SPONSORSHIPS!

 I’m not a huge fan of watching loud cars drive around an oval track until they dive into a retaining wall, igniting the fuel and causing general mayhem. But, on Memorial Day weekend it’s patriotic to watch at least one lap of the Indy 500. After that, it is just a variation of zoom, zoom, and more zoom.  

 

The race cars are small, powerful, and held together by decals of sponsoring companies and associations. The drivers’ uniforms likewise are sewn together with the logos of the sponsors. Both are an exhibit of high-stakes advertising. 

 

Wait, wait. Here comes the cliché! 

 

Why don’t members of Congress do the same thing? Imagine if their suits and ties made them walking billboards for their sponsors. You know, here comes Senator Highcost sponsored by Standard Oil, Coal Manufacturers of Wheeling, the Chamber of Commerce, Eggland Eggs, Tyson Chicken, and the NRA. 

 

Well, it seems that paying a member of Congress, or the state legislature, or the city council person to vote one way or another is not a crime if you do it correctly. The movies often showed a senator meeting in some hotel room with undercover FBI agents who offered him (it was always a him back then) a bribe to vote for a bill that favored the purported sponsor. The senator takes the money, the badge comes out, the cuffs come out, and they are off to booking at the nearest police station.  

 

It didn’t have to be that way. The senator could have said no to the bribe, directed the agents to a Super-Pac, or to his campaign war chest and all would have been legal, the agents out of the money and the senator’s campaign a little richer. 

 

This week there is a bipartisan group of senators trying to hammer out a reasonable compromise that will make it harder for folks to get guns and use them to kill school children … or others. Sounds reasonable. Shouldn’t be hard to accomplish. Look at the corporate logos on the senators’ suits. Not there, you say! Well then, maybe they are not being bribed, legally or illegally. Not likely.  

 

A mass shooting is defined as an incident in which four or more people are killed by guns, not including the shooter. In 2022 alone, there have been 220 mass shootings. Gun killings represent 79% of all homicides in the U.S. compared to 37% in Canada, 13% in Australia, and 4% in the UK. 

 

In spite of the problem, at least 50% of the senators refuse to vote for gun ownership regulations. For some, it is a cultural issue in their states. For most, we could assume that they have been bought off by the gun lobby. The NRA alone has made major contributions to a host of Republican senators: Romney $13.6 million, Burr $7 million, Blunt $4.5 million, Tillis $4.5 million, Rubio $3.3 million, Ernst $3.1 million, Portman $3.0 million, Cotton $2.0 million, Toomey $1.5 million, McConnell $1.3 million, and it goes on, as reported by the BBC.  

 

Senator Cruz expressed the need for fewer doors in schools and armed guards at the entrances, and he agrees that teachers should carry weapons as well. Is that the way we want for our schools? 

 

Representative Scalise, Minority Whip in the House, who was shot at a congressional ball game, said this weekend that he opposed any efforts to take guns away from law-abiding citizens. That is another way of saying that he will not support any effort to ensure that only law-abiding citizens can carry guns, that dangerous people can’t carry guns, or that assault rifles be limited to law-enforcement officers and the military. He has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the NRA. 

 

In 1992 I spent some time in Shanghai teaching in an MBA program for middle-level managers who would come to the U.S. to work in Bay Area companies for six months, and then return to China to help manage the trade with our country. Forget, for a minute, the Chinese political system. We can agree that it was not what we would call free. The greatest fear that these thirty-year-old managers had about coming to the U.S. was the violence. Many of these students had been to Europe, some had been to the U.S., and they were afraid for their safety if they came over here. We do not like to admit that we are a very violent country, but we are. We say that violent is not who we are, but it is. We have more guns than people, yet only 44% of Americans live in homes with a gun. 

 

Why can’t we have rules and regulations that ensure that only law-abiding citizens own guns, that people with mental issues can’t own them, and that assault weapons are banned since their only purpose is to kill people? Why? How long must we put up with the insanity? 

 

Brooks Brothers went bankrupt, but maybe Oxford or Hart Schaffner and Marx can design new suits with lots of logos for our solons.

 

 

June 6, 2022 

 

 

So, We Have a Second Amendment!

 How many more times?

Another mass shooting!

Another mass shooting of school kids, fourth grade!

What if it was your child, the one you sent off to school today, the one you expected to come home this afternoon.

What if it were your grandchild?

What if were your great-grandchild?

Are two days of talking about it enough? Is a Congress that can’t even muster enough votes to bring the issue to the floor acceptable to us? Is that what you want for a government response?

 

We must ask the questions. Yes, we have to wonder if this is the country we want it to be. We must ask, “why us?”

We have a Second Amendment. It is written in plain English for all who read it to understand it: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not the infringed.

We have all been in this discussion before. The Supreme Court has been down this road as well. In District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008 the court ruled that Heller could keep a handgun in his home for safety reasons. In 2010 in McDonald v. City of Chicago the Court ruled 5-4 that the Second Amendment applied to state and local governments as well as the federal system. But, hear the words written in those cases.

In Heller, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote: “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. [It is] not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” It ruled that some laws are “presumptively lawful” including prohibiting possession by dangerous people, possession in sensitive places like schools and government buildings, and imposing conditions on the commercial sale of firearms. In McDonald, the court again wrote that while Heller struck down a law prohibiting handguns in the home “it recognized that the right to keep and bear arms is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever, and for whatever purpose.”

The Second Amendment does not prevent the prohibition of gun ownership for everyone for any reason or the prohibition of regulations related to the manufacturing and importation of weapons.

Laws governing the purchase and ownership of guns in the U.S. are laughable at best. There is no way that a federal agency can do a thorough background check on a person in a matter of seconds. It should take weeks and it should occur before the purchase, not during the sale.

But, they say, we are different. Well, we aren’t different, but our laws are. Let’s look for distinctions.

Too many people in the U.S. are said to have mental problems which cause them to do untoward things. If we have lots of mental problems, wouldn’t you expect people in other countries to have mental problems as well? If they have mental issues but don’t have mass shootings on a nearly weekly basis, what is the distinction? What makes them different or unique? Oh, they don’t let every Tom, Dick, and Jane have guns without deep background checks, and they don’t have a lot of guns in the first place.

They say too many students in the U.S. are under pressure at school. It causes overwhelming stress that makes them do bad things. If that is the case, wouldn’t you expect students in other countries to do the same thing? But they don’t. What is the distinction between them and us? Every Janice and Jimmy don’t have access to military class guns at the tender age of 18.

Many people in the U.S. like to hunt. So do people in other countries. If you hunt you likely own a rifle, no matter the country. What is the distinction? For deer hunting you need a gun meant to shoot a deer, maybe a 30-30, you don’t need a military weapon designed to kill people. In the U.S. the military-style long gun is marketed as a hunting rifle.

Yes, we have mental illnesses that need to be addressed, and Congress refuses to do that. Yes, we need background checks to make sure that crazy people and dangerous people can’t buy guns. Congress refuses to allow that. Yes, we need to control the types of guns, and weapons, that are manufactured in the U.S., or imported from abroad. Congress refuses to do that. Yes, we need to better manage the sale of guns, and make all sales reportable. Congress refuses to do that.

When a Member of the House, a Senator, or a state legislator tells you they support the Second Amendment, but won’t vote for reasonable gun ownership regulations, they are lying to you. The Supreme Court has ruled that reasonable laws are OK. The Court has ruled that the Second Amendment rights are not unlimited. Anyone who refuses to enforce the Second Amendment as the Court has said may reasonably be assumed to be a recipient of money from the NRA, gun manufacturers, or similar groups. It’s a power thing.

So, what about the rancher who needs guns to protect the herd or the hunter who needs a rifle or shotgun? Let them have their guns as long as they can pass a real background check and don’t buy military weapons or take the handguns out of the home they say want to protect.

After the mass shooting in Texas this week, starting that evening, there was a call for more armed guards at the schools. That was the solution of choice that night to prevent more slaughters of our children. Think about that!

 

Governors and Senators want to arm guards and teachers in case a nut job wants to get into the school to kill young children. Not one of them talked about how to prevent someone from having a military-style rifle at age 18 and then selling them clips that hold 30 rounds of ammunition or upselling three or four more clips and the extra ammunition. Nobody wondered why the store owner didn’t notify the police of the unusual sale. Because it is no longer unusual? Is this the country we want to be in? Do we want to be an armed camp?

A young man goes to the store a few days after his 18^th birthday, buys two guns designed to kill people, and walks into a school. He enters a fourth-grade class, locks the door, and shoots 19 young children and their two teachers. The President makes a heartfelt speech, denounced by extremists on the right. The Governor of Texas tells us how horrible the shooting was and then goes off to a gala fundraising event that evening. Politicians orate shooting and how awful they are. The nation takes a long gaping yawn! Nothing happens. Nothing changes.

Then we wait for the next shooting by someone with mental issues and long guns.

This is who we are. We say we aren’t, but we are.

Is this who we want to be?

It wasn’t always like this!

We can be better.

Let us find our better angels!

 

 

 

Hearing?

 

Do you always hear what you heard? I don’t.

More than once, someone has said that I didn’t hear what I heard. Hearing isn’t just sound, it’s understanding.

There is a lot going on at the legislative level in a lot of states. The message of the month seems to be that parents don’t have enough control over the content of their kids’ education and that some textbooks need to be rooted out of the system. I’ve heard it on the news and read about it in newspaper blogs, but I simply scoffed, as one would if they hadn’t heard.

Sometimes, more often than I like, someone has to hit me upside the head and chisel my brain open, before I hear what I heard.

Charles Blow, a highly respected opinion writer for the NYT, opened my eyes, opened my head, the other night on one of the talk shows. I read his opinion piece in the paper the day before and moved on.  When I heard him talk, it bothered me that what he had written hadn’t sunk in. Hearing him was a better way to hear him than reading him.

Much of the brouhaha at fractious school board meetings around the country is much ado about nothing, except the coming elections. It’s a full-on attempt to scare voters and create a further divide in the country.

Parents, governors, and legislators are concerned that Critical Race Theory (CRT) is taught in public schools. It isn’t. They are concerned that if anything but white history is taught in the schools it will make children uncomfortable. But, which children?

Most of the bills introduced in state legislatures around the country are designed to prevent white children from discomfort with the racial history of our country. Isn’t that a form of racism? What about the Black and brown kids, the Asians, the Native Americans, don’t they deserve to hear about the history of their country and about the way their ancestors were treated? Charles Blow suggested that most, if not all of these new laws are just Trojan horses. I agree.

I taught junior and senior high school U.S. history and other social studies courses for several years many years ago. Hindsight shows that I taught a white euro-centric version of our history. That is what the textbooks contained at the time. Winners write history. Large influential groups write history. School is where we teach culture, where it is practiced, and where it is inculcated. The content of the history books is the country of the future. Mao taught us that if you want to change a country, first take over the schools.

Our early history was replete with immigrants from northern Europe. The Age of Reason, the Enlightenment, formed our experiment at the intersection of what was and what was dreamed of. Jefferson believed all men are created equal while he owned hundreds of slaves. White history didn’t teach that. Grant owned a slave while he commanded the Union forces in their effort to stamp out the original sin of our nation. But, White history didn’t teach that, either. If one lives in a culture that is predominantly white and believes that we are a country for white people or only a certain type of Christian, then the true history of our country can be scary to those who don’t know it. What if we aren’t what we always said we were?

 I googled Big Ideas Learning, a math textbook for second graders.  The Florida Education Board rejected it recently, along with scores of others, because . . . Well, they didn’t really say why except that too many of the math books contained CRT and other unspecified content. Somehow, teaching a second grader to add and subtract numbers equates to CRT if the illustrations depict other than white figures.  Go figure.

The mantra of the month is parental rights to control what is taught in the schools. Forget that it has always been that way. We elect school boards that hire teachers that are professionals and whose suggestions we should trust. No, this isn’t about the content of math books.

This is about scaring white suburban housewives and getting them to the polls in November. I wonder what the mantra will be next month.

I am waiting to hear it when I hear it.

 

 

 

 

 

EVIL!

We have seen evil this past month. We experienced evil each day of this past month. Evil is what Russia is doing to Ukraine. Evil is what the leader of Russia is ordering his armed forces to do to innocent people. The personification of evil is Putin, the President of Russia.

Russia, for no reasonable reason, invaded a free and independent nation. It claimed that all of Ukraine was really part of Russia, full of Nazis, and not really an independent country. This is the second time Russia invaded Ukraine in recent years. In 2014 it invaded and annexed Crimea, claiming that it was part of Russia. We stood by and let it happen. This time we galvanized democracies around the world and especially in Europe to oppose the Russian efforts. This really is a fight between autocracy and democracy.

After WWII the nations of the world agreed not to invade each other. Some of those mighty proclamations were on signed treaties and others were “gentlemen’s agreements.” The new world order made it unacceptable for one country to invade another.

Last month, however, overnight, Russia challenged and changed the world order that had been in place for over 80 years, four generations.  

Ukraine did not join NATO after the breakup of the Soviet Union as so many other Soviet Republics had done. Those who joined wanted protection from possible Russian invasion. As everyone knows by now, Article #5 of NATO’s charter states that if one nation is invaded, it is an attack on all thirty member states. NATO invoked Article #5 once, on September 11, 2001.

The atrocities are unacceptable, of course. Cities have been wiped off the face of the map. Millions of people were forced to flee their homes, families separated and exiled to other countries around the world. War crimes are in evidence across the country. The Geneva Conventions are treaties that relate to the treatment of “hors de combat,” people incapable of fighting: civilians, POWs.

Thomas Friedman, a NYT columnist, points out that Putin had no idea that his war would be a war watched in real-time by the rest of the world, with the exception of most of Russia itself. Elon Musk moved some of his “X” satellites over to Ukraine to help sustain the internet and cell phone capabilities of the nation. The smartphone enables us to see hospitals that have been bombed, a war crime, schools that have been bombed, a war crime, fleeing civilians who have been gunned down, a war crime; villages of people shot on sight on the streets, a war crime. President Biden has called for a war crimes trial for Putin.

The democracies of the world, fearing an actual war with Russia, are using economic sanctions in an effort to destabilize their economy. The results are mixed because some countries in Europe are unwilling to stop using Russian primary trading commodities, oil, and gas. If they did it would cripple the big bear. Meanwhile, billions of dollars of munitions are pouring into Ukraine and being put to good use as they push back and regain the land. The only good news is that the Russian ground forces are less capable than expected.

 So what is the free world doing? What can it do? We know that the autocratic world is watching. The recent reelection of Viktor Oban, a pro-Russian-pro Putin Hungarian Prime Minister tells us that autocrats can still be elected in some countries. Other countries are watching the response by democratic countries to this onslaught. China is watching, Ethiopia is watching, Taiwan is watching, Sudan is watching, Burkina Faso is watching. Guinea-Bissau is watching.

If Russia is allowed to get away with the invasion of a free country, and the changing of the world order, it will give a green light to those who want to destroy liberal governance and democracy. It will give credence to those in the U.S. who want to destroy the democratic ideals of our experiment in self-government by the people, those who want to limit the diversity of the nation, and those who want to suppress the right to vote.

Even as we see the results of the Russian barbarism exploding across the Ukraine cities and villages, we still have powerful talking heads on cable TV extolling the virtues of Russia, of Putin, and the downsides of the invaded nation. These same people constantly call for the diminution of the free state.

If Russia succeeds, European democracy will be put to the test and American democracy already balancing on the edge of failure might be pushed over the side. Russia cannot be allowed to win, and when she loses she must be punished.

First They Came!

We read First They Came back in our school days; we read it every so often after that. We think about it from time to time for a few minutes, and then move on. Life is busy!

Martin Niemoller, a German Lutheran Pastor wrote his “confessional prose” about his cowardice following the Nazi’s rise to power in Germany before and during WWII.

          “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out –

          because I was not a socialist.

 

          Then they came for the trade unionist, and I did not speak out –

          because I was not a trade unionist.

 

          Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –

          because I was not a Jew.

 

          Then they came for me –

          and there was no one left to speak for me.”

 

I wondered if something written in 1936 could apply to our lives nearly 90 years later.

         First they came for the Ukrainians, and I did not speak out –

because I was not a Ukrainian.

 

Then they came for the journalist, and I did not speak out –

because I am not a journalist.

 

Then they came for …

 

 

 

 

From Tepid to Hot!

At the end of WWII, we went from hot wars to cold wars that ensued until the fall of the Berlin Wall, give or take a few years. We have been in a Tepid War ever since, well, until last week. We just went from Tepid to Hot! Just how hot it will get is anyone’s guess, but it doesn’t take much to make a limited war a world war. 

On July 28, 1914, Cavrilo Princip, a Serbian Nationalist, shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife. The fatal gunshots that rang out in Sarajevo that sunny day resulted in a world war in which 17 million people died and 25 million suffered injuries. It didn’t have to be!

Europe of that day was a conglomeration of empires with secret treaties propping them up, pledging mutual military support, with generally high regard for members of the nobility. Austria Hungary had to avenge the death of its next Emperor. Germany had to protect itself from Russia, The Ottoman Empire had to support its allies and Great Britain had to feign support for France. Historians still argue over the real causes of “the war to end all wars,” but Cavrilo gets most of the blame.

Russia invaded Ukraine last week. We now live under a new world order.

The NYT editorial, on February 24, 2022, may have said it best:

“The magnitude of the Russian gambit is staggering. Whatever Mr. Putin’s ideas on how Ukraine should relate to Russia, whatever his grievances over Western encroachment on what he perceives as Russia’s sphere of influence, whatever his views on Russia’s place in Europe and the world, an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign European state is an unprovoked declaration of war on a scale, on a continent and in a century when it was thought to be no longer possible...  There will be body bags.”

Putin signaled months ago that Ukraine was in the crosshairs and belonged to Russia, politically and culturally. Most Ukrainians disagreed.  Many didn’t believe him. Too many ignored his bluster, World leaders couldn’t imagine a European country invading another. It really hasn’t happened since WWII, when international law ruled out this sort of thing. Russia proclaimed international law null and void.

In a speech to the Russian people, Putin proclaimed two small sections of Ukraine, Donetsk, and Luhansk, to be independent states. True, they were centers of Russian resistance, but they were controlled by Ukraine. Putin declared that it was necessary to invade Ukraine to provide for the safety of Russian nationals in those two areas. Then he invaded from the north, the south, and the east. Tanks rolled, rockets flew, troops came ashore near Odessa, airfields were bombed, cyber attacks cut off communications, and women and children fled. Every man eighteen to sixty years old was ordered to stay and fight. And fight they did, slowing the Russian advance to the capital and other major cities. Russia had the missiles but Ukraine had the hearts of its people.

Ukraine isn’t a member of the EU or NATO, so it is on its own in this battle. The rest of Europe can provide it with arms and equipment, impose economic sanctions on Russia, and wring their hands in despair, but that might not help much in the end. Putin warned the west that if they interfered in Ukraine, they would face “such consequences that you have never encountered in your history,” a clear statement that he was prepared to retaliate with nuclear weapons. On Sunday, he put the nuclear forces in a “special regime of combat duty.”

The West has cut Russia out of SWIFT,[i] the international bank clearinghouse. Without access to SWIFT, Russians can’t trade in anything but rubles, and they can’t exchange them for any other currency. They can’t bring dollars or Euros into Russia or use foreign currency to live outside the country. Switzerland froze all Russian assets in its banks, an unheard-of reversal of its claim to neutrality that has reigned for many decades. On Sunday, Europe closed its air space to all Russian-controlled airplanes, including private planes. Ukraine looks like a donut hole on the map of planes in the air. Unless a Russian wants to go to China, they are pretty much forced to stay in the country.

So what does this all mean for the future of Europe and the U.S.? It is too early to tell, but one can imagine, can’t one?

The best-case scenario has Russia realizing the error of Putin’s ways, going home, and paying for the damage it inflicted. Not likely!

Putin’s stated objective is to decapitate the government of Ukraine, take out the military, and install a puppet government that it can control. That would give Russia control over the vast mineral resources of Ukraine as well as the food production capability of the nation.[ii]

The worst-case scenario is that Russia sees how easy it is to take over one former soviet state and then it decides to take over another former member of the Soviet Union. That means an all-out war on the continent. China is watching how the U.S. responds to Russia. That will give Beijing a hint to how we would respond if it tried to take Taiwan by force.

NATO’s[iii] members are bound by Article #5 which calls for collective defense: if one country is attacked, it is considered an attack on all member states and that all members will come to the aid of other members. The only time Article #5 has been invoked was on 9/11/2001. An invasion of Poland, or the Baltic countries would put NATO at war with Russia. It would put the U.S. at war with Russia.

The rub, of course, is that you have another world war. Today’s military equipment is too sophisticated to allow for fighting like past wars. Simply knocking out a few satellites brings down the internet worldwide; a bit of computer hacking brings down the electric grid, a bit more shuts down the bank ATM machines. Rockets can still reach the U.S. mainland in less than thirty minutes. Are we ready for that?

Are we ready to send hundreds of thousands of troops and armament to the European continent? Are we ready to reinstitute the draft for both men and women? Are we ready to …?

I don’t like Hot!

[i] SWIFT is the Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications located in Belgium.

[ii] Ukraine’s vast resources include large amounts of uranium and other minerals. Today 42.6% of Ukrainian exports go to the E.U.

[iii] NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) consists of 30 member states, most of Western Europe and  Canada, and the U.S. 

 It was meant to be a relaxing day: sunny, warm for the time of year, blue sky, nothing on the schedule. Then I read the morning readings: online newspapers, favored blogs, unfavorable musings just to “keep the enemy closer.”[i] What could go wrong?

I read about a former president’s Texas rally, where he called his base of supporters to march in the streets if prosecutors across the country tried to take him to court for felony crimes, including trying to overthrow the government, to which he admits involvement. At that same rally, he stated that he had encouraged the Vice President to alter the results of the Electoral College votes because he had the right to do that.  

Then, there was an article reporting efforts by legislators and ultra-conservatives to ban books by the hundreds from school libraries. And to add interest to the day, I read an in-depth review of a new book by Barbara Walter, How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them. It was not to be a relaxing day no matter the sunshine in mid-winter.

Walter is a professor at the University of California San Diego. She spent thirty years studying civil wars. She has the chops to help us understand the phenomena. Her research spans the globe’s uprisings over the centuries. She concludes that there are three early indicators of potential civil wars.[ii]

The first is when a country begins to trend away from democracy or moves away from autocracy. The Polity Index developed by the Political Instability Task Force measures those movements using a +10 to -10 scale. They place the U.S. smack dab in the middle with other countries defined as anocracies, neither democracies nor autocracies. We can argue about our place on the scale,[iii] but data, developed over several decades, shows us moving further away from a true democracy than more of us think we are.[iv] Anocracies are most vulnerable to civil uprisings.

The second indicator is factionalism, defined as when a political party is based on ethnicity, religion, or race instead of ideology. This is the point where politics goes from being about the good of the country and more toward the interest of their members and their group.[v]

The third indicator is when a dominant group senses a loss of status reversal. On a Washington Post Live broadcast with Jonathan Capehart, Walter said that a large segment of Americans is experiencing status issues. She says, interestingly, that it isn’t Republicans vs. Democrats or whites vs. blacks so much as it is whites vs. brown people and Christians vs. Muslims and Nones.

If Walter is correct, we should prepare for more insurrections, for more street fighting. The “Troubles” in Ireland[vi] might be the model rather than Gray and Blue armies marching toward the capitol.

Last week, speaking before a Federalist Society meeting in Florida, the former Vice President stated the issue saying, “I had no right to overturn the election … The truth is there’s more at stake than our party or our political fortunes. If we lose faith in the Constitution, we won’t just lose elections – we’ll lose our country.”

Mike Detmer, a candidate for the Michigan Senate told his followers that they needed to show up armed to ensure that they can observe vote counting in the next election.[vii] He went on to explain that the Second Amendment is there to let the government know that the people are armed and ready to “lock and load.”

Thirty-four states have bills before them designed to make it more difficult for people to vote. Most will pass into law, including possibly a bill or two that allows the legislature to overturn the results of elections; although that was a bridge too far for the Speaker of the Arizona House who ensured the bill would not see the light of day.

Last week the National Republican Committee censured two sitting members of the House because they are willing to serve on the committee investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection. The RNC described the assault on the Capitol as “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” Generally, ordinary citizens visiting the Capitol don’t bring war-grade guns while dressed as trained militia.

Then, I read a news article about the ban-the-books movement that engrosses the nation, often promoted as moms and dads seeking input into what kind of books are in the school library. A political candidate in Texas asked the state school board to review over 850 books that he and his supporters find objectionable.[viii]

The books on the list include classics used in grade schools and high schools for years. MAUS, a graphic novel about the Holocaust is very popular for banning because it has one drawing of a semi-naked woman in a bathtub, never mind that the book won a Pulitzer Prize.  Within weeks of its banning in a school district in Tennessee, it rose to #1 on the Amazon best-seller list.

If you want a teenager to read a book, ban it!

So, what is the point?

The U.S. is in a period of severe flux to be sure. Iron-clad truths are questioned, long-established institutions tossed about, and millions are seemingly willing to accept political power struggles as the new norm. All of these are moves away from democracy. They are power plays, always in the name of preserving our way of life. Is it serious? Yes! Will we outlive it? I think we can but who knows? We can if the majority of people erect a firewall to prevent armed insurrections, tearing institutions asunder, and call for renewed adherence to traditional approaches to governance. At some point, someone has to say, “Enough is enough.”

For the republic to survive, political parties must focus on ideology and programs that move us toward a more perfect union. We must come to grips with the idea that this isn’t our grandparent’s country. It is a younger nation with younger ideas looking for younger leaders. This cohort wants the people to rule, not some party. We need to accept the migration to urban areas where high-skill jobs await. 

We must remember what happened in other countries when the party and the party leader became more important than the free exercise of democracy. Where shall we start – Hong Kong, China, Russia, the USSR, Sudan, Ethiopia, Congo, Eritrea, Rwanda, Argentina, Chile, Uganda, Myanmar, etc? It always started with a small group discontent with changing power cells, loss of influence, or unhappiness with immigrants and the economic system.

 

In our current state of affairs, we have a political party hell-bent on making it difficult for people to vote. The most popular talking heads on cable TV continually foment distrust of opponents and transform public health precautions into political actions that keep the pandemic going. It’s the Proud Boys spewing white nationalism and anti-Semitism, then being described as “good people” by our national leader. It's a political party's strategy to create distrust of the electoral process. Book banning and book burning limits education rather than encourage it.

Each action is one small step in our national journey away from democratic ideals.  

The point is we have always criticized other countries for these same misbehaviors. Are we no longer any better than them?

Are we no longer the shining city on the hill casting a bright beacon for democracy?

Are we no longer us?

 

 

 

 

---

[i]The Prince, Nicole Machiavelli, “keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” “One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.”

[ii] New York Times, 01/18/2022, How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them, Barbara F. Walter, PhD

[iii] A group sponsored by the CIA originally maintained the Polity Index. Many political scientists question its approach but generally use it as a reference to track political movement in a country, trends if not absolute progress.

[iv] We can argue that we are a republic, not a democracy, but that isn’t the point.

[v] NYT ibid

[vi] The Troubles lasted from 1960-to 1998. It began when Catholics demanded equal treatment from the Protestant ruling party, and it was a fight to free the country from England. 3,500 people died because of the conflict which included street fighting and assignations on a regular basis.

[vii] Detroit News, January 31, 2022

[viii] Matt Krause, a member of the Texas Legislature, who is running for Attorney General sent a letter to all school districts in the state asking them if they have any of the 850 books in their school libraries or in classrooms because the books might make students “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish … because of race or sex.”