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Weekly Reader: Be fair and prosper

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This Weekly Reader features links to recent articles that grabbed my interest or tickled my fancy. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry.

Americans need to rethink taxes and the public good if we are to reverse our income inequality and overcome the lack of fairness that games our system for those with money. Writing in The Ink, Anand Giridharadas has a conversation with Danish businessman and founder of Human Act Djaffar Shalchi about why he wants to make rich people like himself pay more in taxes. In The American dream is now in Denmark, Giridharadas and Shalchi make the case that people in Denmark are doing better by being fairer.

“If we millionaires are going to be “for humanity,” we have got to go beyond philanthropy and recognize that we need to be taxed. No matter how generous and smart we think we are in our private giving, unless we shift from trying to minimize our taxes to advocating to be taxed more, we are not living up to being “for humanity.” Are most millionaires there yet? No. I do feel a shift is starting, though. Please keep encouraging us — and keep pressuring us, too.“

Of course, most rich people in America believe that if we adopted policies like those in Denmark, then capitalism would die. The unquestioned goodness of capitalism is just another false American myth.

“In real life, contrary to the Hollywood tale, kids are more likely to achieve the American dream in Denmark than in America. America is not a beacon to the world on how to run an economy. Scandinavia has a much more impressive economic record than the US and is much more innovative. Sorry, my American friends — we’re not just fairer than you. We’re doing better by being so.“

One reason we don’t have a fair and equitable system in the U.S. is that such a small percentage of the population can control the government. Writing in Forbes, Steven Salzberg asks and answers the question What Do You Call A Country Where 5.6% Of The People Can Control The Government? The United States.

“Many people living in the U.S. don’t realize how truly undemocratic our current system of government is. By my calculation, 5.6% of the people can hold the entire government hostage, preventing any substantive legislation from passing.

This isn’t my opinion: it’s simply math. What’s more, it’s completely legal, made possible by the U.S. Senate–and made worse by its ridiculous filibuster rule.“

When monied interest can control our government by controlling such a small percentage of the population, then they have no incentive to pay more taxes or treat people more fairly.

Image by Jorge Guillen from Pixabay

I doubt it will surprise you if you give it some thought, but 46,218 news transcripts show ideologically extreme politicians get more airtime on talk shows. That’s the point of this piece in The Conversation by communications professors and researchers Joshua Darr, Jeremy Padgett, and Johanna Dunaway.

Committee assignments are normally a blessing for new House members. But some of today’s newer members, like freshmen Republican representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn, seem to be more interested in punditry than policy.

Governing isn’t the point. “Owning the libs” is what they live for (and getting rich in the process). Is there any surprise that we have one party that simply isn’t interested in governing or representative government? Speaking of which…

John Stoehr in The Editorial Board says it is time to Stop calling the GOP ‘conservative.’ Even the the late Rush Limbaugh said that if conservatism animated the Republican Party, there would be no President Donald Trump.

“Fascism is all-American. It’s native-born. And it describes the politics of the Republican Party more accurately than “conservatism” does. Sure, there are conservatives in the GOP (Mitt Romney comes to mind). There are conservative think-tanks, conservative policies, conservative legal theorists. But none of that captures the character of today’s Republican Party, which combines, in its never-ending search for enemies to punish, the elements of sadism and masochism.“

Oh yes. Although they show up all over talk shows and on op-ed pages, Jill Lawrence, writing in U.S.A. Today, reminds us that After Trump, Republicans have no standing to pontificate on anything. Period. (And yes, that especially goes for silly op-eds like the one in yesterday’s Washington Post. Don’t tell me about bi-partisanship after supporting virtually everything Donald Trump did for 4 years, including voting for that fig leaf fake constitutional argument in the second impeachment trial to get him off the hook. What hypocrites.)

As I’ve noted before, Chief Justice John Roberts has long had it in for the protection of the expansion of voting rights that helped end the Jim Crow era. In Vox, senior correspondent Ian Millhiser writes Supreme Court: Two cases could destroy the Voting Rights Act. It may happen, but Congress has the power to approve an updated act and ensure the safety of our elections no matter what John Roberts and his ilk on the Supreme Court do. Fighting for democracy is hard, never ending, and worth the effort.

We will end with two music-theme pieces. The New York Times featured an article by Jennifer Moore entitled In the Ozarks, the Pandemic Threatens a Fragile Musical Tradition. “The older fiddlers and rhythm guitar players don’t rely on sheet music, so their weekly jam sessions — now on hiatus — are critical to passing their technique to the next generation.”

Marty Stuart

The Bitter Southerner features an informative and fun interview between music journalist and critic Peter Guralnick and roots and country musician (and music historian) Marty Stuart. Getting Caught Up: Peter Guralnick and Marty Stuart is worth the read, if only to hear them talk about Dick Curless and the Maine truck-driving classic Tombstone Every Mile.

Enjoy and have a good week.

More to come…

DJB

Image of Denmark by David Mark from Pixabay

Mind the gap

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Gaps and distance. Two words with various meanings, but both can point to breaks, differences, and separation. A divide between places on a map, yes; but also the gulf we find between people.

It was the unfolding disaster we watched in horror last week that took my mind from the wide physical distances in Texas to the emotional and political distances that led to, and ultimately compounded, the state’s devastation.

Emotional and political gaps are easier to manage if we maintain a safe psychological and physical distance from those we dislike or who are in pain. Safe, I should say, for the one doing the distancing, but not for the individuals being left behind.

Several years ago I attended a Sunday service in London at St. Martin in the Fields. It was September, and the Vicar, the Rev. Dr. Sam Wells, had written a short meditation for the bulletin entitled From a Distance.

In Ernest Hemingway’s novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” set during the Spanish Civil War, a republican guerilla spots a nationalist cavalryman from a distance and kills him.  He raids the man’s purse, and inside finds a photograph of the soldier’s wife, intimate letters, and items of intense personal faith. Suddenly the cold act of war is revealed for what it was, and a feeling of revulsion creeps over the reader.  This is no longer an ideological struggle; it is the ghastly abrupt shattering of a beautiful set of relationships and loves.

I’m writing this on 11 September: a momentous day.  Rowan Williams described a suicide bomber as someone who can only see from a distance.  All violence requires distance; it depends on not seeing, not hearing, not sensing certain things.

When we build emotional and psychological gaps between ourselves and others we make decisions that run the gamut from tone deaf and stupid (e.g., Cruz, Ted) to unspeakable tragedies such as September 11th that destroy the lives of our fellow travelers on earth. When we operate from an emotional distance, all those who don’t think like us are seen as fair game for everything from mockery to scorn. And when we turn over our brains and our principles to those in the media who are paid big money to divide us, their mockery and scorn becomes ours.

Sam Wells ended his meditation with thoughts on the life of his parish. He called it “life close up,” and in his religious worldview he suggests that keeping the needs of others close imitates the life of God, “close up and giving full attention to the world’s intimate detail.” 

So much of the suffering we have seen in Texas is a result of political decisions to build a gap between those in power and those who do not share the same ideological beliefs and are perceived as outside the tribe. Those decisions don’t allow for a “life close up.” As Ryan Cooper wrote in The Week, the Republican party that has controlled all three branches of government in Texas for two decades is a reflection of the national party, one “in which catering to the welfare of one’s constituents, or indeed any kind of substantive political agenda, has been supplanted by propaganda, culture war grievance, and media theatrics.” Speaking specifically of Ted Cruz, he notes that leaving his freezing constituents to fend for themselves in Texas while he fled for the warmth of Cancun was emblematic of the party’s mode of governance. “Neither he nor anybody else in a leadership position in the party knows or cares about how to build a reliable power grid. They just want to get rich owning the libs.”

Thankfully, there are many fellow citizens and those in power — even from out-of-state and in the opposing political party — who turned toward each other with assistance and love as the state government turned away.

As one travels the Tube and other forms of transportation in the United Kingdom, “mind the gap” signs and announcements are everywhere. They serve as a reminder to be careful in crossing the space between the edge of the train and the platform. But they can also serve as a metaphorical reminder to carefully tend to the distances we find — and sometimes erect — between ourselves and others, working to keep them as small as possible. Working to maintain a human touch. Sam Wells, in closing his meditation, called on his community to:

“…renew our commitment in loving attention to details that matter. And so let us defy those who harden their hearts to bring about savage destruction through seeing merely from a distance.

Have a good week.

More to come…
DJB

Image by Greg Plominski from Pixabay

Christie Lenée’s high-wire guitar routine

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One of this generation’s most accomplished and yet under-recognized acoustic guitarists is Christie Lenée. But the recognition part is changing. Last year, Guitar Player magazine featured her work, and they opened the article with the following observation: “Watching Christie Lenée perform her solo acoustic act is like seeing a firecracker execute a high-wire circus routine while doing flips and juggling flaming bowling pins.” Pretty impressive! Lenée was also recognized as the Acoustic Guitarist of the Year in 2019 by Music Radar Magazine in the UK, so her international reputation is growing as well.

I first heard Lenée in an abbreviated set in 2014, and her combination of technique, passion, and musicianship blew me away. Now some six years later, I continue to be amazed, and feature her music this week in Saturday Soundtrack.

Her website notes that she is “often described as ‘Michael Hedges meets Joni Mitchell and Dave Matthews,’ integrating melodic pop lyricism with catchy hooks and percussive, harmonic textures.” That’s a pretty good description, but it doesn’t really give one a sense of the range and symphonic nature of the sound coming from her guitar. To jump into that sound, here she is in a live 2016 show from Nashville playing Breath of Spring.

In this next musical collaboration, Lenée joins up with the incomparable Tommy Emmanuel to play Landslide, the Stevie Nicks song made famous by Fleetwood Mac. This 2017 version is live from the Songbirds Guitar Museum, in Chattanooga. By the fall of 2019, Lenée was opening for Emmanuel on a European tour. Landslide is followed by another 2017 video of Lenée performing the tune Dance of the Wolves.

Lenée mentioned in the Guitar Player interview that she played the same instrumental tune, Song for Michael Pukac, for her international guitar championship wins in 2017 and 2019. She called it her most versatile piece, as it tells a story through different themes and variations. Here’s a beautiful version of the tune.

Lenée’s guitar work is often compared to Michael Hedges, the trailblazing acoustic guitarist who pioneered percussive finger style guitar. If you want to go deep down this path, then I recommend this hour-long WoodSongs concert from 2020 where Lenée joins Andy McKee in a celebration of Hedges’ work. McKee’s solo work begins at the 8:45 mark and Lenée’s begins around the 19:00 mark. They trade off throughout the hour. At the 45 minute mark, Lenée picks up a “baby 12-string” and a hammer…and, well you should just watch!

Her website notes that during the pandemic, “Christie is currently working on a solo album in addition to collaborative tracks with artists such as Tommy Emmanuel, Phil Keaggy and Laurence Juber.” Pretty good company there! In July 2020 she was also featured on the Grammy Museum’s virtual program streaming from Los Angeles, along with the 4-page article in Guitar Player Magazine referenced above.

Possibilities is a new piece for 2020. I find it filled with joy and happiness, which we can all use in the middle of our global pandemic.

There is so much here to admire. Sit back and enjoy!

More to come…
DJB

Image of Christie Lenée (credit: Christie Lenée | Official Website)

The Moon

Do it because it is hard

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President Kennedy’s famous challenge to go to the moon and return safely within the decade has always been seen as the type of dream that Americans dreamed: big, but also focused on the common good. We should do these things, Kennedy said, “not because they are easy, but because they are hard…and because they are worth winning.” It strikes me that as we consider major obstacles facing an America that seems to have lost its way in the 21st century — like anti-democratic forces in one of our major political parties, systemic racism, and anti-science deniers around climate change and pandemics — we should again dream big as Americans do, and tackle those challenges with renewed vigor because they are hard and because they are worth winning.

This Weekly Reader features links to recent articles that grabbed my interest or tickled my fancy. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry.

The forces that use extreme gerrymandering, voter suppression, racism, and misinformation to keep the majority from exercising power have fought a decades-long battle to silence democracy. As a result, many had given up on the work to change our politics. But the founder and the CEO of Fair Fight Action, Stacey Abrams and Lauren Groh-Wargo respectively, provide the details in the New York Times of how they turned Georgia into a competitive state based on democratic principles, dreams, and good, old-fashioned hard work. In How to Turn Your Red State Blue, they make the case that Georgia, Virginia, and Arizona are leaders in what can happen across the Sun Belt.

Our mission was clear: organize people, help realize gains in their lives, win local races to build statewide competitiveness and hold power accountable.

But the challenge was how to do that in a state where many allies had retreated into glum predictions of defeat, where our opponents reveled in shellacking Democrats at the polls and in the Statehouse.…

Georgians deserved better, so we devised and began executing a 10-year plan to transform Georgia into a battleground state….Years of planning, testing, innovating, sustained investment and organizing yielded the record-breaking results we knew they could and should.“

They did it because it was hard and because it was worth winning.

I featured an interview with author Heather C. McGhee in an earlier Weekly Reader. In this week’s edition, she writes on The Way Out of America’s Zero-Sum Thinking on Race and Wealth in The New York Times.

The task ahead, then, is to unwind this idea of a fixed quantity of prosperity and replace it with what I’ve come to call Solidarity Dividends: gains available to everyone when they unite across racial lines, in the form of higher wages, cleaner air and better-funded schools.

Hard work worth doing because it is worth winning this battle.

500 KV Lines
500 KV Transmission lines (photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you have been watching Fox News and believe that the power shortages in Texas during this major winter storm come from failed green energy initiatives such as wind and solar, guess again. Perhaps you’ll want to read Mark Sumner — a 30+ year veteran of the energy industry — with his piece Messing with Texas: The Lone Star state’s power grid is working exactly as designed in The Daily Kos. You can also check out Will Englund’s story on the same topic in the business section of The Washington Post.

“What has sent Texas reeling is not an engineering problem, nor is it the frozen wind turbines blamed by prominent Republicans. It is a financial structure for power generation that offers no incentives to power plant operators to prepare for winter. In the name of deregulation and free markets, critics say, Texas has created an electric grid that puts an emphasis on cheap prices over reliable service.

It’s a “Wild West market design based only on short-run prices,” said Matt Breidert, a portfolio manager at a firm called TortoiseEcofin.“

Will Englund, The Washington Post

The power grid in Texas is working exactly as the utilities planned: to maximize profits. I know you are shocked. Telling the truth in the midst of an avalanche of lies is hard work, but it is worth doing because it is worth winning.

Abby Lee Hood of Nashville has a similar take as Abrams, Groh-Wargo, and McGhee on the fights to bring together the communities that the forces on the right have worked so hard to drive apart. You may be surprised to learn The Real Meaning of Hillbilly from Hood’s article in the New York Times but I wasn’t. I once worked on a project to make sure that Blair Mountain’s labor history was protected, so I was glad to see Hood speak of that history to a national audience.

“I wish I had realized that my redneck roots didn’t contradict the other parts of myself as much as I was raised to believe. The conservative community I felt alienated from had forgotten its progressive roots. The fact is, in the early 1900s rednecks and hillbillies weren’t backward; they were ahead of the times….

When I interviewed Mr. Keeney, author of “The Road to Blair Mountain,” he told me rednecks need “identity reclamation.” He’s right. Leftists owe it to ourselves to pick up a history book and counter the propaganda against unionization and organizing.

“Redneck” meant something very different to those miners than what we think of today. They were part of the resistance. Reclaiming forgotten histories is work worth doing because it is really hard.

Speaking of cultural movements and histories that may surprise you…I’m guessing that you didn’t know that there was a Bluegrass Pride group. Well, I’m here to tell you that it not only exists, but that their members play great music and they vote! Here’s Molly Tuttle who has been featured on Saturday Soundtrack, singing a bluegrass (sort of) version of the Rolling Stones song She’s A Rainbow which was included in the BGP 2020 Favorites. Getting all parts of the bluegrass world to support rights for the LGBTQ community may be the definition of hard work, but it is work worth doing.

Finally, sports columnist John Feinstein begins his take on the owner of the Dallas NBA team’s decision not to play the national anthem at each game with a family story in his Washington Post piece entitled Mark Cuban had the right idea about the national anthem.

“My father was the general director of the Washington Opera for 16 years. Every year, on opening night, the orchestra, under his instructions, would play the national anthem before the opera began. There was no fanfare, no color guard, no one directing people to “stand and honor America.” The conductor would walk into the orchestra pit, raise his baton and the orchestra would play.

My memories of those nights are vivid because it always seemed to me that the entire audience leaped to its feet. The feeling was, “This is a special, once-a-year occasion.”

And it was.“

Let’s keep up the fight against false patriotism. Because it is work worth doing.

Enjoy the reading and the music this week.

More to come…

DJB

Image of the moon credit space.com

Lessons Jamie Raskin learned from his father

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(NOTE: Charles Ray wrote a blog post about Congressman Jamie Raskin’s father that led me to repost the life lessons here on More to Come. I encourage you to read Ray’s post, as well as Jamie Raskin’s eulogy for his father, Marcus Raskin, which is the source for these lessons.)

We generally see our Congressman, Jamie Raskin, each year at the Takoma Park July 4th parade. We love that parade as one of the best expressions of American values one can find in a region where too many in power have forgotten what the country stands for. Somewhere during the parade, Raskin and a crowd of young supporters will show up, and it is like a windstorm sweeps through the street. Raskin works the crowd like no one else can, shaking every hand he can reach and waving to the ones he cannot touch. In my post about 2019’s parade, I likened him to James Brown when I used the “hardest working man in politics” sobriquet.

Raskin is in the news these days because of his stellar work to speak truth to power in the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Many people wonder why he was quoting his father in the opening remarks. If you are like me and didn’t know very much about the life and work of Marcus Raskin, I encourage you to read his son’s eulogy, given at Sixth and I Synagogue in Washington when his father passed away at age 83 in 2017.

The eulogy is entitled Lessons I Learned from My Father, and I’ll quote those lessons in the hope that you’ll read the entire eulogy and understand a little bit more about father and son, and the remarkable moral compass that is at the heart of their work.

Lesson One: My father taught us that, when a situation seems hopeless, then you are the hope.  When everything looks dark, you must be the light.

Lesson Two: Spoil children with love and wisdom, not with things.

Lesson Three: Whatever the background noise, follow the music in your head and the dreams in your heart.

Lesson Four: Go to school to teach as well as to learn and never let your schooling interfere with your education.

Lesson Five: Bring your full intelligence and ethics to work every day and if you can’t, you may need to find a new job.

Lesson Six: Hate war and work as citizens for peace and justice.

Lesson Seven: Act pragmatically, not in the degraded sense of doing what powerful people want you to do, but in the Deweyean sense of promoting experiments to advance the ideals of freedom and the common good.

Lesson Eight: Never give up on anyone, never hate anyone, and act with love whenever you can.

Lesson Nine: No good act in life is ever wasted.

Wonderful lessons for living a meaningful and purpose-filled life.

More to come…

DJB

Image: Rep. Jamie Raskin (credit: U.S. Congress)

Ordinary places, extraordinary presidents

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Presidents Day is a good time to reflect on the office of the presidency and our expectations for the people who have been elected to lead our nation. There is much to consider on this day, coming as it does less than 48 hours after a strong bipartisan majority in the Senate voted to convict Donald Trump during his second impeachment trial but fell ten votes short of the required two-thirds threshold.

Taking the long view, more than 1,000 historians and constitutional scholars had urged conviction so that “No future president should be tempted by the example of his defiance going unpunished.” In considering the flawed individuals who will always hold this position, presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky writes this weekend on the “incredible power we entrust to imperfect hands.”

From a preservation viewpoint, I have thought about the places that shaped our presidents. Places that, as presidential historian Michael Beschloss has said, give us the opportunity to “walk through autobiography.” * What do they suggest about the characteristics needed to faithfully execute the Office of President, and to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States?

My visits to presidential homes began as a young child on family vacations. It was one of those trips — a car ride through the heartland, working our way north from Tennessee to Chicago — that made the longest-lasting impression.

I saw things on that trip I’d never seen before. Lush, impenetrable fields of corn planted right up to the roadside of those pre-interstate highways convinced me that we were caught in a maze where I had to count on my parents’ map-reading skills to escape. Two places from that trip shaped me forever: Wrigley Field, where I saw my first major league baseball game and became a fan for life; and the Lincoln Home in Springfield, a historic site that intrigued my young nine-year-old mind in ways I didn’t fully understand for years.

Abraham Lincoln’s home — the only one he ever owned — was a place of autobiography. What I remember most about that house was how very ordinary it was.

Oh, it was well decorated for the period, exuding a prosperous, middle-class aura. The National Park Service operation spoke to its importance in shaping the president who would save the nation. But I had seen much grander homes when visiting my grandparents in Franklin and Nashville. Two-story Greek Revival-style townhomes were a dime a dozen in communities throughout the mid-South in the 1960s.

We were there during the centennial celebration of the Civil War and the place was packed. More than fifty years later it remains a site that attracts visitors who very much go out of their way to see how such an extraordinary individual arose from such ordinary surroundings. Springfield is where we see Lincoln as a man of the West, who came up through self-education and hard work to rise to the pinnacle of power at a time of extraordinary crisis. And it was something from this place — for Lincoln was definitely of Springfield — that gave him the strength and character to lead a nation.

It took another president from Illinois to drive home the point about the connections between ordinary places and extraordinary people.

President Barack Obama was speaking in Chicago at the dedication of Pullman as a National Monument. After some background on the site’s role in helping build an African American middle class, President Obama spoke to the large number of students in attendance about why this place in the heart of their community was being designated a national monument:

“It’s also understanding that places that look ordinary are nothing but extraordinary. The places where you live are extraordinary, which means you can be extraordinary.”

Speaking directly to the school children, the president continued.

“You can make something happen, the same way these workers here at Pullman made something happen….no matter who you are, you stand on the shoulders of giants. You stand on the site of great historic movements. And that means you can initiate great historic movements by your own actions.”

Not all our great presidents came from humble surroundings, but all were shaped by place. Of the three who consistently rank at the top of historians’ lists of greatest U.S. presidents, Franklin Roosevelt quickly comes to mind as a scion of wealth who was profoundly shaped during his time of treatment for polio at Warm Springs, Georgia.

George Washington’s family had land and held slaves, but were not necessarily wealthy by 18th century standards. Yet as historian Andrea Wulf has shown, at Mount Vernon Washington connected to that land and developed a garden that spoke to the vibrancy of the American landscape and experiment in self-government. 

Gardens at Mount Vernon (Image by Nayuta from Pixabay)

Lincoln, in sharp contrast to those two, was born into poverty and was raised in very ordinary circumstances, but he was shaped by communities in Kentucky, Indiana, and then in Illinois, first in New Salem and ultimately in Springfield.

Washington’s place in the firmament of American presidents will always be secure. A singular figure in the American revolution, he was the “indispensable man” as described by historian James Thomas Flexner. More than any other, he helped shape some of the norms of our national government. 

Following the winning of independence, Lincoln and Roosevelt faced the two greatest crises in our nation’s history. They came from very different worlds, but they shared the trait of empathy that grew out of place; a trait that put them in touch with the needs of the ordinary people and gave them the extraordinary strength and courage to address whatever life threw at them. Roosevelt, after being stricken with polio, came to understand hardship in a visceral way. Lincoln’s empathy is well documented, as in his response to an issue that contrasts starkly with the Republican response to the recent insurrection:

“Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert? I think in such a case to silence the agitator and save the boy is not only constitutional, but withal, a great mercy.” 

We have, unfortunately, seen what happens in a crisis when the person in the Oval Office and his enablers have no real connection to ordinary citizens and lack empathy, not to mention competency and credibility.

President Joe Biden comes from ordinary places — Scranton and Wilmington — and grew up around ordinary people. He did not attend elite colleges. While in the Senate, he rode an Amtrak train home each night from Washington to Delaware to be able to see his children. He suffered horrible personal losses when his first wife and 13-month-old daughter were killed in a tragic car wreck in 1972, and again much later when his son died at the age of 46 of brain cancer. A stutterer when he was young, Biden learned how to deal with bullies and how to be empathetic to others who struggled.

Now as president, Biden faces cascading crises the likes of which we haven’t seen since FDR’s time: a badly managed national response to a worldwide pandemic, the resulting economic fallout, the rise of home-grown white supremacist terrorism, economic and racial inequality, the hollowing out of government for private gain, and an opposing political party that has just demonstrated that a majority of its national leaders are willing to sacrifice our democracy for personal power. Any one of these crises would test the mettle of normal presidents.

We don’t know how Biden will respond, but there are early indications that we have a chance, once again, to see what extraordinary things can come from ordinary places and ordinary people. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris — the daughter of immigrants and the first woman and first person of color to serve as Vice President — cannot do this alone. But as history has shown again and again, we have the chance to count on ordinary citizens in all walks of life — not just our leaders — to step forward to do the extraordinary work necessary to build a more perfect union.

More to come…
DJB

Image by Yinan Chen from Pixabay

* I did a quick count, and I have visited the homes of 16 of the nation’s 46 presidents, and the number goes over 25 when you toss in other sites related to our nation’s chief executives. Not exactly a bucket list item (like my MLB stadiums quest) but a decent number for an American citizen.

Happy birthday, Frederick Douglass

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Born into slavery with his actual birth date unknown, Frederick Douglass chose to commemorate his birthday on February 14th. A blogger with the name of Chitown Kev gathers the insights of political pundits, and he began today’s post with a thoughtful commentary on how Frederick Douglass may just be the greatest pundit of all time.

“Political violence, voter disenfranchisement, treason,” Kev notes, “Mr. Frederick Douglass wrote variations of this very same subject material in the 19th century.” Yes, “today’s pundits are writing about…contemporary events but I am not sure that they have any better or more eloquent of a grasp of the raw news material in front of them than Mr. Frederick Douglass did in his own day.”

As an example, Kev provides the following excerpt from an 1865 impromptu speech delivered to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society:

“I believe that when the tall heads of this Rebellion shall have been swept down, as they will be swept down, when the Davises and Toombses and Stephenses… there will be this rank undergrowth of treason…You will see those traitors, handing down, from sire to son, the same malignant spirit which they have manifested, and which they are now exhibiting, with malicious hearts, broad blades, and bloody hands in the field, against our sons and brothers. That spirit will still remain; and whoever sees the Federal Government extended over those Southern States will see that Government in a strange land, and not only in a strange land, but in an enemy’s land.“

Frederick Douglass from “What the Black Man Wants” (1865)

Coming out of this weekend, I wish that Douglass was not so prophetic.

If you want to know more about this man, I strongly recommend historian David W. Blight’s biography Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. It would be a great way to celebrate the birthday of this towering figure who speaks truth to us still.

More to come…

DJB

It is difficult to be objective when you are complicit

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We all face decisions. When we have to make quick decisions, we rely on our fast, highly intuitive, emotional thinking, following the instincts we’ve honed over time. It is the big, important life decisions that emotion and intuition cannot adequately address. 

For most of us, our life-changing, moral-clarity-moment decisions don’t play out on a national stage. But if we think about these decisions in our lives, we see that even when the right path is clear those choices are not always easy. One reason, as explained in Thinking, Fast and Slow, is that our brain finds it more important to have a coherent story in order to ease cognitive processing rather than to look at a range of alternatives that may challenge our basic assumptions. We don’t look for or absorb things that challenge our comfort level.

Which brings me to complicity.

When we are complicit in some action, when we personally benefit or find comfort in taking a certain route, even the moral clarity of a different choice may not be enough to force our hand. I know from personal experience how it acts out in our lives, as we come up with what we believe is a coherent story to avoid challenging our basic assumptions. Often, it is only when we are called to account that we realize that complicity has blinded us to the objective viewpoint and the moral choice that was in front of us all along.

Which brings me to the decisions made today in the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump.

Many commentators have rightly suggested that this was not so much a trial of the former president as it was of the Republican Party. The evidence against Trump was open-and-shut. The House Impeachment Managers, virtually everyone agreed, took a chaotic and horrific day and put the events of January 6th together into a coherent, emotionally searing, and highly believable case. They won praise for handling a difficult task well. As my Congressman and Lead Manager Jamie Raskin described the overwhelming evidence, “If you don’t find this a high crime and misdemeanor today, you have set a new terrible standard for presidential misconduct in the United States of America.”

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, put it clearly when he said, “Donald Trump will be convicted by history, even if he isn’t convicted by the United States Senate.”

But making the right decision is difficult if you are complicit. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and dozens of other Republican Senators proved that point this afternoon.

Sarah Longwell, writing on the conservative website The Bulwark, noted that finding 17 Republican senators to vote for conviction is a “Herculean” task. She was right. Why? Because — contrary to what Mitch McConnell said after the vote — many of them joined the former president in feeding the lie that led to January 6th. Members of the jury are “not just not impartial” but, she notes, “are both witnesses and accomplices to the crime.”

“There is something deeply, cosmically unfair about a group of elites force-feeding voters a lie about a stolen election, bilking them out of their money, demanding with the most overheated rhetoric that they “fight” to save the country — and then avoiding all responsibility while those people are hauled off to jail for doing what they’d been asked to do.…

But, as always, there are different rules for different people and in this case, the law that governs QAnon Shaman Guy has suddenly transmogrified when it comes to Trump. Why? Because of the sheer volume and depth of Republican mendacity. Republicans can’t hold Trump accountable precisely because they were complicit. They actively promoted his lies. And so convicting Trump would be an indictment of their own actions.“

Accountability may have helped some make the correct decision in real time, but others put off that moral reckoning. Yet history — as it generally does for all of us — holds those accountable who knew the right choice yet took a path that they see as more personally convenient or beneficial.

Of course the Minority Leader spun a different and truly disingenuous tale once Trump was found guilty by a bi-partisan majority of 57 senators, only to fall 10 votes short of the required two-thirds threshold for conviction.

In a statement that was clearly more for the donors he needs to return to support what has become a party of seditionists than it was to show moral courage, McConnell — mere moments after voting for acquittal — laid the blame for January 6th squarely at the feet of Donald Trump while hiding behind a false constitutional fig leaf that impeachment was not the right remedy to deal with the crimes of a former president. All the while it was his actions as the Majority Leader at the time that delayed the process and thwarted any possibility of holding the trial while Trump was still president. As with all things McConnell, it was a cold, political calculation that had no basis in constitutional fact or love of the institution of the Senate.

Civil rights historian Diane McWhorter made the point before the vote was taken that history will judge those who choose to vote for acquittal harshly. “As a student of an act of domestic terrorism that shocked the nation nearly 60 years ago, I can give you an idea how things will go for the Republican Party if senators decide to sweep January 6 under the rug and vote to acquit former president Donald Trump.” She writes of Birmingham’s reputation after a church bombing by white vigilantes killed four black girls at Sunday School, “(W)hen the church bombers went unpunished, the stain of their crime on the city became indelible and defining….there’s a sense that it never overcame its fate as the “City of Churches” where children were murdered at worship.”

I don’t pretend to know what may happen as a result of today’s acquittal vote in the Senate. But I do know that it is difficult and takes great moral courage to be objective if you are complicit. That moral courage was missing today from 43 members of the U.S. Senate.

More to come…

DJB

Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay

February music for those of us tired of being alone

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February is always the longest month of the year. As we round out a year of loss and lockdown, however, these 28 days just seems extra cruel. Yes, there’s optimism that hasn’t been present since the pandemic struck. Yes, many of us are fortunate to live with family members, roommates, partners, and caregivers, and we depend on the human touch they provide. Yes, some of us even live with our valentines!

Yet the sense of being alone is top of mind for far too many people. We still remain separated in ways that, as social beings, are not healthy for our souls or spirits. We’re lonesome. As the word comes out of our mouths, the sound makes it clear that we’re just tired of being alone.

What a timely topic for a Saturday Soundtrack. And a song. Thankfully, there are hundreds of songs to choose from.

Which brings me to the great Al Green. Best known for recording a series of soul hit singles in the early 1970s, including Take Me to the River, I’m Still in Love with You, and his signature Let’s Stay Together, the Reverend Al Green has a smooth voice offset by a rocky personal history. Tired of Being Alone was among his major hits of the 1970s, and seems to fit the tenor of our times.

Green’s hit has also been covered by a number of musicians, including, in this simple acoustic arrangement, the talented singer Morgan James. Having recently released a new album of Memphis-based soul music, James knows what to do with Green’s tune.

Norah Jones is one of my favorite singers, moving easily between styles and musical genres. She has a new pop-flavored song, Hurts to Be Alone, out from her newest album, but I want to go back a few years to showcase her tribute to the classic Elvis tune Are You Lonesome Tonight?

While we’re into tributes, Johnny Cash turns in his version of the Hank Williams’ hit I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry. This is Cash near the end of his life, so the voice isn’t as strong as it once was, but it aches and fits the tune perfectly, as only he can.

The late John Prine said that “songwriters just go from one breakup to another.” In writing The Speed of the Sound of Loneliness he said in an introduction to a live version that he recalled a Life magazine story years ago of an astronaut breaking the land speed record on the Bonneville Salt Flats, and they had a picture of the G-forces pulling at his face. “I felt like that in this song, that’s what was happening to this guy’s heart. All these G-forces were pulling at it.”

Then he adds, “If that makes any sense to you. If not, the song will be over before you know it.” Pure Prine.

Sometimes lonesome doesn’t get any better than Steve Earle, with Del McCoury singing tenor as no one else can.

And then there are the times when loneliness isn’t the worst alternative. Jack White, joined here by country singer Margo Price channeling Dolly Parton, sings the White Stripes song I’m Lonely (But I Ain’t That Lonely Yet).

“And I love my sister

Lord knows how I’ve missed her

She loves me

And she knows I won’t forget

And sometimes I get jealous

Of all her little pets

And I get lonely, but I ain’t that lonely yet“

And now, let’s turn to Sarah Jarosz — covering Billie Eilish — to take us to a better future.

“I can’t seem to focus
And you don’t seem to notice
I’m not here
I’m just a mirror
You check your complexion
To find your reflection’s all alone
I had to go

Can’t you hear me?
I’m not comin’ home
Do you understand?
I’ve changed my plans

‘Cause I, I’m in love
With my future
Can’t wait to meet her
And I, I’m in love
But not with anybody else
Just wanna get to know myself“

Enjoy! I hope you get to spend Valentine’s Day with the one(s) you love. And stay safe when you do connect with others in your future.

More to come…
DJB

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Weekly Reader: A baker’s dozen

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This Weekly Reader features links to articles that grabbed my interest or tickled my fancy. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry.

There’s a lot going on this week, so I’ve pulled in a baker’s dozen of articles and videos — everything from impeachment to people who coronasplain to a beautiful duet by two musicians featured in recent Saturday Soundtracks. I’ve tried to limit descriptions and quotes to just enough to entice you to dive deeper without getting too discouraged by the length. So let’s jump in!

We’ll begin with four impeachment and insurrection-related articles. First up, historian Lindsay Chervinsky, writing in Governing magazine, looks backward in As Trump’s Trial Nears, Here’s a History of Unusual Impeachments. Each of the cases she cites offers valuable insight and demonstrates that there is no such thing as a typical impeachment. 

Writing at Mother Jones, Mark Follman explains How Trump Unleashed a Domestic Terrorism Movement—And What Experts Say Must Be Done to Defeat It.

“Even the wifi password was a signal. Attendees at President Donald Trump’s rally in Dalton, Georgia, on January 4 who wanted to log in to the Make America Great network had to enter the phrase into their devices: ‘SeeYouJan6!’ Trump was in town that night ostensibly to boost two Republican Senate candidates, but he spent much of his speech railing about the ‘stolen’ 2020 election—and inciting supporters to descend on the nation’s capital two days later. ‘They’re not taking this White House,’ he declared, Marine One spotlighted behind him. The crowd roared. ‘We’re going to fight like hell.’”

This is a long and important piece worth your time.

At Just Security, Jason Stanley writes that scholars on the Nazis and anti-Semitism have seen this all before in Movie at the Ellipse: A Study in Fascist Propaganda.

“The video begins with Trump’s eyes in the shadow, and its second frame focuses the audience on the Capitol building – America’s Reichstag, where the decisions being denounced by the rally’s organizers were being made that day. The third frame of the video is the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles. This image immediately directs the attention of an audience attuned to an American fascist ideology to the supposedly elite class of Jews who, according to this ideology, control Hollywood. The appearance of the Hollywood sign makes no other sense in the context of a short video about an election. The next two images, of the UN General Assembly and the EU Parliament floor, connect supposed Jewish control of Hollywood to the goal of world government. As we have seen, according to Nazi ideology, Jews seek to use their control of the press and the entertainment industry to destroy individual nations. The beginning of the video focuses our attention on this supposedly ‘globalist,’ but really Jewish, threat.“

Another long but important read.

In the last of the four insurrection/impeachment articles, Deirdre Sugiuchi writes about her personal experience in Religion Dispatches. I Grew Up Evangelical and the Christian Nationalist Insurrection Did Not Surprise Me rings true to some of my personal experience as well.

“However horrifying I find the spectacle of white Christians storming the Capitol in hopes of keeping Donald Trump in power, I do not find it at all surprising, because I grew up in the Christian nationalist movement. Growing up I came to understand firsthand that many Christian nationalists view people who don’t practice their form of Christianity as illegitimate. I also came to understand how racism is ingrained in the teachings of the white evangelical church.“

Here are two articles on the obvious hypocrisy of Mitch McConnell, and why serious people should stop listening to his lies. The first, by Jamelle Bouie in the New York Times, is the more straightforward of the two. He simply says, I’m Not Actually Interested in Mitch McConnell’s Hypocrisy. You might find Bobbie Armstrong’s take on McConnell’s hypocrisy in McSweeney’s more fun. Take a look at I Am Dr. Frankenstein, and I Condemn the Actions of the Monster I Created and Did Nothing to Stop.

While we’re bringing humor and hypocrisy together, I also recommend Eli Grober’s short imagined monologue in McSweeney’s by a certain member of Congress from Georgia in The Terrible Things I Have Said and Done My Entire Life, and Right Up Until a Few Days Ago, Do Not Represent Me As a Person.

Right.

David Leonhardt, writing in the New York Times, answers the question that should be asked more often in Why Are Republican Presidents So Bad for the Economy? It goes against Republican talking points about their economic prowess, but historians could have told you this if you’d asked!

Since 1933, the economy has grown at an annual average rate of 4.6 percent under Democratic presidents and 2.4 percent under Republicans, according to a Times analysis. In more concrete terms: The average income of Americans would be more than double its current level if the economy had somehow grown at the Democratic rate for all of the past nine decades.…

“…Democrats have been more willing to heed economic and historical lessons about what policies actually strengthen the economy, while Republicans have often clung to theories that they want to believe — like the supposedly magical power of tax cuts and deregulation. Democrats, in short, have been more pragmatic.“

Speaking of false talking points. It is time to stop the “Unity” charade, and a good place to start is by taking the GOP talking points away from the beltway press. Eric Boehlert, writing in Press Run about Biden, the press, and the “unity” charade makes the case that it is time for the press to grow up.

Three days into Biden’s presidency and the press was demanding to know when he’d start placating the GOP by pushing “Republican priorities.” (Answer: That’s not how elections work.) That same day, CNN interviewed Trump supporters in Texas who wanted Biden to be ‘less divisive.‘…

Here’s the press’ skewed perspective: When Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 by three million votes, it wasn’t seen as a sign of weakness when he couldn’t find common ground with other side. When Biden wins the popular by seven million votes, he gets dinged for not being bipartisan.

As Boehlert notes, let’s stop the “unity” charade and see it for what it is.

I’ll just say it right up front: I love to read The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Angry Grammarian. And this one from late January updating the pandemic dictionary was a classic. Are you a covidiot who coronasplains? he asks. And what is a covidiot you may ask?

Definition of covidiot. Credit: Philadelphia Inquirer.

After reading that, you can probably figure out that coronasplaining is something done by a covidiot.

Let’s finish with three pieces that have nothing to do with impeachment, insurrection, fascism, pandemics, or conspiracy theories. In other words, normal stuff that we are now beginning to see again after four years of lunacy.

We’ll begin with entrepreneur Robert Glazer, writing on Friday Forward about Why Businesses Need More Common Sense.

“Lindstrom has discovered a link between empathy and common sense: the better we understand each other, the more problems we can solve through common sense. We treat others the way they want to be treated.

Unfortunately, studies have shown our ability to empathize has declined visibly, driven by social media, technology use and even the prevalence of Botox, which makes it harder to read people’s expressions.

Perhaps this is why common sense seems to be in such short supply today. As we lose our ability to understand each other, we struggle to find solutions that are both logical and widely accepted, based on a shared understanding of each other’s needs.“

Muriel Vega, writing for Preservation magazine, the publication of The National Trust for Historic Preservation (my old employer) has a short piece about The Meticulous Restoration of NASA’s Mission Control at Houston’s Johnson Space Center. For those of us who remember watching all those space flights in the 1960s, with pictures from Mission Control, this brings back a lot of memories.

Finally, we’ll end this Baker’s Dozen with an absolutely lovely piece by two musicians who have been featured in More to Come’s Saturday Soundtrack: John Smith and Sarah Jarosz. Eye To Eye is a beautiful tune for our time of separation.

I cry out, but I feel like you can’t hear me
I need it, and I wish that you were near me

Eye to eye
Remember when you looked me in the eye
Eye to eye
No, I don’t wanna have to wait in line
Can we stand
Eye to eye?

Enjoy the reading and the music.

More to come…

DJB