It Will Take a Tidal Wave

How can this be? It’s a question many are asking right now. It’s said that a clear majority of the American people want more gun control. A clear majority are said to support a woman’s right to choose. And yet, the Supreme Court and the legislators in half the states seem out of touch. Why? The simple answer is, it was allowed to be this way.

Math is cruel. It doesn’t care what would be nice or what is supposed to happen. It’s what is. When it comes to elections, it’s all about numbers.

No, it isn’t, you may say. In many states, there is gerrymandering, there are restrictions on who is a registered voter, who can vote by mail, how many ballot drop boxes there are and where they are located. In the Senate, there is the filibuster. And then there is the seeming precedent that the party that is out of power wins back the power in a midterm election.

The President is right. Abortion is on the ballot in November. Those who support the right to abortion will have to elect enough legislators to codify it in federal law. But what about all the obstacles that would seem to nullify a fair count?

I have an analogy for this, which is also a little cruel, but I believe it applies. Think back to the great Japanese earthquake of 2011. It spawned a huge tidal wave rolling across northern portions of that country. Aerial shots showed the wave erasing everything in its path. There was no man-made barrier that could hold it back.

The current Supreme Court abortion ruling is no surprise. We even had a leaked opinion weeks ago. The composition of the Court itself isn’t a surprise either, nor is the composition of the legislatures in many states.

The wake-up calls have been loud and frequent. The court ruling is just the latest. It’s becoming clear that we came within a hair’s breadth a while back of losing this democracy, and November’s election, only four months away, may be the last opportunity to save it. Those who oppose the status quo have to show up in such numbers that, just like that Japanese tidal wave, they will overwhelm all barriers, leaving no question about what most Americans really want. This is the only pathway to change. There is simply no other solution.

 

Is Mike Pence a Hero?

 I put this question to my Facebook friends following the latest January 6th Select Committee hearing, and as you might expect, it resulted in quite a discussion.

For many, Mike Pence has been a national joke. He is known for calling his wife “Mother” and his refusal to be in the company of another woman unless Mother is there. But we also remember him for his seemingly robotic adherence to the wishes of President Donald Trump during their mutual term in office.

Until January 6th, 2021, that is, when he pushed back on Trump’s incessant and demeaning pressure that he not certify the 2020 electoral votes, a ceremonial but necessary function to seal the victory of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the new President and Vice President. Trump claimed the election was stolen from him, and the extremists who broke into the Capitol on 1/6 screamed their intention to kill Pence for his plan to proceed with the ceremony.

Pence was in hiding in the Capitol for more than four and a half hours. The murderous mob never found him, but at one point was only about 40 feet away. Even Pence’s own Secret Service chief insisted that the Vice President get into a waiting car to be driven to safety, but Pence, not knowing where that car might take him, refused. After authorities regained control of the Capitol, Pence proceeded with the ceremony, completing the electoral vote certification with a joint session of Congress in the wee hours of January 7th.

What is a hero? There are those whose decades of unyielding bravery in battle or against other forms of opposition earn them that title. But then there are people who have led otherwise unremarkable lives, yet do a single brave thing exactly when it is  needed.

Critics have pointed out that while Pence eventually stepped up to do his duty, it was only after he had consulted with others, like former Vice President and fellow Indianan Dan Quayle, to find out if there were any legal way to do what Trump wanted. Quayle, and Pence’s own legal advisors, insisted there wasn’t, so Pence went on to do the right thing, directly defying Trump. It is my feeling that in history books, if there are still such things in the future, Pence will go down as having saved the republic, for that moment, at least.

Pence may now  seek to run for President himself. I don’t plan to vote for him. But I’m not laughing at him anymore.

 

We ARE Seeing the Movie

  

One of my unpursued dream careers in life is that of a Hollywood casting director. After major news events, I was always wondering who might play whom in the inevitable feature film. I was sometimes disappointed when the movie came out, and I thought a key figure in the actual news story had been miscast. Why didn’t they pick X?

The goal of many docudramas is to show us what went on behind the scenes in major news stories. We know the basics of each event, but it takes either a long investigative New Yorker-type article to connect the dots or some PBS TV show like Frontline or American Experience. Most of us however, will wait for the feature film to do it.

The difference between the January 6th incident and say, Watergate, is that in the modern one, there seem to be fewer behind-the-scenes moments. The scenes are right in front of us, documented from almost every angle, enhanced by an actual filmmaker’s work. We have seen much of this saga already, and more is coming. A feature film would be kind of a pale afterthought, not like All the President’s Men.

Take the committee hearings themselves. Who could play Liz Cheney besides Liz Cheney, or Bennie Thompson, or any of the Proud Boys, General Milley, Ivanka Trump, or Capitol police officer Caroline Edwards, without leaving us a little disappointed? Even Saturday Night Live might not work now, largely because nothing is funny about all this anymore, least of all Donald Trump. Are the days of spoofing him over?

A good deal of the case against him for interfering with the peaceful transfer of presidential power doesn’t even need proving. There is the tape of him asking the Georgia election boss to find him 11,780 votes. And there is the fact that he did virtually nothing to stop the riot.

Look, I understand that January 6th is beginning to fade in importance when compared to inflation, the economic and social upheavals caused by the pandemic, mass shootings, and the war in Ukraine. All the more reason to hope that we can stop talking about Mr. Trump and see him just go away, But it seems like he is going to have to be PUT away. Will the remaining hearings in Washington help get that done? I think there’s time to head out to the theater lobby and get a refill on the popcorn.

 

 

Number One with a Bullet

There we were, thinking that abortion would be the issue that drives the mid-term elections. Surprise! It just might be gun control.

We are in the middle of civil wars on multiple fronts. The bloody battles of the original Civil War took the names of otherwise ordinary American towns and turned them into historical symbols: Antietam, Chancellorsville, Shiloh, Gettysburg. Now, mass shootings have given us Uvalde, Parkland, Newtown, and Littleton.

We all understand what needs to be done here. As far as I know, average citizens are not allowed to drive a tank to work or launch ballistic missiles from their backyards, so why do they need functioning military-grade assault rifles? Why should background checks not apply to gun shows? Couldn’t there be a universal red flag law to stop attacks before they happen? Remember after 9/11 when the mantra was, “If you see something, say something?” The police would then have to take that “something” seriously. Police, by the way, can’t be everywhere, and social media companies obviously can’t catch every wacko-in-development. They need users’ help.

None of these steps, of course, is foolproof. Bad guys can always find prohibited weapons. Talented psychopaths flagged before a gun purchase can convince a shrink they are perfectly sane. But if simple, reasonable measures slow down repeats of Uvalde, that would be an accomplishment.

All roads lead to the same place: it’s not about legislatION, but legislatORS. We can wail on about how lobbies are too strong and how it’s impossible to change the Senate filibuster or other elements of the status quo. We CAN hang lawmakers’ refusal to address the gun issue around their necks and turn them out of office if they don’t act. Yeah, that’s the slow, hard part, but there is realistically no other solution.

Culture doesn’t change overnight. Tobacco is no longer cool, but it has taken the better part of 400 years to get there.  It may take decades to end the American love affair with guns, which, like it or not, is part of our history. But since these long journeys begin with a single step, as the saying goes, we might as well put one foot in front of the other and start walking. There is no free ride.

 

 

 

Waking the Sleeping Giant

The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, was considered a great surprise victory for Japan, but its architect, Admiral Yamamoto, wrote in his diary hat the attack may simply have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve. The next day, the US declared war on Japan, whose expansionist intentions in the Pacific had long been known, but the attack turned it into reality for a previously neutral America.

Last night, a reported draft opinion of the US Supreme Court majority to overturn Roe v. Wade, the half-century-old ruling legalizing abortion, was leaked to the news media – something that has never happened in the history of the court. A final decision was not expected until June, but the shocking leak made it a present reality.

Who leaked the draft, and why? If it were a lawyer working at the court, that individual could be disbarred, falling on their career sword. Could it be that the leak was done deliberately at the start of primary season? A buzzing alarm clock for the sleeping giant?

Now that the Supreme Court has a conservative majority, the likely overturning of Roe may seem like a great victory for the right wing, the latest domino to fall in the culture war. And how many times have we heard on cable news that the Republicans will take over both the House and Senate later this year, simply because a party reversal always happens in midterm elections.

The fact is, it will happen only if it’s allowed to. Democrats have long known the odds are against them this year, but they seem to have done relatively little about it. Essentially, the Supreme Court majority is not considering outlawing abortion, but simply returning the question to the states, many of which are controlled by Republican-dominated legislatures. There is only one way the Democrats, allied with sympathetic Republicans, can change the course of this river, and that is by changing the math: winning elections at all levels, which means winning enough votes to put legal abortion into state and federal law. The right seems to have put many obstacles in the way, but these will have to be viewed as challenges, not excuses for failure.

The left is now worried that the country is about to full-on enter The Handmaid’s Tale. That is indeed how this story will end, if the giant hears the alarm, but rolls over and goes back to sleep.

 

Masks Get a Red Death

  

With the stroke of a pen, as they still say in the age of keyboards, a Republican appointed federal judge struck down a transportation mask mandate. The CDC had sought to extend the mandate for a couple of weeks to give it time to see what the experience would be with the BA 2 COVID variant.

Maybe the virus has traded in some of its potency for transmissibility. It seems everyone is getting it. But cases of COVID from this have not really translated into sickness and death, so far. The herd appears to be getting immune.

The signs are everywhere. In a convenience market here in my California county, I noted that while employees were wearing masks, those little decal imprints on the floor to ensure 6 feet of social distance had been removed. In another store, the plexiglass between clerk and customer was gone.

But the brightening picture is also marked by COVID revisionism, as in, lockdowns didn’t work, the CDC, and even Dr. Fauci, were just plain wrong on a lot of things, and the damage done to children and families, especially around school closing policy, was an unnecessary byproduct.

While watching a TV host I otherwise admire last week, I almost threw something at the screen when he started on, children don’t really get sick with COVID, and his guests chimed in with, vulnerable grandparents usually don’t live with the family anyway, etc. In the past, this same TV host has said most of those dying were old or obese. I wanted to shout, so what were all those hospitals overflowing with sick patients of all ages about during the last two years? Wasn’t that at least real? I’m oversimplifying the discussion on the show and may have mischaracterized some of it, but I think I got the general tone right.

Yes, the CDC has made missteps, but I still believe the scientists were learning about COVID as they went along, and they changed battle tactics in this war as fast as they could for a huge agency that seems much less than nimble. And yes, lockdowns and mask policies were full of holes, but they were designed to slow down COVID and ease the burden on hospitals, not eliminate the disease. At least we are not China. But I do hope there is a commission to thoroughly review our response after it’s all over.

OK, that’s how I feel…but I looked at the clock and the calendar as I wrote this, and it WAS Monday morning, wasn’t it?

 

Two Wastelands

 At this moment, we don’t know when the Ukraine war will end, or who will win it. We can say that it looks like the Ukrainians will, but what will they win? Several of the country’s major cities are in ruins, or heading in that direction. Millions of civilians are displaced, and thousands have been killed, and even the staggering numbers of fatalities we’ve heard so far are probably much too low.

And then there is Russia. While physical war hasn’t come to the homeland in a big way,  another form of war has. The West’s sanctions have turned Russia into an economic wasteland, at least for the average citizen. As President Biden has pointed out, most of the gains Russia has made since the collapse of the Soviet Union have now been erased. Millions of ordinary Russians are suffering, and sadly, many there still don’t know why.

We had to de-Nazify Ukraine, President Putin tells them. An odd turn of phrase, since it’s the Russian troops who are behaving like the dreaded German SS occupiers of World War II. If we’re generous, we might say that the shocking brutality toward civilians is only the behavior of a few rogue military units, or of Russian soldiers seeking revenge for their own losses. But there is much evidence that it’s neither of those things. It looks a lot more like policy. The appointment of the military commander who led Russian operations in Syria to oversee the Ukraine offensive is not a good sign.

At some point, it may occur to Mr. Putin how wasteful his war has been. The truth is, he had it pretty good before starting it. He is (or was) perhaps the single wealthiest person on Earth. While most other European nations aren’t especially fond of him, they have been good customers for Russia’s oil and gas. But now, a major pipeline has been put on hold, and those nations are trying to disentangle themselves from the need to buy anything from Russia.

And even when the war ends, and even if Putin is removed from power by internal or external means, Europe will be left with one country half reduced to rubble, land mines and unexploded ordnance, and the other a pariah state. Both will have suffered catastrophically in their own ways, and both are going to need rebuilding, physically in Ukraine’s case and economically in Russia’s. They, and Europe in general, will need lots of time to heal. I wonder what happened to Never Again.

 

The Trouble with Red Lines

How many times have we heard it spoken or implied: NATO won’t get involved in direct military action in the Ukraine war, but if Russia uses chemical or nuclear weapons, well then, that’s different, that’s a red line that Russia cannot cross. Russia doesn’t have to, of course, because it is trying to accomplish its ends without going there.

Let’s take the city of Mariupol, which has been destroyed, by merciless conventional bombardment, with many people killed. Let’s say that had been done by a nuclear weapon instead. The end result would be pretty much the same.

The basic problem with red lines is not the awful things that happen when they’re crossed. It’s what’s allowed to happen on this side of the line.

There are actually many lines drawn, as in, we’re not going to send our troops in, but we actively are sending weapons to help the Ukrainians out. So, we clearly have taken a side. NATO countries might say, it doesn’t involve us directly, because Ukraine isn’t a member of NATO. Well, yes it does, if you consider the tremendous economic impact it’s already having with the millions of refugees now flowing into NATO countries.

Of Vladimir Putin, President Biden said, this man cannot remain in power, forcing a lot of hair-splitting about whether that meant regime change. But Putin more or less IS the regime, in this particular case.

At some point there will be a cease fire and negotiations. Will Russia get to keep some of the territory it has conquered? And what about reparations? Will Russia pay for the physical damage, not even considering the pain and suffering caused to people? And the biggest question is, how do you negotiate with a war criminal, or multiple war criminals, down to the troops who have committed atrocities. Is genocide going on or not?

Look, I’m not beginning to suggest that any of these decisions or word definitions are easy. People with very good intentions are doing their best to avoid World War III. That is a line that nobody wants to cross. But how much is the world going to tolerate on this side of that line?

The Slap Heard 'Round the World

  

I think it actually was. When actor Will Smith walked on the Oscar stage and slapped comedian Chris Rock for making a poor-taste joke about Smith’s wife Jada, I was surprised at the loudness of the slap in the un-bleeped video clips.

I  also thought we’d be done with this topic after about 48 hours, but now we’re into Day 3 at this writing. It will take time, though, for all the back stories to come out and maybe clear up some of the mysteries – like, why did Smith laugh at the joke and then feel moved to commit assault? Many observers were also shocked that Smith, who won Best Actor, got a standing ovation from the audience during his Oscar acceptance after his earlier display of what was called toxic masculinity.

Some critics say that Smith indelibly stained an Oscar ceremony that, ironically enough, finally did celebrate artists of color and those with disabilities this year. But one of the purposes of the Oscars is to generate ticket sales, or these days, downloads, for the honored movies, and that will happen. We might look at the standing ovation as righteous praise for Will Smith’s performance in King Richard, not his rating as a human being.

There were other things wrong with the Oscar ceremony besides that drama. The tribute to the 50th anniversary of The Godfather featured a speech by Francis Ford Coppola while Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro stood there like bookends. There was no formal presentation of the Jean Hersholt humanitarian award at the ceremony, and the In Memoriam observance was off-putting in tone and left out some people. Sean Penn was so angry about not allowing Ukraine president Zelensky to be a part of the ceremony that he planned to melt down his own Oscars.

There is a lot riding on this annual show, and there was much added pressure this time. It was the first real in-person version of the event since the perceived waning of the pandemic in the US. This is one of the original award shows and one of those increasingly rare worldwide group experiences, plus, Mr. Penn notwithstanding, a small distraction from the unrelenting horror of the Ukraine war.

But there is always something about this show, which as I have said, has endured Brando/Littlefeather, a streaker, the presentation of Best Picture to the wrong movie, and a lot of unsuccessful envelope-pushing. And let’s not forget the pre- and postgame shows largely devoted to the fashion hits, often outnumbered by the misses. But in the end, Oscar is a survivor, and whether some like it or not, the same will be true for Will Smith.