Take Your Bats and Balls and Go Home

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

Jason Smith’s Editorials: Leveling the Playing Field?

Having read most of the editorials of our elected Representative, Jason Smith, both in our local paper and on his website, I find it impossible to describe his arguments against our President as anything other than illogical and unsubstantiated. The lack of adequate evidence, a cogent line of reasoning, and justified conclusions is so stark that one has to wonder why more of his constituents aren’t calling him out for treating them as easy marks. But it is his obsession with “leveling the playing field”—with convincing readers that Democratic politicians are just as corrupt and unprincipled as their Republican counterparts— that makes his efforts so deplorable. In an earlier essay I called this the “I know you are but what am I” syndrome, named for the comedic Pee-wee Herman habit of deflecting criticism back onto someone else. Of course corruption exists on both sides—Republicans will be quick to point out the Senator Menendez bribery scandal—but throwing all caution to the wind in accusing our President and his son of ILLEGAL influence peddling is just not advisable. Especially if one simply doesn’t have the goods, in terms of evidence. And if one wants to compare the two parties? Do Republicans remember Donald Jr’s blatant attempts to capitalize on his father’s victory the very morning after the election in November 2016? This evidence was public—there for all to see. And does anyone really believe that Ivanka and Jared Kushner haven’t been and aren’t still peddling influence to the Saudis? Apparently there wasn’t sufficient evidence to raise an outcry, especially among Republican House members.

Mr. Smith’s zeal for the smear campaign against Joe Biden is so strong that it led him into the novice mistake of forgetting to examine the timeline involved in his accusations. At the time of the supposed most damning evidence, Biden was neither in office nor a candidate for office! So it simply would not have been illegal. Of course, Smith can argue that Joe and Hunter were engaged in influence peddling both before and after the hiatus from holding office, but his inability to deal with the NBC reporter who called him on this destroyed his credibility. And the House impeachment inquiry into President Biden, which he helped initiate, went nowhere. Why? For a total lack of evidence.

Having followed politics most of my seventy-four years, I feel confident in saying that the end of the traditional Republican Party began in the early and mid 1990s when its leaders decided that they could “control the mob” by manipulating its anger, hatred, and fear. They readily embraced the phony Tea Party patriots, who knew little about politics to begin with, who were mostly just a reaction to Bill Clinton and the cultural changes he represented, and later bullied their way to a national election victory in 2000 by stopping the vote counting in Dade County, Florida. When Barack Hussein Obama took the reins from George W. Bush in 2009 and began to repair our bleeding economy (losing up to 800,000 jobs a month), the cultural reaction to having a black man as President gave them another opportunity to step to the right toward fascism. They, of course, had no quarrel with the “Birthers,” who claimed Obama was born in Kenya, despite all evidence, and therefore an illegitimate President. And now, in 2023, Republican leaders are practically goose-stepping, after once again trying to control the mob that invaded our capital on Jan 6, 2021. And taking no responsibility for their irresponsible actions that led to that assault and the deaths of five law enforcement officers in the days following. It seems that they are content to watch others bear the punishment—the “little guys” (though sometimes bullies themselves) who did the dirty work for them.

If Republican Congress members, including our own Jason Smith from Missouri, truly have the best interests of their districts at heart, they will end the chaos in their chamber by repudiating the MAGA caucus and its culture wars and focusing on the problems that so need their attention. However, their recent election of Mike Johnson for Speaker of the House, an inexperienced Trumper who led the House Republican effort to overthrow the 2020 election, is not a good sign. Sometimes leveling the playing field on the steep slope of a mountain is just impossible.

Sam J Duckworth

Oct 26, 2023

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Carrying Guns in Public: A Psychotic Teen’s Empowerment

A rash of holdups in St.Louis, by gangs of young teenagers carrying the popular AR-15 military assault rifles, recently led to a proposal for an amendment to a public safety bill in the Missouri House of Representatives. Democratic state Rep. Donna Baringer, who sponsored the amendment, told House members, “We have 14-year-olds walking down the middle of the street in the city of St. Louis carrying AR-15s. What has happened to us?”

What has happened to us, indeed. The amendment, which would have banned the carrying of firearms by minors in public without adult supervision, was rejected by a 104 to 39 vote this last week. Republicans claimed it an “unnecessary” infringement on Second Amendment rights. Again, I have to ask: “What about the more important human right to life itself, the first of the three ‘inalienable rights’ stated in our nation’s own Declaration of Independence?” In defending the rejection, Republican state Rep. Tony Lovasco, representing a St. Louis suburb, argued that the teens’ carrying assault rifles “doesn’t actually mean that they’re going to harm someone. We don’t know that yet.” Of course, the precise purpose, and likely the only practical purpose, of these military-grade “tools” is to threaten or take human life, thereby bestowing upon the wielder a degree of power he would not otherwise have. And minors should have such unchecked power? The pretense of naivete shown by politicians like Mr. Lovasco, who are obviously in the pockets of the NRA, is deplorable (no, I have no problem using this term in these egregious cases).

“We don’t charge people with crimes because we think they’re going to hurt someone,” Lovasco added to his statement. Apparently he and his fellow Republican House members have no interest in the even more important task of PREVENTING A CRIME, especially a murder or multiple murders, and thereby SAVING HUMAN LIVES. In 2017 Republicans overrode Democratic Governor Jay Nixon’s veto of their thoroughly irresponsible bill: no safety training, no criminal background checks, not even a gun permit required to carry concealed firearms in public places. Though most law enforcement in rural Missouri traditionally have been sympathetic to the NRA, this is already beginning to change as authorities see the tragic consequences of such policies in urban areas.

Wyatt Earp and his brothers, along with Doc Holliday later, knew that the McLaurys, the Clantons, Ringo, the Cowboy Outlaw gang, and in general the cowboys who came off the cattle drives could not be trusted not to use their hip-holstered revolvers to intimidate, injure, and even kill the citizens of the towns they terrorized. The Earps took the severest of measures—confiscating guns, for example—to bring peace, and towns like Wichita, Tombstone, Deadwood, Dodge City, and Abilene, throughout the “wild west,” all adopted the strictest of gun laws. The inevitable confrontations, including the famous “Shootout at the OK Corral,” came about mainly because of city ordinances requiring visitors (the cowboys) to leave their firearms at the local saloon or stable. Do we need similar measures now? Hopefully not, but the truth is that gun deaths in public places are at the highest rate ever and steadily increasing.

The idea that our nation became great because of the freedom to threaten to “shoot ‘em up” is silly nonsense. It took decades of chaotic violence before peace was brought to many frontier towns, mainly because of the widespread proliferation and public threat of human-killing firearms throughout our nation. One simply should not have to fear for one’s life standing in the post office, or waiting in line at the grocery store, or sitting with one’s family in church. Does the sullen young man in the next pew have a chip on his shoulder? And does he have a nine-millimeter automatic in his pocket?

Sam J Duckworth

Feb 16, 2023

Fascism and Trump’s MAGA Movement

Someone asked me recently why I believe that Trump’s MAGA movement is fascist. I responded by describing some of fascism’s characteristics and applying them to the Trump phenomenon that so dominates modern political discourse. Later, however, I did some online research, and what I found is perhaps the best list of the qualities of fascism I have seen. I often have argued that Americans simply did not learn the lessons of fascism after World War II, though many GIs saw and photographed the gas chambers, the skeletal bodies of the survivors, and the huge piles of human bones when they liberated the concentration camps throughout much of Europe. There is no doubt in my mind that Holocaust survivors did learn those horrific lessons.

This list resides on a wall in the Holocaust museum. I have added numbers to help distinguish the items.

EARLY WARNING SIGNS OF FASCISM

1. Powerful and continuing nationalism
2. Disdain for human rights
3. Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
4. Supremacy of the military
5. Rampant sexism
6. Controlled mass media
7. Obsession with national security
8. Religion and government intertwined
9. Corporate power protected
10. Labor power suppressed
11. Disdain for intellectuals and the arts
12. Obsession with crime and punishment
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption
14. Fraudulent elections
    

I believe only two of these signs are debatable in terms of their accuracy in describing Trump’s MAGA movement: numbers 4 and 7. The rest fit his policies to a tee. And supremacy of the military, as well as obsession with national security, would simply come later, after he gained and consolidated more power. In regard to number 6, Trumpers control only one of the cable news channels—Fox News—but would control MSNBC and CNN if they could. Number two has been demonstrated aptly in the recent Supreme Court decision against the continuation of abortion rights (Roe vs. Wade) for women. Number 14 is already being planned by MAGA Republicans in 2024, if they gain control of our Congress in the upcoming midterm elections.

In regard to number 8, evangelicals, in their tunnel vision, believe they have won a victory for Christian morality. But their own doctrine and the First and Second Epistle of John tell them quite clearly that they will be deceived by the Antichrist in the “end times,” which most say is now. It is supremely ironic that it never seems to cross their minds that Trump himself just might be that personage. I am sure some ministers have developed elaborate explanations as to why Trump could not be that individual. I myself believe that he has neither the intellect nor the skill to fill that role, but their total susceptibility to a such a bumbler does not bode well for their future political choices. After all, many of them are supporting Ron DeSantis for President in 2024.

It is not an exaggeration to claim that the fate of our democratic republic is at stake this November. The transformation of Germany, beginning in 1933, from the semi-democratic, constitutional Weimar Republic to Hitler’s totalitarian Third Reich, came as a rude shock to many Germans who found themselves powerless to undo what they had regrettably supported.

I am often told that the threat to our nation comes from the Left, usually from Republicans who are steadily goose-stepping to the Right. A similar sequence of political logic was employed by the Nazis against the Social Democrats in Germany in the early 1930s. Republicans also point out that Left-leaning Democrats often display foolishness in terms of economic policy, and sometimes I have to agree. In the final analysis, however, I will choose foolishness with good intentions over willful self-delusion with hateful intentions anytime.

Maga Mess in Missouri

Missouri’s primary election on August 2, 2022, for the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by Republican Roy Blount, illustrates the absurdity in the GOP’s stranglehold on this state. In an earlier editorial I characterized representative Missouri voters (“as gullible as naive teenage girls at Spring Break”) and discussed six periods in American history since Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency that I call “flirtations with fascism.” The most recent flirtation, called “Trump’s Cult of Personality” by the media (look for this title in future history textbooks), became a sordid full-blown affair during the 2016 primary election season, when Trump put away his Republican rivals by bullying and belittling them on the debate stage. It simply didn’t matter to Republican voters that Trump’s sudden conversion to conservatism and religion, and his taming of overt expressions of racism and misogyny, were nothing more than calculated expediency. Nor did it matter that he had little grasp of the issues, or a cogent platform to run on. Their infatuation with the bully-braggart Fabio that their daughters brought home superseded all rationality and, to future generations, will read like a bad romance novel or perhaps an Absurdist play.

In the end the values and behavior of rank-and-file Republicans who elected him that November set up what would become a failed presidential administration with two impeachments—the last a Democratic congressional response to a violent and treasonous attempt to overthrow the fair and legitimate election in 2020. During that administration, 2016-2020, Trump managed to discredit and demoralize NATO, likely leading to Putin’s brazen invasion of eastern and southern Ukraine. And, even more important, he somehow managed to write off one million Americans, many of whom died of Covid because his obsession with stock market numbers and economic indicators that might reflect on him resulted in a late start in dealing with the pandemic. When he finally admitted to its severity, he encouraged irresponsible behavior by those claiming a “right” not to wear a mask (what about Thomas Jefferson’s inalienable right to life itself?), and he later deceived the public by attempting to hide his own serious case of the disease. That image of his leaving the hospital like a petulant child, against the counsel of his doctors, is one that should have stuck with his admiring supporters. But like lovesick adolescents, they were prepared to rationalize anything.

It was inevitable, I suppose, that Trump’s unfortunate success as a fascist demagogue would be emulated by those who would gain such undeserved power and esteem. In our own state of Missouri, Senator Josh Hawley, wearing the ambitious but soiled pants of the rural populist, made a bid to get the notice of Trump groupies when he fist-pumped in support of the Capitol Insurrection. His recent solo vote against the admission of Sweden and Finland under the protective umbrella of NATO is unfathomable, and smacks of Trump’s cozy relations with another authoritarian strongman named Putin. And our August GOP primary brought out a whole host of Trump wannabes, including Eric Greitens, finally repudiated and laid to rest by Republican voters with a newly found moral compass. Although a majority in the Bootheel remained loyal to him, most Missourians fell, instead, into the arms of former Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a less polished, somewhat clumsy Trump impersonator whose campaign ads showed not a thread of original thinking. Instead he whispered literal “sweet nothings” in their ears, but he did give them permission to break off with Greitens. In total twenty-one Trump imitators vied for the Senate seat, like a host of inept suitors all spouting the same bad pickup lines. Trump himself endorsed “Eric,” though Missouri voters soon learned there were three Erics in the race! One can only speculate, knowing the absurdity of Trump World and his constantly feeding ego, that he figured he could claim a victory either way, regardless of which top contender, Schmitt or Greitens, won. The height of petty narcissism.

How does one convince one’s easily impressed daughters not to fall for the bumbling but devious con artists—to demonstrate a little self-respect for a change? Frankly, I don’t know.

Sam J Duckworth

Aug 4, 2022

Last Refuge of a Scoundrel

On August 3, 2021, Missouri’s U.S. Congressman Jason Smith introduced into legislation a House Bill entitled the Love America Act, a bill similar to one introduced earlier in the Senate by our own Josh Hawley. While the expressed patriotism of these elected representatives seems quite laudatory on first look, one must probe below the surface to see the real meaning and motives behind such proposals. After all, it was Benjamin Franklin who, in his Autobiography, warned future American generations of the dangers of pretense when he stated that “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” We, as American citizens, should keep this quote in mind when we evaluate the sincerity of such grand gestures by Mr. Smith and Mr. Hawley. Are they sincere expressions or merely expedient pretenses that pander to an ill-informed public? Let’s take a closer look at those legislative proposals.

Smith’s proposal claims that “radical, left-wing education activists are hijacking school curriculums and injecting poisonous ideology onto our nation’s youth. These Critical Race Theory advocates seek to reframe our founding as racist in an effort to turn America into an unrecognizable socialist country.” How our nation’s founding as racist could, in itself, somehow turn the U.S. into a politically or economically socialist country is beyond me, but I’d remind both Smith and Hawley that virtually any college textbook on economics or American history makes it quite clear that our economic system has been a combination of both capitalistic and socialistic policies, at least since Franklin Roosevelt’s first term in office beginning in 1933. However, there is little understanding of socialism among voters in this nation. Some confuse it with National Socialism, or Naziism, on the extreme Right end of the political spectrum (and therefore diametrically opposite), which would actually align it with Trump’s ideology. Others are obviously ignorant of its economic impact on their very lives. I clearly remember an ironic incident in which I was standing in line at a local bank listening to two men railing against socialism while cashing their Social Security checks. To say that our electorate is misinformed is quite an understatement, and I can’t think of a more revealing example than this one.

What does Smith propose? That school districts “require students to read the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Pledge of Allegiance and recite portions…at certain grade levels.”  In particular, “In 8th grade, students read the Declaration of Independence and are able to recite its preamble.” Let’s deal with this one.

As a high school English teacher in the early 1980s, I often taught, as a part of classical American literature, a brief unit on Thomas Jefferson and his first draft of the Declaration of Independence. Here is an interesting quote from that seldom-mentioned first draft:

He [King George III] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

Though Jefferson focused his blame on King George III, it is clear from this passage that he recognized the essential immorality of the institution of slavery, though he himself was a slave owner. Also, it is now an accepted historical fact that he had sexual relations with his slave named Sally Hemings (one-quarter African, three-quarter white) and thereby sired a long line of descendants from that union. Likely as not, one student or another would bring up that fact—without my mentioning it—and soon I found myself being chastised for withholding relevant information. What I learned from this is twofold: resourceful students will find and remember scandalous or controversial facts, and teachers lose credibility when they try to hide the truth. As they should.

What is also possible but not entirely clear is the speculation that the slavery issue would have been solved then and there, in the summer of 1776 at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, if Jefferson hadn’t felt compelled to remove that passage from the succeeding draft of the Declaration. Why did he do so? To satisfy several delegates representing Northern businessmen with profitable interests in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the delegates from South Carolina and Georgia, two slave-holding colonies that threatened to withhold support by not signing the declaration, basically a declaration of war against Great Britain. As a result, slavery was not dealt with, and it continued as an institution in the Southern states that later became the Confederacy. That institution ended, of course, when the Union victory in 1865, paid for in hundreds of thousands of lives, insured the nationwide implementation of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

What is clear is that not dealing with “self-evident truths” that are not self-evident at all to a large segment of our nation is a surefire way to bring on the eventual collapse of our democratic republic. Jefferson’s self-evident truth that “all men are created equal” simply wasn’t accepted then by many (as now), which means that, yes, systemic racism was built into the very founding of this nation. Recently many of our nation’s citizens have recoiled at the psychological breakthroughs that occur when one recognizes guilt feelings—whether deserved or not—rising to the surface from one’s own subconscious mind. In an attempt to protect their children from such discomfort, these reactionaries want to ban books, the discussion of controversial issues, the unraveling of an often unpleasant national history—in short, truth-telling of all kinds. Truth-telling is painful, of course, but likely an essential step in the mass healing of this nation. It is time to pull the bandages back and let our wounds heal in the light of day, not stick on some dubious patriotic bandaids that rely on zombie-like recitation of non-understood texts.

While these wounds are healing we, as our country’s citizens, must move on. Instead of promoting the Culture Wars of Smith and Hawley’s extreme Right, we must solve the problems of inflation, environmental pollution and climate change, immigration, the growing disparity between the rich and the poor, the general decline of healthy lifestyles, the increasing power of authoritarianism across the globe. I am pleased when I see people of diverse races, ethnic groups, social classes, religious beliefs, occupations, educational levels, personal interests, etc., all working together to make this nation’s future better for our children. But we must not lie to them.

I Know You Are, But What Am I: Trump’s Pee-wee Herman Syndrome

Trump’s “Big Lie”—that voter fraud in at least seven states cheated him of reelection in 2020—is perhaps the epitome of what I have come to call Trump’s “Pee-wee Herman Syndrome.” This collection of symptoms, ultimately sociopathic in consequence, manifests itself in a repeating pattern of responses all akin to “I know you are, but what am I.” This retort was made famous by Pee-wee when he verbally turned the tables on his opponents in the movie Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. In other words, Trump’s Big Lie has become simply a continuing attempt to hurl back criticisms of his treasonous efforts to subvert a legitimate election. We have seen him try every desperate ploy he could find, including, tragically for our democracy, a violent assault by his followers on our Capitol Building. The irony of Trump’s slogan “Stop the Steal” is that, like Pee-wee, he is accusing his adversaries of precisely what he himself is guilty. Parents and teachers should recognize this classic pattern of “projection,” as psychologists call it, both in the home and in the classroom, when a petulant child projects their own bad behavior onto a convenient target, usually another child but sometimes even an adult.

Trump’s rebuke of Nancy Pelosi for ripping in half her copy of his State of the Union speech is another example. Several witnesses have reported Trump himself obsessively, and illegally in the case of official national records, tearing up documents and correspondence into small pieces. One report claimed he often flushed the pieces down a commode and another claimed he even burned documents. A third claimed he chewed up, and I suppose swallowed, memos and documents. One has to wonder what, specifically, he was trying to hide with such paranoid behavior. I’d guess he’s been deleting, trashing, tearing up, flushing, burning, and swallowing business, public, and personal records that either threaten or offend him his entire adult life.

Trump’s supposed concern, in election year 2016, for national security—that Hillary Clinton’s stolen emails contained classified info—is a third example. When he publicly called upon Russia to find those emails, someone quickly obliged. This helped set in motion a chain of events that led to Clinton’s demise and Trump’s victory in the November national election. After becoming President in 2017, he refused to give up his private cell phone—the first President in American history to be allowed such a breach of security. And he repeatedly discussed classified matters publicly, alarming security officials to the point of wringing their hands. Recently fifteen boxes of classified documents, some of which likely relate to the January 6 Insurrection, were found at Mar-a-Lago. Apparently Trump considered them his personal property but had not found the time to destroy them.

When viewers first saw Trump on national tv shows like Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show in the 1970s and 80s, they were inclined, as I remember, to perceive him as just another wealthy, entitled celebrity-tycoon who was “full of himself.” But Trump’s obvious narcissism began to show itself as full-blown megalomania, a psychotic disorder that should have been apparent to anyone who had taken an introductory course in psychology. Somehow, however, Republicans missed that, I believe because of their own tendency to admire and kowtow to bullies, in this case a Mussolini-like “strongman” who would back them in their culture wars, promise law and order, and rescue them from their perceived financial victimhood. So when Trump declared for the Presidency, they were eager to support his bullying tactics and quite ready to overlook his suspected ties to the mob (much like the Vatican in 1930’s Italy). There were just too many cultural changes going on all around them, too many of those “others” taking over their society, too few “rights” (entitlements) left to them—in short, they were slowly but inexorably being replaced. This led, of course, to the paranoid right-wing conspiracy theory known as “Replacement Theory” and led many traditional Republicans to look the other way, with the rationale that “the ends justify the means.” Often the ends don’t justify immoral means at all, as was finally concluded by many German citizens at the end of World War II and Hitler’s Third Reich, but only after the loss of tens of millions of human lives and the permanent scarring of millions more who did survive.

In an earlier essay I described six periods in American history that involve Conservative “flirtations with fascism,” beginning with Republican reactions, mostly red-baiting, to the partly socialistic policies of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s. These flirtations resurface about every ten to twenty years, and illustrate the fact that many Americans in the generations following World War II simply did not learn the cruel lessons of fascism. This last flirtation, which some have called “Trump’s Cult of Personality,” has turned into a sordid full-blown affair and brought democracy to its knees. Luckily, Trump’s attempts at a coup d’etat—using false voting-fraud claims, all sixty or so dismissed in federal courts, putting pressure on state election officials and legislatures to wantonly cheat, pressuring Pence to decertify the election itself, throwing it into a Republican-controlled Senate for determination, and lastly recruiting illegitimate state electors to replace the legitimate ones—all these efforts failed because of our sacred Rule of Law. In other words, Trump’s Beer Hall Putsch, like Hitler’s in November 1923, failed because of those heroes—from state and local election officials and federal judges to Mike Pence himself—who refused to overthrow democracy for fascism.

Our modern Republican Party has been hijacked, gradually over the last twenty years, by the Tea Party, created and financed by billionaire industrialists like the Koch Brothers to squeeze out the remaining financial assets of our lower and middle classes. The goal, of course, is to maintain control over rural and working class people so they can be fleeced in both the workplace and the marketplace. If you want to know who the real “Deep State” is, who actually orchestrates the constant siphoning of resources from the lower classes to the upper five percent, simply look up the GOP celebration party that occurred immediately after Trump’s second impeachment (for inciting the January 6 Insurrection). If you really want to know, you will find it.

The seduction of neo-fascism, in the person of a wannabe authoritarian despot like Trump, is appealing to Missouri’s Senator Josh Hawley and our own 18th Congressional District’s Representative Jason Smith for obvious reasons. Hawley, fist pumping in support of the “Stop the Steal” conspiracy nonsense, is eyeing a future bid for the Presidency, hoping for Trump’s blessing. Posing as a rural conservative populist and nationalist, he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing—a Far-Right, intellectual autocrat, graduate of Stanford University and Yale Law School, lawyer and former professor, with some of Trump’s skills in hoodwinking the public. Smith, on the other hand, likely has more benevolent though misguided intentions, but his constituents need to convince him that the great majority of them are simply not farmers nor business owners.

The absurdism of the GOP’s desperate attempts to defend the indefensible reminds me again of Pee-wee and “I know you are but what am I.” A few nights ago I had a dream about the Capitol Insurrection. Instead of Pee-wee calling Dottie from a phone booth, evading her proposals for a real date when he gets home, Trump is in the White House Oval Office, feet propped up on his desk, talking to Pence on his unprotected cell phone. It is the afternoon of January 6, Trump is watching the events on his big-screen tv, and Trump rioters have just broken into the Capitol Building, forcing their way toward Pence’s office with a rope noose and screaming “Hang Mike Pence!” Pence is pleading with Trump to tell his supporters to stand down, but Trump has other intentions:

“Krii… krii… krii… krii….” (Trump making fake phone-interference sounds into his cell). “I can’t hear you, Mike, can’t hear you at all. Sorry. You just go on now and make sure you decertify those election results.”

Sam J Duckworth

Feb 17, 2022

Shooting Oneself in the Foot: The Self-Destruction of Rural America

As a child growing up on a cotton farm just three miles south of Caruthersville, MO, in the Fifties, I often heard a phrase that signified carelessness and foolishness through the common metaphor of injuring one’s foot by the injudicious discharge of one’s own firearm. “Shooting oneself in the foot” was applied, and still is, by us old timers to virtually any action we take that leads to unintended but self-inflicted pain that could have been avoided with a little care in the use of a dangerous weapon. Politics is perhaps the most dangerous of all weapons. Voters, however, are often blind and stubborn creatures, and many seem to believe, for example, that willful delusion in politics is a bullet to right all the wrongs of this world, the means to a good end—what amounts to an impossible return to a reimagined past, often a misconceived notion of the 1950s. Their eagerness to fire this bullet is so overpowering, in fact, that they mistakenly and carelessly shoot themselves in the feet again and again.

Since Franklin Roosevelt’s election in 1932 at least, Republican rural America has proven itself particularly inept in the use of this political firearm to help achieve better lives for all its citizens. Like their recent responses to a black man with the middle name of “Hussein” in the White House, many rural heartlanders in the 1930s believed another ultra-capitalist nonsense—that Roosevelt’s partly socialistic policies would lead to a Communist takeover of this nation. Those policies certainly didn’t, but they led to such red-baiting among Republicans, so much so that Fascist dictators—Hitler and Mussolini—were encouraged to believe Naziism, National Socialism, could take hold of American politics and turn populist sentiment in their favor. Naziism failed in this nation, of course, and white, black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans went on to fight this menace all together in World War II, though unfortunately not all side by side in combat. However, this early American “flirtation with fascism,” in the latter 1930s, became the first in a series of such trysts that have plagued our supposedly democratic nation every ten to twenty years since. An extensive examination of these periods is impossible here, but I’ll sum them up this way: Early and Mid-1950s, Joe McCarthy Era; Late 1960s to Nixon’s resignation in 1974, Pro-Vietnam/Anti-Counterculture Era; Mid to latter 1980s, Reagan’s Exploitation of the Poor to Finance Secret Wars Era; Mid-1990s, War on Crime and Welfare/Rise of the Tea Party Era; and, finally, 2015 to 2021+, Trump’s Cult of Personality Era. This last flirtation with neofascism, tragically, has become a full-blown affair, resulted in the violent January 6 riot at our Capitol, and put in jeopardy the very rule of law established by our forefathers and essential to the preservation of our democratic republic.

Almost  22 million more votes were cast in 2020 compared with our national election in 2016. This all-time record turnout can be attributed to a coalition of minority groups and suburban women intent on protecting hard-won rights that Republicans seem just as determined to take away. From minority voting rights to individual control over one’s own body, which took women at least a hundred thousand years to attain, the Republican assault on rights is based on a foundation of white male supremacy and entitlement, tribal fear of “the other,” hypocritical claims of morality, and a misogynistic fear of powerful women. 

Since Trump’s election in 2016, both Trump supporters and even many Progressive pundits have argued that Democrats simply don’t understand white, working-class rural America, but many of us who have lived here all our lives know better. The real problem is that rural Americans have been hoodwinked in their understanding of their own fear and anger. Their fear of change—in everything from loss of entitlements to encroaching minority power to religious secularism to the effects of global warming to the self-dishonoring of former paragons of morality among their own ranks—has demanded a search for answers. Tragically, they regularly but hopelessly return to the same sources for solutions.

Willful delusion is often their first resort simply because it allows them to keep avoiding the horrible truths they’ve managed to avoid for so long. An obvious example is the depiction of Native Americans and native Africans in all those misguided, misleading Hollywood movies. Another glaring example among fundamentalist Christians is the notion that western civilization’s conversion, often virtually coerced at gunpoint, of indigenous peoples and African slaves was a matter of following God’s will. We know now that it was, instead, both a genocide and a theft of land and resources in the case of Native Americans, and both the mortal sin of human enslavement and, again, theft of land and resources in the case of African Americans. I am a firm believer in the Biblical adage “The sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons,” especially if those sons don’t question, don’t learn, don’t change. Many will argue, however, that they are members of the “saved elite” and simply don’t have to.

Perhaps the most egregious nonsense perpetrated by many white rural Christian Americans is the notion that although “everyone is a child of God,” skin tone is the standard by which we know God’s most favored children. In other words, whites are superior simply because God is white and made them in his own image, and all else are fundamentally imperfect and cursed, by comparison. Some believe that blacks are cursed with dark skin because of the Noah-Ham story, even though Jewish theologians have mostly discounted that notion as well. It seems that without the regular discipline of critical listening, evaluating, and thinking, heartland Americans fall easy prey to the propaganda of the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and the pundits of Newsmax, who will sell them a Bible code to grow wealthy, as well. These so-called experts speak the lexicon of white Christian superiority and entitlement, and the fear that “others”—minority groups—are “replacing” the previously dominant culture.  And neither would-be experts nor gullible followers seem to recall Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan, which puts this whole paranoia about strange “others” —whether black, Hispanic, Muslim, Asian, gay, trans, etc.—into perspective and reveals the hypocrisy behind it. But without self-regulation or the will to listen to Jesus Himself, nothing said will change their beliefs because, to them, “alternative facts” are their chosen reality.

Another inconvenient truth for heartland white Americans is this: their poor economic status is mostly the consequence of voting for “trickle-down” economic policies that have resulted in the greatest redistribution of wealth in our history—from the lower and middle classes to the upper five percent. The old cliche that “the rich get richer” is an indisputable and mostly accepted fact, but heartland America was only too eager to add its approval to the big tax giveaway of 2017. This coup by the upper five percent—the reduction of the maximum corporate tax rate from 35 to 21%—meant, of course, that fewer revenues were available for the services on which rural Americans have become dependent. And most of the meager bones thrown to them in the form of income tax refunds were eaten up by the sharply rising prices of inflation within a few months. What they were left with, again, was the pain of just another bullet in already ravaged feet.

Immigrants are not taking their jobs and certainly not the reason for companies closing their plants here and moving them overseas. The truth is that if all immigrants, legal and illegal, were expelled from the U.S., our economy would suffer greatly and food prices would surge, resulting in less access to fresh foods and an even greater issue with malnutrition. The real reason for plant closings are the white business owners who are far more concerned with profit margins for white stockholders than the lives of their own American workers. And the government is not coming to confiscate the guns of rural America. Obama’s and now Biden’s administrations have simply pushed the urgent need for better background checks in order to save innocent lives. And the marrying of Gay people is not a threat to their right to believe in whatever white god they want to conjure up. Their churches do not have to marry gays, hire gay ministers, or accepts gays into their congregations. And women’s access to birth control affects not only our entire society but their own individual lives in countless positive ways. Even the single teenage mothers they love to either criticize or wring their hands about.

Though the great majority of rural white Christian Americans vote Republican, the economic policies that have benefitted them the most are the product of the modern Democratic Party. These include spending on infrastructure, the roads and power grids they access, minimum wage increases, farm subsidies, crop insurance and commodities protections, and a whole slew of social services. They like to rail about Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, Food Stamps, etc., and the minorities they believe are disproportionately receiving them, but seem unconcerned when they cash their own checks, whether welfare or farm subsidy, and use the social services available to all.  They complain about globalization and a world economy that have run their friends and neighbors out of business, but have no concerns about shopping at big chain stores or buying foreign-made guns, scopes, and other hunting gear, and driving over-sized trucks whose transmissions and engines come from Canada, radios from Korea, tires from Japan, and computer chips from Malaysia. They don’t like outsiders and make it clear they are not welcome in their communities, then lament on virtually every small-town editorial page that businesses or plants are opening up in other areas. What do they expect?

Dismissing someone as an “educated liberal,” especially an old-timer who has observed this incessant shooting of feet here most all his life, is not a legitimate response. One should not stop one’s education the day one graduates high school. And college will definitely challenge one’s preconceptions, especially those of a fundamentalist belief system ungrounded in empirical reality. Over much of my 72 years of life, I’ve had numerous discussions with rural white Americans, my own background, and whenever I offer information, no matter how valid or obvious or accepted by experts, that contradicts their ingrained beliefs, they refuse to admit the possibility that my statements just might be correct. Refusal to accept facts and science or even one’s own sensory evidence may be a human right to wishful delusion, but that doesn’t stop the accrual of actual tragic consequences, especially in the future lives of one’s children.

It is true, of course, that “government” often doesn’t do enough to help them, but they continue to elect local and state governments, as well as senators and representatives, that are almost all Republican. These officeholders are seldom held accountable but, instead, voted into office time and time again, with the same consequences—more painful slugs in a crucial body part that both bears weight and allows locomotion. In Missouri, for example, Eric Greitens is poised for another run, and Senator Josh Hawley, who helped Trump incite the riot at the Capitol, will eventually make a bid for the Presidency, using the rhetoric of the white country populist to disguise the intentions of the ambitious neofascist. And Jason Smith, our District Representative, whose blatant toadying for the Trump Administration is so obvious that responders on his website have a field day, likely will win again in 2022. The crying shame is that many of those responders–notably a farm wife named Elizabeth Bird–show much more understanding of and empathy for the constituents of our district than the beholden Mr. Smith. 

The problem of rural white America’s self-destruction is not a matter of misunderstanding by intellectual elites on the coasts or unsympathetic liberal politicians in the halls of power. It is, rather, that rural white Christian Americans continue to fire away carelessly at their feet through voting patterns created by their own tragic beliefs, values, and behavior.

Sam J Duckworth
May 1, 2021 

BULLIES, BOZOS, AND CON ARTISTS

It has become glaringly obvious that both Republican politicians and Republican voters are poised to blame their own great mistake on Donald Trump’s consummate artistry as a con man. Even some Democratic operatives seem willing, in media statements that sound like subconscious magnanimity, to give them a pass for their foolish and completely irresponsible support for the most dangerous President in American history. Trump’s public falsehoods, both outright lies and ignorant assertions of fact, numbered well into the thousands long before he even declared for what would become his first political office. But his convenient estrangement from the truth, combined with personal visions of accumulated wealth and power, enticed Republican up-and-comings to throw all cautious reasoning to the wind. From the big tax giveaway to the upper two percent, to the wrecking of American foreign policy and the turning of blind eyes to Putin’s bold moves, to the thoroughly inept handling of the Covid plague, the Republican legacy during this administration has been less than abysmal. Though likely there are positive motives behind the Democrats’ offering of a fig leaf, many of us want the memory of this debacle to live on so that future generations cannot fall back onto the excuse of the demagogue’s irresistible con. Few such assertions could be further from the truth. Our Republican brothers and sisters were quite ready and willing to “blow it all up”. We must ask, therefore, what in their nature and motives led to this.

Throughout my 71 years of life, but especially those as a student and later as a teacher, I’ve experienced a disturbing phenomenon that, I believe, partially explains their dubious choices. I’m referring here to the willing tolerance, virtually a veneration, of the bullies in our society. No matter that they often are bozos with few skills and little intelligence, the blow-hards seem to command respect through our own unconscious fear. Few will admit to that, yet every three or four years I witnessed the election to class office of students whose only claim to leadership was their ability to intimidate and unnerve their fellow students, who seemed to feel the need to pay tribute by voting for them. At the elementary, middle-school, and high-school levels, of course, the consequences of such choices are mitigated by teachers and administrators who prevent things from getting out of hand. But at the adult level, the situation can degenerate into the despicable display of bullying and name-calling we saw in early 2016 during the Republican primary season debates on tv. After every one of those debates, Republican presidential candidates who had acted civilly and without malice toward their fellow candidates were judged, by the Republican base, as weak and unworthy of their support. Substance meant nothing, the appearance of “strength” everything. In this way Mr. Trump slandered his way to the top of the Republican pack and later, largely with his epithet of “crooked Hillary”, went on to bully his way to the Presidency.

We have allowed the con “artists”, of course, to proliferate beyond all control in the institutions of our society. From the purveyors of goods and services that are either unnecessary or even harmful to us, to the fake-religion advocates who would have us believe they are necessary to our individual salvation, we are besieged by an army of deceivers who fill our mail boxes, commandeer our telephones, and bully their ways into our lives. Too often, we feel powerless and simply give in. When we do rebel, we are told by our Republican leaders that these are merely side effects of “laissez faire” capitalism and that they cannot intervene. What they really mean is that protecting the elderly, the poor, the ill, all the vulnerable elements of our nation, is simply not in their own selfish interests of power and wealth. In this way they feel little compunction in repealing regulations that help protect us from climate harm, in repealing the Affordable Care Act that protect those with pre-existing conditions, and in refusing to mandate the wearing of masks or the lockdown of specified hot spots that would help protect everyone from the Coronavirus plague. All in the name of “freedom”.

In Missouri, our own Governor Parsons, the bozo appointed after the sex-and-blackmail scandal of the elected Eric Greitens, continues the tradition of cowardice and do-nothingism. As fatalities from the pandemic multiply in our state, we are told our freedom to be tragically foolish and to put others’ lives in dire jeopardy will never be curtailed. And Missourians show little promise of turning things around, have remained largely stagnant in their pattern of political support for conservative diatribe. Indeed, Republican voters in our “Show Me” state have shown themselves to be as gullible, in the face of such bumbling con-artistry, as naive teenage girls at spring break. Our own Josh Hawley and Jason Smith, toadies for the Trump Administration, push a “law and order” agenda that is merely a deflection from the real problems at hand. As long as they remain in office, the bullies, the bozos, and the con artists will continue to dominate our lives.

Sam J Duckworth

Oct 21, 2020

Hell-Bent for the Brink

The truism that incumbent American Presidents running for reelection cannot overcome a failing economy or their own failed responses to a national catastrophe may be tested this November in our national elections. In terms of Presidents and their families, Trump and his are such a departure from the norm, and his supporters are loyal to such a fault, that one has to wonder whether they will follow him all the way to a perdition that will destroy our planet, or at least wipe out our species on it. Evangelicals, in particular, often seem dead-set on a self-fulfilling prophecy that means the end of human existence—with their own help, no less. Often I have compared this to willfully riding an out-of-control bandwagon toward the edge of a precipitous cliff: at some point virtually everyone is too afraid to jump off, so one’s fate becomes sealed. Whether the runaway horses have been poisoned by Jimson weed or have become intoxicated by a bully’s megalomania, there are many of us who want a responsible leader to take over the reins and bring us back from the brink. What we have learned is that the notion that government should be managed like a business, or like a reality-tv show, or like a mob organization is a foolish one indeed.

Trump and his toadies are already taking the low road in their efforts to distract the voting public from their culpability in the madness around us. Donald Jr’s meme on Instagram accusing Joe Biden of sexually abusing children couldn’t be more ironic in the light of Trump’s known friendship with the now infamous pedophile who took his own life. Though Trump Jr later explained on Twitter that he was just “kidding” and that “anyone with a scintilla of common sense” would know that, he went on to post pictures of Biden with children at public ceremonies, suggesting inappropiate contact with them. Of course, Jr’s pretense of piety is just another con job, but Evangelicals should be able to recognize such an egregious violation of the Eighth Commandment—“Thou shalt not bear false witness…” They often seem to miss these things while defending the indefensible, and they eventually fall back on the old standby retort of “but they all do this”, like children defending their own misbehavior at school. No, they don’t all do this.

Now that the coronavirus death rate is well past 100,000 in America and the number of those unemployed is past 38 million, the greatest since the Great Depression, it might be a good idea to reconsider one’s loyalty to a leader who inspires such little confidence both in his abilities and in his intentions. I asked a Republican friend of mine recently what he would have thought of Obama if these things had occurred during his watch. This individual immediately tried to make these events Obama’s fault, then abruptly changed course and argued that Trump shouldn’t be held accountable for what was essentially just bad luck. I reminded him of the dust in the helicopter engines that thwarted Jimmy Carter’s attempt to free the American hostages from captivity in Iran in 1980, then pointed out Trump’s early statements, in January, that China had the virus matter under control and that fear of it was merely a Democratic hoax to stifle the stock market and make him look bad. Trump repeated the hoax angle in February at a large rally in South Carolina, helping to set up the current phenomenon of Trumper victimhood in which wearing masks is considered an intolerable infringement on the rights of those entitled ones whose lives are being inconvenienced. Trump waffled later, of course, when he had to, after losing precious time that could have saved numerous lives. Presently he is trying to have it both ways: encouraging irresponsible actions on the part of his supporters while claiming that “everyone who wants a test can get one”. No, they can’t .

Count me as a believer in social sanctions to deter individuals from falling into these errors of delusion and irresponsibility. As human beings we have a duty to at least do no harm to those around us. This is part of the social contract that allows us to live together in this society. I’d remind those who are familiar with our own Declaration of Independence that in it Thomas Jefferson specified three “inalienable rights”—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately, these rights are sometimes in conflict, but there can be little doubt that he put them in their order of importance. In other words, our pursuit of mall shopping and pedicures is somewhat less important than the fragile lives of our neighbors, friends, and loved ones. In terms of social sanctions, however, I am not one who relishes a Republican “Walk of Shame” like the one in the HBO series Game of Thrones. Thirty years without a Republican Presidency should be enough.

Just saw an interesting piece about the birth rates of bears in our national parks. It seems the rates are way up, probably because of the absence of humans. One observer described the bears as positively “frollicking”. And data shows that air and water pollution have already improved, likely because we are consuming less of what we didn’t need in the first place. It should be humbling to know that this Earth can go on without us.

Sam J Duckworth
June 3, 2020