I Love My Country, But... : A Few Thoughts About Patriotism

The Last Refuge of Scoundrels

I have kind of a weird quirk:  I refuse to fly a U.S. flag.  Or wear a pin.  Or hang up anything "flaggy" like a wreath or one of those distressed wooden signs.  And I absolutely refuse to clothe any part of my body with anything red, white, blue, starred and striped.

It's not that I "hate America" or favor burning the flag or any such nonsense.  It's just that I feel the same way about patriotism that I feel about my Christian faith:  that if I'm a true patriot, it should be obvious from the way I act and the attitude I have toward my fellow Americans.  (Which, on the Christian side, is why I don't wear a cross, either.)

This whole "more patriotic than thou" flag-waving dates back to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.  Flags sprouted up everywhere, and it was considered a mark of support for our country.  All very well and good;  but as the years have ground on, that sort of patriotism has taken on the air of being more "the last refuge of scoundrels" than the genuine article.

And Just What Do You Mean by That?!

Oh, I can hear it now:  "Well, if the flag offends you, I'll help you pack!"

Hey, I'm not condemning the flying of the flag;  but when you see it everywhere, all the time, doesn't it sort of lose its meaning?  When you see full-size U.S. flags waving off the back of pickup trucks, or bandannas and other flag clothing being worn by all and sundry--not just on Memorial Day or the Fourth of July or the several other national holidays that call for flying the flag, but all year long--well, frankly, I'm tired of it. 

 The flag isn't supposed to be an object of reverence in and of itself;  it's a symbol.  It's supposed to be a symbol of goodness and doing the right thing and all that, and sure, some of that is true...but to be brutally honest, we've also done some massively awful things throughout our history.  From enslaving Black people to persecuting and killing Native Americans to meddling in the internal affairs of other countries (cough-cough-Iran-cough-cough), our record is far from spotless.  But a real patriot faces those actions and says,  "Yeah, it happened, and we were wrong to do it.  From now on, we need to do better."  What's so wrong about that?

Excuses, Excuses!

 And I'm sorry-not-sorry, but I have no use for any politician who waves the flag--either literally or figuratively--as an excuse for why he or she won't do something or help somebody or take a certain course of action.

A perfect example is the hate-on that the modern GOP has for a national health care program.  Heaven knows, the ACA is a patchwork solution at best, relying too much on the non-existent goodwill of Big Pharma and private companies who care more for the Almighty Dollar than for the well-being of their clients.  A single-payer system similar to that of Canada would do a lot to rein in the runaway horses pulling the private-insurance wagon, and would cost less for everyone, including the government.  But what do Republicans say when the idea is voiced?  "It's socialism!  It's not American!"   

Which is nothing but red, white and blue bullshit.  

The Preamble--the "mission statement" for the country--says that "we the people" were, among other things, aiming to "promote the general welfare."  Meaning, create an environment that was beneficial for all people to live in.  Health care for everyone is a natural fit for that part of the Preamble.  And as I have pointed out before in another post, keeping the American population healthy is a sensible investment;  healthy people can work better and produce more.  And when regular checkups and routine scans are free, serious diseases can be caught before costly treatments are needed;  even better, when people are following their doctor's advice, many ailments can be prevented.

So if a politician's only argument for failing to act is "But it's not American," he or she just might need to get voted out.  Because the concept of what is "American" is decided by all Americans...not just a few reactionaries who fear change.

Flag of Hate

Of course, there are those whose only real use of the flag is as a banner of hate, and I would be failing in my duty as a patriot if I didn't call those assholes out.

Yeah, that would be you, "Proud Boys" (notice it's not "proud men"...hmmm).  And you, too, "Oath Keepers" (any connection to the Promise Keepers?  Gotta wonder).  Yep, you Klukkers get a cyber-boo as well.  And every other stupid militia movement and white supremacist cabal sliming up the American flag while claiming to defend it.  You know why Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the National Anthem?  It was because of know-nothing hate junkies like them.  When people believe that justice and equal rights are only for those who look and believe the way they do, they reveal themselves to be fake patriots.  No one who truly loves this country should ever look to people like that for guidance.  And if any politician is following some hate group's guidance...well, on Election Day it would be an excellent idea to vote him out (but do be informed, lest you vote in someone worse).

And Finally...

I know I'm coming across as something of a doom-and-gloomer;  with Memorial Day approaching, most folks are looking forward to cooking out and hanging with the family, and the last thing they want is some little Worm like myself raining on the party!

But we need to be thinking about these things, now more than ever.  Muddy thinking has led us to this pass, and if we don't start defining terms like "patriot,"  we will continue to see the term misused and misapplied.  On this holiday, we are supposed to remember the many men and women who have lost their lives to defend the freedoms we have;  let us also remember that those freedoms have a flip side of responsibility.

So here are a few things a real patriot is and does:

• A real patriot loves her country, but not blindly.
• A real patriot is willing to admit when her country's people have done wrong, and is ready to make things right.
• A real patriot never calls another person's opinion "treason";  if the opinion is wrong, she will lay out the facts that demonstrate this, and not simply call her adversary names.
• A real patriot may disagree with what someone else says, but will always defend his right to say it.

And finally:

• A real patriot treats all other citizens and would-be citizens with respect and kindness, and does everything in her power to ensure that they are afforded the same rights and opportunities as everyone else.

 Have a safe and fun (but thoughtful) Memorial Day!

Juneteenth Is for Everyone!

 On This Historic Day...

I would like to formally welcome our nation's newest Federal National Holiday.

Also, I'd like to say:  It's about damn time!

Juneteenth--the celebration commemorating the full emancipation of the slaves in the last Confederate holdout state of Texas--originated in Galveston on June 19th, 1965, with the reading of General Order No. 3 by Union General Gordon Granger.  Celebrations of Juneteenth date to at least 1866, with local church-based gatherings (because white people refused to allow Black people to celebrate anywhere else);  from these, the holiday has spread across the nation--first through the South, then to the North--and has grown into a celebration not only of Black Independence, but also of Black culture and food.  It has even made its way to Mexico, courtesy of the Mascogos, descendants of a group of Black Seminoles who escaped slavery in 1852 and settled in Coahuila.

All this is more or less regurgitated Wiki.  But this lowly worm would like to advance the radical notion that Juneteenth is not just a "Black holiday."  This holiday is for everyone!

Okay, before anyone gets mad...

No person is an island.  We all need each other.  And back in the Bad Old Days, when a Black individual was considered 3/5 of a person for census purposes, there was a group of allies who shone brightly in those dark times.

I speak, of course, of the Religious Society of Friends, better-known as the Quakers.  Among other things, they were the most vocal of the Abolitionists.  This was no accident, nor was it a stance of convenience;  the Society's founder, George Fox, claimed to have received a direct revelation from God that slavery was wrong, and that Fox should spread this word to others.  However my readers may feel about people who claim to have heard the voice of God,  I would have to say that in this case, Fox did hear rightly.  His obedience, and that of other members of the Society, led to the publishing of much anti-slavery literature, petitions to various levels of government (local to [post-Revolutionary] federal) for an end to slavery in the nation, and the founding of the escape network widely known as the Underground Railroad.

Efforts such as these contributed to the attitudes of other Abolitionist groups and individuals, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose novel Uncle Tom's Cabin sold some 300,000 hardback copies in the United States alone.  The novel raised the debate about slavery to such a pitch that President Abraham Lincoln, upon meeting Mrs. Stowe, referred to her as the "little woman" whose book had caused a "big war"--meaning, of course, the Civil War.

Meanwhile, down on the plantation...

...The slaves were freeing themselves!

They ran away from their so-called "masters" and headed North, where they built new lives and told their stories, which were published and spread by Abolitionists.  Some of them became "conductors" on the Underground Railroad, returning to the South to help free more of their people from slavery.  The most famous of these was, of course, Harriet Tubman, who never lost a "passenger" and has been lionized in stories and (finally) a major motion picture.  My favorite book about her was one I read as a kid called Harriet Tubman:  The Moses of Her People.

Now, the slaveholding South believed that whites were inherently superior to Blacks, and that slavery was the "natural state" of the Black person.  But you couldn't prove that by the actions of Black people, who were not only escaping to the North, but also rebelling in ways large and small.  The best-known rebellion was that of Nat Turner, who led an uprising of over 70 Black people, both slave and free, who killed 55 whites before the revolt was shut down by white militia forces.  (An interesting side note:  This rebellion almost led to a gradual emancipation.  Nat Turner's confession was published as a book, and some white folks in Virginia, reminded of the dangers of slavery, presented petitions that would gradually end slavery.  But the majority, not wanting to lose their slaves, ixnayed that.)

People who want to be free and are willing to risk their lives to get that freedom are not "natural slaves."  That this was finally recognized and fought for by allies and others does not diminish the spirit of the Blacks who escaped and rebelled;  it affirms that their spirit is strong and true.

This, fellow worms, is called facing reality.

The culmination of all that blood, sweat and tears was a set of Constitutional Amendments.

Amendments don't pass by themselves, you know!

The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution--known as the Reconstruction Amendments--were passed by the required 2/3 majority of Congress in 1865 (the 13th, which freed the slaves; the Civil War wasn't even over yet), 1866 (the 14th, to counter white southern opposition to the 13th), and 1869 (the 15th, which was passed to counter--you guessed it--racist opposition to Black voting rights).

But remember, that's only part of the process.  After their passage, the amendments had to be ratified by a whopping 3/4 of the states.  The miracle is that it not only happened, but happened quickly:  The 13th Amendment took only 10 months and 6 days to get that majority;  the 14th, 2 years and 26 days;  and the 15th, 11 months and 8 days!  In fact, by 1871, 31 out of the 37 states had fully ratified the 14th and 15th Amendments.  There were 11 original members of the Confederacy, so that means that five of those ratifying states were originally rebels to the Union.

It wasn't only the Black vote that achieved that.  It was good white allies, many of whom were probably involved in the Abolitionist movement before the war;  but that vote probably also included a number of white people who were just plain ashamed of themselves.  Shame may be a poor reason for doing the right thing, but it sure beats doing the wrong thing because of cowardice.

What I am not saying...

There has been a lot of talk in recent years about the "white savior" factor.  Movies such as Driving Miss Daisy, The Help, Hidden Figures, and most recently Green Book, have been strongly criticized for their portrayal of helpless Black people who needed the help of whites to get the respect and credit they deserve from society.

When I say that Juneteenth is for everybody, I am not saying that "if it weren't for white people, Black people would never have won their freedom."  No, what I'm saying is that bringing this holiday into the full view of all Americans gives every one of us the chance to learn some history and celebrate together...and declare our commitment to doing better by each other than our ancestors have done.

In Conclusion...

If you are invited to a Juneteenth celebration, or there is a Juneteenth street fair in your area, by all means, go.  See some great art, hear some great music, eat some great food.  Listen to the readings, be humble, and definitely be sure you know all the words to "Lift Every Voice And Sing."

We've been backsliding, children.  Time to repent and move forward.

Happy Juneteenth, everyone!

If We Were a Christian Nation...

 That's what we say, but...

A great deal of the anti-immigrant grumbling I hear on a semi-weekly basis has been about three things:  point of origin/race, poverty, and religion.

I used the fore slash on the first point because when pressed on the issue, the person who said it will backpedal and say something like  "I'm not prejudiced" or "I'm not racist" or "Not that there's anything wrong with coming from (fill in underdeveloped country/region)."

The unspoken addition to all those sentences is "...but..." followed by a sentence that proves that the person is, in fact, prejudiced, racist, and opposed to that undeveloped country/region.

The second point is even more insidious, in that it carries the assumption that a poor immigrant is somehow lazier than a home-born US citizen, or that if too many of "them" are allowed in, our country will be just as poor and badly-managed as their countries of origin are.  

These assumptions show a near-complete ignorance of our history--former immigration waves, including the Irish, Eastern Europeans, Asians, and the forced immigration and enslavement of Black people, have grown and improved the USA on all levels.  (The Black sons and daughters of the Middle Passage have yet to reap the fruits of their labors, a situation that we ought to find appalling but do not.)

Such assumptions also show a bias toward the faulty idea that poverty and ill-management are inborn traits...a belief strongly held by Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood.  But we know more now about the environmental stresses that keep poor families stuck in their condition like a phonograph needle in a scratched LP groove--how poor nutrition stunts children's mental development, which in turn leads to poor grades and behavioral problems, which shoves these unfortunates into the world with few skills and fewer opportunities, which leads to despair, apathy, crime, and violence.  And the cycle continues when these young people produce children of their own.

But that's environment.  Put people like that into a better environment, with better opportunities, and they will do better than their forefathers.

Then there's the point about religion.

I remember a number of years ago, there was a big flap in one of the southern states, where a Muslim woman objected to having to remove her hijab (head scarf) for her driver's license photo.  I can't remember what the courts decided about it, but I do remember an Internet posting that my mom forwarded to me titled "Immigrants, Not Americans, Must Adapt."  The writer was sick and tired of having to move over and make room for the customs and cultures of those who come here from somewhere else.  The hijab was only one of his gripes;  he also objected to having to accommodate people who don't speak English (never mind that English is very difficult to learn as an adult, especially if a person has never spoken any other than his cradle language.  Fun fact:  The more languages you learn as a child, the easier it is to learn more languages later.  Not so fun fact:  Most poor immigrants have never had the opportunity to learn any but their own language.) and the overwhelming of "our" culture by all these weird new customs.  His opinion in a nutshell (emphasis on "nut") was that immigrants should forget their own languages, religions, and cultures, learn English, and be hyper-patriots who salute the flag and never say a bad word about the good ol' US of A.

The point being...?

Along with those grumbles against immigrants, I also hear about how we are a "Christian nation."  That's the accepted reasoning for not allowing people in who practice some other religion (especially Islam, although white supremacists object to Judaism as well).

I would laugh at this if I weren't so horrified.

I remember reading a book called In God We Trust by Norman Cousins.  It was an overview of the religious beliefs (or lack of them) of our Founding Fathers, and it was quite the eye-opener:  With a very few exceptions, most of the FF's were Deists, meaning they believed in God as Creator of everything, but also believed that He created Man as a reasoning creature with the power to choose between good and evil.  Having done that, He left the universe to its own devices, trusting us to make the right choices for ourselves and our communities.

One of those Deists, Thomas Paine, was a militant believer in the triumph of Reason over emotional religion (there was a Great Awakening in progress right before the Revolution), and he wrote a book titled The Age of Reason in which he ridiculed the Biblical account of Creation, the idea of God actually speaking to people, and any miracles whatsoever.  Thomas Jefferson, another Deist, produced a version of the New Testament that excised all the miracles of Jesus and any of His words regarding His Divinity.  Jefferson firmly believed that Jesus was a great moral teacher, nothing more;  he blamed the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation on the corruption of Jesus' teachings by Paul and others.

Ben Franklin, though still a Deist, was much gentler toward those who disagreed with him.  He heard the preaching of George Whitefield, whose dramatic style of speaking helped fuel the Great Awakening, and though he had great respect for Whitefield's powerful sermons and their effect on people, he could never bring himself to convert to Whitefield's brand of Evangelicalism.  Franklin was more concerned with living a moral life than with any ecstatic "new birth" experience.

Of the very few who weren't Deists, one (I think it was John Jay) was a militant anti-Catholic, and another--George Washington--kept his religion very private.

If any doubt remains in the mind of the reader, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment ought to erase that:  "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or preventing the free exercise thereof."  In modern language, that means the federal government is not allowed to create a national religion, favor any existing religion, or keep people from worshipping any god they wish...or none, if they so desire.  James Madison said that the reason for that clause was to keep the religious wars of Europe out of the United States.  He also believed that pure religion flourished better without government influence.

Why the myth dragged on

So how did we get to thinking we were a Christian nation when our founders weren't Christians and our Constitution wasn't designed for it?

Well, in simple terms, Christians were in the majority.  Mostly they were Anglicans, but there were Methodists, Friends (Quakers), and Catholics as well.  Later came the Baptists and Lutherans, as well as some odd spin-offs such as the Shakers, the Christian Scientists, and the Mormons;  but all those groups at least named Christ as having some influence on them.  States had religious laws on their books (Blue Laws--no businesses open on Sunday;  adultery and homosexual acts as prosecutable crimes), and no one who had any influence objected.  In fact, business leaders knew that belonging to the "right" church was essential to their standing in a community.

But as time went on, we began to get people coming in who weren't even nominally Christian:  Jewish people, Asian people (Confucianism,--more an ethical system than a religion--Shintoism, and Buddhism), Indian people (Hinduism and various branchings), and Middle Eastern people (mostly Islam, but also some Zoroastrianism as well).  As these groups and their influence grew, the influence of Christianity as the dominant religion has waned, and more legal challenges have been raised to counter the comfortable assumption that Christianity is the only right way to define our nation.

Some people--especially if they adhere to the teachings of various loud-mouthed televangelists--believe that this trend is a sign of the End of Days.  I don't think so.  If we want to be Biblical about it, God has only ever made a specific covenant with one people group:  the Israelites.  The Israel of the Old Testament was supposed to be a theocracy, with God Himself as their King.  After some disastrously-corrupt priests abused their power, the people rejected that model and asked for a human king, which God allowed.

But the New Testament changed that.  Now God's covenant is with anyone, anywhere, who trusts Jesus Christ for salvation.  Different denominations argue about what that means, but we all agree that Jesus is at the heart of the matter.

And what does that mean for America?

Well, it means that we American Christians ought to behave like Christ's followers, and not go around judging others.  Which brings me back to my original title.

If we were a Christian nation...

• We would not go around bragging about how great we are.
• We would seek peace with all nations, whether they agreed with us or not, and would go to war only as a last resort.
• We would care more for the poor, the sick, the oppressed, and the prisoners in our midst.
• We would spend our money on things that benefit everyone.
• We would have upright leaders who didn't take bribes (read:  campaign contributions).
• We would have a justice system that dispensed justice based on law rather than wealth or influence.
• We would be more concerned about pollution and climate change, since God set humanity as stewards of His creation.
• We would repent of the evils we have done in the past to Native Americans, Blacks, Nisei, and many others, and we would do whatever we could to make things right.

And finally:

• We would welcome immigrants into the country, since everything we have is the gift of God, intended to be shared with others.

That's what we would do, if our nation were truly Christian.  Since we don't do those things--or do them inconsistently--outsiders have every right to doubt our Christian claims.  After all, Jesus said that a person's true character would be known by his or her "fruit," or acts.  Given our ongoing actions as a nation, those words ought to scare us shitless.

Notes from a (Social) Distance II: The Unwanted Sequel

Remember when...

..."Rona" was a gossip columnist?

...the only vaccines you needed as an adult were for shingles, the flu, and tetanus?

...your only worry about that person sitting way too close to you at the bar was that they might be hitting on you?

Times sure have changed, huh?

They have.  Permanently.

In some ways, it's for the better.  About 73% of the adults in this country are fully vaccinated against COVID;  I don't have the stats for children.  And President Biden has done a great job getting the vax rollout done, despite his infamous predecessor having left no plan at all for getting the shots into our arms.  Building a plan from scratch that quickly, with no cooperation during the transition?  That alone should win Biden a second term, in my book.

And we now can get rapid tests that you can use at home to tell you if you have COVID!

But...

Things are worse, too.  Because so many people haven't yet been vaxxed--not only here, but around the world--COVID has had a chance to mutate.  We're now up to a variant called Omicron, which is way more contagious than its parent.   The vax won't stop it, but it does at least help your body fight it... but the variant is still highly dangerous for older people, even if they are vaxxed!  (And the at-home test doesn't always catch the Omicron variant in a timely fashion!)

The pharma folks are working on a booster that will protect against Omicron, but it's one of those impossible races against time that only work out in the movies.  Which means that COVID, whatever the mutation, is well on its way to becoming endemic.

In fact, the odds are high that sooner or later, we all, vaxxed and unvaxxed, will get some mutation of COVID.

Welcome to the new normal.

We still have the conspiracy nuts who try to tell everyone that the virus is a government plot (weirdly, they point to the mutations to prove it), that Dr. Fauci helped the Chinese create it, that the vaccine is made out of aborted stem cells, that this or that quack remedy will either prevent or cure COVID....It never ends.  Meta and Twitter ban accounts when the misinformation gets too egregious, but those accounts mutate like...well, like a virus.

Also, there are the alt-right politicians who refuse to impose masking, social distancing, and vaccine mandates on their populations, protesting that such measures put too much stress on people and the economy.  There is some truth to that, but how difficult is it to find compromises?  Remember how I talked about the curbside pickups for take-out food and groceries?  Those things are still around.  And the vax bill is being picked up by the federal government--I definitely prefer that to them buying a bunch of new weapons or arming the next edition of the contras.

The right-wing politicians point to the learning problems that kids have had due to lack of actual classroom time.  Distance learning, it turns out, didn't work as well as we hoped because the kids didn't cope well with the isolation.  And most children who catch COVID have mild symptoms.  So if the teachers get vaxxed and boostered, we should be okay, right?

Well...yeah.  The problem is that when the children come home and bring the 'rona with them without knowing it, the entire family is at risk.  The adults, even the vaxxed people, will have to isolate until they can be tested, thus losing time from work.  And any close contact with Grandpa could kill him.

It's one of those Gordian knots that can't be solved by cutting it in half like Alexander the Great did.  But there are people on both sides in such high dudgeon over the school issue that nobody is working on a solution.  Somebody needs to start teasing those tangles apart, and soon.

So what now?

Now, we wait.  We do the best we can.  We get vaxxed, get boosted, try to avoid the unmasked idiots, and hope that at some future time we'll be able to go to a concert where we can dance with strangers in the aisles and not worry about getting sick.  We order takeout instead of going to the restaurant (unless they have an outdoor patio), and at home we try new recipes from YouTube, Reddit, and Insta.  We watch live-stream church services instead of attending in person.  At work, we mask up with a filter insert, and hope everyone else will keep six feet or more away from us.

And we pray.

Dear Washington State: Tips From The Midwest

 Psst...Hey, You!

Yes, you up in the Northwest.  Yes, I'm talking to you, state of Washington.

Hot up there, isn't it?

Yeah, global warming is a bummer, huh?

No, I'm not gloating...I'm commiserating.  Because the ugly heat you've been experiencing has been a part of our summer weather for my entire life.  It hasn't always been the level of heat that you're having right now, but we've had enough of it that I feel qualified to give y'all up there some advice on how to survive your present round of dashboard-egg-frying weather.  So here goes....

No A/C?  Try Fans And Frozen Shirts.

No, this is not a prank.  It's how I survived over fifteen years in housing with no aircon whatsoever.

The trick is to use more than one fan.  You put one in a window on the east side of your house, the other in a westward window (both facing inward).  Turn the west one on in the morning, which will draw in the cooler air on the shaded side of the house;  as the sun shifts to the west, turn the west fan off and the east fan on, to get the cooling air from the east.  If you can't be at home all day, buy a couple of cheap plug-in timers, set them for the appropriate times, and plug the timers into the outlets and the fans into the timers.

And at night, open all your windows and use both fans.

Along with this, you can wet a few t-shirts or tank tops, wring them out until they're damp, fold them up, and put them into the freezer.  Take them out after a couple of hours and put them on.  Aaah.  As they warm up and melt, you can sit in front of one of your fans and feel better all over again!

Granted, it will still be warm.  But it will be better than the crazy heat outside.

Use Your Natural Resources.

There are two things you folks have in abundance, depending on which direction you face.

Turn to the west, and you have the ocean.  Turn to the east, and you have forests.

So...pick one and go there.  

I know that sounds simplistic, but hear me out.

One mature tree absorbs 48 (or more) pounds of CO2 per year.  This produces a cooling effect.  The tree's leaf canopy also absorbs sunlight, which heats the air just above the canopy...but underneath, the shaded area is like being under a dark parasol.  Plus, the tree "breathes out" water vapor along with oxygen;  this is called "transpiration," and that plus the "parasol effect" is why you feel much cooler stepping from direct sunlight to the shade of a tree.

A forest multiplies these benefits.  So spending a day or two out there is a good way to cool off.

And one of your boundaries is all seaside!  Breezes blowing off the water will be cooler, and the water (despite global warming) will still be cool enough to be enjoyable.

Just don't forget your sunscreen.

Get A Taste For The Night Life.

The nights may be even shorter than ours up at your latitude, but nighttime is the right time!

It may still be muggy, and it may still be warm...but once the sun has gone down, it will still be cooler than high noon for getting work done, running errands, or eating meals.  And if you socialize outside with friends, you won't need sunscreen!

Lastly...Cool Off On The Inside.

Cold drinks have been a staple of life in the Midwestern summers since forever.  I haven't any evidence, but I bet if you could talk to the Osage, Chickasaw, Sac, Fox, Illini, and all the other First Nations tribes that once lived in this region, they could have told you where they found fresh, cold water to drink on a hot day.

All we latecomers have really done since then is add ice and flavoring.

So while you're finding ways to stay cool on the outside, don't forget to cool off your insides, too.

Plain water is always good, as well as being non-fattening.  But if you have to be out in the heat and you're sweating like a pig...

(This, by the way, is a faulty saying.  Pigs don't sweat.  That's why they wallow in mud--to stay cool.)

...then you may need something with more substance.  There are energy drinks that have fewer sugars and more actual electrolytes (essential salts), so read your labels before you buy.

Iced coffees and teas are nice-tasting, but don't forget that they are diuretics--in other words, they make you pee more, and thus lose water.  And no matter how cold that brewski or that cocktail is, any alcohol will dehydrate you.  So go easy on the alcoholic or caffeinated stuff.

Hang In There....

I'll end with one thing:

As bad as it feels right now, and however tired you may be of triple-digit heat...it won't last forever.  Nothing ever does, especially when it comes to weather.

(Yeah, okay, it nearly always rains in Forks, but you get what I'm saying.)

Your heat wave will break.  And eventually, it will be fall and winter again, and you'll probably have a cold snap that will freeze your collective cojones and make you wish...

What's that?  That it would warm up again?

Final, final tip from the Midwest:

Be Careful What You Wish For!

This Is The Election That Was

 Election 2020:  What.  The.  F$@#???

Well, it's June of 2021, and Joe Biden is still President of the United States.

Somehow, despite conspiracy sites and white-supremacist militias...despite voter purges, mail slowdowns and baseless accusations of election fraud...despite an actual physical invasion of the U.S. Capitol building during the certification...somehow, we did it!  We evicted that fat, orange son of a bitch!!!

I have never prayed so hard for anything in my life.  And even after getting an actual "yes" to my prayers,  it's taken me four months to get used to an Executive Branch made up of serious people who are doing their jobs, rather than a blustering bully and his ever-changing stable of sycophants, none of whom seemed to have any knowledge of what they were supposed to be doing.

So you can understand that the reason I'm so behind the curve with this post is that it's only now that I can finally believe that the nightmare is over.

But getting here was its own little nightmare inside the larger one....

COVID-19:  Worse Than It Needed To Be

I was already having a crappy year when the pandemic hit.

First, I had to have a root canal done.  Then, my eye hemorrhaged, after which the retina detached.  The latter might have been prevented if I hadn't picked up the flu right before they were supposed to do exploratory surgery to find out why the hemorrhage occurred;  as it was, the delay made the surgery more invasive and expensive than it needed to be.

How expensive, you ask?  Well, my deductible was wiped out before the end of April, 2020.  That ought to tell you everything that you need to know.

And on top of all this personal drama, the damn country locked down.

I'm not sure anyone really believed COVID would make it to our shores;  after all, there had been swine flu, bird flu, SARS, MERS, Zika...and we'd made it through those virtually unscathed.

But COVID was both more vicious and less picky about its environment...and a whole lot more contagious.  From its humble beginnings in Wuhan province in PRC, it spread, and spread, and spread...and jumped borders, gaining speed as it hit the EU and then Britain.  Trump tried a piecemeal ban on travel from China, but he not only did he not ban travel from Europe, he also failed to quarantine our own citizens who were returning from abroad.  So of course, COVID made it here.

Now, we have good people who know all about how to study and fight diseases.  Our star player in this respect is Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been studying this stuff since I was a grade schooler.  He did as he was supposed to do and advised the President on basic things that could be done to stop the spread of the disease until treatments and vaccines could be developed.  Those remedies would take time, so people would need to restrict their movements, limit social gatherings to home folks, wear protective gear, wash hands often, and keep six feet apart.  Relatively simple stuff, and with some help from our government, we'd be able to hang in there.

So of course, Trump put on his big-boy pants and got to work organizing PPE shipments, wearing a face mask, making speeches about how we needed to listen to what our amazing scientists were saying, and proposing aid packages that would help keep the economy afloat...

Oh, wait.

Trump did nothing of the sort.

Instead, he accused the Democrats of blowing the pandemic out of proportion.  He refused to wear a mask, and indeed continued to hold rallies at which he trotted out lies and more lies about COVID:  it was just a flu virus;  it would go away come spring;  hardly anyone would die from it...and oh, by the way, Obama had just as bad a thing happen on his watch, so why wasn't anyone talking about that?

The Democrats, who since 2018 had a sizable majority in the House of Representatives, put together a pandemic response package.  It passed, but then hit a wall in the GOP-controlled Senate;  only constituent outcry and some compromise by the Dems got a slightly watered-down package through.  Trump did sign it, but then he took the ridiculous step of having his own name printed on the checks we got!  Yeesh.

And, It's Election Season!

Ever since the beginning of 2020, Trump had been in high gear on reelection.  Besides the aforementioned rallies, he had his merch machine going, and there were "Trump 2020" and "Keep America Great" stickers, hats, yard signs and even flags popping up like strange mushrooms, even before the lockdown eased up.  (Later, there were even masks, which was absolutely surreal considering Trump's attitude toward the virus.)

On the Democrat front, we had a lot of candidates to choose from;  they ranged all the way from Bernie Sanders, who was about as hyper-progressive as you could get, to Joe Biden, who was about as Establishment as you could get.  In between, you had folks like Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Andrew Yang, Amy Klobuchar, and Michael Bloomberg.  Of all the latter, I was most suspicious of Bloomberg, who had done some pretty ugly stuff as Mayor of New York City.  Also, his big talking point was how he had started a successful business (Trump said that too, remember?)...but when I researched that, it turned out to be a "luxury" business, geared toward the needs and pocketbooks of other wealthy people.  There's nothing particularly wrong with that, but could such a man relate to the needs and viewpoints of the 99%?  He didn't convince me, and apparently no one else bought his spiel, either, because he was out of the race not too long after he entered it.

(BTW, I really wanted Liz Warren to get the nomination.  I loved Bernie, but he was a bit too much of a curmudgeon, and although he promised to really kick corporate ass,  I'm not sure how far the Constitution would let him go with that.  Liz had good ideas, and I thought she could win.)

But when all the internecine warfare was done, and the dust settled, Joe Biden was the one the DNC nominated.

A lot of people (myself included) sighed and crossed our fingers.  Because Biden was about as vanilla as you could get.  Not a big hellraiser, very meek and mild...hell, Trump thought it would be a walk in the park!

But...Remember COVID?

It certainly hadn't forgotten us.  And Trump was now well over the rainbow about it;  he implied that injecting bleach (or something like it) might stop the virus.  I listened to what he said about that, and although it doesn't sound like he was actually telling people to do that (though he did seem to be suggesting that doctors should study injecting it), a lot of ordinary people apparently believed he was, to the point that the makers of Clorox and Lysol issued strong statements urging people not to take any of their products internally.

He also touted the use of hydroxychloroquine as a virus treatment, and took it himself for two weeks to keep from getting it himself  (Didn't work - he tested positive for COVID in late September).  And he gave kudos to some of the weirdest people, like Stella Immanuel, a doctor and church founder who pooh-poohed wearing masks and advocated hydroxychloroquine as a COVID cure along with a couple of other drugs...oh, and she also believed that sex with demons is the root cause of gynecological problems in women, that the medical industry uses alien DNA in medicines, and that they are trying to create a vaccine to prevent people from being religious.

Wow.  Is this guy a nut, or what?

Meanwhile, Back At Biden's...

It was all very low-key back in Demland.  No big rallies, at least not IRL.  Joe Biden chose instead to run his campaign out of his home, making speeches over the Internet;  later he made a few at deserted venues.  He talked about what he wanted to do, not about what a jerk Trump was being.

And by God, it worked.

Biden began to gain traction, and Trump began to get nervous.  When Trump gets nervous, he starts name-calling.  "Sleepy Joe" was the most common one, but at this point a lot of people felt like the frogs must have felt in that Aesop's fable of King Log and King Stork:  After 4 years of King Stork, King Log would at least give us some rest!

Of course, there was also the fact that Biden believed the science.  He was keeping socially distanced, he was wearing a mask, he was setting an example...in short, he was acting like a leader, which the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was decidedly not doing.

And when he chose Kamala Harris as his running mate,  I was fully on board.  Because Kamala knows how to kick some ass, and we needed that as much as we needed rest from the EF-5 Tweetnadoes.

When Oranges Attack!

Trump wasted no time in trying to undermine Biden and Harris.  He also went out of his way to make some ugly suggestions that his opponents were going to rig the election through mail-in voter fraud (which was weird, since he voted by mail--absentee, because he wouldn't be in his home district on Election Day).  He packed the empty seats on the Board of Governors of the Postal Service with his own sycophants, and with a strong laissez-faire-capitalist majority, they appointed Louis DeJoy to be Postmaster General.

Now, if he had needed confirmation by the Senate, there would have been a hell of a fight;  even some of the Republicans would have defected.  Because DeJoy held a bunch of stock in a company called XPO Logistics, a contractor for the Post Office.  That's a conflict of interest right there.  Plus, DeJoy had no experience at all with the Post Office;  he didn't even know how much it cost to mail a postcard!

Nonetheless, he immediately began screwing things up:  removing postal drop boxes, cutting back on personnel, closing some locations, and--perhaps worst of all--removing all the automatic sorting machines.  The USPS already had reduced staff, so taking those sorters backed the mail up by geometric progression.  Stuff piled up in warehouses--not just letters, but packages...including perishable food (sorry, Fruit-of-the-Month Club subscribers), essential medicines (sorry, Grandpa--your insulin probably won't make it in time to keep you from going into diabetic coma), and live animals such as baby chicks (yes, those are often sent in the mail).  The animals died, the food spoiled, and it was a huge mess.

Now, understand:  the Post Office does need an overhaul.  But what DeJoy was doing was purely destructive.  We were in a damn pandemic, and we needed our letters and packages.  He could have waited until we got the COVID mess under control.  But he didn't.

Why?

Because people were beginning to vote in advance, by mail.  We were not optimistic at all about our chances of staying safe in a crowded polling place, so we signed up for absentee ballots and used them.  A number of states passed emergency measures to give as many voters as possible access to ballots.  Trump in turn ramped up his "voter fraud" lie and assured his followers that the only valid way to vote was in person, on Election Day.

And as if all this weren't pain and chaos enough...the cops killed a Black guy.

The Murder of George Floyd

On May 25th, 2020, a cop knelt on a Black man's neck for nine minutes.  The man's name was George Floyd, and his murder was caught live on video.

Actually, there was more than one video;  the one I saw was taken by a guy who kept telling the officer kneeling on George Floyd's neck (it was his neck;  you can clearly see that) to ease up, let the man breathe, that this was wrong....

But of course, Officer Big Swingin' Dick did no such thing, and a Black man died for passing a phony twenty.  Later, it was found that Floyd had drugs in his system--but sorry, taking drugs isn't a capital crime, either.  And that finding stank of victim-blaming anyway.

The video went viral, and the entire world took to the streets.  Here at home, people marched and chanted "I Can't Breathe" and carried signs that memorialized not only George Floyd, but other Black people killed by police.  Folks began calling for police departments to be de-funded.

The reaction was predictable:  victim-blaming from the usual racist suspects, tear gas and rubber bullets used on protesters, militias toting guns "to help out the cops."  People got hurt, people got arrested, and property got destroyed when a few people went rogue and started rioting and looting.

Then Trump got involved.  He urged the governors to crack down on the protesters, even saying "When the looting starts, the shooting starts."  He sent out "anonymous" federal agents to deter protests, and even threatened to declare martial law!

But the protests--which remained mostly peaceful--continued.

Trump's Biggest Mistake...

If I had to mark one pivotal mistake--the one that really cost Trump the election--I would have to say it was the breaking-up of a peaceful protest being held between Lafayette Park and St. John's Episcopal Church on June 1st, 2020.  

Trump, apparently, wanted to walk to St. John's and have a photo taken of him holding up a Bible.  He decided to walk through Lafayette Park, and predictably, some folks started throwing stuff.  That set off the National Guard and the US Park Police who were with him, and they started firing tear gas into the crowd and telling them to disperse.  Most of them did, but many of the people who got gassed weren't the ones causing trouble.  Among those choking on the gas was a pastor who was supplying water to the protesters.  The Episcopal bishop, Rt. Rev. Mariann Budde, was not happy about the photo op;  it hadn't been announced, no permission was asked, and it smelled like a publicity stunt.  Plus, she felt it disrespected the Bible and the words contained therein.

She wasn't wrong.

People commented on the fact that Trump held the Bible as though it were an unfamiliar object (he actually wasn't holding it upside-down, though some swore he was, with appropriate jokes about his possible Satanic affiliations).  Me, I wonder a) why he walked through that park accompanied by police and National Guardsmen who just happened to be armed with tear gas, and b) why the hell he decided to go to that church, at that time.  Surely there were other DC churches where he wouldn't be bothering anybody, right?

But in Trump World, it's other people who are in his way.  And if you get in Trump's way, you get shoved aside, run over...or tear-gassed.

The Debates At A Glance

There are only a couple of points I want to make here.

One:  Neither Trump nor Pence seemed inclined to actually answer any questions about COVID, the economy, the legitimate grievances of the protesters, or indeed anything of substance.  And both of them, when asked if Trump would leave office peacefully if he lost, said glibly that they didn't think he would lose.

Two - okay, Two and Three:  Biden getting fed up and saying,  "Aw, shut up, man"  over Trump's crazy rant;  and that fly on Pence's head during the debate with Kamala Harris...those, fellow worms, are moments that nobody's going to forget soon!

Election Day At Last!

Early on, it looked grim for the Democrats.

Not only did most of the states look very red indeed, the down races were going GOP, too.  My state kept its Republican governor and its Republican super-majority in the State House;  we had a few Dems win local races, but the widespread gerrymandering we've had here for the last thirty years mostly paid off for the GOP.  I got more and more depressed at the idea of four more years of Trump, but I battened down the hatches and prayed.

And lo, a miracle!  The states were red because the immediate tallies were mostly from in-person voters - Trump supporters who had followed their leader's dictate that early voting and mail-in/absentee ballots were for stupid wimps who actually believed all that shit about a global pandemic!

But then, they began counting the absentee ballots, and the picture began to change.  States began to flip and turn blue.  When all was sorted, sifted, and counted, Biden had won the popular vote by over 7,000,000 ballots.  The final Electoral College tally was 306 votes for Biden, 232 for Trump--but it took over a month to get all those popular votes counted and the various Electoral votes done and certified.

Trump Goes Nuclear:  The Big Lie

I swear, I think I saw a blinding actinic flash from the general direction of Washington, D.C. as Donald Trump exploded.  He had already been complaining about how he was "winning big" when suddenly, "they started finding all these ballots."  I can't believe that anybody could possibly be as ignorant as Trump seemed to be about why the totals changed, but...well, his history of ignorance does make it a reasonable deduction.

But "reason" had nothing to do with what he did next, which was contest every battleground state in which Biden won.  He had his little Sontaran-look-alike lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, making speeches and promoting Trump's Big Lie that the election had been "stolen";  that all those mail-in ballots were fraudulent;  that election officials, state officials, and even state legislatures were in on the cheat;  and even that the automatic ballot machines had been compromised!  That last claim was a doozy--it involved Hugo Chavez and Venezuela and flash drives that could add, subtract or flip votes.

All of these wild conspiracy theories were dutifully parroted by the ultra-right-wing media, even while saner talking heads at the major networks were all packing up their graphics and saying it was over, Biden won, who do you think he'll choose for Secretary of Transportation?

(One funny note about Rudy's fake-ballot claims.

(In one of his f$@#ed-up press conferences, he claimed that "Joe Frazier can vote here in Philadelphia," then reminded us that Mr. Frazier was dead.

(Now, it seems pretty damned obvious to me what happened--how about you?

(So I did a tiny bit of research, using the online white pages...and sure enough, when I typed in "Philadelphia" and "Joe Frazier,"  I got the name of a Joseph Frazier living in that area.  If I wanted to know more, I would have to pay money and subscribe to the service, but--well, you get it, right?  This isn't Joe Frazier the dead boxer;  it's someone else with that name!  And I am absolutely sure that Rudy knew that.  He was inserting a speck of truth to add power to a lie.

(I said that this was funny;  but living voters have been "accidentally" purged from the voter rolls for just that reason of sharing a name with a voter who died...all because some yahoo in a county office was too lazy or too busy to check and make sure they were purging the correct person.  So this really wasn't funny at all.)

And Trump refused to concede.

He just kept telling that poisonous lie, not only in person, but also on TV and on Twitter and Facebook.  Both of the latter began adding disclaimers to his posts, saying that his claims were unfounded.  On YouTube there were links to actual government sites that would tell you exactly how elections worked and how we ensured that our votes were secure.

Meanwhile, his own AG, Bill Barr, said that the election wasn't stolen and that it was secure.  So did an official with the Department of Homeland Security.  Both of these were Trump appointees.  And Vice President Mike Pence, whom I had always assumed to have been born without a spine, said that he would certify the votes of the Electoral College.

That, plus the fact that every court case his cronies tried to file got denied or was lost...all except one, which gave first-time voters less time to confirm their identification for their ballots.

Oh, and there were also three appeals to the Supreme Court...which the Court refused to hear.

January 6th, 2021:  Insurrection and Infamy

The day on which Congress was to meet to confirm the will of We the People in our choice of Joe Biden as President, Donald Trump held an outdoor rally down the street.  Lots of people showed up, including many sporting Confederate battle flags, Trump flags, #StopTheSteal signs, and lots of camo gear.

That, and a buttload of weapons.

Google that speech Trump gives.  He tells them to go to the Capitol and cheer for those who are ready to do the right thing.  He says he will walk with them, and it will all be peaceful.

He spends God knows how long reeling off a bunch of conspiracy theories about there being more votes than people here, how such and so many thousand people there match the names of dead voters, how the Dominion machines are a disaster, how the mail-in ballots are fraudulent, how he really won the election, and if Mike Pence will only do the right thing, he'll still be President and everything will be so great!

And the attendees did march to the Capitol (without Trump).  But they didn't remain peacefully outside, chanting "Stop the steal" or anything like that.  That was how it started...but then people started talking violence and encouraging anyone who was a true patriot, who was ready for confrontation, to move forward.  And suddenly, there was a mob moving in on the Capitol:  They smashed windows, climbed walls, ran a Trump flag up under the American one...and invaded the building.

(Video shows the Capitol police trying to tell them they can't go in, but no real attempt is made to stop the Trumpists at first.  Maybe they didn't believe that these folks were for real!)

The insurrectionists tried (and failed) to break into the House chamber;  in the process, one of the invaders was shot.  Some tried (and succeeded) to break in to Nancy Pelosi's office;  by now, that picture of the idiot with his feet up on her desk is so familiar that I don't need to show it to you...but here it is anyway:

Soooooo mature.  And I don't know if it was the same guy, but someone was later photographed holding a piece of mail swiped from Nancy's desk.  Guess what, folks?  Stealing other people's mail is a Federal crime!

Oh, and someone stole a podium.  (Piano-clink blink.)  And apparently someone else dropped trou and shat in the Rotunda.  Because when you act like an animal, you have to mark your territory like one!

The Defenders:  Casualties

138 police officers were injured while defending the Capitol from the insurrectionists (one of the female Trumpists, when asked by a reporter what they were doing, enthusiastically said,  "We're storming the Capitol!  It's a revolution!").  One died while engaging the invaders;  two others later committed suicide.  One suffered a concussion while trying to keep the invaders from reaching the top of the Capitol steps;  another lost a fingertip...oh, and over thirty officers tested positive for COVID after the invasion.  Because these were Trump supporters, and many were not wearing masks!

It took over four hours for the cops to get the rioters out of the building.  I was biting my nails the whole time.

So Where Was Trump?

Short answer:  At the White House, watching it all on TV.

Eyewitnesses said he seemed entranced by what he saw;  when asked to do something about it, he seemed slow to react.  When he finally did go on air to speak, he told the insurrectionists that they were "special" and that he loved them, but that they should go home now.

Which infuriated me no end.

These people were not special;  they didn't need "love."  They needed a good kick in the pants.  And Trump never even said,  "I never meant for you to do this, and I'm sorry for the miscommunication.  What you are doing is wrong;  stop it at once."  If he had said that, of course, I wouldn't have believed him.  But still.

By the way:  As of June 10th, 521 people had been arrested for their part in the riot;  another news source calls it more than 465 people.  Either way, that's a lot of people who barged in, ready for a fight...and, according to one video source, ready to make those "traitors" pay "the ultimate penalty."

And Yet...Congress Persisted

After sheltering in place during the attempted invasion, Congress got back to work.  Some Republicans, shaken by what their fellows had done, offered no more objections to certification and indeed seemed willing to finally concede that the election was over;  a few held on to the Big Lie (and still do, to this day!) and tried to raise more objections.  But they failed, the results were certified by the House, and the vote went to the Senate, where Mike Pence confirmed that Joseph R. Biden, Jr., was the duly-elected President of the United States.

Inauguration Day...

...And guess what?  Nothing happened.

Maybe that was because it was almost a virtual event.  The police were on their guard this time;  they were not going to be caught napping again.  A very nice girl named Amanda Gorman read an inspiring poem, Lady Gaga sang the national anthem, and there were stars like Tom Hanks, Jennifer Lopez (I hope she didn't do that pole dance from 2020's Super Bowl halftime...), Eva Longoria, the Foo Fighters, and John Legend performing at the much-subdued Inaugural event on Wednesday night.

And yet...

Q Who?

Many of Trump's wild conspiracy theories were not original to him.  They came from a mysterious online persona called Q, who posted on a channel called 8kun.  (I assume this channel is related to 4chan, hangout of grouchy "incel" men complaining about all the evil, mean women who won't date them...but seriously, fellas, if you want women to like you, don't hang out on message boards with suffixes that sound like manga diminutives--"chan" is a cute term for "girl"; "kun" is used by a girl to refer to a boy she is close with.)

He first turned up in 2017 on 8chan (later 8kun), bearing a coded message that "The Storm" was coming.  He said that President Trump would be the instrument to break up a world-wide cabal of Satanist, cannibal, child molesters and sex traffickers (of whom many leading Democrats were ringleaders).  Whew!  That's quite a list of crimes.

It's all made up out of whole cloth.  But thousands of people actually believe it.  Q has moved the date of "The Storm" several times, and said that Trump would declare martial law on Inauguration Day and arrest Biden and Harris.

His (her?) latest lie is that Trump will be reinstated as President, just as soon as the ballot audits in the battleground states prove that he really won (supposedly, some time in August).  But as Beau of the Fifth Column pointed out, by Constitutional law, if Biden were shown to have actually conspired to rig the election, he would be impeached, and likely convicted, after which he would be removed from office--along with Kamala Harris, who would also be complicit if the accusation were true--and the new President would be the next person in the order of succession:  Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi! 

There were a lot of Q followers;  they had their own little online club known as QAnon.  There were QAnon followers all over the Internet until YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter started banning them.

But here's the thing:

After the Inauguration, after all the snide insinuations and character assassination, Q announced he was packing it in, and advised his followers to get on with their lives!

But many haven't;  they still tout the Big Lie and all of Q's barking-mad conspiracies, and even a few wiggy government officials (cough *Marjorie Taylor Greene* cough) have bought into the lies.

So we still have work to do....

Epilogue:  Spread The Truth!

Debunk QAnon wherever you can.  Trump, ditto.  Support your local voting-rights group;  give money if you can, and time and effort whether you give money or not.  Find out who your state reps are and write them.  Let them know that voter suppression is not cool, and if they won't listen, vote the bastards out!  Find out everything you can about your local candidates (even a County Medical Board has influence) so you can vote with understanding.  Make sure your voter registration is current, and help your neighbors do that, too.  Call--or go online--and find out when all the elections are for this year.  Find out where your polling station is.  Make a plan to get there.  And...vote.  Not just in the general elections, but in primaries and local elections, too.  It's our greatest power as ordinary citizens.  We came way too close to losing that power;  let's all work together to make sure we keep it.

One Final Note...

The New York Times has posted a 40-minute compilation of the various footage of the January 6th Capitol riot.  It's well worth your time, though it is sobering to watch.  Here is the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWJVMoe7OY0

Also, here is the video from which I got the female insurrectionist's words:

https://news.yahoo.com/yahoo-news-reporter-speaks-woman-162518552.html

Aunt Jemima, N.K. Jemisin, and Black Lives Matter

I:  The Mad Copyist Strikes Again!

It all started with another one of those stupid printouts.  Some alt-right conservative at work left it on that same empty desk, and I totally ignored that little voice in my head that said Don't do it, you'll be sorry! and read the damned thing.

And I was sorry, because it was all about Aunt Jemima.  The black woman on the pancake box.  It was headed  "Yep, Black Lives Matter,"  and it told the story of the real woman who portrayed Jemima:  a lady named Nancy Green.  Supposedly, she was given a lifetime contract to portray Aunt Jemima, was a big hit at the World Expo in Chicago, made lots of money travelling the country, used her fame as a platform to advocate for social justice and equality, and finally died at age 89, a millionaire.

Beneath this celebration of her life is a scathing critique of the decision by Quaker Oats to retire the Aunt Jemima mascot.  And underneath that is a picture of Nancy Green, laughing and happy, holding up a plateful of pancakes.

Yeah...No.

According to both Snopes and Wikipedia, two men named Chris Rutt and Charles Underwood bought a flour mill.  But there was no shortage of flour in the area, so they experimented with different mixes of ingredients and came up with a self-rising pancake flour.  At first they tried to market the flour in bags labelled with just that name, but according to legend, Mr. Rutt went out to see a vaudeville show, and he saw a minstrel act (white people made up in blackface, dressed as black slaves) featuring a man garbed up as a plump "mammy" slave singing a song called "Old Aunt Jemima."  Rutt appropriated this name and picture of the minstrel-show character and renamed the pancake mix for Aunt Jemima.

Nancy comes into the picture when the two friends ran out of money and sold the Jemima brand to another company.  The new company, Davis Milling, improved the flavor of the mix by by switching a few ingredients and adding powdered milk, so that all you had to do was add water to get great-tasting batter.

To get the word out about this great product, Davis sought out a "mammy" type black woman to act as a living mascot.  Nancy Green, born a slave and still working as a domestic for the family who had once been her masters, was recommended for the job by her employer, Judge Walker.  She made her debut as Aunt Jemima at the 1893 World's Columbian Expo in Chicago, flipping pancakes, singing songs, and telling stories about her old life "on the plantation."  (All made up--her origins were on a much more modest farm.)  She was the very icon of the idealized antebellum south, and was so popular that security guards had to be called in to keep the crowds moving along.  (That picture, by the way?  It's a fake.  Not only is it not Nancy Green at the World Expo, it's not even a black woman;  it's a self-portrait of a white female artist in blackface and traditional slave garb, titled "Aunt Jemima:  I Sang Because They Paid Me."  The picture is also cropped--the artist's original has Aunt Jemima chained to a table laden with pancakes!)

So, to be clear:  Two white men invented something new, slapped a black slave cook's picture on it, and then sold it to another white man, who hired a black woman to portray that slave cook.  That's wince-making all by itself, but it gets worse.

Myths And Moneymakers

Davis, and later Quaker Oats, invented an entire mythology for Jemima:  born a slave on a plantation owned by a kind master, she not only invented the pancake recipe, but also used her delicious product as a distraction to keep Union soldiers from harming her master!  She also had a husband, "Uncle Moss," and two "pickaninny" children, "Wade" and "Diana."  You could cut out paper dolls of the family on early boxes of the mix; later there were rag dolls you could send away for.  There were also promotional products such as a shopping-reminder board with Jemima's likeness on it, with pegs next to such grocery needs as flour, eggs, vegetables, meat, etc., and little wooden markers to hang on a peg if you were out of that item; the top of the board carried the caption "Gots To Get."

But The Truth Is...

There's no indication that Green ever became a millionaire from her time as Aunt Jemima;  in fact, she was still working as a domestic servant right before she died in an auto accident (a driver lost control and veered up onto the sidewalk, striking Green and killing her).  That lifetime contract was bogus, too --she was supposed to go on a tour of Europe, but Green refused to travel over the ocean to another land.  That would have been grounds for firing her, and the fact that she later lists her occupation not as "cook" but as "housekeeper" seems to indicate that she did lose her Aunt Jemima status.

She did earn enough to contribute to her church (Olivet Baptist) and to other charities, but that is more an indicator of devotion than of wealth.  Whether she spoke up about the social evils of her time is hazy;  I doubt she used the Aunt Jemima platform to do that, as it would be out of character for the image Davis was presenting:  the cheerful, humble, devoted house slave, so eager to serve up a big stack of cakes at the drop of a kerchief.

So, you see, the original writer of this post was an idiot.  The co-worker who chose to share this inaccurate tripe with the rest of us was an even bigger one.

II:  The City Awakens, The Racists Howl...

I do love N.K. Jemisin's work.  I've spoken of her short story,  "The City Born Great,"  and I'm talking about it again because she expanded it into a novel!!!!  It's called The City We Became, and I was so excited to see the notification on Amazon that I immediately went and ordered it from my local bookstore (I only order online if I can't get an item from a brick-and-mortar store).

But as I was waiting for my book to arrive, I got curious;  so I had a really quick look at the reviews.

Yikes.

There were a lot of reviews for this book, and there are always a few grumblers in the stack of any collection of opinions;  but I was amazed at the low-rated review titles:  "A Disgrace." "This Is Racist Garbage." "Good Premise, But Excessive Focus On Race, Gender, Etc. Gets In The Way."  By far, the biggest complaint in these reviews is the amount of setup time Jemisin uses to tell us about the main characters' ethnicity and culture, as well as their gender and sexuality.

How's This For A Statistic?

White people in NYC make up only 42.7% of the population.  The percentage drops to 32.1% if you remove the white people who have some Latino or Hispanic in their ancestry.  Black people make up 24.3%, while Latino/Hispanic folks make up 29.1 percent, and Native Americans comprise 0.4 % of New York's population.  (These stats come from the US Census Bureau, 2019 estimates.)

Now, think of any movie or book with NYC as the setting.  How often are any of the leading heroes any race other than white?  I'm not talking about "best friends" or cab drivers or store clerks;  I mean the actual heroes.

Not many, huh?

And when the hero(ine) is some other race or culture, more often than not, he or she is portrayed in a stereotypical role:  The single black mother.  The lonely private eye.  The teen trying to break out of the urban core.  The last positive portrayal of a black man in a blockbuster movie that I have seen was Agent J in "Men In Black," and even then, the young man starts out as a cop chasing a bad guy, and later on he is used as comic relief (when the alien is giving birth)!

With the percentages I cited, there ought to be, statistically,  more people of color as stockbrokers, scientists, professors, accountants, architects, and lots of other professions besides "cop" or "server" or "cab driver" in New York.  And in fact, there are.  But you would never know it from reading your average book or seeing your average movie.

So Jemisin's tactic of coming right out and telling you that the gay art gallery director is a Native American of the Lenape tribe is actually very appropriate.  In fact, she turns the stereotypes completely upside-down:  The only cab driver you meet in the novel is a white woman, and the monster fought by the heroes is called the Woman In White (because that's how she manifests to those she tries to entrap)!

So Why The Anger?

*Sigh.*  I cannot even pretend to know what is in these folks' minds.  All I have is an educated guess, which is that "white people have always had center stage, so that's the way it's supposed to be."  Which is, of course, untrue.  But I suppose it's scary to think that you are losing your majority status...and even scarier to think that the way you have treated others is about to round the corner behind you and bite you right in the ass.  And scared people are dangerous, as Yoda pointed out in The Phantom Menace:  "Fear leads to anger.  Anger leads to hate.  Hate...leads to suffering."

III:  Why Black Lives Must Matter

I was talking to one of my bosses about people appropriating the culture of Native Americans;  his amused response was,  "What culture?"  That really floored me, because even as a kid I had studied various Native cultural expressions:  jewelry, money (yep, some tribes had beads that were used as a means of exchange), clothing, agriculture, government, intertribal sign language...it was all so complex and fascinating, and here's this white guy sweeping that all away with two words!

The thing is, you hear the same, or similar, about black culture.  It either doesn't exist at all, or it's portrayed as inferior to the cultural accomplishments of white people.  Never mind that nearly all of the music we listen to has its origin in black culture.  Rock and roll is a direct descendant of jazz and rhythm and blues, and the first writers and performers of rock were black--Chubby Checker, Fats Domino, and Little Richard are the ones who immediately come to mind, but they aren't the only ones.  And before anybody says "country and western,"  need I remind you of how much rock, soul, and even hip-hop have influenced the form?  There are country versions of soul songs all over the place (I Can Love You Like That;  If Loving You Is Wrong (I Don't Want To Be Right), to name just two), and country songs that use hip-hop beats and even spoken rhymes (This Is How We Roll, for one;  Chillin' On A Dirt Road, for another).  We have appropriated black music since time out of mind.  And yet, when Lil Nas X did a cool number called Old Town Road, it wasn't "country" enough for the Billboard Country chart!  I mean, seriously?!

But there is a worse thing than devaluating a group's culture, and that is devaluating their very lives.

For Me, It Started With...

...Rodney King.

Maybe because I was too young to have lived through the Civil Rights marches, so I hadn't seen the police dogs and fire hoses and police brutality of that time.

But everybody knew about Rodney King, because some brave soul had a camcorder and got the bad stuff on film.  Oh, the older Civil Rights stuff had been filmed by "official" news folk, and it was important;  but this was just an ordinary citizen who shot the footage and then shared it.  It marked the beginning of the "citizen watchdogs" who have used cameras and cell phones to bear witness to the evil that hides in the shadows.

And it turns out that much of that evil is done by the very people who are supposed to be our protectors.  My childhood was full of the image of Officer Friendly, the kind policeman who would guide you home if you were lost, or help get your cat out of a tree.  But this was not the image that black people saw;  instead, it was the cop who stopped them if their car was new (because how could a black person afford a car like that?  He had to be a thief/pimp/drug pusher!), called them "boy" (because criminals don't deserve to be called "Mister"), and beat them up and ran them in on the flimsiest of charges (He sassed at me!  That's disrespect!  And squirmed...that's resisting arrest!).

Added to that scary image is one I didn't know about until recently:  the trigger-happy cop.

A Different World

Cops live in a totally different world than most of us do.

For a police officer, the people s/he meets come in two flavors:  Good and Bad.  What defines either of these flavors depends on his background and his training.

For many decades now, black people have been portrayed as poor, dirty, lazy, ignorant, dope-addicted, raping, thieving, murdering...criminals.  The reason their neighborhoods are run-down is that they don't care about revitalizing them;  their schools are inferior because the parents don't want to get involved.  Never mind the underhanded banking practices that prevented blacks from getting start-up business loans or mortgage/improvement loan approvals.  Never mind "white flight,"  where white people moved their families to the suburbs so their children didn't have to go to school with black children.  Never mind the food deserts, where full-service grocery stores are far away and the nearest food is processed crap from a convenience store on the corner.  Never mind that the most a black urban-core inhabitant ever sees of his municipal tax money is the police cars that show up to arrest a man or woman for the three joints in their pocket, or the (possibly) unlicensed firearm, or just because they had a bad attitude.  The garbage trucks show up on a hit-or-miss basis, the potholes get larger every year, the murders remain unsolved...but there are always plenty of cops.  And chances are, those cops are going to be white, with the mindset of Us and Them, Good and Bad.

And when you have the attitude that darker skin equals Bad, that's when the fear/anger/hate sets in.

Statistics That Made Me Blink...And Then Cry

According to Statistica.com,  there were 999 fatal shootings of civilians by police in 2020.  Of those killed, 226 were black.  Do the math, and you see that there the ratio is 1:4.42 (rounded to the second decimal place), so slightly fewer than 25% of police kills were of blacks.

But blacks make up only 12.1% of the population of the United States--13% if we add in the multi-racial blacks.  That means that black people were killed by police about twice as often as whites or other ethnicities.

And why?  Because they were criminals?  Tell that to Breonna Taylor.  Police in Louisville used a no-knock warrant at her home because they thought she was part of a drug ring.  When the cops showed up at the house after midnight, both Breonna and her boyfriend asked who was there, but got no answer.  When the officers used a battering ram to bust in the door, the boyfriend, now up and headed for the door, fired his (legally-registered) gun at what he thought was a home invader;  Breonna--unarmed--was shot as she accompanied him.  She had no criminal record and only circumstantial ties to the ex-boyfriend who was the real target (and who was found at another location).

Or how about Tamir Rice?  12 years old, and armed only with a fake gun.  Only problem was, the toy didn't have that orange tip on it that tells everyone it's a fake.  After this kid was seen aiming the toy gun at people, someone called 911 about it.  The caller told the dispatcher that it looked like a kid and the gun was probably a fake, but the dispatcher failed to relay that info to the two officers sent to the site.  When they arrived at the scene, the cops yelled at Tamir to show his hands; instead, he reached back as if to draw his fake gun, and one cop shot him in the torso.  Witnesses say the cop car hadn't even come to a full stop before the boy was shot.  What's more, when Tamir's 14-year-old sister tried to get to her brother minutes after the shooting, she was cuffed and thrown to the ground by the officers (and she wasn't armed with anything!).

Yeah, But...

Okay, this is where people start second-guessing.

Breonna was hooked up with a drug dealer (at one time), so of course she was under suspicion.

Tamir didn't have that orange tip on the fake gun, and he didn't obey the officers, so of course he was going to get shot.

Michael Brown shouldn't have been walking in the street.

George Floyd shouldn't have been passing a counterfeit twenty...

...And on and on it goes.  There's always an excuse for a cop killing a black person.

But what I want to know is, which of the incidents I just named was worth a civilian dying from a cop's bullet (or knee to the neck)?  When the hell did so many cops start thinking it was okay to be Dirty Harry?

When did we lose sight of the fact that everyone is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law?

When did the phrase "To protect and serve" not apply to an entire race of people?

Because it doesn't, you know.  Somehow, the idea that black people commit more crimes has seeped into the public consciousness and sprouted like mildew, and the result is that the police think that black people are more dangerous than white people.  Neither of these things is true, and if people would actually look at the statistics, they would see that.  But the stats remain hidden, and the myth holds sway.

And that's why we need organizations like Black Lives Matter:  because for a long time now, they haven't.  When a black person killed by the cops is belittled, criminalized, brushed off...when that happens, people watching these tragic events get to shrug and pretend that the human being who lost his or her life wasn't important.  They weren't sons, or wives, or daughters, or loved by others--they were only criminals...

Epilogue:  The Color Of Karma Is Black

I'd like to end this with a poem.  I wrote it after getting fed up with the dehumanization of black people shot by police:

Blue pulls the trigger,

Black takes the blame:

--He ran--

--She resisted--

--He reached--

--And they were criminals anyway.

But a life cut short

Never gets the chance

To repent,

To atone,

To change and grow.

Blue sows the wind,

Reaps the hurricane:

And the Color of Karma is Black.

- Lisa Gulick

Sept. 2020

This blogger has been keeping tabs on unarmed black victims of police brutality, whether with a gun or without.  Check it out here;  it's incredibly sobering:

https://www.reneeater.com/on-monuments-blog/tag/list+of+unarmed+black+people+killed+by+police