One of the first lessons I learned as a Boy Scout leader back in high school was that keys represented power.\u00a0I became the Senior Patrol Leader (SPL) of Troop 819, the \u201chead kid\u201d, and with that leadership role came keys.\u00a0\u00a0One key opened the basement door to the Church where our troop met. A second opened the pad lock to the wooden door in front of our Scout Room, the meeting place in what was the crypt of the main church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Keys meant a couple things.\u00a0\u00a0It allowed me to have meetings with other Scouts without the formal \u201cpermission\u201d of the adult Scout leaders.\u00a0\u00a0It let me do \u201cmy job\u201d with the troop Quartermaster (another Scout) as we prepared equipment for our monthly campout. And we had other projects that were part of the Troop annual calendar.\u00a0\u00a0Looking back on that, it was actually a lot of responsibility to put on a sixteen year-old.\u00a0\u00a0And I\u2019m not sure that the Minister of the Church knew what our Scoutmasters were allowing.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I knew the responsibility I had with \u201cthe keys\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0I made sure the door was locked, and that no Scout got left behind. Getting trapped in the Church basement between the Scout room and the storage was scary for a twelve year-old.\u00a0\u00a0When I moved from SPL to become a Junior Assistant Scoutmaster, they let me keep my keys. The Scoutmaser made another set for the next SPL.\u00a0\u00a0I remained part of the Troop, through college, and until I moved away from Mom and Dad in Cincinnati.\u00a0\u00a0Somewhere, in a drawer, I still have the keys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So when I went to work at a public high school, having a \u201ckey\u201d was a deal.\u00a0\u00a0Getting into the building in the evening, or on the weekend with a team, you had to have some way to open a door.\u00a0\u00a0And soon enough, I had the key to a locker room door, and the key to my classroom.\u00a0\u00a0A mentor of mine taught me an early dubious lesson. If you get access to a key, and don\u2019t make a copy, then it\u2019s your own fault.\u00a0\u00a0Keys meant access for what you needed to do your job. We acquired them like medals on the battlefield.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We needed keys to tractors to maintain the Cross Country course, keys to the press box and gates to run track meets, keys to storage to access our equipment.\u00a0\u00a0And we always needed keys to get into the building. That was especially back in the day when the only access to a phone was a \u201chard line\u201d in an office somewhere.\u00a0\u00a0The kids had to call for rides, and, when necessary, we needed to be able to call for an ambulance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just like when I was a Scout, having keys meant getting access, responsibility, and \u201cpower\u201d. And the ultimate key to have was the \u201cbuilding master key\u201d, the one key that opened every door. You know you \u201cmade it\u201d when you had the one key to get everywhere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I worked in the school district for forty years.\u00a0\u00a0There were generations of keys. I had keys for buildings that no longer were standing, and keys for obscure locks that were buried deep inside storage areas or closets.\u00a0\u00a0Ther were my \u201cworking keys\u201d, the few that went into my pocket every day. And then my \u201coccasional keys\u201d, that I would use once a year during a special event.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I finally retired from coaching and managing cross country meets at the school, it was time to turn in the keys, at least most of them.\u00a0\u00a0The ones that no longer opened anything I pitched, and a few were passed onto the next generation.\u00a0\u00a0But the \u201cbig ones\u201d; the master keys, gate keys and equipment keys, were on my ring, and on the secretary\u2019s desk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Giving up my keys was giving up my \u201cpower\u201d in the school.\u00a0\u00a0It was the final act, disconnecting from forty years of work and fun. I left behind all of the successes and tragedies, things accomplished, and getting into \u201cgood\u201d trouble.\u00a0\u00a0Of all the goodbyes, setting my keys on Barb\u2019s desk (the Athletic Secretary) was the second hardest.\u00a0\u00a0The first, of course, was saying goodbye to the kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Donald Trump is a man who gets what he wants.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s hard to tell whether he truly believed he won the election of 2020 at the beginning, but at the end, it\u2019s clear that he convinced himself that was true.\u00a0\u00a0But while the President doesn\u2019t have a \u201cmaster key\u201d to the United States (in fact, he doesn\u2019t have keys at all, someone else always does), he has the \u201cmaster secrets\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And in the days between January 6th<\/sup>, the Insurrection, and January 20th<\/sup>, the Biden Inauguration, Trump struggled mightily with the idea that he actually had to leave the White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bunches of papers were hurriedly thrust into boxes. Classified confidential, secret, top secret, top secret compartmented information: all were stuffed in boxes and shipped to Trump\u2019s home in Mara Lago, his \u201cwinter White House\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s lots of ways to look at that.\u00a0\u00a0Maybe he was just keeping them to show that he was \u201cstill powerful\u201d, like keeping the master key to the building even after you retire.\u00a0\u00a0Or maybe he had confidential information he could use, \u201ckompromat\u201d on others to get them to bend to his will.\u00a0\u00a0Or the worst case scenario:\u00a0\u00a0maybe he saw some financial gain to be made with all of those secrets.\u00a0\u00a0But one thing is for sure:\u00a0\u00a0Donald Trump became President for power, and wasn\u2019t will to give that up, even when the National Archives demanded them, and even when the FBI came for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He wanted to keep his keys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"