Category: Uncategorized

Nothing Changed

Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin formally recognized the “independence” of two Eastern provinces of Ukraine, and offered them military assistance.  This is “no big news” in one sense.  Russian troops have been in the Donbas region since 2014.  Of course, they haven’t flown the Russian flag or worn Russian uniforms, but they are a major part of the “partisans” that revolted against Ukraine during the Sochi Olympic Winter Games.  

But by formalizing “treaties” with these territories, Putin officially supported breaking off this part of Ukraine.  A high percentage of people in the Donbas region regard themselves as ethnic Russians, with over 70% speaking Russian over Ukrainian.  The historic analogy:  1938, when Hitler decided that a portion of Czechoslovakia was too ethnically German to remain outside of the German Reich.  So he took over the Sudetenland, a move that was formally agreed to in Munich by the other nations of Europe.  We all know where that ended up.

Proportional Response

The NATO countries, led by the United States, have to make a decision.  Realistically nothing on the “ground” in Ukraine has changed.  The Donbas was under Russian control, Putin has just made it official.  But on the other hand, by making it official, he dismantled a part of another sovereign nation, Ukraine.  How will the NATO countries react?

There are “terms of art” when dealing in diplomacy.  The first one is the theory of “proportional response”.  Some in the United States, on both sides of the political aisle, want the US to respond with a full array of the economic sanctions available.  The problem with that:  Putin has almost 200,000 troops, tanks, artillery, and planes surrounding Ukraine on three sides.  None of those who moved across the borders.  So while “on paper” the situation has changed, it hasn’t altered on the ground – yet.

And NATO is NOT committed to respond militarily to an invasion of Ukraine.  The members of NATO are committed to each other in “mutual self-defense” through Article Five of the NATO agreement.  That article has only been invoked once – after 9-11 when the NATO membership rose in support of the United States.  Ukraine is not a member of NATO.  While the NATO countries are committed to aid, they are not sending in troops.

Sanctions 

So if NATO won’t respond with military force to armed incursion into Ukraine, the only tools left are economic. The nations of the world can refuse to interact with Russia economically, including preventing Russia from using the world banking systems.  In addition, Russia’s major exports are natural gas and oil.  If those exports are cut, then Russia will quickly be in an economic crisis.  Cutting those exports will also cause hardship in the European countries, and an increase in world prices.

But all of that might not be enough to stop Putin from invasion.  A “proportional response” would call for a more moderate punishment for changes “on paper” that aren’t real changes “on the ground”.  So NATO countries are working to respond, but not to overdo it.  They are saving more serious responses for more serious provocations.

A New Empire

Putin has made it very clear that he considers all of Ukraine, not just the Donbas, as part of “greater Russia”.  He published a 5000 word essay on the topic not too long ago.  And Putin feels the worst moment in modern history was December 25, 1991 when the Soviet Union officially dissolved.  Clearly his ultimate goal is to reconstitute the Soviet/Russian empire.  His new “treaty” of yesterday, is with the “People’s Republic of Donetsk and the People’s Republic of Luhansk,” echoing the language of the Soviet Union.

If Putin wants Ukraine, and he’s willing to pay the economic and military price, he’ll have it.  Casualty estimates are over 50,000 soldiers injured or killed, with millions of civilians displaced as refugees.  A conventional war between Russia and Ukraine won’t last long, but a subsequent guerilla war will be long and bloody.  And the sanctions will create long term damage to the Russian economy.

And if Putin want’s to further “reconstitute” the Soviet Union, the next steps are now under the NATO umbrella. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are all members, protected by Article Five.  And the rest of Eastern Europe, vassal states to the Soviet Union for forty-five years, are also in NATO now.  Ukraine may well fall to Putin, at a high cost in blood and treasure.  But if Putin’s goal is to achieve his new Russian Empire, the cost will be World War III. 

Bob Saget

Bob Saget, comedian and star of the 1980’s classic television show Full House, died a few weeks ago.  He was sixty-five, a couple of months older than me, and he was alone in his hotel room after a stand-up comedy show.  Saget died from brain damage caused by a fall.  Originally it sounded like he “tapped” his head, then died in his sleep.  But the coroner’s report showed massive damage from whatever happened to him.  The family has asked for privacy, but there are still a lot of questions about what happened to Bob Saget.

All of that led me to think about how many times I’ve gotten hit in the head.  So here’s today’s Sunday Story, a litany of literal “mind numbing” events.  

Young Knocks

I was three years old in 1959, and one of the most popular televisions shows was Superman starring George Reeves.  To a three year-old there were few options for flying, but the nearest one was the toilet.  So I climbed on top of the seat, and jumped into the air.  Unlike Superman, I didn’t take flight – but I did show some power as I crashed my face into the floor.

My biggest remaining memory of that event was laying on a hospital table staring into a huge bright light, surrounded by darkness.  A masked figure leaned into the light. It was Uncle Howard! – and that’s all I’ve got.  My parents’ friend Howard Shriver sewed my lip back up.  Was I concussed – hard to say today.

But the first for-sure concussion was in 1964. We were at my friend David’s house, wrestling in his bedroom. I’m not quite certain how it happened, probably a “double-bouncing event”, but I took a header off of the bed, and hit my head on the bed stand as I went to the floor. I remember seeing all sorts of exciting lights, then had a serious headache. The treatment for mild concussions hasn’t changed much in almost sixty years. I was confined to bed, in a darkened room. Mom wouldn’t give me much to eat, but I remember being allowed to have all the Coca-Cola I wanted. I was only in there for a few days, then it was back to the world.

Head Rush

It was in sixth grade in 1967 that I nailed my noggin again.  I was eleven, and like many growing kids had occasional “head rushes”.  A “head rush” was when I stood up too fast, or stretched too “hard”, and got light headed and dizzy.  It was kind of a thing that all of us boys had one time or another, and we never thought of it as a problem.  In fact, we had a “method” of creating head rushes.  One boy would take a bunch of deep breathes, then another would squeeze him from the back so hard that the first would black out.  I spent a few moments unconscious on a restroom floor one day. That was a “sixth grade thing” I guess.

Sex Day  

But that wasn’t the bad one.  It was on the day (just that one) we were supposed to learn about “SEX” in school.  They wouldn’t talk about it in class, but there was an evening assembly when we sixth grade boys were brought back to “have the talk”.  We already had a “back of the bus” understanding of the topic, but there would be a film presentation and a lecture.  That was the height of excitement during the day.

So I was sitting in Mrs. Ralston’s class, and I leaned back to stretch.  I immediately got a “head rush”, and I quickly brought my head back to my desk.  But I missed the desk, and went forehead-first straight into the linoleum floor.  I was out cold for a few moments, and came-to looking up at my teacher. She was an older woman, and big – NFL linebacker big. My next memory is her towering over me.   Somehow, (I don’t remember) they got me to the office, when I realized that I couldn’t see anything but colors, swirling in front of my eyes.  I must not have communicated that well, because they put me on the green-scotch plaid cot in the nurse’s office to wait for Mom to come pick me up.  That plaid made my head really swim!

No ambulance was called, but Dad and Mom rushed me to Dayton’s Children’s Hospital, to meet with our Pediatrician, Dr. Harry Graubarth.  By then my vision was coming back, and I realized that my ONLY opportunity to learn about SEX was on the line.  I complained to the Doc that I couldn’t miss it, and he laughed as he gave me a shot.  As I faded out, he promised I’d find out soon enough.

I woke up at home, two days later.  And I had to wait until eighth grade to get the “school talk”.

Wrestle Off

I was a pretty active teenager.  I swam, wrestled, played some football, and, of course, ran track.  In that era before contact lenses and full face masks,  I had the freshman football team record for breaking my eye-glasses over my nose, six pairs.  And since I couldn’t wear glasses in the pool, my flip-turns were always an adventure.  There were a couple of times when I didn’t figure out the wall, and flipped my forehead into the side.

But it was in wrestling that I probably had my next concussion.  I was a junior, defending my 126 pound varsity position in a wrestle-off, when I shot in for a double-leg takedown.  My opponent countered by kneeing me right in the face, smashing my nose to the side.  I hung on for a few seconds, trying to clear my head, then continued the match.  After all, it was a varsity wrestle-off!  I finally won on points, and came off of the mat. My friend Jack asked, “what happened to your nose?” I reached up – and missed.  My nose was no longer straight on my face, but flattened off to the right side.

My Face

It wasn’t bleeding – and it didn’t hurt too much. It was early in wrestling season. So as a fifteen year-old varsity wrestler, I figured that my nose could wait. I showered up, and headed for home, figuring no one would notice. I managed to get through the back door, and into the family room, before Mom dropped a tray of glasses and screamed in her best English accent – “WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR FACE!!??” Dr. Sidney Peerless was the “nose guy” in town, and was known for working late into the night. I was in his waiting room at 10 pm, and surgery was scheduled for a day later.

I remember laying on the gurney, waiting in the pre-op room.  The guy next to me was still unconscious, and I heard the staff talking about how they had mistakenly taken out all the good teeth and left the bad ones in.  I was glad I only had one nose!

School of Hard Knocks

As I survived into my twenties, I don’t remember too many head trauma events.  But I did have an exciting “head rush” event, at eleven thousand feet on a mountain in New Mexico.  I was sitting uphill from the fire, warming myself on a cold night at altitude.  When I stood up, I “grayed out”.  I stumbled downhill – straight into the flames!!!  Luckily for me, I just kept stumbling, and other than some smoldering rubber on the soles of my hiking boots, and a very surprised look from my trail-mates, no damage was done.  

There was twenty-five years of coaching wrestling, another broken nose, split lips, and several times when I got my “bell rung”.  But my next big “event” was while setting up a cross country course.  Part of that process includes putting fence posts, big steel pipes, into the ground to attach flags and fences.  The tool for putting the posts in is called a post-pounder.  If you don’t know what that is, think about the last cop show you watched in TV.  The big steel contraption they bust down the doors with – that’s a post-pounder.

Posts

The pounder fits over the end of the pipe, and you lift it and drop it onto the post, literally pounding it into the ground.  The only danger is lifting it up too far.  Then the pipe comes out of the “pounder”, and it catches on the edge.  And that’s exactly what happened in the August heat in the back field.  The pounder caught, got sideways, and bounced off the top on my head.  I regained consciousness laying in the sun on the grass, with a stiff headache.  There wasn’t much blood, certainly not enough for stitches, and I could still see straight. So I got myself back to work.  There was a course to setup!

Track coaching too had its dangers.  Our team tents were great most of the time, but always dangerous in high winds.  The tent would flap up, and the poles would come lose, and crash to the ground.  I don’t remember much about the Whitehall Relays one year after getting one on the head, and I almost lost a hurdler at the Conference meet at Hilliard Bradley to pole impact.  But the worst was when a tornado hit our “accordion” tent, throwing it into the air and into the face of one of the Assistant Coaches.  That was a mess.

War Ball

But the final blow was in a track game, and all my fault.  It was a February practice, and we had the gym for indoor track.  The high jump and pole vault pits were inside, and at the end of practice we had a team “war ball” game.  War ball, was like “bombardment”, you tried to knock your opponents out of the game (not out cold) by hitting them with the ball. The team with members still on the field at the end, wins.  But we added a twist, the high jump mat sections as hiding spots in “enemy” territory.

I had the absolutely brilliant idea of jumping up behind the mat, grabbing the top, and throwing the ball, all at the same time.  What I didn’t expect was that the mat would tip over backwards on top of me.  One hand had the ball, the other the mat.  So I went backwards, with mat in tow, right onto the back of my head.   My team didn’t win the game – dammit!

That event was good for about three days of “vagueness” in life.  And the kids who gave me messages (Austin – “I won’t be at practice on Monday”) didn’t understand why I was so mad come Monday when they didn’t show.   I don’t have much recollection about the meet that weekend either.

So I try not to get hit in the head anymore.  And I try not to think about Bob Saget’s accident too much.  I’m just glad that “Google” has all my memory on record!!!!

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

Generations

I had a conversation with a younger friend of mine the other day.  He asked very serious questions:  why should the United States get involved in a conflict, far away in Eastern Europe?  Why aren’t Russian concerns about being “encircled” by hostile alliances just as valid as our worries about the Caribbean or Central America?  Shouldn’t our European “friends” spend their treasure and blood to deal with Russia, instead of the US standing in as the “world’s policeman?”

Frankly, I am always ready to answer those questions.  I am a “Boomer”, the child of World War II veterans.  That label is an honor, not an insult. My generation was the “prize” that our parents earned with their sacrifice.  I was raised in memories of their world that tried to bargain with Fascism rather than stand up to its expansion.  My parents steeped me in the loss and sacrifice of their generation, of the friends who disappeared in the air or on the battlefields.  They understood that there was no turning away from that fight – it would still come and find you, ready or not.

Realization

But it was his next question that caught me unprepared.  He phrased it a little differently, but it basically went:  how can I trust a government who spent twenty years in Afghanistan to no avail, then simply turned and walked away?  The accusation in his tone wasn’t for the leaving, but for staying with no good result. 

 And today, I watched the Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, lay out the case against Russia in the United Nations Security Council.  His words were persuasive, just as tellingly solid as the last time our highest foreign minister warned of impending war in that same body.  That was an even more respected Secretary of State:  General Colin Powell, laying out the case against Iraq.

Experience

And then I realized why my thirty-something friend was so adamant against war. In his lifetime, Americans went into Afghanistan after 9-11 with good cause, to punish the Taliban and destroy Al Qaeda.  But when we achieved both, we didn’t declare victory and leave. We instead stayed for two decades and tried, using George W Bush’s phrase, to “nation build”. My friend’s compatriots were the last to stand on the ridges of Helmand Province, fighting to no avail.  They are suffering today the devastating mental effects of that war.

 And in the midst of that, we determined to invade Iraq as well.  With all respect for General Powell, who was force-fed bad information at Presidential order: he lied about why we should invade the country.  And while getting rid of Saddam Hussein might have been a laudable goal, we opened up a world of conflict that his iron fist controlled.  The suffering in the region spread, from Iraq to Syria, and continues even today.

My friend has no experiential reason to “trust” that the United States is making a valid decision about Russia’s actions in Ukraine today.  “Where is OUR interest, so far away, in a nation where we couldn’t fight, even if we wanted to?”  He speaks with the authority of recent history, and a podcast fueled omniscience.  I get it.

Doomed to Repeat

But I look at a wider history than just the US military failures of the 21st Century.  In the 1930’s, there were two world powers; both authoritarian regimes, and both wanted to expand their hegemony in separate spheres.  They found alliance in their enemies.  One was recovering from an utter collapse at the end of World War I.  The other was seeking domination of Asia.  

The United States, embroiled in its own calamities, ignored both.  The European nations tried to negotiate with Germany, giving away chunks until there was no choice but to fight.  The United States then stood as the only power facing Japan.  We ended up fighting both, with the Greatest Generation bearing the brunt of the sacrifice.

Today’s crisis in Ukraine is not attempting to “democratize” tribal nations without foundation.  Ukraine is not Iraq or Afghanistan, it is a nation-state wishing to be autonomous from Russian control.  And if it falls, is it Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, next?   Then what? What about China expanding into Taiwan, the Sea of China, the “Pacific Sphere of Influence”?

History would have been different if we had backed Europe, standing up to Hitler at the Anschluss, or at Munich.  What if the world had stood against Japan in Korea, or Manchuria?  But even back then they said, “Where is OUR interest, so far away, in a nation where we couldn’t fight, even if we wanted to?”  OUR interest whether it’s Hitler and Tojo then, or Putin and Xi today: it is better to stand for democracy and against authoritarianism early.  

If not, then you surely will have to stand against it later.

Phenom

She’s a fifteen year-old girl.  And she’s (arguably) the best figure skater in the world.  Kamila Valieva is a Russian phenom.  And – she’s tested positive for three different drugs, which, used in combination,  has the effect of increasing endurance by impacting the heart muscle itself.  Sure skaters need strength.  But in a five minute performance, requiring multiple athletic jumps and turns – endurance definitely helps.

If she was a sixteen year-old boy who was legally prescribed an asthma inhaler by his doctor that contained a banned stimulant, they would strip him of his medal and ban him from the Games.  That’s the precedent.  Ask Rick DeMont, the American “phenom” who won the Gold in the 400 meter freestyle in Munich in 1972.   They took his medal away, and sent him home (Daily Advertiser). 

I remember that well – I too was a sixteen year-old swimmer, though nowhere near the class of DeMont.  But I related to doing “what the doctor told me to do”.  I did get to see an Olympic Gold Medal from Munich.  It was around the neck of the fifteen year-old girl who sat behind me in class – Deanna Deardurff.  She won the gold and set a new world record in the 400 Medley Relay.  Deanna was required to compete as a “boy” on our high school team – there was no girls high school swimming at the time.  

That crisis was soon eclipsed – first by the five medal performance of DeMont’s teammate, Mark Spitz.  And then by the terrorist attack on the Israeli athletes that killed twelve.

Banned from the Games

But the International Olympic Committee established the precedent then:  young age is not an “excuse” for testing “dirty”.  You lose what you’ve won, and you are banned from the Games.  Following a doctor’s orders isn’t an excuse either.  And certainly making a “mistake” by mixing your grandparents’ drugs with your own (sounds like a likely story) even at fifteen, shouldn’t get a pass.  We would spank a five year-old for that – do we expect less from a fifteen year-old?

Except – for Kamila Valieva.  She’s already won a Gold Medal for the Russian Olympic Committee in the team event.  Now, she’s favored to win another Gold in the individual contest.  And every other athlete (and all those skaters are amazing athletes) on the ice knows, that if SHE tested positive, she would never be allowed in the building, much less on the ice.

A Russian Problem

The title “Russian Olympic Committee” exists, because Russia has a chronic athletic drug abuse problem. In 2014, even the Russian Security Services were part of cheating on drug tests at the Sochi Games. Russian athletes provided “clean urine” far before the Games. Then they used performance enhancing drugs. When they won Medals, the “dirty sample” was literally passed through a secret hole in the testing lab wall, and replaced with the “clean” sample.

And figure skating has had its share of scandal.  If you’re old enough to remember when the judges held up cards scored 1 through 10 to score a performance, you’ll probably remember the old joke:  “…and the scores are – 9, 9.5, 9, 4 – that was the Russian judge, 9, 9.”  The Russian attitude is always win, at all costs.  The only failure is in getting caught.

The Russian National team has been banned from the Olympics since 2014.  But the “Russian Olympic Committee” can still field contestants, just not under the Russian flag.  And here we are again:  another Russian athlete with a positive drug test, competing in the Olympic Winter Games.  

Unfair Break

Why does she get a “break”?  Why did the International Court of Arbitration for Sport allow her to continue in the competition?  They claim that this could be an “accidental poisoning”, and that the fifteen year-old shouldn’t be held to the same standard as an adult.  They suggest that perhaps the adults, the coaches, should be held responsible, rather than the fifteen year-old (Sports Illustrated). 

Or maybe it’s because she’s on the Russian team.    The American Olympic Team would have banned her from even getting to the Games.  Sha’Carri Richardson never even got to the Court of Arbitration.  She tested positive for marijuana –  a drug with no athletic benefit to a 100 meter sprinter.  She was banned from the US team for a month, by US authorities.  That was long enough to remove her from the Olympic Summer Games in Tokyo last summer (NYT).

Or perhaps the Court is afraid that if Valieva is banned, Russia’s President Putin will invade Ukraine.  That’s not as far-fetched as it seems.  Putin’s actions at the Ukraine border already are on the knife-edge of war, it wouldn’t take much.

So the medal award ceremony has been postponed.  Just in case the Court changes its mind, after the Games are over.  Or Putin doesn’t invade.

Sun Rise

This is an old coaching expression – “no matter what the outcome of the contest, the sun WILL come up tomorrow”.  Life will go on, win or lose; so whatever the outcome: take the credit or the loss, and move on.  I know that the Cincinnati Bengals will struggle with their Super Bowl loss.  But I also know that they are incredibly successful athletes, honed by years of effort.  They will suffer the loss, but they will also use that suffering to motivate the next effort.  The sun came up on Monday, so “Who Dey!!”  Get to work.

Klaxons

But it was a more literal sun rise this morning.  Today was a “sub day”, when I struggled to get out of bed to the 5:30 am klaxon alarm. Into the darkness I wandered through the house, and let the dogs out into the back yard.  All of us, three dogs (two slept on) and I, had sleepy, half-closed eyes.  

The dogs wandered back out of the darkness, the icy yard; and quietly waited at the door for me to let them in.  Meanwhile, I downed the first cup of the first pot of coffee for the morning.  While caffeine has an absolute definite physical impact, even the first sip clears cobwebs from my brain.  That must be a matter of “placebo effect”; no way the caffeine can hit my system that fast.

The other two dogs made their sleepy appearance, the oldest smiling with half open eyes.  So there are five, looking for breakfast, waiting for the “treats” of the morning (bits of cheese with the meds, bits of carrots for the rest), their morning hors-d‘oeuvres before the regular meal.  All but one finally ate (really – 5:45 is far too early for a pit bull puppy to eat, especially when she can lay her head to the fire) and then I started to get myself together.

Early Light

By 6:45 I was out the front door, starting the Jeep to warm up against the ten-degree cold.   Then I noticed:  the sky was lightning.  There was no need to leave the porch light on – I could see around the car, and up the stairs.  Spring will come, not the fake spring of  the day after tomorrow when the temperature will approach sixty, but real spring, leaves coming out and grass growing spring.  It’s on the way.

I drive to school into a red sunrise.  Sailors might take warning, but it was beautiful, uplifting.  Sure there’s still a month of snow and ice to go, and this week’s warmup is really a false hope.  But the sun is coming up earlier, and while the geo-physics that create the seasons are inexorable, it’s still good to see the evidence.

Dis-Heartened

Last week I wrote an essay that seemed hopeless.  The extremism that has infected America is using the Covid virus to infect other countries.  Some Canadian truck drivers, anti-vaxxers, are fouling the roads, using their vehicles to block commerce and daily life.  Ninety percent of Canadian truck drivers are vaccinated, so, like the Insurrectionists of January 6th, it’s dangerous to infer a broader movement from the actions of a few.

But millions of dollars poured into Canada to support the protestors.  Extremists here in the United States bragged how much more the “truckers” raised than either of the two Canadian political parties.  But the parties raise their money from Canadians. It is the US extremists, interested in exporting their movement, that are donating across the border.  I suspect most Canadians aren’t appreciative of another American incursion into their lives.

The Canadian Way

The Canadian government is taking it’s time.  No need to provoke violence, they are carefully winnowing down the protestors, getting to the hard core crazies that may require force and incarceration to move them out of the way.  Canada isn’t interested in a spectacle, of Canadian police being beaten with Canadian flag poles (purchased with US money).   So they’ll move cautiously, courteously.  It’s their way.

And there are protests in Europe, the spread of a right-wing nationalism using Covid as the excuse to be anti-government.  I’m sure US money is behind that as well. Steve Bannon is getting his “dream-shot”, an autocratic union of the “white Northern Europeans”.  It’s what he talked about since he emerged as “Trump’s Brain” in 2016.  It was in one of my earliest essays, when “Our America” was called “Trump World”, back in February of 2017 (The Bully and Bannon).  Whether he’s “behind” all this or not, he’s definitely enjoying it.  The sun came up for him, even after the election of 2020.

Robins

But I didn’t publish my sad, dis-heartened essay last week.  It was a day, not a season, and a day I didn’t want to become a legacy.  So it wrote it, and buried it in the files.  Because the sun came up, and the Canadians are handling their extremists in the “Canadian Way”, and Omicron is diminishing, and the Supreme Courts of North Carolina and Ohio seem dead set to making voting districts fairer.  

We’ve had our “red sky” warning.  But just as spring is eternal, so is hope.  So I’ll bury dis-heartened, and believe this morning’s sunrise, and in the hope that we will continue to be a nation dedicated to becoming “more perfect”.  No matter there will probably be a blizzard next week.  The sun will come earlier, and the grass will soon grow.  Last week I saw the robins flocking in my neighbor’s tree.  They are fat – they’re going to make it through this winter.  

And so shall we.

Dis-Heartened

I’ve been – well – the correct term might be “dis-heartened”.  As any frequent reader of “Our America” probably knows, I  am consistently, some might say overly, optimistic about the future of our nation:  “The arc of the moral universe bending towards justice,” and all that.  And I still believe in American exceptionalism, in the idea that our nation, founded in Revolution by flawed men, can still become a “More Perfect Union”.  

But the “perfecting” is taking a hell-of-a-long time.  Maybe it’s the “Medicare thing”, the idea that at sixty-five, I may no longer see a time when we will be a Nation without strife.  I am confident that the United States will be better, but right now all I see is it moving backwards not forwards.   I’m not so sure how long it will take to change direction again – maybe beyond my Biblical three score and twelve (that’s only seven more years).  

Marching Backwards

We, as a nation, are marching firmly towards the past.  We have a Supreme Court that is turning the control over a women’s body to state governments, many dominated by right-wing male legislators only interested in pursuing their own wealth.   The Court is doing the same with the rights of what will soon by the majority of our Nation, those of color.  And state by state, the white minority is consolidating power.  

The contrived controversy over “Critical Race Theory”, created by the right-wing “think-tank” the Manhattan Institute, has convinced millions of parents their children are unable to “handle” the sins of their fathers.  Just a question:  how can we become a “more perfect union” without reckoning with the imperfections of the past?  Ignoring those flaws, is of itself Un-American.  But don’t dare teach children about those imperfections – or allow them to express their own views.  And they called us liberals “snowflakes”.

Idiocracy

The idiocracy that determines it’s better to ignore a pandemic than follow the science is not just frustrating, it’s immoral.  We are quietly approach 930,000 deaths from Covid,  “the World’s Number One” as a former President would say, and are so divided that nothing will stop us from reaching a million.  I’m reminded of the movie Meatballs, so many Americans are chanting with Bill Murray, “It just doesn’t matter, It just doesn’t matter.”   They are resigned to incapacity, and now are using trucks as the weapons of “FREE-DOM”. They just deny.  They go on with their lives – those that don’t die or aren’t affected by the losses.

There is a commercial for the travel site, Kayak, where they make fun of families split by “Kayak-deniers”.  It’s far too soon to be funny, and far too real.  There are too many families divided and friendships lost, to trivialize by commercializing the division.  I resent the ad, and I resent that it probably amuses folks on all sides of our polarized society.   But, like it or not, it does symbolize our national septicity.  

Don’t Look Up

I didn’t like the “in vogue” movie, Don’t Look Up, either, because I don’t like nihilistic stories without hope.  I didn’t like the popular Netflix series, House of Cards for the same reason.  That’s never been my view of life. But there is a whole lot of “not looking up” going on around here, a focus on internal life to the exclusion of everything else.  

Here in Ohio, a politician took a $60 million bribe from an energy company to get the state to pay for a failing nuclear plant.  And now, two years later, the politician hasn’t been tried for his crime. He’s even thinking of running for office again. And the company is still getting paid by the state.  “Don’t Look Up”, you might see that even the thieves in government are out in the open.  They are brazen, and guiltless, and Teflon.

It doesn’t seem like there’s much “bending towards justice” yet.

Geometry

It’s easy to think – well, just wait for another decade, when the Mitch McConnell’s and Donald Trump’s and, as my younger friends would say, the “old white dudes” will be dead.  But the thrust of our current universe seems to be going in the wrong direction, one of division instead of unity, ignorance instead of knowledge, hate instead of faith.  The arc of the moral universe looks suspiciously like an ellipse. 

I know optimism will return.  I’m subbing in a school, and down the hallway I hear the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King, speaking that last night in Memphis.  He went to the “mountain top”, and saw the “Promised Land”.  After all he had been through, he still had faith in America – the arc bending towards justice. If he could be optimistic in 1968, how can I be less in 2022.

This is another in the “Sunday Story” series.

“That’s right, I start crying. Because another human being, a species that I happen to belong to, could kick a ball, and lift himself, and the rest of us sad-assed human beings, up to a better place to be, if only for a minute… let me tell ya, kid – it was pretty goddamned glorious. It ain’t the six minutes… it’s what happens in that six minutes.” – Vision Quest – 1985

Lunatic Fringe – Red Rider

Sports Fan

I am a sports fan.  So, I was fired up – the Olympic Winter Games (don’t dare call it the Winter Olympics, I don’t know why) started on February 3rd.  I was ready to spend days watching events I know little about, from figure skating to what looks like roller derby on snowboards.  And of course, there is the inevitable hours trying to figure out curling.  It’s easy to write curling off; it’s an inscrutable event.  What looks simplistic from the outside, must be a highly complex skill on the inside. 

The first few days didn’t grab me.   I was waiting for the “Jean Claude Killy” moment.  It was back in the winter of 1968, not the best year of our American history.  The Winter Olympics were in Grenoble, France, and I was an eleven year-old who knew little about winter sports.  But here was this seemingly out-of-control Frenchman, flying down the mountainside. Even at eleven I recognized that the difference between winning and catastrophe, Gold or out, is a razor thin edge. And  Killy, arms flying, seemed bound to crash into the barriers.  But he didn’t – his willingness to put everything on the line brought him the Gold.  That’s a lesson I learned – for sports and for life.

But the first few nights of the 2022 games didn’t have it.  So we moved our viewing away, back to the unending grind of the “news”.  We even read through a whole evening.  (It isn’t that we don’t read, but usually it’s during the day.  Evening reading usually means early sleeping).

Athletic Choices

Wednesday night I tried one more time.  It was the finals of the women’s snowboarding half-pipe competition.  The competitors drop down a twenty-two foot wall into the “pipe” then use that momentum to fly up the other wall – perform flips, turns, and things I can’t even follow, switches and “940’s”. Then they try to land and do it again on the other side.  It’s incredibly complex, and obviously dangerous.  

But what caught me was the choices those athletes had to make.  The scoring is the best of three attempts (a lot like track and field).  If you fall – you fail and that run doesn’t score. The strategic thinking is about how to weigh out the efforts:  go for it all from the beginning and pressure the field or get a safe run in, then build on that momentum.  And, after the first run, the “safe” run, they all got out on that “ragged edge” of Gold or failure.  They tried “tricks” that were so hard that the success percentage was low.  They fell, and yet they went back up and tried it once again.  

Citius, Altius, Fortius

Chloe Kim is the American champion.  Her runs were incredible, tricks that seemed undoable followed by clean landings into another amazing effort.  And when she had won it all, and could just “mail it in” on her final run, she didn’t.  Chloe took her third run and tried tricks that had never been done in competition before.  She tried to raise the standard of her whole event, and to risk that last Olympic moment as a failure.  And she did fail – but in the attempt personified the Olympic spirit – Citius, Altius, Fortius, (faster, higher, stronger) – even with the Gold medal already around her neck.

And after the women’s half-pipe, came the men’s figure skating.  The athleticism involved in jumping, spinning, and twirling on the ice is incredible.  And again, I watched athlete after athlete risk their entire performance, give up the “safe” program, to gain the Gold.  For me, who watches figure skating once every four years, the incredible change is the “quad”.  They leap from the ice, and spin four times in the air before they land.  And it’s not just once, it’s four or even five different quads in a performance.  At least, if you want the Gold.

They fell, one after another.  The only path to Gold was through the quad.  Only one finalist, Jason Brown of the United States, didn’t attempt it.  His was an impressive performance, surely a medalist effort in the 1990’s or early 2000’s.  He knew what he couldn’t do, so he gave everything he could.  He got sixth.

Chen

And then there was the other young American, Michael Chen.  He attempted five quads, four of them seemingly perfect, one flawed but still successful.  And the rest of his performance was incredible, from interpretation to athleticism.  His was the “Killy” moment, when he could take all of his gifts, all of his work, and channel it into a single effort.  He won the Gold medal by over twenty points.  I don’t really know the difference between a salchow and a triple toe loop, but I know an amazing, world class, dedicated athlete when I see one.  Michael Chen is one.

So I’m back watching the Olympic Winter Games.  Last night it was the men’s half-pipe, then the women’s Giant Slalom.  The incredible Sean White made his last Olympic effort, and in true Olympic style, risked it all on his final run.  He was fourth, and it required even more tricks to gain a medal.  He tried and fell:  then showed incredible “class” as he stood with his younger competitors and cheered on the final medalists. 

I’m glad I came back.  They’ll be more sports this weekend – and another athletic oddity– the Bengals in the Super Bowl?  (Coach Sam Wyche’s daughter is bringing his ASHES in a silver football to watch the game – not making that up!!). No wonder the world seems so confused.  But as a Cincy native, an original Bengals fan from the beginning in Nippert Stadium – Who Dey!!!!  Or as a young announcer named Al Michaels said in the 1980 Olympic Winter Games – “Do you believe in Miracles?”

The Sunday Story Series

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

True Compass

I’ve enjoyed Whoopi Goldberg’s comedy for decades.  And I’ve been impressed with her acting, in The Color Purple and in Ghost, when she won the Academy Award.  But in the end, I know Whoopi Goldberg best from her recurring role on Star Trek, the Next Generation (yes, a Trekkie here).  She played a knowing and insightful bartender in the restaurant/lounge of the Starship Enterprise, who had a special friendship with the Captain, Jean-Luc Picard (purely platonic).  In that role, I always felt that Whoopi played herself; explaining time distortions and alien civilizations and acting as a compass pointing to truth and fairness.

And when I’ve listened to Whoopi Goldberg in panels as herself, that same compass always seemed to come through.  She was direct and clear, and was able to cut to the core of an issue and hold her ground. 

Definitions

So it was with some surprise that I heard last week that Whoopi was embroiled in controversy about the Holocaust.  In this time when battlelines are drawn on almost every issue, the Whoopi Goldberg I knew could never be a “denier”.  And she’s not.  But she has fallen into a rhetorical “trap” about the Holocaust, one that I often had to explain to high school students when I taught about that horrific chapter in history.  I hope that teachers today can still have those conversations with their classes.  But it’s understandable that some may be frozen in fear by our battlefield culture. 

It’s a bit of an esoteric conversation:  was the Holocaust, the murder of six million Jewish people (and four million others) by the Nazi death machine, a racial issue?  After all, Whoopi isn’t wrong, the Nazis were Caucasian, and most Jews were Caucasian as well.  So it was a “white on white” attack, a genocide to be sure (“mass killing of a nation or ethnic group).  But was it a “racial” genocide?

Race or Religion

Jews are not defined as a “separate race”.  After all, people can “become” Jews just like they can become Catholic, at least they can become Reformed or Conservative Jews, not Orthodox Jews.  Traditionally, Judaism was “passed” from one generation to the next through the mother (so, though I am “half-Jewish”, since my Dad was Jewish and my Mom was Catholic, I couldn’t be an Orthodox Jew.  However, the Reformed Temple would welcome me in).   

On the other hand, Jews were isolated throughout thousands of years of history.  At first it was a tribal thing in the Holy Land, but later, it was a cultural/religious law.  Jews could only marry Jews, and outsiders weren’t allowed.  On the other hand, Jews were also persecuted and often isolated by other cultures ( in the Russian Pale, or the Jewish Ghettos in European cities). There was limited interaction between Jews and non-Jews.  So there are “racial” characteristics of those who are “culturally Jewish”, whether they are religiously Jewish or not.  

So “cultural Jews” share genetic characteristics, “looks”, certain diseases, and a long heritage of discrimination.  Whoopi’s not wrong:  Jewish people aren’t “a race”.  But they are more than just a religious group, more than the Southern Baptists down the street or even the Roman Catholic Church my mother grew up in.  She was English, born of a father of Irish descent and a mother of Scottish heritage.  So she was English, Irish, Scottish; and Catholic.  

But in much of the world, Jewish people were considered Jews, who lived in England, or Ireland, or Scotland.  And that reversal in order made all the difference.

Nazi Ideology

The “racial” aspect of the Holocaust was an outgrowth of that difference, and so much uglier.  German Jews fought for Germany in World War I at a greater percentage than regular German citizens.  To those Jews, Germany was their homeland, deserving of defense.  But after the loss of the War, and the economic catastrophe that followed, the Nazi Party used Jews as the scapegoat for all the nation’s troubles.  Jews were “at fault” for losing World War I (they weren’t), and Jews were ruining the economy (they didn’t).  

The Nazi racial theory placed the German “Aryan” race, with proto-typical blonde hair and blue eyes and Nordic descent, at the top of their “racial pyramid”.  And they placed Jews as a “sub-human” race, whose existence threatened to contaminate the “Master Race” at the top.  As the Nazi’s gained power, they began to take action against German Jews.  It started as simply identifying them throughout the nation, then moving Jews out of positions of power.  It was accompanied by a national propaganda campaign to convince the rest of the German nation that the Nazi actions were “OK”.  After all, they were “just” Jews.

Nazis’ Choice

We all know how that turned out.  Of the fifteen million Jews in Europe before World War II, six million died in the Holocaust.  They weren’t the only “racial” group to be consigned to the ovens:  as many as half a million Roma were also killed.  And they were accompanied by political prisoners, the physically and mentally handicapped, and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Whoopi Goldberg might be “technically” right about the definition of race.  But she missed the point.  Her definition didn’t matter in the Holocaust.  It isn’t important to the lost six million.  The Nazis were in power – and they determined that Jews were “a Race”:  one to be eliminated.  To those six million, and to those who understand the Holocaust today, that’s the only definition that’s important.

I hope Whoopi will get the message.

Legal Forms

Our Courts are dedicated to following “the law”;  and the law takes several forms.  The first is statutory law, laws written by the legislature.  The easiest example of statutory law is statutory rape.  Rape is to have sex with someone without their consent.  Statutory rape is to have sex with someone who is legally unable to consent to sex, do to age or mental condition. That ability to consent is determined in law by the legislature.  So this becomes rape because of the statute, not necessarily by force.

The second form of law is precedential law, better known as “common law”.  It looks back at how past judges decided, and uses those precedents to determine the outcome of current cases.  On my first day of law school, my Torts Professor described an old English case, where two boys were throwing stones over a hill.  On the other side, a man’s eye was “put out” by one of the stones.  Neither the man, nor the boys, knew whose stone did the damage.  But the Court of Assizes found that both boys were equally liable for the damage, as they both were equally reckless.  If I remember correctly, their fathers were required to pay a pig each to the injured man.

That became precedent in English Common Law, which still influences US law today.  The  concept of “Common Law Marriage” comes from this, and  is still recognized in eight states. By simply living together as a “married couple” for a period of time an actual marriage is created with enforceable rights.  Other states have made marriage solely a “statutory” function, requiring a state license.

Precedence

The ultimate form of statutory law is Constitutional law, law written into “stone” in the United States Constitution.   But all laws require interpretation; a determination by the Court of what the written language actually means.  It is in that determination that Courts create precedent, the decisions made by Courts in the past about that meaning.  

Each state in the United States has a “highest Court” that determine the final interpretations of state statutes.  The United States as a whole has the US Supreme Court establishing interpretations of national laws and the Constitution.  Those final decisions are called “stare decisis”, the precedents used to determine how future decisions are made.

Courts in the United States and the separate states are bound by the decisions of similar cases at the highest courts.  And only those highest Courts have the ability to overturn the precedent and establish new “case law”.  Which brings us to the United States Supreme Court today.

Confirmation Pledges

When the last three Supreme Court Justices were being confirmed by the Senate, they all pledged to honor “stare decisis”.  Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett pledged to Senators, including pivotal vote Susan Collins of Maine, that they would honor the decisions made by early Courts.   This was particularly in relationship to the Roe v Wade abortion decision, but was also a general pledge to not “up-end” the law.

Supreme Court Justices received lifetime appointments, as long as they maintain “good behavior”.   Unless a Justice commits an actual crime, they will remain on the Court.  The process for removing them is the impeachment process we became so familiar with during the Trump Administration, and in our current political climate would end up with similar results.  Only one Supreme Court Justice has been impeached, in 1805, and he was acquitted by the Senate of the charges.

So whatever they say in their confirmation hearings, once a Justice reaches the high Court, they are virtually immune from prior pledges.  They are on their own.

Legal Domination

The Trump Administration bungled a lot of things, but in one area they were ruthlessly efficient:  appointing federal judges.  In four years 234 judges gained a Federal seat, 177 at the District level (26% of all District Judges), 54 at the Appellate level (30%), and 3 on the Supreme Court (33%).  Ninety percent of Trump appointees, and all three Supreme Court nominees, have one thing in common – membership in the Federalist Society.

The Federalist Society has a common cause, a literal interpretation of the wording of laws, and adherence to the “original intent” of the writers.  They do not believe that the law, particularly the Constitution, changes with time, other than through Amendment.  This “originalist doctrine” is dramatically opposed to the “pragmatists” who see the Constitution as a document to be interpreted in light of current society and culture rather than a strict adherence to its original intent.

Loyalty

The Supreme Court has signaled its intent to change the national abortion precedents, Roe v Wade and Casey.  The six conservative justices do not agree with those decisions, and they are going to change them – stare decisis be damned.  And in the same way, the Court is changing the voter rights in America.  In Shelby County v Holder in 2013, they undercut the enforcement provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. This week, they signaled that they might not uphold the section that prevented legislative districts from racial gerrymandering.  

Abortion regulation will soon become a state issue, no longer a national right.  And voting rights and gerrymandering will also be a “state” problem.  They will make their own determination, even if that puts racism into geographic law (see Alabama’s new maps).  No matter what “promises” the Justices made to the US Senate before their confirmation, their loyalty is to the judicial philosophy of the Federalist Society – originalism.  And that takes “precedence” over everything else.

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time” – Maya Angelou

Talking Point

It’s a recent “talking point” in the mainstream media.  Pundits point out that Donald Trump is losing his influence over the remaining Republicans, often citing the Virginia Governor race.  In that contest the victorious Republican, Glenn Youngkins, espoused Trump-like (lite?) ideas without actually being a “Trumper”.  He accepted Trump’s support, but didn’t let him campaign in Virginia.  The “talking point” is that “new” Republican candidates can appeal to the Trump ideology, but not be “Trumps”. 

This doesn’t seem to be the case here in Ohio. In the Republican Senate primary campaign Josh Mandel, a former State Treasurer and “normal” Republican, has adhered as closely to Trumpism as he can get.  His opponents are trying to be even “Trumpier” than he is. Mandel seems to be holding his own: the latest polling shows Mandel up by 6% on his nearest competitor in an eight “horse” race.

Legitimate Political Discourse

Every time a Republican seems to stray from the Trump-line, they get smacked back into place.  Senator Lindsey Graham is the latest, and perhaps, most frequent victim.  Graham had the audacity to say that January 6th insurrectionists shouldn’t be pardoned as the former President suggested.  In response, Trump called Graham a “RINO”, and said “…he doesn’t know what he’s talking about”.  Graham didn’t mention the former President in his response to that,  but held his position against pardons.

But to really see where the Republican Party is today, simply look at the actions of the Republican National Committee this week.  The Party censured Congressmen Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for participating on the January 6th Committee.  The Party went even further, saying that the events of January 6th, the Insurrection at the Capitol, was simply “…legitimate political discourse”.  They also gave their approval to Cheney’s Republican primary opponent, and promised funds against Cheney in the primary election (Kinzinger is not running for re-election).  

Maya Angelou said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time”.  The Republican Party has shown the nation, over and over again, who they are.  They are the Party of ex-President Donald Trump.  Not only do they fall in line with whatever the current Trump talking point is, but they are completely beholden to Trump financially.   Much of the Committee financing is done over Trump’s name, and Trump is getting his “pound of flesh” back.  In just October and November of 2021, the RNC paid over $720,000 in Trump’s legal bills (ABC).

Outliers

There are still Republican “outliers”; those who don’t genuflect to the former President.  Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, and even Ohio’s current Governor Mike DeWine all fit in that mold.  But all of them are in unique positions to get some independence from the “party-line”.  Collins has just won a new six year term.  Murkowski ran as an independent Republican in Alaska, against a “Party” candidate.  Romney is from a state where his religion dominates, and they don’t approve of Trump. 

And with DeWine here in Ohio, we’ve yet to see how his independence will do.  The seventy-five year old Governor has a long political history in the state, but faces a well-financed primary challenge from Jim Renacci of suburban Wadsworth.  Renacci is following the “Virginia model”, checking all the boxes from banning “critical race theory” in schools to cutting taxes and de-centralizing the state government.  He doesn’t mention Trump in his campaign (and has not received a Trump endorsement), but even his slogan, “Putting Ohio first means putting America first” echoes Trumpian faux-patriotism.

Who Are You

The Republican Party told us “who they were” this week, for the umpteenth time.  They even went so far as to rewrite history, and told us not to “believe our lying eyes” about the January 6th Insurrection – simply “legitimate political discourse”.   They have made a choice, to castigate Cheney, Kinzinger, and any others who stand for something that looks like what used to be the Republican Party of twenty years ago.

It’s not.  And for my Never-Trumper friends who voted for Biden and now feel betrayed that Biden turned out to be a “Democrat”, I am sorry.  We told you what we were, and you determined that it was better than Trump.  By the way, that is still true.

Somewhere out there there’s a core of a National Union Party, a center-right  Kinzinger and Cheney meet Joe Manchin alliance.  But the current Republican Party isn’t it.  This week they told us who they are – a Party that is willing to throw out the US Constitution in order to gain power:  legitimate political discourse at the end of a flag pole with bear spray.  Like it or not, if you call yourself a Party Republican, that’s your Party.

Elements

It takes three elements to prove a crime has been committed.  The first is the actual conduct, the “commission” of a crime.  The second is the intent to commit a crime – the “mens rea” or criminal “state of mind”.  And the third is the act: was the person accused of the crime the “proximate cause”, the reason the crime occurred. 

A guy enters a Seven/Eleven with a gun.  He walks up to the counter and demands money.  The clerk gives him the money in the cash register, and the guy walks away.  It seems completely cut and dried.  The actual conduct, the commission:  going into a Seven/Eleven with a gun and demanding money.  The “mens rea”:  he took a gun into a store to get money that wasn’t his.  The actual “proximate cause”:  the guy, the gun – the money was taken.

Unless, of course, he was wearing a “Brinks” uniform and it was the daily pickup.  The Brinks guy doesn’t have either the intent to commit or crime, nor was an actual crime committed.  But he did have a gun, and did demand the money.

True Confessions

Ex-President Donald Trump has publicly stated that he was looking for ways to change the outcome of the 2020 election. He wanted elected officials to “recount” the votes in his favor.  And he wanted to stop Congress from certifying the electoral votes in 2020, the votes that elected Joe Biden as the next President.  

There were multiple plans to prevent Biden from winning office. “Alternative” electoral certificates (some might say fraudulent) were provided from the states. If accepted, they would have provided a Trump victory.  A second plan called for the Vice President to “throw out” contested ballots that were for Biden. And there was even a plan for the President to declare a form of “martial law”, seize select voting machines, and hold a “do-over” so he could win.

Trump advisors Peter Navarro and Boris Epshteyn came on television and outlined their plan, called the “Green Bay Sweep”,  and how it would work.  As MSNBC commentator Ari Melber, also an attorney, asked at the time – “…Do you realize you are describing a coup?”  

From a non-attorney’s point of view, it seems that Trump, his Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, his advisors Navarro and Epshteyn (and attorney John Eastman and others)  confessed to criminal behavior of the worst kind.  They intentionally (mens rea) interfered with the lawful Congressional process (18 USC §1505), attempted to overthrow the lawful government (18 USC §2385) and interfered with the election (multiple US laws).  

Knock on the Door

So where is the FBI pounding on the door at 5:23 in the morning:  guns drawn, dogs barking, black SUV’s at the curb?  Where is the “perp walk” into the Federal Courthouse, and the preliminary hearings with “Not Guilty, your Honor” and bail set and monitors attached to ankles?  What is the Justice Department waiting for?  Where is the Roger Stone or Michael Cohen images that we all saw in the past six years?  Why did Navarro and Epshteyn go onto a television show and “confess”?  And why is Trump now using rallies to explain his actions – his crimes?  

Intent

The answer is simple:  they do not believe they committed a crime.   They think there wasn’t  intent – the “mens rea” of criminal conduct, and that their actions were, in fact, perfectly legal.  The “Green Bay Sweep” was a simple parliamentary maneuver.  They look back at the 12th Amendment and the contested election of 1876, and believe they just found a “better way” to win the election.  Ex-President Trump believes he was acting within his “powers” as President, and as a candidate for office, by devising any plan to contest the election.  

And – this is the real important part – none of them are willing to accept that they are the “proximate cause” of the attack on the Congress, the violence on the steps, or the vandalism in the building. They all say: they “aimed the crowd and pulled the trigger”, but they did not have the intent for them to attack the building. They only wanted the protests outside of the Congress to try to press Pence and other Republicans to go through with the “Green Bay Sweep”.

Garland’s Dilemma

The Department of Justice has a very long tradition of NOT prosecuting former Presidents or their administrations. Barack Obama did not allow his Attorney General Eric Holder to charge members of the Bush Administration for enabling the torture of prisoners at “black sites”. Gerald Ford went so far as to pardon his predecessor, Richard Nixon, to avoid the spectacle of a US President “in the dock”. Even the Trump Justice Department stayed away from indicting former Obama staffers (though they did go after the FBI agents who investigated the Trump campaign).

The Biden Administration got elected on the theme of “returning to normal”. Prosecuting members of the Trump Administration, much less the Ex-President himself, would be highly unusual. That doesn’t make it wrong, just “against the flow” of what Biden usually would do.

But there is a real question of whether the President’s plans, while completely outside of the norms and traditions of the US Constitutional Republic, were illegal.  And that creates three issues for the Department.  First, how to demonstrate that what Trump, Meadows, Navarro and the rest did was against the law.  Second, how to convince a jury of non-lawyers of that illegality.  And third, proving that the accused knew, or should have known, that what they were doing wasn’t just against the “norms”, but against the Law. 

Were they robbing the Seven/Eleven – or were they simply the “Brinks” guys?  That’s the question Attorney General Garland will have to answer.  

Bombs

I went to Denison University to study history and political science from 1974 to 1978.  The Vietnam War was just ending, but the larger Cold War was at its height.  The world was poised on the brink between the nuclear weapons of the United States and the Soviet Union, weapons that could destroy the world several times over.  “Moscow in flames, bombs on the way, film at eleven,” was a dark joke with way too much truth to it.

While I learned a lot about the American Constitutional system and the functions of American government, my favorite courses were about what led us to the current crisis of our time.  I took “War and Revolution in the Twentieth Century”, “Modern European History”, World Political Geography”, and “History of the Modern Middle East”.  But my favorite course was “Problems in American National Security Policy”.  The title was too long to explain – so the “shortcut” name for the course was “Bombs 360”.  

Cold War

The “Cold” of the Cold War was really more of a goal:  that neither the US or the USSR would use nuclear weapons to resolve their conflict.  Atomic weapons were used once, against Japan in the actions that ended World War II.  The damage done by those two bombs was comparable to the  conventional fire bombings of Tokyo, Japan (90,000 killed) or Dresden, Germany (25,000 killed).  But Hiroshima (90,000 to 140,000 killed) and Nagasaki (60,000 to 80,000 killed) were qualitatively different.  The Tokyo and Dresden attacks took hundreds of bombers and thousands of airmen to cause the devastation. Hiroshima and Nagasaki each required just one plane, with a crew of twelve, and one bomb. 

The power of nuclear bombs seemed virtually limitless.  By the time I was studying the subject in 1975, the B-52 bombers that took off from nearby Lockbourne Airbase (now Rickenbacker) had four nuclear weapons, each three hundred times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Japan.  Twenty megaton bombs were “standard”, well over a thousand times those first atom bombs.  The Soviets even tested a sixty megaton device.

Attack and Counter

Learning about foreign policy in the shadow of nuclear holocaust was all about maneuvering just short of the nuclear threshold.  Whatever the Soviet Union and it’s “allies” or the United States and its coalitions did, it couldn’t be an action that would “force” the nuclear hand of the other.  The United States tried to develop the “Star Wars” anti-nuclear missile project.  It didn’t work out (thirty-five years later we’re still trying to stop “a missile with a missile”) but if it had, then the Soviet Union might be forced into a “first strike” with nuclear weapons.  The would either use them before they were blocked, or lose their functionality entirely.

But both the US and the USSR played a worldwide game of conventional, non-nuclear military threats, attacks and feints.  The US was involved in the War in Vietnam.  The USSR was supplying the North Vietnamese military and fighting the Americans with Soviet pilots flying some North Vietnamese fighters.  The USSR invaded Afghanistan.  The US supplied the Mujahedeen (Afghan fighters) and ultimately drove the Soviets out.  (And yes, some of those Afghans later fought just as hard to throw the US out as well).

Iron Curtain

But the essential flashpoint of the Cold War wasn’t in Southeast Asia, nor even in Central America (Cuba, Nicaragua).  Those were the points of harassment, but not the real point of conflict.  That was the border between Soviet controlled Eastern Europe and the free nations of the NATO alliance.  That’s where the tanks were poised, the fighting planes were circling, and the thousands of American and Soviet troops stared across the barbed wire and walls.  Churchill aptly named “the line” the Iron Curtain.  

The American, British, French and German troops stood poised to defend.  The Soviet tank corps stood ready to roll.  World War III often was in the hands of junior officers, who might make the wrong move, and create a crisis that could engulf the world.  It was in this era – from 1948 to 1989 — that both the Soviets and the United States and NATO, learned to do “the dance” of Cold War diplomacy.

Reagan

I was never a supporter of Ronald Reagan as President, but there is one issue where he proved to be successful.  The Reagan Administration determined that the United States, with a GDP (gross domestic product) of $3 trillion, could outspend the Soviet Union with $1.2 trillion GDP.  So we began to build missiles and planes, tanks and aircraft carriers, advanced submarines and possible space weapons.  The Soviets might not want to compete economically, but they had little choice but to try to stay “in the game”.  After eight years, the financial pressure wrecked the Soviet economy, and caused the fall of the Communist government. 

When the Union fell, the Eastern European countries under Soviet control gained independence:  Poland, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic and Slovakia), Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, East Germany, and Albania.  Several other European states, integrated in the Union itself, broke away to be independent: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine set up their own governments. 

So endeth the history lesson. 

Putin 

The modern day President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, grew up in the Soviet Union as an up-and-coming member of the KGB, the Soviet spy organization.  When the Soviet Union fell, Putin “morphed” into a successful politician, using his Intelligence skills and making deals with oligarchs who got rich on the Soviet collapse to gain the Presidency.  He has been leading Russia since 1999 (though he installed a “puppet” President in his stead for four years).  His goal is to regain the power of the Russian Empire – the Soviet Union.

There are over 100,000 Russian troops on three sides of Ukraine.  They are poised to strike, to return Ukraine to the Rodina, the traditional Russian homeland.  While there are 170,000 soldiers in the Ukrainian Army, the Russians out-power them in weaponry, technology, and perhaps most importantly, supplies.  But make no mistake, an all-out invasion of Ukraine by Russia wouldn’t just be video of tanks streaming towards Kyiv.  There would be a fight, an ugly fight, that wouldn’t end when the Russians inevitably took nominal control.  The Ukrainians are already prepared for an insurgency after a Russian takeover.

Putin’s Dream

So if Putin is determined to have Ukraine, he will have it.  But it will have a cost, not just in Ukraine itself, but in the NATO reaction throughout Europe.  Russia is facing huge economic sanctions that could detach them from the world economy.  And NATO is making it clear:  while Ukraine is not a part of NATO, many of the other former Soviet states are, and NATO will defend them from attack.  Need a demonstration of that resolve?  3000 additional US Troops are shipping to Eastern Europe now.  They are a “trip-wire”:  attack them and “all bets are off”.

Vladimir Putin is a skilled negotiator.  It may be that he is simply playing out a “bluff”, that, with the right incentives, can be called off.  And the Biden Administration and NATO are giving him both some incentives to back down, and punishments if he chooses not to.  In the end, it comes down to whether Putin is “just” looking for an edge, or is determined to fulfill his dream of rebuilding the Russian Empire.  

The Cost

But Putin is also aware of why the Soviet Union failed.  Russia’s 2021 GDP was $1.7 Trillion.  The European Union GDP was $17 Trillion.  And the US 2021 GDP, was $23 Trillion (because you want to know:  China 2021 GDP $18 Trillion).  So while Putin may have more tanks and planes than Ukraine, he is in no position to “win” an economic war with NATO and the US.  

It’s not really about what Putin wants – it’s about the resolve of the US and NATO to protect those Eastern European states.  And it’s probably not a “blood” issue – it’s an issue of treasure. Will NATO allies will  spend enough of their treasure to “buy” the poker game that Putin is playing?  

And that’s an old “Cold War” maneuver.  Thanks for the solution, Mr. Reagan.

Two Sides

There are two sides to every issue – that might be the “theme” of this third decade of the twenty-first century.  And if you take one side, you aren’t supposed to “listen” to the other.  Take your stand, choose a side, make up your mind:  then don’t let an ounce of doubt ever make you question.  And go find “affirmation”, information that wholly supports your view. 

Like it or not, the motto of Fox News, “fair and balanced”, is what’s supposed to happen.  Not that Fox News has ever been “fair and balanced”.  Like a line out of Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth does nothing but spout propaganda, Fox News tries to take the high ground with their motto, then tells their tales of a biased world.

Fair

Fair means to tell both sides of the story.  That’s the original “two sides” to every issue.  There are “Gen X and Z” directed news shows, that make a big deal about letting their viewers make up their own minds.  They present the two sides, and then leave conclusions to someone else.  And that sounds eminently reasonable.  But it presumes something that often isn’t true:  that the audience has the expertise to understand and analyze the “two sides”.  

That plays into the conceit of the Google (or Duck, Duck, Go wouldn’t want to be tracked) generation.  They can become “experts” in any field, with a few clicks on the mouse and fifteen minutes on YouTube.  And that “faux” expertise makes them vulnerable.  That’s a flaw, whether it’s in Cheddar News or Fox News itself.  

Balanced

 Then there’s the falsehood in the second part of the motto: balanced.   Fox always “balances” it’s new analysis with “liberal” voices.  Juan Williams was the original.  A well-known NPR commentator, Juan was ultimately fired from NPR for his association with Fox.  He was the “one” on the panel, maybe the “one” liberal, maybe the “one” black man, that created balance.  But Juan’s balance was often, maybe always, drowned out by the chorus of “right-wing” voices on the other side.

And before you start writing your rebuttal, I’m well aware that some of the NBC news shows do the same thing.  Meet the Press often has two liberals, two “neutral newscasters”, and one conservative on their panels.  And those conservatives serve the same purpose as Williams does on Fox, to be the counter-point to the more liberal views of the others.  Rich Lowry, editor of the conservative National Review often plays that role.

So we can agree that both sides create a “faux balance” in some of their news shows.  

Preponderance of Evidence

But there is a more subversive form of balance, one that plays into the “internet expertise” so prevalent today.  For example, let’s talk about a subject most folks agree on:  climate change.  A fair newscast would present “both sides”, the scientists who carefully explain why human action is causing rapid climate change, and the scientist who says it’s all “just nature” and we’ve been here before.

But a balanced newscast would present the ninety-nine scientists who know that climate change is exacerbated by man, and then the one who disagrees.  That’s the real “balance” in the scientific community – the vast preponderance of climate scientists who can demonstrate humanity’s role in climate warming, versus the few “outliers”.  The outliers may be amplified by the massive industries, particularly oil, who finance their media campaigns.  But in the end, there are very few climate scientists who believe that climate change is natural without a major human component.  

Internet Expertise

Of course the debate doesn’t happen that way.  And since the climate scientist and the climate denier are “head-to-head”, they apparently start on an equal footing.   And that’s the problem.  Because when you look at the vast majority of science, they aren’t.  But since we can all be “climate experts” with a click and a view, we can pick and choose our “affirmative” data, or follow our trusted commentator’s opinion (even after he says that he doesn’t have “a side”).

While climate change may ultimately be the greater threat to humanity, and should be the center of scientific debate, that’s not what our current scientific crisis is about.  We all know the scientific “sides” we are taking.  It’s not about the atmosphere, it’s about the virus.

Set Up

We’ve been set up.  

We are told we can become experts ourselves, just by watching a YouTube video, or reading a synopsis of someone’s theory.  And as we invest our time and brain-width trying to understand virology (you could replace that with “rocket science”) the years of study  required gets condensed to a one hour podcast. And we believe.  I get it.

I’m a pole vault coach.  I’ve spent over forty years teaching and learning about the event.  I’ve “apprenticed” with some of the best coaches in the nation.   And I’ve had thousands of vaulters to teach, coach, and learn from.  The technique of pole vault I teach is proven to be effective, and not just by me (want to check that out – Ohio Pole Vault Safety).

But you can click on the internet, and find so-called experts teaching pole vault like they know what they’re doing.  And what they’re doing could ultimately get someone killed.  It’s dangerous, and even more so because they say:  “Just follow our internet instructions and you’ll be great!!”  You won’t be, you’re more likely to be broke (financially and physically).

I won’t in any way advance their cause, so I won’t publish the website.  But if it can happen in something as esoteric as pole vaulting, what about something as politically volatile as the Covid vaccine.

In my way, I’m trying to make pole vaulting safer.  The real “experts” in the field are with me.  And none of us learned how to coach from a website or YouTube video.  Maybe we should all be listening to the vast majority of experts about vaccines (and climate change) as well.

Fire and Rain

I turned twelve in 1968.  My first record was a “45” by James Taylor, Fire and Rain on the “A” side, and “Anywhere Like Heaven” on the “B” side.  (So fifty-four years later, a “45” was a small vinyl record, with a single song on each side, played at forty-five RPM on the record player, versus the multiple song “albums” played at thirty-three).  I wish I could say I still had that record, but I wore it out before the seventies.

I’ve gone to see James Taylor live several times over the years, the last time this past December.  He does Fire and Rain at every concert.  Where ever in the show his “masterpiece” is placed – it’s always done with a blackout – a pause – then James alone in the spotlight.  It’s almost like a prayer, a tunnel through time as the audience goes back to that first time, the record spinning fast on the turntable, an era when everything was possible. We could get Civil Rights, we could end a War, we could change the World.  It was “…just yesterday morning…”. 

Fire and Rain isn’t a protest song.  It’s about personal loss.  But it introduced an entire genre of music to my young ears.  Soon I was listening to Carole King, Bob Dylan, and Simon and Garfunkel.  As I progressed in my teens, I wanted something more “aggressive”, more electric.   And I found a “super group” called Crosby-Stills-Nash and Young. 

Pirate Radio 

My first introduction to CSNY was soon after the shooting of student protestors at Kent State in May of 1970.  We got most of our “new” music on the car radio, and I was a fourteen year-old getting shuttled around Cincinnati in the back seat, usually by one of my older sisters, and far from the radio controls.  We heard about a song that was supposedly “banned” in the state of Ohio, a song with the refrain “…Four dead in Ohio”.  Rumor had it that Ohio’s Governor, James Rhoades, threatened the broadcast license of any station that played it.

It was also in the early days of FM Radio (music was on AM then – mostly talk and sports now).   There were small “pirate” FM stations, that played the cutting edge music we were looking for.  The signals weren’t very strong and you had to be relatively close to the broadcast tower to hear them. Their channel numbers were passed around almost like a secret code (“try 102.7, Jelly Pudding Radio”).   It seemed like listening to Radio Free Europe or the BBC during World War II.

But if you could “catch” the station, you could hear CSNY’s grinding protest of the Kent State shootings – “Ohio” by Neil Young.  I was hooked, and I’m still hooked today.  

By the time I was a senior in high school, my friends and I had become CSNY aficionados.  I was more towards the acoustic David Crosby and Stephen Stills side, while others were definitely Neil Young fans.  We all liked them all, and we all had their albums, both as a group and individually.  But I didn’t get around to getting the “live” CSNY album, 4 Way Street, until my freshman year of college.

Four Way Street

In 1974, a college dorm room in Crawford Hall at Denison University was a just a single room, maybe sixteen by sixteen, with two beds, two desks with chairs, two chests of drawers, one window and one hard “lounge” chair.  The bathroom was down the hall, just past the “grand stairs” to the front lobby.  My roommate Charlie was a veteran of dorm life, having gone to prep school at the famous Deerfield Academy.  But it was all new to me.  We shared my record player, a combination of turntable and speaker.  

Charlie was in love with a group called Bread.  Hearing their songs today brings back good memories, but at the time he played it so much that I threatened to spin the record out of our second floor window into the Quad.  Charlie had the answer – Bread goes, then so goes 4 Way Street.  I played that album so often that I literally wore it out, and had to buy a second copy.  I dubbed it for my tape cassette in my Volkswagen Squareback, and it was always the go to, middle of the night on a long journey, play.  

CSNY was the last, great musical voices of Vietnam protest.  By 1974 the war was almost over, Nixon resigned, and Denison students’ music turned to some guy from New Jersey singing about love and motorcycles – Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen.  But I was still steeped in the music of political change, of an era now past.  I hoped I could make a difference, first in politics, and then through teaching.  

Old Man (I’m a lot like you are)

CSNY are old men now.  They toured together on and off until a decade ago.  While their incredible harmonies still resonated, their personalities clashed to the point that they can hardly speak to each other today.  But their influence still is powerful, particularly among those of us who grew up on their harmonies.  They collectively and individually have weighed in on almost every major issue of their time, from wars to saving the environment to the failures of a materialistic world.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that Neil Young has taken a stand in the current Covid information crisis.  He is incredibly aware of the influence of communication, whether it’s a song about campus protests, or a podcast featuring Covid deniers.  And Young has always been divergent, even from his bandmates.  He sees Joe Rogan influencing younger people to ignore science, and risk both their own health, and the health of those around them.  

Neil Young is willing to lose 60% of his current revenue by pulling his music from the digital music and podcast giant, Spotify, unless they control Rogan.  He has determined not to associate himself with the same service Rogan uses, and he’s encouraging others to do the same.

The Damage Done

Some of Young’s old friends have followed his lead, like  Joni Mitchell and Nils Lofgren.  Others no longer control their own music, David Crosby for example, sold his entire catalog.  But Crosby voiced his support for Young’s action.  And Spotify says it will “warn” folks who listen to Rogan of unfounded or inaccurate information.

Neil Young is seventy-seven years old.  His generation is most at risk from Covid denial.  He’s always been irascible, and he’s never backed away from a fight, even with his friends.  So it’s no surprise to me that he’s made a very public stand.  The man who wrote Needle and the Damage Done , about the loss of friends to drug abuse, would certainly stand up against those who are killing folks by spewing falsehoods.  

There are already more than 33,000 dead in Ohio.  Just like in 1970, Neil Young doesn’t want there to be more.

Track Clinic

I worked in the high school last Friday, and substituted for a friend.  He’s the coach who took over when I left the track program five years ago, after forty years.  John went to the state Track Coaches Clinic. I’m sure he went to hear what the speakers suggest are the “best” practices in track and field.  But it’s also “old home week”, time to catch up with all the coaches you’ve met along the way.  

There’s always something to learn, though. John’s had decades of experience and success. He probably has the same goal I had towards the end of my forty years.  I sat through the speeches, and hoped that I’d walk out with just one thing that I could use, or change, or add to make my team better.  Some years it happened, some it didn’t.  

Old Friends

I don’t attend the Clinic as a coach anymore.  I do teach the two-hour Pole Vault Safety Certification class. That’s been shuffled to first thing, 8 AM on Saturday morning.  It’s usually well attended, a combination of anxious rookie coaches and bleary eyed veterans who need the three-year renewal and joined in the “social” events late into Friday night.  My goal is to teach them to coach vaulting safely – and to keep everyone awake.  I’m not always successful, at least in the staying awake department.

There are many old friends there as well, guys I’ve coached with for decades. And almost always, a surprise. This year: one of my favorite vaulters from the 1990’s. It’s been decades since we’ve seen each other. Now his kids are in high school, and he’s taken on a head coaching role. He wasn’t the best vaulter I ever coached, but he was always the best future coach I ever coached. And now, twenty-seven years later — it’s come true.

Jerseys

Walking into John’s classroom brings back a flood of track memories for me.  Not because it’s an “old” room – it’s the first year for the new high school, so everything is brand-spanking new.  No the memories are hidden in the corners, or high on the shelves, or sitting in the back rows of the classroom.

Like any good track coach in season, John has track jerseys stacked in the corner.  It’s indoor season, and even though John is deep in with his swim team, he still has the uniforms out for the indoor track team.  Those are the “Spider Jerseys”, the “signature” Watkins track jerseys for the past decade.  They came about from a conversation at a football game between the sprint coach and myself, about some little kid’s shirt.  I think we scared the kid – but the shirt was a black and gold “Spiderman” shirt, and we both thought it would make an amazing track jersey.  

End of an Era

The ”Spider Jerseys” were distinctive:  we could pick our kids out across the field or on the backstretch of the track.  And they were special – no one had anything like them.  It made our kids stand out.  They might have been “a little” cocky, but in those years, with multiple Conference and District Championships, so were we.  The Spider Shirts replaced the black and gold “Speed Suits” that much of our team wore before, and there was nothing more exciting than watching the kids light up when they got to first wear the new apparel.

It’s been a decade, and time for the next generation of kids to get excited about something new and different.  John is replacing the jerseys this year with a new (and more modern) design.  As a coach, you need to make each team special, and each era its own.  So it’s high time for new jerseys.  But I’ll still mourn the end of the era of the “Spider Jerseys”. 

Mansfield

Up high on the shelf is the championship trophy from the Mansfield Relays track meet from 2016.  That was the best team we ever coached, strong in almost every event.   On that Saturday at Mansfield we fought a team from Grand Rapids, Michigan to the wire, the points lead altering from event to event.  Finally we  won in the last event, the 4×400 relay, running one of the fastest times in the State, to secure the championship.  

Winning Mansfield was a huge deal for the kids, but an even bigger deal to the team coaches. We grew up in the era when Mansfield was the legendary Ohio meet, with hundreds of teams and thousands of participants over two days.  Placing at Mansfield was a huge deal, and winning an individual event sometimes even bigger than winning the state.

That era was over, and Mansfield was down to one day with “just” forty teams.  But it was still a big deal to come out of the meet, not only with that trophy, but with the medalists in fourteen out of seventeen events.  It was the early high point of that amazing year, one with incredible peaks and valleys.  I remember most of that meet like it was last week, standing on the backstretch trying to coach both the girls pole vault and the 300 Hurdles.  I even can recall the bus ride home down I-71, the immense pride in those kids, and just a few minutes to enjoy the moment.  Then the “clock” of coaching kicked in, and I began to plan for the next meet down the road, Lancaster’s Fulton Relays.  We won that one too.

The Back Row

This is the fifth season since I retired.  There’s only a few kids in the school that even know who I am.  But looking at the back row of one of John’s classes the names are still there:  echoes of older brothers who competed for the “Black and Gold”, who went from young freshmen fighting to just get a varsity letter, to kids standing on the podium at the State Track Meet.  I must be getting “old” – those memories come flooding back, with all the struggles and the ultimate successes.  

Memories aside, there is a job still to be done in this classroom. John actually set up a lesson that I could help the kids with.  That’s unusual for me subbing a science and math class.  But we did some “measuring”, and I got to practice my other former profession, being a teacher, just for a bit.  I’m definitely an “all in” guy when it comes to teaching.  Like coaching, it’s hard to be “in” just a little bit, but it’s still good to be a small part of the learning process once again.

The Sunday Story Series

• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21
• Dogs and Medals – 8/8/21
• The New Guy – 9/5/21
• Stories of 9-11 – 9/12/21
• The Interview – 9/26/21
• Night Moves – 10/3/21
• Funeral for a Friend – 10/11/21
• National Security – 10/24/21
• Boots on the Trail – 10/31/21
• Taking Care of Mom and Dad – 11/14./21
• Dogs Found and Lost – 11/21/21
• Watching Brian 12/12/21
• Stories from Shiloh – 12/19/21
• Team Trips – 12/26/21
• Uphill, Both Ways  – 1/9/22
• Old Trophies – 1/30/22

Substitute Teaching

I’m subbing at the High School today.  One of the differences between “subbing” and “working”, is not having a pattern.  For me, every “sub day” is a Monday.  My retirement normal day is a 6:30 wakeup “call” from Keelie, our black Australian Shepherd mix.  Then it’s a casual morning of feeding five dogs, doing the “chores”, then settling down right here in front of the computer with an endless cup of coffee for whatever idea I need to get on “paper”.  

But “sub days” are different.  The alarm changes; instead of a lick and a paw, it’s the more traditional claxon alarm from the IPhone at 5:30.  There are still dogs to feed, but this early it requires some rousing.  Buddy, our oldest, doesn’t really like to come out from under the bed until the sun is up, and Lou and CeCe, our youngest rescues, are happier cozied up by the fireplace.  So getting them all to eat takes some persuasion.  After that it’s high speed chores, including filling the thermos with enough coffee to caffeinate the day, getting the “brown bag” lunch together, and warming up the Jeep, all to arrive at school by 7:00.

Snow Days

For a thirty-six year teaching career, “snow days” carried the same joy that they did as a thirteen year student.  “Snow Days” were days of endless possibilities, from sleeping to sledding, to rehearsing what retirement might look like.    There was nothing better, really, than waking up to the message – snow day!!  Even when I was working out at school early in the morning, already up and moving and often running out in the drifts before the call was made, “snow day” meant go find breakfast and “chill” for the day.

But as a “sub”, snow day means no pay.  So while it’s still nice to get an extra hour or so of sleep, in my life I can have a “snow day” anytime I want, so, as the song goes, “The thrill is gone”.

Recalculating

What has always been a dilemma for me, ever since I began as a professional educator, is the dreaded “two-hour delay”.   First of all, usually the “two-hour delay” announcement is late in the game, after the claxon alarm and the dog feedings.  The first two cups of coffee are “on board” and it’s too late to head back to bed.  Even if I did, the dogs are already rolling, there’s no “go back to bed” for them.  

And there’s the “time disfunction” that a two-hour delay requires.  So let’s see:  the plan is start the Jeep by 6:40, make lunch and drink one more cup of coffee by 6:50, then pack up and go, getting to school by 7:00.  Now all that’s altered, 6:40 becomes 8:40 and the rest, and I’m all dressed up with nowhere to go.  I keep recalculating the equations in my head, making sure I don’t somehow show up too early, or worse yet, too late.

And why am I writing about all this?  It was 6:40 when my friend John, the teacher I’m subbing for today, texted.  So here I am, with the five dogs wondering why we’re up so early, sitting at the kitchen table, all dressed up – recalculating my schedule in my head one more time.  Today is a two-hour delay.

Wedding Vows

How disruptive are two hour delays?  When Jenn and I first got together, we were both still working.  I went to work early, and we only had one bathroom at the time anyway, so she stayed in bed until I was out of the way.  She timed her morning based on me.  The first time I had a two-hour delay, the call was made early enough that I just went back to bed.  Since I didn’t get up, she didn’t get moving, even though HER job didn’t “do” delays.  She ended up rushing to work late, and it was definitely all my fault.  

It was such a big deal in our lives that it made it into our wedding vows.  I promised her not to close my eyes when she was driving.  She promised me not to be angry if I forgot to tell her I was on a two-hour delay.  Then we both lived “happily ever after”.

So “back in the day” we had a “telephone tree” to let everyone know about school closing or delays.  Even from the earliest days, my name was near the top of the list.  So I had to make sure the “tree” remained intact, and get through to the next down the list so everyone was warned.  But now, there’s an “app” that supposed to text out school closings and delays.  Since I’m subbing, I signed up for it, but that hasn’t made a difference.  I still haven’t received a notification.  Last week I checked the school website, saw nothing, and arrived at school to an empty parking lot and ice covered sidewalks.  So I’m checking back frequently now.

Guess I’m Working

It’s now 8:00 am.  That calculates to 6:00 am on the regular schedule.  Daylight has arrived, though the snow is falling so saying the sun’s up is a matter of faith, not observation.  Buddy has made his morning appearance, but Jenn, who  spent most of the night watching cameras for lost dogs, is still sleeping.  

Channel Ten’s phone app still has a two-hour delay, so I’d better stop writing and get back into “work mode”.   But you never know here in Licking County how the roads are holding up.  There’s always still a chance for a last minute “Snow Day”.  

I wouldn’t argue about it.

Teaching

I was a classroom teacher for twenty-eight years.  If you read these essays on “Our America”, it won’t surprise you to know I taught social studies:  American and World History, Government and Current Issues, Economics and even Sociology.   And I taught every grade level from sixth through seniors, at a time when our community was transitioning from farm town to “the suburbs”; 1978 until I finally left the classroom for the front office in 2006.  

Teachers today are carefully scripted by the state and local administration.  Each learning “objective” is outlined in detail, so that everyone teaching the same subject has near identical plans, lessons, and outcomes.  In some states, that literally means every eighth grade American History teacher is teaching the same lesson, on the same day.  While Ohio isn’t  quite that strict, the whole goal is to have near daily control over what goes on in every classroom.

State Control

There are lots of reasons for “controls”.   We are a highly mobile society, with kids moving in and out of classrooms and schools all the time.  To have a student stay in one school system kindergarten through twelve is the exception rather than the norm.  So those kids deserve some continuity in their education.  

And there is the obvious reason:  making sure teachers actually teach.  By standardizing classrooms, then there is an “objective” scale of success and failure.  As I saw it, ‘D’ and ‘C’ teachers did improve, forced to teach at a higher level.  But the price was that the ‘A’ teachers were forced to change a lot of what made them exceptional, pulling them “down”.  So  the end result was ‘B’ and ‘C’ teachers and fewer failures, but fewer exceptional teachers as well.

In the Day

When I started teaching, “back in the day”  there was a general understanding of what the subject matter was, but no specific controls.  There was the “textbook”, and there was a set of maybe twelve “objectives” for a course, but after that what, how and when you taught the subject was solely left to the classroom teacher.

That put the burden of planning on me.  I’d sit down at the beginning of each school year and plot out a time-line for my courses, figuring out how long I could spend on each topic and still make my way through the entire curriculum.  That was a lot of work, but it gave me the freedom to pace my class to take advantage of the “real world”.  In Government, in even-years I taught politics and elections early in the class, to take advantage of the “real world” elections that happened in November.  In odd-years, I taught that part of the class in the spring, leading up to the primaries.

It also gave me control to respond to world events.  In January of 1999, we learned a lot about impeaching a President (and Presidential sex).  In November of 2000, we extended our examination of elections as the ballots were counted in Florida.  And in September of 2001,  I altered my time-line to learn about Islam, and radicals, and American policy in Southwest Asia.  

Teaching the Present through the Past

When I was teaching History in the 1980’s, I built in extra-time to spend on World War II.  It wasn’t just to tell stories about my WW II spy Mom  (one year, I actually got her to come speak to my classes).  But in the 1980’s in Pataskala, I felt it was important to give “my kids” an understanding of racial bigotry.  We spent time talking about the Nazi persecution of Jewish people, leading up to the Holocaust.  And we contrasted that with the US persecution of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

I was careful to avoid “equivalency”.  While the “re-location camps” now seem very un-American, they were not “the same” as the Holocaust.  But what I really wanted my kids to understand is that even “the good guys” could fall into doing “bad things”.  I wanted them to be on guard, as US citizens, for that kind of racial prejudice.  Those historic examples lead us to discussions about current issues of race and religion in America.

Talking to History

In those days, we could meet folks who survived the experience.  One year we had a Holocaust survivor, a sweet lady, come in and talk.  Her life before the Holocaust was a simple childhood that all the children could relate to.  She didn’t tell too many “horror stories”, but it was enough to see the tattooed numbers on her wrist and the tears in her eyes when she mentioned her lost family.  

And we had a survivor of the re-location camps, a high school second-baseman for East Los Angeles high school who ended up under lock and key in Arizona.  His only way out was to volunteer to fight in World War II.  He was in the mountains of Italy with one of most decorated US Units of the War.  

I know that the survivors of the War are almost all gone, but I’m not sure you’d “expose” eighth graders to that today anyway.  Not only would it disrupt the “planning”, but in our current educational climate, why would any teacher take the chance of “upsetting” someone in the community?  Any deviation from the “set” plan, the state approved curriculum; especially one that would emotionally impact a child, is just an unacceptable job risk for a teacher to take.

Unacceptable Risk

In Virginia, there’s now a state “tip line” to let them know if a child is “uncomfortable” in class by discussions of racial bias.  In Tennessee, they are banning a graphic novel that explains the Holocaust, Maus.  The book shares the experiences of a mouse, gently telling that horrible story. I had a copy of Maus in my classroom since the mid-1980’s.  It’s still on my bookshelf today.

In our era of “sensitivity”, how could a teacher possibly talk about the Holocaust, or the Trail of Tears,  or the reason for the Bill Clinton impeachment?   In our polarized society, what lesson can teacher’s give about the Nisei internment without being “unpatriotic”, much less John Lewis on the Edmund Pettis Bridge?  And how foolhardy would it be to even bring up the two impeachments of Donald Trump, the Insurrection or Covid; the biggest “teachable moments” of the recent past?

There is a lesson for teachers here.  Stick to the script, or risk losing your job.  It’s happening all over the country.  And it’s failing the future.

Conspiracies Abound

on April 29th, 2019 I wrote an essay for Our America (then Trump World) called “Put On My Foil Hat”.  It was about the possibility, confirmed in part by the Mueller Report, that Russia had actually interfered in the 2016 election.  That issue was never “concluded”, other than to say that no one proved that Russia ever “changed votes” in 2016.  But it was confirmed that they hacked into the voting systems in multiple states.  And even if they had altered the votes, by 2019, I wasn’t confident we would be told.  The whole concept was on the edge of “conspiracy”; and for just a minute, I put on my “foil hat”.

If Russia did change votes in 2016, they weren’t changing them into Hillary votes. But what surely did happen after the 2016 election, is that Americans on all sides of the political spectrum felt a little less sure about our elections.  That might have been the whole reason for the Russian electronic incursions.  They weren’t trying to rig the election, they were trying to shake our faith in the election results.  And, if that was the goal, they succeeded.

The ”Steal”

They also succeeded because one candidate for President in 2016, Donald Trump, began to call the results into question months before the vote.  Trump, over and over again, told us how if he lost, the election was “rigged”.  He even said that in a national debate with Hillary Clinton (in answer to a Chris Wallace question).  So even though Trump won, and Hillary conceded, there was the lingering question:  what did the Russians do.

Going into the 2020 campaign, Trump redoubled his efforts to undermine American faith in the election results.  The “Big Lie” campaign, that the election would somehow be “stolen” from Trump, could have been the next phase in the Russian subversion plot.  It really doesn’t matter whether Trump was a “witting” or “unwitting” participant, he was the critical component in getting nearly 40% of Americans to believe the “Stop the Steal” lie.  Think about that.  Nearly 40% of our nation today, on January 26th, 2022, believes that the election was illegitimate, that Donald Trump won, and think that Joe Biden usurped the Presidency.

No wonder “bipartisanship” is impossible. 

I think we can all, all 100% of us, agree on a few things.  First, that both sides have lost some faith in the validity of our election system.  Second, that Russian Intelligence goals are to make America not only less powerful in the world, but less of a “role model” for the world. The present election chaos does it.  So after all of that, it really doesn’t matter whether this was a Russian “Op” or not.  If it was an “Op”, it worked.  But either way it’s just where we are.

New Foil Hat

So let’s put our foil hats back on.  Let’s put together the information we now know about what happened after election day, 2020.

We now  know that the “ground was softened” by the “Stop the Steal” campaign that questioned the election results.  We also know that the results would not have been questioned by the Trump Campaign, and probably not the Biden Campaign either, if Trump won.  But he didn’t, and immediately, the day after the election, the Trump Campaign went from re-electing the President, to trying to alter the election results.  

We know that President Trump, Senator Graham, and others openly tried to persuade election officials in the pivotal seven states to change their vote count, after those counts were done.  Charitably, we could say Trump was exercising his “right” to question the results as the losing candidate.  But, after listening to the Georgia call, it sure seemed like the President of the United States was threatening the Secretary of State of Georgia if he didn’t change the vote count.  Whether that was a crime, will be a question for the Georgia legal system to resolve.

Green Bay Sweep

There were a series of “legal” plans created to try to alter the certified electoral votes in the Congress January 6th.  Those plans included developing “alternate” delegates to those confirmed, and to offer those “alternate” documents for the Vice President’s consideration as the “President” of the Electoral certification proceedings.  They thought that Pence would accept them and toss the Biden electors.  Or at least use their presence to disqualify all Electors from the seven states.  If he did that, and the Senate (still under Republican control) agreed, then the House would choose the President.  In the Presidential tiebreaking procedure, Republicans controlled the House.

The authors and executors of these plans are already on the record.  Eastman, Navarro, and Epshteyn not only are saying what they did, including creating the “alternate” electors, but seem proud of their “Operation Green Bay Sweep”.  They claim it was all legal, and even necessary because the election was “stolen”.   They believe that Vice President Pence betrayed their cause, and their President.

Chaos Works 

But even if Pence wouldn’t go along, if there was enough chaos, enough disruption of the electoral counting process, there was another alternative plan.  Trump could, by Executive Order (already written then and now out in public), use the military to seize control of the election machinery in those seven states, declare that the election was “under question” and delay the outcome.  

After the November election, the Trump Administration purged the Defense Department senior civilian leadership, putting extremely loyal Trump-men in the key positions.  If the President ordered it, and the civilian leaders of the Department backed it, how could the Generals disagree?  Wouldn’t they, by refusing civilian commands,  commit insubordination and even further weaken the government?  And if they complied, and the 82nd Airborne showed up in Atlanta, the Fourth Marines in Phoenix,  the 10th Mountain Division in Lansing, and the rest; wouldn’t their mere presence bring the election into question?

Insurrection

All that was required was a pretext,  an insurrection if you will, to draw out the Executive Powers of the Presidency.  In fact, it’s actually called the Insurrection Act of 1807, and it predates even the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 that prohibits use of Federal troops to enforce US law.   The Executive Order was already written.   It was just waiting for enough “insurrection”.  Would a three day disruption of Congress be enough?  Or the kidnaping of Pence or Pelosi, or Schumer?  

Could it happen?  History says, of course.  The US Army enforced the Supreme Court Brown v Board of Education decision in Arkansas and Alabama.  We all remember the grainy black and white video of little black children being escorted into the school house, through crowds of jeering white folk, surrounded by soldiers with rifles.  And the military was sent into some of the riot torn cities in the 1960’s.  So the precedent was there:  enough unrest, enough destruction, and the military would be called in.

So come to Washington on January 6th, and have a “wild time”.  That’s what then-President Trump tweeted to his followers, and that’s exactly what happened on the steps and in the halls of the Capitol.  They were searching for Mike Pence – there were gallows erected on the lawn, the noose waiting for the Vice President.  They were chanting for Pelosi and for Schumer and for the ultimate “RINO”, Mitt Romney.  Was it all just “symbolic”?  There was no reason to think so on that day.  And there’s no reason to think so today.

Acts of Courage

But for a few courageous people, and the process would have stopped.  If the Secret Service had whisked Mike Pence to an “undisclosed location” and kept him under wraps (their standard operating procedure) Congress would not have met again that night.  Pelosi and Schumer, McConnell, and even for one bright shining moment, Kevin McCarthy, determined that Congress would walk through the broken glass and feces and blood to meet and conclude their business.  If they had not done so, that would have given the pretext for the Insurrection Act to be enforced, and the Executive Order implemented.

How close did the United States’ government come to a full-blown Constitutional crisis on January 6th?  Pence’s decision not to leave the building.  Pelosi and Schumer’s decision to continue the certification process.  Even McConnell and McCarthy’s courage to stand up to Trump.  

None of this is “foil hat” business.  The evidence is all there, in the public eye, now.  It is the reason that so much of this was done “in the open”.  That makes it seem like maybe it wasn’t a crime.  Surely “conspirators” would hide their actions better than that.  But the most blatant acts are the ones done in broad daylight, with heads held high.  And that’s what the Trump people were doing.

What does it take to overthrow the government:   Storm the Bastille, burn the Reichstag?  

How about the occupation of the United States Capitol?  What about US troops seizing the voting machines?  What about a President who refuses to leave office?  

In the end, the Constitution is just a piece of parchment.  It is the people that enforce it, or tear it apart.  No “foil hat” needed for that.

Get the Interview

The battle between the press and the President has been going on just about as long as there have been Presidents.  It all began with the supposed encounter in 1829 of President John Quincy Adams and journalist Anne Royall.  What we know is true:  Adams took almost daily summer swims in the Potomac River or it’s tributaries.  It was his ritual; walk from the White House(about a mile or so), leave his clothing on the shore, swim,  and walk home. That went on even after his Presidency, almost to the end of his ninety-seven years.  And in those days, going for a swim was a bathing ritual; men seldom wore clothes.  We would call it “skinny dipping”.  

Skinny Dipping

So we know that the President of the United States would regularly “skinny dip” in the Potomac, early in the morning in the summer months in Washington.  We aren’t the only ones who were aware of that, in fact it was a well-known fact throughout Washington that the President could be found near the Potomac Bridge with a “full moon” at the dawn’s early light.  And we also know that Anne Royall was a woman journalist who was known for her honest, frank, and sometimes scathing stories about the folks in Washington, DC.  She was even taken to Court for being a “common scold”.

So legend has it that Anne Royall wanted an interview with the President, but was refused because she was a woman.  The story goes that she wandered down to the Potomac shore one morning, and found the Presidential clothing neatly folded on the shore.  So she sat down on the pile, and waited for the man to swim back to shore.  When he realized that his clothes were held hostage, Adams stayed in waist high water, and, as fitting the former Secretary of State, negotiated:  an interview for access to his clothing.

Kid Gloves

By the way, Adams wasn’t the only skinny dipping Chief Executive.  Teddy Roosevelt was known for his exercise regimes.  The French Ambassador wanted a “moment” of TR’s time, and accompanied him for his daily long hike.  But this hike ended at the River shore, and TR stripped down, and dove into the River to cool off.  The French Ambassador was reticent to join in, but finally succumbed to Presidential pressure.  He managed to maintain the dignity of France, by keeping his kid-leather gloves on, saying, “…in case we meet the ladies”.  (For more about skinny dipping Presidents and politicians, click here. No pictures, I promise).  

Presidential Profanity

Harry Truman was known as “Give him Hell, Harry”.  He was a “plain-spoken” Missouri man, which was another way of saying, Truman knew his way around profanity.  In fact, Truman actually physically threated a reporter for writing a negative review of his daughter’s  piano recital.  “Someday I hope to meet you,” he wrote. “When that happens, you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!” (UVA).

George W. Bush called a New York Times reporter a “major league a$$hole”, and Richard Nixon left hours of White House tapes with varying forms of profanity about the “Press”.  

Fox in the House

So Joe Biden is in pretty good company (and, as far as we know, he keeps his clothes on!).  When you listen to the questions some reporters ask the President, it shouldn’t be a surprise that sometimes they say “out loud” what everyone is thinking anyway.  Peter Doocy is the Fox News White House correspondent, and, as befitting being the Fox in this White House, asks “contrarian” questions. His last one was if Biden thought inflation would impact the 2022 mid-term elections.   Biden as first came back with sarcastic remark, “It’s a great asset, more inflation”.  Then he quietly added – “What a stupid son of a bitch”. 

Presidents live under a microscope, with every public movement videoed and recorded for posterity.  Like the Secret Service agents, microphones and cameras are always present; so much part of the scenery, that it’s easy to forget they’re on.  “Hot Mic” moments become fodder for the national media, whether it’s Anthony Fauci calling a US Senator a “moron”, or President Biden’s last remark.  And Biden is no stranger to “hot mic” moments.  As Vice President at the announcement of the Affordable Care Act, the mic caught Biden “whispering” into Barack Obama’s ear, “this is a big f##king deal”.  

Make the Point

Biden is a “stand-up” guy.  He later called Doocy, and told him not to take it personally.  And while he didn’t apologize, he wanted Doocy to know that they will continue to “work together” in their adversarial roles.  But don’t be too surprised that Biden said this into an open mic. The press has asked him recently whether he’s senile, or if his son’s under control of China.   There’s been a lot of frustrating time with the press, and the maybe he wants a message out, not to the press, but to the nation.  

There’s serious work to do, and serious challenges for our nation.  Reporters should ask the important questions, the hard questions.  But don’t waste America’s time with stupid “gotcha” questions.  Stop being  a “stupid son of a bitch”.

False Flag

In the late days of August, 1939, tensions grew on the German/Poland border.  According to the Nazis governing Germany, there were a series of Polish military “incursions” into the German province of Silesia, including an attack on a radio station near the border.  A Polish “soldier” was killed in the attack, his body displayed in full uniform to underline the “facts”.

It was a complete Nazi plot, codenamed “Operation Himmler”.  The body was actually a German citizen arrested for supporting the Poles.  He was not in the Polish military, and in fact his sole crime besides his support was to get arrested at the exact time the Nazis needed a body as evidence.  He was drugged, dressed in a Polish Army uniform, then shot and killed.  His body became the “flagrante delicto”, the primary evidence of a “Polish” attack, that triggered the German assault on Poland.  Russia soon invaded Poland from the East, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany, and the Second World War began.

That’s called a “False Flag” operation, when one country operates under the “flag” of another in order to place blame.  It comes from ancient battles on the sea, when a ship would fly the flag of an allied or neutral country in order to get close in to the enemy, then “run up” it’s “true colors” and open fire.

Soviet Dreams

President Vladimir Putin of Russia is determined to rebuild the old Soviet Union.  At the end of World War II, the Soviet Russians “incorporated” several formerly independent states into their “Union”, including Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Other would-be nations were part of the old Russian Empire before the Soviets:   Belarus, Ukraine, and Georgia.  With the fall of Communism in December of 1991, all of these nations broke away to form their own individual countries.  

Much of Ukraine had been a part of the Russian Empire dating back to 1793.  And Russia’s main access to an ice free seaport both for shipping and Naval operations is in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula.  When Ukraine broke away from Russia, the Russian Navy continued to lease the port as the headquarters of their Black Sea Fleet.  In 2014, President Putin sent Russian troops to occupy Crimea and  maintain control of the port.  They are still there today.  He also invaded other Ukrainian provinces, sending “false flag” troops dressed as partisans, to control parts of Eastern Ukraine.

For the past eight years, Russia has maintained control of Crimea and  the two provinces in the East.  And today, Putin has poised 100,000 Russian troops on the Eastern and Northern Borders of Ukraine, clearly threatening to invade.  He only needs a pretext, but, like the Nazis on the Polish border, he can always create a “false flag” whenever he chooses.

The Cusp of War

I don’t think this is the eve of World War III, despite the dire predictions of some experts (Alexander Vindman, of the Trump phone call fame, for one).  NATO stands to support Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia and the rest of Eastern Europe, and the Ukraine is not part of the that treaty.  A Russian invasion of Ukraine does not invoke “Article Five”, the clause of the NATO treaty that triggers military retaliation.  

And while Russia still has the second most powerful military in the world (Global Firepower), they are 11th in the world economically, behind Canada and just ahead of South Korea (Economist).  In a long term conflict, Russia would be at a complete disadvantage against the NATO powers, led by the United States.

Vladimir Putin may be a lot of things, but he is not foolish.  He can gain advantages and prestige by “playing around the edges”, but there is no advantage for him to start a full scale land war in Europe.  He knows that, and so do the NATO allies.  Putin may dream of the return of the Soviet Union, but remembers the 24 million deaths of World War II that allowed for that expansion.  Putin is a cold, calculating technocrat, not a Stalinist, an “at all costs” empire builder.

Calculations

 Russia also represents a major source of energy, particularly natural gas, and that dependence requires NATO to act carefully.  The Nord Stream pipeline runs through the Baltic Sea, far from Ukraine.  There are “stop valves” at both ends.  Sure Russia could dramatically impact German life by cutting off the gas.  But Germany could just as effectively impact the Russian economy by turning off their end.

So Putin’s calculations are narrow.  How much can he indulge his desire to re-acquire Ukraine (and the other former Soviet Republics)?  Will NATO offer only economic sanctions in response?  At what point will Russian actions trigger a military response along the lines of that terrible day in 1939 when the world descended into war?  

There’s little room for miscalculation on any side:  Russian, Ukrainian, NATO, or the United States.  And here in America, still focused on Covid, Insurrection, and the politics of 2024, it would be easy to miscalculate, or just ignore the problem.

We do so at the world’s peril.