Pummeled Again

After Trump’s blanket pardon of 1500 January 6th rioters, I dug out my journal of that day and read my entry, the handwriting shaky with fear, describing the violent attack on the Capitol as I watched it unfold on TV. Millions of us were witnesses, and no amount of white-washing can change the facts. I am afraid of what lies ahead in this country, for now unrecognizable as the America of “justice under the law” and “all men are created equal.” Rather than try to recapture the emotions of that day in light of the pardons, I decided to re-post my blog from 2020. Wistfully, I note the optimism of the closing paragraph: 

Waves of fury and incredulity pummel my mental shores. Naïve as I am, despite the pundits’ prediction that Senate Republicans would vote to acquit Trump, I believed that dedication to democracy, oaths of office, oaths of impartiality, and love of country would win out over party politics in the face of evidence and the terror of personal experience.

But no.

Buffeted by cross currents, America has been twisted and tortured like its flag in an insurrectionist’s grip. Abused were the stars and stripes on January 6^th as they were wielded as a weapon to bludgeon police. Those who derided Black Lives Matter protesters this summer with calls to “Back the Blue” swarmed the Capitol howling “Stop the Steal” as they brandished the American flag along with their arsenal of bats, fence posts, and pitchforks to bloody those defending the Capitol.

When I was a child, I was told to kiss the flag 100 times if it touched the ground by mistake. Was this my parents’ invention or a national rule? I don’t know, but the message was clear. Dave’s father too, a WW II veteran, taught his grandchildren the solemn lesson “Honor the soldiers and the flag.”

Although they sought to appropriate the motives of America’s revolutionaries, the Trump supporters who breached the Capitol can lay no claim to heroism. They desecrated American symbols while impeding certification of an adjudicated election, endangered lawmakers, spread feces, and destroyed and stole national treasures. Thugs were these, not patriots. The fever of doing Trump’s bidding superseded respect for the flag, democratic process, and human life.

What to make of Mitch McConnell? He refused to call the Senate to session when the House Managers were ready to present the case in mid-January. There was time for a trial, and the former president was still in office. Mitch had not the balls to vote “guilty,” but had the gall after the count to affirm the House Managers’ evidence of Trump as inciter-in-chief. Although the Senate had already addressed the Constitutionality by a majority vote, McConnell defended himself with the timing technicality he created.

In his closing remarks, lead House manager Jamie Raskin looked around the Senate chamber at those before him and quoted Benjamin Franklin, saying, “If you make yourself a sheep, the wolves will eat you. Don’t make yourself a sheep.” How else but as sheep are we to see Senators who believed Trump guilty, yet in their fawning loyalty, absolved him of accountability at the expense of our democracy?

What now? In betraying their oaths and ignoring the result of the vote on the impeachment’s constitutionality, those senators eviscerated the Senate of its credibility and power. They did not “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” when Trump and his mob sought to hold power despite the vote of the people. They waived their sworn charge, and clung to a technicality already dismissed by majority vote.

By that acquittal, the Senate has granted future presidents a “January Exception” for whatever purposes he or she might have in that final month in office; Congress and the Republic be damned. After his final summation of the evidence of Trump’s efforts to prevent the transfer of power, delight at the attack, and refusal to send help, Representative Raskin said, “If that’s not a high crime and misdemeanor, then nothing is.”

It is work to contain my fury and contempt, but friends remind me of reasons for optimism. President Biden has remained focused on the people and the planet. Vaccinations have doubled. A COVID relief bill will soon pass. The U.S. has re-entered the global community in positive ways, re-joining the Paris Climate Accord and the WHO. In discrediting their vote and abdicating their responsibility, the Senate has re-affirmed what has always been true: it is up to us, the people, to govern wisely with our votes.

Inside the Skin

An unmasked man called me a sheep this morning as I waited in line at Trader Joe’s.  Believe me, I dished out some solid zingers later as I re-lived the conversation in my car on the way to my next errand. But, why would a short man with a mustache insult a masked gray-haired woman in a flannel shirt and flats for no reason?

I’d arrived at the parking lot at 7:50 AM to take advantage of senior shopping hours. Because of the store’s effort to reduce capacity to enable social distancing, a line had formed. It ended by a table occupied by two men drinking coffee outside Bagel Plus.  “Are you in line?” I asked. They shook their heads no, and I took my position 6’ beyond them.

One of the men said, “So.  What’s in Trader Joe’s that’s worth waiting for? You could cross the street to Shop Rite and walk right in.” He’d been pleasant, so I launched into my list of Trader Joe’s delicacies: shrimp burgers, dark chocolate covered peanut butter cups, frozen halibut, and mahi-mahi burgers, “heavenly when grilled!” I added. 

He nodded, satisfied, and said, “They have some specialty items then.” 

They were joined, at that point, by the short, rude man.  My shopping motives held apparent fascination for he, too, asked me the same question about waiting. His friend said, “She’s already explained. I’ll fill you in.”

“Sheep,” said the rude man, looking at me.

Startled, it took me a moment to process. “That’s an insult,” I said, though with question in my tone, for really, why would he bother?  The man shrugged and nodded. 

There are countless “I-should-have-saids” that would have been wise, calm, and cutting, and if anything similar happens again, my in-car rehearsal has now equipped me. But I am spoiled in being unaccustomed to fending off unkindness, and all I came up with on the spot was bland truth, “it’s not sheep-ish to stay healthy. “

After Trader Joe’s, I drove to Stop & Shop, still rankling, but not hurt.  Being called a sheep is the mildest of affronts, but the comment stayed with me.  Given the protests churning the country, I reflected, how would it feel to live with the routine threat of harsh words, racial slurs, injury, injustice, and death?  These based not on one’s actions but on something that was God’s decision alone.  When does that hurt, frustration, and anger erupt? 

- When, for eight minutes, Officer Derek Chauvin kneels on the neck of George Floyd, a black man who has done no harm. 

- When Ahmaud Arbery is hunted down and shot for jogging while black.           

- When plainclothes police burst into an apartment without knocking and fatally shoot Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT, eight times. 

- When cell phone technology permits video proof, and white people can no longer look away. 

Brute force. Intrusion with no knock. Rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse peaceful protesters. Have the First and Fourth Amendments been scrapped? Is the Constitution still law or just a list of suggestions? And when we love color and diversity in all else, in flowers, fabric, and our fellow creatures, why is it cause for suspicion in our own kind?

As streets worldwide boiled with protesters willing to risk Covid so their voices might be heard, I shopped for groceries.  While passing in aisles, masked shoppers were cordial, saying, “hello” or “excuse me” or “stay safe.” Thoughts of the rude man subsided as I sought corn meal, potatoes, butter, and birthday cards. 

My rounds complete, I wheeled my cart to check out. The cashier, an African American woman with a tumble of magenta curls, greeted me. Her mask hid her mouth, but her eyes were smiling. No one waited behind me, so our conversation was leisurely as she registered my selections, and I packed them in paper bags. We talked about the anguish of past weeks, and our hope that good would come of it.  She told me about her daughter, who’d been successfully treated for bone cancer when she was eight years old, and how grateful they both were to her doctors. She drew herself taller as she told me her daughter had wished to give back, and now, at 34, is a radiologist. 

Oh, the cashier was proud of her girl! She pulled out her phone to show me a picture of the two of them, and in the photo, I was able to see my cashier’s smile. In that moment, we were two moms bending over the phone, teary-eyed together at the thought of the torment of her child’s long-ago cancer and beaming (behind our masks) at today’s pride in her daughter’s path. 

When we parted, we were earnest in our wishes that each other stay healthy, and curved our arms in an air hug. Surely that encounter is the one more true? May the horror of Floyd’s death and the furor released shock us into connection with the people inside the skin.

What Future for Them?

When we call our son for a phone visit, he and 4-year-old Paul are watching “Cars 2.” 

“Can you say ‘hi’ to Lealea and Tato?’” asks Tucker.

A dear little voice complies with a greeting, but, when Tucker suggests pausing the video to talk to us, not surprisingly, Paul declines.  My son, however, is willing to miss out on the action; the movie is one of Paul’s favorites, so it’s had plenty of screen time.

While we chat, in the background, Paul says something about Lightning McQueen, the snappy red racecar hero of the movie. I can picture my son snuggled up with his boy on the soft gray sofa in their living room, Lightning large on the TV before them. I want their lives to remain healthy, safe, and happy, as comfortable and normal as this afternoon on the couch. 

But to me right now, normalcy seems suspended.  

The impeachment hearings have not haunted my kids and their spouses, any more than Reagan’s Iran-Contra affair haunted me when Tucker and Casey were little. As I was then, my kids are worried about their little one’s colds, Eleanor’s double ear infection, Paul’s happiness at school, Lexi’s propensity (and astonishing ability) for destroying the sturdy board books that survived Paul’s babyhood.  Just keeping their toddlers safe at this age is a challenge. And at the end of a work day, getting the kids fed and to bed leaves little energy to rail at Mitch McConnell’s collaboration with the White House, the GOP Senators’ betrayal of their oaths to the Constitution and before God, and the strategic distractions of the defense team lawyers.

So I agonize on their behalf.  What will reverse the heightened crumbling of democracy, social justice, tolerance, alliances, and the planet’s systems under this administration? 

My incomprehension and anguish are entwined. Many of the GOP Senators who voted to acquit the president were born within a decade on either side of me. They experienced the sixties and seventies too, the revulsion to war, the surge in social movements and environmentalism, the reverence for this miraculous planet and its workings. We understood that stewardship, not dominion, was our role. As I did, these senators must have worn tie-dye and bell bottoms and sung ‘”The Age of Aquarius,” with its yearning for “harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding.” 

What became of that idealism and the hopeful future it promised to shape? 

When the hearings began, I knew, as everyone else did, that Trump would be acquitted.  This was not a surprise. So, why am I so furious and unnerved? 

 - Because I listened to Chaplain Barry Black open the fourth day of Senate hearings with the prayer, “Eternal Lord God, You have summarized ethical behavior in a single sentence, ‘Do for others what you would like them to do for you.’ Remind our Senators that they alone are accountable to you for their conduct. Lord, help them remember that they can’t ignore you and get away with it, for we always reap what we sow.”

 - Because I heard Adam Schiff quote Alexander Hamilton in describing the rogue president the impeachment clause was designed to guard against:

 “When a man unprincipled in private life[,] desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper . . . despotic in his ordinary demeanour — known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty — when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity — to join in the cry of danger to liberty — to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion — to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day — It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may 'ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.'"

 - Because, having watched much of the House hearings and testimony, I heard the House Managers provide credible evidence of Trump’s abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. 

 - Because I heard the House Managers outline the repercussions of acquittal as this president perceives himself vindicated, and, freed of the threat of impeachment, is emboldened, unfettered by honor, facts, or moral behavior. 

 - Because I read Republican Lamar Alexander’s statement, “There is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven,” and yet conclude that compromising national security by pressuring a foreign power to influence an election and obstructing a Congressional investigation were merely “inappropriate.”

Is it possible the Republican Senators were unmoved by all that, or didn’t believe it? I don’t think so, and that’s what sickens me. At our peril and that of democracy, they chose their ambitions and loyalty to Trump over country.

So, I worry for Paul, Lexi, and Eleanor.  For Hazel, Miles, and Charlie.  For Ava, Taylor, and Mariela. For Lily, Maddie, and Mia. I pray that in casting a vote in November, Republicans and Democrats alike consider, not just their own present, but the future their little ones will inherit.