Author Archives: Sheila

Both/And

A former student sent me a blog post by the singer Carrie Newcomer that coincided with an observation of my own that I’d recently discussed with my husband. (I should note here that this wasn’t a student from my “professoring” days–he’s a student from my high-school English teacher days who still keeps in touch! Talk about making this old lady feel appreciated!!)

Newcomer’s post was titled “Holding the Both/And of Human Possibility,” and began with her description of a trip she’d taken to a small town. Her plane had been delayed, and when she got to the airport, the rental car agencies were closed, the town’s only taxi service was closed for the night, and her hotel was a half-hour drive away. She’d reconciled herself to spending the night in the airport with her coat as a blanket, but then the last couple at baggage claim asked her if she had a ride.

They looked at one another (they had been on my same late flight) and said they would be happy to give me a ride to the hotel. Relief rolled down my shoulders and I told them I would be eternally grateful for their help. So as the last lights were dimming in the airport we packed up the back of their car with our things and headed into town. We talked about that region of the country in the springtime, family, music and traveling and I discovered they were returning home from a trip to Australia. With all the weather delays they were more than thirty hours into traveling, but were heading home right after they dropped me off. They were lovely people. When we reached the hotel I offered to help pay for gas (which they graciously refused) and I gave them as many CDs as they would accept. As they were about to leave I mentioned how grateful I was for their help and grateful that my hotel was on their way home. The woman chuckled and the fellow said, “well actually we live about 45 minutes the other direction” and I realized they had added a full hour to their already brutally long travel day —to help out someone they didn’t know who was going to have to sleep in an airport alone until morning.

Newcomer went on to contrast that kindness with a recent speech in which Trump had made fun of people with various disabilities, and reminded her readers that it was far from the first time “this man has used the dangerous tools of authoritarianism to marginalize, demonize or dehumanize entire groups of people (immigrants, persons of color, women, persons with disabilities, and others).”

The rest of the post is a thought-provoking meditation on how we should live in a world where we inevitably encounter both kinds of people. I encourage you to click through and read the entire post, because it is thoughtful and inspiring–and absolutely true.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I read Newcomer’s essay just after I had shared a similar observation with my husband. After we downsized, we moved into an apartment building in the center of Indianapolis’ downtown. The vast majority of other residents are a very diverse population of young professionals–and I do mean young. And they have been unfailingly kind and considerate. They open doors for us, offer to help us with packages, wish us a good day…From what I can tell, those courtesies extend to each other, even though they represent a very diverse mix of ethnicities, races and even nationalities.

They give me hope.

And then I turn on the news, and see what Carrie Newcomer described so movingly. As a commenter here noted a couple of days ago, it isn’t just Trump. His MAGA supporters are evidence that there are many fearful, limited people who have channeled those fears and limitations into grievance and hate. Worse still, there are so many candidates willing to pander to that hate and encourage those bigotries. (One of the Republican candidates for Indiana Governor is currently running an ad in which Tucker Carlson characterizes Black Lives Matter members as “cop killers.” He ran a previous ad featuring an African student he’d helped, so I presume he thought it inoculated him against charges of racism…)

Both/And…

As Newcomer says, we live at a time when all our daily actions matter for lifting up the potential for goodness. Read the essay.

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The Best People…

Sometimes, seeing information compiled–even if you’ve come across most of it scattered over various places–makes an impact that the same information didn’t make when you encounter it piecemeal. At least, that was my reaction when I visited the blog of a reader named Dr. Chris Lamb.

I don’t know Dr. Lamb personally, but I was–and am– impressed with the sheer amount of work he did in researching Donald Trump’s “best people.” We all remember the boasts–Trump was going to hire only the “best people.” He was going to consult and use those “best people” to remake the federal government–i.e., destroy the imagined “deep state” and “drain the swamp.” We also remember how that turned out; the people who actually were competent quickly left, and a fair number of those who were venal or simply ignorant of the functions they were placed in charge of also left–and then turned on him by sharing anecdotes about his appalling behaviors.

Lamb’s list is introduced as follows:

Three years ago, after President Donald Trump left the White House, I began chronicling the names of the people who were complicit in the worst presidency in a century and what might be most corrupt presidential administration in history.

I’ve compiled 300 names (so far) for the blog,

Only the Best People:  The criminals, sycophants, bigots, swindlers, liars, demagogues, pedophiles, pornographers, imbeciles, lunatics, bullies, misogynists, parasites, plagiarists, perjurers, extortionists, traitors, conspiracy junkies, and other deviants who contributed to the Trump presidency.

The following is a list of names on the blog accompanied by brief summaries of each post.

You can click a link to each person to read brief bios that run in length from 100 to 2,000 words. Each post is accompanied by links to the sources of my information.

I am going to cut today’s post short, in hopes that you will use the time saved to visit Lamb’s blog–and see, in one place, the cesspool that was Trump’s “best people.” If nothing else, it will remind you why it is so critical to keep this mentally-ill mob boss and his abysmal gang far away from the levers of power.

(When you do click through, be patient. The site takes a couple of minutes to load.)

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The Rent Is Too Damn High!!

Remember the candidate who ran for Mayor of New York some years back whose single-issue political party and campaign slogan were both “the rent is too damn high”?”

What made me think about him was a recent meeting I sat in on, with Senate candidate Marc Carmichael and a couple of local experts on housing. Marc wanted to be brought up to speed with what has become a significant national issue: the cost of housing (and especially the lack of housing for low-income renters) and the range of national policies that might address the problem. (The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, Jim Banks, has been too busy waging culture war against abortion and trans children to bother with legislation that might actually help people; Carmichael actually wants to “do the job.”)

Marc wasn’t the only one who learned a lot in that meeting. I did, too. So I was interested in a recent publication by the Brookings Institution titled “Ten Economic Facts About Rental Housing.”

The publication reports what most of us know: rental housing has become considerably less affordable over the past several years. We have low vacancy rates and high rent inflation, resulting in housing costs that strain the budgets of lower-income households.

The very low unemployment rate and recent strength in wages makes clear that housing instability in the U.S. is, in large part, a structural problem, one that will not be fully solved by a strong economy. Fiscal support for federal housing benefits is inadequate, eligible households wait years for benefits, and the number of single individuals experiencing homelessness has risen. Any effective solution will require policy actions by lawmakers.

Brookings research shows that approximately one-third of U.S. households rent, although the share of renters varies considerably by age of the head of household, ranging from 21 percent of households headed by someone 65 and older to 58 percent of households headed by someone ages 25 to 34. Renting also varies depending upon the head of household’s education, income, and race or ethnicity.

The paper identifies the ten facts that influence housing costs, and the link includes explanations of each. The explanations are well worth pondering, and if you want to gain a broader understanding of these complex issues, I encourage you to click through and read the entire report. But here, in brief, are the factors Brookings identifies:

  • 1. Households are more likely to rent if the household head has no college degree, is in a lower income quintile, or is Black.

  • 2. One-third of rental units are single-family rentals.

  • 3. Rental vacancies have returned to pre-pandemic levels, while multifamily housing starts have leveled off.

  • 4. Rental housing vacancy rates are highest in the Southeast.

  • 5. Rental price inflation is declining to pre-pandemic levels.

  • 6. Rent inflation looks similar across U.S. metropolitan statistical areas.

  • 7. For renting households with low earnings, rent is consistently more than one-third of their total expenditures.

  • 8. Federal housing assistance consistently falls short of housing needs.

  • 9. Single adults are driving the rise in unsheltered homelessness.

  • 10. Families wait years to receive a housing choice voucher.

A number of these structural causes are related to policy choices at both the state and federal levels. Housing assistance is part of America’s tattered and bureaucratic social safety net–and the failure of that assistance to materially address the problem is one more “data point” that should be considered in a much longer-range discussion about the holes in that net. That said, there are clearly areas where a renewed focus on actual governance would ameliorate at least some of the problems renters face.

At the end of the day, voters need to recognize the differences between culture warriors and policymakers–between candidates focused on the often-boring, day-to-day “grunt work” of actual governance, and the antics of the rabid Christian Nationalists who have neither the knowledge of nor interest in the mundane but incredibly important details of economic and social policy.

The embarrassing television ads being run in Indiana’s primary contests tell me that–at least on the Republican side–candidates are confident that voters fail to recognize that distinction–or, for that matter, the distinction between genuinely local issues and those requiring a national response.

In November, Americans will choose between serious candidates who are willing to educate themselves on the issues and committed to actual governance–to doing the job– and performative buffoons like Banks whose messaging is intended to inflame and divide– the culture warriors who have absolutely no interest in the complexities of the day-to-day issues with which so many Americans struggle.

It is said that in Indiana, an R next to a candidate’s name is sufficient to elect a turnip.

I am cautiously optimistic that this year will be different.

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Cultivating Solidarity

A few years before I retired, I attended an academic conference in Sweden on “Social Citizenship,” a concept commonplace in Europe and utterly foreign to Americans. I came away with a far better understanding of both the concept of “social citizenship” and the importance of a robust social infrastructure.

What do I mean by “social infrastructure”?

The dictionary defines infrastructure as the “basic physical and organizational structures and facilities needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.” Most of us are familiar with this definition in the context of physical infrastructure: roads, bridges, sewers, the electrical grid, public transportation, etc. Within the category of physical infrastructure I’d also include physical amenities like parks and bike lanes. Schools, libraries and museums probably fall somewhere between physical and social infrastructure. Purely social infrastructure includes laws that prevent the strong from preying on the weak, and–importantly– the various programs that make up what we call the social safety net.

What made me think about that conference was a recent essay in the New York Times on the concept of solidarity. It began:

These days, we often hear that democracy is on the ballot. And there’s a truth to that: Winning elections is critical, especially as liberal and progressive forces try to fend off radical right-wing movements. But the democratic crisis that our society faces will not be solved by voting alone. We need to do more than defeat Donald Trump and his allies — we need to make cultivating solidarity a national priority.

For years, solidarity’s strongest associations have been with the left and the labor movement — a term invoked at protests and on picket lines. But its roots are much deeper, and its potential implications far more profound, than we typically assume. Though we rarely speak about it as such, solidarity is a concept as fundamental to democracy as its better-known cousins: equality, freedom and justice. Solidarity is simultaneously a bond that holds society together and a force that propels it forward. After all, when people feel connected, they are more willing to work together, to share resources and to have one another’s backs. Solidarity weaves us into a larger and more resilient “we” through the precious and powerful sense that even though we are different, our lives and our fates are connected.

Social solidarity is the antithesis of the tribalism that is tearing America apart. The essay goes into considerable detail about the efforts of the political Right to undermine connections between groups, and also faults leftists who downplay the important role of policy in shaping public sensibilities. 

Laws and social programs not only shape material outcomes; they also shape us, informing public perceptions and preferences, and generating what scholars call policy feedback loops….. Policies can either foster solidarity and help repair the divides that separate us or deepen the fissures.

I have repeatedly argued that American solidarity depends upon the allegiance of our diverse tribes to what I call the “American Idea”–the governing philosophy underpinning the Constitution and Bill of Rights. E Pluribus Unum envisions that philosophy as an overarching belief system that unifies Americans while respecting our differences.

I have also argued that America’s inadequate and bureaucratic social safety net ignores a fundamental precept of social solidarity: the concept of membership.

Remember that American Express commercial proclaiming that “membership has its privileges”? Several  countries, not just those in Scandinavia, base their social programs on the theory citizens are “members.” 

In today’s America, the Right is intent upon excluding disfavored minorities from “membership,” insisting that only White Christians can be “real Americans”–aka members.

The widespread belief that not everyone is entitled to be considered a “member” is one of the central flaws of America’s social welfare system. You can see it in the dramatic differences in attitudes about means-tested welfare (negative) versus Social Security and Medicare (positive). When a benefit is universal, it unifies rather than exacerbating tribal animosities. I’ve never heard anyone complain “those people are driving on roads paid for with my tax dollars!”

One of the great virtues of a Universal Basic Income is that it would be universal. Not only would it eliminate the costs of America’s enormous welfare bureaucracy and the manifest inequities and humiliations of the present programs, it would avoid the stereotyping of recipients that deprives them of human dignity and excludes them from “membership.”

What if government provided a social infrastructure within which all members would be guaranteed a subsistence livelihood, access to health care, a substantive education and an equal place at the civic table, and in return, would exact “dues:” higher taxes and the discharge of civic duties like voting, jury service and a stint of public service?

A girl can dream….

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Ever Wonder Where MAGAs Get Those T-Shirts?

As regular readers of this blog know, I read a lot of stuff from a lot of very different sources. Mostly, I do so in order to find material to post about, but I also do so because I’m retired, curious and have time but no hobbies– and I’m not much for movies and television viewing.

I mention this because, as I’ve continued to skim available media, I have slowly come to a very concerning conclusion: the MAGA, far-Right takeover of this country is a lot farther along than most normal Americans realize. I alluded to that when I posted about the Heritage Foundation’s willingness to put its appalling Plan 2025 in writing, evidently confident that any blowback to its profoundly anti-democratic, anti-American proposals would be offset by the embrace of millions of committed culture warriors.

Once you look around, you can identify numerous examples of just how far MAGA has penetrated. Trump and McConnell accelerated its capture of the federal courts. Faux News and its proliferating clones provide alternate realities to MAGA folks offended by verifiable facts. Americans continue to retreat into selected tribes. In much of Red America, Christian Nationalism has been normalized.

Then, of course, there’s the considerable cowardice of most Republican office-holders; as Liz Cheney recently said, most of the GOP members of Congress know that Trump is a liar and a danger to the Republic, but they are terrified of his supporters–the current base of the Republican Party.

I’ve recently come across more pedestrian examples, and in a way, I find them even more chilling.

The New Republic recently published a column describing Rightwing business startups. These are businesses that deliberately gear their appeal to the MAGA “tribe.” We’ve evidently come a long way from the time that businesses avoided political identification like the plague, believing that “weighing in” on contested political issues posed  an unacceptable risk to their brands. (That belief was so BT: before Trump.) The article focused on two companies: the Black Rifle Coffee Company (intended to become the “Starbucks of the Right”) and Nine Line Apparel.

Black Rifle got seed money from one Brandon Herrera,

a gun YouTuber and DIY machine-gun manufacturer known as the “AK Guy.’” Two weeks ago, after forcing the Republican congressman representing Uvalde, Texas, Tony Gonzales, into a runoff after he dared vote for a gun safety bill, Herrera tweeted, “Texas is done with RINOS. The war starts now.”

It also turns out that a“black rifle” is not a rifle that is black. It’s an AR-15 assault rifle.

You may have seen Black Rifle’s logo–Kyle Rittenhouse was photographed in the company’s t-shirt after bailing out of jail for fatally shooting a Black Lives Matter demonstrator. Or maybe you saw it on pictures of the “Zip Tie Guy” during the January 6th insurrection–the guy who was going to use his zip ties as tools to hog-tie “treasonous” senators–who wore a baseball cap featuring a Black Rifle product.

The linked article suggests that Black Rifle is just the leading edge of “a trend of brands that make fascist aesthetics into a central part of their business strategy.”

ONE COMPANY ORGANIZED ON THE BLACK RIFLE MODEL is both more modest (it booked an estimated $36 million in annual revenue in 2023, compared to BRCC’s $300 million) and more immoderate. None of Evan Hafer’s crisis communications–style hedging for Nine Line Apparel. After visiting their website, my feed immediately began filling up with ads picturing images like the Christmas card trollingly circulated by Gen. George S. Patton’s son, also a general, after the revelation of the My Lai massacre. Beside the inscription “Peace on Earth,” it depicted a stack of Vietnamese corpses. He also passed around a picture of himself posing with a polished skull with a bullet hole above the eye. Dad bods can now sport stuff like that on a hoodie for the low, low price of $47.99, less if you join Nine Line’s “Patriots Club.”

Among Nine Line’s products: a Spartan helmet done up in Darth Vader black above the legend “I’m a patriot. Weapons are part of my religion,” a Blue Lives Matter flag identifying the stripe in the center as the “Barrier between community and lawlessness,” and t-shirts proclaiming that “Family/Faith/Friends/Flag/Firearms” are “5 Things You Don’t Mess With” and an Air Force number that boasts “Dropping warheads on foreheads since 1947.”

As the article correctly notes, these enterprises are further confirmation of the willingness of many Americans to divide the moral universe into “two incommensurate categories—us, who are blamelessly pure, and them, who are dangerous pollutants of that purity.”

Or in the inimitable words of their Lord and Savior Donald Trump, they are “vermin.”

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