75TH ANNIVERSARY OF UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Seventy five years ago today, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  The document, which was written under the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt, codified the basic rights of every person on earth.  

Since the adoption, the country that took the lead in the drafting of the UDHR, the United States, has rhetorically promoted the idea of "the rule of law" and "a rules based order" while turning a blind (or sometimes, encouraging) eye to allied dictators around the world.  This betrayal of Ms. Roosevelt's work was most famously conducted by (the finally departed) Henry Kissinger.

Then came Jimmy Carter.  Carter stood up and said, 'we mean it'.  Diplomats, politicians and former political prisoners around the world, reported that Carter drove dictators and South American generals crazy.  Amnesty International received the Nobel Peace Prize, prisoners of conscience went free, torture chambers were cleared out, executions became less common.  And a spotlight was on human rights abusers everywhere.  But, not everyone was pleased.  And when 9/11 came along, they were ready.  As America began operating torture chambers, black sights, extrajudicial executions and bombed civilians in multiple countries, dictators everywhere jumped to follow the example and excuse their behavior as "fighting terrorism".  

For a short while one could believe that this was the fault of Republicans.  George Bush won reelection in 2004.  Even then, one could say that at least 49% of Americans opposed being complicit in torture.  Four years later, Barak Obama was elected.  He essentially said, 'nope, it's all of us!'.  With his declaration of "looking forward, not backwards", he instituted impunity for war criminals.  He then ordered bombings of civilians and extrajudicial executions that would have made Dick Cheney blush.  

Today is the second Sunday of Advent.  It's 94 miles from Nazereth to Bethlehem.  Eighteen miles from Gaza City to Khan Yunis.  Different times.  Different trips.  Then, the poor father to be and his very pregnant wife could find no vacancy at any inn.  As I type this, a current version of Joseph knows there is no inn, hospital, or hope, left.  He, and his modern day Mary, will have to make their own shelter.  And, just as 2000 years ago, they need it now, because contractions won't wait.  Not for lodging and not for a cease fire.  

So, as they trudge, on foot (driving is impossible with streets filled with the rubble of bombed apartment buildings, and the gas is gone, anyway) around chunks of concrete, downed power lines and bits of human flesh, searching for plastic sheeting, rope or cable with which to construct a tent on what was once a sidewalk.  All without knowing where their next meal or drink of water will come from.  Everything predicated on they not being shot by snipers, bombed by drones, planes or missiles or crushed by falling buildings.  And those would be the better deaths.  The next street over is hell on earth, as white phosphorus is dropped on their fellow refugees.  White phosphorus ignites immediately on contact with oxygen and burns the skin, corneas and lungs.  It is dropped on these wretched souls by each of us.  Yes, dear reader.  We're not ruled by prophets, judges or kings.  We claim to govern ourselves, our will done by our elected representatives.  Our President and Congress, egged on by corporate media, have shoveled billions of dollars, and provided 2000 pound bombs, along with that phosphorus, to a foreign government that has literally proclaimed that modern day holy family to be the Amaleks, who must be smote.  

If you've read this far, you're probably thinking this detour to Palestine is a pretty far stretch, from his original point, even for Jimmy. Is it?  War crimes and crimes against humanity are being committed right before our eyes, even if our preachers tell us it's OK to take a break and look away, and even if our media sanitizes the news.  If there is a rule of law, it applies to everyone.  If there are rights, they apply always, especially in the most difficult times.  And what we are witnessing, this 2nd Sunday of Advent, is the most innocent and helpless, being the most violated.  Collective guilt, for the actions of others, placed on them and collective punishment being meted out to them.  Without their most basic rights being respected, and without an immediate cease fire being implemented, this little Jesus isn't going to make it to Christmas.  

KING WASN'T CUDDLY. HE WAS RIGHTIOUS, BRAVE AND PROPHETIC

 I remember Stevie Wonder campaigning to make Martin Luther King's birthday a holiday.  I also remember Bull Conner, whips, dogs and firehoses on my TV as a child.  And I remember my dad looking up from the phone, when my sister called to tell him King had been murdered.  

I don't think this is what Stevie had in mind when he sang that we need a holiday.  I realized, this weekend, that I don't recognize the King that most of the country is celebrating.  

As I sat in church Sunday, the lady giving the talk during "kid church" told them that Dr. King was a good man that wanted people to be nice to each other.  Some people were bad to him.  Just like sometimes people are grumpy with us.  Just like Jesus, King wanted us to treat others as we'd want to be treated.  

No!  No!  No!  If that was the case, we'd have never heard of him.  He'd be just another anonymous minister preaching the gospel on Sunday mornings.  Yes, he preached the Gospel of Jesus and emphasized the principal of turning the other cheek.  But the point was to prod the conscience of the wider (whiter) nation.  He didn't travel and preach niceness.  He demanded justice.  He condemned racism, militarism and economic inequality.  Both Jesus and King knew where their defiance of the powerful would probably lead.  Crucifixion for Jesus and, for King, death from blunt force trauma from a truncheon, his neck in a noose or (as it turned out) a bullet.  

We're guilty of doing the same thing as the book burners and banners.  We're obscuring history.  As those of us who lived during King's (and the movement's) time age, it's imperative that young people learn the unadulterated story.  King wasn't trying to change the minds of grumpy people.  He was fighting wicked, evil people who were willing to bomb children, shoot fathers in their driveways and condemn millions of fellow citizens to second class citizenship.  

I reject the argument that children's psyches are too fragile, too undeveloped to be given such traumatic information.  We're doing them no favors hiding reality from them and we commit a second crime against the victims of the violence King was resisting by diluting their stories.  Children were in the protests!  Children were beaten and killed.  White children, like me, in the North witnessed this on our televisions when we were in primary school.  It happened.  We saw it.  And because of that, we can never not know.  

Many of us became human rights activists because of how we grew up.  But, only because we had a realistic picture of how dangerous violations of civil and human rights can be.  If we sanitize history, and if the growing fascist movement erases history, how can we expect a future generation to stand up for their rights or those of others?

For years now, we see politicians, preachers and, heck, even our relatives quoting King and holding him (and selective quotes from him) up as support for their political views on any given topic.  Instead of allowing Martin Luther King to become a mythical figure like George Washington confessing to chopping down the cherry tree, let's take him back.  The real Dr. King.  The one who chastised moderates in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail.  The King who gave the Beyond Vietnam speech at NY's Riverside Church one year to the day before he was shot.  The one who said, 

"  ...we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

As we should with Jesus, let's celebrate not the King we are given after his death.  Let's celebrate the one that was hated during his life.   

 

BOST VS. THE VOTERS

Mike Bost should stop working against our American right to vote!  He is currently helping front a law suit that seeks to throw out legally cast votes, that arrive after Election Day.  State law allows vote by mail ballots to be counted if received within 14 days after Election Day, if they are post marked on or before the final day of voting.  Those lacking a post mark and those with illegible post marks may be counted if the voter dated and signed the ballot on or before Election Day.

So, if a voter goes by all the rules, but the Post Office fails to deliver the ballot on time, Mike Bost wants to just chuck out the voter's legitimate ballot.  Why?  Well, he claims that those mailed in ballots arriving after Election Day (but cast prior to) would “dilute” the other votes.  What?

Bost's beef should be with the Post Office (which in his scenario would fail to deliver the votes in a timely manner), not with the voter who has obeyed the rules and cast and mailed their ballot on time. But he (and by extension, the organization he is partnering with, Judicial Watch) is not really concerned with process or timeliness.  He's looking for a way to eliminate legitimate votes for his opponent.

Congressman Bost has spent years promoting the idea that he is a great friend to veterans.  Apparently, not so much for active duty military personnel voting by mail from overseas.

He claims to the court that counting these legally cast votes would harm him by reducing his margin of victory.  He states that election results are the best measure by which to judge his effectiveness as a congressman.  No.  The best measure of a congressman is his legislative record.  Period.

Oddly, in a lawsuit seeking to disenfranchise some voters, Bost asks, “were voters disenfranchised during the Colonial Early Republic, Civil War, Reconstruction and 20th Century eras… ?”  Well, now that he brings it up, yes, yes they were.  Only landowners could vote in the first years of the Republic. Few blacks, and no slaves, could vote in the Civil War era.  No women could vote during Reconstruction. And until the 1965 Voting Rights Act, millions of blacks could still not vote.  Many Americans, such as Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and Viola Liuzzo died fighting for universal enfranchisement.  Many more, such as C.T. Vivian and John Lewis were beaten.

Bost seeks to muddy the waters by falsely referring to the ballots in question as “unlawful”.  They are not.  He just wishes they were.  Federal law establishes Election Day; these votes have been cast on or prior to Election day and mailed on or prior to Election Day.  State law provides that if they arrive within two weeks of Election Day, they be counted.  Again, the voter has correctly cast the ballot, and mailed it, on time.  They cannot control its delivery.  Why does Mike Bost want to take away their right to vote?  Why does he assume those votes will be against him?

He doesn't seem to trust the people of southern Illinois.  He never holds public town hall meetings.  He once explained his fear by comparing those who might question or criticize him at one to the Red Guards of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.  Really?  That's how he thinks of southern Illinoisans?  Look in the mirror. Mike Bost doesn't care much for the person you see there.  He doesn't care if you have access to high speed internet.  Doesn't care if the oil companies price gouge you at the pump and doesn't care if the pharmaceutical companies overcharge you for insulin.

Instead of playing footsie with groups that want to sabotage our right to vote, with law suits from Texas to Pennsylvania and now Illinois, Congressman Bost should do the job we're paying him for.

IT'S BOB'S BIRTHDAY, THOUGHT I SHOULD NOTE THAT

 The soundtrack of my life sounds both heavy and corny, but I barely remember life before Dylan.  I first became aware of rock and roll when the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan.  I was in second grade.  Shortly after, I was flipping through some entertainment, or women's magazines, that my mom had stashed for when she was bored at the dry cleaning drop off she ran on Main St.  The writer described taking her teen aged daughter to performances by bands and singers her kid liked.  The line that struck me was about some guy whose last name looked to me like it would be pronounced 'die lann'.  She said while her daughter may have wanted to bring Mick Jagger home, she (mom) wanted to take this guy to a hospital.  

Soon, Like a Rolling Stone was as familiar as Satisfaction.  But, growing up, in grade school, I knew there were other songs too, like Blowing in the Wind.  The nuns would try to get us to sing the words to the church song they had ripped off from popular music.  Blowing in the Wind became Living in All Men...  for guitar mass.  I hated that.  

But my lifelong connection, for lack of a better word, to Bob Dylan came the day I first heard Positively 4th Street on the radio.  I looked around to see if anyone else was listening.  This should be a secret.  People didn't talk like that.  People didn't think like that!  Well, they did, but you didn't say it out loud.  Now people say any fool thing they want, live their supposed lives on reality TV shows and there are no taboos.  Girls will be boys and boys will be girls.  But, life was different in the mid 1960s.  The world was still in black and white.  I couldn't get over that song.  The attitude.  The exposure of hypocrisy.  The pissitude!  Fuck off, in a song.  Fuck everyone, really.  One of the first albums I ever bought was Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits.  Positively 4th Street is on it.  Maybe it was being an only child, but that song, stiff arm and middle finger introduced me to an attitude I could never shake. 

I remember my fascination when I discovered my friend Paul Bamman's brother Steve had left his record collection, in their attic, when he went off to college.  That was the first time I ever saw the album Highway 61 Revisited.  Dylan looked like the coolest person in the world, sitting there on the album cover.  I was mesmerized by the liner notes.  "I accept chaos.  I do not know if it accepts me."

I soon bought Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Volume 2 and played both albums relentlessly from 7th grade through college.  The quote never made into a high school year book, but if I had a lifelong theme, it was the last verse to Maggie's Farm:  

"I try my best, to be just like I am

but everybody wants you 

to be just like them.

They say, 'sing while you slave',

and I just get bored."

I started collecting all his albums, or trying, including Highway 61.  One Christmas morning, Eddie and Rosalie knocked on our back door and brought me a copy of Dylan's self titled first album and invited me to "go for a ride in the car".  I'm still trying to teach myself some of those old blues songs on that album.  

A couple carloads of us drove to St. Louis, on a school night, Feb 4th, 1974 to see Dylan and the Band.  In what later became so common place it became a pop culture joke, the crowd held up lit matches while calling for an encore.  Later, over the years, concert goers would hold up cigarettes and lighters and today, they use cell phones.  But, the practice began a couple of shows before St. Louis, on that tour.  

 Everybody has music for life events, be they joyous or heart rending.  Dylan provides for any occasion.  Fierce permanence in Planet Wave's Wedding Song.  World weary sorrow, loss and the winsome discovery that life goes on, on Blood on the Tracks.  Anger, sweet memory and pleasure in Desire, giving way to the final hopeless hope of the last two lines of the album, "don't ever leave me; don't ever go."

Dylan played the SIU arena, on Halloween 1978.  I, and 500 of my best friends, slept on the sidewalk outside the ticket window the night before they went on sale.  After, 25,000 partied on Illinois Ave.  I've seen him four more times since, at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield in 1989 (an unknown, to me, Steve Earle opened), again at the SIU Arena in 1990, in 2005 at the Pageant in St. Louis and in 2007 at the Fabulous Fox.  Different times:  high school, college, early 30s/beginning parenthood and a career, middle age/travel/political activism/twilight of a career. Soundtrack.

I stopped buying his albums when a lot of others did.  The song writing lagged.  But then he'd come out with Oh Mercy.  And then a killer song, Things Have Changed.  And then, in rapid succesion, Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, and Modern Times.  Jerry Garcia died and Dylan inherited many of his nomadic concert followers to add to his own.  His shows were packed again.  I was buying his albums.  But, I never thought he was someone you'd want to hang out with.  I assumed he would rapidly turn that scorn he held interviewers with on anyone.  Then becomes a DJ.  Theme Time Radio Hour.  The former religious convert, who sounded pissed off for 20 years, sounded absolutely jovial.  Turns out that he just needs to be turned loose on a subject he likes.  And he loves American popular music.  Here was a guy I would have hung out with. 

Speaking of which, if you judge one by their friends, Dylan is the coolest.  He seemed to return to certain collaborators:  George Harrison, Van Morrison, Patti Smith.  As Chrissie Hynde would say, he's "the last of the independents."  

EPIPHANY FOR A FAILED COUP

Three days later and what seemed unbelievable then, we now (or we should) realize, was worse than we thought.  In fact, as awful and ongoing as this nightmare is, and was, but for accidents of timing and circumstance, we could be living in a very different world right now.  What if Trump had been even more overt?  What if he had marched to the capitol with the crowd?  What if the crowd had gotten into the Senate chamber, even sooner?  What if they had quickly gotten into the House chamber?  What if those House security personnel had been overwhelmed?  What if they had gone over to the other side, as some of their brethren, outside the building, and downstairs, had done?

 As someone who watched the Capitol overrun, live on TV, I was most stunned by how quickly it occurred.  We now know that was due to police negligence and complicity at the lower levels, and maybe by design at command levels.   Either way, the seat of government of the most powerful country in human history, a building closed to the public due to COVID for months, suddenly had swarms of people roaming its halls, offices and legislative chambers.  These enemy combatants forced their way past metal detectors and any Capitol Police that were inclined to do their jobs.  

And what was their goal?  For most, they probably didn't know.  Many had no idea where the chambers were or what to do next.  They had overrun the citadel of the politicians they hated and of the government they've been taught to hate.  Vaguely, they wanted to stop the certification of the election.  But, some of them had an idea.  Trump had given it to them:  hang Mike Pence. 

I want to point out not only the horror of that, but that that would have been the beginning, not the end of the blood letting.  If the crowd had breached the Senate chamber before the Secret Service could get him out, and the crowd laid hands on him, one of two things could have happened.  One, the Vice President of the United States gets held hostage.  Anyone doing that would probably grab the Senate President Pro Tempore Chuck Grassley, as well.  Or, the crowd that was chanting, "where's Pence?  Hang Mike Pence?", might have used some of that gear they brought and hung him from the Senate gallery.  Or taken him outside to the gallows they'd built.

 And, if they did that, the blood lust would take hold.  If they are going to hang Christian Mike Pence, who thinks they wouldn't murder Bernie Sanders and Chuck Shumer, two Jews that they hate?  Think I'm being hyperbolic?  On Trump's stage, Congresswoman Mary Miller quoted Hitler.  Hitler.  And her audience?  The crowd that stormed the capitol, a crowd with people wearing t-shirts that read "6MWNE" (six million wasn't nearly enough) and Camp Auschwitz.  

Now let's remember the scene in the House of Representatives.  The one with security aiming drawn guns at a door that the crowd was busting through.  What if security lost the gun battle?  What if the crowd decided 'they can't kill us all'?  If the Secret Service couldn't get Pelosi out, the Speaker of the House, second in line of succession could have been kidnapped, or murdered.  

Does anyone believe she would have been spared if some in that crowd could have gotten her?  Now imagine they get their hands on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  Or, Ilhan Omar.  

In addition to the atrocities and violations they would have had to endure, their fellow members would have been hostages.  Maybe in both chambers.  How would that end?  Simply certify Trump the winner, under duress?  A hostage negotiation?  By whom?  Storm the building with commandos?  

While the end of the story is unpredictable, we all understand what one immediate result would have been, last Wednesday.  With the capitol building in control of terrorists, and hundreds of elected officials hostage or dead, the line of succession broken or uncertain, Trump would declare martial law.  Uncooperative generals would be dismissed and, realistically what could they do?  Who could a conscientious general turn to?  Congress is held captive, Pence, Pelosi and Grassley are out of action.  There would be nothing much else they could do, but obey Trump.  And he would likely play the tough law and order president, ordering Congress be retaken by force.  We've seen such scenarios play out other places.  The hostages die.  

We're not out of the woods.  Trump is still president.  A weak willed "opposition" party has dithered, rather than immediately impeach him (they adjourned!).  And, his followers are still out there, radicalized.  

There are good people out there, who have been slowly converted to this cult of personality.  They've been told for 40 years, by politicians, pundits and preachers that they belong to the party of God.  They are against abortion.  They are intolerant of any form of sexuality that they believe deviates from the Old Testament.  They are told they are the patriots because they adore all things martial:  guns, police, the military.  Then they were told that science was iffy.  The preachers taught that evolution was false and the politicians said they didn't know; they weren't scientists.  In the meantime, radio, FOX News and the internet propagandized millions, on a daily basis.  For the last year, good, intelligent people have aped Trump's denials of the extent, contagiousness and morbidity of the coronavirus.  This weekend, even after all that we witnessed on Wednesday, January 6, they believe Trump was cheated out of the election and that he is some kind of victim because a social media site has banned him after years of his violating their terms of service.  There is a word for mindless, militaristic, authoritarian, violent anti-intellectualism:  fascism.  

It's not coming.  It's here.  

Wednesday was, as Nancy Pelosi pointed out in her speech that night, the Feast of the Epiphany.  There are no wise men coming to save us.  Millions of Germans had scales on their eyes for nearly 15 years.  They were deprogrammed through a denazification program that included trials and reeducation.  That education regarding a failed fascist past, the necessity for democracy and racial tolerance continues, 75 years later.  We need to get started.  The stormtroopers are among us. 

MY PREDICTIONS FOR THE 2020 ELECTION

 

There are those who like to skip to the end of a book to see who dunnit.  For those, I'll put my bottom line prediction here at the top.  I think Biden will win the popular vote and in the Electoral College (293 to 245).   A map of how I think this will play out, by state, is here.  This assumes a narrow Biden victory in both Pennsylvania and Michigan and that Democrats can overcome any shenanigans in North Carolina.  I do not believe they can overcome the governor of Georgia and I think they will lose Florida.

Numerically, that's what I think will happen, and I've taken into account possible voter suppression, in the map above.  As far as what is going to transpire, after the voting, I've been thinking about several scenarios, some unlikely, some terrifying and some in between.

1.  Trump wins.  As with 2016, he loses the popular vote.  But, again, he wins the electoral college.  Democrats concede.  There are spontaneous demonstrations, as there were four years ago, but they are put down by Barr and emboldened local police forces across the country.

2.  There is a legitimate tie 269-269 in the Electoral College. In the end, this is a Trump victory.  What happens in between, I can't foresee.  Probably lawsuits from both sides as well as demonstrations from both sides and some violence.

3.  Biden wins, but by just a little in the Electoral College. Trump and Barr and the Republicans go scorched earth in the courts.  Many Democratic votes are discounted. Some Republican legislatures and/or governors certify slates of electors that are faithless to their states popular vote.  The left and mainstream Democrats go into the streets to protest the theft of the election. Some demonstrations are massive.  Trump signals his followers to rough up demonstrators.  Demonstrators are struck by vehicles in multiple cities.  There are one, two, many Kenoshas.  The police stand aside.  Demonstrations become mass and sustained, with ordinary citizens joining and materially supporting.  Police, feds and some military attack demonstrators in multiple cities.  Calls for a general strike become louder and are heeded in some areas. ......This story might not have a happy ending, since it is dependent on institutions that have not shown themselves to be willing to do the right thing:  The Supreme Court, Congress, the police, the national guard, the army.  ...The worst case scenario is not implausible.  Prison camps used to detain protesters.  Martial law in many areas.  Some governors resisting and not allowing their national guard troops to participate.  Trump nationalizing all national guard.  Daily street fighting between Trump goons, militias etc and an increasingly large, desperate and violent antifa.  Nationwide martial law.  Full on fascism.

4.  Biden wins decisively, with at least 25 electoral votes to spare, as in my prediction at the top.  Trump doesn't concede, but Republican lawsuits fail as the scenarios differ enough in the different states and circuits that the Supreme Court can't get their hands on a decisive case.  Republican politicians start to decide to cut Trump loose.  There is continuing right wing violence and long term terrorism, but Biden is inaugurated.

5.  A Biden blow out.  An actual landslide in the Electoral College.  Even Trump knows he's beat.

I'm writing this the day before the election.  Please vote!  To secure this right, people like C.T. Vivian and John Lewis were beaten.  Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, Viola Liuzzo and countless others died.  ...Hopefully, none of us will.  

MY SOLUTION TO THE VIOLENT COP PROBLEM

Police killings of unarmed black men have become so frequent that our reactions are always the same and the result (no justice) is as well.  Once again, we all bemoan racism.  That's half the problem but we can't wait for it to end.  Racism is an attitude.  It is pervasive in society.  It will take many years, if ever, to eradicate.  We need a solution now.  I have one.

The police must obey and enforce the rule of law.  It's that simple.

For most of our history, we have turned a blind eye, or laughed at, police corruption.  The take. The pad.  The list.  We know all these from history, from novels and from movies.  It doesn't have to be that way.  We expect honor and discipline from our military.  Why do we expect less from the police?  They are the direct, most visible link between the people and the state, between the governed and governors.

The police, across the country, expect civilians, be we victim, neighbor, witness or suspect, to provide them with honest information.  The whole truth.  Yet they refer to their own anti-corruption units as the Rat Squad.  When a fellow cop is under suspicion, rather than acting as open, honest, civic, patriotic witnesses, they form the Thin Blue Line.  It's their version of omerta.  And that makes them just another gang.

The amended Set of Principles for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights Through Action to Combat Impunity, submitted to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights on 8 February 2005, defines impunity as:
the impossibility, de jure or de facto, of bringing the perpetrators of violations to account – whether in criminal, civil, administrative or disciplinary proceedings – since they are not subject to any inquiry that might lead to their being accused, arrested, tried and, if found guilty, sentenced to appropriate penalties, and to making reparations to their victims.[2

The police in this country are allowed to act with impunity against unarmed black men.  The solution to that is to oust elected officials such as district attorneys, mayors and attorneys general who put the protection of the police above the safety of the community.  That's not as long a term of a solution as ending racism, but it's also not fast enough, nor sure enough.  There is a more direct answer to the problem.

Make the police be police.  They need training and they must lose their jobs and be criminally prosecuted it they fail to follow the rules of their job.  They are the armed presence of the state; they must be held to account.  For years, we have heard, ad nauseum, about police training.  Enough with talk of choke holds!  That just gives lawyers a foothold at trial.  Every police officer must have it ingrained in them that they are criminally responsible if they fail to prevent a fellow officer from committing a violent crime.

In cases like that of George Floyd, the other officers have one job!  Stop the rogue officer from battering or killing an unarmed civilian.  We all know what would transpire if officers happened upon George Floyd, or anyone else, kneeling on the neck of someone yelling for eight minutes that they couldn't breathe.  They would immediately intervene and arrest the attacker.  And if the attacker failed to cease the assault, and if that attacker was armed, we know what they would do.  They would shoot him.

During the Viet Nam war, the most famous atrocity was the My Lai massacre.  American soldiers, led by officers, including Lt. William Calley, murdered hundreds of defenseless women, children and old people.  Most Americans know how the scandal ended, but most don't know what stopped the massacre itself.  It halted because decent American soldiers forced their fellow American soldiers to stop.  Helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson and his crew landed their helicopter between the marauding soldiers and their next victims and explained to them that if they didn't cease firing on the civilians, that they would commence firing...  on them.

That's what will stop this.  That's the training that police need.  Every potential killer cop must have that doubt sown in their head.  That if they threaten the lives of those they are sworn to protect, their fellow officers will shoot them!

LAST THOUGHTS ON MAC MURRAY COLLEGE

As a toddler, we drove past or through MacMurray College, on the way to church.  The MacMurray baseball field was across the street and the Town Brook, from the playground of Franklin School, where I went to kindergarten.  My kindergarten teacher was Sue Jones.  Her husband was the coach of the Mac baseball team, Itchy Jones.  When I came to SIU, Itchy Jones was the baseball coach here, before his career at U of I.
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Starting with first grade, I walked through the MacMurray College campus every day, on the way to Our Saviour grade school, and later Routt High School.  When I was in grade school, I remember being proud of how unique MacMurray was.  While every other high school and college had a football game following their homecoming parade, MacMurray had a soccer game.  This was decades before the sport swept the nation.

MacMurray was home to "the bridge" (linking the north side of campus, with its academic buildings and sports fields, with the dorms, south of the town brook) and the student center, to those in my neighborhood.  We met under the bridge in the morning to smoke cigarettes, and progressed to the student center to drink cokes and play Foosball, years before Foosball tables were ubiquitous in every bar and suburban basement in the country.

When I was in grade school, our lunchtime routine was to burst outside and steal bikes off the rack and take off, before any teachers, or playground moms, knew we were gone.  Then we pedaled as fast as we could to Burger Chef, got sandwiches and drinks and headed back to the bridge to eat.  Sometimes on it, most times under it.  Morning, noon, and after school, for years, that bridge was our meeting place, staging area and refuge.  The track field, out on Routt Street provided an out of sight hide away for 8th graders playing hooky and drinking beer. 

MacMurray was a growing institution when I was a kid.  I remember watching the chemistry building (Julian Hall) go up on Clay Ave.  It was on what seemed like more of a hill, in those days.  I spent happy winter days throwing snowballs at, and through, the windows of passing cars.  I remember Michaelson Hall being built, when I was very young.  Later, I marveled over all the out of state license plates in the parking lot and the loud music blasting from the windows.  Even later, I found myself in Michaelson, and other dorms, as their residents tolerated the long haired local kids who wandered into their rooms to smoke their pot and occasionally buy it, when they had cash.

MacMurray provided so many firsts.  Besides soccer and foosball, that was where I first saw a lacrosse game, a war protest, hippies and attended my first rock concert (The Grassroots, at Annie Merner Chapel).

MacMurray was central to every day on the east side of Jacksonville.  It was north, west and south of the hospital where I was born, and the church, grade and high schools where I spent 11 and a half years.  It was the eastern end of the street I grew up on and it's campus like a magnet. The clock on top of the library was a focal point of my life for 20 years.  It was visible going to school, church and work, from Beecher, College, Hardin or Clay streets.  The last memory I have of my mom, before we moved her to a nursing home, was of an autumn afternoon, walking her down Franklin St, across Clay and down the asphalt walk behind the chemistry building to Beecher, past the library and on down to East street and on south, through the fallen leaves, home. 

Bob Dylan dropped a new song today.  Tonight I'm reminded of the last line, of a song he released in 1974, "  ...I love you more than ever now that the past is gone."

IT'S NOT OVER, BECAUSE YOUR VOTE COUNTS

The Illinois primary, among others, is March 17.  That's when you can vote to nominate Bernie Sanders for President, and make America the country we were brought up to believe in.  The New Deal saved the elderly from poverty by creating Social Security.  Bernie wants to protect it, expand it and make sure it is properly funded.  Franklin Roosevelt believed that every human being was entitled to four basic freedoms:  the freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear.  Bernie Sanders wants to fulfill that vision.  

Bernie supports a Green New Deal that will save our children and grandchildren from the ravages of a changing climate.  This is a plan that protects workers who work in affected fossil fuel industries.

At a time when the nation is rocked by a pandemic, it is clear that we need a leader with a plan big enough to tackle the problem.  Bernie supports Medicare for All, a single-payer, national health insurance program to provide everyone with comprehensive health care coverage.  No networks, no premiums, no deductibles, no copays, no surprise bills.

Bernie proposes College for All, and the elimination of student debt.  He also proposes Fair Banking for All.  Consumer loans and credit cards rates would be capped at 15 percent across all financial institutions.  Every post office could offer basic and affordable banking services.  (I remember when the post office was where you went to purchase money orders!),  If the Democratic Party really still wants to help the poor and marginalized of society, this is a simple but vitally important solution to those at the mercy of predatory lending institutions and without the liquidity to maintain bank accounts.

Now, I know, the media and a bunch of politicians have told you that the race is over.  It's not.  Some, in the last couple of days have called for the DNC to end the debates because they want to protect one of the candidates from scrutiny.  Some are even pretending that Bernie should just drop out and support Joe Biden.  Um, no.  Joe Biden only leads by 153 delegates. He is short by 1,113 delegates from the nomination.

The Democratic convention will have 3,979 delegates eligible to vote on the first ballot.  At this point, only 1,754 of them have been pledged to a candidate.  That's only 44%.  There are still 2,225 delegates still to be picked.  Voters in many states have not yet had the opportunity to have their say.

It was just three weeks ago that party leaders, and Joe Biden, were saying that if no one had yet earned a majority of delegates, after the primaries were all over, then the delegates should select the nominee, at a brokered convention.  Now, with no one within even a thousand delegates of a majority, they'd like the Sanders campaign to just stipulate Mr. Biden a victory?  No.

Either Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden will have a formidable opponent in Donald Trump.  This primary is about what we want, not what we don't.  None of us want Donald Trump.  But, what do we want to happen after January 20, 2021?  We can't simply go back to the days of Barack Obama.  The past is gone.  Damage has been done.  Climate change has to be tackled.  Urgently.  All Americans need affordable health care immediately.  Our children must be freed from the choice between higher education and future home ownership.  We owe them a clean, healthy, vibrant future.  There is one candidate with the energetic vision to offer us the America of our dreams.  This is a once in a lifetime chance.  Please.  Vote for Bernie Sanders and his down ballot delegates! 

OLD RADIOS AND PLAYGROUNDS

We went a through a period of time, when I was a kid, that we had no television.  It sat, as a piece of furniture, because my parents couldn't afford to fix or replace it.  In those times, we got our news mostly from the newspaper, radio or second hand.  The telephone in our dining room rang fifty years ago tonight.  My dad answered and sat down.  I don't remember who he said had called, my sister or my brother in law.  It was a quick call and Dad looked serious.  He put the phone down and looked up at Mom and me. "Martin Luther King was shot in Memphis.  He's dead.  Black folks, all over the South, are coming out of their homes and spilling into the streets."

Well, that was half right.  They were also spilling out into the streets in places like Newark, Detroit and Chicago.  My reaction to the news was somber.  King was a good guy on my black and white TV.  True, I'd recently sensed some negativity after he'd denounced the Viet Nam War, but I knew that his side was right.  Just as the Kent State killings would later turn me against the military and police, the sight of dogs and fire hoses in Birmingham, and horses and whips at Selma, would forever make civil rights a righteous cause in my eyes.  

He'd been shot!  Just like President Kennedy.  It was hard to fathom.  I was only in sixth grade.  I don't remember much else, but one incident stuck with me.  The next day, April 5, I was out on the playground.  A classmate, who I'd known since I was 5 or 6, came up to me.  He said, "Well, I say, 'It's just another dead n----r.'"  I was dumbstruck.   I remember that to this day.  I remember what shirt I was wearing.  I remember that it was cloudy.  And, this afternoon, I remembered that three days ago, on Easter Sunday, I parked my car on the exact same spot, on the old playground, that ----- ------- and I had that conversation, 50 years ago.  

I used to believe Dr. King, that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice.  Tonight as the bodies of unarmed black men shot by police pile higher, here at home, and the bodies of Palestinians and Yemenis pile higher abroad, I guess the emphasis must be that the arc is long, if it bends the right way at all.  The three evils King warned of are ascendant again:  racism, militarism and materialism.  And that's the problem.  Too many, tonight, look at the victims of police killings, of Israeli snipers and of Saudi bombers as 'just another dead n----r'. 

THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS

Yesterday was Valentine's Day, not Groundhogs Day, but it sure felt like the movie.  How many times do we have to see the same things popping up in our news feeds, the same footage on TV, the same vapid tweets from politicians?  Guns aren't an issue I normally get hot about.  I'd leave this one to others, but, beyond the horror of what happened to the victims and their families, I hate having my intelligence insulted.  So, let's set up the arguments we are starting to hear and knock them down, one by one.
 

• Guns don't kill people; people kill people.  If guns were banned, they could still kill with their fist, a knife or a ball bat. 
• Yeah?  Well, here's the thing.  In these mass shootings, they use guns.  That's why they're called shootings!  Yes, there is the occasional mass killing involving knives or cars, but the overwhelming majority, the constant, is massacre by shooting.  The Las Vegas shooting dispels so many myths.  This is one.  Those victims were 11 floors below.  The killer didn't kill with a bat, or a knife or his fist.  He couldn't reach them without a gun!
• Any restriction on guns is unconstitutional.
• No.  The type of militias, that existed when the 2nd Amendment was ratified, do not exist.  In any event, those worried that they will lose their guns do not belong to a well regulated militia.  Even so, is the absolutist argument that one may keep any arms?  What about nuclear weapons?  Chemical and biological bombs?  If not, why not?  If they are exceptions, that implies a line.  Where is it drawn?  If we can keep such war weapons out of citizens' hands, why not military style rifles?
• The solution is more guns in schools, churches and concealed carry on every American
• This is a call for circular firing squads.  The teachers at Strongman were too busy shielding students with their bodies to have fired a gun, if they'd had one.  What happens when the police arrive at the theater, church, school or mall?  How do they distinguish the villain from the heroes when everyone has a gun?
• We need guns such as AR-15s to defend ourselves from the government.
• The theory here is that an armed citizenry will defend themselves from Big Government.  That means they will be shooting police and soldiers.  This is what the NRA and the Right are promoting?  That literally makes them domestic enemies.  Do we really believe that a band of private gun owners are going to over throw the U.S. government? 
• The NRA and other absolutists are protecting the Bill of Rights.
• The First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Ninth Amendments have been under assault for 20 years.  The Fourth Amendment is barely existent anymore.  Where has this band of patriots been?  Even if we believe they seek to protect the Second Amendment, it is no more sacrosanct than the others.  What this is really about is the NRA and politicians propagandizing the population to buy more guns.  The goal isn't patriotism or protection.  It's to amass profit for the weapons industry. 
• "They" want to take our guns.
• No gun has ever been confiscated.  No politician has ever advocated gun confiscation. No such law has ever been passed nationally or at the state level. 
• It's too soon, after the horror, to talk about guns.
• OK.  While this is maddeningly hypocritical, for the sake argument, let's give them the most recent incident at Stoneman Douglas.  Why can't we discuss gun control in the context of the Las Vegas shooting?  It's been five fucking years since the 1st graders at Sandy Hook Elementary, at Newtown, were slaughtered.  Too soon? 

Too soon?  The bodies aren't to the morgue, before the pious politicians start sending "thoughts and prayers".  We might pray that a merciful god will save us from ourselves.  But, my devout mother taught me that God helps those who help themselves. 
 

JON'S WINTER READING LIST

I was sitting around my sister's kitchen table, with one of my nieces and a nephew, late this summer.  Somewhere in a discussion, I mentioned how a friend, decades ago, had made me a list of ten books to read, labeled Jimmy's Summer Reading List.  My nephew sat up and said, "I'd like to have a 'Jimmy's Summer Reading list!"  OK, Jon, several months late, but here you go. 
 
Jon's request was to keep it short and to lean toward non-fiction.  But, where to start?  Where to stop?  And I love fiction.  Also, I like historical fiction and believe sometimes you learn more there than from volumes of dry scholarship.  I made two lists, one fiction and one non-fiction.  So, as Rod Serling would have said, "presented, for your consideration...  "
 
FICTION

1. 1984   George Orwell
2. Uncle Tom's Cabin     Harriet Beecher Stowe
3. Lincoln      Gore Vidal
4. Watership Down     Richard Adams
5. A Tale of Two Cities     Charles Dickens
6. Johnny Got His Gun     Dalton Trumbo
7. Cat's Cradle     Kurt Vonnegut
8. Grapes of Wrath     John Steinbeck
9. Trinity     Leon Uris
10. The Fountainhead     Ayn Rand

NON-FICTION
 

1. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee     Dee Brown
2. Roots     Alex Haley
3. Saving Capitalism     Robert Reich
4. Gulag Archipelago     Alexander Solzhenitzen
5. Hitler:  A Study in Tyranny     Allan Bullock
6. The Story of the World's Great Thinkers     Ernest R. Trattner
7. The Brethren     Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong
8. The Mainspring of Human Progress     Henry Grady Weaver
9. A People's History of the United States     Howard Zinn
10. Silent Spring     Rachel Carson

Well, this should start some arguments.  I've read thousands of books, and was surprised how hard it was to just pull 10-20 to the fore.  These are not presented in any order.  They are not lists of my favorite books, nor of what I think are the "best" books.  Jon asked for books he "should read".  I attempted to list books I thought everybody should have as general knowledge.  Also, that I could think of, on a Saturday afternoon!  Some probably need some explanation.
 
I didn't read Uncle Tom's Cabin until I was several decades into adulthood.  The term "Uncle Tom" has taken on such negative connotations in the last 50 years, that I was surprised at what a powerful story it is.  I was angry reading it.  No wonder Abe Lincoln, and others, referred to it as the book that started the war.  It paints a searing picture of terrorism and of courage under seige.
 
I have read, and re-read, Lincoln many times.  I love Gore Vidal.  I read this years before Doris Kearnes Goodman published her non-fiction Team of Rivals.  I  was startled to realize that I knew the entire story in detail.  I learned nothing from her book, that I did not already know from Vidal's novel.  And his is more fun!
 
Watership Down is still my favorite book, of all time.  Period.
 
Leon Uris sometimes gets knocked but I think Trinity is a great introduction to Irish history and the background to The Troubles. 
 
The Fountainhead is not great literature.  But, I think Atlas Shrugged is wretched.  So, given Ayn Rand's influence over our current ruling party's ideology, this is a window into her philosophy/ideology of Objectivism.  At least it's a novel, with a story, as opposed to her non-fiction propaganda. 
 
I haven't read the Trattner book, since I was in grade school.  My father had it on our bookshelf.  It was my introduction to Copernicus, Malthus, Darwin, Marx and others.
 
The Mainspring of Human Progress was included with a folder of pamphlets and booklets, that one of my uncles sent me.  I never met him.  Our only communication, that I remember, was this one mailing that I received, when I was about ten.  A folder of free market/capitalist propaganda, from the American Enterprise Institute!
 
Silent Spring is the one book on the lists I have not read.  It's on my winter reading list. 
 
 
 
 
 

NEED TO IMPEACH?

I was asked, last night, what I think of Tom Steyer and NeedToImpeach.com.  I don't know anything about Tom Steyer, beyond what I read today on Wikipedia.  I'm uncomfortable with the idea that we need a rich guy to save us.  It's a pattern:  Ross Perot, Michael Bloomberg, Trump and, now in IL, JB Pritzker.  All billionaires.

As to impeachment, I'm torn.  The Russia stuff leaves me cold.  I think it's a fantasy that everyone wants to be true.  Hillary Clinton uses a private email server to circumvent freedom of information laws, gets hacked, leaving a trail of evidence that the Democratic Party primary process was a sham and, for a host of other reasons, manages to lose the election to an ignorant reality show host.  Wouldn't it be satisfying if he was guilty of treason and the evidence was....  the act of hacking her emails?  Vindication!  ...Bullshit.

There is no reason to believe that the hacked emails, or attempts to hack, steal and alter voter data in various states, by Russia, had anything to do with Trump or, for that matter, Wikileaks.  Did Trump's campaign attempt to obtain info, after the fact, from Russia?  It appears so.  Is that illegal?  Maybe.  Did they try to coordinate the timing of the release of info with Wikileaks?  Maybe.  Is that illegal?  No.

The Russians may have been involved in hacking various Democratic accounts.  They apparently have also tried to tamper with state electoral commission rolls.  That needs investigated and dealt with.  If Trump refuses to do that, that should be the crime.  Collusion is just a feel good narrative.

I suspect there are financial crimes that he is guilty of too, unrelated to the election.  Failure to execute the laws as president and tax evasion are real crimes.  That's where any possible impeachment should be focused.

Should he be impeached?  Will he be impeached?

I struggle with the first one.  I loathe him and want him humiliated.  But, let's assume he is impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate and removed from office.  That gives us President Pence.  Beyond Trump's ignorance and personality disorder (and I recognize how dangerous those are), would we be better off without him?  Most of what Trump does on a daily basis is a freak show.  Yes, we feel like we need a shower at the end of the day, but the reality is that the major destruction comes from the cabinet he's put in power.  Trump is an ignoramus, in over his head.  Pence believes in all this bullshit.  I don't see an end to an advancing police state, racial strife or environmental destruction in Pence World. Plus, with Trump, people are focused on resisting.  If he gets impeached, the attitude will be, 'we overthrew him!' and everybody goes back to being sheep.

I'm not convinced he will be impeached in any circumstance.  The Republicans have a majority. They have shown, in both houses of congress, that they no longer have any sense of responsibility.  The Republican Party is utterly without conscience.  They currently are endorsing a senate candidate that, regardless if one believes the accusations that he likes having 14 year olds touch his Little Roy through his underwear, has publicly said (within the last three months) that his idea of when America was last great was during slavery.  They are not going to impeach a guy who does their, and their donors, bidding.  That leaves the Democrats.  Let's assume they win the House.  Nancy Pelosi, who famously declared impeachment "off the table", before the 2006 election, has now essentially done the same for Trump, when recently questioned about the NeedToImpeach campaign.

So, should he be impeached?  Probably, just to confirm the rule of law.  Will he?  I doubt it, as long as our rulers are people like Paul Ryan, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell.

A TEACHER PUTS HER CHALK DOWN

Today is Katie Carl's last day of work at John A. Logan  College.  Tomorrow is her first official day of retirement.  That can't go unmentioned.  Her last day in the classroom was in May; she has taught on-line, this summer.  She didn't get a gold watch, there wasn't a reception for her at the College (she didn't want one and some of her friends would have been in an awkward position attending, given that they were laid off!).  She didn't make a speech, though David Cochran made an eloquent toast at a private party, in her honor, earlier this summer. 

The College she loved fell apart and the job she loved changed.  As she heads toward the proverbial door, she's been questioning, "was it all worth it?"  "Did I waste 30 years of my life?"  No.  ...No!

While teaching ENG 101, (in addition to Mythology, Speech, Literature and Journalism) which every college kid has to take, she touched hundreds (thousands?) of lives over the years.  I started to type "young lives", but so many of them weren't.  She loved the returning, non-traditional aged, students.  And she gave them the confidence to go to college, after so many years removed from the class room. 

As a role model, she was a magnet for the troubled students, some of whom treated her as a mother figure and clung, by phone and letter, to her for years after leaving Logan.  As an advisor for Phi Theta Kappa, she gave some students their first glimpse outside of southern Illinois and first glimpse of a cosmopolitan city. 

As advisor for the Journalism program, she learned herself, and then taught her student staff, how everything from newspaper writing to investigative techniques to the nuts and bolts of advertising sales and getting the stories into print.  She traveled to the printing plants and took students to conferences.  Then, when the technology changed, she started over and she, and they, learned how to produce on-line content.  She has former journalism students living across the country.  She is their biggest fan and many of them remain hers.

As an academic advisor, she didn't just make the effort to understand what the students needed to transfer and how to build a schedule.  She guided many into unthought-of (as yet, by them) majors and careers.  Her former students and advisees include lawyers, teachers, photographers and journalists. 

She was always excited to think up, or learn of, a new teaching technique. She took pride when others asked to copy her discoveries and she loved the camaraderie of discussing students and teaching with her colleagues. 

Just when she finally achieved her ambition of becoming department chair (a position she wanted not because of extra money, but because she could put many of her ideas into effect), the Board of Trustees reorganized the College and abolished her chair.  They also laid off 55 of the Logan staff.  While frustrated at what happened to herself, as a result of the reorganization, she was broken hearted at what had happened to others.  She not only took an active role in the grievance process, defending her fellow teachers, she became a shoulder to cry on, a sympathetic ear and a voice of counsel. 

She didn't just teach Mythology, she related the stories to the present day.  She taught her students that lessons, values, triumphs and tragedies of the gods and goddesses, and the concepts such as "hubris", were always applicable to our democracy.  Teaching mythology didn't end at the school house door.  For 30 years she has been telling the stories to this son of a Greek, who knows so much less about it than she.  She, last night over dinner, once more, explained how Cassandra, Athena, and Aphrodite related to the story of Agamemnon, Achilles and the Trojan Horse.  Logan's loss is the gain of her oldest student.

Good job, Katie Carl!  Congratulations!

THE FOURTH BE WITH YOU

The Fourth be with you.  The fourth.  Star Wars.  Fourth of July.  Four.  Four dead in O-HI-O.. 

As I scroll through Facebook, throughout the day, I see my lifelong friend, Dirk Keller, posting articles, links and songs about the Kent State killings.  It was 47 years ago today.  He expresses his outrage every year.  Good.  We need to be reminded, constantly, that our own government would order our killings and that uniformed police and soldiers would willingly carry them out. 

I was in the 8th grade, in 1970.  I lived down the street from MacMurray College, in sleepy Jacksonville, Illinois. Back then, MacMurray was a small but thriving little religiously affiliated liberal arts college.  It's students were probably affluent and many came from out of state.  It was common to see license plates from Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York and other northeastern states.  By the late 1960s, their hair grew longer and some were staging small protests against the Vietnam War.  Oddly, I felt no affinity for those I saw with hair curling down their necks or those carrying protest signs.  That seemed foreign to me.  While I idolized the Beatles, I also liked my Sgt. Rock comic books. 

It was a confusing world.  I was checking out books, by Eldridge Cleaver, from the library, buying the Walker Report on the Chicago police riot (what 13 year old reads a government report?) and checking biographies out of the library on Lenin, Stalin, Tito and Che.  And then I would go home and watch reruns of Combat on TV.  I watched Patton, in the theater, and loved it (I still do). 

One sunny day, the first week of May, I came home and started to walk into the living room where my dad was watching the nightly news.  I stopped in the doorway between the dining room and the living room as I started to realize what they were saying and showing.  National Guard troops, at Kent State University in Ohio, had fired on students armed with nothing more than rocks bottles and tear gas canisters (which they were returning to sender).  Some were actually running away as the soldiers, whose faces were concealed by gas masks, fired on them.  I was stunned.  I had a Eureka! moment.  Those students down the street at MacMurray weren't much older than me.  They were the ones I had most in common with, not the politicians or police.  If they would shoot those kids in Ohio, they would shoot people like me!  In that instant, I knew which side I was on. For life. 

As the days went on, students went on strike throughout the country and many universities were closed down for the year.  Some were occupied by their own states' National Guard troops.  One of those schools was Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.  Many years later, I would move to Carbondale, and attend SIU.  In those days (late '70s), one would still see flyers stapled to telephone polls with the message, "Remember Kent State".  Thanks to people like my friend Dirk, who keep the flame alive, we pause briefly each year to remember the fallen at Kent State and at Jackson State. 

Yes, Jackson State.  Because while the media focus was always on what happened in Ohio, those four weren't the only students killed that week.  Students were killed in Mississippi as well.  And that brings us to the present, because the reason we didn't hear as much about Jackson State, nor remember it today, is because those students were black.  No one was punished for the Kent or Jackson killings.  No one is convicted for the murders of unarmed young black men, by those wearing the uniform of the state today.  We hear apologists for the police asking why the hashtag for the movement is #BlackLivesMatter.  It's because they don't.

In the end, those controlling the levers of the state will kill all they deem necessary, to suppress dissent that threatens their wealth and power.  They won't care what we look like.  One of the most inspirational movements in recent times has been the Native American led protests at Standing Rock, in the Dakotas.  They were peaceful.  They were prayerful.  And they were met with violence.  They were attacked with dogs, threatened with guns and sprayed (in below freezing temperatures) with hoses.  Politicians across several states have responded not with reflection on the object of the protest but to attempt to outlaw protest itself.  Some have gone so far as to introduce legislation immunizing from prosecution anyone striking a protester with an automobile. 

Clearly, in these charged times, the atmosphere exists where one spark could light one or many Kent States.  Those of us who believe resistance, to unconstitutional and militaristic acts by our government and environmental degradation by polluting corporations, is our moral duty must recognize that we may suffer casualties.  We may be the casualties.  But, we must....  persist. 

The fourth be with you.

BUT MY FATHER GOT IN

It's Islam now; it was Bolshevism then.  It's Middle Easterners now; it was southern and eastern Europeans in the 1920s. My father came here in Aug 1920. Had he, and my Aunt Martha, tried to come a few years later, they might not have gotten in.  In 1924, Congress, responding to nativist hysteria, created restrictions for immigrants from certain countries, including Greece.  For instance, the quota, for Greece, in 1925 was 100.  What are the odds that the teenaged brother and sister, Demetrios and Martha Skarlatos, would both have gotten in?  They would have been 2% of the entire quota for the country for the entire year. There were at least 23 Greek immigrants coming in to Ellis Island, on the S.S. Themistokles, that day (I have a copy of the ship's manifest, in my lap, as I type this).  One ship, on one day. 

But my father got in.  He was a resident alien for 16 years, before being granted citizenship.  Depending on what time it is, and who is interpreting the rules, green card holders from restricted countries may not be able to return to the U.S. under Trump's Muslim ban.  If those rules had applied in the 1920s and 1930s, people like my father could not have visited their relatives in Greece, and returned to the United States.  Now, as it happens, my father never returned to Greece.  But, his brother John did.  He returned after the Spanish Flu pandemic to collect two of his orphaned siblings and bring them to America.  My Uncle John was a resident alien, had a business and a wife in the U.S.  What if a ban, such as the one now imposed on Muslims from certain countries, was imposed in 1920?  He would have left the U.S. to settle his family's affairs and care for his siblings, only to find himself unable to return to his wife and business in the U.S.  The United States of America:  the country he had fought for in the trenches of France, in World War I. 

There is a reason some of us are reacting so viscerally to Trump's actions.  A short dictionary definition of 'empathy' is "the ability to understand and share the feelings of another". 

Now What?

Donald Trump's election provoked fear, anger and confusion on the part of his millions of opponents.  Worrisome though, was the anger directed against other voters.  In a healthy democracy, neighbors, friends and family members will always differ on politics.  Arguments become more intense around election time and then die down.  Some people, like myself, are news and political junkies and think about politics constantly.  Most normal people do not.  They may or may not have a basic political leaning, but their awareness rarely extends beyond elections season.  Now we hear people unfriending people. I'm not talking about virtual friends on a social media platform.  I mean the warm blooded kind you can (and should) reach out and touch. 

POLARIZATION

The logic is that because Trump has said and done crude things, voting for him makes one "OK" with his treatment of women or his appeals to racism.  I don't think that's true.  It's true that racists voted for Trump.  But, those aren't the voters I'm talking about.  I'm talking about normal people, friends and relatives, that we know and love.  These people are the same folks they were on the Monday before the election.  To suddenly think they are worthy of ostracism, because of what they did in the voting booth, assumes everyone looks at politics the same.  If one starts out believing that all, or most, politicians are corrupt, conniving liars, then how is one so worse than the other?  If politicians of both major parties will sell themselves for campaign cash, future employment and political ambition...  If, when elected they bail out crooked Wall Street bankers, while leaving millions of ordinary citizens to lose their homes and businesses...  If they create two systems of justice, one for the rich and one for the poor...  If, when elected, they condone wars their children don't have to fight, the wiretapping of our phones and computers and torture...  Is racism and predatory sexism really that much of a leap? 

Forgetting, for a moment, the arguments and the specific candidates, is this tenable?  Can we allow politics to become so all consuming that we turn against parents, close friends or co-workers?  Brother against brother?  We did that once in this country.  Up where I live, we call it the Civil War.  Over 600,000 died.

WHY DID THEY DO IT?

Blaming the voters ignores what happened.  The electorate was presented with two major party candidates they didn't like.  But voters didn't stay home.  They were angry.  The country was ready for revolution.  The question was whether it would come from the left or the right.  The Democratic Party had the chance to offer democratic socialism (though realistically, it would have only been a return to New Deal Democracy) against the Republican Party's potential fascism.  In the end, the Democrats insisted on an establishment nominee.  That left the Republicans with the revolutionary candidate and the Democrats as the "low energy" campaign, as Trump would put it. 

Those who blame Trump voters miss the point.  They weren't choosing Trump over Clinton because they like all of what he says and does.  And that many people didn't turn out just because they hate Clinton, though most do.  They are frustrated.  They want to break things, just like one does when they sweep papers off their desk or dishes onto the floor.  They were voting against the system.  They wanted to change the regime!

That may not be rationale.  We may disagree with the logic, but this is what happens when people are not given an outlet for their frustrations, or an honest critique of their situation. 

NOW WHAT? 

How do we survive the radical, right wing, top down revolution we're about to experience.  And revolutionary it will be.  Many of us lived through Nixon, whose newly appointed Attorney General, John Mitchell, told the press, "we're going to take this country so far to the right, you won't recognize it".  We lived through Reagan, who never heard of a weapons system he didn't think the tax payers shouldn't buy, who made the initial assault on environmental protections and intervened, internationally, on the side of death squads and tropical oligarchs.  If George Bush set the Constitution on fire, and Obama left it to smolder, Trump is going to grind the ashes out with his foot.  We really won't recognize this place. 

So, how to fight back?  Well, first, on a national level, we have to see if the Democratic Party can be saved, or is worth saving.  It doesn't look good.  In democracies all over the world, when a party loses, its leaders resign.  Party chairs, prime ministers, losing nominees all disappear.  After the Brexit vote, which was not even a parliamentary election with candidates, David Cameron resigned.  Leaders take responsibility!  Not politicians in this country, and certainly not Democrats in 2016.  After failing to take a majority in the Senate, Chuck Shumer moved up to minority leader.  After failing, again, to lead the Democrats to victory in the House, Nancy Pelosi was reelected minority leader.  After the party lost a national presidential election, the titular heads of the party being Obama and Biden, Joe Biden starts making noise about being the nominee in 2020.  The DNC was exposed, over and over, working against Bernie Sanders and for Hillary Clinton.  Debbie Wasserman Schultz overturned Obama's rule against lobbyist money and opened the sewer again.  After she was exposed working against Sanders, she resigned, to be instantly hired by Clinton's campaign.  Her successor, Donna Brazille, was presented to the public as an independent on air analyst, by CNN.  She slipped debate questions to Clinton, showing she had neither integrity as a news analyst nor as a member of the party.  She is unapologetic.  The first candidate to declare for the DNC chair is Keith Ellison, who comes from the actual progressive wing of the party.  My guess is the corporate insiders will find a way to keep him out.  

Corporate Democrats simply will not accept that they drove this train wreck.  The party had a candidate that all data showed could beat Trump decisively.  They insisted on Clinton over Sanders, and took a chance.  It was a bad bet.  Even the entire party organization, the celebrity and corporate money and the support of a popular president, she ran a lack lust campaign.  On the debate stage, with a worldwide audience, she made her candidacy small.  She had Trump on the ropes and then, at the end chews up time criticizing him for insulting a beauty pageant contestant, years earlier.  No matter what offense Steven Douglas might have committed outside the debate, I can't imagine Abe Lincoln going off on that tangent. 

The FBI director may have intervened in our election, and possibly affected its outcome, but hiding behind him or the Russians doesn't mitigate the responsibility of losing an election to a billionaire con artist.  We don't, as of this writing, even know for sure the Russian government had any involvement with the hacks of DNC and other computers and the subsequent publication of Clinton campaign and DNC emails.  We do know that those emails revealed reprehensible behavior on the part of the Democratic Party hierarchy, much of against a campaign peopled, and funded, by people like myself. And let's please remember that the CIA is not our most credible source of public information, if one remembers how we got into Iraq.  Also, using 'CIA' and 'intervening in a foreign election', in the same sentence, is rich.

OK, beyond national electoral politics, now what?  We need to support smaller groups, like the Standing Rock protesters and Black Lives Matters.  We need to support local environmental and community organizing groups.  We need to support and join unions and make them a fierce and vibrant force, once again.  We need to get off media and get in the streets. 

Argue and engage, in person, with people with opposing views.  Get out of the echo chamber.  If we just read and share Huffington Post articles, we miss the opportunity to win over the Fox viewers.  We have valid arguments, but they have to be made in terms others understand.  When conservative friends or relatives ask why there is support for the mothers of young black men killed by police, but no political fervor, months later, for the families of slain police officers, point out the difference.  Beyond the fact that one is killed by an agent of the state and the other in the line of duty, is the issue of justice.  The cop killer will be convicted, but the killer cop will be set free. 

Speak up and express your displeasure with racist comments, jokes and displays.  Tribalism and racism are common, if not natural, human traits.  It takes effort and civility to tamp them down.  If stoked, you get Rwanda in the '90s.

There were days of demonstrations, across the country, immediately after the election and still much hand wringing.  But, we need to conserve our anger and energy.  It's easy to be righteous now, when Trump's not yet in office and things are relatively peaceful.  When the next really bad terrorist attack happens, that will change.  You think we will all stand together and resist?  No.  Remember 9/11?  Did we resist torture?  Did we prevent the war, or punish the politicians who voted for it?  Did we resist the humiliations at the airport?  The surveillance of our communications and travel?  Did we insist Bush and Cheney be impeached?  Did we insist they be tried after they left office?  Did we oppose Obama, when he declared he could order and American citizen killed, by simply declaring that the person is a terrorist?  What do you think Trump will do with that power in his hands, if the country is scared silly, like it was in 2001?

What do you think he's going to let the cops do, the next time an African American sniper takes out a bunch of cops like in Dallas?  He's already praising Duerte and the death squads, in the Philippines.  We have to be ready. 

We have to stop blaming voters and Russians and focus on what our own government, and its corporate allies and owners, are doing to us and our fellow citizens.  We need to insist the Democratic Party purge its old guard.  We need to make sure our schools teach science, logic and reason, even if it means running for the school board ourselves.  We need make activism a common place, not something a few others do.  We need to suit up, put on our helmets, dampen the bandanas for our faces and lock arms. 

There Won't Be a Happy Ending

Come Wednesday morning, we will not wake up from our "long national nightmare".  No matter who wins, we lose.  The ads on TV will stop and our PO boxes will no longer be stuffed with political junk mail, but things aren't going back to normal. 

If Trump wins, there will be fear and anger among all he's threatened and insulted during the campaign.  If he loses, his supporters will feel cheated, frustrated and angry.  The crazier ones will want to get violent.  The rest will be divided between those who shrug off politics forever, lick their wounds and go back to their lives and those wishing to regroup and fight on.  Do they simply take over the Republican Party?  Do they form another party?  Unlike Bernie Sanders' supporters, they did not get co opted by the party.  Their guy got nominated. 

I'm not going to waste time pondering what life under Trump will be like if he wins. We know he would be dangerous.  He is unfit for office.  He clearly doesn't read.  He has no attention span.  He is uninformed, vindictive and seeks instant gratification.  That's a volatile combination. 

Then there will be counter moves in the street.  Most Americans are docile as sheep, but a Trump victory would wake up many, and demonstrations by the masses would probably be accompanied by rioting and other acts of violence by the few. 

What if Clinton wins?  In 2008, she mocked Obama's young supporters, saying they thought "celestial choirs will be singing...  and the world will be perfect", if he won.  Now, that's essentially what we hear that from her supporters, including many who just last spring

were Bernie Sanders backers who said they could not vote for Hillary Clinton because she's a war monger.  She hasn't changed.  They have.

War and Peace

Donald Trump should not be President and certainly should not have access to the nuclear launch codes.  However, Hillary Clinton's election does not usher in an era of peace.  Just the opposite. She's not insane, or ignorant, like Trump, but that doesn't mean we're safe.  This is a woman who gets her advice from the likes of Henry Kissinger, Madeline Albright and Benjamin Netanyahu.  Look at those names and you know we're in for more subversion of democracies, coups, wars and an increasingly unstable Middle East. 

She will continue arming the Saudis to the teeth, so they can continue their current war crimes in Yemen.  She will continue to arm the Israelis and give them political cover to continue turning the West Bank and Gaza into open air prisons.  And people wonder why "they" hate us and want to kill us.

Her vote, in the Senate, helped start the Iraq War.  That war led to the creation of ISIS.  Now that ISIS has spread to Syria, she wants to implement a "no fly" zone, supposedly to protect civilians, but, in reality to contain the Assad government, as her husband did with Saddam Hussein in the 1990s.  That will require bombing radar installations and probably killing Iranians, Russians and members of Hezbollah.  It also could involve shooting down Russian planes.  Feeling safe yet? 

Race relations

Keeping Donald Trump and his band of white supremacist followers out of the White House does not equate to an era of racial justice.  Think the Clintons would not throw black females under a bus, if would serve their ends?  Ask Loretta Lynch, who will never be appointed to the Supreme Court. Ask Lani Guinier, who will never be Attorney General.  Ask Sister Souljah.  Ask Hillary's mentor, Marion Wright Edelman, if the Edelmans and Clintons are still political friends. 

Climate and the environment

A Trump victory will abolish the Environmental Protection Agency.  But, a Clinton victory is just a slow death.  Does anyone, who believes that global climate change is an immediate existential threat, believe that Hillary' incrementalism will provide the solutions necessary, in time, to save our children from planetary disaster? 

Dancing on Donald Trump's grave is fine.  I plan to.  But why celebrate a Clinton victory?  Why celebrate a candidate we saw attack a young Greenpeace activist, last spring?  Why celebrate a woman who told her patrons that environmental activists need to "get a life"? 

Secrecy

Donald Trump will unshackle the FBI and other security services to bring us all to heel.  But, let' not forget who voted for the Patriot Act.  What is the practical difference between Trump and Clinton's attitude toward Edward Snowden, who went into exile in order to reveal to us what our government had been doing to us?

Money

All through 2015 and the first third of 2015, we witnessed tens of thousands attending Bernie Sanders rallies in a rejection of the monied interests control of our government and politics.  Donald Trump is one of the billionaires he was railing against.  But Hillary and Bill Clinton took hundreds of millions of dollars in legalized bribes.  Those debts will come due when Hillary is sworn in.  We now know why she didn't want to release transcripts, of her talks to the bankers, during her primary run against Sanders.  She had told the bankers she thought they should be allowed to write banking regulations!

So, we're screwed

The two party system has driven us down a dead end alley.  In the darkness, is unrelieved political and cultural polarization, oligarchy and war.  The Republican Party, in its institutional denial of science and reason, ensured a purge of its Old Guard and gave themselves, and us, Trump. 

The Democrats, and their allies in the corporate media, have been exposed gaming the nomination and electoral process, with back channel communication between the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign against Bernie Sanders and between the DNC and at least one national news network (CNN).  CNN asked the DNC for questions to pose to Republican candidates.   Donna Brazille, epitomizing the revolving door between political elites and the media, slipped questions she copped, as a temporary CNN employee for Clinton to use in her debate against Sanders. 

We learned this through the emails revealed by WikiLeaks.  DNC and Hillary mouthpieces wish to distract us with supposed Russian hacking of their computers.  I'll have to be excused if my level of outrage seems low.  These are the same people that are OK with our own government hacking our email. 

If you are genuinely for Clinton, not just scared shitless (as you should be) of Trump, celebrate if she wins.  But be proud of what you are getting, not what you are avoiding.  If you are OK with fracking, OK with the death penalty, OK with government surveillance, OK with banks writing the rules they play by, OK with hundred million dollar arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Israel, OK with wars of intervention, OK with CIA coups, believe there is an equivalency between the water protectors in North Dakota and the cops, construction workers and security guards beating them down and believe the fossil fuel industry is being unfairly put upon by radical environmentalists, then shout and dance and set off fireworks! 

But, if not, and Hillary wins, wipe your forehead in relief, have a beer and wake up Wednesday, ready to continue the Revolution.  If Trump wins, hold your neighbor tight, speak quietly, plan and be ready to resist the fascists and the fools. 

A Night at the Circus

In ancient Rome, the masses were distracted by the spectacles presented in the Colosseum.  As our republic devolves from government of the people to oligarchy, our rulers are hewing to the lessons of their Roman predecessors.  In Wednesday night's debate, we were given the circus of ancient times, not a successor to the Lincoln/Douglas Debates. 

On the left of our screens, was the orange freak show the media has fed us for a year.  On the right, was the illusion of feminist, progressive liberalism.  Rather than lions, gladiators and Christians, we beheld the vulgarity of a major party candidate without impulse control, intellect, decency or self awareness.  His opponent:  the embodiment of the intersection of crony capitalism with political careerism. 

While WikiLeaks has exposed as fact the suspicions that Clinton holds environmentalists in contempt, is inclined to let bankers regulate themselves and is in collusion with the corporate mass media, she was allowed to get away with framing the discussion not on the content of the leaked emails, but on the method of their exposure.  It was a debate of celebrity, not substance. Trump, Putin, Hillary. 

Trump is so ignorant, self absorbed and inarticulate that he missed multiple opportunities to entangle Clinton in a web of her own illogic and deception.  Two people stood on the stage last night.  Only one of them has gotten people killed.  Yet, what the public heard was an argument about Trump's opinion on the Iraq War, 13 years ago.  Clinton snipped that, "I've said it was a mistake", referring to her Yes vote on the war, much as a teenager would stamp their foot and declare 'I said I was sorry!'  No discussion about whose mistake, what the mistake was or what the consequences of her mistake were.  Rather than point out that the 2003 invasion of Iraq led to the birth of ISIS, Trump confused his audience with childish declarations that "Obama and Hillary created ISIS" (presumably while she was Secretary of State).  Of the three, only Senator Clinton had to the Constitutional power to vote on the actual war.  In 2003, Obama was in the Illinois legislature and The Donald was a real estate developer turned TV star. 

Trump, furiously denying accusations of sexual misconduct, with an outrage that conflicts with his public self image as unrestrained libertine, failed to force Clinton to account for her family's behavior.  Bill Clinton, Hillary, their liberal supporters and the mass media have always treated Bill Clinton's accusers with a skepticism and contempt that they would never tolerate toward the accusers of Donald Trump, Bill Cosby or nearly any athlete. 

And so went the night.  Trump would act stranger and stranger, the clock began to wind down and neither would have to explain what the world would really be like, if they were elected.  Once again, Clinton pointed out how heartless Trump's refugee policies would be, without explaining to the voters what the future will look like, after she is elected.  Instead, it was 'look!  there's a squirrel!'  An honest discussion of refugees, energy or national security would center on the emergency of climate change.  Instead, we were treated to the tired discussion of the mean things Trump has said about Mexicans and Muslims and to Clinton's platitudes about how America is Great because America is Good. 

What voters need to be told is that the wave of refugees we witnessed flooding into Europe this last year is nothing compared to what will happen when climate change forces millions to march out of Africa, not fleeing war, but in search of food.  That's a national security issue they don't discuss.  It will happen.  For 10,000 years humans have migrated when famine or climate have made their homes uninhabitable.  This will lead to reduced standards of living, worldwide, political instability and wars.  Trump huffed and puffed and Clinton offered lip service to an onrushing global emergency. 

Clinton says she came to oppose the TransPacificPartnership when she learned of how it was going to hurt workers.  Yet, she had the treaty text when it was being negotiated and when she said, 45 times, that she supported it (even calling it the "gold standard").  After she left the State Department, Obama wouldn't even let senators, such as Elizabeth Warren, see the final text.  So, when did HRC come to oppose it?  What new provisions does it include that were not there when she had promoted it?  Who knows?  Putin!  Sexual assault!  Crooked Hillary!  Liar!  Nasty!  Emmy awards! ... Lions!  Christians!

Climate change.  Israel.  Saudi Arabia.  Yemen.  Government surveillance.  Health care solutions.  Income inequality.  We heard nothing.  We saw nothing but the circus.