Regular Order

You may remember the late US Senator John McCain’s famous call for the Senate to return to “regular order” while it considered an unorthodox Republican plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act some years ago.

The debt ceiling increase vote is not the regular order for dealing with spending decisions. As has been stated many times, the need for an increase not about future spending, but about paying debts already incurred. But with what seemed to be a gun to its head, the Biden administration agreed to negotiate with the GOP House leadership over a series of Republican fiscal demands, and a tentative deal was reached. There were sacrifices – and benefits – for both sides, and we’re hearing some “attaboys” about bipartisanship, but the deal is far from done, and the wings of both parties have lots of unhappy campers.

There will be more attaboys (and girls) and sighs of relief if the crisis is averted at the last second, but why should it have been permitted to get this close in the first place? Did we really need this thrill ride? The doubt that has been planted in our minds, and the minds of others all over the world, about our full faith and credit has done plenty of damage already. As many of us learned in school, deadlines do force us to get something done, but simply beating a deadline doesn’t mean it was done well.

Meanwhile, we have a former President out there who hints that maybe default isn’t such a bad thing. So, we’re getting financial advice from someone who has suffered several business bankruptcies and who has a reputation for not paying HIS bills. Thanks very much.

This debate smacks of children playing with explosives. The fact is, the House already has the power of the purse, and there is a regular-order budgetary process to work out fiscal issues. True, a dispute even under the regular order process could force a government shutdown later on - a terrible thing, but not nearly as bad as welching on our debts.

What’s going on now may seem like an inside-the-beltway squabble among politicians, but those of us outside can’t be blamed for feeling left out of a critical discussion that affects us. This isn’t just their debt, it’s ours too. We have to do better than sit on the sidelines, shake our heads and say, “Ain’t it a shame?”

Fort Sumter Moments

In our school history classes, we were taught that the first shots of the US Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter in 1861. South Carolina had seceded from the Union the previous year and demanded that Union troops surrender the fort at the entrance to Charleston harbor.  The demand was refused, and in response, the secessionist forces began shelling the fort with cannon fire.

The firing of weapons is usually said to be the first phase of such conflicts, but in truth, the seeds had been planted and were germinating underground for a long time before these first sprouts appeared above it. The first Civil War, it could be argued, was well underway already. And for all intents and purposes, so is the second.

This one has already had its Fort Sumter moment, known as January 6. And we have had more than our share of smaller Fort Sumters, carried out at shopping malls, schools, and synagogues by those who were armed with what are considered weapons of war.

Some pundits have characterized Donald Trump’s appearance on the CNN “town hall” in New Hampshire as a wake-up call. I know that most are blaming CNN for the way it handled that event, but what came out of Trump’s mouth was not entertainment, even though the audience reacted that way. At least some of it could be in our future. We do need to stay awake. I believe we should be at least mentally on a war footing right now.

This doesn’t mean that everyone needs a gun. As voters, we all have a weapon at our disposal already. Each election is a battle, and the battlefield is the ballot box. The weapons issued to us have “bullets” in them, so to speak: our votes. This ammunition is way more powerful than anything in an AR-15.

It may be harder to fire that electoral weapon in some places than in others, but It is still capable of bringing about true change. If we want to employ heavier weapons, at least some of us have to run for office ourselves or support someone we believe in who is.

The current President and some historians are telling us that the upcoming state and national elections represent fights for the soul of America. If we were NOT cheering and laughing along with the town hall crowd in New Hampshire, what are we going to do about it? Answering that question can’t wait until November 2024. The work has to start now.

 

 

Secrets and Liars

 

 

Among our recent news stories has been the apparent theft of highly classified material by a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman in Massachusetts, who then allegedly shared it with his video-gaming buddies. The young man was arrested almost immediately.

He is said to be one of more than a MILLION with legal access to such information. Many of us have trouble keeping secrets among our co-workers or family members. How do we expect to trust a million people to do so?

There’s a scene from the movie Tora! Tora! Tora! about the events leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. If I’m recalling the story correctly, two military intelligence officers, one from the Army and another from the Navy, are staying alert for signs of an attack, as it will fall to them to put out the warning to a special group of top officials, including the President. The two go into a room where there is a locked cabinet on the wall, and one of them opens it with a key. This reveals a small blackboard containing the names of only a dozen or so authorized to receive the highest-level secret information. How quaint was that?

Breaches of secrecy are almost common now. Some folks think that people like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange are heroes for revealing information they thought the public should know. I still haven’t made up my mind about that. But over-classification is indeed a problem.

Some information goes back such a long way in history that it’s hard to see how making it public would harm anyone. I saw a PBS American Experience episode recently about Elizabeth Friedman, an Illinois woman who basically created the US codebreaking program used during two World Wars. Her work saved many thousands of servicemembers’ lives, but the details of it were kept secret for decades, and in the meantime, no less a figure than J. Edgar Hoover took credit for much of what she had done.

Perhaps the most famous secrets revolve around the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, of which this year is the 60th anniversary. Most related classified materials have been released now, but not without redactions. The conspiracy theories on this event turned into a genuine industry, and for some, it all may never end.

We often hear it said that if you or I were found to have even one classified piece of paper or digital file in our possession illegally, we would be in jail the next day. Well, most of us, anyway.

 

1-800-You Don't Have to Do That

 

I know, too many letters there. But I want to talk about crisis hotlines. There are 1-800 numbers to call (and other means of contact) for rape victims or those contemplating suicide or having a mental breakdown, among many other reasons. But what about those who are just very angry and want to do a bad thing, especially with a gun? Is a general crisis line good enough? Might a number they could call safely, anonymously, and for free, to talk with a counselor trained specifically to deal with them, be useful? If there isn’t already something exactly like that, maybe there should be.

The risk, of course, is that without some physical intervention, the caller may go out and shoot someone anyway. But if there were one last base to touch, might they be talked down from their plans?

I am 100 percent supportive of reasonable nationwide gun laws, such as background checks, waiting periods, and an assault weapons ban. Red flag laws are great too, but sometimes, nobody sees the flags, and maybe there simply are none. People with perfectly clean records are suddenly moved to get a gun, which they can do legally and often too easily. Then, how many times have we heard people say after an incident that they had no idea the person they thought they knew was capable of such a terrible act? How many dormant volcanoes are there out there – people with lava boiling inside? We don’t always know when they might erupt.

I get that many shootings are motivated by revenge, as in the case of workers fired from their jobs or those whose significant others just dumped them. But why do shooters attack schools, churches, shopping malls, and theaters? Most are not political terrorists. Maybe they just feel powerless or ignored and want to make a statement, to be somebody, to count. I am all in favor of not mentioning the names of or glorifying shooters, but I do think we have to know something about their motives. Clearly, a mass murder is a response way out of proportion to what’s bothering them, but could someone on the other end of a phone line or chat box convince them of that?

We are constantly hearing pleas to help the underserved, but it would do us well to provide some safe outlet for the dangerously underHEARD. As I have said, by the time somebody shows up at a school with an assault weapon, it’s way too late.

 

 

 

 

The Answer, Ashbey, Is Yes

 

 

“Aren’t you guys tired of this?” Those were the words of Ashbey Beasley to reporters following the shooting that left six people dead, including three children, at a private religious school in Nashville. An Illinois resident, Beasley and her son, both mass shooting survivors themselves, were on vacation in Nashville to visit family when the shooting occurred not far away.

The media are indeed tired of covering these, and we consumers of news are equally tired of seeing the same pattern of coverage after each incident.  Unfortunately, though, the media are participants in this drama. It could be argued that they have paved a road to attention for the shooters, who know that attacking a school will provide maximum exposure for them and whatever cause motivates them. Many outlets, at least, are starting to avoid mentioning shooters’ names for that very reason, and that’s a bit of good news.

The bad news is, we have all been conditioned now to expect continuous coverage of these tragedies. Sometimes, the facts only dribble out, and in between dribbles, the anchors and experts fill the time with speculative babble. Gone are the days of a quick bulletin followed by, “We now return you to our regularly scheduled program.” I remember that when the Jonestown mass suicide in Guyana hit the news on a Saturday night in 1978, CBS broke into a movie to report what information it had, then sent us back to the movie, which was, as I recall, “The Demon Seed,” in which a computer wanted to have sex with  Julie Christie. That kind of come-and-go coverage couldn’t pass muster today, but I don’t know what the alternative is now.

That said, the wall-to-walls on mass shootings are the 2x4s repeatedly hitting us over the head to remind us of our gun problem here in America. I was thinking, if we didn’t have these things, would we be paying any attention at all to the gun violence, or gun accidents, occurring around us daily?

We all know that when an individual shows up at a school site with an assault weapon, it’s already too late. We think, and we pray, and we talk about all this, but nothing  much happens.

President Biden has issued executive orders aimed at implementing reasonable gun measures, including a ban on assault weapons, but concedes that his authority is limited and that not much can be done without Congressional action. So how many more times do we have to see THAT movie?