The 1619 Project: The Informational Grounding We Need

As a former history teacher, I was obviously interested in The 1619 Project, put forth by the New York Times. It purports to tell the real story about slavery and its legacy.

It spares nothing, including its attitude. You can just feel the anger, controlled anger but real anger, flying right off the page.

The timing is significant. 1619 marked the 400th year after slavery first came to our shores and grabbed ahold of our culture like a strangler. It got here, as the collection of essays points out, even before the Pilgrims did.

The job of the essays is to blow up the moderation with which slavery has been considered and taught. There are people who are considered deeply famous in our midst, who have monuments devoted to them in Washington, DC, who do not fare particularly well: Jefferson and Lincoln, to name two in particular.

But the thing is, there are no exaggerations. There is no hype. What is revealed within the project's pages is the honest truth. It's just truth that makes us uncomfortable--and if you read it (just access it on Google),  you will be.

Many things are simply repeated, like the conditions of slavery and their utter dehumanization. Those things have been written elsewhere.

But what the Project does is present them as one flowing process. It indicts the North as much as the South in perpetuating and establishing a co-dependent relationship with slavery. Put simply, the North needed slavery to produce, at increasing rates, the raw cotton it would need to operate its mills and weave it into cloth and clothing. Yes, there were anti-slavery societies that sprung up, but economics beat out morality until the inevitable war emerged. But that took two and a half centuries of abuse, dehumanization and devastation to a whole people based solely on their color.

The authors don't just want you to feel ashamed of all that. They want you to feel ashamed enough, thoroughly ashamed, even and especially if you had nothing to do with it. They want you to walk around with it, to feel it deeply. They're sitting across the table, pointing at you, and saying firmly: Feel this.

A whole country, one that would become the world's richest and by far the most productive, operated and flourished based on the intentional captivity of millions of people who were doing nothing else than trying to carve out their lives successfully. Then they were stolen from their family and friends, never to see them again.

Think about that. Plenty of us got upset when Lady Gaga's dogs were stolen from her walker. That was bad and wicked enough. What about this?

Nearly two million, by reasonable estimates, never made it to dry land again, either. They died below decks and, because there was nowhere to bury them, were fed to the sea, to the sharks that, wrote Richard Hofstadter long ago, would often follow the slave ships, knowing that a handy, easy meal would soon arrive.

We all want to look away, or to look at it briefly but not absorb its full meaning. We all want to assume that, in these modern days, we wouldn't lower ourselves to participate in this barbarity. But we fool ourselves. Technological improvements have nothing to do with moral development, or the lack of it. The latter is a much heavier lift.

There is plenty more that has been written, and will be written, about this. I'd just like to recommend a few books that you might read, if you already haven't:

• The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin (really, anything he wrote)
• Collective Poems of Langston Hughes (again, anything by him)
• The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison (she also has a treasure troft of marvelous books)
• Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson
• The Blood of Emmett Till, by Timothy B. Tyson
• Frederick Douglass, Prophet of Freedom by David Blight
• Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

That should get you started. That should also take you a while. Happy reading. May it be meaningful.

We are at the end of another Black History Month, and some of us, at least, have emerged with a greater awareness and appreciation of where we are in terms of race relations and the enormous distance we still have to go. We should feel shame, yes, but with greater and deeper knowledge, we can also ground ourselves for better and deeper conversations. The 1619 Project wants to do that. Be sure to read that, too.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. Three days until a second vaccine shot. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Imagination: More Important Than Knowledge? Republicans Know This Well.

I had it up in my classroom for a while in a poster. I had forgotten all about it.

But I saw it again in another blog: Imagination is more important than knowledge. The quote is attributed to Albert Einstein, who should have known. He was known for not saying much, so if he said anything, it was best to pay attention.

Republicans certainly have. They've concocted, not only recently but through the years, a number of fantasies that they're still clinging to. And their followers have immersed themselves in these imaginative fictions.

Let me point a few of them out:

• Trickle-down economics. Not the oldest one, but the one which has defined them in terms of policy. It's the signature of Reaganism, which has kept America from getting better, creating huge gaps of economic inequalities. It's the idea that if you give business owners bigger tax breaks, they'll automatically put their savings back into their businesses, hire more workers, and raise salaries. No, they didn't. They bought more stock and made that money expand for themselves. They doubled down on their selfishness. If that wasn't so, why did the economy nearly fall apart in 2008-09? Why do business owners continue to insist that a minimum wage of $7.50 is enough, that somehow that will carry people through the pandemic? Through anything at all?
• Transgenderism is a fluke, a construct. Guard your public bathrooms. Remember that scare tactic? You know, transgenderism is for male perverts who want to see women in their underwear. Where are the examples now? Any reports out there? No. I haven't seen any. But the fear created has its own lasting force; imagination basks in fear. If it happened in one place, it can happen everywhere.
• Unions ruin America. This one is the oldest that I know of that endures until today. It began after World War II, when the country was producing at full force, when we were about to enter an unequalled era of dominance. Republicans waited until they had the numbers, then struck back against the unions that had organized during the Great Depression, when they were truly needed, and the right to organize and strike were established. They passed Taft-Hartley, which created another damning phrase, right to work, which is in itself a lie and a deception. Yet, it floated into our lexicon and remains there today. It got put there to protect businessmen. The rest of the one-two punch, trickle-down economics, is listed above.
• Saddam Hussein helped plan 9/11. No definitive connection was ever established. That's because there wasn't one. But this was heaped into the same cauldron of lies as weapons of mass destruction, another play upon our imaginations. Not that there never were any, but that only the bad guys had them, were about to use them again, and so Hussein had to be wiped out. Bush-43 and his Voldemort, Dick Cheney, used that phraseology many times in the run-up to the unnecessary war, but 43 did not use it in his war message. That's because he knew there weren't any, at least not there. We're still in Iraq. Our people are still getting killed. It's much easier to get into wars than get out of them.
• The pandemic is a hoax. Masks are unnecessary. So are vaccines. Okay, but there are, as of last night, 512,000 reasons why that's nonsense. And nobody, not one, person who has been vaccinated so far has even gotten sick, not to mention dying. Word to the wise: Follow the science. Get your shot or shots. Survive. Rekindle hope. Move toward herd immunity.
• The 2020 election was rigged. Fake ballots were imported. There were "irregularities," which is a phrase implying, but never proving, things that might have happened. One more time: The Georgia Secretary of State, who voted for the losing candidate, said that, indeed, fake ballots were invented using names of dead people. Out of five million ballots, exactly two--not two million, not even two thousand or two hundred, but two--were discovered. No Secretary of State in any other state, investigated or not, reported anything else. It was a lie, the Big Lie (not that the above aren't small), that's still being forwarded by people who are too scared to admit otherwise because people overall are too scared to admit otherwise, because--well, you'd have to ask them. It will be rolled out again this weekend, when the losing president will explain his loss by claiming he got screwed.

All this baloney is still being clung to. All this is based on imagination and the fears that are engendered because of them. Millions upon millions buy in. Yes, it is possible that mass hysteria can still reign, even now in the 21st Century. Clear-headed people need to step up and deny it at every turn.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. Four days until a second vaccine shot. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

He's Not Kidding: The Work Continues. For Us, Too.

Terseness tells. When the Supreme Court ruled that the previous president couldn't hide his tax returns anymore, the District Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Cyrus Vance Jr. (son of the late Secretary of State), tweeted, "The work continues."

Lots can be interpreted from that. Like, Thanks much. We're knee deep in stuff now. Or, we still don't know everything, but thanks for letting us find out.

Above all, it means that nothing is final yet. What has to be accomplished is still very much out there. The final result is months away.

That can be said for causes for which liberalism have been known for some time: The work continues. Joe Biden's election sure didn't conclude them. And knowing which side's positions have won is undetermined. Maybe one side has edged ahead, but it's too soon to tell. In the meantime, one poll says that 73 percent of Republicans still think (and probably will always think) that the Biden's election was fraudulent.

Up against that Big Lie, many others have been added. But it hasn't stopped the advance of liberalism, and won't. 

I'm sure you've seen yard signs put out by liberals and progressives, declaring that "In this house:"

• Love Wins
• Black Lives Matter
• Women's Rights Are Human Rights
• Diversity Is Respected
• Immigrants Are Welcome

Things like that. Things that should be recognized by everybody, but clearly aren't. Had these not been issues, the attack of January 6 would not have happened. Irrational fear would not have won out. But then, the last president wouldn't have been elected, and even if he had, we wouldn't have had to wait several days to know for sure that he had lost his re-election try.

I think other yard signs should say things like:

    In This World:

• Gay People Don't Spread It
• Don't Worry: It Doesn't Rub Off
• What Makes You So Special?
• What Are You So Scared Of?
• Blue Lives Don't Matter: 1/6 Proved It
• 500,000 Reasons to Wear Masks
• Without Guns, We're All Free
• Respect Works For All of Us
• Your Religion Belongs Only to You
• The Christian Right Is Neither (I've actually seen this one)

That would take a bigger sign. Maybe even a bigger yard. But it might spark a franker and more revealing conversation that would get people thinking a little more deeply. We need that now more than ever. 

People want to stop thinking about serious issues. They want to stop being serious, period, or return to some thoroughly imagined time in which nobody needed to be serious. If you take any part of any speech that the previous president made since his declaration of candidacy in 2015, it has one thread, one theme: Nothing is that serious. It's all kind of a joke, in fact. So leave it all to me--I'll handle it. "Only I can fix."

Without serious thought in a democracy, though, without serious conversation, you waste your advantage as a citizen every bit as much as you would by not voting or voting for the wrong reason. It might not seem that important, since there are so many of us, but all those thoughts equal public opinion, which is horribly split and so many have sadly based their thinking on misinformation, deception, and lies.

Worse: The truth has caught up with The Big Lie, and the latter hasn't been eradicated yet. If that day is coming, it's still a long way off. So it still stands repeating;

• The election was not fraudulent. 
• The counting in every state was thorough. 
• Nobody sneaked extra votes ashore.
• The number of votes in question were never enough to change the results in any state.
• Representatives of both major political parties watched the counting take place exactly so no claims of fraud could be made. 
• The tabulations were verified by members of both parties within their states. 
• Some verifications were made by those who voted for the person who didn't win.
• It was safer, and fairer, than many other elections have been, if not all.
• Joe Biden won 81 million popular votes and 306 electoral votes, definitively and verifiably, to win the election. The previous president won 74 million popular votes and 232 electoral votes, definitively and verifiably. He lost.

Each one would make a decent yard sign. At least, they're decent talking points just in case you get caught in a discussion with someone who remains obsessed with The Big Lie. Yes, apparently, you have to remain informed about this to keep tamping down snarky non-facts. Too many of those who did not win won't accept it. They can't get past it.

Do not accept it from anyone. Do not turn and walk away, at least not until you've set the record straight. Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of the previous president's top lapdogs, again tried to foghorn the nonsense in a Congressional committee meeting yesterday, and Gerry Connolly of Virginia had to, once again, stand up to him and told him he wouldn't be lectured by someone claiming a fraudulent election that didn't happen.

So we all can and in fact must say, at least right now, the same thing Cyrus Vance, Jr. says, succinctly and honestly: The work continues. Remaining vigilant about the integrity of democracy is endless effort. The deceivers must be shouted down.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. Six days to a second vaccine shot. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

It Was Just Jaywalking. We Thought. Really That Serious?

Early Spring, 1972, was pretty much like all early springs in Wisconsin; on the calendar only. It was cold and damp and cloudy and not much fun. The trees hadn't budded yet. The dirty snow had very recently melted.

So when a frat brother called me and said he was flying into Milwaukee instead of Appleton (where we attended college) and wanted to know if I wanted to hang out for a while before he took a bus north, I jumped at the opportunity.

He took a bus from the airport to the station downtown. That was exciting enough for me, a guy from Grafton, living about half an hour north. Going downtown was a special deal. There had to be a good reason. Mom let me borrow the car, as worn out and unexciting though it was.

In those days, downtown Milwaukee was still pretty attractive. There were department stores and plenty of good restaurants. It was fun just to walk around in the middle of the day.

As I recall, there wasn't a whole lot of traffic. After I picked up Bill at the bus station, we parked somewhere near Wisconsin Avenue. We got out and started walking eastward, toward Lake Michigan.

He was a good buddy. From Massachusetts, he had a great personality and was a good-looking guy. The women normally flocked nearby. His angst was normally picking one out of several who were interested. Otherwise, he was  a leader in my fraternity, too, and a member of the track team. His humor was pixieish and he laughed easily. To me, he was more of a friend than just a frat brother. I was pleased he had called and looked forward to the day. We were about the enter the third of three tri-mesters in our junior years.

We walked up "the ave," as we called it here, looking for crossing traffic but not particularly worried whether we were crossing when "Walk" flashed. Someone was watching, though.

It might have been 6th or 5th; somewhere in there. Suddenly, just as we crossed over, we heard "Hey!"

Crossing the street, heading right for us, was a big, black cop (his color would otherwise be absolutely irrelevant, but see below) with a deep baritone voice that could probably be heard in Cudahy. He approached us quickly. "Didn't you notice the 'Don't Walk' light at the corner?" he fairly shouted.

Bill, quick on his feet, offered that he was from Massachusetts (as if they lacked stoplights there). "Uh, I'm from out of town, too," I offered. There were no stoplights in Grafton at the time, so it wasn't exactly a lie. Neither excuse rang genuine. "We didn't know it was that big of a deal," I said.

"We have a jaywalking ordinance which is very strictly enforced," he said. "I could take you both to the station right now."

I remember thinking, Really? Is this that serious? But wisely decided not to get into that kind of lose-only philosophical discussion. Technically, he was right. Technically, at least, we were screwed. Getting arrested and being booked wouldn't make our day much fun.

We apologized humbly and promised to obey the signals from now on. He let us off. We breathed again. I remember thinking, Thank God. Nice way to treat a buddy: Get him thrown in the slammer. I looked back a block onward; he was still watching us. We were being good boys.

Maybe he was having a bad day. Maybe he was frustrated about watching a lot of jaywalking. Maybe he'd had it up to here with it. Maybe he just wanted to scare us. He seemed pretty touchy. That's something that it didn't seem smart to dicker with: a touchy cop.

It was a time of many protests like today, and leftist groups were the darlings of the ultra-liberal media back then, so he might have been thinking that we were radicals (though neither of us had very long hair) who found it chic to defy authority. I, for one, had marched down the main street of Appleton two years before, protesting the invasion of Cambodia. But this wasn't the time to make some kind of fairly irrelevant, purposeful stand. Besides, I didn't know any lawyers. And he meant business. Defiance wasn't wise.

That incident came back to me as I watched a guy--a black guy--in Orange County, California, approached by two policemen--both white--in another jaywalking incident. A phone camera showed the situation quickly deteriorating, a scuffle ensuing, and the poor guy getting shot to death. Over jaywalking.

And I thought, again: Really? Is this that serious? Before approaching, one of the policemen was heard mentioning that it wasn't that big of a deal, that maybe something should be said and that should be it. But the other insisted upon stopping the guy and confronting him.

Seemed to me that the black guy got touchy with the white cop who leaned on him a little too hard, in which case it escalated to issues about manhood and/or race--probably not expressed as such, but hot buttons are never far away in such situations--and the white cop got pretty touchy, too. Then the other white cop who really just wanted to move on got pulled in because he needed to back up his partner--the cops' code. They ended up sprawled on the sidewalk. Suddenly, the black fellow apparently but unsuccessfully reached for one of their guns and--Blam! Blam!

Forty-nine years after my jaywalking incident, the world has intensified considerably. If Bill and I had been black and the policeman who stopped us had been white, things might have turned out differently. It's not as if police killings of blacks hadn't taken place back then, either. 

This is not to say that all police in Milwaukee, where I live, have been or would have been unfair in their treatments of young people, whether people of color or not, but such incidents were reported. The death of Daniel Bell, a young black man, highly suspicious, took place in 1957, On the other hand, my late godfather spent his career as a Milwaukee policeman. He wasn't involved in that, but I never asked him for any details about any of his work, either.

Neither do I think the specific place or city matters. Defund the police? No. Absurd, especially now with all the guns around. Redirect the funding? That might work. Something has to change.

Bill and I joked about the incident for a couple of months. Then he took his sometime, sort of girl friend, Maura, out on Lake Winnebago after a party thrown by a couple of other frat brothers. They had apparently broken up but she was with him that night. He was crazy about her, and she was gorgeous. Whenever she saw me on campus, she would sing my name as if to open an opera. It was both embarrassing and fun. I always laughed.

I'm sure he wanted to get back together again. They went out in a canoe, though, and never returned. Their bodies were recovered a few days later. It stunned the otherwise small, idyllic campus; for many, it was the first time that kind of early death had touched them. I missed him for a long time. But the memory of jaywalking in Milwaukee brings a smile now.

Like Joe Biden says, the smile eventually comes before the tears. It just takes time. That's all that's left for the family of the poor guy in Orange County, too. How unnecessary.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. Seven days until a second vaccine shot. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Death Matters in That Lives Once Did

CBS Sunday Morning isn't usually a place that acknowledges death that much. It tries to shine fair light on the living and what many have accomplished, or even that accomplishment isn't always the point to life.

This Sunday, though, it caught itself in a rare place. It publicized death in a way that acknowledges life--that is, how people are remembered. Or if.

Some time ago, someone--the show didn't say who--unearthed the tombstones of black citizens of Washington, DC and used them, hundreds of them, as shoreline barriers from a river that flowed along his property in Virginia. A Republican state legislator and his wife bought the property and, while wandering it, found the tombstones along the riverbank.

They learned that the tombstones were taken from the Columbian Harmony Cemetery. The Democratic governor was alerted and $5M was appropriated toward finding the graves and reattaching the tombstones. Some will never be found. The overwhelming number of the unattached gravestones belong to black people.

Another way in which Black Lives Matter, or mattered: That is, so do Black deaths. "I had a horror of dying alone," wrote a Civil War soldier to his mother. "Just that someone might see me die." He did, in battle, wishing that his death be noted because, for a moment at least, so would his life.

That all those Black lives were deemed insignificant enough to rob their recognition for someone's need for breakwater, with waves washing up against them for decades, thus slowly robbing us and their descendants of simply knowing they once existed, is not only an embarrassment but a type of genocide. The selfish, racist idiot didn't want to get a couple of trucks to dump huge rocks along there (I've seen it done when Lake Michigan's shoreline suddenly expanded in the 1980s, which you know it will again, threatened by climate change, and that's scary enough), so he figured that those Black people wouldn't be missed, I guess. Besides, theft is cheap. That's another dimension of inhumanity.

A less evident, but no less significant, unmarked death, noted the show, went stubbornly untraced until recently as well. This guy was Hispanic, named Hernandez. His corpse was found in Florida, in a one-man tent, along a walking trail. He had no ID, no markings, nothing from which anyone could immediately figure out who he was.

Turns out more than four thousand people share that fate, all told. But with help from authorities and of course the internet, Hernandez's college roommate recognized him. He had a habit, he said, of being friendly then not friendly, depending on the day. He was a computer programming wizard.

Do they do that on purpose? Do they consider themselves so meaningless that nobody should go to much trouble to get rid of them? Their corpses are still there. They must be disposed of, if you want to look at it that way. Even the birds that feast on carrion leave the bones. Someone should account for them. "I'm nobody, who are you?" wrote Emily Dickinson. "Are you nobody, too? Then there's a pair of us, don't tell!"

Such a shame: Every interaction has great potential. That's why the pandemic is such a tragedy: Think of the opportunities to make friends, to correct mistakes, to celebrate good events, that have been squandered, beyond the lives lost. 

That people have been dying faster than they can be normally disposed of emphasizes the futility of dealing with a pandemic that has gone out of control. Vaccines have that saving grace, above all. We can't stop reductions in population, but we feel better about putting the remains where they belong, about recognizing that they once were here, about that basic dignity. All that takes time and care. We feel diminished when we can't give that, when we can't slow down for a minute to observe a life lived.

The New York Times is known for its obituary section. Some of the most interesting stories it has in its Sunday paper is of people whose lives were incredibly interesting, often behind the immediate scenes. Just yesterday, the Times ran a story about the late singer James Brown's set-up guy, the guy who paved the way for his appearances, who was part of his act.

He didn't have the musical talent, but he had talent for making someone else's talent matter. He was disciplined and insisted all others be the same. "It's all about the look," he would say.

Another was a mathematician who merged his studies with physics in a way that someone like me can't reach in fathomability yet leaves one with a sense of marvel. He dressed, and lived, it said, with a certain degree of flair; there was more to him than just numbers and equations. I turned the page with a thought: I wish I could have met him.

Nowadays, though, any meeting has an aura of impending danger. Just the other day, a lady in the grocery store (of course she was masked) asked me to reach up to a high shelf and get a package she couldn't. I did so, and thought about giving some self-deprecating comment. But I remembered not to do so, to keep each other from standing in front of one another for long, lest germs be spread. Then I got quite sad for a moment. 

There was no time to create a friendship, even if I wasn't looking for one. It could have been a moment for a humorous comment, though, maybe to improve someone's day. But the virus discourages that. Damn. We wander everywhere, still at least slightly scared, knowing that moments like that can't happen. That's damaging, too.

Maybe that will be a gift of the pandemic, for us to understand that time has been stolen from us and it can't be replaced: We're all headed to the same fate. Maybe people will travel more. Maybe they will reconnect with relatives and friends and stop putting it off. 

Maybe that will cause people to be nicer to each other,  to stop hardening positions, if only for a minute at a time. It's a place to start again. Considering death, life is what matters.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. Nine days to a second vaccine shot. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Has Democracy Run Its Course?

Anne Applebaum and her husband threw two parties, twenty years apart: one in 1999, one in 2019.. What's happened in-between charts the crumbling of liberal societies.

Applebaum's new book, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism, is a short work that bears much attention. It brings perspective and foreboding to the West, which of course includes the United States--which is a significant part of her analysis.

But most importantly, Applebaum provides perspective. As usual, we here in the U.S. tend to treat what's happened to us, particularly if it's bad, as something of a one-off and an exception to the "exceptional" label that we so quickly self-apply. And once again, that label has proven to be nonsense.

Authoritarianism began elsewhere before it got here, and has manifested itself in more places than most people have probably kept track: Turkey, Poland, Hungary, and Spain, to cite examples that she's most familiar with. And what happened that led up to those developments have closely mimicked what's happened here.

When you embrace authoritarianism, you reject democracy, which relies on agreement of facts and willingness to exchange ideas in the marketplace. You prefer that someone tells you what they believe is the truth and either respect or allow (little difference) references to someone else's information as, as in the now-common parlance, "fake news (which in fact more often than not, what the authority figure tells you is exactly fake)."

We have had democracy much longer than any of the abovementioned countries. So why has it also become just as fragile as it has overseas?

A bunch of reasons, Applebaum says. She interviewed Karen Stenner, an Australian political scientist, who has done much work on authoritarianism. Authoritarians aren't conservatives, she says; the latter want change to slow down, while the former resist any change at all. They seek phraseologies and hot button slogans that fit their worldviews.

Immigration, therefore, especially happening fast and with no apparent end in sight, takes strong action (another identifying characteristic) to hold back: Thus the wall, now partially built, during the last presidential administration. Such a contraption, regardless of whether it actually works, addresses the hyper-nationalism that authoritarianism invokes.

Much of the rest of the appeal can be summarized under simplifying matters. The world is too much with many of us; no one can debate that. Most of us adjust by absorbing what he believe we can and organize ourselves around that. But authoritarians reject all of it and project victimization instead. Although I won't generalize and call all of them authoritarians, it's like what you see on Facebook sometimes when someone looks up and publishes what things used to cost when the baby boomers were kids--as if we could magically revert to that time and have our present salaries with prices from 50 years ago. 

The craving of nostalgia is a gateway to such attitudes: Don't you wish it could still be like the way it used to be? Except the mind often chooses to forget the bad parts and only remembers the good ones.

Racism, which is to say white supremacy, is a large part of that thinking, whether the authoritarians want to admit it or not. Mingling the races is always hard work. And based on the last few years, it's clear that attitudes haven't come nearly as far as many once thought.

But a frightening new development has reared itself: Violence as a deterrent to racial harmony. When the previous president responded to the hatred and a murder committed in Charlottesville in Spring, 2017 by saying that there were very good people on both sides, that unleashed a permissiveness that hasn't been seen before.

None of this is new. Lynchings have swept the country at times, hitting every part of it. But all those waves have subsided. This has come as close to overcoming us as anything else has ever done.

And events like well-publicized trials have also had their effects. (O. J. Simpson?) One that Applebaum brings up took place in France, another country that is faced with oncoming authoritarianism and is trying to head it off. Applebaum reaches back to 1896, when Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish military officer, was convicted for passing secrets to the then-hated Germans, who had won the Franco-Prussian War and seized a major chunk of France a quarter-century before.

The trial unearthed hyper-nationalist and reactionary attitudes and severe polarization. The country was, said Applebaum, "split right down the middle." Dreyfus was convicted, although he was later proved innocent and released 11 years later. But like here, today, 

• What constituted the "truth" came highly into question;
• Reliance on provable science to prove Dreyfus' innocence was discounted; and
• His Jewishness came under severe prejudice, making a fair trial nearly impossible.

All that echoes until today. Marine Le Pen, a right-wing activist and former presidential candidate, is once again sending out feelers about running against president French President Emmanuel Macron, who has begun to tailor some of his former liberal policies to reduce the resistance. France has even deeper issues with Muslims than we do, post 9/11; recall a couple of massacres.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden tries to prove that, if you really do consider people first instead of yourself, democracy can accomplish plenty and relieve much suffering. If splintering Republicans still refuse to accept their losses, cut them, and retreat from an abyss of authoritarianism, if they continue to disrespect the normal behaviorist guardrails that keeps the checks and balances in effect, a balance of interests is unsustainable.

Winning, and the power that comes with it, cannot be its own goal. There must be something behind it that's worth cherishing, something that can rise above the pettiness and polarization that lead to violence. If not, democracy will fail. So will this nation. So will the world.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. Eleven days to a second vaccine shot. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Lurching Through the Endless Days

Lurching through the endless days

I walk the street, reliably smug

Behind my mask and anonymity

When what I need is a hug

And reassurance that my humanity

Is seen and felt and recognized

Instead of endlessly paralyzed

By virus and helplessness:

A gesture of selflessness

Done even without name.

We all wander lame

When what we need

Could be to acknowledge

That we are too frail

To claim that holy grail

In pretense that we deserve it,

Such nonsense that conserves it

Behind a wasteful pride

Long since decried

By loving things, not people

Because it's an easy peephole

That dodges what are your needings--

Confirmation that no one can

Disturb the proceedings toward salvation

Of a worn-out nation:

Instead of enduring the bleedings

Of one day into the next,

No difference between them.

The essence of boredom pecks

And prevents us from seeing them

As things of separate existence;

We're left with subsistence.

They say you can see the horizon

So I'll watch as normalcy tries on

A new reality. Just like before?

Exhaustion, nothing more.

February, 2021

Is He Worth the Trouble? I'm Afraid the Answer Is Yes

It probably should have gone first. But patience wore thin, understandably.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced yesterday that the House of Representatives would be coordinating an independent inquiry on the events of January 6, when an angry mob invaded and trashed the U.S. Capitol and resulted in the deaths of six people.

Why do this? Why, when the Senate rejected House impeachment charges with a majority but less than a required super-majority vote, and hundreds of rioters have already been arrested with more to come? Haven't we had enough?

I wish it were so. Minority rule has once again reared its ugly head. It got the previous president into office in the first place, carrying the outmoded Electoral College even though he lost the popular vote by more than three million; and it allowed him to escape from the Senate impeachment trial because a 2/3 majority, or 67 Senators, were necessary for conviction.

The verdict of history will be pretty clear. But none of that matters to him. If that were true, he would have tweeted differently, made different rally speeches, played far less golf, tried to insult very few people, goaded no one to commit violence, and above all, governed with some idea of how people felt, besides embracing their victimhood and anger and making sure they continued to feel it.

He has a low-life morality which measures pain and pleasure, which guide him alone. Allowing him to escape from any real punishment, with only a scolding from Mitch McConnell, feeds right into his cellophane wrapping--it reflects, but does not absorb. He feels nothing--no guilt, no responsibility.

But some aspects of the Constitution have been hiding and can be resurrected. Things wear out, true, like the Electoral College and impeachment, which have been shown to be irrelevant and have lost their usefulness, since they were invented before political parties were created. But the 14th Amendment? That has hidden gold, and it has been utilized for the sake of justice before.

The 14th Amendment is one of the so-called Civil War Amendments. It directly addressed the defeated Confederates. It circled back and made sure they would no longer be inclined to threaten and break apart the Union. Grant was good to Lee's army; he merely told them to go home. Not so with the Congress and non-seceding states; they needed further reassurance.

We are in just about the same place. The former president tried, indirectly as is his wont, to overthrow the government, have someone kill his then immediate successors for him, and step into the breach; that now is clear. Let's not fool ourselves. It's exactly what he tried.

The effects are still there. He has not been punished in any way, at least not yet. He has raised enormous sums in perpetuating his Big Lie, the so-called stolen election, upon unsuspecting members of his cult (and yes, it is a cult). They stand ready to lurch again upon his hot-button, obvious orders.

What he needs to do is go to jail. That will take months to determine, if at all; remember, he has dodged lots of court dates and decrees. Every day he remains out there is a day he can build new strength. And, in fact, Republicans coast to coast have rallied to surround him with sycophantic obsequiousness. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, instead of stepping away from him because of an understandably nasty phone call while the Capitol assault continued, went to Mar-A-Lago for a kiss-and-make-up session. South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham, one month after saying he was "all done" with the ex-president, is now going to play golf with him and speaks of "[Rhymes With Chump]-plus," as a campaign strategy to regain Republican Senate control in 2022.

They're making the same kind of mistake that the Germans made with Hitler: That they could utilize him for their needs. The big, rich-person tax break of 2017 was just about the only thing they can point to, but it's certainly there and fits their ridiculous notion of trickle-down thickheadedness. About the only thing they can use him for now is to piggyback upon his slavish need for being a lemming for him. The deepening of the cult is not only possible, but now likely.

But Hitler pivoted and, once inside the realm, proceeded to use German democracy against itself--exactly what the ex-president tried to do again and again the past four years. Does he have war and slaughter in mind? We may find out if he's allowed to proceed as if nothing actually happened.

His water needs to be shut off. Losing the election is not enough: If you haven't done so already, try watching "Terminator 2." The best way we can neutralize this menace is to keep him from running for office again. As of now, he still has about 40 percent of the electorate that would vote for him, a good place to start building more lies and more undermining. Actually, being out of office, he can now roam where he wishes, with Secret Service protection to boot, and create havoc in far more places than before.

The 14th Amendment provides a place where Congress can put him aside. Article 3 states that anyone who, "having previously taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same or given aid or comfort to the enemies therein," can have eligibility for future public office taken away from them.

Who would declare that an insurrection has taken place? Congress. On what basis can it do so? Majority vote, but some kind of analysis would give it further legitimacy. Hence the independent inquiry: It would be run by Congress but contain no actual members of Congress in its membership. It would have one job: To take whatever information it could gather--no question the House impeachment inquiry could be included, but wouldn't have to be; it could start from scratch to qualm arguments--and conclude, or not, that an actual insurrection had taken place. You and I probably have little doubt, but officially, a relatively unbiased conclusion to the same effect would mute objections from the other side of the aisle.

There is no two-thirds bar required, either. A mere majority of both houses of Congress are required. The Democrats control both houses, of course, and no Republicans need to vote in favor. But if it were another purely politically charged document, it would lose legitimacy. And, recognized as such, a court challenge might beat it. That, as well as threats of primary challenges now less than two years away, might persuade all Republicans to vote against it. But they don't have the numbers.

Here's the only hurdle, and it might be major: the Senate filibuster rule. Seven Senators crossed over and voted to, in fact, remove the ex-president's ability to run for future office. Two, in Louisiana and North Carolina, already face censure by their own party (which is no more and no less a declaration of earning a primary challenge). Bill Cassidy, of Louisiana, doesn't face the voters again until 2026, so memories will probably fade, especially if the menace isn't returned to the White House. But Richard Burr of North Carolina is next up to bat in 2022. His is a more courageous stand.

Thing is, can all those Senators be willing to, once again, condemn the ex-president in an official way and rid ourselves of this pestilence once and for all? And can we find three more willing to do so?

That's where our ex- is working, you can be sure. He has already figured out which Republican Senators might be inclined to cross over, with 60 as the bar instead of 67, and get rid of him at least operationally. Trust this: He's contacted the heads of the Republican Party in those states and told them what he wants. We will hear it in the news. You won't need Twitter to figure it out.

The only other way out, and this must now be a temptation, is to be done with the filibuster rule so only a majority is needed to end debate. Democratic Senators Manchin of West Virginia and Sinema of Arizona have indicated that they won't vote to dispense with the filibuster, so Mitch McConnell backed away from further delays on things like Cabinet votes and consideration of coronavirus relief. Those two Senators may need a revisiting.

So pressure from within would surely be ratcheted up. Is the ex-president worth it? Is he worth changing the whole nature of Senate consideration and debate just to block him?

Pretending he's not a future threat is simply wrong and fantasy-ridden. He may become the Republican capo anyhow, dispensing his approval upon most, if not all, Republican movements and candidates with implicit comments in code. McCarthy's, Graham's, and Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson's obsessive fawning practically guarantees that, at least for now. Pretending that the Republican Party will grab hold of itself and right the listing ship defies what has already happened.

It may become practically the ex-president's party whether he holds office or not, because his status within the cult he has created has remained, and will remain, largely unchallenged. Every day he escapes actual punishment, his outsized influence grows. 

Many have given up their political independence and any kind of clear thinking in favor of this maddening lockstep. The Big Lie may expand into many lies and an entire alternative reality created out of thin air, out of nothing, responsible to nothing. But let the Republicans figure that out. They created the problem. Now the addiction to nothingness has grabbed them, and on the ground, it won't let go.

Some people believe, and have already been quoted as saying, that support for him will gradually fade. I would debate that. It's not a mere matter of support anymore; it's now graduated to fanaticism beyond any entreaties to reason. If he were to be criminally charged and brought to trial, there may be more confrontations with right-wing militias. If so, the relatively small number of deaths may potentially be increased. Both sides would bring more weapons, to be sure.

That would be its own problem, but reflective of the radicalism that ex- has created and consecrated. But it's now up to the Republicans to turn him away. Allowing him to function within the governmental realm might easily be the end of America and the establishment of racist fascism writ large.

It's scary, I know. Being scared is not weakness. Running away from fear or pretending it doesn't matter is.  Promising a new car, or some other gift, for students to do better in their studies solves the problem only temporarily; it doesn't make studying itself desirable. It doesn't grow on the child; they know the game by now--act humble and plan ahead. 

Likewise, letting ex- off the hook by a technicality but then condemning him in speech, like McConnell, solves nothing. It certainly won't change his outlook. Unofficial rebuke does him no damage. Playing Pontius Pilate and kicking that can down the road to the courts guarantees nothing. Labor leader and socialist Eugene Debs ran for president from prison in 1920 and won more than 900,000 votes.

It's sad to project that he's worth all this trouble. But he is. He'll keep coming on until turned away. To paraphrase Churchill: We have the tools. Now let's finish the job.

Article 3 of the 14th Amendment, and the end of the filibuster which would clear the way for it, are what I believe to be our only hopes. If I'm wrong I'll certainly be happy, but it doesn't look like it. Without a legal blockage, it's entirely possible that we may be subjected to a kind of plague that will very definitely eclipse the one we now have, one we might have thought we ended but will only grow with time. It's much tougher to kill a state of mind than a mere virus.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One more vaccine shot to go. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Presidents' Day? Do I Have to?

Today is supposed to be Presidents' Day. It's actually a hybrid since Lincoln's birthday (on the 12th)  and Washington's (22nd) are both in February, and postal workers and other federal employees, I guess, aren't supposed to get two days off this month.

So they combined them, and someone thought, Let's celebrate all our presidents. You know, they did get elected and they did lead our nation in one way or another. Since we're combining the celebrations of the two best presidents we've had, we've also had several who were pretty good as well. So we'll crush them in with one another, do one federal holiday instead of two and viola! We've saved a bit of money.

We've also introduced some serious mediocrity. Franklin Pierce? Please. James Buchanon? Heavens no. George W. Bush? I don't celebrate him; there's no reason. To the contrary, he presided over 9/11. And our most recent former president? Give me a break.

The best people don't always make the best presidents. The best people often don't run. The best people among those who run often don't get elected, either.

It depends on someone's station in life compared to what they think it will be if they get elected. After all, the Constitution limits a president to two terms, or eight years (ten at most). A member of the Senate, or a state governor, from which the rosters of most candidates are taken, might be able to last longer in their respective positions. Their worlds aren't quite as big, but their control may be greater.

The condition of the country at the time of the campaign matter, too. Joe Biden is president now, but this is his third serious try. The case could be made for saying that the utter incompetence, meanness, and criminality of the previous president paved the way for him, that under other conditions, especially without the pandemic, he wouldn't have even made an attempt, especially considering that he's 78.

If public speaking and thinking on one's feet are two good things to have, then Pete Buttigieg should have won the campaign. But it's simply too early for him. If thinking outside the box and coming up with unique plans would have done it, then Tom Steyer might have grabbed the momentum. But earnestness and money alone can't get it done. He's never held public office before. And he wasn't an inherent racist, like the winner of that campaign was, something that carried him much farther than anyone was ready to admit.

In his first inaugural address, Lincoln decried the division within the country, too, a lethal one since it led to the Civil War. Yet it was that division that made his candidacy a round peg in a round hole, his obvious political skills notwithstanding. His was a dark horse candidacy, possible because others were in the wrong place at the time. He won 39.4% of the popular vote in 1860, the lowest of any winner, talk about the tendency of the Electoral College to legitimize less than a majority.

The second time he ran, he didn't even have the Confederate states around to unite and vote against him; they were too busy exhausting themselves with their self-destructive temper tantrums. His chances at a second electoral victory, though, remained in doubt until the Union forces had won three crucial victories in 1864--Chattanooga, a major railroad center; the taking of Atlanta by Sherman and the very consequential march to the sea; and Mobile Bay by Farragut, which inspired "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead."

Washington's ascendance to our first presidency appears clear and obvious now, but he could easily have passed it up. Nobody could have blamed him, since he led the Continental Army to one of the world's great military upsets. As it was, he was offered army support if he would have accepted their entreatment to become the emperor of America and end the squabbling and incompetence that had emerged under the Articles of Confederation, an offer he declined. 

Washington had to be coaxed into running the Constitutional Convention, too. He saw the need of the country to give it its first sturdy legs. He became president out of public duty, not out of a need for prestige or expansion of ego. He was just right for the moment.

There have been plenty of other effective, even very good, presidents, too: FDR, for instance. who should be mentioned in the same sentence as Washington and Lincoln, for guiding us through the Great Depression and the Second World War. But the country united itself behind him in both those regards, too. It resisted another world war and Congress passed Lend-Lease by one vote, but once attacked, it put that aside, the one time in our history that a war was universally approved. It made things much easier, though crisis-ridden. 

Nixon could have been elevated to greatness or near-greatness, and like Obama a very good writer, but his paranoia and vindictiveness led to the scandals that cut his legs out. Lyndon Johnson might have had the same status and his persona loomed large, but Vietnam's ambivalence in the field and at home became a negative national turning point. Jefferson's accomplishments were great and his mind brilliant, but his slave ownership and actually having six kids by one of them cast a long shadow. 

Obama's personal character and enormous intellect make us lucky to have had him, but the country was already too quarrelsome (and, I believe, largely ungovernable) and he too cautious at times to avoid unfair and ridiculous undermining--which in no small way brought on a racist successor, by far the worst we have had. Reagan was a phony actor in the literal sense, placed in front of a silly conservative parade as a robot of the feel-good. The doubled-down backward effects of that magical thinking persist to this day.

So to celebrate our presidents, in aggregate, is a stretch. I would rather lump Washington and Lincoln together, call it that, and be done with it; time, distance and timing taking care of proper posterity.

Where will Joe Biden land in this spectrum? He has a chance to come off well, but based on lies, the country is badly divided and violence has already been utilized as a mistaken remedy. His personality, which avoids running his mouth and running other people down, is already helping (kind of like Bush-41, who kept saying, "Don't listen to what we say, watch what we do."). But circumstances change and judgment with them. Of course I wish him great success. History will decide the rest.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One more vaccine shot left. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

"A Political Act in the National Interest": I Remember the TV Show. Remember This Betrayal.

I showed it year after year in my classroom, so I remember parts of it well.

When we would get to the part of U.S. history that covered Reconstruction, I would show the kids an excerpt from the TV series "Profiles in Courage," written by John F. Kennedy (well, that's the name on the book; Ted Sorenson probably wrote most of it). The book detailed short non-fiction about members of the U.S. Senate who had shown particularly deep and abiding political courage, when many others took the easy way out and did the popular thing.

Such an opportunity presented itself in 1868, when the Senate put President Andrew Johnson on trial for violating a law (later deemed unconstitutional) they had dreamed up and could pass over his veto. Such a law would take away any power he had over the Cabinet, and thus render him powerless; this despite a greater than 2/3 majority in both houses of Congress, a veto-proof majority. That wasn't enough; they hated him that much.

Granted, he was terrible. He was a racist and sought to block the path of Congressional Reconstruction just months after a horrible civil war which led to over 600,000 deaths. He compromised with no one. He insulted anyone who didn't agree with him. He was obnoxious and crude. (Yeah, I know)

But the law had gone too far, even though it had been passed. Johnson openly violated it and, as he said, "want(ed) it in the courts." Republicans, afraid of exactly that, impeached him instead.

Kennedy's version was compelling, and that version made the TV series. It involved the one person who hadn't already decided on the case, Edmund G. Ross of Kansas.

Kansas had only been a state for seven years. It had gone through its own civil war in the 1850s when both slave and free forces had sneaked people over the border to try to vote in their favored version of a state constitution that would be presented to Congress to admit the territory as a state. So again, a contested election.

Kansas and its neighbor, Missouri, had been the scenes of some of the most vicious, neighbor-to-neighbor fighting of the war. Emotions were boiling beneath the surface.

As a political animal, Ross' choice was clear: He would have to convict Johnson. But he had a legal and moral core and was ambivalent: Should the president be removed for violating a clearly unconstitutional law? By the day before the vote to convict, every other Senator had committed himself. It was down to a one-vote margin. Ross would decide.

The show depicted a demonstrative conversation, perhaps apocryphal, between Ross and General Sickles, in whose army Ross apparently served during the Civil War; remember, it was only three years since it had ended. Sickles apparently had been sent by "friends" to persuade Ross to vote for conviction or just make sure he was going to do so.

It became a clearing house for the issue. They went up, down, and sideways. Sickles reminded Ross of some of the more outrageous things Johnson had done, things that had not come up at trial, but things that everyone knew. "General," Ross says with measured but ebbing patience, "the President is on trial. I must made a judgment based on the evidence presented, nothing more."

Such high-minded ethics land badly. Sickles begins to panic. He realizes that it's slipping away. If Ross votes to acquit, it will make the 1/3 bar--admittedly low, but it will constitutionally keep Johnson in office. Never mind that it's 1868 and an election is coming up, so the country can (and did; he didn't even get the nomination) turn Johnson away from a full term (he had succeeded the assassinated Lincoln). "Say it isn't a trial," Sickles says with quickened tone. "Say it's a political act in the national interest."

A political act in the national interest. That phrase keeps echoing through my head. We have, one more time, just witnessed exactly that. Mitch McConnell just gave 43 members of the Senate, including the thoroughly awful Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, that narrow, conjured off-ramp and they took it.

A trial, a real trial, would have gone otherwise. The Republicans tried to declare the whole thing unconstitutional from the get-go, proposed by the unctuous Rand Paul of Kentucky, but the Democrats and five Republicans weren't biting. So the proposal of a mis-trial had been rejected.

When a defendant's lawyer does that in real court, the judge decides. If she says no, the trial goes on and the previously proposed standard goes bye-bye. It can't be brought back. The jury must act as if it were never considered.

Mitch McConnell also knew he couldn't bring it back, so he grabbed another technicality. But the 42 other Senators who betrayed the Constitution, common sense, and any sort of propriety could keep their counsels to themselves and consider any old justification.

We knew this would be a hung jury. McConnell even admitted that on the facts, the former, awful, disgusting president had lost, and badly. He really did inspire, encourage, and by passive resistance try to prevail, in an insurrection so he could have tried to rush in and reclaim power. McConnell helped let him off the hook.

This betrayal must be expressed as such. We are betrayed. The Constitution means so much less than it did 24 hours ago. This awful, stinking bag of garbage may yet get jail time, as McConnell suggested. But he doesn't know any more about that than anyone else. And by his lies, the awful, disgusting bag of garbage has plenty of money to defend himself.

Thou doth protest too much: Nice try, but in the end, all we really have is McConnell's vote. He voted with the other cowards. He drew an arbitrary line in the sand and said that the awful bag of garbage committed these heinous offenses and crimes too late for us to bother with it. He created a fait cocompli--even though the impeachment vote did take place before the bag of garbage left office--by refusing to convene the Senate while the last presidential term was still in effect.

Yes, it would have taken immense courage, the kind that sometimes you must pay for by relinquishing enormous egos and putting your power on the line, to have stood for justice and convicted this monster. Ross and six other Republicans who crossed over and acquitted Johnson were never elected to the Senate again. Ross suffered abuse and poverty in Kansas, but bounced back to become territorial governor of New Mexico some years later, under a Democratic president. So yes, democracy was just as emotionally messy back then. But yes, there were second acts, too.

Sometimes you just have to do what you must to save the republic and keep its meaning. Seems to me that's why you get elected. If you don't, you're just a lemming with a big title that now means nothing. We saw 43 of them today. I wouldn't care, but it's my country, and we will all pay, starting very soon, for this cowardice. 

There will be new attempts to get past this. Resist. Do not forget this, and never be afraid to bring it up. Tell them Mitch, and Edmund G. Ross, sent you.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One more day to a second vaccine. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

The Brandenburg Test of Free Speech: Someone Jumped Over It

Accepting that the second impeachment trial of Rhymes With Chump is constitutional, we have to progress to the issue itself: Did he act with malicious intent? And did that constitute an illegal act?

Of course RWC's lawyers will say no. They'll claim that like anybody else, he had First Amendment rights and did nothing more than exercise them. The crowd acted on its own.

That's nonsense. The crowd wouldn't have done what it did had he not spurred them on, lying about being with them as well. He wanted them to disrupt the constitutional process of counting the Electoral College votes, and they came very, very close.

There are a number of standards by which to judge what he did. One of the best is called the 

"Brandenburg test," which stems from a Supreme Court case in 1969.

I won't bother with the details of the case, other than to say that Ohio had a law prohibiting the kind of speech that a member of the Ku Klux Klan made, which came pretty close to being the same kind of speech that RWC made on January 6. But rotten as he was, too, he got away with it because there was a big difference, and it comes down to a couple of key words in the Court's decision.

The Brandenburg speech made vague promises of violence at some later date. It was not a "clear and present danger" of significant public disruption, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said back in 1917 in the Schenk case, in which flyers were handed out suggesting that men resist the draft. (I don't agree with the ruling, but it was done during wartime.)

RWC did not do that, but neither did he have to. He beckoned the crowd to proceed to the Capitol immediately. He said he would be with them. He told the crowd that if they didn't, "You won't have a country left."

That met the Brandenburg standard. The Court said that the speech had to be one that was "directed or producing imminent (my emphasis) lawless action" AND it had to be "likely (again, my emphasis) to incite or produce such action."

The speaker and the crowd were close enough to the Capitol to 'produce such action.' It was a mere walk of a few blocks, which could have and was achieved that very day. His influence, as president, cannot be overlooked. He wasn't just another lawyer, like Rudy Giuliani; he wasn't just another member of Congress, like Mo Brooks of Alabama (though he, too, should be ashamed of himself). He was the president, the country's leader, and he was in fact leading them in suggestion that they should raid the Capitol.

That he didn't say those exact words has nothing to do with it. The circumstances were ripe enough to produce the effect. 

How do we know this? There is film footage of the crowd reacting to RWC's speech. telling each other to go to the Capitol. Nobody had to be so specific as to precisely direct them; they knew what they were doing and why.

There are those who actually trespassed on the Capitol grounds who in fact said so. They said that RWC inspired them to do it. What other proof does one need?

Writing as I do, and all my adult life, I've been inclined to give free speech and press a very wide swath in which to operate. The greater weapon to utilize against irresponsible speech is responsible speech, and it takes a lot for me to allow that mere words can cause the kind of damage that lead to investigation and banning. But this situation is different.

It's different because, though I don't like admitting it, RWC's demagoguery has resonated with enough people that his lies and innuendoes are accepted as truth. He knows which words to use to dodge sufficient scrutiny and hide behind generalizations and vagueness. In other words, he speaks in code that takes little sophistication to understand. He nudges, and he's good at it.

As such, he has gained a status untouched by very many other people anywhere and at any time. For many, the stage moves with him. Had not that been so, this disgusting set of assaults would not have happened. He did not merely throw words into the air; he urged a crowd to break laws and threaten lawmakers. How do we know this? Because senior staff members have said that he watched it on TV and enjoyed what he saw.

He saw people say things like, "Fuck the police," "fuck these pigs," and "fuck the blue," which should give those police unions who supported RWC some pause. And he tweeted, summarizing, This is what you get when you get in my way.

Four hours later, he told the rioters to go home, after they had done what he wanted them to do but not completely succeeding. He'll undoubtedly use that as a defense that he had tried to warn them away. But he saw them do the damage first, so that will hold no water.

The Brandenburg case had liberal jurists like Hugo Black and William O. Douglas on the side of free speech, holdovers from the Warren Court. It was a different time. The case came right up on the edge of, but didn't quite exceed, the limits of free speech. Still, a gutsy ruling: The KKK was just as unpopular then as they are now.

I wouldn't be surprised if RWC's two shaky lawyers bring the Brandenburg case up and try to steer Senators around its wording. But they can't. The film is too revealing, and the Democratic managers made sure to do the excerpts in real time to demonstrate the clear connection between speaking and reacting.

The previous president arranged for that, just as cleverly. He knows no shame. He only knows power. He believes that those who defy him are weak, and those who support him are strong. 

It's just the opposite. Most Republican Senators will hide behind a specious claim of unconstitutionality, but we know better. So do they.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One more day closer to a second vaccine. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

So Why Are We Bothering? Because Justice, Even Partial Justice, Beckons

The second impeachment of someone who isn't even in office begins Tuesday. Sounds useless.

The especially useless Rand Paul got up and tried to make it so by getting his largely corrupted Republican colleagues to say that tomorrow's impeachment trial was unconstitutional. He got them on record as saying so.

The historical precedent for refuting this apparently doesn't matter. They made something else up--a universe of falsehoods is out there--and that's the story they're sticking with in a display of rogue solidarity.

So the Democrats will, of course, have to go it largely alone. Maryland's Jamie Raskin, who should have done the last impeachment anyhow and carrying around the burden of his son's recent suicide, will lead his party's accusers in a Senate trial that, as Republicans will say with typical cynicism, has already been decided.

They'll say, almost as one: We've voted on this. The event wasn't pretty, granted, but we need to move on.

I don't want you to be merely outraged by it. I want you to be bored and eye-rollingly tired first. The Republican Party gets more and more ridiculous by the day, blindly defensive without the slightest thought of justice or propriety. Look at what they've done in just over the last month:

• They have perpetuated the Big Lie that somehow, in some way that hasn't been verified in any way, the presidential election was stolen;
• They have not supported the arrest and potential imprisonment of the perpetrators of the assault on the Capitol, which led to the deaths of five people, including a member of the Capitol Police who in fact voted for the candidate they supported, too, thus complicit in their silence;
• They have not expressed outrage and disgust at threats to the very lives of Nancy Pelosi, Mike Pence (one of their own, supposedly), and Alexandra Octavio-Cortez;
• Their leader in the House actually went to the residence of the former president (whose name I will still never use; he will never be good enough to be mentioned in this space), a perpetrator of sedition, to make sure things were all right by him, instead of supporting his arrest and imprisonment;
• A Congressional majority of them in the House supported the breakdown of the Constitution by refusing to confirm that the Electoral College had met, voted, and declared Joe Biden the winter of the presidential vote;
• They gave a standing ovation to a new member whose claim to fame so far involves bringing a weapon to the floor of the House and wanting to shoot Nancy Pelosi in the head, actions so inherently dangerous that Democrats (but with a few brave Republicans in tow) took away her committee assignments, a punishment she neither understands nor regards (but will soon learn); and
• Several Republican members of the House doubled down on resisting reasonable restrictions (see above) and also tried to get to the floor of the House with weapons, absorbing a $5,000 fine from the Speaker (the next offense carries a $10,000 additional fine).

Even the former president's most vocal supporters haven't stopped screaming foul, as if saying so makes it so. But their days are coming. Facts are stubborn things, said John Adams in his defense of British soldiers at the Boston Massacre, and they have consequences beyond their mere voicing and the lies that accompany them. Smartmatic, the parent company that had its voting machines placed in doubt by the likes of Maria Bartiromo, the now-fired Lou Dobbs, and Jeanine Pirro, has filed a libel suit against Fox News for $2.7 billion. Watch for the settlement of that one out of court.

Dominion Voting Systems, an offshoot of Smartmatic, has filed suit against rogue lawyer Rudy Giuliani--who also spoke to inspire the crowd to assault the Capitol on January 6--and associate Sidney Powell for $1.3 billion, also for specious, false claims of vote corruption. A spokesperson for Smartmatic appeared on the CNN show Reliable Sources Sunday, noting that the My Pillow guy, Mike Lindell, another blind and horribly naive supporter of the former president, "is practically crying out to the sued. We just may accommodate him."

When someone wants to settle out of court, there must be agreement from the other side. There can be admission of wrongness, too. We will see if Dominion and/or Smartmatic settles. They may not. They may make the sued bring whatever "evidence" they have.

If these cases come to trial, they will not be closed. The sued would be wise to settle and pay heavily to avoid embarrassment. When an entire company sues you, your pockets better be deep, either for the settlement or the lawyers necessary. 

It is only fair to say here that in the interim, articles have also been written noting that it would be possible to rig machines so they counted votes twice. Yes, that is true--there are books that have been written to that effect far before this; I recommend one called Steal This Vote--and the sued will probably cling to this. But they have to prove that someone actually did act fraudulently; they have to come up with names and places, not to merely speculate. In other words, they have to have a factual basis for claims that inspired knuckleheads to charge the Capitol justifiably. They won't because they can't.

The machines don't cheat by themselves; someone must actually control them to do so. Nobody did. Wild claims don't change that. The counters, too, took oaths to support the Constitution. Unlike many Republicans who couldn't hold childish tempers in check, they actually did so.

But the whole nation will view the second impeachment trial. We will view, again, the awful film of an awful event. Perhaps new film will emerge. The House managers, too,  now have the testimony of those who were there. They have the simple fact that federal authorities have already arrested, as of Sunday, 235 people for criminal charges stemming from the assault; that number grows daily.

The public revelation of these items serves as its own justice, token votes to resist notwithstanding. What the Democrats do with it is another issue. If they want to hold the former president and his minions accountable, they must repeat the lies and damage they've created until at least the next Congressional elections. 

Depending who the Republicans nominate next, it could and should extend into the next presidential campaign. If they do not apologize, if they do not sufficiently explain, there's no reason why not. Republicans will try to distract and get us to move onward. Democrats must once again stubbornly resist.

There have been other vestiges to justice. One occurred during an otherwise boring Super Bowl game, when the NFL, through Jim Nantz and CBS, hosted the family of Brian Sicknick, one of the Capitol Police who died defending the institution and the perfectly constitutional events that were taking place there. The NFL was making a comment: This was unfair. It was unjust. It was not necessary. We honor him.

Make no mistake: Democracy is on trial here. Justice's final determination will take quite a while, as long as Republicans aren't beholden to the facts. More persuasion is necessary. More work to be done.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One day closer to a second vaccine shot. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Majorie Taylor Greene Without the Pistol Swagger: Not Quite The Same

She stood there in the well of the House of Representatives, trying to explain herself, trying to be humble now. It didn't work. Her past caught up with her.

Marjorie Taylor Greene tried to save her committee appointments yesterday. The Democrats took them away.

You might say that that was unfair, that her rights were violated. Not true.

Yes, she had a First Amendment right to say uncomfortable things, things that were not true and even things that were dangerous. But they aren't just words. They are predictors of future actions, like someone saying that the rally previous to the storming of the Capitol last month would be "wild."

When certain people in certain positions say irresponsible things, others piggyback and allow themselves to be persuaded. It's only human. And someone has to step in and set things straight. Someone has to act responsibly.

The scary thing, the thing that keeps eating away at me is, that if Kevin McCarthy was the Speaker of the House and not Nancy Pelosi--by a majority that has narrowed considerably since 2019--Marjorie Taylor Greene would continue to say things like:

• The Clintons sabotaged JFK Jr.'s plane, which crashed in the Atlantic and killed both him and his wife in 1999;
• The Parkland school shooting was actually staged;
• Someone should put a bullet in Nancy Pelosi's head;
• No plane ever hit the Pentagon; and
• There is a wide conspiracy including Democrats, the "deep state," and Hollywood.

She also tried to disavow and distance herself from the horrible group called QAnon, which among other things says that Democrats kill babies and drink their blood (I prefer trout and salmon, drained and processed, thank you). But she said that yesterday and not one day before that, so her sincerity rings very hollow, like her reminder that she hasn't said anything outrageous since being elected.

It sounds like Kevin McCarthy told her to look humble and say humble things. It doesn't look like she would say them anyhow, say them just to be nice and somewhat normal.

Because when you walk into the House of Representatives with a weapon and insist on doing so, so much that you dodge the metal detector and walk around it, you are telling perfectly normal people that displaying that weapon is vital to your existence, even though nobody else has to make such a claim. 

"I'm a very regular American," she said, but she's wrong and she knows it. If you need that gun to make your point, your point isn't very popular and you have defied but defeated the very purpose of having the discussion. And it's not regular. It didn't resonate, so Pelosi had to threaten her with a $10,000 fine if she did it again.

That isn't revenge from a threat, although Pelosi couldn't be blamed if it was. It just makes sense, directed at someone who hasn't grown up.

Greene did not back away from attacks on the news media, either, to sound very much like the president she so greatly admires, even though what all those media are trying to do--as opposed to the media she likes, which are also media but she believes that the label "media" will attach only to those she doesn't prefer--is their job, which is to monitor government and make sure it spends our tax dollars well.

She even had an excuse for her narrowness. "I was made to believe things that weren't true," she cried, which is permissible if you're some slob trying to get to work while listening to Rush Limbaugh, but not for a member of Congress. 

Oh, you couldn't get up and leave the meeting? QAnon tied you to your chair? They made you stop reading books and magazines, did they? Or did they shut off CNN and forced you to watch Newsmax? This is a sufficient explanation about why you believe in an incredible truckload of nonsense?

She also blamed the "cancel culture (careful not to mention Black Lives Matter)." which has torn down some Confederate statues--relevant in her home state of Georgia, for sure. But to lump it in with sanctions upon her status in the House continues one of the major themes of Republicanism lately, that of being a victim: Poor, persecuted little me.

If you consider this unimportant, consider also that when she walked into the Republican Caucus, Greene was rewarded with a standing ovation. That's exactly what was reflected in such a tawdry and gooey show of support.

That's why the gun is so necessary, too. The response is then to bully, to display power, to get one's own way. Making people fear you is superior to getting people to respect you through the strength of your ideas. If the two were the same, she would not have had her committee assignments challenged. Like someone else we've been forced to listen to for the last four years, the person whose name she was also smart enough not to mention, presentation skills are supposed to impress us more than substance. That will increasingly be the Republican MO. Wait and see.

The former president, of course, slinks down in Mar-A-Lago and awaits the discovery of how close he will come to not being allowed to run for office anymore. He'll survive, but some Republicans will cross over and either have a conscience left, or they don't feel threatened by a vote of conscience. Probably a little of both. They're certainly won't do the right thing for its own sake.

But Greene isn't him, and tolerance for lies and poppycock only go so far. Without the swagger of her weapon at her side, she isn't very much; things aren't quite the same. But we should expect more of this (by the way, where did Lauren Boubert, the other blowhard with a pistol, go lately? Hasn't said much, huh? She, uh, dodged a bullet there.). I can't see why not: Thomas Massie, Louie Gohmert, Alex Gosar, and others are already there and have been spewing reality-challenged items for some time now. The Baloney Caucus is only growing.

Former House member Patrick Kennedy was on CNN last night and expressed some remorse for what's been going on. "Nobody likes this," he said. He's a bigger man than I am, then. I would take pleasure in shutting down an angry, irrational fool like Marjorie Taylor Greene. I would almost enjoy it.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One day closer to a second vaccine. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Winter's Benign, But Only For A Bit

Wednesday, February 3, was the kind of day to savor, to be outside. To wish I was 10 again.

Cold? Depends on where you're from. If you've been raised in Milwaukee or thereabouts, it's oddly and unendingly nice: Maybe a degree or two above freezing.

Sunny, too. Rare for January and early February, or at least it used to be. There have been far too many quiet, even partly sunny days the past few winters for people not to regard it as climate change. Winters used to have quite the ferocity, especially to this point: Massive snowstorms and then frigid blasts from somewhere in hellish Canada, not nice Canada, which relieved the awful humidity in August. If it's winter, I'll take sunny and 35. Almost balmy.

We've had major, extended, unknown Indian summer (which is, in fact, based on their own ferociousness) in November, when more often than not we'd already be buried with the white stuff. Yes, it was wonderful, the same way the seashore suddenly becomes waveless before a tsunami: You suspend belief for a while, knowing without precision but for certain that it isn't going to last.

Cloudy, too: nothing so dreary as trying to get through sub-freezing cold with a canopy hanging down so close you can just about jump to touch it. Today's clouds, which caught up after the sun stopped by, were white, fluffy, looked delightfully temporary and had spots of blue sprinkled between them, with small gaps that you could get a 9-iron through if you only had the loft. It was mostly cloudy, sure, but not in a way that could make your attitude match it.

I walk, weather permitting, to keep my heart in reasonable shape. I went southward, then eastward, bending toward the big pond that is Lake Michigan. Any snowstorm coming from that direction picks up extra moisture and laces anything and everything with it. I passed a steep but friendly hill that sledders and snowboarders utilize. Today was that kind of day.

We had a dumping Saturday night into Sunday, where hot chocolate added to peppermint schnapps seemed to be the order as you watched it snow sideways. Then the plows had to come and push it into places nobody wanted, but nobody could figure out how to otherwise arrange it.

Driveway owners dread such times; for days, even weeks, the plows come and give you new work, backbreaking work, endlessly throwing that crap into some other pile that needed to be dealt with, but not just now. Even if you could have fun with snow, knew how to do it, you still had to get the car into the street and there was no way around it: it was either get the car stuck uselessly just feet away from freedom or dig in, and out, and through, seemingly never getting quite wide enough.

I remember doing that at our place in Grafton when I was a kid and we had not only a long driveway, but a semi-circular artery that made it three times as long as everybody else's. It seemed endless, especially if we were told to start before the snowing had ended. Then you'd get mad, in which case you'd shovel as fast as your back could handle it, which did you some good but not nearly enough, especially if throwing the snow into the wind was pointless. It drifted, too, adding to the challenge. It was like sticking your hand into a bucket of water and swirling it around; it seemed to make a difference but was nothing more than displacement.

Some in the city of Milwaukee were already parked in the street and days later, the plows have shoved it all so high and it has caked so roughly that it defeats you just to look at it. Two-lane streets become one, and you have to be polite if someone enters before you do, even if you don't want to. But such is the hassle of The Time of Dirty Snow, when it's no longer flowing and picturesque and just another burden.

But if you could, you got out the saucers and sleds and found the kind of hill that pours into tennis courts at the edge of Lincoln Memorial Drive, just north of one of the Collectivo coffee shops that haven't yet closed. The smart people would wait until Tuesday, even Wednesday.

Why then? Because in the first few hours of Monday after the front had passed, the snow isn't packed down yet. Sleds and saucers get caught up if it's too fluffy, which is its own kind of fun but not conducive to what hills are for--speed. The sun plays its role, too, melting away some of the top stuff but not enough to spoil the effect.

And when kids have been up and down the hill a few times, the snow gets tamped down, just enough to provide a firm underpinning. Then the sledders and saucerers can whiz to the bottom and perform all kinds of tricks, including going and spinning much faster than they were planning. What else can be more fun?

On hiking back to my apartment, I ran into a mom and two kids, headed to the hill. Mom had a huge saucer and a boy had a sled. "It's perfect now," I said, trying to get the kids fired up. "Just perfect." It was three-thirty or so, and surprisingly, not many kids were there. Great timing. A couple hours of that, and dinner would taste real good.

As I finish this, another strong storm is cascading upon us here in Milwaukee. When it passes this time, Jack Frost will arrive and spew his frigidity upon us for a week or so; the cold hell of Canada. Shovelers will have that much more to complain about. I will stay parked out in the back, inside trying to stay warm, and wishing that I was 10 again.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One day closer to a second shot. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark