Will backward in retreat trump forward to the future?

via Inbox (69) – cpeek.cp@gmail.com – Gmail

Will backward in retreat trump forward to the future?

                                                                   By Charles Peek

 Soon after the close of WWII, a passel of people initiated efforts to make some vital and long-overdue changes in America. In many cases the need for these changes had been widely recognized as early as the turn of the century, but people and their causes had waited through two world wars and a depression before they could begin to act.
Act they did!

Brown vs. Topeka, Freedom Rides, voter registration, the Feminine Mystique, tribal sovereignty—huge national movements in the areas of civil rights and women’s rights that led eventually to gay rights, changes in laws affecting all sort of issues of sex and gender, and along with these our growing awareness of the environment, the depredations it was enduring, the dangers those depredations portended. Add to that the youth movement, opposition to unjust wars, concerns for peace and justice on all fronts.

Some of these movements created great bodies like the United Nations.  Some others, like the Civil Rights movement, changed the ground rules in courts and in the court of public opinion.  Still others were more local, specific to places or denominations.  For instance, the movements that led to open up the church and its liturgy were largely led in the decades after the war by people who were veterans, some of them even veterans of the Great War.  Their time had come.  Fifty years of waiting and we could finally get on with the business of becoming America.

In the wake of all this forward movement, movement that shamed any number of southern sheriffs, domestic bullies, and defenders of all that was unholy, we could almost believe we were, as the song said, at the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.  Somehow we forgot that there was left behind in the wake of progress a hard core of white, straight, males who were completely unprepared to live alongside and compete in a global world where people of color, of various sexual orientations and genders also enjoyed rights and privileges.

Often less educated and lower on the economic scale, the “good old boys” longed to restore the time when ignorance did not have to bow to knowledge, where there were no upstart women or Negroes or natives or gays, where white, straight, males ruled home and community and where white, straight, male citizens of the USA still ruled the world without having to be concerned with other’s points of view, other’s needs, the sometimes devastating effects of American power and privilege, the increasing globalization of the world.

For decades they flocked first to the Republican Party, eventually to the Tea Party, waiting until one or the other would restore the world to where they thought it was before all these pesky civil rights movements, environmental protection movements, marriage equality movements, women’s equality movements. Their question: would the damn political correctness of the world ever disappear and just leave us back in charge of the hen house the way we used to be?

Republican’s catered to this to get votes, some of them subtly, some egregiously, and hence the Tea Party.  Then (and still) the Tea Party caters to this to get votes. Many so called Evangelical Christians bought into it and gave it a veneer of righteousness. But you couldn’t quite trust the top of the ticket to really get rid of 50-60 years of progress and take us back to when bullying and bigotry and bragging and bitching were just fine thank you.

Until, of course, now.  And there came upon the scene one man with the desire and skills to manipulate all these isms—sexism, chauvinism, all the old isms—and all these phobias—xenophobia, homophobia—and turn them into political support.  People mocked when Trump arrogantly declared, “I am the man!” Well, friends, he is absolutely right.  You can argue whether or not he really gives a hoot about what all these folks feel and think they want.  You can’t argue that he has not been the single force that brought them out of the closet, unleashed their angers and violence, and threatened the very fabric of ideals that drove American reform from WWII to the proliferation of desert wars, wars which not just incidentally unloosed many of the same fears, behaviors, and assertions of male privilege and domination in another part of the world as we’ve seen emerge here. (One of the great ironies is how fundamentalist extremism is much the same wherever you look and among whatever religions feed it!)

Now, without question, this characterization does not encompass every Trump supporter.  I know many decent people who will vote for Trump—although I confess that vote will remain inexplicable in the face of the great tragedy it would be if Trump were elected.  Still, the duffle bag of “deplorables” should more appropriately refer to the fears and ignorance and behaviors of many of his supporters, not to the supporters themselves.

Yet, it is no accident that so many people who oppose Trump are treated violently by supporters without being restrained by other supporters who would not themselves raise an angry hand and who seem willing to overlook Trump’s own repeated calls for violence to be done to those who oppose him, Trump’s own abusive manner and language.

Curiously, the media have not yet quite tumbled to their role in creating Trump and giving him legitimacy, nor does the media seem aware that they would be first on the chopping block were Trump to win.  (First or second depending on how many churches will be found standing up for the actual Gospel!)  Or perhaps, since “news” is now forced to “entertain,” perhaps it is not curious at all.  We used to ask, what would a war be like if nobody came to it? Now we can ask, what would advertising revenues for networks be like if there was an election that they didn’t make seem like a contest?

And just possibly we all need to waken to the fact that many people, some of them our friends, resent the hell out of the loss of an America they believe once existed and they want it back—an America of unrivaled power whose solutions are always military, a country still ruled by a white minority, homes and communities and public spaces ruled by males, and heterosexual serial monogamy the only game anyone is allowed to play. To them, only in a world like that will American be “great” again.  To them, a progressive America is a “disaster.”

For many of them, the biggest disaster is that they have to pay taxes! For the less fortunate among them, the biggest disaster is that the capitalism they championed unleashed forces that put them out of work.

Trump is right about one thing: the playing field here is not even close to even. But he has the equation all backwards because bigots and bullies have tools they will not hesitate to use, and using them parleys into getting more and more free publicity.

But the choice is stark—backwards into a night into which we should not gently go or forwards into (and here is a phrase that sometime soon might catch on) “liberty and justice for all.”

[Here are some excellent articles to consult: Rebecca Onion’s “No Girls Allowed” in Slate, David Leonhardt’s “Simple Fix for Obamacare” in the New York Times, and Catherine Rampell’s “Want to Save the Republican Party?” in the Washington Post.]

                                                            Kearney, Nebraska October 31, 2016

On the eve of the 2016 Election

via Inbox (77) – cpeek.cp@gmail.com – Gmail

On the eve of the 2016 Election

By Charles Peek

Seven Lessons from this year’s long and sordid electioneering.

First, as the very wise Jim Schmitt has said, thank God the campaign was long—because it took every bit of that time for enough voters to return to some measure of sanity, to some thought of the values they once held, for the country to dodge a further descent into bullying and braggadocio.

Second, as every objective study shows, there are voters who just can’t shake the grip of lies they’ve believed, but they are a minority—highly vocal but small.  Meanwhile, most people have come to realize that Hillary Clinton is neither culpable nor dishonest, despite a small number of people who spent vast sums of our tax dollars trying to prove she is both.  What a dilemma—either she’s smarter than all those people and all that money—or she’s not guilty as charged. Where does the grip remain tightest? Among so-called Evangelical Christians.  Their strange politics—nostalgia for an America that never should have existed in place of the Gospel—has been a huge factor in the deterioration of our systems and institutions, but the signs are that the monolithic force they exerted is now split—almost 50-50—and that those still hanging on will have a diminished voice.  That alone may allow us to begin to find workable answers to some very real issues that have haunted our political landscape for far too long and been the lever by which unscrupulous or ideological politicians pried out votes to cater to big money, big oil, and the beneficiaries of divide and conquer.

Third, the election has in many cases turned into a referendum on underhanded, sometimes illegal tactics employed to change the political landscape.  In our state, a governor (whatever else you may think of him) has invested a great deal of his own money in local elections for candidates and causes of his own choosing.  The state law, which he is bound by oath to uphold, does not allow the death penalty, but he is the primary supporter of efforts to restore the death penalty.  His vetoes have been overturned several times, and he has targeted those Senators responsible.  He has organized Regents to support one candidate over another.  In the case of the Regents and the Legislature, both are by our Constitution non-partisan.  To make the elections partisan, therefore, subverts the very Constitution he took an oath to uphold.  Go figure why the Secretary of State and Attorney General have not been all over this!

Fourth, in many states, including my own, attempts to gerrymander districts into voting blocks to bar the opposing party, even when legal, witness to the overwhelming way in which loyalty to party comes before the good of the country.  It should be no surprise then that a good many Republicans, despite early protestations or actual convictions, have bellied up to drink at the Trump bar.  (Witness one of our Senator’s flip-flop on this that earned condemnation in the Washington Post.) There is a place for party loyalty, to be sure.  Without it, we’d have no parties, and despite the current clamor, that would spell chaos for us.  But there is a limit to party loyalty as well, and even some of our good friends will put friendship in jeopardy to carry the water in this election.  As to their usual defense—anything but crooked Hillary—see #2 above and consult what they have said over the years about not voting for party but for persons.

Fifth, the issue regarding the death penalty in our state has brought again to the surface the rather strange moral foundation supporters of the death penalty seem to promote—a foundation on which no moral system has ever been built, namely that someone else’s behavior should excuse mine.  That how others treat me is how I should treat them.  The proponents are often the same people who claim to believe in the Golden Rule—which is the exact opposite.  In the particular case of the death penalty, I find it understandable that someone who has felt great grief over the murder of someone dear to them should confuse revenge and justice.  But it is not understandable for the voters to perpetuate that confusion.  Most painful to watch—law enforcement officials (read again that description) who confuse revenge and justice.  And that misunderstanding tells us a lot about why there are such important questions about law enforcement in our cities these days.

Sixth, there are now a good number of prominent Republicans who have stopped short of endorsing Trump but who are working to keep the very congressional majority that, as much as almost everything else, gave us Trump in the first place.  Paul Ryan, for example, will not campaign with Trump, but he will campaign in Congressional races for people who do support Trump and whose inaction in the last Congress created the vacuum into which the Trump tornado blew and swept away the last vestiges of true Republican values.  The so-called rightwing of the Republican Party needs to hear what true conservatism is as much as do the Tea Party adherents (Tweedledum and Tweedledee indeed).

Here’s one reminder of what those of us raised Conservative were once taught:

“What it means to be a conservative . . . Stability, order, temperance, balance, incrementalism are all important conservative virtues.  Disorder, instability, chaos, intemperance, and anarchy are not.” Charlie Dent, head of the Tuesday Group Caucus (yup…maybe even they are learning!)

Yes, not only not much of Trump visible there, but not much of the Tea Party in general or of what’s left of the Republican Party either, certainly not the House Freedom Caucus that has obstructed almost every constructive initiative since the last election put people in office who neither know nor care how our government is intended to work.

Seven, the major news services (network, cable, press, television—forget radio—it was lost long ago) have yet to face up to their deplorable role in the Trump phenomenon. Even NPR, with a misguided sense of what balanced news means, promoted coverage of an array of candidates and speeches and causes that should have had not even a moment’s claim on our attention—baseless, trivial, but “news” because someone made enough noise or they were short of filler for the 24/7 round of “news.”  Meanwhile, while not following through on the claims and counterclaims, while lacking the budget for research and depth reporting, they have focused news time on such stories as the Kardashian robbery.  No wonder vital issues like Global Warming get little play in the news.  And the result? Even usually sound talking heads like Mark Shields start speaking glibly on subjects they haven’t really studied or using their air time for riding their own hobby-horses.  As long as news bureaus are treated like entertainment—subject to the bottom line—don’t expect this to change anytime soon.

{One short postscript: Glad to see a posting on Facebook that linked to an article by Carl Davidson…he and I were grad students together a century ago at UNL and he was even then a bright and engaged fellow…glad to hear he still is—thanks John Reiser!}

PS: for locals hereabouts, please consider Marsha Fangmeyer for Regent, Bob Lammers in Legislative District #37, and Melissa Freelend for Nebraska Public Power District

Kearney, Nebraska 10/25/16

 

A HERO OF OUR TIMES

A Hero of Our Times (with due credit to Lermontov for the title)

I’m always suspicious of hero worship, especially when the hero is from far off in history (or, in the case of science fiction, from far off in the galaxy).  Many people’s allegiance to Jesus seems to be just that kind of suspect hero worship.  I’m not bothered by the “mystical” Jesus, but the “mythical” Jesus seems to be either irrelevant or dangerous…but that’s the Jesus we seem these days most often to encounter.

The problem with either historic or galactic distance is that, as Mies van der Rohe said, God is in the details.  So, as he well knew, is the devil.  Too much distance blurs nothing so much as the details until we are left with a figure who may well have been heroic but whose heroic image bears little resemblance to the real person and little real relevance to our lives.

The George Washington who may well have gotten his false teeth from the teeth of his or someone’s slaves yet who ended up emancipating his slaves in his will is much more the hero to me than the “could tell no lie Cherry Tree” Washington.

I want, in this blog, to bring the “hero” back home, and possibly prompt you to take note of your own “local” hero.

I’ve posted recently on Facebook a comment on the state of the arts in our community.  We have just lost some giants.  Art Pierce in calligraphy, Don Welch both as teacher and poet, Gary Zaruba both as artist and as a prime mover in the Nebraska Art Collection, Nancy Westerfield who was never adequately recognized as a poet…and there have been other musicians and artists and teachers.  The loss need not be through death—we “lost” Vern Plambeck when he retired from years of editing the Platte Valley Review and subsequently moved to Omaha and will soon lose the wonderful Sandoz scholar Helen Stauffer about to move to Lincoln.

I went on to point to all the newer and current writers and artists and musicians who have come on the scene, some of them with national reputations now.

Even at Eucharist last Sunday we were able to celebrate some of those creative spirits—Marilyn Musick’s return to the organ console after surgery on an arm, Lois Thalken who subbed with Todd and Mike Lovelace and others in the praise band (Greg Tesdall happened to be gone that day), Bret Ensz who usually sings with the band also now doing music with our youth, and the talented John Kosch who made his debut as our new choir director.

I no sooner posted the lament for those gone and the celebration of those taking their place than I began to receive replies that reminded me and other readers of yet more figures no longer with us or others now finding prominent places in our area’s vital arts community. I’d only scratched the surface.

The same lament and celebration could extend all through Nebraska.  Kira Gale once suggested to the legislature that our license plates describe us as “The Writers’ State”—since we have had so many famous poets, novelists, and screenplay writers, just as we have had in the fields of visual, theatrical, and musical arts as well.

The redoubtable Jerry Fox and Ron Crocker and I did a local program, one I’d like to do statewide (or how about an event in D.C. hosted by the Nebraska Congressional delegation!!!), entitled “This is Nebraska: Out Loud and in Your Face.”  Audiences were astounded at the talent here now and the rich soil in which these talented people have thrived.

(Of course, the legislature didn’t change our license plates.  Too bad…it might have helped us avoid the change from the “Good Life’ to “Nebraska Nice”—not that either motto is altogether clear.  That’s all right.  Our local university, the Antelopes, had for a year the motto Join the Herd—somewhat embarrassing in an academic institution! And don’t hold your breath for a Congressional Delegation program…they are all usually back here raising money!)

Much of what I posted briefly before has all come to mind again in the recent anniversaries of two heroes of our time, Mike Adams and Charlie Stubblefield.

Friendship with heroes is not for the faint of heart, or course.  There are hazards that having play-pretend heroes avoids but into which having real life heroes plunges you with abandon.  Both Mike and Charlie were somewhat curmudgeonly.  Both had decided opinions and spoke them with sometimes surprising bluntness.  Both could be, let’s put it charitably, pre-occupied!

But what amazing lives they led, each a story of so many difficulties overcome, lived through, survived, only to emerge stronger, better.  They were examples of Nietzsche’s dictum that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

No one who knew either of them ever doubted for a moment that they were in the presence of a unique person, possessed of great talent and good heart.

At both their memorials, at both of which I was privileged to serve as emcee, the stories that were told painted a picture of a person who touched the lives of those around him and a person whose contribution to his chosen field were unique and lasting.  Many fiction writers attest to the influence of Charlie Stubblefield’s teaching, himself no mean storyteller.  No musician in these parts but would tell what an amazing influence Mike Adams had on our music scene. Gifted in their own right, they encouraged others to find and use their gifts.

I had the pleasure of being on stage with Mike Adams for the Carl Sandburg programs that Kate Benzel originated—he could put together an “ensemble” out of disparate musical talents in one rehearsal!  I’ve been to breakfasts of the old Dudley Bailey breakfast group where we did little else but listen to Charlie spin a tale!

I know a little about our music—about Howard Hansen and Chip Davis and Ann Ronnell and Conor Oberst. I know a little bit about our literature—about the greats (Cather, Eiseley, Neihardt, Wright, Sandoz, Kloefkorn, etc.) and the current crop (Brummels, Hansen, Saiser, Koozer, Mason, Dawes, Bokenkamp, etc.). I know something about the people who painted and sculpted here and the directors and curators of the works of their hands. It’s a rich place, for sure, and this month the Nebraska Center for the Book will recognize Twyla Hansen and Marge Saiser with its Mildred Bennett Award.

But, Kira, I wouldn’t have been unhappy with a license plate inscribed simply “Where Mike Adams and Charlie Stubblefield lived”! Both are heroes to many who knew them, even if they are unlikely to ever enjoy the dubious honor of being heroes to those who didn’t know them at all. Still, I bear in mind these words of Edward Arlington Robinson: “No songs are ended that are ever sung.”

Chuck Peek / Kearney, Nebraska