Category: Politics

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Coronavirus, COVID-19 Politics Religion

God Will Take Care of You

There’s an old morality tale which has recently made the rounds as a meme on social media. You’ve probably read or heard some version of it, but to refresh your memory, it goes like this:

A fellow was stuck on his rooftop in a flood. He was praying to God for help.

Soon a man in a rowboat came by and shouted to the man on the roof, “Jump in, I can save you.”

The stranded man shouted back, “No, it’s OK, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me.”

So the rowboat went on.

Then a motorboat came by. “The man in the motorboat shouted, “Jump in, I can save you.”

To this the man on the roof said, “No thanks, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me. I have faith.”

So the motorboat went on.

Then a helicopter came by and the pilot shouted down, “Grab this rope and I will lift you to safety.”

To this the stranded man again replied, “No thanks, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me. I have faith.”

So the helicopter pilot reluctantly flew away.

Soon the water rose above the rooftop and the man drowned. He went to Heaven. He finally got his chance to discuss this whole situation with God, at which point he exclaimed, “I had faith in you but you didn’t save me, you let me drown. I don’t understand why!”

To this God replied, “I sent you a rowboat and a motorboat and a helicopter! What more did you expect?”

(Copied from Truthbook.com)

The man in this little story seems deluded by a concept of God which is quite common: the image of a remote deity who intervenes in human affairs during emergencies but who seems somewhat remote from everyday happenings.

I’m not arguing for or against the existence of God; I’m arguing for a coherent view of God among those who do choose theism over atheism. I don’t really like the god I read about every day on social media.

My first thought when I hear “God will take care of me” is “I wonder why God didn’t take care of the 630,000 people who have already died from COVID in this country alone.” I wonder why God didn’t love those people, too. That’s not a god I can believe in. At least two families among my personal friends and acquaintances have lost members to COVID. What an insult to suggest that God will take care of me, even if I refuse to follow any of the directives for keeping myself and others healthy, but God must not have protected those people who died! What an arrogant, self-centered world view and what a repugnant image of God!

Like the man stranded on the roof, waiting for God to physically appear, take him by the hand, and guide him to safety, many Americans suffer from a view of God that limits God to search-and-rescue missions. The all-powerful God they claim to believe in seems otherwise disconnected.

One perplexing question is why God has been separated from science and why science has been made the enemy. I found this definition of “science” in an online dictionary: “the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.” If one believes God created the “physical and natural world,” one should see scientists as explorers of God’s work, discoverers of God’s marvels, solvers of God’s mysteries. If scientists are human beings created by God, and if all of the materials available for them to work with were created by God, and if God can direct human affairs–all of which many theists claim to believe–why could that same God not inspire scientists to put together certain materials in ways that might protect or rescue humans from a deadly disease? Science and God could be seen as partners, not enemies.

Another problem with the unfortunate image of God in the opening parable is that the man’s safety and well-being are totally dependent on God’s action. My mother always said “God helps those who help themselves.” If the man on the roof had believed he needed to take responsibility for his own rescue, he’d have been praying for strength, endurance, and guidance while actively seeking materials from which to build a raft and being on the lookout for rescue opportunities. Standing still and praying for a miraculous act of God–instead of using the God-given instincts, knowledge, and materials at his disposal–was lazy and irresponsible and certainly not indicative of faith. Those who trust God to protect them from a disease to which they willingly expose themselves every day by ignoring their personal responsibility is as shortsighted and deadly as drowning on a roof after refusing three offers of assistance. I wonder if their God might ask, “I gave you doctors, scientists, and government leaders. Why did you not listen to them?”

A little back story might be helpful here. The writer of this small piece of fiction doesn’t reveal how the man happened to find himself on the rooftop as the flood waters rose to precarious levels, but with a little imagination we can think of several possible storylines.

One possibility is that the man was on the rooftop because he was desperate, desolate, and without means of escape. Sadly, millions of people in this powerful, wealthy country of ours find themselves in such circumstances. NPR’s Laura Sullivan reports, “After Hurricane Katrina, around 100,000 people were trapped inside New Orleans, unable to escape for days. The evacuation plans for the city fell apart even before the storm hit.” These were people who had nowhere to go and no means of transportation to go anywhere. They were people whom the system failed in the lead-up to the storm and had previously failed many times during their lives. Heart-wrenching stories emerged of people living on rooftops and in attics praying and hoping to be rescued in time. Although they were sometimes criticized for their “choice” to remain when they had been urged to evacuate, their choices were not the cause of their plight.

Many Americans have been failed by our health care system and are understandably distrustful of public health advice and mandates. Their skepticism and disdain for the medical profession is the result of a lifetime of having to choose between going to the doctor and buying food, between having necessary surgery and paying the rent. They’ve been denied access to first-rate facilities and limited to public clinics and VA centers. Why should those people believe anything they hear from the CDC, the WHO, or the highly credentialed doctor on their TV screens?

Like the New Orleans residents trapped without hope, some anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers deserve our understanding and compassion. Unlike the man on the rooftop, they may have ceased praying for rescue because their circumstances seem too hopeless even for God to remedy. Criticizing them would be akin to criticizing New Orleans residents who “chose” to ride out a deadly storm. Critics who appeal to God to make those “stubborn” folks do the right thing could do far more good by asking God where they might be of service in alleviating fears, dispensing information, gaining trust, offering transportation, and giving financial assistance.

A woman named Dorothy Oliver has made the news this week and become a national hero for persuading nearly everyone in her tiny town of Panola, Alabama, to be vaccinated. As of August 24, 2021, 94% of the 400 citizens of Panola had been vaccinated, including 100% of the citizens over the age of 65. Elizabeth Broadbent reports,

“Panola didn’t have a vaccination clinic. The nearest shot available was 39 miles away . . . and many residents of Panola don’t have cars. So she and Russ-Jackson [Drucilla Russ-Jackson, county commissioner] teamed up to bring a pop-up clinic to Panola. But they only agreed to come if Oliver had forty people willing to get the shot.” So Ms. Oliver started making phone calls, and she talked to everyone who came into her general store. Ms. Rush-Jackson explains her own involvement: “I just felt like I had to do it because the government, nobody does enough in this area. This area here is majority Black. Kind of puts you on the back burner. That’s just it. I mean, you don’t have to put nothing else with that. That’s just it. I don’t have to elaborate on that one.”

Although desperate, neglected populations might feel asking God for help is as futile as expecting help from a country that has ignored their existence, the best kind of prayer others can offer on those people’s behalf is “praying with the feet.” When my mother was teaching me “God helps those who help themselves,” she was showing me by her life that she believed God also helps those who help others. That’s a view of God I can believe in.

Not everyone can do what Dorothy Oliver did. The greater Seattle area is just a smidge larger than Panola, Alabama; but I can talk to people in my realm of acquaintance, and so can you. The herd can be won over, one person at a time.

Here’s a second possible storyline that brings our protagonist to the rooftop in desperation. As a long-time Floridian (now Washingtonian), I’ve lived through many hurricanes. The torturous lead-up to every named storm includes–among other things–full tracking information, reports of its strength, and predictions on where and when it may make landfall. Predicated on all of that information, various authorities issue warnings, advisories, and mandates. When advisories include evacuation orders, those orders always come with the caveat that people who choose to ignore the order and remain in their homes should not expect immediate assistance, because conditions may be too dangerous to send out rescue teams and active teams may have difficulty reaching people in time.

Perhaps our friend on the rooftop had warnings, could have avoided ending up where our story finds him, but decided to take his chances because he knew more than the experts; and besides, God would take care of him if things didn’t go as he hoped. One must wonder why he didn’t think of turning to God before the situation became dire. Why didn’t he ask God for guidance on how best to keep himself safe? Why didn’t he ask God to help him find a place to go and a means to get there? Why didn’t he ask God for wisdom in deciding which authorities and information he should trust? Why did he limit God to rescuing him in a crisis but not helping him avoid the crisis?

Every day during the current global disaster, this concept of God is on full display, especially among “freedom”-loving Americans. Wearing masks is unnecessary, because God will take care of me. Being vaccinated is dangerous; I’d rather trust God than medicine. Leaders who attempt to guide us through the crisis are the enemies because they’re frauds, perpetrators of a grand hoax, cannibalistic pedophiles, power-hungry dictators, and so on. I’d rather trust God than human leaders. Scientists are suspect because, because, because. Well, I’m not sure, but I’m going to trust God instead of scientists; God’s way is best. I hear it every day!

Another possible reason our rooftop friend is in danger is that he got his information from all the wrong sources and based his decisions on flawed data and opinions. His social media friends said the storm was no big deal and was being overhyped; he watched a few YouTube videos showing sunny skies and dry ground and accusing meteorologists of spreading fear. He scoffed at the idea of checking the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association) because it’s a government agency, and you can’t trust the government. And those people on CNN and MSNBC never tell the truth! All that stuff is based on science, and science is phony baloney. You can’t trust the media. Or science.

Surreal as it sounds, many of our fellow citizens have more confidence in treatments such as Ivermectin (a horse de-worming pill), hydroxychloroquine (an immunosuppressive drug used to treat malaria, lupus, and some forms of arthritis), bleach injections (never a good idea), and shining lights into one’s body cavities (also of no value except as an odd visual) than they have in vaccinations, monoclonal antibody treatment, and proven methods of prevention such as mask wearing. Their misplaced confidence is the direct result of watching Fox News, accepting disinformation found on social media, and trusting the half-baked opinions and conspiracy theories spouted by their anti-government and anti-science friends.

Apparently the god whom these people are trusting to keep them from harm when they are exposed to COVID doesn’t care about the stupid, careless, and irresponsible actions that place their lives in danger; this god will protect them from everything, including their own recklessness, and will perform magical healing when their ill-informed choices lead to the logical results. Never mind that the same God did not step in and intervene for the 630,000 folks who have already died. Their explanation for those deaths is that it was “just their time.” God didn’t fail them; God had simply decided eons ago that this is how their lives would end.

“Deus ex machina” is a phrase from the ancient Greek theater, where Euripedes and other playwrights delivered a god to the stage with the help of a crane–hence the Latin “deus ex machina,” or in English “god from the machine.” The god was delivered as the miraculous solution to a seemingly hopeless situation: a last-minute redemption by the divine, just when it seemed all hope had been lost. I prefer the God my mother taught me, the one who helps me help myself. Expecting God to rescue me from the results of my own carelessness and irresponsibility is careless and irresponsible.

As Thomas Paine wrote, and I have often quoted, “These are the times that try men’s [and women’s] souls.” Standing on a rooftop praying for help while ignoring all of the resources we already possess is not going to get us out of this crisis. Claiming our “right” to make our own decisions while ignoring the fact that every person’s freedom affects every other person’s freedom is not going to end the suffering. If you want to pray, pray with your feet and hands! You can start by putting on a damn mask and getting vaccinated.

Categories
Coronavirus, COVID-19 Politics

No Peeing in the Pool

Sorry to be so crass, but this is a crisis. COVID numbers are once again on the rise, just as we thought we were heading back toward some version of normal life. July has been a bad month for the virus, leaving Dr. Fauci saying “We’re going in the wrong direction.” Even Donald Trump’s surgeon general, Vice Admiral Dr. Jerome Adams, has sounded the alarm: The pandemic is “spiraling out of control again.” Adams attributes the surge to the fact that too few people have been vaccinated.

A few years back, when my now teenage grandsons were cute little preschoolers, one afternoon I took them to the local kiddie pool, where we had gone many times before. This day, we walked up to the gate only to find it locked, with a sign expressing regrets that the pool had to be closed for the rest of the day. We couldn’t imagine why the pool would be closed during normal operating hours on a beautiful summer afternoon. But then, returning to our car, we met a father and son who filled us in. There had been a birthday party just a little earlier during which one of the guests had not only done a little #1 in the pool but had done the dreaded #2 as well. Emergency! Pool closed!

There’s a metaphor developing here. One might ask why the pool staff couldn’t have simply scooped out the offending material and gone on with business. It was, after all, just one small heap in a large body of water. What could possibly go wrong? Or one could ask why they didn’t simply rope off the small area where the accident occurred and allow swimmers to enjoy the rest of the pool. One might just as well ask why pool managers post “Don’t pee in the pool” signs in the first place. Couldn’t they rope off a designated peeing section where swimmers could relieve themselves without contaminating the whole pool? The answers to these questions are too obvious to merit discussion. What happens in Vegas may (or may not) stay in Vegas, but what happens in one part of the pool does not stay in that part of the pool. It contaminates the entire body.

And that brings us to several groups whose reluctance to protect themselves and the “herd” are causing this latest crisis. As of this date, fewer than half of all Americans have been fully vaccinated; even allowing for the millions of children who are not yet eligible, we are still far short of the number needed to achieve the long-hoped-for herd immunity.

According to CNN’s Travis Caldwell, Holly Yan, and Dakin Andone–on Sunday, July 25–in 48 states, the rate of new cases in the past week jumped by at least 10% compared to the previous week; in 34 of those states, the increase was more than 50%. Southern California–including San Diego and Los Angeles–is experiencing the highest numbers they’ve seen since February, and hospitalizations in LA County more than doubled in a two-week period in July, topping 700 for the first time since March.

It’s been well established that this latest surge is caused by the Delta variant of the virus, which is the most transmissible version we’ve seen yet. This phase has been given the label “Pandemic of the Unvaccinated, because at least 83% of new cases and 97% of hospitalizations are unvaccinated people (University of Massachusetts Medical School). There have been a small number of “breakthrough infections” among the fully vaccinated; but the cases have been mild, have not required hospitalization, and have not caused death. Conclusion: The vaccines are working.

Americans are known around the world for our rugged individualism; unlike citizens of other countries, notably Asian cultures, our first concern is rarely for the collective body. We pride ourselves on being hardy, independent, and self-sufficient; and many Americans are far more focused on their “rights” than on the responsibilities associated with those rights.

Then there are the libertarians who, as the name suggests, value liberty above all else and who believe people allowed to choose for themselves can be trusted to do right things and act in the best interest of themselves and their fellow citizens. That deeply misguided notion could be debunked by a quick study of human psychology and world history.

The Cato Institute denies that libertarians, despite their fierce insistence on personal choice, have no concern for the effects of their individual actions on others. Their website offers this description:

“To protect rights, individuals form governments. But government is a dangerous institution. Libertarians have a great antipathy to concentrated power, for as Lord Acton said, ‘Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ Thus they want to divide and limit power, and that means especially to limit government. . . . Limited government is the basic political implication of libertarianism.”

Although not everyone who advocates limited government and expresses antipathy toward government calls themselves “libertarian,” suspicion and distrust of government has grown exponentially in my lifetime. The dominant argument of the gun slingers who resist even small, common-sense changes in gun legislation is that if the government takes away any portion of the freedom to own firearms, the populace will be left defenseless in the case of attack by the government.

Next in line is the God-will-take-care-of-me group. I’m not disparaging anyone’s faith or religious practice, just saying certain people may need to examine their beliefs a bit more deeply. Those who believe all they need is God to protect them against a deadly virus should ask themselves whether God loves them more than God loved the 650,000 people who have already died. My high school classmate John was a good man and a beloved husband, father, grandfather, and great grandfather. Does John’s death from COVID mean God didn’t care about him or that John was not worthy of God’s protection? No.

Since diseases don’t recognize social status or personal virtue, even the best and most powerful are as much at risk as the most evil or powerless. President Abraham Lincoln, widely regarded as our best president and a fine example of morality and honor, lost three of his four sons to disease during their childhood and teen years. One son, Willie, died at age 11, during Lincoln’s presidency, of typhoid fever believed to have been contracted from contaminated water that because of the Civil War then supplied the White House. If Honest Abe didn’t earn divine intervention or immunity from suffering, that doesn’t bode well for my chances.

And these days we can never forget the conspiracy theorists. Many who are refusing vaccination are convinced the government is using a public health crisis as a venue for carrying out such nefarious operations as injecting us all with tracking chips, stealing our DNA, and making people magnetic. If that sounds more like the plot for a science fiction movie, welcome to the 21st century!

Evangelicals were a relatively quiet, low-profile group until President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) “put liberal aspects of his Baptist tradition front and center, whether appealing for racial equality, lamenting economic disparity or making human rights concerns integral to American foreign policy” (Clyde Haberman, New York Times, 28 Oct 2018). Mr. Haberman attributes Carter’s replacement by Ronald Reagan in 1980 to Carter’s fellow evangelicals’ displeasure with his liberal agenda. Their disillusionment with President Carter led evangelicals to put their considerable clout behind Ronald Reagan, also a professed Christian, even though Reagan’s lifestyle–“twice-married, alienated from his children, almost never attended church”–“flew counter to much of what they considered elements of an upright life.”

The contemporaneous birth of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, with its anti-abortion, anti-homosexuality agenda, according to Mr. Haberman made the late 1970s a pivot point for the evangelical voice in American politics. Since then, they have become the most powerful voting bloc in the Republican Party. Also known for their anti-science point of view, their opposition to vaccines should surprise no one.

The last group is less distinct but among the most powerful: those in whom the tribal mentality is most deeply ingrained. Dr. Zeke Emanuel, speaking to MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell on July 26, sadly informed viewers that only 9% of U.S. hospitals have fully vaccinated staffs, because according to Dr. Emanuel, health care workers are subject to the same disinformation being promulgated among society at large. The divide between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, according to the doctor, has created an in-group/out-group environment in which either having or not having received one’s inoculation to COVID constitutes a “badge of honor” which identifies people with their respective tribes. Absurd as that sounds, it’s a powerful force not easily overcome by facts and logic.

Here’s the problem with all of those who believe vaccination should be a personal choice: They’re peeing in the pool. Remember the old seating arrangement in restaurants: smoking and non-smoking sections? I do. No matter where one was seated in a large room with no solid dividers, some smoke was bound to reach one’s nostrils, and being seated in the last row of the non-smoking section–directly beside the first row of the smoking section–was the same as sitting in the smoking section. There’s a reason restaurant managers no longer use that system. Everyone within an enclosed space breathes the same air, and everyone in the pool is swimming in the same water, because neither air nor water can create its own barrier.

My fully vaccinated status took effect on April 12. I received my two injections of the Moderna vaccine on March 1 and March 29, so April 12 was the end of the two-week post-injection period. According to the CDC and Washington State guidelines, I can now be with other fully vaccinated people, I can travel, and I can shop or eat at restaurants without wearing a mask. And for several weeks, I enjoyed those freedoms; but now, I’m becoming more wary, am more likely to don the mask even when I’m not required. During a shopping trip on Sunday, July 25, I saw more of my fellow Washingtonians masked up than I had seen in several weeks.

Thanks to the half of Americans who foolishly believe their choice to decline the vaccine affects only themselves, it’s highly likely that I will soon have no choice about whether I go out without a mask, travel, or maybe even go all the way back to quarantine. Although the small number of breakthrough infections for vaccinated people have been mild and have not resulted in hospitalization or death, a vaccinated person infected with COVID is capable of transmitting the virus to others. Breaking news: A headline in today’s New York Times says the CDC is likely to announce later (July 27) today a reversal in its mask guidelines, requiring fully vaccinated people to mask up again. Thanks a lot, vaccine rebels!

I want to be clear that I have no objection to mask mandates; I have willingly worn a mask for the last almost year and a half, and I’ll willingly do it again. I simply resent the fact that uninformed, misinformed, and obstinate people are stopping the progress that would be a benefit to us all.

I respect those who are hesitant to receive a vaccine because they fear medical issues may result, but I encourage those people to pro-actively seek answers to their questions instead of simply holding onto their fears while they impede progress. A family member who was recently diagnosed with fibrosis asked her doctor whether that diagnosis should prohibit her from being vaccinated; the doctor firmly replied: “Well, do you want to have fibrosis AND COVID or just fibrosis?” That family member has now received her first dose and will soon receive the second. She’s smart. She sought professional advice and then followed that advice.

The simple fact is vaccines work. I bear on my left arm the faint remains of the scar left by the smallpox vaccination I received at age 6. At the time, no one was permitted to enter first grade without that scar; it was the “vaccine passport” of the day. U.S. doctors stopped routinely giving smallpox vaccines in 1980 because smallpox had been eradicated from the world. Smallpox went from being “one of history’s deadliest diseases . . . estimated to have killed more than 300 million people since 1900 alone” (American Museum of Natural History) to fully eradicated within a few decades.

The Immunization Action Coalition says, “Eradicating smallpox prevented millions of deaths and—by removing the need to treat and prevent the disease—saves many countries billions of dollars. Perhaps just as important: it showed the world that disease eradication was possible.”

Polio, another dreaded disease responsible for killing and permanently disabling millions of Americans–including one U.S. President–began its decline in 1955 with the introduction of an effective vaccine, and the U.S. has been polio-free since 1979, according to the CDC. Polio cannot be cured, only prevented; so millions of people are able to walk today and millions more lived to become adults because a vaccine prevented them from getting polio.

Parents no longer live in fear of losing their young children to measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis (whooping cough) because vaccinations for those child-killing diseases have been a routine part of infant care for decades. Yellow fever, HPV, Hepatitis, influenza, and Ebola have also been controlled by vaccination.

French president Emmanuel Macron announced on July 12 that he is “putting in restrictions on the non-vaccinated rather than on everyone.” Those restrictions include being denied access to eateries, cinemas, museums, and public transportation without proof of vaccination. The alternative is to show a negative test result, but that test will no longer be free; it will cost 49 euros. Additional mandates include required vaccination for health care workers and others who have close contact with clients.

Talk of vaccine passports has raised eyebrows and tempers, but vaccine mandates are not new. The smallpox vaccine was required for my fellow first graders and me to start school. I had to show vaccination records for my children as part of their kindergarten entrance requirements. To be admitted to Florida Gulf Coast University, my daughter was required to have a vaccination which had not been among the routine shots given when she was a baby and toddler. Yet I can’t recall any examples of those vaccination requirements becoming political issues.

Bottom line is we’re all swimming in the same pool, so those who choose to exercise their freedom by making careless or irresponsible choices contaminate the water for all of us. John Donne may have put it a bit more eloquently when he wrote “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main[land],” but the simple, clear message from vaccinated Americans to vaccination resisters is “Stop peeing in the pool.”



		


	


	

		
		


			

		


		
	


	






	



	


		
			

				
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There’s More People Now!

		


			

		


		
	





	


		


			

Arthur Miller’s iconic character Willy Loman, in the play Death of a Salesman, lives out before the audience the last 24 hours of his unraveling life–a life that has been filled with disappointment and unfulfilled dreams. In a conversation with Linda, his long-suffering and enabling wife, Willy complains:





“The way they boxed us in here. Bricks and windows, windows and bricks. The street is lined with cars. There’s not a breath of fresh air in the neighborhood. The grass don’t grow any more, you can’t raise a carrot in the back yard. They should’ve had a law against apartment houses.”





Linda protests, “Well, after all, people had to move somewhere,” to which Willy–increasingly agitated–responds, “No, there’s more people now.” When Linda contradicts with “I don’t think there’s more people,” Willy erupts:





“There’s more people! That’s what’s ruining this country! Population is getting out of control. The competition is maddening!”





I recently read Irving Stone’s historical novel Those Who Love, about the lives of John and Abigail Adams, which led my thoughts back to the question of how our country’s–and our world’s–vastly expanded population changes how we live and the privileges and responsibilities we have as citizens.





For perspective, here are some numbers. In 1787, our Constitution was ratified; and three years later, in 1790, the first U.S. Census was conducted. The official population count at that time was 3,929,214; in 1949, the number was just over 149 million; and in 2021, the United States is home to over 331 million people. That means, in the 230+ years since our country’s founding, the population has grown to just over 84 times larger than it was in the beginning.





In 1790, the five largest U. S. cities were New York (33,131), Philadelphia (28,522), Boston (18,320), Charleston (16,359), and Baltimore (13,503). According to my handy calculator, the combined populations of those five cities is 109, 835. In 2021, New York City is home to a walloping 8,550,405; Philadelphia, 5,734,000; Boston, 4,315,000; Charleston, 421,774; and Baltimore, 2,333,000. Grabbing the calculator again, that’s a total of 21,354,179–or an increase of almost 195 times. Charleston, no longer even ranked among the country’s largest cities, is now home to nearly four times as many people as all five of 1790’s largest cities were. In fact, my tiny hometown Troy, Ohio–with its 2020 population of 26,739–is larger than four of the five largest cities in the country in 1790.





So at this stage you must be wondering, “Okay, but what’s your point?” Well, for one, a Constitution that was written for thirteen states, with a total head count of 3,929,214, now has to be applied to fifty states bursting with 331,000,000 people. Laws and customs meant to insure order and tranquility among a small number of humans spread out over a large continent must now be stretched to govern densely populated cities where as Willy Loman laments “There’s not a breath of fresh air.”





Imagine yourself at a buffet loaded with an abundance of delicious-looking foods. You take a quick glance around and discover you are one of only six people who will share this bounty. You each could eat your fill, and beyond, and have leftovers enough to do it again tomorrow and maybe the next day. Now picture the same amount of food to be shared by twenty people, now fifty. As the number grows but the resources remain the same, different considerations apply. Although six people might just stuff themselves into a food coma, twenty or fifty would have to calculate their fair share. Restraint, respect, and possibly a little sacrifice would have to be exercised.





Now go back to the comparison between the 2021 and 1790 census counts: 331,000,000 vs 3,929,214, and remember that’s a ratio of over 84:1. For every one person fighting for social and professional recognition in 1790, there are now 84 people; for every person using Earth’s resources then, we have 84 now; for every right granted to one person, we’re now granting that same right to 84 people. Cities are larger, there’s far less open territory, and the year of COVID has demonstrated what can happen to supply chains when an unexpected disaster occurs.





I recently made a trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks and was awestruck by the magnificence of Nature’s creations and by the immense power just beneath the surface that has the potential to change the whole face of that area in one moment. Yellowstone sits on top of a volcano, which has the whole place simmering like a pot of soup all the time. Old Faithful is the most well known of the many geysers in the park but only one of many, not to mention “mud pots,” steam holes, and other geothermic features. Watching Old Faithful erupt is breathtaking but also a reminder of how little control humans have over Nature.





Many scoff at the concept that humans must respect their use of the planet and be conscious of individual carbon footprints, and perhaps in 1790, people didn’t need to know much about such things; but because this is not 1790, and because there are now 84 times as many carbon footprints wreaking havoc on Earth’s fragile ecosystem, we absolutely must be conscious and careful consumers of Earth’s resources. Anyone who’s ever moved into a home or apartment after a previous resident has trashed the place knows what it takes to make the home livable again; if we trash the whole planet by our selfishness and greed, no amount of “remodeling” will put it back together. If our carelessness and selfishness change the climate and therefore the entire infrastructure, the results can’t even be fully predicted. Each of us is a tenant of this small planet for only a brief moment in time, and not one of us has the right to leave the place in a diminished condition.





Poet Ezra Pound wrote a haiku titled “In a Station of the Metro,” which for me has always evoked an image of life in the 20th and now 21st centuries:





“The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.”





In the days when the largest U.S. cities were smaller than our current small towns, individual citizens had opportunities to know a larger percentage of their neighbors; and there were fewer strangers to fear, a narrower range of opinions on civic matters, less competition for jobs and positions, more opportunities to stand out of the crowd and to distinguish themselves. In other words, meeting what Abraham Maslow called their “belonging” needs (level 3 in his hierarchy) and “esteem” needs (level 4) was a whole lot easier in 1790. It was not easy, of course, and not everyone found satisfaction for those needs, but there was far less stress and less competition then than now.





By 1913 when Ezra Pound wrote “In a Station of the Metro,” his image of “apparitions” (ghosts or ghostlike images) must have resonated with a generation in which the world was about to explode into its first worldwide war and in which finding a place to belong and to stand out had just gotten much more difficult. Now, 108 years later, Pound’s images are even more compelling. How many citizens today feel faceless and meaningless, like beautiful petals–their individual colors, shapes, and fragrances so fragile and fleeting–made transparent against the dark branch from which they grew.





What might people do to find the significance and meaningful existence they crave? Might they align themselves with a reality-TV star bent on destroying our democracy to feel they are part of something greater than themselves, to know what it means to be part of a powerful inner circle? Might they latch onto the most outlandish conspiracy theories if doing so made them feel they were the ones “in the know,” superior to those pathetic sheeple who believe what scientists and other suspicious sources tell them to believe? Might they join a mob that would attack our nation’s capitol intent on overturning the results of a fair election just to know the heady feeling of power and control that would result from literally shitting on the seat of the government which they feel has left them out?





Americans’ concern for their personal rights could “rightly” be called an obsession, and guarding one’s personal freedoms is a good thing so long as every person remains aware that each one of the 331,000,000 who currently call this country home is entitled to the same freedoms and rights. As a young person, I often heard the saying “Your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins.” The 33,131 citizens of 1790 New York City might swing their arms all day long without coming near another person’s nose. On today’s crowded NYC streets, however, the 8,550,405 New Yorkers can barely reach for the crossing button at a street corner without touching another human.





With greater numbers comes greater diversity and the necessity for a paradigm shift in our attitudes toward equality and individual rights. Purging outdated ideas of “normal” is a starting point. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of our population classified as “White only” (not Hispanic or Latino) was about 60% in 2020. Also from the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of Whites in the 1790 population was 80.7%, and that percentage increased steadily until it reached its peak in 1940 (89.8%) but has been declining every decade since 1940.





Racial and ethnic origin is, of course, not the only way in which the U.S. has become a more diverse nation. Ideas and practices have changed on everything from gender identity to marriage norms to women’s roles to religious affiliation and much more. In Irving Stone’s historical novel about John and Abigail Adams, the narrator often mentions the custom of the “holy walk,” practiced in the 1700s in cities both large and small. People would join their neighbors in Sunday morning community strolls toward their places of worship. Today, there is no such unity of thought about religious beliefs or church attendance. Growing up in a small town, I knew two women who we thought “might be” Lesbians. Today, I have many gay and Lesbian friends and have had numerous gay and Lesbian students. Applications and information forms used to offer two choices for gender: male and female; today’s forms have extended that list to four, five, or six choices, including “prefer not to say.”





One approach to living in a larger, more diverse population is to panic over one’s diminishing racial supremacy, loss of status, and lack of control. Such an approach might include creating a political party which recognizes only straight, white men; acknowledges only what the party regards as a “traditional” identity and lifestyle; advocates outlawing further watering down of the white majority; and restricts the rights of those who don’t fit their narrow definition of normal and acceptable. That party might also tie their rigid ideals to religious precepts to gain the benefit of appearing to be in alliance with God and claim to have the powers of the universe behind their corrupt purposes.





Dehumanizing “the other” is a strategy as old as humanity itself. Any time one person or people group has wanted to dominate or eliminate another group, they’ve simply declared the unwanted group a lesser species. Hitler did it, American slave owners did it, colonizers who found Native Americans a deterrent to accomplishing their goals did it. Certain Americans of the 21st century are doing it to immigrants, women, people of color, LGBTQ people. If their lives can be deemed of lesser value, taking away their rights can be justified–to some minds.





How does all of this change our responsibility as citizens? I’m not part of that political party which supports white supremacy; I respect my fellow citizens of all races and ethnicities, national origins, sexual and gender identities, and religious beliefs; I do my best to help others, to show kindness and compassion to all. But I can’t stop there.





The luxury of being a good person but uninvolved citizen is one no longer available to responsible people. Casting our votes, then trusting elected officials to do their jobs while we go on about our daily lives is not an option.





Darnella Frazier, the teen who filmed George Floyd’s murder with her cell phone camera when all she had intended to do at that moment was walk down the street to Cup Foods–something she had done “hundreds, maybe thousands of times”–took action when she saw an injustice being committed. If not for her cell phone video, the world might never have known exactly how George Floyd died and his murderer might have been released to harm others. Ms. Frazier made the statement:





“Even though this was a traumatic life-changing experience for me, I’m proud of myself. If it weren’t for my video, the world wouldn’t have known the truth. I own that. My video didn’t save George Floyd, but it put his murderer away and off the streets.”





At 18 years old, Ms. Frazier is now the recipient of a Special Pulitzer Award for her courage and responsibility.





Before February 2018, few people outside Parkland, Florida, had ever heard of Emma Gonzalez or David Hogg; now everyone knows who they are. Google them and you’ll find “American Activist” just below their names. These two young people survived the horrific mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, then turned their grief and anger into action, becoming highly vocal advocates for gun reform. They have led high-profile marches and protests, given numerous media interviews, and were (along with three of their fellow students) included on Time Magazine’s 2018 list “Time 100: The Most Influential People.”





Congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis put it this way:





“When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something; you have to do something.”





These young people, along with many others, saw something that wasn’t right, they said something, and they did something. No one of any generation has a right to do otherwise. “There’s more people now,” and that means more problems, a broader range of ideas, and the need for more understanding and the responsibility to take action. And it also means there is a place for everyone–all 331,000,000 of us! Elected officials are appointed to lead us, not to do all of our thinking and our work for us. Their job is to represent us; our job is to hold them accountable.





“There’s more people now.” It’s easy to fall into a feeling of meaninglessness, worthlessness, like those “apparitions in the crowd” Ezra Pound wrote about. It’s understandable to fear the loss of rights and freedom, but guarding those rights and freedoms means doing more than just complaining or trying to compensate by taking away the rights and freedoms of others. John Lewis perfectly described our duties as citizens in a global, diverse culture:





“Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society.”


		


	


	

		
	


	






	



	


		
			

				
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					Coronavirus, COVID-19 Politics Religion				

			


			
Politics, Propaganda,     and Paranoia

		


			

		


		
	





	


		


			

Among the more unsettling images now the icons of January 6 are those in which the Capitol attackers display symbols representing the Christian faith: signs and flags with such slogans as “Make America Godly Again,” “Hold the line, patriots. God wins,” “Jesus 2020,” “An Appeal to Heaven”; Christian flags; flags bearing the icthys (sign of the fish). Perhaps most troubling of all is a photo of a man standing behind a wooden cross with his head bowed against it and surrounded by others in postures of prayer, as if invoking the Almighty to align with them in their evil deeds.





A question I have often grappled with over the last decade or so is, When did the government become the enemy? Along with the related question, How did Christian Nationalism become the most prominent and influential religious ideology in America? The image of government as Evil Empire, promoted primarily by Christian Nationalists, has been used to justify everything from unregulated gun ownership to defiance of public health mandates meant to reduce the devastation of a pandemic.





Government as Evil Empire is not supported by our Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the writings of any of our leaders and great thinkers, and–sorry!–not even by the Bible. On the contrary, each of those sources depicts government as (1) necessary to maintaining order among communities of human beings and (2) needing to be closely monitored by the governed to prevent its overreach. James Madison said it most effectively in Federalist 52: “You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.”





The Old Testament Book of Judges reiterates several times the statement of chapter 17, verse 6: “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.” With no central government, only tribal leaders, even the high crime of murder was left to families who usually assigned an avenger of blood to administer justice. It’s pretty easy to imagine how such a system would play out in a nation with a current population of 331,000,000 people of wildly varying backgrounds and moral codes.





The simplest social contract in our country’s history was the Mayflower Compact, composed in 1620 by English colonists who sailed across the ocean on the Mayflower ship. The written compact was a preemptive measure by leaders who foresaw rebellion and chaos if the 102 passengers were turned loose on dry land with no guide for self-governance. The group had originally planned to join the Virginia Company, an established community, but–as a result of storms which blew them far off their charted course–found themselves in Massachusetts, near Cape Cod, instead. As the History.com editors put it, “Knowing life without laws could prove catastrophic, colonist leaders created the Mayflower Compact to ensure a functioning social structure would prevail.”





Essentially, those who signed and agreed to live under the Mayflower Compact consented to do three things: form a civil union, enact whatever laws were deemed necessary to maintain order within that union, and individually obey the laws enacted. That rudimentary compact is at the heart of the more sophisticated documents that have since formed the framework for our civil society: first, The Articles of Confederation and then our Constitution. Since allowing everyone to do what is right in their own eyes would lead to anarchy and chaos, the only way to live together in harmony is to be members of a society, elect leaders who will enact laws necessary for the common good, and then all play by the rules.





That sounds pretty ideal, right? But what happens when government does go awry, when officials do overstep the bounds of their power? And they do. Henry David Thoreau, in his well-known 1849 essay “Civil Disobedience,” begins by asserting that the best government is no government and that “when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.” One can’t miss the implication that humans were not in 1849 prepared for complete self-governance and I would argue are even less so in 2021.   





Further on in the essay, Thoreau poses some questions:





“Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?- in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislation? Why has every man a conscience, then?”





He concludes, 





“I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.”





That last statement sounds almost like no government, but I think in context he’s saying the only appropriate time to exercise civil disobedience–that is, knowingly and thoughtfully disregarding the law–is when the law requires something which the conscience forbids.





Thomas Jefferson’s well-known words, in the introduction to the Declaration of Independence, establish the purpose of government:





“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”





Humans are given certain rights by their Creator, and governments are instituted to secure–preserve, protect–those rights; and governments’ “just powers” are the ones assigned to them by the governed.





Thomas Paine, in his powerful book “The Rights of Man,” elaborates a bit more on Jefferson’s idea by dividing human rights into two categories: natural rights and civil rights. According to Paine,





“Natural rights are those which always appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the rights of others.”





He then defines civil rights:





“Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection.”





To sum up Paine, we all are born with rights which we should be allowed to exercise throughout our lives without interference, so long as our actions harm no one else. However, since John Donne nailed it when he said “No man is an island” and the book of Judges was onto something in reiterating the pitfalls of allowing everyone to do what is right in their own eyes and the writers of the Mayflower Compact were wise in their forethought that turning loose 102 people who’d been cooped up on a little ship together for a few months would not end well, Paine recognizes that problems may arise within communities and that individuals will lack the power to adequately defend their own rights to security and protection. Therefore, we consent to yield certain individual liberties in exchange for mutual safety and well-being.  





The Preamble to our Constitution codifies the themes of human rights, human nature, and the need for a central authority to keep order and peace:





“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”





According to the writers, governments have certain specific purposes. First, to “form a more perfect union.” A tribal unit is a union but a far from perfect one; a constitution tightens and defines that union and the responsibilities of each member. Second, a central government will “establish justice”; ideally, that means justice will be uniformly administered, as opposed to allowing blood avengers to deal with matters in their own ways. Third, a centralized authority will “insure domestic tranquility.” Walk into a roomful of third graders when the adult in charge has stepped out for a moment and you’ll get a pretty clear picture of how tranquil our society would be if there were no one in charge. Fourth, the framers wanted to “provide for the common defence,” which we Americans now spell “defense.” External threats will always exist; someone has to organize the response to those threats, since none of us is capable of defending ourselves against a foreign or domestic power intent on doing harm. Fifth, our Constitution is intended to provide a framework by which we can “promote the general welfare,” or make sure everyone is equally protected and the greater good is always our common goal. Finally, our Constitution contains guidelines to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity”–ideally, to be sure our generation can live in freedom (within the limits of the common good) and can pass on a free country to our children and grandchildren.





Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist 23, wrote:





“The principle purposes to be answered by Union are these — The common defense of the members — the preservation of the public peace as well as against internal convulsions as external attacks — the regulation of commerce with other nations and between the States — the superintendence of our intercourse, political and commercial, with foreign countries.”





The Bible also says a good deal about government, one of the central passages appearing in the New Testament book of Romans:





“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. . . . Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.” (Rom. 13: 1-2, 7)





Jesus said it even more succinctly in Mark 12: 17: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”





So far, I see no discrepancies among these documents on the ideals of human government. Has any government on earth ever perfectly lived up to those ideals? Well, no. But these are worthy goals which every generation should continue to strive for. And until we have achieved the ideal of a “more perfect union,” it’s important to consider when laws should be disregarded and thoughtfully broken.





For Thoreau, the breaking point comes when the law requires something the conscience forbids. The Bible consistently emphasizes the difference between human law and God’s law and instructs us to obey both when possible, but when they are in conflict, obey God’s law. Martin Luther King, in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” addresses the subject of civil disobedience by drawing a distinction between types of laws:





“One may well ask: ‘How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?’ The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. . . . Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.”





In this time of deeply divided, tribalized, paranoid national crisis, many have simply concluded that government is the enemy and citizens must protect themselves against it. Attempts to place reasonable restrictions on gun ownership are vehemently rejected as nefarious plots to leave citizens helpless and vulnerable to government attacks. Government actions which contradict individual opinions, however unfounded they may be, are clear evidence in many minds that our government is run by evil people who will bring about the end of civilization as we know it. “Conspiracy theory” is another term for paranoia, which has reached epidemic levels. What has to happen to the mind of a reasonable person to make that person believe there are government officials and celebrities who worship Satan while they kill and eat babies? That’s a serious level of mental illness, yet it is present all around us and even in our Congress. During my lifetime, lots of people have been displeased with the results of every election, but until now there was no widespread distrust of the officials announcing the results. We accepted the results, though sometimes grudgingly.





Dr. Anthony Fauci, leading epidemiologist and new household name, said recently:





“We had such divisiveness in our country that even simple common-sense public health measures took on a political connotation. If you wanted to wear a mask, you were on this side. If you wanted to stay in and avoid group settings, you were on this side. It wasn’t [a] pure public health approach. It was very much influenced by the divisiveness that we had in this country.”





In October of 2020, Dr. Fauci said, 





“The wearing of masks became more of a political issue where there were, you know, those in favor and those against. It became almost an ideological thing as opposed to what it really is. It’s a public health issue. It doesn’t know politics. The common enemy is the virus.”





In addition to the powers enumerated in the Constitution, our government is also accorded certain emergency powers: the right to impose temporary restrictions for what our Constitution calls promoting the general welfare. During wartime, the government can restrict distribution of certain commodities to ensure that those fighting the battles are adequately equipped. When roads and bridges become unsafe, it is the responsibility of the government to restore them to a usable condition and in the meantime to keep citizens off them. Following natural disasters, the government assumes additional power to restore order to devastated areas.





As summarized by ASTHO (Association of State and Territorial Health Officials),





“The Public Health Service Act (PHSA) provides the legal authority for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), among other things, to respond to public health emergencies. The act authorizes the HHS secretary to lead federal public health and medical response to public health emergencies, determine that a public health emergency exists, and assist states in their response activities.”





Since health is a part of our overall welfare, I’d say the Constitutional purpose of promoting the general welfare must include keeping as many people as possible from contracting a deadly virus and insuring the health-care system is adequate to meet the needs of those who do get sick either from the virus or from other health issues. Therefore, the government is well within its limits–both constitutionally and according to its emergency powers–when it requires people to wear masks, avoid close contact, and stay out of large gatherings. Based on scientific evidence, these things keep more people alive and healthy; and since allowing everyone to do what’s right in their own eyes never has worked out well, someone has to coordinate the effort to “promote the general welfare.”





James Madison, in Federalist 52, wrote:





“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.”





I haven’t seen any angels around lately, so I guess we’re stuck with government by our fellow humans. It’s unclear who deserves credit for saying it, but somebody once said, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” You and I must never for a moment let our guard down, for it is our job to oversee the last part of Madison’s caveat: making sure the government controls itself. That doesn’t mean, however, that we have the right to demonize the whole for the actions of some. It is our legal and moral–and yes, Biblical, for those interested–responsibility to subject ourselves to the governing authorities unless doing so violates our personal moral code. Then it’s our legal and moral responsibility to resist and to speak out for change.





March 2020 to March 2021 has felt like a decade instead of a year, but the most intolerable part of all has been the whining about “rights.” Objections to government actions, resistance to government, and civil disobedience are rightly based on conscience and morals, not “rights”; on conflicting loyalties–law vs individual conscience or obedience to God–not “rights.” Thoreau, Gandhi, King, and the Bible–not one of them advocates anarchy or allowing “everyone to do what is right in their own eyes.” Not one of them says government is illegitimate or “has no right to tell me what to do”; they all say it does have that right and responsibility.





And then there’s the eternal vigilance thing. If my government requires me to treat any of my fellow citizens as less valuable or less important or less human than I am, I will break that law, because my conscience and my faith tell me everyone is equal and should be treated as such. If my government forbids me to gather at my chosen house of worship, I will break that law, because it conflicts with my conscience, my faith, and the U.S. Constitution. But if my government tells me to temporarily refrain from gathering in a congregation in order to promote the general welfare by containing the spread of a deadly virus, I will willingly obey, because nothing in my moral code says I can’t cooperate to protect the common good. 





If my fellow citizens elect a con man to the high office of the presidency, I will protest (and have). If my government attempts to restrict the voting rights of any of my fellow citizens, I will protest. If my government imprisons children in inhumane conditions, I will protest (and have). If another government oppresses an entire sector of their population and imposes apartheid laws, I will travel there as often as I can to plant olive trees and help pick the harvest of ripe olives to enable them to retain ownership of their ancestral lands. 





If my government tells me I must wear a mask for the rest of my life to demonstrate my patriotism, I will break that law. But if my government tells me I have to wear a mask in public for a short time to help prevent the spread of a deadly virus, I will wear the damn mask, and I won’t whine about it, because nothing in my moral code or religious beliefs forbids me to wear a mask. Therefore, it’s not a political or civil disobedience issue.





Government is not the enemy; it’s not the Evil Empire. It is an imperfect human institution which is necessary to our life and well-being. It’s our job to know the difference between just and unjust powers, to oppose the unjust, to cooperate with the just, and not to get the two confused. It’s not an easy job, but we have to do it if we’re to continue being a government of, by, and for the people.  


		


	


	

		
		


			

		


		
	


	






	



	


		
			

				
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					Politics				

			


			
Both Sides: the Dangers of Neutrality

		


			

		


		
	





	


		


			

Pontius Pilate famously asked the question “What is truth?” in response to Jesus’ statement, “For this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.” Jack Nicholson, in the character of Colonel Jessup in the movie “A Few Good Men,” angrily spews the classic line “You can’t handle the truth” to the judge who is demanding answers to difficult questions. Thomas Jefferson, in his finely-crafted introduction to the Declaration of Independence, writes “We hold these truths to be self-evident” before he enumerates certain human rights which in his view need not be explained or defended. Jesus, foretelling his own death, tells his followers that if they continue to practice his teachings, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Martin Luther King once said, “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.” 





In what is often being called a post-fact world, where talking points guide thinking and determine policy and facts are just impotent rebuttals, there is no greater barrier to knowing and standing for truth than the “both sides” rationalization: “Both sides do it,” “There’s fault on both sides,” “There are good people on both sides.” Judgments of right and wrong have to be based on some standard of truth, and if truth is the standard, two diametrically opposed sides can’t come off as equally right or equally wrong.





Two children are fighting. Both are swinging arms and throwing punches, so they’re equally guilty, right? Send them both to their rooms and give them no dessert. That’s the lazy way out. Somewhere behind the visible scene, however, is the truth. Who started it? Why did he/she start it? Did the other attempt ways of solving the problem before resorting to physical engagement? Was anything about the optics perhaps deceiving?





The only way to make a fair decision in this situation is to search for the truth, but that carries risks. Maybe the parent, teacher, or coach doesn’t want to know the truth, because with greater knowledge comes greater responsibility. Maybe the truth would force the adult to deal differently with the two children, and that’s always awkward; chances are the one judged to have the greater responsibility will be angry at the arbitrator. So the arbitrator takes the easy way out and treats them as equally at fault. We’ve all done it.





In grown-up politics, the “both sides” argument is the lazy way out. Citizens and officials who can’t face the responsibility of being the arbiters of truth and right take the Pontius Pilate escape and simply wash their hands, declare both sides flawed, and crawl back into their cocoons. But why would anyone not want to know and stand for the truth? Lots of reasons come to mind. The truth is not always as “self-evident” as those named by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, so finding it is going to take a lot of work. Knowing the truth  may demand action; it may affect relationships; it may shift one’s entire worldview. Acknowledging the truth may also cause a loss at the polls. Rather than setting one free, the truth may be too uncomfortable to bear, so many understandably choose retreating to their comfort zones or clinging to a deeply flawed leader because his coattails are necessary for achieving success in the next election. Another Martin Luther King quotation is, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” 





I doubt there’s anyone in the world who’s never turned a blind eye to an uncomfortable truth: the spousal affair, the errant child, the injustice under which many people in the world are forced to live. But here’s the problem: Without truth, there can be no standards of conduct, no morals, no ethics. If nothing is true, everything is acceptable. If your truth is different from my truth, the only principle either of us can violate is our own, so there’s no common standard to which we both can be held. One of my favorite news commentators has recently made frequent use of the word “nihilism,” “the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless.” Where there is no truth, life has no meaning. What to do? Some create their own truths.





Cult members’ truth is whatever their leader tells them it is. The Peoples Temple members who followed Jim Jones all the way to the Kool-Aid table believed his paranoid apocalyptic vision of imminent nuclear war, and he persuaded them only he could insure their safety. Cyrus Teed convinced his followers that the earth is hollow and we actually live on the inside, not the outside, of the globe. They followed him because he promised to turn Estero, Florida, into the New Jerusalem. As a bonus, those who could maintain celibacy would achieve immortality; but then Teed died and failed to resurrect himself after the three days his followers kept him propped up. Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles, founders of Heaven’s Gate, kept their followers faithful by promising there was a spacecraft out there which was going to transport their members to the next level of existence.





All attractive promises, to be sure. Believing them, however, means denying formerly held standards and sources of truth, science being the first to go. I recently helped my seven-year-old grandson find some answers to a question he’d been meditating on. We did a quick Internet search, since that was the resource most readily available to us. We read one source, and then I told him we had to look up more because you never take just one person’s answer to a question. You get multiple (in this case, only two) perspectives and then compare. When all other perspectives have been invalidated, however, as in the case of a cult, there’s only one thing left to believe: the leader’s word. And that’s always going to lead to trouble.





Conspiracy theories give people a system of truth that is, for whatever the reason, more comfortable than reality. They create communities in which people who have felt spurned by powerful elites can turn their perceived oppressors into cannibalistic pedophiles or turn catastrophic natural events into intentional acts performed by a people group whom they see as threatening their supremacy.





Following a national leader who tells the lies, which those who perceive themselves as oppressed want to hear, creates a community in which they are the elites and the ones holding the reins of power. Who flies flags for a president? Who wears clothing and decorates their vehicles or their homes with paraphernalia advertising their hero worship? I don’t know about you, but the most I’ve ever done is put out an occasional yard sign, no matter how much I like a candidate. I’m glad Joe Biden is president, but it’s going to be a cold day down there when I put a cut-out of him in my rear car seat (Yep, I’ve seen it, for you-know-who). Yet I guess I can understand the appeal for someone who is desperate for a sense of belonging.





For that cult who flies the flags and wears the clothes and adorns the trucks, their leader’s 30,573 lies documented by the Washington Post during his four years in office are their fervently held truths. Everything else is “fake news” and evil liberals’ attempts to discredit their dear leader.





In high school general science class, I learned that an acid plus a base equals water (and a salt). Something in the acid neutralizes something in the base and vice versa (You expected scientific names? Ninth grade was a long time ago). Pitting two groups against one another and declaring them equal neutralizes important differences between them, and what’s lost in the process is truth. Making them equally right requires disregarding the truth. Making them equally wrong leaves no one with the moral authority to expose the truth and adjudicate the problem.





If there are “good people on both sides,” neither side has the right to be outraged or to take the lead toward resolution. Americans are where we are today because too many of us can’t handle the truth. It’s not stating the profound to say that our country’s two major political parties are both flawed, that both of them have some wrongheaded ideas, some wacky candidates and elected officials, and some extremist factions. However, the “both sides” narrative would have us believe the flaws are of equal consequence, but believing that narrative requires disregarding some essential truths.





Truth: Good people do not turn over their consciences to a maniacal leader. Truth: Good people do not try to overturn the results of an election. Truth: Good people do not attempt to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power in a democracy. Truth: Good people do not attack the United States Capitol. Truth: Good people do not mercilessly bludgeon police officers, leaving one dead and 140 severely injured, with mental scars so deep that two have since taken their own lives. Truth: Good people do not threaten to harm or kill those responsible for carrying out elections just because they don’t like the person who won. Truth: Good people do not defecate in the Capitol building (or in any other public place) and do not smear their feces on the walls. Truth: Good people do not steal, loot, and terrorize. Truth: Good people do not pray for God’s blessing and assistance to commit felonies. Truth: A good person, who holds command over the most powerful fighting forces in the world, does not sit in his living room watching the assault unfold on his TV set and do NOTHING to stop it. Truth: Good people do not buy into nutso (my academic word) conspiracy theories. Truth: One party is rife with conspiracy theorists and elects some of them to Congress. Truth: The other party is not known for harboring crazy conspiracy theorists or for electing them to Congress. Truth: All of the above has been  done by members of one political party. Truth: None of it, or perhaps a small amount of it, has been done by the other party.





So please remind me again how “both sides” are equally flawed.





Another truth: Good people do not justify their, or their tribe’s, transgressions with a “what about” question.





Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel has said,





“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant.”





Political party affiliations and other labels should also become irrelevant. Both sides can’t be right when their ideas and actions are at opposite poles. The “both sides” defense helps the wrongdoers, never those who would bring justice to bear. It provides all who wish to be uninvolved, who can’t handle the truth, who are more comfortable in their cocoons or ivory towers, who would prefer to wash their hands of the responsibility of searching for and standing for truth a pious-sounding defense. This is no time to be silent or neutral.





I end with the words of Thomas Paine, from “The American Crisis,” which I have quoted often:





“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.”





Freedom is not cheap, but it’s well worth the price.


		


	


	

		
		


			

		


		
	


	






	



	


		
			

				
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					Politics				

			


			
Words to the Wise

		


			

		


		
	





	


		


			

Words matter. Take the word “burger,” for instance. That word generally means a patty of ground beef, served in a bun, with some variety of toppings and/or condiments. The burger I order at McDonald’s will look and taste different from the burger I order at Red Robin, and that one will look and taste different from the burger I’d be served at a five-star restaurant. The size, the quality and preparation of the ingredients, and the endless possibilities for toppings and sauces and garnishes will yield different culinary experiences–not to mention wildly different price tags–but the three basic components will be there. In other words, if I order a burger, I know I’m not going to get egg salad.





Yet in 21st-century political lingo, I can’t be so sure. Depending on whom I’m speaking with, a burger might very well be egg salad, and egg salad could be quiche. The biggest barrier to that elusive goal of unity we keep talking about is that we don’t agree on what “unity” means. To some, perhaps those in the cancel culture, it means something close to agreeing on every point. To others, you can think or believe whatever you want so long as you swear unwavering fealty to the cult leader that keeps your party in the headlines and assures more election wins. Cross him, and your fate might look somewhat like that of Liz Cheney whose position in the party had to be reconsidered after she cast her vote to impeach the cult leader. Fortunately, she escaped censure, but her future decisions will have to take into account what she now knows is a potential result if she again runs amok of party leaders.





If unity is even feasible in our country, we’re going to have to find some middle ground between the idealistic notion that we can agree on everything and the dangerous prospect of turning over control to a narcissistic authoritarian who would rather burn down the building than hand over the keys.





But finding that middle ground is going to require defining some other important words, such as “truth,” “fact,” “opinion,” “patriotism,” “treason,” and “high crimes and misdemeanors.” When two members of congress are placed on trial by their colleagues and their names used in the same sentence–one for having committed the offense of voting her conscience against the party leader and one for being a crazed, violent, conspiracy-theorist nutjob–we’re in deep waters. In the end, the right decision was made to allow Liz Cheney to keep her leadership position; but only 11 of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s GOP colleagues were willing to vote with the majority that stripped her of her committee assignments. Even more disturbing is the fact that she was given a standing ovation by some of her GOP colleagues in response to her behind-closed-doors, tell-them-what-they-want-to-hear “apology.” 





What do the words “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” mean? They seem relatively straightforward but get a bit muddled when a lawmaker who swore that oath can harass a school shooting victim, disrespect a whole nation of people (Jews), and advocate assassinating her colleagues and her party even has to debate whether to allow her to serve on the education committee that oversees the schools in which shootings have happened and where students and parents of those schools have to be deeply wounded by her labeling their personal tragedies as “false flag operations” that didn’t really kill anyone. Her actions make it seem more that she is the enemy than that she is the defender against enemies. God help us all!





Let’s talk about the word “incite.” Merriam-Websters says “incite” means “to move to action, stir up, spur on, urge on.” Simple, right? None of the dictionary definitions include participating in the actions oneself. The world has held Hitler accountable for the deaths of over 6,000,000 Jewish people, along with some others whom he considered undesirable and inconvenient to his purposes, yet there is no record of Adolph Hitler personally rounding up Jews, taking them to camps, herding them into gas chambers, and releasing the noxious fumes that would end their lives. Charles Manson never murdered anyone, but he was convicted and sentenced on seven counts of first-degree murder, because it was judged that he ordered his followers to commit the murders. According to the Washington Post, “Manson was also convicted of two murders that he did physically participate in,” but he was not the one who dealt the fatal blows.





Both Hitler and Manson are considered mass murderers, yet their hands never killed anyone. On January 6, 2021, the sitting “president” spoke to a violent mob in Washington, D.C., encouraging them to “take a walk” to the Capitol. Using such incendiary statements as “We will never give up,” “We will never concede,” “You don’t concede when there’s theft involved,” “We will not take it anymore,” and “We will not let them silence your voices,” he aroused the crowd to such a pitch of fury that they marched to the Capitol and desecrated that national monument in unspeakable ways. Five people died as a result of the violence, two more Capitol police officers have since committed suicide, and more than fifty other officers were injured, some of them severely. One risks losing an eye, and another has lost three fingers. Yet our GOP lawmakers want to parse words and can’t be sure whether the “president’s” words actually caused the insurrection. Fortunately, the House impeachment managers have no such vocabulary limitations; they have cited the speech maker as “singularly responsible” for inciting the riot.





The article of impeachment against the person who made that inflammatory speech charges him with “inciting violence against the government of the United States.” The problem is it seems few lawmakers in the GOP knows the meaning of “incite.” Within hours after order had been restored to the Capitol building, 147 of the people who had narrowly escaped death that day voted to overturn the election results and retain in office the person who had incited the riot that might have cost them their lives. Some people have a lot of trouble connecting dots.





Apologists for the inciter of the January 6 insurrection argue that this is a free speech issue.  Jacob Sullum sums up that argument in a column published in Reason:





“Even advocacy of illegal behavior, the Supreme Court ruled in the 1969 case Brandenburg v. Ohio, is protected by the First Amendment unless it is both ‘directed’ at inciting ‘imminent lawless action’ and ‘likely’ to do so. It is hard to see how [that] speech, which urged his supporters to ‘fight like hell’ against an ‘egregious assault on our democracy’ as a joint session of Congress was convening to affirm Biden’s victory, meets that test.”





I’ve heard it argued that he said what he said and they did what they did. One cannot be held accountable for the other. No connection. Then let’s just take the word “incite” out of the dictionary.





And that brings us to the words “freedom of speech.” Does the first amendment guarantee every citizen the right to say whatever the hell we please, wherever and whenever we want to say it, with impunity? Not according to my understanding. I believe our founders and our Constitution’s framers wanted to insure citizens the right to speak their minds on the actions of their government without fear of punishment. Slander and libel have always been illegal, as is the much-cited incident of yelling “Fire!” in a crowded building unless one has actually seen flames or smelled smoke. No right is absolute; every one has moral and logical limitations. Although our founders could never have envisioned a Reality-TV star “president” or a QAnon, anti-Semitic, purveyor of dangerous theories member of Congress, I find it impossible to believe they would have written into our Constitution an amendment protecting their destructive speech.





Our two deeply polarized political parties defend their own actions and condemn their opponents’ actions using the same words. The January 6 rioters call themselves “patriots,” while those of us shocked and devastated by what we saw and have since learned consider their actions among the least patriotic we have ever witnessed.





New York Times columnist Stuart A. Thompson recently published an article documenting his three weeks inside a QAnon chat room. Among many other disturbing comments Mr. Thompson heard, he reports that Q followers consider themselves “fact-checkers” of mainstream media. Most of us look to such nonpartisan resources as Snopes, Politifact, and ProPublica, but whatever. The article begins with a series of several audio clips in which group members can be heard saying such things as “Behead ‘em all” and “Bring in the firing squad.” Mr. Thompson quotes another member: “If the Biden inauguration wants to come in and take your weapons and force vaccination, you have due process to blow them the [expletive] away. Do it.” These speakers are the people who want to be the arbiters of truth and fact.





The word “opinion” gets tossed around a great deal these days, as in everyone is entitled to have ‘em. Although in both general usage and the dictionaries, “opinion” means any held belief, regardless of its relation to fact, I would argue that in public discourse–particularly that which determines government policy–an opinion should be more than a whim or what one pulls out of a particular body cavity. In public discourse, “two opinions” or “two sides” implies two equally valid positions on a subject, both positions backed by fact and evidence. However, when one side’s positions are based on science, logic, and investigative journalism and the other side’s position is based on theories about baby-killing, blood-drinking Satan worshipers, space-laser-launching Jews who ignite forest fires, and the Clintons killing everyone from Vince Foster to JFK Junior, the two sides seem a bit unbalanced. And the possibility of finding common ground for dialogue is slim to none.





Decades ago, I read a book called “None Dare Call It Treason,” by John Stormer. In the 2020s, everyone dares call treason any act which violates their side’s belief system. Many of us believe our former “president” was guilty of treason–or at the very least high crimes and misdemeanors–for attempting to enlist foreign help in getting elected, attempting to overturn an election, and inciting a riot to stop legally cast ballots from being certified. Those who are okay with all of those actions, however, accuse the accusers of treason for their disloyalty to “dear leader.” How does one adjudicate the leader’s actions when words have become meaningless?





Other common controversies involve the word “socialism,” used mostly by people who don’t know what it means but think it sounds scary and menacing. “Right to bear arms” has been debated for decades and will continue to be, given the current climate, for years to come.





Words matter, but they become impotent when separated from the ideas or realities they represent. The philosopher Aristotle had a great deal to say about words. He believed “We use words as tokens in the place of things” because “it is impossible to converse by bringing in the actual things under discussion.” I have to believe Aristotle would agree that discussion itself becomes impossible when the disconnect between things and their words makes the words mere inane gibberish. He goes on to say, “Those who are inexperienced with the power of words are victims of false reasoning, both when they themselves converse and when they are listening to others.





    In the famous speech which William Shakespeare penned for his iconic character, Juliet laments having just learned her newfound love’s name, since she (a Capulet) was forbidden any contact with him (a Montague).  But they had been getting along swimmingly before the name issue came up. Her lament begins with the famous words “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore [why] are you Romeo?” She continues “’Tis but thy name that is my enemy” and then asks: “What’s Montague? It is nor hand nor foot/Nor arm nor face nor any other part/Belonging to a man. O be some other name./What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet.” It’s all just words.





But words matter. For Romeo and Juliet, our fictional lovers, words led to their deaths. For the people who were killed and injured in the January 6 Capitol attack, the words spoken directly preceding the riot had the power to determine their fates. The words they had spoken and listened to for months before they rose to action formed their world view and justified their insurrection in the names of God and country. Yet many of our lawmakers deem those words so trivial as to be dismissed without consequence.





I wish I had a nice fairy-tale ending where we all come together for a group hug, join hands, sing a couple of rounds of Kumbaya, and promise to be loving and kind to one another from now on. But until we can agree that “up” means “up” and “down” means “down,” I don’t know how we get out of this. I just pray we’ll figure it out.


		


	


	

		
		


			

		


		
	


	






	



	


		
			

				
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					Coronavirus, COVID-19 Politics				

			


			
COVID Has a Face

		


			

		


		
	





	


		


			

Around 25 years ago, my then-husband and I hosted a gathering one evening at our home. We invited several other couples with whom we spent three or four hours eating, talking, and laughing until we cried. As the party was breaking up, one of the men present received a phone call from his younger son, informing him that his older, twenty-five-year-old son had died earlier that evening when the motorcycle he was riding was struck by a car.





Standing in my family room, I watched as the shock registered on the man’s face and in his body. He jumped into the air and did a slight pivot before planting his feet and bending slightly forward in deadly earnest as he listened to the words coming through the phone line. His first verbal response was “NO! Don’t tell me!” I continued to watch as his wife was brought from another room and he gently seated her in a chair, then knelt before her to break the news that her beloved son was no longer living. I watched her face as she registered the shock and went immediately into the denial stage of grief, shaking her head and repeating over and over, “No, not my Richard. Not my Richard.”





I watched as the other guests gathered around them and began offering comfort and support. One of the men volunteered to drive them home, while another said he would deliver their vehicle for them. A few days later, my husband and I walked with them into the room where they would for the first time see their son in his casket. I saw them catch their breath and turn their faces away as they got their first glimpse of his lifeless body, then move closer and hold each other while they both wept.





From that day until this, I have never read a headline reporting a traffic accident in the same way I had read those headlines before. We see them every week, and we feel a certain level of compassion and sympathy. “Oh, that’s terrible. His/her poor family.” But it’s hard to hold onto that compassion or even to experience it at a very deep level when the victim has no face, when the grieving family are just names in the obituary. What that evening did for me was put a face on the headline “25-year-old Man Killed in Accident.” Now when I read similar stories, I see my friend hearing for the first time of his son’s death; I see his wife who for ten minutes couldn’t stop shaking her head and moaning “No, not my Richard.” Dick and Penny are for me the real people whose real suffering gives such stories meaning and impact.





Like everyone else in the country, I read each day and listen each night to the day’s grim statistics: number of new COVID infections, number of deaths on that day, and total number of deaths so far. Also like almost everyone else, I find it a bit hard to be appropriately compassionate toward faceless numbers. I haven’t personally known any of those people, so they’re just vague, faceless statistics. Heartbreaking, yes. Frightening, definitely. Reason for taking precautions, absolutely. But I don’t know them; they’re people “out there” somewhere.





All of that changed, however, in the wee hours of Christmas morning, 2020, when one of my high school classmates lost his battle against the virus. Now COVID has a face: the face of John Mathes. I’d been following John’s progress for a little over a month, as he was placed on a ventilator three times and then removed when there were signs he was going to beat the illness, as he was moved into and out of ICU several times, then to a rehab center, and then back to the hospital. Finally, at 12:30 a.m., as Christmas Eve faded into Christmas morning, in his wife’s words, John was just too tired to fight any longer.





I haven’t seen much of John since high school, but I received updates through mutual friends, saw him and his wife at a couple of class reunions, and for the last few years communicated through Facebook. After graduation, we went different routes: I went off to college and then to various other cities, while he put down deep roots in our home soil. Within a couple of years, he had married our fellow classmate Sharon Warling, and they spent the next 50+ years creating a loving family and being a vital part of our hometown community.





Now when I read the number of daily COVID deaths, I’ll see John lying in a hospital bed, attached to a ventilator. I’ll see Sharon, mostly at home because of visiting limitations necessary for such a highly contagious disease, praying for the miracle that would bring her husband back to her. I’ve never met their three daughters or any of their grandchildren and great grandchildren, but they have lost the rock of their family and must find a way to bring stability back to their own lives while supporting their mother and grandmother as she learns to navigate her new normal and find new meaning and direction, without the partner with whom she’d shared her entire adult life.





John Mathes is more than a number on a list of statistics, more than just one of the 300,000+ people who have succumbed to the ravages of this virus. He’s the guy who played golf in high school and beyond, who always had a big smile on his face, who married Sharon, one of the Catholic school girls who joined us at the public school in ninth grade. They had three daughters, were among the first of us to become grandparents, and may have been the very first to become great grandparents. 





John and Sharon are the ones who took over the job of keeping our class united after Eve–the classmate who organized most of our reunions–died. They sent out emails and started a weekly meetup for anyone in town at Marion’s Pizza. They became the glue that held us all together. He’s the guy with whom I’ve had so many lively political debates on Facebook over the last few years, and I’ve already missed those debates this month while he’s been fighting for his life.





John is not a number on a chart, not just a statistic; he’s a flesh-and-blood human with whom I share a history. He is for me the new face of “pandemic.” Many people still don’t have that face; to them, those numbers are still impersonal. But tragically, before this long, dark winter ends, thousands more will have a face to give definition and urgency to the dispassionate words “COVID,” “coronavirus,” “pandemic.”





As those cold numbers begin to take on flesh, the complaints about rights being violated and government overstepping its bounds become a bit more personal. Could those people look Sharon Mathes–or whoever else it may be that gives the disease a face–in the eye and say they’re being oppressed by the mandate that they wear masks in public? I don’t know how John contracted COVID, but I know that if my wearing a mask or taking other recommended precautions carries even the chance of protecting another family from suffering the devastation that the Mathes family is now mired in, I wouldn’t think of insulting those families by complaining about my “rights” or my “inconvenience.”





Another face that guides my responses these days is that of my former pastor, from the church I left when I moved out of Florida. I’ve read Pastor Jeff’s letters to members as he navigates this uncharted territory of how to have church during a pandemic. Is it safe to meet for in-person worship, or should services be streamed online only? If there are occasional in-person meetings, what precautions need to be followed? How does a leader do the tightrope dance of trying to balance wise judgment and scientific fact with maintaining harmony and good will among parishioners who have differing ideas about how things should be done?





Reading Jeff’s personal and honest accounts of his grappling with the responsibility–in conjunction with the church’s ruling elders–to make the right decisions, knowing that no decision will be met with unanimous approval, has moved me to greater compassion for all leaders who are doing their best to guide us through these unfamiliar waters.





Washington’s governor, Jay Inslee, comes to mind, along with the other governors who struggle to make wise, science-based policies while facing the ire of citizens who resent their efforts and who will flout whatever guidelines and mandates they propose: citizens whose conception of their “constitutional rights” outweighs any consideration of public welfare or the common good.





Government powers must be restrained, of course. Too many countries in world history have been case studies in government tyranny, and we have ample examples of corruption in our own country. Yet in fact, although each of us sees our personal concerns and although those concerns are valid and deserve consideration, it is not only the right but the responsibility of our elected officials to oversee the whole system, to make sure all of the parts function together. They are privy to information to which the rest of us don’t have access, allowing them to see a bigger picture than most of us are able to see. There is good reason to question the wisdom and integrity of individual officials; however, making decisions to insure public welfare is the job those officials are elected to do, and they of derelict of their duty if they don’t do it.





Locally, the West Seattle bridge was closed this year because of cracks and structural instability, and it will remain closed until at least 2022. The bridge was part of a major thoroughfare, and its closure has posed an inconvenience for probably thousands of commuters. Our local government made the decision to close based on engineering data because it is their responsibility to act for the public good. If they had simply informed the public of the structural problems and advised against using the bridge, knowledge of human nature should tell us that hundreds if not thousands of people would still be driving across it because it’s their normal route and the g-d government has no right to tell them where they can and cannot drive. They’ll make up their own minds, thank you very much.





The tell-us-what’s-happening-and-then-let-us-decide method of handling matters of public safety seems to be the choice of many who feel the government has gone too far in imposing restrictions to limit the spread of COVID. Yet history has shown that such an approach rarely if ever ends well and that those same people would lash out at the government for being too lax and for abdicating their duties if restrictions were to be loosened and the death toll to rise even more.





My heart goes out to our governors and local law makers who must do their jobs in the current polarized atmosphere, knowing they’re “damned if they do and damned if they don’t.” Dr. Fauci has received death threats and a few months ago said he had hired security for himself and his family. He expressed disbelief that a doctor–one who took an oath to “do no harm”–would find himself needing protection for doing his job.





To Pastor Jeff, Governor Inslee, Dr. Fauci, and the many others charged with the enormous task of saving lives and leading others to act safely, whether they want to or not, you have my highest respect and support.





“Make America Great Again” needs to change to “Make America Compassionate Again,” “Make America Responsible Again,” “Make America Moral Again,” or “Make America United and Cooperative Again.”





The stage has been set. There will be more John Matheses, and there will be more grieving widows like Sharon Mathes; those are unavoidable facts, largely beyond our power to control. What is within everyone’s power is to take the personal responsibility to keep the number of Johns and Sharons as low as possible. We’re overwhelmed, but we’re not helpless. Everyone has a duty to be part of the solution. It’s going to be a long, dark winter; but I want to be here to see next winter.





Wear the damn mask!  


		


	


	

		
		


			

		


		
	


	






	



	


		
			

				
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For Such a Time As This

		


			

		


		
	





	


		


			

The long night is almost over, we have awakened from the terrifying nightmare, we have released a loud collective exhale. When I lie dying, on some far-off day, I will remember the scenes etched into my consciousness on November 7, 2020, when I saw the return of the America I have known and loved. People danced in the streets in massive conglomerations of skin colors, sexual identities, religious beliefs, ethnicities, professions, education levels, income levels. There were no angry chants, no pumped fists, and only a few negative signs–just flag waving, singing, and dancing. What I saw in those images on my TV screen was unadulterated joy and relief, and it was beautiful.





It’s been an excruciating four years and a time which I’m willing to admit has shaken me to my very core. I, along with my fellow Americans, have watched in horror as a rogue “president” and his accomplices have taken a wrecking ball to our democracy. Most heart-rending of all has been seeing people I have long known and respected pulled into the snare of a lying, cheating, grifting con artist. We have watched truth be reduced to “opinion.” We have listened to more than 22,000 lies spoken from the presidential pulpit and echoed by millions, all without consequence. We have witnessed foreign interference in our most sacred right, welcomed by the beneficiaries of that interference, also without negative consequences. We have watched an impeached “president” brazenly demand reelection and millions of our friends, neighbors, and family members line up to cast their votes for him.





We have seen statesmen uncloaked, revealing themselves as just power-hungry mercenaries; and we’ve seen their constituents eagerly reelect them. We’ve been witnesses as the Party of Lincoln has devolved into the Party of Conspiracy Theories and Incompetence. “Moral high ground” has come to mean nothing more than pro-life, anti-abortion fanaticism. Lives lost to gun violence, black lives cut short by police cruelty, children kidnapped and held in cages for three years or longer, families unable to buy food because they’ve lost their jobs as a result of a pandemic–these lives have been irrelevant in the predominant “moral” code.





We have watched nearly a quarter million, so far, of our fellow citizens die while not a word of condolence or comfort or genuine promise of help has been spoken from our White House. We have watched the dismantling of the structures which were put in place during previous administrations to manage the possibility of a pandemic. In their place were only the fatuous comments about how, when we least expect it, the coronavirus will magically disappear–maybe a little faster if we just inject some bleach or shine a light in the appropriate place.





Worst of all, we have seen the jaws of authoritarianism and fascism open and bare the vicious fangs which would love to devour us, to destroy the world’s oldest functioning democracy, to prove that this great experiment of ours has failed and was just a pipe dream all along. We have watched the fabric of our democracy stretched almost to the point of being torn asunder, our country reduced from leader of the free world to laughing stock of the world. But fascism, you can close your ugly jaws and go back to where you came from. We are stronger than you.





Joe Biden won the election, but most important, WE won. We showed that, although we can be swindled into a period of darkness, the American spirit is real; this experiment is still working. We have earned the right once again to call ourselves the land of the free and the home of the brave, to wave our flag proudly as a symbol of an imperfect union held together by imperfect people who believe in the goodness and strength of the human spirit to overcome adversity.





We have tons of work to do. This country had problems before the inauguration of 2017, and the inauguration of 2021 is not going to make them disappear. The good that has come from these last four years is that they have shined a light under the beds and in the corners and the closets where we’ve kept our dark impulses hidden and pretended they had gone away. They’re all out now, right in the middle of the living room, and we have to start house cleaning.





What this election did for us was give us the leadership to guide the country through the hard task of looking honestly at each other and remembering that what unites us is stronger than what divides us. The last four years have revealed the deep prejudices that exist; now it’s the job of every single person to examine their own heart and acknowledge their own prejudices, because everybody has at least one. If we are to be whole again, every person must begin with cleansing his/her own soul. No political party has all of the right answers; healing will require finding our common ground and building on it.





Joe Biden has never been accused of being exciting. He’s not suave, polished, or sophisticated; he’s not an eloquent orator. He can be clumsy, awkward, and gaffe prone; in fact, gaffes have been his m.o. What he does bring to this time of healing is goodness, and goodness is what we have most been missing. Joe Biden is a good, decent, loving, kind, compassionate, empathetic human being who knows how to wrap his arms around a person or a nation who’s hurting and truly “feel with them” (the definition of empathy). Although the Democratic Party has its own set of problems, the wisdom of choosing a man such as this for a time such as this is a testament to the party’s moral fiber and patriotism.





Spoiler alert: Here comes another of my mother’s favorite sayings. She was fond of saying “You can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.” That pivot some people kept waiting for in 2016 and 2017 couldn’t possibly have happened, because the raw material was not there. The person elected president in 2016 did not have the knowledge, temperament, wisdom, dignity, or class to be president. Hoping to make a beautiful creation out of that raw material was futile, to put it kindly. A pig’s ear is a pig’s ear, period. It can’t be silk, and it can’t be made to look like silk.





Joe Biden is not pure silk either, but he’s high quality cowhide; and that makes a pretty solid, durable purse. A silk bag is only good for a fancy evening out, but that leather bag can go anywhere and endure pretty much any abuse. President-Elect Biden has been tested, and he’s a survivor. He’s suffered loss–both of loved ones and of ambitions and elections–and he didn’t come from wealth or privilege. His driving force has been to serve his family and his country, and he has faithfully done that for 48 years. He is strengthened by his faith, though he doesn’t flaunt that faith or use it as a weapon. If he goes to church, it will be to worship, not to stage a photo op; and no tear gas will be required.





Congratulations, America! I have never been more proud to call you my home. Now let’s all get to work! We have a lot to do. The world is celebrating with us, but they’ll also be watching. Let’s not let them down again. Let goodness, decency, kindness, and compassion prevail. God bless America!


		


	


	

		
		


			

		


		
	


	






	



	


		
			

				
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Pee-Wee Herman Politics

		


			

		


		
	





	


		


			

During my sons’ tween-age years, Pee-Wee Herman, a character played by actor Paul Reubens, was frequently on the screen in our house; so my sons adopted Pee-Wee’s favorite retort to an insult: “I know you are, but what am I?” For example, “You’re an idiot, Pee-Wee.” Pee-Wee’s response: “I know you are, but what am I?” Mr. Reubens’ career ended after an incident that just begs for an off-color joke; but moving along, the saying remained one of our favorite humorous comebacks for quite some time.





Never could I have imagined I’d see the day when a comedian’s schtick would go to the mainstream political arena, but here we are. Donald Trump’s first notable “I know you are, but what am I?” moment came during the third presidential debate of 2016. Hillary Clinton confronted Donald Trump about the campaign help he was receiving from Russia, saying Putin would love to see Trump elected, because Putin would then have a puppet in our White House. Trump shot back, “No puppet. No puppet. You’re the puppet.” No one would be surprised by that comeback in a fifth-grade classroom; but on the stage of a presidential debate, we expect more: counter-arguments supported by facts and examples.





Sadly for all of us, real arguments based on facts are now only a dim memory, replaced by Pee-Wee Herman Politics.





Our national intelligence agencies have clearly established the fact that Russia conducted coordinated, widespread efforts to influence our 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. Witnesses presented compelling evidence to prove Donald Trump–in a phone call made from the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office–attempted to enlist Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s assistance in finding “dirt” on Joe Biden that could be used to discredit him with voters. All of these incidents are well documented with fact, yet they have become part of the narrative reversal that is driving the 2020 presidential race.





The list of pending litigation against Donald Trump–much of which he will be forced to face when he no longer has the shield of the presidency to protect him–is pages long. His shady business dealings, both before and during his tenure in the White House, are well known and documented. What we have seen so far of his highly classified tax returns holds enough damning evidence to insure he could die behind bars. He has never divested himself from his businesses, while he has encouraged and required that they be used by government personnel, enriching himself by misusing his office for personal gain. And that doesn’t even include the times he and his family have used their official positions to hawk everything from beans to apparel.





Current figures estimate that $141,000,000 has been spent during the last almost four years on Trump’s golf outings, yet the faithful band of supporters praise his supposed donation of his $400,000 annual salary for being president. Even if he’s telling the truth about donating his salary, it would take 352 and a half years of that salary to equal what you and I have paid for his entertainment and negligence of his duties. That doesn’t exactly earn him a halo.





The Hatch Act of 1939 “prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activities while they are working in an official capacity,” but that law didn’t stop Donald Trump and the R.N.C. from using the White House as a venue for parts of their 2020 convention–most notably Trump’s acceptance speech, which included the requisite dictator-style balcony scene. At any other time in our post-1939 history, such theatrics would have been nixed in the planning stage; but the current unique combination of unhinged chief executive and corrupt, complicit political party have rendered complaints against abuse of power futile. 





A prime example is the way Mitch McConnell goes stone-cold deaf any time his hypocrisy is pointed out; for example, his ramrodding Senate approval of a Supreme Court nominee in the middle of an election after denying so much as the courtesy of an interview with a candidate nominated eight months before an election. All of the righteous rhetoric of 2016 by McConnell and accomplices simply evaporated in 2020, and none of them seemed to notice or feel any sense of shame.





In true Pee-Wee Herman fashion, however, it’s Joe Biden who is now being portrayed to voters as a criminal, a would-be dictator, a person worthy of being locked up. Pee-Wee Herman’s “I know you are, but what am I?” is a more modern twist on the line my classmates and I used on the school playground: “I’m rubber, you’re glue. Anything you say bounces off me and sticks on you.” And the narrative reversal technique is on full display everywhere I look.





In a quick scan of some rabid Trump supporters’ Facebook pages, I found these claims about Joe Biden:





A post exclaims that both the CIA and the FBI have been covering for the Obama/Biden administration by redacting evidence against them and that because of this tweet from Donald Trump, the forementioned folks will soon be going to jail. Hashtag OctoberSurprise. The Tweet:





“I have fully authorized the total Declassification of any & all documents pertaining to the single greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax. Likewise, the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. No redactions!”





Another post excoriates Democrats for putting the country through four years of “bullshit and lies” about Trump’s Russia ties, while lo and behold, it was actually Hillary Clinton who was doing the colluding all along.





Narrative reversal: It is Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton who should be investigated and prosecuted for their complicity in Russia’s interference–not Donald Trump, who was “completely exonerated” (NOT) by the Mueller report. The problem with this narrative is that it is based on no credible evidence. Robert Mueller did not absolve Donald Trump of guilt; he simply declined to pursue prosecution against a sitting president. And no credible evidence has been presented to support the claim that members of the Obama administration colluded with Russia. So this tweet amounts to nothing more than a diversion from the facts and an attempt to retain the support of those gullible enough to believe anything Trump says and dismiss any facts to the contrary.





A September 9, 2020, headline in the conservative rag National Review reads:





“Bombshell Allegation: Hillary Orchestrated Collusion to Distract from Her Emails, According to Russian Intel.”                                







The article goes on to state, without evidence, that Hillary Clinton “signed off on the plan.”







A Twitter user, responding to Trump’s tweet about declassifying all documents relating to Russian election interference, says gleefully:





“When all of the documents are finally declassified, and all the redactions removed from reports, the nation will see that the FBI and CIA not only knew the Russia ‘collusion’ allegations against Trump were a political dirty trick, but they were in on the trick.”





Hashtags currently trending include #BidenCrimeFamily and #BeijingBiden. If those labels sound vaguely reminiscent of claims against Donald Trump and his family, you win the Pee-Wee Herman award for identifying “I know you are, but what am I?” ruses.





Aside from being a sign of desperation as polling numbers show a wider and wider gap in favor of Biden, the “I’m rubber, you’re glue” narrative reversal undermines the truth and serves to diffuse righteous indignation which should guide voters’ choices. Making “both sides” guilty of the same “crimes,” or attributing allegations against one side to the other, serve to neutralize the issue, and facts lose all relevance. When there is no authoritative source of truth, truth becomes whatever one chooses to believe; hence, confirmation bias (believing only that which supports one’s preconceived ideas) has become common among many of all persuasions. When we as a nation can no longer agree on what is true or credible, voters are left to choose according to visceral preferences, biases, and hearsay.





The New York Times, our nation’s oldest and most respected newspaper, is now a joke among those who have bought the “failing New York Times” and the broader “enemy of the people” epithets. Snopes and other fact-checkers are similarly scoffed at as liberal-leaning and untrustworthy. When the FBI and CIA are accused of being political operatives, we’re deep into dangerous territory. These are apolitical agencies whom we have always trusted to guard our national security, yet corrupt politicians have tarnished their credibility for personal gain and power. When our Justice Department is used as the personal legal team for the president, we’re equally at risk. We’re no longer kids on the playground, using silly retorts to deflect criticism. “Rubber-glue” narrative reversals have dire real-world consequences.





During this year’s final presidential debate, when Joe Biden attempted to press Donald Trump on the 545 children still held in cages by our government while no one knows where their parents are or how to find them, Trump offered no explanation except the lie, “They’re being treated very well.” Says the man who s*&ts on gold toilets. Trump’s only comeback was “Obama built the cages,” repeated several times. For once, he was telling the truth: President Obama did build the facilities, and I’m not even going to try to completely absolve him from guilt in the larger debacle.





What I do want to focus on is the way this narrative reversal enabled Trump to skirt the issue and deflect blame. President Obama built the facilities for a different reason, one that was relevant at the time; but he did not kidnap the 545 children in question, and he did not place the children in those cages, while making no attempt to keep track of their parents. Donald Trump alone is responsible for the kidnapping and imprisoning of these children, and no amount of narrative reversal can change the fact. And what has he done to end those children’s suffering? Sent his wife to visit, wearing a jacket that essentially said F you. 





Even if Obama had placed them there (and he did not), Donald Trump has had almost four years in which to undo the damage, four years to show a glimmer of humanity and release those children either to their own parents or to caring people who would give them loving homes with beds in place of concrete floors; soft, warm, cozy blankets in place of mylar covers; a yard and fresh air in place of confinement; and a loving embrace to help ease the pain in which they have lived for three years. But what has he done about it? Nothing. Except blame Obama.





Possibly the most damaging effect of Pee-Wee Herman politics is that many voters seem confused about who is the incumbent in this election. Donald Trump has made it popular to counter every claim and campaign promise Joe Biden makes with the comeback, “You’ve had 47 years. Why haven’t you done this already?” Such an inane question doesn’t really deserve a response, but for those in the back row, Joe Biden has served as a senator and as a vice president. Neither of those offices is endowed with the same power or allows the same opportunities for unilateral action that the presidency does. One senator or vice president can effect change within the scope of their own office, but that scope is limited. Although Biden’s positions on issues can be discerned from his record in other offices, what he would accomplish in the office of president cannot be.





Donald Trump, on the other hand, should be called to account for what he has accomplished or failed to accomplish during the almost four years he has been president–something he has deftly avoided by employing Pee-Wee Herman Politics and flipping the narrative. Trump has for four years, five including his campaign, been promising a wonderful, beautiful health care plan that we’re all going to love. His efforts to strike down the ACA, now in the middle of an out-of-control pandemic, have been based on the promise of a better system. But where is it? He’s had four years. Why are 545 children still imprisoned, with no clue to their parents’ whereabouts? Why is he still “going to” make America great again? He’s had four years. Why does his campaign use images of this year’s civil unrest to show what life would be like during a Biden administration? This is what life has been like during a Trump administration. He’s had four years to be the “law and order” president. What has he done to make us safer?





In a typical election, the incumbent has the advantage of being able to point to achievements of his/her first term, on which he/she would like to build if given the chance for a second term. Who’s the incumbent here? Joe Biden is being held accountable for 47 years as a senator and vice president, but Donald Trump is not held accountable for four years as president. Does anyone else think that’s backward?





Pee-Wee Herman Politics trivializes a process that has life-and-death consequences; presidential elections are not child’s play. I close with an excerpt from a powerful speech by Senator Chuck Schumer, delivered on the eve of Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, but I think perfectly applicable to the Republican Party’s last four years as a whole: the nomination of a reality-TV star for our highest office, the continued enabling of that “president’s” reign of chaos and his degradation of the office, allowing and repeating his lies, blocking his well-deserved impeachment, doing nothing to stop foreign interference in our elections, and allowing more than 230,000 people to die while they told us things are getting better and will magically go away at any moment.





“I want to be very clear with my Republican colleagues. You may win this vote.  . . . But you will never, never get your credibility back.  . . . You may win this vote. But in the process you will speed the precipitous decline of faith in our institutions, our politics, the Senate and the Supreme Court. You will give an already divided and angry nation a fresh outrage, and open a wound in this chamber that may never heal.
You walk a perilous road.
I know you think that this will eventually blow over. But you are wrong. The American people will never forget this blatant act of bad faith. They will never forget your complete disregard for their voices, for the people standing in line right now voting their choice, not your choice.
They will never forget the lack of consistency, honor, decency, fairness and principle.”





You know what to do: Vote like your life depends on it. When my grandchildren are older and living the results of our choices, I want to be able to tell them I stood on the right side of history. Your vote will have consequences far beyond your lifetime. Vote like your children’s and grandchildren’s lives depend on it. They do.


		


	


	

		
		


			

		


		
	


	






	



	


		
			

				
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It’s Almost Midnight

		


			

		


		
	





	


		


			

The recent chatter about Donald Trump’s declining mental state and increasingly erratic behavior has me thinking of the legend of Faust. Isn’t everyone? In the classic German legend, an eminent scholar, Faust, becomes bored with his life, unable to sate his desire for something beyond the scope of his studies. Enter Mephistopheles, servant of Lucifer, who grants Faust 24 years of unlimited knowledge and pleasures of the flesh. In exchange for Mephistopheles’ favors, Faust signs a pact to surrender his soul to Lucifer at midnight on the last day of the 24 years. The legend, originally written down in the 16th century, has known many retellings, including those by Christopher Marlowe and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Hollywood actor and director Richard Burton.





Although the various renditions change the names a bit–Faust is also Dr. Faustus–and alter the ending, the story has become a metaphor for any situation in which a person is willing to exchange their morals and values, in other words sell their soul, to test the bounds of human limitations and gain a greater share of earth’s power, wealth, and pleasure.





Donald Trump is certainly no scholar, but he shares with Faustus the insatiable craving for more, the drive to overcome human limitation. The title of his niece’s book, Too Much and Never Enough, is a fitting epitaph for his life. Our tragic hero, Trumpus, was teasing the idea of a presidential bid as far back as 1988, bantering about the idea with Oprah and Larry King over a period of years. His hunger for power and prestige led him to leave his home borough of Brooklyn and cross the river into the more glamorous and highfalutin Manhattan, the place his more frugal father would never venture into.





Trumpus’s appetite for the pleasures of the flesh is also well known. Conquests of beautiful women, both willing and unwilling partners, have stoked his ego and caused him to brag to Howard Stern during an interview that sex should count as his Viet Nam and he should be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for having avoided contracting any STDs in his numerous liaisons.





He had money, he had fame of a sort (mostly the supermarket tabloid sort), he had his name in tall gold letters on buildings across the globe, he lived in ostentatious penthouses, he had wealth (though not as much as he claimed), he had success as a reality TV star, he had power as the CEO of the many companies that comprise the Trump Organization, he had the appearance of success as a businessman (convincing enough to dupe millions of people into voting for him to run the business of our country), and he surrounded himself with beautiful women, including Miss Universe contestants.





But, like Faustus, Trumpus’s restlessness drove him to take great risks in his quest for the salve that would soothe his itch for more. Rising to the highest office in the land and wielding the authority of the most powerful position on earth felt to him like the last mountain to be climbed. With it would come the adulation of millions and the opportunity to destroy the legacy of the man he envied and hated; and as the CEO of the country, he could expand his wealth by making his private enterprises venues for government business.





It was the perfect plan, but there were obstacles. He was inexperienced in politics, he was completely uneducated in the constitution, foreign policy, the economy, global alliances, geography, or any other subject that might have given him knowledge and insight needed for the job. Moreover, he lacked the basic intelligence and intellectual curiosity to learn any of those things. He even had to pay someone to sit for his SAT so that he could earn the required score for admission to the Wharton School of business. What to do? Well, he could summon Mephistopheles.





And so he did. In this version of the tale, Mephistopheles is named Vladimir Putin. Putin, with the complicity of the Republican Party, would grant Trumpus the presidency–with all of the glamour, power, wealth, and ego inflation–in exchange for complete control over Trump and freedom from the inconvenient sanctions that would be imposed on him by any real president. I would not presume to make suppositions about Donald Trump’s eternal soul, if he ever had one, but it has been clear to all with eyes to see and brains to process information that he is beholden to Vladimir Putin in ways detrimental to him and to the country gullible and stupid enough to elect him.





There is throughout the tale a sort of madness to Faustus, like the character in Edgar Allen Poe’s story who is strapped down and unable to move while the pendulum that could slice him in half inches its way closer. Trumpus’s base level madness shows itself in his frenetic tweeting, bragging, and lying about such things as crowd sizes and his ability to handle things: “I alone can fix it.” Trumpus knows his time is limited, unless of course he can incite his base to make him the kind of life-term authoritarian ruler he so admires in other countries.





Whether it’s four years or eight years, midnight is coming, and he sees the bottomless chasm opening to swallow him up: that deep pit of legal troubles over which he is dangling, which must be every bit as terrifying as the mythical hell flames. As long as he can remain in office, he will continue to have the immunity to prosecution and unveiling of his deepest secrets that he has so far enjoyed. At the stroke of midnight, however, he will be open to exposure–the threat of which is driving him further into madness, just as Faustus descends into madness during his final moments.





Former CIA Director John Brennan said to MSNBC news anchor Joy Reid, on October 12: “Things have gone from the abnormal to the surreal.”





One reason it’s been difficult to recognize and chart Donald Trump’s descent into madness is that he’s never been sane. Abnormality has been the norm: the lies, the tweeting, the flouting of tradition and norms, the disrespect for his office, the ignorance, the utter lack of compassion for other humans, the refusal to treat his supporters and his critics with equal respect and responsibility, the refusal to condemn white supremacist groups, the inner circle of felons and the lowest level of humanity, the willingness to do anything to boost his ego and retain power and adulation. Tragically, this is the base line.





How could things get worse? When the guy who signed the deed (made the deal with Lucifer) is looking at possible debt collection time (November 3), even the thinnest semblance of control is going to be next to impossible to maintain.





Hence, the infamous tweets appear to be escalating in both number and recklessness. This one, posted on October 5, 2020, could win awards for misinformation, insensitivity, and shameless self-promotion:





“I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M. Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!”





Yes, misinformation, insensitivity, and shameless self-promotion are his primary characteristics on his best day; but this tweet hits a new low.





In the most inane report of the week (so difficult to single out just one), it’s been widely reported that he had cooked up this stunt and discussed it with several people as he was preparing to leave Walter Reed Medical Center. In his always-delusional, now drug-enhanced extra-delusional brain, he saw himself walking out of the hospital in his usual button-down shirt and suit coat. Then at just the perfect moment, he would rip open his shirt, revealing a Superman T-shirt underneath. Really. This was his fever dream for demonstrating his strength and virility. With 210,000 Americans at that same moment having lost their lives to the disease he claims to have beaten, he wanted to do a Reality TV stunt to show how strong he thinks he is.





His scattershot efforts at voter suppression expose the desperation which drives him. Tampering with the postal service, raising unfounded alarm about mail-in voting, putting up roadblocks to make voting more difficult, and lying about ballot fraud are all aimed at suppressing votes for his opponent and creating enough doubt about the legitimacy of the election to set the stage for the Supreme Court to decide the winner. And he’s orchestrated, with his complicit Republican senators, the greatest sham hearing in history to railroad through a SCOTUS nominee, to be sure he has a majority on the bench when the election case is presented.





In a move typical of banana-republic dictators but not of the republic to which Americans pledge their allegiance, he is using the power of his office and of our government agencies to attempt punishment of his political rivals. During the week following his release from Walter Reed, he launched a series of tweets demanding the imprisonment of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, and excoriating his own Attorney General Bill Barr for not acting fast enough. The tweet storm culminated in an all-caps scream:





“DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS, THE BIGGEST OF ALL POLITICAL SCANDALS (IN HISTORY)!!! BIDEN, OBAMA AND CROOKED HILLARY LED THIS TREASONOUS PLOT!!! BIDEN SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO RUN – GOT CAUGHT!!!”





I’m trying to imagine what congressional action would have been taken against any other president who made such an unhinged demand.





To prove he’s an equal-opportunity employer, he also attacked his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for not having declassified and released all of Hillary Clinton’s emails (groan!). CNN’s Jennifer Hansler reports:





“’She said she had 33,000 e-mails,’ Trump told Fox News on Thursday. ‘They’re in the State Department, but Mike Pompeo is unable to get them out, which is very sad actually. I’m — I’m not happy about him for that, that reason. He was unable to get — I don’t know why. You’re running the State Department and you get them out. But they’re in the State Department.’”





My mother always said, “Any port will do in a storm.” And Trump’s storm is rising, so he’s frantically throwing out whatever might appease the storm gods and find him safe harbor.





So what is it that may await our tragic hero when his days in the White House end? What does he see in that chasm that is slowly opening beneath his feet? Among other things, exposure of his crimes and misdeeds and most embarrassing moments, a wave of lawsuits, and if justice prevails, prison time.





Parts of the Mueller Report which have so far been redacted could be made public, further information about his tax fraud may be published, whatever Vladimir Putin is holding over his head may be exposed, evidence may be revealed to substantiate parts of the Steele Dossier, more aides and administration officials may feel free to tell what they know and write more tell-all books, he could face even more lawsuits than are already pending against him from families of COVID patients who have died, and worst of all to his narcissistic mind he will stand naked before the world as the thing he hates most: a loser.





Individual lawsuits are already too numerous to list, but they can be organized under a few general headings: finances and taxes; violations while in office, including the Hatch Act, the  emoluments clause, and using White House property for political gatherings; possible lawsuits arising from the Mueller Report; campaign violations; sexual misconduct and assault, of which he has been credibly accused by 20 women, including one who was only 13 years old at the time of the alleged assault; and contractors whom he has refused to pay money he owed. This is just a small sampling of what he and his family may face when he can no longer retreat to the safe harbor of the White House.





Our job is to be sure midnight comes on November 3, 2020–not November 5, 2024. As Senator Amy Klobuchar so passionately argued during the confirmation hearing for Amy Coney Barrett,  “This isn’t Donald Trump’s country, it is yours.” I’m ready to take it back. Let Donald Trump pay for the bargain he made, and let us restore our country. By 2024, it may be too late.