Together, It's A Heck of A Party: Can They Make It Work for Them?

When twenty presidential candidates take the stage, some new ideas are likely to emerge. Some might even be good ones.

With this group of Democrats, there were plenty of good ideas and well-expressed. Nobody's saying much about it right now, but the display on June 26 and 27 was pretty darn impressive.

It was also a relief of sorts. There were no ad hominem attacks, though sharp exchanges between Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, and Julian Castro and Beto O'Rourke, were to be expected. Yet, the verbiage was respectful and measured, not random slams based on exaggerations.

I wonder if people came away from that believing that, if nothing else, maybe a Democrat should be given a chance to undo the terrible damage that the awful words of 45 have done, so far, these past two and a half years. And none of them lied or even were disingenuous.

Really. You know if you watched it. If you didn't, you have to take my word for it: A normal political exchange between competitors is still possible in this republic.

The language expressed, the ideas made, the respect between competitors, cannot compare with the stumbling, bumbling, Neanderthalish Republicans, who oversimplify and brutalize every policy initiative, even those begun by themselves, seeking a two- or three-word phrase that either deflects or deceives.

Rachel Maddow is right: Each of the 20 candidates had an excellent, meaningful moment during the debates. Each said something not only articulate, but even profound, right up to Marianne Williamson's "We welcome the stranger (which is challengeable, by the way, worth a discussion based on history)," which, if not one hundred percent true, is something many of us strive for or should strive for.

There were plenty of others: Eric Swallwell's comment that he has to remember what his kids wear to school so just in case they get gunned down, they can be easily identified as dead or alive; is that chilling enough? Tim Ryan's reminder that if the Democrats don't become a party at least partially sensitive to the working people, they'll lose again: Can there be any doubt about that?

The three I have mentioned above have almost zero chance of being nominated, much less elected, president. But I'll take their minds and their approaches over every single other Republican candidate I have heard speak since Eisenhower. Republicans have sloganized their messaging so much that they literally have nothing new to say. They are bobbleheads who quote each other and posture for effect--the effect being the largest person or the largest voice being the one who evokes enough fear, which substitutes for real strength, which takes work and thought and adjustment through time, not just the same solution for every problem.

It's a collection of talent far superior to the one conservatives raved about four years ago. Only one of them will survive this cutthroat competitiveness, though.

Is it possible that that winner can combine the best attributes of the whole bunch? If so, it would be one formidable candidate. Who would that be?

Here's another question: Can the debate-primary system we are now stuck with bring that about? Can the combination of politicking necessary to weave one's way to the top rung become the strainer through which the most negative aspects of a presidential hopeful are wrung out, and the best left over at the bottom, then poured out for magnificent display?

Or will the winner, having had to take incredible shot after incredible shot, be so beaten up and susceptible to attacks by the time the process ends and the final campaign begins that he/she can't possibly overcome the name-calling, castigation, innuendoes and outright lies we know will come from 45, who will take advantage of what gets laid out there for him? The process undoubtedly makes people inwardly tougher with each showdown (As it did when I ran for the NEA Executive Committee for a second straight year. People were looking at a different person then.) But will it make them weaker in the eyes of too many?

Impossible to say, but there are already built-in strainers that might eliminate candidates who may be some of the best the Democrats have. The cut-off support numbers for candidates before the next debate have doubled, and some candidates who accorded themselves quite well and have excellent credentials struggled to make the first cut. Does the relative paucity of support reflect their lack of electability at this early date, thus eliminating someone who might just come roaring from behind?

All this may be excessive hand-wringing, of course. All may yet be well. But it also might not. We can't afford to get it wrong this time. A loss in 2020 won't so easily be waved off by an attitude of we'll-get-'em-next-time. The country would look far worse than anything we have had to endure. The vacuum of leadership already evident would deepen. Encouragement of polarization for another four years would take hold in more ways that would be truly frightening.

Here's hoping the Democrats get this right. They have plenty of material to build a solid candidacy. Whether they can put the right parts in the right places at the right time, though, will determine our destiny in no uncertain terms. One of the concepts that the candidate must get across, too, is the very idea that that's what's at stake.

Maybe that's why so many came out to run. Maybe that alone is a good sign.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

More Presidential Power, Not Less; More Politics, Not Less: The Legacy of Gerrymandering's Legal Imprimatur of Unfairness

Today's Supreme Court ruling on gerrymandering--no harm, no foul; fix it yourselves, say the five Pontius Pilates--damages our checks and balances in ways that are quite possible, now, to foresee.

To wit: With a Congress that will always be polarized and helplessly knotted up with posturing but little legislating, presidential power to govern will become more vital, not less, piled onto a system that has, with remembrance of terrorism all too evident, become more reliant on it.

Thus: More executive orders, not fewer. The executive branch will become top-heavy with power, with true representative government being shunted into irrelevance.

Dictatorialism, much like that of Hungary and Turkey at present, will impress itself upon the land. It's just what the monster in the White House wants.

Worse: Impeachment, as even a political act in the name of the people, will now be rendered officially obsolete--a part of the Constitution as useless as, say, the 3/5 Clause, which arranged for the South to have an equivalent number of members of the House because it could now count 3/5 of its slaves as people, even though they weren't treated as such.

Polarization will now double down and get worse. Primaries will continue to be the real elections in more than half our districts. The competitions will be intra-party, with severe, extreme positions needed to create distance between those who run. Trying to navigate legislation through that hotbox will be difficult enough; performing the daunting task of impeachment will be hopeless.

Put that together with the nicely-arranged, Justice Department's philosophy/policy of not indicting a sitting president, and you have the makings of an imperial position that the Founders never wanted. Unless one political party simply decides to cave and deliver the 2/3 majority that conviction constitutionally demands, no president will be legally assailable under any circumstances--including proof that he committed a major crime, such as rape.

The nation will have to wait--be forced to wait--at least until a term has ended before organizing an effective campaign to take a president down. In the meantime, as is happening right under our noses, our prestige, governmental infrastructure, and rule of law will suffer serious damage, far more than the considerable amount it has already suffered. It is damage that will take perhaps decades to repair, and may lead to violence to settle passionate issues. Heaven knows, we have plenty of guns for that.

With Speaker Nancy Pelosi crying uncle over today's capitulation on the border wall bill, giving Senate Republicans pretty much what they wanted, it's clear that as feared, the Democrats are too divided between moderate and progressive wings to form a united front against this monster. It will be bad enough for the country to have a presidency swung out of balance; if 45 continues, we will be confronted with genuine tyranny with no way to counteract it.

Remember that photo of the drowned father and his infant daughter, futilely reaching for asylum through treacherous waters: There will be more. We will become numb to that, too. Having relinquished feelings for first graders gunned down, we will come to feel nothing at all. That is the doorway to chaos and anarchy. If nothing haunts, we cannot be haunted by anything.

Don't believe that the passage of 45, whenever it happens, will result in something close to a return to normal power balances, either. People who lust for that kind of power can now justify that lust and are eyeing the White House in new ways. The reliance on big money to fund campaigns will be even more necessary, and Citizens United has provided them with just the vehicle. If 45 is going to get away with foreign intervention to assist his victory (victories?), why should anyone else hold back from such strategies?

Democracy in this land has been thrown into the hurt locker by five Supreme Court justices who either don't get it, have retreated back into a very scarred ivory tower of separation of powers that they conveniently choose to respect, or have simply joined the glacial coup d'etat: huge, slow but impenetrable. Regardless, with this legal imprimatur of gross unfairness, we are now quite officially stuck without a compass, and the states will now accelerate the fierce struggle for power. It will bring home politics to all those who wish to hide behind social niceties. With polarization guaranteed, no one will play nice because no one has to.

Sorry for the grim forecast. I see none other.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

The Scold of the Senate: Could She Be Ready for the Showdown?

Elizabeth Warren is, among all other things, a scold.

She creates an atmosphere of accountability by merely being in the room. I saw it myself.

During the year in which I lived in Washington, DC, I would occasionally sit in on committee hearings, especially when they had something to do with education. This particular day, it had something to do with higher education.

The original atmosphere was same old, same old. Al Franken's body language reflected it. He looked tired. His chin was plunked onto his hand such that it might have been superglued there. He listened politely but had little to add. He and Lamar Alexander were the only Senators in the room.

It seemed a day like so many others: perfunctory, token, dull, nearly meaningless in terms of shaping policy. In came Warren. Sitting literally at the edge of her chair, she had questions--very, very pointed questions--in the form of a scold, as in how could you let this happen?

People squirmed. Answers became hesitant. But she got them. Then she got up and undoubtedly went on to something else she needed to get straight.

Don't think for a minute that she'd change this attitude if she becomes president. And don't think she would change anything in her approach if on the debate circuit with 45, with the future of the republic at stake.

Wall Street people don't like her because, as someone suggested in a recent New Yorker article, she's not there to argue with you. She's there to tell you the things she's going to do if people would just get the heck out of her way and let her do them because, after all, she's done the reading and she's done the asking and it's the right thing to do. And when it's the right thing to do, after all, there shouldn't be any questions.

But first, she would get after 45 like nobody else. Taxing the middle class and not the rich: How could you let this happen? The immigration crisis on the border: How could you let this happen? Our growing fiasco with Iran: How could you let this happen? The damage done to our allies: How could you let this happen? The utter lack of accountability for the elections and pretense of no Russian responsibility: How in blue blazes could you let this happen?

And on and on. If it came to that--and right now, the odds aren't exactly great though she's building some momentum--it would be fun to watch. It would be a showdown unlike any other. And it would decide the election right then and there, because the ultimate male, in his mind, would have to respond to a female who simply wouldn't take any guff from him.

He would try everything, personal insults included, "Pocahontas" and "socialist" being just for starters, and every venue available--Fox, tweets, the whole bit--without letup, weeks before the debate. He is, after all, desperate. And he knows why: all the wrong reasons.

How she would handle them would be the litmus test, because she'd have to get beyond them to prove that her policy initiatives, not the scattered shabbiness his represent, would be the direction that the country needed to have. In the meantime, she would pick a fight with him, not the other way around. To stay with the basis of that fight--not personal, just policy, which is the way she wants it--may or may not give off the best impression that she, and certainly not he, is the best person to take the reins now.

No way to know that, of course, seeing as how we're dealing with someone who will do anything and say anything to get what he believes to be the upper hand. (Look for his tweeting during the Demcratic debates to be an early indication.) And no matter how anything looks, he will claim victory. But it might still be left to her to call this monster out for who he is--a cruel, self-aggrandizing, and disgusting bully who has no justification to take on or keep such an important position.

But first, the preliminaries. The candidates' goals will be to stir up some dust. By the weekend, we'll see where it falls.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

"I Stopped It" Equals "I'm the Decider"

For 45 to say that he pulled the plug on what would likely have been a provocative, escalatory response to Iran's destruction of one of our military drones was supposed to be a reassuring reaffirmation: I'm in charge here.

It isn't. Because he isn't.

Anything but. It's clear from the leaks of inside-the-Oval-Office conversations that are always provided because he can't control those, either, that 45 was caught between military and diplomatic/economic solutions--a.k.a. John Bolton and Mike Pompeo--the same way that Jimmy Carter was caught between Cyrus Vance and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Gerald Ford was caught between James Schlesinger and Henry Kissinger, and Bush-43 between Dick Cheney and something less than complete aggression.

That he was ten minutes away from blowing something up that would have killed about 150 people suggests dithering, not decisiveness. A Business Week article suggests that, if the pre-briefing by the military was anything like that delivered to previous presidents, 45 would have been told right from the top that the attack plan would have cost lives. So 45's explanation of his decision-making, as is true of his explanations of nearly everything else, is tainted with the knowledge that he very definitely knew exactly what he was doing--including the original decision to attack.

But we now also know that:

• Tucker Carlson, the right-wing commentator on Fox News, told 45 that an attack on Iran would likely cost him the 2020 election;
• Pompeo made it a point to tell 45 that the economic sanctions on Iran were working quite well, thus putting the kind of pressure on the Iranian government that they were meant to; and
• There was enough evidence to suggest that the attack on the U.S. drone was, if not an outright mistake, a reaction from a trigger-happy member of the Iranian military, and not a plan from the government to escalate tensions.

Knowing all that beforehand, 45 still allowed preparedness to proceed until literally the last minute. This is playing with disaster, a fulfillment of the fictional film Fail-Safe, in which both the American president and Soviet premier, though in direct consultation at times, watch helplessly as the systems they thought they controlled spin hopelessly out of control--and, though neither of them wants it, two major cities are obliterated.

Even with a non-nuclear attack, ten minutes of slack aren't very many. The world is still a large place, messages take time to reach layers of command and can get scrambled--or, as the Iranian attack suggests, either ignored or intentionally misunderstood. It begs responses by terrorists with tacit approval, things like blowing up jetliners: At least that way, though you don't know when, you know it's going to happen, nobody within your government will touch it, and maybe you can cover your tracks.

We don't play that game. They do. He plays politics with everything. Look back at the three bulleted points I've made above: Which one do you think weighed the most on his mind when he reversed course with ten minutes left? Anyone with a firm grasp on geopolitics and diplomacy?

Does it suggest that he has strong views on anything? Because he doesn't, especially about things that he hasn't already registered in his small, relatively vacant mind, including a guilty verdict against five black teenagers who were wrongly accused of rape 30 years ago. Iran wouldn't be one of them.

He hasn't read up on it. He hasn't asked about it. He just thinks we were weak to negotiate with it, and he hates the appearance of weakness (not its reality, for prior lack of knowledge makes one a weak decision-maker). But telling everyone that "I stopped" the attack is exactly that, except that he still thinks enough of the public will see that as being somehow blessed with peaceable intentions out of the clear blue sky.

All this suggests an inability to decide crucial matters, much like Bush-43 appeared to be most of the time Cheney was around. For him to say "I'm the decider" was much like teachers proclaiming that they ran their classrooms--which means, when you have to re-establish that idea, the kids have already taken over.

Bush-43 managed to reclaim his authority toward the end of his presidency, projecting a more moderating tone. But it took a good five to six years to do so. By then, the damage done by such mistakes as the Iraq War and No Child Left Behind were deeply underway--mistakes for which we are paying today.

45's mistakes, his refusal to hire staff at even the highest levels, his stubbornness to absorb any outside information that might help establish policy, his obsession with a crepe paper construction of a past that never existed, his racism and his insult-based approach to politics will also wreak horrible damage, whether he is impeached or not, whether he is re-elected or not. We are left with a blind, fragile hope that, next time around, a combination of advisers and dumb luck will leave us in the same place we are now--somehow stumbling a bit short of catastrophe.

Not exactly the most responsible process for a superpower. At least, one that used to wear that label far better. But then, "responsible" is a word this president hates nearly as much as "immigrant."

Be well. I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Joe Can't Say It Ain't So

Political campaigns, by their very nature, have an exaggerative bent. 45's wasn't the only one: He just took it to a level we hadn't experienced.

We start again. Joe Biden's early-on video announcing his candidacy has a reassuring theme. To wit: What we're seeing here from 45 is "an aberration." It is, in other words, a one-off, a blip on the screen, a hiccup. In the 243 years since the founding of the republic, there's likely to be one of these that we simply can't fathom.

Don't worry, Biden's saying. Help is on the way. After all, I was Obama's Veep. I know what a good administration is. We'll get the ship righted. We'll send these people packing.

Not that that wouldn't be one excellent idea, but the premise is shaky and unrealistic in its estimation of these purveyors of unrealism. One of the assumptions that we simply can't settle for is that this was an ambush of sorts, that nobody could see this coming. It ignores some pretty deep dividing issues and the degree to which some folks are devoted to advancing them, regardless of who carries their banner.

Self-bluffing dominated the 2016 campaign, and it all wasn't just Hillary Clinton's or those of 45's internal Republican detractors. Many people saw the lusting, shouting, mocking crowds at 45's rallies and assumed, as some journalists did early on, that a significant number of those in attendance came for entertainment purposes. They could say they were at the carnival that ultimately couldn't have been going anywhere anyhow.

But as I tried to point out to friends on Facebook, the crowds got larger and even more boisterous. 45's insults and ridiculous anti-logic got worse. And they just kept coming and gaining momentum. The election appeared to be getting close.

Something was happening out there. Or, just maybe, something had already happened.

It's the latter. Think back: How did the Republicans in Congress deal with Obama's election? When did the Tea Party begin its rallies? When did Glenn Beck get it all riled up against the Affordable Care Act? When did the Republicans take back control of Congress? When was Mr. F. Gow* (see note below) first elected? And what did the columnists say of all that at the time?

Answers: From the beginning, to stonewall anything he wanted to pass; 2010, 2010, 2010, 2010; and that it was a "temper tantrum." Which means first, that the resistance--the real resistance, the one in plain sight that we flicked off as trivial--began far before people took it seriously as a measurement of underlying despair, anger and resentment, regardless of its basis. The denial of that phenomenon had established itself well before its ultimate Aliens birth, where the being agonizingly and fatally rips through the male space agent who'd unknowingly inhaled it and had been gestating it beforehand, tearing his body in two, complete with screaming from both beings--one that had come to life, one dying in the worst way.

This was swallowed in 2010. It took six years to grow while we all went about our business, pretending that it could be absorbed by the body politic without permanent damage. And out it came with all the screaming and horror it could possibly create.

Aliens is a space-age horror film. We are now living it, having been torn in two by this terrible combination of the wrong attributes. It's been here for some time now, in a way since the Clinton impeachment. Let me run some names past you, names that gained notoriety before 2010: Newt Gingrich. Tom DeLay. Jack Abramoff. Roy Moore. Dick Cheney. Donald Rumsfeld. Bullying of opponents, devastating gerrymandering, casual corruption, twisted religiosity, utilization of executive power to further one's ends, misuse of the military. It's all there.

Sorry, Joe, but this is not a mere "aberration". You can't say it ain't so. This is a real politico-cultural entity, something like the enormous plastic "island" in the Pacific Ocean that's nearly the size of Texas; not very useful, but it won't dissolve by itself. It has drifted ashore, it is still growing, and it must be faced and dealt with.

Maybe this sounds like more political exaggeration. I don't think so. Failure to deal with this will spell failure again in 2020. Even if the Democratic candidate should prevail, she/he will have to reach out to the Anger Lobby and present some semblance of hope for it. Otherwise, the effects of victory will quickly dissolve. I don't think this republic can handle the incessant discontent, however pretentious and misplaced it may be, and continue to be what Lincoln called "the last, best hope of mankind."

The hope is still there. But it dangles on the edge now.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark
*See my blog of 6/3/19

Keep It On The Billboards, Not In The Smoke-Filled Rooms

Billboarding is one of those lost arts we take for granted. They are often not just ads. They are commentaries, too, and meant to be such.

Their positioning is vital or the object of derision, depending on your outlook. There are a group of them, going north on I-41 right around Oshkosh, that represent a fascinating cultural dichotomy. They're on the other side of the freeway, but they can't be missed. The first group, as you get to it, are religiously-based, those Jesus-Is-Lord reminders. But they're followed, quite immediately and almost close enough to suggest that our minds are being toyed with, by another, equally-numbered grouping that announces a nearby strip joint.

Makes you wonder which ones were put up first. Makes you wonder, too, how to consider them: either to say that the first should blot out the second in your mind, you naughty boy; or, like most of us, to take care of the first on Sunday and, well, enjoy the rest of your week and by the way, there's fun to be had, feminism (and the rest of those awful but cavalier guys) be damned. We get to ask for forgiveness, but what's the use of that if there's nothing to forgive?

Whatever. But there are other, religiously suggestive but sometimes not, billboards that we see all over now. They, too, are reminders. They, too, have intentions deeper than those stated.

Those are the ones that tell you at what point in a fetus' development--never called a fetus, always a baby, itself a commentary that is to be considered beyond the billboard itself--its heart can beat, its hands can be seen, it can hear, etc., etc. The message pounds away at you--this is a human being very early on, far before it's ready to come out. How can anyone possibly end its existence?

Some of them directly invoke God's or Jesus' name, as if, again, Christianity were the only religion within which a discussion of abortion should be brief, pointed and already answered: NO. It isn't, but billboards don't have a lot of room, you know?

It suggests a deserved smothering, a flexing of power and control against that which every pregnant woman has upon discovery of her status, whether we like it or not, a power that has been exercised for centuries, legality also be damned. And to be sure, only Planned Parenthood billboards, as few of them as there are, represent something akin to an unstated pushback against them, actual family planning by plenty of other healthy means notwithstanding. At least I have never seen a billboard expressing, which it certainly could by utilization of the same First Amendment, the right of a woman to control her body under constitutional limitations (which there are, lest we forget), thank you very much. Have you?

By lack of exposure, then, a side of one of the most important arguments in our jurisprudence and culture goes mostly wanting. Liberals aren't lazy as often as they are insouciant and smarmy. The status quo doesn't need organizing; it's beyond that now because, you know, it's there. The discussion is over, true. We won. Nothing to fight for.

But ideas can die from a lack of expression, which forecasts their loss of salience. Once they figure out how dangerously under attack they are, though, advocates find that it's often too late. As it might be now, when the horrible new state laws passed in places like Georgia, Alabama, and Ohio are paraded in front of the Supreme Court that 45 has had a chance to significantly alter, what with two appointees out of nine that have already tipped the scales. Knowing this, those state legislatures, controlled of course by white, male Republicans who can't imagine the rights of a woman extending beyond the voting booth and actually into her individual self--and can't imagine, either, the possibility that, once re-established, restrictions on women's bodies won't be extended into men's reproductive rights, either; a specter that would loom large by retribution if for no other reason, but anti-perspective thick-headedness dominates cultishly paranoid behavior and squashes logic--have decided that, with possibilities of a possible impeachment and failure in the upcoming presidential election looming, now is the time to transcend that apocalypse and extend a far more preferred one upon the abortion rights advocates. Amen!

Messages that respond to these awful new laws scream for an airing. If your uncle rapes your niece, what are your plans to adopt? Stick that one up on I-75 out of Atlanta and see what happens. It's at least as outrageous as the religiously-afflicted one on I-40 east of Little Rock that suggests (shouts, actually) that it's okay to beat your kids because the Bible tells us so. There ought to be one that follows it by about 300 feet that says, Please ignore the billboard you've just read. Be good to your kids and they'll be good to you. Or maybe, in direct response: Jesus said to suffer the children unto him. Maybe you should, since it's clear you can't handle them.

I wouldn't mind that at all. Because that's where the conversation belongs. It belongs out there, not within law-making bodies. Nobody wins there, because that's the failure of power over influence.

Power is by nature coercive: Do this or else. It is dominating and it speaks to condescension and humiliation. Winners demand losers. But also revenge, so the relationship never ends and is never positive. Never. The losers wait in the tall grass as long as it takes. It is why, without the use of the actual force we had in the name of a highly questionable morality, we lost in Vietnam: the natives had all the advantages, especially time. Sixteen years wasn't enough: that's the amount of time etched on a wall in Washington, DC, listing the 58,000 Americans who learned that for us in the worst way, having their lives aborted just a little later, the reasons for which are, too, highly debatable. (No, I'm not suggesting that we should have dropped nuclear weapons on North Vietnam. But Ho Chi Minh understood the Western psyche: We get impatient and give up easily. To the Asian mind, 16 years is a finger-snap. In 1971, Henry Kissinger asked Chinese Foreign Minister Chou En-lai how he felt about the effects of the French Revolution. His response: It's too soon to tell. And now, a mere 44 years after a pointless war, we trade with Vietnam and exchange tourists. They're still a communist society.)

Influence, on the other hand, speaks to what is best in us. It is persuasive and requires one to stop and think. It is why a history teacher got far more mileage out of recommending books to be read and not requiring them to be 'covered' for tests, though there was always that: When you have to do something 'or else,' it's largely uncomfortable and not much fun. When someone you respect thinks something is a good idea, though, you might just look into it and benefit from it. A much better bond is created. That never ends, either.

Which one is preferable? Which one moves humanity in a better direction? Is there any choice?

I'm all for persuasive influence. If you think that God intended women to give birth regardless of circumstances as awful and devastating as they might be, and have the bucks to get it out there on a billboard and keep it there, then fine: We live in a society that allows that message, however misguided a use of religion I happen to think it is. But you'd better allow me to post a pointed response nearby, as sinful as you think I'm being. That, too, is my right and my advantage: to respond to your argument with one of mine, well-placed and well-timed.

And this argument will never, ever be solved. No law, no Supreme Court decision will determine that. The same pushback will take place because the two sides can never be completely reconciled other than to say that abortion is a tragedy and should be avoided--but sometimes can't be. That is our limitation as a human species, and no absolutism and the power than it can unleash, a stifling, horrible power that can't be put in an okay-just-for-this kind of box (because there are too many variables), will end the discussion.

It's going to happen. It can't be stopped. As a society, we are working on it, too: Teen pregnancies are down. But to pretend that it can be eradicated is whistling past a growing graveyard of panic-stricken women, short on health insurance or prohibited by it, who will resort to exactly the thing at which we cringe: coat-hangers.

So leave the discussion up on the billboards, not in the smoke-filled rooms. That's where it belongs and can flourish. It's one of the most important discussions we continue to have, so visual reminders of it can't hurt. Not like a coat-hanger, anyway.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

The Obsolete Handmaid in Charge

I subscribe to more magazines than I can possibly absorb, at least in their entirely. Often, I read one particularly interesting article and then pitch it. I don't have time to do more, especially if I do something like this, too.

I also keep some articles around for reading even months after publication with an I'll-get-to-it attitude because I might need it for something that's come up. Sometimes, I'm kidding myself and end up tossing it. Other times, though, articles re-emerge with distinct timing. So it was that I took out a copy of The New Yorker to read a profile piece on Sarah Huckabee Sanders, written by Paige Williams for an issue last September.

Sanders, as we all now know, is leaving her White House press secretary position to return to her native Arkansas, a place I have some knowledge of, having lived there for two and a half years early in this decade. Its politics, like those of my home state of Wisconsin, have turned particularly bitter, ugly, and divisive. And, like Wisconsin, the Republicans are in firm control, Wisconsin's recent election of Tony Evers as governor not withstanding because his reforms are being stifled by a strong, gerrymander-arranged majority in the state legislature which is making the budget revert to what it's been the last eight years under Mr. F. Gow (should you need a translation, please see my blog of 6/3/19).

Sanders' father, Mike Huckabee, is perched near the center of that bitterness. He gave politics a sharp right turn after Bill and Hillary Clinton left for the White House in the '90s. His skill with words hid, or attempted to gloss over, a deep evangelical commitment against abortion and gay marriage--one that his daughter shares.

Sanders, Williams pointed out, has worked on the campaign of Senator Tom Cotton, a hyper-militaristic, fear-mongering, fact-twisting, fellow evangelical (Who has already written a book, meaning that he's eyeing the White House himself. Count on it. He's as vicious and self-righteous as Ted Cruz, and even deeper into a world of his own.). She never performed the tasks of press secretary with the aplomb of a media-relations professional, Williams said. She was a campaign operative, hired as a mouthpiece and not a distributor of information, however biased. "A press secretary who had an abiding respect for First Amendment freedoms likely would have resigned once it became clear that [45] intended to steamroll his way through the Constitution," Williams wrote. "But Sanders stayed....The [45] Administration's relationship with the press transcends ordinary discord. The president's toxic relationship with the media demands that a press secretary behave, at least publicly, less as a source of information than as a battering ram--especially during a moment of crisis, like now."

Sanders became a hired gun, but her hands were tied in case she was ever tempted to wander off the reservation. 45 often watches what press conferences ever take place on live TV next to the Oval Office. "It's like having the theatre critic-in-chief sitting there, and you'd better believe he'll tell you about it afterward," Williams was told by a White House reporter.

But that was never the problem. Sanders, at least publicly, treated reporters with disdain, obfuscation, and condescension. (In private discussions, she has been far more accommodating and far closer to the traditional role of press secretary. At parties, she has been known to pop a bourbon or two, drinkin' and yes, cussin' like the boys. Wherever she has gone, her public attitude toward her position has taken the shape of her boss'. She may be submissive on the surface, echoing whatever lies he tells, but she also utilizes her opportunities to get where she needs to go.) Ever the victim--one of her boss' major character traits--she regularly insulted the press corps by constantly implying what a pain it was to have to deal with them.

So, quite naturally, the frequency of press conferences has diminished such that, as we count, nothing has taken place over the last 95 days that would approximate one, if you don't include the very meeting at which Sanders announced her resignation. Sanders and her boss are perfectly satisfied with commenting while making their ways to the next meeting--briefly, vaguely, and dismissively with talking points, not genuine information.

One could say, without much exaggeration, that Sanders' job has therefore become obsolete. I seriously wonder if, as 45 has made it part of his M.O., that she either might not be replaced, or that the person who replaces her will be made acting press secretary--you know, on an interim, probationary basis, just in case she/he should mess up even once.

Whether Sanders messed up in saying that "countless" FBI employees had contacted her to support the dismissal of Director James Comey--a lie exposed in the Mueller report, which she could not walk back with anything like skill--is a good question. But no doubt whatever street cred she'd had has pretty much disappeared. It's become a good time to get, and so she's gone.

I'm guessing that her successor will first, be a female, extremely obedient to the strong-sounding (but not actually strong) male; second, an openly-admitted evangelical, like Sanders and many who are now close to 45 (including, chillingly, the Secretary of State) and used to playing a subservient, biblically-based role; and third, someone with a tongue as sharp as Sanders and Kellyanne Conway in dealing with a press corps that has become even more strident in its objections to the attitude extended toward it. In short, the Handmaid in Charge, protecting Big Daddy against those mean old people who judge folks like them so harshly.

For those in Arkansas, you know what you're getting. Rex Nelson, a columnist for the very pro-45 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (which annoyingly tries literally every day to get a pro-45 headline and/or picture into its main story even when it isn't very important; a down-home spin machine that 45 should thank) and Mike Huckabee's former communications director, who is quoted more than once in Williams' story, wants Sanders to run for governor 'some day', not wanting to step on the toes of Asa Hutchinson, the current Republican governor. Nelson's positioning in that daily, monotonous Republican mouthpiece (the circulation of which has no equal in the state, but which is phasing out its print edition), along with family familiarity, will bring that decision forward in a relative hurry.

Meanwhile, the meaning of the First Amendment continues to be trashed by an administration gifted by a built-in "enemy of the people," a self-victimizing smear that it brings forward when it re-occurs to 45, usually at rallies of mindless, indoctrinated minions who boo and hiss the media that gives ironic, public exposure to this insistent nonsense. We face four more years of this attempt at mind-cleansing if 45 should be re-elected, not to mention the acceleration of lies and steady diet of exaggerations that the next campaign no doubt will bring. All the more reason for the press to remain vigilant, aggressive, and mindful of its role as the counterpoint to a government that hides in plain sight.

With the exception, of course, of Fox News. But that's another story for another time.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

The Gnats Won't Leave Her Alone

So you're Nancy Pelosi, the most powerful Democrat and the most powerful woman, at least legislatively, in American history (so far) as the current Speaker of the House. And you're on the spot.

You have a renegade president on your hands. He won't respect anything or anyone. The only two things that matter to him are first, if he can do what he wants to do; and second, if anyone doesn't like it and is willing to say so. The first he attacks with his lawyers, the second with his tweets and his obnoxiously big, lying mouth. The only thing the two of you have in common is that you both have five kids; you by a single husband, he by three wives, all of whom he has betrayed.

You find him horrible, reprehensible, and simply revolting. Beyond that, his policies border on consistently, cold-bloodedly inhumane and amoral. He is an intimidating bully to boot.

In the meantime, an independent report, as restricted as it was, has still unearthed considerable evidence that The Renegade has broken the law--not once, but at least ten times. Beyond all his other awful attributes, he is now, in all likelihood, a criminal in plain sight.

You know this. You are challenged daily by it--by the mere presence of someone so powerful but so irresponsible and simply childish. He not only doesn't represent what the overwhelming majority of Americans want in a president, he also represents all that they don't want. And now you're challenged by your fellow Democrats in the House, who know this and want action.

The 2018 election has put them back in control. The House has the responsibility to begin impeachment proceedings if it wants to. And that phrase belongs solely to you. You are the person who can pull that trigger or keep that weapon in the vault permanently. Your position, right this minute, is to wait to see what kind of evidence will develop and where "the facts will lead."

But this president is standing there, daring you. You know very well that an impeachment charge or charges will go wanting in the Republican-controlled Senate; no hopes or logic, however legally procured, will change that simple fact. The Senate Republicans are tied by politics alone, for any consideration of legality would have removed this monster already. So it's politics and not law that chains the Senate to its seats. But there it is.

You have other considerations. The 2018 mid-terms caused a rumbling in the force of our politics. Americans elected Democrats in places nobody has heard about for quite some time: Kansas, Oklahoma, Utah. They have elected Muslims in Minnesota and Michigan. They have elected a Democrat in Orange County, a bastion of rock-ribbed Reaganites. They have elected an outspoken socialist from New York City who has emerged as an articulate, if controversial, spokesperson for millennials weary of the same-old, same-old.

Your job, in a sense, is to bring home this same majority, if not an even better one, in 2020, when the next national set of showdowns takes place--including the presidential election, which looms but is still too far away to say that the current day's politics have a salient effect. An unsuccessful, or even ineffective, impeachment proceeding might have devastating effects on that majority. On the other hand, failure to act decisively might keep loyal Democrats from showing up in 2020--exactly the thing, for whatever reasons, that defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 and brought on this awful person.

You had an internal challenge from white males who believed it was time for a change to more assertiveness, and had to compromise with them and agree to step down as Speaker in 2022 at the latest. You'll be 82 then, and ready to go, in all likelihood.

But here you are, on the hot seat. The thing is now. What do you say while this unravels? How do you keep the various forces at bay, loyal for now but increasingly riled up? They're like gnats swarming around your face; you can step away from them for a minute, but every day you walk the same path, and there they are, making you crazy. Too.

Here's what we can gather, in order in which they've been said by Pelosi, along with speculative interpretation according to my own intra-union political experience, because half of politics is what is said and the other half always lingers--the part that isn't said:

• He's not worth the trouble. Would that we could. He might go away soon, after all. Let's not poke the bear. He's being so ridiculous that he'll be brought down.
• He's committed impeachable offenses. I don't want to say that I agree or approve or wish to ignore this very bad person, though. Let's make that clear. But this is only how I feel.
• He should be referred to someone. Maybe his family could look into it. The man's really unhinged. His frustration is boiling over. I won't do what he wants, and I'm a woman. He can't deal with that reality.
• I don't want him impeached, I want him in prison. I know you're mad at me. I know you think I'm dithering. But I want justice for us and for him. This may be one of the best ways to do it. The Southern District of New York has a boatload of stuff on him, and he can't pardon himself for whatever the State of New York has in its own basement. Yes, he might wreck all kinds of stuff in the meantime, but we're still here and can block and harass him. For now.
• I don't want to talk about him. Beyond everything else, he's tried to intimidate me and insult my intelligence and sanity. That's beneath my consideration, period. The man is disgusting. He's pushing my buttons, but not in the way he thinks he is. Someone has to stay in control here. In the meantime, we all know he's a little off.
• Impeachment inquiry is not off the table. Notice that I said inquiry. I did not say proceedings. The two aren't the same. But this won't go away, ever. Too much is being revealed by both Mueller and, to come, Jerrold Nadler. Inquiry need not lead to proceedings. Yet they did with Nixon, who quit just before the latter were about to begin, but only because political friends approached him with unbeatable numbers. This guy won't because the numbers lean his way. He'll forestall and challenge with lawyers, claiming victory either way. How will that look on the other side of this mess?

Seems to me that there's an acceleration building here, an acknowledgement that is simply undeniable. We have to get the goods on him, she keeps saying in so many words, except nobody has yet asked: What the hell do 'the goods' need to be? We don't have enough? Really?

Her patience, I believe, is about institutional relevance and its imprimatur. If the House should actually impeach this president, it will be after fact-finding that would be considered suitable by at least the Democratic faithful (though none of it would ever be considered adequate by Republican sounding boards like Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan) and anyone else in the mainstream media who are watching with decent consideration. The Democrats in Kansas, Oklahoma, Utah and Orange County, clinging to slim majorities, and the Muslim women against whom vindictiveness, rational or not, will be unleashed upon impeachment proceedings, will be watching. She needs 218 votes, but Democratic defections will weaken the effort. She can't have that.

But that, too, rolls onward with the passage of time. Nadler, now on fire for impeachment, is collecting information with the thoroughness of a White House groundskeeper. He, Adam Schiff, and Elijah Cummings, other House committee chairs with their feet in the impeachment possibility pool, have been turned loose to 'get the goods.' I believe it will be a consensus of the three of them, and not just Nadler, that will force Pelosi's hand. But it will also give her sufficient force of investigative weight. But just. Don't. Hurry. It.

Risk is the wild card of politics, especially in this world of fierce polarization. Savvy pols avoid it at nearly all costs. Sometimes waiting takes care of it, sometimes backroom compromises by plausibly deniable envoys sent for that purpose. But how long will it be until deliberation becomes capitulation? Can our system endure that? If he doesn't deserve impeachment, who ever would? What would any legal proceeding mean to anyone, anywhere, if this one can't apply? Can the Constitution get slapped around like this and return somehow to a modicum of respect?

Those gnats, too, buzz around Nancy Pelosi's head. "Impeachment is a very ugly word," 45 keeps saying, preparing his minions for a showdown.

Yes, it is. And it should be applied only to a very ugly president. Nancy Pelosi knows that, too. There he is, standing right in front of her.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Starvation As A Cure for Well, Everything

Life can be tough. Republicans are right about that.

Their solution is always the one that makes people understand that. An excess of assistance for those in difficult times will never, ever be something they support.

That's because their definition of success means that someone has had to get through tough times. If you don't get something accomplished, that means you have to do more--saving, striving, building, effort of some sort, a.k.a. working--to get where you didn't go before.

Which is because of their automatic assumption: You didn't try hard enough. Work harder. Work more. And get less until you do, until you learn.

This solution extends to those outside their realm, or outside the realm they want to admit: Minorities, immigrants, and other countries with people of color ("shithole" or "shithouse" countries, depending on which Republican U.S. Senator was in the room when 45 said it). The bottom line is that the U.S. government isn't a charity house, you know?

Summarized as: You don't throw money at a problem to solve it. "Throwing money" means to increase funding for it once you see that it hasn't worked yet. It can be endless, you see. We might actually owe someone an incredible amount of money if we keep this up. Because, of course, we don't right now.

Right?

So we won't huddle with Honduras, Nicaragua, and/or El Salvador to see if we can help them with economic development which might just create more jobs, infrastructure, and educational opportunities besides kids being bullied and being made to pay tribute to the gangs that threaten every single other elementary and secondary student in those countries, whether directly or indirectly.

These are the same gangs that drive parents to sell out to 'coyotes' and get their kids to the U.S. To them, America is either a promise or a refuge--either one of which looms as salvation. Absolutely nothing about that has changed since 1607.

What are walls to them? Just something to get past. And the migrants keep doing so. National policy won't change individual desperation. It never has.

For evidence, I offer Plymouth Rock. And the Underground Railroad. And the Berlin Wall.

We've managed to get Mexico to increase surveillance of the border with its national guard but that evokes an image of lining soldiers up right next to the border and daring anyone to come by (as if Mexico has enough of them to do so). The other day, 45 said that we would never, ever think of shooting migrants trying to get here, dropping hints that he's considered it. Sure enough, we won't. But he doesn't mind if the Mexican government does it, not one bit--something he has never said but considering his normal mentality, nobody can conclude otherwise. Think he'll accept any of the blame?

So he wants Mexico to try harder, to work harder, without an extra dime from us--in fact, raising tariffs on Mexico if they don't succeed. That's been avoided for now, but so blinded is this buffoon that he'll risk higher prices on both those products and those of the Chinese to get everybody to believe that the U.S. is number one in enough minds so that he can claim it and get re-elected.

If we'd just get tough with these people, they'll back away. For heaven's sake, don't help them. They'll start counting on it.

So, too, it was with Bush-43's woe-begotten education solution, No Child Left Behind. Basing all success of poor-performing schools on standardized test scores, it sought to standardize nearly everything else--curricula, teaching, and learning, making school an assembly line. Failure to achieve the nearly impossible goal of one hundred percent learning efficiency--now, there's a fun basis to operate a school, efficiency; that'll bring the kids running back every morning--would result, first and foremost of all, in less federal funding to improve.

Got a problem? Not ours. Yours. You have to try harder, like 45's saying to Mexico. Obviously, the kids aren't trying hard enough. The teachers aren't trying hard enough either because, you know, they belong to unions which get away with allowing them to skate by and bilk the public for its money. If we just connect salaries to test scores, well, then--that'll drive them to make the kids succeed.

How? I don't know. Just stand over them until they do what you want them to do. Repeat everything over and over again. Don't play games or invent other ways to learn.

You know, the old way. School hasn't changed. All you need is a teacher and a piece of chalk. And, of course, to say the pledge of allegiance every day.

As if nobody had been trying in the first place. Poverty? Uh-uh. Don't come to us with that. Everybody knows that poverty is caused by laziness. If people would just work hard, nobody would be without a decent standard of living. Racism, of course, and prejudice have nothing to do with it. Those are just things to overcome. Life is tough. Get over it.

But by all means, don't increase the funding. Take it away. Starve them.

Just like building walls led people to find ways to get around them, so, too, did teachers find ways to circumvent the effects of standardized testing. Some of them out-and-out cheated to make sure the kids did well and secure the funding, as they did in Atlanta, causing a huge scandal and excessive hand-wringing. How awful, you say, especially when people who are supposed to be the greatest example for kids to follow cut corners and cheat?

Because national policy won't change individual desperation. It never has. But then, I've just said that. Cheating should have been expected.

And how did this "get tough" strategy work? It didn't. And the problem has now been handed back to the states. But the reliance on standardized testing to measure progress continues. Now there isn't just one way to mis-measure what you're trying to do. There are fifty.

Fifty, most of which wouldn't dream of increasing educational funding. Because most of them are controlled by Republicans.

Does this mean that, if Republicans remain in control, you'll get to save nearly every single dime of your hard-earned tax dollars that you possibly can? Well, yes.

In exchange for what--a border problem that's an endless embarrassment? An educational system that's stuck in a 40-year rut? But you have a few dollars more at the end of the year.

Oh, but wait: if you're in the middle class, you've been paying more in federal taxes and getting less back. Haven't you? So those few dollars have disappeared.

You're being starved, too. For whom? For the rich, so they can pay more people better wages, which is what they say.

But they almost never do. And the distance between the rich and the rest of us grows daily.

Yet, America is great again. Compared to what, nobody can quite say.

If you just stand over everyone and keep saying it, though, and make them learn it, they'll do so. They'll chant it. They'll wear the caps. They'll start saying "shoot them," right after they pledge allegiance.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

Echoes of Dr. Seuss, Horton, the NEA, So-Called Little People, and the Adjustment of Legacy

Dr. Seuss normally brings back fond memories.

The National Education Association, the top leadership of which I was once a member during the last decade, has a celebration of reading each year called Read Across America. It promotes reading and, of course, is very child-centered.

Little children, that is. Plenty of reasons for that: If you want kids to read, you want them to start as soon as they can. I was hooked on reading by four. I remember reading the Milwaukee Journal, spread out on the living room floor, to my mother--and learning new words as I spelled them and she pronounced them for me--as she made dinner. My book collection, swelled and reduced several times now and presently re-swelling, is a testimony to all that. As much of a jock that I became in high school and college, I was also a nerdish, fervent reader.

So I approached the road trips on which the NEA sent the Executive Committee members with particular enthusiasm. Sometimes we went alone, as I did to Beckley, West Virginia, and Chicago. Sometimes it was with another EC member to North Carolina, Virginia, Utah and Colorado and places damaged by Hurricane Rita, such as Galveston, Texas and Lake Charles, Louisiana. It was pure public relations, of course. After all, would some people all dressed up be able to convert kids to reading if their teachers hadn't already done so, then leave town as quickly as they appeared? Not much of a chance. We tried with middle schoolers, but it was too late by then. They were already jaded, and our entertainment quotient had been too far reduced. It was very uncool to be turned on by that, so they made a point of being very unimpressed. I remembered the body language, as used to it as I was by my classroom experiences, and I wanted to scream.

But with little kids, the magic never stopped. People were stunned the first time I hammed up a reading of Green Eggs and Ham. They hadn't seen me as someone who could possibly pull off a performance of sorts (Except I already had, in Minneapolis, when I wore a frontier-type get-up and put on a one-man show of a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition, an essay for another time), especially with little buddies. After that Texas moment, the staff and state leaders relaxed. They knew I had bought in.

I switched Dr. Seuss books, though. I thought it was a good idea to stay consistent with our brand. The NEA had adopted The Cat in the Hat as the symbol of RAA, complete with the red-and-white stovepipe hat, cat get-ups, Thing-1 and Thing-2, and all the print-outs and PR accoutrements anybody could think of. It was even coordinated with Dr. Seuss' birthday, March 2, around which all activities were centered. Occasionally, it gets national media attention, which is exactly the point: Good for kids, good for our brand, good to humanize a teachers' union that increasingly gets trashed by right-wing nonsense. We are, after all, child-centered, even if we take a moment here and there to remind the world that we make a living from these efforts and that value shouldn't be taken for granted.

So I started reading Horton Hears A Who (I wore a business suit; staff wore the costumes) to various gatherings of elementary kids. I thought it was perfect for little people. "A person's a person, no matter how small," is its central theme. Maybe I could reach that little person who needed to feel that; again, a one-shot deal. The odds weren't great. But I liked the message, so I stayed with it.

The Whos of Whoville needed a separate voice, so I created a high-pitched one. "Hello, my friend, you're a very fine friend," they said to Horton, who, originally annoyed, nonetheless saved them from evil. It's classic Seuss: create a crazy place, invent a crisis and drive home a happy ending with a universal message.

Except Dr. Seuss had revealed his hand during World War II, sending forward a controversial legacy. That's being revisited with a new book about him, Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination, by Brian Jay Jones. It's no longer a secret that Geisel made a strong contribution to anti-Japanese-American propaganda in the early days of World War II, prototyping Asians as being small, hostile and threatening. It cemented the necessity of putting them into internment camps, a horrendous violation of their rights that was addressed only in the late '80s by throwing a paltry, token $20,000 in damages at whomever managed to survive it to that point.

Once NEA folks learned this, especially those from the West Coast where much of the disruption had taken place, some definitive soul-searching in the form of research was needed. Surely, we thought, there would be some semblance of contrition evident in later work. Surely, someone so in tune with little kids couldn't help but be sensitive to something so humiliating to others that some kind of make-up call would be obvious. But nobody could find anything and believe me, we looked.

The NEA did not abandon its Read Across America brand; that had been too far embedded. We lurched on with someone's chips on their shoulders and no way to remove them. It was embarrassing, and it always felt a little sheepish to continue with that shadow following us around.

Until now, that is. Jones' book reveals that with Horton Hears A Who, written in 1953, Geisel extended a post-war hand to the Japanese. The message: You are no longer inferior beings whom we defeated. You're real, you're human, and you're our friends, no matter how small, in an obvious allegory. (This from a review of the book in the New York Times Book Review, from last Sunday's issue, by Adam Gopnik.)

How could we have missed it? Well, Dr. Seuss always spoke in allegory. Why wouldn't this be different? The message was obvious, but about whom it was, wasn't. And he never spoke publicly to clarify it, either. Here's a story, he kept telling us. Make what you wish of it.

So now we know. Okay, easy for us to say after we bombed the hell out of them. But we did what he had to do to defeat that aspect of fascism--the 75th anniversary of another coming up very soon. And the message is ultimately very condescending--okay, now we can recognize your humanity, as if the Japanese were somehow sub-human beforehand. But then, they hadn't exactly projected a humanistic message, what with the vicious, despicable slaughter of 300,000 Chinese at Nanking, the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, suicide charges on various islands, and the refusal to surrender until two atom bombs had been dropped.

By welcoming them back to what we called decent civilization, Geisel, without apologizing for earlier insults, simply recognized that the world had changed and we should change with it. Part of that change takes place with new knowledge, and so I extend this to the NEA, too: We can move on. It's okay. At least, it's forgivable now. Dr. Seuss' anti-Asian poltergeist has been sufficiently addressed--by him, as we have learned, which is most appropriate. It's less than perfect, but it emits some soul. He didn't apologize, and now we don't need to, either.

Theodor Geisel's messages were never solely for younger people anyhow: They were for everybody. His Pulitzer Prize, for instance, came for his anti-war allegory, The Butter Battle Book, which I believe to be his best, most meaningful work (and which represents another adjustment to a world in which not all wars are just or valuable). With silly depictions of beings, reduced, strange vocabularies and contrived drama, Geisel uncomplicated a complicated world through, for instance, kids trapped by a foolish cat in their own homes and a country trapped by a foolish war somewhere else. It makes his legacy contiguous and, in a sense, eternal.

I mean, I can't imagine a world without The Cat or Horton or The Lorax. Can you?

Didn't think so. Thanks for reading, my friends. You're very fine friends.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

The Political Pestilence That Will Not Die--So Why Feed it?

Mr. F. Gow seems a sufficiently tame name for someone. It suggests a relatively harmless person, even friendly.

Not the way I'm going to use it, though. When you read that name in this space, it will stand for Most Recent Former Governor of Wisconsin. We all know who that is.

Which is the point. I attended the speechifying at the Democratic Party of Wisconsin's convention Saturday. Mr. F. Gow's actual name was used by nearly every speaker holding public office, which were, gratefully, quite a few more than there had been not very long ago.

Except: Mr. F. Gow's name kept showing up like that itch on your ankle caused by a mosquito bite; you know you shouldn't scratch it, but you can't help it. In this present atmosphere of having-just-won-big, Democratic speakers are feeling free to utilize Mr. F. Gow to get cheap huzzahs and token solidarity.

But we are looking at some seven months, now, since Mr. F. Gow was defeated, and barely, by Tony Evers, and not clinched until between midnight and dawn the next day. Not exactly a landslide, though Evers and Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes don't shy from admitting that. And due to very effective and continuous gerrymandering, Republicans still have a strangehold over the state legislature which, not unexpectedly, has led to a building showdown between them and a new Democratic governor who's turned the tables on them, since his gubernatorial veto power, one of the most significant within the fifty states, was created for a Republican governor by a Republican legislature, even before Mr. F. Gow was much more than a backbencher in Madison.

It just seems that, with the legislative battles building with major intensity, to continually mention Mr. F. Gow's very name, even to disparage him, evokes too great a reminder to the awful era that he commandeered. It also makes it nearly impossible to forget about him--which is what taking over the reins of power should cause. You can't get beyond someone if someone else continues to make you think of them. It makes them the major issue, not what they've ruined.

It also creates a brand, even though that's the last thing you need. Like it or not, Hitler is a brand. It stands for true and indelible evil. Its use in comparative discussions is nearly verboten (pardon the German), and often results in accusations of overreactions by the very people who ought to be thinking very carefully about that very comparison. Ironically, it brings all those discussions up short and helps legitimize Hitleresque actions and language that leave the decent rest of us thoroughly disgusted. As often the result, the damage caused can't be sufficiently minimized by well-deserved pushback.

But it's a real name of a real person. Mention it and your mind gets his picture. I don't want that for Mr. F. Gow. I want people to work at visualizing his endless smile and smarmy manner. Then they'll most likely put it into the context in which it's deserved--that is, of someone who's just not around anymore. Comebacks notwithstanding, of course, and I'm quite sure he's plotting one this very minute. But why should we feed it?

There is research for this. George Lakoff is an excellent spokesperson for the concept of political labeling (though it also works in other aspects of communication). He wrote a brief but very meaningful book entitled Don't Think of An Elephant! which speaks for itself. After all, if I tell you not to think of an elephant, that's very likely the first thing you'll do.

In other words: The key to get someone to remember something or someone is to continue mentioning it regardless of the context. When you mention something or someone, you reinforce the images that that thing or person has already made on you. That's why 45 thrives in this ultimate environment; he doesn't even need the tweeting he does to fix himself in everybody's heads, but he keeps doing so to keep his support reinforced. It doesn't matter, to them, if he's wrong or if he's lying. They see him and that's what makes them happy.

You can trash this all you want, and you'd have plenty of empathy, including mine. But every vote from them equals one of yours. And those people, who spent decades not showing up, now are and will come November 2020. That's why I don't mention his name in print: It evokes a brand. I won't participate in extending it.

The only way to combat all this attention toward someone you can't stand is to avoid mentioning them by name. I've come up with some acronyms; you can either do the same or create another we-know-who-that-is reference, like "our ex-governor," or "Dr. Pothole," or something else. Just stop saying his name. What he did to our state was bad enough. Why keep dwelling on him--and it?

The way to move forward is to think in forward terms. That means to learn from mistakes, but stop putting them and keeping them in the front of your minds.

Allow me to suggest what we should be considering, all of which would serve to improve the state's economic health while being cost-effective:

• The end of Act 10 and a renewal of simple respect for our public employees so that they avoid burnout and walk the extra mile for us (which, having been one, I know they'll do);
• Medicaid expansion to provide for those in our state with inadequate health care, so that they can work longer and more productively;
• The stifling of the phony charter school movement and a renewal of simple respect for public education; and
• Infrastructure renewal with a serious consideration of public transportation, including high-speed trains to connect, at the very least, Milwaukee and Madison with Chicago and Minneapolis.

We don't need Mr. F. Gow's name as a moniker for bad government--first of all, because nearly half the state's voters wouldn't agree, regardless of how misguided they've been; and second, because the more it's used, the faster it will be on the lips of discussions about political futures, which people like me don't want him to have. Things were bad enough to begin with, and his successors, who seem to be the likes of Robin Vos and Scott Fitzgerald, will reinforce the magnitude of his mistakes until Evers' veto pen runs dry (which it very well might, considering his opponents' self-righteousness), thank you very much.

Besides, Mr. F. Gow had already performed the disingenuous act of removing his name from a place where it might have been seen by millions, in a gesture of faux modesty that caused intestinal queasiness on the part of this citizen, at least. Those of you who do interstate automobile travel have probably noticed that, as you cross the next state's border, there's a nicely created, great big welcome sign. And, somewhere along the edges of it, there's the name of the governor.

But not in Wisconsin, at least not between 2011 and 2019. In the place where Mr. F. Gow's name should have been, there was the phrase "Open for Business." (As if it wasn't beforehand, a piece of understated pretentiousness that Mr. F. Gow became well known for.) So in case Mr. F. Gow becomes a bit piqued by the exclusion of the mentioning of his actual name, your response might well be, "Well, you had a chance to display it to everyone crossing the state line, but I guess you didn't think that was important enough."

I never did. But then, I was once someone of the loyal opposition. This is a commentary coming from Wisconsin, where the wood-hewn welcome sign now says: Tony Evers, Governor.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

I Really Don't See the Difference. Do You?

Thirty years ago, a horrible government gunned down hundreds, maybe thousands, of its own citizens, all at once in an intentional act.

Thirty years later, a horrible government sits and watches as hundreds, maybe thousands, of its own citizens are gunned down a dozen or so at a time in complicit passivity.

The first, of course, was China at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. We know about the second one.

It happened again yesterday in Virginia Beach, VA, where an apparently disgruntled public worker walked into an office and opened fire. Twelve people were killed, including himself in a shootout with police.

You can do that on Monday. You will have to wait until then, though. Government offices usually aren't open on weekends. All kinds of people walk into government offices. One guy who died in Virginia Beach wanted to file a contract request. He wasn't even working there.

But then, there are always Sunday church services in case your trigger finger can't stop itching. Somebody walked into one in South Carolina and shot eight people to death. Someone else walked into one in Texas and killed 26 people.

Government did what it could do. The police got there real fast, armed to the teeth. It either arrests and convicts the shooter or shoots him on the spot, usually fatally. Unless, in the case of the Newtown, CT, mass murder of little kids, the shooter kills himself.

In China, the shooters got away with it. They are the government.

But the victims are still dead. Or injured. Or maimed. After all, they didn't have any guns with them. (The exception was the church shooting in Texas, when someone followed the assailant down the road and shot him. Seeing the rising futility of the situation, he took his own life.) Either way, the shooters get away with it. Nobody can stop them until the carnage is well-established.

Thirty years ago, we railed at the disgusting sight of the slaughter of helpless people whose families loved them and will always miss them, clucking our tongues at a society that doesn't value the freedom of its citizens. Thirty years later, we are numb to our own slaughters or helpless people whose families loved them and will always miss them. Government keeps saying it's wrong, it's bad, it's inhuman, it has to be stopped.

But nobody has stopped anything. Nobody. Though we cluck our tongues at a society that doesn't value the freedom of its citizens.

The Chinese people are living under incredible repression, regardless of the public relations opportunities it takes to demonstrate those living under good conditions. After all, their lives could end in a moment after expressing what should be their daily freedoms to do and say what they wish. They are being held hostage, and daily, in a country under siege.

The American people are living under incredible repression, regardless of the public relations opportunities it takes to demonstrate its president living under amazing conditions, staying in a posh resort and playing golf whenever he wants. After all, the lives of any American, living anywhere and doing anything, could end in a moment after expressing what should be their daily freedoms to do and say what they wish. They are being held hostage, and daily, in a country under siege.

The only difference is that we've been fooling ourselves for far too long. We're not nearly as free as we used to be. I attend church and go to movies, and therefore expose myself to helpless slaughter. I do. There is no other way to say this.

What venues are next? Just a few years ago, teenagers were stopped with weapons in their car. They were headed to a high school basketball game. This happened in Wisconsin, just a few miles from where I'm writing this--not in the big city of Milwaukee, either, but a pristine, idyllic suburb in which, once again, nobody can possibly imagine such an event.

Open-air concerts are taken care of already. So are movie theaters and nightclubs. Old hat.

When you start thinking about what could happen, about which venues could be easily breached by mass murderers, your inclination is to stop thinking about it. The NRA wants you to do that. It wants you to listen to them, to celebrate being free, which to them means that we can have as many guns to do whatever we want to do with them whenever we wish.

That's not freedom. That's living in an armed camp with wishful thinking and someone's good intentions, knowing full well that someone else with bad intentions won't and can't be stopped.

Just like China.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark