Is McConnell playing Long Game? -- Impeach Fast, Convict Slow

 Now that Donald Trump has been impeached a second time in his role as President, the question moves to the Senate where until January 22, Mitch McConnell is still in charge. To quote the classic Cold War film Hunt for Red October, he is "a politician, which means I'm a cheat and a liar, and when I'm not kissing babies, I'm stealing their lollipops. But it also means I keep my options open." And, while the word on the street is that McConnell supports the idea of impeachment and has told Republicans it is the way they purge Trump from the party, he is not inclined to rush the trial and will not call the Senate back until January 19 at the earliest. 

And that is potentially a shrewd move, and it's probably the right one.

The nature of a conservative is to be prudent and cautious, and it's ultimately about moving slowly as opposed to being too rash. The Senate is designed to move slowly; that was the intention of the Founding Fathers, intended to temper the potentially radical intentions of the People's House. 

The most important aspect of conviction will be the ability of the Senate to prevent Donald Trump from ever running for office again. That's the end game. That's how Republicans purge him. They do not need to have the trial while he is still in office, though that is what the Pelosi, Schumer, and the Democrats want. The Democrats are looking for symbolic action of "removing him from office," even if it's just a few days. But that is not necessary, and it's more effective to wait, hold the trial later, convict him, and make a lifetime ban on public office or government service the primary stipulation. 

Holding the trial later will also potentially defuse some of the tension among ardent supporters, and it can provide cover for Republican representatives and senators who, according to Rep Jason Crow of Colorado, fear for their lives if they vote yes. And, granted, Crow is correct that the Republicans are in a way failing the American people because they lack the same conviction and sacrifice that they expect of the soldiers they vote to send to fight and die for the country. As Crow noted, "Some of my Republican colleagues are afraid of the consequences of an impeachment vote. This congress sends our young men & women to war. Not asking my colleagues to storm the beaches of Normandy, only to show a fraction of the courage we ask of our troops. It’s time to lead."

That said, it probably makes sense for Pelosi to speak with McConnell and play the long game to ensure the real prize -- get him out of office and keep him out of it forever.

Rep Lauren Boebert Lacks the Conscience of a Conservative

 After the sad events of last week at the Capitol in DC, and the profoundly disappointing behavior of the newest elected representative from Colorado, I penned the following op-ed which was published today in the Denver Post. 

Ronald Reagan used to say, “I didn’t leave my party. My party left me.”

While he was explaining his shift from midwestern Democrat to western Republican, his sentiment also describes the situation for many these days who find themselves conservative but not Republican. It’s a particularly apt distinction in Colorado where a majority of voters now identify themselves independent and unaffiliated. And it’s particularly pertinent this week after the unsettling words and behavior of the newly elected representative for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, Lauren Boebert of Rifle.

After the riotous mob assault on the nation’s Capitol, Rep. Boebert both supported the attempted insurrection while also trying to distance herself from it. After excitedly praising the radical chaos in D.C. by tweeting “Today is 1776,” she later shifted gears to assert the rioters “were not conservative.” Her mistake is in thinking she is. While Boebert correctly asserts “conservatives do not tear their country down,” she naively fails to realize she is not conservative. The representative is certainly a social media sensation. She’s obviously a small business owner. She’s an elected official. She’s a Republican. But she is most definitely not conservative.

Read the rest online.

Don Lemon is also Hurting America

 A few weeks I published a post about how Tucker Carlson is hurting America. The spirit of the post was disappointment, and the basic idea is that Carlson has not matured at all from earlier in his career when Jon Stewart embarrassed him on the CNN show Crossfire. He is a bright, well-educated, savvy, and influential speaker who could reach a huge audience with an informative news-related show that generates serious discussion and genuine debate. Instead he engages in sound-bite commentary with incredibly short segments that are designed to limit any deep or genuine discussion of issues. And he focuses on maintaining and often enflaming the preconceived beliefs and biases of his audience while he makes an incredibly large amount of money doing it.

However, Carlson is not the only problem voice on television. In addition to the shallow partisan infotainment from other commentary show hosts like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham for Fox News, commentators on CNN and MSNBC participate in the same biased soundbite commentary designed to appeal to Democrats. 

Don Lemon is not helping anyone in America to become more fully informed on important political and social issues, for he offers an incredibly limited show every night that repeats the same mantras, slogans, and touch points again and again ad nauseam. His guests and his regular panels of pundits never get to any real depth on issues, as he is constantly cutting off segments, telling speakers "Hey, I gotta go," as he moves to a commercial and then comes back to another brief undeveloped segment, which is almost always just narrow partisan complaining about Republicans and President Trump. I recall tuning in one night for a special medical guest (I think it was Dr. Sanjay Gupta) to talk about the Covid vaccine and various plans and concerns. Dr. Gupta could have gone on the whole hour and really delved into the issue and informed people. But Lemon "had to go", and cut the doctor off so Don could move on to another redundant rambling session criticizing the Trump administration. 

The same criticism can be leveled at Anderson Cooper, Chris Cuomo, Rachel Maddow, and especially Lawrence O'Donnell. Viewers can tune into FoxNews, CNN, or MSNBC for literally four straight hours every night and hear the same tired show with different hosts night after night and learn next to nothing but have all their biases reinforced. Professor and cultural critic Neil Postman noted how all the information found in an hour-long television news broadcast (in terms of word count and topics covered) could be found on one page of a newspaper. While too many Americans, and especially politicians, are fond of blaming society's division on "the mainstream media," it's not the work of authentic journalists and reporters they are talking about -- it's the commentators, talk show hosts, pundits, and info-tainers that are our problem. Contemporary society has a negative view of the fourth estate, not because of the people in the trenches doing the hard reporting, but because of the media personalities that tarnish the important world of journalism.

There are so many incredible and important stories to be covered every single day, and the "news" networks spend the most coveted air time they have on a group of pop culture media mavens who might at one time have had an interest in journalism but have allowed the bright studio lights to blind them and us to the narrow scope of their "content" and the insidious harm it is causing us. Don Lemon could spotlight so many people, stories, places, issues, foundations, non-profits, citizens, achievements, questions, ... basically news .... every night. But instead, he and his fraternity of talking heads just re-hash the same old biases night after night. And, as the son of an esteemed small town print journalist who spent thirty years as a reporter, feature writer, and editor, I am deeply saddened by what the cable networks have done to that thing we used to call news. 

I'll close with the prophetic criticism from Clare Booth Luce:

 Certainly we must face this fact: if the American press, as a mass medium, has formed the minds of America, the mass has also formed the medium.  There is action, reaction, and interaction going on ceaselessly between the newspaper-buying public and the editors.  What is wrong with the American press is what is in part wrong with American society.

Is this, then, to exonerate the American press for its failures to give the American people more tasteful and more illuminating reading matter?  Can the American press seek to be excused from responsibility for public lack of information as TV and radio often do, on the grounds that, after, “we have to give the people what they want or we will go out of business”?

  --Clare Boothe Luce, “What’s Wrong with the American Press?”

Henry David Thoreau - America's first Punk Rock Icon

 I can't remember whether Greg Graffin's Punk Manifesto first reminded me of Henry David Thoreau's Resistance to Civil Government (also referred to as Civil Disobedience), or whether it was Thoreau's work that resonated with Graffin's description of the punk ethos. Regardless, ever since I've been teaching, and for as long as I've been teaching Thoreau and the philosophy of transcendentalism, I have always introduced the ideas of Thoreau through the concepts of punk. Basically, I introduce Thoreau to my students as the original punk rocker. Henry David Thoreau is original American Punk.

Certainly the simple idea of self reliance, which Thoreau's good friend Ralph Waldo Emerson described so eloquently in an essay of the same name, is at the heart of America's individualism and is also an integral part of the punk identity. The pursuit of self reliance in theory was put in to practice by Thoreau, notably during his time living at Walden Pond. However, the ideas of self-reliance in the face of a society which seeks to force conformity reach another level in Thoreau's work on civil disobedience. At the heart of the idea is authenticity to the self and the ideals of that self. These ideas, going back to the early nineteenth century, are aptly articulated by Graffin, frontman and founding member of the seminal punk band Bad Religion.

PUNK IS: the personal expression of uniqueness that comes from the experiences of growing up in touch with our human ability to reason and ask questions.

PUNK IS: a movement that serves to refute social attitudes that have been perpetuated through willful ignorance of human nature.

PUNK IS: a process of questioning and commitment to understanding that results in self-progress, and through repetition, flowers into social evolution.

PUNK IS: a belief that this world is what we make of it, truth comes from our understanding of the way things are, not from the blind adherence to prescriptions about the way things should be.

PUNK IS: the constant struggle against fear of social repercussions.

What now?

 "What'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?

What'll you do now, my darling young one ...?"

-- Bob Dylan (via Edie Brickell)

So, what now? Where do we go from here?

Wednesday, January 6, 2021 was a dark and heavy day for our nation and our community. The unimaginable manifested itself in our nation's capital, our Capitol, the People's House. And now there is uncertainty and a deep hollow feeling, as we ask ourselves: "Is this the end of something, or the beginning of something else." There is much subtext in those words from Van Jones on CNN. The ambiguous nature of what is ending -- the madness or the community and institutions it seeks to disrupt -- cannot be fully known at this point. Is the beginning a return to decency and a rejection of the bitter nastiness in politics, or is it the beginning an even darker and more sinister approach to partisan divides? 

I remain concerned and uncertain, especially after the 100+ votes in the House and the revisionist justifications happening among some media and partisans. 

The buffoons in DC yesterday, even the armed ones and the ones who entered the Capitol building or just marched, are not what most disturbs and unsettles me. They are mostly just a bunch of hooligans who have lost or never had a sense of decency. And I don't mean to dismiss or de-emphasize the very real danger that erupted yesterday and was thankfully contained. And I don't mean to gloss over or dismiss the very real fear that many of our representatives and civil servants felt. But the harm those people did, and the terror they enacted is not our worst danger. The next Timothy McVeigh is. The foreign powers who saw the weakness and vulnerability of our Capitol are. Somewhere out there are people far more sinister, far more dangerous, and far more intent on doing harm. And the President cultivated that. And the Republican leadership has done far too little to counter it.

And I am concerned. And I am worried.

But I am also still hopeful. And I still have faith. And I still believe in our goodness.

January 6, 2021

My heart is heavy, and my spirit is mourning.

I’m just truly deeply sad.

My unshakeable belief is starting to shiver.

My unwavering faith is starting to quiver.

No man, no one person, no single act, no moment in time is stronger than the republic ...

I’ve always said.

I’ve always believed.

The institutions are solid, the base will hold, the foundation is secure, the nation endures ...

I’ve always trusted.

Not here, not now, not possible. No way.

It’s not supposed to be this way. But is it this way?

I’ve never been one for the exaggerated claims: “end of days, catastrophic shifts, future of the country, life as we know it, pivotal decision, vote of our lifetime, life-changing moment …”

One party, one election, one law, one act -- one “anything” is not the sum of us.

It never has been for me.

I’ve never believed such narrow and extreme warnings.

“Better angels … malice toward none … city upon a hill … e pluribus unum”

They’re not just words, not just platitudes, not just theoreticals, not just ideas.

But they’re not finished. They are a work in progress, always.

And I still trust. And I still believe. And still hope. And I still love.

But I’m worried. And I’m sad.

Truly, deeply, sad.

Athletes, Performance Bonus, & Teacher's Salaries

In the final seconds of the last regular season NFL game between the Seattle Seahawks and the San Francisco, with the Seahawks up by three with the ball, it might have been expected that a simple running play or a kneel-down to run out the clock would have been the call. And it was. At least that's what the coaches wanted. However, quarterback Russell Wilson changed the play in the huddle, and called for a pass to receiver David Moore. It was a completely inconsequential play for everyone on the field -- everyone except Moore. For him, it was a $100,000 play.

That was his payoff for catching his 35th pass and reaching a performance bonus in his contract.

Apparently, some people, including a few morning deejays in Denver today, are upset about Wilson's choice. That's just ridiculous. There is nothing wrong with using these pointless plays at the end to help someone complete his contract and earn his money. Why should the team just kneel down? That "run-the-clock-out" standard that the NFL requires teams to finish out the clock with purposeless plays is silly anyway, and there is no reason the team should kneel or run a worthless run play either. And that money is there for players to earn - which David Moore did. He caught the ball. That's his job. And this practice is not that uncommon. It happens every year, and Tom Brady did the same thing for his receiver this week. 

And that brings me to teachers' salaries -- because whenever there is an issue with athletes making large amounts of money, people make absurd comments about how they shouldn't make that much money because their jobs are just entertainment, and teachers by contrast should be making millions. That's nonsense, and to claim so reveals an ignorance of basic economics. The athletes and entertainers receive huge salaries because their jobs generate huge revenue. And they deserve their share of it. Teachers don't generate massive ticket sales, apparel income, and ad revenue. They don't generate huge revenue, so they don't earn huge salaries.

It's that simple. Stop whining and be happy for David Moore.

Can We Talk about Seat Time & Attendance Now?

"Seat time," or the legally required minutes, hours, and days that kids must be in class for it to count as "school" is an entirely arbitrary number, and educators have always known that. And I've long opposed the restrictive idea, especially when politicians and pundits make exaggerated and misinformed claims that what American students really need is more time in school. In reality, some kids can benefit from more time, and many can actually benefit from less. So, now that the pandemic and the last ten months turned education on its ear, perhaps we can revisit the ideas we hold about seat time and attendance requirements.

To that point, education researcher and professor Michael Petrilli of the Fordham Institute opined in Bloomberg last May that perhaps "Half-time High School May be Just What Students Need." Now that we've been through a semester of it, perhaps it's time to have more serious discussion about school schedules. The practice of remote learning, hybrid schedules, and asynchronous lessons, which schools implemented out of necessity in a health crisis, has revealed that students may not need to be physically present in school buildings for pre-set times of the day if they can access curriculum in learning in other ways. Granted, there are many aspects of schooling that ...

no virtual environment can replace .... [such as] football games, choir concerts, musicals and so much more that’s part of the American high school experience.

However, it's indisputable that many students, especially at the high school level, spend countless hours bored and disengaged while in the physical building. And if they can access the lessons, do the work, receive constructive feedback/assessment, and learn in other ways at different times, then we are doing the kids and society a disservice by mandating specific stretches of time. 

That said, schooling is not all about content, skills, and coursework. We have long attended school in person because we are communal animals, and much learning is enhanced by a community of learners. I know I benefited greatly from discussions with my grad school cohort, especially when tackling works such as Thomas Pynchon's post-modern masterpiece V. In fact, I doubt I'd have truly understood and benefited from reading it without them. Yet there was as much to be learned from the time spent exploring on my own in the graduate library. And, I completed my degree while teaching full time - so clearly being in a classroom five days a week wasn't indispensable.

Overall, I believe kids need to be "in school" regularly. And the pandemic has also exposed significant gaps in learning, as too many kids have fallen off the map, and grades for many have plummeted. The lack of accountability and access for many children has been catastrophic. Truly, for many kids school is the one constant, the one safe place, the one bit of security and stability. Kids need human connection. But the rigidly arbitrary nature of "seat time" and attendance requirements can change. And it should.

Fifty-One, "Palm Springs," & the Year We All Got Stuck

I'm fifty-one today, and as Jerry and the boys once sang, "nothing left to do but smile, smile, smile."

Normally, my birthday would consist of a nice early morning hike, afternoon visits to a few art galleries, and a happy hour out with the family. None of those things were in the cards this year, and that's OK. Instead, it's been a rather chill and pensive time to simply look at the present. And reflect a bit on the past. And have no expectations for the future.

Last year on January 2, the year of living artfully got off to a pretty solid start with all the favored highlights. And the first few months included a few art classes, some good writing, and ideas about the Colorado summer. And then the world turned sideways, and we found ourselves "stuck in a time loop," the opposite of Billy Pilgrim who fifty-years ago "came unstuck in time." I mention those two ideas because I recently finished re-reading Slaughterhouse Five for the first time since I read and barely understood the book over three decades ago. And, I recently watched the Andy Samberg movie Palm Springs, which is a rather astute and entertaining homage to classic existential meditation Groundhog Day. 

Both those movies, and of course Vonnegut's classic novel, aptly comment on the absurdist nature of existence. Truly the film Palm Springs may be "the perfect film for 2020," and it sardonically investigates the notion that time doesn't really exist in the way we believe it does, never really has, and occasionally the world comes unstuck, or we become stuck, and we must deal with the bizarre nature of the moments in which we exist. As "the definitive rom-com for 2020," the absurdist pop culture vehicle is a perfectly silly meditation on how we spend our days, especially when something comes along to disrupt the expectations we had for how things were supposed to go.

As far as how things go, we will keep on living these moments as they come, and hopefully do so with a bit of wisdom and patience and kindness.

“What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?” —Phil Connors, Groundhog Day

Closing the Book on This One

Looking back, I realized I did not blog at all in the month of December, 2019. There are good reasons for that. And, now I've blogged pretty much every day this month, and that feels right. I have a habit of setting large unrealistic goals and silly timelines for writing and art and personal growth during the regular breaks I get from school. This year was, of course, no exception; and despite good intentions I have not finished three paintings, though I did one, and I have not practiced and perfected a song on the piano, though I am further along than I was last month. And, I did not finish editing my collection of essays and op-eds -- which incidentally was a goal for all of 2020. 

Oh, well. 2020.

As we bid farewell to an arbitrary collection of 365 days, we know nothing really changes tomorrow. And the same goes for me the next day when I turn fifty-one, though I like to tell myself something is different, or could be. As far as final thoughts on this year, I have to share an annual tradition in journalism and commentary that is one of the few enjoyable things about looking back on the worst year of our lives. To that I give you Dave Barry's "Year in Review: Trying to Find some Humor in a Tough 2020." While there wasn't much to laugh or even smile about these last ten months, it helps to look back on the absurdity of it all. And no one exposes and ridicules absurdity better than he.

Beyond that, with an eye toward how we somehow heal and get better, get further down the road in 2021, I've been reflecting on David Brooks' column "2020 Taught us How to Fix This." Brooks is, in my opinion, an incredibly bright and erudite thinker who poses some relevant and interesting insights for us. In this piece, he is addressing the vast divides we have found between us, and he exposes the downside, or perhaps inadequacy, of the trainings and education we believe can heal our prejudices and biases. Hint: they probably can't. But I will counter that they may for any one individual make a difference. And if they do, then they're always worth it. The key, I think, is to try, and we can only do this by being together, which is Brooks' other point, being together and communicating. For, as I noted in one of my better pieces of writing this year, "As Long As We're Talking," there is hope.

And for one final little chuckle, I have to give a shout out to Avenue Beat, some girls from Peoria, IL, for their song "F-2020" all too relevant goodbye and kiss off to the year none of us wanted, and all of us want to forget. 

Exercise for 4 Minutes? How 'bout 4 Seconds?

The news on working on out just keeps getting better.

This year, Gretchen Reynolds of the New York Times has been covering the research on the benefits of brief bursts of high energy interval workouts. Who knew the benefits could come from as short as four seconds of intense exercise? I've been a fan of the interval workouts for a while now. A few years ago, I ran across a piece in the paper about the "7-minute workout," which I modified as my own 9-minute workout. Now, I have a few different short but intense workouts that I believe are an asset in my overall good health as a 50-year-old.

Live as He Lived

So, in glancing at the First Reading from today's liturgy, which comes from the first epistle of John chapter two, I had an interesting thought about faith and how we live. The verses I'm thinking about advise:

But whoever keeps his word,
the love of God is truly perfected in him. 
This is the way we may know that we are in union with him:
whoever claims to abide in him ought to walk just as he walked

And, I have to say, not meaning to offend but merely to ponder, that in the contemporary world, especially American society, we seem to have many more "pharisees" than we do disciples, and it seems that these people of implied superior sanctity have potentially turned attendance at services and the reading and study of scripture into their own version of the golden calf. Does that sound strange, that the actions of the service and the reading of the Word could actually become a sort of false idol, so to speak? I don't think so. The public profession of faith and the practice of the service would seem to me to ring a bit hollow if we did not act in accordance with the model, for "This is how we know we are in him; whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did."

Now, of course this observation is obviously influenced by the Catholic school kid in me -- the idea that actions matter and that actions are the ministry we are called to. And, I have to say, I don't see enough of that ministry in the world today, nor granted, do I exhibit it enough myself. For it is written "anyone who hates a brother or sister is in darkness." And there is no shortage of darkness going around these day. It's worth noting a little further into the epistle is one of my favorite and to me perhaps the most important of verses:  "God is love." Yep, that pretty much says it all - love, compassion, empathy, charity, and service. But above all love.

So, while this post is a definitely a departure from my usual fare on this blog, these thoughts were on my mind, and so I thought I'd share.