One Year After George Floyd--Can We Handle Diversity? How 'Woke' Are We?

So it's been a year since George Floyd was murdered by a police officer, and many publications have gone out of their way to ask: Where are we now, and where should we go?

To that point: Are we any closer to eliminating the effects of racism? I wish I could say yes, but I doubt it. Black people are still getting killed by police, many of which under suspicious circumstances. It continues to be challenging, with qualified immunity, to bring police to their proper level of responsibility. Like much of the jurisprudence in this federalistic legal framework, it's a patchwork quilt, addressed on a case-by-case basis, which means that we have to wait for terrible things to fix instead of taking strides pro-actively.

The young white man who killed two people in Kenosha during the height of this business still hasn't stood trial yet. He proclaims his innocence. He is released despite a million dollars bond by a former Hollywood star who has taken the opposite tack from people like George Clooney and decided to go all-out in defense of reactionary, not merely conservative, causes.

Some Confederate statues have been taken down. Replacements haven't been built yet. But some of the most significant--like that of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia, where the infamous 2017 march took place, and those of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis, carved into Stone Mountain, Georgia, during the World War I era, and much ballyhooed since--are being maintained with misplaced pride.

We know more about Black Lives Matter, but that phrase has turned into a rallying cry for reactionaries to automatically reject any calls for reconsideration of racial stereotypes. It cannot be enveloped into the political mainstream. Due to effective usage of innuendoes by people like ex-, any and all disruptions are often attached to it. It is relegated to the fringes.

But white supremacy, which is at the bottom of all this, seems to be gaining strength after January 6, along with guns and fierce talk. Power, and force, and the anger behind it, seem to be at the top of the agenda. Senate Republicans, one supposes, do not mind: They have just blocked any bipartisan inquiry of the insurrection. Among other things, they seem to want to dodge attachment to radicalism and white supremacy, or perhaps to attach them in subtler ways, as if that was possible.

Too late. I may be going out on a limb here, but to this point, not one media source on either side has located a Democrat among the insurrectionists; Fox or Newsmax or One America News would certainly have located, and called out, one by now. And at least one Capitol police officer of color was exposed to racist commentary as he was assaulted there. "Is this America?" he said.

Yes, sadly, it is. It isn't new, either. The attitudes sure aren't new, though. The newness is the blatancy with which racism is declared and established.

You could say, too, that the defiance and protests supporting people of color have also increased, and that resistance, those of the white supremacists, has by nature followed. Yes, by nature: America is full of countervailing forces, and those two are at, or near, the top of our dynamics. 

"We have never been one country," said one pundit the other day, and while that may be a bit strong, I would follow by saying what I've said since I've lived in our capitol for a year during the last decade and seen it myself in microcosm: We are too big now. There is too much fraying at the edges. We cannot handle diversity, looming though it may. It should be a strength, but far too many people have been swallowed up by pointless fear, and have been literally led to believe that it is harmful.

There are no encompassing ideas that will settle us into consensus. Maybe there never were, and our contrary illusions have been blasted away. Ex-, alone, cannot be blamed. He just did a better job of congealing attitudes than others have. What seemed like the legitimacy and effectiveness of anger did the rest.

George Floyd's murder did move the needle of awareness a bit, like that of Emmitt Till in the 1950s, the demonstrations and militancy of the 1960s, and the desegregation of the 1970s, until Reagan ripped the legs out from under and we've struggled to maintain some semblance of focus ever since. Yes, we became 'woke' in the past few years; we could hardly have done otherwise. But we also woke up to a renewal of racist underpinning, of hate, of mindlessness.

We remain, for now, in an oasis of decency and relative calm, with Joe Biden trying his best to stay on course. But with the displays of outright cowardice by Republicans who think nothing of the country but only of themselves, that time is wearing thin.

You can feel the anger growing again, can't you? And more absurdity: Marjorie Taylor Greene, the recount in Arizona, ridiculousness disguised as legitimacy. What we need--a better minimum wage, fixing a crumbling infrastructure, seeing to cybersecurity--are being drowned out. Once again: Failure to address these screaming needs is not conservatism. It is reactionism. It is a mindless attempt to replace the past with the past. It is an effort to avoid consensus. 

It is irrational and obsessive to stop the changes we need. We 'woke,' but so many of us want us to go back to sleep. That can't happen now, though. Too much of this has to go somewhere. Where it emerges no one can know.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Do We Dare Consider A Commission on Liberal Outbursts, Too?

I heard it while driving yesterday. It was one of those things that made me reconsider.

The insurrection of January 6 was one of the most awful events in our history. Of that, there can be little doubt. The storming of the U.S. Capitol to disrupt and potentially cancel the acceptance of the Electoral College vote, however perfunctory and functionally unnecessary, is an act of treason, whether its perpetrators understood it to be that or not (and I doubt that a majority of them did, caught up in the moment of hysteria; it would be pitiful if not so obnoxiously stupid and naive).

Now, Congress is trying to authorize a commission to study the event. On its face, it looks like overkill. We know what happened and why: the outgoing president, an evil and power-lusting man, tried to get someone to do his dirty work for him--certainly not new; it's his method of operation--and somehow get the presidency back, nullifying a fairly enforced election in which he lost.

His minions came close. They got inside the building and might have descended upon an ongoing session of the House and Senate had quick-thinking guards not diverted them in time. I almost wish they would have entered the chambers and been overwhelmed by the moment, as I think they might have been.

The FBI has taken control of the investigations of several hundred individuals who breached the building, violating federal law. Many of them will receive just punishment. They are certainly acting and saying things that indicate their remorse. I'm not sure I believe them. But it isn't like nobody's already looking into the event and analyzing it.

They came from all over the country; the clod who helped tear up House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office hailed from Arkansas, for instance. So a Congressional inquiry, representing the nation as a whole, isn't exaggerating the scope.

They laid ruin to the place, too, in a gesture of nihilistic devastation. Walls and windows were wrecked and smashed. Some people also decorated the premises with their bodily waste. I think a commission might remind us of the disrespect.

But I'm no longer sure it should stop there. I heard someone comment on Wisconsin Public Radio and, just the way he put it, it makes some sense. To summarize: After all, some people also wrecked federal buildings elsewhere in the country. Shouldn't that be investigated, too?

I found myself considering that. Before the assault, people had also attacked federal buildings in Portland, Oregon and Minneapolis, Minnesota--certainly not as bad as the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, but bad enough. Should that be simply written off as violent, inappropriate tributes to George Floyd and Black Lives Matter? 

Little has been written as follow-up. But those buildings are federal property, too. Should those attacks be considered tolerable because their origins are more closely attached to justice as January 6's is? If not trumpeted as also wrong-headed, wouldn't that encourage others to renew those attacks in the near future?

If nothing else, the caller lit me up. I get it now. I get where they're coming from. To understand is not to agree, but it is to accept that a deeper explanation and exploration of events may be more valuable than once thought.

This is dangerous territory. Anyone advocating for a commission to include the earlier attacks stands to be accused of making them equivalent--and, rhetorically, anything can be twisted to make it so. And anything that makes Black Lives Matter look less than sincere, or ultimately harmful, runs the risk of being labeled racist. Nerves are still taut. Exaggerations are still close to the surface.

But the notion isn't absurd. The danger is in Republican spinning of such an allowance, making it sound equivalent to January 6. Granted, what happened in Portland and Minneapolis was serious and definitely destructive, not the kind of place you want to take protest. But paying 'official' attention to it won't necessarily blow it out of proportion. What it may do is, in fact, reduce the inclination to add those incidents to conversations unnecessarily. It may in fact add proportionality to them, not detract. That sunlight, too, may be an excellent disinfectant.

Of course, the mere suggestion that such investigations be added might also create a chat storm that can't be turned away. And, to be honest, Democrats haven't had the entire corner on definitive facts.

Take, for instance, the ever-invoked Steele Dossier, funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign to trash ex-, which Devin Nunes made a point to haul out whenever given the floor in the House investigation of ex-'s first impeachment. That's the one, if you recall, that had ex- peeing on some bed in Moscow that Barack Obama was said to sleep on. There is no reliable evidence of that, as well as some other corruptive tidbits that Steele tried to forward. While that didn't make other investigated facts wrong, it cast doubt in some eyes upon Democratic reliability.

But the absence of the Dossier, or even its accuracy, wouldn't have changed many Republican votes, either. They had their own nonsense machine based on their hysteria, which certainly churned out far more non-facts and questioning that tried to disguise innuendoes; you only needed to listen in to about half an hour of the hearings to conclude that. 

So, if given the opportunity to investigate whatever makes them feel better, will Republicans conduct themselves with less vitriol, stick to reasonably determined facts, and make judicious conclusions? If you've seen Nunes, Louie Gohmert, Alex Gosar, Matt Gaetz, and Jim Jordan, and now the seriously unhinged Marjorie Taylor Greene, let me ask: Do you trust them to do that?

There is also, of course, the time factor, and what to consider first. If Portland and Minneapolis were on top of the docket, the Republicans would try to delay open hearings for weeks, maybe months (which they might try to do anyhow), leaning into the 2022 mid-terms, which most pundits believe will go in their favor. Their anxiety would disappear in a hurry. Delay is a powerful tool. If it were forced to go second, Republicans would accuse Democrats of diminishing their importance with protocol.

All of this would put Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer into a tough spot. But putting one's head down and forging ahead is proving, however justified, to be bad politics. The odds of the Senate approving a singularly-directed January 6 investigation appear to be long. Why approve of something awful done by people who would overwhelmingly vote for practitioners of your party, without demanding that the other side's folks stand accountable as well?

So there it is. If everybody would just behave, one might be able to the to the truth of the matter. But it's quite evident by now that Republicans don't care or even want to know the truth, at least not the whole truth, or enough of the truth, about anything as long as they can win anyhow. Some have tried to act like January 6 was a tourist venture gotten a little out of hand, and others keep counting their state's 2020 votes as if they will find several thousand errors after the actual results have been reviewed three times or more.

This continuation of matters long since decided, this commitment to find something wrong with something so as to cast tremendous doubt where none rationally exists is the newest justification for future meddling caused by them, not by others. Something as momentous as an investigation of the worst breach of our very Capitol since 1814 would be otherwise be an invitation to establish incontrovertible truth. But it's also a naive wish to the now ridiculous question,  as said by Rodney King: "Can't we all just get along?"

We've known that answer for a while now. I wish it were otherwise. It isn't. Maybe there will be a commission on liberal outbursts as well, but I think we know what to expect from it.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

A Community for All? Too Much for Marathon County, Another Sad Fantasyland

I've been thinking about moving for some time now. My current abode has excellent location--can't have it much better, relative to grocery, pharmacy, and other advantages, even with and maybe especially because of the pandemic--so the precise area in which I might move becomes quite important.

But I'm not moving to Marathon County. I'd be an outsider, and a liberal, and that seems to be a bad idea at this point. 

The county's government made it a point to declare that it's not a community for all last week, which means that it feels that it might be a good idea to bar someone it doesn't like from joining it or at least living within its boundaries. It didn't say exactly who, but of course, it doesn't have to.

Seems that a bunch of people--one can safely assume that they're white--concluded that such a declaration meant that Marathon was a racist county. Let's explore that assumption a bit.

One possible conclusion is that such an accusation is accurate. If so, that wouldn't make Marathon much different from most other counties, including those with a whole lot more minorities living in them than it has, with 91 percent of its citizens white.

What it wants to do, above all, is avoid the shame of being called racist. So it won't take that on at all. It'll brush that aside. It'll easily acquiesce to what Tim Scott, U.S. Senator from South Carolina, said the other day after Biden's address to Congress: America isn't a racist country.

Oh? No vestiges left after slavery and the Civil War? Everything was okay then? And since? No demonstrations, no lynchings no structural racism? Don't feel bad, Republicans. It's okay. What does anybody else know anyhow?

If you pulled someone from that county aside, though, and mentioned some information that would lead them to conclude racist inclinations, you'd probably get agreement, as long as:

• It would be kept quiet, that is, out of media;
• They wouldn't have to admit it at some kind of gathering; and
• You would promise not to tell anyone else so as to identify them with liberals.

Kind of like the same mentality that was violated by Liz Cheney when she insisted on telling the truth about the 2020 election and insisting that other Republicans do the same, out loud. It's okay to admit that things aren't perfect, that America isn't living up to its reputation, that things need to be improved, as long as it's done under someone's breath so that someone else needn't take any responsibility for it.

That's the core problem: That America is going to be great again but we need to ignore, not fix, our core issues to get to that point. It's kind of like the attitude that ex- and his minions took about migrants from Central America: we'll fix that later, just ignore it and keep declaring that we're improving things. Except, with a growing number of people arriving, the problem's getting worse instead of better, and the baggage is getting heavier instead of lighter.

Said Fareed Zakaria on his show "GPS," several weeks ago: in 1950, the population of the U.S. was ten percent minority--a true minority. Today, it's forty-one percent and rising (nowhere near that in Marathon County). Our ex- was trying to hold it back, at least from getting to majority status with increasing speed, or doing so in a way that people could actually see and experience. 

That minorities actually present will continue to marry and bear children, and eclipse whites quite naturally, is an issue not discussed (and, with Republican insistence against abortion, a result to be brought about sooner, not later, as stupidly hypocritical as that is). It's a mentality for 1960, not sixty years later. It's not the fact of integration that's difficult, it's the admission of the fact, in spite of everything that surrounds.

Those who protest Marathon County being "a community for all," fall into that same category, and can, because of geography, continue to act ostrich-like. The minority individuals who live there now know that they cannot, and will not, admit that the world, their world, is changing and that they're still all right in spite of it, that their lifestyles haven't been somehow poisoned, that interaction need not be temporary or superficial.

It is, in a sense, an addictive behavior that's easy to fall back on. And such behaviors can end only starting with one event: an admission of a problem. Without it, such cancers only grow.

There's nothing falling apart in Marathon County that wasn't wrong in the first place--like real respect, and true tolerance, and admitting actual reality, things lacking for people other than white. Too many there, too, have fallen into the same wish: that a fantasyland has always existed and always will exist, despite what's clearly in front of them. It no longer shocks, but it does sadden.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Do I Still Have to Look at Him? Sigh.

The announcement that the organization of our ex- has now risen, so to speak, into a criminal, not just civil, investigation, has filled me with dread. No, not that kind of dread. Quite another.

Since his electoral defeat and banishment by Facebook and Twitter, there have been few pictures of him in media. After all, he isn't president anymore. He has been squirreling himself into his luxurious pad in Mar-A-Lago, and is due to wriggle himself out of it this weekend in North Carolina.

The great thing about that is that I haven't seen him much. I do despise him, but in a way I've reserved for few other people. He simply makes me upset when I see a photo of him.

So the above announcement has brought forward photos, often the same photos exactly, of him usually speaking, which is basically what he's done anyhow, from the past. I suppose the media's just doing its job, after all. I just can't stand it.

I don't wish him dead because it isn't Christian to do so. I just want him to go away for as long as possible until his ultimate demise.

Except he's going to have a meeting in which he'll spew his typical nonsense. And he wants no media coverage. Rather, he has ordered it.

That means he's going to tell everyone how he'll undermine Democrats and the media and whoever else is standing in his way, and do it so secretly that, or so he must think, nobody except Republicans will be able to figure it out until it's too late.

The problem with that is that everything he's done has been incredibly transparent. His sudden obsession with secrecy is not only not likely to work, but is actually unnecessary. Barring legal intervention on past wrongdoings--and that's an increasing possibility though still not a big one--he'll get away with whatever he's going to try anyhow.

Besides that, don't expect him to disappear. Autocrats crave the attention, so he'll be with us until he's dead. As Ariel Dorfman pointed out in the May 27 edition of The New York Review of Books:

As for [ex-'s] future, it could be like (Juan) Peron (strongman dictator of Argentina in the mid-20th Century), he makes a comeback. Or, also like Peron, who still hold his country in thrall almost fifty years after his death, Trump could continue to influence our vulnerable and imperiled land. Or perhaps a worse and more dangerous incarnation of his persona and policies is brewing right now [I would guess Josh Hawley]. What ever the coming years bring, we should not forget [ex-'s] terse last words as president, before being flown off to his Elba-in-Florida: "We'll be back in some form."

Unquestionably, the influence of his thinking was begun before he actually circumscribed himself on our political scene; the ridiculous notions and outright lies that carried him to the presidency, nearly twice, began far before but weren't catalysed successfully until 2016. As we have seen, that thinking has been catapulted into state legislatures and continues in the Congress by extremists elected in 2020. 

Do not count on successful prosecution, either. We already know that he's dodged that for his entire life in a number of realms. He knows all the angles. It will take a herculean effort, and at least a little luck, for that to transpire.

His alternative world lives on. We would do well to consider what it means, and confront it wherever it rears its ugly head. That's beyond his own head, which is ugly enough the way it is.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Typical Republican Playbook: Just Take the Money Away and That Will Fix Everything

Senator Ron Johnson and the other Republican members of Congress from Wisconsin have asked Governor Tony Evers to suspend the $300 per month unemployment payments to state residents. Beyond the fat chance that that's going to happen, it's xeroxed out of the Republican playbook.

Let's haul the cliches back out again: 

• You can't solve problems by throwing money at them; 
• If you give people money, they'll just sit on their backsides and won't look for work; 
• It's 'rugged individualism' (this one from the Great Depression, which failed for Hoover, too) that's made this country great.

Granted, the jobs report wasn't nearly as hopeful as the Biden Administration had projected it would be. By about three-fourths, in fact.

This isn't a good look. Biden was planning on businesses, and people, to have a bit more money to tide themselves over and get back on track. Which is to say, fill up some job openings that have been sitting there for as along as this virus has had us on hold, and in the meantime, pay some bills and get something to eat.

Like your Mom teaching you how to ride a bike, it felt great until you realized she wasn't pushing you anymore. In fact, I heard today that restaurants in the Milwaukee area are trying to hire new workers, but they haven't responded yet. Now, why is that?

The Chamber of Commerce, too, thinks it has this all figured out. As soon as the jobs report came out, it immediately recommended that the administration stop all handouts. That's not new thinking. It's tired Republican thinking, the thinking of those who run businesses and never got laid off themselves. It's rather automatic, rather knee-jerk. But those claims are true only if two things are also true:

• Those not working found no value in work; 
• Those who can't earn any more money than the minimum wage, which is absurdly low and hasn't been adjusted for inflation for a ridiculously long time; and
• The dollar amount they got from the government allows them to sustain themselves (and if they have families, them, too) for the foreseeable future.

Take it from someone who's been unemployed more than once in his life: The first isn't true. Yes, I got assistance from a state government or two, and yes, it certainly helped. But sit there without doing anything, especially if I could be earning more money while gainfully employed? Nonsense.

People have pride. It takes a lot to beat it out of them. But sometimes a lot happens. If it takes a long time to get a job, people give up. They gave up often during the past recession. I know I nearly did.

But I also knew that if I did, the original people who thought they should let me go would win. In the twisted minds which cut me loose from Cedarburg in the first place, they would justify it far more easily. (And no, I have not forgiven them nor will I ever. I'm not that big of a person. My removal had to do with unexplained vindictiveness because the obsequious superintendent told me with others around, "It's not about the money.") It was my goal to make it to the age of Social Security, one way or another, working until I could retire.

Could I start over, outside of education, at age 57? Uphill all the way. I didn't try to get back into anybody else's classroom. Who would take someone that old, with jobs that scarce, especially someone who had been a big union guy? Who would take on someone with that potential for organizing trouble?

Age discrimination was a major roadblock. It is sometimes not even subtle. People tell you that you're too old. They find ways to do it that avoid lawsuits. I got good at reading tea leaves after a while.

Usually you don't even get that far. Just get me in the room, I'd tell myself and by implication tell someone who could hear me only through my resume; you'll see.

There are sites that profess to know, really, really know, the trick to writing a good resume; all you had to do was pay a couple of bucks, if you had it, and they'd tell you. But it's mainly done through algorithms now, and they hook your paper to a computer which wrings out the humanity from all of it and treats you like the machine it is. And it's no guarantee of anything.

Previous prestige meant zero. Even my colleagues back in Cedarburg had no idea what I'd accomplished, no clue as to where I'd really been and what it had taken to get there. It was absurd to believe that anybody else did, either. And prestige achieved in another profession meant little to that which you aspired. That took a while to absorb. I'd had enormous success, but it was all inside a bubble.

It got so that actually getting a response, even a bad one, was a victory. At least they thought I had a chance, I'd say to myself, and I was good for another three or four days.

I'd come close, here and there. Interviews were like gold. Some of the work was far off and they didn't want to pay to get me in the room, where I knew I would knock them dead, so some did it by phone. I got better and better at phone interviews; I had one group in Nevada eating out of my hand, laughing at my jokes. I thought they were going to not only hire me, but adopt me as family. But I came in second. 

I could hear the voice delivering the bad news; I really had come close. They really were sorry. It was genuine. But the results were the same: still unemployed.

It would fill me with both hope and despair together. I felt like the dogs chasing the rabbit around the track: Always close, never quite there, and feeling a little dumb about it. But there was no one who would just give me a job, at least not one at the level at which I believed I deserved.

That's the other issue: Do you sweep floors instead? I chose not to. I let my savings dwindle. I spent through one IRA, but not the second: I drew a line there. But what if I did take a menial position? With the minimum wage what it is, and was, would it have made that much difference?

Instead, I plunged into debt. It took years to climb out. But I got there, just in time to retire. I had to give up the place I'd bought more than a decade ago, to which I might have gone and buried myself in withdrawal; living in rural Wisconsin was cheap enough, and I could have survived on my teachers' pension alone. But I couldn't do it. I knew I had more to contribute, and considering where I'd been, I had to try. And there was still Cedarburg. I would not let them celebrate upon my demise.

Yes, it cost me in time, money and emotional stability. But I have that victory. They snubbed me but they couldn't bury me. I endured.

It grinds away at your self-esteem, though. You know you're worth something to someone, but you can't prove it. You have to be invited first. You're out there on an island with no ship passing by. No one can help you.

And yes, the thought does occur to you: Maybe I should quit. And once re-hired somewhere, the enthusiasm for working isn't quite what it once was; too much energy and emotional juice has been spent getting there in the first place. The longer it takes, the deeper it gets. You can only get beaten down so far when it starts to matter.

I made it, but the struggle was enormous. I'm sustainable now. Unless inflation overtakes us--and you never know about that--I can live just fine on what's coming in. Had I simply quit back in 2009, though, my Social Security payments would be much less per month. The gamble paid off.

And--surprisingly, but a sign of economic recovery--I just learned that my monthly stipend from the state retirement system, after taxes, jumped some eight percent in the last couple of months. Not bad.

So the Chamber of Commerce, in their fine, stylish corner offices, can say what they want: The reality isn't  quite what they project. Work brings pride with it, but if it was that easy to get, that problem would be solved almost immediately.

And no, extra money to keep one in their homes and fed for a little while longer won't cause, by itself, an inclination to use the public trough as a permanent source; nor will it collapse the entire economy. We're some ways from that yet.

But that pride has a limit, too. Withdrawing that stimulus money and "letting the system manage itself" only works for those doing the philosophizing; they don't have to suffer the daily anxiety of being without a job, nor do they need to manufacture hope from whole cloth. 

It's real easy for Ron Johnson and Republican members of Congress to urge that people take away the safety wheels; they have well-paying jobs that, in my view, they don't deserve, either because people here are deluded or they've had the skids greased for them by gerrymandering, where all they have to do is show up and they get 60 percent of the vote without trying.

Obviously, they didn't get sick, either. That might be followed with genuine compassion. Outside of lip service, that's a little too much to ask. That isn't in the Republican playbook.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask inside. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

The Lawn Mower, Reluctantly, Starts Again

There is a coffee shop just two blocks away, straddling a corner. It has copious seating outside, mostly wooden seats carved for draining rain with umbrellas to hold it back a bit. It drizzled a bit while I sat there, the sideways wind carrying it on top of me anyhow.

I figured it to be a good day to renew my outside reading amongst other humans, having absorbed the CDC declaration that getting sick would now be nearly impossible. It wasn't crowded. As with most things now, repopulation of certain sites will come slowly. Some still need vaccination, some are exaggerating the extent to which they need to protect themselves, worrying a bit too much.

It was a time to watch humanity a bit. Parents were out with their descendants, probably some for the first time in months. These were happy moments.

Kids have a way of piggybacking on things, feeding off each other, sensing that something's about though they can't quite describe it. I picked that up while teaching, and could tell uncannily that the kids would be wound up or sluggish, depending on what had just happened or was about to happen. Whether it was consequential to an average adult was largely irrelevant, and those were teenagers.

Two little ones with their mother were quite the same, expending energy. They entered my eyesight from the left, bouncing around and running willy-nilly on the sidewalk, chasing nothing in particular but releasing themselves in near defiance.

The smallest one, a girl, looking about three, decided to let all caution fall away and darted between two parked cars right into the street. It wasn't as if the mother had lost track of her, either; it was, well, with two of them--the older one, a boy, might have been five or six--it's just a little too much occasionally.

For a long, terrifying second, the girl stood there, right in one of the traffic lanes. Fortunately, that was the cross street that's not traveled nearly the same as Downer Avenue, so no cars were turning onto it or lurching through the intersection. She wanted mom's attention, and she sure got it, freezing solid now, knowing she'd done something not good. Mom, about two steps behind and sensing the nightmare, quickly hustled out there and dragged her back.

As women often do, they check to see if anyone's been watching. (Sexist? Maybe. But men tend not to care.) She caught me. It was too late to posture. Awash in mortification, she glanced toward me and furtively rolled her eyes as if to say, I can't do a thing with this child. She gave off a look which could have been a smile. 

I barked out, "Hey, have a good time." She managed a strained chuckle and tried to respond, but the kids were onto something else and she was too far away by then to make it out.

I went back to my reading. Another little girl about the same age happened past, surrounded by both parents, and they sat for a moment while she held court. Oh, yes: there was something profound to say, and she had the rapt attention of the adults, with her mom's curly hair and all. She sneaked a look at me from behind mom, but turned shy, as precocious children do. I waved anyhow, and dad saw me and grinned, proud as a peacock.

Back the next day, the sun dominated. More people, louder talk. Not full, but then, it's not that warm yet.

I checked back at the coffee shop and learned when it'll be all right to use the restrooms: another month. Then, too, the inside of the place will also open up and young-uns and I will bring their laptops and plink away, never too busy to make breaks to sip what will by then be cold drinks. We will observe the friendly, crowded din, glad that we are part of it, mindful of our once wondering whether it would ever happen again.

More people are in the park now. There are more, too, on the sidewalks. Motorcycles, seeking their arrogant freedom, whiz loudly past. It's more than spring. It's a deeper renewal.

We are turning the corner, adjusting the choke on the hesitant putt-putt of the lawn mower. It's been a while since we've brought it out. We're surprised when it starts up, however reluctantly. We shouldn't be. It always seems to.

Nothing earth-shattering here, nothing terribly momentous. Just life. For now, that's plenty.

Be well. Be careful. If you haven't been vaccinated, what's keeping you? With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Finally! An Advantage of Getting Old! No Masks Anymore! (Well, Almost)

I've been looking for advantages in aging for as long as I've been considered "aging." It's been an uphill battle.

My hip had to get replaced, and hasn't healed well enough after six weeks; physical therapy now necessary. The other one now hurts, too. My prostate had to get shaved. I nearly died of excessive arterial plugging. It's been a long five years.

And, of course, Covid, the ultimate ogre, the hidden monster. The CDC finally came to the rescue, admitting as it did that it was behind the curve scientifically there for a while.

The signals it's sending are certainly hopeful, but actually bizarre. Now that I've been fully vaccinated, I can walk into a bar, sit down with people fully around me and drink as much as I possibly can to catch up on all the beers I've missed, but I need a mask inside the doctor's office and the hospital, where everybody's so disinfected they look bleached? Huh?

Okay, but let's slice through the confusion. For the most part, going maskless is now not a threat to me or from me. That's because I've been old enough to be among the first in line for my shots.

It's also because of a development highlighted by Laurie Garrett, a medical analyst who sometimes appears on MSNBC. A couple of days ago, she said that there was a growing chance that the vaccine actually puts antibodies in people's mouths and noses--the two routes by which the virus is normally spread (Also the eyes, but I have glasses, so blockage is there at least for me.). I'm guessing it was that discovery and verification that allowed the CDC to make the rather surprising announcement.

Businesses haven't caught up yet, a day after the ruling. We can't expect them to. They operate, most of them, from corporate headquarters that are sensitive to potential lawsuits. It'll take a while. So if you've had the two shots, I would carry a mask with me if I were you, at least for the present moment.

In the meantime, it's weird, I have to admit, to see people walking around with masks now. I feel for them. But if we're going to put this thing where it belongs, they still have to do it. I'm working on not approaching them with trepidation, after 15 months of needing to do so.

So I celebrated and had lunch at a counter of a greasy-spoon restaurant that I haven't entered in at least the last ten years. Still had great burgers with fabulous cooked onions. Still had great fries, though technically, I'm not supposed to have them. I took off my mask and announced to the waitress that I'd had my shots. Not sure that it mattered, but I didn't see any on the faces of any of the other customers, either. Things are loosening up.

Motorcycles are zipping around now. Traffic is backing up in places suddenly, maddeningly, but the kind of thing that happens when people are normally out and about. It's actually, for the moment, something to like.

I'm not going to gloat, but I am going to celebrate. There's a bar just half a block away in which I haven't ordered a beer since March 2020. Might even have two. It's hell getting old. Except for now.

Be well. Be careful. Even if you've had your shots, carry a mask with you. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

She Got What She Deserved--and That's What's Wrong

Make no mistake: Liz Cheney got what she deserved. About that, there can be no question.

Read that again. You know that's correct. That's what's wrong.

She stood up to the truth about the election, the truth which should be far behind us now, but an incredible number of people have cancelled that out of their minds--people with power, people who can enhance or reduce identity. They have made up a different reality, one that's far more comfortable, one they think they can continue to foist on us all.

I have no great liking for her. Her political views are pretty far from mine. But she does appreciate democracy, the give and take of ideas and the hashing out of them in the appropriate arena of the electorate. Under normal circumstances, this would be no big deal. We are not in normal circumstances.

Ideas are malleable, flexible, adjustable, discussible. Facts don't fit. Facts are established truth.

All she did was keep stating facts. In the twisted, absurd world of Republicans who are emotionally, not rationally, tied to our ex-president, she got one pass at telling the truth. Then she was supposed to shut up, become absorbed by their alternative reality, and ride out the lying for effect.

She was supposed to get behind the titular and phony party leader, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a slippery charlatan if there ever was one, for the sake of 'unity.' There is no room for deviation there now, no room for alternative discussion.

It's pretty scary. It's scary not only because of the way she was voted out--voice vote with loudmouths typically shouting, like followers of our ex- normally do, instead of a counted vote in which people go on record, a far more cowardly act--but of the way her narrative quickly became discounted, then condemned. She was thrown to the floor, then swept up and put into the trashcan. And millions think that's a good idea.

She says she will continue her narrative and try to persuade fellow party members of the errors of their ways. That ship has sailed, Liz. You are so, so late with that one.

I wonder what she'll do when that clear and decisive fact hits her. She's devoted to the truth, but some truths are harder to absorb.

She's being replaced with Elise Stefanik, a professional golddigger who has conveniently morphed herself into being another sycophant. Her grandstanding during the first impeachment trial of ex- paved the way. She's not a leader, she's a follower, and like the rest, she will be complimented only as long as she now kneels at his feet.

She cannot stay within the party, at least not the elected members of it. A group of a hundred or so party members, apparently, are going to issue a statement soon, condemning the absurdity of a continually contested election. Many of them are former officeholders. Not one of them are current officeholders. They have watched Liz Cheney get grilled on a spit, and they'd rather not, thank you very much.

They've learned. They're in with everyone else now--putting their heads down, avoiding interviews, and running into their group to hide from the rest of the world: sheepishly, ridiculously, but knowing that that's the only place they can operate now.

They're solid. They're protected by the Big Lie that's getting even bigger. From that base, they can tell even more--such as, for instance, that January 6 wasn't much more than typical tourism. Yes. Some are now saying that. In their world, time doesn't shrink falsehood: It expands it.

Liz Cheney would do well to join the objectors, at the very least so she isn't hanging out there by herself. She needs to belong to something now. But she cannot be in the Republican Party any longer. Once that voice-vote happened, they moved on without her. She's already in another solar system.

Maybe she'll catch on with a think-tank. There are several conservative-leaning ones that are well-established credentials. Now she'll have time to choose one that's rational, see the writing on the wall, and announce that she isn't running for re-election.

Because she's going to get buried back in Wyoming. The polling will tell her so. She will, momentarily, believe that her name will continue to get her into the front doors of county and local party cadres. And maybe, for a while, she'll be right. But those crowds will diminish. Wyoming's one of those places where people watch One America News and think it's reality.

It will take a while for all that to hit home. The Republican Party is not part of reality any longer. At least, the part of reality that the rest of us have accepted. And their commentary doesn't advance policy; it's still hung up on Dr. Seuss, which most of the rest of us have long since discarded and was falsely attached to Democrats anyhow. It doesn't have a point, it doesn't have a goal. It just opposes, well, something, anything, everything. No discussions or debates that make any sense.

They lock down on objecting to the "cancel culture," when in fact they have established their own--rigid, self-enforcing, final. Step out of line, and you are gone. You have to be very quiet to continue to belong to this group now; very quiet, very scared, and very loyal to a terrible person.

Liz Cheney will soon be dismissed as a victim of a dangerous movement of a whole political party which has thrown itself at the feet of a naturally dishonest, loud-mouthed, irrational liar due to his absurd hold on millions of people who don't really care enough about politics to see the damage he's doing. How this will end is anybody's guess now. It's become a form of mass hysteria, Salem writ large.

But from this point, there will be less said within their ranks, not more. The silence will be telling.

Liz Cheney got what she deserved. Will we?

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask indoors for now. With luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

"Background with Quote Approval:" A New Twist in A Long Game

Beware of whatever comes out from the White House staff. Yes, even Joe Biden's staff. In fact, especially Joe Biden's staff.

Anyone who reads this knows how glad I am that the present president is, in fact, the president. So much tension has been reduced. But not all his ethics are 100% clean.

That's because of a practice that, truth be told, ramped up during Barack Obama's presidency; in fact, it was known for it. I lived in DC during part of Obama's second term, and the discomfort of the press with Obama's staff was palpable enough that a former member of the Washington Post's editorial staff (Leonard Downie, Jr.) wrote a well-documented report (published 10/10/13, through the Committee to Protect Journalists, cpj.org) and held a press conference complaining about it, with printed testimonies and the whole bit. It put the strong contradiction to Obama's previous claim that his administration would be far more transparent than that of Bush-43 even though he gave lip service to allowing journalists to do their jobs. 

It was also done during the last presidency, but with nowhere near the sophistication and thoroughness than Obama or Biden, probably due to a lack of experience (which would, I'm quite sure, be well addressed if the last president gets another shot at it, hostile toward the press as he generally was) and a surfeit of leaking that went unaddressed. One of the many things that our ex- lost track of was the degree to which people were telling tales of disorganization and undermining as soon as they knew them.

But now, any White House staff who are interviewed for any kind of story have to do so with "background with quote approval." This means, very simply, that anything they say must be run past the Biden communications team--which decides whether or not to allow such comments or edit them.

Which means: Any information you get directly quoting a member of the White House staff has been laundered and might not be the reaction originally expressed--unless, of course, it's okay with their bosses. This is, simply put, control of the news and a direct abrogation of the First Amendment.

Stories are supposed to be genuine. They're supposed to be a direct representation of what someone being interviewed thinks. Otherwise, who is actually doing the talking? We don't know. It could be good-natured, but it often isn't, especially when the news being revealed puts the government in a controversial light, which is far more often than not.

At first (says Politico Playbook), White House reporters accepted the practice because they thought it was being done with the best of intentions--you know, cleaning up inaccuracies. But when they came to see that it was actually being done to twist the reality of the original comments so as to obscure their meaning, they began to show some concern.

Something like this has taken place from time immemorial. But the negotiations about what gets into a story and what doesn't has normally been between the reporter and the person who's being solicited. Often, that person doesn't want anyone to know they're leaking information, so it's agreed that it's going to be revealed "on background," which means that the reporter will promise not to use names if the information is accurate.

It's a great way for reporters to get and retain sources. It's also a great way to get scoops, if the person doing the leaking is in a particularly sensitive situation. The leaker clearly wants to reveal the information, but also wants to hang onto the job they've been appointed to: that comes with considerable prestige. Deep Throat, a.k.a. Mark Felt, who was the center of the information leak that became known as Watergate, was one such person.

It's a game, one that reporters and sources have played forever (and doesn't just exist at the White House; plenty of such arrangements get made all over the country, at all levels of government). "On background" really began with FDR, when he would get reporters all around his desk and just start commenting. He refused to be quoted directly, but would allow information to be revealed by "sources close to the White House," or some such moniker, meaning himself but frustrating his enemies. Henry Kissinger, too, was a master at the practice.

A lot of things can get moving, or at least discussed, due to revelations: whether or not a bill will get vetoed; whether the administration will take some kind of action; whether or not someone within the administration is meeting or not meeting the approval of the president. The result is often to speed up processes or direct them such that some decisions will be made and the act of governing gets untangled, albeit temporarily. There are bars and restaurants galore within shouting distance of Capitol Hill, including lunchrooms within the office buildings themselves; that's where much of this takes place. Congress is full of leaks, some intentional, and some of the best reporting gets done there (Try the Punchbowl News, for instance).

Inside the NEA, there was often an attempt to hide information for best-timed release, so I understand the need. But it almost never worked. There was, or had to be, a mole inside the building who would tell a guy named Mike Antonucci. He was uncanny at getting information within 24 or 48 hours, despite members of the Executive Committee being told behind closed doors with obvious remonstrance to keep things quiet (I was briefly suspected of being the mole, but as God is my witness, that never happened. He contacted me once, in the limbo period before I got on the Executive Committee, but I did not respond.). Antonucci was, and is, staunchly anti-union, our sworn enemy. He delighted, I'm guessing, in running the information online in his blog. It was maddening. And the leaker had to be good, because I don't recall anyone finding him or her. 

But that's the point: Antonucci hung on to that source and milked it well. We had our own Deep Throat.

The reporters' choice, of course, is to get in some room, or to approach someone, which they like far more than whatever information that's revealed, however indirectly. But wide usage of the practice of "background with quote approval" is seen as unfair, which is beginning to get under the skins of White House correspondents. The specter of Big Brother looms, and that makes them--and should make us--pretty uneasy, regardless of who's at the top.

And Biden will exploit this as well as he can. As user-friendly has he's presently being, there's a limit. He understands the way reporters work as well as anyone, so he'll put up sufficient firewalls to make sure that one message will be told, one conduit will be used, and one meaning, however clear or unclear, will be understood. Just because he's a nice guy doesn't mean he isn't crafty--and because he's been around Washington since 1973, he's among the craftiest of them all.

What can reporters do? Nothing, as long as they remain self-competitive. If one does not follow the prescribed formula, he or she stands to be excluded from any information--as long as the Biden White House staff goes by the same concept as well. Or, any reporter can keep looking to find inside leakers, of which there will be far fewer in this White House, due to aforementioned savviness. With less monkey business going on, ironically, like the type happening inside the last White House, it will be more difficult to do so. But then, that's good for all of us. Kinda sorta.

The only other way through this is for a significant number of reporters, if not all of them, to refuse to play ball, refuse to go by the idea of "background with prior approval." Then whatever information they'll get will be had genuinely, without screening for phraseology that might be more than vanilla. It also means that it might be tougher to get, but that's what they're hired for. Leakers weren't disciplined much in the last White House; I think that will be the opposite with this one.

Just because the government has the philosophies and policies that most of us prefer right now doesn't mean that the basic nature of government-versus-press conflict isn't still there. Please remember: It's government's preference that all information released be its own and on its own calendar so it can control the message. It's the press' preference that information is fought for and released if and when it's most significant--as long as it's accurate--so that the voters can decide whether it's really using their tax dollars well.

I've previously praised the Cabinet as functioning well and serving the greater interests of the public, as opposed to the last one, which seemed to defeat that purpose from the get-go. The only way to insure that it continues is through a vigorous and inquisitive press, one that doesn't get along with government sources so much that they always seem to be on the same page. Then they're no more than obedient mouthpieces. If Biden and his ilk have nothing to hide, what's the big deal?

Biden's positive rating on the virus hit 70% last week, so it seems to me that he doesn't need carefully screened news to continue that. Not that he'll pay any attention. Or maybe he's trying too hard to maintain it. Governments, whether democratically and legitimately elected or not, usually do.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask indoors for now. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Brandi's Insults and Larger Implications of Social Media of School, But Not in School

A 14-year-old goes off on Facebook, and it gets all the way to the Supreme Court. Amazing? Hang on.

Back in 2005, the Court also heard the case of a Juneau, Alaska teenaged smart-aleck who displayed a ridiculous, nihilistic sign that said "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" as the 2002 Olympic torch-passing parade took place. He and his schoolmates were given permission to line the streets and watch, so he thought he'd take the opportunity to act like a jackass.

The school suspended him, the parents sued for his First Amendment rights. None other than Kenneth Starr, late of the Clinton-Lewinsky dust-up, got called into Washington to argue the case for the school district. The Court came down on the district's side, because--it said--that the core message (not that there actually was one; go look again) was a pro-drug one, and so it was antithetical to what the school stood for.

I believed then, and as a member of the NEA Executive Committee and said so (and was roundly criticized for it), that the issue was certainly not drugs, but religion. If the sign would have said something like Bong Hits for Dubya, making fun of the then president, the Court would have been in a real quandary, that being political speech. But it said Jesus, which brought Starr running, he of the effort to morally purify most things, including a philandering president, whether he actually did so or not; remember, the ensuing impeachment ran into a dead end.

Legal eagles within the NEA actually called me aside and tried to lecture me about, I presume, going public in an e-mail in which I and other Executive Committee members were asked whether or not the NEA should have filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief, defending the kid, and starting it by saying, as I recall, "What the hell is this case doing in the Supreme Court?" They thought of me as incredibly naive and not at all in the realm of reality. They were unsuccessful in their attempts, I'm guessing, to have me apologize. I thought it made them look a little out to lunch themselves.

In any event, tinged with controversy as it was and hovering with the possibility that some of our more religiously dedicated members would howl like mad and force the state presidents to explain what we did--strictly verboten; you never make a state affiliate president uncomfortable if you can at all avoid that--we voted (I the only one against) to refrain from filing. I still believe it to be a mistake.

What most people don't know is that the school district settled with the parents out of court, which is, of course, an admission that the whole thing wasn't worth it, except by then it was certainly worth something, at least the lawyer's fees (which must have been enormous). That brings us to the present situation, which originated in Pennsylvania in 2017. The girl involved was a freshman at the time, which means that she's graduated by now.

Nonetheless, she went on a vulgar rant, liberally using the f-word to trash school, softball (I guess she must have ridden the bench, or just didn't like the coach), cheerleading, and "everything," which, if you've ever taught freshmen, is something that's never far from their thinking and attitudes (and which, if you haven't had the same thought during the pandemic, you're a better person than I am). Except she posted that on Facebook, while not actually in school at the time. 

A number of states and school districts have made such postings, though not actually part of a school, subject to school punishments (like Little Rock, Arkansas, where I used to work as a teacher consultant, ten years ago). Another student, for instance, gave a printed copy to a high school coach, and the girl was suspended from cheerleading. These parents sued, too.

Two lower courts said that Brandi's (her name) free speech rights had been trampled (information on this case provided from The Week magazine), so up the ladder it continued. But it seems to me that the Supreme Court has already ruled, above, and its ruling against something as mild as a pro-drug message meets a pretty low standard, and frequent use of the f-word has to at least achieve that standard. So this should be open-shut.

But an insult to Jesus, now dead these two thousand years, doesn't equal that of a real human. A narrow ruling, recommended by Justice Brett Kavanaugh (He of transgressions early in his own life, remember?), might invite school principals to overregulate student behavior in the name of "morality," and set up an omnipresent language police. We end up right back in 1984, and students are stifled yet again, not even within the school's walls.

And of course, it's the f-word that's really at stake. If she should have said "screw softball," that would probably have resulted in a good talking-to, even a threat of removal, and the parents would probably have yelled but not sued with no actual penalties assigned. But f- is the ultimate, deserving of the ultimate punishment, I suppose.

Trashing individuals connected to the same school, though, which happens often and everywhere, is going on at atrocious rates. And kids have killed themselves due to the humiliations caused by the insults and bullying. So free speech, in the larger sense, is at issue. A line does have to be drawn, but it's tough to know where.

So is this: If Brandi cannot be regulated, if she or some other freshman or sophomore or whatever is allowed to widely use the f-word to criticize a publicly-paid for entity such as a high school sports team on Facebook, why wouldn't a former presidential candidate be allowed to utilize the same venue to insult others who have been elected, as he has endlessly, horribly, annoyingly, and obnoxiously these past several years (and within which he, in fact, has said "hell" once or twice, but that's about it)? Where would Facebook's justification of barring him, presently in effect, then land? And why wouldn't he take that same claim to the Supreme Court as quickly as possible?

Yeah, I know. It's a problem. Grey areas usually are. Hang on tight.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask indoors. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

NPR: One of the Great Things About the USA

NPR is 50 years old now. It feels like an old friend.

I didn't even know it existed until the 1980s. I was still stuck on the 'latest' news, the kind of tabloidism that infects us even today.

I'm not even sure how I learned about it. But its richness survives. It's more than just news. It tells stories that matter.

Its permutations survive, too: All Things Considered; Weekend Edition, still with the incomparable Scott Simon on Saturdays (and Liane Hanson, who graced our Sundays until ten years ago with her clear, decisive but also comforting voice). Other weekly daytime shows like 1A, from Washington, DC; Fresh Air, with another incomparable interviewer, Terry Gross; and humor shows, like Wait-Wait, Don't Tell Me, with the droll Peter Sagal; and Ask Me Another, with Ophria Eisenberg.

Those shows drive my week. They certainly kept me going through the pandemic. Because they weren't mindless drivel; they celebrated not only people's abilities to think but their need to. You could get lost in them and feel better when the hour had elapsed.

There is a map--you can get it--that shows the location and scope of NPR stations throughout the country. It served me particularly well in my travels with the NEA and working gigs elsewhere. You could play with the dial sometimes, and come up with early afternoon classical music, if the funding wasn't there, or recorded shows like Hidden Brain (Ever listen? Fascinating) if there was. It was always someplace between 88.1 and 92.9 FM. There's also a cell phone app that tells you where the nearest stations are and if you're coming up on another one.

On long drives, you were secure in the knowledge that if NPR wasn't quite there at the moment, it soon would be.

You could, and can, wake up to it every day. Here, in Milwaukee, there is 89.7, WUWM in Milwaukee, for NPR news and daily coverage. West of here, there is Wisconsin Public Radio, 90.7, WHAD, which has stations in Delafield and Milwaukee. During weekday afternoons into the early evenings, it serves the state with Central Time. Over lunch hour, there's a daily reading called Chapter A Day.

The effect has been, and still is, to slow life down a little, to explain it a more deeply, to provide badly-needed context. It has never majored in happy talk. It has never had to conjure, or work hard to find, good things going on. It seems to attract them.

It has attracted some of the finest female journalists of the last forty years: the late Cokie Roberts and her weekly musings, often subtly pointed, on the Congress; Nina Totenberg, with her detailed and deep analysis of the Supreme Court; Linda Wertheimer and Susan Stamberg, with their definitive voices (about which a new book has been written). It seemed natural that NPR became a haven for their flourishing.

During the last four years of the pointless nihilism created by the previous president and all that surrounded him, NPR did not indulge in counterattack as much as it kept going and explaining the nonsense as exactly that. There was an edge to voices that wasn't there before; you could feel it. But there was a line it wouldn't cross, and the integrity was preserved as a result.

We have all survived--for now--that onslaught of language twisting and bold-faced deceptions. NPR sails on, fortunately. But the Big Lie still has legs because it has been woven together within one of our political parties, and it is due to make another national appearance. NPR gives us at least one place we can go in an ongoing effort to discern the objective truth of things. With each passing day, it gains value.

It's said that America is known for three things: baseball, jazz, and the Constitution. Add to that a fourth--National Public Radio.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask indoors. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

What Would You Do With This Menace?

Facebook has a decision to make, and it will make it tomorrow: Do you close, forever, the account of the previous president? Or do you re-open it since the fear of violence after January 6, which he caused, is over?

That depends. It depends on whether you believe that (a) his free speech rights are being violated; (b) the aforementioned threat has been removed; and (c) the political fallout, ferocious in either direction, is tolerable.

Let's discuss the three. Are someone's free speech rights being violated if, based on clear and convincing evidence, the speaker incited a riot in the U.S. Capitol, designed to overturn a constitutional process honored every four years since 1800, just because he clearly and officially lost but claims that he won?

Rights in the Bill of Rights are rights that are supposed to be guaranteed by government, not by website. Facebook's obvious popularity has trademarked it in the American mind like Xerox and Campbell's soup--it's become synonymous with social media. Facebook can cancel anyone's status if it wants to; it does not have to justify it other than through its own principles.

If the government had a social media site, that would be another issue. It brings up another case, that of the previous president blocking those he didn't like on his infamous Twitter account. A court said that he couldn't do that because he was (unfortunately) the President, and public scrutiny and discussion must carry on in the most robust way.

So, he might reason, why wouldn't he have the legal right to go back onto Facebook? Because he's no longer the president. Because he's now just like everybody else. Besides, he abused his right by creating innuendoes and lies that inspired others on January 6 (admittedly, in court) to act in his behalf and because it would please him. They weren't just words; they were proddings. If it were otherwise, then politics themselves would be pointless.

But there are other soups, and they're plenty good enough (including low salt, which for people like me have become highly prized). There are other copying machines (like Hewlett-Packard) that work just fine. 

Are there other social media sites? Well, yes. None have the staying power or prestige of Facebook, but they're certainly welcome to try.

Does a former president need Facebook to put his views out there? One wouldn't think so. So far, he's managed to do that and have some of those views reported in mainstream media. That makes him better off than me, for instance.

The popularity of Facebook beckons someone like him to take full advantage of it. He certainly has, hasn't he? He's tried to get people to overthrow our government, then slip into the cracks and take it over again. Make no mistake; that's what he tried to do. If it failed, as it did, he could just settle back and make excuses that didn't rub up against him--on the surface. But he was the instigator, and no rational person can look at the evidence and pretend otherwise.

So the answer to (b) would have to be: Yes, that threat ended. BUT--

• way too many people are still addicted to the thinking that the election was stolen (the Big Lie), and might easily respond to further inspiration concocted by the Big Liar;
• Facebook is a major and evident, even if unwitting, purveyor of that conversation; and 
• the previous president's return to it would exacerbate and emphasize that Big Lie continuously, having its horribly damaging effects on our well-established (see above) political processes.

So what about (c), then? What about the fallout? Can Facebook absorb whatever results it causes?

I'm guessing it can. The very inertia that allowed the previous president to spew and spread his endless nonsense will continue. There will have to be a significantly well-established alternative site to take people who, angry and frustrated, might jump to. And that will take time and a real sense of purpose.

That begs another question: Can we handle the diminishment of Facebook? Can we end our own addictions to tapping into it, as surely as we take a shower or cross the street? Can we disconnect and be as alone as we've ever been, especially with the fallout from the pandemic still all around us?

If people give up on Facebook, it's usually because Facebook, in point of fact, raises our stress levels as much as it raises our connectivity. It's subtle, but it's there. I would be stunned if Facebook suffers a significant downturn in traffic. Unless, of course, the Big Liar is allowed to return. Then alternatives might be sought.

As for the perpetrator around whom all this revolves, he's enjoying the bother. If he's the subject of removal, he'll clearly respond publicly regardless; he'll continue his insults and drivel if allowed back on; and will gladly continue playing the role of the victim if he's not. So nothing, actually, will change about him, if we ever foolishly anticipated it might.

Which also means that, if he runs for president again (which he can) and gains the nomination, he'll try the same approach--which is to say, he'll plant the seeds of the corruption in deflection to that which he will be attempting, whether in plain sight or not. Policy aside, he's a horrible menace to this country, and the Republican Party should be ashamed of itself in its utter lack of leadership options.

The best way to return any integrity to our electoral system is to exclude this menace. He means nothing more and nothing less than to regain the reins of government to operate behind the scenes for himself and only himself--this time to utilize the weapons he overlooked to eliminate the influence of enemies. If Facebook's rulers haven't figured that out by now, they're either part of his minions or they've been hiding underground for far too long.

We'll see if Facebook becomes the cat's-paw, the avenue for him to return to ignominy which we may still be condemned to share. We'll see what kind of guts they have.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask indoors. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Is This Being 'Woke'? Someone Thinks So. Someone's Wrong.

When people use the word 'woke,' it's usually liberals saying that they've become more aware to unfairness or discrimination or the sufferings of people. That implies that somebody should do something about it.

But it's what, exactly, they've 'woke up' to, and how they place it into context, that makes all the difference. Without context, facts mean more in the short run, and much less in the long run, than the purveyors of those facts intend. And those errors belong just as much to the left of the political spectrum as to the right.

Let me give you two fairly recent examples, both regarding San Francisco, in their various ways. You know, San Francisco, the haven of liberal awokeness, but where some of the homeless must still defecate in the streets because there are no public toilets to service them, so maybe not quite as 'woke' as it needs to be.

Not long ago, the San Francisco school board voted to change the name of one of its schools from "Lincoln." (It also did the same to "Washington," but we won't deal with that here.) Yes, that Lincoln, not just some other guy named Lincoln (like Austin, Texas, in which one of its high schools is named Reagan, which assumes the fairly recent president, but in fact refers to the treasurer of the Confederacy--which should be changed anyhow, but you can see that flap miles away).

Why? Well, in an attempt at 'wokeness,' the board wishes to point out that Lincoln signed off on the hanging of 38 Native Americans in Minnesota in 1862. Why did he do that? Well, because they were waging war on the oncoming settlers in the southern part of that state then, Civil War or no Civil War. They had been forced onto reservations upon Minnesota being declared a state in 1857, and had had some of that land swindled from them to boot.

They descended upon the whites and slaughtered them near New Ulm, prompting Lincoln to send what he had left of the Union Army to suppress it. The army arrested over 300 Natives, and were going to hang them all.

Yup. Every last one of them. But wait, they didn't, right? Right. That's because Lincoln commuted the sentences of over 260 of them, categorizing them as war combatants rather than mere destroyers of property and life. He only ordered the execution of 39 Natives (the largest mass execution in American history; one was later suspended so the total was actually 38) because they were direct participants in the massacre of settlers.

So yes, Lincoln actively ordered in a mass hanging. But he also used judgment in saving lives. He was the president, after all, exercising his executive powers. And it's not like he had nothing else on his plate; he had plenty of other people getting killed elsewhere, too, in places like Shiloh and Fredericksburg and Bull Run.

And he did issue the Emancipation Proclamation, the document which created the force of human rights behind the war effort. The more you research that, too, the more remarkable that act is as well.

So do you take his name off wherever it exists in your school district? I think not. I think someone failed to do, or take proper notice of, additional research and recognition that being president, at any juncture but particularly that one, is not so simple. It's not conservative to think so, either.

They made a mistake. They should correct it.

The second misjudgment happened during a lecture I zoomed the other day. The speaker's point was that much of American history has been bleached white and a lot has been hidden. I cannot debate that wholly, but much of what he's claiming has, in fact, come to light during my teaching career, which began in 1973. I'm not sure he's right about not much of it being taught as it is the probability that maybe he, and others, weren't listening.

But much of what he claimed hadn't been included, was. Textbook creators have, in fact, managed to, here and there, insert injustices committed toward people of color. And they were pointed out by teachers, white and otherwise, far and wide.

He did, justifiably, point out that Wisconsin dictated to public schools that they were to have begun, if they hadn't already, to insert education about Native history within the state. The law didn't say how much, just that teachers were to have pointed it out. So we did so. He came up with some interesting facts, yes, and things that I didn't include, I must admit. But I did pay attention to reservations established in the state and how they got there. I could have done better. Schools could have done better.

But there's also the context: the rest of American history. And there are only so many days and hours to get it in. And most recently, there are the pressures of standardized testing present so that teachers are driven to cover what they have come to know as material that will be included on those tests. So minorities, people of color, will get the coverage that is required, not what they deserve.

That being said, the speaker also assumed that a whole bunch of other things hadn't been taught, either. That annoyed me, especially one regarding Japanese-Americans. I certainly did teach that, and what's more, I provided the appropriate context, which that speaker didn't do because he clearly didn't know it.

It's called the Gentleman's Agreement, reached between the U.S. and Japan in 1907. To wit: The American government would guarantee the desegregation of San Francisco public schools to include Japanese-American students if the Japanese government would actively discourage its citizens to move to the U.S.

The speaker expressed bewilderment as to why that would happen. We actually wanted someone to stop sending people to our land? Gee, has that ever happened since? It's happening right now. And yes, there is a racist tinge to it all. Too.

But there's a backdrop to that. And it had to do with what the American president, Theodore Roosevelt, had done earlier.

Japan and Russia had fought the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-05. Much of it involved the islands strung on a curved line between the Kamchatka Peninsula and what constituted the Japanese main islands, known as the Kurils. There was also the very large, elongated island that comes quite close to the Russian mainland just northwest of those islands, Sakhalin. There was also iron-rich Manchuria, and the Korean Peninsula, and who might secure the rights to mine and settle there.

The Russians sensed the threat, and gathered their rather formidable navy, some 44 ships, and sailed them all the way around Africa and Southern Asia to take on the Japanese. The betting was on the Russians, since the Japanese were, and would be for quite some time, underestimated.

In the ensuing battle, called the Battle of Tsushima, the Japanese navy literally laid waste to the Russians, sinking or damaging 42 of those 44 ships. It was the first major naval battle of that century, and the first time that an Asian nation had gotten the better of a European one. What's more, it gave Japan tremendous confidence, which it would extend quite aggressively, building an immense empire that would take the "island-hopping" strategy of the United States to curb and conclude in World War II.

In the meantime, though, expenditures on both sides were draining them. Roosevelt had made initial statements favoring the Japanese in this war, so they approached him to sit down and hammer out the settlement. The Russians agreed, two days after their navy was wiped out.

But the land war was being won by Russia--troops arriving across Siberia via the Trans-Siberian Railroad--and that made a difference in the negotiations. The war was finally settled by the Treaty of Portsmouth (NH) in 1905. The Japanese public, celebrating the great naval victory in nationalist style, were let down by some of the provisions of the treaty, and blamed Roosevelt because he was white and seemed to favor Russia, a white nation (see, racism works both ways, always with bad results), at least in terms of its government.

Thus: Roosevelt was dealing with a nation not happy with him (and one now filled with confidence and hubris), and he had the problem of dealing with a growing Japanese population in one of his own nation's most prosperous cities. American prejudice against Japanese was at least as intense as it had been against the Chinese, who had been flat-out banned from the country in 1883 (Which the speaker did point out, but again, under the assumption that teachers hadn't taught it. Not true, but when's the last time the Russo-Japanese War came up at dinner?).

So: Roosevelt struck the Gentleman's Agreement, which held no legal water, but it diplomatically calmed the rough seas between Japan and the United States, at least for that moment (and did not stem Japan's expansionist plans, as we know). And that's why it happened.

There. That needed to be said by the speaker. He needed to provide context. He didn't. But he also tried to cover lots and lots of ground, and the presentation was getting long--exactly the problem faced by teachers all over. 

To bring all that up isn't a bad idea. But there has to be sufficient follow-through. Without it, history becomes a grab-bag of trivia, just the thing the typical kid complains about. It might not be as ideologically pure than what one wishes, but few things are.

The above explanation would have obviously made it longer, but would have provided the listeners with badly-needed context. Besides, to be bewildered as a teacher is not to fulfill your mission or your goal. To teach is not to be bewildered, but to provide needed information or to guide others to find more if they're interested. The speaker did not do either. He should. Because, after all, he was teaching.

And this essay has gone on a long time, too. But knowledge and understanding take time and attention. That's what being 'woke' really is: Not only to know more and to give, perhaps, the benefit of the doubt to those who have not had it to this point, but to be sure to do it in a way in which the proper context is exposed. Otherwise, some information is almost worse than none, especially when it's used as a weapon to attack what's assumed to be unfairness.

Besides, if you don't do research well, it gives the other side an incredible advantage in refutation. They'll point out that you're 'woke' with just one eye open. That isn't how you win discussions. That's how you lose.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask inside. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark