The age old question

 

Manipulated image.

      What if it's not about immigration? Not about borders. Or citizenship. Not crime. Or culture.
       It certainly doesn't feel that way.
      What if it's really about creating a faceless para-military force that follows no law, and is accountable to no one, except one man. Maybe it's about building remote internment camps that exist outside of the law, where anything can happen and does. 
     What if immigration enforcement is the dry run? To see what the public will accept. And despite a low level hum of outcry, America seems like it will accept a lot. Will tolerate this state of affairs. Allowing people — immigrants now, supposedly, but who knows who later? — to be plucked off the street, for no particular reason, by masked agents of the government, and delivered to an unknown fate. Disappeared. No record of who they were or where they went. 

      What if it's about putting the United States military into American streets and cities, ready to quell the unrest sure to be sparked by undemocratic and illegal policies?  Waiting for the next imaginary "emergency" to be declared, where temporary emergency measures can be put in place, laws and rights further suspended, only to become permanent realities.
     That feels ... I almost said "right," though it is not right. Not at all. But wrong. Very wrong.  
     What I mean is that feels ... like a more accurate assessment of what is going on right now, right before or eyes. Or, more precisely, right behind our backs. History will wonder how Americans allowed it. That's what history always wonders. Why didn't we do more to stop it, while we still could? Why didn't we see it coming? The age old question.

    Maybe because seeing what's coming is so terrifying. It's easier to pretend it's not happening. Even though it clearly is. 

Next they'll be writing the editorials

     The classic illustration of the Yiddish word chutzpah is the youth who murders his parents and then begs the court for mercy because he is an orphan.
     But now that chestnut has strong competition, with the Trump administration's director of the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya, arguing in Tuesday's Washington Post that scrapping mRNA vaccine development is not calamitous groveling before our anti-science ruler, but "a necessary pivot in how we steward public health innovations in vaccines."
      Why? Because despite showing "promise," the mRNA platform "has failed a crucial test: earning public trust."

     And exactly why, we may ask — God knows Bhattacharya never will — has trust in such an established lifesaving technology been reduced to rubble? Oh right, anti-medicine Trump slashing away at scientific research, backstopped by his wack job secretary of health and vaccine removal, RFK Jr.
      Give Bhattacharya credit. He said it with a straight face. That must be hard. 

     Also in Tuesday's Post, former Fox New host and current U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, our old friend, Judge Box o' Wine, Jeanine Pirro, writing about "The Fight to Make D.C. Safe and Beautiful," which seems to involve the lock-'em-up tough guy swagger that represents the entirety of the Trump administration's approach to crime. Or at least toward people of color, and in their mind, to stretch the term, the two are synonymous. 

    Well, that and calling out the National Guard.

    Plus, not to forget — and how quickly we do so — masked policemen plucking people from the street and dispatching them to foreign hellholes without any sort of due process of law.

    Newspapers sometimes hand their greatly-muted microphones to public officials. The Sun-Times would let the mayor — or rather, the mayor's press office — go on about something. But two Trump stooges in one day...

     It's scary to see this pair of lapdogs being given such prime real estate in what was once a legitimate newspaper, and now clearly is slinking toward being some kind of official government house organ, like Pravda. It would almost be funny if it were not so, you know, terrifying and tragic.

Bee expert judges honey

Dushanbe Tea House

      What is the word for when you talk about something and then it occurs? Coincidence? That sounds so technical. Karma? Closer. How about serendipity? That could be it.
       My brother and I were having dinner the Dushanbe Tea House in Boulder Sunday night, on what I'm thinking of our Goodbye Ma Tour of my parents' former home. The goal being to commemorate our mother's passage into the great beyond by going on great Colorado hikes, eating at restaurants she liked, and hanging out together.
      We were recounting things she used to say. 
      "You'll find it when you're not looking for it," is the first snippet my brother served up. Advice that I remember deeply resenting as a child, ripping the house apart, looking for some toy that I wanted now.
      There were a few others: "Call people up. You can't wait for them to call you because they never will." (We are people who like to talk, and, umm, let's say our friends and acquaintances are not queuing up to be on the other end of that phone line, listening to us go on and on).
      The very next morning, I logged into Facebook to check the Memories — I do that every day, as sometimes it offers up blog posts I want to share, for the benefit of all the readers who are new to the party. Monday provided a solid pair — "We're doomed, but that's no reason to get upset," a funny-yet-dire assessment of global warming from four years ago, and "Trump surges in the polls, again," a grim recognition that, vile as Donald Trump is, "the man will be president," not despite his numerous personal flaws, but because of them. It gives me a certain cold comfort in these grim days, watching through latticed fingers as our democracy is murdered, to realize I did what I could. 
     I was racing toward the bottom of the Memories list, feeling I'd already harvested enough, when there it was. A photo I'd been searching for the other day. I was writing about honey, and remembered a shot I'd taken at the Illinois State Fair in 2012. Platforms weren't quite as synched a dozen years ago, and I was down in Springfield. I popped it up on Facebook, but it somehow never found its way into my photos. 
     I'd really liked that picture — the lighting — and it bothered me that it had blown away in the data whirlwind. Now I found it, when I wasn't looking for it, labeled "Bee expert judges honey." I probably have his name in a notebook somewhere. I might find it, or, more likely, it might be gone forever. That happens to everything, eventually. 

Flashback 2006: Da Bears Redux

     The Bears and the Dolphins tied on Sunday? 24-24 at their pre-season opener at Soldier Field? Is that possible? What happened to overtime? Is it because it's a pre-season game, and thus doesn't really matter? Overtime would just be a waste — as it is, the best players don't bother playing.

      But I can't be sure. I am not a Bears fan. Or a football fan. Though sometimes I do try to fake it, just trying to momentarily fit in. That never works.

     At first I tried deception.
     "Did you watch the Bears game?" I said, as if I had, to Charlie, the fireman who runs a coffee shop at the train station in the old leafy suburban paradise.
     "Unbelievable," said the guy in line behind me, as Charlie launched into an elaborate celebration of the offense, or the defense, or the passing game, or some such football-related thing, with such open-faced enthusiasm and sincere gusto that I was shamed into telling the truth.

     "Actually, I didn't watch it," I mumbled, accepting my Sun-Times and my coffee. "Never considered watching it."
     Sports are the universal adhesive, the commonality we all agree upon. All day Tuesday I found myself passing through pockets of shared delight, like a blind man tapping my way through a circus. Records broken, Olympian Heights scaled, the Bears, down 20 to nothing at halftime, rallying to win 24 to 23, to preserve their unbeaten record, a staggering 6 and 0. Bears, Bears, Bears.
     "Didja watch the game!" a fellow reporter called to me across the newsroom.
     "Umm . . . no," I whispered. His face fell.
      "Aren't you a Bears fan?" he asked, in a tone of focused concern, the way you'd ask a child found lost and crying in the street, "Where's your mommy?"
     "No," I said.
     He must have thought I didn't understand the question.
     "Aren't you a sports fan?"
     "No," I said. "To me, sports are the same thing happening over and over again."
     "Oh," he said, wandering off, his mouth doing an odd grimace, as if trying to dislodge something caught between his teeth with his tongue.
      I hate doing that to people. But what choice have I? False enthusiasm? It's a little late. And I couldn't pull it off anyway. "Those Bears fellows sure are thriving!" They'd stone me.
     The Bears are going to keep winning. I know it. They'll go to the Super Bowl, sucking all the air out of the city for the next three months. Chicago will be one unified city, young and old, rich and poor, black and white and yellow and brown, all united in one giddy, hugging shouting mass of commonality. Bears Bears Bears Bears.
      Except for me and, perhaps, you, and a handful of other weirdos and oddballs. I thought it necessary to set out this space for us as a Bears-free zone (if the mayor can have his security bubbles, I can have mine). God knows you'll get enough Bears everywhere else you look.
      — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct. 18, 2006

Donald Trump is an evil man and his idiocy gets good people killed

"Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump," by Jean-Michel Basquiat 

     No one will ever know how many deaths can be directly attributed to Donald Trump.
     Hundreds of thousands perished of COVID needlessly because of his footdragging and minimizing the illness (and yes, he pushed for a vaccine, trying to make up for lost time, which was good. But then he went undercut his own vaccine, blunting its effect).

     Plus tens of thousands of deaths in Gaza from the wrong that his buddy, Benjamin Netanyahu, caused by prolonging the war for his own political benefit. Plus more in Ukraine from his pivoting American policy toward his other pal, the butcher Vladimir Putin.
      Deaths caused by brutal ICE arrests and deportations, of people kept in horrid conditions, in the United States and abroad, truths that may not become known for years, if ever.
      Not to forget the deaths due to making a crazed science denier named Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the secretary of health and human services, an almost perversely destructive act.  Pulling the plug on research. Undermining vaccines. When measles begins scything through babies, I wonder if Trump fans will notice? Probably not.
     I'm sure there are more I'm forgetting. Feel free to make your own suggestions in the comments.
     Because right now I am thinking, hard, about Off. David Rose, of the DeKalb County, Georgia police department. Killed Friday. Not familiar? No reason you should be. There is so much going on, so much news to process. Things get missed. 

     Off. Rose was slain by Patrick Joseph White, who opened fire on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta from the second floor of a CVS across the street. He was found shot dead, along with five long guns — because one just wouldn't be enough.  

     The new barely made a ripple. To me, it seems a big deal.

     The New York Times story about the crime didn't name Off. Rose until the 14th paragraph. An odd news choice. He was 33,  an ex-Marine, who had two children, a 1-year-old son and 6-year-old from a previous relationship, with a third on the way with his wife.

     I suppose you could add White's name to the count. He was fixated on the coronavirus vaccine, blaming it for his own medical woes. So a murderer, but a victim, too, of the poison spewed by Fox News. At the behest of Donald Trump. Another life snuffed out. With more to come. Will we keep tab? The way the Washington Post tallied his lies, for years, until it realized that nobody actually gave a fuck. Not true. Some people do still care. For all the good it does.

    That's it. No pithy summary or straining toward hope. I just thought Off. Rose's death should not go unnoticed here. We may never miss him. But his kids certainly will. 

Flashback 1998: Day at the beach is no day at the beach

     Are you having a good summer? Me too. Outdoor concerts, picnics, travel, hiking. One thing I'm not doing, because I never do it, is go to the beach. The reason is ... well, once I took a crack at trying to explain why. 

     I have not gone to the beach this summer. Nor last summer. Nor the summer before that. Or before that. Didn't go in 1994. Or the previous summer. Or in 1992. Summer of '91? Nope.
     In fact, I haven't gone to the beach at all in the entire decade of the 1990s, though I live a brief stroll away from a rather popular one.
     Not only have I never gone to the beach; I never considered going to the beach. Why would I? The beach is a crowded desert ending abruptly in a flood.
     First, think of sand. Sand is an awful substance. Sand is used to make glass. In a sense, a beach is just an expanse of crushed glass. Sand sure feels that way, in your shoes.
     And sand gets everywhere. Try this experiment. Take a teaspoon of sand and put it in one of those double-seal plastic sandwich bags. Then put the bag in a coffee can and wrap tape around the lid. Place the coffee can in the basement. Now go run your hand over your sheets — sandy, right? That's how sand is.
     Second, people. Lots of people, spread out everywhere. Nearly naked people. Nearly naked, fabulously unattractive people who, in their public state of undress, are a profound, silent argument for the importance of clothing.
     Finally, there's water. Lake Michigan is frigid slush except for about an hour on the last day in August. I went in once, one July day, long ago. It was like jumping into liquid nitrogen.
      Despite all these strong feelings, I was prepared to go to the beach, as an experiment, influenced by reading Lena Lencek and Gideon Bosker's new book, The Beach: The History of Paradise on Earth.
      While of course disagreeing with their premise that the beach is important, historically, I found enough fun trivia to reward my chewing through the book's dense thicket of academic babble. (And boy, is it thick. For instance, the idea "going to the beach" is rendered, I kid you not, as "the inspirational pilgrimage to the ephemeral boundary of land and sea.")
      Where else could one learn that, in the summer of 1936, the country agonized over whether men should be allowed to go topless on public beaches.
     "No gorillas on our beaches," Atlantic City declared, banning topless bathing. Cleveland passed an ordinance requiring that men's bathing trunks cover the navel. Galveston went further, legislating tops for men's suits.
     The authors trace the lure of the beach back to Greek times and, swept up in the history of it, I resolved to head to the beach and see if, perhaps, I had been neglecting it unfairly.
     "Don't expect me tomorrow," I told the city desk, breezing out the door Monday evening. "I'll be at the beach."
     That night, I cataloged everything I would need. Pail and shovel, of course, for digging. Sun block. A cooler of some sort. Drinks and snacks. A towel. A thick beach book. (Having finished The Beach, I thought I'd bring along my current project, A History of Private Life from Pagan Rome to Byzantium. Talk about interesting trivia. Did you know that the Roman emperor Justinian created a scandal by marrying a stripper, Theodora, famous in Constantinople for her act involving geese peckinggrain from, well, a place where geese do not normally peck grain?)
      Everything was ready. It was a ton of stuff to schlep — my wife suggested taking a wagon — but, hey, inconvenience is what going to the beach is all about, at least in my mind.
     Then — and those whose long-term memories go back 48 hours may have seen this coming — Tuesday broke, all gray and rainy, and my careful plans were abandoned. So I stayed home, made progress in A History of Private Life, and happily postponed going to the beach for another year, or another century, or never.
     Just as well.


—Originally published in the Sun-Times, July 9, 1998

Footsteps of Klan march in the nation's capital 100 years ago echo today

Library of Congress

      Shorter is better. As much as I grumble, hitting my 790 word landing to be on page two of the Sun-Times is a good thing. Although I often lose things that are superfluous but fun. Such as the intro to this column. After I wrote it, it was just over a thousand words — 33 percent too long.

     So the first thing I did was lop off the top two paragraphs. I can make my point without the tiger. But I really like the tigers. So I'll retain it here. If time is of the essence, you can go straight to the Sun-Times version, linked at the bottom.

     I savor logical fallacies the way some men collect fine wines. One of my favorite vintages is known as a "category error" —when you allow a set of qualities to convince you that something belongs to one particular group when other, more germane, qualities suggest it really belongs somewhere very different.
     Take Bengal tigers. If I decide, based on their feline nature, soft fur and beautiful appearance to consider them among "animals children should be allowed to play with," I am making a category error. Because other tiger qualities — razor sharp teeth and claws, carnivorous habits, general unpredictability — should really place them in the realm of "animals best confined to story books."
       Consider U.S. history. In his "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History" executive order, Donald Trump claims that anything reflecting "racist, sexist, oppressive" aspects of the American past is "a distorted narrative" that "fosters a sense of national shame."
     For him maybe. Not to this cowboy.  I consider his executive order a category error. History, even regarding fraught topics, is always fascinating and often useful. The history of our country is a tale of casting off bigotries toward a spectrum of groups, and that hatred returning in new forms. Learning about that doesn't bring shame unless you're rooting for the bad guys. Rather, it fosters a sense of perspective, even relief.
     For instance, Friday is the 100th anniversary of 30,000 or so members of the Ku Klux Klan marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, a high-water mark in a decade that saw the post-Civil War hate group reborn and enjoying unprecedented public acceptance. They marched unmasked, as demanded by D.C. ordinance — which also, police decided, forbade anti-Klan groups from gathering, noting "the law strictly forbids any political demonstrations on public property in the nation's capital."
     The Klan, remember, did not fancy itself a political group, but a religious and patriotic organization — hence all the crosses and flags. The Klan made this argument to President Calvin Coolidge, urging him to welcome them, noting that he had spoken before the Holy Name Society, a Catholic group, and therefore "he should be willing to greet an organization of Protestants."
     He wasn't. Coolidge was no racist — he privately despised the Klan, and the year before addressed the commencement at all-Black Howard University. I have a difficult time imagining the current president doing that.
     But Coolidge's response to the 1925 march (there would be others) was not a profile in courage, either. While Klansmen (and women; a third were female) were marching around the Washington Monument, Coolidge was on vacation in Swampscott, Massachusetts. He said nothing, good to his "Silent Cal" nickname. Pressed on the issue, the White House revealed that Coolidge "was not a member of the order and not in sympathy with the aims and purposes."
     The Klan was seen more as a Democratic problem anyway — it was the major issue overshadowing the 1924 Democratic National Convention. Liberals wanted a condemnation of the Klan written in the party platform. But lots of Southerners were Democrats, and they argued that most Blacks voted Republican — in the areas where they were allowed to vote — out of residual loyalty to Abraham Lincoln. The Democrats punted.

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