Collateral Damage

 

The recent resignations of Republican Congressman Tony Gonzales of Texas and Democrat Eric Swalwell of California have shocked us but likely not surprised us. It’s a continuation of the theme of powerful men alleged to have taken sexual advantage of the women who worked for them.  We may be wondering if this is a common pattern for male members of Congress. One of my Facebook friends posted that if all the sexual offenses committed by Congressmen were brought to light, the legislative buildings would be pretty empty.

One thing to understand is the shame and the damage – it goes way beyond an offender’s reputation. Those of us of a certain age may remember the case of Wilbur Mills, the Arkansas Democrat who was chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and his connection with a stripper named Fanne Foxe. One night in October 1974, Mills, with Ms. Foxe in his car, was pulled over by police near the DC Tidal Basin for having his headlights off. He was said to be drunk. She, meanwhile, got out of the car and jumped into the water, apparently to avoid the cops. She was rescued. It was so close to Election Day that Mills was easily re-elected to Congress but lost his committee chairmanship.

I read that this saga had serious implications in Congress, as Ways and Means’ ability to appoint Congressional committee members was lost. Mills himself had been thought of as a careful shepherd of US tax legislation, and it’s said that our tax system became a lot messier without his leadership.

Swalwell was a rising star in the Democratic Party, but the distraction of the sexual case forced him not only to leave Congress but to drop his bid for California governor. Now I never especially liked him and got rather tired of seeing his face on cable TV panels all the time. But does it all mean he was a bad legislator? It could certainly be argued that his resignation caused the voters of his district to lose a powerful representative.

In our culture, there is special contempt for those alleged to have committed sexual offenses, especially now. After MeToo, a few of the rich, famous, and powerful offenders have seen their former reputations somewhat revived, but it is a very few.

We probably can’t expect sainthood from our elected officials. But while consensual sexual indiscretion is one thing, exercising power that harms someone else is quite another. In the end, a lot of people lose.

On a brighter note, though, Mr. Mills recovered from alcoholism, became a prominent recovery speaker, and helped found Arkansas’ Wilbur D. Mills (rehabilitation) Center for Alcoholism. He died in 1992 at age 82, while Fanne Foxe lived until she was 84.

The Unwitting Environmentalist

Maybe he didn’t intend it, but President Trump, at least in one respect, is doing the planet a great big favor. One giant side effect of the Iran war is the attention being brought to that country’s stranglehold on oil and other important commodities largely caused by geography: the Strait of Hormuz. It’s not fair, perhaps, that the Iran regime should have control over 20 percent of the world’s daily oil supply, but so far, it does.

The most immediate effect of the war is the increase in the price of oil and its knock-on effect on gasoline prices here in the US and many other countries, resulting in inflation and great economic hardship. But some may be smiling.

One of them might be your neighbor down the street who owns a Tesla, the same car on which, earlier this year, he had a bumper sticker apologizing for owning it because it came from Elon Musk, who at the time was using his famous chainsaw on government agencies. But now, your neighbor can’t control his smile, because he doesn’t have to buy gas for $6 a gallon. Meanwhile, we guzzlers have to cut down on our driving because we simply can’t afford it. Let’s see: less driving. That means, not only less traffic congestion, but less air pollution, right?

I have a friend (not a neighbor) who has solar panels on his house and a battery system to store energy. At night, he charges his Tesla up, then drives it around the next day. It has been quite a while since he has purchased one drop of gasoline. Does any of this sound attractive?

Let’s be clear: oil isn’t going away anytime soon. If it weren’t for all those dead dinosaurs, we might not have the civilization we enjoy now, so we can’t blame ourselves   too much for putting it to use. It’s still needed for many other things, like plastics.

But shouldn’t we continue thinking about alternatives? We don’t until we’re in pain. Some may remember the pain we suffered in the 1970s, when many of us waited in line to get a few gallons of the limited supply at our local gas station. Well, it happened then, and it may be starting to happen now in some other Western countries. But do you think maybe there’s a chance it might happen once more in the future?

Rare earths may be the next commodity we get into a fist fight over. But wouldn’t it get us ahead in life to find our own sources or at least maintain relationships with others who may have what we need? It would be nice if we could all just get along.

 

 

 

 

When Our Heroes Fail Us

The New York Times story detailing the sexual abuses attributed to the late United Farm Workers union founder Cesar Chavez has shocked all of us. One of the victims, union co-founder Dolores Huerta, has confirmed what Chavez did to her 50 years ago. She kept silent about it, she said, because she was worried about damaging the farmworker movement Chavez launched.

Many have already decided to remove his name from schools and streets, hide his statues, and cancel celebrations in his honor, even changing the name of the holiday created for him.

But can these revelations diminish Cesar Chavez's accomplishment? In the civil rights field, he did for Latino farmworkers what Martin Luther King Jr. did for blacks: made them and their plight visible. The creation of the United Farm Workers union liberated many from exploitation and put the issue on the map for the whole country, not just California. Should his crimes constitute grounds for erasing him from consciousness?

This Jekyll and Hyde dynamic is not new. Thomas Jefferson, one of our most revered Founding Fathers, is also known for fathering children with a female slave. But it doesn't change the foundations of our country. Remember Christopher Columbus? He may have "sailed the ocean blue in 14-hundred-and-92," but most states have renamed his holiday because he oppressed indigenous people when he got here. We admire the work of artists and performers until we learn about their bad habits, extreme political views, or even criminal activity. But it doesn't change one stroke of their painting nor one frame of film in the movie that won them an Oscar.

I've often said that when you put a statue of someone up in the town square, it had better come with interchangeable parts so that when your hero falls out of favor, you can easily replace them on the pedestal with someone else.

I'm not calling for anyone to forgive Cesar Chavez. What he did, as reported, to women and young girls is unforgivable. But we can't erase history, and many of our leaders have already been trying to do just that for other reasons, long before these New York Times revelations came out.

The other message here, though, is that as a civil rights issue, the women's liberation movement is far from over. If the Epstein story hasn't made that point, maybe the Chavez story will.

As for March 31st, Cesar Chavez's birthday and still officially a holiday here in California, it may be renamed Farmworkers Day. I prefer Campesinos Day, using the Spanish word for farmworkers, which at least preserves the spirit of what this man did for tem.