Category: Uncategorized

 The Principal

The Secret Service has a long history of success.  They’ve been protecting the President of the United States, the “principal”, since 1901.  That President is the biggest “target” in the world, forced by his job to go out in the public, walk to crowds, stand in front of assemblies.  There is always a threat.  In the 120 plus years, they’ve failed once, spectacularly, in Dealey Plaza in Dallas. 

 But there have been several other “close calls”.  An assassin attacked FDR in an open car in Miami. Puerto Rican separatists tried to storm the Blair House where Truman was staying.  A Charles Manson follower shot at Ford in San Francisco.  And a crazed man shot Reagan as he left a Washington hotel.  

The Secret Service aren’t just “bodyguards”.   When the President of the United States comes into town, there is a weeks long process, mobilizing Federal agents from every agency.  A list of those who have threatened the President comes out, and every “potential” is “checked” to make sure they aren’t a threat at the moment.   Federal agents scout every possible Presidential route, determining the safest passage for the motorcade.  Every “sniper’s nest” is checked, every ambush site evaluated.  Each person who will be in contact with the President is vetted.

After all of that, they still know one thing.  If someone is willing to die, they can probably take the President with them.  They don’t need history to know that:  look at former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, assassinated in Japan a couple weeks ago, one of the safest countries in the world.  No matter how secure they try to make things, there’s always the potential for disaster.

Jimmy Carter

In 1976 I was a twenty-year old lowly Field Coordinator in the Carter/Mondale Campaign.  One of my many tasks was to help prepare when one of the Carter’s came into town.  Each time, I interacted with the Secret Service, both the local office and the direct protection details.  They were “pros”, cooperative but definitive about what they would and wouldn’t do.  And they also had a sense of humor.

Jimmy Carter himself came in to Cincinnati just one time that fall, on a day when the Reds were playing at home in the World Series.  The campaign had a long discussion about whether the Governor should go to the game.  There was concern that he would be booed and it would look bad on television.  I argued that if he put a Reds hat on, he’d be fine.  

I lost the argument, and Carter was brought into Lunken Airport, a smaller “business” airport near downtown.  There were several thousand people gathered to hear his speech from the tarmac, and our staff got the opportunity to have a few minutes to meet and talk to him in the small terminal building.  When I greeted the “Governor”, he made clear that it was “Jimmy”, not “Governor”.  It was exciting to meet the man whose name was on all the signs, buttons and bumper stickers.  Like most of those interactions, he looked smaller than I thought, almost my own five-seven.  All of the campaigning made him seem seven feet tall.

In the Crowd

Carter left our staff, and met with some local dignitaries in a private room.  Then he went out into the crowd to get back on his plane.  I went out ahead to help clear a path for him.  As I backed into the crowd, I bumped into a rough looking, middle-aged man.  He was around six-foot tall or so, and my elbow accidently bumped into his ribs.  I could feel the outline of something hard under his dirty army jacket.  It felt like a gun.

What should I do?  Carter was coming out of the terminal, there wasn’t time to get help.  I slowly turned and looked up at the man.  He smiled – then reached for the collar of his worn jacket.  He turned the collar over – and there was the security pin of the day.  Whew; he was Secret Service, put in the crowd to make sure nothing happened.  I’m sure he could see the concern, then relief in my face.  He nodded, then continued to scan the crowd.

Rosalynn

Rosalynn Carter (pronounced Rose-a-lin, not Ros-a-lin) came to open our downtown, street-front office in the old Sheraton-Gibson Hotel building on Fountain Square.  It was a crowd, in the small office, and in the street, as the always gracious Mrs. Carter (please call me Rosalynn) encouraged the staff and supporters to work even harder in the last few weeks before the vote.  We were headed back out onto Fifth Street across from the square, when a woman about my age stepped in front of me, struggling to get something out of her purse.

I nodded to the Secret Service agent behind me (and ahead of Mrs. Carter) and in a flash, the young lady was gone – out of the crowd and “safe” against a wall.  Her purse was quickly examined – and the pen she was searching for discovered.  Rosalynn came over and gave her and autograph, and an apology.  But the Secret Service was clear; don’t reach for something at the moment that the “principal” was coming.

The President

I should have learned that lesson myself.  In the last week of the campaign, President Ford was coming into town to give a speech from Fountain Square.  The Secret Service was really buzzing – the President himself is “the” big deal.  The Carter staff let the Service know that we were going to hang a Carter/Mondale banner from the top of the building where our street-front office was located.  They weren’t happy about it, but gave grudging approval.

The building was old and abandoned (torn down a year later), and the elevators didn’t work.  But we could go upstairs to the rooftop, and unfurl our sign from the side of the building moments before President Ford arrived.  So three of us, all “junior” staff, were up there, watching the final preparations on the Square.

As we leaned over, tying the sign to the side, we saw the Cincinnati Police officers pointing to the top of “our” building.  It looked like those scenes from Dallas in 1963, with folks pointing to the windows.  At that moment we saw several officers charge into the storefront office, and realized that the Secret Service didn’t want a sign up here.  They didn’t say “no” to us, but they didn’t tell the local cops about it.  

We started heading down the stairs, and met the officers about halfway up.  After we were “controlled”, frisked and cuffed, they started listening to our explanation.  It didn’t do much good, and they were marching us out of the door when a Secret Service agent finally gave them the word to let us go.  There was no Carter/Mondale sign when the President gave his speech.

Today

I have enormous respect for the Secret Service protection details.  They are all-business, until the “principal” leaves, and always prepared to take action.  They are trained not to hesitate, not to question, but to act.  I’m sure, even now, forty-six years later, they are the same.  

I wrote an essay the other day (Praetorian Guard) about the Secret Service deleting text messages from January 6^th.  The agents that day were in a “no-win” situation.  They had a single duty, to protect their principal.  And yet, on that day, the “principal” was acting in opposition to the Constitution, the basic foundation of our nation.  Each agent swore to “support and defend” the Constitution, not the “principal”. 

But in my experience, the Secret Service agents on the Protective Details are single-minded.  It wouldn’t be a surprise that they “crossed some lines” on January 6^th.  Now it seems, they crossed more lines in deleting the text messages from that day.  And their bosses, the leadership of the Secret Service, allowed them to do it.  

That single-minded “beyond” the law attitude, cannot be allowed to stand.

Rodney Dangerfield

Despicable, Disgusting, Shameful:  you’d think people were describing a child molester, or a serial killer.  But in the last forty-eight hours, these words were used to describe Joe Biden, the President of the United States.  And it wasn’t Republicans talking about the President. These were “fellow” Democrats describing the President of their own party.

Rodney Dangerfield was an American comedian who made an entire career out of getting “no respect”.  And Joe Biden has been the “Rodney Dangerfield” of the Democratic Party, ever since the hair plug transplants of the 1980’s and aborted runs for President two decades apart.  But he also was the overwhelming winner of the Democratic primaries in 2020, and seemed to be the only candidate that could defeat Donald Trump.  And he did.

(Democrats tend to forget that.  We remember the early primaries in New Hampshire, Iowa, and Nevada, when Mayor Pete and Bernie shined forward.  Then came South Carolina – the powerful Jim Clyburn and Biden juggernaut.  The next week, Biden won eight of ten major primaries – and the Covid pandemic began – burying every other news item of consequence, and more than a million Americans..  The rest of Biden’s primary wins seem lost in the lockdown).

Biden is, an always has been, a man in the middle of the Democratic Party.  And in reflection of our current polarization, the “middle” is scorned by both sides.  So it’s often the “progressives” who are using the most virulent terms against him.  From the “despicable” fist bump with MBS, to the “disgusting” failure to get more gun control legislation through, Biden can’t win with his own party.

Hyperbole

Meanwhile, of course, Republicans have their own unique vocabulary about Biden:  stumbling, gaffe prone, and sleepy.  And the ultimate GOP insults:  “Uncle Joe” (like an “Uncle Tom,” only white?) and, of course, “Brandon”. 

Hyperbole is a part of politics, as “baked-in”, as red-white and blue bunting, handshakes, and kissing babies (though in the era of Covid, the last two are frowned upon – Biden still does them).  But I do think that when our language becomes so immoderate, we lose the context.  Those powerful terms lose their strength – and become emasculated (hey – there’s a powerful word).

Despicable:  the Holocaust was despicable.  Hitler was despicable.  What Vladimir Putin is doing in Ukraine is despicable.  Surely Joe Biden fist bumping Mohammed bin Salman, the young power of Saudi Arabia, is not in the same “class”.  

Disgusting:  the slaughter of twenty-one children and teachers in their classroom is disgusting.  And we might argue that the Republican automatic denial that guns are part of that outrage, might be disgusting too.  But is it disgusting that President Biden is unable to fulfill the campaign promise of passing stronger gun control legislation?  I would argue that it’s sad; sad that Americans don’t recognize the danger of allowing weapons of war into our society, almost without restraint.  But it isn’t Joe Biden’s fault – he’s spent a career trying to restrict access to those exact kinds of guns.

Voting Wrongs

Shameful isn’t Biden failing to pass the voting rights act.  Shameful isn’t really even Joe Manchin, who is being exactly who Joe Manchin always has been – a “Blue Dog”, one of the last of the breeds of conservative Democrats.  What is shameful – that a political party in the United States used a knowing lie, the “Stop the Steal” nonsense, to justify disenfranchising voters of their opposition party.  The American tradition of “one person, one vote” isn’t even used as a “cover” anymore.  Republicans are creating a voting process where the rural and the rich have the power.  That better fits the definition of shameful.

Horrifying describes what the United States Supreme Court is doing to the rights of Americans.  It’s horrifying that women lost control of their own bodies.  And it’s just as horrifying that public schools can now legally be the center of religious indoctrination.  What comes next, from a legal sense, has all the tension of those horror movies that I can’t stand to watch.  Don’t go in the abandoned building, don’t go in the basement, don’t open that door.  Don’t let the Court rule on voting rights – they’ll make them voting wrongs.

Self Defeating

I’m certainly not saying that all Democrats need to “get in line” with Biden.  That’s never been the nature of the Democratic Party.  Unlike the current Republican Party, purging the Kinzinger’s and the Cheney’s; the Democrats have always suffered internal opposition gladly.  One only has to look at Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, in the same party with Joe Manchin and Henry Cuellar.  

Internal opposition is one thing. And using hyperbole against the leader of your own party isn’t “traitorous” – that’s hyperbolic.  But it is self-defeating.  And we aren’t in a time when we can afford to defeat ourselves.  There’s too much at stake — and that’s no hyperbole.

Ancient Rome

The Praetorian Guards were the private protectors of the Roman Emperors.  And they were more than just guardians of the Imperial lives.  They were the Emperors’ private intelligence service, keeping track of his enemies for over three centuries.  The Praetorian Guard also became a power unto themselves. They grew from protecting Emperors to determining who would actually wear the throne.  Finally, the Emperor Constantine disbanded the Praetorians, sending the remaining members to the far corners of the Roman Empire.  The inner wall of  their headquarters, the Castle Praetoria, was destroyed.

The term “Praetorian Guard” became synonymous with any force surrounding a leader to maintain his (or her) power.  It’s more than just physical protection, the term “Praetorian” symbolizes the political power to determine who that leader would be.

Secret Service

The United States Secret Service was founded at the end of the Civil War to protect the US Government’s most important asset:  American currency.  At that time, almost one-third of the paper money was counterfeit. The Treasury Department needed its own “policing force” to gain control of the money supply.  

The late 1800’s saw a series of American Presidents assassinated: Lincoln in 1865, Garfield in 1881, and McKinley in 1901.  While the Army and local police had informal protection duties, ultimately no one was directly responsible for protecting the President’s life.  After McKinley’s death, the Secret Service, still part of Treasury, was given the job.  (The Department of Justice didn’t have a “policing” agency until 1908, and the FBI wasn’t created until the 1920’s.)

No Fail

Since that time, the Service has had two missions:  to protect the US currency, and to protect America’s President and other leaders.  The balance of importance between those two missions tilted over the years, with the Protective Detail gaining importance.  Recently, the agency was moved from the Treasury Department to the Department of Homeland Security.  

The Presidential Protection detail is a “no fail” operation.  There are thousands of threats on the President every year, from cranks to organized conspiracies.  Success is determined by stopping every single one of those threats.  Failure is when just one gets through.  The Secret Service not only physically protects. It also acts as a law enforcement agency, investigating potential threats and gathering evidence to turn over to US Attorneys for prosecution. 

There have been a continuing series of assassination attempts on the President:   Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Ford, and Reagan were all directly attacked.  Kennedy and Reagan were both hit by gunfire, with Kennedy killed.  In our current polarized environment, the threat to the President must be as intense as ever.  

The Secret Service does not “enforce the law” on its “protectees”.  Steve Ford (President Ford’s son) smoked marijuana in the White House. And we all know what Bill Clinton was doing in the hallways of the West Wing.  The Service needs to have the trust of their charges, so they step back from their law enforcement role to protect. 

And finally, the Secret Service agents on the Presidential protective detail would literally “take a bullet” for their protectee.  Agent Rufus Youngblood used his own body to shield Vice President Lyndon Johnson in the open limousine directly behind Kennedy’s as the shots rang out in Dallas.

Missing Evidence

As a law enforcement agency, the Secret Service is well aware of the importance of evidence.  So it’s incredulous to think that the agency would allow the destruction of their agents’ text messages sent during the greatest threat to the US Government since the Civil War.  But that’s exactly what they are saying:  that in a pre-scheduled technology “upgrade”, they erased many of the Presidential Protective detail messages from January 5^th and 6^th, 2021.

Everyone in the Secret Service is a law enforcement agent, a cop.  Everyone knew the gravity of what happened on January 6^th.  We know that the agents protecting Vice President Pence were just seconds ahead of the mob chanting “Hang Mike Pence”.  We also know that when they planned to whisk him away from the danger in the Capitol, Pence refused to go.  He told the head of the protective detail, “I know you, but I don’t know the driver of the limo”.  Was Pence just doing his duty to the Constitution, or did he suspect something more sinister?

Protect and Serve

Perhaps the Agency’s Director determined that revealing those texts would put their protective mission at risk.  If Presidential Detail agents are used as “evidence” against a “protectee”, then the Service won’t be trusted the next time.  Bill Clinton’s detail were ordered to testify about Monica Lewinsky (WAPO), a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court.  By deleting the texts, there one less piece of evidence to talk about.

And we also know that Donald Trump, President of the United States, wanted to be with “his people” as they marched on the Capitol.  The testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson revealed conversations about an altercation in the Presidential SUV, as the Commander-in-Chief was told that the Protective Detail would not take him to the march.  A Metro Police officer assigned to the motorcade substantiated the story.

But what were these Service agents saying to each other, on the “privacy” of government issued phones? That won’t be known.  And like Mike Pence, it leads the nation to ask:  were they protecting their charge, or enabling a threat to the Nation?

The Secret Service protects the President.  It is not, and cannot be, a Praetorian Guard.

Pole Vault Camp and Jeeps

A good friend of mine contacted my yesterday.  He’s one of the “pole vault guys” that I’ve known for decades, and he’s running a camp.  One of his coaches might not be available, and he wondered if I was interested.  

I’m always interested in coaching pole vault camps.  I’ve already done two this summer: the coaching is fun, and the conversation with other coaches makes me better every time.  My default answer (after talking to my wife, of course) is yes.  But there is one issue:  it’s four hundred miles away.

My 2004 Jeep Wrangler is awesome:  manual shift, four-wheel drive (when needed), soft top that can be completely removed, and a sound system that works, even at seventy miles an hour with the top off.  There’s one hang-up.  On a good day, in two-wheel drive on the highway, the Jeep gets about sixteen miles a gallon.  

Round trip is 800 miles. Divided by sixteen miles a gallon – that’s fifty gallons of gas.  At somewhere around $4.70 a gallon, that’s $230 in gas to get there and get home.  Now I don’t coach camp for free. And a “pit coach”, my position, is well paid in the Pole Vault Camp world.  Suffice to say though:  it’s a four day camp, and the first two days might pay for the gas.

Record Inflation

Yesterday the news world was all doom and gloom.  The inflation rate was over 9%, higher than it’s been in forty years.  The newscasters went through each item:  eggs, milk, airline tickets, bread, new houses, and, of course, gas prices.  I didn’t really need to watch the news to figure that out:  Wednesday I paid $12 for a pound of sliced deli ham and almost the same for a pound of sliced deli cheese; almost twice what I paid three months ago.

Like many Americans, I got a “pay raise” to my retirement this year, a 3% Cost of Living Allowance (COLA).  That sounded great:  but it looks like, at the moment, I’m down 6%, not up three.  

But when I looked at the “list” of everything that costs more, it seems to me that they all have one thing in common – airline tickets and eggs, new houses and deli ham.  All those things require, one way or another, gas.  The eggs, ham, and cheese are transported from the “farm” to the wholesaler to the store.  The biggest continuing cost for airlines is jet fuel.  And the materials for the new house came from the forest, to the processor, to the lumber yard, to the worksite.

In short, inflation isn’t about the cost of eggs, or the rest.  It’s all about the cost of the oil : oil made into the gas for the Jeep, or the diesel for the egg trucks, or the jet fuel for the Boeing 737’s.  The prime driver of our price increases is the increase in the cost of getting whatever it is to wherever it has to go.

Economics 101

And why it the price of oil so high?  Well, there’s still a war going on in Ukraine.  The Western world is boycotting Russian oil. The US had to replace 7% of our oil, and Europe is replacing 25% of theirs.  If Russian oil isn’t used, then the actual “supply” of oil on the world market gets smaller.  In Economics 101 our first lesson was the “mantra”:  when supply goes down, and demand remains the same, price goes up.  So the cost of oil increased. We know: by the incredible new prices on our local gas pump, and at our grocery store, and all the other items that are moved by oil.

That’s why President Biden is headed to Saudi Arabia today.  Sure, we are still mad about the butchering of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, and the human catastrophe in Yemen.  But the Saudi’s have… 
“what the world (still) needs now: it’s oil, sweet oil.  It’s the only thing, that’s there just not enough of…” (sorry, Burt Bacharach, and all my global climate change friends). 

Biden needs the Saudis to boost their oil production. And in Riyadh – there’s always a way to make a deal.

Not Just Oil

There’s no doubt that there are multiple causes of our inflation.  The world virtually shut down during the Covid pandemic.  Nations did their best to help their citizens through the crisis, pumping lots of money into their economies.  And since those economies were slow, a lot of that money wasn’t spent while we isolated from Covid.  Once the economies opened back up, all of that “extra” money flooded back in.  Lesson two of Economics 101:  when the demand for goods goes up, and the supply of goods remains the same (or is low because production was slowed by Covid), prices will go up.

So we faced inflation anyway, no matter who was elected the President of the United States in 2020.  But what’s the difference between four or five percent and “record breaking” nine percent?  The cost of oil, that made the cost of gas at the pump sky-rocket. And it only feels worse by the contrast to the record setting lows of two years ago during the height of the pandemic shutdown. 

Gas prices are gradually coming back down.  Part of that is due to reallocating American oil production, part is pressure on the oil companies not to take exorbitant profits, and part is regular folks reacting to the high prices (reducing demand).  And with gas prices going down, we should see the other costs lower for: eggs, ham, cheeses, construction costs and airline tickets.  But, Lesson three of Econ 101:  prices go up fast, they come down slow.

But if we can keep pressure on Russia, cutting their oil profits, maybe we can slow their attack on Ukraine. That’s worth the cost.

I bet there’s no COLA for “Pit Coaches” this year.  I’ll probably go anyway.

Not a Trial

In yesterday’s essay, I presented the January 6^th Committee hearings as a cross between a criminal trial and a “mini-series”.  Information is being presented – but unlike a true court proceeding, much of that is a part of a narrative presented by the Congressmen, backed up by edited clips and snippets of  “evidence”.  And while we are familiar with that form of presentation, often used to further the plot in TV and movie trials; in a real courtroom that would not be allowed during witness questioning.  In a court, the whole information must come from the witness, not the attorney, “leading the witness”.  The attorneys can only elicit facts from the witnesses, not present those facts (“facts not in evidence”) themselves. 

And of course, in a courtroom there would be a defense, cross-examining the witnesses and presenting alternative theories of the “crime”.

The January 6^th Committee isn’t a “trial”.  It is an investigation, now presenting to the Congress, and the Nation, what they discovered about the events leading up to January 6^th.  The members of the Committee aren’t going to “convict”, at least not in the legal sense.  They are, in the most limited sense, telling the story of the Insurrection to the Congress, for the purpose of creating legislation to avoid one in the future. 

But the audience is much larger than that.  In the first night of Committee hearings, over twenty million Americans watched on television or cable.  Many more streamed the hearings online.  Over six million are watching the daytime hearings live, with millions more catching up in the evening recaps.

Grand Jury

The January 6^th Committee hearings aren’t a criminal trial.  They are more like a Grand Jury investigation.

A Grand Jury is one way our justice system investigates crime.  Much like the January 6^th Committee, a grand jury hears the “prosecutors” side of the case, without opportunity for defense.  They hear witnesses, presented by the prosecution.  And an investigative grand jury can, like the Committee, subpoena further witnesses and require them to testify under oath.  Grand juries do not determine guilt, their role is to decide whether there is “probable cause” to believe a crime has been committed.  If they find “probable cause”, they bring charges against the perpetrators, sending them to criminal trial.

So the January 6^th Committee is presenting their evidence to the Congress, and also to the American people.  In fact, they are serving the purpose of the prosecution for a grand jury of the American people, presenting the evidence of “probable cause” that crimes were committed, crimes even at the highest level, by the President of the United States.  And it’s up to the American people to determine whether to “indict” or not.

No Precedence

There is no legal precedence for indicting a former President.  The Department of  Justice is running a parallel investigation of the Insurrection right now.  Anecdotal evidence indicates that that the Department had not reached the White House, they seemed as surprised as everyone else at the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson.  So the Committee is forcing Justice to move ahead, and look at the ultimate possibility:  bringing charges against a former United States President.

Americans have a saying:  all men are equal in the eyes of the law.  But, of course, that’s not really true.  We know throughout our history that the law is often enforced unequally.  Bill Cosby was treated differently than “Joe average”.  While we believe that our laws apply equally, we also not that “rank hath it’s privilege”. 

And there are good reasons why former Presidents of the United States require a higher standard for criminal indictment.  We watch the parade of other former world leaders who go from the pinnacle to the jail cell, and wonder how much of that is their conduct, or just their political opponents getting revenge.  The United States pardoned Richard Nixon, forgave Bill Clinton, and held no one responsible for the torture of the Bush Administration.

And there is the practical consideration of how a convicted former President would be punished.  Does he go to jail?  Does his Secret Service detail go with him?  What about all of the secrets he knows? How compromised would our national security be, even in a “country club” minimum security  “white-collar camp”?

Acceptable Behavior

But most importantly, what about the tens of millions of Americans who still believe in the former President.  It isn’t just creating a martyr, but literally putting their “hero” in jail.  As the Republicans in Congress have made it clear; they intend retribution.  If the Republicans retake the House, we expect a “reverse” January 6^thCommittee, searching for the “crimes” of Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and, of course, Liz Cheney.  If Donald Trump is convicted of crimes, should Joe Biden be wary?

Former prosecutors make it clear – they follow the evidence wherever it leads them.  The “grand jury” presentation of the January 6^th Committee is leading us, Americans, to indict the former President of the United States.  The Department of Justice will reach its own decision to bring charges or not.  For the sake of the future of our Nation, I hope they decide to indict Donald J Trump.  But if the Department of Justice doesn’t, it will be up to the American people to use the only “trial” they have available.  They must turn their back on him, and his supporters, at the ballot box.  There can be no middle-ground: a vote for a person who still supports Donald Trump, is a vote to allow all of the lawbreaking and anti-American actions of Trump to go unpunished.  

What kind of America do you want?

Trial

It’s the rhythm of a criminal trial.  The Prosecution begins the case with it’s “opening”.  They describe the “who, what, when, where and why”, and they tell the jury what the evidence will show.  Then the evidence itself is presented; building, piece by piece, the structure of the criminal acts.  And finally, after the Defense has had their chance, the Prosecution sums up what all the evidence “adds up to”.  If they did their job, it adds up to a finding of guilt.

The January 6^th Committee is not holding a criminal trial.  They are presenting the “intelligence”, the information, about the actions of former President Donald Trump and his cohorts leading to the Insurrection for which the committee is named.   Some of that “intelligence” rises to the level of evidence, some does not.  

But that’s not the January 6^th Committee’s problem.  All they can do is show what they’ve found.  They can “write the story” of the Insurrection, and they will ultimately propose legislation to try to “fix what’s broke”.  Oh, and they can lay out a case to the Department of Justice for indicting the former President of the United States.

Think of the January 6^th Committee as presenting a cross between a criminal trial and a mini-series.  They’ve been masterful in carefully building a story.  The Congressmen narrate, backed by video clips of witness statements, footage of the what the protagonists did or said, and those awful battle scenes on the steps of the Capitol.  And then they carefully present “live” witnesses to buttress each point of the day, the “episode”.  Tuesday’s presentation was no exception.

Hearsay

Remember, in our “last episode” we heard from Cassidy Hutchinson, the aide to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.  Her position, both administratively and literally, was in the center of the action.  Meadows was the gateway to Trump, Hutchinson was the gateway to Meadows.  And she took us “inside” in the final days leading up to the Insurrection.  Her testimony was so damning of Trump and Meadows, that all that the unheard “defendants” could say was that much of her testimony was “hearsay”.  She was telling what someone said someone said.

So this week, the Committee brought in the “someone” who said much of it, former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone.  He “had no problem” with her testimony, verifying most of it.  Her hearsay was verified by his direct testimony, admissible in any Court.  

Nexus of the Crime

And in this episode, the Committee also took us to the “nexus” of the crime, the moment when the Insurrection was put in motion.  It was after an hours long meeting with the President on December 18^th, 2020, four days after the electoral votes were confirmed by the States.  

It was in this meeting, filled with shouting and near physical violence, that President Trump was presented with two choices.  His White House staff, represented by Cipollone and Meadows, offered him reality.  They said the election was over, and that Trump should concede and rest on his successes in office.  But the outside “counsel”, Giuliani, Powell and Flynn; offered him an alternative, one that was tantamount to overthrowing the government.  

We knew about this meeting within hours of it happening.  I wrote an essay about it two days later (Seven Days in December).  But at the end of the hours of  screaming and shouting, Cipollone and Meadows walked out thinking that they had avoided the worst.  

But what we didn’t realize then, was that Trump’s next move was to call out the mob, the famous come to Washington for a “wild time” tweet.  That moment, that tweet, set in motion a chain of events from all of those groups that were following Trump’s earlier instructions of “stand back and stand by”.  They immediately began to organize. The President chose to launch an Insurrection.

Preserve, Protect and Defend

The committee still has not clearly tied Trump (or Meadows) directly to those groups.  What they have done is shown that the President knew there was an armed mob in front of him on January 6^th, the mob he summoned; and despite that knowledge, sent them to march on the Capitol to “fight” for him.  And as they headed down the Mall, Trump himself wanted to be “with them”.  We know that the Secret Service had to disobey the order of the President of the United States in the black SUV after the speech, and take him back to the White House.

What did Donald Trump do as the Capitol was breeched for the first time since 1814?  Why didn’t he call out the National Guard, or at least call the mob off?  Direct testimony from one man who actually broke into the building said that as soon as the President told him to, he left the building.

Our final episode:  what did Donald Trump do in the three hours that the Capitol was under siege?  How did Trump react to direct threats on the Vice President and the leadership of Congress?  What is the duty of the President to protect Congress and the Constitution, and what is the reality of Donald Trump’s inaction?

Tune in again, next week, to find out.

The January 6^th Essays

• The Summation
• The John Dean Moment
• Sinning and America
• Flashes of Hope
• Don’t Look Back
• For You, Republicans
• On the Tightrope
• A Television Moment

Georgetown Lawyer

Jeffrey Clark is an accomplished scholar and lawyer.  He earned his Bachelor’s Degree at Harvard (class of ’89), then a Masters in Urban Affairs at the University of Delaware.   Clark then went to law school at Georgetown, the class of ’95.  After graduating, he clerked for a Federal District Judge in Cincinnati.

Clark went to work at the firm of  Kirkland and Ellis in Washington, DC.  If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Kirkland and Ellis is the “supplier” of lawyers for Republican governments.  Here’s just some of their alumni in government service:  Alex Acosta*, Alex Azar*, William Barr*, John Bolton*, Robert Bork , Pat Cipollone* Jeffrey Clark*, John Eastman*, Brett Kavanaugh*, Pat Philbin*, Jeff Rosen*, Ken Starr (* served in the Trump Administration). And there are a few Democrats too: Richard Cordray, Sean Patrick Maloney, and Mikie Sherrill. (The last two both current Democratic US Congressmen).

At Kirkland he developed an expertise in environmental law.  He then moved into the Bush Department of Justice, and served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Environment and Natural Resources.  After 2005, the “revolving door” turned again, and he returned to Kirkland to continue his environmental law practice.  No surprise: he wasn’t a “green” guy.  He represented the US Chamber of Commerce challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate carbon emissions and British Petroleum in the Horizon oil spill case.

With Trump’s win in 2016, Clark moved back to Justice. This time he was the Assistant Attorney General for the same division.  Once in charge, he aggressively worked to protect businesses from environmental law enforcement. He was “Mr. Oil Spill”.

Off the Rails

Political appointees at Justice often try to impose their views of the law on their departments.  This is what happens, even in the law, when political control changes from one President to another.  While the Obama Justice Department strictly enforced environmental laws against polluters, the Trump Administration took a different view.  To make sure that view was reflected, guys like Clark were brought in.

I didn’t support the Trump pollution policies, but I understood that it was just one result of his election victory.  The line, “elections have consequences” fits; these are the kind of unseen outcomes of a change in Party.  The appointment of sympathetic Supreme Court Justices is a much more visible result of the same thing. 

Donald Trump had difficulty getting his appointees through Senate confirmation, even though Republicans had a majority.  So many of his appointments to office were “acting”; without Senate approval, who had a limited amount of time they could serve.  I wrote an essay about this back in 2019, The Acting Presidency.  In the last few months of the Trump Administration, Clark was appointed as Acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.  In that job, Clark successfully got the government to support Trump in a personal lawsuit. (It was filed by a woman who claimed Trump, well before he was President, sexually assaulted her in the dressing room of Bergdorf-Goodman, an exclusive clothing store in New York City).

Acting-Acting

Clark was replacing another acting appointee whose time had expired.  After the election of 2020, Clark became steeped in the “Stop the Steal” conspiracy, thoroughly convinced that Trump had actually won the election, regardless of the lack of actual evidence of any kind of voter fraud.  He approached a friend, Republican Congressman William Perry, who put him in touch with the outgoing President.

Trump and his campaign legal team, led by Rudy Giuliani, were searching for support anywhere they could find it.  That an Assistant Attorney General not only was “on board”, but willing to do anything to help, was a great plus.  The current Attorney General, William Barr, made it clear that the Department found no evidence of voter fraud.  And, once Barr resigned, his replacement as Acting Attorney General, Jeffrey Rosen, and the Acting Deputy, Richard Donaghue, continued to follow those facts.

So in late December as the January 6^th Congressional Electoral Vote certification loomed near, President Trump contemplated firing Rosen and Donaghue, and replacing them with Clark. In fact, Trump decided to actually do that, and for a few hours, Clark was “noted” as the Acting Attorney General in White House communications.  But in a pivotal meeting with Justice Department leaders and White House legal counsel, Trump was told that the majority of the senior leadership of the Department would resign if Clark was placed in charge.  As Rosen put it, “Clark would be leading a graveyard”.  Trump rescinded the order.

The Other Side of Justice

What other actions and involvement did Jeffrey Clark have with the “Stop the Steal” movement?  Did he have knowledge of plans for the Insurrection on January 6^th?  Those and more are questions the January 6^th Committee wanted to ask Clark.  He at first refused and was charged with contempt. Clark then ultimately appeared before the Committee. In that testimony, he exercised his 5^th Amendment right against self-incrimination over one hundred times.

The actions of several Trump attorneys not only gained the interest of the January 6^th Committee, but also the current Department of Justice investigation of the Insurrection. One Trump campaign attorney, John Eastman, was pulled over in his car, and served a search warrant for his cell phone.  When the FBI agents asked Eastman to raise his hands, the legal “scholar” didn’t quite seem to understand the question.  The helpful agent gently took Eastman’s arms and put them on top of his head. Then they did a cursory search to get the phone, and check for any weapons.

Subject of Interest

And, in the early morning hours, the FBI came calling on Jeffrey Clark as well.  He answered the door in his shirt and boxer shorts, to find agents on his front step. They had warrants to search for electronic devices; computers, phones and the like.  The FBI doesn’t search a house with the occupant inside, they make sure to control the situation by placing them in temporary custody outside by the FBI vehicles.  

And of course, once you answer the door, they aren’t going to let you go back inside.  You might destroy evidence.  So Jeffrey Clark, former Acting Assistant Attorney General, former Assistant Attorney General, former member of the vaunted Kirkland and Ellis law firm; was escorted to the street in his shirt and boxers.  

I used to watch a television show called “Cops”. The show had camera crews that travelled with active police officers, showing what happened during their patrol. There was a “rule of thumb” while watching cops: if a suspect didn’t have a shirt on, they were going to jail.

The moral of this story might be to believe the evidence that the Justice Department, Clark’s own Department, found.  It might be: don’t fall for the internet of lies and videos that made up Stop the Steal.  Or it might be to not get involved in a plot to overthrow the Constitution.

But it definitely is this:  if the FBI is knocking on your door – put your pants on.

Upset

The battle of Yorktown is marked as the victory that ended the American Revolution, and began the American experiment in democracy. (Yes, I know that it was two more years before a treaty actually ending the war – but Yorktown was the reason the treaty was signed). It was an overwhelming “upset”, to use a sports analogy.  It was like my alma mater, Denison University beating Ohio State on the football field, or the Toledo Mud Hens defeating the New York Yankees in baseball.  The British Army was perhaps the strongest in the world, and the British Navy was definitely the best.  

But that didn’t matter; General Cornwallis got his British forces backed into a corner.  And the British Navy wasn’t at the battle, the French Navy was.  They blocked Cornwallis from any extraction by sea.  After days of siege warfare, the unthinkable finally happened.  A white flag flew from the parapet, and Cornwallis marched his troops out to surrender.  But he couldn’t accept the loss himself, he sent his second in command to offer his sword to General Washington.  

Washington, the consummate military man, was always aware of protocol.  He instructed his second-in-command, General Benjamin Lincoln (no relation to Abraham), to accept the symbolic gesture.  As the British stacked their weapons and marched into captivity, their pipers played the old English ballad, “The World Turned Upside Down”.  

Today

The world feels pretty upside down today.

The former Prime Minister of Japan was assassinated, shot in the back with a homemade gun.  If that happened here in the US, it would be just “another brick in the wall” in this summer of mass shootings.  But in Japan, you can count the number of deaths from gun violence for a year on one hand.   Nothing more powerful, or cowardly, than an assassin with a plastic sawed-off shotgun.

Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, the United States is again leading a coalition of forces to oppose Russia.  A smaller democratic state, Ukraine, is under mass attack. Instead of letting the Russian autocrat Putin exercise his will un-challenged, the US is doing everything short of direct warfare to stop him.  It’s one of the few things that most Americans actually agree on.

That’s because the democracy that Washington helped create is also now under siege.  The essential tenet of our government, that the most votes wins, is under attack.  Perhaps as many as thirty percent of Americans believe that an election was stolen.  They think that Joe Biden usurped his position illegally, and that their only vindication is to “change the rules” so that they can decide the winner regardless of the vote count.

Trust No One

Our nation with all its blemishes and flaws, for more than half a century stood, “as the shining city on the hill” for the world.  It seems to be a bit dimmer right now.  We didn’t create the “post-truth” world, but our nation fully practices “post-truth”.  And its American companies:  Facebook and Twitter, Apple, Microsoft and Google, that intentionally or not, are the mechanisms of spreading the lies.

How crazy is this:  on the next update for my brand new IPhone (13 mini), Apple will offer a switch that will guarantee my phone cannot be hacked.  I guess that’s a good thing – but that also means the courts, the police, the FBI can’t get in my phone either.  I have nothing to hide on my phone, or computer, or anywhere else.  If the FBI needs to get into my phone, it’s probably because something bad happened to me.  But if I flick that switch – it erases itself rather than “give up” data.  And yet I’m still tempted to “protect” myself.

And what’s even more confusing, is that both sides, “MAGA” or “Blue”, would agree to that. There is fear of an unformed “them” that requires protection.

Moral Arc

Dr. King often used the phrase, “The arc of the moral universe may be long, but it bends toward justice”.  For most of my lifetime, it’s felt like we could actually see “the bend”, as it arced towards more freedom for Americans. But in recent years it seems like the arc just goes off into an unseen universe, far from a final just landing. Much of the work that so many Americans have done to bend it, seems to be lost.  Whether it’s about race, or gender, or identity; the America of today is less just than at any time that my sixty-five years can remember.

The world feels upside down. 

Struggle 

The American Revolution was a protracted struggle.  It took six long years from the town squares of Lexington and Concord to the white flag of Yorktown.  And for most of those years, the Continental Army lost.  They lost at Lexington and Concord, they lost at Brooklyn and Harlem, they lost Philadelphia, they lost 10,000 troops under Benjamin Lincoln who surrendered Charleston, just a year before Yorktown.  They suffered through the harsh winter of 1777-78 at Valley Forge, and three other winters in the nearby Watchung Mountains of Western New Jersey.  

Washington knew that the ultimate goal was for his army to survive.  Survive long enough that the British ran out of patience, and money, to maintain occupations forces.  Survive by avoiding a cataclysmic final battle, a “Gettysburg” that risked his entire force.  Washington kept his Army alive and fighting, for six long years, until he finally could capitalize on a British mistake.  The arc of his mission finally bent towards victory.

It feels like we are in a time of decision, of determining whether our world will remain upside down, or whether we will find a way to right ourselves, and our nation.  It’s not time for the white flags, or to give up our swords.  Like Washington and his second-in-command Lincoln, it’s time to redouble our efforts, so that we can drown out the British pipers with our own ditty, “Yankee Doodle Dandy”.  

This essay was originally published in July. The US Supreme Court will hear the case on Wednesday, December 7th, and it’s worth looking at again. IF the Supreme Court agrees with this radical theory, it could change the outcome of elections for years to come.

Back to Class

There is a bomb set to blow up the entire election of 2024. It could make the Presidential votes of the citizens of the United States unimportant. The gerrymandered state legislatures could decide the election, without referring to the popular vote count. And it would all be “legal”. The fuse is already lit.

To understand that panicky warning, there’s a lot of explaining to do. So I need to take you back to class, to that early morning American Government (or POD) class, with a chalk board and books instead of Smart Boards and computers.

The “School House Rock” version of our government is pretty simple.  There are three branches: the legislative, the executive, and the judicial.  The legislative writes the laws and the executive takes those laws and enforces them.  The Judiciary makes sure that those laws “fit” with other laws and the US Constitution, in a process called judicial review.  

If I was your teacher, you might remember a candle in a dark classroom, as President John Adams signed the documents creating the “midnight judges”.  That action started the sequence of events ending in the Supreme Court case Marbury v Madison. The Supreme Court took the ability to determine whether Congressional actions are Constitutional, judicial review.

But it doesn’t “have” to be that way.

Gerrymandering on Steroids

The process of drawing legislative districts so that one party is specifically advantaged is “Gerrymandering”.  It was named after Elbridge Gerry, the Governor of Massachusetts in 1812. He signed a bill creating a district that looked like a salamander to guarantee a Democratic/Republican (that’s the Party that evolved into today’s Democrats) victory.  The newspapers called it “Gerrymandering”, and it has been an American political tradition ever since.

Gerrymandering went on steroids with the development of advanced computing. It was no longer a matter of this section trends to one party or the other. Computer modeling could create absolutely specific maps to maximize advantage, down to the street level or even specific addresses. Want to dilute the other party’s power? Make sure that their supporters are divided into multiple districts. Want to strengthen your own power? Draw districts to guarantee your base is “in charge”. Need to see an example – check out the map of Ohio’s Fourth Congressional District in 2020, represented by Jim Jordan.

After the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed by Congress, the US Supreme Court ruled that while districts could be Gerrymandered for political gain, they couldn’t be drawn to prevent racial minority candidates from winning elections. That was 1995 in Miller v Johnson. So the rule was pretty simple: when Ohio Republicans drew the Fourth District, it held up to Court scrutiny because it wasn’t “racially” based. But when it was demonstrated that North Carolina specifically divided black communities to weaken their voting power, it was unconstitutional, at least until 2019.

Saved in Court

In that year the Supreme Court majority, led by Chief Justice Roberts, stated that Federal Courts would no longer rule about Gerrymandering. He “kicked that” to State Court jurisdiction for judicial review. They would have final say over the actions of the state legislatures in drawing maps, and in making other election decisions.

After the 2020 election, both the state and federal courts confirmed the popular vote. The desperate Trump campaign went to them first. In more than sixty cases, “Stop the Steal” was debunked and dismissed. Even judges appointed by President Trump, including on the US Supreme Court, dismissed Trump’s claims against the valid election results. After Trump lost there, he went to the other tactics we heard about in the January 6th Committee hearings. One was to place Extreme pressure on election officials to change results. Another was to convince state legislatures to ignore the popular vote and replace Biden electors with Trump’s. That all lead to the Insurrection of January 6^th.

The Eastman Plan

But in that final push to overturn the election, lawyer John Eastman (of the “Green Bay Sweep” fame) put forward a radical theory of the American Constitution, called the “Independent State Legislature” (ISL).  It stated that the US Constitution gave state legislatures the exclusive power to determine how federal elections are conducted.  He based this concept on Article I, Section 4:

The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators.

Eastman theorized that the language was specific, and that the state courts or constitutions had no place in ruling on how the legislatures exercised that power. The argument is simple: if a state legislature, say Georgia, said that Donald Trump won, regardless of what the popular vote in the state was, then neither the Georgia state courts nor the Georgia state constitution could be used to overturn that decision.

(If you think a state legislature can’t ignore the state Supreme Court or the state Constitution – remember the DeRolph school funding decision in Ohio? The Court ruled the funding process unconstitutional- but the legislature refused to change it. That was twenty-five years ago, and the process still hasn’t changed).

School House Rock

Back to “School House Rock” for just a second. Eastman states that the Courts have no power of judicial review over elections, because the US Constitution doesn’t give them the specific power in Article I, Section 4 to review federal election decisions. So the three co-equal branches, aren’t; and the legislature is unchecked when it comes to those decisions.

The “ISL” theory flies in the face of traditional American government, and the precedent established by Marbury v Madison at the very beginnings of our Federal system.  It requires a restricted view of the US Constitution, only viewing the actual text in that section without looking at the rest of the document, or the history that followed it.  In any other time in our history, going all the way back to the Marshall Supreme Court in 1801, it would have been laughed out of the courtroom.

The Bomb

But we aren’t in any other time.  Today’s US Supreme Court is in the hands of “textualists” who are sympathetic to the “black and white” arguments that lawyers better than Eastman are making.  On Wednesday they will hear Moore v Harper, arguing that the North Carolina Courts have no place in deciding the legality of Gerrymandered districts in North Carolina.  They have no place, because, according to ISL, the legislature has the exclusive power to determine election decisions.

The decision will be published sometime in 2023.  It’s about Gerrymandering, but the ramifications would apply to election laws in every state.  And, as we now know, the current Supreme Court majority isn’t afraid of overturning precedent, or taking radical historic stands.  

What if those sixty courts didn’t have a chance to rule on “Stop the Steal”?  What if those few election officials who stood up against changing the results, didn’t have court backing?  The Trump/Republican Party tried to pack state legislatures and election offices with “Stop the Steal” believers in 2022.  They may be the legislators “in charge” in 2024.  They could decide that the election results are “wrong”, and send their own slate of electors, this time with legislative approval, to be counted in the House of Representatives.

Moore v Harper is the fuse.  If the Court rules for ISL, the bomb will go off in 2024.  By then, it will be far too late to avoid the blast.

Good Guys

Let’s get one thing straight.   As a teacher, coach, and an administrator; I spent much of my career working with law enforcement.  I found that almost every police officer, sheriff’s deputy, or state trooper I worked with was competent, motivated to protect people, and well aware of the potential risks they faced around every corner.  They were (and are) exactly the kind of men and women I wanted to “have my back” when things went crazy.

We place them in an incredibly difficult position.  They are supposed to protect us from crime; but if they try to act proactively, they are “interfering”.   We want them to make us safer, but resent it when they enforce the law on us.  And we ask, no, demand, that they risk their lives for us.  Sure, “it’s what they signed up for”.  But that doesn’t change their desire to go home to their families after work, like anyone else.  But they’re not anyone else, on duty or off.  They’re cops.

No Excuses

This isn’t an excuse for the excesses we saw in Minneapolis, or this week in Akron.  But the officers, deputies and troopers I knew wouldn’t do that.  The failure of a few shouldn’t indict them all.

And here’s the most impossible thing we ask:  protect us from the mass shooters; our wholly American problem.  We expect that they will run “to the shooting” rather than away from it.  And, honestly, most of them will.  But the United States seems to have a virtually unlimited supply of high powered weapons, available literally “on demand”.  Hundreds of shots fired in the Uvalde school, seventy some fired at the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, fifty rounds shot in the Tops Market in Buffalo.   The “shooters” can act so quickly, there’s no way for the police to protect us.

Butcher’s Bill

No matter how fast the police get there (less than six minutes in Buffalo), the “butcher’s bill” is already written.  In Buffalo a retired police officer sacrificed his life.  In Uvalde,  conflict in the hallway among the nineteen officers, held back by the incident “commander”, will probably never be known.  If they were like the police officers I knew, I suspect it was more than intense. But many of the kids were already dead before they even arrived.

In Highland Park, Illinois, the target was a Fourth of July parade.  The police were on the scene, directing the procession.  They’re response was immediate and appropriate.  Watch the videos: the crowd, the parade participants, are running away from the gunfire.  The police are guiding, directing, sheltering the onlookers and victims, and searching for the shooter.  They are in the line of fire, doing their duty, their job.

Fall Guys

They are the “good guys with the guns”.  They are the ones willing to lay down their own lives to protect others.  And there’s not much they can do about the young white man with a gun on the rooftop of the building, or who storms into the supermarket, school, church, synagogue or nightclub.  So let’s stop making them the “solution”, for a problem they can’t possibly solve. 

Because, by making them the solution, we are really making them the “fall guys” for our national malady.  We can’t solve the two actual problems:  the ready availability of high powered, high capacity weapons; and the willingness of young, mostly white men to use them to commit atrocities.  Or more accurately, we won’t.

We won’t, because we’ve allowed common sense to be thrown out the window by political rhetoric.  

An American Solution

The United States has been here before.  In the 1920’s, fully automatic weapons flooded the American market.  We all know them, “Tommy Guns”, Thompson sub-machine guns.  If you don’t remember, find an old black and white gangster movie from the late 1940’s with James Cagney or Edward G. Robinson or George Raft. 

Tommy Guns were designed as “trench sweepers” for  World War I type combat, with the rapid fire ability to clear the enemy at close range.   In the post-war world, with the passage of the 18^th Amendment banning alcohol use in the United States; crime became rampant.   The Tommy Gun lead the way as criminals provided society with booze.  

After Bonnie and Clyde’s crime spree in the Central United States, and the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago, the US government regulated automatic weapons by licensing them and requiring a steep tax.  While it didn’t solve the problem right away, ultimately it limited the number and raised the cost of the fully automatic weapons available.  They stopped being the gangster “weapon of choice”. 

So the argument that there is no “legislative” solution that could cure our current assault weapon crisis is simply not true.  It was done in the 1930’s, and it could be done again, if there was a legislative “will” to do it.

The deeper question – why are some Americans, especially young, white, males: drawn to committing such terrible acts?  I don’t pretend to have an answer to that question, or a solution for the problem.  But I do know one thing – we could take the weapon of choice out of their hands.

If we only had the will to do it.

Mid-Life Crisis

It’s Independence Day, the Fourth of July, 2022.  The United States is two hundred and forty-six years old.  History is relative in the US, two hundred and forty-six seems like such a long time.  But, in the course of history, two and a half centuries really isn’t very long.  Just look at the history of the United Kingdom, or China, or France, or the Navajo.  While the United States is no longer a “young” country, we probably are just reaching “middle age”.

America is celebrating a birthday on a national scale, kind of like a man turning forty-seven.  It’s those years of “mid-life crisis”, when the identity and goals of young manhood are now in a wholly different perspective.  How do you know that your “younger life” is over?  I knew it when they put a stent in my heart (at forty-seven), though it took a few more years to sink in.  

So the United States is trying to buy a leather jacket and a Corvette.  We are, in fact, looking back to the “good old days” as if the future will never live up to the past.  We are a nation struggling with changes, wistfully wishing (for the privileged few) that we could be something we once thought we were.

False Utopia

In the first month of these “Our America” essays, I wrote an essay called “Trump World and the Beaver”.  It was all about the so-called utopia of the 1950’s, when I was born, and the world was simpler.  “Leave it to Beaver” was a show about the life of a white, suburban kid named Theodore, nicknamed “the Beaver”.  His Dad wore a suit and tie to work (he took the tie and suit coat off, and put a sweater on for dinner) and his Mom cleaned the house in a dress and pearls.  

It was an idyllic life of baseball games and adventures with brother Wally.  Mr. Cleaver always had the wise answer to the boys’ problems, and Mrs. Cleaver with never flustered, and always perfectly coiffed.  But that idyllic life was for the chosen few.  While Wally and the Beaver were growing up on TV,  young Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi. Rosa Parks was refusing to sit in the back of the bus, and  Martin Luther King was emerging as the leader of a national movement.  

America was preparing for the dramatic changes of the 1960’s, from civil rights to opposition to the Vietnam War, to the whole “hippie” movement.  A decade after “the Beaver”, life in America was changed forever.

Life Changes

Like any life changes, it wasn’t all for the good, or for the bad. The United States became more diverse, more “free”, more willing to change.  We set out on a path whose ultimate result was an America that would be fully integrated, not just “technically” in schools and swimming pools, but in life.  Kids of all races would listen to music of all cultures, and the racial-cultural-religious background of a person would not matter. 

It would be easy here to insert Dr. King’s, “…judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”.  It was a goal he established on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963.  But fifty-nine years after that marker in history, we forget that in the speech he also said:

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men — yes, Black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.

America’s Promise

It’s Independence Day.  And the United States still hasn’t made that check good for so many of our citizens.  Instead of “doubling down” to clear that debt, a portion of our nation is trying to roll the clock back to no longer honor the bill.   So while we celebrate our birthday, Independence Day, we should realize that we are a nation defined by obligation.  The United States, was founded in concepts rather than in people.  The notably flawed Founding Fathers were able to create concepts beyond their personal failings.  And it is to those principles that we should look in our “mid-life” crisis.

Like Dr. King, we should look to the promise of the Declaration of Independence, our founding document: 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

  It was on this day, two hundred and forty-six years ago, that the founders of our nation agreed to our Independence, based on those words.

And we should look to the promise of the Constitution, establishing the fact and the goals of our Union eleven years later:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

More Perfect

It’s my favorite phrase in America’s founding documents: “…a more perfect Union”.  It’s the promise of America – that while our Union may be “perfect”, our goal is continually make it “more perfect”.  And it is in the “more perfecting” that we are committed to struggle, through war and rebellion, economic failure and success, and even the evil manipulations of men intent on gaining power. 

So America, blow out the candles, you’ve still got the “wind” to put out all two hundred and forty-six.  Forget the leather jacket and Corvette – the President already has them.  And make the wish, that we shall look to a future of “more perfecting”, rather than a past that really only existed for the few.  We are an America of the many, and we need to make our “checks” good.  

Happy Fourth of July.

This is a Sunday Story – not only because it’s Sunday – but this happened on a Sunday. You can bet on it!

Dog Racing

Wheeling Downs is a dog racing track on Wheeling  Island in the Ohio River. Specially bred greyhounds sprint around the course, chasing the mechanical “rabbit”.  Bettors  carefully read the statistics – wins, losses, splits; and sires, dames and trainers. The racing “form” is their guide and Bible. 

We used to wander onto Wheeling Island for a pleasant afternoon.  There’s a casino where you can feed the slot machines for a bit. Then maybe a few minutes at the five dollar blackjack table, and onto late lunch and betting on the brindle and black dogs. 

Now that we are in the rescue world, we don’t bet on the dogs anymore. Greyhounds live a tough life – their only enjoyment comes from those few seconds on the track . But we did have our own “Pataskala Downs” for an exciting few minutes in our fenced in backyard last Sunday morning.

To the Post

Three of our five dogs were hanging out with us on the back deck as we drank our late morning coffee. Jenn and I were on a slow start to the day. It was a late Saturday night of Fourth of July fireworks and libations. Then the fireworks began in the backyard. A bunny, just a teenager, made the mistake of getting inside the fence and sprinting along the back line. And, in a flash, the three dogs were through the deck gate: “they’re off!”

Sunday news on the outdoor TV was quickly left behind as the rabbit made his first circuit around the backyard course.  “Peter” had the agility advantage, taking the corners and u-turns with speed. But our bayou rescue Lou had the flat speed in the straightaways. Keelie, our Aussie mix would catch up at the bends, and our Lab Atticus gamely hung in as the older dog in the mix. 

Peter was desperately searching for any escape path. But, unfortunately for him, when we took on our newest rescue, CeCe, our “Baby Yoda” puppy (lucky for us, she was cooling off inside) we escape-proofed the barriers.  So it was onto lap two, with Lou closing in, almost enough to feel the brush of the cottontail. 

By a Whisker

They almost ended the pursuit in disaster (or success, depending on your point of view) as Peter desperately headed for a corner by our shed. But he managed to scoot through the legs and tails to double back and start lap number three.

Meanwhile the “crowd”, Jenn and I, were making our bets known by shouting “NO!!” at the top of our lungs, and actually entering the race course to somehow intervene. I once was a sprinter, almost half a century ago, but even back then I wouldn’t have been able to join in this chase.  I wandered behind though, for what looked like an inevitable scrum when the rabbit fur flew. 

It was on lap number four that, as Peter’s legs started to fail, he found the only weakness in “Fortress Dahlman”. There was just enough room for a teenaged rabbit with nothing to lose to slip under the back gate – quickly followed by the noses of Lou, Keelie and Atticus as they tracked his scent. But, thank goodness, the crack was too small and the gate held against the pressing dogs.

Win, Place and Show

Lou won by a half a length, with Keelie second and Atticus a close third. Lou paid out 3:1, three dollars on your one dollar bet. And, if you called the trifecta, the finish in order – you’d collect a fifty dollar win. Since CeCe and our eldest, Buddy, failed to make the post, there was no superfecta in this race.

 But the real winner was Peter, whose bunny heart must still be racing as I write this report.  Hopefully he’s learned his fence breeching lesson. Meanwhile – I’m reinforcing the “fort”. 

The Sunday Story Series

• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21
• Dogs and Medals – 8/8/21
• The New Guy – 9/5/21
• Stories of 9-11 – 9/12/21
• The Interview – 9/26/21
• Night Moves – 10/3/21
• Funeral for a Friend – 10/11/21
• National Security – 10/24/21
• Boots on the Trail – 10/31/21
• Taking Care of Mom and Dad – 11/14./21
• Dogs Found and Lost – 11/21/21
• Watching Brian 12/12/21
• Stories from Shiloh – 12/19/21
• Team Trips – 12/26/21
• Uphill, Both Ways  – 1/9/22
• Old Trophies – 1/30/22
• The Last Time – 2/7/22
• Olympic Miracles – 2/13/22
• Mind Numbing – 2/20/22
• Track Weather – 4/3/22
• What’s Missing – 4/11/22
• A Scouting Story – 4/17/22
• Waterproof Paper – 5/8/22
• Origin Stories – 5/22/22
• Origin Stories – Part Two 5/29/22
• Back at State – 6/5/22
• Out in the Country – 6/19/22
• Pataskala Downs – 7/4/22

This is NOT a Sunday story.  It’s actually more of a Sunday “lesson”, in the US Government, and specifically, that odd rule called the “filibuster”.

School House Rock

We Americans think of our government in basic terms.  One Person should equal one vote, and everyone’s vote should be equal to everyone else’s.  We have a representative democracy, a government where the people elect legislators who then vote on proposed laws, called bills.  The majority vote of those legislators “wins”, and they become law.  If you’re old enough to remember “School House Rock”, you know how it all goes.

But we also know that the simple basics aren’t reality.  One person, one vote depends on which election it is, and on whether everyone gets the opportunity to vote.  Legislators do vote on bills, but it’s never as simple as just voting.  There are all sorts of impediments:  rules to get the bill to a vote, committees that determine what is in the bill, even committees to determine what the rules of the debate will be.

And that’s just one House of the US Government.

The Constitution

The Constitution doesn’t say too much about passing bills into law.  While it says that the bill must “pass”, it doesn’t define how that happens. Presumably, passing means a majority vote. And for certain actions,  such as overriding Presidential vetoes, and ratifying treaties, one or both Houses are required to have a two-thirds majority. 

We do know that the Founding Fathers intended different roles for the two Houses of Congress.  The House of Representatives is elected directly by the people, every two years.  They were intended to be “close” to the people, and “hot” with popular ideas. The House, and therefore the people, were also in charge of the finances. All appropriations bills must start there.

The Senate originally was chosen by the State Legislatures, two for each state.  Senate terms were six years long.  Supposedly Washington described the Senate as “…the saucer to cool” the hot ideas of the House.  And the Senate was given power to control foreign affairs and Presidential appointments.

Things have changed since 1787.  The House has become incredibly partisan, driven by gerrymandering that guarantees one party or the other the vast majority of Congressional seats. All 435 seats are up for election every two years, but in reality, only thirty-five or so will be true contests.  For the rest, the contest is in the party primary before the general election, if there’s a contest  at all.

Meanwhile the Senate has become more competitive.  The Seventeenth Amendment mandated Senators are directly voted by the people.  And while states might be partisan one way or another, they aren’t manipulated through gerrymandering to favor a side. So today the Senate tends to be the home of the “hot ideas”, and the House is more controlled by institutionalists. 

Traditional Filibuster

The infamous impediment to passing bills in the Senate is the filibuster.  It’s not in the Constitution, nor in the House of Representatives. It wasn’t even in the original parliamentary rules written for the Senate by then Vice President Thomas Jefferson.  The filibuster arrived after Jefferson became President, and his Vice President, Aaron Burr, was presiding over the Senate.

Jefferson’s rules call for a debate before the final passage vote.  The minority could delay by keeping the debate going.  The winning side then has to have a vote to end the debate, called a “cloture motion”.   (For those familiar with Robert’s Rules of Order, based from Jefferson’s Rules, this is ‘calling the previous question’, and requires a two-thirds vote to pass, end debate, and begin the vote).

Like Robert’s Rules, the Senate originally required  a two-thirds vote to agree to cloture, ending debate and bringing the final vote.  However, the Senate also allowed for a vote to begin when debate ends simply because Senators just stop talking.  So to prevent a vote, Senators must “hold the floor” and continue the debate.  Under Senate rules even a single Senator can hold the floor, as long as she or he remains standing, talking, and doesn’t leave the chamber.  No other Senate business can go on while the “filibusterers” hold the floor.  

A single Senator (Mr. Smith goes to Washington) or a few Senators can hold the floor.  As long as the “other side” can’t muster two-thirds of the Senators to end debate, they can go on as long as physically possible.  The record for a single Senator filibustering:  Strom Thurmond of South Carolina held the floor singly for twenty-four hours and eighteen minutes to stop the 1957 Civil Rights Act. 

Today’s Filibuster

The filibuster changed in the 1970’s, by an agreement made between the two political parties.  First, they reduced the cloture number to sixty Senators (three-fifths) instead of sixty-seven (two-thirds).  Second, before debate on a bill even begins, there is a cloture vote.  If the majority side can’t muster sixty votes, then the bill is “considered” filibustered, and the debate doesn’t even begin.  In exchange for making it “easier” to end the filibuster, the actual act of filibustering, holding the Senate floor, is no longer necessary.  Either the majority has sixty votes, or a bill is done.

So, if we are a democracy, where the majority is supposed to be able to “rule”, why allow thirty-four (originally) or forty (now) to control what bills pass?  Why give the minority control of legislation?

One of the strongest current supporters of the filibuster today is Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia.  He reasons that in our incredibly partisan politics, the existence of the filibuster requires Senators to work together to get legislation.  With only a couple of exemptions from the rule, bills passed in the Senate must be bipartisan, with at least ten votes from the minority party (in our current 50-50 Senate).  So every bill must be negotiated by the majority party with the minority party.

Otherwise, Manchin reasons, the Senatee becomes a tit-for-tat body.  When the majority changes, they will simply undo everything the former majority achieved.  Instead of advancing the national interest, the main focus will be to “take back” what the other side did when they had the majority.  Nothing new will get done.

And inevitably, that “other” party will someday get control of the Senate.  And when they do, the new minority party will want to have the control that the filibuster offers.

Filibuster’s Future

We got a hint of Manchin’s future with the Affordable Care Act. It passed with Democrats alone (a sixty vote majority) in 2010.  With the election of a Republican President in 2016 and Republican control of the House and Senate; they attempted to repeal the ACA seventy times.  The Senate came within one vote of achieving that goal, with Arizona’s John McCain giving his famous “thumbs down” in the middle of the night to save the program.

Senator Manchin’s view does depend on one thing – that the minority party wants to get “something” done. If a determined minority just wants to obstruct all legislation, then his bipartisan negotiations never happen.

Senator Warnock of Georgia wants to end the filibuster. He argues that its main use has been to delay civil rights legislation.  The filibuster has been a tool of segregationists and those who wish to maintain unequal privileges in the United States since the Civil War.  Even today, in that long tradition, many of the bills “filibustered” by the Republicans have been ones that would increase voting and economic opportunities for minorities.

Speaker Pelosi argues that with the Insurrection of January 6^th, and the “clear and present danger” that still threatens our democracy, the Senate must act.  The “gentlemen’s agreement” of the filibuster now stands to protect those that want to alter our form of government, whether in the Senate, on the Supreme Court, in the State Houses or at Mara Lago. They are the threat to our democracy.

The Votes

The bottom line:  the filibuster isn’t in the Constitution, and it isn’t even a “law”.  It’s an agreement in the Senate, a “rule” voted on every two years.  They can repeal it tomorrow.  And that “repeal” wouldn’t require sixty votes; Senate procedural rules pass with a simple majority vote.  If Democrats, including Manchin and Arizona’s Senator Sinema, decided to restrict or remove the filibuster, they could.  And if Republicans get control of the Senate in this November’s election, they can too.

President Joe Biden is a “Man of the Senate”. He served thirty-six years as a Senator and eight more as the Vice President presiding over the body.  He is an institutionalist, and has always supported the filibuster in the past. But this week even he suggested that the rule must be modified to pass laws codifying the principles of Roe v Wade and passing the voting rights acts.

That’s a big step for democracy, and America.  But it’s not possible without fifty votes in the Senate.  And until Manchin and Sinema change their minds, or more Democrats are elected to the Senate, as the line from the musical Hamilton goes, “You ain’t got the votes”.

Our democracy is at risk.  Many are looking to the next Presidential election.  But the 2022 election is just as important.  Who controls the House and more importantly, the Senate, may well decide the fate of our Constitutional “experiment” in government.

Public School Coach

I was a public high school coach for forty years.  Like it or not, I knew the kind of influence I had over my teams.  If I got mad, they got scared. If I “lost my head”, they certainly would lose theirs.  My teams looked to me to understand how to handle both the good and the bad.   And that wasn’t always about winning and losing.  Teammates and coaches died, best friends let us down, our sports were cut.  My job was to help “my kids” deal with the loss, the sadness,  and the disappointment, as well as the joy.  Part of that was to learn to deal with it all myself.

Don’t get me wrong, winning and losing were important, and emotional.  The “highs” of winning were “tight”, all the negatives dropped away from that moment.  And the “lows” of losing were often tempered by the fact we shared them together.  But the “real” life and death situations were soul changing.  I’ve never felt so close to a group of athletes and coaches as I did with a candle in my hand on our track, saying goodbye to a coach, or as we returned from our teamates’ funerals to compete in a meet.

When I wanted to punch the locker room door, I did it when the kids weren’t around.  And when I wanted to drink a toast (or two) to my lost coach, I didn’t do it with my team.  There were things that were appropriate to share with those impressionable young athletes, and there were things that were not.  They were personal.

Kennedy v Bremerton School District

The Christian conservatives on the  United States Supreme Court gave a “wink and a nod” to a public high school coach from the state of Washington this week.  God bless that man, Coach Kennedy. He’s a devout Christian, so devout, that after his team’s football game he felt called to go out onto the field and kneel in prayer.  And he did it as the kids were still on the field, and the crowds were still in the stands.  He believed that he was exercising his First Amendment right to practice his religion in the way he found appropriate, just as professional player Tim Tebow knelt in the end zone after scoring a touchdown.

But there’s a difference between Tebow and Kennedy.  Tim Tebow was a private citizen, employed as a quarterback in the privately owned NFL.  The coach is a public employee, hired to coach a public school football team.  

Until last week, the Supreme Court had a firm standard, set in Engle v Vitale in 1962.  I remember when that case was decided.  Until then, Mrs. Meyers led us Clifton Elementary School second graders in the Lord’s Prayer each morning, right before we stood up and Pledged Allegiance to the flag.  I’m not sure any of us really understood what “pledging allegiance” meant, nor asking for our “trespasses” to be forgiven.  But then, one day, we no longer were saying the Lord’s Prayer, nor were we given an hour of the school day to walk down to the nearby Episcopal Church for Bible study lessons.

Teaching Religion

Mrs. Meyer couldn’t “instruct or lead” us in religious education.  If we wanted that, we should go to Annunciation School, the Catholic elementary just down the road.  That was because Mrs. Meyers was employed by the Cincinnati Public Schools, and the city government didn’t have a place in determining or instructing us in religion.  They could teach us about religion, but they couldn’t help us to practice a religion.

Years later as a social studies teacher I was very aware of that distinction when I taught “world religions”.  We went through all of the tenets of Judaism, Christianity and Islam; Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shintoism.  We talked about what “they” believed, even to the Jewish and Christian and Buddhist kids in the classroom who were the “they”.   One Buddhist parent thanked me for explaining it to his kid.  I guess I got it right, or at least, I was on the “middle path”.

But I did not analyze “right” or “wrong”, what was “fact” and what was “myth”.  I simply stated what the tenets of the faiths were.

The Problem

So what’s so wrong with Coach Kennedy, following his calling out onto the game field, and giving thanks to his Lord for a well-played game?  Nothing – unless his players, his “kids”, interpret that as part of their “team” activities.  Football is a tough sport.  Unlike my beloved Track and Field, where performance is objectively measured in seconds and inches, getting to start in Football is all about the coaches.  It’s their subjective decision.  If you’re fifteen and want to get on the field, then you don’t want to “piss off” the coach.

Every kid knows that.  And so does every athlete who grew up in inter-scholastic sports.  That includes high school football team captain John Roberts, and football and basketball player Bret  Kavanaugh.  Even Justice Samuel Alito ran track.

So when your coach goes on the field, by himself, to pray, he doesn’t have to “order” anyone to join him.  His kids want to follow him, want to be a part of what he does.  And even if they aren’t sure about the whole “praying” thing, they want to be “in good” with coach. They want to be with their buddies, and they want to be in the lineup.  Who wants to  “stand out” as the kid who didn’t go?

His Right, Our Dime

The Supreme Court gave a “wink-wink” to Coach Kennedy.  They agreed that he was just expressing his individual right to his religion.  He could have expressed it in his office, or at his car, or in the dark field after the lights were off and the kids were gone.  There were many nights when I walked the track – alone – not to commune with my maker, but to savor the moment, or lower my blood pressure.  But Kennedy didn’t.  Wink-Wink, he was just talking to his God, in private; under the lights,  with his team, other teams, and  fans in the stand.  And they were talking with him.  A coach is a leader.  And Coach Kennedy was leading all of them in a religious action.

And it was all on the government payroll, essentially “sponsored” by the Bremerton School District.  

In Law School, we learned to take an event, and alter “one thing” to see if we could get the same result.  It was called the “what ifs”.  What if Coach Kennedy had rolled out a prayer rug and bowed to the East in Islamic Prayer?  What if, instead of the Lord’s Prayer, the chant was, “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare, Hare”?  Are his actions still, OK?

Wink-Wink.

Attention

Americans are notorious for a short attention span.  It’s always been that way, even from the founding of the Nation. Five short years after the ratification of the Constitution, when everyone warned of the dangers of partisanship, the Washington Cabinet split into Federalists and Democratic-Republicans.   To put it in the best light – Americans are more interested in looking forward, into the future, than back to the past or even at the present.

Remember Covid?  It’s still here, over 300 Americans dying each day.  But we’ve learned to live with, or ignore, the crisis that shut our Nation down only two years ago.  Sure, there are still masks in the top of the Grandfather clock in the dining room, and there’s still tests in the medicine cabinet.  But Covid no longer controls our lives – until we get it. The pandemic is honored by ignoring it.

And Americans are easily “distracted”.  Think about the last five weeks:  the span from the Uvalde school massacre to today.  Since then, there’s been more shootings, protests, and even legislation passed.  And there’s the “discovery” that our Supreme Court is radically right of the mainstream of the Nation, that the President tried to overthrow the Constitutional process, and our passenger rail system is vulnerable.

Zelenskyy

President Zelenskyy of Ukraine knew that the world would leap to his support when the Russians invaded his nation.  He gave dramatic speeches from the streets of Kyiv, as Ukrainian troops held off the Russian attack in the northern suburbs (remember the eighteen mile convoy, stalled for days along the road?).  American cable news networks went 24/7, some from the borders in Poland and Hungary, some with greater risk from inside Ukraine.

But Zelenskyy also knew that a long, protracted battle would ultimately fade from the front pages.  The network news anchors would go back home, the lead stories would move to the next world “crisis”.  Most importantly, Americans would be distracted, and lose interest in the daily missile strikes and artillery barrages.  

And here we are.  It’s been four months since the Russians smashed across the Ukrainian border like some black and white World War II documentary.  But this attack was in “living color”,  the color of thousands of lives lost.  The estimated “Butcher’s Bill” today:  33,000 Ukrainian troops killed, 25,000 Russian troops killed, as many as 28,000 civilians killed.  But on the smoke filled battlefields, it’s really too soon to know.

Zelenskyy’s forces were able to hold off the first Russian thrusts at the major cities of Kyiv and Kharkiv.  The “vaunted” Russian tank forces were stopped literally in their tracks.  Putin demanded his generals go to front and “fix” the problems.  Eleven of the them were killed, including a Corp Commander and the Chief of Electronic Warfare.  

Russian Strategy  

So Putin changed strategy, from decapitation of the Ukrainian regime, to expanding from the already Russian controlled portions of the nation.  And that’s where we are today, a constant grind of artillery and attacks across a broad swath of Eastern and Southern Ukraine.  The Russians are forcing Ukrainians to defend a long border, and the Ukrainians are making the Russians pay dearly for every foot of Ukrainian soil they take.

Since the early failure to overthrow the regime, Putin’s  strategy also changed to waging war against not just the Ukrainian military, but against the morale of the civilian population.  No one is safe,  even in a shopping mall in Kyiv, more than three hundred miles from the battlefield.  Two Russian missiles slammed into the crowded stores.  Twenty were killed, fifty-nine wounded, and forty more are still missing in the burned out wreckage.

Putin believes that the world will not “step in” as long as he doesn’t use chemical or nuclear weapons.  The European Union and NATO nations increased the sanctions against Russia, causing the Russians to default in their international bond payment of $100 million, the first default since the end of  World War I.   Sweden and Finland are now in NATO.  And the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad (a piece of Russia surrounded by Poland, Lithuania and the Baltic Sea) had fifty percent of its trade cut.

But, for the short term, Putin is willing to accept the economic losses.  His bet is that the famous American attention span will shift away from a protracted fight in Ukraine.  He believes Americans will be more concerned with rising gas prices, the prime “driver” of the American inflationary spike, than the civilian casualties in Kyiv shopping malls or Mariupol theatres.  

Independence Day

It’s coming on the Fourth of July.  There’s a great deal at the local gas station – $4.79 a gallon.  Eleven million Americans are travelling by air in the next few days – even though ticket prices are up, and the number of flights are down.  The cost of toilet paper, chicken, peanut butter (not Jif), and almost everything that gets shipped to the store is up.  There’s a whole lot going on in American life that doesn’t include missiles landing on Ukrainian shopping malls.

But we shouldn’t forget Ukraine, or grow tired of their struggle.  We are celebrating our 246^th year of Independence.  Our obviously flawed democracy is still trying to grow “more perfect”.  But one way to celebrate that independence and honor our own history, is to support another nation’s battle to maintain their national sovereignty.  Ukraine isn’t going away – and neither should we. 

Ukraine Crisis

• Ukrainian Independence – 6/30/22
• No Victory Day – 5/10/22
• Desperate Moves – 4/27/22
• This is the Time – 4/20/22
• The Winning Message – 4/18/22
• Victory Day – 4/12/22
• Chapter Two – 4/11/22
• Zelenskyy’s Choice – 3/31/22
• The Gaffe – 3/28/22
• Putin’s Choice – 3/27/22
• Far Away From the Front – 3/20/22
• The Next Step – 3/17/22
• Thinking the Unthinkable – 3/14/22
• Russian Oil – 3/11/22
• Kyiv’s Choice – 3/8/22
• The Logic of Madness – 3/7/22
• Lights Out – 3/6/22
• Ante Up – 3/3/22
• State of the Union  3/2/22
• The Guns of March 3/1/22
• Sanctions 2/26/22
• What Happens Next 2/24/22
• The Games Begin  2/22/22
• Talking with a Friend 2/18/22
• Trip Wire 2/2/22
• On the Brink 1/23/22
• The Ukrainian Dilemma 12/5/19

Demanding Attention

I tried to write a long explanation about the filibuster, bad and good.  And I need to write about the atrocity of Russian targeting shopping malls in Kyiv with missiles.  I struggle to write about fifty dead in San Antonio, left trapped in the 100 degree heat in a sealed semi-trailer.  Then there’s the public school coach whose religious actions on the field are now “sanctified” by the Supreme Court.   And there’s more to say about Dobbs v Jackson. So, there’s plenty of critical subjects to choose as I stare at the blank page on my computer screen.

But then Chairman Thompson and Vice Chairman Cheney directed my attention back to January 6^th  and the Insurrection.  They held a “surprise” Committee hearing, on twenty-four hours’ notice, with an unnamed witness.  We spent Monday night speculating:  is it Mike Pence, Mark Meadows, John Cipillone?  And then we had the pre-hearing let down.  It was “just” Meadows Executive Assistant. Cassidy Hutchinson, is the twenty-six year old who went from the office of Congressman Steve Scalise to the White House, and literally to the door of the Chief of Staff’s office, only a few feet from the Oval Office.  

The Door-Keeper

But Hutchinson’s testimony was more than compelling.  She was in the mix, with Meadows, Cipillone, and the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, former Secret Service Agent Anthony Ornato.  Not only was she literally positioned in the center of the West Wing of January 6^th, but she was “door-keeper” for Chief of Staff Meadows.  They came to her first, then onto Meadows and ultimately President Trump.

Her testimony stated that the President didn’t just sit silently as the Capitol was attacked.  Trump wanted to lead the assault himself.  He tried to force his Secret Service detail to take him to the Insurrection, and literally attacked his own Protection Detail when they refused to allow it.  Trump knew the crowd was armed, and that the weapons weren’t meant for him, but for Congress.  And with that knowledge, he still sent the crowd to attack the Capitol.  His actions can no longer be seen as negligence. She testified to his intentional incitement of the attack.

Sure, some of her testimony is legally hearsay, evidence inadmissible in a court of law.  But her eye-witness testimony was damning enough, and called out those others who don’t have the courage to come forward.

And her direct testimony indicts Mark Meadows. He sat on the couch, scrolling through his phone, literally as the Capitol was breeched.  Meadows did not see his duty as White House Chief of Staff as any greater than failing to convince the President to act.

Four Prongs of Coup

And, almost unnoticed, Hutchinson testified to a direct connection between Meadows and the “war room” at the Willard Hotel, manned by Roger Stone, Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon.  Stone had direct contact with the armed insurgents who first breeched the Capitol, the Proud Boys.  

The Committee is establishing the four prongs of a coup. The first, is the lie of “Stop the Steal”. Then, they developed the illegal “Constitutional” plan, explained by Eastman, Giuliani and Navarro. There were the pressure campaigns by the former President on the state elective leaders to alter vote counts or recall electors. And then Trump called the mob to Washington for a “wild time”, with connections to the “shock troops”: the Proud Boys, Three Percenters and Oath Keepers, who already were “standing back and standing by”.   All trails lead back to the West Wing, to Mark Meadows, and ultimately to Donald Trump.

No wonder Giuliani, Eastman, and now we know Meadows; asked for blanket pardons from the departing President.

History Rhymes

Hutchinson was not the high profile witness everyone expected.  She was a young, lower level staffer, who happened to be in the center of the storm.  Her role is more like a thirty-five year old assistance White House Counsel named John Dean, who testified to the Watergate Committee, and tied the crimes of Watergate all the way to President Nixon.   That was forty-nine years ago, in a time when America had the patience to sit through a three day statement. 

Today, America has to have information packaged for quick consumption.  The January 6^th Committee put together a tight two-hour package, with video, the testimony of the attractive and compelling young lady, and corroborating evidence from the thousands of hours of video testimony from other witnesses.  They piqued the interest of the media and the Nation with their surprise hearing, and managed to break through all of the other issues that confront America, at least for an afternoon.

The Cover-Up

And, at the end of the session, Congressman Cheney intoned a stern warning to those who still thought they could silence witnesses to the coup.  She displayed the mob-like warnings to witnesses, indirectly threatening them if they failed to be a “team player”.  And Chairman Thompson followed up with the offer of cooperation with witnesses who need to come forward or to “revise” their statements to get to the truth.

Clearly there is a Trump counter-offensive, trying to silence those who know what happened.  And likely, Thompson, Cheney and the Committee realized that two weeks without a message was too long.  It might let the silencers gain too much ground.  

Instead, they blew the top off of the conspiracy to disrupt the Congress, and overturn the election.  Hearsay or not, the pathway to the truth is now illuminated for all to see.  Cipillone, Meadows, and others better stop covering up, and start paying attention.

The January 6^th Essays

• The John Dean Moment
• Sinning and America
• Flashes of Hope
• Don’t Look Back
• For You, Republicans
• On the Tightrope
• A Television Moment

The Journey

No Democrat wants to think about this:  the radicalization of the Republican Party started with election of Barack Obama.  The obvious conclusion is that the “shock” of America electing a Black man President was so great, that it caused a “back lash” in American politics.  It was the beginning of the end of “moderate Republicans”.  And that’s the Democrats “fault” for electing him, I guess.

I’m not accusing every Republican of being a racist. What I am saying is that the radicalization of Republicanism occurred because of racism.  

The “dominos” that fell after 2008 are pretty clear.  The Tea Party Movement rose up to the ideological right of the Republican Party, and the Party leadership wanted their votes.  Tea Partiers were anti-government, anti-tax, anti-immigration, and were highly energized. While they weren’t overtly racist, there were always racist undercurrents.  So Republican leaders began to take on the Tea Party “language” and views.  By 2012 there was a “rift” in the Party, between the mainstream Party members, and the more extreme Tea Party.  Remember, the Republican Party used to be the Party of “big business”, of corporate America.  The Tea Party was not.  They were just as anti-corporate as the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, on the far side of the Democratic mainstream.

Corporate Republicans

Corporate Republicans saw themselves as a Party in the minority.  They began to try to consolidate what power they had, working on the state level through their national Red Map Program. That program used technology to exquisitely draw state political districts in order to maximize Republican power.  And, like the Midnight Judges of John Adams, Republicans made a concerted effort to appoint as many young, ideological judges to state and federal benches as possible, including the United States Supreme Court.

But the schism in the Party all came to a head in aftermath of the Presidential election of 2012.  

The Last Corporate Republican

Mitt Romney was the consummate corporate Republican.  He was the scion of an old Republican family, the son of moderate Republican Michigan Governor George Romney.  Mitt made his financial “bones” as an investment consultant, rising to the top of Bain Capital and becoming a multi-millionaire. He then took on the failing 2002 Winter Olympics, where he created a financial and popular success.  It was the last Olympic Games to finish financially “in the black”.  He then went into the “family business”, and ran for Governor of deep-blue Massachusetts as a Republican. 

He ran a very moderate campaign, and won against a weak Democratic opponent.  And he ran Massachusetts as a moderate; increasing taxes, decreasing spending, and putting the state in a financially positive position. Romney proposed a statewide healthcare program that became the “model” for the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and originally campaigned with a pro-choice position on abortion.  It was in the middle of his tenure as Governor, that he changed to a pro-life position, more in line with his personal religious beliefs as a Mormon.

Romney seemed like an obvious choice to run against Obama in 2012.   And he ran a strong campaign, in the end losing to Obama by only five million votes.  What then looked like a massive defeat, fore-shadowed the elections of 2016 and 2020.  Clinton won the 2016 election by three million votes, but lost to Trump by a slim margin in the Electoral College.  Biden won over Trump in 2020 by seven million votes, but was just barely able to reverse the Electoral College in his favor.  

Autopsy

After the 2012 election, the Republican Party leadership commissioned a study of what went wrong.  The report, nicknamed the “2012 Autopsy” was really called “The Growth and Opportunity Project”, and made recommendations for the Republican Party of the 21^st century.  It included reaching out to younger people, minorities, and women as a way to increase the Party base.

But the “Autopsy” was antithetical to the now powerful primary base of the Republican Party, the original Tea Partiers.  So Republican candidates for office ignored the National Party recommendations, instead “doubling down” on the Tea Party ideals in order to generate primary votes and energy.  And for those Republicans, it worked.  The Freedom Caucus of the US House of Representatives grew to represent those Tea Party views in the Congress, and while the structure of the Tea Party faded away, their ideals became a strong minority view in the Republican structure.

Trump versus the Report

We can argue about the political “acumen” of Donald Trump.  But one thing is clear:  he made the political choice to campaign to the “Tea Party” in the Republican primaries in 2016. And it worked.  Trump never won a majority of votes in a Primary until very late in the process.  But he was able to win the plurality of many state elections by consolidating and expanding the “Tea Partiers”.  The more mainstream candidates were left far behind.  Jeb Bush and John Kasich are the obvious examples, the corporate Republican flag-bearers whose campaigns never caught on.

Instead of expanding the Republican base, Trump determined to maximize the existing base.  In fact, he played a “Democrat like” game.  Democrats win elections by getting folks to turn out.  Base to Base, if Democrats turn out, they win.  But Trump so energizing his base that, even though they were smaller than the Democratic base, they turned out in droves to vote for him.  

And, like the primaries, it was just enough to win, not the popular vote, but the electoral vote.  For a non-politician, Trump ran one of the shrewdest campaigns in American history.  In poker terms, he played to the inside straight – and won.

Commitment

With the election of Donald Trump, the old “Tea Partiers” had a new banner.  They were now “Trumpers”, red-hatted “MAGA” supporters.  And the corporate Republicans had to make their way over to the more extreme views of what now was the majority of the Republican Party.  It doesn’t really matter whether Lindsey Graham or Mitch McConnell or JD Vance (2022 Senate candidate in Ohio) really believe “in their heart”  Trump Republicanism.  As long as they publicly act as “Trump Republicans”, they can maintain the now Trump base.  

Which leads us to today.

On the Boat

The Republican Party is dominated by Trumpism, even if not Trump himself.  And the old corporate Republicans have structured many states so that even if the Republicans aren’t a majority, they can still control a majority of the political positions in state government.  The forced union of those two:  the Red Map success and Trumpism, has pushed more than half of the states in the Union far to the right of the political spectrum.  To maintain political power, the Republican Party is committed to the “old” ideals of the “Tea Party”, including the founding racism.

American citizens are now faced with a choice.  The Republican Party of their fathers (my father too) is long gone.  It is now the Party of Trump.  The Democratic Party still has moderate and progressive wings, but the pressure is on to react as the mirror opposite to Trumpism.  That empowers the progressive wing with the base, but it also increases the immense political schism in American life.  

Moderate Democrats, like President Biden, seem like a man boarding a boat.  One foot is on the dock, one foot in the boat, and it’s leaving.  While they can try to pull the boat back to the dock with their legs, the currents of American political life may be too strong for moderation.  And that may leave them with a choice – get on the boat, or get left on the dock.

1969

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”.   Neil Armstrong made that remarkable statement as he stepped off the ladder of the Lunar Lander, and for the first time put a human footprint on the moon’s surface.  It was 1969.  I was twelve, watching the grainy black and white video along with millions sitting in their homes.  We were  awed by the first live broadcast from another body in space.  

In those years in the United States, a woman’s ability to get reproductive care, including abortions, depended on where they lived.  In New York, California, Connecticut; a woman could access care, including abortions. But across state borders, in Ohio, Arizona, or almost any state south of the Mason-Dixon line; that same care was a felony, punishable by imprisonment.

Abortionist

That year my family went on our traditional vacation to an island on the Great Lakes in Canada.  We went to the same “tourist” store we always visited, to buy moccasins and Hudson Bay blankets, Viyella flannel shirts and McIntosh’s toffee.  My London-born Mom talked to the woman who ran the store.  She was also from England, and they had all sorts of conversations about their homeland. 

But there was always a distance from her husband, the owner of the store.  Rumor had it that he was an American who fled to Canada, because he was an illegal abortionist.  As a young teenager I’m not even sure I  fully understood what an abortionist did, but it seemed to be a bad, even dirty, thing to be. (Full disclosure –I recently did more research into that store owner – he passed away two years ago at 100 years of age.  He was a born Canadian, a World War II veteran, and a noted entrepreneur who did everything from building boats to flying a plane.  He was not an “abortionist”.  Isn’t that always the way with “rumors”).

1973

In 1973 a lot of those terms “went away”.  Illegal “abortionists”, rumored or true, were no longer applicable.  Women could access the health care they needed, including abortions, as a fundamental right under the Constitution, in every state in the Union.  The Supreme Court of the United States, in a 7-2 decision, found that the Constitution guaranteed a woman’s right to determine what happens to her own body, at least until the time that an unborn fetus could survive birth.  The Court, took a huge step forward for “human-kind” rather than just men.

Over the years that right was re-affirmed by the Court again and again.  The same legal logic that led to recognizing a personal right in the Constitution was extended to gay men and women, and to the transgendered.  It’s been almost half a century of expanding the rights of individuals to make their own choices on the most intimate issues in their lives, who they love, and what happens to their own bodies. 

2022

Friday that right was stripped away. Six Justices joined the decision overturning Roe v Wade.  America took a “giant step backwards for humankind”, and one step closer to a nation where a single religious or political view determines what Americans can do.

We are a nation divided, somehow travelling in two opposite directions at the same time.  In the last decade, we recognized the hidden toll many women were paying in their jobs and their lives.  The “Me Too” movement outed the discrimination and sexual violence many were forced to accept as “part of life or business”.  And the hidden sexism and racism of many of our most important institutions and businesses were revealed and confronted.  

Our Nation recognized that while gender may “look” binary, it is in fact a spectrum of views. Our kids get it:  they take individuals as they are, not forcing them into a “square or circle” world.  It doesn’t matter to them.  The important thing is to be allowed to be your authentic self, and live a fulfilling life.  We accepted gay marriage, and allowed the transgendered to come out from the shadows.

Inherent Right

And all of that is based on that “inherent right” of the Constitution, that calls on the Nation to allow human authenticity.  Unlike the Second Amendment, “the right to bear arms shall not be infringed”, there is no black and white “right to personhood”.  But there are a series of amendments that reference that fundamental privilege:  the Fourth Amendment right to be “…secure in their person…”, the Tenth Amendment reserving powers not delegated to go “…to the people”, the Fourteenth Amendment preventing states from “…abridging the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.”

But that’s all under threat today.  The logic of Friday’s Supreme Court majority doesn’t just ignore an inherent right for a woman to control her body.  It denies the existence of that inherent right at all.  Sure, the author of the opinion, Justice Alito, promises that this re-interpretation will stop at abortion, at the Roe decision.  But believing that is like believing Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh when they promised the Senate that they would respect, “the long established precedent of Roe v Wade”.  They didn’t, and there is no reason to believe that this Court won’t continue on to strip Americans of their right to be, themselves.

Justice Thomas in a concurring opinion, laid at all out in the open.  If the  “inherent right” doesn’t work in Roe, then it won’t work in Griswold (banning the states from regulating contraception), or Obergefell (legalizing gay marriage), or Lawrence (prohibited bans on gay sex).  And while Justice Thomas failed to mention it for his own personal reason, perhaps even Loving (prevented states from banning inter-racial marriage).

What Does it Take?

If stripping women of their right to determine what happens to their bodies and their lives isn’t already enough motivation to do “something”, then the resulting domino effect must be.

After World War II, German Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemoller wrote:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

What Now?

This Court is coming for American rights.  They are single-handedly trying to take us back to a time before humans walked on the moon, and before we recognized true equality in everyone.  We can all be angered by how this Court came about, the product of twenty years of careful planning and political shenanigans and deceit.  But all of that is “under the bridge” now.  They are on the bench, and in the saddle.

What can we do?  The Supreme Court acted against the inherent right to “personhood”.  But there is an alternative – Federal law.  Congress took a “pass” on these difficult issues of abortion and LGBTQ rights.  It made political sense – the un-elected Justices of the Supreme Court with lifetime appointments took the “heat” for those tough decisions, why should the elected politicians in the Congress intervene?  

Congressional Answer

Congress could write Roe and Griswold, Lawrence, Loving and Obergefell into Federal law, just as they wrote the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965.  All that is required is the will, and the majority, to get the job done.  

We aren’t used to Congress taking such political risks.  Think of the “gun control” decision just passed – a decision that did nothing to control guns, but did manage to put some reasonable safety measures on who can purchase them.  That was a “miracle” of bipartisanship, and an all-round good thing.  But it wasn’t all that much.

Or Congress could add four Justices to the Court, making it a 7 to 6 majority of “liberal” Justices.  

And, of course, a Congress dominated by Republicans could do the exact opposite – and make all of these rights against Federal law.  Don’t miss this:  the pro-life movement won a huge battle yesterday.  But they aren’t done – they want a nationwide ban of abortions, red states and blue.  If they could do it federally, they would.  Sure, a Democratic President would veto – as long as there’s a Democratic President.  And if they can’t do it federally, then they will try to do so state-by-state.

War for America

We lost the battle to protect Roe when Donald Trump became President.  His avowed goal was to appoint pro-birth Justices.  And, through fate and Mitch McConnell, he got the opportunity to change the Court and appoint three.  So here we are. 

“First they came for abortion rights, and I did not speak out, because I wasn’t a woman…”

If we wait for “our” turn – it will be too late.

The late Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave us the charge:

 “Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.” 

It’s time to fight.  Fight for Congress,  fight for the Presidency,  fight for America. The majority of Americans do not want the future this Supreme Court offers. All we need to do – is vote.

Mortal Sins

I’m not Catholic, but I’m not that far from it.  Mom was Roman Catholic, born of an Irish father and Scottish mother in England,  and into the faith.  During World War II she married my father, an American soldier of the Jewish persuasion.  Mom’s parish priest demanded that she guarantee that any offspring from the union be raised Catholic.  But that’s not what she and Dad agreed upon.  Mom’s story is that the priest showed up at a wedding party at her house to notify her of ex-communication:  forbidding her from the sacraments of the church.  My grandfather asked him to leave – with a punch in the nose.

While Dad didn’t want us kids to be Catholic, he didn’t go much beyond that.  So we were raised in the American Episcopal Church, just a few short theological steps from Roman Catholicism.  And while I’m not practicing anything now, the prayers and traditions of my childhood still echo in my memory.

So I know all about venial sins, and mortal sins.

Defining Sin  

For those who are unfamiliar with the Catholic Church, there are degrees of how bad a sin can be.  A venial sin is kind of minor, like a “white lie”.  If you were to die without having received forgiveness and absolution for venial sins, your immortal soul is not at risk.  In fact, it is likely that you will die with venial sins, and if you are unable to receive the “last rites” of the Church, you will spend time in Purgatory to “pay” for those sins.

On the other hand, mortal sins are those for which there can be no recovery, without God’s forgiveness and absolution.  If you were to die with an unforgiven mortal sin “on” your soul, you risk eternal damnation to Hell.  

Mom’s “sin”, not agreeing to raise us three kids in the Roman Catholic Church, was so grave, so “mortal”, that she was stricken from receiving the Holy Sacraments or Confession.  She could not gain forgiveness for her actions, unless she repented and brought us “up” in the Church.  Her soul was in “mortal” danger of eternal damnation.  

Thank goodness the Episcopal Church doesn’t believe in quite all that.  So Mom’s soul, might not be in Catholic heaven, but may be down the block in an Episcopal version.  I hope they still serve gin and tonics at cocktail hour, and wine at dinner.

American Sinners

So what are the “sins” politicians face here in the United States?  For what can they be forever “damned” from getting votes, and what actions can be somehow “forgiven” by the electorate?  In short, what are venial political sins, and what are mortal sins, from which there is no recovery?

It used to be that if a politician was divorced, that became a “mortal” sin, making them unelectable.  It was kind of “moral” test in America – it wasn’t until Ronald Reagan was elected President that a “divorcee” gained the office.  That didn’t mean that Presidents had to be “monogamous”.  Let’s see:  in the twentieth century alone Harding, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and of course, Bill Clinton all had affairs; some right in the White House.  I guess those were “venial” sins.

Nixon’s Sin

When Nixon was caught, on tape, leading the conspiracy to coverup the Watergate break-ins, even the leaders of his own party decided that was beyond forgivable.  They saw no need to carry out impeachment; the threat was enough to get Nixon’s resignation.  And as a “Christian” nation, the next President carried out the act of absolution, pardoning Nixon for any crime he might have committed.  But while Nixon was pardoned, he was never really forgiven.  He spent the rest of his life as the only President to resign, a disgraced figure.

But Bill Clinton got caught.  And he got caught with a twenty-one year old intern, hardly an “even” relationship.  So some in Congress determined that this sin was now mortal, and must be punished with impeachment and removal.  The problem was, many of those attacking Clinton lived in “glass houses”.  They had their own mortal sins to keep covered.  The House impeached him, but the Senate refused to convict.  After Clinton left office, he was “rehabilitated” into a “senior statesman”.  

I always thought that Clinton’s “sin” was bad enough that he ought to resign.  While I didn’t think his private behavior was impeachable at the time, I did think that he disgraced the office.  And on a more practical level, Clinton staying in office meant that someone else would pay the price for his transgressions.  That fell to Al Gore, who had to run for President in 2000 with the “status” of Clinton’s sin still unresolved.  In short Clinton stayed, and the price was George W Bush for eight years.  

A Living Sinner

Which brings us to Donald Trump.  We know he committed sexual transgressions before he ran for the Presidency.  Those, I guess, were venial sins, even if the whole going into the dressing rooms of Miss Teen America, the Access Hollywood tape, and getting spanked by a porn star were more than creepy.  We know that he was a “shady” real estate guy, always slanting the deal.  America determined that, like used car dealers, that was “just” part of the job, venial at worst.  

And we know that his campaign was ugly, starting from the “…drug dealers and rapists coming across the border,” at the bottom of the golden escalator.   But clearly his statements for many were just “plain speaking”, as if he were some kind of modern-day Lincoln.   In short, Trump was granted “electoral absolution” for all of his sins, venial or mortal, before his first election.  

Presidential Sins

And America could not reach a consensus on Trump throughout his Presidency.  He tried to ban Muslims from entering the country, he had children ripped from their parents arms at the border, he talked about “fine people on both sides” of Charlottesville.  All of those felt like “mortal sins” to one side of the nation, and were, at worst, venial sins to the other side.  Many thought those were all “good ideas”, even if ugly, or racist, or un-American.

Then there was the first impeachment, when the President, Trump, tried to leverage the power (and money) of the United State to get another nation’s leader, Zelenskyy, to investigate a political opponent, Biden.  Surely that was a mortal sin.  If not eternal damnation, at least impeachment and conviction were in order. 

But our nation is so polarized, so divided, so “loyal” to our “tribes”, that we are willing to accept the mortal sins of our side’s leader, rather than give-way to the other side.  So Trump was not convicted, and doubled-down on his sins after the trial.  He went on the “revenge tour”, cleansing the executive branch of anyone with questionable loyalty, to him.

Ultimate Sin

All leading to the election of 2020.

I am not going to relitigate what happened in 2020.  We can all do that together, watching the January 6^th Committee hearings.  We are seeing a series of Republicans, many Trump appointees, who in the weeks after the election stood up against Trump and for the Constitutional process.  They watched Trump commit the ultimate political moral sin; attacking the Constitution itself.  He threatened the very foundations of our Democracy.

And yet some, even after acknowledging that Trump committed those “mortal” sins, still say they would vote for him again.  Conservative Republican leaders like Rusty Bowers of Arizona, stood up against Trump. He held the line of the Arizona election results, and was attacked and suffered for his stand –but still says he would vote for Trump again.

I don’t get it.  I called for Bill Clinton to resign in 1998.  My membership in his “tribe” didn’t not grant absolution from any wrong.  Rusty Bowers, Mitch McConnell, say they don’t want Trump to be the nominee in 2024, but they would vote for him if he was.

There is no limit to the sins they will accept. If subverting the US Constitution, threatening our two-hundred and forty-six year experiment in Democracy, isn’t sinful enough, what is?   It must be that the alternative, “my tribe”, is so evil, awful, terrible; that any level of sin is acceptable except for one: being a Democrat. 

.

Democrat from Birth

I am a Democrat.  I have been a Democrat since I can remember, a Kennedy Button on my blue sweater in the 1960 campaign when I was four. My first career was as a Democrat, a “campaign operative”, plotting where to put yard signs and targeting door-to-door before I had my driver’s license.  I worked for Democratic Judge campaigns, City Council, State Representative, Congressional campaigns, and even in a winning Presidential Campaign. 

Then I found my “joy” in teaching.  As a teacher I kept most of my politics to myself. It wasn’t my goal to create “new” Democrats from my classroom.  And for those who wonder if I was trying to “indoctrinate” kids – I was.  I was trying to indoctrinate them in the “magic” of the American experience, and the “wonder” of the flawed men who created the Constitution.  I taught America’s failings as well, but based my teaching on Madison’s words in the Preamble:  to become a “More Perfect Union”.  My goal was for my students to become part of the “perfecting”.  

But I didn’t try to make them Democrats or Republicans:  just Americans. 

American First 

As a Democrat I lived the “highs” of Carter’s victory (I was part of that) in 1976, and the failures of Mondale and Dukakis.  I wasn’t a great Bill Clinton fan (Republican-lite) but was glad he won.  I suffered through the 2000 election, watching the fate of the nation decided by a hanging chad in Palm Beach.  And I swallowed my anger, and followed my candidate Al Gore when he said it was time to unite behind a new President, George Bush.  

I was an American, united, as Air Force One flew singly across the nation on the evening of 9/11.  George Bush was “my” President when he stood on the wreckage of the World Trade Center.  And even though I opposed many (most?) of the actions Bush took, and I worked for John Kerry in 2004, I “survived” the long eight years of the Bush Administration (thank goodness for The West Wing).

I never found a visceral anger against Republicans.  When it came time to pass levies, I stood beside the Republican County Chairman (a former student) as we campaigned to support the schools.  We had friendly disagreements about a lot, but we could unite in a common cause (and a pint of beer).

A Dark, Indefinite Shore

I found, along with many Americans, the future arrived early, when Barack Obama ran for President.  What was predicted to be something on the distant “dark, indefinite shore” of the mid-21^st century, was right now, today.  America was jumping with both feet into the new world, electing a Black man as President of the United States.  Even Republican candidate John McCain, in the agony of his defeat, recognized the power of the moment:

A century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt’s invitation of Booker T. Washington to visit — to dine at the White House — was taken as an outrage in many quarters. America today is a world away from the cruel and prideful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the election of an African-American to the presidency of the United States. Let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on Earth. 

But America was not going to jump without a struggle.  Somewhere in the Obama eight years, it stopped being about ideas and political philosophy, and became a battle to maintain power. As a Democrat, it became harder to “respect” Republicans who simply wanted for the President to fail, ignoring the fate of the nation.  Mitch McConnell’s singular mission, regardless of precedents or the “norms”, was to defeat Barack Obama.

The Resistance

I could have lived with Mitt Romney in 2012, but was happy the President was re-elected.

I don’t blame President Obama, but his election became the focal point of American division.  Somewhere in that second term of his Presidency, our national divisions became so great that it was difficult to think of the “common cause” of all Americans.  A pint of beer wasn’t enough to overcome the anger.  And with the election of Donald Trump, a wedge was driven straight through the body politic of American life.

I struggled to understand how anyone could vote for Trump, much less millions.  To me, “the Resistance” became a part of my daily routine (I’ve got over a million words to prove it).  The anger became visceral; I saw the Republican Party enabling the “de-perfecting” of America.

I hoped the election of the “Great Consoler” Joe Biden would start to repair that division. And I believe that was Biden’s goal from the beginning, and still is.  But, so far, that’s not to be.  The American political chasm is absolutely visible, from the “$#&! Biden” Flag flying down the street, to the national acceptance of three hundred dying from Covid, and over hundred more gunned down, each day.

Common Cause

It should be no surprise to anyone who knows me, that I have watched with rapt attention the January 6^thCommittee hearings.  They are laying out the case to indict a former President, and they are documenting for the future the crimes of 2020.  But there is also an unexpected outcome.

Many of the witnesses are Republicans.  Of course they are, it was the Republicans who were up to their neck in the “Stop the Steal” nonsense that almost overturned our Nation.  But many of those witnesses are Republicans who stood up against the “Stop the Steal” crimes; who refused to break their oaths even at the behest of the President.  And listening to those men and women, I am reminded of something.

We don’t agree politically on – well – anything.  But we do have a “common cause”, in our own way:  the “more perfect Union”.  And while I still struggle with how some of those same Republicans enabled Donald Trump to the Presidency, I can see that not every Republican has lost their way.  There are still some with honor, with a clear view of right and wrong.  And with them, I can still have common cause.  There are some flashes of hope, on that distant, dark and indefinite shore.