Morning Fog

President 45 School

What's in a name? Columnist George Will's recent column "The Sensitivity Sweepstakes" reviewed the art of political correctness and the extremes to which it went in 2020. It's worth a read. To cite just a couple of his examples, in case you can't access the column: the curious notion that Ulysses S. Grant, the military genius who was most responsible for defeating the rebel Confederate States of America, should not be honored because he owned a handful of slaves; or that a lecturer in a university class who read to his students the "Letter from Birmingham" whose author (a guy named Martin Luther King, Jr.) used "the n-word" ought to be fired.

There are many difficult decisions to be made in this country as we consider the implications of deeply rooted racism, or of other past sins. But I would agree with Will that some of the demands being made now are laughable.

I would agree that huge numbers of statues to Confederate heroes must be removed, with some possibly to be parked in a museum somewhere. Most of those appeared years after the Civil War, after Union forces won the war, but Northern politicians lost the peace. A tragedy, but what can we do? We can take down those statues. But reason cautions me against de-naming anything that glorifies or commemorates someone strictly on the basis that he owned slaves. How can we possibly decree, from our position 150 years after the fact, that prominent individuals and national leaders should not have shared the customs, mores, and attitudes of their time?

Well, all these matters are being dealt with now, and not all will end up without some people's reputations being injured or destroyed rather needlessly. (Aside: Another telling example cited by Will was in Great Britain: zealots were decreeing that the name of something (was it a town? a museum? I forget.) must be changed; when it was pointed out the person it was named for was NOT the same person to whose moral turpitude the zealots were objecting, they insisted it must be changed anyway, "to avoid confusion." Far be it from them to concern themselves with facts or reality when their high moral credentials are at stake.

Again, these things will be worked out in coming years, in various ways. But in the meantime, changing the past can be an annoying and even costly process for those living in the now. Here in Arlington, Virginia, "Lee Highway" (named after you-know-who) runs within a couple of miles of my house, and for miles out into the Virginia countryside. Its name is being changed soon, at least here in Arlington, but I lay money on two things: (1) locals, if only from habit, will keep on referring to it by its old name for years, and (2) hundreds of thousands of dollars will be spent by government and business to alter street signs, business addresses, and such.

There is a practical way to avoid all this nuisance and cost? Lee Highway has another designation:  U.S. Rte. 29. That has a pleasant, unifying, apolitical ring, doesn't it? Why can't we just refrain from having to name every human structure, and many natural ones, for some broken-down Highway Commissioner, pious priest, a Superintendent of Schools who just did his job, or even a twice-impeached President?  [Be forewarned, those requests for naming things "Trump" are coming, and many will be approved, and later we'll need to change them.] 

I am much in favor of numerical names, or those representing natural features. New York City already does this with its elementary schools, e.g. P.S. 329, and there is a school not far from where I live known as "Lemon Road School." Those are great names.

Breaking The National Political Logjam [Part 1 of Umpteen, Maybe?]

Trump's support has remained steady almost no matter what he does. So if he were reelected, we can't look to the Party of Trump (PoT)* to do us much good in breaking down the tribal barriers that now pervade our national political life. In fact it seems likely that we could count on a further deterioration, to the point of ruin. So obviously, the moderate course is to rely on the Democrats.

Will Biden and Harris be able to reach out? I'm not optimistic. They'll be too busy with trying to undo the regressive trends that Trump and his sycophants have tried to implant in so many areas (literally ALL areas). They will also working to establish new progressive models, as voters clearly expect, to deal in more creative ways with matters that now seem higher-profile than before -- racism, national health care, income distribution, and climate change, to name a few. They will be doing this not only against the pushback from Republicans who survive the election, but possibly also from different factions within their own party. These jobs will take years; a full Presidential term or even two. And if they should craft some semblance of bipartisan consensus on measures addressing one or two issues, the only barriers that get broken down will be those among a handful of politicians.

This is all good and necessary work, but not enough to keep 2024, or 2028, from looking just like 2016, when we will be looking again at a very narrowly decided election, and we'll be off again on the next Trump disciple's rush to take the country back to the 1950s or earlier.  

Could it be that Biden and Harris need to go much further? Trump's base is real. Certainly it includes malevolent and self-interested politicians who lead them down garden paths, and it includes a small tranche of people who really are "deplorables," not the "fine people" Trump so infamously declared neo-Nazis to be. Democrats should keep in mind that until the mid-1960s, those same deplorables were voting Democratic. But that's the fringe. I believe that mostly the 40%, or 45%, whatever, are just regular Americans. They too have to pay the bills, deal with their health, educate their kids.  They vote, they have issues they legitimately expect their government to help deal with, and - useful to keep in mind - issues where they believe the government ought NOT to get involved.  If they are on average more white, more male, older, less educated, or live in less densely populated areas than those on the other side of the political divide, they are still as American as apple pie and violence.

As a nation, what shall we "do with" this large contingent? If we're going to get past the current state of intense polarization, they are the people to whom Joe and Kamala will need to reach out. Frankly, in the current environment of mutual suspicion and hostility, I don't see how the more extreme proposals of the left get us there. History suggests a President may be able to bring one major change to fruition during a new term. On the other hand, many commentators are seeing hope that the current juxtaposition of several churning crises (black lives matter, climate change, attacks on our constitution and voting procedures, coronavirus) can produce another era of sea change a la FDR. I don't see Joe Biden in that mold.

*There is a terrible punster behind the curtain at Morning Fog who suggests that probably the PoT would rather just sit back and call the kettle black. Or maybe destroy the kettle.

 

Wine Or Guns? Which Is More Dangerous?

The most recent tragic school killing in Florida generated considerably more active response from the young people who were targeted, raising hope that some of the most egregiously self-destructive aspects of U.S. gun law might be moderated. 

They are learning how tough a battle they have chosen to engage in.

They were kept away from a planned meeting at the state capital in Tallahassee because of fears for their safety. (Well, I guess we already knew Florida, like many other states, can't protect its schoolkids from random shooting.) 

Those who met with the President, who only the day before had at least said he would have his administration look into" banning bump stocks, faced a wooden-faced NRA-manipulated Charlie McCarthy who revived tired and preposterous notions like incentives for teachers who learn to use guns. Don't teachers have enough to do? Do they also have to enlist as part of a military force to protect their own students? And if they do, don't they really become the National Guard, that selfsame "militia" that the Constitution defines as the reason for Article 2, and which the strict constructionist Supreme Court mysteriously wrote out of the picture years ago?

The enraged chieftain of the National Rifle Association has declared that anybody who doesn't agree with the NRA "hates individual liberty."  Yet he in effect decrees that we, the people, have no individual liberty to challenge his views.

Well, as predicted, not much has changed. As one commentator recently said, when it comes to firearms, we are a corrupt failed state. Yet. In the long run, things are bound to change, and stonewalling and insane rage against change is only likely to make change, when it comes, far more radical.  Mincing steps to require everyone who buys a gun to have a background clearance will no longer suffice.

Meanwhile, I have lately been working on a charity event involving a wine tasting. In Virginia, these things get a little bit complicated because a retailer who may bring a wine to a tasting, at an event outside his own shop, may NOT sell bottles of that wine at that location. He has to take orders for pickup at his shop a day or two later. If there is any justification for this (one is not immediately evident), it appears to be that the customer might drink his wine on the spot and could become dangerous to others. Think of it as a kind of waiting period. No such worries about guns, though! 

School Shootings On The Rise?

Another "big" school shooting, this time in ... gee, hard to remember without checking, there have been so many ... I think this one was in Florida.

And people are up in arms about it. (Or is that a poor choice of words?)  We definitely know of some who, far from being upset, maintain an amazing degree of equanimity about the problem. Those, of course, would be our Republican elected officials, including the most prominent of them, Ryan and McConnell. (Trump too, though he isn't really a Republican and we are getting less certain whether he was truly elected.) 

Even here in the lowly Virginia Assembly, where elections last November brought a tidal wave of Democratic wins that came within one seat of wiping out (drat! wrong choice of word again!) the 30-some seat Republican majority, we are seeing that legislation on anything involving guns is radioactive, despite the fact that we've had our own school shootings here over the years.

Just a while back a four-year-old shot himself dead with a gun he found at his day-care center. One of the new Democrats in Richmond floated a bill that would simply have required day care centers to ensure that any guns they have lying about are kept under lock and key. Seems reasonable to me -- after all, if they really need them to control the kids, they can always run and get them. The Virginia Republicans shot it down (oops, another poor choice of words?) in committee. No reasons were stated but no doubt they wanted to ensure the four-year-olds' Constitutional right to procure weapons with which to kill themselves. Or maybe just cut down on "needless" regulations.

I don't have kids of my own, but somehow I don't feel all this killing is quite right.  One idea that occurs to me is that the Florida shooter (we won't glorify him here with a name) should not have survived. Most of these kids seem to want "suicide by cop" anyway, so maybe this one just screwed up. And there seems to be no such thing as taking personal responsibility for one's actions anymore. But given the chance, which in this case they clearly had, the cops should be sure to shoot him dead. It would not solve the problem, but it would give the parents of the victims a little closure, and it would sure save us all a lot of money. Learn his motive? Why should we care about his motive? "Troubled?" We don't know how to fix that but it doesn't give him any legal justification to murder, does it?

So, what is to be done? Not much, really. It's hard to see anything constructive happening until a senior Republican legislator's own kin (grandchild maybe, since they're all ancient) is killed.  Then maybe.

Meanwhile, for those of you out there who do have kids and grandkids, the most positive development I see is somewhat counterintuitive - the very frequency of these school shootings means that young people all around the country are "gaining" personal and first-hand knowledge of the issue.  A few more incidents, and hardly a kid in America won't know at least one person who was shot at his/her school.  Those who do manage to survive will be voting very soon.  Very soon. They can target (right word!) their "my-gun-right-or-wrong" supposed representatives in state and national legislatures.  Or run for office themselves.  

This just in: Rumor has it that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has a draft bill ready to go for Monday - raising the legal voting age to 50.

An ACA By Any Other Name Still Smells Like Progress

We're told that we may get further information regarding what the Republican replacement for the Affordable Care Act may contain. I'm sure we'll be seeing plenty of views as to what's good about it, and what's not, but taking the long view, I think one thing is certain:

The real accomplishment of the Obama administration and the ACA that it legislated is not so much specific provisions, though of course it's good for all of us if more citizens obtain health insurance, and provisions like those involving pre-existing conditions and others are naturally very popular.

For me, taking the long view, I see the ACA's most important feature as having pushed the envelope to expand health care to the point that even (most) Republican pols can't do away with it. Oh, yes, they will try. After all, Republicans have fought tooth and nail since the Roosevelt era against the whole idea that government has a duty/mission to provide health care to all. But the ACA has moved the ball forward a couple of steps - its opponents are already finding they can't move it three steps back (perhaps one). And that's the definition of progress.

Democrats have become a bit sensitive about calling themselves "progressives," but I think it's a fine term, in part because it offers its mirror image - "regressive" - as the definition of what the Republican Party and its current standard-bearer represent.  Over time, societies choose to progress rather than regress.  I've always said the GOP efforts to put a negative spin on the ACA by dubbing it "Obamacare" would come back to haunt them. No matter what alterations they make now; it will remain a significant Obama legacy. 

Hicks In The Sticks - Still Solidly Sensible?

The day after the U.S. presidential election, pundits suddenly came awake to the political/cultural division in our country between the citified folk and the hicks in the sticks (my term, not theirs). It seemed they had just noticed it, but if they were asleep to it before, one look at those county-by-county maps of the nation that were being shown as part of the pre-election coverage made it clear as a bell.  In state after state, urban areas showed up as blue spots, patches, or teardrops of varying sizes in a sea of red.  

[Incidentally, for those pundits, Morning Fog is pleased to point out that we were concerned about this trend some years ago - see for example "The Purple Ring" (2012) or "...Urban-Rural Dichotomy" (2010). Aaah, so what? - with that and about three bucks, we can get a cup of coffee at Starbucks!]

Moving on:

I confess, as the Starbucks reference shows, I'm "urban" these days - I live a stone's throw from Washington D.C., the belly of the beast, and I voted for Clinton (see earlier posts for reasons). Yet the parents who imparted me their values were basically small-town rural; they used phrases like "I wouldn't know him from Adam's off ox;" I was raised mostly on a series of military bases (real rurality!); and did military service. More than many in our current urban caste, I think, my wife and I still have a foot in the heartland, spiritually and even physically, having recently visited such spots as the California high desert and the coal and lumber country of central-western Pennsylvania.

With my mixed ruban (or urbal?) sensibility, I've always figured the American voter, particularly the small-town one, was a rock of level-headedness. I credited them/us with common sense, common decency, and the ability to see through dishonesty; to know that cream rises to the top, but so does scum; and shit floats too.

But if I could address the non-urban voters who we are told put Donald Trump into office, I'd have to say my belief in that general principle was shaken more than a little by this month's election results. I'm puzzled how you could have been hornswoggled by such a snake oil salesman; considered his wild promises to be anything but ludicrous; been unconcerned about his lack of moral character and common decency; or failed to detect, from his erratic behavior and paranoiac statements -- and here's where he really stands out from his opponent -- that he maybe ain't quite right in the head. 

Am I wearing blinders? Will future developments prove that the heartland still beats true?  Maybe. I can even think of a few ways that Trump, ass that he is, could solve a couple of this country's longstanding issues. But his latest tweetery of denial, rage, and baseless fabrication on the subject of election "rigging" doesn't offer much hope.

I guess the "good" news is that in so many places, the supremacy of nonsense over common sense is razor-thin, and may be restored with just a few people returning to their senses. But that's just my two-senses' worth.    

Nightmarish Forecast

The very day after the election, the Washington Post ran this banner headline in its "style" section: "Our National Nightmare Is Over!"  This was one of those twerpy, feel-good sorts of things, intended I suppose to help people put the election behind them and feel jolly. Maybe some actually will be buoyed by the advice offered, e.g. "just get back on Facebook" or remind yourself that your "true citizenship is in heaven." (Ye gods!)  The profoundly gullible might even believe the statement that "there are things we never, ever have to go through again," like debates and October surprises. (REALLY? Where are those going to go before the next election?)

Overall though, I think that for most of the country - at least those who were a part of the popular-vote majority, and in due time, probably a lot of the others too - would find it more realistic to consider that the nightmare has just begun.

We begin from the premise that we accept the results. The people have spoken, get on with it. Some of the kids in the streets seemingly disagree, but they have lots of energy to burn and the rest of us are not going to protest, not publicly anyway. The nightmare, though, isn't in what occurred, nor even in what Trump says he wants to implement, but in the separation that so clearly remains among us, which I hope to come to in a later post. It's also in the divisive currents that our President-Elect chose to arouse and enliven -- racism, sexism, xenophobia, paranoia, violence, media-bashing, questioning the legitimacy of our political system (to name but a few). Do all Trump voters share these views? Of course not, most do not. But consider the reverse: Those in the country who DO share these views voted for Trump. Their themes will continue to fester and erupt, as in fact they already have with white kids taunting Latinos in our schools.

Perhaps there was hope, in Trump's acceptance speech, where he spoke of healing wounds and being the President of all the people, that he would try to calm those currents? The early evidence is not encouraging, since his reaction to demonstrations as of this morning was to suggest they were fomented by "the media" and it wasn't fair! To him!  A statement worthy of a 12-year-old spoiled child.  Anyway, I note that Trump's demeanor suggested he must have been heavily drugged to enable him even to make such a statement. Yes, I know that isn't "fair" to Trump, so in fairness, I'll point out that winning Presidents always say such things. George Bush did, but did nothing more about it; Barack Obama did, and tried to take some steps, but was utterly rebuffed by the Republican establishment in Congress, and that meanness of spirit will likely cure any future Pres-Elect of trying to extend an olive branch to the opposition.

So the forecast is for continuing storminess, increasing chill on the way, exacerbated by high winds originating from a blowhard settling in over Washington, D.C. It won't be just Clinton supporters who feel it. All things considered, I think we're in for a longish nightmare, but I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise, by concrete action. 

Update:  This just in 30 minutes after posting: in the light of day, and presumably after being admonished by one or another of his advisors, Trump revised his view of the protesters with this new tweet: "Love the fact that the small groups of protesters last night have passion for our great country. We will all come together and be proud!" Make of that what you will, but at the least we see a mind whose first inclination is to respond to events abruptly and petulantly.  

 

 

Racitics

Where does the time go? As I attempt once again to stick a toe back into the blogging waters, perhaps it makes some sense to begin where I began about seven years ago when Morning Fog first saw the light of day.

Thus I stick my toe right into the U.S.'s ugly, festering black eye - the politics of racism, or maybe more accurately, the racism of politics.  Let's call it racitics.

In this regard, a recent column by DC-area writer Petula Dvorak caught my eye (not the festering one, the other one). Entitled "Unseemly Campaign Uncorks a Geyser of anti-Obama Hate," it calls attention to the fact that ugly hate mail addressed to the President, already unprecedentedly high over the past seven years, has become both qualitatively and quantitatively worse in recent months as the political campaign to replace him becomes more intense.  And threats to the President are just one component of the iceberg; right next to Dvorak's column in the newspaper is another item reporting a curious increase in "racially biased episodes" at a nearby small college in Maryland.  The list goes on and on.

It came as no surprise that the election of an African-American President in 2008, although symbolically important, certainly didn't mark the end of racism in the U.S. And it was only to be expected that said election would in fact bring forth a wave of racist expression by providing a convenient and very visible target for the anger of those who saw the success of a black politician as a personal affront. 

The history of contemporary racitics can be traced back to the "Southern strategy" developed in the Nixon years, which cynically chose to bolster the Republican Party's already-evident weakness at the polls by constructing a coalition of Southern whites disenchanted (to say the least) by civil rights legislation of the 1960s. It wasn't racist.  Oh no, of course not, just regional. And how could they have been expected to know that if you drag the bottom of a river, you'll catch catfish and snapping turtles, not trout? 

Believe, if you wish, that there was no intentional race bias. Some folks jes' like catfish.  Regardless, the "strategy" continued, with modifications, right to the present day. Had we hoped the election of Obama might have encouraged at least some GOP politicians to seize an opportunity to leave the worst vestiges of racism behind us by abandoning it?  Dream on.  In the Obama years they doubled down, with that pioneer of civil rights Mitch McConnell leading the way, dredging up even more catfish in the Midwest and elsewhere, while refusing to cooperate in any way with Obama (because catfish were unable to discern that Obama had any legitimacy in the White House).  

So we arrive at Trump, who has brought still more bottom-feeders - the snapping turtles - to the surface by adding Latinos, Muslims, LGTBs and others (women, perhaps?) to the long list of interlopers from whom we must take our country back before we can "make it great again."  Trump is simply the most recent manifestation to evolve (excuse me, I mean of course to be creationed by God) from the Southern strategy.  More traditional Republicans now are befuddled about what they created, and how to stop it. Sadly, I don't sense any remorse on their part about perpetuating racism over the past 40 years.  What they seem mainly to be concerned about (Trump is correct here) is their loss of control, and maybe just a tinge of concern that a few people might, however erroneously, think of them personally as racist.  

One Last Stab At The Confederate Flag Topic

I know I'm belaboring this topic at too great a length.  Beating a dead horse to death, as a State Department spokesperson (Margaret Tutwiler, I believe) once said in a press conference.

And that's why I think it's important to add a final thought to put the flag issue in perspective. 

First, the Court ruling as I understand it relates to license plates and nothing more.  One may hope as I do that the reasoning from that decision, coupled with outrage at the most recent killings, will offer a window of opportunity for blocking at least some other public displays of the Confederate flag.  But that window is political, not legal, and it will take work.  Opponents may go to court again.

Second, the political cartoon below by Mike Luckovich, publishing in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and reprinted in the Washington Post, really provides a powerful perspective on how this whole flag business fits into the broader canvas of race and discrimination in the U.S. --

The Confederacy's Place In History

In recent days, and for many years before, governments, politicians, and others in the U.S. South have sought to justify the continued widespread public display, sale, and reverence for the flag of the Confederacy as a matter of history.  "It's our history," they may say, or perhaps they say they are honoring the valor of those who fought for what they believed in.

I'm very much against any efforts to deny, or to whitewash, U.S. history.  The Civil War (or if you prefer, the War Between the States), is part of what we are as Americans, imbued in our psyches, even for our most recent immigrants, because its effects and its many remaining manifestations are still a part of our everyday lives.  So historians will continue to attempt to analyze and explain it, and museums will continue to offer glimpses of it.

But symbols aren't history, when raised to the top of flagpoles around the country, or splashed across automobile bumpers.  Despite claims to the contrary, they are rallying points that serve only to keep sick ideas alive.  In this country, we teach school children to honor and even "pledge allegiance" to the flag - a kind of a dumb idea in my opinion (a FLAG? Really?), but if we blow away the smokescreen, we have to understand that the "Stars and Bars" is also a claim of allegiance. 

Allegiance to what, though?  Is it history, even if Americans generally have very little regard for history?  Is it pride in relatives who served loyally for a cause? Well, there are lots of people in this country today who are descended from the Tories of the Revolutionary War period, who weren't evil and who believed in their cause, yet I'm not aware of any state in the union today that flies the Union Jack.  Lost causes are embraced only when someone wishes they weren't lost.  

And what is that cause?  Some would have us believe that it has to do with legal issues (the right to secede), or even economic ones (concerns about destroying the economic base of the South).  And it did, in part, at that time.  That's history.  But it also had to do with a principle, or as Vice President of the Confederate States of America Alexander Stephens put it shortly after several states officially seceded, the new CSA government's cornerstone:

...rest[s] upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. 

A devil's advocate might suggest that allowing the symbols of Confederate principles to be widely on display would give relatively harmless vent to regressive thinking that might otherwise go underground and turn to violence.    That has not proved to be the case.  It's time to recognize claims on "history" for what they are:  a sham.