Cassidy Hutchinson: Brave As Can Be

Say this for Cassidy Hutchinson: She's brave as can be.

Since her book Enough came out, she's been on with Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, and Jimmy Kimmel (as far as I know). They are letting her hawk it. She needed the money.

Here's the part that's fascinating, though: There's been no screaming from the right-wing, and not even from ex- himself. Nothing, at least not as far as I've heard. Barely a peep since she appeared in front of the Jan. 6 committee last fall.

This is an anomaly. Any critic of ex- is usually the subject of a massive, exaggerated, disingenuous put-down as soon as he learns of the criticism, regardless of the verifiability of the accusation. The point is, of course, not only to divert your attention back to the one who can't get enough of it, but in its exaggeration to make something about it rub off and suggest that the opposite is true or that the accuser has skeletons in their closet that haven't been revealed--yet.

Makes you wonder why. I have some suggestions:

She's a female. Ex-'s chauvinism is working against him. Too, he also knows that verbally abusing a young woman seems over the top all by itself, regardless of the lies that underly it.

They've already tried to intimidate her to no avail. Recall that in addition to the 'insider' information that Hutchinson supplied to the 1/6 Committee, she also added, upon Liz Cheney's prodding, that nefarious (Can there be anything else?) members of ex-'s entourage called her and gently encouraged her to remain a member of "the team" in her testimony--that is, not to say anything that would shed poor light on him. But the point of her appearance was to do exactly that, because she had already tried to dodge or hold back significantly damning information--and her conscience had bothered her too much. That is, contrary to ex- and most people working for him, she has one.

Her position wasn't very important so not enough people will pay attention. To be a helper to ex-'s Chief of Staff, the obsequious Mark Meadows, seems minor enough. But proximation suggests insider-ness, and the fact that Hutchinson sought out Alexander Butterfield, the revealer of the Nixon White House tapes, shows that though the public might not even know of you or your position, your strategic presence can't be hidden. And in this case, it shouldn't be.

She hasn't turned Democrat. Not by a long shot. She declares herself a solid Reaganite, which to me is what got her in this trouble to begin with. What she's left out of her narrative, in fact, prompts some questions, especially about her support of ex- during the 2016 campaign. Such as: She writes about ex-'s so-called "moderate" positions, but what about his bloated, inflated, lying rhetoric about lots of other things? That didn't have an impact? 

And echoing her clear dislike for Mike McKenna, who she insisted was horribly sexist and who she says she had a hand in firing from the White House staff, what about the Access Hollywood incident where ex- discusses grabbing women in the crotch and being able to do anything men want to do to them if you're "a star"? There's no comment about that. Does she mean to say she was, like millions of others, willing to overlook that? To brush it off? Plenty of men have said and done far less and been castigated thoroughly for sexism (see: Al Franken, Jimmy Fallon). Really? She didn't mind that? She didn't take that seriously?

But she stays in her own lane for the most part. She doesn't comment about policy matters much. She's not there to do that. She's there to tell you what happened--what almost happened--to her. She admittedly was drawn in by the atmosphere of the White House and the somehow magical personality of its then most famous resident. To quote her directly:

    I had adored the president. I'd been very close to Mark Meadows (Chief of Staff, of whom more down below). I had loved working in the White House (as Meadows' chief assistant). I deeply cared for the people there. I believed sincerely that we were serving the interests of the American people. I regretted the belligerence and crudity of some of the president's messaging: the inappropriate, unpresidential tweets. But you can become inured to it, and I did. I often laughed with colleagues at his communications, when I should have seen them for what they were--mean-spirited. Politics is a team sport, and I was a willing teammate.

    Even [ex's] tantrums hadn't made me angry. Whenever I witnessed or heard about him losing his tamper, it hurt me to see him upset. My first thought was why had people let it go so far. Couldn't we have done more--could I have done more--to serve him better, to avoid upsetting him.

    My views of [ex-] would change as I witnessed his selfish recklessness threatening the country's constitutional order. My resolve only strengthened when my loyalties to him and my former colleagues were put in direct conflict with my obligation to the country.

Her ambition must have blinded her. Wouldn't be the first time that ever happened. Being that close to ultimate power has its undeniable lure. And she never explains what it is that attracted her to ex- that much--something I'd like to hear from people. What she didn't know--what she couldn't have known until it was too late--was that that approximation has its price. The more she knew, the more uncomfortable she got with paying it.

Mark Meadows became very uncomfortable, to the point at which he was trying to do anything to avoid being held responsible for the chaos and complete disregard for the law that came crashing down around him. Hutchinson's youth, her willingness to please, and her (right up until the end) blind loyalty made her the perfect pawn for Meadows to jettison acts he should have taken on himself. 

Clearly, according to Hutchinson's account, Meadows knew what was being planned for January 6. He knew it was wrong. He knew it would threaten members of the same Congress that until very recently he had been a member of, and still knew many of those members. But he did nothing, or next to nothing. His neglect makes him blatantly complicit in the terrible assault on the Capitol. He could have stormed into the Oval Office and had the confrontation that was needed that afternoon; he didn't. He could have resigned on the spot and walked away; he didn't. 

While none of that might have changed the outcome, it would have established Meadows as enough of a patriot for people to conclude that he, too, put country over dangerous, ridiculous personal loyalty. Instead, he comes off as an obsequious, repulsive leaker, a non-entity with a title that becomes more absurd by the moment. During his legal machinations, he has claimed that executive immunity rubbed off on him because of his proximation to the rogue president. Not only is that absurd, he must know deep inside that the legal claims cannot eclipse personal failings.

Cassidy Hutchinson could have resigned, too, but she didn't, either. After ex-'s term mercifully ends, she gets caught up in the clutches of what she called [Ex-] World, in which loyalty is rewarded as long as it is absolute and personal. She is given a lawyer within the realm who guides her around having to say things that might incriminate her bosses--that "I don't remember" does not constitute perjury, even though she did remember many things and quite well. She seems to survive that potential prosecution, but not that of her conscience, which knows that she has not served her country the way she originally promised--to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." 

Maybe her youth and idealism blocked the jadedness that political experience tends to engender; maybe she finally understands that she is but a pawn in a much larger game, though one closer to he who wants to be king than she finally realizes; once used thoroughly, she will be given a token job for a token fundraiser, disappearing into an almost invisible, continuously corrupt wheel. Maybe, like her drifting, shambling father, she surmises that she has again run into a supposedly strong male who is quite the opposite, who is nothing more than inflated rhetoric inside a windbag, who needs her far more than she needs him. 

Regardless, she finds the strength to pit her tormentors against each other, to beat them at their own deceptive game. She manages to find lawyers who are genuinely interested in her story and for whom they will work pro bono. Nearly broke, she has found the key that opens the door. She must still walk a tightrope, but she does so by using some of the skills she has learned.

Eventually, it brings her back to the Capitol's Cannon Building, where she had spent lots of time in her original job working for Congresspeople, to perform the live testimony that she wants to dodge but increasingly knows she can't. Considering all that she writes about leading up to that moment, all the personal fears and attitudes that she must handle alone, her near-flawlessly poised testimony is all the more remarkable. As she approaches that daunting moment, she has unforeseen help and encouragement from then-Congresswoman Liz Cheney, whose support and gravitas serve as bracing ballast and without which I doubt that Hutchinson would have been so successful.

She found as inspiration none other than Butterfield, left in a similar position in the Nixon White House, and whose testimony began the downhill slide that culminated in Nixon's resignation in 1974. He was 97 when Hutchinson read Bob Woodward's biographical account of Butterfield's odyssey from fudging to truth. Hutchinson read that book endlessly, found sufficient inspiration from it, and resolved to meet him to compare experiences. Her book ends on that note.

I fear for her now. What we don't know, what we probably shouldn't know, is where she now is, who she now works for, how she earns a living. After all, she's only 25. Having been catapulted into unwanted fame, she runs into unknown supporters and detractors haphazardly. I can't help but wonder if one of the latter will have worse things in mind for her, especially if ex- winds up in jail.

For the time being, though, the receipts from this work are likely to pay her bills nicely. I couldn't find her book at Milwaukee's best independent bookstore, located just a block away from my residence. Nobody could. It had to be back-ordered. It has already hit the New York Times best seller list. I can't call it brilliant, but it's honest. Coming from a land in which honestly was at a near-deficit, it makes her quite the standout, brave as brave can be.

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

Mister Mark

National Friends of Libraries Week: Does That Include You?

This is National Friends of Libraries Week. I thought I'd point that out.

Someone is always declaring some kind of National Something or Other Week or Day, so if the above declaration doesn't impress you, you can scarcely be blamed. But right now, in this atmosphere, it might be especially vital to know that.

Libraries are under attack nowadays because their contents aren't always flavored vanilla. They don't always adhere to someone else's morals and ethics; indeed, they spend significant time questioning, if not directly opposing, what those morals and ethics are. But that's the point: Those authors aren't blindly shuffling forward, like zombies, in a world where nothing is doubted, nothing is challenged. 

Your mind can close itself off with certain truths that agree with your world view, with your preferences. But that's the wrong approach. Truth today, as many historians can tell you, isn't necessarily the whole truth of tomorrow. The relentless job of research and its documentation in things like books is to continue to unearth, and add onto if not actually refute, those truths we've comfortably come to accept and burn into our brains. One set of facts, as we understand them, allows us, even requires us, to ask questions about what might come next.

Neither does that rule out those who deal in fiction, the novelists who imagine worlds and circumstances that could be, that could happen, to inspire others to do the same. Not only isn't this a bad idea, it's one of the best: It was Einstein, after all, who said "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

The two are intertwined. One leads to the other. I wish that for our sake, Einstein would have added the word "even" to put between "is" and "more," to make it read, "Imagination is even more important than knowledge," to emphasize the inextricable link. But he was dealing in physics, where the quest for truth inspires more and more and more. I'm not sure he thought he had to add that little word. I wonder what he would think today, now that some people find truth more threatening than ever, now that they grasp it for the first time.

That quest has been getting people in trouble for centuries. But it has the same basis upon which people are trying to take out new information now--religion. Religion can be a good thing, guiding us toward personal peace and goodness, but it can also pull us toward darkness and the sin of suppression disguised as protection against evil, or what someone calls evil. 

Stopping the spread of knowledge isn't stopping the work of the devil, it's doing that work. It's preventing us from fulfilling the expansion of our minds, the major advantage we have from the lower primates.

It's all based on fear--fear that we might learn something that will help us do something else that someone doesn't like. Ignorance accomplishes that far better than excess or additional knowledge. And that is based on a negative viewpoint of human nature, that left alone, we are inclined to do bad things, not good. We need controls, not additional freedom.

Judge that as you will. The real trouble comes when someone takes away someone else's rights due to moral evaluations they have no right to act upon. Not doing something that you think is wrong doesn't mean you can, must and have the right to do the same to someone else who doesn't think so. So if you don't think abortion is right, don't have one. If you don't think a certain book or books should be in the library, don't read them, don't look through them, don't think about them.

I've just learned that the EveryLibrary Institute, a public policy think tank for libraries, and Book Riot, the largest independent editorial book site in North American, announced the results of a recent survey about perceptions of public libraries and the issues they currently face. Over 850 parents with children under 18 were asked in September to share their views. Some of the top findings:

• 67% agreed or somewhat agreed that "banning books is a waste of time";
• 74% agreed or somewhat agreed that book bans infringe on their right to make decisions for their children;
• 92% said their children are safe at the library;
• 57% said that reading opens children to new ideas, new people, and new perspectives; and
• 44% said that teens should have access to books on controversial subjects and themes

It's that last statistic that bothers me. What constitutes "controversial"? Is that word a dog whistle for LGBTQ+ topics and trans-student issues? Or does it also include anything regarding sexual behavior, hetero- or homosexual? If so, that's the conversation we should be having. Kids need to know about sex. They surely should know more than our generation did. We'd like to think parents will be talking to them about it, but what information will they be imparting to them? We'd like to think it will be accurate, but what if it's based only on their own experiences, and not on science? Wouldn't that have the potential to do more damage instead of being helpful?

All of it leads to this ongoing question: What would hurt to have more information available about anything and everything, as long as it's accurate? What would it hurt to read about other people's experiences?

Sex isn't the only "controversial" place a library can go. There is still denial among people who don't think climate change is really happening. If you take "controversial" books about sex away, what about that, too? What if Greta Thunberg's library had had  no sources on that subject?

So, too, with race. White supremacy isn't fading from view, unfortunately. We need more works on racial mixing and harmony. Banning Ta Nehisi Coates sounds ridiculous, but to some it may not be. Closing minds about one thing makes it all that much easier to justify closing them to others that one may not have foreseen.

So if you haven't visited your public library in a while, this week wouldn't be a bad time to do that. I don't live in Shorewood, the border of which is just a few blocks north, but I've been allowed to join the board of the Friends of the Shorewood Public Library (the Advocacy Chair of which, Mary Armstrong, compiled the above stats, so kudos to her). Nobody's attacked that library yet--at least, not that I know of--but I want to be there to defend it if they do. I'm going to defend the right of information, the lifeblood of democracy, which dovetails with the right to read. 

It's another thing that we like to take for granted, but in today's excessively contentious society, we can't do that anymore. Should we turn our backs on it, it will be gone one day, and our lives will mean that much less. I can't change the world--tried that, didn't work--but for that little part of it, I'll be around to stand guard for people's freedoms and liberties. 

Happy National Friends of Libraries Week. Take out a book and enjoy it.

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

Mister Mark

Israel at A Definitive Moment; Our Support Won't Waver

To begin with--and let me be clear--I'm no great fan of Israel. What it has done, at times, in its so-called self-defense strikes me as taking advantage of its endless, self-proclaimed victim's status. It has broken promises, it has double-dealed. Its expansionism is regrettable but, in a way, understandable if you accept Russian expansion that created the Iron Curtain and elsewhere (read Ukraine). The endless merry-go-round of attempted negotiation and compromise gets perpetually nowhere. It wants guarantees it cannot have. Its suspicions of its Arab neighbors cannot possibly extend good will anywhere. That suspicion is echoed back at it.

But so, too, it can be said of the Palestinians. They want, and many say deserve, a contiguous country of their own. They have tried everything, including bonding with some of those surrounding countries to provide support for their independence. That support has sometimes come to violence. Every time, Israel has endured and survived. Every time, the Palestinians have swallowed defeat and grown back its resentment and hatred.

You can use the Bible to justify both positions, so that won't do you any good. Islamic radicalism has taken hold, though. Regardless, this variable remains constant, not really a variable: The United States' backing of Israel has held steadfast. We keep trying to create a permanent solution, though. More than one president has personally intervened. The cameras have clicked, the smiles rampant, the handshakes exchanged, to eventually no avail.

But when it comes to existential issues, the U.S. hasn't budged. I said it to every single class I ever taught in which the issue of Israel has emerged and I'll say it again: Regardless of presidential administration, regardless of anything else that is happening at any given time, the United States will stand by and support Israel. "We will never abandon Israel," I would say. "Never."

That is not filled with wishful thinking. That is a stone fact, untinged by politics. After all, we supported Israel's creation in the United Nations in 1947, as an attempt to prevent another Holocaust by giving the Israelis the right to govern and thus protect themselves within a territory with which they were already familiar. We did not think Israel would have an atomic bomb, but it does. We did not think that Israel would take it upon itself to expand its borders more than once, but it has.

The United States has stood by and watched more than once. It even stood by as a gunboat, the U.S.S. Liberty, was attacked off Israeli shores in 1967 and about 40 U.S. seamen died. The mysteries surrounding that have never been completely unraveled.

Meanwhile, Israel has done some of the U.S.'s dirty work for it. I recall a book written by Arnaud DeBorchgrave, a foreign correspondent for Newsweek, back in the day in which it stood swinging in the ring with Time. It was called The Spike, trying to explain that truth gets delayed sometimes, if not cancelled out, by the exigencies of international politics. In that book the Mossad, the Israeli CIA, as it were, does America a favor and takes out a bad guy in a real quid pro quo. It's a novel, of course, so it can be explained away with plausible deniability. But still.

Is the commitment to Israel filled with internal American politics? Of course it is. But the bottom line has never moved. The rhetoric of ex-, filled with quasi-religious fervor (for he is not religious at all), and the ferociousness of President Biden's speech yesterday, have parallel emotional attachment. This, despite Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's striving to create an authoritarian regime in which the courts are token and unimportant. He's finding that difficult, though, as well he should. Israeli democracy has existed now for 75 years, long enough for democratic institutions to take hold and people's trust to support it. 

That, too, is why ex-, though he might in the end succeed in gaming our system to guarantee him power, found it and is finding it difficult to overcome. When people get used to something that delivers a modicum of justice and reflects, at least in part, a fulfillment of our Constitution (overall, with of course exceptions), they can't easily let it go. Most of us still respect the courts, which have come for him. Despite his bluster, lies and manipulation, he may yet go to jail, where he belongs. If he doesn't, if he manages to escape accountability, this will not be a good place to live. It will become a Republican, minority slaveocracy, and free speech, the watchword of American democracy, will be devastated, politicized, and made generally irrelevant.

With this vicious and barbaric invasion of Israel, Hamas has moved its chess piece into an untenable position, one which will be exposed when Israel gears up its military and goes counterassaulting building-to-building, which it it close to doing. It will only increase the depravity. 

Meanwhile, it's going to be increasingly prohibitive for any American government to enter into reasonable talks with people who kidnap and kill children and behead soldiers, a la ISIS in Iraq. Civilians will now die in large numbers on both sides of Gaza. If nobody else enters the war, what can possibly be accomplished by this? (Note: 22 Americans are also dead. That's its own challenge to Biden.)

The only thing that will happen is that Israel's paranoia about being attacked and conquered will only double down. Its citizens, without guarantees of safety, cannot possibly return to any kind of domestic peace equalled in any democratic system. It must remain on edge, taking stronger security matters into its own hands, burying any hope of rapprochement with its neighbors.

What would you do? Destroy the invaders, then pretend it never happened? Rely on diplomatic safeguards? With those monsters?

We wait for effective journalism. Why? We have to know--have to--who's funding and supplying the invaders. Palestine can't do it alone. Who's backing this? And, upon discovery, what's next? (Note: save journalists are already dead, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.)

But rely on this: At any one, defining moment, at any existential threat, we stand foursquare behind Israel--despite the double-crossing they themselves have done, despite the promises they themselves have broken. Anything else remains unthinkable. Especially now.

Those talks concerning a Palestinian homeland, talks that I have always supported? Forget it. Who would put any credence in them now?

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

Mister Mark

Be Good to Our Kids? The Truth Wins Out? Let's Hope So.

There's an ad on TV. You've probably seen it. It's been on several different kinds of TV shows, so it must be well-funded. In fact, $176,000 was paid, apparently, to get it on a recent Packers telecast.

It's got some young Black fellow with his daughter. Right up close, nothing else. He says, in essence, that critical race theory has to go because it's divisive. That jumps to a number of conclusions.

It assumes that critical race theory has been absorbed by our educational system. The long version of this ad shows you a teacher in Martin Luther King, Jr. School in Milwaukee, being videoed while declaring that the Pledge of Allegiance be made to the "Afro-American nation." Interviewed later, the teacher said that that was part of a "cultural immersion" in the school.

But the video shows you that and only that. It wants you to believe that that display is somehow linked to critical race theory. It makes no attempt to link it, no explanation as to why the teacher made that statement. It assumes you'll do it for them.

If this group advertises in other large cities, is it gambling that one display in one other city will make people conclude that the teacher is typical of all public school teachers throughout the nation? Or just in big cities, where Black students predominate?

It refers to a website named BeGoodToOurKids.com. So I looked it up.

It's very simple, very unobtrusive. But very misleading, like the TV ad.

It says: "We take positions, but not partisan sides." That is disingenuous. It implies an attempt at unbiased reporting. It is anything but that. Black people speaking against Black issues asks, by implication, Black voters to switch to conservative, read Republican, affinity. These people just aren't announcing that. It's subtle but clear as a cloudless day.

So who's paying for this? Langdon Law, a conservative group from Ohio, led by a fellow named David Langdon. According to the Center for Media and Democracy, a media watchdog for corruption, Langdon Law contributed more than $400,000 to the recall campaign of Mr. F. Gow, Most Recent Former Governor of Wisconsin, in 2011. This, apparently, was done through something called the Coalition to Restore American Values, the funds of which come from a Koch Brothers think tank.

Once again, before I become blue in the face: critical race theory can't be taught to grade school kids. It's much too complicated. It involves concepts understood and developed only at a graduate collegiate level, something that kids of the little girl's age simply can't grasp. All this is about Christopher Rufo, who has managed to scare nearly everybody into thinking that this is being inculcated throughout our educational system, at every level. It never has been, and the only reason it's being mentioned at all is because of people like him, whose intent it is to connect that fear to The 1619 Project, begun before the last presidential election by people with a particular edge toward telling the whole truth about slavery and its effects on all of us, like it or not.

It can't be taught to the overwhelming majority of high school students, either. That's because the right has insisted upon standardized testing, the results of which demand that history teachers, like all other teachers, completely cover the curriculum they've been presented with. With those time constraints, it's simply impossible to introduce something like critical race theory, which would involve sophistication and especially time to develop. It can't be squeezed in.

But it's given an excuse for the governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, to declare that the children of her state stand threatened by "indoctrination," meaning an interpretation of history that makes her, and some other white people, uncomfortable. Rufo's self-proclaimed intent (see his bio on Wikipedia) is to sow distrust in the public education system and to take it apart. He wants people to connect all that is wrong with the system with critical race theory and its apparent absorption by teachers and administration.

That is nonsense, but that is also a very convenient version of non-facts that's easier to put out there because people won't take the opportunity to straighten themselves out. In all my years of teaching, 30 to be exact, I never heard the phrase 'critical race theory' discussed in any faculty discussion, in any discussion in the social studies department, in any writings I ran into. Not once. And I tried hard to teach the civil rights movement in a positive and thorough way. Maybe I would have run into it had I gotten a master's degree in history. But I didn't, and I didn't have to to maintain my teaching license.

This is about an advanced level of race-baiting by utilization of unsuspecting members of the very race it's designed to bait--the ultimate in cynicism. "When the truth comes out, we all win," mutters a background voice at the end of the ad.

Yes, I certainly hope so. And now the "truth" will have to include this enormous attempt at deception, pretending to describe critical race theory by saying that it's divisive. Don't be fooled by this bogus generalization. It's the ad that's divisive. It's based on a lie in an era in which the truth matters less and less.

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

Mister Mark