In the late 1950s, when I was an adolescent growing up on a cotton farm just south of Caruthersville, my parents often took my little sister and I on Saturdays to visit our older sister’s family who lived in town. There we would spend most of the day playing with our nephew and niece, both slightly younger, while the older folks commiserated about life. Invariably my nephew and I turned to baseball or softball for entertainment, and we frequently recruited neighborhood kids from Madison, Collins, and later Zaida Avenues for a friendly game, if the weather permitted. During one such game a gaggle of kids from houses at the far end of the street showed up, as a team, and wanted to play. We agreed enthusiastically, and so began a series of encounters that I will never forget—mainly because of the lessons it taught me about human nature. When the inevitable childhood conflicts surfaced, our team members winced, then at first tolerated the rule changes or suspension of rules altogether that the other kids demanded. After all, we loved baseball and wanted to play. Soon, however, we just couldn’t accept the taking of last strikes for others, the batting for others, the running for others. One day, when the cheating became too blatant and involved a lot of phony interference calls, rule perversions concerning tagging versus forcing someone out, and eventually running completely outside the base lines, it became evident to us that an umpire was necessary if the game was to go on.
Finding an impartial person in this environment seemed impossible, but I had noticed an old, white-haired man who sat regularly on his front porch across the street and watched us play. Hesitating at first, I thought once again of the boredom of listening to the grownups sitting inside on such a gorgeous day, so I walked over and asked the man if he would umpire our game. He said he would, for an hour or so. That Saturday, as I remember, became one of the most pleasurable of the entire summer. We reveled in the excitement of the game, gave up our petty protests and resentments, and enjoyed baseball the way it was meant to be played—by some rules. I believe our team lost the game that day, but it didn’t matter so much because there would always be another game, as long as we revered baseball. The presence of an adult, in this case knowledgeable and respected (or feared) by all the players, ages 8 to 13, made all the difference. I grew used to that difference.
A few weeks later the old man was not there on his porch. We played anyway, of course, and at first made an effort to follow rules when we knew them and to compromise when we didn’t. But that didn’t last long in the fierce climate of competition. We fell again into our pattern of losing, resentment, and retribution on one side, and winning, belittling, and entitlement on the other. That day our team was winning but not enjoying it because it was driven by resentment and the desire for retribution for earlier games when we just knew that cheating had occurred. Soon we were belittling and childishly claiming superiority as well. The last straw came when a boy on the other team threw a bat that connected with my nephew’s face. As he began to wail, I could see the blood running down his cheek from a small cut just below his eye. Though there was a bit of shock on the faces of all of us, there were no apologies, just the picking up of gloves and bats, and the characteristic taunting as the other team walked away from our makeshift ball field.
My nephew was okay, of course. But we never again played baseball with those other kids. Too many hard feelings, and the game itself seemed too much trouble, too much effort. When my sister and I visited my niece and nephew, we found other, more peaceful, diversions. Sometimes, however, I looked out at the vacant ball field with what I’d now call a sense of nostalgia, for somehow I knew we had lost something of value.
Like baseball, democratic politics is a game, though in comparison one that perhaps should be taken more seriously. Can politics be taken too seriously? Maybe, but again egos and self-image are involved. With politics we have to add safety and security, health, family fortunes, status in community, invested time and energy, financial success…the list goes on and on. Again, we hate losing through our proxy candidates and harbor resentments when we do—unless we adhere to rules and find a neutral arbiter that frees our egos and allows us to accept loss graciously. But even then we must willfully accept both the rules and that arbiter’s judgements, in order for the game to go on. In politics our judicial system fills that role—all our federal and state courts—with our Supreme Court acting as our home-plate umpire. If we don’t accept the rules and our courts’ rulings, all descends into chaos and the game we call politics disappears into oblivion.
In the days following the Presidential election in November 2020, Donald Trump, in cooperation with several elected Republican officials, including Missouri’s own Senator Josh Hawley and Representative Jason Smith, deliberately violated their constitutional oaths. They disregarded over sixty legal judgements, perpetrated attempts to overturn a legitimate election, including the sanctioning of fake electors in some states, and incited a violent assault on our Capitol. Representative Liz Cheney, a rare Republican figure with principles these days, opposed these efforts, not only witnessing the attack first hand but also playing a key role in the Congressional Select Committee investigation. For her scruples her Republican constituents back home in Wyoming took away her House seat in the next election. In her new book “Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning,” Cheney recounts this crucial moment in American history and helps us understand both who propagated Trump’s Big Lie and who acted to safeguard our constitutional principles.
In Cheney’s book she describes in detail the events of January 6, 2021, on the floor of Congress as our Vice President, Mike Pence, prepared to certify each state’s lawful electors for the election held the previous November. Our own Jason Smith was in the process of formally protesting the certification, in spite of the more than sixty judicial decisions against Trump’s case. When the MAGA mob, the insurrectionists, began to breach the doors and windows of the building, House members were told they must be evacuated for their own safety. Cheney looked over at Smith and said, “You did this!” Of course the proceeding was interrupted and only completed the next day on January 7. Meanwhile Pence and his staff were led away to safety, amid cries of “Hang Mike Pence,” and our Senator Josh Hawley was caught by video running down the hall to his own safety after fist-pumping in support of MAGA just a few hours before. Apparently Hawley and Smith, in those moments of fear, realized they couldn’t control the mob they had helped foment and simply fled the scene.
A few days later, after some soul-searching I’m sure, both our brave Congressman and our Senator decided to take the expedient course and double down on their support of Trump and MAGA—even after the insurrectionist attack on our capital. After all, their Missouri constituents back home were already practicing selective amnesia about what they had seen with their own eyes on the news, and embracing crackpot conspiracy theories that the FBI or maybe even ANTIFA (an anti-fascist group) had orchestrated the entire rebellion. An “inside job,” many called it. Others claimed it was merely a mass Capitol tour that got out of hand. Today these same Missouri Republicans are both calling the insurrection, in which five police officers died in the following days, an “unruly protest” and, at the same time, calling for amnesty for the gullible pawns who carried it out. Why do they need amnesty?
To all those Trump supporters who do not agree with our nation’s rule of law, I simply would say: America, Love It or Leave It. Some readers will remember that is precisely what was said to the anti-war protestors, both law-abiding and not, who disagreed with neo-conservatives over Richard Nixon’s Vietnam War policies in the late 1960s and early 1970s. When Nixon resigned from the Presidency in 1974, after his own violation of the law, these same conservatives grew strangely quiet for about six months. In those days there was still such a thing as shame, but the modern Republican Party has moved beyond all that and just keeps doubling down into infamy. The old timers, however, always hold onto their party affiliation—I still often encounter those who seem to think they’re voting for Nixon some fifty years later!
This kind of intractable behavior and disrespect for the rule of law will eventually cause the demise of our fragile democratic system as voters invite fascism to step in and bring order out of chaos. Ironically, like the naive German Lutherans and Catholics who at first welcomed Mr. Hitler’s brand of “law and order” in 1933-4, Evangelicals in our own nation, indulging the obsession that they can “defeat the libtards” and establish a theocracy, are in the same unconscious process of destroying our own democracy. They seem to have little understanding of their own history—that their forebears came to America to escape religious persecution and that our nation’s founders established a separation of church and state in order to prevent the religious wars that had caused them so much misery. They are fortunate and don’t know it, but they are also susceptible to the grifters like Mr. Trump who would lead them into a fascist state in the guise of establishing God’s will on earth.
We still have a democracy, of course, but voting this November to give up our future choices would be foolish indeed.
Sam J Duckworth
January 26, 2024
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