Author: Bruce VanWyngarden

Categories
At Large Opinion

Out of Bounds

Phil Mickelson (Photo: Wikimedia Commons | Creative Commons | By Peter Brown)

Golfing legend Phil Mickelson stands in the first-hole tee box, staring down the fairway, picking out his target. Several yards behind him, under a mound of freshly turned earth and a bouquet of white flowers, lies the recently interred body of Ivana Trump, ex-wife of Donald Trump (and mother of the three children he pays attention to). Mickelson takes a couple practice swings and waggles over his ball. As he pulls the club back, someone in the crowd shouts, “Do it for the Saudi royal family, Phil!” Mickelson steps away, a pained look on his face. After a moment, he resets and gives the ball a resounding whack. A fan in the gallery screams, “Let’s go, Brandon!” as the little white pellet soars into the blue, blue sky.

All of the above is true. It happened last Friday at the LIV Golf Series tournament at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey. If you’re not a golf fan, you may be unaware of the sea-change that has upended the PGA Tour this year. The Saudi Arabian government has lured several top professional golfers (and three-dozen mediocre professional golfers) to play in eight events around the world, instead of on the venerable PGA Tour.

And by “lure,” I mean, pay them absurd amounts of money. Mickelson got $200 million to flip, plus whatever winnings he takes home. Dustin Johnson got $150 million. Consider that the greatest golfer of all time, Tiger Woods, has won a total of $120 million in his 26-year career.

The Saudi LIV tour is not serious golf. Everyone gets paid, even the guy who comes in last. Winners get a ludicrous $4 million paycheck. The golfers ride in carts, tee off from different holes, and play on meaningless “teams.” Music blares from loudspeakers during the round. It’s goofy golf.

So why are the Saudis doing this? Well, they do have some PR issues, which happens when 15 of your citizens attack the Pentagon and World Trade Center, and when your leader has a Washington Post journalist dismembered and murdered (in that order). So, maybe they’re buying European soccer teams and international gaming franchises, and, well, 47 professional golfers, in an attempt to appear, er, human?

The Saudis also paid Trump a handsome fee to use his New Jersey course, and he had no ethical qualms about it. Shocker, I know. He showed up for the Thursday pro-am, drove around in a cart with the presidential seal, and pretended to play golf. (If you’re interested in Trump’s day, I recommend reading, “Watching Trump Play Golf: Decent Drives, Skipped Putts, Lots of Sweat,” which appeared in The New York Times on Friday. It goes about how you’d expect.)

Lots of 9/11 survivor families showed up to protest outside the gates of Bedminster. And as they do at every LIV tournament, the golfers faced pointed questions from journalists about the ethics of selling out their profession to the murderous Saudi government. They don’t care. They’re rich.

It’s easy to dismiss all this as meaningless — billionaires paying millionaires to play a silly game — but consider what astoundingly good things could be done with the $60 billion(!) the Saudis have committed to fund sports and games. And maybe consider why the Saudis have such an obscene amount of money to blow on ethically challenged morons like Mickelson and Johnson. It’s oil, of course. Under the vast deserts near the Arabian Gulf lie some of the world’s greatest deposits of fossil fuel, without which Saudi Arabia would be just, well, a giant sand trap, not a country President Joe Biden recently felt compelled to travel to and give a ceremonial fist-bump to a murderer and ask if maybe, sorta, kinda he wouldn’t mind lowering oil prices.

Now think about the raging wildfires, the prolonged droughts, the empty reservoirs, the deadly heat waves, the record floods — all consequences of the global climate change caused by mankind’s inability to meaningfully reduce its global addiction to fossil fuels. And maybe think about the devastating impact on all the world’s economies when the price of gas increases by a couple bucks. Our dependence on oil is screwing the economy and the planet. The attempted deconstruction of the PGA is just another reminder of how it’s all connected — a birdie in the coal mine.

Categories
At Large Opinion

The Devil to Pay

Photo: Adrienne Wallace | Dreamstime.com

We’re hearing a lot about God in politics lately. Maybe not your god, especially if you’re Muslim or Buddhist or Jewish or, I don’t know, Episcopalian. No, the god that’s being shoved into our faces by the United MAGA Church is the American fundamentalist Christian god, the one who doesn’t approve of unmarried sex, homosexuals, abortion, interracial marriage, or even contraception. This god is a real hard-ass, and the MAGAs have attached themselves to him like a barnacle on a tugboat. (We’ll assume His pronoun is Him.)

This god was invented in backwoods American churches, where fast-talking evangelists did their best to guilt their flocks into obeisance and into donating money to “the church” before seducing the prettiest 15-year-old in the congregation and running off to dupe the next group of suckers.

As is often the case with successful small businesses in America, that model got leveraged and eventually morphed into the big mega-churches whose preachers fly private jets, live on palatial estates, and have television shows. The payoff is bigger but the game is the same — guilt and grift: “You poor schmucks are going to fry in eternal hellfire FOREVER if you don’t stop sinning. Here’s a list of stuff that’s bad. Don’t do any of it, even if most of it feels good. Like sex. Sex is really bad unless you’re heterosexually married and only doing it to have babies. Did I mention you need to send me money so we can stop all these other schmucks from sinning? In the name of JAYSUS, amen!” Millions of idiots buy into this.

All of this hustle is theoretically based on Christianity, which, applied properly, is a respectable religion, based on the life and example of one Jesus Christ of Nazareth, a poor man who lived in the Middle East a couple thousand years ago, and who, as far as I’m aware, never asked for money or said a word about abortion, guns, contraception, interracial marriage, or white supremacy (which is a good thing, since Jesus wasn’t white).

Mainly, as I recall from my Methodist raising, Jesus was against materialism (money-changers), for forgiveness — and for treating our fellow humans as we ourselves would like to be treated. If we did this, I was taught, we’d go to Heaven, where we’d see all the people in our lives again and hang out with them forever (which was a concept I spent many a night in my youth trying to get my head around).

But any religion is subject to perversion of its core beliefs, whether in the pursuit of money, power, or both. And make no mistake, nationalistic Evangelicalism is a perversion of Christianity. It has literally nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus. It’s a bizarre cult that believes a 10-year-old should be forced to carry a rapist’s baby to term, that everyone should carry guns, and whose political representatives are now passing laws prohibiting women from crossing a state line to get a medical procedure they disapprove of.

This Christian Taliban thinking led all but eight Republicans in Congress to vote last week against a bill guaranteeing the right to contraception. Think about it: Ninety percent of Congressional Republicans literally voted against guaranteeing people the right to buy condoms.

Also, last week: Georgia Congress-beast Marjorie Taylor Greene said on television: “We need to be the party of nationalism. I say it proudly. I’m a Christian Nationalist!” So were the Nazis, Marge.

Colorado Congress-gun Lauren Boebert said, “We need to get over this idea of the separation of church and state, because we’re a Christian nation.” The Founding Fathers would be surprised to learn that, LB.

And there was Florida Congress-putz Matt Gaetz, who offered the novel theory that women demanding abortion rights shouldn’t worry “because they’re all 5’2” and 300 pounds and no one’s going to want to impregnate them.” So, only hot chicks get abortion rights?

How deep does this crazy go? And more important, how far do we let these dangerous freaks go before we stand up and vote-shame them back into the guano-glutted bat-caves from whence they came? If we don’t take these people seriously — right now — we will regret it for the rest of our lives. They’ve gotten a taste of power (and money) and now they’re coming for our freedoms.

Categories
At Large Opinion

Money for Nothing

Bill Lee (Photo: tn.gov)

I had Mrs. Bailey for two years in high school: freshman English (Beowulf, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, etc.) and honors English in my senior year, where she introduced me to Kurt Vonnegut, J.D. Salinger, Joseph Heller, Flannery O’Connor, and other more contemporary writers. She had a tiny sneeze that she would stifle with a small hankie and that would invariably cause the class to giggle. She was well-known for these tiny sneezes and her love of bad puns.

But I remember Mrs. Bailey for another reason: She saw me for who I was — an awkward kid with a speech impediment and a good brain — and for who I could become. Mrs. Bailey probably decided that I wasn’t going to make my way in this world by being a smooth talker, so she encouraged me to write. She praised, criticized, and edited my essays. She took me aside and encouraged me to read real writers, not just the required classroom stuff. She helped forge my life’s path, and I didn’t even figure out what she’d done until years later.

I think, if we were lucky, most of us have a Mrs. Bailey in our past — a teacher who took the time to connect, who saw our potential or our pain, who saw a way forward for us or a way out. And it’s still happening, every day, all over the world: Teachers make a difference; teachers shape lives; teachers are among the most important people in our society.

Which is why every human being in Tennessee should be absolutely outraged at Governor Bill Lee, who is relentlessly fostering the destruction of our public schools via a voucher system in which parents play the middleman between our state treasury and private schools to the tune of $7,000 per family. It’s flat-out wrong, and it’s using money that rightfully should be going to public schools. If people want to send their children to private schools, let them have at it, just don’t ask the taxpayers to cover the note.

But that’s not the only reason to be outraged at Lee. He’s been pushing to bring the Michigan-based Hillsdale Academy into the state, openly stating that he wants to let them establish 100 schools with our money. Hillsdale Academy is a Christian-based private school that promotes conservative values in its “1776 Curriculum,” which appears to mean the Civil War was just a misunderstanding and slaves were just inconvenienced and everything is fine now — among other interesting theories.

At a private event in late June, Governor Lee sat on stage with Hillsdale Academy president Larry Arnn and listened, smiling, as Arnn said the following: “Teachers are trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country. … We are going to try to demonstrate that you don’t have to be an expert to educate a child because basically anybody can do it.” This ramble went on for nearly two hours, with Arnn repeatedly disparaging teachers and public school systems. (Hillsdale practices what Arnn preaches. None of its eight education faculty members are certified to teach in public schools.)

So what did Bill Lee say or do as Arnn attacked and discredited all teachers, including, presumably, the thousands of public school teachers in Tennessee? Zip. Nada. He sat there and grinned like a chimp, or a chump. Your call.

Unfortunately for ol’ Bill, Nashville’s Channel 5 got a copy of the tape and all hell broke loose. All around this deep-red state, school boards, administrators, and teachers erupted in protest, demanding the governor repudiate Arnn’s remarks. Lee had his spokesperson send a boilerplate statement that mentioned nothing about Arnn’s comments. He then slipped off for a bit to Florida to hang with Ron DeSantis, who’s pushing for Hillsdale to take over public schools there. When he got back, he dodged reporters, evaded teachers’ groups, and made no public appearances for a week — a real profile in courage, this guy.

The only good that may have come out of all this is that Hillsdale is now very unlikely to get any state dollars, according to several Republican state legislators. Turns out that lots of communities around Tennessee are quite happy with their public schools and rather fond of their teachers. Mrs. Bailey would find that gratifying, I suspect. She didn’t suffer fools.

Categories
At Large Opinion

Welcome to Hell

It’s too damn hot. (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)

Sometimes I stare in space

Tears all over my face

I can’t explain it, don’t understand it

I ain’t never felt like this before

Now that funny feeling has me amazed

Don’t know what to do, my head’s in a haze …

Just like a heat wave

Burning right here in my heart

— Holland-Dozier-Holland

It’s 8:30 on Saturday morning at Tobey Dog Park. Many of the regulars and their mutts are here. The humans, maybe nine of them, are gathered in the shade of the one appreciable tree. The dogs, maybe 14 of them, make brief forays out into the burnt-grass hellscape to chase a ball or wrestle or dry-hump each other or poop, but soon return to the shade. They are not stupid creatures. Neither are the humans, who don’t even try to wrestle or dry-hump each other or poop. They just stay in the shade and commiserate.

It’s the third or fourth week without rain in Memphis. No one here in the shade can remember the last time water fell from the sky. We all agree it’s been at least 10 days since the daily high temperature was less than 98 degrees, with many days reaching triple digits. On Friday, the day before my trek to the dog park, Memphis registered the highest “feels like” temperature in the United States — a balmy 114 degrees.

What the hell, y’all?

At our house, we have closed every curtain, shutter, and window blind. All the ceiling fans are turning at warp speed. We keep the lights off during the day. We open and shut exterior doors quickly so the satanic heat can’t get in. We’re now living in a dark bat cave just so our air-conditioning can keep up. Sort of. When it’s 114 outside, we consider an interior high of 76 degrees a victory.

If it’s any comfort (and no, it’s not) we’re not alone. Heat waves have been happening all over the Northern Hemisphere this summer — in Spain, France, India, the Middle East, parts of Africa, and elsewhere, leading to the usual attendant miseries of drought and crop failure. And also to forest fires like those that have ravaged the Western U.S. this year — where they’re running out of water because it doesn’t snow enough anymore.

At least we’ve got water in Memphis. For now. Unless Governor Lee decides to privatize the Memphis Sand Aquifer. Which I wouldn’t rule out.

The world’s legitimate scientists have long moved past debating whether climate change exists or even whether our addiction to greenhouse gases is the cause. In a recent New York Times story, some scientists said that the current trend to longer and more frequent heat waves renders the question obsolete. The climate has changed, and we’re going to have to deal with the consequences. Why argue about the obvious?

In the same Times article, climate scientist Andrew Dessler said, “The warming of recent decades has already made it hard for scientists to know what to call a heat wave and what to treat as simply a ‘new normal’ for hot weather. … As time goes on, more and more of the planet will be experiencing those temperatures, until eventually, with enough global warming, every land area in the mid-latitude Northern Hemisphere would be above 100 degrees.”

If this is the new normal, then summer is the new hell. And it’s not like we don’t have a few other things to worry about these days, including a major political party that can’t kick its addiction to a delusional con man, a country that can’t keep its young men from randomly gunning down dozens of strangers, and a Supreme Court apparently made up of faith healers, gun nuts, and (probably) climate-change deniers.

Where to turn? It all feels new and not at all normal. I would say we’re all going to hell in a handbasket, but it appears we may have already arrived. Which begs the question: Can you get out of hell in a handbasket?

Categories
At Large Opinion

Triggered

photo: © Mikephotos | Dreamstime.com Demonstration in Melbourne, Florida, after Roe v. Wade was overturned.

So, it’s likely you read about the 10-year-old rape victim who couldn’t get an abortion in Ohio. The story came to light shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24th. Ohio’s six-week “trigger ban” came into effect three days later and prohibited the child from getting an abortion in her home state. Her pediatrician called a colleague in nearby Indiana and arranged for the traumatized child-abuse victim to have an abortion there. (Indiana legislators have since indicated they will pass an abortion ban in an upcoming special session.)

The Ohio case has become something of a flash point for the abortion debate. A sampling of commentary on social media: 

“My heart absolutely BREAKS for that child but who are we to question what God is doing?” 

“God has a plan and a purpose for everything, and it’s not our place to try and take matters into our own hands no matter how badly the situation hurts.” 

“Every life is precious in His sight.” 

Others see it differently: 

“Why did God create the doctors and medicines that allow her to have a safe abortion?” 

“Why is God’s will behind the rape and Satan’s will behind the abortion?” 

“If everything is God’s will and she has an abortion, isn’t that abortion then also God’s will?”

And on it went and on it goes.

Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves declared June to be “Sanctity of Life Month” in celebration of SCOTUS’ overturning of Roe v. Wade. Mississippi, it should be noted, has the highest infant and fetal mortality rates in the U.S. and the lowest life expectancy, so Reeves is totally on-brand with his pro-life bilge. 

And, to demonstrate that it’s not just Southerners who can utter evangelical garbage with a straight face, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem went on national television Sunday, mostly to fluff Donald Trump in hopes of enhancing her vice-presidential ambitions for 2024. But moderator Dana Bash had the poor taste to perform journalism and confront Noem with the case of the Ohio girl. It didn’t go well for Noem, who shuffled and deflected and avoided answering the question for several minutes. Which answered the question.  

Former Vice President Mike Pence came out of hiding long enough to speak the GOP’s fetal-attraction fever dream out loud, calling for a national ban on abortion, because God hates abortion — and also little girls, I guess.

Have any of these people ever actually known a 10-year-old girl? At 10, a little girl is in fourth or fifth grade. Fourth or fifth grade. Let it sink in. Think about a 10-year-old girl you know or have known — their innocence, their joy, their spirit. If they get pregnant, it is by definition because they were raped. It doesn’t matter if it was an uncle, a brother, a father, or a random evil stranger. An innocent child was the victim of a brutal, heinous crime. And now the law of the land in more than half of these dis-united states is (or soon will be) that that child deserves to be punished. 

The emphasis on child-rape and incest is helpful in illustrating the horrid absurdity of the SCOTUS ruling, but the most important thing to recognize is that the right to privacy and bodily autonomy for half the American population has been taken away. A 10th-grader, a mother of three with an ectopic pregnancy, a 40-year-old rape victim — all will be legally mandated to carry their pregnancy to term in much of the U.S. Their faith doesn’t matter — Jews, Muslims, Agnostics, Episcopalians, Methodists, Flying Spaghetti Monster worshippers. What matters is that American women are now required to adhere to a pseudo-religious tenet held by 13 percent of the country’s adults. A tiny minority has spent years working on packing the Supreme Court for the express purpose of overturning Roe v. Wade. They have succeeded. They have taken away an American woman’s right to decide what’s best for her body. 

It’s time to rage, folks. It’s time to get triggered and get organized and get loud. In a free country — in a real democracy — this cannot stand. 

Categories
At Large Opinion

Second World Problems

The term “first-world country” has come to mean a developed and industrialized nation characterized by strong and free democratic institutions, a healthy public education system, affordable healthcare, acceptance of the rule of law, a stable economy, and a decent standard of living for most of its citizens. Think Germany, Great Britain, Finland, France, etc.

A second-world country’s educational system is often theocratic or politically controlled; their healthcare is non-inclusive and inequitable. Their political infrastructure is less open than first-world democracies, often featuring a single dominant party and centralized government power. The “rule of law” depends on who is in power. Think Hungary, Romania, Turkey, Iran, etc.

Is the United States still a first-world country?

In the past couple of weeks, our Supreme Court has ruled that states can send tax dollars to private and religious schools, that states may not enact certain handgun carry laws, and that states may mandate that a woman carry a pregnancy to term, even in cases of rape and incest. The majority of justices on the court put their Christian/Catholic beliefs ahead of the law and were appointed by two presidents who did not win the popular vote. Oh, and our healthcare system is flawed, expensive, and inequitable.

Our first-world allies in Europe and elsewhere are still reeling from the Trump years, shocked that America could elect such a person. Now they see the highest court in our country acting like a rogue grand jury in Boise. Even the United Nations is alarmed, with human rights officials there describing the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision as a “shocking and dangerous rollback of human rights that will jeopardize women’s health and lives. The Supreme Court has completely disregarded the United States’ binding legal obligations under international law, including those stemming from its ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”

In the January 6th Committee hearings, more mind-boggling evidence continues to emerge of President Trump’s relentless, multi-faceted, months-long attempt to stage a coup and keep himself in office, overturning the will of the people. That shouldn’t happen in a stable first-world democracy.

The truth is that we are currently ruled by a minority, thanks to gerrymandering, the Electoral College, the absurdity of each state having two senators (Wyoming, e.g., has half the population of Memphis), and the SCOTUS ruling that corporations are “people” and therefore can contribute millions to buy politicians.

The most recent Gallup poll shows that more than 80 percent of Americans say that abortion should be legal under all or some circumstances. The number of Americans who say that abortion should be illegal in all cases is 13 percent, an all-time low. More than 70 percent of Americans are for some type of gun reform. On issue after issue, state legislatures and the Supreme Court go against the will of the people under the guise of “states’ rights.” You remember states’ rights, don’t you? We fought a civil war over it. Now Tennessee will soon have harsher abortion laws than the Taliban.

But it’s not all the Republicans’ fault. Democrats are also to blame for their decades-long disorganization and simple, stupid trust that the GOP would play by the rules. Mitch McConnell hustled three SCOTUS justices in under Trump, all Federalist Society approved anti-abortionists.

Democrats wail and rage and demonstrate in the streets, but they lose the big battles because they think there are guardrails, some “rules” that must be followed. McConnell and the GOP don’t care ’bout no rules. Amy Coney Barrett, anyone?

Why didn’t President Obama rage and go on national TV and demand justice when he was denied a legitimate SCOTUS nomination for 10 months? Oh, the Democrats thought Hillary would win. Oops.

The Democratic response to these crises is always “VOTE!” which is becoming the party’s version of “thoughts and prayers.” Yes, there needs to be a huge voter turnout in November, but Democrats need to quit playing by rules the other party ignores. They need to reach the people who aren’t reading The New York Times and watching cable news shows. They need to hammer the country with what is at stake: women’s autonomy over their own bodies, more gun fetishism, a theocratic takeover of our public schools and courts, and the potential destruction of our electoral process. These are not first-world problems. But they are now our problems. And they are second to none.

Categories
At Large Opinion

View From a Boat

The Manhattan skyline, far and wee in the distance (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)

Someday, my baby, when I am a man

And others have taught me the best that they can

They’ll sell me a suit, then cut off my hair,

And send me to work in tall buildings …

— John Hartford

I’m tempted to quote T-Pain: “I’m on a boat, mother … .” But I’ll spare you. I was on a boat on my vacation, though, a funky single-masted sloop owned by a sailing co-op my son belongs to in Rockaway Beach. We went out one evening with eight locals for a sunset sail in Jamaica Bay. The only sounds were gulls, congenial conversation, and the occasional snap of the mainsail. As the sun fell to the orange horizon, we took pictures. I noticed when I enlarged the photos that you could see the entire skyline of Manhattan below the setting sun, far and wee in the distance.

It brought to mind a story I’d read in The New York Times earlier in the week called “A Full Return to the Office? Does ‘Never’ Work for You?” The current return-to-office rate for office workers around the country is 43 percent, but in New York City, recent data puts the number of workers who have returned to the office five days a week at 8 percent. Most of the buildings in that impressive skyline are half-full at best.

At-home workers cite Covid fears, the cost of commuting, gasoline prices, childcare, and the inability to concentrate in a cubicle/desk situation as reasons to continue working remotely. Management fears that if their workers stay home their organizations will lose the benefits of cooperative brainstorming, a teamwork ethic, and, yes, a lack of direct oversight — not to mention that companies continue to have to pay for their office facilities whether they’re used or not.

But it’s clear the pandemic has unmasked a myth: that people need oversight to be productive. Different organizations are trying different ways forward. Some are experimenting with three-day-a-week office hours or flex scheduling around meetings, school schedules, etc. Others are downsizing office space to a few meeting areas and shared workstations.

It’s all in flux, but one thing seems certain: The office out-migration is going to greatly impact the nation’s cities, where commercial real estate has traditionally been a driver of business, employment, income, and tax revenues. Full Downtown office buildings mean full restaurants, full bars for after-work happy hours, full parking facilities, and bustling retail. Now, maybe not so much.

But in a weird way, the work-from-home trend may favor a city like Memphis. For years, we’ve marveled at Nashville’s building boom, its Downtown seemingly permanently decorated with a half-dozen cranes attached to under-construction office towers. But if you’ve been to Downtown Nashville at night lately, you’ve seen a congested, noisy, tourist hell-hole. Housing prices are skyrocketing. A recent piece in the Nashville Post reported that “6 percent of homebuyers moving to Memphis in the first quarter were from Nashville, twice the rate of the same period in 2021. In April, the typical home in Nashville sold for $455,000, compared to $280,000 in Memphis.” Welcome to Bluff City, cowpokes.

Downtown Memphis is anything but overbuilt. We’ve still got the finest 1970s skyline in America. Plus a pyramid. Sterick Building, anyone? But maybe we got lucky. Nashville, New York, Austin, and all those other “it” cities are going to have to figure out what to do with all those shiny “big empties.” Not us. And let’s not forget that thousands of Memphians don’t have the privilege of working from home. Warehouses, factories, hospitals, retail cash registers, bars, grocery stores, delivery trucks, etc. don’t exist without people leaving their homes and clocking in. Without these essential workers, everything breaks down. The Memphis economy is filled with those kinds of jobs. Which, it turns out, is a good thing in the eventual post-pandemic world.

So, maybe the future is livability and affordability. Maybe the future is funkiness and soul and big trees and big water rather than tall, gleaming — empty — buildings. Maybe it’s finally our turn. Maybe we’ve been there all along, patiently waiting for the world to find us — out there on the horizon, far and wee in the distance.

Categories
At Large Opinion

Hold On, He’s Coming

You know, I’ve really tried to avoid writing about the most-recent former president. I was the Flyer editor during his tumultuous four years in office, and I had to write about him a lot, mainly because a week seldom went by without some sort of outrageous, over-the-top, unprecedented presidential antics. We were in a continuous reactive mode. He did what??? I had to write the column at the last possible minute, just to keep up.

Emotions were high from the very beginning of his term. (You may remember the Flyer’s infamous “WTF?” cover, which led many people to call our office to tell us they would never buy another Flyer. Yes, we’re free, but you know …)

Now, as Congress’ January 6th committee finally prepares to hold public hearings on the remarkable attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, I suspect emotions are about to kick into high gear again. The cast of characters in the plot includes generals, cabinet members, several congressmen, a few senators, sleazy lawyers, crazy lawyers, a pillow salesman, the wife of a Supreme Court justice, the minority leader of the House of Representatives, and the former president himself. 

The supporting cast includes Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, and other white supremacists, plus several thousand assorted idiots from around the country who actually believed they could get away with pillaging the U.S. Capitol because the then-president told them to do it. (Not to mention that some of them actually thought they were going to hang then-Vice President Mike Pence.)

The schism in American politics was always there, but Trump drove a thick wedge into it, widening the divide like never before. Healing is going to take a while. With any luck, the former president will resist the temptation to run again and just keep operating the ceaseless “fund-raising” grift he’s been pushing since he left office. It’s not as much work and there’s more time for golf, so I’m somewhat hopeful.

As you may have gathered from various billboards around Memphis, Trump is bringing the circus to town, or rather, to Southaven, Mississippi, where the “American Freedom Tour” is slated to play the Landers Center on June 18th. Opening acts include Donald Trump Jr., his girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle, former paintball salesman and now sheriff Mark Lamb, plus other as yet unnamed “Top American Conservatives.” Tickets start at $45. Cultists and other suckers are advised to jump on these before they drop to, oh, I don’t know, free? The “crowds” Trump has been luring lately are not his best people. He’s got the usual six Black guys who sit behind him, a couple hundred Trump-heads who travel and never miss a gig, plus whatever assorted moronic locals show up to feed their id. It’s a party.

And there’s a Memphis angle now. After his speech at the NRA convention last week, Trump read the names of the 19 victims of the Uvalde shooting (mispronouncing many of them). Then, as one does following such a somber moment, he broke into a dance. That was bad enough, but making it worse was the fact that the music Trump was dad-dancing to was “Hold On, I’m Coming,” the iconic Stax tune penned by David Porter and Isaac Hayes.

Porter was not amused. He tweeted: “Someone shared with me Donald Trump used the song ‘Hold On, I’m Coming’ for a speaking appearance of his. Hell to the No! I did Not and would NOT approve of them using the song for any of his purposes! I also know Isaac’s estate wouldn’t approve as well!”

Such legal niceties will not stop Trump from using the song, and no doubt he’s doing so without paying royalties. But there may be a way to get a little payback. Memphis city council members Martavius Jones and JB Smiley have introduced a measure that would prevent the Memphis Police Department from escorting the Trump caravan from the Memphis airport to the Landers Center. They rightfully point out that Trump routinely stiffs local governments for any costs his visits incur, so why should Memphis put itself on the hook for those expenses? Trump’s a private citizen now. He’s got Secret Service protection. Let Mississippi take care of it.

I couldn’t agree more. When Trump lands in Memphis, let’s send him this message: Hold On, We’re Not Coming. 

Categories
At Large Opinion

My Perfect Night

Bruce Lee (Photo: Wikimedia)

“What have we come to as a society when these innocent kids and teachers are gunned down? These school shootings bring me to my knees. What do we do to stop this?”

It was a sad and sobering Facebook post from a longtime friend, one with whom I don’t have a lot in common politically, but whose intelligence I respect.

I responded: “Every country on the planet has mental health issues, video games, violent movies, etc. but only one country has mass shootings every week. The difference is clear. We’ve made it way too easy to obtain high-powered guns. Do we have the political will to do anything about it? I doubt it. The NRA owns Congress and the Senate and the state legislatures. Until that changes, nothing changes.”

And thus, the pot was stirred.

From somebody named Darlla*: “Well, here we go again, trying to make something political out of tragedy. Sorry, Bruce, gun laws won’t stop evil people. There’s a mental illness in our young people and they will manage to get a gun no matter the law. Those people who are calling for more gun control are the same ones who think abortion is okay. There is a disrespect for life, it’s not a gun problem.”

I responded: “Oh, I guess since laws don’t work you’ll want to stop trying to ban abortions, right? And if the problem is a ‘mental illness in our young people,’ then how do you explain all the non-teenagers who commit the same heinous acts with the same weapons?”

“Hmmm,” she responded. “Interesting questions. I’ll have to think on it.”

Then, Doug, a guy who went to my high school 40 years ago, chimed in: “You’re thinking is the problem, Bruce. More people are killed with knives and cars every year than guns. Why don’t you gripe about them?”

Sigh: “Yes, Doug, because there are so darn many mass knifings and indiscriminate car slaughters. Brilliant analogy. Look, moron, the number of people killed in car accidents and mass murders in elementary schools are not comparable problems. I can’t with your bullshit. Carry on. Also it’s ‘your.’”

“Oh,” he responded. “My bad, sorry. You make some good points. And I’ll be more careful with my grammar.”

A guy I didn’t know chimed in: “If someone is breaking into your home, Bruce, do you call the police with a gun or the fire department with a hose? THAT’S your real test.”

“What?” I said. “Why would I call the fire department, you idiot? If someone was breaking into my house, I’d pull out my Beretta semi-automatic .12 gauge and use it if I had to. And I’d also call the cops.”

“Wait,” he said. “Why would someone like you have a gun?”

“Because,” I said, “you are assuming that owning a gun means being in favor of allowing unrestricted purchases of assault weapons.”

“Oh,” he said. “I get it. Thanks for clearing that up.”

I was starting to feel like Bruce Lee in Fist of Fury, just whaling on these fools coming at me from all directions. Who else wants some of this?

Turns out, Chitty did. “Maybe we should have SUV control, after the Waukesha mow-down,” she said. “And If you are outraged because you think we need more gun laws, you should be just as outraged at the drugs coming across our open borders. There are more than seven times as many drug overdoses a year in the United States than homicides. Maybe we should ban drugs.”

“Um, Chitty,” I said. “Many drugs are banned, and you need a prescription for thousands of other pharmaceuticals. But no one’s attacking elementary school kids and drugging them to death. No one’s driving SUVs into schools, stores, and churches and killing a dozen people at a time every week. Guns are the problem, and how you can ignore that reality astounds me. They say America is the stupidest f**king country in the world. You, my friend, are Exhibit A.”

Chitty didn’t respond. I assume she slipped off into the internet somewhere and changed her identity. Damn, that felt good.

Then I felt a warm wet tongue on my face and smelled Olive’s doggy morning breath. I opened my eyes to see daylight flooding the room. And suddenly I was awake, still in America, still in the stupidest f**king country on the planet.

*Names have been changed to protect the ignorant. And my life.

Categories
At Large Opinion

Time to Say “No”

Just say no. (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)

I’ve been thinking about a sign in the yard of a house in my neighborhood. It’s more of a sculpture, really — a white dog taking a poop — very realistic, complete with poop coming out of the appropriate place. The word “NO!” is painted on the dog, and the message to passersby is clear: Do not let your dog do his business on this lawn!

I keep thinking about how the (probably very nice) person who put up this sign was so concerned that a dog would poop in their yard that they erected a permanent image of a dog pooping in their yard. It’s like an homage to a pooping dog. People walk by, see that sign, and think about a pooping dog. There’s probably some sort of life-lesson here, but it eludes me.

President Biden went to Buffalo, New York, last week, in the wake of the recent mass murder there, and gave a heartfelt speech about the dangers of white supremacy, saying that it was not who we are as a country and that we should reject it. He’s right, but we might as well put up a billboard on the White House lawn picturing a Klansman with “NO!” painted on his sheet, for all the good that speech is going to do.

Signs and speeches aren’t going to fix what’s wrong with this country. In too many states, a rabid right-wing minority has control of the reins of government. Poll after poll shows that the majority of people in those states (including Tennessee) favor some kind of gun control and some level of abortion rights. And yet, their legislatures keep passing no-permit-needed, open-carry gun laws, and forcing through measures that will outlaw abortion entirely, even in cases of incest, rape, or potential death of the mother. The real “radicals” are in charge in too many states, the will of the people be damned. How do we change that?

Consider Mississippi: Thirty-eight percent of the population is African-American, and yet there has not been an African American elected to statewide office in Mississippi for 130 years. That’s primarily because the state has a law that allows the legislature to pick winners of statewide races if the winner gets less than 50 percent of the vote. But it’s also because the Democratic party has done a crappy job of getting more African Americans registered to vote and involved in elections in that state.

The Buffalo shooter lived in a town with a 3 percent Black population. He had to drive 200 miles to find enough African Americans to kill en masse. It’s fair to assume this guy had only been exposed to the ideology of his rural community and the silo of his internet habits. It’s possible he’d never had a real conversation with a Black person, which made it easier for him to perceive them as “other,” rather than as fellow human beings.

Maybe the Democratic Party should take some of the millions of dollars it spends on TV ads and billboards supporting its candidates and put it into a massive campaign to register voters in red states — a reprise of the “freedom rider” movement of the early 1960s. Send busloads of young folks into rural areas and small towns. Have them knock on doors, set up voter-registration sites, speak to civic groups — introduce themselves and the party’s priorities to people who have only known progressives in theory, as evil “libruls,” rather than actual humans.

Maybe it’s idealistic, but the only real way to send white supremacists back to their caves is to elect people who will stand up and fight against them — and to get rid of elected officials who call them “patriots” and give credence to the Great Replacement Theory.

We really do need to “replace” white supremacists and their political enablers, and not just in theory. These evil creeps are spreading hatred, intolerance, violence, and death. They are bent on destroying the most diverse country on the planet and establishing a racist autocracy. It’s time to stand up and say no. These white dogs are crapping on all we hold dear.