Desultory Diary, Episode 28: Towards a Kinder and Gentler Nation

Recently, I saw a YouTube clip of a man in Texas who said to a few friends, "The worst day in America is better than the best day anywhere else." He might as well have said, "Jesus Christ is Lord," for the group around him smiled in pious agreement. O, the arrogance!

The United States is, hands down, Number One in the world regarding Covid-19 deaths, but it lags behind other countries according to many indicators. We are the only wealthy country that lacks universal health coverage; we rank 35th according to longevity statistics, (just below Lebanon and just above Cuba), despite spending twice as much on health care as other wealthy countries; among the 31 OECD countries, we rank last regarding obesity; we are certainly nowhere near the best regarding infant mortality and education. The American Dream is alive and well, well, in Denmark.

Something is rotten in the United States, and it's about time that we do something about it.

The patriotic hubris of the Texans is not an isolated incident.

How many times have you come across someone asserting that this is the greatest country in the world? If you haven't ever been told this by a neighbor, teacher, or friend, you have probably been living on a different planet.

I am 75. When in grade school, I had to memorize the doggerel line, "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue." At that time, Columbus was, in effect, a secular Messiah, who brought the gifts of Western Civilization to the New World. No mention of the Arawak Indians, who soon become extinct in Hispaniola, where Columbus first landed; not to mention the genocide against South American Indians, one of the worst genocides in history.

Regarding Thanksgiving, we were led to believe that Edward Hicks's painting, The Peaceable Kingdom, in which Pilgrims and Native Americans got along just fine, was historically accurate.

Later on, we were taught the concept of Manifest Destiny, namely, that it was God's will that the United States gain sovereignty from coast to coast, The wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time, Mexican and Native Americans, had to be swept away like underbrush. And they were.

I remember the shock I felt, when, fairly recently, I picked up a bible with the American flag plastered all over it. It included on back pages a collection of religious hymns and patriotic hymns, and a mixture of both. America and God--there seemed to be no difference. An aria from The Messiah came to mind, with lyrics from the Old Testament, "Why do the nations so furiously rage together?/And why do the people imagine vain things?" Those lyrics were of course missing in that American bible.

I thought traditional religions taught that, while it is good to be patriotic, we live in a fallen world and every nation suffers from various degrees of fallenness. Not so in the American Religion, as the gaudy bible I had picked up proclaimed. It is dangerous, is it not, when the prophetic maxim, "walk humbly with your God," becomes, in effect, "God has chosen us to be on top!"

America's Original Sin

I grew up in the 1950s, and, like most white kids at the time, lived in a segregated neighborhood. (In a restricted sense, I still do, although my multi-racial family is no longer as unique as it once was.) Race was like rice in a pressure cooker over high heat--God had long since abandoned the kitchen--Pretty soon everything had to explode. And explode it did.

Blacks have had access to higher education; many have assumed positions of power. They are unwilling to be subjugated any longer. Progressive whites reject the racism of the past, as the multiracial protests in Portland attest. Yet not every white person is progressive.

When a pressure cooker explodes, expect a mess. I am firmly convinced however, that the mess can and will be cleared up.

Take the case of kneeling during the national anthem at NFL games. Colin Kaepernick--whose name sounds like that of a Dutch explorer--famously knelt in 2016 during the playing of the national anthem before a NFL game. He was protesting police brutality; his protest caused a furor in our divided country. God-and-country whites were deeply offended. Trump, in 2017, strongly advocated that players who refuse to stand during the anthem be fired. The NFL lost a lot of money.

The vehemence of the protests reminded me of the vehement arguments supporting either transubstantiation or consubstantiation, subtleties of Christian dogma over which people actually killed each other in the past. (Have people chosen to forget that the most important behavior is how we treat each other, not how we treat a flag? Colin Kaepernick has spent a lot of his money and time on children).

Things have since calmed down. On July 4, 2020, during a much-publicized game, it was left to the players to stand or to kneel during the anthem. A professor of African-American studies wrote, "I would have found it hard to believe it a year ago. I would have said something really happened in America to cause that. Clearly what has happened in America...fundamentally changed people's perceptions as it relates to racism in this society." The catalyst for this change was the brutal murder of George Floyd. You can be cynical and believe that the owners found a way for money to flow into their coffers again; nevertheless a change has occurred.

The intolerant God-and-country crowd, however, is still with us. I recently talked to some gym friends, who are mostly Trump supporters. When the topic of kneeling during the national anthem somehow came up, one of our friends went ballistic.

This person is vehemently against the removal of publicly displayed Confederate statues as well. Not much of a surprise there.

German Patriotism

I sometimes watch German-language TV. Once they had a segment regarding  teaching German teenagers the horrors of the Holocaust. Regarding the rabid anti-Semitism of those days, a teenager replied, in utter disbelief,  "Is this fiction?!" Yes, the degree of evil of the Nazi regime is beyond comprehension.

How do German patriots--and mostly everyone everywhere is, and should be, patriotic to some degree--fare these days? A teacher replied, "We love Germany. But we must love it with a broken heart."

I like that. America's racism has been, well, awful. America has also committed many atrocities around the world. Vietnam, Iraq, South America. There is a saying in Mexico, "Pity us. So far from God and so close to the United States." If you wonder why they could say something like that, ask a Native American.

There are of course many good things about our country as well. It is still--maybe not for long? a vibrant democracy. Long live the First Amendment--a variation of which in many countries simply doesn't exist. Despite many challenges, contemporary and in the past, the Constitution has been a beacon of light for the entire world.

Germany, with its sad history, is known as perhaps the least overtly patriotic country in Europe. It is also one of the most progressive. We could learn a lot from them, for our history has not been as good as many think. 


Maybe we could learn to love our country while we happily sing, "Hail, Columbia" without Columbus, and with a tear in our eyes. If we do, there is a good chance that George H. W. Bush's dream of a kinder, gentler nation would be fulfilled.

Desultory Dairy, Episode 26: Police Push an Old Man Down

In the midst of the Covid pandemic, we have been shocked by the brutal murder of George Floyd by Derek Chauvin, a white police officer. We--I'm not using the 'royal we' but the 'decency we'--have been encouraged, despite reports of looting, by the widespread demonstrations protesting his death. That 'decency we' has also become the 'majority we'--a good sign. We all hope that much-needed changes will result.

The police abuse did not stop with Floyd's murder. On Thursday, June 4, 2020, a week and a half after the black man's death, a protest demonstration took place in Buffalo, New York. Although there was no need for a show of massive force against peaceful protesters, the police were ready.

Martin Gugino, a 75-year-old activist, a member of the Catholic Workers Movement, a man with impeccable non-violent bona fides, approached the police, despite commands to back away. (He has what has been reported to have been a cell phone in his hands; he apparently had been trying to show the officers a screenshot of the First Amendment. He certainly had no weapon). Two officers brutally push him to the side; he falls and lies on the ground, bleeding from his head, apparently unconscious. They pushed him hard, with the compassion of inhumane drill sergeants, kicking a stray dog aside who got in the way of a small-town military parade. It was  shocking. (Gugino, a small countercurrent against waves of riot police, reminded me of the photo of the man defiantly standing before a tank in Tiananmen Square).

I felt that shove. I am the same age as the victim.

Pushing over  a 75-year-old is categorically different from pushing over a younger or middle-age individual.

Fear of falling is a recurring nightmare of old age. A person seventy years old has three times the chance of dying  from a 'low-ground fall' that is, a fall from level ground, than a younger person has. The chance of falling increases dramatically with age, since the older you are, after 60 or so, the chance of losing your balance rises. Injuries incurred during a fall tend to be more serious as well. Bones are more brittle and thinner, making them much easier to break; older people know that breaking your hip, for instance, can signal the loss of independence, the beginning of the end. Recovery from even a minor injury tends to be much longer once you are old. As an example, my wife had a minor fall in our house about two months ago. No bones were broken, but she was unable to exercise or take a walk with me for weeks. If the accident happened years ago, she would be incapacitated for only about a day, we estimate.

I still take a basket full of laundry down the dozen or so curving steps to the laundry room in the basement of our house, but I am extra careful. Watch out, Dorsett, a voice tells me, this could be it!

When an older person falls down and hits the back of his head, the chance of a serious, potentially fatal, cerebral hemorrhage increases greatly. Many older persons are on blood thinners, as I am, making that dreadful complication much more likely. I know of several cases of falls among the elderly which resulted in serious complications, including death. 

Most states define elder abuse as willful injury to a person 65 years old or older.  The police officers look three to four decades younger than the 75-year-old peaceful protester. It was a crime!

I heard and read many of those who commented on this incident. Not one mentioned that it is a breakdown of civilization when one shows no respect to elders. It's like pushing a modern-day Jesus off the Mount of Olives so one can rush to the top to take a selfie.

The next day after the abuse I read that 57 members of the riot squad resigned in protest. Maybe I'm getting senile, but I first thought that they had resigned in solidarity with the man who was brutally pushed to the ground. Yeah, right. (There is a ray of hope: the two officers who pushed Gugino, Aaron Torgalski and Robert McCabe, have been charged with second-degree assault).

You are supposed to respect the elderly, not strike them down. That this dictate of civilization was not even mentioned in the news, indicates to me how far we've declined.


2.

Trump will be 74 in less than a week. By the way he sways back and forth while attempting to stand  still, it seems to me that he has an old-age balance problem. (Despite all the crimes he has committed, pushing him over would still be a crime!)

Has he learned a little bit of compassion and empathy with old age? Here's a recent tweet of the president, regarding the incident:

Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provacateur. 75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN, I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?

This is nuts. A ridiculous conspiracy theory supported by the President of the United States?! (His source, One America News Network, is much further right than is Fox News).

Between the scanner that wan't there and the scanned equipment  that also wasn't there, Trump has injected an icy image of hateful paranoia. A man who believes this could push down his grandma and claim that aliens--that is, his alien mind and his alien heart--made him do it.

I am shocked again. Yes, those with even a rudimentary analytical ability have known Trump's number for a long time. Yet Trump, like an asymptote on a graph, always manages to get closer to zero. 

It's worse than that:

Trump is a symbol of a general breakdown of civilized norms. The Republicans who still follow him--and there are many--have lost all moral authority in their pursuit of the gods of greed, hate, and delusion. Citizens who still support Trump--and there are many of them as well--follow their increasingly tarnished idol, and are unaware that their Pied Piper is leading them--and us--into a dead-end cave where all is lost. We must not let that happen.

Uncle Sam is over two hundred years old. Mr. Trump, stop pushing him down!

If We Vote for Trump, What Do We Have to Lose?

According to our dear leader, Trump has done more for blacks than any president in the past, "with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln." A statement like this would have made Joseph Goebbels proud. Trump's singular accomplishment has been a trillion dollar giveaway to the richest Americans. The man who is supposedly fighting for underdogs, especially white underdogs, has been doing his very best to keep them leashed.

We are in difficult times--our nation and the world have been wracked by a plague at the very same time that our nation and the world are in the midst of a political crisis. Will democracy meet current challenges? For the first time in my life, and I'm not young, I have my doubts. This is not a time for despair, (yet?), however; it is a time to fight.

When Trump was campaigning, he tried to solicit black support by saying, "What do you have to lose?" If Goebbels were now the provost of the University of Hell, I'm sure he would have recommended giving Trump an honorary citation, dishonoris causa, for that one.

No matter what our ethnic background is, we do have a lot to lose.

Our nation has been reeling since the murder of an unarmed black man at the hands of a white police officer who showed as much concern for the sanctity of human life as a Nazi thug. The extensive and prolonged demonstrations against the atrocity of racism continue at the time of this writing, over a week since the murder. They have been overwhelmingly peaceful. There is a good possibility  that something is going to change this time--for the better. Enough of too much!

Our dear leader has no moral core, no ideology other than genuflecting before the golden idol of himself. Protests have been muted in cities and towns of rural America, Trump's base. With the savvy of a demagogue, Trump knows that the majority of those protesting the death of George Floyd are also protesting against him; they are, therefore, in his narcissistic Manichean worldview, evil--for the sole reason that they are likely to be 'never Trumpers.'

So what did our president do? Give a speech that attempted to bring the country together? Yeah, right.

Prompted by Ivanka and Jared, he decided to have a photo tableau taken of himself as the god of Law and Order. Peaceful protesters were cleared away by force from the vicinity of the church, near the White House, where the photo was to be taken.  The use of military force to disperse citizens exercising their First Amendment rights--what are we coming to?

You've all seen the photograph of Trump holding up a bible (upside down, it turned out)  in front of an iconic church. He's doing his very best to look Serious and Dominant--the latter being a favorite word of his; instead he looked Pitifully Ridiculous. He looks like a madman who thinks he's General Custer, sanctioned by God, preparing for Man's wackadoodle Last Stand.

2.

The misuse of religious symbols didn't start with Donald Trump. Holding up the Bible as a symbol of Law and Order reminded me of an even more egregious use of such symbolism, as demonstrated by the Archbishop of Paris on May 27, 1610. This was the date of the execution of François Ravaillac for murdering Good King Henri lV of France. While the bishop held a cross before the unfortunate man, who by all accounts was mentally unstable, he was subjected to despicable acts of torture. His flesh was torn by pincers; molten lead, sulfur and boiling oil were poured into the wounds. During all this, the cross was held up before the victim's gaze; I imagine the bishop had an expression on his face similar to Donald Trump's at the church: one that proclaimed domination for all to see; a visage completely lacking in empathy.

The onlookers, a large swath of the public, were on the bishop's side. After the initial tortures were over, Ravaillac was drawn and quartered by horses. When one of the horses at its macabre task faltered, a nobleman volunteered his steed. This torture lasted for about an hour. After Ravaillac died, children made a bonfire to burn the regicide's flesh. When the spectacle was over, nothing was left of the poor man but a piece of his shirt.

3.
Mr. Trump, you are wrong. Everyone, not only blacks, has a lot to lose by voting for someone like you.

The injunction against  cruel and unusual punishment is a precious part of the Constitution. When Trump appointed General Mattis as the Secretary of Defense, the president stated outright that he favored torture of terrorists. The Archbishop of Paris would have been proud.

On May 27, 1610, no opposition to the horrible ordeal Ravaillac suffered was recorded. In June, 2020, the opposition to Trump's misuse of religious symbolism was swift and articulate.

Society has indeed changed; certainly not enough, but it has changed. We have come a long way, but have much farther to go.

The murderer of George Floyd did not inflict the tortures that the good citizens of France witnessed  in 1610. Murder, however, is still murder. Even Trump, one assumes, would be horrified over the details of Ravaillac's execution. Yet his misuse of the bible has a definite parallel in the archbishop's misuse of the cross. The former is throwing the book at his opponents, the latter was crucifying them. Both served the same god: Law and Order. (My Law, My order).

During Hitler's rise to power, many laughed. It couldn't happen here, they thought. But it did.

We have a lot to lose. Protecting the Constitution and taking decisive steps on the road  to racial as well as economic equality are among the many tasks before us. First things first: voting that incompetent, mean-spirited, would-be tyrant from office has become a paramount civic duty. It's not too late!