weather hits.  I was doing that, just last year.  And then there’s the great “sign-up” for Medicare, the rite of passage into senior citizenship.  No wonder “seniors” sound confused, Medicare is a confusing process.

But all of that didn’t really make as big a dent on me, as receiving that “Explanation” did yesterday.  If we’re lucky, like my parents, Jenn and I will have another thirty years to figure it out.

Want to learn more about Mom and Dad? Here’s a link to “all about them” – The Dahlman Papers

The Old South

It feels like sixty years ago – 1961 not 2021.  In a courtroom in the “Old Confederacy”, Brunswick, Georgia; a jury made up of 11 white people and 1 black person is hearing a murder trial.  It’s about three white men who accosted Ahmaud Arbery, a black man they chased down with a pickup truck for being in “their neighborhood”.  When  Arbery resisted, the white men tried to use a gun to subdue him.  In the subsequent struggle, Arbery was shot and killed.

A defense lawyer complained that there wasn’t “enough diversity” on the jury.  What he wanted was more “white males born in the South over forty without a college degree”.  As he said, “…Bubbas or Joe Sixpacks…seem to be significantly underrepresented” (First Coast).  That’s diversity, I guess, not a jury more reflective of a community where 26% of the people are black (US Census Bureau).  Even the judge in the trial admits that the defense has intentionally picked a “white” jury (though he says there’s nothing he can do about it – CNN)

But that’s not all.  The same lawyer is concerned that the presence of “black ministers” might influence that eleven and one jury.  “If their pastor’s Al Sharpton right now, that’s fine.  But then that’s it.  We don’t want any more Black pastors coming in here…sitting with the victim’s family…”  He then compared the black pastors to folks dressed like Colonel Sanders with white masks (Reuters). It’s hard to know if he was implying that black people like fried chicken, or that Colonel Sanders dressed like the Ku Klux Klan.

The Old North

But at least the attorneys in the Ahmaud Arbery Trial are allowed to refer to Mr. Arbery as the victim.  In the trial of eighteen year-old Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the defendant is accused of shooting three white demonstrators at a protest over the police shooting of a black man, Jacob Blake.  But the prosecutors aren’t allowed to refer to the two dead and one wounded demonstrators as victims.  They can be “…rioters, looters or arsonists”, the Judge says, if the defense can show evidence of that.  Of the twenty jurors selected in Kenosha, (ultimately twelve of the twenty will decide the case) only one person is of color. Kenosha is 80% white (Census).

Movie Trials

There are two famous “movie” trials where our nation’s race relations were exposed.  The first, the trial in To Kill a Mockingbird, is set in the 1930’s. It’s about an innocent black man, Tom Robinson (played by Brock Peters) accused of raping a white woman.  The black man’s white attorney, Atticus Finch (played by Gregory Peck), makes an impassioned plea to the jury. He tries to convince them that the courts are the place where “all men are created equal”.   But the all-white jury finds the defendant guilty anyway.  The film, made in 1962, highlighted the continuing racial discrimination in the United States.  What was true in the 1930’s was still true in the sixties, with all-white juries determining the fate of black men and women.

In the more recent film,  A Time to Kill, set in the 1980’s and filmed in the 1990’s, Matthew McConaughey plays Jake Brigance. He’s a young Southern white lawyer defending Carl Lee Hailey, a black man (played by Samuel L. Jackson) who actually commits the crime of killing the torturers and rapists of his young daughter.  Despite pressure on the jury and defense team from the Ku Klux Klan,  Brigance is able to convince the all-white jury to overlook the guilt of his client.  He has them visualize the crime against the child,  then pretend she was white instead of black.

The message of A Time to Kill was that times had changed, and that, with prodding, an all-white jury could relate to a black man’s anger.  But the two current trials have a different emphasis.  Both the Brunswick and Kenosha trials hinge on the accused’s right to “self-defense”.  

Defending Property

In Brunswick the three white defendants claimed they were making a “citizen’s arrest” of a potential burglar. When Arbery resisted, they threatened him with a gun, which he attempted to grab.  The “citizens” claim that they were first defending their property, then defending themselves from Arbery.

In Kenosha, Rittenhouse, then seventeen, took a semi-automatic rifle to the protest, supposedly to protect property.  When one of the victims (oops – protestors) tried to take the rifle away from him, he shot and killed him.  The other two victims then attempted to apprehend him, one with a gun (he was killed) and the other using a skateboard as a club (he was wounded).  Rittenhouse’s defense is that he was protecting property, then defending himself against the victims, and was in fear for his life.  

White Privilege

One aspect of both these cases is that of “white privilege”.  Three white men see a black man jogging down the street, and they have no problem chasing and accosting him.  One white boy sees a protest going on twenty miles away in another state, and decides he’s going to grab a rifle and  insert himself to protect someone else’s property.  It’s not hard to think that if the races were all reversed, Jake Brigance wouldn’t have the juries close their eyes. The outcome of both these cases would be pre-ordained:  guilty.

Atticus Finch is the “model” of an attorney fighting not just for his client, but for what America should be like – all created equal.  The two current trials will give us an answer to  how far has our society come since the 1930’s, or 60’s or 90’s?  

The answer, I’m afraid, is not very far at all.

Frozen Positions

We Democrats want to make the political issue of our time the Insurrection.  As a Democrat, it is the ultimate betrayal of our Democracy.  It’s easy to get fired up against those that manipulated the Nation into that crisis, just as easy as it was for those same manipulators to fire up their base to “Stop the Steal”.  That base thought they were acting to defend the country.  It isn’t the guy down the street with the “F**K Biden” flag that’s the problem, it’s the manipulators who continue to lie to him about our Republic.

What happened around January 6th, and what’s happening still today, are incredibly important.  But voters on either side of that issue are frozen in place.  Democrats, like me, are enraged by the Insurrection and will vote solely on that issue.  The guy with the flag down the street will too.

Slapped

But that’s not what’s deciding elections these days.  Democrats can’t be blinded by our rage at the betrayal of the Constitution.  For the precarious middle of our national politics, the small percentage of voters that decides who wins Virginia and Ohio and Pennsylvania and the other “swing” states; the issues are what they always were.  There’s a blindness in that as well, but it’s fact.  As Democratic Operative James Carville said back in 1992 – “It’s the economy, stupid”.

The economy is slapping people in the face today.  They see it in the price of construction. The cost of lumber and other materials have skyrocketed.  The cost of beef at the grocery store is up 40%.  But the most striking increase is visible every time you drive down the street – the cost of gasoline.  Gas today here in Pataskala is $3.35 a gallon.  So a fill up for my Jeep is now $50.  And the pickup truck is almost $75.

$75 for a tank of gas.  One of my early political jobs paid $75 a week (but it only  cost about $4 to fill-up of my 1967 Volkswagen).  Rising prices eat away at all of the “advances” people make in their jobs.  They are proud of getting a raise, but the end result is that raise is gobbled up (no Thanksgiving pun intended) and their standard of living doesn’t change.  And for those living on a fixed income – like old teachers who are retired – costs go up, but the pension check remains the same.

Shutdown Supply

What happened – why are we literally “all of a sudden” looking at 6% annual inflation?  It takes a look at the past nineteen months, America in pandemic.  We all remember the beginning, St. Patrick’s Day of 2020.  All of a sudden schools moved to online classes, hospitals braced for skyrocketing Covid cases, and places of employment shut down.  Service industry jobs in restaurants and gyms disappeared.  Other jobs became work from home, a good thing, as many children were at home in “online school”, and many daycare centers were closed.

We still needed police and fire, grocery stores and delivery drivers and healthcare workers.  But the shutdown was eerie.  There were those amazing pictures of New York City so closed down, that coyotes were wandering the streets.  Here in Pataskala, Broad Street grew oddly silent, even at rush hour.  But we still needed those folks to work in the meat packing industry, and the canning factories, and the bakeries, and all of the other “essential” areas.  They took the risks the rest of us avoided.

The economy was dramatically slowed down.  Unemployment approached 20%.  Gas prices hit a modern era low (of course, no one was driving much).  It’s the oldest rule in economics – supply and demand.  The supply of gas was high, demand for it was down, so the price went down.

Shutdown Demand

And that happened for a lot of other products.  We couldn’t go out, who needs nice clothes?  We didn’t fly much – airlines were near giving tickets away.  For those earning money, there wasn’t a lot to do with it.  So we stashed it, in bank accounts, and we added the Covid incentive payments, Covid pay increases, and even Covid unemployment benefits to that money “under the board”. (Remember Monopoly?  It was always good to stash some early money under the board.  That way if you had a bad run, you had some extra.  And if things were going well – your opponents didn’t know how well you were really doing). 

There were supply issues then too.  We lined up for toilet paper and paper towels early in the morning.  Some products, like cleaning sprays, were hard to find.  That made sense.  But other, odd things came up missing – like low calorie bread.  Beef costs went up too, as the workers at the processing plants came down with Covid.  Farmers had products, but couldn’t get them processed to go to market.   The “supply chain” was broken.  

It lasted through the spring, then eased some in the summer as we began to adjust to the pandemic.  But our economy was still restricted, unless you were selling campers.  Then it was a booming market – a vacation, outside, with a contained environment was one of the few ways out.

Back to Basics

It wasn’t until the vaccine arrived and larger percentages of the nation reopened that the economy started moving again.  While it seems like an eternity, that was really only six months ago.  People had money, they were ready to spend, and there were more jobs available than people who wanted them.  Again, basic economics:  demand for products went up, supply of products hadn’t even caught up to the pandemic level, so prices went up.  We have inflation.

There is a standard macro-economic definition:  if the supply of money increases without a corresponding increase in the supply of goods, the cost of goods will increase.  Increased supply of money is often a product of government spending more money than it brings in, deficit spending.   But our current inflation isn’t about government spending.  It’s being created by the imbalances of a pandemic world.   

Democrats are in control of Federal Government, no matter how tenuous that control may be.  Being “in charge” means taking credit for the good, and blame for the bad.  Getting our current prices increases under control is not only in the interest of Democratic success, it’s in the interest of the country.  Democrats must do something to take the credit, or prepare to bear the blame at the polls in 2022.