Category: Politics

The Democratic Party of Calloway County did a notable thing several months ago.  They elected an intelligent, hard-working woman, Mrs. Vonnie Hays Adams, as their chairperson.

 Adams is not the first women to be a Democratic leader, but she does represent a younger generation of woman, more of whom are now willing to accept the difficulty, in the conservative South at least, of being a woman in politics.

She is aware of the research that that shows that a woman who runs for elected office must work harder, raise more money, and bend over backward to be more likable than a male candidate to get elected.

To get a better understanding of women in politics, I spoke with Robyn Pizzo, a current member of the executive committee of the Calloway Democratic Party and co-chair of the membership committee.

She pointed out that workplaces staffed largely by women—education, healthcare, childcare—are the very areas where women’s leadership would result in benefits for all of us. As Pizzo commented “When women have first-hand knowledge of the equity issues that exist in this part of our economy.”

Pizzo believes that “when women are elected, we all win. Women’s participation in politics tends to result in policies in areas of health and education that improve our quality of life”.

Two of the administrators I worked for during my career were women.  They were strong leaders who knew their jobs and had clear goals.  Unlike some men “bosses” I had, these women were also good listeners.  They didn’t need to avoid wearing pink either.

Since issues such as childcare, equal pay for women, healthcare, pre-K programs and family leave are important issues for Democrats, one might expect women would be eager to enter public service by running for political positions.

Yet that is not the case locally.  Only seven of the twenty-five top elected officials listed in the Murray Ledger and Times are women.  One of them, our State Representative Mrs. Imes, has even said that she wants things to remain the same for her grandchildren as they are now.

While I do understand her love of tradition, I also know as a historian that the only constant is change. Female officeholders can help us cope with those changes; they have skills to make the world safe “for children and other living things,” to revive a slogan we used decades ago when protesting the war in Vietnam.

Perhaps women are reluctant to run for public office here because of the resistance they can face.  When Vonnie Hays Adams was campaigning for a county magistrate’s position during the last election, one voter asked her: “Can women be magistrates?”

If you look around Murray and Calloway County, you will quickly notice that it is primarily women who “are caring for the most vulnerable people in our community,” Pizzo pointed out.

Women staff the Child Literacy Program and are a major presence at Angel’s Attic. Needline was created by a woman and has been directed by women ever since.  Women created Soup for the Soul and the Calloway County Collective set up during our COVID-19 epidemic.  Women created our public library many decades ago and still direct and manage this facility.

In addition, a woman heads the local Chamber of Commerce and many small businesses have been created by women.  Those who greet us when we do business at the bank or courthouse are almost all female as well. A few of them were even elected.

Washington is so gridlocked that I understand why intelligent people are retiring from Congress. The unwillingness of those in Washington to work together to actually govern the country and meet our current needs is very clear.  Most of the resistance to serving the people is spear-headed by Mitch McConnell, sad to say. He, and not Nancy Pelosi, is the chief obstructionist.

But locally, things are different.  We can work together here to create positive change. However, “if our government doesn’t look like the people it is supposed to represent,” Robyn reminds us, “there will be perspectives, issues, and challenges facing our community that will not have a voice.” 

When in college (the first in my family to attend) I became fascinated with the term “cognitive dissonance” first coined by a psychologist in the 1950s. 

It is defined by my American Heritage Dictionary as “a condition resulting from inconsistency between one’s beliefs and one’s actions, such as opposing the slaughter of animals and eating meat.”

            Another definition found on line told me that cognitive dissonance “causes feelings of unease and tension” which people try to avoid by “’explaining things away’ or rejecting new information that conflicts with their existing beliefs.”

            We all experience this condition.  We cheat on our diets and rationalize it; for years I smoked cigarettes while believing that smoking could kill me.  We tell lies but consider ourselves honest. I believe carbon emissions are dangerously warming the planet but drove a gas-guzzling motorhome for seven years.

            Certainly we see cognitive dissonance in both our religion and our politics, the two subjects that polite people in my parents and grandparents days were told to avoid. Many people today say they avoid churches because of the “hypocrites” who say they believe in loving their neighbor but hate  people they dislike—immigrants, gays, foreigners, or members of other religious or political groups.

            We have just lived through the presidency of Donald Trump, who was seen by many conservative Christians as a savior of family and religious values despite his verified sexual exploits, his habitual lying, cheating his workers, and his illegal and unconstitutional behavior.  Many members of the Trump base were comfortable with this inconsistency and convinced themselves that anything bad said about Trump was a lie.

            As humans, we are adept at converting our uncomfortable feelings into certainty.  Those who disagree with us, we say, are completely mistaken.

            This helps explain both the belief in the lie that Trump won the 2020 election and the commonly heard statement last year that COVID-19 was a “hoax.”

            It might not be so bad if we didn’t replace our discomfort with strong anger and violence directed at those with whom we disagree, but the events of January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol show how difficut this is to do.  

            Cognitive dissonance will always exist, in both our personal and our political lives. It is an unfortunate part of our human nature.

            What does not have to continue is American acceptance of those who are proud of this inconsistent morality.  We do not have to act as if those who lie have as much right to publicly do so as those who speak the truth. To be blunt, our TV reporters do not have to humor those who speak nonsense before the camera, using foolish statements about the existence of conspiracies to justify their own discomfort with the truth.

            We should laugh them off the stage, challenge their right to be taken seriously when they clearly are speaking nonsense, and then, if they persist, ignore them and deny them a public platform.

            Stop people talking about Ivermectin on television unless they are talking about a horse or a treatment for river blindness; don’t seek out people to interview who want to proclaim that they have “the freedom of choice” or the “constitutional freedom” to endanger the lives of others by not being vaccinated or wearing a mask during a COVID-19 pandemic.

            And we should do all this politely but firmly!

            To help better understand this problem, I recommend a book by social psychologists Elliot Aronson (who worked with the man who invented the term “cognitive dissonance”) and Carol Tavris: Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions and Hurtful Acts (2007; updated in 2020).

            A shorter look at their argument is found in Atlantic (July, 2020) titled “The Role of Cognitive Dissonance in the Pandemic.”

            And when talking to a family member who has refused COVID vaccination, it is best not to start the conversation with “How could you be so stupid?” 

 Instead, ask your relative to find someone who shares their political views but has been vaccinated; ask that person to explain why he or she did that.

            If that doesn’t work, just tell your relative to just stop watching television.

             I recall a cartoon from my early years that showed a picture of a slightly disheveled man wearing a poster board that had printed in bold letters: “Repent. The End is Near.”  

            We used to laugh at that because it seemed silly to think anyone could be so sure of the end. 

            Now I am no longer so sure that is the case.

            In the final two weeks of September, I saw the following new items. NPR had a story, repeated in other media outlets, about a meeting of representatives of three Christian denominations, Catholic Pope Francis, the Episcopal Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Patriarch Bartholomew, together urging us to pray for the planet and its peoples.

            “Widespread fires and droughts threaten entire continents,” the clergy leaders said, “sea levels rise, forcing whole communities to evacuate; cyclones devastate entire regions, ruining lives and livelihoods. Water has become scarce and food supplies insecure, causing conflict and displacement for millions of people.”

            The Christian leaders then called upon “everyone, whatever their belief or world view. . .to listen to the cry of the earth and its people who are poor, examining their behavior and pledging meaningful sacrifice for the sake of the earth which God has given us.”

            In a more secular or non-religious setting, I also heard António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, proclaiming on a network news show that it was almost too late to stop a disaster from fast-increasing climate change.  We need to curb carbon emissions—and every country was well behind on their promises to do so.

            So what are we Americans doing about this patently bipartisan threat? 

Congress seems to find too expensive a bill that would, according to Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, put the United States in a position to reach only 50% emission reductions by 2030. 

            That goal does not come close to meeting satisfying the urgency underlying the plea of the UN General Secretary and the Christian leaders. And the bill to do this will be reduced in both money and intent before it is approved.

            And Senator Joe Manchin says he doesn’t think that eliminating fossil fuels will “clean up the global climate” anyway.  Of course, what else should we expect of the Senator from a state that produces 91% of its energy needs from coal?

            Are we doomed?  Well, that depends on whether we have the political courage to actually tax in some form or fashion the continuing use of fossil fuels and to do so quickly.

            President Biden’s climate proposals would have us introduce tax incentives for clean energy and electric vehicles.  It would also establish a standard for what constitutes clean energy, and would create a “civilian climate corps” modeled on the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps.  It would hire 20,000 people annually, similar to Americorp, at $15.00 an hour, to do such things as restore wetlands, fight wildfires, and improve our environment by removing invasive species.

            Of course, the key to any attempt to save our world and the human species requires a change in attitude. Do we value human and other life more than money? Democrats seem more willing than Republicans to put the survival of humanity ahead of immediate financial gain for wealthy executives and stockholders in the fossil fuel industry. 

            But the “proof is in the pudding,” as we like to say, even though the original expression was that “the proof of the pudding is in the eating or tasting.”   This helps to clarify the meaning.

            Another way to say this is to say that the proof is in the walking, not in the talking, or in the “lawing” instead of the jawing.  

            So maybe we should all write or call our Congress people. Or call our state representative and senator, Ms. Imes and Mr. Howell at the Legislative Message Line (800 372-7181), and ask them to set a bi-partisan example on the state level by supporting legislation to promote clean energy in Kentucky. 

            Then we could all be pro-life, in the deepest and most important way possible!

Recently a conservative friend encouraged me to broaden my liberal horizon by reading an article on “The Real Structural Racism” in the Wall Street Journal (9-6-21)

            Written by William McGurn in the Opinion section, the article criticized progressives such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for not doing more to promote black achievement, saying that “if ever there were a structure systemically keeping African-Americans from getting ahead, it would surely be America big city public school systems.”

            McGurn cites low reading and math proficiency rates for black eight graders in Detroit (4% for math and reading) and Milwaukee (5% for math and 7% for reading).  He reported that this is also common in other large cities, despite much money spent per pupil in many of them.  

            The author goes also attacks progressives (meaning big-city Democrats) for ignoring the black achievement gap “by not making it easier for these kids to get into schools where black children are achieving, whether this be charter or parochial schools.”  He notes that some of them even want to eliminate achievement tests themselves to cover their failure.

            Yes, McGurn is describing a real problem.  Black students are not doing well in many big city schools, and I have no doubt that systemic racism does exist in many school systems.  His response to the problem is to privatize education. Send blacks to religious schools or charter schools and all will be well.   

Well, maybe.

            An article in McGurn’s own paper two years ago, “Charter Schools Success Is an Illusion,” by Glenn Sacks (8-26-19) pointed out that Charter schools, like magnet schools, are often successful because their enrollment is very selective.  Take only the best students, screen out any weak ones, and your test scores will improve. 

“There is a level of institutional hypocrisy here,” said the American Enterprise Institute in 2013.

 As a teacher, I have never been fond of measuring educational success by test scores, even though politicians love to reduce “success” to a number suitable for media sound bites.

The many ways of learning, as well as many factors outside schools, make education complex but also an easy mark for those who seek simple solutions.  Because of that, I see the value on McGurn’s final loaded question: “Is the answer to a black achievement gap to paper it over by eliminating any objective measures of achievement?”

Well, of course not.  This question falls in the “Have you stopped kicking your dog” category.

            Here is a more complex answer to the problem of institutional racism McGurn identifies in our educational system.  The first step, of course, would be to screen out racist individuals in the hiring and promotion process for teachers and administrators, as difficult as that might be.

            Second, and even more difficult, we could close the achievement gap between successful middle-class students and blacks and other minorities stunted by poverty by systemically promoting greater equity in our society. 

            Attack overt and subtle institutional practices outside the school that place poorer and minority students at risk from Kindergarten onward.  Make it easier for their families to get home loans and salaries commensurate with their white, middle-class counterparts. I wonder if Mr. McGurn supports a $15 an hour minimum wage?

            Then we might address those practices that make black students feel devalued before and after they enter school.  Fear of the police, of walking, driving, or even jogging in white neighborhoods (in Brunswick, Georgia, for example).  

            The simple truth is that black Americans, like many indigenous Americans, are not treated well by many of the rest of us. This can be due to prejudice by individuals but it is also due to the cultural assumptions and attitudes built into the practices of many institutions, including our schools.

            Many of us have heard of research showing that some white teacher’s lower expectations of black students can have consequences. A study in Education Week several years ago reported that “Teachers lower expectations for students can become a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy.’” [10-24-17]

            I appreciate Mr. McGurn’s awareness of the systemic racism built into our educational system, and I even wish that his simple solution would work.            Alas, it will not.  But, hey, thanks for pointing out the problem. It is a start.

            Since I have been asked by the executive committee of the Calloway County Democratic Committee to represent the Democratic Party as a columnist, it is fitting that I offer explain why I have been a registered member of this political party for over fifty years.

            I begin by thanking my friend and Democratic colleague Marshall Ward, who ably, factually, and faithfully represented Democratic party positions for the past three years.

            Although Marshall has left his post as a columnist to become a non-partisan lobbyist for the Kentucky Retired Teachers Association, I appreciate the research and knowledge of American history found in his columns.  As a European historian by training, I envy his mastery of such things as the Federalist Papers and the legacy of post-Civil War racism and segregation. 

            I also want to thank the Ledger and Times for presenting diverse opinions in columns and letters in recent years.  As a Ledger subscriber since 1969 and a person involved in various public issues since then, I can assure readers this has not always been the case.

            Now to today’s topic: Why am I a Democrat?

            First, the Democratic Party is more inclusive in its membership and policy positions.  While Democrats during the Clinton years did succumb to the lure of a neo-conservative centrism that lost them the support of many working-class Americans, especially union members, Democrats still offer a broader tent than Republicans, one which welcomes people of all classes and colors.  

            Second, Democrats see rational disagreements among party members as a virtue rather than as a sign of political disloyalty, as is the case with today’s Trumpist Republicans.  This can be a political weakness. Early 20^th century humorist Will Rogers once said: “I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat!”  

            Third, today’s Trump Republicans are so different from Republicans I grew up with—men like Everett Dirksen, Dwight Eisenhower, or the moderate Kentuckian John Sherman Cooper.  In those days, Republicans promoted different policies than Democrats but were open to debate and compromise and did not call their opponents enemies.  

Today, the Trumpists leaders of the Republican Party prefer power over policies, even when that preference requires them to lie about election results and pass state laws restricting the voting opportunities of lower class and minority voters. To some governors in this Trumpist party, promoting public health with vaccinations and facemasks is far less important than their political future.

Fourth, Democrats are less willing than Trumpist Republicans to distort the truth for political gain. A current example of this is the recent attacks on Critical Race Theory by Republicans. By focusing, in almost hysterical terms at times, on this academic theory, they distract their supporters from the very real issue of systemic racism in our social, political, and financial institutions.

Fifth, Democrats speak up louder for human survival during climate changes than do Republicans, who seem happy to continue polluting the planet with carbon emissions until it brings the death of all or most human and other life on earth.

Finally, I am a Democrat because American democracy is at stake, and the elections in 2022 and 2024 could be the most crucial since the election of 1860.  I know that us older folks are often humored for saying that things are worse than “when we were young,” but this time it actually seems to be true, as we see voting rights and Congress itself under attack.

And since Murray is a largely conservative, evangelical religious community, I will say that it is time for Democrats to repent of the grievous sin they committed during the past generation by ignoring the importance of local politics in favor of just trying to elect a Democratic president of the United States. Republicans now control the grass roots, filling school boards, local magistrate positions as well as many state legislatures. This doesn’t have to continue.

It is time for Democrats in Calloway County to stand up publicly for democracy, fairness, truth, public health, and the earth itself.  We need to work together to end systemic racism and reduce poverty in our community. 

I hope to play a small part in helping this happen.

            I know that this sounds like a nasty, sarcastic question.  Yet it is being be asked by some serious people in the American political community.

            One of them is New York Times columnist David Brooks, my favorite Republican opinion writer.  I admire him, of course, because he is convinced, with only a few reservations, that President Biden’s legislative agenda—including the infrastructure bill, the reconciliation package, and the measure designed to prevent voter suppression—are all necessary to end polarization in our politics and slow down the GOP move towards authoritarianism. Unlike the Trumpist Republicans, Brooks cares about people.

            In a recent column, Brooks expressed dismay that in traveling through five states, he found widespread indifference to the current battle in Congress over Biden’s legislative package.

            “Have we given up on the idea,” Brooks wrote, “that policy can change history? Have we lost faith in our ability to reverse, or even be alarmed by, national decline?”   Have we lost respect for “the common man,” so admired by our ancestors, he asked? Are we now so caught up in a “culture of individualism” and “vicious populism” that we no longer care for others? 

            If we did care for each other, would we let friends and family members die of COVID by not getting vaccinated?

Brooks noted that “the Democratic spending bills . . . serve moral and cultural purposes” and should not be viewed as only important politically and economically. Yes, “they would support hundreds of thousands of new jobs for home health care workers, childcare workers, metal and supply chain workers” but they would also “redistribute dignity downward” and “ease the indignity millions of parents face having to raise their children in poverty.”

While Brooks’ concern about American indifference to the importance of this current legislation is on target, behind his concern lies the greater danger facing us because of our present situation.  This is the threat to each other (neighbors all) and to democracy itself.

An underlying reason for the current deadlock threatening people and planet, aside from what Donald Trump did and said, is that many Americans felt ignored by their government for an entire generation. Both parties, especially Republicans, have fought expensive and fruitless wars against “terrorism” and catered to the rich with tax breaks. 

            Many of those who voted for Trump and Biden were angry at being ignored.

            Biden’s proposals would address the loss of faith in government that has been worsening since at least the Nixon presidency. They would increase jobs for infrastructure, cleaner energy, and expanded internet connections. They would provide tax credits and child care for parents, and protect our right to vote freely.  The largest per capita share of most money in the infrastructure bill would go to the very states where “Trumpian resentment is burning hot,” according to Brooks: Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota. 

President Biden is trying to support and dignify those very Americans who voted for Trump. He is trying to show them that their government cares. Of course, this will be just another empty promise if this legislation fails to pass or if the money Congress approves is reduced to a mere token of what is needed.

And yet most of us, writes Brooks, seem “indifferent.”  There are no protest marches, no massive letter or email writing campaigns urging Congress to do what is necessary to break the deadlock and pass these measures.  This is true in Kentucky where the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy estimates that 1.9 million Kentuckians would have guaranteed paid family leave and sick leave under the Build Back Better bill. Why does Mitch McConnell think that is unimportant?  Why do Kentuckians continue to let him think that??

Have we lost energy? Democracy requires more energy than does dictatorship.  It also works best in a community where all have minimal economic security.

Dictatorship, whether in a capitalist or socialist state, or in a mixed system like that of China, values obedience over energy. Is that what we want?

And let’s not pretend that “it couldn’t happen here.”  It can and it will, if we do not act now to move our legislatures off of their “if, ands, and buts.” 

This is what a political analysist wrote recently when a speaker at a recent meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) claimed that Trump had won the 2020 election.

The words in this title were used by a political analyst to describe a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAP) stating that Trump won the 2020 election.

What does it mean to say that someone is “untethered from reality?”  Psychologists call such people delusional, especially if they really think that what they are saying is true. The rest of us just say they that they are confused, mistaken, or just lying to protect themselves or to convince others of something that is not supported with evidence.  

Of course, children often engage in such defensive behavior. I knew a child once who, when unable to find his belt, claimed that someone had broken into the house during the night and stolen it (later found “hidden” under his bed).

We expect more of educated adults. Perhaps we should not.

What we should understand is that being “untethered from reality” is nothing new in human history, especially political history. It occurred when leaders in ancient Athens overestimated their power in 431 BCE and went to war with Sparta, leaving all of Greece open to conquest by Alexander the Great in the following century.  

It happened again when leaders in Europe in 1914 expected a short war and ended up permanently weakening Europe’s power in the world by the end of World War I in 1918.  And when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and declared war on the United States that same year, he was “untethered” from the reality of what these two “flanking powers” would do to his “thousand-year Reich” by 1945.

Even in our daily lives, we often cling to delusions we deem necessary to our emotional survival. Especially in difficult times, we are programed, it seems, to divide into camps, with ourselves among the good people and the “others” responsible for all the real or imagined evils that beset us.

Then there is also our ego-driven desire for power, governed far more by our emotions far than by our ability to reason.  It is just the way we are as humans, like it or not.

Do we think that saying that someone is “untethered from reality” will shock that person or his or her followers into repentance and a return to reason?   Do we think it will matter to those we see as delusional?  Naw, not really!  

Usually, I dare say, we are just trying to rally our base, those already persuaded, as well as to convince the imaginary “undecideds,” and get out the vote. What we often accomplish is just a continuation of the current political polarization.  

We face a dilemma?  Those of us who prefer legislation to help our fellow citizens over the current demoralizing “tug of war” in Congress now realize that belief in bi-partisanship is becoming an idea almost as untethered from reality as the belief that Trump won the 2020 election.  

Are we Democrats caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, to use another cliché?   The lack of ability to pass significant legislation itself weakens our faith in democracy at the very time the Republican Party is working to suppress voting at the state level.  

Are we approaching another civil war, this one over whether or not to remain a democratic republic or to move to minority rule by a dictator subservient to the rich (what Greeks called oligarchy, government by the few)?

The only way out, it seems, is to use the courts to preserve our right to vote while trying to convince voters that democracy is worth saving—and that can be done only if we clearly see the alternative. Twentieth-century authoritarian leaders were responsible for many millions of deaths.

Unfortunately, dictatorship is again part of our world’s political reality.  After all, dictators get things done quickly and do not tolerate political divisions.  They cut down rainforests in Brazil, fight Covid with soldiers in China, financially enrich those who support them in Russia, and ignore the poor everywhere.

Surely that will never happen here?  We are “proud to be Americans, because at least we know we’re free,” Lee Greenwood told us many years ago.

Let us hope and act as if that is still true. The clock is ticking.

This is an editorial piece written for our local paper in Murray, KY.

Well, here we go again!

Republicans are currently creating great fear by hysterically attacking “critical race theory” (CRT). This term is an academic way of saying that racial discrimination has been around for centuries in the United States and has become embedded our social and political institutions and policies.

However, many Republicans and rightists want you to believe that the notion of racial inequality and systemic discrimination by whites against blacks and other people of color, is really not much of a problem, but a Marxist inspired plot to turn whites against blacks and create turmoil.

We all really get along pretty well with each other, these critics of CRT say, despite a few unwarranted killings and traffic stops by a few “bad cops” here and there.  We have laws on the books against discrimination in banking, housing, education, and other areas of public life. There really isn’t any bias built into our social, political, or financial structures, they say, and all this talk about “systemic racism” just divides us.

As evidence that I am not being too sarcastic, I present as evidence of this new right-wing fear-spreading tactic a proposal by three Kentucky legislators to “ban teaching critical race theory in Kentucky,” according to a headline on the front page of the June 8 edition of the Ledger & Times.

Representative Joe Fischer (R-Fort Thomas), and fellow Republican Representatives Matt Lockett of Nicholasville, and Jennifer Decker of Waddy will introduce legislation in the 2022 General Assembly of Kentucky to prevent the teaching of critical race theory (by which they mean the history of racism) in all public schools and universities.

Lockett’s comment was intriguing: “Those who subscribe to critical race theory are more interested in labeling people, dividing them into categories, and pitting them against each other than they are [in] actually addressing important issues like racism.” 

He then adds that he wants to ban teaching that: “one race, sex, or religion is inherently superior to another race, sex or religion” and that “an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race, sex, or religion.”

These statements are irony, defined by my dictionary as “a state of affairs [or words, in this case] that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is [thus] often amusing as a result.”

Lockett also is engaging in what I have heard psychologists call “projection”—accusing others of what you yourself believe or do.  Haven’t many white Americans for centuries regarded black Americans as “inherently inferior”?  Wasn’t this one of the justifications of slavery?  Even after slavery officially ended, didn’t white leaders, especially in the American south, pit poor whites against blacks in order to prevent any collaboration between the two groups during the Progressive Movement of the late 19^th and early 20^thcenturies?

Lockett and his colleagues should choke on their words as they claim that people who support teaching about racism believe that “an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race, sex, or religion.”  Discrimination by whites against blacks has been blatant throughout American history, both before and after slavery.  Lockett’s colleague Decker’s comment is even more unbelievable: “Frankly, teaching that one race or sex is superior to another is insulting and dangerous.”   

It certainly is! But to have the effrontery to try to shift your behavior and beliefs onto your political enemies is even more “insulting and dangerous.”

During the Obama administration, right-wing leaders worked insistently to convince us that Obama was really a Muslim born in another country; later Donald Trump worked hard to convince his followers that the 2020 election was stolen.

Many Democrats were initially bemused by these tactics, certain that sensible, thinking voters would see though such outrageous statements.

They were wrong. These statements were not silly distractions. These lies convinced millions.

And Democrats will be wrong again if they do not strongly and repeatedly condemn these lies about racism in America. 

These tactics by the Republican right-wing are distortions of both history and the truth; they could pave the way for authoritarian rule—beware!

            Spending the final years of my education during the Vietnam War, I recall many references to “the light at the end of the tunnel” that promised a successful conclusion (for us anyway) to that war.  

            We tried to find hope in that phrase, but it was difficult. The war was finally concluded  with serious human cost to all participants, in 1975.

            Now we face another crisis in our history. The new tunnel we are trying to exit is “the climate crisis.” 

This tunnel results from natural processes and human excesses; among the latter is the population explosion of the twentieth-century sending global population from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 6 billion in the year 2000.  Animal, vegetable, and human life cannot continue as we know it with this unsustainable human growth rate, as I suggested in my recent column on our interest in Mars.

However, we now see light at the end of this particular tunnel, found in a piece from the New York Times weekend edition of May 22-24, entitled Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications.

The authors got my attention with this statement: “Maternity wards are already shutting down in Italy, Ghost cities are appearing in northeastern China. Universities in South Korea can’t find enough students, and in Germany, hundreds of thousands of properties [330,000 housing units since 2002] have been razed, the land turned into parks.”

This dramatic and rapid decline in population will reduce pressure on natural resources.  China, these authors tell us, could shrink from its current 1.41 billion to a mere 730 million by 2100. Decline, like growth “spirals exponentially” as fewer people have fewer children, causing a drop that “starts to look like a rock thrown off a cliff.”

This suggests that the “light” of a reduced planetary population that could allow us to better adapt to a warming global climate might only come at the end of a tunnel of massive social, political, and economic unrest.  We cannot welcome the coming light without being clear about what we must endure to enjoy the light at the end.

 Our economies, especially in capitalist industrialized countries, are predicated on growth—in products, purchases, and people. Fewer people mean fewer jobs, smaller markets, diminished revenue for governments at all levels. One town in southern Italy, Times authors report, closed its maternity ward, built to accommodate 500 births annually, a decade ago because “this year, six babies were born.”

When schools, factories, businesses and hospitals close (with nursing homes the last to go), society as we know it will face those “sweeping ramifications”—a polite term for collapse—promised in this article’s headline.

There are ways, however, of dealing with our need for the “light” of a reduced population to help restore our planet to sustainability without suffering the full “tunnel” of a turmoil caused by a too rapid population drop.

The authors of the “Long Slide” article explain that people still want to have children but often “face too many obstacles.”   They cite the story of Anna Parolini, who left her small town in Northern Italy to find a better job in Milan. Her salary of under 2,000 euros a month is not enough to raise a child without parents nearby. She is 37, and says that “thinking of having a child now would make me gasp.”

            Anna, and many like her in other “advanced” countries like the USA, could benefit from free day care (or a higher salary) which would allow her to have children and more security and hope, perhaps even a better job. Then she might be able to pay taxes, some of which could help us better adapt within our current tunnel of climate change.

            Some of my Republican friends call such a “gift” socialism. So far employers in places like the United States, Australia, and Canada have been able to make up for the population decline (especially among white people) with immigrant labor from other countries.

            Yet those who confuse socialism with democratic social welfare programs that promote a stronger, healthier country economy are also the ones who want to reduce immigration. Go figure?

            We can address climate change by promoting equity and hopefulness among citizens that might slow the inevitable population drop just enough to allow our economy and society to adjust as we move through our tunnel?  

            Maybe that is what President Joe Biden has in mind.

Since we have now passed the one-year anniversary of our encounter with COVID-19, this might be a good time to review what we have learned.

            Following the Old Testament example, I have come up with a list of ten things I have noticed.  Some are based upon my own experience, and others are observations based on watching too much television while living in Coronaville with my wife and a series of rescue dogs.

• Working from home digitally reduced both traffic congestion and carbon pollution;

• We are now all aware (as some of us teachers were twenty years ago) that on-line education has a long way to go before it can result in effective learning;

• We all have a renewed appreciation of family and friends—most of the time;

• We now know that even a serious pandemic threat to humanity will not significantly reduce our distrust of people who think, look, or act differently than we do;

• Whether we are alone or crowded together with others, we need pets with us when we are quarantined;

• We have learned that we can be kind and compassionate to each other for a short period (March to May, 2020) but do not have the patience to do so for the long term (June,2020 to May, 2021);

• We have learned that going out to lunch or dinner really is a big deal, not “small potatoes”;

• We really do have time to hone a hobby, rediscover reading, or finally learn to cook;

• We have learned that it can be fun drinking beer in someone’s back yard, socially-distanced, with a mask, weather permitting;

• We have learned, to our credit, that even a pandemic of unusual size cannot keep us from voting or going to the streets to seek justice and “redress of grievances.”

Yes, we have learned many things about ourselves, some that are encouraging 

and others discouraging.  As Pogo said in the old cartoon: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” 

            But we have also seen light at the end of the spiked Covid tunnel. Things we have lived through, among them the stresses induced by living in Coronaville, the death of George Floyd and its aftermath, and the alarmist TV news programs, have made us more aware of systemic racism in our country’s culture and institutions. 

            We are also more alert than ever before to the possibility of drastic, rapid changes in our earth’s climate that could destroy both our civilization as well as many living species (even us) on this planet.

            It is hard for some of us to sort out what we have learned, as is evident by the mixed nature of my “Ten Learnings.”  In 1849 the French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote “the more things change, the more they remain the same.”

            This might be a useful truth to remember while we listen to all the hype about how COVID will change things. Americans are born with a pretty strong “change gene.”  We are taught to expect change, which we sometimes confuse with improvement. We naively expect the future to automatically be better than the past: we are Americans, after all, and favored by God and History.

            Sarcasm aside, what COVID-19 should have taught us is that we can change things—for better or worse—depending upon our intentions and actions. Our experience with COVID can result in a better world for all of us, but not if we just want to return to “old normal” as quickly as possible.  

            To really learn from this experience we need to do more than just get vaccinated and listen to science more carefully than in the past.  We also need to end our national love affair with greed and selfishness, stop worshiping our unhealthy version of unrestrained capitalism, one that values money and power more than human lives.

Beyond that isn’t it is actually time to begin treating others as we would like to be treated, whatever their color, religion, sexual orientation, or where they were born?  That may be what COVID was trying to tell us.

            It also might not hurt to take a hard look at that original list of ten dos and don’ts that Moses brought down the mountain some time ago.