Author: Bruce VanWyngarden

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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?

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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At Large Opinion

Saving Grace

Barack Obama (Photo: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

It was in late June 2015. I was on vacation, visiting my son Andrew in New York City. The news had been filled for days with the horrific events in Charleston, South Carolina, where a racist teenager named Dylann Roof had walked into Emanuel AME Church and gunned down nine Black parishioners in cold blood.

We decided to drive out to Montauk for a few days to try and change the vacation narrative. The first night, we went to watch an indie film being screened in a local park. It was a perfect summer evening and a small crowd was spread about on blankets and folding chairs, waiting for the film to begin, chatting, staring at their phones. I was one of the latter, scrolling idly, when a tweet with a video of President Obama caught my attention. It was the moment when the president broke into “Amazing Grace” at the funeral for Rev. Clementa Pinckney. Obama began singing alone, then a few parishioners joined in, and then the sound swelled like a great wave cresting, as everyone in the congregation lifted their voices. As I watched, I felt tears flooding my cheeks. The president had somehow tapped into the unspeakable pain of that moment and transformed it into hope, into love, into catharsis. I will never forget it.

Just 10 days earlier, the man who would become Obama’s successor had ridden an elevator down to the basement of Trump Tower and announced his intention to run for president. His first words into the cameras were a lie: “Wow,” he said. “That is some group of people. Thousands!” Puzzled reporters looked around, noting the several dozen spectators, some of whom, it was later discovered, had been paid $50 to attend and wave signs. Trump then went off on one of his now-familiar verbal rambles, concluding by saying of Mexico: “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us [sic]. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists. They’re not sending their best.”

Trump didn’t invent the stubbornly embedded strain of American racism that still plagues this country, emerging and receding through the centuries like a blood tide. But Trump was the first president to give permission to the white people who are decidedly not “America’s best” to voice the angry, suppressed, evil part out loud — and act on it. In a few short years, the specter of white supremacy has gone from anonymous, ignorant men burning crosses in the Southern woods to the mainstream of the Republican Party — and into the brains of who-knows-how-many disturbed young men with easy access to high-powered weapons.

The latest rallying cry is the “white replacement theory” — the belief that people of color are going to somehow pour across the border by the millions, register to vote (even though they wouldn’t be citizens), and take over the electorate, thereby making white people a minority. It’s a fiendishly clever plot, no? Laughable or not, it’s now the principal topic on Tucker Carlson’s racist fever-fest on Fox News. And mainstream Republicans have taken the cue, openly espousing the theory, even using it in their ads. The message isn’t subtle: Poor, dirty, non-English-speaking brown and Black people are going to “replace” you noble white people and take all your stuff. And the Democrats are behind it all!

The 18-year-old who murdered 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, last weekend wrote 180 pages of drivel citing the replacement theory as justification. It’s just the latest iteration of the American white supremacist horror show, which also includes the murders of worshippers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, the killings of Hispanics at a mall in El Paso, and the deadly “Jews will not replace us” march in Charlottesville, Virginia. All were committed by white men citing the replacement theory bullshit.

Trump began his campaign with a racist trope, and he continued to stoke racism at every turn for five years, including after the nazi march at Charlottesville, where he notably cited “good people on both sides.”

That whirlwind has hit the barn. We live in a country where baseless fear-mongering and racism spark mass murder, a country where it’s easier for a teenager to obtain weapons of war than a beer, a country gravely in need of healing, and yes, maybe even a hymn. We are an Amazing Disgrace.

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At Large Opinion

Oh, My God!

Ginni Thomas (Photo: Wikimedia | Gage Skidmore)

It really is unbelievable, when you think about it. You have to wonder how this can possibly be happening in 2022. Women are being treated like chattel — their bodies controlled by the state as though they were livestock, their gender and sexuality no longer their own.

I’m talking, of course, about Afghanistan’s autocratic Taliban rulers, who last week ordered all Afghan women to wear body-covering burkas in public. The decree further mandated that women leave their homes only when necessary, even when wearing a burka. Male relatives will also face punishment — including possible jail time — if women in their family violate the dress code.

It was seen as a hard shift by the Taliban government, one that confirmed the worst fears of human rights activists. It is a cruel and absurd level of oppression and misogyny, but what do you expect when government and religious ideology are combined? It’s so distressing.

Meanwhile, in the United States of America, the Supreme Court (where six of the nine justices are Catholic) appears to be ready to overturn Roe v. Wade and thereby legalize religious-based laws banning or restricting abortion in 26 states (and counting). Seventy percent of Americans oppose making abortion illegal again, but this is a case where “majority rule” is truly a joke. As Republicans learned long ago: Control the judges and you control the law.

The problem, of course, is not necessarily that the justices are Catholic — liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor is Catholic, for example — the problem is that the five judges in question have been vetted and brought to the fore by the ultra-conservative Federalist Society, which opposes abortion rights. Presidents G.W. Bush and Donald Trump (both of whom lost the popular vote) followed their recommendations, and here we are. It’s been the Federalists’ stated goal to overturn Roe v. Wade for 50 years, and it looks like they’re about to succeed.

John Gehring, Catholic program director at the Washington-based clergy network Faith in Public Life, was interviewed by the AP: “The Catholic intellectual tradition has produced giants of liberal thought as well, but in recent decades the right has done a better job building institutions that nurture pathways to power.” No kidding.

And let’s not forget the Evangelical Christians’ contribution to this pending fustercluck. David Talcott, professor of philosophy at King’s College and an expert in Christian sexual ethics, told vox.com: “Conservative Catholics and conservative evangelicals have become allies of certain kinds, each defending the interests of other, a theological and philosophical overlap between the two.” Indeed.

I’m no religious expert, but I am sure of one thing: What we’re talking about here is, at its core, sexual repression. Abortion is just one spoke in the traditional religious shame-wheel that also includes opposition to sex without marriage, LGBTQ rights (including gay marriage), contraception, masturbation, etc. — pretty much anything involving fun sexy-time — because their god has decreed that sex is not for f**king around. It’s for baby-making. The guilt is just an added feature, not a bug.

It’s no accident that when contraception became readily available to women via the pill, the sexual revolution followed, and Roe v. Wade became the law of the land. The religious right and their Republican groomers have been working to turn back the clock ever since. Can’t have women acting all uppity, after all. They need to learn their place and make some damn babies. The conservatives played the long game — stacking the courts — and it looks like they may finally pull it off. Much to their regret, I predict.

There are two principal theories about the now-infamous leak that made Justice Samuel Alito’s preliminary majority opinion public: 1) A liberal justice or associate leaked it to provoke alarm among progressives and arouse the base for the midterms. 2) A conservative justice or associate leaked it to prevent any of the five in the majority from being able to back away from their initial opinion on subsequent votes.

Ironically, both results will probably happen. As for the leaker? If I were a betting man, I’d put money on Mrs. Clarence Thomas.

Categories
At Large Opinion

Both Sides Now

Sean Hannity (Photo: Wikimedia | Tia Dufour)

I graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in the 1970s. The school runs a real daily newspaper, where students in their senior year get hands-on experience as reporters. In those long-ago days, we wrote on typewriters using cheap brown paper. Every desk had an ashtray on it. Our editors were veterans from dailies around the country and were mean as cobras. When you turned in a story, you better have spelled every name right and gotten “both sides” or you got your ass chewed and your story was wadded up and thrown into an editor’s wastebasket. Back then, nothing was stored on a computer, so you started your rewrite from scratch. Good times. We drank a lot of beer after work.

One day, the police radio in the corner of the newsroom reported that a child had been run over and killed by a school bus. I was given the story. I dutifully called the school district spokesperson and got a boilerplate statement: “We regret this unavoidable tragedy, blah blah.” I got the police report and wrote up the details of the accident; then I got a quote from a police spokesperson. When I turned in my story, the editor tossed it back to me and said, “This needs a statement from the kid’s parents.”

I was mortified. I couldn’t even imagine what question I would ask the parents of a dead 5-year-old. I sat staring at the phone. An hour later, I told the editor that I’d called the parents’ house several times and no one had answered. It was before answering machines and cell phones and there was a looming press deadline, so I got away with it. I decided then that I was not hard-boiled enough for daily newspaper reporting.

This “get both sides” ethos still remains, but what was once our universal source of news and information — the local newspaper — is a crispy cicada shell. Most of them aren’t even locally owned any longer. They’re doing what they can with the resources they have, but millions of Americans are now self-selecting their news sources. And, sadly, millions of those Americans have no idea how to distinguish legitimate news reporting from propaganda and misinformation.

Take an issue like, say, the minimum wage. It’s $7.25 an hour and hasn’t been raised in 13 years. A traditional journalist would explore the issue by talking to business owners, hourly workers, labor union officials, and economists.

Those in favor of raising the minimum wage would say it puts more money in the pockets of the working class, which will spend it, which will drive the economy via increased sales of appliances, cars, vacations, etc. Those opposed would argue that raising the minimum wage will increase labor costs, which will increase the price of goods, cause inflation, and put companies out of business.

After getting input from both sides, a journalist would then dig into historical trends, to see what actually happened when the minimum wage was raised in the past. Then, voila!, a news article. Fair and balanced. Two sides with a little neutral analysis. This was journalism for decades. Pick an issue. Rinse and repeat. Done properly, the reader would have no idea how the reporter felt about the minimum wage. Reporters were not even allowed to cover stories where they might have a conflict of interest.

Contrast that with the recently released taped conversations between former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows and Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo and Sean Hannity. Bartiromo is heard telling Meadows the questions she’s going to ask Trump in an upcoming interview, setting up the softballs, so to speak. Hannity is heard asking Meadows, “Which states do we need to focus on?” in order to drive GOP voter turnout for Trump. Note the “we.” After getting his marching orders, Hannity ends the conversation by saying, “Yes, sir!” to Meadows. Welcome to the new “fair and balanced.” And don’t even get me started on the racist bilge that Tucker Carlson spews out to 4.3 million Americans every night.

The Fox News network and its hosts have an agenda. They are the network of Trumpism and manufactured far-right outrage. The hosts at MSNBC also have an agenda, a progressive one, though I don’t think they’re anywhere near as manipulative of the truth as Fox.

The overarching point is that people need to learn to distinguish between reporting, opinion, and propaganda. Legitimate news reporting exists; it’s just harder to find amid all the dreck pouring from the political fringes. Propaganda is designed to make you feel something — fear, anger, outrage. Good journalism is supposed to make you think. We need to seek out the latter.