Category Archives: Random Blogging

Funerals

Like many readers of this blog, I’m at “that” age–the age at which you experience what seem like weekly losses of long-time friends, acquaintances and family members.

Last Friday, I went to yet another funeral.

My deceased friend left an accomplished and loving family. He died after a lifetime of service–to his profession, which was (ironically) that of funeral director–and to his various communities: the Indianapolis Jewish community, of which he was a part, the political community (he was a longtime, passionate liberal Democrat), and especially and always the larger human community, for which he demonstrated infinite love and compassion.

It is a tired phrase, but so true of this particular individual: he never met a stranger.

What struck me during the service were the characteristics the clergy focused on (a number of them participated). One after the other, they remarked upon his integrity, praised his compassion, and admired his willingness to stand up for what he believed. They repeatedly noted that he was a man of his word–that no matter how difficult, if he made a commitment, he kept it.

If he gave you his word, you could “take it to the bank.”

To use an old-fashioned but entirely appropriate word, he was righteous. Yes, his smile could light up a room, his personality was warm and his laugh infectious–but he was also righteous. He was incredibly kind. He was unfailingly moral, but never judgmental.

He was righteous.

As I listened to the (entirely accurate) glowing eulogies, all I could think of was that as those in the (jam-packed) room mourned the loss of a good man, we continue to live in a country with a chief executive whose word is worthless, whose commitments are laughable, and who has displayed absolutely no connection to–or comprehension of– integrity or righteousness. At Trump’s funeral, no one will be able to say with a straight face that he was a good or loving– or even nice– person, let alone honorable or righteous.

There is a growing abyss in our country between truly admirable people (of whom there are more than we sometimes realize) and the empty and pitiable “captains of industry,” political posturers, and pious hypocrites who currently occupy positions of authority and power in this country.

My friend saw that abyss, and it troubled him greatly.

There were hundreds of people at my friend’s funeral. They had to put up a tent outside the capacious funeral home to accommodate the large and diverse crowd who were there to pay their respects to a man who exemplified the attributes of human kind we most admire–a man whose smiles and hugs reached into multiple neighborhoods and constituencies.

At the end of the day–and we are all closing in on the end of our days–the genuine affection of our fellow humans, the earned respect of our peers, and the honesty of a celebratory eulogy is all the success that any of us can really hope for. To repeat another hackneyed truth: we can’t take anything else with us.

It’s the memory of a life lived with integrity, love and compassion, not the trappings of power or wealth or celebrity, that ultimately matters. The hundreds of people who came to my friend’s funeral were there to comfort his family and mourn the passing of someone they genuinely cared about. I’ve been to a number of funerals where that wasn’t the case.

In the Jewish tradition, there’s a saying: may his memory be for a blessing.

Leaving a memory that is a blessing is beyond the ability of today’s self-engrossed wanna-be autocrats to achieve.

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Edging Toward Civil War?

A few days ago, I shared one of the essay questions from my Law and Policy final exam. The question required students to consider the very different–actually opposed–beliefs about what constitutes American “greatness.”

A number of students chose to respond to that question, and although virtually all of their essays were thoughtful, several of them were depressing. As I noted yesterday, at least a couple suggested that we might be heading toward civil war–that Americans’ approaches to the legitimacy and purpose of government are so incommensurate that common ground is simply unattainable.

Nearly all of them blamed social media for many of our inconsistent realities.

As I said yesterday, I would love to dismiss their observations and concerns as overblown, but stories like the one yesterday and this one–which I referenced a few days ago– are becoming more common and more worrisome.

A small group of white nationalists stormed a bookstore in Washington, D.C., to protest an event for a book on racial politics and how it’s impacting lower- and middle-class white Americans.

The group stormed the Politics and Prose bookstore on Saturday afternoon, interrupting a scheduled talk by Jonathan Metzl, a professor of sociology and psychiatry at Vanderbilt University who released his book “Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland” this spring.

Videos filmed by those in attendance showed the group standing in a line before the audience chanting, “This land is our land.” At least one man was yelling white nationalist propaganda into a megaphone while people in the bookstore booed him.

The man identified the group as “identitarians,” a far-right white nationalist group which is linked to Identity Evropa, which the Southern Poverty Law Center lists as an extremist group.

This exhibition of racial and religious animus took place on the very same day that a 19-year-old white supremacist fired on worshippers in a synagogue in Poway, California.
Before he mounted the attack, the shooter had  gone online and posted an eight-page manifesto, in which he boasted about his “European ancestry” and expressed hatred of Jewish people.

Metzl told NBC Washington that before the protest broke out he was speaking to a man who had helped Metzl’s father and grandfather flee Nazi Austria.

“Not five minutes before, I had acknowledged him and said this is how great America can be when it is bold and generous,” Metzl recalled to NBC.

He told the Post that the incident was “very symbolic for me.”

Actually, the incident should be symbolic for all of us.

The man who had helped Metzl’s father and grandfather escape the Nazis represents what many of us–certainly, the people who occupy my own “bubble”–think of as American greatness: generosity of spirit, a willingness to use our own good fortune to assist others, an instinctive impulse to protect people who are weaker or who are being marginalized.

We see America as an idea and citizenship as a diverse polity’s common devotion to that idea.

The “very fine” people who rioted in Charlottesville, who shot up the synagogue in California, who demonstrated in that bookstore and who cheer anti-immigrant slogans at Trump rallies cluster around a very different version of American greatness.

In their morally impoverished reality, only white Christians can be Americans, and only when straight white Christian males are dominant can America be great.

My students are right about one thing: those worldviews are impossible to bridge. They do not lend themselves to compromise. And thanks to Donald Trump and his constant appeals to the basest among us, we are confronted daily with evidence that many more Americans than I ever would have guessed share a significant amounts of  “identitarian” beliefs.

And a hell of a lot of them are armed.

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That Dangerous Alternate Reality

A week or so ago, I noted that, in their final essays, several students had suggested America might be heading for another civil war.

Despite our polarization, despite our increasingly toxic politics, that seemed farfetched. I still find it overblown–after all, this country has gotten through plenty of rough patches since our one (and so far, only) civil war without repeating that horrific experience. Granted, some episodes of civil unrest have been bloody, but they haven’t constituted civil war.

We’ve grown up, right?

Maybe not. This recent story from the Guardian made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Washington state Republican representative Matt Shea and several associates regaled an audience with conspiracy theories, separatist visions and exhortations for listeners to arm themselves ahead of a looming civil war, at a gathering at a remote religious compound in the north-east of the state last year.

In recordings obtained by the Guardian, Shea and Jack Robertson, also known as radio personality John Jacob Schmidt, invoked their visions and fears of a violent leftist revolt in speeches at the 2018 God and Country event in Marble.

The Guardian last week published leaked chat records in which Shea and Robertson were revealed to have discussed the use of surveillance, “psyops” and violence against liberal and leftist activists.

Robertson – who aired fantasies of extreme violence against liberal activists in the leaked chats – told the audience at the 2018 event that they should be prepared for civil war.

In his speech at God and Country last June, which immediately followed Shea’s speech, Robertson said: “Of course, you all know that you should have an AR-15 and a thousand rounds of ammo, right? Because Antifa is kicking up and getting ready to defend, right?”

Barely a week after the Guardian reporter contacted Shea and asked for comment, Shea linked to an Australian white nationalist website post which had criticized the reporter making the call.

Robertson and Shea are evidently regular guests on each other’s broadcasts, which air  on a local “Christian” network. According to the Guardian article, the two of them often share a stage at “patriot movement” events. They’ve been associated with the Christian Identity movement, which interprets the Bible as establishing a racial hierarchy in which Jews and blacks are enemies of the white race, who are the true Israelites.

According to Christian Identity doctrine, the United States should be a theocracy governed by Christians in accordance with divine law (as they interpret divine law).

Years ago, a friend of mine told me, in all seriousness, that 20% of the people we pass on the streets–20% of our countrymen– are mentally ill, and that some number of them are delusional and dangerous. At the time, I thought his estimate was high; I no longer think so.

What neither of us foresaw was the election of someone who is seriously disordered (and none too bright), and the encouragement his Presidency would offer to others who live in a  dystopian alternate reality.

We’re in uncharted territory.

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Facebook Is Making Me Suicidal

I’ve been trying to escape the torrent of stories about the constitutional crisis Trump has precipitated by claiming “Executive Privilege” over the entire Mueller Report and refusing to allow White House functionaries to testify to Congress.

The administration’s escalating assault on constitutional and democratic norms has plunged me into a depression–not just because there is an insane moron in the Oval Office, but–more critically– because not a single Republican Senator is willing to place fidelity to the country over fear of electoral retribution by the party’s rabid base.

Not a single one. They are all fellow-travelers to treason.

As my introductory diatribe probably indicates, I spend a lot of time muttering and despairing…so, recently, I went to my Facebook feed for distraction. (That wasn’t the brightest thing to do, because most of my Facebook friends are as politically irate as I am.)

Here’s what I saw on just a quick scroll:

  • A picture of the student who died in the most recent school shooting, in Colorado. He was three days from high school graduation, and rushed the shooter, saving others. I’m sure the f**ing NRA sends thoughts and prayers.
  • An economic analysis of Trump’s steel tariffs, showing that the cost of each American job created was $900,000. (That is not a typo.) I couldn’t tell whether that number included the extra couple hundred dollars Americans are paying for their washing machines thanks to those tariffs…
  • A NYTimes report that Trump lost 1.17 billion dollars over a decade–the paper obtained tax information detailing the massive losses by our self-proclaimed “deal maker” and also showing that he didn’t pay a dollar of tax during that period. (Now if we could see the more recent taxes he’s so frantic to hide…)
  • Several posts about new anti-choice legislation in Ohio and Georgia. The Georgia version would impose criminal penalties on women who couldn’t prove they didn’t cause their own miscarriages, and would charge women who left the state in order to get legal abortions elsewhere with conspiracy to commit murder.
  • Several posts highlighting despicable statements and blatant lies from Mitch McConnell, aka the most evil man in America. (No, Mitch, it wasn’t Obama’s fault that Russia interfered with our election.)
  • News reports about a group of Neo-Nazis who shoved their way into a Holocaust Memorial ceremony in Arkansas, shouting “Five Million More!” (I’m sure our American Fuhrer would say the group contained some “very fine” people.)
  • A news report that Betsy DeVos’ Department of Education rejected 99% of the applications for loan forgiveness filed by students who were bilked by bogus for-profit “educational” institutions.
  • And this story about a Texas Republican representative who labeled vaccinations “sorcery.” After reading this one, I couldn’t go on.

After deriding public health science as a “scam,” the Representative, one Jonathan Strickland, doubled down on the crazy, telling a pediatrician who works with impoverished children that he was a practitioner of “self-enriching science.” He then engaged in a couple of other illuminating twitter exchanges:

Replying to @RepStickland and 2 others
You are wrong in all particulars, Congressman. As a civil servant, I would expect that you would listen to experts (Peter surely is a leader here) and be…civil. BTW “self enriching science” is myth for almost all of us, but has likely saved your ungrateful life more than once.

Jonathan Stickland@RepStickland
Typical leftist trying to take credit for something only The Lord God Almighty is in control of. Repent!

David Gorski, MD, PhD
✔@gorskon
Notice how, to these “parental rights” antivaxers, it’s all about THEM: THEIR rights. THEIR religion. THEIR freedom. The child’s right not to be medically neglected, not to be left unnecessarily vulnerable to disease, never even enters the equation. It doesn’t occur to them.

Jonathan Stickland@RepStickland
Replying to @gorskon and 3 others
… You can’t seem to understand the notion of freedom and liberty…you have no right to come between me and my doctor of choice, or between me and my religious beliefs. Leave us alone.

Personal responsibility and parental rights confuse you, I get it. You’re a brainwashed commie, not all your fault.

 What makes all of this so frustrating is the absolute inability to have a rational conversation, grounded in reality and evidence, with the dangerous and demented cult that is today’s GOP.

They aren’t interested in policy, they disdain science, and they’re contemptuous of the rule of law. They have invented a “Christian” theology that is consistent with their fears and hostilities. They are motivated entirely by their visceral hatred of the women and minorities that they fear are “replacing” them.

Bottom line: Facebook didn’t distract me. It just reminded me that I’m powerless to “change the channel.”

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The Next Generation

Let me begin with an academic caveat/truism: anecdotes are not data. I know that.

I will nevertheless repeat what I have often said: I would turn this country over to my students in a heartbeat. If my graduate students are at all representative of their generation, they are admirable–inclusive, thoughtful and respectful of evidence.

We have just concluded the spring semester. I give my Law and Public Affairs class a take-home final with three essay questions, from which they are to choose one. Depending upon the question, I’m looking for essays that reflect understanding of the course content and an ability to apply it, recognition of the constraints imposed on policymakers by the Constitution and the rule of law, and a willingness to address the complexities of the conflicts currently bedeviling the policy process.

One of the essay questions on this semester’s final was the following:

Donald Trump’s campaign slogan was “Make America Great Again.” Without addressing the personal characteristics of either candidate in the 2016 election, and without opining whether America was or was not greater in the past, explain the very different views of American greatness suggested by the elections in 2016 and 2018. Do you think these very opposed views of our national character can be reconciled? Why or why not? If not, what do you believe will be the consequence?

Several students chose to respond to that question. I’d like to share parts of one of those responses, not just because it is well-written, but because I think it reflects views that are  widely-held by members of the student’s generation.

The very actors who helped cause the subprime mortgage crisis and subsequent economic downturn have again found a way to capitalize. Ironically, this time it’s on the distrust and anxieties that came out of the Great Recession, where so many lost their jobs or homes or health and have yet to regain any of it, despite this administration’s boasts of a bull market and rising GDP. “If we could just go back,” they argue (back to when or where exactly, no one knows), the answers to our problems must be found in the past. Whereas Donald Trump wants to “Make American Great Again,” Pete Buttigieg tells us “There is no honest politics that revolves around the word ‘again.’” After spending a lot of time thinking about what Buttigieg means by this, I keep coming back to the fundamental question of greatness: What constitutes it in the first place?

What we see today are two different views of greatness. The first sets its sights primarily on economic gain and American sameness, an image less of America but of Americana – one designed mostly by the mid-20th century rise in the advertising, media, and entertainment industries. It’s a place where complexity is reduced to palatable one-liners, a place that can be experienced on a postcard or a Route 66 tour bus. The other view of American greatness, as promulgated by Buttigieg and a host of other progressive voices, is rooted in a very different kind of principle, one I would argue is more realistic about the complexity of our society and the problems we face, but one that’s also hopeful about how American can become greater. This version of American greatness is grounded in the principle that the ways in which we are different from one another are also the ways in which we can be better together. It’s the notion that we can take the very best ideas from each corner of American society and weave those together to create a system that works for everyone. These two versions of greatness might face opposite directions, but their stake is the same: Who gets included in the realization of the Great American Ideal? More importantly, who gets left behind when change comes?

I think these paragraphs do a wonderful job of describing dramatically different visions of American “greatness,” and the very divergent paths the country may choose. My student has cast her vote, concluding that

Making American greater starts by figuring out how to make it work for everyone.

I fervently hope that it will be people like this student who take America into the future.

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