Are You Really Surprised by George Santos?

For the second time in about a month, HLN Channel is showing reruns of "The West Wing" series. Kind of fun to watch in retrospect, they harken to a time when politics still felt rife with possibility.

But warts still emerged. Do you remember that the President Bartlet had multiple sclerosis, that very few people were in on it (but his wife, a physician, gave him shots to deal with it under the table), and that he was eventually censored by a concurrent resolution of Congress (requiring no signature by the president)? 

That was kind of a Big Lie, too, surprising as it was because Jed Bartlet seemed like the kind of straight-up guy who brooked no nonsense. Nice literary license there, dodging impeachment, which a Democrat would almost certainly have faced in a Republican-controlled Congress.

The Republicans held the prerequisite hearings. The chair was succinct and direct: "Did people lie? Were people told to lie? Are people lying now?"

Such is stuff of fiction, illuminating possibilities out of a decorous past. Living through the era of the Big Lie, as we are still, with dozens of Republican candidates mouthing it endlessly, even though they may not at heart believe it themselves but smacks of effective politics in gerrymandered districts, gamed by seiners of power that may last generations. 

Did people lie? Openly. Were people told to lie? Unquestionably. Are people lying now? Endlessly.

So can we really gasp when a Congressional candidate runs on a resume' of nearly pure fiction? When he makes an end run around an unsuspecting public, and media to boot? With the very recent turgid examples of ex- and his unabashed, unshameable nonsense and outright lies on top of lies on top of lies?

C'mon now. You can't possibly be surprised.

You can't be surprised that a Congressional candidate, George Santos, got away with a trashcan full of lies about his background and history. And that the media, perhaps stretched beyond decent coverage possibilities, perhaps once again covered instead by naïveté, never caught it. In New York. On Long Island. In Queens. 

They aren't like totally isolated areas or anything. People have televisions there. They can read. You can look it up.

Being naive is a delight, a refreshing skip through life, until you have to pay for it. Thousands, now, must do exactly that. They now have a Member of Congress who got there by concocting a complete fable. 

You can't possibly be surprised, either, by the Republican Congressional leadership, led (as it were) by an ultimate obfuscator himself (not the ultimate obfuscator; you know who that is), running again and hiding from this obvious ethical torpedo--as if it could. Messing with this could remove one of the crucial votes Kevin McCarthy needs to become House Speaker, if in fact he can promise very unethical clowns to be standup idiots, instead of mere idiots, for the next two years.

In the history of Congressional races, there has been plenty of lying. And maybe, just maybe, someone somewhere in our esteemed 236-year history, did the same thing: Made up stuff that he didn't have to answer for, the overwhelming percentage of the scenario from which he built an entirely false image.

Such is the price our system exacts. The Republicans will be in charge now, having gamed things very nicely over time and several states, and they won't lift a finger to investigate or even question Santos' veracity, which hovers just about ground zero right now. Can you image Nancy Pelosi's reaction? She arranged to have Majorie Taylor Greene removed from all Congressional committees for her egregious comments about, well, damn near everything. What about this guy?

She would wring the slime out of her hands, get the right Democrat to the mic, and start the process of first, investigation, and second, removal and a new election. Each house of Congress has the power to set rules about who sits in their chambers, it says in the Constitution, and running on a platform of pure deception might just be one of those firewalls. It says here that George Santos' credentials would have been DOA with a decent, ethical, clear-thinking Speaker.

Kevin McCarthy isn't that and never will be that. His intent is power, all of that and only that. His silence about a number of things is revelant of being not even regrettably complicit.

I'm quite sure he's got it in his head that he can promise a number of people a number of things that will never come to pass anyhow, just so he can have 218 votes to become Speaker. Then he'll turn Jim Jordan loose to make up a revanche committee to smear the January 6 committee--which will take some doing--and create enough bother to shift attention to someone they'll have to make up more stories about (Hunter Biden, anyone?).

Today, the New York Times announced that investigations will take place surrounding Santos' 'embellishments,' as he calls his lies, perhaps to soften the effect even unto himself. The whole business smacks of the kind of clean-up that takes place after a natural disaster: Necessary, but fundamentally reparable only with a great deal of time and attention.

The press dropped the ball here. But we also shouldn't ignore the basic, now baked-in corruption of Republicans, who will do anything and now say anything to get their way, and who cannot even face votes against them lest they admit they may not have had the best ideas. So they make them up without the slightest desire of accountability. If you have power, of course, you don't need any.

"The West Wing" features a telling confrontation between the counsel for the majority (read: Republican) and a Senator who also, in a scorched earth approach, wants to bring in Chief of Staff Leo McGarry's alcohol and drug addiction, from which he became clean, into the hearings. The counsel, showing some ethics, says to the Senator: "This is why good people don't like us."

A prescient comment, that. But too many good people still hold their noses and vote Republican anyhow. Only when those numbers diminish can we get this country back on track, and have conversations that need not be existential. Maybe the 2022 mid-terms represented a high-water mark for the liars. Maybe, with George Santos leading the way, the tsunami is about to envelop us all. We won't have long to wait.

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

Mister Mark

Just A Tree? Or Bigger Than Even That?

I'm quite sure it was supposed to be a heartwarming story. Maybe, for some, it was.

A few days ago, Channel 12, the ABC affiliate in Milwaukee, ran a story about the fellow who decided to donate the 33-foot tree that completely dominated his front yard to the city, which of course needed a Christmas tree to display in what is now known as the Deer District. He had planted it way back when, a seedling about a foot high, he said.

Trees measure time and growth. They are unrelenting when they stand tall and majestic, as this one did for decades. They are reminders that nature will outlast us, will survive us.

Not when they're cut down, though. As this one had to apparently be, to satisfy the spirit of the season. Jolly? Is that right? Humans are, and can be very unrelenting, too. Get out the saws, baby. Low hanging fruit.

One month from now, where will it be? You know where: fed to machines, which will produce mountains of mulch. Whoopee.

It felt like a waste. What will be the value of this guy's property now? Won't it take a huge nose dive?

Not that it mattered much to him. He's 93. He lost his wife, dearly beloved, three years ago. "It's time," he said. I have no idea, but I'm guessing the city paid him off. Transactional, right? All good?

I'm sorry, but I object. That report saddened me. Even if that tree was donated out of good will, it shouldn't have been done. Yes, he had the right to do with his property what he wanted. The city shouldn't have approached him, though.

The City of Milwaukee didn't need that tree, that beautiful, long-lasting fir that's towered above us. It had seen its share of triumph and tragedy and endured storms galore. Kind of like the Natives once upon a time, it just got in the way and not nearly enough people considered its long-term value.

I suppose there's some kind of rule out there that demands that the tree must come from within the city or something, as an expression of urban pride. That would be a really stupid rule. I'm not a scrooge about Christmas. Such a display is better than none, and it's pretty tough to find an artificial tree that's 30 feet tall, much less store the damn thing.

But nobody's going to know where the tree came from, once it's been decorated with lights and displayed where people can easily see it. They'll be just as filled with whatever good feelings that this season can bring. What if, instead, it had come from somewhere else in Wisconsin, somewhere in which trees like this stand among hundreds, maybe thousands of others?

Such a tree could have been imported, albeit with some cost, from another county (Forest? Wood? Bad puns, I know. But far more likely to breed big pines.). Would that have bothered the budget curmudgeons all that much?

Wouldn't that be better than ruining a whole property, indeed a neighborhood (to which the tree belonged, too, in a way), because someone had to scratch an itch?

We claim to be oh, so caring about the environment we can't help ourselves to destroy. Really? What about this part of it? No, it isn't a whole hillside full of pines. No, it isn't smearing plastic along the bottom of oceans. No, it isn't a major river that''s drying up. But someone thought of it as a temporary palliative to an annual need to celebrate something that we know didn't come with much fanfare at all.

What the hell. It's just a tree.

Or is it even bigger than how tall it stands, for the few days it has left? Does it symbolize more, though not very comfortably?

Is that why no major network is picking up "A Charlie Brown Christmas" anymore, and it has been relegated to Apple TV+, for someone else to make a little money, show it briefly and tokenly to satisfy the soft-hearted of us, and then dispense with it? Hmmm?

Merry Christmas.

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

Mister Mark

"Go Shopping" Isn't the Solution to Our National Disconnectedness

Remember the watch-phrase that got sent past us after 9/11? "Go shopping," we were told.

That's to ensure that people didn't become so paranoid of terrorist attacks that the economy didn't go into the tank. That would prove, I would guess, that America could bounce back strong and undaunted.

As far as that went, it worked for a while. But the economy did go into the tank under the same president that encouraged us to keep shopping, and it took the better part of the next decade to pull us out.

Spending money demonstrates that you aren't afraid to go to the store. Maybe. Shopping online increased, and many go-to department stores went under. The ease with which we can now do pretty much everything electronically instead of stepping outside our homes has saved us, and condemned us at the same time.

Certainly, millions are now alive who could easily be dead by now because they could get things delivered during the height of the pandemic, that time during 2020 when the deadly virus was being spread willy-nilly without arrest. Many even got their groceries delivered, hankering back to a time when that was done within neighborhoods and accepted as such.

After having read that 48 hours was required to make a delivery sufficiently safe to handle, I always left something sent to me out in the lobby of my apartment building to make sure of that. If it was dropped at my door anyhow, I brought it in with the end of a broom and left it somewhere other than an area in which I normally walked inside my apartment. I had to be very careful since I was only two years past open heart surgery and in that age group where Covid killed far more easily.

I made it. I'm still around. But it's not the same as before. Not close.

There is an inertia about us that won't be easily dissolved. There is also a lingering distrust implanted, partially, by ex- and his rantings. But that mistrust was, in a sense, already there. He just accelerated it.

Many of us preferred to be alone before Covid, not lonely because we were in control over when we would and wouldn't interact with others. Then we went into self-created home monasteries because we were forced into it. Nobody was used to that. The restriction, once voluntary, was felt deeply. Add to that the maddening, mystifying inclination of some to continue to resist vaccination--who has died from it, please show me--and one cannot easily trust anyone else to care enough about us to foster normal, human care.

A world in which all are out for themselves eventually deteriorates and deep inside, we all know that. So we cannot be totally free again to go outside, risking the discomfort if not the devastation of Covid. The next person may still be crazy enough to reject what just about everyone should have sought two years ago. You can live, as I do, in a part of a big city in which it is likely that everyone, or nearly everyone, has wised up enough to exert enough control over their lives to have had their shots, but nearly everyone is not everyone, and chance has a way of hovering over us all.

I've had all five shots now. I rarely wear a mask. But I still do where I'm not familiar with the clientele. When I see people with masks, I assume that, ridiculously, they haven't had their shots yet. And I keep one, at least, in my outer clothing just in case I think that problem may suddenly emerge.

I've no doubt that others feel the same way. Going shopping, then, doesn't solve the problem of loneliness. Loneliness is the handmaiden of distrust. If I'm not sure about you, I must pull back from getting to know you, even having the lightest conversation because I'm not sure that you won't spray the virus all over me (even though we've been told that 15 minutes is the likely length of time we need to be proximate to someone for it to attach to us, and the culturally locked-in six feet, which I find hard to believe, too). I cannot form a friendship, cannot plan to have coffee some time, cannot even have but the briefest of conversations. 

My world cannot expand. I need to care more for your politics than I want to, too. I know that the 'other side' is inclined, for some unfathomable reason, not to trust vaccination. Knowing that creates a wall that must remain as impenetrable as possible, even after all this time and the angst it has caused. 

Remember: Those who have caught the virus can still spread it. Even I can spread it even though I've been maximally vaccinated, though the odds are quite low. I cannot enjoy those people, were it ever possible. I cannot laugh with them. I cannot look forward to another random interaction with someone. We all lose when that happens, and we lose every day.

The best gift we can give ourselves for Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanza this year is the assurance that we have had our shots. We can gather with confidence. We can renew faith in each other. This can be done not only with family, but with friends. I had a long conversation with someone not long ago, and one of the first things we did was to reassure each other than we've had the five shots that constitute the maximum protection. Beyond that, nobody still knows anything about this insidious invader, but it's easier to hedge your bets at least.

We need to do this. Our world is becoming unreachably isolated. The knowledge of even the slightest support for our common humanity is what propels us to join groups and feel a sense of belonging to them. It is more than fun. It is vital.

The next time you go shopping, whether in observance of the holiday season or not, glance at the faces of those others in the store. They don't smile much. They go shopping, which supports the economy, but they aren't happy about it. They want to get it over with and get back home, where they're safe. That is not a good world to live in, a world without joy.

I go for walks if the weather cooperates. I remind myself to smile if I pass someone going in the other direction. Knowing someone else can smile is its own little gift.

It may not sound like much, but something shared can be inspiring. I went to the Shorewood Public Library yesterday for a talk on books people might like to give someone else for Christmas. The place was packed. Most people didn't wear masks, and were fairly close to my age. Everyone smiled. We are hungering for contact, for fellow feeling, for joy. We want to know that connections aren't that remote anymore.

Yes, some of us bought books, so "going shopping" was part of the point. But gifting was the main point, gifting and sharing and talking about books and expanding the mind. 20% of what we spent went to charitable causes, so there was that, too. That is a deeper expression of our humanity.

I felt better all day, renewed, refreshed. Here's hoping there will be more throughout the Christmas season, and especially beyond.

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

Mister Mark

The World Cup? No Thanks. Not Interested After Qatar's Massive Abuses

The World Cup has to be the most corrupt sporting event ever created. Qatar has to be the pinnacle of it. So far.

Qatar, a very small country on the Arabian Peninsula, has an incredible amount of oil and natural gas resources and the money to show for it. It would be natural, then, for it to host the world's biggest showcase, the World Cup of football (we call it soccer). There were all kinds of intrastructure issues, but the Federation of International Football Associations (FIFA) was assured that they would be overcome, given enough time to get prepared.

Work began in 2012. Qatar didn't have nearly the number of workers to build the necessary structures--a freeway and eight separate stadiums, for instance--so it had to import them from other lands, usually in South Asia, from places like Nepal, itself very poor. So they were. But the treatment they had to endure--and endure is the only word that can be used--mirrors the kind of slave labor that we forced captives to undergo in the years before the Civil War, perhaps even worse.

I learned this by watching an excerpt from the HBO show "Real Sports," still the pinnacle of sports journalism in this country. It completely disgusted me.

Besides the incredibly stifling heat, equalling anything Death Valley could offer--the summer temperatures getting regularly to 120 degrees--the workers were forced to live in conditions that soon became ridiculously squalid and filthy, without showers and few toilets. The men washed themselves with the water from the toilets. They may still be doing so.

They are prevented from going home, too. They can't quit. That's the definition of slavery. In was pointed out in the "Real Sports" report that they were paid, so technically, it's not slavery. Not true: In antebellum America, in our own slave times, a few of the slaves did earn some money. They tried to save it to buy their freedom. So no, the horrible wages the men earn does not excuse Qatar from imposing slavery upon them, not if they lack the freedom to spend whatever small amount of free time (they usually work 12 hours a day) they have.

Knowing that, I can't watch this display of taking advantage of thousands of others. If there was ever a reason to form labor unions, that's one right there. But who's going to have any energy to do so, working 12 hours a day for wages no better than the dirt they've overturned? Who's going to attempt to enter what seems to be a slickly-run society, but is in fact horribly repressive?

It's on now. The field has been trimmed to 16, including the U.S. All the news is about its advance, and the athletes, and the competition. Nobody else is reporting on the price paid by thousands to put this on. Qatar has done its best rope-a-dope in taking shots from inquiring media and dispensing them amidst the other outrages we have to put up with. No one will be prosecuted for any of these abuses. No one will absorb any responsibility.

To me, Qatar may be trying to blend into the vestiges of Western hospitality, but it's really all about displaying its decadence and massive neglect, which you can do when you have more money than you know what to do with. It's not worth it. I won't watch the world's greatest sporting event. I don't care.

It's another example of the vacuum of any kind of ethics that takes place when the show becomes of higher value than the effort it took to put it on. Qatar, to me, joins Saudi Arabia (in its subterfuge of the PGA Tour by massively financing the LIV Tour) in its enormous deception of hooking up with Western culture. It's trying to gain acceptance, leading to some form of tolerance for its brutal justice system which, by now and if it really meant to get "western," should be obsolete. Maybe it will by others, but not with me.

I spent last weekend binge-watching "The West Wing" reruns, propelling myself back into a world I thought was also once possible. Got a lot more out of it.

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

Mister Mark

Randi Weingarten? Most Dangerous Person in the World? There's A New One

Who is the most dangerous person in the world? Vladimir Putin comes to mind for not only the vicious evil he's doing to Ukraine right now, but what he could do if he got really carried away.

Kim Jong Il? North Korea has just tested an intercontinental ballistic missile. Nobody who's interested in that can be labeled as anything other than deeply dangerous.

Mohammad Bin Salmon? His control of fossil fuels in Saudi Arabia, plus his ruthlessness in muscling up his power, demonstrated several times now, makes him a prime candidate for that title.

Xi Jinping? The military forces he controls, including a decent number of nuclear weapons, and tensions rising in Taiwan, might give him the edge.

Ex-? Well, not anymore. Not now, anyway. But he's running for president again, and should he regain power, nobody can possibly know the hijinks he can commit.

But Mike Pompeo, obviously testing the waters to see if enough members of the Republican Party can get behind a presidential run, has named someone else. In his deep, delusional analysis, the most dangerous person in the world is: Randi Weingarten.

Huh? The world? More dangerous than the abovementioned five individuals? He was perfectly serious. The president of the American Federation of Teachers, he said, was more dangerous than any of them.

Really? She can inflict more damage on our country than any of those other guys? How does that work?

He's put together a scenario that rivals anything I've seen for nonsense since QAnon. I wonder, in fact, if his comments aren't made directly toward them to gain a base for him. Crazy? Yes, they are. Yes, that would be. And yes, Majorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert were re-elected to their House seats.

But it follows a familiar pattern: Get out there ahead of everyone else, make outrageous statements that can't be disproven, and stand by while everyone (you hope) discusses it and drills down to no avail, one way or another. Then you come back with something else, other claims that you can't ignore. 

That's how you build attention. At least, that's how ex- did. How did that work for him?

But where did he get Weingarten's name from? How did he bestow upon her such gravitas?

I really have no idea. But as bombastically ridiculous as this is, I don't think it's too hard to speculate.

Consider what he added to this claim: "It's not a close call. If you ask, 'Who's the most likely to take this republic down?' it would be the teachers' unions, and the filth that they're teaching our kids, and the fact that they don't know math and reading or writing."

Pray tell, Mike, what is this "filth" of which you speak? Is it pornographic? Sexist? Misogynist?

He didn't say, but I'm betting that once again, it's a reference to that which has never been practiced: Critical race theory. Filth? Dirty? Disgusting? Or truths that would just as soon not be faced--ever?

Once again: Critical race theory is a phrase that, in 30 years of teaching history, never once crossed my desk or entered the conversation of any colleague or department meeting. Never. Critical race theory is not some conspiratorial, sneakily entered concept that somehow poisons the minds of young people. It's the idea that, if you're going to discuss the effects of race on our society--it's there whether you like it or not--it does you far more good to drill deep to totally "get it." 

The deeper you go, of course, the more insidious it becomes. Lots of white people don't like that, of course. They'd just as soon look past it. But filth? Disgusting? Au contraire--it's disgusting to refer to it as filth, when it's a serious, purposeful study in the terrible effects racism has had in seeping its way into so many things we routinely do and say on a daily basis.

Does that make America a bad place? It depends who you are. If you're Mike Pompeo, striving to be chief blusterer and exaggerator for a tragically misguided political party, then it's best to point out and cherry-pick circumstances where someone has said something disparaging toward America in some classroom. But additional insults, actually, aren't needed. We enslaved human beings for 250 years and let go of it only in our worst war in which more than half a million of our countrymen died. Then we manipulated our legal and cultural systems so that those who were enslaved continued to get the worst of it. It's all there in whatever textbook you want to choose. 

Mike Pompeo can't change that. It's extremely disturbing that he even wants to.

But not only that. He's dragged along by media, which prefers to rely on Randi Weingarten for cogent comments on educators and education, when in fact she leads a labor union with less than one-third the size of the largest in the nation. That's right--the AFT has something like 900,000 members. While that's fairly impressive, the largest teachers' union, the National Education Association, has more than three million. Three million.

The president of that group is Becky Pringle. I've known her for more than twenty years. While I haven't read anything she's said about critical race theory, it's probably tangential to what Weingarten said in response to Pompeo's empty attacks: "So Mike, let me make it easy for you. We fight for freedom, democracy and an economy that works for all. We fight for what kids and communities need. Strong public schools that are safe and welcoming, where kids learn how to think and work with others. That's the American Dream!"

This is the greatest threat to the world? This threatens whom? It only threatens those who choose to smear, like Mike Pompeo. It only threatens the clueless, like Mike Pompeo. But it also means that while ex- looks to be losing his personal influence, it doesn't mean that other Republicans won't keep trying to characterize unions and educators who choose to stand up for themselves as, somehow, threats to our society and culture.

It was that way when I traveled amongst union people at all levels, when I kept pointing out that that's what they had in mind from the start. It had to be enough of threat to the Cedarburg School District that they more or less forced into retirement when I tried to return after my stint on the NEA Executive Committee and try (as I would have) to give the kids an idea on what life in Washington, DC was really like. It's no different now.

That we dodged a huge bullet on November 8 and managed to retain a semblance of our democracy doesn't mean it still isn't being threatened. Keep your eyes on Mike Pompeo and see what kind of influence he'll have. It won't be pretty.

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

Mister Mark

Not Delving Into Ex- Any Longer

There are a couple of books recently out that you might be interested in if you haven't read enough about ex-'s corruption, utter stupidity, bullying, and lies.

One is called Confidence Man, which has already gained notoriety because its author, Maggie Haberman, withheld some might-have-been important information before and during the 2020 presidential campaign, when it might have, but didn't, made some difference in the outcome. The other is called The Divider, by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, which dives into detail about ex-'s blunders while actually president.

You are welcome to read them. I won't be doing so. Oh, I'm not trying to withdraw from his utter ridiculousness, because I'm not sure who can. It's just that I know enough now. I've read five works that does plenty enough to tell me to wonder, really wonder, just how we could have selected such a horrible person to lead us.

After all, I read the news daily, and I already know just about all the awfulness ex- has been associated with. Refusing to read compilations of so much stuff that you simply can't keep up with it won't change my mind about how I regard him, much less whether, if I get another chance, I would vote for him. Those questions were settled in 2015.

The issue is, and remains, how and why Republicans find it difficult, if not impossible, to simply dismiss and ignore him and move on to someone with whom I'm probably strongly opposed, but who might have something of a clue how to actually govern in a way that doesn't reflect his endless need to get rich beyond nearly everyone's imaginings. Who accepts that this is a big country filled with people who need help. Who won't spend time assuming that disagreements on policy are personal affronts. Who actually understands and accepts the fundamental understandings under which our government must function.

You know, that kind of stuff. If we get four more years of ex-, we get revenge visited upon all those who would stand in his way of doing, well, damn near anything he wants, seeing as how the perfectly acceptable solution of impeachment and removal have already been tried twice, once even after he has left office, but both have been rendered useless. 

And, of course, Elon Musk, in his infinite wisdom, self-delusional and pretentious, has taken control of Twitter and put ex- back on. Ex- says he's not interested, but we will see. I'm on Twitter, but I think the better road is not to quit it but to take the higher one--to let ex- rant on about his blithering and do what people for some reason find it impossible to do--ignore him. Silence is the ultimate weapon for such a knucklehead: the silence of not caring, the silence of declaring whatever he's saying so unimportant that it doesn't deserve comment.

It's like having someone in the other room who you don't want to listen to. Just don't go there. Render him irrelevant. It's happening now, anyhow. Candidates influenced by him are starting to lose in significant numbers. I'm waiting for someone of enough significance to start calling him what he is and always has been: Loser. The one word he can't stand is exactly what he's embodied for this entire, awful span that we have allowed him to dominate.

Of course, commenting on why I would rather not comment on someone is its own comment, and feeds the onus behind it. So I'm done. I'd done unless he's nominated again, but that's a long way off. He doesn't deserve it. But then, he never has.

I feel better already. I've stopped caring, stopped spending money on those concerns. Maybe I'll stop thinking about him. That would be a new decoration of independence. Want to join me?

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

Mister Mark

Election Deniers? Not This Time So Much

So many of the election deniers got beat Tuesday. That's a win for democracy that shouldn't be ignored.

But here's the other shoe dropping: Most of them didn't deny their own defeats. They conceded. They accepted.

Wouldn't they continue to object, especially if they lost? Wouldn't they see conspiracies anew? Shouldn't they?

Would seem to make no sense. Ah, but it does, if one understands that in politics, half is what's being said and half isn't. That oftentimes, one hides one's real motivation. Or, what may more be the truth, motivation is subject to speculation, anyhow.

Let's consider why those who so strenuously insisted that elections should be questioned, didn't question the count that defeated them:

• Political campaign posturing--It was the popular thing to say. Lining up with the rhetoric of election deniers, or at least election questioners, didn't take a lot of research. There were about three or four pet phrases that needed to be utilized. You spend just a minute on a campaign speech spewing them, and you're good to go.
• The lie repeated becomes the truth--There's nothing new about this. If circumstances dictate repetition, it becomes one's mindset. You look for corruption where there is none, and to say you're looking at it is all you need to convince some voters.
• They'll now say that it was true in 2020, but not in 2022, claiming credit for changes--I'm waiting for this one. They'll give their own party credit for 'cleaning up' the elections, especially after a Republican-controlled legislature passed measures suppressing minority voting.
• They desperately needed ex-'s endorsement--Or at least they thought they did. That, as it turned out, is starting to attach badly. Ask Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania, and Tim Michels in this state. Or Paul Ryan, who went out of his way to say what many should have begun saying long ago--that ex- is starting to become a "drag" on the Republican ticket. The Republicans expected to clobber the Democrats Tuesday. They did not. Enter Ron DeSantis?

And finally--

• The elections in question should never have been questioned in the first place because nobody tried anything edgy or illegal, and those that did got caught at the door, including ex- --and down deep inside, they knew it. It's not as if elections haven't been tinkered with in the past--both parties are guilty there--so bringing that up echoed a familiar refrain that takes time to decipher and by then, the cynicism has turned to genuine belief. (Plus ex- set us up for his victimization way back in 2016, if you recall.) Nobody remembers this, but there was a Senate investigation of illegal and improper activities in the federal elections of 1996. You can also study, say, what happened in 1876 and 1960. The 2020 election, as marred as it was by ex-'s attempts to sew chaos through the postal service and the rampant confusion of the pandemic, was one of the least corrupt, if not the least corrupt, in American history. As previously written here, the shadiness of the 2000 presidential results in Florida had its ripple effects in other states which did not feel like being as embarrassed as that state was--so they cleaned up their processes pro-actively.

We can only hope that that posturing will now fade away and become part of the past's rhetoric. It would serve to eliminate useless, reckless investigations that go nowhere--Michael Gableman, anyone?--and restore, to a certain degree, confidence that democracy really does work. No, it doesn't work perfectly, as various campaigns have displayed and continue to do so, But there is and will be, I predict, greater faith that one's vote really is opened when it should be and counted the same as everyone else's. That basic equality is one that modern technology helps us strive for and, one day, achieve. Beyond the maddening insistence upon that basic lie--one which ex- will repeat, of course, when he runs again; we will see how it now attaches--forces are still at work that will stop lies like the one we've had perpetuated before our very eyes. We all win then.

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

Mister Mark

I Voted Yesterday. Here's How and Why.

It was a great day to walk, so I strode to the closest voting place I could find--maybe 15 minutes on foot. It's a secret ballot, of course, but that secret's up to you. 

To heck with that. I voted for Democrats down the line--for governor, for U.S. Senate, for the House of Representatives (so obscured has that race been that I didn't even know who Gwen Moore's opponent was--not that it mattered much), for Attorney General of the state, for Secretary of State (suddenly a crucial race), for state treasurer, and for state legislators in both houses. There is no longer any consideration of Republicans necessary or, in my mind, possible.

That is because they have largely given themselves to the hysteria, panic and mindless nodding that following ex- and his minions have caused. Election denial is bad enough. That doesn't quite get to the bottom of the now vast difference between the two parties, one that will not have enough time to heal, ever.

The Republicans are profiles in cowardice. Nobody stands up to ex- anymore. But that's because most of those who vote Republican have drowned themselves in collusion and delusion. They go along to get along, but only with each other. No logic and certainly no facts will deter them.

They have even eschewed democracy. Election denial, based on foolish, paranoid notions of conniving that have never been proven, only alleged, stipulates that a democratic decision based on honest voting is no longer possible, except if Republicans win. That is not only stupid and crazy, it is evil. It opens the door to fascism. 

It is an ambush while we watch. It is Ron Johnson trying to deliver a motion to qualify phony electors right to the desk of the Vice-President as he prepares to count the actual, bona fide Electoral College votes on January 6, 2021, which will make Joe Biden president. It is Tim Michels saying that something went wrong with the ballot count in Wisconsin while being unable, even unwilling, to go to the trouble of proving it.

It is Michael Gableman--remember him? He will return if Michels is elected, you can count on it--trying to get the legislature to do something the law says it cannot do, which is to de-certify the election without presenting a shred of evidence as to why it should do so.

It is a compilation of lies that now have piled far too deep for anyone, much less Democrats, to take them apart. The way to win in Wisconsin is now, apparently, to lie and keep lying to outrun those who find the real facts. The lying side has more money, far more money, and can keep throwing it at us in the form of lying ads because of Citizens United and its insistence that anyone can fund anything without being detected.

Has anyone asked Tim Michels if he wants his daughter, to whose aid he came when she was a child--as if he's unique among parents, and note how late in the campaign they brought that forward--to have her right to choose revoked? But maybe he'll have plenty of money to handle that out of state, as opposed to many who do not and cannot. And what of the accusations that women in his business have been sexually harassed, with clear connections to neglect by his office? What steps would he take if his own daughter was victimized as such?

In any event, Michels is a hoodlum who worships at the feet of ex-, a gutless, phony tough guy, a carpetbagger with nothing but bags full of money. He says he doesn't care who he offends, but that only means Democrats. He will call ex- first if he needs advice. We will have a state with a shadow government, run by ex-.

Not to mention Ron Johnson, who already does worship this menace. Anyone who sought to get into the mix of disrupting the 2020 election enough to perhaps topple it lacks the guts to stand on his own. He wants to wipe out Social Security, too, because business owners like him want to stay and be as greedy as possible, even though they already have far enough money to handle anything, including any other elections that are contested. Of course he objects to hiring more agents for the IRS; that department was drained by ex- because they were assigned the tasks of getting the rich to pay what they deserve to pay. Of course he makes it sound like a threat to the average middle-class taxpayer. It is anything but that. It is assurance that the system gets closer to working the way it's supposed to.

This is beyond the continuous embarrassment that Johnson has caused this state. His bizarre pronouncements about Wisconsin business, his disgusting admonition for people who don't like the state's abortion ban to "just leave," echo Michels' insistence that offending people doesn't matter. He has managed to operate under the state's radar for 12 long, ridiculous years. I voted to get rid of him. I pray hard the state does, too. Not a minute too soon, either.

These are two campaigns that blend into each other, utilizing racist rhetoric to create a kind of mentality that Democrats do not share. Johnson's attack upon Mandela Barnes, the Democratic candidate running against him, that the perpetrator of the awful Christmas parade attack last year would have been released because Barnes wants to get rid of cash bail, isn't likely. But again, Barnes isn't hitting back. He's just accusing Johnson of lies, but is providing no solid facts against them. Johnson has erased a six-point deficit, and the race is too close to call now. Without solid facts, fear tends to take over. And Republican rhetoric is designed to stoke up fears and anger. I'm afraid Barnes has blown this golden opportunity.

Johnson is a mean and disgusting liar. He represents only himself. But he knows that in campaigns, winning is the point and truth takes the back seat. I strongly hope enough citizens of this state can still tell the difference.

One week to go. We will see just how crazy this state has gone. That the main races are close says something unto itself. But maybe some sanity will be left.

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

Mister Mark

In War, Morality Is the First Victim

I noticed that the American government very recently confirmed that yes, the murder of a daughter of a Russian nationalist with ties to Vladimir Putin was, indeed, committed by forces loyal to, or part of, the Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion, now seven months in and running. As if it could have been anyone else. (Maybe it could have; Putin is rumored to be in ill health, and maybe some of Russia's own citizens might have been interested in hurrying that along.)

But it makes some people feel better in some echelons that "official" verification of this somehow satisfies a need for accuracy. The ethics of such an act are now in "official" question.

That includes the accompanying statement that the Biden Administration, had it known, would have advised against it. That brings with it a whole bunch of other questions.

Such as: Is this announcement a very weak effort to appease Putin so he doesn't freak out and contemplate, more than he already has, the use of nuclear weapons to settle Ukraine once and for all? Is this an effort, again a weak one, to give the U.S. clean hands, although it sounds like the "damned spot" of Macbeth, one that cannot be removed no matter how hard you try?

Such as: Do you really think the particular Ukrainians who had this in mind would have rung up Anthony Blinken, the Secretary of State, or someone with similar juice in the American government, and asked for consultative assistance? Like, "We've got her set up now, so we need your okay. We won't tell a soul"?

You got hopes. Focus on this would be all about cherry-picking, though. Especially because Russian troops, in their all-out attempt to intimidate the Ukrainians and perhaps believing their own propaganda that Nazis infect the population, have murdered thousands of Ukrainian civilians. The killings are often willy-nilly, incredibly random, done by what seems to be mere impulse. Sometimes the Russians have even made up excuses, but usually not. (For more on this, please read Masha Gesson's article in The New Yorker, published on August 8. I don't keep the issues forever, but I kept this one.)

In the popular vernacular of the day, these are known as war crimes. But in that frame, war is supposed to be refined to the battlefield, where the people directly involved actually have on uniforms belonging to their side. Unfortunately for the Russians, their invasion hasn't worked the magic they've planned, so Ukraine still has most of its land and all of its court system left over. If they ever catch them, woe be to the Russians who have perpetrated these atrocities.

In the meantime, vengeance is to be expected. A message got sent to Putin with that assassination: We are coming for you. Not that that hasn't already been contemplated by his side: Little doubt remains that Vloydymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine, would be left alive if his country is overrun by Russia, though right now that doesn't appear likely. Brave as he is, he is no more brave than his soldiers, and will die with them if worse comes to worst. That it would solidify a good place in the history written by those with a moral base may or may not be a comfort to the family he leaves behind. Make no mistake, either: the Russians are trying to kill him this very minute. They just can't get to him.

All of which makes the U.S. a side player in acts of warlike nature. Yes, we have supplied Ukraine with plenty of weapons, which they have clearly utilized to their benefit: the Russians, to this date, have lost territory previously conquered. The spending for this has, so far, been gladly paid by a Congress with a majority of its members who see the clear and unmistakeable threat to democracy overall. It's much the same as Lend-Lease, out of which we supplied the Allies against Germany and Japan before Pearl Harbor forced us in. 

But that permission was razor-thin in the House of Representatives--it passed by exactly one vote--and I cannot help but think that, under the disgusting thumb of ex-, the Republican Party, should it take control of the House in January, might very well cut off funding in anticipation of another ridiculous term of its banner carrier, who has managed the greatest con job in American history. That would pave the way for ex- to take control again, shut down any attempts to even make Russia look bad, not to mention Ukraine's defense, and let ex- have his hotel to make money, the only thing he truly believes in, in Moscow in a horribly proportioned quid pro quo.

So what would we have done had we known ahead of time: threaten Ukraine with reducing or cutting off the funding if it carried out what constitutes a war crime of its own? Not a chance. The Democrats are caught, too: caught in the rabbit hole of supporting a war and taking on the moral debris that comes with it. Will they recommend that the actual perpetrators be tried for war crimes, too? You really think so?

I know a fellow who, early in his career before he turned to teaching, worked in Southeast Asia for Air America, a passenger and cargo company that served as a CIA front for supplying forces friendly to the U.S. in that region (and attacking those unfriendly). He was there in the early '60s--six decades ago--when almost no one knew of it. Very little has still been written and researched about it, a gap in our history which should be corrected. He brought it up in a conversation.

He didn't mind discussing the possible death of civilians one bit. "It's part of war," he said with a straight face. "Civilians are going to get in the way." He knew people were being bombed, way before Congress ever considered entering that tragic war. He knew that while some of them could be called enemy, many of them weren't. He didn't seem remorseful. In acts laden with moral dilemmas, he had settled his long ago.

Should this be written off as the "price of freedom"? A defense against worldwide communism that couldn't be opposed? The moral implications of that are sorry to contemplate, including the very fact that this very respected union member who told me didn't have a problem with it. 

I demonstrated and worked with those who opposed that war, once that it was exposed. I didn't, and still don't, have a problem with that, either.

Considering that, who is right and who is wrong? What is justifiable and what isn't? Does the murder of one who also had nothing to do with the actual war going on become the exception to the moral rule, or should it be lumped into the same bin as the murder of many? I leave that to you.

As long as it appears to be a one-off, I doubt that many Americans will object to this murder. If it's tied to Putin, nobody will mind much. But that young woman, Daria Dugina (yes, I will say her name), couldn't have known what was about to happen to her. That is a randomness no less chilling because it happens on the other side of the world, no less outrageous because it happened to a single person rather than to thousands. (Something that should be also connected to school and supermarket and church and nightclub and concert and newspaper office and movie house shootings, but I digress)

Unquestionably, morality of any sort is one of the first victims when war is waged. It reinforces what I once told a class of mine: "The only real issue of war that gets decided is whether or not you're alive when it's finished."

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

Mister Mark

Maybe We Should Step Aside for the Newer Folk

Time is another one of those periodicals that has shifted from a conservative curmudgeonly approach to public affairs to a far more progressive one. As such, it is welcome to see.

One of its semi-regular features--every couple of months or so--is to display people of the next generation who are already making a difference in our world, a hundred at a time, in different aspects of our culture. This past week's edition, for instance, gives brief bios of:

• Mykhailo Fedorov, 31, Ukraine's Minister of Digital Transformation, who is the front line of his country's battle against Russian disinformation, a.k.a. lies;
• Eugenia Kargbo, 35, the first ever Heat Officer of Freetown, Sierra Leone, who strategized the planting of a million trees to reduce the core temperature of that city;
• Leah Stokes, 34, political science professor from the U-Cal Santa Barbara, a major contributor to the Biden effort to significantly lower emissions;
• Jessica Nouhavandi, 37, co-founder and lead pharmacist of Honeybee Health, which became the first mail-order pharmacy in the U.S. to ship abortion pills;
• Cassidy Hutchinson, 25, who bravely testified to ex-'s horrible behavior and the threats to democracy caused by insurrectionists to the January 6 committee;
• Lawrence Wong, 49, Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister;
• Wally Adeyemo, 41, the first black U.S. Deputy Secretary of the Treasury;
• Kaja Kallas, 45, the Prime Minister of Estonia;
• Chris Murphy, 49, Senator from Connecticut, a Senate leader in gun control;
• Annalena Baerbock, 41, German Foreign Minister;
• Dr. Caitlin Bernard, 38, an ob-gyn in Indiana, who has put herself in the forefront of the twisted, ridiculous ban on abortion in that and many other states.

That's out of a hundred that Time has noted. Note the ages. There are extremely competent people coming up now, and it indicates that they want to take on the world that our--my--generation has largely screwed up: climate, authoritarianism, backwards thinking, abuse of religion, resistance to change, endless bickering, etc., etc., etc.

The time is coming when we'll have no choice but to get the hell out of their ways. The elder statesmen are running out of energy, and running out of ideas to motivate people. The political ads we are being pummeled with during this dismal election season is but one example.

The sooner, the better. Our selfishness, which some theorists have tried to justify as leading to a better way (Ayn Rand, for instance), has led to rabbit holes all over the place. Nobody wants to rely on anyone else anymore. Nobody thinks they can.

This invading world of just me, only me, nobody else matters, is cascading humanity right off a cliff. The insistence of some people to base their decisions on outright lies is frightening, and will lead to conflicts entirely avoidable.

Somebody has to clean up this mess. Not my generation. We've created it.

Some of us have been waiting for the next bunch of burgeoning adults to grab the reins and guide us in a new direction. The above people are examples of those who could. My only piece of advice to them: Hurry the hell up!

H.G. Wells said that humanity is in a race between education and catastrophe (and that quote is over a century old). The above people are examples of those who have watched things start to crumble. I hope they have learned well. They have a big job ahead of them.

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

Mister Mark

Mr. C's Theory: Russia Is Losing the War

I taught a course called 20th Century Conflicts back in the day. The last time I taught it was 19 years ago, so it's possible that you might conclude that I might be ineligible, or at least outdated, to recall it.

I don't think so. I used to teach something that I had thought up all by myself--hadn't read it in any book as such, hadn't heard it in any college lecture. But in all the wars we studied in that course, it was consistently true. 

I gathered the relevant facts together and concocted a theory. I think it still works, and the war in Ukraine verifies it.

To wit: to win a war, a country facing another country must be superior in four areas: Technology, production, strategy, and morale. If it wins all four, it will win. If it loses just one, that one may have an adverse effect upon the other three, and it may easily lose. If there is no clear advantage, the war may easily grind into a stalemate.

The only variable is time. Over time, things a country may have in advantage might turn against it. A country might have a good strategy starting out, but that might prove to be too costly in men and materials. It might have the advantage in men and materials to start, but its strategy might prove to drain that advantage as things move along. It might also build that advantage through a spike in production, as the U.S. did in both world wars. And all countries who engage in war have plenty of morale starting out, but often that morale wanes.

When Russia first attacked Ukraine, it gained ground fast, partly because Ukraine's government tried to remain calm and panic-free right up until invasion time. So Ukraine's overall preparation was poor--bad strategy.

Ukraine was also frightfully undersupplied. It had weaponry, true, but not nearly enough to handle Russian tanks and planes. But it has gained enormous ground in that regard, since American President Joe Biden made a strong stand against the invasion, did a great job organizing NATO behind Ukraine's defense, and began shipments of both American offensive and defensive weapons. Technologically, then, Ukraine is catching up after being clearly outgunned at the start. By year's end, it will have the benefits of another $12B in American military aid, too.

Russia, led by the fascist monster Vladimir Putin, propagandized its troops into believing that somehow, Ukraine represented a threat to their borders (which it never did and never wants to), and that its claims for that land were legitimate (they never were). That provided sufficient morale boosts for them to invade and try to conquer the whole nation, reaching the outskirts of the capital, Kyiv, as well as destroying parts of the city itself.

In the meantime, though, Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelenskyy rallied his country's defenses. Not only enlisted solders responded, but also the population at large, which certainly did not agree with Putin's insistence that certain lands naturally belonged to Russia. There is no more powerful defensive force than national reverence and pride. Russia's experience in the Second World War ought to have been enough evidence of that, since it sacrificed a great deal of life to the Nazi invasion, which got to the outskirts of Moscow.

The war has now lasted seven months. In that time, Russian casualties have been enormous. Russia has felt the need to call up reserves and then to institute a draft. Nothing rare about that.

But just as some Americans decided to flee their country during a war in Vietnam they had real issues with, so too are thousands of Russians now fleeing that country to avoid being called into service to put their lives on the line for a war they are no longer sure of. That's a sure sign that, regardless of the horribly misleading propaganda that the Russian government is trying to guarantee that its citizens absorb, hopefully (but not absolutely by any means) divorced from what news is coming in from the West, people have concluded that getting killed for Ukraine just ain't worth it.

Ukrainian forces have been reported to have pushed the Russians back in more than one area. Whatever strategy the Russians employed at the start of the war has now been thrown back in their faces. Calls back home, recorded surreptitiously, indicate that Russian soldiers are getting nervous and cynical about that strategy. Morale is weakening.

Putin has hinted of the use of nuclear weapons if things continue to go badly. But that may be a standstill as well, since the U.S., as a member of NATO, has warned Putin about going off the deep end. We will have to see about that.

So let's go over my theory's parts again:

• Technology--Ukraine's defenses have seemed to catch up to Russia's assault.
• Production--As long as NATO and U.S. aid continues, Ukraine should benefit. But providing soldiers is part of production, too. Right now, Ukraine doesn't seem to need any. That may change.
• Strategy--Russia seemed to assume that showing up would be enough, and that throwing superior numbers at Ukraine would prove decisive. But it has lost more than 50,000 killed. We lost 58,000 killed in Vietnam, true. But that took eight years. And Ukraine has counterattacked successfully in places.
• Morale--It doesn't look as if Ukraine's men are leaving the country. They're making a brave stand. Their president is leading the way. Russian men are trying to escape the new draft.

As time flows, these things may change, of course. They may get worse for Ukraine. But they may also get much worse for Russia. And gains recently made on the battlefield by Ukraine will assist in the will to resist and absorb what for them have been frightful casualties, including the slaughter of innocent civilians--except that slaughter may well increase the will to resist, not diminish it.

To try to make things "official," Russia has claimed that it has annexed four parts of Ukraine--as if the besieged country will now accept that. That's kind of like the American colonies declaring themselves to be free from Great Britain; bold gesture, but it had to be backed up with military force (which it was, or just enough of it to wear down the British). Russia might not be so lucky, though. Diplomatically, it seems to be an effort for Russia to withdraw from Ukraine while claiming victory.

As such, it may be an effort, too, to bolster morale within Russia. National pride is now at stake there. Russia is now stuck with justifying all those dead soldiers, all those families now without their sons. As in America with Vietnam, that will linger through the decades and serve to wear away national loyalty.

America responded by making wars it had no right to make. That is the pushback that results from defeat: register a victory, or try to, to even the scales. Doesn't always work. Yup--Russia will not go away if it loses. War begets more war. And Russia is losing this one.

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

Mister Mark

First Amendment Day: A Time to Reflect

September 25 is celebrated, at least in some spaces, as First Amendment Day, because the Bill of Rights, of which the First Amendment is the crowning achievement, was approved on September 25, 1789. The First Amendment is seen as a gateway to democracy. I think it is democracy. Without it, nothing else in the Constitution would matter, nothing would hold up.

The document is so sweeping as to take your breath away. It encompasses so many potential actions and previous activities that its scope surpasses astonishment. But it is what we're made of. Without it, there's nothing about America that makes it unique or pleasant to live within.

If you wade into the First Amendment, though, your head begins to spin. The first set of issues must come from the first part of the statement: Freedom of religion. The "establishment clause" is supposed to stand in direct juxtaposition with the "free exercise" clause that immediately follows. That is, government can't establish an "official" religion because I'm supposed to be free to deal with religion as I see fit, including not at all. The phrase is there to keep government out of my mind, within which I am free to think as I please and free to express myself in like manner. No coercion allowed, in other words. 

There is supposed to be a separation of church and state. And in the most practical sense, ask any legislator of either party, whether they're inclined to admit it or not, whether discussion of What Jesus Would Do enters any hearing on any budget. It's all symbolic and meant to be no more than a salve.

Maybe that's what the Supreme Court had in mind when it allowed a high school football coach to lead his team in prayer after a game, in full sight of the crowd and all. But isn't there implied coercion behind joining the team in prayer? Isn't there a chance that, if push comes to shove, a certain player wanting to be on the starting team wouldn't be allowed to because he took a principled stand?

But the Supreme Court is now filled with Catholics. They won't leave that on the shelf. They listen to a source we were supposed to be free from. Supreme Court justices should not be religious. To the contrary, they should be agnostics. These issues should be moot. Laws should not be passed nor activities governed by whether or not they please the almighty as someone understands them.

Onward to freedom of speech and press, closely bound in practice. A current case in front of the Supreme Court asks whether social media sources which have become widely used can ban certain people from belonging to them. 

It's a tricky issue as the current Supreme Court is put together. The majority believes that businesses should be allowed to function in the freest atmosphere possible, ideally without interference. So a private corporation (which has been interpreted to be a 'person' in Citizens United) can allow or disallow membership as it pleases, right? But if that social media becomes so pervasive, like Twitter or Facebook, so that 'everybody' uses it, isn't that unfair and a denial of rights that have fused onto everyone else? If I'm excluded, I'm free to establish my own social medium, right? But the economic burden placed upon me is beyond enormous. It's folly to assume that just anybody can create their own corporation, right? But if that's true, where did the creators of Facebook and Twitter get their impetus? So that doesn't work, at least not logically.

But since ex- has been muscled out of Facebook and Twitter, his sycophants in important positions, such as Ken Paxton, Texas attorney general, come rushing to his defense of being able to spread innuendoes and lies in the most popular and widely-used medium. So is the purpose of such media to spread the truth? Or to spread information and misinformation (i.e. lies) to allow the public to make a decision as to the degree of believability it wishes to accept? Stay tuned. This one will be interesting.

Of things in print, recent bannings have become frenzied and ghastly irrational, as I have documented not long ago. Let me ask this, though: If To Kill a Mockingbird can be banned, wouldn't that also be true of a recent book published by someone named Helgard Muller, referring to ex- as The Son of Man--the Christ (Which is, reportedly, being distributed at ex-'s rallies now)? If that is permissible for open discussion, as incredibly crazy that assumption is, what in To Kill A Mockingbird would be equally as absurd? And what would be in it that would ban its distribution and allow Muller's obvious pack of lies to be distributed?

Free press is free press. Publish and be damned. And I hope Muller is. But to ban it would bring down opprobrium on the censors, make Muller and ex- into victims (again), and draw more attention to it (as I've said here before). Better to allow stupid people to be openly stupid, to reflect the desperate extremism that is beginning to emerge due to a doubling-down on the same fears that got ex- into the ultimately inappropriate position he unfortunately occupied for four long years. The meaning of that enormous mistake is just as eligible for analysis as any other public act or office.

That's allowing the "marketplace of ideas," as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes called it long ago, to function as it should, as a self-regulating force that allows reason to overcome nonsense. But that assumes that people will step up and make their stands known. That cannot be guaranteed. But the First Amendment protects that, too.

Meeting in assembled places is also covered by the First Amendment. That includes meeting to complain as well as celebrate. Ex- showed us what he thought of assemblies he didn't like when he sent police both on foot and mounted horses to break up a Washington, DC, Black Lives Matter protest just outside the White House upon George Floyd's murder in 2020. But he praised the Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 as being "good people." You can't have it both ways, though. You must allow the stupidly unthinking to say what they wish, as long as they don't get in anybody else's reasonable way.

That's the double-edged sword of freedom. That's what we have to live with in order for liberty under law to continue to function. Should ex- get back into power, one of the first things he'll do is to try to stifle those outlets who are unrelentingly critical of him. He will not merely criticize them, either. He will try to take 'official' steps to keep them from bringing him back into public scrutiny, which is what free speech and press are supposed to be for.

That's why he must be stopped, and the rigging of election results so that one side is guaranteed victory must be stopped, too. That will take a huge roar of outcry. Our jobs, our collective and individual jobs, of preserving democracy aren't finished yet. Indeed, they are just beginning. 

That should be the message of First Amendment Day: Preserve it while it can yet be preserved. Once lost, it will be practically impossible to get it back. The shadow of fascism lurks, and the First Amendment is the only thing that can ward it off.

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

Mister Mark

The Plague of Banned Books

I got hold of a part of USA Today last weekend, which featured a large and ever-growing number of books that someone or other has decided needs to leave shelves because they threaten--well, you'd have to ask them. Some of these titles astonish me:

The Odyssey

Lord of the Flies

Of Mice and Men

A Light in the Attic

Maus

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Animal Farm

The Catcher in the Rye

The Things They Carried

Beloved

To Kill A Mockingbird 

The Outsiders

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

1984

The Hunger Games

The Handmaid's Tale

The Color Purple

A Separate Peace

Born A Crime

The entire Harry Potter series

There were several others, but I gather that you've heard of the above.

Yes. Cancelled. Forbidden. I can't even.

Granted, I haven't read all of these, but I've read enough to understand that banning them, even calling them into question, violates any decent sensibilities and reflects a staggering paranoia that, while it could be called natural because of the current regressive state of things, calls thinking into question.

To these people, thinking must be dangerous--thinking that isn't pre-conditioned, I suppose. Except nobody can do that. Nobody can tell anyone what to think and then guarantee that that thinking will be all the thinking that people do. It's not only arrogant and slavish, it's downright stupid.

Plus what are people going to do--cancel, or force to cancel, cable television? When adaptations to To Kill a Mockingbird or Animal Farm or Of Mice and Men or The Hunger Games or Animal Farm are shown, will they put out notice and warn parents of the awfulness of those films?

Here's the ultimate irony of book banning: 1984. I book about control of thinking banned by people who want to control thinking. A book about the manipulation of language brought by those who supported the man who told them not to believe what their eyes were telling them--and meant it.

Maus? Really? An allegory about the Nazis abusing and killing the Jews? What are the banners doing, joining the Holocaust deniers? Or is it that they just don't like rats? If not, avoid All Quiet on the Western Front, too (which, by the way, has also been banned), because there are plenty of rats and the atrocities they commit (or merely following up on ongoing atrocities, take your pick) in that work.

Is this a drilling down on Black Lives Matter? On critical race theory, which is a concoction of graduate school thinking which, until a radically conservative conjurist introduced, had never been in any mainstream conversation in any school, public or private?

Or is it just that someone thinks that kids can't read about bad things at all? Things like:

• Gayness (Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, A Separate Peace)
• Bullying (Blubber)
• Racism (The Hate U Give, Eleanor & Park, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter)
• School shootings (Nineteen Minutes)
• Atheism (The Golden Compass)
• Colonialism (The God of Small Things)

You know, stuff like that. If anything, I now want to read these books and discover what someone had a problem with. The fact that there are many best-sellers among these is, what, evidence of the damage in our culture? With our sinfulness? With our lack-of-straightness?

And do people think the assigning of these books, with their tax dollars (and how much money per person in any jurisdiction covers the cost of a copy or two of any book?), represents a betrayal of their values? That whatever school libraries and teachers assign must align with their thinking, however ill-informed it may be? That because they think a certain way, everybody else's thinking is not only bad, not only wrong, but is to be prevented somehow?

So much of this is about race and gender. People have never stopped being afraid of a lack of whiteness. They have never stopped being put off by gay people acting in loving ways in public. The thoroughly neanderthal candidate for Wisconsin governor has said as much: no public displays of gay affection. Keep that in your closet. (Would he introduce legislation preventing it? If elected, don't put it past him.)

Reducing information feels comforting. But it builds walls. It encourages the same behavior everywhere. And it never, ever works.

Of course, not all school libraries are banning all of the above books. To compile lists in such a big nation as ours leaves one with the impression that all books are under examination and that we are all being whitewashed, excuse the pun. But it is bad enough.

This is what happens when minds are stifled and paralyzed, when negative possibilities overwhelm the positive, always easier to do. When panic meets exaggeration. It is a human element that we do not prefer and that we too often ignore.

What to do? Talk up the problem. It is not true that where it does not now exist, it won't or can't. That will become true especially where Republicans seize power, where it becomes popular to bring out phraseology such as "woke," to confirm that whatever a particular book contains cannot be good for kids.

No. Do not wait. Don't assume rationality surrounds you. There are ways to fight this, and fight this we must.

Talk about it openly, logically, and especially calmly. Ideas, by themselves, are just that--ideas. They can cultivate minds and often do, not poison them. 

And do not accept the cherry-picking that reactionaries insist upon to justify their inclinations to take books off shelves. Use the word context often and with effect. Ask those who would censor, "Have you actually read the whole book? Is it utterly without merit or importance?"

Staying calm and speaking out is not walking away. Staying calm and speaking out is being an advocate for reading, for intellectual curiosity, for thinking, for kids. Kids are wiser than we think. But they also need guidance now, more than we think. The world is a different place, yes, but not one that we can hide them from. We must stay rational and keep the lines of communication not only open, but inviting.

Banning the above mentioned books, though, robs young people of important opportunities to know things about the world that they will need to know once they emerge into it as adults. Fear cannot overtake it. It won't. Reading these books under guiding hands is the answer, not preventing any challenges whatsoever.

They're smarter than us, anyhow. They'll find a way around it this plague, as contagious as the viral one we've endured. Ask yourselves this: Is this more dangerous than having guns?

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

Mister Mark