Let's Compare, Shall We?

47 has offended so many of us in so many ways that I seriously doubt that anyone's keeping track any longer. His latest is a classic: Putting himself on an equal basis with someone whose sneakers he couldn't possibly lace.

I'm talking about John F. Kennedy, whose name 47 has deigned to supersede on the face of what used to be the Kennedy Performing Arts Center in Washington, DC. I went there more than once when I had an office there and also lived there a while back. It is a tribute to a president who, representing the best of us, had an attraction to and a deep appreciation for the performing arts.

All 47 has a deep appreciation for is basking in the glow of a bunch of very rich people so he can be identified with them, being rich himself. But that richness only consists of how many dollars he can possibly be connected with, not rich in things that truly matter: Style, eloquence, tact. In those, he has consistently displayed himself, and continues to do so daily, as a national embarrassment.

Yes, I am embarrassed to have him as my elected leader. I take nothing from him as an example except for how not to act, what not to say. It is a slap in the face of our political life that he was allowed to get anywhere near this otherwise cherished position, where he is allowed to represent anything good about my country. As big and, yes, as diverse as it is, it still flows from the same roots and same actions that identified it as undeniably American. He only wants to enhance not its prestige, but his. But the harder he tries, the less he does so.

Instead, he seizes upon opportunity after opportunity to name things and buildings after himself, in a ridiculously desperate attempt to become 'famous' and to name his own legacy. But in his utter stupidity, he fails to understand that he succeed in that attempt. Only the populations that follow him will, and he must surely understand that to a certain extent, many will strive to forget nearly everything about him.

Not so John F. Kennedy. To be sure, his name became connected with many things that could have been named after other famous or noteworthy Americans; his assassination, dramatic as it was and so deeply mourned, reflected excessive admiration and lionization, tarnished in later years by the discovery of a rather jaded personal life. But to name a performing arts center after him has never seemed inappropriate. He enjoyed, rather at times basked in, the performing arts, having noted musicians perform at the White House--Pablo Casals, Igor Stravinsky, Ella Fitzgerald, even Chubby Checker, for instance--and people got dressed in gowns and tuxedos for the concerts. This was a direct influence of Kennedy's wife, Jacqueline, who saw the White House as a place of elegance and enduring class.

Not so 47. He has, instead, destroyed the East Wing of the White House, which used to contain the offices of the First Lady, just because he didn't like it. That wing was exactly where the Kennedy sponsored concerts were held. For him to destroy it represents that much more of an abomination, a curse upon what was an excellent addition to the building's history. 

Not ironically, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has sued 47's administration for that destruction. Kennedy addressed a meeting of the Trust's delegates in 1963, a little more than a month before he was murdered. He said, in part: "What you are attempting to do and what interests me, of course, is trying to maintain and keep alive in this country a very lively sense of our past....with all that sense of motion and progress and looking to the future, we have a good many things in our country that are worth retaining. One of these, of course, the most important, the White House...."

47, I guess, wouldn't agree. He wants to make the East Wing one big ballroom, to hold dinners and raise money for, I suppose, himself. This ghastly ruination of a significant part of our history wrenches us from our moorings. I was lucky enough to take a tour of the White House about 25 years ago. No way I would subject myself to that now. I deny belonging to anyone or anything that would ruin that history for me. I am not responsible for it. I cannot attach myself to it in any way.

Consider, also, the crassness with which 47 makes public statements. He put himself on awful display again Wednesday night, when he tried, I suppose, to rally his supporters into further denial of what's right in front of them: A country and society that he's leading right down into the sewer. 

I have a copy of Kennedy's official papers and speeches during his presidency: It is refreshing to read them again with a yearning for something, anything, meaningful to come out of our present leader's mouth. 47 said, almost to make an excuse, that his Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, who herself had found herself embarrassed by her own comments to Vanity Fair, rather made him get up there and once again make a complete fool of himself. Effective staff assistance would rather try increasingly to get him to shut up.

To combine the names of both these presidents on the facade of one building, any building but particularly one devoted to the performing arts, as 47 has just done, is to combine silver with mud. It signifies the affliction under which we presently suffer: a tribute to phoniness, to contrivances, to fakery and fabrication. 

47's name will go down in tribute, sure. Now that it has ruined two very honorable buildings in our nation's capital, it will descend in dishonor for generations to come. The mistake the country has made, twice, in electing him will only now multiply in scars he casts upon our national landscape.

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

Mister Mark

Now You Can Feel It

The post office does you what's supposed to be a favor by telling you when parcels sent through the mail are supposed to arrive. It does that through its own website.

The other day, it said that something was to arrive last Friday. It didn't come. That's happened before. It usually arrives the next day.

Then it said it would come Saturday. It didn't arrive, either.

Then it said it would come Monday. Nope.

Then it said it would come Tuesday. I didn't believe that. I was right.

At this point, I sincerely believed that it had been lost. There were things I had sent for that would be genuinely helpful with battling a case of arthritis that has suddenly sprung up. I thought about sending for it again. But why pay double?

It finally arrived Wednesday, five days after the original notice. I did not sigh with relief. I simmered. More like seethed.

This is annoying and builds up tension that you can fairly feel. It is also, I have learned, something I--we-- should probably get used to.

There's been an adjustment, I've been told, where cost-cutting is at the center of postal services. What's the best way to do that? Why, slow things down, of course.

Mail is now being routed through regional centers, a process called "consolidation." As a result, there are delayed postmarks, at least a day later. This is being called Delivering for America, which makes you think that somehow, the government is more on your side than ever. But it's not. Surprised?

The advice? Adjust by sending what you need to send earlier. That especially means bills. Meaning: If you don't want your payments to skyrocket, or pay the extra adjustment bill at the end of the pay period, you'd better get cracking.

That irritates, doesn't it? It's a way of artificially making you displeased with government. If that's some kind of experiment, it's working very well.

It's a way that someone has to make your security feel that much more tenuous. The other effect is to find something more efficient. Like: a private entity. If you can.

In a big city like mine, Milwaukee, that's not too tough. But what about if I live somewhere rural, say west of Wausau or north of Eau Claire? I'm familiar with those areas. Trying to find something out there is like finding a geographical marker. Best of luck. Guess you'll just have to wait.

Privatization is the government's deepest threat. It's an ongoing test: Can a private business deliver on its promises better and more efficiently than government?

It's one thing to try that on your own. It's quite another to get driven into that choice by forces beyond your control. But there's a disingenuous backdrop: Relying on government to deliver for you either gets to cost too much or doesn't meet your brand of efficiency or quality. That's arranged for by lack of funding, just like this shenanigan. So you're forced to conclude that government is against you instead of for you, and you turn elsewhere.

If you've spent a career in education, you aren't surprised in the least. That's where it began and still thrives. Milwaukee, in fact, is something akin to the founder of that attitude, seeing as how it went to the state Supreme Court to have its voucher program approved. That was 35 years ago, and the result has been staggering, if not unpredicted:

• a two-tiered system
• overcrowded classrooms
• dilapidated buildings
• shrinking classroom supplies
• the steadily dropping morale of teachers

All of which is a patented effort to look askance at the public school system as inadequate, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy meant for parents to siphon their kids into privatization. The fact that the public continues to fund these privatized schools has continued to be beside the point. The draining of funding toward public schools makes them look bad, which is only appropriate because increasingly, they can't help it.

Most of the time, though, it is only those within that system that notice that things are slowly but inevitably unraveling. With the mails, though, it's universal. We all notice. And it's not going to take years: It will take only months to see that backing away from a pursuit of increased quality belongs only to the administration that's responsible for it.

The next time something you were anticipating coming through the mail gets there two and three days late, think of those responsible. Think of the neglect it will take for that to additionally fall apart within a relatively short time. Then think of what's happened to education--not because of those who are practicing it, but because of those who are supposed to be caring for it, but don't.

Think about that when you get notice that, in case whatever you sent someone in the mail for Christmas got there a little late. Everybody will apologize, but there will be no oversight involved. You can read that last clause any way you wish.

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

Mister Mark

Of "Caste" and Other Worthy Books: The Protracted Battle

I must say that I've not yet read the book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson. I have it, but I haven't read it.

Apparently, if I lived in Llano County, Texas, I'd consider myself pretty lucky. I wouldn't be able to find a copy of Caste there in any library anymore.

Such is the effect of a recent Supreme Court decision, issued just a few days ago. The Court decided not to intervene in a local dispute about that and other books in county libraries, which had made itself up through the federal appellate court in that circuit.

Caste is, apparently, a powerful testament to the racial divide which still plagues us. Wilkerson is also the author of an important work entitled The Warmth of Other Suns, which documents the experiences of those caught up in The Great Migration, as it is called, from the South to mostly large Northern cities in the years between the world wars--a movement that changed the political and cultural landscape of the United States forever.

Wilkerson calls our divide a caste culture. Many, including me, have never heard it put that way. We think of that as belonging almost exclusively to India, which has declared their class divisions as such, while turning our backs on our own obviousness. It's how so many of us learned about the word and its horrible unfairness, dooming millions (out of a country which now boasts a population of over one billion) to lives without hope of upward mobility.

But a caste culture we are. We know of the stories. We know of the ceilings. Such was also established, for a time, in Nazi Germany. But the Nazis had an excellent example to draw from: Us. Our abuse of blacks and Natives was, and still is, a blueprint for systematically excluding people from significance just on the basis of their race. 

The following is from the preface to Caste. It alone is plenty food for thought: Enough for it to be one of Time magazine's ten best nonfiction books of 2020, and receiving a 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award, among others (source: Wikipedia). But this book may be banned now in many other libraries, for reasons you'd quite frankly have to ask the banners, because it's (purportedly) incredibly well done about a topic necessarily turned on its ear for examination. But since book banners are gathering nationwide, one community at a time, it may lead to an epidemic of banning without the kind of challenge it deserves. So enjoy: You have a place where you can at least read a few pages. It's called "The Man in the Crowd":

        There is a famous black-and-white photograph from the era of the Third Reich. It is a picture taken in Hamburg, Germany, in 1936, of shipyard workers, a hundred or more, facing the same direction in the light of the sun. They are heiling in unison, their right arms rigid in outstretched allegiance to the Fuhrer.

        If you look closely, you can see a man in the upper right who is different from the others. His face is gentle but unyielding. Modern-day displays of the photograph will often add a helpful red circle around the man or an arrow pointing to him. He is surrounded by fellow citizens caught under the spell of the Nazis. He keeps his arms folded to his chest, as the stiff palms of the others hover just inches from him. He alone is refusing to salute. He is the one man standing against the tide.

        Looking back from the vantage point, he is the only person in the entire scene who is on the right side of history. Everyone around him is tragically, fateful, categorically wrong. In that moment, only he could see it.

        His name is believed to have been August Landmesser. At the time, he could not have known the murderous path the hysteria around him would lead to. But he had already seen enough to reject it.

        He had joined the Nazi Party himself years before. By now though, he knew firsthand that the Nazis were feeding Germans lies about Jews, the outcastes of his era, that, even this early in the Reich, the Nazis had caused terror, heartache, and disruption. He knew that Jews were anything but Untermenschen, that they were German citizens, human as anyone else. He was an Aryan in love with a Jewish woman, but the recently enacted Nuremberg Laws had made their relationship illegal. They were forbidden to marry or to have sexual relations, either of which amounted to what the Nazis called "racial infamy."

        His personal experience and close connection to the scapegoated caste allowed him to see past the lies and stereotypes so readily embraced by susceptible members--the majority, sadly--of the dominant caste. Though Aryan himself, his openness to the humanity of the people who had been deemed beneath him gave him a stake in their well-being, their fates tied to his. He could see what his countrymen chose not to see.

        In a totalitarian regime such as that of the Third Reich, it was an act of bravery to stand firm against an ocean. We would all want to believe that we would have been him. We might feel certain that, were we Aryan citizens under the Third Reich, we surely would have seen through it, would have risen above it like him, been that person resisting authoritarianism and brutality in the face of mass hysteria.

        We would like to believe that we would have taken the more difficult path of standing up against injustice in defense of the outcaste. But unless people are willing to transcend their fears, endure discomfort and derision, suffer the scorn of loved ones and neighbors and co-workers and friends, fall into disfavor of perhaps everyone they know, face exclusion or even banishment, it would be numerically impossible, humanly impossible, for everyone to be that man. What would it take to be him in any era? What would it take to be him now?

What indeed? For the pestilence that threatens to now engulf us will not end with its creator. Count on that. There are too many--you can already see them, too, in the headlines--who believe, or have made themselves believe, that they can turn the USA into a cesspool of cheap obedience and white supremacy. We dangle on the edge. Those who would ban a book like Caste will now ban other books just as important and just as revealing, as it has a book about the Ku Klux Klan, about a transgender teen, and about the sexual changes we all go through.

The original case was heard in federal court with the advocates of reading, of libraries, of freedom having won. The county briefly considered closing all its libraries, but it won a reversal in federal circuit court. And now the Supreme Court will not review it, letting the reversal stand and potentially engulfing many other local communities in the same ongoing battle for the public's minds.

That battle is proving to be protracted. In order to maintain some decency about the right to think, people of my age, or so, will have to practice resistance for the rest of our lives. That need to resist may be coming, soon, to a town either near you or to the one to which you belong. This ugly era of authoritarianism assures us of that.

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

Mister Mark

Garbage in the White House: The Chief Creep

It stunned me, I must admit. I never knew.

As a member of the Executive Committee of the National Education Association, I got myself invited to a member conference in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 2008. I don't recall the precise title of it, nor the precise focus. But a discussion of the challenges of English as a Second Language (ESP) broke out in one of the presentations that I attended.

It was there that I learned that not only were there members having to deal with Hispanic students in South Sioux City, Nebraska--just across the Missouri River from Sioux City--but that immigrants from Somalia were working in meat-packing plants in mid-state, were sending their kids to public schools, and those kids needed help.

Somalis. In the middle of south Nebraska. More than a decade ago. Who knew? Talk about a language transition. Wow. 

That thought came to mind when 47, in his ever-present eloquence, referred to Somali immigrants as "garbage," with vice-president J.D. Vance pounding the table in agreement. 

He continued with his generalizations that amount to racism. "These aren't people who work," he is reported to have said. "These aren't people who say, 'Let's go, come on, let's make his place great.'"

But clearly they are working at jobs others would avoid, and have been for some time now. He's unleashing another ICE round-up of immigrants in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, not too terribly far away from Lincoln, and wants to justify it to himself as necessary.

Karoline Leavitt, ever the obedient sycophant, called those remarks an "epic moment." Well, yes. I wonder if they'll go up on whatever monument additional minions put up for 47, like the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural inside the Lincoln Memorial. He said he was a better president than Lincoln, didn't he?

What he's really doing is conflating all Somalis with Ilhan Omar, one of the original "Squad" of four particularly notable female, Democratic members of Congress, back when the media made something special of them. He's obviously resented that, resented that anyone get attention outside of him, and has carried it over to include her along with others trying to make this now rather confusing country their own.

"She's garbage," he said. "Her friends are garbage." Omar happens to represent part of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, so I'm sure he's getting ICE ginned up to do their worst. As if they needed to.

It has mystified him as to why we would accept people from "shithole countries" in Africa. I have one answer for him to contemplate: Because they're better people than you are, dummy. And, again, turning some away and deporting some more does nothing more than shout at the wind, seeing as how Somalis have been here much longer than he'd ever want to consider. He's not going to clean up anything.

Instead, it'll make us look quite the opposite than what we've been used to being. "His obsession with me is creepy," Ms. Omar said. Right again. Creeps do act creepy. And the chief creep, the biggest creep, is likely to act the creepiest.

He's truly not well. Garbage? The new, overdone, ridiculously ostentatious East Wing can't disguise the smell coming from the building.

Those Somalis working in the meat-packing plants had kids. Some of them might be married already. Some of those married might have married white people, too. And had kids. He ought to think about that while brewing his fetid stew of racist, fascist hate.

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

Mister Mark