Category: Uncategorized

The Trial

The Senate Trial of former President Donald Trump is over.  Some Democrats take solace in the seven Republicans who voted to convict.  Many of the other Republicans who voted to acquit immediately condemned Trump’s actions. They claimed a technical Constitutional interpretation prevented them from assigning guilt.  And several Republicans Senators, sworn jurors in the trial, took great pleasure in flaunting their assistance to the Defense team.

The Trump attorneys, as poorly as their “My Cousin Vinnie” defense performed, hit the nail on the head. They said  “a win is a win”.  Donald Trump, the first President to be impeached twice, remains acquitted twice as well.  

Kick the Can

There may be other venues to apportion Trump’s blame for the Insurrection of January 6^th.  The Justice Department may look at his actions. But that’s a “no-win” situation, playing straight into the Trump narrative of “witch-hunt” and persecution. Georgia authorities are examining Trump’s recorded call to the Georgia Secretary of State.  And there’s plenty of other Courts who are likely to have Trump as a defendant. The District Attorney of Manhattan’s jurisdiction has been preparing for years.

Trump’s impact on our politics is not over.  By acquitting him, the Senate has “kicked that can” down the road, regardless of the damning speeches delivered after.  His influence over “his voters” will continue. He many no longer have the “weight” of seventy-four million votes behind him.  After the Insurrection, and as he’s out of office, it’s likely that he still influences millions, but not those millions. 

Trumpism Lives

The battle symbolized by Trump will continue:  the growing authoritarianism, the racial divisions inspiring hate, and the silos of “facts” that cannot be reconciled.  And America is faced with an ultimate fact that cannot be ignored.  In a score of years White people will no longer be in the majority.  The growing pressure of that undeniable event influences all of our political interactions.

And all of those factors will still be here, Trump or no.  Trump may want to pick up the mantle of leadership again. Or he may pass it on to his children, or allows others (Hawley, Cruz, Graham) to grasp it.  But the struggle the Senate trial symbolized is not resolved.  America still needs to confront the forces that drove the Insurrection, and until we do, they will hang like a Damocletian sword over everything else.

Moving On

America is confronted with more important crises:  COVID, racial inequity, economic disparity, and climate change.  Joe Biden is relentlessly moving ahead.  The “progressive” worry, that Biden will be too driven to compromise, is proving to be unfounded – at least so far.  Sure Biden is talking to Republicans, but meanwhile, the COVID package is moving through the House of Representatives as a “budget reconciliation” item.  Should the Senate need to pass COVID without Republican support, they have the fifty votes plus the tie-breaker to do it.

But it is time to move on.  Trumpism will be in the background, rearing its head especially in the Republican primaries of 2022 and 2024.  But Donald Trump’s record is that unless his name is on the ticket, he doesn’t help so much in the general election.  In 2018, and even in 2020, his name brought out voters. It helped the “down-ticket” ballot, but even in 2020 it wasn’t enough to help him.  

Return to Normalcy

Joe Biden made promises to America.  One of those was to “return to normalcy”, to a time when we weren’t worried about the next “Presidential Tweet” establishing US Government policy.  A time when “normal people” didn’t check their phone – first thing – to see what the next crisis would be. 

 To return to when we could have reasonable expectations for the conduct of our leaders.  Biden has already passed one such test.  When one of his staff ended up in a scandal, and tried to abuse his authority, the White House immediately suspended him and ultimately the staff member resigned.  A far cry from the way scandals were handled in the Trump White House.

It’s time to leave Donald Trump behind.  That doesn’t mean forget the Insurrection (and his role in it), but it’s time that the future take precedence over the past.  Have a “9-11” style commission, let the Justice Department and the Courts do their thing, but the Nation needs to focus on our future.   And the future is a man of our past – Joe Biden.

This is another in the “Sunday Story” Series. There’s nothing “political” here – no great moral outcome or outrage. Just a story about ritual – and me.

Schedules

Many of my classes at Denison University in the 1970’s had “high stakes” testing.  Two written exams; one in the middle (mid-terms) and one in the end (finals) made up the entire grade for four months work.  There was no room for error, for having a “bad day” or failing to prepare.  Blow the mid-term, and there really was no coming back.  Blow the final, and you wouldn’t even know until you left campus and arrived home.

So studying for exams was serious business.  The week before exams there was always a “pattern”:  starting with re-reading underlined texts ( there were highlighters back then, but I didn’t use them).  Then it was onto the pads of notes.  I’m left-handed, so Spiral Notebooks were never my friend.  The spiral always got in the way.  And since for most of my college career I anticipated going to Law School,  “legal pads” were absolutely necessary for note taking. 

Before exams ever began, I wrote a “schedule”.  How many days until the first exam (we had a “study week”), how much time between each test, how much effort I needed to make for each class.  There was an organized process, that paced me through to the last exam on the last day, before I loaded the Volkswagen and headed out.  For those who coached with me over the years, they know – there’s always a schedule.  That started early.

Pancakes and Pennies

I’d study until the night before an exam, going so far as to write “sample essays” of the possible exam questions.  But at some point, usually past midnight of the day of the exam, we headed to I-Hop (International House of Pancakes) in Newark for a late-night breakfast. I put all the study materials away.  When I was done studying, I was done – there was no “cramming” at the last second to confuse and distract me.

But there was one last ritual to perform, to symbolize the completed preparation.  I  lived in Crawford Hall at Denison, farthest to the East from the Academic Quad.  The walk to the main quad passed in front of Swasey Chapel, and in front of the Chapel was a sundial.  That exam-eve night, after returning from I-Hop, my friend Tony and I would stand at the sundial, and throw pennies off the hill and into the darkness, chanting Julius Caesar’s ancient invocation as he crossed the Rubicon:  “Alea Iacta Est”.  We studied, we prepared, there is nothing more to do:  the die was cast.

The Die is Cast

That ritual always served me well on those exams.  I went into the tests confident, and prepared, and other than trying to keep my handwriting legible in the “Blue Books” full of answers, I  did well. (As a career teacher, I am glad that my recent students could take exams by typing rather than writing – I feel badly for the professors who had to decipher my scrawl).

Later as a Coach, “Alea Iacta Est” became important in my strategy.  When training track and field athletes, there is a tendency to try to do “one more thing”, one more workout, one more vault, one more throw.  It was important to know when to stop, when that next interval or attempt wasn’t worth it.  “Ending on a good one” was important mentally, but ending before an athlete was exhausted was critical.  That was even truer at the end of the season.  Rest became more important than effort – but the pressure to do “one more thing” was intense.  “Alea Iacta Est”– or as I learned in rural Pataskala when I first arrived – “the hay is in the barn”. 

Sprinter’s Mind

As an athlete I had personal “rituals”.  My first really competitive sport was swimming – with all it built in customs.  “Shaving down” for the big meet seemed like such a good idea, slipping through the water like a shark:  until it became a “blood-letting” like the shower scene from Psycho.  I determined I needed the red blood cells more than the “mental edge”.  But being clean and shaven (at least my face) before the meet, any meet, became a ritual for me, in swimming, wrestling and onto my track career as an athlete and coach.  

As a track athlete I had the “sprinter’s mind” of always being warm.  I was a two sweat-suit guy, even on the hot days.  I was usually soaked through before I ever got in the blocks.  But as a coach I envied my peers who wore track warmups to their meets.  I did that a couple of times and we had horrible team performances, so sweats were out for me.  Shoes weren’t that important, on bad weather days boots were just fine, and getting a “Teva Tan” from sandals at the summer meets was great.  But there was the base:  either blue jeans or khaki shorts and the coaching shirt.  For really, really hot meets I might switch to a team t-shirt, but that damn black coaching shirt was always in my bag.  When the pressure was on and the big races up, it went back on.

Damn Shirts

I finally retired that shirt after the 2016 track season, replaced with a different one – but it looked just like the old one.  That one became “that damn shirt” for 2017.  It’s still hanging in the closet, a lingering reminder of coaching the “black and gold”.

And speaking of shirts – never, ever, no matter how “sure a thing” it might be – order championship T-Shirts in advance of winning the championship.  It took a rival team in the Ohio Capital Conference to prove that was a bad idea.  They were so sure of themselves:  they wore their new 2009 Team Championship camouflage shirts to the prelims of the 2009 Championship meet.  My kids noticed, and some words were spoken between the teams and even my team and their coaches.  I put a stop to that – but don’t think I didn’t use that shirt as a motivator for the finals.  We won the Conference by almost fifty points.  I don’t know what our competitors did with those red, white and yellow camo shirts.

Location-Location-Location

I’m not obsessive compulsive – at least not too much.  But as any team I’ve coached will tell you – I have a spot.  There’s a spot for the team camp, a place for our team warmup, even a spot where  I want to stand to watch the pole vault or yell “ARRRRRMMMS” for the 4×400.  At Heath we camp on the high jump end just beside the visitor bleachers.  At Wheeling it’s on the fence at the back-stretch, and at home, it’s across from the south long jump pit.  

And me – I want to be at the events I directly coach – or on the backstretch.  Always on the backstretch – I can yell, I can talk, and occasionally even swear, without being in the middle of a crowd.   

But the ritual that prepares me best for coaching (or officiating these days) is “the walk around”.  Sometime after we arrived at the track, I’d “take ownership”.  I would walk around the track, looking at field event areas and exchange zone colors; checking how the timing system was set up and where the clerking area was.  I’d learn the place, and organize in my mind how the meet was going to go.

Saying Goodbye

It didn’t always work, but the ritual got me ready.  And that last year in cross country at State, and a few years later at the Regional in track, I also took a moment to take it in.  I did a mental check, making sure that it was “OK” for me to go.  I remember standing at Scioto Downs by the south gate, looking across the infield, knowing I was going to retire.   I waited for the onset of “panic” that would let me know: I couldn’t go through with it and resign. But there was no panic.  I was so confident in what Coach Jarvis would do, the program would only get better.  That’s how I knew I was ready.  And John has proven me right.

One Job

So Friday was for the defense in the Senate Trial of Donald Trump.   

I hate those guys.  I know they are lawyers, hired to do one thing:  get their client acquitted.  And I know that as defense lawyers, even in this Senate “impeachment” environment, the burden of proof is on the prosecution, the House Managers.  But there are three terms that characterize their Defense:  specious legal arguments, continuing Trump’s lies, and my least favorite term of all, “what-about-ism”.  

Dead Horse

In any “regular” court, the defense would normally call for a summary dismissal of a case.  They’d do it at the beginning of the trial, trying to find jurisdictional or legal grounds that disqualify the prosecution.  And they’d do it again after the prosecution rested their case, claiming that the necessary burdens of proof were not reached.  But once the judge ruled on those motions for dismissal, then the defense would drop it, and move on.  In fact, if the defense continued to try to press their dismissal claim, the judge might well hold them in contempt.

But the first leading argument of the Trump defense team is that the entire hearing is unconstitutional.  Their claim is that the Senate has no standing to try a “former” President.  But the Constitution expressly makes one thing clear:  The Senate is the sole decider on trials for impeachment.  And the Senate voted, twice, that the trial of Donald Trump was in fact Constitutional.  Just as if a judge ruled in a trial, the decision was made, the question “asked and answered”.  There is no appeal.

So why do the Trump lawyers continue to “beat this dead horse”?  It’s simple math, adding up to the number thirty-four.  They need to give at least thirty-four Republican Senators “cover” to vote for acquittal.  The evidence, in spite of the defense attorneys’ attacks, is absolutely condemning of the President’s actions.  The Republican Senators don’t won’t to be pressed into deciding on that basis – so the faux Constitutional argument gives them a “fig leaf” to hide behind.

But in full fairness, the lawyers have one job to do – defend the President. 

Alternative Facts

What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?  There’s one thing we have learned from the Era of Donald Trump:  repetition of a lie over and over again does not make it true.  There really is no such thing as “alternative facts”.  But the Trump attorneys felt duty-bound to continue the lies:  that Trump was for “law and order”, that Democrats want to “defund the police” and “burn down the cities”.  That the President of the United States has a “free speech right” such that he can incite a mob.  

But we also know that while the whole nation, and much of the world is watching, the Trump attorneys are speaking to thirty-five people:  thirty-four Republican Senators and one former President living in Florida, who may or may not pay their bills.

What-About-Ism

The new-speak term of art is “what-about-ism”.  It is a debate tactic:  rather than discuss the actual focus of the debate, the actions of the President of the United States leading up to and on January 6^th:  talk about something else.  “What about” something that Nancy Pelosi, or Joe Biden, or that demon of all demons, Maxine Waters said.  From that comes the false equivalency.  If they can say what they said, then Donald Trump was legal and justified to say and do what he said up to and on January 6^th.  That’s a “false equivalency” (another new-speak term).  None of the named sources, or Johnny Depp or Madonna (or even Robert DeNiro) were in front of a mob ready to follow their leader to save his “stolen election”.  If Joe Biden did take Donald Trump behind the gym and punch him, it wouldn’t rise to the level of insurrection, or impeachment.  It would be at best an assault, and looking at the two, Trump would get his ass beat.

And even if all of those things were “equivalent”, it doesn’t matter.  If we are all driving at eighty miles an hour, we are all breaking the law.  The fact that only one of us gets pulled over doesn’t make the ticket any less.  “What-About” means everyone is guilty, not that one is “made” innocent.

Have a Question

Then onto the “lightening round”.  Senators ask questions of the House Managers or the Defense Lawyers or both, and they answer the questions.  Some of the questions are “setups”, patsy questions for one side or the other to “hit out of the park”.  And some are serious, the Senators who seem to have real concerns.  And out of those questions we have come down to the one critical issue that might actually change some minds in the thirty-four decisive Senators.

No one is seriously questioning the base House premise:  that Donald Trump incited the mob.  But what seems to be a more significant issue for the Senators is what did the President do while the mob was in the Capitol.  Utah’s Mike Lee foreshadowed this debate when he threw a fit about a House Manager quoting him in a phone call from Trump as the mob reached the Senate chamber.  “I am the only witness to that call,” Lee shouted, “and they have it wrong.”  The call was on Lee’s phone, but it was Trump for Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville.  And the rookie Senator stands by his own statement: The President called to have him delay the vote on certification. Tuberville told the President that the Vice President was being hustled away by the Secret Service.

What does that matter?  It is the definitive proof that Donald Trump knew, in real time, that his Vice President was in danger – and did nothing.  And Friday night it was revealed that around the same time, Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy had a profanity laced screaming match on the phone, as McCarthy demanded Trump do something.  But nothing was done.

Outbreak

Trump sent the mob, then did nothing as they ransacked the Capitol, threatened the proceedings, and searched for our national leaders, threatening death.  Shouldn’t he be punished for that?

The Defense Team is terrible.  They have walked into a sure thing, a guaranteed thirty-four Republican votes to acquit, and managed to allow doubts to creep in.  I still believe the Senate will acquit the former President, so his team will “get one job done”, but they didn’t help much.  

And I still wish there might be an “outbreak” of honor and courage in the Republican Party.  If not enough to acquit, enough at least to give America hope.

Addendum (2/13/21 – 11:30 am)

The Trial of Donald Trump has finally taken an unexpected turn.  Saturday morning the House Managers called for the deposition and testimony of  Congresswoman Herrera Beutler (Republican-Washington) who overheard the Kevin McCarthy phone call with President Trump.  The Defense lawyers threatened to depose “hundreds” in his office in “Philly-delphia” if that request was agreed.  But – by a 55-45 vote – witnesses will be called – and this Trial will last quite a bit longer.

Who will really be called – and how many – will be debated and voted on.  What is not clear: To what end?  The House Managers have made their case – but have determined that it is to their advantage to push this on further.  Is there more pressure on Republican Senators than we realize?  Chuck Schumer does not operate “on the fly”, he must have known this was coming.  

So what is the greater strategy?  Only time will reveal it.

Addendum II – The Greater Strategy – 2/13/21 – 4:15 pm

There was no greater strategy – other than the strategic move by the McConnell to hold the rest of the Senate business hostage to the Impeachment Trial. Donald Trump was found not guilty – 57 to 43, 10 votes short of conviction. Now the “re-write” will begin. As I type, Senator McConnell attempts to justify his decision to find Trump “not guilty”. He is condemning Trump, but failed to find him guilty. And he led a coalition of Republican Senators to take that position. Seven Republicans – Sasse of Nebraska, Cassidy of Louisiana, Burr of North Carolina, Collins of Maine, Murkowski of Alaska, Romney of Utah and Toomey of Pennsylvania choose “the right” over political expediency. They found Trump guilty. We should say their names. Others. like Rob Portman of Ohio, couldn’t muster the courage to do so.

It’s time to move on. We will ultimately pay some price for not ending Trumpism here, but so be it. There is work to do in our country – we have kicked the “Trumpist” question down the road. That’s a huge mistake, but it, is what it is.

Now let’s get going.

Buffalo Springfield – Stephen Stills-  For What It’s Worth

Both Sides

I had a discussion with a friend the other day, about the trial of Donald Trump.  We were lamenting what seems to be fact.  No matter what, enough Senate Republicans have made the political calculation: protecting Donald Trump is protecting their own interests.  They will vote to acquit, and Trump will claim “victory”. 

I pride myself on being able to see “both sides” of most arguments.  I’ve searched for “principled” reasons why one would vote against punishing Donald Trump for sending the mob against the Congress on January 6^th.  Unfortunately, I’ve failed.  Other than the highly questionable Constitutional jurisdiction argument that the vast majority of scholars say is wrong, there seems to be nothing “principled” in their position.  They are only protecting their own asses from the wrath of the Trump-controlled primary voters.  It only takes thirty-four Senators to acquit Donald Trump, and while I am normally a “half-full” kind of guy, I am struggling to see any other outcome.

Watching History

Being retired, I have the luxury of watching the impeachment trial closely.  I’ve set up the day: write, workout, shovel snow, make breakfast. Then it’s sit-down and watch history in the making.  It’s like sitting in the gallery at the Andrew Johnson impeachment, or with a group of high school seniors watching the Bill Clinton trial (I did that). I followed this same schedule just last year.  

Someday, years from now, in some classroom (digital or real) a teacher will try to explain this.  The teacher will “teach” how a President refused to accept defeat, convinced almost half of Americans that the election was a fraud, then ginned up a mob to stop the certification of votes.  How literal battles were fought on the steps of the Capitol of the United States, hand to hand combat, flags flying, lives lost, to protect the representatives of our Nation.   There will be the heroes in the story, the Policemen who struggled to hold back the insurrectionists. 

Lessons Learned

And there will be lessons to learn.  The teacher will cite this as another example of how a demagogue can temporarily derange part of a nation, Trump on the list with Hitler and the rest.  And that educator will have to explain how the American “exceptionalism” belief that our leaders will always “rise to the occasion”, how the Presidency “makes the person”, failed.    The words “profiles in courage” will be used, and the teacher will be left to explain why that wasn’t enough.

And because that future is a “multi-media” world, students will actually see what we are seeing now.  There will be the videos of the insurrectionists searching the building for Vice President Pence and Speaker Pelosi.  They will see Senators running from the mob, and police officers crushed in the doors.  And likely, they will hear some of the words of Congressman Jamie Raskin emotionally telling his experience:  the death of his child, the call of duty in the Congress, and the fear of losing more of his family in the uproar.

It will be as if we could watch the trial and execution of John Brown, or be there as the Ku Klux Klan rode to keep the freedmen from voting.  It will be in color on their monitors.

What Was Learned?

And at the end of the lesson, a good teacher will ask the open-ended question – what was learned?  Those future students will hopefully have a better answer than we have today.

We hear it from Lindsey Graham and Jim Jordan.  They are sure there are not enough votes to convict, so why are “those Democrats” forcing the Nation through this.  And the answer lies in that future classroom.  There may be criminal trials of insurrectionists, and maybe even of citizen Trump himself.  Those trials will never put the national spotlight on this tragedy better than this impeachment trial does.  The Senate is writing history.  And while it would make a better historic point if that trial resulted in conviction, a more fitting outcome; just putting the truth “on the books” for future reference is important.  

Those students will learn that our Republic depends on the “honor” of our leaders.  And they will also learn that sometimes, that “honor” just isn’t enough.

And, for what it’s worth, maybe they will do better. 

Summer of ‘74

It was August 8^th, 1974.  I graduated from high school two months before, and I was in the final stages of preparing to leave home.  Denison University, up “on the hill” in Granville, Ohio, awaited me.   I spent that last summer before college painting houses, and watching the House Judiciary Committee investigate and debate the actions of the President of the United States, Richard Nixon.

It was my second summer of Nixon.  My last summer of high school, 1973, I watched the Senate Committee hearings on Nixon, with the famous Senator Sam Ervin, a Democrat who could have been Hollywood cast for the part, as Chairman. (Speaking of Hollywood, the Minority Counsel on that Committee was a young Fred Thompson, who spent the latter part of his life as an actor, including “serving” as the second District Attorney on the Law and Order series). 

The Tapes

So I knew the case against Richard Nixon, inside and out.  On July 24^th, 1974, the United States Supreme Court ordered Nixon to turn over the “tapes”. Those were recordings from the White House of Nixon’s own conversations with his staff about the Watergate break-in and coverup.  I fully expected Nixon to burn the tapes on the White House lawn rather than turn them over (the suggestion of one of his speech writers, Pat Buchanan).  Had Nixon done so, perhaps he would have survived in office to the end of his Presidency.

But Nixon did turn them over to the Special Prosecutor, who then passed them to the House Judiciary Committee.  And the Committee moved inexorably towards impeachment of the President, the second time in American history.  

I don’t think I knew at the time, what happened in those early days of August.  The leaders of the Republican Party in the Congress:  The House Minority Leader, the Senate Minority Leader and Senator and former Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater; all went to see President Nixon.  They told him that he was going to be impeached, and the Senate would convict him.  They asked him to resign.

Champagne

What I did know on the evening on August 8^th, sitting in our downstairs recreation room with a few friends, was that Richard Nixon was speaking to the nation.  And there must have been some fore-knowledge of what he was going to say – champagne and glasses were available.  Nixon announced, that as of noon on August 9^th, Vice President Gerald Ford would be the next President.  We toasted to the end of Nixon, and of three years of America’s fixation on Watergate.

The House Judiciary Committee recommended impeachment, but the full House never debated or voted it.  So Richard Nixon became the first President to resign, but not the second to be impeached.  And since there was no impeachment, there was no Senate trial.  Exactly a month later, President Ford granted a full and blanket pardon to Richard Nixon for anything he might have done, declaring that “…our long national nightmare has ended”.  As a freshman at Denison, all the folks watching in the student lounge in Crawford Hall instantly knew what I thought about that.  Nixon got off – far too easily.

Over the ensuing years, I mellowed on President Ford’s decision.  I gained some understanding about how much our attention was diverted to Watergate, beyond what was happening in the world, and in our nation.  And now I hear some of those same arguments, directed towards President Biden, suggesting that he should end this current Trumpian nightmare. “Move on” they say, there’s too much to do:  COVID, the economy, the environment, infrastructure, and so much more.

Nixon Redux

But I have come to think of all of this differently.  Donald Trump was politically advised by the younger generation of Nixon’s followers.  Roger Stone was critical in his political aspirations.  Stone, a young Nixon staffer, believed so strongly in the disgraced President that he had Nixon’s face tattooed onto his back.  At sixty-eight, he maintains his physique, perhaps to maintain the structure of Nixon’s visage.  

Almost three years ago, I wrote an essay about Stone called Stone’s Dream.  The premise of that essay was that Stone believed if only Nixon had “toughed it out”, burned the tapes, stonewalled longer, then he would have survived.  Stone taught Trump well. He stonewalled the Mueller investigation that found hundreds of contacts with Russian intelligence. The day after Mueller testified, Trump  leveraged Ukraine for “dirt” on future opponent Joe Biden resulting in his first impeachment and trial. But Trump got a “pass” on that as well.  So why shouldn’t Trump absolutely insist that he won the 2020 election, so much so that he encouraged his supporters to come to Washington, march on the Capitol, and stop the certification of the Electoral votes.  He always “beat the rap” before. He was tough like Stone.

Accountability

Today’s impeachment trial of Donald Trump is not just about Trump himself.  It is about responsibility and accountability.  Nixon was never held accountable for his actions in Watergate, despite his key aides all serving jail sentences.  The Congress didn’t hold him to blame, accepting his resignation as enough.  The Courts were denied the opportunity to air the evidence, Nixon protected by his blanket of Federal pardon. 

Maybe our “long national nightmare” was only temporarily ended by Ford’s pardon of Nixon.  Perhaps that action created a recurring nightmare, each time a little stronger and more frightening.  Nixon was a crook, a thief, a man who abused the powers of his office for personal political gain.  Yes, he resigned the Presidency, but lost little else.  Trump was more, a man all-to-willing to launch an insurrection to maintain the office for which he no longer was entitled.  If we, the United States, do not hold him accountable for those actions, either in the Senate or the Courts, what nightmare will shock us from “sleep” next?

Divided Politics

We are a divided nation.  Perhaps that’s not the right characterization:  we are actually a fragmented nation.  Politically there are Republicans and Democrats.  But the Republican Party is splintering over whether to continue the path of Trumpism.  There are the “Lincoln Project” types, no longer officially Republican at all, who are trying to become the core of a “New Republican” Party.  There are the “old school” Republicans, like Ohio Governor Mike DeWine or Senator Rob Portman, who seem adrift in a sea of Trumpist action.  And then there are the Trump followers, not just his family, but those opportunistic politicians who have found a band wagon to ride.  And, of course, there are the “crazies”, from Proud Boys to QAnon remnants, who really aren’t Republican at all.

Then there are the Democrats.  Being a Democrat means being divided almost by definition.  Need an example:  The Mayor of Chicago, a Democrat, elected with the support of the Chicago Teacher’s Union, was at war with that same Union about opening the schools.  The “progressive” Democrats are scared to death that President Biden will somehow be too “moderate”, even though he was elected specifically because he was a moderate.  And then the “blue dog” Democrats, the more “conservative” Democrats are searching for a place in their own Party.  Well, they are fewer and far between.

Divided Origins

We are also a nation divided by race and origin.  But even that question is changing.  Within only a decade or so, there will be no majority race in America.  We will be a nation of minorities, including the “White” minority.  And while we’re at that, even the minorities are splitting.  What was once considered the “Hispanic” minority, is now seen in more appropriate terms.  Some are of Cuban origin, some Puerto Rican,  some Mexican, some Central American, some are more American than most other Americans.  

We grew up with a “School House Rock” view of America – The Great American Melting Pot (bring back some memories – and watch it again).  We came from “wherever” (old World) and jumped into the pot – and all became American.  But we know that’s not really what happens – at least not now.  And it’s hard to pick out a dark face in the “School House Rock” version though the Indian kid on a bed of nails does make an impression.  Maybe we should view America as a “tossed salad”.  Instead of a “melting pot” or “stew”, where everything becomes alike, we are a salad where each carrot or onion or tomato remains individual, but contributes to the “salad whole”. 

Multi-Culturalism

That, by the way, is the essential difference described as “multi-culturalism”.  Instead of cultures being subsumed by “American”,  American is enhanced by different cultures.  They all maintain their relevance in an America that is greater than its parts.  But multi-culturalism is a direct challenge to the “melting pot” where all were one.  In a more racially focused view:  the melting pot made everyone either “White” or “subservient” to White.  And of course, that’s why the “melting pot” didn’t work.  If you were a person of color, you could never “melt” into a White society.   The “tossed salad” allows everyone to keep their culture.  And while “lettuce” may make up more of the salad than any other part, it’s all the other constituent parts that make a salad actually “taste” good.

The German could lose her accent.  The Irishman could drop his brogue and Catholicism.  The Italian could do the same.  All found ways to “melt” and immerse themselves into the American “melting pot” of the 1800’s.  But when the great migration of Black people from the old South to the North and Midwest occurred around World War I, there was no way for them to “melt in”.  No matter what else they did – they remained Black.

Education 

So when you look back with nostalgia at the “School House Rock” version of history (so much more exciting than good old Mrs. Ralston) remember it not only simplified, but ignored many Americans.  It was 1977.  While there were a few faces of color, there was no mention of slavery, or Hispanic immigration, and their impact on the “American Melting Pot”.  It wasn’t taught in school then either (full disclosure:  I was soon to be one of those teachers, and it took years to get over just “teaching what I learned”). 

Part of the “dissonance,” the discomfort many Americans feel today is because of this.  We were taught one thing, now we are being told we weren’t told the truth.  No, Mrs. Ralston or even Mr. Dahlman weren’t LIARS, but they were “victims” of their own education.  They taught what they knew, and they taught their own experiences.  But that knowledge and experience didn’t include much about those who couldn’t climb into the “melting pot”.  

This week (in this year, 2021) a group of parents of North Ogden Charter School in Utah, decided they didn’t want their kids to “participate” in Black History Month.  That’s not the “bad” news.  The bad news:  the school went ahead and allowed them to “opt out”, like it was religious or sex education.  The public uproar changed the school’s and even the parents’ minds, but that’s the discomfort America feels with our unlearned, unspoken past and present (KUTV).

Acceptance

All of that dissonance flows right back into America’s political fragmentation.  It’s why working-class White men with high school educations think that the Republican Party represents their interests.  It’s why there is so much political “reward” in packaging campaigns in “us versus them” terms, and in playing to victimhood.  And it’s why there is hope for the Republic.

Hope?  

In the next decades, as we become a minority-majority nation, we also will see the passing of what my son calls “the old White dudes”.  And with them, goes generations of entitlement and false historical memories.   It’s not that the younger generation has it “all right”.  They are too addicted to their screens and podcasts, too susceptible to the “voice” in their EarPods that seems to know the answer to every riddle.  But they are different, they have experiences that cross the boundary lines that restricted their parents and grandparents.  So I believe that at least when it comes to this form of single-culturalism – they may well save us. 

 No pressure – of course.  

Senate Trial

For the second time in as many years, the Senate trial of Donald John Trump begins today.  It is a trial caused by the House of Representatives “impeachment” of the then-President in January.  The House charged the President with committing the Constitutionally mandated “high crimes and misdemeanors”.  In this case, they are charging him with inciting insurrection by literally sending a mob to attack the Congress.  The purpose of the attack was to stop the certification of the election results of 2020. Then-President Trump claimed that the results were fraudulent, despite over ninety Court decisions to the contrary.

As a result of the attack, five people died and the Capitol was “invaded” for the first time since the War of 1812. The process of certifying the vote was disrupted, and one police officer was killed. One hundred and forty other officers were injured, and two have committed suicide.  While Congress resumed session hours after the “insurrection” and certified President Biden’s victory, it is safe to say that the Congress has not been the same.  Neither has the United States of America.

Legal Technicality

The former President is defending himself with four legal arguments.  The first, to be examined and decided today in the Senate, is whether a President who no longer holds office can still be held for trial.  The vast majority of Constitutional scholars agree that he can be, even though the “main” penalty of an “impeachment trial” is removal from office, a moot point in this case.  The reason:  The Constitution also contains the clause that the Senate can further “punish” by barring the convicted from every holding Federal “positions of trust”.  It is this second punishment that the Senate seeks.

Peacefully

The second argument is that the President spoke to the crowds on January 6^th in a “peaceful manner”, in fact, using the word “peacefully” to encourage their actions.  That was one word in an over seventy-minute harangue, in which he called for the crowd to “march on the Capitol” and to “fight, fight, fight”.  He told them “we will not take this anymore”, and that “we have to show strength”.   And he reiterated his false claim that the election was stolen, and that it was their duty to “stop the steal”.  

Everyone Else Does It

The third argument is one that Senator Lindsey Graham, a current “impeachment juror” and Trump apologist argues:  Democrats do it too.  Graham is “threatening” to demand witness testimony from Democrats who, he says, advocated violence during the Trump administration.  His particular focus is on Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who at the beginning of the “child separation” crisis told a crowd to confront Trump Administration members in restaurants, gas stations and on the street.  Graham equates her actions, and other Democrats during the George Floyd protests last summer, as “equal” to the actions of Donald Trump regardless that the outcomes were wholly different.  

This is similar to the argument made by some Republicans in the House of Representatives last week, as the Democrats stripped the Committee assignments of Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.  The Congresswoman from Georgia advocates the QAnon theory, and has called for the murder of Speaker Pelosi.  When the Republican Party failed to punish her for those statements and others, the House as a whole did.  In the debate, Republicans, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, equated Greene’s statements with those made by Waters and Ilhan Omar, who was been outspoken about the power of the Israeli lobby on Congressional action.  

The statements don’t compare.  Neither Waters or Omar threatened death to anyone. Neither has taken stands like Greene that the school shootings at Sandy Hook or Marjorie Stoneman Douglas were “faked”.  And neither sent a mob to attack the United States Congress.

Free Speech

But it is the fourth argument for the former President that will be the most interesting to hear articulated.  The lawyers for Mr. Trump are preparing to argue that, no matter what he said on January 6^th, he was simply exercising his First Amendment right to “free speech”, and that Senate has no authority to sanction that right.  They will claim that the United States Supreme Court makes the speech of January 6^th permissible under the 1969 Case Brandenburg v Ohio.

Clarence Brandenburg owned a television repair shop in Arlington Heights, Cincinnati, just down the road from where I grew up in the suburb of Wyoming.  Brandenburg also owned a farm on the east side of Cincinnati, near Coney Island, and he invited a news crew from WLW-T to come and film a Ku Klux Klan rally there.  

The rally was small, twelve hooded men who burned a cross and gave speeches.  Brandenburg spoke about a “400,000-man march on Washington” and said:

“If our president, our Congress, our Supreme Court, continues to suppress the white Caucasian race, it’s possible that there might have to be some revengeance (sic) taken.” (Cincinnati Enquirer).

Brandenburg Standard

Brandenburg was charged with an Ohio Law against “advocating violence as a means of political reform” and sentenced to one to ten years in prison.  On appeal, the United States Supreme Court overturned the conviction, and set the standard for when “political speech” crossed the line into criminal action.  The “line” is created in this phrase of the Court’s statement:

“…except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” (Cornell – section 7).

The lawyers for Mr. Trump will argue that whatever he said or did on January 6^th, it doesn’t meet the “Brandenburg Standard”.  And the House Managers prosecuting the case, will do everything they can to show that through both direct action and reckless disregard, the former President’s actions leading up to January 6^th, and his speech of that day, did exactly that:  incite lawless action and produce the Insurrection.

But we can’t ignore the irony.  Donald Trump will base a large part of his defense on the actions of a sad little KKK rally of twelve men in costumes on a farm near Coney Island.  The essence was that whatever Brandenburg said, he was ultimately ignored.  It’s too bad the nation wasn’t so lucky on January 6^th.

Men in the Middle

Bill Cassidy, a Republican Senator from Louisiana,  is a “man in the middle” in our current political world.  The crucible of politics in America is the United States Senate.  The Democrats hold fifty seats, and so do the Republicans.  The Senate is “Democratic” by virtue of the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.  If America is divided – the Senate is the image of division in the mirror.

America has been a nation of growing division since 2010.  There are lots of reasons.   A Black man elected as President of the United States. The Affordable Care Act passed without a single Republican vote. Majority Leader McConnell refused to allow Democratic legislation to reach the floor of the Senate for “up and down” votes.  The economic divide between the “haves and haves not” increasing.  And it is the view of many Americans that the nation they “knew” in the past has irrevocably changed.

The Tea Party and the rise of Donald Trump were results of this division.  So was the Women’s March on Washington, the Black Lives Matter movement and the outlandish QAnon conspiracy.  The most recent outcomes were the repudiation of “Trumpism” at the polls in 2020, and the “Insurrection” against the US Capitol on January 6^th.

Where Stands the GOP

So here we are.  For those who think this is settled – concluded with the prolonged results of the Presidential election of November – it only takes a look at the Republicans in the House last week. They tried to remove their Caucus Chairman Liz Cheney for voting in favor of impeachment. And they gave a full “pass” to Marjorie Taylor Greene for sanctioning QAnon nonsense. It’s not over.

The next expression of our division will take place this coming week, in the United States Senate.  The House of Representatives voted to impeach Donald J. Trump, then President of the United States, for inciting the Insurrection on the Capitol.  They did this while he was in office, as a statement of his collaboration in the “crime”, and as a warning to keep him controlled until the Biden inauguration.  They achieved the latter, but Joe Biden was sworn in on the Capitol steps surrounded by more military forces than any President since Lincoln in 1861.

The House also wanted to establish the precedent that no President can “send the mob” against the legislature to enforce his will.  Regardless of whether Trump is in office, that precedent is more than just incidental.   A significant minority of our Nation still believe that Trump was right.  That leaves us without accountability for what occurred, and many months from judicial determinations.  

So once again the focus will be on Donald Trump, the nexus of American division, held in the symbolic home of that division, the Senate.  McConnell is still there, but muted by his minority role.  So how does the Senate “breakdown” for this most significant Constitutional process?

Your Radio Dial

Going from right to left (on your radio dial as the Cleveland Brown’s radio announcer would say) we start with those Senators who are full throated Trump supporters:  Hawley, Cruz, Kennedy of Louisiana, Paul and Graham.  Ol’ Lindsey is an interesting case.  He’s a man who the night of January 6^th detached himself from Trump (“I’m done” he said on the floor of the Senate). But he then quickly moved back into his chosen position of “Trump Whisperer”.  

That group and others are more interested in inheriting the Trump mantle, and more importantly his voter base, than the right or wrong of the case before them.  There is no changing their stand. 

Then there are the Republicans who voted with Rand Paul to avoid the trial. They agreed with him that the Constitution does not allow for a “private citizen” to be tried in the Senate.  Regardless that all the legal precedent, and the Founding Fathers themselves, disagree with that interpretation, it gives those Senators a “fig leaf” to hide behind.  No reason to go into the facts of incitement or insurrection (for a much longer discourse on “fig leaves” – click here).

The Middle

Senator Bill Cassidy was one of these.  And Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press Cassidy said: “…that vote was in a moment in time…”. He went on to suggest that it wouldn’t prevent him from judging the entire case, not just the Constitutionality based on Rand Paul and the defense lawyers’ assertions.  Of those Senators there are a few, including perhaps Portman of Ohio, Shelby of Alabama, Grassley of Iowa, Burr of North Carolina and McConnell himself.  Portman, Shelby and Burr have already announced that they will not be running for re-election, freeing them from the Trump voting majority in the Republican Party.  There may be more in this “middle ground”. 

Next there are the “five”:  the five Republicans Senators who voted against the Paul motion, and for the trial.  Toomey of Pennsylvania (retiring), Murkowski of Alaska, Romney of Utah, Collins of Maine, and Sasse of Nebraska all bucked their former President and earned the political enmity of their local and state Republican Parties.  While a vote to have a trial is not the same as a vote for conviction, it does suggest that they don’t need a “fig leaf” and want to hear the evidence.

A Group of One

And then there is the “lonely” but ultimately powerful one Democrat near the middle, Joe Manchin.  Almost 69% of his state, West Virginia, voted for Donald Trump.  69%, that’s more than two out of three voters. Even the elected Democratic Governor, Jim Justice, switched to Republican while in office AND was re-elected. From a wholly Democratic state of the 1990’s, the state of Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller; Joe Manchin is literally the last Democrat standing.  Manchin is well aware of his dual roles. He is the decisive vote for the Democratic Party in the Senate. And he is always in a perilous position as a Democrat representing the most Republican state in the Union.  

Manchin stood with the Democratic Party when necessary.  He voted to remove Trump from office in the first impeachment trial, and voted against some of Trump’s Supreme Court appointees.  But while he voted to continue this trial, he has been outspoken about how “ill advised” this impeachment process is.

The Choice

And finally there are the other forty-nine Democrats in the Senate, lined in lock-step for conviction of Donald Trump, and hopeful to ban him from running for office in the future.

It takes sixty-seven Senators to convict Donald Trump, and after that, only a majority to ban him from running for further office.  It’s unlikely that seventeen Republican Senators will determine that Donald Trump should be convicted and removed, despite the ample evidence to show his involvement in incitement. His actions during the Insurrection were the definitions of nonfeasance, misfeasance and malfeasance.

The Republicans in the House of Representatives have clearly made themselves the “Party of Trump”.  As disgraced Congresswoman Majorie Taylor Greene stated, “The Party belongs to Donald Trump, and no one else”. It is only fitting that the Republicans in the Senate get the opportunity to make that choice as well.  And in the next few weeks, they will.

This is another “Sunday Story” from “the good old days”.  But this is not about backpacking, or even dogs!  This is a coaching story.

Rookie Lessons

In high school, I wrestled, and I swam.  But where I really found my place was on the track.  I was a sprinter, pretty fast actually, and I found success and satisfaction on the Track Team.  It started at Van Buren Junior High School in Kettering just south of Dayton, Ohio, and I learned a lot of lessons that first year.  I learned that eating cornflakes before Spring Break practice was a horrible idea.  And the next lesson came immediately. I learned that no one dies from throwing up, at least not on the track.  All you do is pick yourself up and finish practice.  Don’t step in the cornflakes.

Another lesson: no matter how good a strategy it might appear to be, diving to complete a sprint relay exchange is just a bad concept.  I was second man in the 4×220 relay (back then, we ran yard not meters).  I was coming fast, and my teammate receiving the baton was worried that I’d overrun him.  So he took off way, way, too soon.  I found one more gear to try to reach him, and the baton was only inches from his hand.  But I couldn’t get there – so I dived.

Eating Cinders

The baton struck his hand, but he didn’t close in time.  I went down on the track at full speed.  Today, that action would result in “road rash”; layers of skin scraped off by the rubberized surface.  But back then we weren’t running on “all-weather” tracks.  We were running on packed cinders, charcoal ash pressed into a track surface.  So when I hit, shoulder first, then rolled on my back, not only a couple of layers of skin were gone, but were replaced with layers of those cinders.  The fall hurt, but I did get to hear for the first time, the crowd go “ahhhhh” as they watched me go down.

My next experience was with a spray-on medication called “cinder suds”.  It hit the raw wound, stung like crazy and then bubbled.  That was so the Coach (we didn’t have trainers for track) could start scrubbing the cinders out of the wound with gauze pads. Coach and I “bonded” in my pain.  Later the teams I coached missed out on that particular “bonding” experience, though they did learn a therapeutic technique called “contrasting” involving buckets of ice and warm water.  That “bonded” us together too.

It actually took several years for all the cinders to migrate out of my shoulder. And I got a lot more serious about exchanges!!

Old Man Races

I got hurt a couple of other times as an athlete.  The last was when I was far past my prime, running a sprint race in the “over fifty” age group at a summer meet in Yellow Springs.  I was trying to find my “sprint” shape of old, and was racing those other “old” guys.  One of them, sporting a USA Track Team speed-suit, made sure I knew he was going to win.  You’ve either got to be really good to pull off a speed-suit in the “over fifty” group, or you’re just too cocky.

So when we came off of the turn in the 200 (meters now) and he was right beside me, I knew what to do.  I lifted, relaxed, and for a few steps, found a rhythm I hadn’t felt for two decades.  The technique still worked, and I moved past “speed-suit guy” —  and then my calf muscle dissolved.  I took the next step, and when my now non-functioning foot hit the track again, I followed it straight into the surface.  Damn – I had that dude beat!!  But I did get a final chance to hear the “ahhhhh’s” one more time.  The next problem:  how was I going to get home with might right calf completely locked?  I crossed over and used my left foot for the gas and brake. Good thing I didn’t drive the Jeep with the clutch.

It took a few weeks on crutches, and a lot of time riding a stationary bike to get back to normal life.  Fitting, that my “athletic” career ended about the same way it began: in a 200, going down on the front stretch to the chorus of “ahhhhh’s”.

Learning Pole Vault

But my best (or worst) track injury was as a coach.  And it happened far away, on the campus of Slippery Rock University in Northwestern Pennsylvania.

I was a sprinter, but I coached every event in track and field during my career.  I had state qualifiers as distance runners, long and high jumpers, throwers and hurdlers, as well as sprinters.  But my “reputation” came as a pole vault coach.  That was only because I couldn’t find an expert, and had to learn the event myself so I could help my kids.

The way I learned was to go to the places the kids went to learn.  So I started at the Indiana Track and Field Camp, working with a national level coach named Marshall Goss.  That week, I had the honor of watching Fourth of July fireworks between Bronze and Gold Olympic Medalists, a pole vaulter and a 400-meter runner.  

I then took some of my athletes and went to the then-premier vaulting camp in the country – the MF Pole Vault Camp at the University of Rhode Island.  The coach there was Bill Falk, a man who looked a lot like Mr. McGoo (that’s definitely a dated reference) and had an enormous wealth of vault knowledge.  Bill was always willing to share – something I found in most great vault coaches.  I learned a lot, and my kids got to eat lobster for the first time! (The deal was, I paid for the lobster, and if they didn’t like it, they could get a burger and I’d eat their dinner.  I had two).

Advanced Studies

But where I really earned my pole vault “advanced degree” was at the Slippery Rock Pole Vault Camps.  There I met another “guru”, Mark Hannay.  Like me, Mark was a high school teacher and was the part-time vault coach for the university.   Mark developed an entire theory of vault, with each piece fitting in a whole process. He called it the “summation of forces”, and  it was understandable physics that made a lot of sense.  

I went with the kids to “the Rock” for a couple years, and then Mark asked me to come work the camp as a coach.  For the next few years I spent a couple of weeks each summer in that environment.  There were hundreds of vaults a day, and breakfast, lunch, dinner and far into the night talking with other amazing coaches about pole vaulting, and everything else. It was in those weeks that I really gained my understanding of the event.  

Pit Coach

I was a “pit coach”.  That meant that I had my group of kids to work with for the entire week, following Mark’s progression.  They always got better, even though their improvement was tempered by the wear on their legs as the week went on.  It was part of my “pit coach” job to make sure my group was “safe”.

So I was standing next to the runway, near the pit, when a kid named John had a disaster (I do remember his last name, but I won’t share it here).  Everything he did was bad:  he slowed down instead of speeding up, he was too far away from the pit when he jumped, and he committed to a vault that wasn’t going to get him to the mats.  I stepped up.  There’s no “catching him” – that’s really not a thing in pole vault.  I was going to push him into the pit.  But as I stepped in, he (rightfully) swung his takeoff leg back, trying to create more energy.   Unfortunately he was wearing track spikes, and instead of pushing off of the runway, his takeoff foot pushed directly into my face.

John went up, then landed hard on the ground on the edge of the pit.  I stood on the runway, my face in my hands.  The SRU trainer ran to John, as he sat in a heap. “Are you OK?” she asked.  “Yeah, I’m OK, but you better check on him”, pointing to me.  

So, you know things aren’t  very good when the trainer looks at you, and goes pale.  I stepped forward to catch her, she looked like she was going to pass out.  To her credit, she quickly pulled herself together, and moved to me.  My face was covered in blood, and I had a jagged tear stretching from my forehead above my nose across and onto my eyelid.  It  didn’t really hurt, but it was clear that this was more than a couple of “steri-strips” fix.

Asics Symbol  

The trainers got me bandaged up, and Mark and the other coaches had a discussion about which local hospital was the best for getting sewed back up.  The debate was between hospitals in Grove City or Butler, and the final consensus was go to Butler.  So we drove twenty miles, and I checked into the Emergency department.

I think I was the only patient in the Butler ER that night.  I remember being in a big group exam room, just me and the doc, who gave me “the good news” and “the bad news”.  The good news: my eye was fine, and he thought he could sew things up without a whole lot of scarring.  He said “The cut isn’t a straight line – it’s curved.  That’s good – a straight line scar is really obvious, this will eventually blend into the lines in your face.”  I guess that made me feel better – at the moment I felt like I had a Klingon forehead-thing going.

He also said he had a “special German” suture kit, with finer needles to make smaller punctures.  That way, there would be less damage as well.  And that was all the good news.  

The “bad news”:  if he numbed the cut up, then the wound edges would go soft.  They wouldn’t  be “clean” and that would increase the scar.  So he asked me to “hang on”:  he would work as quickly as possible, but no painkiller.

It wasn’t as bad as I anticipated.  If you’ve ever had stitches, the worst part is the needle of Novocain finding the nerves to numb things up.  So instead of that one shot, there was the piercing of the curved “German” suture needle, in and out.  It hurt, and he put a lot of sutures in, again to reduce the scarring.  But the Doc was a man of his word, and it went pretty quick. 

Earn the Lines

I arrived back to the SRU dorms, and my “pit-group kids” all came to see how bad it was.  The last they saw me was just blood, so they were pleased that I “made it” and was back on dorm duty.  I didn’t miss a shift on the pit, spotting kids in the next morning’s session.  John was incredibly apologetic:  I was just pleased he was OK too.

The Doc was right:  the scarring isn’t too obvious.  If you look carefully there’s kind of an “Asics symbol” in the middle of my forehead.  But as I got older, it has been mostly subsumed by the natural lines created by forty years of Watkins Track and Cross Country. 

Out of all that, we developed the “Watkins Rules” of pole vaulting.  The number one rule was and always will be: 

LAND IN THE BIG BLACK AND GOLD THING (the mat).  

But the number two rule:  DON’T HURT THE COACH!!!

Mixed Signals

I’m not a Republican, and it’s not for me to say what the Republican Party, the Party founded on anti-slavery and Lincoln, should do right now. But I can describe what I’m observing, and what road the Grand Old Party is traveling.  

The election of 2020 gave the Republican Party mixed signals.  Sure, Donald Trump lost.  But he got the second most votes EVER by a Presidential candidate.  And he did it in the biggest US election of the modern era, with 66.3% of the voters showing up.  So while it’s easy (especially for me, A Democrat) to say that Trump was repudiated, that’s not quite fair.  Trump was defeated, in an election which has been scrutinized by both sides for fairness.  But there are 74 million Americans who voted for Trump, and he still remains a force to be reckoned with.

And the rest of the GOP ticket did pretty well, Georgia being the massive exception.  The House of Representatives grew tighter, as many of the marginal Democrats who won close elections in 2018 were ousted.  And while Democrats did “pull the upset” and capture the Senate, many prognosticators, including me, thought it would be a seven or eight seat margin.  Instead it is a fifty-fifty tie, with Vice President Harris determining the Democrats have control.

Aging Mitch McConnell is willing to hang on for a couple of more years, to see if he can regain control of the Senate. And California Republican Representative Kevin McCarthy sees himself as the next Speaker of the House of Representatives, if he can only find a way to turn six more seats from Blue to Red. 

So while the Democrats are “in the saddle” in the White House, the Senate, and the House, it’s really all a very near thing.

Signal Flare  

Yesterday the Republicans in the House of Representatives met to decide the fate of two of their colleagues.  Their decision is a signal flare in the sky, telling us what forces are “in charge” of the Party today.

Liz Cheney is the Congresswoman from Wyoming.  She is third in the leadership structure of the House Republicans, Chairman of the Caucus.  And, of course, she is the daughter of one of the stalwarts of the old Republican guard, former Vice President Dick Cheney.  How important is she to her father?  When her gay younger sister Mary, legally married her partner, Liz took a stand against gay marriage.  The Vice President supported Liz against his younger daughter.

But Liz Cheney has also committed her own “unforgiveable” sin.  After the insurrection of January 6^th, when the House of Representatives voted to impeach Donald Trump for his role in instigating the action, Liz Cheney, third in power in the GOP, was one of ten Republican members who voted to impeach the President.    She made it clear that she held Trump responsible for the insurrection, and indirectly, the deaths that occurred.  For this act she has been censured by several County Republican Party organizations in Wyoming.  

Turning Right

There is a movement to remove Cheney from her leadership position in the Republican Caucus.   She held onto her position yesterday, but twenty-five percent of the Republicans wanted her thrown out.

And then there’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, the newly elected Congressman from Georgia.  She is an avowed QAnon supporter.  During her rising political career she has supported multiple “conspiracies”. She believes  the Trump “voter fraud stolen election” story. But more than that, she believes the 9-11 conspiracy that a plane did not fly into the Pentagon building, that a space-based Jewish laser gun set fire to California forests to clear the way for the high-speed rail line, and that the Sandy Hook and Parkland school massacres were staged by “crisis actors”.  Oh, and that Hillary and Bill Clinton somehow caused John Kennedy Jr to crash his airplane and die.  She has called for the murder of Nancy Pelosi and assaults on other Democratic members. 

The people of Georgia still elected her to the Congress, and the Republican Campaign Committee did little to stand in her way.  And when she arrived in the House, the Party has allowed her to continue her conspiratorial rants, and even to circumvent House security measures.  There are still concerns about what actions she took on January 6^th. 

But the Republican caucus yesterday stood by their committee appointments, including sending her to the Education Committee.  This, the woman who thinks that the murder the little children of Sandy Hook and teenagers at Parkland was faked.  She even went so far as to film herself harassing an eighteen-year-old Parkland survivor David Hogg, demanding to know who was financing him.

The Right Thing

Democrats are demanding that Greene be removed from all her committees.  If the Republicans don’t do it, then the Democrats may use their majority to take the unprecedented step of doing it themselves.  While it would take a two-thirds vote of the whole House of Representatives to remove her from the chamber, they can strip her committees with just a majority vote.   Greene, of course, warns that when Republicans regain the majority in 2022, they may do the same to some of the more outspoken Democratic members – Ilhan Omar a primary target.  It’s an apple to bananas comparison, but there it is.  That’s the road the freshman Congressman from Georgia wants her Party to take.

Yesterday the Republicans could have avoided this by doing what is obviously the right thing to do: removing her from the committees themselves.  They did the same thing only a couple of years ago, when Iowa Representative Steve King was “just” outspokenly racist.  

The Road Taken

So the Republican choice was clear.  They bet that their support depends on far-right conspiracists like those who invaded the Capitol and support Greene.  They bet that Trump will still dominate the political landscape is 2022.  And they rewarded Greene with her committee assignments. They did all of those things, but tried to “cover their bets” by not punishing Cheney for her vote.  Maybe they think, Democrats will do the “right” thing anyway, so why should Republicans take the political heat?

The answer is pretty simple.  Republicans chose what direction they will go.  They continue to be the party of Trump:  the party of  conspiracy, fake news and the big lie.  They chose to be that Republican Party, not the one who claims to wants lower taxes, less regulation, and smaller government; the Party of George Bush and Dick Cheney.  

The road forked with the end of the Trump Administration.  We now get to see where the GOP will go. And it’s continues down the road of Trumpism.

Living on the Edge 

So let’s have a discussion about the minimum wage.  Here in Ohio, it’s $8.55 per hour.  The national minimum wage is $7.25 per hour.  So let’s do some figuring, to find out what those numbers mean.

$8.55 an hour means a gross pay of $342 a week (for a 40-hour work week), $1368 per month, or $17,100 a year.  And that’s if you’re lucky.  Lucky to live in Ohio, lucky to work 2000 hours in a year, and lucky to not get sick or laid off.  

$7.25 an hour, the national minimum, obviously is less:  $290 per week, $1160 per month, or $14500 a year – less.   But an either case, it’s not credible to call the minimum wage a “living” wage.  

As a single person, to be 100% eligible for Federal assistance, you can only make $12,760 per year.   So even at the national minimum wage, someone working a fulltime job (2000 hours a year) would be way “over” the poverty line.  To quote the Parkland kids – I call “BS”.  

Let’s say you’re paying $600 a month for rent (that’s the cheapest here in Pataskala).   You manage to only eat $250 per month worth of food (that’s $62, or nine Big Mac value meals, a week).  And, in many places in the United States, there is no such thing as reliable public transportation.  A car, gas, insurance:  maybe that’s another $150, though one minor mechanical difficulty will blow that right out of the water.   So with rent, food, and transportation you’ve gone through more than one thousand dollars.  And you haven’t bought (or washed) underwear, or eyeglasses, or shoes.

One Expense Away   

In “real life”, neither $7.25 or $8.55 is a living wage.  It’s a wage guaranteed to require something else – another job, someone to help pay for things, or going into debt.  It also guarantees that the “Pathway to improvement”, the old “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” through education, isn’t available.  There’s not the time, nor the money, to get that done.  Living on the real minimum wage locks people into an essential struggle to survive.

What would a $15 per hour minimum wage do?  Run the numbers:  $600 per week, $2400 a month, or $30,000 a year.  It’s a wage that allows folks to actually live, instead of just survive.  It creates discretionary income, to pay for education, to put aside for retirement, to save for a future home or business venture. 

In 1978 I signed my first teaching contract for $8000 a year.  That small amount was able to take care of my $125 a month rent, $.75 a gallon gas, and a Big Mac value meal of $1.79 (though there wasn’t a McDonald’s in Pataskala back then).  I was able to pay for further education, and drive my 1967 Volkswagen – even pay for repairs at “Mike’s”.   And what is 1978’s $8000 worth in 2021 dollars:  $32000.  By the way, beginning teaching salary in the local school is still under $40,000 a year.  Teachers haven’t made much progress over forty years in getting above a minimal wage.

Dignity of Work

Ohio’s Democratic Senator, Sherrod Brown, speaks often about “the dignity of work”.  He recognizes that most Americans want to work, they want to “pay their way”.  But to make that “American Dream” available, there has to be a tangible result – a living wage.  We can’t define “living” as barely scraping by, one small expense away from disaster.  If we want folks to have that “dignity”, then we need to establish a “floor”, a base pay that will provide that dignity.  And that “floor” isn’t extravagant.  It won’t, by itself, support a family.  A family today requires both adults work, something that a half century ago wasn’t necessary.  That’s progress, I guess.

Currently 44% of American workers earn less than a $15 per hour wage.  So what does that do?  It forces 8% of American workers to work two jobs.  It also makes the average worker put in an extra five hours a week overtime.  That’s 250 extra hours a year – or the equivalent of more than four extra weeks of work.  So our 2021 era requires a big percentage of Americans to work far more than a forty-hour work week, for low wages – that’s our “American Dream”?  

 

Our Dream

We hear apocalyptic scenario of what would happen if the United States had a $15 minimum wage.  According to that vision, millions of Americans would lose their jobs, thousands of small businesses would fail, and inflation would spiral out of control.  But would it?

Any change in wage and salary rules will have a negative impact on some businesses – it would be foolish to deny that. There would be adjustments.  And the costs of some of those adjustments, including higher costs for goods, would be borne by those who buy those goods.  So a higher minimum wage is likely to raise costs for folks who buy more stuff, those who already are making more than that minimum wage.  It would cause some “income leveling”, by raising the floor for many, it would likely make those already way above that floor to pay some more.

And some Americans would lose their current jobs as businesses “sort out” a higher bottom wage.  So there will be some negative impacts for some people.

But for a large percentage of American workers, a $15 minimum wage would change their lives for the better, and give them greater access to the “American dream”.  It would create Senator Brown’s “dignity of work”, and also allow more Americans to have a life beyond work. That’s something many cannot have now.  A $15 minimum wage would allow American workers to live for more than just a paycheck.

Wisdom

Joe Biden is the 46^th President of the United States.  At seventy-eight, he’s the oldest man ever to serve in the office, edging out Ronald Reagan at the end of his term.  If age begats wisdom, then we have elected the wisest man ever to be President.  

But more importantly, Joe Biden brings a lifetime of legislative experience to the White House.  He was first elected to the United States Senate in 1972, actually twenty-nine years of age on election day and meeting the minimum age of thirty, two weeks after.  He served in the US Senate from that time until he took the oath of office for the Vice Presidency in 2009, thirty-six years later.  To say that Joe Biden is a “man of the Senate” is not just a turn of phrase:  he literally grew up in a body where legislative compromise was the “stock in trade”.

President Biden knows what the Senate was.  And he also knows what our current political climate is like.  As Vice President, Biden experienced first-hand the recalcitrance of Mitch McConnell’s Republican majority, climaxing in holding a Supreme Court seat open for more than a year in order to prevent then-President Obama from filling it.  The “stolen seat”, now held by conservative appointee Neil Gorsuch, is a bone in the throats of Democrats, and a “success story” for the now minority Republican Senators.

President Biden believes in a Senate of compromise, and sees as a major goal of his Presidency bringing the Senate and the nation back to its former self.  But he also knows that his Presidency  will ultimately be judged on how he manages the COVID crisis.  It’s the reason he was elected; Donald Trump’s ultimate failure, and the true “test” of Biden’s time.

Parliamentary Tricks

So when the goal of restoring the Senate runs up against the goal of managing COVID, President Biden is in the mix.  He has the power, right now, to pass almost his entire $1.9 trillion COVID relief plan without any Republican votes at all.  Speaker Pelosi in the House is already framing the legislation as a “budget” item.  The United States House of Representatives operates on a “majority wins” system, have one more vote than the other side, and you win.  And the Speaker has ten more votes than the Republicans, so she can do as she wishes.

But the Senate is tied.  There are fifty Republicans, and fifty Democrats.  The Democrats have “control” by the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.  But for most legislation the Senate is not a majority rule body.  Current rules require sixty votes to end debate on legislation, a process called “cloture”. So even though fifty Democratic Senators and one Vice President will vote for final passage, they can’t get to a final vote without ten Republicans agreeing to end debate. 

Exception Makes the Rule

But there are exceptions.  Federal judicial and cabinet appointments are now under “the nuclear option”, that is, a simple majority.  No cloture votes are necessary.  And items that come under the heading of “budget reconciliation” are also under the “simple majority” rule. That’s something that Speaker Pelosi is very much aware of – thus the $1.9 trillion Biden COVID relief packaged as a “budget item” rather than a stand-alone legislative proposal.

So President Biden can ram through his big COVID relief package within the next month or so.  And he can do it without any Republican cooperation, as long as he can keep all fifty Senate Democrats lined up in his column.  Then Vice President Harris will fulfill her Constitutional obligation as President of the Senate, and cast her tie-breaking vote. 

Doing a Deal 

But the tie-breaking vote might not be the only thing broken.  It might also break any opportunity for Biden to develop some cooperation with the Republicans in the Senate.  That cooperation is the key to bringing American politics away from the polarization that led to a Donald Trump Presidency.  And Biden isn’t the only one invested in changing our political atmosphere.  So are many Republicans who see Trumpism as a danger to their causes, their Party, and their nation.  And of course, they recognize the need for some COVID relief as well.  

So President Biden’s attuned sense of Senate deal making is alert.  Ten Republican Senators have proposed an alternative to the Biden COVID plan at $600 billion.  There should be no surprise that the number is ten, the exact number needed to end the debate and bring any plan to a vote.  That gives them some power. And they went over to the White House yesterday.

There’s a far piece between $1.9 trillion and $600 billion.  But you have to have some offer to get in the door, or more colloquially, into “the room where it happens”.  Those ten Republicans don’t expect to come out with a $600 billion deal.  President Biden doesn’t expect to get his $1.9 trillion either.  And there’s more than just passage on the table.  Maybe some of those Republicans don’t vote for the final bill, but are willing to vote for cloture to bring it to the floor for final vote.  

All In

They all have more in common than not.  Both Republicans and Democrats recognize the need for COVID relief.  They all want to get legislation into law.  And they all want to proceed in a way that encourages future cooperation and deals, not just more side-taking and finger-pointing.  Neither wants to use anything that’s called a “nuclear option”.  Just as in real warfare, it’s beyond difficult to turn back once gone “nuclear”.

There are Democrats on the other side, from the “Progressive” wing of the Party, that will cringe at any Biden giveaway of COVID relief.  They will pressure him to stick “to the plan” and go nuclear if he needs to.  But it’s difficult to see where they get to negotiate this.  Are they going to vote against a compromise COVID relief plan?  It doesn’t seem likely, and their counter-pressure to the Republican moderates may not be enough.  Those progressives will end up accepting a Biden compromise, even if they don’t like it.

After all, it is the United States Senate.

Adversaries

Every defendant deserves representation.  That is a basic tenet of our legal system. No matter how “bad” a person might be, not matter how apparently awful the act the accused may have committed, they still deserve representation.  Even more, it’s how our system works.  The American legal process is “adversarial”.  One side presents a case, the other side presents their case, and the “adjudicating authority” determines which side is right.  It might be a judge, it might be a jury.

So while it’s easy to say that someone did something so awful, so heinous, that they don’t “deserve” a defense; it simply doesn’t work that way.  We need defense lawyers for axe murderers and child molesters – in fact, those defendants need them most of all. 

In the American legal system we have “pro-bono” attorneys.  They are appointed by the Court to defend those who can’t afford defense.  And in bigger court systems there are even government funded public defenders. We pay them to take on the defense of those who cannot pay private attorneys.

There is one exception to all of this.  A defendant can demand that they “defend” themselves.  Lawyers (and judges) all know the maxim:  a lawyer who defends himself has a fool for a client.  But in the end, a defendant who is competent, and refuses representation, can proceed on their own.

Impeachment

For the second time in as many years, Donald Trump was impeached for “high crimes and misdemeanors” by the House of Representatives.  In the first impeachment trial, Mr. Trump was represented by several lawyers. They included Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, former Special Counsel and Judge Ken Starr, and television lawyer Jay Sekulow.

The Constitutionally mandated impeachment and trial process is a “political” process, not necessarily governed by the standard rules of legal procedure.  But Senate precedent has allowed for representation, and an opportunity to “put on” a defense in the trial.  It’s “part of the process”, and a way that Americans will perceive that the process was “fair”.  

Donald Trump faces an unprecedented second impeachment trial. All of American tradition and precedence assumes he will have representation and an opportunity to present a defense.  But he’s got a problem – his defense team just quit, one week before the start of the trial.

Legal Ethics

From a legal standpoint, there are particular achievements that stand out.  Arguing a case before the Supreme Court is one, and arguing a side (either side) in one of the four Presidential impeachment trials in American history is another.   Yet this weekend, the lawyers representing former President Donald J Trump quit, leaving him without representation in this high-profile case.  Lawyers above all understand the adversarial representation system.  They are dedicated to it – from day one of Law School it’s both “preached” and “practiced”.   To “abandon” a client before trial is a near breech of legal ethics.  So what happened?

There is no reason to try to defend the former President from “incitement of insurrection” charges, nor dereliction of duty charges, nor even encouraging election fraud.  Those may be the substantive charges that the House Impeachment Managers want to prove, and they are actions that may well be indefensible.  But Trump’s attorneys won’t fight those battles.  Better to stand on one legal point:  jurisdiction.

Slam Dunk

The legal argument for Donald Trump is very straight-forward.  It is the same “process” argument that earned forty-five votes in the Senate at the introduction of the House Impeachment resolution – that a trial of a former President, now a private citizen, is unconstitutional.  In short, the Senate doesn’t have jurisdiction.

It’s an argument that most Constitutional scholars disagree with.  Mr. Trump was still President, acting as President, when he was impeached.  And the penalty for conviction includes more than just removal from office, but also a ban from holding office in the future.  The Founding Fathers knew all about impeaching “former high officials”. It was done by the English Parliament they used as a model.  And they also knew that banning a post-term impeachment would give a “get-out-of-jail-free” card for the last months of a Presidency.  

But all of the Constitutional and precedential authority doesn’t really matter.  Attorneys for the President aim to win their case and get the President acquitted.  It requires only thirty-four Senators to vote for acquittal, and forty-five have expressed agreement with a “process” argument.  In legal terms: this case is a “slam dunk”.  The jury is already “rigged”.

Fool for a Client

We don’t know why these attorneys quit.  But I’m willing to make a guess:  their client, Mr. Trump, wasn’t willing to stand on the “process” defense.  He wanted a full-throated defense of all of his actions, point by point, from the Michigan, Arizona and Georgia phone calls, to the “perfect” speech on the Ellipse on January 6^th, to ignoring the frantic cries for help from the Capitol.  And most importantly:  he wants to make his claim that  the 2020 Presidential election was stolen from him by widespread voting fraud.

And for his attorneys all of those arguments put their “slam-dunk” case in jeopardy.  Republican Senators would be forced to face reality:  there is no evidence of voting fraud, the President pressured election officials to “fix” the election in his favor, and that he then sent a crowd to attack the Capitol to stop the electoral vote certification.  The evidence of Donald Trump’s guilt would be overwhelming, but more importantly, it would threaten the safe forty-five not guilty votes.

No attorney is going to use arguments that might convince the jury of the guilt of their client.  And if their client demands they do so, the only reasonable thing for them to do is resign.

Pro Bono Defense

So if Mr. Trump can’t find a defense team – what is the Senate supposed to do?  If they just go ahead and proceed with the trial, then it will be “unfair”, regardless that the lack of representation is the defendant’s own doing.  If they delay longer, then all Mr. Trump has to do is NOT get a legal team, or keep firing them, and he’ll never be tried.

But just last night, two more lawyers have taken up “the challenge” of defending the former President. One, was a lawyer on the team for serial child molester Jeffrey Epstein. He joins a line of Trump lawyers who were involved in the Epstein case, including Dershowitz and Starr. The other was the District Attorney of Pennsylvania’s Montgomery County. His claim to fame: he refused to indict Bill Cosby for his sexual predations.

They indicate that Mr. Trump will now fall in line with the “process defense”. But we know Donald Trump. Even when he “changes his mind” and seems to do the prudent thing, it doesn’t mean he’ll stick with it. Don’t be surprised to find this “Junior Varsity” legal group forced to argue that Trump was just trying to “Stop the Steal”.

Oh, and one of his new attorney’s is known for doing pro-bono work. After it’s over, whether Trump is convicted or not, the Senate or the attorney need to do at least one more thing: send Donald Trump a bill.  

He ain’t no charity case.

This is another story from my “youth” – there is no deep political meaning, no “moral” of the story.  It’s just a story about a hike – and a dog.

The Challenge

Boy Scouting had a huge impact on my life.  From leadership lessons to survival skills, physical challenges to a breadth of knowledge learned; Boy Scouting was a “game changer” for me.  And, of course, Scouting gave me my first taste of teaching, and of a form of coaching, that would end up setting my career path.

We did a lot of hiking and camping in my “Tenderfoot” years in Boy Scouts, and I was thirteen when I took my first major backpacking trip.  My troop, 229 out of Kettering, Ohio, sent us on an “expedition” to Philmont Scout Ranch in the mountains of New Mexico.  I was fresh out of eighth grade, a wrestler, swimmer and track athlete, and I thought I was ready for the challenge.

But there’s nothing like that first ten-mile day in the 8000 feet altitude of New Mexico with a forty-five pound backpack.  I remember cramping up as we worked our way out of the valley into the mountains, thinking maybe I had appendicitis, and they’d have to send me back.  It wasn’t such a bad thought, the climb was tough, the air thin, and I was challenged by the effort.

 Chili Mac and Dehydrated Ham

But it was a cramp, not appendicitis, and after the first two days I adapted to the altitude, the effort, and the dehydrated food.  By the way, there’s an amazing transition that occurs on every long-term backpacking trip.  That first night, no matter what the menu item, powdered and dehydrated food tastes like — well, it tastes bad.  Even the chili mac, something that you might even serve at home, just isn’t particularly good.  It’s eat a few bites, then crawl into your sleeping bag.

But somehow there’s a magical transformation that occurs in the pack, as the food gets jostled and tossed on that second day.  When that day’s journey ends, the tents are pitched and the fire going, the dehydrated onion soup followed by rehydrated noodles and ham in tomato sauce with “Bolton biscuits” (unbreakable, non-crumbling biscuit product) and powdered chocolate pudding is the best!! 

Traveling America

So I learned a lot about backpacking.  My family moved to Cincinnati and I joined Troop 819.  We hiked on the Appalachian Trail (AT) on the Tennessee/North Carolina border, again on the AT in New Hampshire off of the Kancamagus Highway, and in the Maroon Bells of Colorado.  We had great adventures, and by the time I was an adult, I no longer dreaded that first day with the now sixty-pound pack and steep elevation changes.  We’d been snowed-in on the Roan Plateau above Rifle, Colorado in June, and covered the incredibly steep elevations changes of the White Mountains in New Hampshire.

We hiked a lot with the troop, and one of the places we enjoyed with the Susquehanna Trail, only a few hours drive away in north-central Pennsylvania.  I was nineteen or twenty, old enough to drive one of the vehicles, when we took a crew on that trail.  We dropped our vehicles at a little town called Cross Fork, and headed up into the mountains.  

In the Woods

That first night, as the rookies groaned and crawled off to bed and the Scoutmasters lit their tobacco, I noticed something moving, just beyond the light of our campfire.   It seemed fascinated with the remains of our dinner, and got just close enough for us to recognize as a dog we’d seen as we left our cars and trooped through town.  He’d followed us up onto the trail, and come the six or so miles we climbed to our first campground.

So we set some food out for him, and went to bed, thinking he’d turn around and head back to Cross Fork.  The next day, the adults hiked at the rear.  That’s not because we were “stragglers”, but this way it was the youth leaders directing the hike, and the younger kids didn’t struggle back by themselves.  Even in following the map, it was all about leadership.  I’ve walked dozens of miles, knowing it was the wrong way, and waiting for a fifteen-year-old to figure it out.  We had everything we needed, so what  if our excursion the wrong direction left us too far off-course to correct that day. We could bed down wherever we needed to and straighten things out in the morning.

Blue Tick

And being in the back meant that we would get glimpses of anything following us.  And that dog, instead of going home to Cross Fork, was getting closer and closer to our group the whole time.  But nightfall when we reached our second camp, he was about ready to come in and join us.  Dinner closed the deal, and we had another friend along for the trip.

He was a “blue-tick” coon hound, and when he got to know us, he was incredibly friendly.  We didn’t have a name for him, just called him “dog”.  But that seemed silly, so as we sat around the fire that night, I tried to guess what his name might be.  After all of the usuals, from Buddy to Spot, I started working through the first names of Presidents (I would eventually become a history teacher).  He didn’t respond to George or John, and I got all the way to Dwight with no luck. There already had been a couple of Johns, so I used Kennedy’s family nickname – Jack.

The dog’s eyes lit up, and he ran up to me.  Whatever his real name, Jack was the one he wanted us to use.  And so we had another in the line of stumbling Scouts working through the Pennsylvania woods, though this one was pretty agile – Jack, the blue-tick coon hound.

A Mouthful

As we hiked, Jack would wander away from the crew for a while.  But I’m sure the dozen boys we had made so much noise as we tromped along, that Jack could find his way back to us easily.  He’d run up, check on us, then head out again.  That night he caught up with us as we were pitching our camp.  But this time it wasn’t a joyful run.  He slunk into camp, whining as he came up to me.  Jack had made a big mistake.  He tried to catch a porcupine, and got a mouthful of quills for his trouble.  

We debated what to do about a dog we didn’t know with quills around his mouth.  It was clear Jack couldn’t eat in that condition, so we had to do something.  Porcupine quills are a lot like fishhooks, they go in easy, but they’re barbed to come out ugly.  But, unlike a fishhook, you couldn’t just push a dozen barbs the rest of the way through Jack’s lips and pull them out from the inside.  There was only one way to help him.

Hot Pot Tongs

We always carried Hot-Pot-Tongs, basic pliers made of forged aluminum.  They were lighter than regular pliers, and designed to lift our pots off of the fire.  But they worked like pliers in a “pinch”, and so I decided that they would work on Jack. 

For the next twenty-four hours, Jack and I performed the “ritual” of quill removal.  He would slink up to me, whimpering, and wait for me to get the Hot-pot-tongs.  I would grab a quill, and jerk it out.  Jack might let me get two, but then he’d run off just outside of the camp, and wait for a while.  Eventually he’d come back, wander up to me, and we’d do it again.

It took most of  two days, with twenty miles of trails to cover in the time, to get all the quills out of Jack’s mouth.  But we finally got him “quill-free”, and Jack was happy to consume his portion of whatever dehydrated gastronomic delight we were serving that night.

You’re Gonna Die

In the Pennsylvania mountains you have to worry about two wild animals.  The first are the rattlesnakes.  The hang out on the rocky outcroppings, usually ones that provide the best views over the scenic valleys.  It makes sense to do a bit of checking before you decide to take your pack off, sit down and enjoy the view.  

There’s an old hiking joke about the guy who gets bit on the butt by a rattlesnake.  His buddy runs back into town to get the doctor, but all the doctor can do is give him treatment advice.  “Well,” says the doc, “you take your pocket knife, and you cut ¼ inch deep wounds through the bite marks.”  “Yep” says the buddy, “I can do that.”  “Then,” the doc says, “you take your mouth, and you suck the blood and venom out of the wounds.”  “What!?” says the buddy.  “You suck the venom out,” says the Doc, “that’s the way to fix your friend”.

The buddy runs back up the mountain, to find his friend laying on his stomach, moaning, “What did the Doc say?”  The response – “the Doc says you’re gonna die”.

We did see a rattler on this trip, right in the middle of the trail.  We detoured around it, worrying about its mate the whole time.  But the other wild animals that can really cause trouble are black bears.  Bears do one thing well, and that’s find food.  So leaving food around camp, or in the tent with you, is just a bad idea.  We had to emphasize to the kids, that the candy bar for the middle of the night might be a great snack, but it might not be for you.

Night Attack

Anyway, one of the last nights on the trail, we had to sleep in a “dry camp”.  That meant no running water around, and we had to conserve our supply.  We set up our tents, and as we were turning in heard some thrashing around in the woods.  The leaders made sure the food supply was secured in the trees and we went to bed.

But there still was something moving around out there.  And as my tentmate and I settled in, we worried about what might happen.  In the middle of the night, I woke up to something rustling up against the nylon tent wall.  I put my hand against it, and felt fur on the other side.  Was there a bear right beside us?  I carefully started to unzip the front door, but before I could get it open – fur and legs came flying into the tent!!  We were under attack!!!! – by Jack, who obviously was as worried about what was out there in the night as we were.  So our two-man tent became two men and a dog for that night. 

Jack’s Back

So after a week or so out on the trail, we finally completed our circuit and arrived back at Cross Fork.  There’s kind of an American contrast:  a bunch of grimy, dirty, no-shower-in-a-week kids and adults marching with packs down the Main street of a little town.  But we were surprisingly welcomed.  Town kids watched us coming in, and started yelling “Jack’s back, Jack’s back”.  Jack said his goodbyes to us, and returned to his home in Cross Fork, Pennsylvania.  As it turns out, this wasn’t his first excursion with a backpacking group. He was the “town dog;” everyone was happy to see him return.

It’s been a while since I’ve been out on the trail.  My backpack is in rafters above the garage, along with all the other equipment gathering dust over the years.  But I still remember the elemental peace that hiking brings, when the biggest concern of the day was getting up the next mountain, checking out the views along the way, and getting the porcupine quills out of Blue Tick Coon Hound’s mouth.  

Since writing this essay – the Department of Homeland Security sent out a National Terrorism Advisory Bulletin warning of terrorist threats from “domestic extremists” with “…objections to the Presidential transition” and “fueled by false narratives”. It’s all not just about votes from Donald Trump.

Old Friend

I had a long conversation with an old friend Tuesday night.  While we don’t share all the same political philosophies, we have been able to reach across our differences and build bridges, connections that I highly value.  Unlike most of the political conversations in our era, we have been able to keep our differences from driving us apart.  But that night, I blew it, and I am sorry.

I’m not sorry for how I feel, but I am sorry that my old friend bore the written brunt of my emotions.  I am usually able to see practical politics over rhetoric, and recognize that politicians respond to differing pressures than just “right and wrong”.  And my friend called me to reality last night – the reality that regardless of what happened in the Capitol on January 6^th, the majority of Republican Senators will find a way to avoid a vote against Donald Trump.

He’s probably right.  

Profiles 

When I was twelve years old, I read John F. Kennedy’s book, Profiles in Courage.  Kennedy knew a little bit about courage himself.  In World War II, he saved his PT Boat crew members from drowning and capture by swimming miles in the dark between islands in the Pacific.  As he would say, “I got my boat sunk,” but we know that he went far beyond “normal” heroics.  And he did it with a damaged back, one that would deteriorate so much that fifteen years later he spent months in bed recovering from surgery.  And that’s when he wrote a book about courage, political courage.

Kennedy wrote about eight members of Congress who risked (some lost) their political careers to stand up for a principle they believed in.  It wasn’t about the physical courage that Kennedy showed in the Pacific nights, it was about political courage in the bright sunshine of open Congressional debate.  And it wasn’t even necessarily that they were on the “right” side of the issue.  It was that they believed that they were in the right, and were willing to stand for that right despite the political costs.

We know a lot more about John Kennedy than we did back when I was twelve.  But, personal flaws and all, Kennedy’s book revealed a new level of “duty” to me, one that I haven’t forgotten in the more than half a century since I read the book (damn – that’s a long time). 

Kicking the Ball

It set my expectations for our legislators.  I knew that they would generally do what they thought best.  And fifty years of politics informs me that “best” was generally what was best for their own political interest.  It’s the nature of the profession.  But what I did expect is that in an issue of national import, when the founding principles of our nation were on the line, at least some of them would put principle over party, and over their own political careers.

The Trump era should have taught me different.  I’ve become Charlie Brown, constantly trying to kick the football that Lucy pulls away.  Again and again, I line up to swing at that ball, only to land flat on my back.  And so I lined up again Tuesday, watching the United States Senate debate the impeachment trial of Donald Trump.

Fig Leaf

The term “fig leaf” goes back much farther than half a century.  It comes from the first book of the Bible, Genesis.  Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden, an idyllic life where clothing was unnecessary.  But when they “partook of the forbidden fruit”, they gained forbidden knowledge, and were embarrassed by their nakedness.  So they took fig leaves and covered themselves.

Some members of the United States Senate have made the political calculation that they must support Donald Trump.  This, in spite of the clear evidence that Trump incited rioters to attack the Congress, including those same members.  In all of the history of the United States, it is the first time a President has tried to violently intimidate the Congress.  It is the most dangerous threat to the Constitution since the secession of states before the Civil War.

But though out of office, Donald Trump maintains political power, and some of the Senators are afraid they will be “primaried” and lose their office.  Unlike Kennedy’s eight “profiles in courage”, these Senators are putting their political careers ahead of principle.  But they need a “fig leaf”, something to hide their embarrassing act from public view.

Misinterpretation

Rand Paul, the junior Senator from Kentucky provided that “fig leaf” Tuesday.  He argued that, since Donald Trump was no longer the President, the Senate no longer had jurisdiction over him.  Regardless of his prior actions as President, the fact that he was no longer in office puts him beyond the reach of the Congress, was Paul’s theme.  And that argument does fit in with our “Schoolhouse Rock” understanding of the impeachment and conviction process, where we learned that it was about removing the President (and other high officials).  That’s why it was no surprise that when Nixon resigned from office, impeachment went away.

But the legal precedent, what the Senate has done before, is the opposite.  The Senate has tried “former” officials in the past.  And that is because the Constitution specifically states that the penalties for conviction are two-fold:  removal from office and a second vote to ban from future office.  Practically, the Founding Fathers envisioned both, and resignation or end of term shouldn’t relieve a convicted “high official” from the second penalty. Nixon, by the way, was already ineligible to run for the Presidency again, having served most of two terms.

But Rand Paul offered this “fig leaf” to obscure what some Republican Senators are doing.  They are standing on false “technicalities” rather than stating the obvious:  regardless of the heinous actions of Donald Trump, they are more afraid of his political power than they are of his threat to the Republic.  

Take Courage

The Democrats aren’t afraid.  And five Republican Senators aren’t afraid either.  Toomey of Pennsylvania,  has already said he won’t run for re-election, removing the threat that Trump represents.  Three more, Romney of Utah, Murkowski of Alaska and Collins of Maine, believe that their constituents will stay with them.  And one, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, has made a choice of courage over expediency.  

But forty-five Republican Senators are crowding behind that little “fig leaf”, trying to hide their naked political fear of Donald Trump’s tweets.

And I am tired of the statement: well if it was a “secret ballot” Trump would be convicted 90 to 10. It’s time for “Profiles in Courage”, and that means speaking out in the open. But that’s probably not to be.

What’s my best case?  That several of these Republicans figure it’s not worth the Trump generated pressure for the next three weeks.  So they vote “for the fig leaf”, but when it all comes down will vote to convict the clearly guilty President, and ban him from office.  Hang onto that football, Lucy.  Some like Mitch McConnell and Rob Portman, have even sent vague signals that it might be the case.

And my worst case?  That they truly won’t stand up for the Constitution, that they are so afraid of the power of the “Trump Base” that they will “stand with Trump”, just as they did after the “perfect phone call” to Ukraine.

Reality

My old friend believes that will be the case, and thinks we ought to move onto the future.  He isn’t ignoring the past; he’s just recognizing political reality.  Senators Kaine of Virginia and Collins of Maine agree with him. They are “floating” the idea of a Congressional Censure – a slap on Donald Trump’s wrist with no actual penalties.  It may be the best they can do.

I will agree on one issue.  The dark power that Donald Trump tapped into as President will not go away with his impeachment, removal or banning.  He is not the cause. He is the symptom.  So it’s more than Charlie Brown foolish to think a “principled” vote of the Senate will change the divide in American politics.  

But it would be a start.

A Year Later

February, 2021 begins next week.  A year ago, the nation was watching Donald Trump on trial in the Senate, and  Democratic Presidential candidates scramble to get recognition.  And quietly, almost below the radar – we began to hear about a virus in Wuhan, China.  Little did we know a year ago, that in 2020 over two million would die from that virus worldwide, and over 430,000 here in America.  That’s more than in died in any war the United States ever fought except for the Civil War – and that “butcher’s bill” of 600,000 will be surpassed in the next couple months. 

We are all now “experts” on COVID-19:  on “social distancing” and quarantining.  We all know folks who had COVID and recovered, and also those that didn’t make it.  On the key hook by the door hang multiple face masks ready for use. Everyone has them. Some are fashionable, some make political or social statements, and some wear ones that look like the belong in an operating room.  Ours are basic black – they go with everything and don’t look dirty (kind of strange – that’s the same reason I wear black running socks). 

Jenn and I are retired, and spend a lot of time at home. There’s usually a TV on, and I’ve binged a few televisions shows (not programs, as I’m told by the advertisement). The new Star Trek Discovery series is the latest. But mostly MSNBC’s on, often in the background. Stephanie Ruhle, a morning news anchor, has made it a point to demand that children go back to “regular” school. And she points out two very valid reasons.

Back to School

 First, she says, in-school education is much, much better than “remote” education.   Of course it is.  As a teacher, I know that the personal relationships between teacher and students are vastly important both to student achievement and personal growth.  And, through my limited experience in online education, two months at the beginning of the pandemic, I know it’s so much more difficult to have those relationships “remotely”.  So, everything else being equal, going back to school is a “great” thing.

And the second point Stephanie Ruhle makes is also valid. If kids can’t go to school, many folks can’t go to work. For those who don’t have the “luxury” of working remotely, remote school means don’t work (and not get paid), find someone to stay with kids (and pay them) or leave kids alone and unsupervised in remote school. From a national economy standpoint, schools being open is critical to getting the economy going particularly for lower income areas.

Compulsory Education

It’s a lot like the reason compulsory schooling began in the first place.  Here in the United States, that took hold in the 1920’s.  Of course it was about getting kids “educated”, but there was another reason just as significant.  If kids were in school, they were out of the labor market.  Child labor was a big deal in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.  Kids were agile, they could do the mass production work of that time. And they were cheap.  They kept adults out of the job market.  So sending them all to school kept them from working “in the mills”.  

And another reason for getting kids out of “the mills” was the danger of doing hazardous work.  One job was that of “breaker boy”, the children who straddled the elevated conveyor belts leading into coal processing plants.  Their job was to pick rocks out of the passing coal and toss them to the ground.  The dangers were great – the conveyors were high, and the “belts” were often slatted metal.  If the kid reached in too deep, they could lose a finger, or a hand, to the “belt”.  If they lost their balance, they could fall to injury or death on the piled-up rocks below.  Child welfare meant getting them out of those jobs, and keeping them safe until they were old enough to “assume the risks” themselves.

It’s the Adults

We now know enough about COVID-19 that we understand that the risks to children are low.  While they can catch the virus, and they can spread the virus, they are less likely to get sick from the virus.  Those particularly vulnerable kids, or those with vulnerable adults at home, need to be removed from the school setting, but for most kids, school is fine.

So it’s not the kids at risk from open schools, it’s the adults.  It’s the teachers and the custodians, the cooks, and yes, even the administrators.  Like the “breaker boys” of the 1880’s, it’s the adults who are being asked to assume the risks.

And it’s a special kind of risk that we want those adults to assume.  There are few jobs today that place large groups of people together in a single room.  And since we know that children can have COVID without necessarily having the symptoms of COVID, we are asking those adults to go into a setting where transmission to them is more likely.  It’s not the same as the other “essential” worker jobs we discuss.  The grocery store clerks have more room, the postal workers are outside, and the meat processing plants test their workers. Even the hospital workers have the proper protection, and work in buildings designed to ventilate the virus away.

Chicago

The Chicago Public Schools ordered their buildings open, and their teachers to report for in-person instruction this week.  The Chicago Federation of Teachers voted by seventy percent to stay out of school and continue online instruction. Their concern has two parts.  Sources told the Chicago Tribune:

“They will not go back to schools until they think it is safe and urge CPS to come up with health metrics for when a school should be closed, and to take the idea of synchronous teaching — instructing in-person and remote students simultaneously — off the table” (Tribune).  

The United States wants kids in school, but we haven’t spent the resources to make it safe for the adults working there.  Schools aren’t improving ventilation systems (already a problem in our aging school structures).  Schools aren’t “bigger”, so classroom sizes really haven’t changed much.  In our local area, the “rules” were re-written so that kids could be three feet from each other in class instead of six, because there wasn’t the room for six-foot separation.   And there is little or no COVID testing in schools.  The schools depend on the county health departments, first overwhelmed by contact-tracing, and now by vaccine distribution. 

Commitment

Schools aren’t closing because the kids are getting sick.  To be brutally honest, we have no idea how many kids really have COVID, because we don’t test.  Only the ones who get sick enough to go to a doctor and get reported to the County Health Department are known.  What we do know is that schools are being closed because of staff absences.  Teachers are getting sick, and substitute teachers, many, like me retired from a teaching career, aren’t working.  We are among the more vulnerable to COVID infection. 

Teachers want to work directly with kids.  They want to be back in school.  I’d like to substitute.  But many know that they are putting themselves and their families at risk by being in the classroom.  So what’s the solution?  Vaccination of adult school workers and testing of kids is the answer, as well as spending the funds to make schools physically a safer place.  And all of that takes time, money – and a national commitment.  

Just wanting kids back in school shouldn’t make it so. 

Revolutionary Theory

Revolution:  when the people rise up against an oppressive government to change its structure.  A “coup d’etat”,is when an individual leader is overthrown. But a Revolution is a popular movement (of the people) overthrowing a “system”, not just a tyrant.  Look at revolutions of the past: the American, French and Russian revolts. They didn’t occur when oppression was “at its worst”.  Revolution isn’t a matter of how bad things can get.  Historically it was a matter of “hope”:  of people knowing that things were getting better, than having that hope dashed.  

Revolution is about frustration just as much as it is about oppression.  It’s about taking away hard-won gains, improvements that were won “within” the system.  When those are stripped away, the frustration that results causes “the people” to “rise up”. 

America Today

In today’s America, there are two different cases that suggest we are a nation on the verge of revolution.  The first is the “frustration” of the fading white majority, slowly losing power along with its majority status.  Within two decades, white people will no longer be the majority of Americans.  The race that had the majority power since the founding of the Republic; since it could own some minorities and sweep others from their lands, will no longer be able to depend on sheer numbers to dominate elections.  

One perspective on the success of “Trumpism” is to see it as a last great struggle of that majority group to maintain control.  In blunt terms:  the Obama Presidency was a “wake-up call” to a new, multi-cultural America.  For those who didn’t appreciate that change, it was the alarm that drove them to the polls in massive numbers, first to elect Trump in 2016, and then to defend him last November.  Their America is dominated by a strict partisan divide. At every level it is near even:   the 2020 Presidential election (81 million for Biden, 74 million for Trump), the Senate (50 Dems, 50 Reps), Governorships (27 Reps, 23 Dems), and in the House (Dems 222, Rep 212).

Past Majority

The four years of the Trump Administration gave that fading majority group “hope”.  Mike Pompeo, Trump’s Secretary of State and an obvious future Presidential candidate summed it up in a tweet last week:  “Woke-ism, multiculturalism, all the -isms — they’re not who America is. They distort our glorious founding and what this country is all about. Our enemies stoke these divisions because they know they make us weaker…”   

In a more esoteric way, that conflict is demonstrated by the New York Times’ 1619 Project versus the Trump Administration’s The 1776 Report.   1619 places slavery at the foundation of much of American prosperity.  It posits that the original sin of America was slavery, one that has neither been acknowledged nor atoned for. 1776 was written by a commission of conservative Christian historians for the Trump Administration to directly repudiate 1619.  It denigrates the impact of slavery both on American social and economic advancement, taking the more traditional, “great individuals, primarily white, made a great American” stand.

And now, by a relatively slim margin, Trumpian “hopes” have been frustrated.  And their leaders, with Trump at the head, stoked that frustration with the “false hope” that the election was stolen.  It should be no surprise that they were willing to storm the Capitol, hang the Vice President, and overthrow the Constitution.  Ironic that they were protesting the one Constitutional provision, the Electoral College, that gave their minority view political power four years before.

 

Future Majority

Concurrently, the “future” majority is now feeling empowered.  The symbol of “white majoritarianism” is the former President, the first to be impeached twice.  They view the 2020 election as a repudiation of Trumpism.  And the changing politics of the South, with Georgia and Arizona going for Biden, and North Carolina and even Texas becoming “bluer”,  are a positive signs of the future.

But states like Georgia, Arizona, Texas and Pennsylvania are also trying to enact voting restrictions, with the clear desire to reduce minority voter participation.  And should they be successful in minority voter suppression, that will serve to frustrate them, perhaps leading to a disenchantment with the current electoral processes.  Nothing “calls” the revolution more than gaining power legally, then having that power ripped away.

Insurrection

We are learning that the “Insurrection” was not just a spontaneous uprising of a “mob” of Trump supporters.  There was planning involved, planning by the extremists who wanted to use the mob as cover, and by the organizers to use mob action to pressure Cgress.  In short, the mob was intentionally created, and intentionally used.  Whether their ultimate violence was “intended” by the Trump Administration, is still an open question.

But Insurrection is not a Revolution.  Revolution is much deeper than a riot in the Capitol, or in the streets of American cities.  Revolution comes when a vast number of Americans come to believe that their government no longer can represent their interests.  In fact, it comes when the Revolutionaries have lost all hope of “political” change.

Changes in our Nation are inevitable.  America is America:  we are becoming more “multi-cultural” in spite of Mike Pompeo’s wishes.  And the “inalienable rights” are more than just those that the Founding Fathers’ envisioned, in spite of the authors of the 1776 Project.  The predominantly white, Christian, European nation those Founders led is old news. Luckily, they left us Founding documents that allow our changing nation to expand our structures and our beliefs. 

Without that expansion, Revolution would be inevitable. The frustration will make people Rise Up.

Songs and Insurrection

Donald Trump is no longer the President of the United States, Hallelujah, Hallelujah!!  He’s sequestered away at his Mara Lago Resort, taking out his frustrations on the fairways and putting greens instead of Twitter and the Department of Justice.  And, to quote a very different song lyric (from Hamilton, of course) That Would be Enough.  But of course, it’s not.

The evidence continues to grow that Donald Trump was in the process of an overthrow of the Constitution. He tried to subvert the mandated transition of power to a new President. Trump did it with the long discredited “election fraud” campaign.  He did by attempting to suborn election fraud in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan (and probably Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada).  We have the actual call to Georgia, when he demanded that the election authorities “find” 11,780 votes to change the outcome.  

He did it by bringing his partisans to Washington on January 6^th for the express purpose of stopping the Electoral Vote certification.  We have that speech as well, and those of his apologists who are hiding behind the one—word fig leaf of “peacefully”,  ignore almost an hour of haranguing the crowd, firing them up to march to the Capitol and “fight, fight, fight”.  This isn’t a “perfect” speech, Georgia wasn’t a “perfect” phone call, and neither was the one to the Ukrainian President.

Sunday Night Massacre

And Friday night we discovered that President Trump made the decision to fire his acting Attorney General. He wanted to replace him with a lesser Assistant who, in the assistant’s own words, spent “…a lot of time on the internet” and believed in the “stop the steal” fraud.  Only the willingness of the rest of the leadership in the Justice Department to quit in protest, gave the President enough pause to change his mind.  And it really wasn’t that potential “massacre” that stopped him.  It was two days before the January 6^th assemblage on the National Mall. Trump thought he had a better chance of “winning” there, and didn’t need the distraction.

And now reporting shows that while the mob was storming the Capitol, and Congressmen hid in fear, Donald Trump was watching on television. He was almost gleeful, getting what he wanted: pressure on the Congress to deny the legal election results.

Who knows what other actions will be revealed in the coming days?  Who knows how close our Republic was to irrevocable damage?  A government of the people, by the people and for the people was on a thin thread, and the more we learn, the more frayed and narrowed that thread becomes.  

Self Defense

So impeaching the President while he remained in office was really a “no brainer”.  It was the only reasonable course that the House of Representatives could take, a pure measure of real self-defense.  That only ten Republicans chose to participate says so much more about the rest:  politics reigned supreme over principles.

But he is no longer in office, exiled to the sunny golf courses of the Sunshine State.  So why bother with a trial in the Senate?  Goodbye and good riddance. Let us move onto the crises of the present:  COVID and the economy, racial justice and the climate threat.  But like putting a new coat of paint over rust, those last actions of Trump cannot be ignored.  The new will flake off to reveal that the old rust is simply growing, the problem worse from the neglect.

We know that “…if you give a mouse a cookie, he’ll ask for a glass of milk”.  We learned that over and over from Donald Trump.  The more he acted outside the “lines”, the farther he passed the boundaries of American mores and norms.   Senator Susan Collins of Maine assured us he “learned his lesson” after the first impeachment and trial. But of course we now know the only lesson he learned was – forge ahead and no one will stop him.  

Milk and Cookies

So the Senate trial of the former President is more than just a “show trial” for the slim Democratic majority.  In their heart-of-hearts, they wish they could “leave him be” on the golf course.  But they know, he has the cookie, and the glass of milk, and he will come back for much, much more.  And even if Donald Trump chooses to not exert himself and return to the fray, his progeny and those that strive to gain his mantle (Graham, Hawley, Cruz, et al) must know that there are consequences for insurrection, malfeasance and misfeasance in office, and for trying to subject the United States to authoritarian rule.

Sure, the new Department of Justice will have their say as well.  Federal prosecutors must be examining those last few weeks, trying to determine whether to charge felonies of incitement of insurrection, sedition and election fraud.  But there is a difference between “legal” consequences and “political” consequences.  And the legislative branch, granted the Constitutional authority to enact political consequences for unconstitutional acts, must weigh in.

There are two punishments for conviction after impeachment.  The first, and most obvious, is removal from office.  That box is already check-marked, the people of the United States have made that clear.  And for doubters, the precedent is already set for trying a “high official” who has left office, it was done in the ugly time after the Civil War.  It’s been done before; it can be done again.  But why do it?

Political Consequence

 The second Constitutional consequence of conviction is the opportunity, a choice, to ban the offender from any future “position of trust”.  And it is that statement that the offended legislative branch must make to the man, and his followers, who attempted to use the executive branch to violently overthrow them.  Like the House of Representatives, the Senate must rise to its own defense, and not just depend on a third branch, the judiciary, for protection.

The statement must be loud and clear – attempt to overthrow the Constitution, and you forfeit the right to earn the trust of America again.  The Senate must stand for itself, and for the nation.   

This is just a story of my younger days.  There’s no deep political meaning, no “moral”. It’s just a story of a nineteen-year-old kid from the suburbs, learning about  – Riding the Dog. Enjoy!!!

Driving Old Cars

My sister lives in the New York City area.  She has no need for a car; public transportation is great and stores in the neighborhood are close.  So when she wanted to come back to Ohio and didn’t want to pay for a flight – she took the Greyhound from Newark, New Jersey.  She called it “Riding the Dog”.  She once led a passenger revolt in a blizzard at a truck stop near Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania.  But that’s her story to tell.

I have lived in Ohio for most of my life.  Unless you live directly in a downtown, having a car is a necessity.  When I went to college at Denison University in Granville, I was two hours from home in Cincinnati.  Dad could come and get me, but I was an independent young man, and didn’t want to depend on my Father for mobility.  So I always had a car at Denison, even in my Freshman year when we weren’t allowed to park one on campus.  I paid a small fee to keep it at the Certified Gas Station down by the IGA (grocery store).  It was a fifteen-minute walk from my dorm, but accessible when I wanted to go camping, hiking, or get back home for a Friday night with friends.

Plymouth Fury III

Today’s kids would call my first few cars “beaters”.  They weren’t all that old, my first car a 1969 Plymouth Fury III (it was 1974).  But my cousin put the first 100,000 miles on her in a year, and she was worn.  I paid him $250, and had to replace the head gaskets before I could even start the engine.  So I learned about mechanics from my neighbors, as we took the engine apart to remove the heads, had them machined, then put everything back together.  Tom Morgan and Carlos Phillips taught me everything about engines, and even more about the process of getting things fixed.  Tom, a Proctor and Gamble engineer, always had a way of using a “gentle tap” with a hammer to loosen some recalcitrant part.  

Carlos, on the other hand, learned his mechanics on his two vintage 1950’s Porsches.  He was amazed that you’d even get a hammer near the engine, or that the engine would ever run without the “strict German tolerances” he was used to.  But we had a great time in Tom’s garage, getting “the Furious” together, and watching my Dad fall asleep against a tire.

The “Furious” did fine for the last year of high school and the first year at Denison.  But a buddy borrowed it over the summer after my freshman year, and the engine blew again.  Ultimately the Fury was “repurposed” – we donated it to the Goodwill.  I can’t imagine that they fixed it up, but I like to think that some other sixteen-year-old got a “low-cost beater” to learn on.

The Squareback

My second car was a little older, a 1967 Volkswagen Squareback.  It was the station wagon version of the Beetle, with a shoe boxy build instead of the more traditional bulbous shape.  And while it was by then eight years old, it only had 75,000 miles on it.  Carlos was ecstatic – old Volkswagen engines and old Porsche engines were almost the same – except for engine tolerances and top speeds, of course.  So when the Squareback broke down, actually caught fire on I-71 just north of the Fort Ancient bridge on a frozen sixteen-degree day, Carlos was more than willing to help replace the crankshaft bearings.  Tom joined in too, this time in my Dad’s garage.  The Squareback didn’t take up as much room. 

But I was still in school at Denison, so I had to do the repairs on the weekend.  And one way to get back to Cincinnati, was “riding the dog”. 

There was a “metro” bus you could pick up in downtown Granville, across from Fuller’s Market (now I’m pretty sure that’s “the Pub on Broadway” – that’s my fault too, but it’s another story).  It took you all the way down State Route 16 into downtown Columbus and the Greyhound Station, where you could catch the bus to Cincinnati.  On the other end there was a stop in Springdale, not too far from Mom and Dad’s house, so I could catch a ride and get back to work on the car.

On the Dog

It took a couple of weekends to get the Squareback on the road:  one to tear things down and get the parts to the NAPA store to “get grinded” and reset, then another weekend to pick things up and put them all back together.  So there were two weekends of finding a way home, and the first weekend, of “Riding the Dog”.

So I caught the bus in Granville, and impatiently waited for the dozen stops to get downtown.  We even stopped in a little town called Pataskala, not far west of Granville.  I didn’t think much that at the time – little did I know that I’d spend most of my life there.  But that too is another story. 

We finally arrived at the Bus Station in Columbus, on the seamier side of downtown.  I rushed in, got my ticket, grabbed my backpack and boarded the Cincinnati bus.  I wanted the window seat, even though I had the trip down I-71 already memorized by mile marker.  A middle-aged guy took the seat next to me, and struck up a conversation.

He asked me what I was doing, and I explained to him the fate of the Squareback.  He laughed, then told me that he was a chiropractor.  Now I was a smart kid, nineteen years old and a Denisonian, but at the time I’m not sure I knew what a Doctor of Chiropractic actually did.  So this guy began to explain chiropracty to me, telling me about positions and spinal movements.  It all sounded interesting, if a little exotic.  He waxed eloquently about the health benefits of alignment and extension, and we were halfway to Cincinnati before…things got a little strange.

Adjustment?

The good doctor explained the need for special tables in order perform adjustments.   But then he began to get into the mechanics of his tables, and the “new” chair he had designed.  This, he said, was good for chiropractic, but its real value was for sex.

I wasn’t quite ready for that transition, and soon the Doctor was waxing eloquently about how good sex was in his new chair.  He then got more descriptive, reaching over the carefully placed armrest to try to alter my Greyhound seat to more aptly describe his invention.  I wasn’t a frequent “rider of the dog”, but I knew when it was time to defend my window seat.  We had a bit of low-key parrying, as he tried to place himself in a more descriptive position. I kept replacing his hands back on his side of the armrest, and he was getting frustrated with my unwillingness to gain “a full understanding” of “the chair”.  My still honed high school wrestling skills were coming in “handy”.

I thought things might become more violent, but realized that we were turning off of I-75 by Princeton High School.  The Springdale stop was right at the corner, and I had no concerns about jumping over my “seat mate” to get down the aisle to the open door.  No goodbyes were necessary for the Doctor of Chiropractic.

What Bus?

I spent the weekend up to my elbows in grease and gasoline.  But we got the engine apart, the small (4 cylinder) crankshaft to the NAPA store, and ordered all the assorted parts and pieces to pick up the next weekend for the rebuild.  By Saturday night, I was with my buddies listening to music (and probably having a Stroh’s beer or two).

Sunday morning I had breakfast, and then caught the early afternoon bus back to Columbus.  No “doctoring” was available on this trip, so I read an Isaac Asimov novel and jumped out unscathed at the Greyhound Station.  I went out to the street, and waited for the local bus to take me back to Granville.

After about half an hour or so, I wandered back into the Greyhound Station to the information desk.  There I was informed that the bus to Granville (and onto Newark) didn’t run on Sunday, oops!

It was 1975, and hitchhiking was still “a thing”.  My buddy down the hall hitchhiked all the time from his home in Maine to Denison and back, so I figured that getting from downtown Columbus to Granville wouldn’t be a big deal.  But you can’t hitchhike on the Interstate, and it didn’t seem like you could in downtown Columbus.  So I started walking east on Broad Street, figuring it couldn’t be too far until I could get to a more “highway” like area.

Hitchin’

Looking back on that journey, I walked from downtown, through Bexley and Whitehall, and out past the airport towards a little hospital (then), Mt. Carmel East. That’s about nine miles, but hiking and backpacking was my thing in those days. I was even wearing hiking boots and a backpack. Unfortunately it was getting dark, and cold, and there was still a long way to, about eighteen more miles to Granville.  I finally got up my nerve and stuck out my thumb. A nice lady picked me up and took me as far as the County line. 

State Route 16 was a two-lane highway back then, not the five-lane road it is today.  And back then there was only one stop light from Mt. Carmel East all the way to Granville. Today, there’s one every couple of blocks.   So hitchhiking was easier back then, and a pickup truck pulled over almost right away. 

Now I was a novice hitchhiker, so I didn’t think too much when the guy with the fluorescent orange work gloves jumped out of the driver’s seat.  The passenger door was broken he said, but he was headed east if I wanted a ride.  So I clambered up into the driver’s side of the truck,  slid over to the passenger seat, and we headed east towards Granville.  

The window didn’t work either, so I did start to get a little nervous after my chiropractic adventure.  But he was a local guy, just talking about local stuff, and we got to Granville quick enough.  He wanted to drive me up to my dorm, but I had him drop me off by Fuller’s Market.  Seemed like a safer bet.

No More Dogs

The next weekend I caught a ride with another Denison student headed home for the weekend.  It was a busy Saturday and Sunday, trying to reassemble the Squareback with all the new parts and pieces.  And I managed to get in a little bit of trouble at home:  Mom came into the kitchen and found pistons in the oven and wrist pins in the freezer.  Their tolerances were close:  it was hard to get them together. So you made the wrist pins smaller from cold, and the pistons bigger with heat.  Somehow Mom didn’t seem to get the point, and the oven did have the odor of just a hint of motor oil.

But we managed to get the pins in the pistons, the crankshaft in the engine, and the engine back in the vehicle.  By Sunday it was time to test it out,  and, I drove the Squareback back to school.  By now I could park in the Dorm lot.  I hitchhiked a few more times in my student days, including one crazy ride at 120 miles an hour through the mountains of Tennessee.  I thought that was going to be the end, but learned to never underestimate the skills of the son of a moonshiner.  

But that trip to Cincinnati was the last time I was “riding the dog”.

Call It What It Is

You would think that after almost a thousand essays, I would have covered all of the political topics of our time.  But there are a couple I’ve shied away from for varying reasons.  One of those is American racism, though I have written about Black Lives Matter and societal violence towards minorities.  But with the end of the Trump Administration, so many Americans don’t seem to understand why the Insurrection of January 6^th is being called a “white supremacist” event.  So I’m going to try to examine why.

In the Fox News App (yep, I really do check it to see what they’re saying) they had a long article about the Insurrection.  In that article the term “white ___” (fill in the blank, supremacist, racist, extremist) was constantly followed with the parenthetical “sic”, to designate an improper use of language.  It took me a while to catch on.  Fox News doesn’t believe in “white supremacy” (sic) so every use of the term by them is improper, hence the “sic”.  

So let me lay out a case to demonstrate why the Insurrection, and much of what is done to restrict voting is, in fact, racist.  And let me go on to show why a lot of what our government does, intentionally or unknowingly, is racist as well.  If you’ve gotten this far, I hope you’ll be willing to read the rest.  The case isn’t that complicated.  This isn’t social calculus, it’s simple arithmetic.  In fact, it’s as simple as two plus two.

Stop the Steal

The Trump/Republican Party made a case to America that the Presidential Election of 2020 was “stolen” from them.  They argued that the Democrats somehow stole votes, or created them from thin air.  They tried to make their argument in Courts throughout the nation, even in front of Trump appointed Judges, but failed each and every time.  But they held onto that argument, long past time to give in, all the way through to the Electoral College certification in the United States Congress on January 6^th.  One hundred and forty some Republican Congressmen voted to refuse the votes of several states, and two Senators.  

But let’s look specifically at whose votes President Trump, and his fellows in the Congress didn’t want to count.  It wasn’t that they really wanted to throw out the whole votes from Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada.  They only wanted to disregard the votes from certain segments of each of those states.

Here’s the list.  It’s the county (or counties) in those states that contained the following cities:  Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, Phoenix and Las Vegas.  Why those counties?  Because if you discounted those, Trump would win, and win the Presidential Electoral College.  But let’s go to the next step:  what do each of those cities have in common?

Sixth Sense

There is a Bruce Willis movie called “The Sixth Sense”, where a child is able to see the dead.  The famous line from that movie is a haunting (literally), “I see dead people”.  If you look at each of those cities you don’t see “dead people”, you see “brown people”.  Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit and Milwaukee have a high percentage of Black people, most of whom vote Democratic.  Phoenix and Las Vegas, have large Hispanic populations, and again, most of them vote Democratic as well.  

So when the Republicans cried out to deny the votes of those states, because of those cities, what they were really doing is disenfranchising people of color so that they could win an election.  If that ain’t (sic) racist, I don’t know what is.

So why not New York, or Cleveland, or Chicago?  Because those states weren’t close enough to be in question.  But don’t doubt for a second that if Ohio had been a closer count, there would have been Republican cries to discount Cuyahoga (Cleveland), Summit (Akron), and Montgomery (Dayton) counties.  Republicans saw “Black people” there too.  Black people who voted Democratic.

I’m sure my Republican friends will say it had nothing to do with race, it was simply about trying to win the Presidency.  But if it was you – if the President of the United States was taking your vote away, and all-around you people who “looked like you” were having their vote threatened too, what would you think?  It’s as easy as two plus two.

Electoral College

It’s similar to the argument to maintain the Electoral College.  Let’s be clear:  The Electoral College simply says that in some states, the vote for President of the United States is worth more than in others.  The smaller the state, the more each vote for President “counts”, the bigger the state, the less.  In a nation where the Supreme Court ruled a half century ago that “one man, one vote” should be the law of the land (Reynolds v Sims), the Electoral College stands out as the “grand exception”, endowed by the Constitution with an exemption from fairness.

Want a statistical analysis?  Every state (and the District of Columbia) is guaranteed three Electoral votes. Then those votes are added by population.  So, in California, each Electoral vote represents about 720,000 people.  In Wyoming, each Electoral vote represents 193,000.  Here in Ohio, it’s one Electoral vote to 650,000.  

Any nine-year-old can look at that analysis and determine – it ain’t (sic) fair.  And of course the Electoral college was based in an ultimate unfairness.  It was written on the principle that some people counted as one (free persons) and some people counted as 3/5’s, (enslaved persons).  Those who were enslaved didn’t get to “cast” a 3/5’s vote, they didn’t get to vote at all.  But their bodies added to the Electoral strength of the state where they were held.

It shouldn’t surprise then, that the states with the greater “weight” of Electoral votes are states where the vast majority of the population is white (Washington DC is the exception).  The Electoral College is a “peculiar” institution, founded in racism.  And it continues to be.

Apartheid

The nation of South Africa made a huge transition in 1994.  For forty-five years before, South Africa lived under the principle of Apartheid, a strict legal separation of the races.  Where you lived, where you could go, what you could study, who you could love, was legally set by a government determined racial designation.  The ultimate goal of apartheid was to keep a minority white population in control, and the majority population of color denied political power.

It wasn’t until 1994 that the system of apartheid was abandoned, and majority rule came to control.  Amazingly, this revolution didn’t require a war (though there was a lot of civil violence).

So there are models of government where a minority manipulates the law and government to maintain control.  And while here in the United States we aren’t considering apartheid laws, there are more subtle means used to keep one political party in power over the other.

And let’s call them out:  laws that keep people from voting, that are designed to make it “easy” for suburban voters and “hard” for urban voters, and that draw the legislative district lines to enhance one political party’s power and dilute the other, are racist when one party predominantly represents one race.  Voter suppression, “Red Mapping”, making polling places inconvenient for the voters: all are designed to keep people of color from voting.  That’s inherently racist.

Numbers

The United States Census Bureau estimates that within twenty-five years, the United States will become a majority/minority nation.  In plain language, white people will no longer by the majority of the country.  The fact that this represents a “challenge” to be met by altering rules and laws to enhance the power of white people, is another “proof” of racism.  And here’s another statistically “altered” figure.

We all know that the pandemic has damaged our economy.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics says our nation has, in large part, recovered from the high unemployment of last June.  They statistically claim that unemployment was as high at 14%, but now is back down to 6.7%, still high, but more “politically” palatable.  But our “gut” tells us that the current figure doesn’t “feel” right, that far more folks are impacted by the pandemic than “just” 6.7%.

Emergency

And our “gut” is right.  The Statistics stop counting folks who stop looking for work.  So the “real” unemployment rate – of people who want to work but can’t find work – is closer to 12% (CNBC).  And from that the overall rate, we know there’s an even greater impact on people of color.  The “announced” unemployment rate for Black people is 9.9%, and for Hispanic people 9.1%.  But the “real” unemployment rate for people of color:  somewhere around 15%.  The numbers are all massaged to look better.  But the “massaging” denies the national emergency that a 15% unemployment rate represents.  

The Congress should do something about a 6.7% unemployment rate.  COVID relief, extended unemployment, improved health coverage are all reasonable actions.  But if it’s “only” 6.7%, that’s “not that bad”.  When that number was 15%, Congress passed the first COVID relief package almost immediately.  The President made sure to put his signature on the “stimulus checks”.  

For a large segment of the United States population, that number is still 15%.  But since our Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t acknowledge that pain – it’s not such a concern.

It’s all easy to see.  Not some societal advanced calculus, just “ two plus two” arithmetic easy.  

Call it what it is.  Intentional or not, it’s racism.