Category: Uncategorized

Unpronounceable

The good citizens of East Palestine, Ohio, aren’t stupid.  (That’s “Pal-es-teen”, not “Pal-es-tyne”; welcome to Ohio, also the home of Versailles –  “Ver-sails”, Russia – “Ru-see-ah”, Lima- “Lie-ma” and the unpronounceable Gnadenhutten).  

A Norfolk and Southern train of 150 cars, travelling from Madison, Illinois, crashed in their small town after an axle broke on a single car.   The resulting destruction was “epic”; train cars spilled like toys around the crash site, with fierce fires breaking out around several.  That was the bad news.  The worst news was that at least twenty of those tankers were carrying extremely hazardous chemicals with names as unpronounceable as Ohio’s towns:  Vinyl chloride, Ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, ethylhexyl acrylate, isobutylene, and butyl acrylate (EPA).

Bad Choices

The hazmat/fire crews faced a dilemma.  The tanker cars were surrounded by flames.  The chemicals in the tanks were heating up, with pressure already escaping from relief valves.  If they left the chemicals in the tanks, they risked uncontrolled explosions, blowing the raw chemicals into the atmosphere and onto the surrounding community.  So they chose to drain out the chemicals into open ditches, then intentionally set the deadly materials on fire.  

The column of black smoke was huge, ugly, and vulnerable to the wind.  Much of the surrounding area was evacuated.  Even partially combusted the chemicals still presented hazards to humans, animals, and ground water. And then there was the unburned chemicals that leeched into the ground.

Alphabet Soup

And now, two weeks later, all of the authorities:  the Federal EPA, the Ohio EPA, Governor Mike DeWine, the Columbiana County Health Department (and, of course, the Norfolk and Southern Railroad); are telling the citizens of East Palestine that the danger is passed, and they can return to their homes.  Except, folks are getting sore throats and coughs.  And there’s a big fish kill on the bordering Ohio River.  And some folks who had to leave their chickens returned to find them dead. Pets are getting sick.  

But Governor DeWine says it’s OK to come home and breath the air.  His suggestion – maybe stick to bottled-water for a while, until the final testing of the deep wells that provide the local water service.   But he assured them he’d bring HIS family home. (But if East Palestine residents want to stay in hotels away from town, Norfolk and Southern will foot-the-bill). And what of the cities downstream, who draw their water from the Ohio River, like Wheeling, Marietta, and ultimately Cincinnati?  Well, they’ll just have to keep monitoring.   All of the authorities seem reasonably sure it’s OK.  Just ignore the upside down fish floating downstream.

Nothing to See

The East Palestine Local School District is back open for business.  The Ohio EPA tested the air inside over 400 homes and found the chemical residue levels “acceptable”.  And while there’s going to be long-term air, soil and water monitoring in the area; as Obi Wan Kenobi famously said, “There’s nothing to see here, move along, move along”. 

Folks who live in Eastern Ohio “ain’t fancy”.  It’s a tough, working crowd; from the old steel mill, coal mining and river barging days.  They want to go home and return to their “normal” lives, but they also know that it’s in everybody else’s interest:  the Governor, the EPA, and most importantly, the Norfolk and Southern; for this crisis to be over.  And they are worried that in the hurry to get out of town, those “officials” are leaving more than  just a mess.  The good citizens of East Palestine will have to live in it.  

I don’t blame them.  Until all of those business and government folks are willing to stand in East Palestine and take a “deep breath”, then a “deep swig” of local water, and maybe live in town for a while – they shouldn’t get off the hook.  The residents of East Palestine are left taking the risks, and perhaps paying the ultimate price.

Again

Three are dead, five injured in a shooting on Michigan State University’s campus in East Lansing last night. The shooter, a forty-three year old man, took his own life when confronted by the police.  

The world is sending its “thoughts and prayers”.  “We are all Spartans today”, one commentator said, a phrase of solidarity with the mourning campus. Members of the minority Democrats in the state legislature say “…we cannot let hate win”.  But thoughts, prayers, love; hasn’t put a dent in the number of mass shootings in our “shining city on the hill”, the United States.  It’s the fifth anniversary of the Parkland shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School today, where seventeen were massacred.  There have been protests, marches, dramatic speeches and many, many horrifying acts of violence in the past five years.  Little has changed.

There have been sixty-seven mass shootings in this new year.  In total, 5214 are already dead from guns in 2023, today, on February 14^th (Gun Violence Archive). 

Recognition

When confronted with mass shootings in the past (the Oxford High School shootings), the leader of Michigan’s Senate Republicans said: “ If we get obsessed with eliminating all risks, we will then develop and evolve into a country we won’t recognize, because we’ll also have no freedoms.”

We have already “developed and evolved” into a country I don’t recognize, a country where gun violence is accepted and normal.  There is little hope for change.  It’s no good talking about how to “fix” this:  we cannot.  And rather than propose solutions that will not be agreed to, we need to look at why our nation is so emasculated that we are forced to accept these deaths as inevitable, as acceptable losses. 

How did we get here?

Freedom’s Limits

In 1919, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the most famous dictum on limitations on the First Amendment’s freedom of speech.  In his majority opinion in Schenck v United States (245 US 47) Holmes stated:  “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”  

Our freedoms, guaranteed in the Constitution, have never, ever, been “unlimited”.  The bedrock of the American experiment, the “five freedoms” of the First Amendment (speech, press, religion, assembly, petition), are not absolute.  As Justice Holmes said, there always is a limit to their exercise.  And there always will be those who claim the protection of those freedoms  whose actions are beyond the law.

Some limitation on freedom only makes common sense.  Absolute freedom means absolute chaos.  The old saying:  “You’re right to swing your arm ends at the tip of my nose,” describes the balance all of our actions require to get along in society.  Every citizen of right mind “gets that”. 

Unlimited Freedom

But somehow when it comes to the Second Amendment, we have lost our minds.  “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”   The wording is clear, the first section, “…well-regulated militia” modifying the second “…keep and bear arms”.  “Well regulated” was the Founding Fathers control on the public, much as “falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater” controlled the First Amendment right.

But in our “modern” world we have detached the second amendment’s clauses.  The current radical view upheld in the Courts is that “well-regulated militia” means every citizen of the United States, from the upstanding to the mentally ill.  It no longer modifies anything.  Our current Supreme Court has moved to saying that it’s “OK” to yell fire in this crowded theater, whether there’s a fire or not.  

We now say that everyone can have a gun.  And not just a gun, but a semi-automatic rifle with rapid-fire capability.  And that gun can have as large an ammunition magazine as possible, in case a person needs to fire dozens of rounds at a time.  

Here in Ohio citizens can carry sidearms without regulation, like the “wild-wild West” of the movies.  Friends go to their young children’s birthday parties with loaded pistols strapped to their hip.   And maybe in our current world they are right.  

Fear Itself

Because, unlike almost any other modern nation in the world, the United States is a nation of fear.  We are told to be afraid; of urban areas, of sex offenders stealing children at the library, of the “stranger”, particularly the stranger of color, in the dark.   Our fear is “ginned up” by some news media and social media because fear increases “views”, and views mean profits.  And our fear is also stoked as a political motivation – “elect ME, and I will protect you from your fears!”  And their offer of protection is simple:  you can have your own gun.

This is our America.  This is the Nation I do not recognize.  Because America always was a Nation that solved problems, that built highways and airports and ran wires across the breadth of the country.  America always moved forward into the future, we have never cowered from the problems of the present.  Except now:  we must “be small” to avoid being a target, and of course, “be prepared”.  And in this America – that means have a gun.

And until we are willing to face that fear – we will never change.  We will cower behind our guns.

Celebration

Sure, Democrats celebrated in November.  They held the Senate, in fact, gaining a seat.  What was supposed to be a Red Tsunami (Ted Cruz) or a Red Wave (Kevin McCarthy) in the House turned into a Red Dribble (Marty Dahlman) with Blue tints.  In the end, Republicans flipped nine seats, ending with a narrow five vote margin for House control.

This led to the Republican debacle of the House leadership election, when McCarthy needed a full week and fifteen ballots to wrangle his entire Party to cast their majority vote for him.  As the week went on, you could feel the power of the Speakership diminish, as McCarthy made deal after deal.  Right before the last vote, Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida, still under investigation by the FBI, wrested one more thing from McCarthy in full public view, and finally “awarded” his vote.

Democrats enjoyed the spectacle, the ugly words and bargaining.  They maintained solid unity behind their candidate, Hakeem Jeffries of New York; heaping praise on his abilities and his record in fifteen different nomination speeches. Jeffries himself demonstrated class, congratulating McCarthy on finally earning the gavel, and oratorical prowess. He gave an alphabetical litany of what the Democratic Party is all about.  From “American values over autocracy”, and “Benevolence over bigotry,” to “Zealous representation over a zero-sum confrontation”, he explained the Democratic view.

Paybacks

But after all the Democratic celebrations ended, the Republicans did have control of the House.  McCarthy is now “paying the piper” for the deals he made in that fateful week.  One of those with the creation of the House Special Sub-committee on the Weaponization of Government.  What does that mean?

After the four tumultuous years of the Trump Administration, many Republicans are aggrieved.  Even before Trump was elected and took office, there was an FBI counter-intelligence investigation into his dealings with Russia.  Then, after Democrats gained control of the House in 2018, there were Judiciary Committee Hearings on the Mueller Report.  When a whistleblower, Colonel Vindman, reported that Trump pressured Ukrainian President Zelenskyy for “dirt” on Joe or Hunter Biden, threatening to withhold military aid, the Democratic majority House voted to impeach Trump.  There was a trial in the Senate, where Democrats failed to even get a simple majority of votes to remove the President, much less the two-thirds needed.

And of course, after the January 6^th Insurrection, there was the second Trump impeachment.  This time the Senate vote was 57 to convict, and 43 to acquit, still short of two-thirds, but a “bi-partisan” statement of the Senate nonetheless.  That Trump could possibly have been “that bad” just isn’t a Republican option.  He was “wronged”. 

So in our partisan world, Republicans now have the “whip hand” of committee assignments.  And the most prominent Republican “whipper”, Ohio’s former state champion wrestler now Congressman Jim Jordan, is leading the charge to get “payback”, as Chairman of the Weaponization of Government Sub-committee.

The “Weapons”

The overarching theme of the sub-committee is that “the institutions of government” were somehow weaponized to defeat Donald Trump’s Presidency.  From the FBI to the Justice and Treasury Departments to even the National Security Agency, the Republicans proclaim Steve Bannon’s “Administrative De-Construction” theory.  The idea is that the civil service bureaucracy is a treasonous “shadow government” co-opted by the Democratic Party to serve their needs.  So the sub-committee is searching for those “bureaucrats” who “ratted out” Trump (Ukraine), or protected Hilary Clinton (e-mails), or Hunter Biden (hard drive) or even slowed the building of “The Wall” (border).   Oh, and don’t forget the whole Covid thing.

The Republicans learned a lot from the three years and seven million dollars  of the Benghazi hearings in the early twenty-teens.  They were able to “bring Hilary Clinton down”; creating so much negative feeling about her that even Donald Trump could win the Presidency.  And now, they intend to use that same tactic against Hunter, (whoops, I mean), Joe Biden.  They are wading into the implausible Hunter Biden laptop story, complete with the blind computer technician with the tam o’shanter on.

Hearing One

But before they get there, they brought in witnesses to explain “bureaucratic treason”.  Instead of one of the eighteen supposed “whistleblowing” former FBI agents, or even tam o’shanter guy himself, they brought in two US Senators: octogenerian Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.  Grassley “testified” his own opinion that the FBI is biased, and Johnson covered a plethora of bureaucratic complaints from Clinton emails to Dr. Fauci.  Then Jordan added Constitutional scholar and Professor Jonathan Turley to “teach” the committee government.  Turkey also testified for the “Trump team” in the impeachment hearings.

We expect witnesses to either give facts or “expert” testimony.  Grassley and Johnson offered their concerns, without any hard evidence to back their assertions.  But they found a receptive audience in Chairman Jordan and the majority members of the committee. That includes House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, Benghazi Committee veteran Darrel Issa, and, “got-the-deal-done” Matt Gaetz.

Democrats countered with their ranking member, former Impeachment Manager Stacey Plaskett.  In addition former Impeachment lead attorney now-Congressman Daniel Goldman, and former Democratic Committee Chairman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz are on the dais.  Their job:  to counter the Republican arguments and poke holes in witness testimony.  And they were allowed to have one witness of their own. Congressman Jamie Raskin, himself a Constitutional scholar,  countered Turley’s testimony.  Raskin also brings his own experience as an Impeachment Manager and a lead member of the January 6^th Committee.  He knows “real” treason.

In the Big Top

If you’re looking for a Congressional “circus”, this is the place.  It will be interesting to see if Jordan and his committee can repeat their “success” of the Benghazi hearings.  A lot has changed since 2014, when Hillary Clinton testified for eleven straight hours.  After four years of Trump, two impeachments, an Insurrection, and a lot more awareness of “our truth” versus “their truth”, I’m not sure Americans will be so easily persuaded.  Perhaps our partisan lines are so solidified, that nothing can alter our final votes.  

But the show will go on, with Jordan as the ring-master, and tam o’shanter guy on the high trapeze.  We’ll have to wait and see.  Maybe Goldman will be the lion who eats the trainer.   

Joe Cool

I had a  track meeting last night, and sped home to watch the State of the Union (SOTU) address.  I had just enough time left to stop and buy some snacks on the way in.  It’s not quite the National Football League,  Bengals versus Chiefs. But for someone who’s followed politics almost since birth, SOTU is definitely “game time”.   

If you follow NFL football, the Bengals have a young quarterback who is unflappable.  Joe Burrow, “Joe Cool,” sets playoff records.  His patchwork line struggles to protect him, and last year Burrow was sacked more than any other quarterback ever in a playoff game.  And they still won.  Burrow got bowled over, smothered, smashed: then popped back up and threw his next pass halfway down the field for a touchdown.

President Biden is a little like Burrow, a “Joe Cool”; and it’s not just the aviator sunglasses.  In his career, and life, Biden has been bowled over. But now at the end, Biden gave all of us sixty-somethings hope.  He won the Presidency at seventy-eight years old.  Biden’s “gaffes” are a political legend in Washington, and with forty-five years on “the field”, Biden has made plenty.  So as a fan of the “Biden Team” in this SOTU, I always worry:  will the Biden gaffe raise its awkward head again? 

This game was a setup for the President.  He isn’t Barack Obama, with soaring rhetoric reminiscent of Lincoln.  Biden is a plain-spoken man, punctuating his text with “…look folks” and “really, I mean it”.  And he knew that he faced a hostile crowd to his left (“…but they’re really right,” he said).   Gone are the days when the President’s Party claps and cheers, and the opposition Party politely sits on their hands.  Our current Congress more closely resembles “Question Time” in the UK Parliament.  The opposition has no problem booing, jeering, and calling out in the middle of a Biden sentence.  

Draw Play

Remember when we were all so shocked by the Congressman from South Carolina who yelled out, “You Lie” to President Obama?  Well there were plenty of yellers on the Republican side last night, including newly empowered Marjorie Taylor Green.  She made sure the cameras could find her, as she hollered “LIAR” from the back of the chamber.  When that happened to Obama, the whole room stopped.  

But Biden intentionally baited the raucous opposition into reaction.  Biden quoted Rick Scott, the Republican Senator from Florida and Campaign Committee Chair.  Scott has a plan to “sunset” Medicare and Social Security.  And when Republicans, especially Green, squealed that Biden was “lying”, he turned the play; “Well I guess we all agree then – Medicare and Social Security aren’t on the table for cuts”.  The Democrats broke out in cheers.  In football it’s called a “draw play”, when the opposition is faked into thinking pass, and at the last minute it’s a run.  Touchdown for Joe Biden.

Game Plan

Biden laid out the vast successes of his first two years in office. He touted  the infra-structure bill, the “chips” act, the “burn pit” bill, and the other legislative wins.  He hailed the international coalition standing against Russia in Ukraine.  Biden set the table for negotiations over the debt ceiling.  And he talked about the changes America needs to make in policing, in women’s health rights, and in LGBTQ rights.  

Biden laid out his vision for an America that stands for the middle class, where the poor get a “hand up”, and the rich pay their fair share of the tax burden.  He made it clear that he is willing to negotiate, and that if he can get Americans to work together, “There is nothing we can’t achieve”.  It was noisy, it was raucous, it was very different from other SOTUs.  But it was all Joe Biden, cool under pressure; even taking his own good time leaving the chamber.  This “Joe Cool” signs autographs too, and even has a story for the two retired Supreme Court Justices.  Score a victory for Biden.

Silence in Little Rock

The scene then switched, from the noisy Congressional floor to the empty living room of the Governor’s mansion in Arkansas.  Newly minted Sarah Huckabee Sanders gave the Republican response, always a tough job.  In the name of Marco Rubio, there were no water bottles present.   Where Biden described a bustling, energetic world where the government offered help and hope, Sanders’ world is dark and quiet and  scary. There is a criminal around each corner, you need a gun to protect yourself, and the government threatens to rip citizen’s rights away.  Biden’s world is bright with hope, Sanders dark with dread. 

The dogs woke up early this morning.  I had some time to peruse the news, from the Washington Post to the Fox News website.  And it came to me that if all your information came from Fox, then Sarah Sanders sounds right.  The world is a dark, cold, threatening place.  The “woke left” (whatever “woke” means) is challenging your religion, your jobs, and your kids’ education.   

I don’t want to pop anyone’s balloon (like Biden did) but I like Biden’s noisy, excited, and hopeful world.  We don’t have to be scared, we just have to work hard and have everyone; the rich, the powerful, the monopolized industries, pay their fair share.   It sounds like a better place to be.

Another score for Biden.

Look, up in the sky!!  It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a UFO!! NOOOOOOO, it’s a Chinese Spy Balloon!!

NORAD

Perhaps they thought no one would notice.  A giant helium balloon, the size of three Greyhound buses, carrying a solar-powered package of…something.  After all, it’s between 60,000 and 100,000 feet in the air.  American passenger jets travel under 45,000 feet, and the US military stays below 80,000.  

Certainly the North American defense system, NORAD, tracked it from the beginning.  If they can track eight reindeer and a fat guy in a sleigh, and incoming nuclear missiles, they can certainly find a balloon one hundred and twenty feet wide.  It’s been around for a few days, crossing the Aleutian Islands over the weekend and headed into Canada.  And it showed up in the clear blue sky over Billings, Montana on Wednesday.  In fact, they paused flights out of Billings Airport, in part because the Air Force scrambled jets, F-22 Raptors.  Perhaps with the intent to shoot it down.  And folks on the ground got pictures of the balloon, with a clear view of the solar panels arrayed beneath.

The Air Force didn’t shoot, saying that the size of the object put those on the ground in too much danger.  Maybe it’s still headed east, though it’s exact trajectory, like in the few days before Billings, is a US secret. The Pentagon knows. The public has to keep scanning the skies to see.  But this balloon seems to be able to “hover” over territory, and right near Billings is Malmstrom Air Force Base.  Malmstrom extends over 23,500 square miles of Montana territory, and is home to the 341^st Missile Wing, part of America’s nuclear missile deterrent force.

1950’s Tech

So it’s still out there, somewhere over the northern half of the USA.  Take it look, it might appear in the sky over your location.  I hear it just passed St. Louis. Look for a tiny “moon” in the daylight.  

The Chinese have satellites, just as the US does – so why a balloon?   Satellites are acknowledged to be “above” so-called sovereign air space – not to be “messed with”.  But balloons – they’re definitely within the defense zone of the United States, and it would be more than acceptable under international law to shoot down.  This one isn’t a wayward weather balloon, either (and neither is the next one, rumored to be on the way).   Which leads to three questions.  Why did the Chinese send it, what are they looking for, and why hasn’t the US shot it down?

Thumb in the Eye

Why did the Chinese send it?  The military tension between the US and China is continuing to escalate.  Chinese aircraft violated the air boundary between China and Taiwan, causing Taiwan to go on full alert this week.  The US Secretary of Defense reached an agreement with the President of the Philippines to re-open some US military bases in the nation, with the obvious intention of countering Chinese influence.  And the criticism of Chinese influence over US social media, particularly with information gathered through Tik-Tok, is a continual irritant.

The Chinese are “peeing” on corners; intentionally provoking a US response by sending this balloon.  There’s little that this balloon can see that Chinese satellites can’t.  But this slow-motion “thumb-in-the-eye” goes on and on.  It’s a big deal: Secretary of State Blinken just postponed his imminent trip to China.  Congress demands Biden Administration action.  No one in the US wants to sleep in the shadow of a “Communist Balloon”!! (They really should have painted it Red with Mao Zedong’s face on the side). 

And meanwhile, the balloon meanders over the Montana missile fields, and who knows where else.  Most certainly US secrets are secure.  We already hide our ground activity from high-flying satellites, low-tech balloons are merely an inconvenience, not a threat.  So the balloon doesn’t represent a strategic threat, just a diplomatic embarrassment.

Pop the Balloon

Which leaves us with the question – why has the Air Force allowed the balloon to remain up there?  The excuse:  the debris of a shootdown could hurt citizens down below really doesn’t hold water.  The balloon traversed the Pacific Ocean between the Aleutians and Canada, and could easily have been dropped in the water.  We didn’t do it then, and now that the balloon is outed to the US public, we haven’t  done it… yet.

The US is in a “nickel/dime” escalation with the Chinese.  Each provocation by Americans:  Nancy Pelosi visiting Taiwan, re-opening Philippines bases, restricting Tik-Tok, has generated a Chinese response.   A Four-Star US Air Force General warned his staff to expect war with China by 2025.  The media got the memo, and put it on the second page.  This balloon gambit is just the latest – but to take a war-like action, to fire a missile into the balloon and bring it down on US soil, while very satisfying, is definitely an escalation in hostilities.  That “level-up” would likely generate and even greater Chinese response.

Civil War

And the US is happy to have China use 19^th and 20^th century spy tech in a 21^st century world.  To many Americans the Biden Administration is showing “weakness” by not “popping the bubble” and dumping the whole thing in the Mississippi River (by now).  But perhaps Biden is taking a different tack:  the Chinese balloon reminds the world of the ineffectual World War II attempts by Japan to set the US western mountains on fire.  Or of the first balloonist in the Civil War, getting the “high ground” to spot the enemy.  It didn’t work well then, and this won’t work either.  The US, meanwhile, has the most advanced technology in the world – in space,  invulnerable, and aimed at whatever we need to see.

“Red Alert – Red Alert:  the balloon will be overhead to take intelligence in… oh, four hours.  Take your time”.  Meanwhile, Americans can look to the sky to see the green meteor (to the North) and the giant white balloon, somewhere out over I-64.  There’s no basket with men waving with binoculars, but the old Civil War Balloon Corps veterans still sure are proud.

 There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture…We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical…We can change the focus to a soft blur, or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. – Opening narration of the 1960’s TV Show – The Outer Limits.

Davy Crockett

When  I was a student in public school in the 1960’s and early 70’s, I took for granted that the Texas War of Independence, with the battles at the Alamo and San Jacinto, was a major part of American history.  After all, they got a whole chapter in our textbook, a third of the space of the Civil War and World War II, but the same amount as World War I.  

By sheer volume of paper, Sam Houston, Davy Crockett and the boys got more space than the entire Labor Union movement of the late 19^th and early 20^th century.  The book had more than twice as much about them than the Abolitionist movement before the Civil War.  And, add to that we all grew up with our “raccoon-skin” Davy Crockett hats (more than a little old to actually wear them), and could still sing the theme from the Disney Show of the early sixties; “Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier!!”.  

Fighting for Slavery

We never, ever, were taught that those “Texians” were fighting for their “right” to own slaves in a nation, Mexico, that abolished slavery in 1829.  Instead,  we were taught they were fighting for their “right” to self-government, rebelling against the central power in Mexico City and the “tyrant”, General Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón, otherwise known as Santa Anna.  

It wasn’t until I was in college that I learned differently.  That’s when I found that John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry was more than just a crazed man that the US military, led by Colonel Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant JEB Stuart, had to “put down”.  He was trying to lead slaves to freedom:  maybe not such a crazy idea after all.  For that – he was executed at the end of a rope.

Selling Books

And it wasn’t until I was getting my Master’s Degree in Education that I discovered why I was taught that way.  It wasn’t that the teachers I had in Cincinnati and Dayton and Wyoming (a little city bordering Cincinnati) were “racists” or even necessarily biased towards Davy Crockett.  They were simply teaching from the textbook.  The textbook was their “manual”.  It established the topics, the subject matter.  In “educationese”, the textbook was the course of study and the curriculum, determining the “facts” that were important and those that didn’t need to be discussed.

At the time, the state of Texas determined the single textbooks to be used by the entire state for American History, both in eighth grade and in high school.   Unlike Ohio, where curriculum was set by the state but textbooks chosen by individual school districts, in Texas – one book fit all.

Textbook publishers wrote their books to the specifications of the Texas Board of Education and the Texas Education Agency.  It was the biggest single market sale they could make.  Since every publisher was trying to sell in Texas, we all got Texas curriculum from Texas-oriented books, like it or not.   “Davy, Davy Crockett” was a Congressman from Tennessee, an ally of Andrew Jackson who broke with him on the Cherokee Removal.  He lost his Congressional seat and left his home to start anew in Texas. That was “important”.  Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, even nearby Ohioan John Rankin; all heroes of Abolitionism, were ignored.

Hidden History

There was a whole  American history hidden.  Sure, we learned about the Irish and the Chinese immigrants building the transcontinental railroad. But who built the White House, the Capitol, and the entire structure of the Southern economy?  We were never taught the plain fact that enslaved people, Black people, people working for masters not for dollars; toiled, bled, and died to build those things.

Education was controlled, by the Texas Department of Education.  They controlled the “horizontal”, they controlled the “vertical”; they kept American History in a “soft blur” when it came to the “peculiar institution”.   Your teacher learned history that way, and if they didn’t go beyond their original  high school studies, that’s what they thought was “history”.  

White-Wash

It’s no surprise that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is taking control of Florida’s education curriculum.  He’s found a political tool to unify his base.  What’s surprising is that now, sixty years after the “I Have a Dream” speech, there are still Americans who buy DeSantis’s assertion that “woke” ideas like cultural diversity and inherent racial bias don’t belong in the classroom, at least in Florida.  But perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise – it fits right in with what education did for generations.  It’s likely what many Florida citizens learned in school themselves.

DeSantis controls Florida’s horizontal, vertical and focus.  He is taking Florida education to the outer limits of denial:  a quite literal “white-washing” of the American story.  Unlike the 1960’s and 70’s, it isn’t economic forces driving the curriculum, it’s political control.  And other Republican dominated states in our bifurcated nation are following suit.  The legislative plan is in the Ohio House of Representatives today.  

Yesterday was February 1^st, Groundhog Day and the beginning of Black History month.  As the depressing “education joke” goes; “Why is there a ‘black’ history month?  Because all the other months are ‘white’ history.”  Ron DeSantis has a vision of America as a nation of all twelve months for “white” history, just like the old times.   Those are his “Outer Limits”.  On this day after Groundhog Day, the day after they buried Tyri Nichols in Memphis, we have to decide whether to sit quietly — or change the channel.

Darkest Hour

It’s six-thirty in the morning.  For my entire work career, pre-dawn mornings held no terrors for me.  I was usually up at five, and leaving for work before six.  But I’m “way-retired”, entering my eighth year as a “senior”.  So five am has slipped to seven.  It would be even later, but there are five dogs in the house.  One of them, usually the “senior dog” Buddy, won’t let me snooze any later.

But today I was scheduled to work, subbing at the local high school.  So the alarm went off at five-thirty.  The dogs knew it was going to be an early morning, the coffee pot clicked on a few minutes before my alarm.  Atticus, the big yellow lab, was already laying on top of me before Crosby and Nash’s guitar gently started playing from my phone.  No klaxon alarms necessary in this house.

False Start

I knew as soon as I opened the back door that I needed to check on school.  There was a slight coating of snow on the back deck, but when the dogs stepped out, it was obvious that under the snow was a layer of ice.  Some of the neighboring districts were already on delays or even closed, but here in the Southwest Licking Local Schools, we were still “on”.  So out the dogs went, did what they needed, and quickly returned.   The morning routine of Dahlman meds, dog meds, dog breakfasts and large volumes of strong black Starbucks French Roast coffee began.

It was twenty minutes later that the teacher I was subbing for texted.  He is in charge of the “Quiz Bowl” team, the academic contests between neighboring schools.  The team was in a tournament today, so I was covering his classes.  But with the ice and now a school delay, the tournament was cancelled, and he will be in his classroom.  He gently told me to go back to bed, no subbing today.

Back to those volumes of coffee.  I was on my third cup, and the dogs were patiently waiting for their dishes.  There was no quick path back to bed, and no sleep to be gained if I did.  So we moved ahead with our breakfast plans, and got four out of five dogs fed.  CeCe, the puppy, didn’t want to leave the fireplace.  She likes to sleep “hot”, and like Jenn, is the slow riser of our crew.  I’ll put her breakfast out, but there’s no certainty that she’ll eat anytime soon, though she’ll guard it for hours if I let her.  I get it:  it’s too early for short-haired puppies in the dark of a  cold January morning.

Promises

As a career teacher, snow days always had a promise.  Whatever you planned was “out”.  Unexpectedly, a whole day was opened for whatever you decided to do – back to bed, head down the road for breakfast, write an essay before the sunrise.  And while this snow day is costing me a paycheck, it still has that promise.  The day is yours; as Robin Williams would say “Carpe Diem!!” 

We need some “Carpe Diem” around here.  As always, both Jenn and I are plugged into what’s going on in the world, and what’s going on isn’t good.  On TV we watch the aftermath of the Tyre Nichols’ murder.  It’s as if there were cameras at the death of Emmitt Till.  It’s Rodney King, all over again, this time stretched out for almost an hour, with close-ups and wide establishing shots.  King was in 1991, almost thirty-two years ago. His plaintive cry, “…Can’t we all just get along”, echoes down the decades.  The answer is still a resounding “NO”, drowned out by Tyre’s anguished cry for his Mom, only a hundred yards away.

Groundhog Day

I watch the morning show on MSNBC, Morning Joe, as part of my routine.  So they are on in the background right now, a signal to the dogs, perhaps, that breakfast is over.  They’re smart:  they’ve all found a place to go back to sleep – even CeCe, though her nose is inches from her untouched breakfast.  I test Morning Joe every day – how long will it take for the name of the twice-impeached disgraced ex-President to come up?  It’s usually measured in seconds, as it was today.  Trump said any publicity is better than none, and Morning Joe was pivotal in bringing Trump to the fore in 2015.  Today it’s about Stormy Daniels, the porn star who got paid for silence about Trump.  He’s in the headlines again.

It’s like the movie “Groundhog Day”, though that’s tomorrow, not today.  For eight years the name Trump keeps coming back, in spite of impeachments and Insurrections and indictments.

Those who support Trump don’t really care why he’s on “page one”.  They believe that he is their maltreated leader, constantly attacked by the “MSM” (mainstream media).  So for them, good that his name is up front, ignore whatever else is said.  I just listened to Senator Lindsey Graham pledge his near-worshipful fealty to Trump, and now Chairman Jim Jordan denies that Trump ever did anything wrong, ever.  He’s running for President, if for no other reason than to gain immunity from indictment.  Trump hopes to run out the statute of limitations.  Which raises an interesting hypothetical:  if someone is elected President while they are standing trial for crimes – what happens? 

I don’t really think we’ll get there – but I do think we are headed for another ugly election cycle.  I remember thinking after 2020, after the Insurrection, after Biden’s inauguration, we finally would move on from Trump and Trumpism.  But that clearly is not to be.

It’s Dawn

The sun isn’t coming up this morning – not really.  But it is growing lighter out there, the frozen road emerging in the cloud-covered dawn.  It’s probably time to go clear the truck and Jeep off. Jenn’s got a lost dog (not ours) almost ready to go into the trap. 

 If it does, that will become the focus of the day, getting him safe and back to his owners.  He’s been on the run for three weeks, and completely disappeared for the last seven days.  He re-emerged last night, just as everyone was ready to give up.  There won’t be time to scrape ice and clear windows later, if (when) he finally succumbs to the “sweet smell” of Vienna sausages luring him to the trip plate.  With the gray light of this dawn, it’s time to “seize the day”.  

Well, maybe after one more cup of coffee.

Kia Kids

I understand the frustration of cities and police departments.  In many places crime,  particularly high visibility crimes like homicides, are increasing.  Gun violence is also growing: mass shootings seems to be daily, but even worse, it is commonplace to hear of seemingly random shootings.  A thirteen year-old was shot in his bed in a drive-by shooting here in Columbus this weekend.  A six year-old shot his teacher in Virginia.  The violence and crime seems out of control.

An example of this frustration is the “Kia Kids” of Columbus, Ohio (sounds like a Saturday morning cartoon). Social media app Tik Tok showed them how to steal Kia’s, a simple computer hack.  And throughout the summer, a group of young teenagers terrorized the town, stealing Kia’s (and Hyundai’s), and madly driving them through the streets to ultimately crash.  The thieves were apprehended over and over again, so many times that some of their parents  begged the Courts to hold them in custody.  But in our current system, they didn’t “qualify” for juvenile detention, only a location-tracking ankle band, easily removed.  It seemed fruitless for the Police to arrest them – they would be back on the streets in hours, some in casts from their last stolen crash. 

Revolving Door

In the midst of all this, many are also demanding reforms in our cash bail system.  A person charged with a crime might be held for months and even years before their trial, where they might well be found not-guilty.  That incarceration is determined not by “risk”, but by money.  If the accused could afford bail, they got out.  If not, that sat in local jails, losing jobs and families.  I am completely in favor of reforming a system that so favors the wealthy over the poor.  But current reforms have an unintended consequence.

Between bail reforms and the changes brought by the Covid pandemic, fewer accused criminals are incarcerated before trial.  From the police perspective, the demands to get criminals “off the streets” are followed by a revolving door of appearance in Court and release, just like the “Kia Kids”.  So police officers are frustrated, unable to satisfy the demands of their communities.  Some, perhaps many, are now hesitant to “go the extra mile” to do their jobs.  They are huddling behind the “Blue wall”.

Flying Squad

Some cities searched for other ways to control crime.  They develop “flying squads” of picked officers, to sweep into neighborhoods and “take control”.  The idea is to fight “fire with fire”, gang violence with a group willing to use gang-like tactics against them.  The unspoken goal:  do whatever it takes and “take the streets”.  If gangs want to bully people into submission; perhaps the police should be the “biggest” bully on the block, behind a uniform, badge and gun.  

Our culture is steeped in cops who go “beyond” the law  from Dirty Harry to Chicago PD.  They offer simple solutions to the complex problems created in our urban environments.  It’s satisfying in an Old Testament, “eye for an eye” way.  But that too has unintended consequences.

A group of chosen officers, mandated to go “beyond the law” to gain control, are sent into the streets.  It’s completely foreseeable what will occur – a Lord of the Flies kind of overwhelming violence.  In Memphis they called it the “Scorpion Unit”: even that name anticipates the need to strike, to sting, and to kill.  It sounds like a special forces unit from the Vietnam War era; dressed in their dark blue hoodies and unmarked fast cars to roam the streets.  And we now know what happens – they lost their way.  When a twenty-nine year old black man named Tyre Nichols failed from abject terror to “submit” in the way they wanted, then panicked and ran:  they did what bullies do to enforce their authority.  They beat him, so badly that he died.

Frustration

It’s like all the frustration of the today’s policing came out in one hour, on the body of that one man.  They can’t do the job they’re asked to do, the job they want to do, that they became police officers to do.  The leaders of our cities desperately turned to more “aggressive” law enforcement tactics.  I guess this outcome should really be no surprise.

Those officers, themselves young men in the twenties and early thirties, are completely responsible for their own actions.  The Memphis authorities immediately responded to their violence, firing them from the force, then charging them with the maximum offenses.  The five officers, and ultimately several more, will be held accountable for their individual actions in the death of Tyre Nichols.  

But in a larger sense, our society put them in that position.  The possibility that those men, mandated to “control”;  would lose their way was apparent from the beginning.  Memphis, and lots of other cities, are searching for simple solutions to complex problems.  If police officers are their only tool, the “hammer”; then every societal “problem” must be a nail.  Instead, America needs to gain the knowledge and resources to discover the “hard” solutions to our societal failures. Solutions that are real, not just violence countering violence.  

Because more violence, clearly, is not the answer.

Over the seven years of writing on “Our America” (aka “Trump World”) , there have been a couple of essays with “Foil Hat” in the title (Put on My Foil Hat, Foil Hat Two) .  These were the essays I indulged in the conspiracy, so far unproven, that Russia took a direct hand in the 2016 election.  There were three basic “strategies” that the conspiracy followed.

Social Media Fact

The first strategy is factual, and well known.  We know that Russian Intelligence influenced social media in the 2016 election, much of it out of a non-descript building in St. Petersburg.  That was made clear in the Mueller Report, and Mueller actually indicted several Russian in-absentia for their actions.  At the very least, we know that Russian Intelligence worked to exacerbate the extremes in American politics.  Russian agents were active on Facebook and other social media sites, stoking the fires of extremism, and trying to push Americans towards division.  They went so far as to organize bogus rallies, getting real Americans to attend. 

The intent of this Russian program was to benefit Donald Trump in his campaign against Hillary Clinton. Social media never had so much influence as it did in 2016.  While it’s impossible to determine how many actual votes the Russian actions impacted, we can be sure that it influenced the election.  Whether it determined the outcome in that razor-thin result, we can’t be sure.

Spies and Cigars

The second question was simple:  how much influence did Russian intelligence directly have on the Trump Campaign?  The current Republican talking point is that the Mueller investigation was based on the “now discredited” Steele Dossier, a Democratic opposition research effort.  So, first things first:  the FBI investigation into the campaign, called “Crossfire Hurricane”, wasn’t based on the now infamous “Steele Dossier”.  The investigation was going on before the Dossier became known to the FBI, and even longer before it became public.  

The Mueller Report documented over one hundred contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russian intelligence sources. It’s easy to disregard foreign policy advisor Carter Page with his goofy fishing hat and trips to Moscow.  But it’s more difficult to comprehend the actions of Paul Manafort, the Chairman of the Trump Campaign.  He was deeply indebted to a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, and passed strategic polling data to Russian Intelligence sources in the “Cigar Room” of Grand Havana Hotel in New York City.  Or former General Mike Flynn, Trump’s top foreign policy advisor and future National Security Advisor, who took thousands of dollars from Russian TV, and sat at the “right hand” of Vladimir Putin in Moscow, among other contacts.

Mueller never came to a conclusion about Trump/Russia contacts or collusion.  In his report, he only noted that the “stonewalling” of Trump campaign officials, including Manafort, Stone, and the Trump children; kept critical information secret.   

A “Something” Burger

We now know that Attorney General Bill Barr completely misrepresented the Mueller Report to the American people.  We also know that the Justice Department Inspector General confirmed that the FBI had a “valid predicate” (reason) for beginning that investigation.  

And yesterday, the New York Times reported that the “investigation into the investigation”, led by US Attorney John Durham, came up empty after three and a half years.  This was Trump and Barr’s great hope:  their attempt to prove that the FBI was “after Trump” at the behest of the Obama Administration, and, as Don Jr would say, Mueller was a big “nothing burger”.   But after spending over $6.5 million and losing two Federal Court trials, Durham wasn’t able to shake the Mueller conclusions.  In fact, it turns out the only serious “criminal charges” Durham contemplated were financial irregularities by – Donald Trump in Italy.

Comey’s Letter

But the third “leg” of the conspiracy is even more “foil hat-ty”.  The ultimate turning point in the 2016 election, was when, two weeks before the vote, FBI Director James Comey announced that he was reopening the e-mail investigation into Hillary Clinton.  This announcement violated Department of Justice policy to NOT take actions that influence election outcomes.  But Comey felt trapped.  An unrelated investigation into former Congressman Anthony Weiner’s computer in the New York FBI office created a huge issue.  Weiner was accused (and later convicted) of sending inappropriate pictures to underage girls.  But when the FBI examined his computer, they found some classified Clinton emails on his hard drive.  

Weiner’s was  then married to Huma Abedin, Clinton’s personal chief of staff.  Somehow Clinton email’s to Abedin ended up on Weiner’s hard drive, including some marked as classified. 

In the weeks leading up to Comey’s announcement, it became clear that Trump advisor Rudy Giuliani knew about the Weiner hard drive.  Somehow, the New York FBI office was leaking to the Trump campaign, and Comey thought it was “better” to get ahead of the leak before Giuliani broke the news. 

New Information   

Comey’s public letter re-opening the investigation had a direct impact on the polling, and two weeks before the election, was the “nail in the coffin” of the Clinton campaign.  Whether Comey was right in breaking Department policy or not, his actions determined the next President of the United States.  But the one of the questions left hanging for the past eight years was, who leaked the information to Giuliani?

We still don’t know the direct answer to that.  But just in the past week, another “data point” was added to the 2016 imbroglio.  The FBI Special Agent-in-Charge of the New York counter-intelligence division at the time, Charles McGonigal, just this week was indicted for taking money.  That money originated from Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.  

We don’t know that McGonigal was “spying” for Russia in 2016.  But we do know that he had access to the “Weiner” laptop information at the time.  And we do know that he’s in deep trouble now, perhaps the worst betrayal of the FBI since Robert Hanssen back in 2001. 

So push your foil hat down, and draw your own conclusions.

Prohibition

Up front, I am pretty much in favor of legalizing things that you can’t control.  Using marijuana, for example, should be legalized (and sales controlled) nationwide.  Whatever you think of using the drug, making it against the law didn’t work.  That ship sailed.  The Centers for Disease Control estimates that 48.2 million Americans used marijuana at least once in 2019, over 18% of the population.   The lessons of Prohibition learned in the 1920’s apply today – by making marijuana illegal we are creating a black market for drug sales.

And sure, there are people who abuse marijuana – there’s even a term for it; “marijuana use disorder”.  They carefully don’t call it “addiction”, though there are people who seem to be unable to function without the drug.

America has been addicted to alcohol, legally, since 1934.  70% of Americans had at least one drink last year; that’s more than 200 million people.  And while there are estimated to be 15 million alcoholics, we recognize that banning alcohol didn’t work.  Banning marijuana doesn’t either.

Federalism

Legalization is happening, in all of the “glory” of our Federal system.  Twenty-one states have made recreational use of marijuana legal.  You can drive down the streets and see the green leafed “dope stores”, almost as many as beer stores in California and Colorado.  Like alcohol, the state gets a cut of the sales. Another sixteen states, including Ohio, legalized “medical” marijuana.  With a prescription, you can get a state “Marijuana Card”, and then legally purchase the drug.  The prescription, available online, runs about $150, and the registration card another $50.  For a little fibbing and $200 a year, you can be a legal Ohio medical marijuana user, along with  323,000 of your fellow citizens (Ohio).

So when Ohio legalized gambling as of January 1^st, I figured it was an all-around good thing.  Gambling used to be  “back door”.  It was legal at the horse races, but otherwise against the law.  You could go and place a bet on a  filly to win-place-or-show at Scioto Downs.  But you couldn’t lay a legal bet on the Bengals to win the Super Bowl.  Serious gamblers found illegal places; the backroom poker game or a bookie at the end of the bar.  

Place Your Bet

Ohioans like to bet on anything.  Back “in the day”, when the state track meet was in the Horseshoe at Ohio State, you could even bet on the kids’ races.  Just take a seat in the top row near the finish line, and wait.  Soon you’d hear how much someone was willing to put on the kid in lane six of the 100 meter dash. Someone would take the bet, and the money passed down the row.  It was always out there, but it was not very visible.  

Oh, and then there was BINGO!!  Bingo itself wasn’t particularly gambling – but a part of any good bingo game was instant ticket sales, with great names like “Better than Sex”.  As a bingo caller (“A – 4”) I had to identify what instant game was “on the floor”.  So I’d call out: “Better than Sex is now on the floor”, followed by “…but you know, there’s really nothing better than sex on the floor”.  The audience of mostly older ladies reached in their bras, pulled out their cash, and ate those tickets up.

Get Our Share

And then Ohio built casinos throughout the state.  Toledo, Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati all got a casino site.  Part of the reason:  Ohioans were casino gamblers, and they were going in masses to Indiana, West Virginia and Michigan to play.  The State legislature figured they were missing a lot of tax revenue, so why not “dip in” and get Ohio’s share.

So while good-old strait-laced Ohio was against gambling, we were on the slippery slope.  And as of January 1^st 2023, we are now an open-gambling paradise.  You can pull out your cell phone, or go to a “sports bar”, and bet on any game you want, legally.  In fact, you can bet on the game, or the quarter, or whether Taylor will return a punt for a touchdown or Higgins will catch the next pass.  You can watch the game not to see the Bengals shock the Bills, but as an ongoing investment, you against the world, betting the yardage and the play.

Bet at Home

Every Ohioan now has a “sports-book” in his or her pocket.  But what I really wasn’t ready for was the onslaught of television ads.   Bet the first $5, and they’ll give you $200 more to bet with.  Talk about the “pusher-man” hanging out by the playground with “free samples”. The sports-book guys are in your living room, and impatiently waiting in your pocket.  They’ll get their $200 back and more.

It almost “un-Buckeyean” to not bet.  Speaking of the “Buckeyes”, there was vast disappointment when they lost on a missed field goal to Georgia on December 31^st.  Ohioans couldn’t legally bet (probably put $10 down on miss left or right) and were desperate for the team to win.  The Championship game was after midnight – putting money on the “Buckeyes” legally on your own phone – the real test of any fan of THE Ohio State University football team.

Gambling is legal, but it’s definitely scary.  The pressure is intense.  I’m not a gambler, but even I feel “left out” when I see all those TV ads.  It’s only a couple of taps on the phone.  But I’m holding off – I don’t want someone else to “hold my beer” while I play!  

Crime Shows

We watch a lot of “crime” shows on TV.  You know the ones:  there was a crime in some familiar sounding small city in Wisconsin, or Iowa, or Ohio.  The local police try to solve the crime, but can’t find the kidnapper, or the thief, or the murderer.  But there’s always one detective (usually now fat, old and retired) who just couldn’t let the case go.  He spends years, into his retirement, trying to solve the crime.  And, if it’s a “good” crime show, he finally does.  Justice prevails, the suspect goes to jail, and the victims gain “closure” and go on with their lives.

We learn the incantation of law enforcement:  find someone with the motive, the means, and the opportunity.  Motive:  the driving force pushing the suspect to commit this unacceptable act.  Means:  does the suspect have access to the weapons, or the shovels, or the finances to pay for such a heinous act.  And finally, opportunity:  can law enforcement place the suspect at the scene of the crime.  Put all of that together, and find some evidence proving each factor, and there’s a good possibility of conviction.

Shining City

The United States isn’t a lot different from other “modern” nations.  Most folks here are doing OK:  they have three meals, and a roof over their heads. They can take care of their families and get the material things they need and want.  But according to the US News “quality of life” survey, the US ranks 20^th in the world.  There are the Scandinavian countries you would expect ahead: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland; in fact, almost all of Europe is ahead of the US, as well as South Korea and Japan.  And, Canada is ranked at number 1.

Americans would argue that we are a “different” kind of nation – one with much greater diversity of race and culture, a nation still striving.  We are a country where the nature is to “struggle” to improve.  That creates a national dissatisfaction – folks all want to do “better” than they are right now.  So ask them about their quality of life, and they’ll think about how much better they can do.  Why do you think the “Mega-Millions” lottery is so popular?

And there is still a great deal of poverty in the US, both the urban poor and the often unseen rural poor.  Our social safety net has a whole lot of holes in it.  The supposed “richest” and “most powerful” nation in the world, Reagan’s tarnished “Shining City on the Hill”; has a plethora of excuses for not being quite so glowing.

110 Every Day

But only in America – only here – do we have the kind of recurring mass shootings of innocent citizens.  Just yesterday there were three – two in California (Monterey Park, 11 dead, and Half Moon Bay, 7) and one in Iowa (Des Moines, 2).  It isn’t outrageous anymore, it’s just a part of the “regular news”.  We even hear the argument:  “…well, only two were killed in Des Moines, and it was gang-related, so it shouldn’t really count as a ‘mass shooting’”.  We figuratively stand on the bodies and debate the labels.

What’s so different about the United States? We take as a “run of the mill” day that 110 Americans die from guns every day.  It’s January 24^th: 2800 Americans have died since New Year’s Day from gun violence (Gun Violence Archive).

Excuses

Every nation in the world has dissatisfied people.  Every nation in the world has people with mental illness.  In fact, every modern nation in the world has video games, even violent ones, that kids play regularly.  All of those are used as “causes” of America’s gun violence.  After the really horrific mass shootings, we talk about getting better “mental health” to prospective shooters, as if they are registered like parolees.  

Motive, means, opportunity: we all know the litany of crime.  We can agree that someone who finds a motive to shoot a bunch of old people dancing to celebrate the Lunar New Year, is pretty screwed up.  But other countries have screwed up people, and other countries DO NOT have our epidemic of violent gun deaths.

And we can see the “opportunities” all around us, no matter how “hardened” we make our schools, churches, government buildings or even parade routes.  There always is a chance to kill innocents:  at the restaurant, the ballroom, the night club; anywhere that people gather.  But people gather all over the world – and they aren’t “infected” with our virus of death at the end of a gun barrel.

The Means

What’s the difference?  It’s all about the “means”.  Americans have more access to guns than any other nation in the world.  Here, in our “Shining City”, there are 120 guns for every 100 citizens, almost double every other nation (World Population).  We are awash in guns, up to our necks in guns, stuffed with guns.  Guns are so easily available that any adult can walk into a store (there are at least five within a fifteen minute drive) and buy a gun, ammunition, and be “ready to go” (whatever that means). 

We have a Second Amendment that our current Supreme Court interprets to mean everyone can have, virtually unregulated, a firearm.  How can we be surprised that those of us with motive and opportunity choose gun violence as the means?  We can lament the deaths, from the children of Uvalde to the senior citizens at Monterey Park, to the two more kids who died in “gang violence” in Iowa (as if “gang violence” somehow makes their deaths less important).   But we can’t do a damn thing about it.

Oh snap:   we can get our own gun.  It’s kind of like getting Covid, so we don’t have to get vaccinated.

Drip-Drip-Drip

If I invite you into my home, and allow you to search, do you really “seize” anything?  The FBI this weekend found six more classified documents in the home of a President, this time, the sitting President, Joseph R. Biden.  Some of the classified documents go back to Biden’s thirty years in the Senate, and some are in his own handwriting.  If Joe and Jill found them, they would hand them over to the FBI. Seizure sounds like it was dragged from their clutching hands, like seizing the scissors from a three year-old.  It might be an unnecessarily aggressive word.

Wait – one beat – so if Senator, or Vice President, or President Biden writes something down, it can become classified and then subject to document storage requirements?  If he takes notes in a classified meeting, notes to assist him in making a decision – those notes are classified and therefore he can’t “have them” with him?

I guess the answer to that question is yes.  So six more documents are added to the agonizing drip-drip-drip of bad news for the Biden Administration.  

The media describes it like a Special Victims Unit television show:  well the search was “consensual”, so there was no “assault” like the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago.  The Biden’s are OK with the invasion of FBI into their home.  And they didn’t find anything to incriminate Hunter! One down, at least one more to go, the vacation home in Rehoboth Beach.  That  has to be coming soon.  

Burn the Tapes

When the Courts demanded that Richard Nixon turn over the audio tapes proving his own guilt in the Watergate crisis, some of Nixon’s advisors told him to burn ‘em.  Nixon had this vision of a bonfire on the White House lawn, as he tossed tape after tape onto the flames, burning away all proof of his guilt, dancing around the flames as the press and FBI watch helplessly.   He didn’t do that, and four years later told an interviewer he regretted not taking that dramatic step.

Joe Biden is the President of the United States.  He, unlike an unnamed former President, still does have the power to declassify material.  Maybe he just ought to declassify all of the documents his lawyers, staff, and the FBI has found in his possession.  Like Nixon burning the tapes;  “Whadda U gonna do about it?”

Biden won’t do that.  The Democratic Party took a stand in the last decade – “We are the ‘good guys’, we will not only follow the law, but we won’t take advantage of our power”.  A couple of pictures come out, and Al Franken resigned.  Congressman Katie Hill left when she had an affair with her Chief of Staff.  Republican Congressman George Santos lies, cheats, and who know what else, but stays in office.  Biden isn’t going to get out of this by de-classifying everything.  Instead, he’s going to “stew” in this mess, until all of the classified documents in Biden’s private residences and offices are finally outed.  

Junior High Math

From a raw politics point of view I guess he’s lucky.  It’s hard for Republicans to take advantage of Biden when Trump did the same thing.  You can’t “nail” Biden, when it took a NON–CONSENSUAL search, requiring a SEARCH WARRANT (bold and loud to try to draw the distinction) to get Trump’s classified documents.  

Why doesn’t Biden just tell the truth:  his staff packed his papers – and they didn’t get the classified materials out of them?  The problem with that is that it makes Biden look “taken care of”, like packing up your parents’ house to send them to the senior citizens home.  Worse than looking like he ignored the law; that would make Biden look helpless.  No one wants a helpless eighty-year old man as President.  Better to be a scofflaw.

So, my Democratic friends, swallow hard.  There’s no good way out of this, no way to spin this into a good Biden thing.  The best I can offer is “old math” from my Junior High days.  We learned to multiply and divide fractions by “cancelling out” numbers on the top with numbers on the bottom (thank goodness I don’t have to really remember how that worked).  I’m sure in today’s “new” math, they don’t do that.  Surely, we are no longer a culture of mathematical cancellation. 

But we still cancel-out in American politics.  And as long as Donald Trump is a number in the fraction, that cancels out Biden’s classified document indiscretions.   The danger:  come 2024 if there isn’t a matching “number” on the other side, Biden becomes more vulnerable.  If Trump isn’t the candidate, we are going to spend all of the Biden campaign talking about “addled, old Joe” who doesn’t know when he’s got hot papers in his hand. 

Imagine

It was 1980.  I was teaching government at Watkins Memorial High School on December 8^th, the day an assassin murdered John Lennon.  It was shocking, one of the musical talents of a “generation” killed young and senselessly in front of his New York apartment building, across from Central Park.  The next day, our Middle School guidance counselor came to school wearing all black.  He  was in mourning for the loss to music, and to our society.

It seemed a bit “over-the-top” to me.  I was younger, twenty-four, and while I certainly knew all of the Beatles songs, I was too young to be part of “Beatlemania”.  That was my older sisters: but I still have the “family” copy of “Meet the Beatles”, the 1964 album so old it’s in mono not stereo.  I was eight when it came out – “I Want To Hold Your Hand”, “All My Loving”, and “It Won’t Be Long”  can still call out with some static from my updated turntable, even today.  But I was not a “Beatle-maniac”.  Going into full mourning for the loss of John Lennon just seemed too much.  I didn’t get it.

Too Late for Woodstock

“My music” came later – the music of the Vietnam war protests, and the beginnings of the psychedelic era.  I listened to electricity of Hendrix and The Doors, and the folk protests of Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins.  But “my” group combined both – the harmonies of the folk protests with the electrics of rock and roll.  At fourteen, in 1970, I “discovered” Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.  

They were a “super-group”, made up of members from other highly successful groups.  Crosby was from The Byrds of “Eight Miles High” fame.  Stills and Young came from Buffalo Springfield.  Stills wrote and sang “For What It’s Worth”, opening with the era evoking lyrics, “Something’s happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear…”  Graham Nash was from the Hollies of “Bus Stop” fame.  But they all left their respective groups to come together in a mix of talent, harmony, creativity and egoism. 

The Super Group

They were like a nuclear critical mass.  CSN and CSN&Y authored some of the historic music of the era.  The meshed in every way, in instrumental talents, three and four part vocal harmonies, their ability to “float” through complex acoustics, and to “get down” and jam to electric rock and roll.  They could pound through Neil Young’s “Southern Man” and Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock”.  They could float with David Crosby’s “Triad” and “Lee Shore“.  The audience jumped into Nash’s “Teach Your Children”, and stood for Young’s “Four Dead in Ohio”.  And there was the strength of Still’s “Love the One You’re With” and “Find the Cost of Freedom”. 

They began in 1968.  And like every critical mass, they imploded, first in 1970.  They flew off to make their own individual music, and to aid others like The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, and Phil Collins .  And they re-combined, as the “super-group” and pairing with each other for the next forty-six years, until their final meltdown only six years ago.

Probably Keep Us Both Alive

Their music is the theme song of my youth and young adulthood.  I played the live album, “Four Way Street” so much in college, that my roommate Charlie finally tossed it out the window (I responded by launching his Bread album on the same trajectory).  I timed long drives from Washington DC, to Cincinnati  so that the tape would end in the pre-dawn morning hours, joining in the harmonies of “Find The Cost of Freedom” while I finished the last few miles.  

As a coach, I travelled all over the country with high school track athletes.  Somewhere on a highway in Nebraska or Oregon or Virginia or Florida, I would challenge them to “name that tune”.  Most failed, but the ones that knew me best always said “Crosby-Still and Nash”.  It was a good guess for me.

And I was haunted by “Four Dead in Ohio” about the Kent State shootings for decades.  It took a track recruiting visit to the Kent campus, then indoor track meets there year after year to exorcise the ghosts of those protests, but never the song.

I saw Crosby-Stills-Nash and Young in a couple coliseum rock concerts, then Crosby-Stills and Nash in a symphonic hall, more acoustic performance.  I aged along with CSN, listening to their old ballads, and letting their new efforts have a chance as well.  Even when Stephen could no longer hit the “medium” notes, he could still play guitar.  Even when Neil Young went off into strange projects about a fictional California town, Greendale, I went to see him in concert.  I have tickets to see Graham Nash in May.   My phone rings with the chorus from “Wooden Ships”. 

Crosby

But in the “inside world” of Crosby-Stills-Nash and Young, I was always a Crosby guy.  His voice, in lead or harmony, never faltered in six decades of performance.  His songs: ethereal, stoned, evocative, or “straight-up” (“Almost Cut My Hair”) always resonated.  Even when Crosby’s own behavior fractured the four, three, and then two (Crosby, when interviewed, explained that he was the asshole) his music still moved on.  He released a live album last month.

And in our modern social media world, I followed Crosby on Twitter.  I’m not usually a “groupie” like that.  My usual mode is to listen to the new music, and make up my own mind.  But having almost daily “notes” from David Crosby led me to other music, through his musical interactions.  I didn’t directly communicate with him, but his constant contact made him feel close.  I read how arthritis took away his guitars.  But his voice never faltered.

Last week he tweeted about playing at a live concert in a California coast town in a couple of months. 

Yesterday David Crosby died in his home in Santa Ynez, California. He was 81 years old.  His wife said he was suffering from a long illness, but his recent Tweets gave no indication of disability.  So it was a surprise last night to hear that Crosby was gone.  He’s a part of my life, the songs I was likely singing, the background music to the joy and the sadness of my last fifty-two years.  

If I was teaching today – I’d wear black in mourning.  I get it now.  

Old Classrooms

For many years, teachers wouldn’t allow students to record their classes.  Folks from outside education thought that was “nefarious”; that teachers didn’t want to be held accountable for what they said.  But the real answer was simpler.  Kids, then and now, are technically more proficient than their parents and their teachers.  It didn’t take much editing for a perfectly normal lecture or discussion, to turn into something completely unacceptable.

If a teacher really did say or do something that out of bounds, there was always thirty-some witnesses.  But one altered tape could destroy a teacher’s career.  So teachers of the past didn’t allow their classes to be recorded.  But in our current age of Zoom classrooms and every single kid carrying a recording device, teachers are well aware that they are vulnerable to “editing” at every turn.  It’s now just another “assumed risk” of the profession. 

Lying Eyes

Project Veritas, led by James O’Keefe, is a far-right group that creates videos to trash their opponents.  They use hidden cameras to catch the conversations of the “enemy”, then edit the outcome to make them look foolish and nefarious.  For example, it was Project Veritas  that showed “evidence” that Planned Parenthood was selling parts of aborted fetuses.  The evidence was from edited hidden video of “interviews”, carefully clipped to create the appearance that Planned Parenthood executives were bragging about the sales.  

It was a lie – but it’s hard to deny your “lying eyes and ears”.  Just like that teacher from twenty years ago, the edited version says whatever the editor wants it to say.  O’Keefe set the “standard”:  fake credentials, hidden audio and video, edited responses to create a false narrative.

Word Salad

Accuracy in Media is another “gotcha” group, run by a Project Veritas alum. This week they posted a video  of two local high school administrators  (Upper Arlington and Groveport) discussing how their schools “supposedly” teach Critical Race Theory.   The video authors follow the Project Veritas playbook, posing as parents enrolling their kids in school, and just asking “a couple of questions” recorded by hidden video and audio.  

They use a “word salad” game to “catch” the schools.  Accuracy in Media equates their ultimate “bogeyman” – Critical Race Theory – with other educational terms such as Social-Emotional-Learning, Diversity and Equity Education.  Social-Emotional Learning is defined as “…the process of developing the self-awareness, self-control, and interpersonal skills that are vital for school, work, and life success (Committee for Children).”   That sounds like something every child needs, but, like the term Critical Race Theory itself, the video creators describe it as “liberal indoctrination”.  Diversity and Equity, standard educational goals since the 1970’s, are also being “turned” into evil.  And don’t even get them started on white privilege or inherent racism. 

Gotcha

So as the administrators use those terms, the “announcer” jumps in to quickly redefine them as part of the whole “Critical Race Theory conspiracy” of the “liberal public schools”.   The announcer (who is the President of Accuracy in Media)  uses the “word salad” to get to his final point:  you can’t trust the “liberal” public schools, so support laws which give public money to private schools.

As those school administrators found, you can’t trust anyone to have an honest conversation.  Now they are at risk of being fired, and the school districts are scrambling to explain exactly what they’re doing.  Public schools serve everyone in their communities, and those two districts now are “out-ted” to a segment of those constituents,  even though they aren’t doing anything wrong. 

Florida Man

It’s happening here in Ohio, but in Florida, this kind of “Critical Race Theory” nonsense is even more mainstream.  

America’s colleges have been teaching classes in African American History for fifty years.  This year, the College Board developed a high school advanced placement class (AP) in the subject.  They are piloting the course program in sixty high schools throughout the United States:  except in Florida.

The Florida legislature already has passed laws that the Accuracy in Media  crowd wants for Ohio.  They banned the teaching of Critical Race Theory in schools, conflating all of the other “word salad” terms as well.  The Governor of Florida this week ordered that AP African American Studies cannot be taught in Florida public schools, because it is in violation of that law.  As the Governor’s office said: it’s too “woke”, and not “real history”.

White Wash

“Real history” to the Florida legislature is the whitewashed version of American history we were taught in schools of the 1950’s and 60’s.  Black influence in America was restricted to Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, George Washington Carver and Jackie Robinson.  The Civil War was all about the nature of the Constitutional agreement to form a union, and had little to do with enslavement.  Only history books acceptable in Texas were allowed in America’s classrooms.  We knew more about Davy Crockett and the Alamo, then we did about the Emancipation Proclamation.

To the Florida legislature, “color blindness” (and LGBTQIA blindness, and disability blindness) are all equal to “fairness”.  Of course, that’s not fair, not to the kids who aren’t in the majority.  But that’s where Florida is “leading” American education – back to the old “white culture” domination of the mid-20^th century.  And Ohio isn’t far behind, with this new “evidence” to support their biased claims.  

And if saying that is “woke” – so be it.

My Credit Card

So let’s say I take out one of my credit cards and buy something extravagant – a new car for example.  Once I’ve made the purchase, I’ve committed to paying that bill, including the interest on the credit card.  If I don’t like paying that interest, I might (if I’m smart) find some more fiscally sound way to finance the car, an auto loan perhaps.  But whatever I do, I bought the car, and unless I sell it or declare bankruptcy (and lose the car anyway) I am responsible for the bill.

Responsible individuals budget their spending, take into consideration how their income, and how much debt they’re willing to carry.  But not the United States Congress.

The Dam Bill

The process of US Government spending is already complex.  The annual budget of the United States is measured in volumes and pounds rather than pages.  And each of those expenditures has to be passed by the Congress, in fact, passed four to six times!!

In my senior Government classes, we used the example of the “Dam Bill”.  A dam is needed, to hold back water, to control flooding, and to generator hydro-electricity.  So a Congressman (or Senator) introduces a bill to build it (“I’m just a bill, oh I’m only a bill, and I’m sitting here on Capitol Hill” ).

The bill is sent to the committee that deals with dams, the Dam Committee.  That Dam Committee will hold hearings about the dam, determining what’s needed, and what the dam drawbacks might be.  Perhaps there’s a particular town that might be flooded by the dam, or a fish that might not be able to mate.  So there will be Dam Hearings, and the committee will make a dam decision. If they determine that the dam is needed, they’ll send the bill to the full House to vote on it.  When the House passes the Dam Bill, it moves onto the Senate (or vice versa), and the process goes on again, dam hearings, dam decisions, and dam votes.

If both the House and Senate pass identical Dam Bills, then it becomes law (that’s two votes).  But if there are differences, they need to negotiate a single bill, and both pass the Dam Bill again (that’s four votes).  And once it’s all done – the President would have to sign it.

The Dam Money

And that’s it – right?  Oh no, there’s a Dam Law (a passed bill) but there’s no Dam money to build it.  So the process will begin again, this time required to start in the House, and they’ll have a dam money hearing, debate, and vote (that’s five).  And the Senate will have to agree, six votes to get the Dam Law and the Dam Money Law so they can build the damn dam.

The government has trillions of dollars in taxes ($4.9 trillion last year) to build the dam.  And of course, the costs are spread out over years, it takes more than one to build a dam.  If the government spends more than that (2022- $6.7 trillion), they borrow the money, just like using that credit card for the car.  The government borrows in lots of ways, mostly by selling bonds (long term fix interest loans).  That creates a national debt, just like the credit card, car loans and mortgages regular people have.  The national debt, the total amount the government owes right now, is $31.34 Trillion.  The difference is that the government, unlike my credit card, doesn’t have a limit set by the credit card company.

The Limit

If the government wants to cut spending, they had six different opportunities to decide not to build the dam.  But our Congress has an artificial way to create a crisis.  They have set up their own self-imposed “credit limit”, called the “debt ceiling”.  It sets a ceiling of how much debt the US government can carry.  If I buy a car on my credit card, and it’s more than my credit limit, the card company denies my purchase.  But when the government passes the Dam Bill, they know exactly how much it will add to the debt.  Still, if it puts the debt over the limit, there’s nothing to stop them from doing it.

They can always raise their own credit limit, by lifting the debt ceiling.  And that’s where we are today.  The current debt limit is $31.381 Trillion.  The US Government is expecting to hit that limit on Thursday  (US Treasury).   If the Congress doesn’t raise the limit by then, the US could default on its debt – not pay the interest on all of the loans (bonds) that were issued.  

Default

If I don’t pay my credit card bills, the credit companies come after me.  They can ultimately take me to court to try to recover their losses.  If the US Government doesn’t pay its bills, there’s not much anyone can do – except not ever buy US Government loans again.  And that would create an economic catastrophe; an artificially created recession with higher unemployment, interest rates, and potentially more inflation.  It would (will) be a mess, all because instead of Congress deciding to not build more dams the several times they had the chance, they failed to raise their own credit limit instead.

This sounds like a stupid idea.  And realistically, while the “deadline” is Thursday, the Treasury Department can finagle the books to stretch things out until May. 

Kevin’s Box 

But here’s the real issue.  The House of Representatives is run by the Republicans, with Kevin McCarthy as Speaker.  To get elected Speaker, McCarthy gave every single Congressman the right to call for a vote on his job.  It took fifteen separate votes for him to get his own Party to elect him.  There are about twenty Republicans who held McCarthy’s dream hostage until they got everything they wanted.  And one of those things was to hold up the debt ceiling vote until the Government cut spending.

Now it’s a lot harder to cut spending after it’s been spent, than it is to not spend it in the first place.  But that’s what the twenty want to do.  And they’re willing to go to the edge of economic disaster to get it. To actually cut the debt, the House, the Senate, and the President would all have to agree.  They’d have to let the twenty hold the whole Government and the US economy hostage, and then give in.

And if McCarthy looks to Democrats to help him pass a debt ceiling bill, then any one of the Congressmen, from Matt Gaetz to George Santos, can call for a new Speaker election.  And if five Republicans refuse to vote for McCarthy, he’s out, and the House is back in chaos. So don’t be surprised that, if not now, in May, the US Government shuts down, unable to pay its debts.  Because Kevin McCarthy wanted to be Speaker so badly, he negotiated himself into a box.  The few, the five, the “crazies’; control McCarthy’s future, and unfortunately, the future of the Nation.  

And that’s a damn shame.

1968

I was eleven years old, living in Dayton, Ohio when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.  It was the first week of April in 1968.  I remember the “breaking news” from NBC’s Chet Huntley on Dad’s TV station, WLW-D.  The civil rights leader was shot in Memphis, and then died at the hospital soon after.

But what I remember most of that time was trying to understand the events of the next few days.  I didn’t get why people were rioting in Dayton, and in most of the other cities in the United States.  I do remember sitting in our family room, watching the TV, and seeing blocks of Dayton on fire, the police and National Guard in the streets, and the smoke on the horizon when I stepped outside.  At the time, I couldn’t figure out how the death of King led to all that destruction.  I didn’t know the frustration of being Black in America, of the hopes raised by the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts dashed by the continuing discrimination and economic hardship.  

I was just a White kid in the suburbs.  But I watched Dayton and Indianapolis and Cincinnati on fire, and listened to my parents explain what was going on.  It was an early introduction into the realities of our Nation; a reality that Dr. King was trying to change.

What’s Changed

That was fifty-five years ago.  Today we celebrate a national holiday in honor of King’s achievements, but more importantly to recognize his goals that were not achieved or satisfied.   Unemployment rates for Black people are almost double that of White people (US BLS). Average income for White families is $75000, average for Black families $45,000 (US Census).

Dr. King’s “Dream” of an America where race no longer mattered, given sixty years ago from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, is still unfulfilled.

In our fifteen-second sound bite era, George Floyd and Black Lives Matter has faded in the background.  But we still live in a time, when the number one cause of death among Black men under forty-four is homicide (CDC).  It isn’t even in the top three for White men.  Color, sixty years later, still matters.

There is a Facebook “meme” going around that seems to denigrate the purpose of this American holiday.  “I have a ‘Dream’ of a day off, but I’m headed to work”, or “I have a ‘Dream’ of a vacation in Hawaii, but I’m clocking-in today”.  I can’t really tell, is this a way to cheapen Dr. King’s words, or just a rap at employers who require folks to work on a Federal holiday?  And then there are two states, Mississippi and Alabama (go figure) that make this a joint holiday, Dr. King and Confederate General Robert E. Lee (WAPO).   They honor both the man who fought for equality, and the man who fought for enslavement.  

Color-Blind

Politicians often quote Dr. King’s phrase “…judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”.  Many use that to call for “color-blind” laws, that treat everyone as if we are on a “level” playing field.  We are not.  Skin color still determines life outcomes.  Until we build a society where that isn’t true, we shouldn’t dare to use King’s words against programs we know he’d fight for.

Sure it’s a school holiday.  Here in Ohio, many students had a four day weekend.  Fireworks were going off in the field behind our house last night –not in honor of King, but because those kids didn’t have a bedtime for a six am wakeup call.  Our dogs were not pleased.

What Martin Luther King Day should be, is a time of reflection on the past fifty-five years.  Why haven’t we achieved a “color-blind” society in this lifetime?  What’s wrong with our America?  Can’t we find it in our hearts and minds to get past the prejudices of our forefathers? How can we still allow any state to give a wink and a nod to the discriminatory past by juxtaposing King and Lee?  How, in America is it still about the color of your skin?

 

We Are Bound

Martin Luther King day, like King’s speeches, is about the possibilities, what we can be, not what we are. 

Shed a Little Light

(James Taylor)

Oh, let us turn our thoughts today
To Martin Luther King
And recognize that there are ties between us
All men and women living on the Earth
Ties of hope and love
Sister and brotherhood

That we are bound together
In our desire to see the world
Become a place in which our children
Can grow free and strong

We are bound together by the task
That stands before us
And the road that lies ahead
We are bound, and we are bound

Apt Description

Years ago, when I was teaching eighth grade history at Watkins Middle School, there was an administrative failure.  Our school of over eight hundred students in three grades, was left with just one Administrator, the Principal.  The assistant position was left unfilled, intentionally, for many months.  Our Principal was amazing, with his focus completely on what was best for our kids.  But handling a school, sixty teachers, dozens of other staff, and eight hundred kids, was too much for any one person to do.

When a group of teachers went to the District to ask for an Assistant, we were told one wasn’t needed.  The District Administration had their own agenda, to drive the Principal from the Middle School he “founded”. They forced him to retire: it was all “political”.  A teacher friend looked at me and said: “This is un-f##king-believable.” And it was.

That term stuck in my mind, as the absolute describer of a decision or action that was not only inexcusable, but completely avoidable.  It describes something that creates a crisis that didn’t need to exist. The District’s decision was made with full intent, regardless of the damage to the kids and the school.  That is the definition of “un-f##king-believable”.

Skeletons in the Closet

I am a Democrat, and I voted for Joe Biden in 2020.  I defended him in essay after essay, as he carefully managed his way through the first term of his Presidency.  But this week is “un-f##king-believable”.  

The Nation had the twice-impeached ex-President “on the ropes”.  He had classified documents, illegally and knowingly, and refused to return them to the National Archives where they belonged.  We had the spectacle of the FBI searching his home, and literally finding highly classified documents shoved in desk drawers with personal passports and itineraries, items that he would need and use.  There was no argument that the ex-President “couldn’t have known”, the papers were right in front of him.  

Not only did the FBI execute a search warrant on his home, but a Federal Grand Jury was empaneled and a Special Prosecutor appointed.  Trump was caught, with his “pants down”, holding Top-Secret-Compartmentalized papers in his small hands (like that visual?).  There could be no excuse.  

And then someone looked in Joe Biden’s closet:  talk about skeletons.

Say it Ain’t So

Joe Biden had classified documents shoved in files in the closet of an old office in Washington he used five years ago.  Then, they found more classified documents in a box in his garage at his home in Delaware, right next to his treasured Corvette.  And then they found more inside his home.

It’s un-f##king-believable.

I’m not naïve about Biden or Trump.  I know that when they left the White House, just like when my Principal left the Middle School, there were boxes of papers that went with them.  No one expects the President, or the Vice President, or the Principal, to sort and pack years of documents as they prepare to leave the building.  They all finished their last days in office looking to the future and doing their current jobs.  Those last days aren’t paid for them to pack up the past.  Staff packed the boxes, stacked them on two-wheeled carts, and took them out to the drive.  There were loaded in trucks or cars, and taken to offices, homes, and, now we know, garages.

Of course it’s a staff failure.  Some intern in the White House just loaded the “top drawer” of a file cabinet into a box, and it was shipped to Mara Lago, or Wilmington.  It isn’t the “high priced” staffers that get the honor of dusting off four years old files, it’s the lowest of the low.  And if that system failed to protect classified documents, that’s a big problem, one that needs to be addressed.

The Difference

And there is a huge difference between Biden’s actions and Trump’s, after “the fact”.  Trump spent months, even years, hiding documents, ignoring both the National Archives and the Department of Justice’s requests, and then lying to them.  Biden’s lawyers found the files, and immediately turned them over to the appropriate authorities.  And, obviously, when they found the first ones, they went on a “search and destroy” of all the other possible places that documents might be – hence the Wilmington house and the garage.

What should have happened?  Those files should never have left the White House.  And when the Mara Lago files came out, the Biden staff should have immediately started their own “search” of all the old boxes.  And, maybe that is exactly what they did.  Perhaps that’s why it’s coming out now.  I’m sure there are low level Obama staffers now digging through files, ready to close their eyes tightly should they see the telltale signs of classification.  I don’t see Barack and Michelle doing it themselves, just as I don’t expect Joe and Jill to stop what they’re doing and go trashing through the Wilmington basement.

Holy, Holy, Holy

But now, instead of being “holier than thou”, Biden, like Trump is either nefarious or incompetent.  Now, instead of Trump alone with his “pants down”, they are standing naked together.  And now, the House of Representatives can take the next two years and millions of dollars for “Biden Hearings” with subpoenas and excruciating questions to staff.  They can “Benghazi” Biden before the 2024 election, just like Hillary Clinton.  I don’t remember anyone giving up the political “high ground” so dramatically and abruptly: staff’s fault, Biden’s fault, nobody’s fault.  It doesn’t really matter.

It’s just un-f##king-believable.

Beachfront Property

In the old days, scams didn’t come by email.  Someone, probably at a bar or maybe a church social, came up and offered “a deal you couldn’t refuse”.  It might involve land in Florida, supposedly beachfront property, which turned out to be in an alligator infested swamp.  Or, the classic scam of World War II days: “…let me sell you a bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge”.  And, just as folks today look for cash in the Nigerian bank email, or fake credit card scams, there was always someone who “bit”.  After all, as circus entrepreneur PT Barnum supposedly said, “There’s a sucker born every minute”. 

So when I received a message from an “Israeli lawyer” in February of 2014, I was on guard.  He vaguely referenced some land in Israel purchased by our Grandfather back in the 1920’s.  I ignored him, even when he attempted to directly call me.  But after several messages which included details about our family, I finally called him back.

The Lawyer

He was trying to reach my father, Don Dahlman, to discuss this land deal.  At the time Dad was still alive, but unfortunately dementia had taken most of his memory.  As Dad’s legal power of attorney, I took it on myself to talk to him.  His name was Gil Cirkin.

He explained that in the 1920’s there was a worldwide “subscription” for Jews to purchase land for farming and development in what was then British controlled Palestine.  Salesmen went throughout the United States trying to convince Jews to purchase plots, either for future settlement, investment, or just to aid in Zionist relocation into the Holy Land.  

One of those areas was near the village of Migdal, located on the Sea of Galilee.  And Gil Cirkin believed that Ben Dahlman bought a plot in that development in 1924. 

Migdal

Cirkin’s call set me off on a flurry of research:  about him, Migdal, and about his claim  “we” Dahlman’s owned property.  I discovered the Cirkin himself was a real lawyer with a record of dealing with aged property deeds that predated the founding of Israel.  I also discovered that Migdal itself existed, first as a Jewish farm community in the early 1900’s, then as a residential development in the 1920’s.  Today, Migdal really is “beachfront property”; high priced condos with a view of the Sea of Galilee. 

Cirkin sent us his “evidence” that Ben Dahlman owned this property.  In a 1930’s Migdal “deed book”, Ben Doll (or it could be Dall) of 711 Glenwood Avenue in Cincinnati, is listed as an owner.  And, who lived at 711 Glenwood Avenue in the early 1930’s?  Our Grandfather and Grandmother, Ben and Gertrude Dahlman, with their two children, Adele and Donald.

My sisters Terry and Pat and our first cousins Dick and Judy, the generation after Adele and Don, had some discussions.  I was the youngest, and didn’t know my grandparents very well.  And the others didn’t believe our grandparents would ever spend the money to “gamble” on land in the Holy Land.  The Ben and Gertrude Dahlman they knew, survivors of the Great Depression, were always incredibly tight with their cash.

But all that really didn’t matter.  Gil Cirkin disappeared, “ghosted us”; and the whole issue disappeared as well.

Gil Returns

On June 26^th of 2022, I received a “Facebook Messenger” from Gil Cirkin, describing the “situation” again, as if we had never communicated before.  I returned his lengthy missive with a terse: 

“Gil – we discussed all of this six years ago – and you never got back to me.  Unless you are serious about this, please do not contact me again.”

Four missed calls and two more messages including an offer to come to Columbus, and I finally talked to him. After our conversation, I decided to “call his bluff”.  We arranged a face-to-face meeting at a hotel near the Ohio State University campus on July 9^th.  

I was surprised.  Gil actually showed, and we met in the lobby of the Marriott for over an hour and a half.  My first question was why did he “ghost” us for six long years?  He explained that in 2014 he was acting as an attorney for another Cincinnati family that tried to claim the “Ben Doll” Migdal plot, but that the Israeli authorities denied the claim because that Ben Doll (a noted 1920’s Zionist in Cincinnati) never lived at 711 Glenwood Avenue.  That led Cirkin to search deeper, and find Ben Dahlman at the correct address.  But when we started communicating in 2014, Cirkin was still representing the Doll’s (the heirs to Zionist Ben) and was in conflict of interest.  

They dropped their claim in 2015, and Cirkin didn’t get back to this Migdal plot until after the Covid pandemic pause.  So here he was.

Finder of Lost Deeds

He then went through the claims process for “lost” deeds in Israel.  This is an important issue in Israeli law, as much of pre-Israel land was subscribed as this Migdal land was.  Many of the European owners and their families were lost in the Holocaust, and a lot of the records were gone as well.  And many of the American records ended up being family relics, proof to some of being “suckers”, and tossed away.  Israeli law requires a full search to try to clear the deeds, before declaring them void and taking the property for the state.

And this particular Migdal property was important, with a possible sale value approaching a million US dollars.  For over twenty years, Cirkin made his living sorting these historic deed issues out,  and taking thirty percent of the net profit of the sale of the land once the Israeli authorities accepted the legitimacy of the deeds.

He tracked down the heirs to the owners of those lost deeds, then proved to the Israeli government that they were indeed the correct ones.  In doing so, he relieved the Israeli government of responsibility. In addition, by clearing the deeds it opened the property for further development.  Developers didn’t want to build on a piece of land when they couldn’t be certain who actually owned it.  Cirkin cleared up the issue.  And he got paid for it.

We talked through the process, and his guarantee that there would be no additional costs to the “heirs” (myself, my sisters and first cousins) outside of his share of the net profit.  He also explained the finances if the deal went through:  the Israeli government would probably get 50% of the sale in tax and fees, Cirkin would take 30% of what was left, leaving 70% of the net profit to be divided among the heirs.  If it was a million dollar sale, each “heir” might get $70,000.  That’s “money”, but certainly  not as much as selling the Brooklyn Bridge. No one would become a millionaire on this deal.

Ben and Gertie

After the meeting, I talked with Terry, Pat, Dick and Judy; and ran into a problem.  The Ben and Gertie Dahlman they knew would never have spent $200 ($3500 in 2022 dollars) on a shaky land deed in Israel, as least they thought.  So regardless of the “deed book” listing of Ben Dall (or Doll) at the right address, they didn’t buy it.

And that led me to try to find out more about what kind of couple Ben and Gertrude Dahlman were. Not in the 1950’s when I knew them in their apartment in Silverton with the plastic covered couches and TV dinners. But what were they like in the Roaring Twenties; before the Great Depression seared their lives with struggle.

Ben Dahlman was born in 1880, fifteen years after the Civil War and four years after Custer died at the Little Big Horn.   He was the sixth child of Isaac and Clara (Dreyfoos) Dahlman (mis-spelled as Dallman in the 1880 census), both immigrants from the French province of Alsace along the German border.  Isaac came to the United States in 1861 and Clara arrived around the same time.  They married in 1869.  Isaac made his career pioneering the dry-goods business in Cincinnati, and they had six children.  Ben, the youngest, had two older sisters, Carrie and Julia, and three older brothers, Lee, Sam, and David.

Ben’s first mention in local newspapers was in the Saturday, May 20^th, 1893 Cincinnati Tribune.  At thirteen, he was confirmed into the Jewish faith at the Plum Street Temple along with twenty-five other young teens (Cincinnati Tribune -1).  From then on, his name was in the papers for the next sixty-five years, either as the news, or in the byline.

I have no memory of my great-aunts or uncles.  I was eleven years old when Grandpa died, but I do remember the crooked little finger that stuck out horizontally from his hand.  He told me that he broke it boxing, and that it ended his career because he couldn’t fit the gloves on anymore.  For decades I thought that was a  “kid’s story”, much better than the arthritis that attacks most of us Dahlman’s.  But after researching, I found that Ben Dahlman began his sports career as a boxer.

Ben was definitely the “little brother” of the four boys.  Even when he was 17 years old, he was boxing in the “special class,” smaller than featherweight – under 100 pounds.  He barely was 5’0” tall.  But Ben Dahlman was competitive.  As a boxer he was one of the best in town, competing in the Cincinnati Gym Championships in 1898 and winning the City title in 1899 (Commercial Tribune 1898 -2),  Commercial Tribune 1899 – 3). 

And while there’s no more mentions of “special class boxer Dahlman” in the newspapers after the turn of the century, his athletic career wasn’t over.  He played baseball in the Commercial League, and (much to my delight) even ran the 50 and 100 yard dashes in a “Cincinnati Field Day”  track meet in 1904.  He also was part of the American Bowling Association, listed as a “prominent bowler” in a 1907 newspaper article (Commercial Tribune 1907 – 4).  He was still bowling on a team in 1927.

At the Post

Ben also went to work at 17, starting on February 16, 1898 the day after the battleship Maine exploded in Havana Harbor in Cuba, triggering the Spanish-American War.  He almost lost the job before he began. He showed up for his interview the day of the explosion, just as news was breaking from Havana.  The newspaper’s editor, Ed Keen, was understandably busy, and a waiting Dahlman became fascinated with the typesetting machines in the next room.  He peeked through the door to watch.  But, when the door closed, the glass window in it shattered.  Keen turned to him and yelled, “You’re fired”.   But Dahlman replied “But Mr. Keen, I haven’t yet been hired.”  Keen told him to report for duty the next day (Cincinnati Post – 5).

He started off as a copy-boy, someone who ran the written copy from the editors to the type-setters.  He made $2 a week.  That began his life-long career at the Cincinnati Post, from 1898 until he finally a retired sixty years later in 1958 (Cincinnati Post – 6).

In 1904 Ben became a working writer, hired by the Sports Editor to follow horse racing.  He also joined the Cincinnati “Pen and Pencil” Club of aspiring writers, even getting on the Board of Directors.  Ben became a horse racing expert, not just stories about horse racing, but understanding the betting odds. By 1911 Ben already was becoming “the” horse racing handicapper for the paper.  He even travelled to New York to watch the horses run, taking his father Isaac with him on the excursion (Times Star – 7).

 He didn’t just spend sixty years with “the ponies”, though he was the acknowledged expert handicapper in the Midwest.  He served as the President of the “Commercial” baseball  league, and spent several years on their governing board.  He also served as the Sports Editor for the Post, wrote a horse racing column, and covered the rest of the sports world.  He was one of the first newspaper reporters to write about two new professional sports, golf and tennis (Cincinnati Post – 8).  He even had a successful racing greyhound named after him, as well as a bowling tournament.

And when there was a crisis, Ben Dahlman chipped in to do his part at the paper.  During World War I, the “advice columnist” went to war as a nurse.  At thirty-eight, Ben was too old for military service.  So for two years, it was Ben Dahlman giving advice to the lovelorn in the Cincinnati Post. And in the Great Flood of 1937, when all of the reporters were out covering the damage, he stayed at the office, editing copy and putting the paper together.  Since he couldn’t get home for days, his wife Gertie brought him dinner and clean shirts.

The Millers

In 1913, Ben, thirty-two married twenty-two year old Gertrude Miller.  Gertrude was the second child of Louis and Sophie (Manneheimer) Miller.  While her father Louis was born in the US, mother Sophie was also originally from Alsace, and became part of the close knit Jewish-Alsatian community in Cincinnati.  Louis and Sophie had five children:  Esther (Essie), Louis (Lou), Gertrude (Gertie), Stella (Stel) and Leonard (Len).  (I didn’t  know my Grandmother Gertie very well, but I did know Aunt Essie and Aunt Stel.  I called them the “blue haired ladies” of my childhood.  Their “up-to-date” style was to tint their gray hair blue. It was the older Jewish ladies trend).

Judaism went through a “reformation” throughout the 19^th century.  Before that time, there was only  Orthodox Judaism.  By the end of the 19^th century, there were two “reformed” groups; “conservatives” and “reformed”, and a Jewish “fundamentalist” sect called the Hassidic.  Reformation started for Jews, like Lutherans, in Germany, but it took deep root in the United States as Reformed Judaism. 

Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise helped bring Reformed Judaism to Cincinnati, and made the town one of the main centers. By the turn of the century the Hebrew Union College was founded, a school to teach rabbis of the Reformed movement, along with several Reformed temples.  One of the oldest was Temple Bene-Israel located on Rockdale Avenue. To Cincinnatians, it was known as Rockdale, so much so, that in the late 1960’s when the temple moved out to Ridge Road in Amberly, it still retained the name,  the Rockdale Temple.  

Much of Ben and Gertrude’s social life revolved around the temple.  Gertrude was a member of the True Order of the Sisters, a temple-based service group.  They raised their two children in the temple and in the faith, Adele born in 1916, and Donald (my Dad) born in 1918.  Don even appeared in a Temple Hanukah pageant in 1926.  

The Roaring Twenties

But they also found time to travel – to New York (to visit Uncle Lou) and to Mackinac Island.  They went with Aunt Stel and her husband Leon Joseph up to Lake Michigan.  They often played cards with friends and bowled.   And then there was always time at the race tracks – in Kentucky and Ohio, where Ben worked and sometimes played the ponies he knew so well.  

Ben’s job with the Post paid well enough that they bought their own house on Herschel Avenue in 1924.  While the sale price was unlisted in the newspaper, they did sign for a $5000 mortgage (Cincinnati Commercial – 9).  In the 1930 census they declared it worth $8000 (more than $142,000 in 2022 terms).  Life was pretty good.  So good, that perhaps they might have been able to, in 1924, buy land in Palestine for $200. 

In 1924, a spokesman for the Migdal property sales, and one of the founders of the farm there, was touring the United States.  Moshe Glikin, a pioneer Zionist, crossed the US trying to raise money for the Migdal project.  He hit Jewish communities in New York, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis and Los Angeles. 

 And, while the formal Reformed Movement wasn’t particularly interested in Zionism, some of their well-known leaders were.  Rabbi Silverman, Rabbi emeritus of the Reformed New York Temple Emanu-El, spoke in favor of Zionism to the Cincinnati Men’s Club.  Other Jews, including Albert Einstein, were “investing” in Migdal.  And in Cincinnati, the local Zionists ran a campaign to raise $5000 to purchase farmland in Palestine in 1924 (Cincinnati Commercial – 10, 11).

Our Dad remembered going to Hyde Park School from their Herschel Avenue home.  He wasn’t quite the sub-feather weight his father was, but, even so, on the day he enlisted in the Army at twenty-three years old, he was 5’3” and 116 pounds. Some of the kids at Hyde Park bore grudges against “German” kids after World War I.  The fact that both of Dad’s grandparents left Alsace while it was still part of France really didn’t matter. So, as Dad described it, his father needed to teach him some boxing skills. 

The Depression

But the Great Depression soon caught up to the Dahlman’s.  By 1931 they no longer owned their Herschel Avenue home, and were renting at 711 Glenwood Avenue.  They also were taking on borders to try to help cover the rent.  As family lore tells it, Ben Dahlman’s salary was cut in half, then half again.  Gertrude was forced to go to work, one of the early pioneering women in the real estate industry.  She soon was making more than Ben – which must have been a “thing” for them, because that was always a BIG part of the story that I heard as a child.

They later moved from Glenwood to an apartment on Mitchell Avenue, the place that my Dad remembered as home.  Financial concerns didn’t prevent them from celebrating Adele’s wedding to Mayo Hersher in Atlantic City, NJ in August of 1937.  The family went, with Don accompanying his mother and aunts Essie and Stel.  There was no mention of Ben going; he may not have been able to leave work.  And they were still living on Mitchell Avenue while Dad went to Walnut Hills High School and worked his way through the University of Cincinnati – what Dad called a “street car” college because most students lived at home and came by public transportation.  

World War II came, and while Ben Dahlman at sixty-one was far too old for service, he wasn’t too old to register for the draft.  Don Dahlman wasn’t as lucky, and in  the fall of 1941 he enlisted in the Army.

After the War

Ben and Gertrude continued to work after the War.  Ben was seventy-eight years old  in 1958 when he finally left the Post.  There was a grand “Ben Dahlman Day” at River Downs, the thoroughbred horse race track near Cincinnati.  Oddly, the only newspaper in the area not represented at the celebration was the Post, but sportswriters from other papers who spent decades sitting beside him at the races were there to celebrate (and write about) his retirement.

I suspect that Ben and Gertie lost all their retirement income during the Depression and World War II, and that it took another decade to make up enough for them to live in their final apartment, the one that I remember with plastic on the couch on Greenland Place off Summit Road in Cincinnati.

Gertrude died in January of 1963.  Ben soon moved to the Jewish Nursing Home at Glen Manor, not too far away.  He lived there until 1967, a whiskey bottle beside his bed for his evening “night cap”, and a story or two always available for his youngest grandson when we came from Dayton to visit.  When Ben Dahlman died, he left an estate of almost $50,000, the equivalent of over $450,000 in 2022.

He never mentioned land in Israel, nor did anyone else in the family, including my Dad.  Perhaps they forgot about it, or saw it as a waste of money they’d prefer not to remember.  Or maybe they didn’t buy property there at all, and there is some other explanation, logical or not, for Ben Doll (Dall) of 711 Glenwood Avenue in Cincinnati on a 1934 list of deed owners of Migdal.  

Ben Dahlman thought the best horse he ever saw was the 1948 Triple Crown Winner Citation.  And you can be sure, Ben and Gertie were there to see him take the Roses at Churchill Downs.  They didn’t miss a Derby for fifty years.  I know for sure I saw Citation,  much later when our family toured his home at Calumet Farms, just down the road near Lexington, Kentucky when I was a kid.  There are some very old and crackling eight millimeter movies of that time.

Gil Cirkin is still on the case.  Most of the family “heirs” are taking the attitude that it will be adventure to see what happens.  Maybe there’s a pot at the end of this rainbow, or maybe we’re being taken for a ride.  But a big part of this is learning more about that short,  prematurely white-haired man who worked the Post sports desk from baseball’s 1898 best Honus Wagner to 1958’s  Ernie Banks.  Or more appropriately for Ben Dahlman:  from Plaudit, the Derby winner of ‘98, to Tim Tam in ‘58.

It was a great ride.

To the family – Merry Christmas!!!!  

Marty –  December 25^th, 2022

Footnotes

Note – the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune,  and the Cincinnati Times Star, are available directly from the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library.  The Cincinnati Post is also available there in a separate collection.

• Primary Documents Included
• Migdal Deed Location
• Ben Dahlman – Temple Confirmation (1)
• Ben Dahlman  – 1934 Address 
• Migdal 25^th Anniversary 
• Ben Dahlman – WW I Draft Registration
• Ben Dahlman – WW II Draft Registration
• Ben Dahlman Winner – Greyhound 
• United Jewish Cemetery Receipt
• Cincinnati Post – 1958 Ben Dahlman Retires (two pages)

Don’t Say It

Our modern society sanitizes this discussion.  We use words like right-wing or authoritarian or populist or nationalists to describe politicians who believe in the power of a single leader of the government to “protect” society from “bad influences”. Those “bad influences” often include race – that is, the majority protecting its own influence against other races.  If that sounds racist, so be it.  

“Godwin’s Law” is an internet discussion term.  It states:  “…(I)f you mention Adolph Hitler or Nazis within a discussion thread, you’ve automatically ended whatever discussion you were taking part in.”  We won’t sully this essay by violating that rule. 

But there is a demonstrable commonality among names like Bannon and Bolsonaro, Trump and Netanyahu, Orban and Putin.  They all are beyond “traditional” conservatives.  They espouse and represent all those terms mentioned before:  right-wing, authoritarian, populist, nationalist, even racist.  Without violating Godwin’s Law – they are neo-Fascists.  Godwin didn’t say anything about Mussolini.

January 6th

The date January 6^th evokes strong memories in the United States; of police officers beaten with poles, the Capitol violated with intruders carrying Confederate battle flags, the very processes of our Constitutional democracy under attack.  It was part of the “Fascist handbook”:  to convince the masses to distrust the government, then send them to destroy the symbols of that government. Mussolini used that tactic to take control of Italy (and the unspoken to control Germany).  

It’s branded into our national history, along with July 4^th and December 7^th and September 11^th.  

And now January 6^th is not only a date of infamy in the United States.  The neo-Fascists in Brazil used that exact same plan, encouraged by ousted President Bolsonaro.  The images were eerily familiar:  the smashed windows, the crowd control barricades turned into battering rams, the seemingly endless wanderings of the mob.  And the words:  “rigged electronic voting machines” and a “stolen election” are straight from the Steve Bannon script.  

Noticeably absent from the Brasilia mobs were the authorities.  They didn’t have their battle on the steps of the Capitol; the police didn’t show up.  Today the Brazilian authorities are questioning the police and state governing leaders.  Where were they?

Bannon supplied the Bolsonaro  crowd with the playbook.  He was a cheerleader for them as they stormed the capital and desecrated their government buildings. And Bolsonaro himself:  he hung out in Kissimmee, Florida, feigning ignorance of the violence committed in his name.  It must have given him a tummy-ache; he checked into the hospital.  Not surprising he’s in Florida, it puts him under the “auspices” of Trump and Governor Ron DeSantis.  

City on the Hill

Ronald Reagan famously quoted the Bible in describing America.  He said we were “the shining  city on the hill”, the example of democracy for the whole world to see.  But today, our example has eroded.  Even before the Trump era, the failure of the Supreme Court to protect our democracy from partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression made us “less free”.  And with the election and actions of Donald Trump; authoritarian views gained a stronger grip on American politics.  That culminated in the myth of “Stop the Steal” and the reality of January 6^th.  And it’s not over – witness the far-right wing power of a small number of Republican Congressmen.  America will see plenty more evidence of neo-Fascism in the next two years.

Today that “Shining City” is now tarnished by the grime of Fascism.  We are not only threatened internally by neo-Fascists, but exporting the ideology to the world.  It’s not like the “old days”, with ships loading guns in the harbor.  American Fascism today is transmitted through the algorithmic magic of social media.  Almost three billion people in the world are on Facebook, two billion on Instagram and What’s App, three hundred million on Twitter.  The American social media trends are worldwide, and the mathematical equations that make money for Meta and Twitter are geared to create discord.  It’s not that Zuckerberg and Musk (well, maybe Musk) are neo-Fascists themselves, it’s just the best way for them to make money.

Like the German industrialists of the 1930’s, who found that supporting authoritarianism was “good for business”, the social media giants of today are counting their cash through the unrest they create.  They are exporting America’s version of neo-Fascism.

And they are doing it for the profit.

Private Colleges

It happened quietly; drowned out by the noise of Congressional Chaos, the near-tragedy on the NFL football field, and the day to day beginnings of a New Year.  But while we were distracted, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida moved to create his own “ideology” university.

There are “real” ideology schools in the United States.  Hillsdale College in Michigan is a stand-out.  The privately owned school refuses all government monies, including student loans.  And Hillsdale is open about their beliefs – in Capitalism, a Christian America, and the “purity” of the Founding Fathers.  Hillsdale sees itself as a bastion against “woke” culture.  They refuse to recognize the importance that this Nation was founded, in part, on the backs of those that were imported to perform slave labor.  And they fail to acknowledge the inequities that still exist in American society.  

It’s a free country, and if Hillsdale wants to advocate that view, that’s their right.  If someone chooses to attend Hillsdale, they will be imbued with “history” as we knew it in the 1950’s. Back then the “Indians” were in the way of Western/Christian culture, and the South was just exercising their right to “withdraw” from the Union.  

“Liberal” Arts

By the way, there are colleges that have an opposite view.  Oberlin College in Ohio was founded in the 1840’s, and has been in the fore-front of “liberal” thought ever since.  Oberlin was one of the first colleges to admit women and Blacks, and it remains a place where “free thought” is treasured.  It’s a “woke” place, in all the good ways that word can mean.  Oberlin recognizes and honors the differences in people and tries to value all of the diversity in our Nation.  And it’s a private school as well, though not as divorced from Federal funding as Hillsdale. 

I also attended a private school here in Ohio, Denison University.  Denison did not have an institutional political ideology, but did encourage diversity of thought.  Two of my favorite professors were diametrically opposite in their politics.  Professor Dennis was a conservative in the traditional Republican manner, who would go onto work in the Reagan Administration.  Professor Kirby was a traditional liberal; and the two would challenge their shared students with their teachings.  And as different as their politics were, they were to good friends. They were concerned about their students as well as their ideologies.  I learned from both.

New College

The New College started out as a private school near Sarasota, Florida.  It eventually merged with the public South Florida University, but remained a separately governed institution (around 700 students). New College gives students different options from the traditional “graded” programs.  Instead of receiving letter grades, students are given written evaluations of their course performance, a pass/fail/incomplete “contract” with the College.  The “contract” might be to get evaluations “passing” three of the five courses they take in a semester, with the goal of encouraging students to both academically experiment and take academic risks.  Failure within the contract is acceptable.

As a small school, dedicated to academic experimentation and student governance, it should be little surprise that New College is a “liberal” institution that values the diversity and independence of their students.  As their website states:

“…the school community “celebrates diversity, encourages individual expression, and values openness, kindness and mutual respect,” and that the private college that was its predecessor was “founded on principles of equality and inclusion.”

Stop Celebrating

But that doesn’t fit into the current Florida Governor’s campaign against “free thought” and “wokeness”. DeSantis has sponsored several laws requiring public education to restrict discussion of racism, under the misguided guise of controlling “Critical Race Theory”.  If DeSantis gets his way, the whole idea that race impacts outcomes in governments, schools, economics or life will be “outlawed” in Florida.  Inclusion and diversity are “dirty words” in Florida government.

And since New College is a state school, the Governor of Florida has the authority to select members of the Board of Trustees, the group that determines the administration and policies of the College.  DeSantis, on the January 6^th anniversary of the 2021 Insurrection, appointed six new trustees to the Board.

Not Critical

One of those appointees is Chris Rufo, a Georgetown University graduate and a fellow at two conservative “think tanks”(Heritage Institute and Claremont College).  Rufo is best known for taking the arcane legal study of institutional racism called “Critical Race Theory”, and rebranding it into a label for the right to attack including many of the inclusion and diversity efforts in the United States.  While that isn’t what Critical Race Theory was about, Rufo managed to find a “catchy” name to include many of the grievances of the right against public education.

Other new trustees are Matthew Spalding, a government professor at Hillsdale University itself, and Charles Kessler a professor at Claremont.  As DeSantis’s chief of staff put it: “ It is our hope that New College of Florida will become Florida’s classical college, more along the lines of a Hillsdale of the South.”

It’s good to be the Governor.  He decides what kind of education Floridians should have, or more specifically, what they should believe.  And he can makeover a whole university to do it.  

Best of all, it’s all on the taxpayer’s dime.