Probity

Although I should be paying closer attention, I’ve sporadically followed the January 6^th House Select Committee hearings. Most of the live coverage and commentary I’ve listened to has been from NPR during my work commute. 

As viscerally horrified I was that day, time has blunted my emotions surrounding the incident.  I chalk this up to Trump fatigue.  I’m almost at the point where I say, “Fuck it.  Let ‘em all walk as long as I don’t have to hear about them anymore.”  

It’s not the conduct of the hearings.  Reps. Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney are making the best of an awful situation.  The revelations are nauseating but unsurprising.  The parade of in person witnesses and recorded depositions has become a rehashed drone of things we either already knew or suspected. 

Nevertheless, I was struck by Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony the week before last.  Hutchinson was White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ aide in the months and days leading up to January 6^th.  We learned of President Trump’s infantile reaction to Attorney General Barr’s denial of election fraud, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone’s warning of potential violence in the wake of the January 6^th rally, and Meadows’ strange inaction during the riot, as well as the requests for pardons afterwards.  

There was one thing in Hutchison’s testimony that cleared up a question I had had for the last year and a half concerning why Trump did not march on the Capitol after the rally as promised.  Apparently it wasn’t one of the innumerable cheap pledges he’s made over his career; Trump reportedly lunged at his Secret Service driver after the driver told him he had to go back to the White House.  That was the first actual surprise to come out of any the testimony.  Another was that Trump wanted the metal detectors removed from the rally site so that his supporters could bring firearms since he thought they posed no security threat to him.  It is unthinkable how much worse the ensuing riot would have been had Trump prevailed. 

Like many of the reporters and talking heads covering Hutchinson’s testimony, I was uncritical at first because I was genuinely impressed by her.  She projected a calm self-assurance, maturity, and wisdom beyond her twenty-five years.  I was also taken with her earnestness.  She was quoted in one source as wanting a career in public service, something that resonated with me.  I was a wide-eyed idealist as a young adult, though I soon learned to keep those sentiments to myself because they were often met with eyerolls.  At the time I worked in a position with a considerable amount of responsibility for a twentysomething, albeit far from the levers of power, but which nonetheless comported with my own aspirations. 

The passage of a couple of weeks has tempered my admiration.  I do not doubt Ms. Hutchinson’s idealism (or at least her own belief in it), and I will not criticize her conservative politics.  I can even forgive her cringy dance with Kayleigh McEnany to “Y.M.C.A.” during the 2020 campaign.  However, the White House-aide-as-Capra-heroine narrative does not completely hold up the closer one looks.  Certain questions arise. 

As an undergraduate Hutchinson interned with both Ted Cruz and Steve Scalise, two of the most disreputable people on Capitol Hill.  Surely, she was aware of their reputations before seeking work with them.  Then there is her accepting a position in the Trump White House.  Was it really idealism, or a self-serving determination to get ahead?  Only the most fanatical MAGA nutters, the people who believe Trump was chosen by God to save America from whatever imaginary threat, can truly believe Trump possesses even the slightest shard of integrity.  Then there is her apparent acceptance of an offer to work at Mar-a-Lago post-presidency which was later withdrawn (and has led to accusations from conservative media that her testimony was sour grapes for not getting the job).  

I am not second-guessing Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony.  I believe her to have been truthful with the committee.  However, I question the choices which put her in this position to begin with.  Although she did the committee a service, it does not mitigate her responsibility for being part of a criminal presidency.  Others may vouch for her character, but I am unconvinced. 

 

© 2022 The Unassuming Scholar

Freedom at Play

Brett Kavanaugh couldn’t stay for dessert. 

This week’s political tempest in a teapot concerns Kavanaugh’s hasty backdoor departure from a Washington, D.C. Morton’s steakhouse after protestors had gathered out front.  (Some accounts claim he was unaware of the demo, but the decision to leave through the back tends to refute this.)  Morton’s management took to Twitter, asserting that their high-profile guest’s right to dine in public had been violated. 

Yes.  And no.  Certain activities noted of late, such as protesting outside officials’ private homes, make me uneasy.  Similarly, I ask myself whether we should condone interfering with their non-official activities (as in the case a few years ago when Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a Northern Virginia restaurant after its employees objected to her patronage).  However, in the case of sitting U.S. Supreme Court justices, who can serve for life should they choose, there is precious little recourse to publicly register pushback against decisions which adversely affect the liberties and rights of vast numbers of citizens.  

The galling arrogance of the new SCOTUS supermajority, and that of Justices Alito and Thomas particularly, is horrifying when we take into account that its holdings will reverberate in people’s lives for generations. The power of these unelected officials, half of whom were nominated by a president who received a minority of the popular vote and confirmed by a Senate with a majority representing less than half the country’s population, is largely unchecked.  They are well aware of their freedom from accountability, hence their newfound disregard for precedent and stare decisis.  They are fast paving the way to a Christofascist future in which the majority of Americans do not want to live. 

So, misgivings aside I don’t have a lot of sympathy for Kavanaugh’s spoiled evening.  He chose to become a public figure with considerable authority and thus has a lessened expectation of being shielded from public scrutiny.  Yesterday’s near-confrontation sent a message that thousands of unread critical letters, emails, and online posts cannot.  I doubt neither he nor his colleagues care about public sentiment either way, but at least a public protest is visible.  As long as no one is harmed and no property is damaged, citizens should be permitted to gather for political expression.  

Perhaps Mr. Kavanaugh will spend his future evenings quietly at home.  And perhaps Morton’s will court a more respectable clientele.

 

© 2022 The Unassuming Scholar

 

 

 

 

Backsliding

Everyone knew it was coming, of course.  That didn’t make the news any easier to accept. 

The U.S. Supreme Court has formally handed down its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, nearly two months after Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion was leaked to the public.  The resulting backlash notwithstanding, it appears the final draft is identical or nearly so to the preview.  There is no longer a nationally recognized right to abortion.  

The extent to which a woman enjoys reproductive freedom now depends upon the state where she lives.  In my own state, little or nothing will change in the wake of Dobbs.  There has been talk of making our state a sanctuary for women seeking safe terminations.  But even then, measures elsewhere such as the Texas snitch law may thwart this particular haven unless the woman doesn’t return home. 

Emboldened by their right-wing supermajority, there is already talk of harsher actions to come.  Clarence Thomas has publicly said it may be time to consider limiting access to contraception. Rights such as same-sex marriage may also be at risk now that SCOTUS has issued a total reversal of what was once considered settled law. 

Despite having won, the right is nevertheless taking refuge in their perennial claims of persecution by a malevolent “woke” left.  Congressional wingnuts are already conjuring specters of a violent backlash to further entrench the hysterical tendencies of the base.  Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah (where else?) warned of a potential “constitutional crisis” resulting from a rumored “invasion” of the Supreme Court by the “pro-abortion left.”  (Sorry, Mikey, inciting mob violence is your party’s brand.)  

The decades-long assault on reproductive rights is deeply disturbing to me on a visceral level.  This may read counterintuitively considering men can’t get pregnant (except in emojis).  But the two things I value most are my privacy and my autonomy.  If I insist upon these for myself, then it is only right that I want them for you as well.  Anti-abortion and anti-contraceptive policies limit privacy and autonomy for women of childbearing age, and that is wrong.  

Dobbs is a landmark on the backsliding route our country is traveling.  It is also a warning.  We have arrived at a place where a moderate majority are increasingly subjected to the superstitious fanaticism of right-wing leaders and their legions of scruffy devotees.  It’s sickeningly awful to witness them fouling our nest while our freedoms erode and life in America becomes harder to bear.  We face more grim days such as this.  The darkness is gathering fast.

 

© 2022 The Unassuming Scholar

New Old Habits

Summer sessions starts on Monday, after a three-week hiatus from work.  Part of me is looking forward to returning to the classroom.  Part of me dreads it. 

I know I’ll be okay once things are going.  But in the days leading up to summer orientation earlier this week I began to feel anxious about leaving the house.  You see, I had not left at any point during the three weeks except to get the mail and take out the trash.  

This had a familiar feel to it.  During the pandemic’s worst phase, I went four and a half months alone at home. I am not exaggerating.  I opened my door only to accept deliveries and to let in technicians from my internet service provider.  My first venture out was to get my first dose of the vaccine (but only after calling AAA to jump start the car I hadn’t driven all winter). 

Fall and spring semesters were partly live and went well. But during the winter break I holed up at home once more and went nowhere ever, reverting to having my necessities brought to me.  I am beginning to suspect the past couple of years have taken a greater toll on my sense of wellbeing than I previously believed.  These days, I do not return home so much as I flee there. 

Some of this is caution.  In spite of being vaxxed and double boosted, and in spite of weekly PCR tests during the school year (all negative!), I don’t want to be infected.  Some of this I can attribute to the breakdown in social norms since the pandemic hit.  It appears to me that the shameless ratfuckery of the Trump years has emboldened every unhinged crank and basement dweller in the country to act out.  The absence of accountability and consequences for their flagrant public misbehavior bodes ill for the common good.  I just don’t want to engage. 

Before the plague arrived, I was only home 24/7 on weekends during the academic year.  Travel was a constant for me in my free time; it was good to escape the shitshow our country was descending into once in a while to clear my head.  My previous life has been stood on its head.  My passport expired three months ago.  I haven’t traveled by air since the very early days of COVID.  I’ve spent exactly one night in a motel, and only then because there was utility work being done on my block and I would be without water for a day.  

I don’t like living as I do now, but I can’t help the situation or myself.  I have developed new old habits.

 

© 2022 The Unassuming Scholar

It's Happening Here

I find YouTube ads a necessary evil to get free content.  I almost never watch them through.  Last night I saw one that made me watch to the end.

It was a campaign ad.  The candidate was a former student, a MAGA fan who was an unconscionable pain in the ass the whole semester.  He’s running for county clerk, who is also the registrar of voters.

The spot itself was unremarkable though professionally done.  The candidate appears on camera throughout, first as a talking head then in footage of him walking down a farm road with his wife and preschool-age daughter.  He’s as I remembered him, receding hairline, beard, red face, beer gut, etc.  Same lack of an indoor voice. 

His pitch emphasized his military service and his commitment to faith and family.  (The usual conservative campaign ad tropes.)  He also promised to “clean up” the voting process in our county.  As a sometime poll worker in the county, I can assure you with certainty that our polling process is already clean. 

I’m not worried that he will win.  Although the long-time incumbent is leaving office, his deputy is running and appears the most viable candidate of the three in the primary race.  However, I don't like that many of the disturbing trends seen elsewhere are seeping into my community. 

The post-Trump era has not resulted in peace of mind.  Voter suppression efforts across the country are just one facet of what Bill Maher has called a slow-moving coup by the right.  Approximately two-thirds of Americans are white.  They make up three-quarters of registered voters.  To not see an underlying white supremacy behind voter suppression laws is willful blindness.  And yet the opposition flails impotently to stop them.

Trump-era hysteria permeates red state political culture.  Screening proposed textbooks (some of them math!) for “woke” themes or supposed references to Critical Race Theory is a distraction from serious policymaking while inflaming white ressentiment.  The “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida and the pending measure in Texas forbidding parents to seek gender-affirming care for their trans children are solutions to nonexistent problems.  (Concerning the latter, it strikes me funny that the same people who refused to let the government to coparent when it came to masks now support government coparenting transgender kids.)  Adam Serwer got it right; the cruelty is the point.

To add to the darkness enveloping our country, it came to light this morning that a draft majority opinion in the Mississippi 15-week abortion ban case written by Samuel Alito leaked from the U.S. Supreme Court.  It comes as no surprise that if issued as written, Roe v. Wade would be definitively overturned.  Still, I always figured SCOTUS would probably gut Roe rather than overturning it outright.  The Texas snitch law passed last summer was the shape of things to come from our 6-3 conservative majority Court; it’s doubtful there will be a happy ending in this case either.

During his confirmation hearings Chief Justice John Roberts stated that Roe was settled law.  Guess he’s changed his mind.  Despite her open religiosity, Amy Coney Barrett’s limited record of abortion-related rulings offers a faint glimmer of hope but I’m not holding my breath. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Thomas are lost causes.  If one believes Sen. Susan Collins, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh lied about their stance on reproductive rights during their respective confirmation hearings. I look upon this development with unsurprised disgust.  What do you expect from a pig but a grunt?

There’s been some hopeful commentary that the leak will damage Republican prospects for this year’s midterms and may even fend off a GOP (Trump?) victory in 2024.  Don’t hold your breath.  It is more likely that it will further energize and further embolden the base, as will the probable passage of the spate of anti-LGBT bills in the South.  Speculation on both sides of the divide predicts that Republicans will attempt to overturn results in states with Republican legislatures that go Democratic in 2024.  I don’t doubt that such attempts will occur.  Perhaps they will succeed. 

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.  Somewhere along the way, we took our eye off the ball.

 

 

© 2022 The Unassuming Scholar

Year Three (...and Counting)

 March 13th.  So begins the third year...

Enemies in a Lifeboat

 

“Alright then, we are two nations.”

John Dos Passos, The Big Money

 

Dos Passos was referring to the ideological divide surrounding the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti nearly a century ago.  The statement could just as easily apply today. 

As we approach a third year of pandemic, the divisions in our society have become a gaping wound for all the world to behold.  Its successive waves have limited physical mobility making escape from the social upheaval a distant vision.  I’ve long dreamed of becoming an expat in my retirement, but the desire to travel the world has morphed into an urge to flee and not look back.  Unfortunately, that is no longer feasible for most of us.  And as time goes on creeping political repression may make it even less so. 

In the aftermath of the “stolen” 2020 presidential election, we are entering what Jason Stanley terms the “legal phase” of fascism.  Much of this is happening at the state level given the narrow Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, though the 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court will almost certainly enable these enacted and pending measures.  Restricting voting rights, limiting the right to publicly protest, gerrymandering which further entrenches Republican legislators in red states, and the de facto purge of anti-Trump Republicans in Congress and statehouses are all calculated to pave the way for the Orange Führer’s triumphant return in 2024.  (To further raise alarm, it has come to light that Boeing and Pfizer were among the corporations and trade groups which donated $8 million to Republican lawmakers who voted to decertify the 2020 electoral results.)  

Nor has the past year mitigated the threat of right-wing extremists or self-appointed “good guys with guns” taking the law into their own hands.  While the verdict in the Ahmaud Arbery murder trial may signal a renewed intolerance of vigilantism, the not guilty verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse case is disturbing.  (One reason I suppose the jury was inclined to acquit was that Wisconsin’s “stand your ground” law doesn’t apply to public spaces.  By initially attempting to flee a confrontation with an armed protestor, Rittenhouse was arguably fulfilling his duty to retreat.)  The brazen, high-profile antics of so-called militias give further cause for concern.  

Misinformation exacerbates the divide.  It helps further what Bill Maher has called the slow-moving coup.  Social media fueled hysteria over mostly nonexistent threats surrounding gun control, vaccines, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, Critical Race Theory, and so forth.  It also promotes anti-science attitudes and misinformation about COVID, leading to lowered vax rates and increased spread each time a new variant emerges.  

It is no wonder that Donald Trump loves poorly-educated people.  They are the most susceptible to the message and the least likely to understand how our constitutional system actually works.  While affluent, educated suburban whites supported Trump as well, it is the unruly mass of working class whites who pose the more immediate threat.  Gullible and hostile and ready to accept any sort of bullshit shoveled at them as long as it caters to their anger and prejudices, they are the most liable to resort to mob activity. 

What we are seeing is a progressive normalization of ignorance and rage-fueled rhetorical and physical violence, fueled by social media.  At its worst, this violence has taken the form of looting in cities to violence against protestors.  Legal consequences fall differently depending on the person and the offense.  One year on, few of the participants in the January 6^th Redneck Riot have suffered any meaningful punishment for having attempted to overthrow the government.  Most of the convictions have been for trivial crimes such as trespassing, rather than for sedition.  Had it been, say, a Black Lives Matter protest, the penalties would surely have been swifter and more severe. 

To quote Dos Passos again, “They have taken the words of our fathers and made them slimy and foul.”  Watching the recent New York Times documentary on the riot, possibly the most complete dissection of the event so far, we behold scenes of self-proclaimed “patriots” confronting law enforcement officers demanding they uphold their oaths to the Constitution notwithstanding they were doing exactly that.  At the risk of repetition, it was these “patriots” who sought the disruption of the very government prescribed in the Constitution. 

The transposition of surreality over mundane normalcy characterizes the present moment.  Life goes on as usual, but with a pervasive sense of dread.  And I am beginning to think there is (admittedly anecdotal) cause for worry.  A couple of years ago, just before the pandemic, I took a trip to Europe.  Not only was the flight delayed without explanation for nearly two hours after boarding, but we had to submit to two separate document checks before boarding.  Perhaps it was only a routine security precaution.  Perhaps it was a harbinger of future restrictions on Americans traveling abroad.  

Which brings me back to my deep-seated wish to check out of the mess our country has become. I fear my contrarian opinions may make that more difficult if not impossible as time goes on with the prospect of even more repressive measures.  I’ve learned having money of your own confers freedom, freedom which includes leaving home.  Security legislation since 9/11 has given the federal government greater oversight of bank accounts.  All of mine are in the U.S., which means my assets can be frozen or seized by the authorities on the slenderest of pretexts.  Goodbye, freedom.  Our sweet land of liberty may well become a lawless place where mobs of heavy-gutted, bearded white men armed with guns and superstition are calling the shots and where decent people will have no means of escape.  

More than ever in our contemporary history it has become a matter of us and them.  We are seemingly locked in a death embrace with our enemies at home and escape may no longer be no longer an option.  There is scant cause for optimism.

 

 

 

© 2022 The Unassuming Scholar