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