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These horrible and politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republican or Conservatives.  We need more Justices or we will lose our 2^ndAmendment and everything else.  Vote Trump 2020. —  Donald J. Trump Tweet – 6/18/20

Dog Whistles

Buddy is our older dog.  A shepherd, Border collie, Heinz 57 rescue; he’s been through a lot.  He survived being a near feral pup, several failed foster homes, and near-fatal lymphoma to become our “fat and fluffy” elder statesman at nearly eight years old.  And somewhere along the way, he developed an absolute phobia to smoke alarms and the “ping” noise of Facebook Messenger.  Anytime he hears those or even sees a computer come out, he heads for safety: into the bathtub.

We found him heading inexplicably towards the bathroom from time to time, somehow linked to the neighbor calling his dogs in their backyard.  After some investigation, we found that the neighbor had a “dog whistle”, a device that emits a sound above the range of human hearing.  Dogs can hear it, and while it didn’t seem to attract his dogs to the house, it sent Buddy on an immediate bathtub run.

Humans can hear certain kinds of “dog whistles” as well.  Statements are made that require a unique background of knowledge to understand.  While to the uninitiated, a political statement might just sound colorful or even inane, to those “in the know” the message is a clarion call to action.  It’s a “dog whistle” to them, unheard by the masses, but quite clear and compelling. 

Lunatic Fringe 

The Trump campaign uses “dog whistles” masterfully to communicate to the “lunatic fringe” of their support. (Ok, so I was a middle school wrestling coach in the 1980’s, and Vision Quest was THE movie – so if you need that “fix” here’s the link to Red Rider’s video Lunatic Fringe).  But to understand what is really being said, it takes some research into the “Mark Levin, Alex Jones, QAnon” world, where secret communications is not only expected, but also accepted as truth.

The right wing fringe believes that President Trump is secretly on their side, but “has” to play like he’s more “moderate”.  The Charlottesville statement, “…good people ON BOTH SIDES” was a clear signal to them.  He’s “their” President, constantly sending hidden signals that “only they” can hear.  It’s no surprise then that David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, said, “We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That’s what we believed in. That’s why we voted for Donald Trump, because he said he’s going to take our country back.”

Even if you don’t believe in the “dog whistle” messages, they do.  So it becomes important that the White House recognize their “communications” with the far right have an impact.  What they say, even in Tweets, even in a Presidential rage, matters. So when the President loses two cases in the Supreme Court in one week, and vents about it on Twitter, he is sending the message.  Sure he’s telling “the base” to vote for him in November, so that he will have the opportunity to appoint more Supreme Court Justices.  And the “shotgun blast to the face” combined with the threat of losing “our 2^nd Amendment” might just be balancing a phrase.

Court Vacancy  

But the President is certainly aware that there is another way to replace Supreme Court Justices:  have a vacancy occur.  The far right is on watch, waiting for eighty-seven year old Ruth Bader Ginsburg to finally “vacate” the Court.   That way, regardless of the election, Trump would be able to appoint a third Justice, and one that would negate the more moderate Chief Justice.  Another Trump appointee combined with Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Bush appointee Alito and that dirty old man of the far-right, Reagan appointee Clarence Thomas; would significantly drag the Court to the right.

So what “dog whistle” is the President really signaling?  Is he calling for his “supporters” to vote for him in November? Or is there a more insidious message hidden inside the tweet – one partnering “shotgun blast to the face” with “we need more justices”.  Is the President suggesting, maybe even ordering “someone” to “create” a vacancy on the Court; even making it known the method he wants used?

It seems so far-fetched, even a novelist would find the idea rejected out of hand.  But it’s not crazy to those listening for a signal, waiting on command for the President to lead them in “defense” of their view of America.  And the President, and those around him, knows that they are out there, listening, and waiting for “the sign”.  

They know, and they know that the “crazies” know.  So how irresponsible can it possibly be to send that signal?  In Hosea 8:7 it says:  “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”  

When the whirlwind arrives, plausible deniability won’t be an option.

Finally, the Book

John Bolton has written his book.  He is telling us all of the things we thought we knew: that Trump would do anything to get re-elected, including the impeachment offense of withholding funds from Ukraine until they “got the dirt” on Biden.  Bolton added that Trump flat-out asked China to buy more agriculture products so he could be re-elected. He shopped American funds to foreign leaders to gain advantage in the election, and openly invited their intervention into the electoral process.

Bolton laid out all of this and more in his book, five months after the impeachment trial ended in the Senate.  It’s like a witness to the Brown/Goldman murders coming forward and saying that they saw OJ do it with the knife and wearing the gloves and shoes, right after the trial ended.  It’s salacious, and it will definitely sell. To use an old phrase, “Inquiring minds want to know”.  I want to know, and as loath as I am to donate to the “Bolton Fund,” we’ll have a copy here at the house soon.

Sales Pitch

The White House is doing everything it can to increase book sales.   It’s not intentional, but the President has tasked the Justice Department to find a way to bring charges against Bolton, and to somehow stop the book publication.  But the book is already out there, in the hands of the New York Times and the Washington Post and the rest of the mainstream media.  The proverbial “barn door” is wide open; no judge will want to look foolish enough to try to close it with the horses already gone.  All the legal hoopla will just drive the book farther up the New York Times bestseller list.

Bolton flirted with testifying to the Senate during the impeachment trial. He even leaked out some of the Trump’s more significant transgressions.  Yet he never took the unalterable step of publicly saying what happened, in fact; he didn’t do so until the publicity tour started this week. He’s been a masterful salesman, keeping public interest high and bringing the book now, when all of the investigations have quieted in the Congress and he can have center-stage all to himself.

Staying in Power

But with all Bolton’s talk about what the President did, it certainly seems he’s took the coward’s way out. 

John Bolton is a Republican.  While even some other Republicans see him as an outlier, willing to take the Neo-Con ideology to extremes, he still is an “establishment” member of the Party.  And John Bolton runs a political action committee that supports many Republican candidates, gaining financial influence over those new legislators.  He wanted into the Trump Administration early, but it took almost two years and the firing of Generals Michael Flynn and HR McMaster for him to finally be invited to the National Security Advisor role.  He almost shaved his trademark mustache; it was rumored that Mr. Trump didn’t like it.

Bolton claims the President not only wanted help from foreign leaders to win re-election, he also states the President obstructed justice, and was incompetent in leading the nation.  And yet Bolton served silently on as the National Security Advisor for seventeen months.  Instead of stepping forward and letting the Congress, and the American people hear what was going on, he joined the ranks of “Anonymous” and others in enabling a failed leader.  

Oh, he covered his “ass”.  When his subordinates asked what they should do about “Giuliani’s Drug Deal” and Sunderland’s back room negotiations, he told them to “go to the lawyers”.  He wanted no part of that; though he left those same subordinates “holding the bag” in front of the House Intelligence Committee.  Vindman, Morrison and Hill all took the heat from the Committee and the President for telling the truth.  Bolton hid behind a façade of getting “legal permission” from the courts.

Patriot

A patriot would have resigned and made it clear why.  General Mattis followed that path, when the President’s actions went beyond “the pale”.  But Bolton, like so many others, stayed and enabled the disaster that is the Trump Administration. Now he hopes to profit from it.  

He sits righteously on Face the Nation and tells his story.  He lays out a chilling tale of a President incompetent, ignorant and egocentric.  We will have the opportunity to hear it again and again in the next few weeks.

What’s Good for Bolton

Bolton has it figured out.  He could have told his story in January, and the Senate would have been forced to listen.  But he counted the votes, and didn’t see a way that the Republican Senators would be convinced to remove the President.  So, rather than face banishment from his political power base, he simply hinted his story, then let the GOP Senators make the choice.  Call him, sure he would testify.  But Senators wanted cover:  they didn’t want to hear Bolton’s story. That made exonerating Trump’s actions easier – and Bolton could accommodate that.

And if he waited to publish the book later, say in September or early October:  well then he be accused of singlehandedly trying to alter the election.  Instead, it’s now, in June, when there’s plenty of time for the Trump misinformation machine to paper over the mess.  So here comes the book, and here comes the truth of the Impeachment charges.  Bolton gets to keep his profit, and his power. 

Is it good for the Nation?  In an election where about eleven percent or less will decide who the next President will be, everything counts.  So, yes, Bolton’s story is still important.  But Bolton should get no “points” for courage.  That opportunity passed six months ago. 

It’s all about profit now.

Called Out

I was called out on social media the other night.  After weeks of discussion about the police, and Black Lives Matter, and what to do about America:  one of my friends, a law enforcement officer, wearily said about my posts: 

“Sometimes I wish I could read this blog and there would be something positive spoken about our Law Enforcement Officers who protect this great Country.”

I responded then by saying that I’ve written about “you guys” being the “first ones in” during a school shooting, and about how he, a School Resource Officer, in particular was “the right man in the right job”.  I’ve said it in “Facebook debate” and I actually did write that in my blog.

My Friends

But he did hit a nerve.  I have friends, good friends, best friends, who are police officers.  They are people I know well. I’ve taught them, coached them, been to their weddings, and worked beside them.  I’ve been to the funeral of a policeman killed in the line of duty.  His son, a former part of our track team, is on that same police force today.  

And I know those guys.  They all have their good points and their flaws, but they all care about people.  I’ve seen many of them in action, some as police officers, some in other roles, working with folks of all races and backgrounds.  The idea that “all police officers are racist” is simply not true.  These guys aren’t.  And most have never even fired a gun in the line of duty. 

In my eight years as the Dean of Students of a 1200 kid high school in charge of student discipline, I got to know the police as supporting my job.  We were on the “same side”.  We didn’t want violence in the school, or drugs, or theft or bullying.  And, should the worst happen and the school was attacked, I knew they would be the first in line to try to stop it, even at the cost of their own lives. The strategy was as a result of the carnage at Columbine – the first man on scene goes in. 

Compassion

I also saw them care about kids and adults, about the plight of folks that “the system” failed.  I’ve had long talks with them about what we could do to make kids’ lives better.  It didn’t have anything to do with “the law”, nor with the race, gender, sexual orientation, or the rest of the list.  It was about helping individuals, even those who broke the law, even taken into custody, hands cuffed behind their back in my office.

They are some of the finest people I know.  They “have your back”, and are unswervingly loyal to their friends.  In a crisis those officers are cool, and decisive, and don’t “lose it” the way we are seeing some cops do in videos today.   I think, to be honest, their strength and judgment represent most police officers. 

Culture

I am a retired track coach.  I spent forty years, most of them as a head coach (I was twenty-five, a “kid coach” really, when I got the job). As the “person in charge” I learned a lot about how “the culture” of an organization can impact the success of that group.  On our team, we tried to develop a culture where your teammates always knew you supported them.  The saying was, “…you don’t have to love your teammate, but you do need to back him”.  It was track and field; there usually weren’t huge crowds at the meets, nor a lot of pressure from parents and peers to be successful.  But to know that forty other guys on the team had your back, and you had theirs, meant that you’d go “beyond yourself” to perform, if for no other reason, just not to let them down.

What’s Right

That culture was generally a “good” thing, and it certainly generated a lot of success over the years.  But, as I matured as a Coach and as a Teacher, I also found the danger in that culture.  We all got so focused on backing each other and succeeding, on going “citius, altius, fortius,” (higher, faster, stronger) that sometimes it was easy to overlook personal mistakes.  Was someone breaking team rules, were they stealing or using drugs?  But they were your teammate, your “star”, how could you “let down the team” by calling them out on their behavior?  A legendary basketball coach once said; “I don’t have rules, the best players always break them”.  So what did our team culture say about it when they did?

It took a while, but our team came down on the side of “doing what’s right”.  It turned out, our team “family” was more important than “the wins”.  What our family was about was each other.  So we took our losses when a good athlete was removed from the team, and could still look each other in the eye and know that we did the right thing.

Survival

But what if the culture isn’t about wins, losses, or a “team”.  What if it’s about literal survival?  In that one flashing moment when a police officer’s life is threatened; “having your back” means saving that life.  When that becomes so ingrained, it’s hard to imagine that much else can break through.  It’s easy to just “have their back” on everything else, right or wrong.

How did that culture happen?  How did policing become so much a “blue against everyone” world?  I don’t have an answer to that, but I know what it’s done.  It’s enforced a culture of insulation, of protecting “brother officers” from even their own unacceptable actions.  Why?  Because, someday they may have to physically protect you.  There can’t be hesitation.

I love my friends who are policemen.  I know they are decent, caring, compassionate people.  And I expect most policemen are. That’s why they wanted the job in the first place. I trust them to police our society, and trust them to do the right thing. In fact, I would trust them with my life.

But I also know that the culture of the institution they work in is broken.

I hope they can see that, and I hope they can see that I still stand with them, even as I stand with Black Lives Matter.

The Post

I was in my twenties and I lived in Washington, DC. I worked for a Democratic Congressman on Capitol Hill, and took classes at American University.  One of my favorite parts of living there was reading the Washington Post.  In DC, people talk about politics like folks talk about Ohio State Football here in the Columbus area.  It’s their “inside baseball”, and as a political “mind”, I loved it.  The Post was the ultimate index to what was happening inside the government machine.  It had the daily “scoop”. On the bus and Metro everyone was reading, and talking about, what was in the paper.

Today, I can’t get delivery of the Post here in Pataskala, Ohio, but I pay for their “App” on my electronics.  I can read the daily Post “cover-to-cover”. 

Eugene Robinson is an associate editor of the Washington Post, and writes a column for the paper several times a week. He measures his words, and his long experience often lends insight into our political world that others don’t see.  He is a Pulitzer Prize winner, a South Carolina native, and a graduate of the University of Michigan.  Robinson is also a frequent guest commentator on MSNBC programs. I often get to start my early mornings listening to his insights on Morning Joe.   

And he is a black man in America today.

Father to Son

In our current age of racial unrest, Robinson lends personal insight into the political problem of race in America.  He and his wife raised two sons in Arlington, Virginia, a mixed suburb of Washington.  His boys went to integrated schools, and had both black and white friends. Robinson was both professionally and economically successful: at the top of his field. But despite all that, he had two black sons growing up in America.  He had to have “the talk” with them.

“The Talk”, as Robinson describes it, wasn’t easy.  He told his sons that regardless of what their parents did, or what they themselves achieved in school, sports, or life, there were going to be situations where they were going to be treated differently because they were black.  When it came to the police, the assumptions their white friends could make, that the police would assume “the good” about their actions, wouldn’t apply to them.  The color of their skin could determine how they would be treated, and that they should act accordingly.

“The Talk” defined discrimination.  In a nation where the 13^th Amendment ended slavery one hundred and fifty-five years ago, and the Civil Rights Act was passed fifty-six years ago, young black men still have to hear, “The Talk”.  It’s a bitter pill to swallow, and a humiliating warning for a father to give his sons.

Endemic

Tim Scott is the Senator from South Carolina.  He served as a Charleston County Council man, a South Carolina State Representative, and a member of the US House of Representatives.  He was elected to the US Senate in 2013. 

Scott tells the story of trying to enter the Senate building, wearing the appropriate identification pin on his lapel.  He was stopped by a security guard, and despite having the proper identification, was prevented from going into the chamber.  Meanwhile other Senators went on by, showing their pins for entry.  What was different?  He is a black man.  

Here in Pataskala I coached Track and Field for forty years.  Early on, I heard the stories from my athletes about the differences between how the white and black athletes were treated.  “DWB” – driving while black – was a frequent expression among my black runners, when (not if) they were pulled over here in town, just to be questioned.  And there were several schools where we competed, when running a warm-up or warm-down had to be on the competition track. The white athletes might head out on the neighborhood roads, but the black athletes would be “RWB”.  Better that they stayed close.

Atlanta

Two nights ago a man had too much to drink.  He fell asleep in his car, waiting in the drive-thru line at Wendy’s.  Reasonably, the Wendy’s night-shift employees called the police.  The officers woke the man up, got him out of the car, and used a “breathalyzer” to determine his level of intoxication.   His name was Rayshard Brooks, he was twenty-seven, and he was a black man.

The police and the Brooks had a reasonable conversation.  He asked to call his sister, and when she refused to come and pick him up, offered to leave his car and walk home.  After over thirty minutes of discussion, the policemen determined he should be arrested.

Routine

It was a routine police matter.  In Atlanta (and in Ohio as well) if you are drunk at the wheel of a car with the keys in the ignition, you are considered a “drunk driver”.  The enforcement of the law has changed over the years, and what would have been a “get home safe” fifteen years ago, now is a drunk driving charge.  So the police officers tried to take Brooks into custody.

He fought the policemen, and was able to grab one of the officer’s Tasers.  Brooks then sprinted away from the officers.  When he turned towards his pursuers with the Taser, he was shot twice in the back, and died later that night.

This is not a “clear-cut” case of abuse of force like George Floyd. Brooks was drunk, he refused arrest, he assaulted police officers, he was fleeing the scene, and he tried to “Tase” an officer. But none of these should have required a “death sentence” in the parking lot.

The police knew him.  They knew where he lived, and likely where he was going.  Without their pursuit, he wasn’t a danger to himself, or to the community.  Let him go, pick him up later; that would have been a reasonable thing for the police to do.

And the underlying question is this:  if he had been a white man, would the entire chain of events occurred?  If his name was Raymond instead of a Rayshard would he have been given a “pass”?  Would the police have continued a pursuit?  Would they have used deadly force?  Until we can unequivocally answer that question no, then America has a problem. 

And black parents of black children will need to continue to have “the Talk”.

Our Times

Most Americans have never experienced times like this.  Sure, we’ve been through dramatic shifts in the economy, in 1987, 2001, and 2008.  And we’ve been through times of dramatic civil unrest, in the 1960’s, after Rodney King, and after Ferguson.  But, in living memory, we’ve never been through a disease that has killed 117,858 in four months here in the United States, and 436,125 worldwide (as of this writing).  

And those numbers don’t include the hidden thousands and maybe millions in China, Russia, and Iran.  Remember when they made a big deal about hitting 100,000 dead in the US a couple of weeks ago?  So much else has happened since then, but the disease keeps on killing.

It’s not as bad as the 1918 Flu Pandemic (not 1917 as President Trump keeps saying).  About one half of one percent of the US population died then, the equivalent number would be sixteen million today.  Hopefully modern science will be able to put a “cap in the bottle” with treatments and vaccines far before we reach that number. 

Incompetence

Economic upheaval, civil disorder, and viral infection:  it’s all happened in US history before.  And we’ve even had Presidential leadership that seemed unable to deal with the problems.  Woodrow Wilson was so focused on world leadership that he ignored the pandemic.  He then was physically incapacitated by a stroke.  Herbert Hoover was so dedicated to his economic philosophy that he allowed the Great Depression to reach near 25% unemployment.  And Lyndon Johnson, after determining not to run for re-election, focused on the Paris Peace talks to end the Vietnam War, and failed to intervene in the combination of anti-war and civil rights unrest in 1968.

It certainly seems that this President, Mr. Trump, has failed to address our multiple crises.  He has followed Wilson’s example, turning his back on the pandemic.  He recognized Hoover’s flaw of economic purity, and spent trillions to prop up the stock market.  But he still failed to provide for those left without employment.  And, like Johnson, his focus is somewhere else, not the civil unrest that divides us today.  Trump is focused on his own re-election to the exclusion of everything else.

Fanning the Flames

In American History, we’ve never had this combination of all four factors:  economic collapse, pandemic, civil unrest, and Presidential incompetence, at one time.  And then add one more issue, this one new in our history. We now have semi-anonymous social media that allows anyone to add gasoline on the bonfire of public discourse.

Social media lets folks speak their minds without the guardrails of facing those that they criticize.  We now simply tap on the keyboard, without fear of being punched in the nose for the critical things we say.  We can allow our darkest selves to have voice in the public sphere, with little concern for the consequences.  In fact, we have those who seem to relish in creating discord.  This is now even a weapon of nation-states:  using social media to drive more wedges into the political systems of rivals.  It happened to the United States in 2016:  why think that Russia, China and others would pass up the upheaval of today?

The Choice

So here we are, at a true crisis in our Democracy.  To paraphrase Lincoln:  testing whether that nation, so divided and so stressed, can long endure.  We face a choice this fall, to continue with the current incompetence, or to choose change.

For those committed to Mr. Trump because of his choice of Supreme Court Justices, I have to ask, is his failure to protect us from the pandemic worth it?  Is the ongoing sacrifice of current human life the price we must pay to protect the potential human life you so value? 

For those committed to Bernie Sanders’ agenda of social change:  are the compromises that Joe Biden represents so terrible, that Trump is a better choice?

And for those convinced that all politicians are self-centered and corrupt:  isn’t there still a choice that would make a difference in how America responds to disease, civil unrest, and economic collapse? While I do not believe Biden is corrupt, even if he is, isn’t corrupt competence better than the current corrupt disaster?

Fools?

The United States will endure, even though our differences are real, exacerbated by social media, and fueled by foreign influence.  The United States has always found a way to rise above our multiple failures and flaws. Now we face an inflection point, a chance to change the direction of our nation. Biden will not take us as far as many of my more radical friends want to go, and he will go farther than my more conservative friends might like.  But he represents a competence that is clearly not present in the Trump administration.

To quote Lincoln one more time:

“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time”.

A minority of Americans chose a non-politician actor as President of the United States in 2016, for a variety of reasons.  In the past four years, and especially this year, he has proven what he can’t do.

For the sake of the United States, here’s a George Bush misquote of the song Baba O’Reily  by the Who:

This November, “You can’t get fooled again”.

Amy Acton, MD (Northeast Ohio Universities), Master of Public Health (THE Ohio State University), and the Director of Public Health for the state of Ohio, resigned last week.  Her reason was sound:  the effort of managing Ohio’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic were so great, that, as she said, “…it wasn’t a sustainable thing,” (Cleveland).

Ohio’s Response

Dr. Acton led Ohio’s response to COVID-19.   The state got out in front of the pandemic, closing public events much earlier in March then most other states.  This prevented “super-spreader” activities like the Arnold Classic in Columbus or the State high school sports tournaments; large events that would increase mass infections.  New Orleans, for example, suffered significantly from the Mardi Gras celebration, held just a couple of weeks before.  

Ohio’s Governor Mike DeWine listened to Acton, and Ohio did well for the first months of the crisis. Ohio ranks seventh in population in the US, but currently is twelfth in the number of COVID-19 deaths (California, ranks seventh in deaths with double the fatalities).   The shutdown in Ohio was real.  Folks stayed mostly at home, and followed the advice of DeWine and Acton.

Acton took the heat for stopping the March 17^th primary election in Ohio, after the Courts reversed DeWine’s cancellation.  The idea of standing in line to vote while the state was under quarantine defied common sense, but critics from both political extremes were more worried about setting precedent than the medical facts.  It was the first of many public health decisions that would gain Acton a lot of political heat.

Too Successful

DeWine, a Republican Governor, stood firm with Acton until the middle of May.  But somehow the pressure finally reached him, as, like the President, he began to listen to his economic and political advisors more than Acton and the medical field.  Re-opening the economy became the paramount objective, and those health concerns that seemed so important in March now seemed to fall to the wayside.

Acton’s success in stifling the spread of COVID-19 was the reason for her ultimate demise.  Ohioans did so well, they began to believe there really wasn’t an epidemic at all.  The cries from the far Right and Left, encouraged by social media promises of dark conspiracies to take over the world and by Mr. Trump himself; all became too much to ignore.  The fact that picketers showed up in front of her family home in the Columbus suburb of Bexley also made it clear to Acton that she was a personal target (Cleveland).

Eyes Closed

So Acton, while remaining an “advisor” to the Governor, is gone. And with the Federal response muzzled (when was the last time Doctors Fauci or Brix appeared) America is moving on, eyes firmly closed.  

There seems to be a political or regional divide in the state. Go into the city, and most folks are wearing masks, and seem aware of social distancing. Head towards the suburbs and the “masklessness” grows, and crowds grow closer. In the more rural areas, a masked person looks “suspect”, and personal space doesn’t seem to be an issue.

In my far suburb, with corn growing in fields nearby, I stood in line today in Advanced Auto.  Of the fifteen people in the store, I was the only one wearing a facemask.  The signs to “maintain social distance” were ignored.  It’s the same in the local restaurants and bars, where folks are carrying on “normal life” as if Corona was only a Mexican beer.

I drove by a community baseball park yesterday.  The stands were packed and the concession area crowded.  The little kids kicked dirt on the multiple fields or talked on the benches in the dugouts.  It was vintage suburban Americana:  from a not-long ago era when there wasn’t a virus.  

I want to, “Go down to the demonstration, to get my fair share of abuse,” (Stones).   At least most of the protestors there are wearing masks. But it still could be another “super-spreader” event, regardless of the worthiness of the cause.  And whatever Mr. Trump says he believes; his lawyers know the truth.  To attend his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma (now on June 20^th to avoid the “Juneteenth” date) a legal waiver of possible COVID-19 infection is required (Trump). 

Real Numbers, Real Costs

My non-believing friends (and I do have many) tell me to look at the US numbers:  “we have crossed the peak and are headed down the slope,” they state confidently.  But look at individual state graphs, minus the New York City metro area. They show that we did manage to flatten the peak, but remain steady in infections and deaths.  We should anticipate that, with the increase of inter-action, that number would increase as well (do a Google Search – graph of Ohio COVID numbers).

That will become even worse by ignoring Dr. Acton’s advice on masks and social distancing.   She made the ultimate “mistake”:  she did her job too well.  Many Ohioans stopped believing.  I hope the price she has to pay in her career, and the price we will have to pay in Ohio lives, won’t be too high.

History

I graduated from good old Wyoming High School in 1974.  I grew up watching violence on television, from the Bloody Sunday beatings and tear-gassing of civil rights protestors on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 to the Chicago Democratic Convention police riots of 1968.  Like most Ohio students in that time, I took American History twice, once in eighth grade, and once again in my junior year.  

My teachers were my parents’ age, veterans of the Second World War.  History class at both levels was the same.  We started with settlement, then onto revolution, industrialization, Civil War, more industrialization, progressivism, World War I, Depression, World War II.  Anything that happened after World War II was a bonus, and we never got too far into Vietnam, or Civil Rights.  Those were current events, not history, I guess.

History class was predictable, and it was very, very, white.  It wasn’t until I reached Denison University that I began to find the contributions of people of color in American development, and even then, it was more from self-study than curriculum.  So when I graduated from college with a degree in “American Political Studies”, I’d never heard of Tulsa.

Historic Omission

My young friends who are now in the streets protesting today didn’t know about Tulsa either, and they blame me for that.  We teachers didn’t teach them about it.  There’s a book titled Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.  It seems as history teachers, if we didn’t learn it in high school, it’s difficult to accept that it happened.  That’s no excuse, but it still seems to be true.  Revelations of history are questioned, because they aren’t “a part” of the comfortable body of knowledge we grew up with.  

And we’ve passed that onto the next generation, with white “centric” history lessons, because it was passed that way to us.  

Tulsa

So what about Tulsa?  Tulsa is the site of one of the worst race massacre in American history.  And it didn’t happen in some ancient time, when history is vaguely reported.  It happened in 1921, when newspapers, radios, and reporters were at their full powers.  

In 1915, DW Griffith made an epic silent movie romanticizing the Ku Klux Klan, The Birth of a Nation.  It was so popular, that President Woodrow Wilson had a private screening in the White House, a first.  Griffith’s revision of American History made the Union Reconstruction the villain and the Klan the hero.  It resonated with an America returning from World War I.  The post-war economic recession, and the migration of blacks from the South competing for employment throughout the country, was fertile ground for hate.

1921 was the year of the true ascent of the Ku Klux Klan.  They were “above ground”.  There were marches in the streets, with thousands of Klan members proudly waving flags (both United States and Confederate) and robes.  The Klan became a potent political force, in many states. Running without Klan endorsement was a losing political strategy.

Tulsa was an oil boom city.  Highly segregated, the black population was centered in the Greenwood neighborhood.  The businesses of Greenwood were successful, earning the nickname “the Black Wall Street”.  And in 1921, mob justice wasn’t uncommon in Tulsa.  Only a year before, a white teenager was accused of murdering a white taxi driver.  A lynch mob took him from jail and killed him. The police did little to stop them.

The Massacre

On May 30, 1921, a black teenager named Dick Rowland, entered an elevator in downtown Tulsa.  At the time elevators were operated by hand, with an “elevator boy” at the controls.  This elevator had an “elevator girl”, Sarah Page, a young white woman.  Somewhere in the ride, she screamed, and he bolted from the elevator and ran.

Rowland was arrested the next day, and the front page of the Tulsa Tribune reported he was charged with sexual assault.  An angry mob of white men gathered in front of the Courthouse, demanding Rowland.  The Sheriff barricaded the top floor of the building and refused to give him to the mob.  Soon twenty-five armed black men, many veterans of World War I, came to offer help protecting the teenager.  

The Sheriff turned them away.  The white mob attempted to break into the National Guard armory, but failed.  By later in the evening, seventy-five armed black men returned to the Courthouse, and confronted the fifteen hundred white men in the crowd, some of whom carried guns.  Shots were fired, and the black men retreated back to Greenwood.

The white mob moved on Greenwood.  A false rumor spread that there was a “black revolt” going on, but in fact, it was white men rioting.  By dawn of June 1^st, thousands of white people were burning, looting and killing in the Greenwood neighborhood.  The fire department was kept out of the area by armed rioters. Over 1200 homes were burned, and another 215 looted.  The National Guard eventually put a stop to the violence and fires, and arrested many black people.  6000 ended up under guard at the local fairgrounds.

Scrubbed History

The official death total was listed at 36, with 10 whites killed.  Dick Rowland was quietly released, and left town.  The Greenwood community eventually was rebuilt, and the KKK got even stronger.

Evidence of the riot was scrubbed from the record.  The state and National Guard records were literally erased from the volumes.  The newspaper headlines and front pages were removed from the bound records.  It was only in the 1970’s that the Massacre was publicly “remembered”, and years after that the true scope of the damage was revealed.

In 2001, the Race Riot Commission concluded that between 100 and 300 people were killed and over 8000 made homeless in the riot.  There are historians still looking for mass graves in the Greenwood area (History).

Trump Campaign

So why bring up Tulsa today?

President Trump is having a campaign rally in Tulsa on June 19^th.  That day is “Juneteenth”, the day celebrated by Americans for the revealing of the Emancipation Proclamation to slaves.  The combination of Tulsa and “Juneteenth” for the first Trump Rally in the COVID and “I Can’t Breathe” era is one of two possibilities.  

Either the President’s staff is so ignorant of the history that they don’t realize the contrast they are creating.  Or, more likely, they know exactly what they are doing.  They are using the contrast to further polarize the electorate.  The Trump campaign will use the outrage over their lack of sensitivity (they’ll call it “political correctness”) to further “fire up” their base.

They want this first rally to be “the best”.  

Rigged Elections

We see it on social media all the time:  “the election system is ‘rigged’”!!  And we read the President’s continual tweets: 

“There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent,” Trump tweeted early Tuesday. “Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed.”

While real examples of election fraud in the United States are few (the most recent an absentee ballot fraud scheme in North Carolina by Republicans), it has been the President’s claim that election fraud is rampant, and supports Democrats.   Mr. Trump has made it clear that he considers any reform that makes voting easier, in fact makes Democrats more likely to be elected.   That means they must be cheating.

Georgia

But the real election-cheating going on is by Republicans who control the elections in several states.  The most recent example happened yesterday, when the Georgia primary election was a disaster.  Absentee ballot requests weren’t honored, forcing even those who requested them to vote in person.  New voting machines broke down, forcing long waits at polling places.  Provisional ballots that could be completed by hand were unavailable.  And, in this COVID-19 world, there was a lack of qualified poll workers.

In spite of the pandemic, people in Georgia came out to vote.  In the Democratic Primary, with the nomination already secured by Joe Biden, more than 666,500 votes have been counted.  Perhaps 100,000 more absentee votes and an untold number of provisional votes are yet to be tallied.  In 2016, in the thick of the Clinton/Sanders battle, 761,218 voted, so it’s likely that even more Georgia Democrats came out yesterday.

Georgia wasn’t ready.  Georgia’s Republican controlled election process failed.  After the failures of the 2018 election, where Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State, running for Governor, refused to remove himself from electoral decision-making, we thought maybe Georgia had learned a lesson.  Now Governor Kemp should have instructed his Secretary of State, civil engineer and businessman Brad Rafensperger, to solve the problems. 

And voters in Georgia’s Republican counties didn’t have a voting problem yesterday.  The problems were in the largely minority counties, that also happen to be the largely Democratic counties.  Folks waited in lines for up to five hours.  Some reached the actual polls, only to find that their application for absentee ballots that were never sent disqualified them from voting in person.  Others couldn’t wait that long. Work, children, life, and exposure to COVID-19 risking crowds required some to fail to vote.

Legal Cheating

The President is correct.  There is massive voter cheating in the United States.  It is led by some of the Republican state’s electoral leadership, and supported by the Republican voter suppression program throughout the United States.  Here in Ohio, the State House of Representatives passed a bill reducing the amount of time available to request absentee ballots, and preventing the Secretary of State (a Republican) from sending postage paid absentee ballot requests and ballots.  The bill passed on a party line vote.

It’s not just about COVID-19.  It is the policy of the Republican Party to make voting as difficult as possible.  Mail-in voting restrictions, voter identification requirements, and limited polling place access in “minority” voting areas, all are ways of “restricting the vote,” another way of keeping Democratic voters from participating in the process.

President Donald Trump said that if the United States switched to all-mail voting, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

The GOP speaker of the House in Georgia said an all-mail election would be “extremely devastating to Republicans.”

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said universal mail voting would be “the end of our republic as we know it” (Chicago Tribune).

This week, polling shows Joe Biden running several points ahead of President Trump in national polling.  More importantly, Biden is leading in Florida (+3.4%), Pennsylvania (+3.3%), Wisconsin (+3.4%), and in the latest Fox News Poll, even in Ohio (+2.0%) (RCP).  It’s still five months until the election, but, just as in 2016, Trump needs “everything” to go his way to win re-election. 

 It shouldn’t be a surprise to find Republicans rigging the system.  As Mr. Trump himself said in 2016:

“The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary – but also at many polling places – SAD.”

Many polling places – run by Republicans.

Racist

Once, in our society, there was a range of ways to tell someone that they didn’t understand racial issues.  It would start with saying they were insensitive, then perhaps unknowingly prejudiced.  If that didn’t explain the problem, then defining their actions as openly prejudiced was the next step.  The last step reserved only for those most affirmably and knowingly against another race, was to call them a racist.

Racist was reserved for the Ku Klux Klan and the axe handle carrying Governor of Georgia, Lester Maddox.  Racist was the ultimate insult, not just of hate, but of poor judgment and ignorance.  I knew a lot of prejudiced people in my time, but I didn’t know a lot of racists.  I felt I could change prejudice; reach them intellectually and emotionally.  There was hope.  I didn’t want to know racists.  There was no hope for them.

Not any more.  A look at social media, particularly Facebook, sees the word racist used to describe almost all behavior that fails to recognize the reality of Black America.  Use the words “All Lives Matter” and you are a racist.  Worry about the damage done in riots, without worrying about the life of George Floyd, and you are a racist.  Try to draw some nuance from the polarized debate about America today, and you are a racist.

American Tale

The American story is about redemption, finding faith and knowledge and changing attitudes.  There seems to be no room in our polarized society for that:  once you are a “racist” you are branded beyond absolution.  There are lots of folks who overcame ignorance and prejudice, but it’s hard to find the story of a racist overcoming the hate.  Sure there are those guys who used to be Neo-Nazis or KKK members, who now have “seen the light”.   But they are few, and ultimately not trusted.

Our polarized language isn’t allowing for redemption. 

Another example is the slogan “Defund the Police”.   Even those who use it regularly, explain that it really doesn’t mean what it plainly says, take all the money away from the police department.  It is “shorthand” for repurposing police departments, taking the roles that don’t suit policing and putting them where they belong.  

Drug overdoses, mental health issues, traffic control all might be placed in some other category rather than “policing”.  Call 9-1-1 for a heart attack, and an ambulance arrives.  Call for a fire, and a fire truck comes.  9-1-1 for a break-in and the police show up.  Maybe for a mental health issue, the “Mental Health Service” arrives.  Need to direct traffic, and the “Traffic and Roads Service” takes charge:  no guns, no arrest warrants.

The role of policing will still exist, and it would be a highly defined organization that would serve.  So would the role now filled by SWAT, and by process servers.  It just wouldn’t all be placed under one organization.  Organizers should have painted “repurpose the police” or “redefine the police” or “reorganize the police” on the street.  But none of those terms cut through in our highly polarized language of today.

Divide or Conquer

Hillary Clinton fell into the “polarization game” with her “basket of deplorables”.  Joe Biden is a more nuanced politician.  He refuses to fall into the polarization, refuses to allow the “writing off” of large segments of America. Donald Trump is the opposite, the essential divider.  He is the “perfect” President for a nation hoping to be split.  

Again this morning he asked Americans not to believe their “lying eyes”.  He told us that seventy-five year-old Martin Gugino, pushed down and injured by police in Buffalo, New York, was not actually hurt.  No, he was an “ANITFA provocateur”.  The President states, publicly on Twitter, “…He fell harder than he was pushed. Was aiming a scanner”.  

Mr. Gugino had a police helmet, not a scanner, in his hands.  The video evidence is clear.  But in our era of polarization, some can ignore their own eyes, and see what the President wants them to see.  Here’s the video:  SEE for yourself.

Label or Educate

Calling everyone who doesn’t agree with you a racist won’t solve the problem.  Demanding that they go down on their knees and ask forgiveness for white privilege won’t work either.  Redemption is admitting sin, and attempting not to sin again.  We cannot bully everyone into the confessional of public opinion, and shame them into change.  But we can bully everyone into even harder positions and a more polarized society.  

We need to educate, to persuade, and to move people from prejudice to acceptance.  Perhaps an old man from Scranton, Pennsylvania, himself in need of redemption for fifty years of differing statements, is the perfect fit for the job.  Joe Biden understands the difference between prejudice and racism.  He’s fallen into the trap himself:  “You ain’t black if you vote for Trump”.  And he’s learning from his mistakes, just as we need to ask the nation to do.

We are not just choosing between Trumpism and Democrats.  It’s a choice between polarization and national union.  It’s all in the language.

Nixon Again

“Defund the Police” – painted in bright yellow over six lanes of road. Just down the street, “Black Lives Matter” painted by the Mayor of Washington, DC .  It’s within view of the White House.  A short slogan that means what it says, but not what it sounds like.  What it doesn’t mean is abolish policing, though that’s what Trump 2020 wants you to think.  Trump himself tweeted it out:

“Sleepy Joe Biden and the Radical Left Democrats want to “DEFUND THE POLICE”. I want great and well paid LAW ENFORCEMENT. I want LAW & ORDER!”

It’s ironic that the President presiding over the biggest protests since the 1968 Civil Rights and Anti-War demonstrations claims that he wants “LAW AND ORDER”.  But if there is one single political truth to the Trump campaign, it is “Do what Nixon did”.  Nixon was able to tie the 1968 disruptions to the Democratic Party. With that he squeaked out a win over Hubert Humphrey.  The difference:  Humphrey was running as the Vice President to Lyndon Johnson, the President “in charge” of the nation during the upheaval.  That’s Trump’s role now.

So, what does “defund the police” actually mean?  

Lunatic Asylums

The way America handled mental health might give us a clue as to what “defunding the police” implies.  In the mid-1800’s, Dorothea Dix, a Boston schoolteacher, campaigned for better treatment for the mentally ill.  At the time, mental illness was treated as criminal, and “lunatics” where put in jail.  Dix campaigned for more compassionate care in a hospital setting, and by the time of her death, 110 psychiatric hospitals were established in the United States.  They were called “asylums;” places of safety for the mentally ill.

Reform

By 1955, over half a million Americans were in state-run psychiatric hospitals.  In 1962, “Beat Generation” author Ken Kesey drew attention to abuses in those hospitals with his book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  Medical professionals began to call for community-based mental health services rather than institutionalization.  Over the next decade, the American model moved away from hospitalization.

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed the Mental Health Systems Act funding community based services. But with the election of Ronald Reagan, funding for that law was cut, and Reagan turned control of mental health over to the states. The “Reagan way” was to give the states authority and cut the money. Federal funding was slashed by thirty percent.  Most of the traditional state-run hospitals were closed.

Reagan never used the phrase “defund mental health”, but that’s effectively what he did.  He didn’t end mental health care in the United States, but he changed the entire model of care for the mentally ill.  The good news:  the large “lunatic asylums” that became warehouses for the mentally ill were closed.  The bad news:  many of those patients ended up as homeless folks on the streets.

The massive hospitals were gone, old relics deserted on a hill; their model of care (or lack of care) discarded.  The institution was altered.  And that’s what “defund the police” is calling for.  There will still be officers enforcing the law.  But what “defunding the police” demands is a radical overhaul of the American concept of “big city” policing.  

Altering Institutions

The institution of policing has suffered from many of our societal changes.  The closing of the large mental hospitals, and lack of funding for more community-based care, have put dealing with mental illness squarely on the shoulders of the police.  The dramatic increase in drug abuse in our nation, with the criminalization of more and more drugs, has also dramatically added to the police burden. They not only enforce the drug laws, but become the first-responders for drug abuse care, with life-returning drugs to reverse overdoses.

And police have taken on the task of anti-terrorism.  Police forces have militarized units, often in camouflaged gear, and with heavy-duty assault vehicles.  It’s just another task added onto the institution with little increased funding, or training, or even looking at other alternatives for achieving the goal.

All of these tasks need to be done, but the current institution of policing isn’t necessarily the best model to do them.  And like the giant mental hospital up on the hill I remember from my youth, the institutions of police forces seems unable to be changed.  In part, the unions, who often refuse to police the violations of their own members, cause this.  But there is also an “us against them” culture in many police departments that sees “the public” as the enemy, and others “in blue” as their only friends.

Slogans

Short slogans are easily misrepresented.  “Abolish ICE” from two years ago, didn’t mean let anyone who could get into the country stay here.  It called for a change in the institution, removing the “black shirted” force that seemed to act with capriciousness and terror in their enforcement of the law.  “Abolish Ice” was shorthand for either reforming the institution, or tearing it down and starting over.  

“Defund the police” doesn’t mean anarchy, much as the President wants us to think so.  It doesn’t even necessarily mean abolishing our current police departments.  But what it is demanding is that we overhaul what tasks the police are asked to do, and choose other, better ways to deal with our community problems.  Say it that way, and it’s worth looking into.

Minneapolis

The Minneapolis Board of Education cancelled their contract with the City Police Department to station officers in their schools.  In the wake of the George Floyd murder by a Minneapolis Police officer, the Board felt they no longer could have officers as part of their educational process.  It probably wasn’t about the individual officers in the buildings.  The Board of Education must feel that the continued presence of “police” in their buildings would continue the hostile environment that Minneapolis minority students already feel outside the school.  The Board felt they had to “take a side,” and chose their students.

SRO’s

The movement to “imbed” police officers into school systems, particularly at the high school level, started back in Flint, Michigan in the 1950’s.  The idea was to create relationships between the students and police officers outside of normal enforcement.  In the 1970’s, some large urban school districts actually created their own sworn police forces (think of the 1984 movie Teachers with Nick Nolte, JoBeth Williams and Ralph Macchio).  But the liability and expense made “school-cops” an expendable item on Districts budget.

That changed in the age of school shootings, and particularly after Columbine.  Districts began to look for ways to get the ultimate protection, a police officer with a gun, full time in the school building.  The speed of casualties in a school shooting meant that the officer presence in the building could save lives.  And, it didn’t hurt that from 1999 to 2005, the US Department of Justice gave $750 million in grants for “School Resource Officers”, SRO’s.   

But today, SRO’s don’t just “sit around” and wait for a school shooter.  They patrol the building and get involved in student discipline issues, including fights and drug use.  SRO’s serve as contact for students who need to report criminal issues, particularly for abuse situations.  They advise school administrators about security needs for the buildings and for large school events.  And they do exactly what the 1950’s Flint plan hoped:  communicate with kids on an informal basis, establishing relationships between “cops and kids” outside of speeding tickets, traffic accidents and regular policing. 

On the Job

As a high school Dean of Students, I had the opportunity to work with several Student Resource Officers.  All of them took their role as a bridge from police to students seriously. They reached out to students that didn’t necessarily have other adults at school they could talk to.  From that standpoint, having an SRO in the building was a good thing.

It was common for the SRO to be “hanging out” in the cafeteria at lunchtime.  What looked like “lunch duty” was really an opportunity for conversation and building relationships.  Our SRO’s even wandered up to the gym, open for lunchtime “recess”, and shot a basket or two.  It made “the police” accessible to students in a non-threatening way.

But the problem today is that what were traditionally “school problems,” in-house discipline issues, now have become criminal issues.  The fight in the hallway, or the kid with a pocketknife or a joint in his pocket now is “automatically” a police report and possible juvenile court referral.  The “school to prison” pipeline, fueled by “zero-tolerance” policies, creates the first contact with the justice system. That record has future consequences in punishment and sentencing.

It’s not that the SRO’s are wrong:  they are doing their job.  A police officer in a public situation like a school environment can’t look away when a weapon is found or an illegal drug is involved.  But what was school discipline; suspension or expulsion back in the 1980’s or 90’s now may result in a criminal conviction as well.

Balancing Needs

It’s not that schools shouldn’t call the police.  There are situations where it’s more than necessary:  a gang-fight in the halls, the rumor of a gun in the building, the adult coming to school to hurt someone.  All of those things happened during my tenure as Dean of Students.  And all of those occurred when the school district couldn’t afford to have an SRO.  We had to handle those things in-house until the police could arrive.

But Districts need to weigh the balance between education and policing.  Having an SRO embedded in the school might work in the suburban district where I was Dean of Students. But it might not work in the more polarized environment of an urban school.  It’s not about being for the cops or against.   It’s about what’s best for the students in that school system.  That’s what Minneapolis had to weigh. And that’s what Districts across the country will have to consider in our new “I Can’t Breathe” era.

The Experiment

The American government is a strange place.  We pride ourselves on being a democracy, “…a government of the people, by the people and for the people” as Lincoln put it.  And we are in the largest sense.  We elect a legislature to write our laws, and the executive is an elected President.  

But the founding fathers were acutely aware of the dangers of democracy as well as it value.  They came from the English tradition of monarchy, and knew the perils of an arbitrary ruler who could, at whim, change the laws and traditions.  And even more significantly, many of the founding fathers were lawyers.  They were schooled in the English common law. In that tradition, rules governing day to day life in society are based on centuries old precedents, tested over time in varying situations.  

Precedent 

On My first day in law school “Torts” class back in 1981 this was made dramatically clear to us. The professor told the story of a town in medieval England, where two boys were seeing who could throw rocks the furthest.  They decided to launch over a hill at the same time.  The rocks soared, then landed out of sight on the other side.  There was a scream, and the boys raced to the top to find that a rock had put a man’s eye out.

Obviously one of the boys’ rocks did the damage.  But which one threw it?  The man certainly didn’t know, and neither did the boys.  Neither boy was fully accountable, so who could be held liable for the damage to the man’s eye?  The judge ruled since each boy had acted equally recklessly, that both were equally responsible for the damage.  If I recall correctly, both boys were required to give the man a pig in compensation.

There was the “rule of the people” as seen in classic democratic ideals.  But there were also the long-standing traditions, the common law. 

American Institutions

In America we have long standing institutions that carry on a common tradition.  We look to them for reassurance in difficult times, and to help guide our democracy to safety.  Institutions like the military, the Department of Justice, the Courts:  all have long standing practices that help steady our government. Our current President sees those institutions as impediments to achieving his goals.  But traditionally they have carried on the ideals of American government, in spite of the arbitrary whims of a given President.

I studied political science at Denison University, and we spent some time on what was then called “the bureaucracy”.   It was the mid-1970’s and “bureaucracy” was seen in two lights.  First, it was a burden, standing in the way of the needed changes in America.  Much as you hear today, it was the “bureaucracy” that favored the military-industrial machine and prolonged the Vietnam War.  It was the “bureaucracy” that was one of the last to favor integration.  And it was the bureaucracy that stood against increased civil rights for women, minorities and gays.

Justice

But it was also the bureaucracy that brought Richard Nixon to justice.  It was in the Department of Justice and the Courts where Nixon’s threats and retributions were ignored, and it was there that the full extent of his crimes was revealed.  Without those institutions, Nixon might well have gotten away with his political abuses.

 And it was also in the Courts, that the full weight of the US Constitution was brought to bear for the rights of the individual.  It was the Supreme Court led by Earl Warren, a former Republican Governor from California, that made the decisions for civil rights, equal education and due process rights in the criminal process.  The Warren Court set the precedents that allow American society to become more accepting, and allowed Americans to address the ongoing problems we still see today.  Without those decisions, we never would have made the progress we did.  

History Lesson

Here’s my “OK Boomer” rant of the day.  The young generation, out in the streets demanding justice, blame generations of the past for not getting things “fixed”.  It’s easy for the twenty-something’s to forget, or maybe they never knew, what changes went before them.  I’m sixty-three years old, and I remember driving through Kentucky as a child, seeing “Whites Only” signs.  As a boy I went on holiday to Washington, DC and my friend in Virginia had school off for Robert E. Lee’s birthday.  I watched on black and white TV as Bull Connor sent the dogs and the fire hoses against black protestors.  We didn’t complete the task of change, but we’ve come a long way since then.  

And today we find those institutions, the bureaucracy, or as former Trump “brain” Steve Bannon would put it, the “Deep State”; are some of the very things holding our nation together.  When the President determined to use the United States military to intervene where he thought state leaders weren’t doing enough to control protestors, even his own appointees stepped in.  Defense Secretary Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Milley made it clear that they opposed using troops in this way.  In addition Former Secretaries of Defense Mattis and Perry, and former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs Dempsey and Mullins all stepped up to protest military involvement.

The soldiers of the 82^nd Airborne are standing-down; most are headed back to base. 

Holding the Fort 

The other institutions of the United States government are also trying to “hold the fort” in this tumultuous time of Trump.  The “deep state” that protects our health, the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health have been defunded and ignored by the Trump administration.  Yet they still are trying to get their message out, and are doing their best to control the COVID-19 outbreak.  They are being undercut from many directions, not least from the President himself, but they are still trying to help the states and American people survive.

And the intelligence agencies, ignored and humiliated by the Trump Administration, are still trying to do their job.  They warned of the COVID-19 epidemic early, but were ignored.  And they continue to warn of the external threats to our election, from Russia and China and Iran.  We should listen to them, even if the present White House sees it all as a “Deep State” attack on Trump’s policies.

Bureaucracy, Institutions, Deep State:  they are the “bad guys” when it comes to making rapid change in America.  But “bad guys” is a relative term:  it’s only bad if the changes would make America worse, like the authoritarian changes that Attorney General Bill Barr and President Donald Trump are trying to make. Steve Bannon was right on one thing:  those institutions are protecting America – even from the President himself.

Internet Experts

One of the hardest problems about the COVID-19 pandemic is who to listen to.  In this “Reddit, YouTube, saw it on Facebook” age, there are hundreds of so-called “experts” explaining everything about the virus.  We are told that the virus actually doesn’t attack the lungs, even though most of those who died suffered “lung failure”.  They told us that an anti-bacterial, Chloroquine, used for treatment of malaria, was an effective medication for COVID-19.  And then there are the statistical “experts” who say that since there is such a low chance of dying from the disease, we should just let it happen.

One of the biggest problems is that the “real” experts, the folks who have spent their careers studying viral infections and epidemics, aren’t giving us good news.  They aren’t telling us to “go back to life”, and they aren’t offering miraculous cures.  They are saying that they really don’t know how bad this outbreak will be.  Their best guess: things are likely to get ugly as we open up our society again, and then again in the fall when we all go back inside.

Easy Answers

We want a miracle cure.  We don’t want to wear masks, wash our hands, and socially distance.  And when those are the only real solutions offered, we go looking on the “Internet” for something better.  

We ignore experts at our peril.  It’s happening with this disease, and over 108,000 Americans are dead because of it.  We are still doing it with the environment, and pretending that the consequences “won’t be that bad”. “Anti-vaxxers” do it, pretending that they can ignore diseases and not be harmed by them.  We go to the keyboard, and find excuses.

We are in an age where everyone can become an expert, just by getting on a computer.  And even worse, we don’t even have to read; we can have it spoon-fed to us on YouTube, with cool music in the background and nifty graphics.  This instant knowledge, told by folks that are absolutely certain about their conclusions, is more than seductive.  They are telling us what we want to hear, and they are absolutely certain they’re right. 

And the real experts, aware enough to realize they don’t have the answers look pale and puny compared to the YouTube geniuses.  Take Anthony Fauci, a man who has for almost forty years led America’s battle against lethal viruses.  “Oh, but he worked with the big pharmaceutical companies, so he can’t be trusted!”  He was trying to find vaccines and medications for brand new diseases. Who would you expect him to turn to for help?  Sure Louis Pasteur worked alone, but that was one hundred and fifty years ago.  Fauci went to the experts, the best at creating medications quickly.  And they produced results, for AIDS and Ebola, and for many of the other pandemic viruses we faced.

But it’s not just pandemics and climate.  

Balancing Rights

President Trump finds that the Governors and Mayors won’t listen to his “expert” approach to controlling protests over the death of George Floyd.  But he can control how the Federal District of Columbia responds, so he has created his own “expert” to control DC – Attorney General Bill Barr.

Washington has a duly elected Mayor, a Police Chief, a large metropolitan police department and a full range of city administrators.  But the President seems unwilling to allow those folks to do their jobs.  Instead, from an “FBI Command Center” in downtown, Bill Barr uses Federal agents from across the alphabetical spectrum to take over.  FBI, DEA, ATF, Bureau of Prisons, Customs Enforcement, and National Guard all are “flooding the battle zone” (a football and warfare concept combined), in spite of the protests of the local government authorities.

And the “expert” Barr has an even bigger “card” to play if he wants to:  he’s dragged out the “Insurrection Act of 1807” to allow him to use the US military.  He’s stationed active duty troops just outside of Washington.  That may be a “bridge too far” for the Defense Department.  Defense Secretary Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Milley have just now started to push back against using the military on American streets, late in realizing what may happen.  But that might not stop the Attorney General.

The Siege

Bill Barr’s a high priced lawyer.  He’s twice been Attorney General of the United States, and both times been involved in controversial interventions in the American justice system.  But he’s no expert in crowd control, defending First Amendment rights, or city or police management.  His expertise seems to be in one thing only:   garnering more power for the President, regardless of what the Constitution says.

It’s hard to imagine Bill Barr watching YouTube.  But I bet he’s seen the 1998 movie The Siege starring Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis a bunch of times.  It’s when the 101^st Airborne takes over New York City under martial law.  Mr. Barr must fall asleep in the middle though, because the final message of the movie is that the occupation doesn’t end too well for New York, the Constitution, or America.

COVID

So it’s the first week of June, in the incredibly weird year of 2020.  The world is still in a global pandemic, though that seems to have been forgotten.  As of this morning, 108,062 Americans have died of COVID-19.  There’s an “app” for that, http://www.ncov2019.live.  A high school kid in the state of Washington wrote it, with accurate data for the states, nation and world.  It also has a “survival calculator”.  Put in your age range, your gender, and a couple of pre-existing conditions, and it will tell you what your likelihood of surviving COVID-19 is.  As a 63 year-old man with previous cardiac issues, it’s not a promising number that shows up in blood red – 54.08% chance of dying from COVID-19 if infected.

Here in Ohio the numbers are still scary, with 2,267 now dead from the disease.  Has it only been three months? 

Occupation

And it’s the second week of protests over the murder of George Floyd.  Protestors marched again all across the country last night.  They did the block around the State House in Columbus, and at our local Courthouse in Newark, Ohio as well.  There, the Sheriff’s deputies mingled with the crowd, talking and listening to the concerns.  As one deputy put it, “it was more of a community gathering than a protest”.  

And we are in the age of Donald Trump.  The President has ordered parts the 82^nd Airborne, the “American Division”, stationed around Washington, DC.  Those troops haven’t hit the capital streets yet, but they are ominously waiting near by.  The Secretary of Defense used the term “controlling the battle space” to describe American cities.  Even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs “scouted” Washington DC in fatigues and boots, perhaps looking for the “high ground”.  Its like an old 1960’s black and white movie, Seven Days in May, except this time it’s the President who seems ready to militarize the nation instead of a cabal of generals.  I sure hope there’s a real-life Kirk Douglas character that will stand up for civilian control.

Gone Camping

Jenn and I and the dogs have gone camping.  We hoped it would be some escape from the steady torrent of ugly news.  But, even hear in Appalachian Ohio, cell signals get through loud and clear.  The world is in your pocket, or on the TV screen in the camper, or in the messages from friends in the protests.  You can’t get away.

But it is a strange contrast.  We’ve camped here before, and camping in a pandemic doesn’t feel like much has changed.  The camp store is only open a couple of times a week, and the worker has a face mask on.  But we aren’t particularly “social” campers anyway, so staying appropriately distant from the few others who have weekdays off in June isn’t difficult.  In the brief conversations we have, it’s about how the weather has been, and how well behaved our dogs are.  

Our Dogs

Our Yellow Lab, Atticus, is three.  All of a sudden, the wild crazy two year old Lab that we knew, hung onto, and loved, started to mellow.  He’s not barking at every other dog, not getting frenetic in the car and camper.  We knew it would happen, but it’s still kind of a shock.  But here he is, at seven in the morning, standing beside the picnic table as I pound on the computer, listening to the birds and feeling the gentle morning breeze.  If you ever met this wild man, you’d be shocked.  Who is this new guy, and where did our Atticus go?

Our older dog, Buddy, isn’t so sure about this camping thing.  Instead of just going out back to do what needs to be done, now it’s walks.  Camping trips are “Buddy boot camp”, with miles of long walks as Atticus pulls us on.  I think Buddy likes being out somewhere new, but he’s getting older and out of shape.  Sleeping in the camper is a good thing for him.

More Dogs

Dogs are a big part of our life, and it’s not just Atticus and Buddy.  There is a small group of dedicated people who go and find lost dogs, and Jenn’s becoming one of them.  The group she’s part of, Lost Pet Recovery (LPR), goes all over Ohio searching for lost dogs and cats.  It’s not like looking for a lost child, because the child wants to be found.  Lost dogs are terrified, of everything and everybody.  They won’t even come to their own families after a couple of days “out”.  In fact, chasing a lost dog is almost a guarantee that they will stay “lost”.

So it becomes a matter of spotting, tracking, and trapping.  It’s kind of amazing:  there are people in LPR who take calls and messages, people who chart maps of sightings, people who put up signs.  And then there are the trappers, who put large cage-like traps out at the most likely places, and set up mobile camera surveillance.  That’s what Jenn likes to do, find the spot where the dog likes to go, and bait a trap with McDonald cheeseburgers and chicken tenders.  Then wait, sometimes for days, and hope the dog takes the bait.  

It’s an all-consuming task.  There are traps going now, in Lancaster, in Wapakoneta, in Dayton and another down in Cincinnati.  The “happy endings” are awesome, but there’s lots of disappointment and sometimes tragedy as well.  A dog crossing I-75 got lucky and survived to be trapped.  One crossing State Route 16 didn’t.

Crisis

All of that comes in on the phone as well.

It’s Wednesday, and we’ll be back home on Friday.  There’s a protest downtown Saturday evening; I think we’ll go.  You can write about all of this, but sometimes you’ve got to get out and actually do something as well.  I’ve ordered new bandanas.  At least we’ll have stylish masks even if we’re not socially distanced.  

There is a question in this pivotal year of 2020:  How many crises can we take?  We haven’t even really gotten to the election yet.  We might have to go camping some more before this is all done.

Trump World

You know, this whole set of essays is called “Trump World”.  It’s about our world in the time of Trump, and as the author, though I often write about the President’s actions, I try not to write about Donald Trump every time.  But today, I am going to write about what he did yesterday, and how the symbolism he hoped for turned out to be emblematic of his entire view of America.

We Get It

This last week has been one of outrage.  Most Americans are sickened by the video of George Floyd begging for his life, as a police officer in Minneapolis “puts him to sleep”.  And most Americans recognize that it happened once again to a black person, only the last in a series of outrageous killings of black people in the past few months.  The first two were covered by the COVID-19 pandemic, and it took time for them to percolate up to media visibility.  But the murder of George Floyd instantaneously galvanized Americans.  It was if someone way saying:

“The hunting down and shooting of Ahmaud Arbery wasn’t enough.  The ‘no-knock’ execution of Breonna Taylor didn’t get you.  So how about we just murder George Floyd on the street in broad daylight in front of witnesses.  Get it now?”

We get it.  Many people get it.  Young folks who never considered themselves “political” or “activists” get it.  They are in the streets, crying out for justice, not just for Ahmaud and Breonna and George.  They are demanding justice for all black Americans, who have lived in fear of the authorities for too long.  “No Justice, No Peace” is their demand:  black and white, young and old, men and women marching.

First Amendment

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is clear:  Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or the press, or the right to peaceable assemble, or petition for the redress of grievances.  So when those mostly young people stand in front of the Ohio Statehouse, or march down the streets on Minneapolis, or gather across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House in Lafayette Park, it’s not about privilege.

It’s about rights.

The City of Washington DC made a “deal” with the demonstrators.  The city authorities said, they could exercise their legitimate right to speech, assemble, and petition until 7:00pm.  Because of the rioting and the looting that had occurred, after that time the city instituted a curfew to clear the streets.  So demonstrators gathered in Lafayette Park to make their voice heard.  They wanted it heard by Donald Trump, the President of the United States.  They wanted him to know their outrage, and their demand for change.

Photo-Op

Their presence was inconvenient for the President.  On Friday, when things got out of hand, his Secret Service security rushed him to the “bomb shelter” underneath the West Wing, for fear that the crowd might reach the building.  They didn’t, but the image of Donald Trump tweeting from the basement was too much for the man to bear.  He looked weak.

So the weak man decided to lash out.  On Monday he determined that he would give a 6:30pm address in the White House Rose Garden.  He didn’t want it to be interrupted by chants.  And to prove his “religiosity” to his Christian base, he determined that he would walk across the park to the St. John’s Episcopal Church.  A small fire had been set in the basement on Friday.  Trump, a man who couldn’t walk with world leaders at the G-20 summit and had to use a golf cart, now wanted to make this one block “pilgrimage”. 

He would have to walk across Lafayette Park.  It was twenty minutes before curfew.  Security wouldn’t allow the crowd to stay.  Besides, the President wasn’t interested in hearing their views, or facing confrontation.  So the tear gas was fired, and the rubber bullets flew.  The mounted Park Police rode forward, and the crowd, now denied their legal rights, was driven away.  All so Donald Trump could stand in front of the church, waving a Bible he likely has never read.  He thought it would make a good “photo-op”.

Domination

The President wants to “dominate” the streets.  He wants to use an arcane law, “The Insurrection Act” to send the US military into cities, whether the Mayors or Governors want help or not.  He needs to show “strength”, especially in cities controlled by Democratic Party leaders.  He’s lashing out.

I am a Star Wars guy.  There is a phrase said by Obi Won Kenobi the Jedi Master as his former student, Darth Vader, moves to kill him.

 “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”

Donald Trump should take note as he ignores the Constitution and the legitimate grievances of Americans.  The election is only five months away.

Live on Your Phone

For younger folks, this weekend seemed like the apocalypse:  choppers in the sky, marching in the streets, burning buildings and drifting clouds of gas. They stood against authority, represented by the police, and in some cases, the National Guard.  But if you’re old enough, this is really nothing new.  It doesn’t look much different than the 1960’s, though watching live on social media adds a heightened immediacy, even if you can’t feel the rubber bullets.

Like the 1960’s, many young people felt drawn to stand for something, even in the midst of a world pandemic.  A cause they could understand:  inequity, a system unfairly stacked against their friends.  They wore masks, perhaps for COVID-19, or to maintain some anonymity from the facial recognition software.  Or maybe they thought it might help ease the pain of pepper spray.

Black Lives Matter

The issue is stark:  authority that treats African Americans and particularly black men, differently than whites.  It isn’t really about the individual police officer; many of them walked with the protestors, or kneeled down in prayer and solidarity during the early hours.  As we would have said in the 1960’s, it’s “the system” that somehow designates black men for different treatment.  Black Lives Matter may be a movement, but it is more importantly a statement of what “the system” does not seem to recognize.  The statistics of racial imprisonment, and the litany of names where black men and boys were treated as “less,” is far too long to ignore.

Standing for the system, in place of Bull Connor or George Wallace, is the President of the United States Donald Trump.  While he made the perfunctionary phone call to the grieving family of George Floyd, he was unwilling to listen to their grief, talking over their words.  He also chose the racist 1960’s Miami Police Chief’s term to express his view on Twitter:  “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”.  The President placed a greater value on property over life.  

Lines Being Drawn

The lines were drawn up, just like an old Civil War battle.  On one side the well equipped police:  helmeted, padded, respiratored, equipped with gas and “non-lethal” force.  On the other side, t-shirted and face masked protestors, seeking a target for their anger.  Behind the line, organizers were calling out: “white bodies to the front”.  They believed that the police would be more hesitant to advance. 

The Protesters were looking for confrontation.  They were looking to vent their anger and frustration.  And the police knew there would be only one ending to this, no matter how many hours of peaceful protest preceded the final act.   Many individual acts of kindness and solidarity might occur during the day, but conflict was inevitable as the sun went down.  The cry went out from the protestors: “No Justice, No Peace”.  And added to it:  “F**k the Police”.  

Burn Baby Burn

Violence begets anger and frustration.  None of that is an excuse for vandalism and destruction, but it happens.  How to impact a “system” that has all of the tools to drive you away?  Destroy the products of that system:  the stores, the restaurants, and the symbols of prosperity.   Both sides looked to deflect the blame for these seemingly random acts.  

The “system,” voiced by Attorney General Bill Barr, claims that dark subversive forces led by “ANTIFA” are encouraging destruction.  The protestors claim that police “provocateurs” or white nationalist groups like the “Proud Boys” or the “Bugaloo Boys” (that’s a new one) are subverting the cause.  While both sides may have some facts, the reality is that frustration creates anger, and anger needs an outlet.  Cities have burned in frustration for centuries, it doesn’t require someone else to light the fuse.

So the riot goes on.  The police fulfill their role, and the protestors get their confrontation.  And for some of us, we wait for the chant of  “Attica, Attica.”  But that’s merely an echo of another time.

The Choice

Dr. Eddie Glaude is Chairman of the African-American Studies Department at Princeton University.  He presents America with a stark choice:  “we can either embrace change, or double down on the ugliness”.  Historian John Meacham puts it a different way:  “do we want history to see us as Bull Connor, or transformative”.   

We are at a crossroads in America in so many ways.  In the middle of a world pandemic, made infinitely worse by the mismanagement of the Trump Administration and 104,166 Americans already dead, we are now forced to face our society’s inequities.  In a nation aching for national leadership, we have leader who hides from protest in the White House bomb shelter.  At a time crying for national unity, the President is doubling-down on polarization to encourage his own voter turnout.

So it will be up to the individual cities, the mayors and the police chiefs, to reach across the line and find common ground.  They must withstand the crashing waves of frustration and anger, and then find ways to transform “the system”, changes that will answer the legitimate demands for fairness.   It will have to be from them, because the Commander-in-Chief can only tweet out division from his bunker.

This weekend American cities were wracked with riots. Legitimate protests over the death of George Floyd spilled into confrontations with authority and vandalism. While the fires raged in Minneapolis and other towns, other Americans achieved a new first – private industry sent Americans into space.

Americans in Space

The American manned space program didn’t start off well.  The Russian program launched their first satellite, Sputnik, in 1957.  The United States tried to catch up, launching Explorer I three months later.  Russia moved ahead following up with the first man in space and in orbit, Yuri Gagarin in April of 1961.  Meanwhile the American rocket, Vanguard, had lots of problems.  

Alan Shepard was selected to be the first American Astronaut in space.  After the Vanguard rocket failed, he rode a tested but smaller military rocket, the Redstone, on a sub-orbital flight lasting a little over fifteen minutes in May of 1961.  The second American, Gus Grissom, launched in July, but still was using the Redstone’s sub-orbital power.  Both Shepard and Grissom’s flights were successful, though Grissom’s capsule unfortunately flooded and sunk after he was rescued.

Meanwhile the Russians launched a second man into orbit, Ghreman Titov.  He did seventeen orbits of the earth before returning safely.  It wasn’t until the following February, on a different, more powerful Atlas rocket, that the United States launched John Glenn into space, and orbit.  While his flight had difficulties and was cut short, he did manage to orbit the earth three times before returning.

Only the insiders at NASA knew the risks that Glenn faced with the untested Atlas.  Scott Carpenter, Glenn’s astronaut backup, was “cap-com”; capsule communicator for Glenn’s mission.  He was the voice that Glenn, and America, heard communicating throughout the mission.

As Glenn’s rocket left the Launchpad at Cape Canaveral, Carpenter intoned the phrase:  “Godspeed John Glenn”.  It became the watchword for the original Mercury Astronauts and NASA, as well as for John Glenn himself. 

Moon and Shuttle 

The race with Russia went on, and several Astronauts on both sides were sacrificed.  But seven years later, in the turmoil filled year of 1968, it was three Americans who first orbited the Moon in Apollo 8.  On Christmas Eve Astronauts Borman, Lovell and Anders read the first Book of Genesis to the people of earth, as we watched the Earth itself rise above the lunar landscape.  Seven months later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed Apollo 11 on the surface, the first of six successful moon explorations.

After Apollo, the US space program turned its focus to a more mundane but important project:  building a reusable vehicle to work in space.  The Space Shuttle program began in 1981 with five shuttle vehicles, and continued for over thirty years.  Shuttles were launched and returned 133 times.  There were two catastrophic failures, with the loss of the Challenger and Columbia vehicles and their crews.

The last Shuttle launch was in July of 2011.  Since then, almost nine years, the United States has been shut out of space, hitching rides to the International Space Station on Russian rockets and capsules. 

Free Enterprise

In 2011, the United States Government contracted out the space program.  NASA still oversees civilian space flight, but instead of purchasing the rockets, capsules and equipment and using them, they now contract with companies to carry NASA personnel and equipment into space.  Two companies, Elon Musk’s (Tesla) SpaceX and traditional aeronautics giant Boeing, built competing products.  NASA awards contracts to each, allowing them access to the Kennedy Space Center testing, assembly and launch facilities.

SpaceX won the first race, to get a human payload-ready space vehicle in place.  Like Musk’s Tesla cars, the SpaceX rocket, is designed to look sleek and modern.  Even the names are cool:  the Falcon Rocket, and the Dragon space vehicle.  The Falcon even returns to earth, landing gently just offshore of the Cape on a drone piloted barge named “Of Course I Still Love You” for re-use for future missions.

Space – Dude

Spacesuits have changed since the silver metallic of the Mercury days and the bright white Michelin suits of Apollo.  Even the orange “test flight” suits of the Shuttle days are gone.  The two astronauts launched by the SpaceX team are wearing something closer to Star Wars Storm Trooper with a cooler helmet.  Except for the boots, which look like a cross between Doc Marten and Wellington.

And the grizzled Astronauts and engineers who spoke for NASA are now young “millennial something’s “ in casual SpaceX sportswear.  The launch was cool, and so are the folks talking about it.  It’s the California laidback style, “…of course it all works, Dude.”

But after nine years, two Americans are back in space in their own “ride”.  They are headed to the International Space Station, but they’ll get a “nap” along the way: it’s a nineteen hour pursuit to meet the station in low earth orbit, so there’s an eight hour sleep cycle scheduled.

And as the Falcon Rocket cleared Launch Complex 39-A, home of the Apollo and Shuttle Launches, the SpaceX announcer gave the NASA invocation with an informal twist: “Godspeed, Doug and Ben!”

Welcome back America!!

Burning Cities

Minneapolis burned last night.  Even quiet Columbus Ohio felt the strain of riot and looting.  I am reading the outrage of many, mostly white suburban voices:  “This is not the way,” or “ Columbus, we are better than this”.  And, of course, the President, with his usual idiocy, tweeted,  “…but when the looting starts, the shooting starts”.

In the United States we value property.  We even know that black entrepreneurs own some of the stores burned in Minneapolis.  And we expect the police to arrest the arsonists and the looters.  But here’s the point the outraged black communities of Minneapolis, and Columbus, and Los Angeles, and Denver, and other cities are making.  The police see an arsonist or a looter, or even a CNN news crew.  They see something those folks are doing, and they have “probable cause” to make an arrest.  They put them in custody, right there.   The cuffs go on:  right or wrong, they go to jail.

Probable Cause

Most of us have sat through the excruciating last seven minutes of George Floyd’s life.  We heard him plead to the police officer to take the knee from his neck.   And we listened to the pleas of the spectators, to let the man breath.  He died, a knee on his neck, and two other officers holding his handcuffed body down on the ground.  A fourth officer stood guard to make sure no one else could intervene.

The probable cause is self-evident, just like the young man caught throwing the firebomb, or removing a television set from Target.  But the officers are not under arrest.  The local prosecutor is waiting for some unknown exculpatory evidence that will somehow justify what was done to George Floyd.  Sure, they have been “fired” from the police force:  so what.  It’s just another time of being told, “Don’t believe your lying eyes”.  

Why is Minneapolis burning?  Why are young people in Columbus, Ohio protesting, then attacking police and property? They are recognizing their “self-evident” truth.  The Target store, the AutoZone, the doors to the Ohio Statehouse, must be so much more important than the life of a black man on the street:  their lives.  The point is clear: the looters and vandals are jailed; the murderers of George Floyd are sitting in their homes.

Nothing New

It’s the same question that was asked in the riots of the 1960’s:  in Watts, and Detroit, and Dayton.  Why are people burning their own neighborhoods, why are they destroying their local stores and buildings?  It’s to make the point:  our majority society values that property much more than we value the lives of minorities.

I know that many of my more conservative friends struggle with the slogan, “Black Lives Matter”.  They respond with alternate sayings: “Blue Lives Matter” or “All Lives Matter”.  But they miss the point.  We do care about “Blue Lives”, about the police officers that risk their lives daily.  Even yesterday, a Columbus Police Officer was shot in the line of duty.  He risked his life to protect others, and our thoughts are with him as he recovers.

And of course, we do care about “All Lives”.  But, as a society, we need to be aware of the message being sent to minorities, and particularly to black men:  your lives don’t matter as much, at least to many.  Your life means so little, that the policeman can kneel on your neck, on the open street in the bright light of day with cameras videoing, and nothing will be done to stop him.  Not even by his brother officers.

What Matters

No one protected George Floyd’s life.  It didn’t matter.  No one protected Ahmaud Aubrey’s life.  It didn’t matter.  No one protected Eric Garner’s life.  It didn’t matter.  How long a list do you need to see, to see that black lives don’t matter?  We watched all three die, on video.  How can we not believe our eyes?

But don’t burn down the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department.  That matters!  It’s not about protecting property.  It’s about what we as a society value, and until we make it clear that our society values minority lives, then we will continue to watch devastating videos, and continue to call on the National Guard to protect property from folks demanding that they matter too.

Trump World

Four events occurred in the past few days. The first, and most obscene, is the death of another black man at the hand (or knee) of a white man with “official” standing.  It’s one of those things, like school shootings, that America seems to abhor, yet accept as “unsolvable”.  I have already said a lot about these actions in the past weeks, and this new incident doesn’t change what needs to be done.  

What I will note is this:  maybe for the first time, the “blue wall” of support has cracked.  Police officers aren’t immune to the depravity of some in their profession, but they are loath to discuss it.  I understand that completely.  When they are out in the field, they must be absolutely confident that their fellow officers have “their back”.  It’s literally life and death.   That confidence depends on supporting each other, regardless of personal likes and dislikes.  

But the fastest way to change those few brutal outlier officers is from the inside.  It’s not just “on” their coworkers, but it’s where change can begin.

Numbers

The second is the ongoing battle of numbers. We now find that some of the tests, the fifteen million that President Trump is so proud of, are about as accurate as flipping a coin.  That allows everyone to simply ignore the most important number of the week: one hundred thousand dead from COVID-19 in the last four months.  And there is no stopping this yet:  it’s almost 102,000 as I write this essay.  Like the school shootings, and like the death of black men, the numbers seem no longer shocking.

The third is positive:  the United States is preparing to send humans back into space.  I was waiting for that launch: it’s past time for an “uplifting” essay, and I am a huge proponent of space exploration.  But, as we are discovering with a vengeance in our current world, nature controls us so much more than we control her.  The rocket didn’t launch yesterday, thunderstorms lurked around Cape Canaveral making it far too dangerous.  They will try again on Saturday.  I look forward to writing about the United States in space on Sunday morning.

All of which leads us to today’s topic.

The First

“Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…” – First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

In school, teachers talk about the First Amendment as “the five freedoms:” religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition for redress of grievances.  But the wording of the Constitution is more nuanced:  it doesn’t really asset a “positive right”.  What it does do is establish a boundary:  Congress, representing the Federal government, shall make no law.  

The First Amendment restricts the Government.  It does not control what private individuals do.  So for example, in New York City last week, a white woman was in Central Park, allowing her dog to run off-leash.  A black man, in the Park bird watching, asked the woman to follow the “rules” and leash the dog.  He recorded the ensuing discussion/argument on his cell phone.  The woman responded by calling 9-11 and demanding that the police come and protect her from this “African American man ‘threatening’ the dog and her.”

White privilege and racism were loaded in all of her actions:  thankfully the police came and defused the situation. No one was arrested or charged. When the video of her actions went viral, she was fired from her investment company job.  Some claim that this is a violation of her First Amendment rights, including her “right” to be a bigot.  But the investment company is not the Federal Government:  it is a private corporation.  The First Amendment does not circumscribe their actions.

Twitter

There are many negative things to say about the President of the United States, Donald Trump.  I’ve spent three years and three months composing the essays of Trump World, and many of them have criticized the President.  This is my “right” under the First Amendment, and in spite of the concerns of some friends and relatives, some of them from outside of the United States, I haven’t had any “governmental” repercussions from speaking my mind.  

But one positive thing can be said about Mr. Trump:  he has found a new way to bypass the media and communicate with the American people.  In the past, Presidents could either use the press, or use the “bully pulpit” of the White House and speak directly to the public.  But President Trump has made it an “art form” to use social media, particularly Twitter, to reach Americans.  He has 81 million Twitter followers, but his Tweets resonate far beyond them to the rest of us.

Rules

Twitter has a “community use” policy.  There is a list of actions that are banned from the platform (Twitter): 

• Threatening violence, 
• Threatening or promoting terrorism, 
• Child sexual exploitation, 
• Promoting violence, 
• Threatening or harassing someone based on race, ethnic origin, gender, etc.
• Suicide of self-harm,
• Graphic violence and adult content,
• Illegal or regulated goods.

Twitter is a publicly traded company, run by CEO Jack Dorsey.  Like Facebook, Instagram, and other social media giants, Twitter is characterized as a “platform”.  The concept is that they are simply a conduit for the sharing of information, and have little or no responsibility for what is shared.  As a “platform” they are a “structure”, without an editorial position.

This allows them to avoid the strictures that broadcast media are required to follow through regulation by the Federal Communications Commission.  And, they are corporations, not government entities.  The First Amendment does not restrict them.  In essence, they can make the rules for the use of their platform, if you don’t like their rules, don’t sign up for their platform.

Twitter regulates what its users say.  Violate the “community standards” and Twitter punishes by restricting or banning use – “Twitter Jail”.  But Twitter has determined that some chosen few Americans, including the President, are so “newsworthy” that no matter what they say they are exempted from the rules.   They are given a “pass”:  the fact that they bring millions of followers, and therefore income, to Twitter is beside the fact, supposedly. 

The President

President Trump takes full advantage of his Twitter immunity.  He says whatever comes to his mind, and whatever appeals to his diehard supporters.  In the past week, the President has Tweeted about the dangers of mail-in voting, citing all of the “cheating and fraud” that occurs when ballots are cast by mail.  It’s simply not true, and Twitter knows it.  Rather than placing Mr. Trump in “jail”, they have determined to fact-check his Tweets, placing “the truth” under his Tweets to counter the fiction.

Mr. Trump doesn’t like to be corrected, and most certainly doesn’t want to be questioned on his favorite communication medium.  So he is now threatening some kind of regulation over Twitter and the other social media platforms.  He claims he has the First Amendment “right” to say what he wants on Twitter, and that their corrections are interfering in the 2020 Presidential election.

Executive Orders

So he’ll sign an Executive Order today.  It will threaten Twitter and the rest, with the threat of regulation:  a threat, of a threat.  

His threat of regulation is another “paper tiger:” the President on his own cannot just create regulatory authority.  It would require Congress to agree, and would then surely be tested in Court against the First Amendment.  But that’s not what Mr. Trump really wants to do.  He’s simply firing a “warning shot” at Jack Dorsey and Twitter world, the same shot he’s been firing at Fox News.  He’s saying, “If you don’t back me, I’ll take my millions of followers and go somewhere else”.  The problem the President has in both cases, is that the alternative platforms aren’t nearly as broadly viewed.  

But it might well work.  It’s 2020:  Twitter, and more importantly Facebook, look to the Trump Campaign for many ten of millions of advertising dollars in the next few months.  So don’t count on any of them putting the President in “jail”, even if he makes up a conspiracy about an opposing news personality committing murder.  It’s not about freedom of speech; it’s about cash on the barrel.

Another Memorial Day

It was Memorial Day, yesterday.  A near-traditional Memorial Day for us, with the very first hot weather of the upcoming summer, family at the house for early dinner and a “low country” boil on the back deck.

But, of course, it wasn’t traditional at all.  We remain under a cloud, even under the hot May sun.  It’s the COVID-19 pandemic, changing life in all sorts of big and small ways.  The crisis seemed to have frozen time:  it’s a little bit of a shock to see that summer came anyway.  The weather, and the world, felt like it was going to be March rain forever.

But here we are, on the cusp of summer.

2001 – the Future

When I was a young man, I became fascinated with science fiction books. Clarke and Asimov were my favorites, though Frank Herbert crept in towards the end.  Some created whole new universes, but the authors I related to most were those that showed what life here on earth would be like only a dozen decades ahead of today.  

Many of them prophesized some kind of world crisis, when the people of earth made some dramatic decision on how to live their lives. For a few, it was an atomic war; a reasonable prediction given the way the 1950’s and 60’s were going.  Gene Roddenberry, creator of the Star Trek franchise, showed earth rising from the ashes of a nuclear war that ended in 2053.  That seemed so far away back in 1968.

Several authors anticipated mankind’s crisis of confidence in science.  Isaac Asimov recognized this in his Robot series.  He constantly dealt with the fear that somehow robots would use their superiority over humans to “take over”.  He developed an entire “moral” code for robotics to convince mankind they were safe.  And while we aren’t quite to the point of his andromorphic helpers, we do depend on artificial intelligence for growing parts of our daily living.  From “smart houses” to “Alexa” and “Siri,” AI has infiltrated our daily routines.  It’s listening and responding to our every word.

Anti-Science

Like any good 1960’s science fiction novel, we find a backlash in our society to these advances.   For many, Microsoft creator Bill Gates has become a bête noire, “threatening” to put “chips” in our body to somehow gain control.  As if we aren’t already allowing access to all of that information already, instead of a “chip” in our arm, we carry a little box in our pocket with all of that data.  We call it a “phone”, but that little computer we all carry is constantly in communication with an interconnected world, revealing our location, our likes and desires, our calendar and our images, fingerprints and sounds.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that there is a backlash against science.  It was already happening before COVID-19 was even named back in February.  Anti-vaxxers have been crying out for years, their conspiratorial theories amplified by celebrities and led by a name that echoes other great crusades, Kennedy.  Climate change deniers have ignored scientific research for decades, well financed by a petroleum industry whose profits are vested in the status quo.

And now, with COVID-19, we have accelerated the war against science.  Just as we have folks who are willing to close their eyes to the damage we are doing to the climate, we now find many who refuse to take the advice of our leading scientists as they offer a less painful path through this crisis.  Like the petroleum industry, we have a political party who has embraced the “anti-science” view.  It too is led by a “name”, the President of the United States.

2020 – The Present

Clarke and Asimov would find our current situation strangely familiar.  There is a commonality in the fear of those educated in the arcane “secrets” of viral epidemics.  They know and understand what has happened and can confidently predict possible futures, knowledge most of us do not have.  The virus seems capricious, and like the Judaic angel of death, passes over many.  And that gives President Trump an advantage, the virus as an “unseen enemy”. It’s easy to doubt something you can’t see, and create doubt in the scientific prescriptions. Invisibility allows manipulation for daily political gain. 

But the “laws” of science are as inexorable as the changes of the season.  The virus will do what it’s going to do, regardless of the political ramifications.  Perhaps it will mutate itself “away” from infection, the miracle that President Trump wishes for.  Or perhaps we will find that “herd immunity” doesn’t exist for this particular virus.  We really don’t know. What we do know is what the best science tells us:  social-distance, masks, and testing.  

Decades from now we may well look back at 2020 is a pivotal year, a turning point where the “people of earth” made decisions that altered our future path.  Science is competing with immediate self-interests:  Clarke and Asimov had faith we would choose wisely.  I hope that faith was right.