Category: Uncategorized

Random Violence

We are America.  We are awash in violence.  If one more media commentator uses the phrase “unspeakable” to describe these actions, I may fracture the screen.  It’s not “unspeakable”.  We speak of this violence all of the time.  In fact, that’s pretty much all we manage to do; talk.

This weekend a shooter interrupted a final exam study session at Ivy League Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.  Eleven students were injured, two have died from their wounds.  Police held a “person of interest” for several hours, but he was released.  The shooter remains at large.

This weekend, activist and legendary director and actor Rob Reiner and his wife Michele, were found stabbed to death in their Los Angeles home.  Reiner, originally of “Archie Bunker” fame; directed “A Few Good Men”, “the Princess Bride” and “This is Spinal Tap”.  He was a driving force in progressive politics; and a leading voice opposing the Trump Administration.  The attacker remains at large and unidentified.

Surprise

And, as if to prove that random violence is contagious, this weekend there was an attack on a Jews celebrating Hannukah, the festival of light, on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia.  At least two shooters took the high ground, randomly shooting into the joyous crowd.  Fifteen were killed, twenty-seven more wounded.  

One attacker is dead, the other in custody. Both are of Middle Eastern background, as is the courageous man who wrestled the rifle away from one of them. That hero was shot twice by the second shooter, and is in the hospital.

At least that’s a “surprise” in Australia.  After a horrible mass shooting in 1996, when 35 people were killed, the Nation instituted strict gun control laws.  While this hasn’t prevented all shootings, it did make these incidents rare.  Which makes this attack perhaps even worse.

But violence is no surprise here in the United States.  It’s common place.  And the phrases “unspeakable” and “hearts and prayers”, are only weak salve on the wound.  No one is seriously suggesting a real response, a real solution to our ongoing failure to protect. 

Solutions 

We can lock up our children in their schools.  We can add more police.  We can, as some suggest, arm EVERYONE so that the “good guys can shoot the bad guys”.  We can put more police around Jewish gatherings, protecting them from growing anti-Semitism.  But America’s reality is that we are a nation of violence.  It must be in our national DNA.  At least Australians can take some solace in the fact they’ve taken action, and plan to take even more.  Here in the United States, all we do is talk.

Someone will say:  well, the Reiner’s were stabbed to death.  Gun controls wouldn’t have helped them.  In fact, if they had guns, maybe they’d be alive.  And that’s true; American violence is endemic.  But tell the Brown University students that cowered behind desks that guns aren’t a “root” of our violence.  Tell the two National Guardsmen shot in Washington, DC just a few weeks ago.  Tell all of the children who will hide in the back of a classroom in a “school shooting” drill this week.

Here in America we should learn from Australia.  Today they are talking about what they can do to prevent this kind of tragedy.  Today, America is talking about “thoughts and prayers”, of “unspeakable acts”.  We are in an age of political paralysis, led by a President and a Party only interested in securing their own financial benefits.  

Thoughts and prayers are the best we can do: it’s just talk, and  just cowardly.

Essays on Mass Shootings

• Guns and Sadness                   10/3/17
• A Teacher with a Gun              2/23/18
• Don’t Change the Subject       3/25/18
• Again                                       4/15/18
• Staying Small                           5/3/19
• Saving Lives Is Not Politics      8/4/19
• The Pain Becomes too Great  8/5/19
• Who’s Your Daddy                  8/21/19
• A Good Guy With a Gun         9/1/19
• Rights and Guns                      5/17/20
• Pittsburgh                               6/17/20
• Our Choice                              12/1/21
• Toxic Mix                                 5/16/22
• Apple Pie                                 5/25/22
• Prairie Dogs                             6/9/22
• The Will to Do It                      7/6/22
• Hanging Together                   8/12/22
• Swatted                                   9/23/22
• They Aren’t Pro-Life                9/23/22
• Motive, Means, Opportunity  1/25/23
• Accepted Losses                     2/14/23
• German Rights                        3/28/23
• Fear Itself                                3/30/23
• The Gravel Pit                         4/16/23
• Butcher’s Bill                           5/8/23
• Right to Live                            10/26/23
• On the List                               9/5/24
• Blood of Patriots                     8/29/25
• Just Talk                                   12/15/25

New Rules

The Customs and Border Protection Division (CBP) of the Department of Homeland Security has proposed new rules for examining visitors to the United States – all visitors to the United States.  Folks coming here would be REQUIRED to share five years of their social media history.  Want to come to the US: Disney World, Las Vegas, the World Cup Soccer matches, the 2028 Olympic Summer Games?   Avoid the line, and type your name and passwords into an “app” before you leave home.  Or, be prepared to hand your passport, your phone and your passwords to a CBP agent at the border, and wait.  

What were you saying five years ago?  It was 2020, “Covid Christmas”; “Zooming” with our family and friends over traditional dinners held in separate locations.  Many of us had colorful masks to match our holiday apparel.  And it was a month before the inauguration of Joe Biden as President of the United States.  It was only a few days before Trump invited his supported to come to Washington on January 6^th for a “wild time”.  Many of us weren’t sure what would happen.

Now, CBP isn’t proposing this rule for returning American citizens (though they can “explore” your phone on re-entry).  But what were folks from Europe, Asia and Africa saying about the US in the last five years, the years of our intense political turmoil?  And what will be the “criteria” to determine denial of entry?  If you were a “pro-masker or anti-masker” in 2020?   Were you concerned about the state of the American democracy?  Did you think that the decimation of USAID by Elon and the DOGE boys was disgusting and immoral? 

The App

And how do you actually go about “sharing” five years of social media history?  Do tourists have to come with “books” of printed out Facebook, Telegram, Instagram and Reddit posts?  What about Tik-Tok and You-Tube, do they have to find a way to share all their videos as well? There must be an “AI” answer to that, some application that will scrub names and passwords through years of material.  I bet a simple key-word search works:  Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Taliban, ANTIFA, 50501, Democrat.  I’m sure Peter Thiel’s Palantir company has already sold it to Homeland Security and is ready to install it nationwide.

Months ago, Americans traveling abroad were advised to get “burner phones”, without any connection to their social media, to travel abroad.  That was just to avoid the “inspection” at the borders by US authorities.  Ultimately, US citizens do have the right to re-enter, but CBP could make it difficult.  

Many will say that this is “just fine”.  If you want to visit the United States, you should be willing to “pay the price”, and open up your life to investigation.  After all, we don’t want “international terrorists” coming in!!  Of course, real “international terrorists” probably don’t have accessible social media histories revealing their inner-most thoughts.  Sure, this process might snag a few dumb terrorists.  But at what cost?

The Price

About half of the United States already doesn’t trust Homeland Security to act in the interest of, well, homeland security (Gallup).  Nearly half of Americans see CBP, and ICE, and the more mysterious HSI, as extensions of the Trump Administration political operation.  If half of “us” don’t trust them, what do you think foreign tourists coming to the US think?

Foreign tourists spent around $250 Billion in the US in 2024.  That number is already down, almost by half.    Canadian tourism has dropped in reaction to Trump policies, including tariffs.  There are other beaches, places to gamble, and even Disney Worlds, in the world.  And while there’s no Yosemite National Park anywhere else, the US has already jacked the entry price for foreign tourists ($200 fee per person at the entry gate!!).   So, beyond all of the concerns about “politics”, there is a real economic impact of reducing tourism.

The Host

What kind of “host” are we?  Two major world sports events are scheduled in the next three years:  the World Cup soccer finals in New Jersey, and the Olympics in Los Angeles.  It’s not just the tourists:  the players and coaches and all of the management officials will be subject to the same scrutiny.  Inevitably, there will be some conflict with the “search program”: will the US serve as host, or filter?   Is it too late to move the events somewhere more inviting?

Final point:  this is a “recommendation”, put up for a sixty day review.  At the moment, the CBP does not analyze all of this.  But if there’s no outcry, no complaint, then, like the actions of ICE towards migrants in the US today, where do we draw the line?  And if moral implications aren’t your concern, what about the economic impact?  How far are we willing to “tank” the US economy for Trump’s billionaire friends (like Peter Thiel)?

What does this proposed rule say to tourists to America?  We don’t trust, you, and we don’t want you.  

America is saying, “shut the front door”.  

The saying goes:  History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.   Perhaps Mark Twain said it.  That’s a small historic controversy;  if he didn’t, he should have.  

Need a Drink?

History has ample evidence that banning something makes it more popular.  The generational example is the great early twentieth century experiment of the United  States, the Eighteenth Amendment. The term that describes the 1920’s is “the era of Prohibition”.  And while the law banned alcohol, society took an entirely different direction.  It was the “Roaring Twenties”. Rather than “bars”, there were “speakeasys”.  Instead of reducing alcohol use, by the end of the era drinking the United States was almost to 70% of pre-Amendment consumption.  

What Prohibition did do was take a social behavior that most thought was acceptable, and make it illegal.  But instead of stopping the behavior (though drinking did drop 70% in the beginning), it made “criminal” behavior acceptable.  By 1933, when the Twenty-First Amendment passed to repeal Prohibition, many of the “heroes” of the era were the providers of illegal booze.  As I used to teach in history class, America was in the depths of the Great Depression and needed a legal drink.

Prohibition gave us “rum runners” and “bootleggers”.  The echoes of Prohibition still exist today, a century later.  America’s most popular motorsport, NASCAR, traces it roots to the transport of “moonshine”. Drivers were able to outrun the “revenuers” with a trunk load of illegal booze.

Need a “hit”?

The “rhyme” in our history is the banning of marijuana. (A ban notably supported by the alcohol manufacturers:  drink, but don’t get high!).  Recreational use of marijuana was illegal in every state in the Nation until just thirteen years ago.  But, like prohibition; criminalizing recreational use, didn’t reduce the amount of users.  It simply made that “criminal behavior” acceptable.  We are still in a difficult phase of legality when it comes to marijuana.  Only twenty-four states allow recreational use, while ten still don’t even allow medical usage.  And the Federal government maintains laws against marijuana.

But, we all know where the United States will ultimately “land” on marijuana use.  We’re just not there yet.  Someday history will teach about the end of this prohibition.   Maybe the “joke” will be, “Donald Trump was President, and we all needed a ‘hit’”.  

Need a Chat?

Many of my “media sources” are excited about the Australian experiment.  This week, their Government banned social media sites from their citizens sixteen years old or under.  They include:  Facebook, Tik-Tok, Instagram, You-Tube, Snapchat, Reddit, Snap and Kick.  The law doesn’t punish children for being on the sites, but it threatens the site-owners with massive fines if they are.  

There is an enormous amount of talk about the “horrors” of social media, from bullying to body-shaming to fatalities caused by copying “Tik-Tok” videos.  And all that is true, it really happens.  But, as Joe Biden would say, “here’s the deal”.  For the vast majority of teens, Australia took a legal, acceptable behavior and essentially criminalized it.  It took the teens most common way of communicating with their peers, and made it “bad”, so “bad” that it had to be banned.

Smarter Than a Teenager

But the vast majority of those teens know  their primary means of socialization isn’t “bad”.  And, being teenagers, they are more likely to not only take risks, but to have a better understanding of how to get around the legal “bans” than those who are trying to enforce it.  What it definitely does, is push the “horrors” of social media deeper, farther away from the adults who might be able to intervene and protect.  

While the news from Australia currently is about kids complaining about the ban, there also is the quiet under-current of kids who already are finding ways around it.  The new “risk taking” will become the draw, just like the risk taking of going to the speakeasy, or making a buy for that illegal joint.  

I’m a “Boomer”, with all of the negatives that come from that term.  I’m so old that video games weren’t part of my childhood. “Pong” came out when I was sixteen.   And even I use social media, from Facebook to X to You-Tube.  It seems to me the teen use ought to be more like the teen use of alcohol.  Sure, no one really wants teens to drink.  But we also recognize it’s going to happen.  The decision then becomes, do we make teen drinking so “unacceptable” that a drunk child can’t call home for a ride?  Or do we balance our desire to control, with the reality of teen risk-taking: please call and I’ll come get you.

History shows us that “prohibitions” are doomed to fail.  When they do, the problems still remain.  Without Prohibition, Al Capone doesn’t exist.  Without the marijuana ban, Cheech and Chong were just bad comics.  

What will the Australian ban create?

Zombies

Back in the 2010’s (is that how you say it?) I was still working at the school, and I had a high school senior boy living with me.  He, and his friends, were “hooked” on video games.  The dinner table conversation often went something like this:  “I killed over a thousand Nazi Zombies today, how ‘bout you”? And while I didn’t have much compassion for “Nazi Zombies”, it did stir a bit of concern.  All of this killing, all of this tremendous focus on a screen, and a game, and not on school work (or real work).  It just seemed too much.  When the TV screen got cracked (did a Nazi Zombie strike back?) there were limits placed on the new one.

Those boys are in their thirties now, and I suspect have moved on from Nazi Zombies.  They have “real” jobs, and kids, and lives. But, I imagine, they are still “gaming” in one way or another.  And they aren’t the only ones.  The skills “honed” on Nazi Zombies now have war-time uses.  What seemed like  “Star Trek” kinds of fantasy weapons only a couple of decades ago, are very real today.   

Drones

Look at Ukraine’s continuing war against Russian aggression.  The Russians have more troops, more tanks, more missiles, more of almost everything.  But the Ukrainians are the “masters” of drone warfare.  “Killer drones” that are programmed to remotely attack far locations.  Guided drones that communicate back to base, controlled by devices eerily similar to the “controller” that attacked Nazi Zombies.  Drones that can lock onto a single individual, follow them, and destroy when ordered. And “dumb” drones, swarms of them, attacking in numbers difficult to defend.  

And with all of this “remote” warfare, we grow used to seeing grainy black and white pictures of a tank, or a building or an oil storage facility; standing one moment, engulfed in explosion in the next.  It’s nothing new: back in 1991 General Schwarzkopf showed us the footage of the “luckiest man in Iraq” as a bridge exploded right behind him.  The explosion must have filled has rearview mirror.

The question I have is this:  is all of our exposure to “remote death” somehow cheapened the value of life?  Is this, a by-product of over exposure to “death” on TV, in video games; as a “way of life” – how many Nazi Zombies did you kill today?

Replay

My “old man who did not grow up on video games” experience is this.  In the past week, the media focused on the US military blowing up boats in the Caribbean.  One boat, supposedly filled with narcotics and eleven humans, was destroyed by a remotely controlled drone. When the smoke cleared, two survived the attack. A second strike was launched.  The military called it a “double-tap”.  

My chosen news source, the newly renamed MSNOW, spent hours talking about the legality and morality of the second strike. As the discussion went on, they showed the first strike attack over and over again.  If you watched (I didn’t) they showed the death of nine people in a black and white blast on replay.  

And now, the “proof” in this whole conversation is in the “second tape”, the one “we” haven’t seen.  The description of that video depends on the politics of the viewer.  Democrats say that two helpless men are clinging to the wreckage of the “drug boat”.  They are in “shipwreck” mode, looking for help, perhaps even waving a white shirt of surrender to the drone/weapon circling overhead.  Then the “double-tap” hits; another explosion, and nothing left after.  That’s the “story” Democratic Congressman Jim Hines tells.

Republicans, after watching the same thing, have a very different story.  They tell of the two survivors trying to right the capsized craft, save the narcotic cargo, and contact help by radio.  That’s how Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton saw it.

There are often situations where two very different things can be true – but this video isn’t one of them. 

Execution

It’s a lot easier to order a “double tap” on a video image, than on the reality of killing two more men, even if they are smuggling narcotics.  The act of smuggling itself is not a “death penalty” offense. But that doesn’t seem to even enter the conversation.   Is this so much easier for America, because we’ve been doing it “as a game” for so long?

What we can all agree on is this:  Americans are inured to video death.  We watch it without emotional affect.  We can put human execution (even of drug smugglers) on replay, without concern.  And, for many Americans, the dinner table conversation seems to be, “How many narco-terrorists did you kill today?”. 

Caught

They caught the “shadow” person who left improvised explosive devices in Washington, DC, in the pre-dawn hours before the January 6^th Insurrection.  Nothing pleases me more.  It was a unique “unsolved mystery”; left hanging, overshadowed in the midst of the later chaos of the that day.  Was it someone aligned with the Insurrectionists? Or part of the weapons cache in nearby Virginia hotels, or the “assault columns” up the Capitol steps?  Or was it, as current FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said over and over again as a commentator, an “inside job”.  Did someone in the American intelligence world, plant devices as some nefarious means of protecting a Biden victory?

The Justice Department and FBI were unable to identify a suspect during the Biden Administration; one more piece of evidence for the “Biden conspiracy” crowd.  It took Trump stalwarts: Attorney General Bondi, FBI Director Patel, and Bongino, to bring this case to a head.  And now, they have a suspect not only in custody, but apparently confessing to the crime.

The fact that the IED’s were inoperable, unable to explode, doesn’t really matter.  Placing them outside the two major party’s headquarters was a clear attempt to induce public panic.  And it worked.  It was an important and concerning story even that day, and remained an ongoing concern after the tear gas cleared, the gallows were removed, and the halls of the Capitol restored.  

Ham Sandwich

But, to be truthful, I don’t trust the Trump Justice Department.  They’ve spent the last eleven months doing the political bidding of the President.  It’s currently indictment by Presidential tweet.  Their standing as the acolytes of “Blind Justice” is non-existent.    (My more right-wing friends will claim  that before them there was “Biden lawfare”.  Even if you were right about that, which you are not, it doesn’t excuse a continuation with “Trump retribution”).  

I have written lots of essays extolling the virtue of the FBI in the past almost nine years.  And I suspect that the core of the agency, the professionals, are still struggling to uphold their motto:  Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity.  But the leadership was purged of those unwilling to pay personal fealty to Donald Trump.  If the Patel/Bongino regime demanded an arrest of a bomber, valid or not – that arrest would be made.  

I’m waiting for the indictments.  Maybe they’ve “caught their man”, or maybe, like former Director James Comey or New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Federal Grand Jury won’t swallow this “ham sandwich”.  (In case you miss the reference, the legal joke is;  “A good prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict even a ham sandwich”).

The Shoe Fits

It’s kind of amazing though, how far we have come in the last year.  My right-wing friends would say that turn-about is fair play, that now I know how they felt for the last nine years.  The rock foundation of America used to be the legal system; law enforcement, prosecution, and the Courts.  How quickly the veneer of truth, the blindfold around the eyes of Justice, were ripped away.  

There is little left in my faith in our Federal legal system.  The leadership of the investigators are true-believers in MAGA.  So is the Justice Department.  And while the lower Federal Courts are doing yeoman’s work to stand for Justice, the Supreme Court is completely — I hesitate to use the word corrupted, but “that shoe fits”, except for the three.  Precedence means nothing:  look at the 1965 Voting Rights Act now decimated.

So maybe they caught the bomber.  I’m sure he’s going to turn out to be a crazed anarchist, someone they can label as the “dreaded ANTIFA”.  And, maybe it really was just a nutcase who coincidentally picked the day that American Democracy was imperiled.  Or maybe not.

It’s US

What I can tell friends on “my side” of the political chasm:  don’t depend on the Courts.  Don’t depend on the institutions of American justice.  The majority at the top of the Federal Courts is as biased as the Trump Justice Department.  

The ultimate authority in the United States is enshrined in the Constitution itself. It’s the first three words:  “We the People”.  And it takes “we the people” to undue all of the damage done, not just in the past year, but in the next three years.  The mission will take decades, beyond my lifetime, I’m sad to say.  But it’s the only “institution” we can still depend on.  It’s me, It’s you, It’s US (in both forms).  

Let’s get to work. 

An Act of the Ohio Legislature

It’s called “The Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act”, carefully inserted  between lines 375 to 536 of the “regular” education finance legislation annually passed by the Ohio State Assembly.  Named after the recently martyred political commentator and Christian Nationalist, the Act claims to give permission for public school teachers at; “…a state institution of higher education may provide instruction on the positive impacts of religion on American history…”.

The old “black line” was simple:  teach about religion, but don’t advocate for any religion.  When I last wrote lesson plans during the Covid closures, I was teaching sixth grade world cultures.  Of course, religion was a huge part of the course material.  I found myself explaining all sorts of major religions and their variations, including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism,  and Shintoism. 

In the Day

In the “old days” when I started teaching, there was no question where to start.  The vast majority of my students were “church-going” Christians.  They were a very slight smattering of Jewish kids, and a few avowed agnostics or atheists.  So most of my teaching beyond Christianity was all “new news” to the kids in my classroom.  

But today, there’s a lot fewer “church-going Christians”.  And there are still those few Jewish kids.  But there are also Muslim kids, and Buddhist kids, and a vast majority of kids who really have no faith at all.  It’s a different world, one that requires an “even hand”.  Teach about the religions:  leave advocacy to parents and ministers, rabbis, imams, gurus or monks.   In this second decade of the 21^st century, teaching about religion in suburban Central Ohio is complex.  

There’s always a story.   I was well aware that some of my students were Buddhist, and worked hard to give a complete explanation of their religion.  Then I got an email from one of their fathers.  My heart sank, I was ready for the “how dare you!!” assault for somehow screwing it up.  Instead, it was a thank you note, for giving a “Westernized” explanation of the religion they practiced to his “Westernized” son .  For the first time, his son was interested in their shared faith.  It was a very “middle path” experience.

But advocacy isn’t just a matter of saying “my” religion is right, “yours” is wrong.  As with any topic, a teacher can present a “slanted” case, that would leave the student with a biased view of what American History is.   And that’s what the Charlie Kirk Education Act is all about.

Cherry Picking

I’ve attached the detailed “permissions” outlined in the list at the end of this essay.  In all fairness, the Act does not “require” the teaching of these historic “points”.  But it does lay out a “lesson plan” of positive Christianity through American history, to be written in “black letter law”, should the State Senate agree and the Governor sign on.  Any teacher in this highly partisan world could ignore the “Act” only at their peril.

Some of it is innocuous.  Of course the Pilgrims were people of faith, it’s the entire reason they risked the journey.   And Thomas Jefferson did appeal to “the Creator” in the Declaration of Independence.  What the “Act” doesn’t speak to, is that Jefferson’s view of “the Creator” was very different than the Christian view of the time.  Jefferson was a “Deist”, who believed that “the Creator” started the world, then stepped back to watch what would happen.  It wasn’t a Christian view.  But that’s NOT in the Charlie Kirk Act.

The list also includes that the Pilgrims “kept” their treaty with Native Americans.  That’s true, but it’s the last mention of Native Americans in the “Charlie Kirk Act”.  Meanwhile, the US Government made at least 368 treaties with differing tribes, and broke almost all of them (History.com).   

Mandates

The State of Ohio is trying to mandate a view of American History that would be familiar to teachers of the 1950’s. It’s one where Booker T Washington, Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King (and maybe Harriet Tubman) are the extent of African American history.  Where Americans pledged “One Nation, Under God”  as the original intent of the “Pledge of Allegiance” (it was not).   And an America where the Founders mentioned religion, not in a “generic” sense, but one dominated by Christianity. 

That’s something that the Founders specifically opposed. That’s a “State Church”; the same kind that the Pilgrims, Puritans, Quakers and Roman Catholics who settled America escaped from in England.  But that detail isn’t included in Ohio’s “Charlie Kirk Act”.   James Madison said it best:  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”.  

It was the FIRST Amendment for a reason.

The Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act

When providing instruction on the topic of American history, an instructor at a state institution of higher education may provide instruction on the positive impacts of religion on American history, which may include the following historical accounts:

(A) The authentic history of the pilgrims, including the following:

                  (1) The organization of the pilgrims as a church;

                  (2) The history of the portrait of the pilgrims displayed in the United States capitol rotunda, which depicts prayer, an open bible, and the inscription “God with Us” on the sail;

                  (3) The religious implications of the Mayflower Compact, which was modeled on a church covenant;

                  (4) The treaty with the Native Americans signed and upheld by the pilgrims;

                  (5) The first Thanksgiving that was observed as an act of gratitude towards God.

(B) The appeals to divine power and protection embedded in the Declaration of Independence;

(C) The appeal made to the biblical exodus in the fight for independence;

(D) The religious background of the signers of the Declaration of Independence;

(E) The influence of religious leaders like Reverend John Witherspoon who signed the Declaration of Independence;

(F) The impact of the first and second great awakenings on public policy;

(G) George Washington’s direction regarding chaplains in the army;

(H) George Washington’s farewell address calling religion and morality “indispensable supports”   that lead political prosperity, and their tributes to patriotism “great pillars of human happiness” and the “firmest props of the duties of men and citizens”;

(I) Benjamin Franklin’s appeal for prayer at the constitutional convention and the hiring of chaplains that followed;

(J) The influence of religion on the United States Constitution, as evidenced by the exclusion of Sunday from the allotted time for the president to sign or veto a bill and the dating of the Constitution according to the birth of Christ;

(K) Reverend John Leland’s influence that led James Madison to advocate for a Bill of Rights including the First Amendment to the United States Constitution;

(L) The history of the concept of the separation of church and state dating back to its religious origins with Roger Williams;

(M) The influence and debates of Reverend John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg and his brother Reverend Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg, the first speaker of the house;

(N) The historic role of the black robe regiment;

(O) The nation’s response to Thomas Paine’s, “The Age of Reason,” including Benjamin Franklin’s suggestion that he burn it, the national rejection of it, and multiple responses to it including Elias Boudinot’s, “The Age of Revelation”;

(P) The role of the Ten Commandments in shaping American law and their presence in art and sculpture embedded in the United States supreme court;

(Q) How religious influence shaped civil rights and the civil rights movement through men like Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and others;

(R) The impact of religious leaders such as evangelist minister Billy Graham on the culture of this nation;

(S) The history of the national motto: “In God We Trust,” dating back to the national anthem and traced through its appearance on currency and the inclusion of “under God,” in this nation’s pledge of allegiance;

(T) That “religion, morality, and knowledge” are essential to good government, as expressed in Article 3 of the Northwest Ordinance and Ohio Constitution, Article I, Section 7.

Cowboy Movies

I am “old”; approaching the Biblical definition of “old”; three score and ten.  I grew up in the 1960’s.  But even as old as I am, I was a little bit past the age of the “cowboy movies”.  That was more in the fifties, though I definitely saw my fair share of John Wayne epics.  But I was a little bit past the heyday of  Audie Murphy, Tom Mix, Gary Cooper and Randolph Scott.  I saw their black and white movies, usually on TV  on Saturday afternoon. But they were definitely before “my time”.   

Besides Wayne, my cowboys were Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Clint Eastwood, with a sprinkling of Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, and Henry Fonda (my favorite actor).  They were kind of anti-heroes.  Newman and Redford, in the wonderful “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”; portrayed criminals, doomed to destruction.  And Clint Eastwood, either in the Spaghetti Westerns like “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”, or the later  “Outlaw Josey Wales” was definitely not the typical good guy.

Hats

But I still got it:  they were “good guys”, even if they weren’t perfect. And then there were the real “bad guys”.  In the fifties movies you could usually tell by their hats: good guys wore white, bad guys wore black.  John Wayne almost always wore white, except when he played the sheriff in “True Grit”.  And when Wayne played Davy Crockett in the Alamo (coonskin cap, of course), we were again reminded the difference between the “good” and “bad” guys.  Mexican General Santa Anna ordered his buglers to play “El Deguello”, the throat cutting.  There were to be no prisoners, and no mercy, for the Texican rebels.  The Mexican Army even wore black hats.

America used to think of itself as a “white hat” country.  We were the good guys, John Wayne in “The Cowboys” or “Big Jake”, my favorites. (Okay, both of those movies were in the early seventies, but close enough).  There was no ambiguity.  We knew who was good and who was not.   Wayne even took that Western role into Vietnam in the 1967 movie “The Green Berets”, where David Jansen (of the original “The Fugitive” TV series) played the jaded reporter.  John Wayne was “pure” good guy, even in a war where there wasn’t much pure or good to go around.  It was Jansen who had to be won over.

Bad Guys

Sure there’s been a change in some American’s view.  The “Neo-Cons” of Dick Cheney ilk believed that whatever was good for the US, was good, even if we had to act like the “bad guys”.  Americans committed war crimes at Abu Gharib in Iraq, justified in their minds by the horrific attacks on 9-11.  There was “good guy” America:  waterboarding captives, and making them stand naked in front of women, threatening their genitals with guard dogs and electric probes.  John Wayne would never has stood for that, even in the Green Berets. 

And today, the Trump Administration seems to take great pride in being “the bad guys”.  The United States of America has no problem bringing the full weight of the government down on  a nineteen year-old woman in college going home for Thanksgiving, or a grandmother, or the tenants of a Chicago apartment building.  There’s no “good guy” in that, only “bad guys” reveling in the idea that their atrocities are “in the name” of the USA.

And now, Defense Secretary Hegseth has (metaphorically) ordered “El Deguello” for every one on board a targeted “drug boat”.  Unlike Santa Anna, we aren’t at war with any of the countries involved, nor are the boat crews even “rebels”.  No; instead US Special Forces launched a second missile into the wreckage of a ship, to make sure that two survivors of the first attack, wouldn’t make it.  They even have a cute name for it, a “double tap”.   That’s the term used by assassins to make sure their target is completely dead: two shots to the head.   So we are not only attacking ships on the high seas, an illegal act of piracy, but we are assassins as well.

Tarnished City on the Hill

Seal Team Six is the highly touted group of Special Forces, heroic beyond heroism.  They brought us the death of Osama bin Laden, in the dramatic raid that finally achieved America’s ultimate retribution for 9-11. But recently, it was revealed that they assassinated North Korean fishermen who interrupted a surveillance operation.  The fishermen saw something they shouldn’t have, and innocents lost in the name of gaining North Korean information.

 But now, the Team is ordered to remotely destroy boats in the high seas, and kill the survivors.  I guess it’s good Seals don’t have a uniform cap. It would be hard to determine what color they should wear.  And, before anyone starts to say “they’re just following orders”; the “good guys” are better than that.  It was the United States that demanded the Nuremburg Trials after World War II, rather than just summarily executing the leaders of the Nazi regime.  We wanted a clear delineation; that “following orders” wasn’t an excuse for “war crimes”.

Ronald Reagan (not my favorite President), in his farewell address, spoke as America as “…a shining city on a hill”; an example for the world of freedom, and justice. As I would put it, “the good guys”.  But, as we round up grandmothers and children, kill survivors of our military actions, threaten Venezuela and Columbia; we no longer deserve a “white hat”.  Our “shining city” is now badly tarnished gold, just like our very real White House. 

Our reputation is gone. I don’t know how we get it back.  

So here’s a “Sunday Story” – about gas prices and the “old days”. 

The Bubble

Woo Hoo!! Here in the “Amazon Bubble” of high gas prices, I “scored”.   As I drove by the local United Dairy Farmer, there it was on the price list:  Regular – $2.12!!  Across the street at the Duke and Duchess/BP Station, it was $2.17.  I felt like partying like it was 1999, or at least, 2007! (Sure, we all vaguely remember Covid prices lower, but where was there to go during Covid??).

It’s doubly odd that gas prices are so low in Pataskala.  As I’ve whined about before, we are in the “Amazon Bubble”.  Lined up, seven days a week, are the little blue Amazon vans, filling up on Pataskala gas.  And, if local gas prices really are a product of good old micro-economics, simple supply and demand, then the demand at the gas stations in this “bubble” is always high, and drives prices up.

Normally our local stations around the corner run about $0.30 higher than gas stations just a few miles away.   All those little blue vans, line up right here.  In fact, drive ten miles to the “Flying J” in Kirkersville, even though it’s located on I-70, and you might save $0.40 or even $0.50 a gallon.  So $2.12 meant it was time to line up the cars, and “fill-er-up”. (That’s an old phrase from the era when there were actually gas “attendants”, who filled up your tank, checked the oil, and cleaned the windshields.  Let AI try to do that!!). 

Whiplash

And “score” twice – my UDF loyalty card got me another $0.03 off – $2.09!!

I’m even more sensitive to gas prices than usual this month.  Jenn and I are “working” on recovering a dog in New Concord, a small village in Eastern Ohio. (It boasts of Muskingum University, John Glenn High School, and the boyhood home of Astronaut and Senator John Glenn).  It’s about fifty miles away, and we’ve been “commuting” to a trap there several days a week for almost a month.

So we first hand get to see gas prices rise and fall.  On Thanksgiving morning about 3 am, we paid almost $3.00 a gallon for gas at the local Sheetz Station.  There’s a variety of gas prices between home and New Concord, usually cheaper at the Love’s truck stop in Zanesville than the Love’s just down the street in Etna, Flying J almost always the lowest.  Except for the Fuel Mart in New Concord, the nearest restroom to the trap.  Ninety percent of the time, it’s the cheapest.

But $2.09 a gallon in “downtown” Pataskala.  What’s going on?

Fury III

I’m reminded of when I first got my driver’s license, in 1972 back in Cincinnati.  I was driving a “boat”, the used car I bought from my cousin Brendan for $200.  It was a 1969 Plymouth Fury III, and it was huge, with two giant bench seats; easy to put eight kids in the car.  And, since it was modeled off of the “police special” of the time, it could fly.  It was a great first car, and big enough to protect a novice driver.

Tom Morgan, our neighbor and a Proctor and Gamble engineer, taught me how to replace the head gaskets and generally keep the “Fury” running.  It was a big engine in a big car with a ton of mileage on it.  But it worked for the first few years of my driving career, and served as a  great way to learn “how to turn a wrench”.  

BC Glasses

And gas mileage – well – who cared?  Gas prices were $0.25 a gallon.  And when there were “gas wars”, stations across the street fighting for business, the price might dip down to $0.18 a gallon.  A fill-up cost $5.00.  In fact, gas prices got so low that gas stations were giving stuff away to get your business.  The Marathon Station down on Springfield Pike in Woodlawn, gave away a “BC Glass” (after the BC cartoon) with each fill-up.  When I finally got my first apartment in 1978, almost all of my glassware had the characters from “BC” on them.

So is there a gas war going on here in Pataskala?  Maybe just on the corner of Broad and Vine.  Less than a mile away at Kroger, gas is still $2.47.  But don’t worry, Jenn and I will get one more chance to get cheap gas before the “war” ends.  We got home from New Concord at 3 am last night, and we’re headed back there tonight.  Sammy (that’s the dog) has to eat sometime – hopefully somewhere in the dark of  New Concord tonight in our specially designed panel trap.  So we’ll need to fill-er-up again, at least one more time.

The Sunday Story Series

2021

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

2022

• Uphill, Both Ways  – 1/9/22
• Old Trophies – 1/30/22
• The Last Time – 2/7/22
• Olympic Miracles – 2/13/22
• Mind Numbing – 2/20/22
• Track Weather – 4/3/22
• What’s Missing – 4/11/22
• A Scouting Story – 4/17/22
• Waterproof Paper – 5/8/22
• Origin Stories – 5/22/22
• Origin Stories – Part Two 5/29/22
• Back at State – 6/5/22
• Out in the Country – 6/19/22
• Pataskala Downs – 7/4/22
• Car Stories I – 7/24/22
• Car Stories II  – 7/31/22
• Old Man Experience – 8/7/22
• Cross Country Camp – 8/14/22
• New to the Pack – 8/21/22
• Car Stories III – The Bus – 8/28/22
• A Day in the Life – 9/4/22
• Stupid Human Tricks – 9/18/22

2023

• Fair or Foul – 2/26/23
• Immigrant Story – 3/12/23
• Busy Season – 5/15/23
• Of Jeeps and Bucks – 5/28/23
• A Pole Vault Story  -6/11/23
• End of an Era – 6/25/23
• Paybacks – 7/2/23
• Graying in Pataskala – 7/17/23
• Being a Goat – 7/23/23
• Toy Truck – 8/20/23
• Medical Terms – 8/27/23
• Missing Margaritaville – 9/3/23
• The McGowan – 9/10/23
• Who’s Watching – 10/22/23
• The Saturday Before – 10/29/23
• A Tale of Turkey, and Dogs – 11/26/23
• Bruno’s Story – 12/3/23
• Out in the Country – 12/10/23
• Christmas Eve – 12/24/23

2024

• Rube Goldberg – 1/12/24
• Our Pataskala Kroger’s – 2/5/24
• A Sad, Sad, Dog – 2/11/24
• Singing in the Tornado – 3/3/24
• Your Safe Spot – 3/17/24
• Easter Dawn – 3/31/24
• Swarms – 4/14/24
• Lowest Common Denominator – 4/28/24
• Seniors – 5/12/24
• Season’s Over – 6/22/24
• Camp Morning – 6/30/24
• Jeeping – 7/7/24
• How Mondo Won the Gold and Started a Dog Fight (almost) – 8/6/24
• Fifty Years of the McGowan – 9/8/24
• A Walk in the Woods – 10/22/24
• Smokin – 12/6/24
• Coal for Christmas 12/16/24
• Provenance – 12/22/24

2025

• Lost and Found – 2/22/25
• Catching Cars – 3/2/25
• PV Mentor – 3/31/25
• Dogs, Jeeps, Fireworks and Beer Coolers 7/6/25
• It’s About Time – 7/27/25
•    Gas War – 11/30/35

Targets

Up front:  there’s never an excuse to “gun down” anyone.  The two National Guard soldiers shot in Washington on Wednesday were not “legitimate” targets for any kind of protest.  They were American young people, doing the job they signed up for.  I’ve got friends in the National Guard.  They joined with a sense of duty, to be a part of something bigger than just themselves, a little adventure, and maybe some advantage in training for future employment.  Those West Virginia soldiers didn’t in any way, shape or form, “deserve” this.

We live in a society where madness happens.  There are more guns in America than people. (Check that, more guns in America than people, statistically, one and a half guns per person).  And, I know, my “Second Amendment” friends will say that “guns don’t kill people, people do”.  That trite phrase is true on the surface.  But it’s unreasoning.   We also live in a nation polarized to an historic extreme.  Not since the late 1850’s have Americans been so against each other.  Into that sea of division we stir in an overwhelming amount of deadly weapons.  So why is it any surprise that those who are on the edge of mental breakdown, “fall off” and use guns to show it?

Action/Reaction

It’s hard not to think that these kinds of horrific events aren’t exactly what the Trump Administration is looking for.  They have turned up the heat on the “pot” of unrest.  Armed troops, ICE, are skirting or ignoring American legal protections, rounding up individuals based on the color of their skin or the sound of their accent.  Their randomness, and the “pride” ICE takes in its own inhumanity, is stoking the fire of discontent.   We don’t know why an Afghan who fought bravely with American troops in his homeland, decided to drive across our country and target two kids from West Virginia.  But we can see the inevitability of it happening, somewhere, sometime.

So what is the Trump Administration response.  Add more fuel to the fire.  Send five hundred more troops to Washington, five hundred more “targets” of discontent.  Instead of reducing the causes of division, they are doubling down; using the results of their own actions to make things worse.   Because, in the end, the Trump strategy is to show Americans how bad things are.   And if they aren’t really that “bad” (see Portland), it seems they are creating situations where it will be.   They are offering this choice:  troops in the streets, anonymous forces disappearing neighbors, mass detention facilities, or civil unrest and violence.  But the unrest and violence is, in large part, a result of the Administration’s own actions.

Better Angels

I don’t blame the National Guardsmen, doing the job they signed up for.  And I don’t excuse the madman with a gun. He should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.  But I do blame Donald Trump and the people around him for acting in an inhumane and unamerican ways.  They are acting to provoke violence.   And they got what they wished for.

So I worry, about the fate of the remaining National Guardsman still alive, and about the extent of the reaction of the Trump Administration.  And I truly worry about the future of our Nation.  If we cannot find a way to step away from this division, that it will ultimately consume the American Democracy.  We are losing our values, our ideals. America is giving away freedoms to gain “protection” from forces that the White House itself is creating and aggravating.  We are in a circle of increasing authoritarianism, with each action creating an even greater reaction, and less freedom. 

We need leadership back to our “better angels” of law, democracy, and freedom. But we’ve got a long way to go to get there.

Three issues came up this weekend that are much more “political” than “real”.  

Peace in Our Time

The first:  the so-called US peace plan for Ukraine.  This twenty-eight point plan was accepted by President Trump and Russia, and sent to Ukraine with an ultimatum that they needed to agree by Thanksgiving.  (That’s the US Thanksgiving, not Canadian Thanksgiving, or whatever holiday might coincide with Thanksgiving in Ukraine).  

The plan gives Russia 20% of Ukraine’s sovereign territory including areas not now under Russian control. It reduces the size of the Ukrainian military and guarantees that Ukraine will not ask NATO for membership. This weekend it was revealed as Russia’s plan, not America’s plan.  That shouldn’t be a surprise; it’s a virtual Ukrainian surrender.  What should be a surprise is that the Trump Administration didn’t just “pass it along” to Ukraine.  They put the imprimatur of the United States on it, declaring it “our” plan for Ukrainian peace.

Change the Subject

President Zelenskyy, after Trump’s White House meltdown a year ago, now knows how to “handle” the US President.  Instead of calling the plan out for what it is, Zelenskyy took the plan under advisement, and suggested that he would also consult with his European allies (who used to be our allies in NATO:  now, not so much).  He didn’t throw it out, he just “laid it on the table”, the legislative term for letting it go.  

Trump is desperate to change the subject after losing control of his MAGA Congress over the EPSTEIN FILES.  Here was the chance, a plan that Russia agreed to and his Administration didn’t care about.  So, if he could ram it down Zelenskyy’s throat, maybe there’s a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the rainbow.  But, like the “Gaza Peace” negotiated a couple of months ago, this deal won’t work.  Ukraine isn’t Hamas, and won’t snatch defeat from the jaws of stalemate.  The world sees the Trump Plan for what it is:  a Russian plant, from an “unserious” President of the United States.  It will make real negotiations, where Putin is required to make sacrifices, even more difficult.

Running Red Lights

The second “hit”:  Democrats stated the obvious.  At the end of last week, several Democratic Congressional members, all veterans of the US Armed Forces, reminded current serving servicemen that they are not required to follow “illegal” orders.  In fact, they are duty bound to deny those orders.

Those Democrats got exactly what they were looking for.  Republicans went nuts, from Trump on down.  The President even suggested that they should face the death penalty for treason, saying they should be hanged.  All weekend, other Republicans made similar (but less tyrannical) threats.  The topic of the weekend was clear:  Trump is perilously close to violating the law in two different areas of the military.  He is already violating the Posse Comitatus Act of 1778, which bans the US Military from “policing” actions within the United States.  And now, the American military is in position to launch military action against Venezuela. That’s all been done without consulting the branch of government that actually declares war, the Congress.

So Democrats made a statement of fact:  each individual servicemember is personally responsible to obey legal orders, to not follow illegal orders, and to recognize the difference between the two.  It’s kind of like the Democrats reminding the country that we don’t run red lights.  It put a spotlight on actions of the Trump Administration that are clearly illegal.  

The First Shot

The third political “hit” is an internal Ohio issue.  Next year there will be several hotly contested statewide races.  While Ohio is dramatically Gerrymandered to the Republican advantage, in statewide elections it remains relatively close, 55% Republican to 45% Democrat (at worst).  Donald Trump will NOT be on the ballot next year, putting the pressure on Republicans to find a way to get their MAGA supporters to the polls.  

There is a Senate seat up for grabs.  Former Republican Lieutenant Governor John Husted was appointed to fill Vice President Vance’s vacant seat, and is running to win the remainder of the term.  Against him is the formidable Democrat Sherrod Brown, who lost his Senate seat to  Republican Bernie Moreno in the 2024 election.  Brown is guaranteed to be well financed, and ran well ahead of Democratic Presidential candidate Harris two years ago.  It’s likely to be a tough, expensive, and ugly campaign as the gloves come off once again here in Ohio.

Vivek versus Amy

But the more intriguing race will be for Governor.  Republicans are set on Vivek Ramaswamy, the billionaire who ran for President, supported Trump, and lost control of the DOGE boys to Elon Musk.  Ramaswamy was born in Cincinnati to Indian immigrants, and so has Ohio roots.  The former venture capitalist now lives in suburban Columbus.  

This week the Democrats also settled on their candidate, Dr. Amy Acton.  Acton gained notoriety as the State Director of Health during the Covid pandemic.  She took dramatic action to protect Ohio’s citizens, including closing schools, mandating mask wearing, and curtailing public events.  For the first couple of months, she had the powerful support of Republican Governor Mike DeWine, but as the anti-mask, anti-Vaxx movement grew stronger in his Republican Party, DeWine ultimately let Acton  resign to “take the fall” for his government’s actions.

Acton, who lives in the Columbus area city of Bexley, became a celebrity for Democrats, and has spent the past couple of years trying to stave off political rivals.  Her main competitor, once Brown declared for the Senate race, was former Congressman and Presidential candidate Tim Ryan.  Last week, Ryan declared himself out, leaving the field to Acton.

Anti-Vaxx

Acton is a polarizing figure in Ohio.  Republicans hope that can use “anti-pandemic” emotions to drive voters to the polls.  This week they introduced a bill in the legislature to make Hepatitis B vaccination “optional” for school children.  In fact, not only would they allow parents to exempt their children from the vaccine, but they would also require schools to allow unvaccinated children to remain in school during a disease outbreak.  

It might seem like a typical MAGA-Republican move, one that Ohioans are growing used to with our heavily Gerrymandered legislature.  But it also is an opening “shot” in the Governor’s campaign.  Ramaswamy is a man of Indian ancestry running in a state that has never elected a person of color Governor.  He’s the standard bearer of the Party that is least likely to vote for one.  Republicans have to find a way to “gin up” their voters.

What better way than to bring back the “horrors” of the Covid pandemic.  The entire state will get to re-litigate the emergency actions that DeWine, and Acton, took to protect citizens five years ago.  It shouldn’t be a surprise that Republicans are introducing anti-vaxx legislation. It’s to motivate their own anti-vaxx voters.

Lame Duck

It looks like a wall, not the porous border wall, but a big, beautiful, orange tinted wall.  While Democrats traditionally are divided, easily accused of being a “circular firing squad”, the MAGA-Republican party holds firm.   Those Republicans who stood against MAGA, old names from the past like McCain, Flake, Corker, and Portman, were long ago shunted to the side.  

But there have always been “factions” in MAGA-world, divisions that were papered over by Trump’s leadership.   Now the 47^th President is an admitted “lame duck”.   He toyed with the idea, but he’s not really going to run for an Unconstitutional third term as President.  So the battle for the “soul” of MAGA has begun.

Believers

It’s always been an uneasy coalition.  There are “traditional” Republicans, who swallowed all of the insults in order to pursue their goal:  unbridled capitalism; “Let Billionaires be Billionaires!”   As long as the markets are good, all is right with the world.  But, they had to accept Trump’s differences in foreign policy, and all of the cultural baggage that MAGA brought. Most would normally be staunch supporters of Ukraine and our European alliances. And many are near-Libertarian; fiscal conservatives but cultural liberals.  Trump certainly is neither of those things.

Then there are the ideologues, like the Heritage Foundation.  These Project 2025’ers dreamed their whole lives for the opportunity to change America’s direction.  From stopping multi-culturalism to cutting the social safety net, they want to remake America into what they imagine as a “gloried past” resembling the 1950’s.  That was before the Warren Supreme Court, the passage of the Civil and Voting Rights Acts, the woman’s rights movement, Medicare and gay equality.  

And their cultural goals dove-tail with Christian Nationalists, who see Trump as “God’s imperfect vessel” for their religious state.  They don’t want a theocracy (I guess).  They just want Christian Primacy.  The United States is to be “One Nation Under God”, a God that they have defined as their own.  They found a powerful martyr in the death of Charlie Kirk.

Sure there can be “others”, but those others aren’t allowed to influence American life.  The one exception; fundamental Jews.  While they don’t believe in Jesus, they do believe in Israel.  That’s the site of the impending Second Coming, according to the faithful, the time of judgment and rapture.  So protecting Israel (and Netanyahu) is literally an article of faith for Trump’s Christian friends.

Regulars and Crazies

Then there are those that just want to “throw all the bums out”.  They liked The Apprentice, they like the lack of verbal inhibitions, and they like the promises to make their lives easier, prices lower, and their world safer.  A lot of Americans were uneasy with the quick progress of American multi-culturalism, and Trump promised to make it stop.  Democrats were portrayed as the party of the minority, from skin color to sexual preference. Trump said it was “OK” to say no to other’s lifestyles. So they voted for him.

And last but not least, there were the crazies.  With the ascendance of the internet, some fell down deep wells of conspiracy.  The Trump team was masterful in weaving those already known theories into the MAGA liturgy.  It was no mistake that QAnon themes found their way into Trump rallies, or extremist groups were told to “stand back and stand by”.  And the real child-sex rings of the “Billionaire class” became “Democrats in the basement of a pizza place” in Washington, DC.  

The Files

The EPSTEIN FILES are a point of fissure.  The crazies recognized that some of their misdirected theories were real, and Trump protects the wicked.  The Christian Nationalists struggle to accept that their “imperfect vessel” is THAT imperfect.  The ideologues see Epstein as a threat to their plans, and want it to “go away”.  And traditional Republicans:  maybe protecting child-sex billionaires is just a bridge too far.

Honestly, Trump’s about-face on Epstein was an astute political move.  If you can’t win, switch to the winning side, then control the outcome.  Sure there’s a law that says the “files” must be released.  Trump signed it.  But there’s already another law protecting the secrecy of “investigative materials”.  Trump ordered investigations into Democrats who may or may not have participated.  Of course, these investigations may take a long, long time – maybe until the end of the administration.

So when  Greene and Bobert and Mace called out the Trump Administration and demanded the files be released, they exposed the first apparent fractures in the Big, Beautiful, Orange Wall.  And behind the scenes, folks like JD Vance, Marco Rubio and others are maneuvering to become the “chosen one”, not just of Trump himself, but of one or more of the factions.  

America First?

It’s not just the EPSTEIN FILES though.  A portion of “MAGA” is “America First”.  Wide ranging foreign entanglements; blowing up boats in the Caribbean, threatening military action in Venezuela and Columbia and Mexico, offering US “peace-keepers” for Gaza, and allying with dictators is not what many expected.  Add to that the economic upheaval of the constantly changing tariff policies, and it doesn’t “feel” like America First.  It feels more like a weird mix of Dick Cheney neo-conservatism and “Let Billionaires be Billionaires”, as long as Trump gets another hotel in Riyadh and builds a “nice” ballroom on the White House. 

And there is one more political reality.  Trump is the proven “winner” on the ballot (only Joe Biden could fix that!!).  But his name will no longer be on the ticket.  Trump himself said: “I started MAGA, I say what it means”.  But what happens in the “post-Trump” world? 

Here’s your “daily” Bible verse:

“So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city” – Joshua 6:20 (KJV).

Will Democrats pull themselves together, and blow the “trumpet” to make the already fissured Orange Wall tumble?  Is 2026 just another next step in the MAGA saga, or will America return to bending “the arch of the moral universe” towards justice?  

That’s America’s choice.

Amendment V – United States Constitution

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury…

Taking the Fifth (and Sixth)

Americans usually have a pretty good idea about their rights in the criminal process.  Embedded in our media, in every “cop show”, we hear the almost medieval chant: 

“You have the right to remain silent, if you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say can be used against you in a Court of law.  You have the right to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during questioning.  If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you by the Court. You have the right to have questioning end at any time.”

We call them the “Miranda Rights”, after the Supreme Court case Miranda v Arizona that required the explicit reading upon arrest or identification as a criminal suspect.   And even grade school students know the phrase, “I’ll take the Fifth”, the right to not testify against yourself, guaranteed in the Constitution.  As a high school Dean of Students dealing with discipline, I often got that “teachable moment” to explain when the Fifth might apply to high school students, and when it didn’t.  The Government Teacher in me came out, even if the kid on the other side of the desk  just wished I’d write the suspension papers and be done with it!

Grand Jury

Just as important in the Fifth Amendment is a procedure called the “Grand Jury”.   The Founding Fathers, only a few years past the American Revolution, worried about the power of the Government over “regular” citizens.  They looked to English Common Law that gave those citizens two separate opportunities to check the Government.  One is familiar to most:  a trial by jury.   Every person accused of a crime has the right to a trial, where a jury “of their peers” determines guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt” by unanimous vote.  

But the authors knew that forcing folks to stand trial was an arduous and expensive process. Even if the accused was found “not guilty” it still altered their lives.  So they placed a second standard, where “regular citizens” determine if there is even enough evidence to bring a case to trial.  That second Jury is called the “Grand Jury”.  They hear just the government’s side of a criminal case.  If, after that evidence is presented, this jury determines that it is “more likely” that the crime was committed by the accused than not, then an indictment is issued.  That formally charges the accused and brings them to trial.  If the jury decides that the government doesn’t reach that low bar of “more likely”, then the jury votes a “No Bill”, meaning that the charges are dropped. 

Ham Sandwich

There is a legal “joke” that says, “(A) grand jury could indict a ham sandwich”.  It recognizes that the prosecutor controls all of the information that the Grand Jurors hear.  Any “good” prosecutor should be able to present that evidence, without contradiction, to convince the jurors to bring an indictment.  Grand juries don’t even have to be unanimous. Federal grand juries require twelve of sixteen jurors to agree.  Here in Ohio it’s seven out of nine.

Unlike trial juries, Grand juries can ask witnesses questions, and can even get more information  by issuing subpoenas requiring folks to appear before them.  But, like trial juries, in the end a grand jury deliberates in secret, away from prosecutors and court recorders.  They decide through private discussion and vote whether the “more likely than not” standard leads to indictment.

I have the privilege of serving on the Grand Jury here in Licking County.  Every person accused of a felony must have their “case” heard by “us” first.  Unlike a regular jury, we serve for three months, once a week, to hear all of the felony charges.  If you read about a criminal arrest in the local paper on Friday, the Grand Jury is likely to hear those charges next week.  If the charges are “dropped”, then the accused is released from jail.   But if the Grand Jury indicts, then the process to trial continues.

Due Process

In every case, the prosecutor brings witnesses.  They lay out the evidence and convince the jurors “more likely than not”.  Often it’s the arresting officers, and the victims of crime who testify.  It’s an eye-opening experience for jurors.  I can now identify the difference between meth, crack, coke and fentanyl, and even how much is for “personal use” or is “bulk for sale”.   Unlike a jury trial where the proceedings are public, the Grand Jury is secret.   The idea is simple.  Someone’s reputation should be protected from accusation, until at least the “more likely than not” standard is applied.

The “paperwork” is seemingly endless.  Each allegation is defined by the Ohio Revised Code, and the evidence needs to point directly towards that law.  There is a significant different between assault, assault with a deadly weapon, assault with a vehicle, or specific forms of assault, like strangulation.  All of this is carefully defined in law, and the application is determined by the Jury.  It’s all a matter of “due process”.  The process must be fair to the accused and guarantee that their rights are protected, even though there is no “defense” presented to the Grand Jury.

And while the vast majority of cases (we hear a dozen or more each week) are indicted, unanimously, there are some where jurors just aren’t convinced.  There is the occasional “no bill”. Sometimes prosecutors just don’t meet their burden of evidence, or witnesses are so contradictory that it just doesn’t “make sense”.

And after our session, every indictment is “crossed checked” against the law.  Every signature (and there’s plenty) is triple checked.  Every change to a possible indictment is confirmed.  And finally, the week’s efforts are reported out to the Common Pleas Court.  

Jim Comey       

Former FBI Director Jim Comey recently was indicted for lying to Congress.  There is a lot of controversy about that charge.  Was what he said over different Congressional testimonies contradictory?  Was the contradiction intentional?  From what we can gather, the Federal Grand Jury originally issued a “No Bill”, then, was presented more information and indicted Comey on two of three possible counts.  

But yesterday, a government attorney admitted in Court that the indictment they presented was never actually heard by the Grand Jury.  The “paperwork” was revised after the Grand Jury hearing. And the signatures on it, including the jury “foreman”,  did not represent what they actually decided.

In essence, the government lied about what the Grand Jury said.  And that lie has a single government signature on it:  the newly appointed US Attorney Lindsey Halligan, in her first Federal indictment.

Soup Sandwich

Grand juries hear a lot of cases, in secret.  In Licking County, the notes we take about each case are destroyed as soon as we vote.  But the memories of how we decided aren’t.  It would be clear to us, and surely is to the Federal Grand Jury in Virginia, if a decision was altered.

The Fifth Amendment is clear, the Grand Jury must decide between a ham sandwich and a soup sandwich.  And if the Prosecutor ignores their decision, the Court has a clear remedy.  The Comey indictment must be thrown out, with “prejudice”.  The charges in this set of facts must be forever dropped.  It’s the only way to make the message clear. Upholding the US Constitution is more important, even than the desire of Donald Trump to get “revenge” on Jim Comey.

Harvard

Larry Summers, the former Secretary of the Treasury and ex-President of Harvard, is stepping back from his “public roles”.  He plans (hopes) to  maintain his “private role” as a professor at Harvard, but even that’s a question for him right now.  Summers maintained a close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein until the last months of Epstein’s life, right before the once convicted pedophile was indicted again, imprisoned, and ultimately died in his prison cell.  

There is no evidence that Summers was involved in sex acts with underage women.  The issue is that, even though Summers knew what Epstein was involved with, he continued to take financial, political and personal advice from him. In one of their last emails, Summers asked Epstein for help with a new “girlfriend”.   He clearly didn’t find Epstein’s personal actions rose to the level of cutting off their own private relationship.

Summers is guilty; guilty of bad judgment.  It’s such bad judgment that it brings into question his ability to advise the “high and mighty” about his own area of expertise, finance.  Senator Elizabeth Warren, herself a former Harvard faculty member, asks whether Summers should be educating the next generation of financial experts.  That’s a good question.

Clinton

It’s the same question we need to ask of former President Bill Clinton.  There is no current evidence that Clinton was engaged in inappropriate activities through Epstein.  Clinton himself says that they shared a common interest in African economic development through the Clinton Foundation.  But even at the time, the early 2000’s, Clinton should have known that Epstein was more than “shaky”.   At least Clinton cut ties with Epstein after his first sex offense conviction in 2007.

Of course, we all know Bill Clinton’s own history of sexual exploits.  Of anyone, he should have been hyper-aware of the “optics” of Jeffrey Epstein.  So, to use an old phrase, there’s a lot of smoke, where’s the fire?

Dream Team

How important was Jeffrey Epstein?  To round-out the circle, one of Epstein’s lawyers in the 2007 child-sex case was former Federal Judge and US Solicitor General Ken Starr.  He was best known for prosecuting President Clinton, first for questionable Arkansas land deals, and ultimately for lying on a deposition about having sex with a White House intern.  This led to Clinton’s impeachment by the House, and acquittal by the Senate. (And my having to explain that oral sex was really still sex to a bunch of high school seniors in my government class!)

Epstein had Starr, Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz, and noted defense attorney Roy Black on his 2007 defense team.  No wonder the US Attorney (and future Trump Secretary of Labor) Alex Acosta cut Epstein an incredibly lenient deal.  He was looking at a legal “dream team” across the table.

Revealed

Of course, Americans want to know what prominent Americans like Summers, Clinton, current informal Presidential advisor Steve Bannon, and others had to do with Epstein.  Sure there’s the prurient interest; did these leaders actually abuse underage women (and men)?  But there’s also the “Summers” question.  How did these leaders, and seemingly so many other prominent men, have the bad judgment to “stick with Epstein”, even after his actions were publicly revealed?  

Recent published emails suggest that Epstein thought he had “leverage” over many of these men.  Maybe it’s the obvious: they participated in Epstein’s ongoing underage sex “business”.  Or maybe just the bad judgment they showed in “using” Epstein for financial advice was enough to make them vulnerable.  Either way, it’s not just a matter of punishing the “guilty”.  We must also question their judgment.  

Americans ask a simple question, one that President Trump has failed to answer as well.  It’s unimaginable that all of these highly informed “gentlemen” didn’t know what was going on.  Here in Central Ohio, back in the early 1990’s Epstein was a key part of the growth of Les Wexner’s Limited Corporation.  Even then, there were rumors of sexual impropriety at Wexner’s New Albany mansion, involving both young women and men. If I heard them here in Pataskala, others must of heard them as well.

It may not be about depraved actions, the commission of crimes. It’s just as important to determine the depths of our leaders’ judgment. What “omissions” were they willing to tolerate?  And perhaps just as important, what “kompromat”, if any, did Epstein use to control them? Because if he could do it then, and even now from beyond the grave; who else might have that same control? 

We need to know.

Go Bucks

I live just twenty miles from “The Shoe”, the horseshoe shaped stadium where THE Ohio State University football team annually competes for National recognition.  Ohio State has a tremendous influence on the culture of our area.  Go to any American location: on a beach, in an airport, to a bar, up a mountain, and call out the letters “O-H”.  Someone nearby will always respond “I-O”.   That’s National impact.  With that kind of effect; imagine the athletic, cultural, and academic influence of Ohio State here locally.  It is immense.

Teachers went to Ohio State, Administrators got their advanced degrees from Ohio State, doctors (all) went to Ohio State, the guy selling you a car went to Ohio State.  So whether you like the “Buckeyes” on the football field or not, “Scarlet and Gray” permeates our communities here in Central Ohio. 

It’s so powerful that Ohio State can recruit athletes just with the name.  In my track and field career I coached athletes good enough to compete at the NCAA Division I level.  Several earned scholarships to Big Ten schools.  A couple turned down better offers from other schools, just to run for Ohio State.  Being a “Buckeye” was that important to them.

The Secret

But here’s a “dirty little secret”.  US News and World Report issues an annual academic ranking of schools in the same conference with Ohio State, the Big Ten. And the Buckeyes are not on top.  They aren’t even in the top five.  Here’s the top ten list:

•             1 – Northwestern
•             2 – UCLA
•             3 – Michigan
•             4 – USC
•             5 – Illinois
•             6 – Wisconsin
•             7 – Rutgers and OHIO STATE (tied)
•             9 – Maryland
•             10 – Purdue and Washington (tied)

            Then there’s the other seven members of the “Big Ten”(US News).

When the football team is losing on the field, the Harvard University band is known to chant:  “That’s OK, you’ll work for us!!”  I guess Northwestern can use that same refrain.

I’m taking a risk writing this essay.  I live in the heart of “Buckeye Country”.  But I’m really not trying to be so critical of Ohio State.  What I am doing is making a point: sometimes the facts don’t fit with local biases or loyalties.  Any good educator will lay out the facts, and then use it as a jumping off point for discussion.  Is the US News survey really accurate?  Are there areas, Veterinary Medicine for example, where Ohio State is the best, perhaps in the Nation?  And, of course, what about those Buckeyes on the football field.

Controversial Issues

But we are in a “new era” of education, both in the K-12 public schools, and state sponsored universities.  In this “MAGA age”, educators are required to make sure that their students are “comfortable” with the teaching materials.  Any lesson that challenges the students assumptions, political or otherwise, risks becoming “controversial”.  And controversial lessons, are now considered “against the law”.  

In Ohio it’s embodied in the newly passed Senate Bill 1.  “For classroom discussion, the bill will set rules around topics involving “controversial beliefs” such as climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, diversity and inclusion programs, immigration policy, marriage, or abortion. (Ohio Capital Journal)”.  If a professor “teaches” a view which makes a student “uncomfortable”, the student is empowered to demand that administrators discipline or remove the professor.

The Chart

Indiana has a similar law.  This week, a lecturer at Indiana University (somehow rated 15^th in the Big Ten for academics) used a pyramid chart to describe racism in America.  The chart uses terms to describe both implicit and explicit racism in our society.  Here it is:

(Egalitarian Publishing).

If you haven’t found it yet, the chart lists on the left, an unconscious sign of White Supremacy, the term “Make America Great Again”.   

Now that’s a loaded term, certainly one designed to stimulate thought and discussion.  Like any classroom in America today, there are likely to be students who believe in the political tenets of “Make America Great Again”.  Any good teacher would use that as a jumping off point for the discussion of implicit bias.  That’s exactly what the Indiana University lecturer was doing.

Students should engage in that discussion, defending their “MAGA” view,  and stand up for what they believe in.  But the new “controversial issues” laws gives them a whole different path.  They don’t have to examine their own views, they simply have to say, “That chart makes me uncomfortable”.  

Making America Great

The Lecturer was suspended from teaching the course.  Indiana University administrators are “investigating” whether further employment action is required.   But even if the University ultimately stands up for “academic freedom”, it really doesn’t matter.  The point is made.  And teachers, lecturers and professors are all learning.

I took a risk pointing out Ohio State’s academic standing in the Big Ten.  So far, that’s not against the law.  But in Indiana, and here in Ohio, making students critically think about their own political views, is. I did that as a high school government teacher.  Critical thinking was a basic tenet of my class. It’s what our teachers and professors should do.  But they’re not likely to take that risk anymore.  It can cost them their jobs.

Is that Making America Great Again?

Post-Truth

During World War II there was a huge influx of young, rural American men into New York City.  They were there enroute to the battlefields of Europe, and they marveled at the miles of skyscrapers in “Gotham”.  Kids from places like Outville (really, just down the road from here in Pataskala) or Ottumwa (the birthplace of Radar O’Reilly of MASH fame) or Ouray (above 10,000 feet in Colorado) wandered Times Square.  And while they knew a lot about farming and hunting and fishing, some were a little bit naïve about “Big City” ways.  The joke was, there were so gullible that you could sell them the Brooklyn Bridge.

Today we are, maybe, more sophisticated.  The amount of information Americans get:  from television, social media, online searches and unending texts and emails; is more than the old firehose versus garden hose analogy.  There’s a massive Niagara river flowing to us of so-called facts.  We learn to select our sources because in this “post-truth” era,  just because we hear it doesn’t make it true.  (One of my Facebook friends can detail the design and construction of an alien spaceship, just passing the sun’s orbit and headed towards earth – “the end is near!!”). 

Tariffs

Last night President Donald Trump proclaimed that his “magnum opus”, the tariff plan, was directly changing the American economy.  In fact, he said the following:

“Tariff revenues SMASH records – slashing the U.S. deficit by over 25%!  Shrinking government spending, downsizing bloated bureaucracy and unleashing a wave of American jobs” (Twitter/X).

Another of my Facebook buddies praised him for this wonderful work.  In fact, he said, “…that give us another two years, and the US deficit would be completely gone – what a marvelous job Trump is doing for the American people.”

Deficit

So here are some other “facts”, maybe sourced a little better.  The true annual deficit of the United States Government is $1.78 Trillion.  That’s how much more the government is spending than bringing in.  So the common definition of “deficit” is in our current annual budget.  To cut that “deficit” by 25%, would require the government to either cut $445 Billion from expenditures, or raise that same amount in revenues.

According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, tariffs have raised $195 Billion this year, about $140 Billion more than last year.  So the Trump Administration should get credit for raising $140 Billion to reduce the deficit (CRFFB).  And there was a $200 Billion one-time student loan savings, putting Trump nearer to his magic number.  But there were also increases in the budget spending, that in the end, leaves the 2025 deficit about the same – $1.8 Trillion (US Treasury).

Fancy book keeping, what we used to call “lyin’ and figurin’ by politicians”, ain’t nothing new.  It’s easy to claim the savings, without owning the expenditures.  Maybe your household made more money than last year.  But if costs went up more than the additional income, it doesn’t make your personal “deficit” status any better.  You might brag about how much you made, but you probably don’t talk about how much you spent.

Debt

Then there’s the Federal government “language problem”.  That’s because there is a reasonable confusion between two terms:  deficit and debt.  The deficit is how much more the government spends annually then they bring in.  The debt is the total accumulation of annual deficits that the government is responsible for.  So, add this year’s $1.8 trillion, to all of the other years of spending more than was brought in, and you get the debt.  Deep breath – the US owes $38.2 Trillion (Debt Clock).  

Who do we owe it to?  Close to two-thirds of the debt is owned  by us, payable to us (Pew).  Government bonds are a source of financing, raising money to cover the debt and, like any loan, paying interest to the bondholders (US Treasury).  And about 20% of that money is actually borrowed from other government funds.  The Government writes an “IOU” to itself, borrowing from social security, Medicare, and retirement funds.  The US Government also owes money to folks in other countries and to banks and institutions in those nations. But it’s not as much as you think:  about 30% of the debt is “overseas” (Congress).

Real Numbers

What does having that much debt do?  Well, first it reduces how much the government can spend on other stuff.  Paying interest on a $38 Trillion debt costs a lot, even if the rate is low. Last year the US budget included about $1 Trillion to pay interest on the debt.  And second, it has the effect of increasing the overall supply of money.  More money in supply means that “getting” money is easier, but it also means that the purchasing power of that money is lower.  In “plain language”, the debt is a major influence towards rising prices – inflation.

With all the “language”, it’s easy to get confused.  Some of my Facebook buddies truly believe that Donald Trump’s tariffs are paying off the US debt at an amazing rate – but the numbers show that’s not really true.  In fact, he’s not even reducing the debt.  But he has had one visible effect:  the cost of purchasing tariffed items is going up:  coffee, cars, electronic equipment, and imported foods are notable examples.  And, American consumers are paying for the tariffs.

That increases our own personal spending, pushing some into a bigger personal deficit.  And that’s a problem that even Facebook can’t solve.

Not Me!!!!

President Trump just announced that the Justice Department will be “probing” the relationship between deceased billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and a host of Democrats.  They include former President Bill Clinton, former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, billionaire venture capitalist Reid Hoffman, and banking giant JP Morgan Chase.   Hoffman helped fund E Jean Carroll’s successful defamation and battery suit against Trump. And JP Morgan facilitated Epstein’s finances even after his child exploitation conviction in Florida.

My mother used to have an expression:  “That’s the pot calling the kettle black”.  It’s not a racial commentary. In her childhood in England the main fuel supply for both heating and cooking was coal.  Pots on the stove were constantly covered with a black coating of coal soot.  Therefore, both the pot and the kettle were black – coated with the same soot.

Emails released from the trove given to the House Oversight Committee by the Epstein estate, revealed that Epstein was both in communication with Trump in the last years of his life, and also making a living off of advising others how to manipulate Trump.  He wasn’t the only one; former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen early on in the Trump Presidency advertised that he could reach the President, for a fee.  But these “new” emails directly counter the White House narrative that, while Trump knew Epstein in the 1980’s and 1990’s, their relationship was severed in the 2007.  That’s when Trump claims to have “kicked Epstein out” of membership in his Mar-A-Lago club.

Under the Gallows

Donald Trump, to use another old English phrase, is “twisting in the wind”. The origin of that came from the English use of the gallows to execute criminals.  Once they fell through the trap door, the body was left at the end of the rope, subject to the whims of the winds – “twisting”.  It now is used to describe someone who is fate is out of their control, at the “whim of the winds”.  

For years, the Trump “team” tried to master the Epstein issue.  Trump’s re-election to the Presidency gave him ample power to gain control of the narrative.  However, Trump also used the Epstein situation, including conspiracy theories about Epstein’s death in the Manhattan Federal Correctional Facility during Trump’s first term as President, to attack Democrats.  He made a campaign promise, to get to “the bottom” of the EPSTEIN FILES. And he implied that the Biden Administration was afraid to investigate because of involvement by high level Democrats, including Bill Clinton.

Both Trump’s  Attorney General, Pam Bondi, and more notably FBI Director, Kash Patel, committed over and over again to open up and release the EPSTEIN FILES.   Bondi even claimed to “be going through” the FILES in a Congressional hearing.  But both became strangely quiet, likely when they read what actually was in the record.  Now, they deny that there ever were “FILES”, and are using the Obi Won Kenobi defense:  “Nothing to see here, move along, move along”. 

Transparency Act 

America isn’t accepting that.  Even some of the most avid MAGA members of Congress, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace, are standing against the President and demanding that the (now non-existent?) EPSTEIN FILES be released.  The House is preparing to pass the EPSTEIN FILES TRANSPARENCY ACT, calling for the Justice Department to release all of the information.

Now, getting past the House will only be the first hurdle for such a law.  The Senate will need to pass it, by a 60-40 filibuster-avoiding margin.  And then the President would have to sign it. Or, the House would need to pass it again by a two-thirds majority, and the Senate by two-thirds as well.  All of that is highly unlikely to happen.

But what Congressional action on the act will do, is pressure whoever is “next”  in line to vote for it, or explain why not.  The President would ultimately face the same choice, one that would go completely against his own campaign promises.

And meanwhile, the White House is doing everything in their power to obfuscate the situation.  After a record setting government closure, (that bought forty-six days) the issue is right back up. It’s front and center for Congress, the President, and the American people.  Now the US Navy, the largest warship in the world the USS Gerald Ford is off the coast of Venezuela.  The aircraft carrier, and all of the other ships part of the “Carrier Group”, threaten a neighboring country.  There are multiple issues between Venezuela and the United States, (less so with Columbia). But none of them seem to rise to this warlike setting.

Wagging the Dog

So here’s one more expression, this from my more recent adulthood:  “Wag the Dog”.  It was a movie in the 1990’s when the President of the United States invented a war in southeastern Europe, in order to distract from a personal sex scandal with a Girl Scout selling cookies in the Oval Office.

The pot is just as black as the kettle.

The Presidential strategy on Epstein is absolutely twisting in the wind.

And, we seem to be on the verge of a war with neighboring South American countries.

 I hope Trump’s not just “wagging the dog”, one more attempt to avoid accountability for his actions with Jeffrey Epstein.

There’s certainly something to see here.

The Eleventh Hour

“Hostilities will be stopped on the entire front beginning at 11 o’clock, November 11th (French hour). The Allied troops will not go beyond the line reached at that hour on that date until further orders” (Allied Commander, French Marshal Ferdinand Foch).

Numerologists believe that certain numbers hold “special powers”.   They say it’s no coincidence that the Armistice ending World War I went into effect on the Eleventh hour, of the Eleventh day, of the Eleventh Month.  Eleven is a “Master Number*”.  But the staff of French Marshal Foch, the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces, had a more practical reason.  The ceasefire was signed at 5:00 am on that day. The battle lines were four hundred miles long, and there were continuing operations both at sea and in the air.  11/11/11 was an easy way to communicate to all that the battles should stop, at all places, at the same time.

* 11 represents illumination; a channel to the subconscious; insight without rational thought; and sensitivity, nervous energy, shyness, and impracticality. It is a dreamer (Numerology).

Estimates are that 3000 soldiers died in that six hour span. Some died because commanders  hadn’t “gotten the word yet”. Some were trying to gain “that last” strategic advantage over an enemy they battled for more than four years.  It is a measure of the massive size of the war, that so many died in that brief period before the shooting stopped.

The End of War

Originally, “Armistice Day” celebrated the end of “The War to End All Wars”.  But the next generation discovered that World War I was only a beginning. November 11^th was soon joined by May 8^th, Victory in Europe Day, and the formal surrender of Japan on the deck of the USS Battleship Missouri on September 2nd.   In the United Kingdom and Canada, it became known as Remembrance Day.  In the United States we call it Veterans Day, to honor those who served.  (That’s different than Memorial Day, that honors those who died in service).

I am the child of two World War II veterans.  Dad was from Cincinnati, and joined the Army (rather than be drafted) in 1941.  He ultimately used his finance degree from the University of Cincinnati to become part of Army Finance, dealing with payrolls and, after the D-Day Invasion, currencies in France.  

Mom was British.  Her war experiences were dramatic as a part of Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s “private” spy service, the Special Operations Executive (SOE).  She was in and out of occupied Europe throughout the War (“My Story”, in her own words).  They met and fell in love as the bombs fell on London, and had to move their wedding date up by a couple of months because of the coming D-Day invasion.  

My Generation

So I’ve always had a special appreciation of those who served their Nation.  After all, if it wasn’t for that service, I wouldn’t be here!!  I grew up with their stories, shared around the living room over gin and tonic or straight Kentucky bourbon.  I was too young (barely) to get drafted for the Vietnam War, but that conflict soured many Americans on military service.  And many civilians had difficulty distinguishing those who served, from those who bore the responsibility for sending our soldiers there.  Coming home from Vietnam meant hiding their service, even at the airports as they travelled.  I had close friends who had the toughest duties in Vietnam, and it took a lot of trust for them to share their stories.  

In my father’s generation, 33% of the men served in the military.  Today, less than half of that percentage have that same shared experience.  That makes Veterans Day even more special. It’s not just to honor their service, but to realize the huge sacrifice many of them have made.  War hasn’t gotten “better” in our advanced technical age, in fact, advances have made the injuries more serious, and difficult to treat.  

Haunting

Warfare seems different, maybe even crueler in this modern age.  Our recent wars have been fought where it was difficult to distinguish between ally and enemy.  A ten year-old child looking for a Hershey Bar from my father’s generation, more recently carried an improvised explosive device.

 And we now know that brain injuries and exposure to varying chemicals leave lifelong effects.  The veteran who seems “fine” on the outside, may still be suffering on the inside.  I had the opportunity to spend some time with these “new” veterans. (As opposed to the old veterans sitting around our living room back in the 1960’s).  Not only do they need to be recognized for their efforts, but also helped with the issues that still haunt them (often literally).

It’s Veterans Day, a day designated to honor those who served our Nation.  I’ve gone from knowing veterans of my parents’ generation, to my generation, to the generations of kids I taught and coached in school.  No matter the divisive politics of our current era; no matter whether someone is “MAGA” or “Woke” or somewhere in between.  We all owe a debt of thanks to the few who served and serve now.  That debt is payable on any day, but particularly today.

To my Veteran friends – Happy Veterans Day.  Thank you for your sacrifice, for all of us.  

Bad Week

Last Tuesday Democrats began their electoral comeback.  The election results in many parts of the Nation, from New Jersey to California to Mississippi, were overwhelmingly in the Democrat’s favor.  And Democrats were able to turn blame for the ongoing Government shutdown onto the Republicans.  A majority of the Nation saw Republicans at fault, not only for the shutdown itself, but for the looming threat of increased insurance costs.  

In effect, last week was a very bad week for Republicans, and for the President, maybe the “worst” week of the second Trump Presidency.  

So, why did eight Democratic Senators flip last night, and join with Republicans to push a budget resolution forward; the beginning of the end of the shutdown?  That in spite of their failure to get the sole demand they asked for:  continued funding for the Affordable Care Act.   

Back in the spring, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer allowed Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” to go to the floor for a Senate vote.  Instead of using the filibuster to stop it, he depended on a few Republicans to “cross-over” and vote against the Bill, denying it a simple majority.  It ultimately passed though, a tie in the Senate with Vice President Vance casting the tiebreaking vote.

Schumer took a great deal of “heat” for not requiring the filibuster, a sixty vote passing margin, and shutting down the Government.  But, at the time, Schumer noted that a closed Government gave the President even more power to cut jobs and redistribute funding.  He was unwilling to take that risk.

Shutdown

And that’s just what we’ve seen in this current shutdown.  The Trump Administration continues to pay for their “priority” issues, including the payment of ICE officers.  The US Military is getting paid as well.  But many other areas that directly impact US citizens, including the Air Traffic Controllers and TSA agents, were required to work, without pay (they presumably will be paid back once the government reopens).  Even more government employees were furloughed, with no guarantee of repayment, effectively unemployed.  And then, Trump stepped in to prevent November SNAP benefits (the Food Stamp Program) from being distributed, even though the funds were available.

And that became the “Hobson’s Choice” for some Democrats in the Senate.  As Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire bluntly put it:  “Trump forced us to choose between sick kids and hungry kids”.  

The Deal

The eight cross-overs (seven Democrats and Independent Angus King of Maine) did extract several concessions from the Republican majority.  They include repayment for government officials required to work without pay, reinstatement of workers fired during the shutdown, and the end of further federal job cuts.  It also guaranteed SNAP funding in the future.  

But they didn’t get the Affordable Care Act funding.  The Senators did get a promise of a vote on that funding, one that will force Republicans to go on the record for increased insurance costs (if they vote against).  It won’t likely fix the insurance problem, but it will firmly fix the blame soaring costs.

The question is:  did Democrats snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?  Or, did Chuck Schumer find a way out of what was going to be an impossible situation.  SNAP benefits were not getting paid. People were facing real hunger.  US transportation (particularly air) was snarled, delayed and cancelled with the holiday season coming. And millions of government employees were unpaid.  

Is this another Democratic “failure”, or did Democrats get exactly what they wanted?  We now have a clear choice of “who’s to blame” when it comes to rising insurance rates, unpaid government workers and even hungry kids.

The Tell

Schumer himself voted against the deal.  But the “tell” is the vote of Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, the second most powerful Democratic Senator (the minority whip).  Schumer is the “face” of the Democrats in the Senate. But Durbin holds the “whip hand”, the “muscle” of the Party.  He provided the final vote, the eighth, to end the filibuster and begin to reopen the government.  It’s likely that this was, in part, Schumer’s plan, even though two Senators from New Hampshire took the lead role.

So what happens next?  The Government is NOT open.  The Senate has NOT voted on the resolution to reopen it, and may not for a few days.  The House of Representatives is NOT even in session.  Speaker Johnson will need to call his Republican members back from their six week vacation (the Democrats never left).  And the “deal” the Senate made hasn’t been confirmed by the whole Senate, or either the House or the President.  So, until there’s an agreement between all three, nothing is certain.

Except for one thing.  Whatever the fate of this deal, it has firmly set the stage for the 2026 election campaign:  advantage Democrats.   If the shutdown continued, it may have turned to a “pox on both your houses”.  

Schumer may have snatched victory from the jaws of catastrophe.  We’ll know in about a year.

Special Report

When I was a kid, the “NBC Special Report” logo and music held a special terror.  From the time I was six, a “Special Report” meant risk or tragedy.  

• “Special Report”:  missiles in Cuba.  
• “Special Report” Kennedy assassinated.  
• “Special Report”:  Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower; dead.  

And that was all when I was younger.

The mid-sixties were worse:  Apollo I burned on the launch pad, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy shot and killed; the summer riots, the Chicago Democratic Convention, Four Dead in Ohio.  It was like a morbid version of  “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Billy Joel.  I still get a special “twitch” when the “magic” words are intoned:  “We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming for an NBC Special Report”.  Who’s dead; what’s crashed?

In recent years though, that “special report” music has less impact on me.  Now, it’s the “election music” that gives me a traumatic reaction.  It’s weird; I’ve been involved in politics all of my life (at least since I was three).  Elections were exciting; like the final game of football season or the state championships in cross country.  There was always that energy, that magic moment right before election day, when everything is possible. 

Stages of Grief

But since November of 2016, “election music” doesn’t create the same sense of anticipation.  Now, it’s more like the dread of the old “Special Report”. It’s been since that long Tuesday night/Wednesday morning when we discovered that the polling was wrong and Hillary did not “break the final glass ceiling”.   For a Democrat like me, it was unimaginable.  And, after going through the stages of “grief”; Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance (maybe never acceptance), we sat and watched President Obama and Michelle, with ultimate dignity, hand the “keys of the nation” to Donald Trump.

Come to think of it, maybe we never got much past the “anger” stage of grief.  And that anger came out in record strength in 2018, when Democrats regained control of the Congress, and stood up to Trump’s demands.  

Relief

In 2020 there was excited anticipation for the vote.  But there was still that lurking dread that we might have to relive 2016 again.  So it was with relief rather than joy that we accepted the results of the Biden Presidency.  It took four days, until Saturday, to be sure Trump was “over”. Besides, we were in the throes of Covid and celebration was a mostly solitary activity.

But then there was a “return to normalcy”; perhaps too quickly.  We grew complacent in the “regular order”, the “norms” of politics and government.   We thought it was 2012, not 2024.  I would say that many Americans underestimated the power, the attraction, and the desperation that drove Donald Trump back into the Presidency. I surely did.

Again the polls mislead us.  Kamala Harris lost every swing state, and the disbelief of November 2016 came crashing back.  We knew that this time, there were no guardrails or norms, that if Donald Trump was “restrained” back in 2017, he wouldn’t be now.  There would never be an “acceptance” phase in this grief; we were trapped in “depression”, watching the democracy we loved almost instantly altered beyond recognition. 

Music Again

Tuesday night the “election music” played once again.  Depression fiercely guards against false hope.  Allowing that would make the “fall” even worse.  So Tuesday’s MSNBC (MSNOW??) no longer elicits joy and excitement.  Instead, it serves as a warning of bad news to come.

But that didn’t happen. Tuesday was a resounding Democratic victory, from New Jersey to California,  from Pennsylvania to ruby-red Mississippi.  Sherrill won in New Jersey, Mamdani  won New York, Spanberger won Virginia, and the California re-districting amendment passed overwhelmingly.  Even in the Virginia Attorney General race the Democrat won.  Jay Jones, hamstrung by a stupid text sent three years ago, (in the middle of a gun control debate, he suggested that the Republican Assembly leader should get “bullets to the head”). He still pulled off a narrow victory over the Republican incumbent.

So what does this all mean?  Trumpism, MAGAism isn’t over.  The battle will continue day-to-day; by Governors, the Democratic minority in the Congress, and in the Courts. And by “everyday Americans” (I hate that phrase) who will to stand for their beliefs and march in the streets.  But there is a twinkling “new dawn” in America.  Maybe the dread of “election music” will return to an anticipation of success.  Or, as Winston Churchill so loquaciously put it:

Now this is not the end.

It is not even the beginning of the end.

But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Fall of Rome

There is an apocryphal story about the beginnings of the fall of the Roman Empire.  Long before Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410 AD, the story goes that Emperor Nero was so oblivious to the fate of his subjects, that he played a lyre as the city burned.  From that story comes the phrase for a leader heedless of his duties:  “He fiddled while Rome burned”.   It is the symbolic tale of a government absolutely detached from the needs of its constituents.  Nero was the “beginning of the end”. 

There’s some serious fiddling around going on here in America today.  The Government of the United States of America is closed, and has been for more than a month.  Sure, the wheels of bureaucracy continue to grind, albeit slowly.  Medicare bills and social security payments still arrive.  But, what used to be called “food stamps” (now SNAP benefits) are on the block this week.  

And the place where many Americans come in direct contact with Federal employees, the airport, is under stress.  TSA and Air Traffic Controllers are mandated to show up for work.  But they aren’t getting a paycheck.  Not surprising, many are taking sick days, perhaps to work other jobs to pay the bills.

Fiddling in Florida

And what is the President of the United States, for once, really the “only man” who can fix this, doing?  Most of the past couple weeks was spent overseas, picking up awards from various leaders. Then, he returned to host a White House Halloween party, and work on planning the self-named new ballroom.  Next, he spent the weekend at Mar-A-Lago, golfing during the day, and hosting a “Great Gatsby” themed dinner party at night.  

Ironic that they chose The Great Gatsby, a book about social elites set in 1922.  1922 was a transition era for the United States.  The Nation was recovering from the Great War, with the economic upheaval caused by moving  from a wartime economy back to peace. 

Gatsby

The United States was also restricting immigration, and cracking down on political dissent through the Palmer Raids.   And many Americans ignored the US Constitution, particularly when it came to the 18^th Amendment banning alcohol production.  That created a huge criminal black market for alcohol transportation and sale, and made many Americans new criminals.  

It was a time of rich extravagance, and criminal growth.  There were the “bandits”: Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde, and Pretty Boy Floyd.  They were well armed with the new weapons used in the Great War.  And it was also a time of dramatic growth for organized crime, financed by the alcohol trade.  While Al Capone headlined with violence, all of the Mafia families dramatically grew through bootlegging and other illegal activities.

“Main Street” America was invested heavily in Wall Street. It was a time of excess, and “fiddling while Rome burned”. But, the economic success was soon to end. By 1930 we were in the throes of the Great Depression, the wealth of the masses lost in the market crash.

Knee Socks

So where are we now?  The Wall Street economics seems to have no bounds, driven by the “AI bubble”.  But on Main Street prices are still high, with no end in sight.  Some US Senators in both parties would like to negotiate an end to the shutdown, but leadership knows that nothing is possible without Trump’s agreement.  And in the House, Democrats face locked doors, as Republican leaders keep the body in more than a month-long recess.   They’re waiting for Trump’s “permission” to come back to Washington.

Decades ago, my teacher’s union was negotiating for a new contract with the Board of Education.  The Superintendent, the Board’s lead negotiator, thought he could get a “better deal” by  blowing things up.  So he showed up hours late for negotiations, dressed in a summer Boy Scout uniform, complete with shorts, knee socks and tasseled garters.  The message was clear:  going to his son’s Scout meeting was much more important than what the teachers wanted.

It worked.  The teachers were incensed.  And while a strike was ultimately averted, the final deal was tough.  The Superintendent got some of what he wanted. I guess he won. But the loyalty and respect of the teachers he lost was never regained.

Trump’s message to America is clear as well:  playing dress-up at Mar-A-Lago is more important than getting the American Government back open.  The difference is that many Americans aren’t sure that the President wants to ever open the government again.  He’s much more comfortable running it “by himself”.  It’s that “he alone” thing all over again.

“The Great Gatsby” did not have a happy ending.  Neither will Trump’s current course of “fiddling around”.