Moral Panic

Now we know.

After a couple of days of wildass speculation in the MAGAverse, a suspect in the murder of the Great Martyr Charlie Kirk has been taken into custody.  He is…wait for it…wait for it…you will be shocked…a twentysomething white male.

After two “persons of interest” were arrested and released, theories surrounding the killer ran amok.  Some concerned the latest MAGA moral panic, the transgender mass shooter.  If you weren’t paying attention, a few weeks ago a transgender person in Minnesota who posted regrets over their transition on their socials shot and killed two children and wounded 18 attending mass on the first day of their parochial school term.  In 2023, a transgender person killed seven and injured two at a Nashville Christian school.

And that’s about it.  Since both perpetrators died in the attacks, we cannot know for certain their motives though their social media presence offers clues.  In both cases, it appears they immersed themselves in websites castigating trans people and others promoting mass shooters. A simpler explanation is the Oswald motive: They did it to be famous.

No matter.  Transphobic rhetoric colored the commentary from the right.  My personal favorite quote came from Congresswoman Nancy Mace, who proclaimed to reporters that a “tranny” was responsible for Kirk’s demise.  She went on to say that she and her staff were afraid to come to work because of the looming threat of radical left violence.

Apparently, this is a common fear in MAGA world.  Because it’s all about them.  Random clicking dredged up videos of bearded white men shouting into the camera about how patriots like them are being targeted for death by the violent radical left.  Some of them—okay, most of them—bemoaned the rising death toll among men like them at the hands of these deranged leftists.  They also promised that this fictitious carnage would be met at gunpoint.  Disturbingly, one of these videos was posted by a police officer in uniform.  I feel reassured that this guy is out there protecting the public.

The ludicrous overreaction continued at the top, at least for a hot second.  The president announced he was awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Kirk, further cheapening one of our most prestigious honors.  The vice president flew Kirk’s remains home aboard Air Force Two, at taxpayer’s expense of course. But when asked for comment about Kirk on the White House lawn, Trump devoted a few seconds to express his regret before launching into a monologue touting the new construction of the White House ballroom.

The president has perhaps moved on, but the MAGAsphere are like dogs with a bone.  The most disturbing revelation of the past few days is the creation of a website which purportedly gathers the names of anyone who might have cheered Kirk’s death on social media.  The idea is to get people to dime them out so their employers will terminate them.  (Trump and MAGA are unpopular among my colleagues, so I think they are safe from the “mass firings” promised by the website’s creators.) 

I don’t think this doxxing website poses much of a threat.  It’s just more posturing.  But the past eight months under Trump 2.0 have been exhausting.  I was raised by a narcissist, and I recognize this feeling as a constant from when I was a kid.  Add to that all the demented shit emanating from the right and the constant state of hypervigilance provoked by it, and one’s sense of wellbeing becomes hard to maintain.

The discourse from the left—the actual left, not the boogeyman living in MAGA’s imagination—is not encouraging.  For all the grandiose talk about themselves as “the resistance,” their writ doesn’t extend much beyond Tik-Tok and YouTube.  They are too few to pose a threat.  Meanwhile, more moderate critics of the administration unself-consciously muse over whether Charlie Kirk is the Trump movement’s Horst Wessel or whether his killing is the administration’s Reichstag Fire.

It doesn’t matter.  Trump and his allies control or have coopted all three branches of the federal government.  We may not yet beyond the point of no return, but that point is edging closer by the day.   Charlie Kirk’s murder, while unfortunate and unwarranted, will be bounced from the headlines in short order in service of flooding the zone.  And the base will move on to fixate upon some other outrage.

 

© 2025 The Unassuming Scholar

Descent

A few months ago, I wrote about a bizarre incident in Colorado where a man stalked a TV news crew, following the news vehicle back to the station.  When they arrived, the man confronted and assaulted the crew’s on-air reporter who was described as being of Pacific Islander ancestry.  During the assault, the man yelled, “This is Donald Trump’s America!”

At the time, I mused that political violence under a second Trump administration would vary in intensity while the legal consequences would depend on local sentiments.  In the case of the Colorado incident, the reporter’s assailant has pled not guilty and is to stand trial in January.

This afternoon, another violent act may put my speculation to the test.  Right-wing activist Charlie Kirk was shot dead while giving a speech at a Utah college.  Details are unclear, but Kirk was apparently shot from a rooftop of a campus building about 150 yards away.  A “person of interest” has been detained.

The reaction to Kirk’s death among prominent Democrats so far is in contrast to Republican reactions when Democrats are physically attacked.  The June murders of a Minnesota legislator and her husband and the wounding of another legislator predictably generated vituperative victim blaming, for instance.  On the other hand, Kirk’s murder elicited condolences and condemnations of gun violence from Democrats.

Personally, I despise everything Charlie Kirk stood for.  But there shouldn’t be a death penalty for expressing despicable opinions. 

Naturally, MAGA has overreacted in ways which border on the absurd.  President Trump has ordered the flag flown at half-staff for the next several days, as ifi Kirk had been a great statesman rather than a self-serving, hate-mongering opportunist.  The next few days will likely bring more hyperbole.

Considering the fate of the shooter, I cannot predict.  Republican-majority Utah has been somewhat cool toward the MAGA phenomenon.  I am sure any trial jury would approach the case independent of political considerations.  But Utah’s governor has said this will be a death penalty case.

Would red state juries impose the death penalty on the murderer of a liberal activist or Democratic politician?  Would they convict in the first place?  Incitement is much more common on the right.  It’s not much of a leap that if a liberal activist or Democratic politician were murdered in a red state, the social media response would find a way to dismiss the crime and find a way to subtly (or not so subtly) put the onus on the deceased.

Returning to the right’s knee-jerk reactions to any threat, real or imaginary (mostly imaginary), let’s look at the ongoing, unnecessary occupation of Washington, D.C. by National Guard troops.  Although it had to have been in the works for weeks, the immediate precipitating event appears to have been an attempted carjacking involving DOGE twerp Edward “Big Balls” Coristine.  (Okay, I don’t condone violence, but the revelation that Mr. Balls was beaten up by a 15 year old girl made me smile.  Besides, his pride was hurt worse than his face) 

Any crime committed against a white person in a city with a plurality or majority population of color is going to set off right-wing alarm bells.  Since most of our cities, whether in red or blue states, have significant minority populations and tend to have Democratic administrations, they draw right-wing ire by their very being.  The planned replication of performative military intervention is certain, all in the interest of preventing violent crime of course.

I wonder if the president will be sending troops to Orem, Utah anytime soon.

Not very likely.

 

© 2025 The Unassuming Scholar

Projection

Justice Alito is afraid.

The author of last summer’s holding in Dobbs said this week that the leaking of the decision draft in May exposed his fellow justices (the right-wing ones, anyway) to risk of assassination. 

One can partly attribute this rhetorical drama to conservatives’ self-importance.  Conservatism is rooted in the belief one is intrinsically better than other people.  Putting oneself above others leads to self-aggrandizing ideation.  Having said that, we have to look at who is victimizing whom in the long-Trump pandemic.  Aside from the incident of an antifa protestor killing a Patriot Prayer militant in Portland in 2020, there are few credible examples of lethal left-on-right violence in recent years.

Before Dobbs I saw Samuel Alito as I regarded other run of the mill conservatives in high places, something resembling a pebble in my shoe.  His low public profile in the past led me into a grudging acceptance of his presence.  Since the May leak, Alito’s outspoken assholery has become nearly intolerable.  We have learned much of his character in past months.  Alito strikes me as an angry, embittered man with antediluvian views who poses a threat to the personal liberties of tens of millions of Americans.

But it isn’t Alito’s hyperbole that prompted me to write this.  The attempted murder of Paul Pelosi in his San Francisco home yesterday is the worst example of right-wing violence since the January 6^th insurrection.  The accused is, unsurprisingly, a Trump-troll whose activism was previously limited to shitposting on social media.  News reports indicate the assailant planned to hold Pelosi hostage until his wife returned from Washington.  Pelosi was able to dial 911 during the home invasion and the police promptly responded, but not until after the attacker fractured his skull with a hammer.

The attack on Speaker Pelosi’s spouse is the latest incident in the trend of escalating far-right aggression since 2016.  As I write, a group of self-proclaimed militiamen (i.e., armed cosplayers in camouflage) are on trial in Michigan for plotting to kidnap and murder governor Gretchen Whitmer.  The ambiguity of Donald Trump’s statements on such incidents from the “good people on both sides” assertion after Charlottesville to his instruction to the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” before the 2020 election constitute a tacit endorsement of illicit force directed at other Americans.  Statements by other Republican leaders, such as Lindsey Graham’s prediction of “riots in the streets” if Georgia prosecutors dared to indict Trump for his attempted election fraud simply add fuel to the fire.  Last summer’s YouGov / Economist poll reporting more than 40% of those polled believe a civil war is likely in the next decade is probably a reflection of the ratcheting bombast emanating from Republican politicians.    

And yet, to hear them tell it, these same pols are the victims.  Alito’s drama queen fears of assassination have manifested in little more than Brett Kavanaugh being forced to cut short a night out when a few protestors showed up outside the restaurant.  To the last individual, Republicans at all levels whine about imaginary stolen elections while shamelessly advocating and instituting policies designed to exclude minority voters in future contests.  Delusional imaginings of violence meted by antifa and other lefties ignore the very real threat from the right.

There’s a word for this: Projection.  Push your faults and your misdeeds on your opponents.  That’s what is happening here.  Call it for what it is.  Call out the offenders.  May the truth win the day.

© 2022 The Unassuming Scholar

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

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

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

From Within

This week marks six months of confinement for me.  Winter has turned to spring to summer and now to autumn.  From within four walls I’ve watched the world sink into madness.

The worst of it has been the senseless loss of people murdered simply going about their daily lives – Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd.  Then there are all the other maladies afflicting us at the moment.  The alt-right’s escalating provocations against civil rights protesters has made me increasingly uneasy as the November election draws nigh.  Wildfires are running amok in my part of the country, leaving the air thick with smoke and staining the sky an ominous orange hue.  Then there’s the pandemic, which shows no sign of abating and has already added several more months to my sentence now that my college has decided to stay “remote” through spring semester.

There are all kinds of things I could do outside which carry little or no infection risk, but I feel unmotivated.  Perhaps a more accurate description of my mindset is that I’m suffering an uncharacteristic agoraphobia that has gotten worse with time.  I miss being with others even as I dread any human interaction.  I pass the days in a state of free-floating anxiety.  I’ll doodle around the LMS for a couple hours, grade assignments, answer student emails, and violate the sanctity of my own home each Monday holding my required office hour on Zoom.  I’ve come to detest Zoom nearly as much as I’ve come to hate the phrase “unprecedented times.”

Watching the societal breakdown beyond my front door is my main pastime.  Divisions which seemed intractable before March have morphed into insurmountable fissures.  As events careen into bounded chaos, some verities about contemporary politics are made clearer. 

The first is that so-called post-truth politics have become the norm, at least on the right.  The “base” at this point will uncritically believe any crazy assertion put forth by the President, administration officials, or their pundit toadies.  Some examples from this week alone point up the trend.  There is the claim from U.S. Department of Health & Human Services official Michael Caputo that he received death threats because of his collusion with Trump to suppress information concerning the coronavirus pandemic.  Caputo then doubled down, stating there were left-wing “hit squads” ready to stage an armed insurrection to stop the President’s reelection.  He then advised people to “buy ammunition.” 

Another batshit statement that seems to have originated from a northwestern firefighting official and has since gone viral on Facebook is that “antifa” started the wildfires in Washington and Oregon.  (I’m amazed at how Facebook has gone from being a mindless timesuck for teens and twentysomethings to a mindless timesuck for aging wingnuts.)   

If the origin of the antifa arson rumor is true, it can only erode trust in public safety workers.  Law enforcement seems particularly fertile ground for the QAnon conspiracy fad, though we’ve only had small, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it clues.  In July, the NYPD union president gave an on-air interview to Fox News with a QAnon coffee mug visible in the background.  Last year a Broward County sheriff’s deputy was photographed greeting Vice President Pence with a QAnon patch visible on his tactical vest.  Another unnerving trend is the appearance of the Punisher logo on tactical police vehicles, no question about the intended message there. 

The juxtaposition of QAnon and other alt-right phenomena with the agencies tasked with keeping us safe is troubling.  Right-wing hysteria over Black Lives Matter and antifa illustrate the true role of policing.  The right has all but conceded that law enforcement’s mission is not about protecting and serving all citizens equally, but to defend the propertied classes and act as an occupying force dedicated to enforcing white hegemony.  

The personality types disproportionately drawn to law enforcement reflect an authoritarian streak as it is.  Some are cruel or indifferent to cruelty.  For instance, I recently had a student who had just gotten out of the military.  She was beginning work on a criminal justice degree with an eye toward joining the local police department after graduation.  During a classroom discussion about Abu Ghraib and the Detainee Treatment Act, I noted that torture is considered an ineffective interrogation technique.  My student countered that her NCOs had taught her differently.  It appears my student and her sergeants had slept through their mandatory Geneva Convention trainings.  It also left me asking myself just what kind of police officer she would be.  I suspect I’ll be reading about her in the news someday.  

The valorization of armed violence is as old as American culture.  To be more specific, it’s armed violence by Christian white males that we glorify.  Let’s consider the attitudes of the police to the rise in vigilantism.   The 17-year-old boy who shot three protestors in Kenosha, killing two, walked unchallenged through a police cordon carrying a semiautomatic weapon.  He seemed to be under the delusion that he was there to assist law enforcement, and the nonchalant attitude of the cops did nothing to dissuade him.  After the shooting he walked away, again unchallenged, got in his car, and calmly drove home to Chicago.   

Part of me wants to make allowances for the Kenosha shooter’s youth.  But what can we say about the motives of his adult defenders?  President Trump claimed the shooter acted in self-defense, never mind that the fact he came armed and was presumably looking for trouble.  Then there’s the legal defense fund started on a “Christian” fundraising platform which has netted nearly $1 million so far.  The soliciting organization is #FightBack.  This lovely band of trolls proclaims their mission is to “fight back for [a] forgotten America,” notwithstanding the high media profile of said forgotten.  

Time for an aside.  It comes as no surprise that Christian groups are rallying to the shooter’s defense.  Christianity of the evangelical Protestant strain is inextricably bound up with the American right.  The various churches may differ in theology, but their shared ideology emphasizes exclusion and punishment to a degree that can be construed as poorly veiled white supremacism.  Considering that the months of protests arose from civil rights abuses against people of color, their support for a killer of protesters causes the veil to slip further.  

Back to the vigilante problem.  As we have seen, law enforcement has no problem turning a blind eye if they use force against their own preferred targets.  And the problem isn’t new.  George Zimmerman’s acquittal of murdering Trayvon Martin foreshadowed much of what we’re currently seeing.  Of course, being white doesn’t afford absolute protection against violations of civil liberties and civil rights by both official and non-official actors.   

The militarized response to the protesters has emboldened the aggressive element always present among the political right.  One example from this week’s news involves an NPR news crew covering the Oregon firefighting effort.  They were run off public land by armed men who did not identify themselves and probably had as much authorization to be near the fire zone as the reporters.  Another example are reports that armed men are setting up unauthorized roadblocks along evacuation routes, potentially endangering evacuees.

Although isolated incidents, they demonstrate entitlement on the part of civilians being allowed to intimidate their fellow citizens with impunity.  The official stance toward the proliferation of paramilitary “patriot” groups resembles that of the German authorities toward the Freikorps immediately following the First World War.  Rather than being sanctioned for their extralegal actions, they are regarded as allies in preserving the existing order.  As we stumble blindly toward the November election, this stance carries the potential of emboldening further violence against vulnerable populations regardless of the outcome at the polls.   

© 2020 The Unassuming Scholar

Alone Together

The past months have been instructive as we endure an unforeseen emergency which has yet to show any sign of letting up.  If we believe the more pessimistic predictions, the future will be permanently altered and not for the better.

This is the third major crisis the country has faced in less than twenty years.  First there was 9/11, which itself came on the heels of the tech meltdown.  Next was the bursting of the housing bubble.  Now it’s the wide swath cut by an unseen killer bearing the awkward moniker SARS-CoV-2.

Being slightly north of fifty, I’m alarmed at the increasing frequency of these calamities.  Life in America has never been entirely secure for average people, but the worst thing I witnessed in my first three and a half decades were the stagflation and oil shocks of the 1970s.  Even if you throw in the domestic turmoil over Vietnam and Watergate, the difficulties of that era seem positively quaint in retrospect.

A sense of unity is essential for a society to meet extraordinary challenges.  What that means is a matter of one’s personal worldview, however.  For me, the closest example that comes to mind is Britain during the Second World War.  Confronted with an existential threat and living through years of material hardship, the British people met the challenge with plucky cheerfulness. 

A quick glance at your newsfeed or cable news will show instead that the fissures plaguing us before coronavirus have only deepened.  This should be surprising to no one.  The cultural and economic wars experienced by the past two or three generations have left us so divided the divisions may be irreparable.

Material satiety has done a lot to paper over these differences, but this has become less feasible as time has passed.  After the attacks on New York and Washington, George W.’s advice was to go shopping and visit Disney World.  We did, and the downturn quickly passed.  If you stayed employed through the Great Recession you probably came out okay; many of those who didn’t had yet to fully recover before the COVID-19 anvil landed on them.

Economic pressures are indisputably a factor driving the reopening controversy on the part of laid off workers and small business owners who abruptly lost their incomes.  But the great cultural divide in American life overshadows the coronavirus response as it does everything else.

A closer look at the news since March brings this conclusion into 20/20 focus.  Three and a half years of “fake” news accusations and “alternative facts” has made the discourse (if you can call it that) a bit unreal.  A local news channel interviewed churchgoers defying a closure order a couple of weeks ago.  One worshipper said he wasn’t concerned about the pandemic since for him it signaled the beginning of the End Times.  Another said he wasn’t worried because God would shield him.  Neither wore face masks.

Face masks have become an unlikely bone of contention of late.  If the opinion pieces I’ve read are any indication (and the President’s own statements echo this) it’s that being required to cover one’s face is a sign of weakness.  It is a form of forced submission, and so to go without a mask is an expression of one’s manhood.

Asinine?  Emphatically yes.  But there may be an added dimension to the pushback over masks.  An article in The Atlantic proposes that the reason so many white males on the Right reject masking is that it makes “vice signaling” difficult for them.  Put differently, covering their faces makes it less likely for them to receive credit for any public mischief they commit.

Vice signaling, as you’ve probably surmised, is the flipside of the conservative snarl phrase “virtue signaling.”  The MAGA contingent wants the world to witness its bad behavior and dares us to do something.  In the social media age, however, this can entail blowback as we have seen on recent two occasions.  Sadly, but unsurprisingly, both involve the deaths of black men.

The stalking and murder of Ahmaud Arbery is notable in that the perpetrators were so sure they would suffer no consequences that one of them recorded it on his phone for posterity.  The death of George Floyd at the hands (or, more precisely, knee) of a Minneapolis police officer this week was caught on camera by several onlookers.  One would think that the nauseating procession of public violence against people of color over the years would inhibit would-be race warriors and law-and-order thugs, but no.  Not only have they been emboldened, but they want the notoriety of going viral.

The Arbery and Floyd killings perversely demonstrate that while so much of our world has been upended some things do not change.  But as horrific as these deaths are, the extent to which the pandemic has disproportionately harmed minorities demands even more attention.  Not only are they more likely than whites to have the kind of underlying health issues making them vulnerable to COVID-19, they are less likely to have health insurance and are more likely to work in the essential jobs necessary to keep the country’s head above water.  The soft violence of social inequality will do far more harm to people of color over the pandemic than any random attacks on their young men. 

Throughout it all, I’ve been hunkered down at home.  I am one of the fortunate ones whose bosses have commanded to work from home.  I have ventured out twice since early March, once to the supermarket (before dumping my shopping needs upon gig workers via Instacart) and once to the bank.  Each time the world looked normal albeit with lighter traffic.  Everyone I interact with, few as they are and mostly limited to neighbors and the aforementioned delivery drivers, has been normal and even pleasant. My risk of infection is very low.  By all rights my only enemy should be boredom.

Yet, I continue to look at the world with trepidation. The antics of the Trump administration, its disingenuous minions, and its unhinged supporters have become less amusing and more appalling as this year’s election draws near.  I’ve assuaged my frustration with and distaste for daily life with occasional travel abroad, the future prospects for which are now remote.  Weeks of confinement, while tolerable, has also heightened a state of anxiety that sometimes drifts to the edges of paranoia. 

I thought I was immune to this; who knew?  I can’t be alone.  It’s our new normal.

© 2020 The Unassuming Scholar

In the Shadows: Part 8 - Winning Ugly

We have a fascination with true crime.  There are the network news shows, the hour-long docuseries, blogs, dozens of podcasts with legions of listeners, not to mention dedicated cable channels like Investigation Discovery.  I’m a die-hard fan of all of ‘em.  Transgression is transfixing.

But not all murders are equally interesting.  Each of us are drawn in by different aspects—the victims, the perpetrator(s), the method, motive, time, place, etc.  The Ice Box Murders do possess a morbid allure, but I’m drawn more to the man who probably committed them.  Never mind the legends conjured by conspiracy mongers tying Charles Rogers to the intelligence services and the John F. Kennedy assassination; the man is captivating enough on his own.

It helps that we have some things in common.  Countless people have had chaotic childhoods, so it goes beyond just that.  Charles was a self-directed man who succeeded on his own merits, without any substantive help from family, friends, coworkers, or mentors.  He was intensely private.  The nature of his work, particularly after he resigned from Shell, afforded him the flexibility not only to travel but also to lay low at home when he chose not to engage with the outside world.

Of course our respective life stories differ as well.  Even discounting the wilder allegations, the tale of Charles Rogers and associates has a generous dose of intrigue.  It has adventure in the wild, with the protagonists and supporting players flying themselves into remote and dangerous places.  It has stolen industrial secrets and business fraud.  It has betrayal, drug and gun smuggling, and an ignominious end in the Central American mountains.  It’s a ripping tale even without the bodies in the refrigerator.

It also has its headscratchers.  It’s hard to grasp why Charles didn’t just cut ties with his parents and leave them to their own devices.  He probably stuck it out because he was the sole living child, his older sister Betty having died while he was very young.  Our culture places far too much emphasis on family even when it’s used as a pretext to exploit.  Fred and Edwina were reprobates, deviants by nature and choice.  Charles was nothing more to them than another mark.  Family is a sucker’s bet when you’re the only one playing by the rules.

I’m speaking for myself with the previous sentence.  I finally got sick of being played and guilt-tripped by unscrupulous people using the accident of being related as an excuse for taking advantage.  But there is also a key difference or two.  Charles was only one of his father and mother’s many victims, but he was as contemptuous of social mores as they were.  My own revenge fantasies against my parents stopped short of murder.  Even if I was inclined to kill them, I don’t think I could have mustered sufficient cold bloodedness to literally butcher them afterward.  Instead, I did the prudent and rational thing and cut off my parents and siblings.  I may have been a bad son, but I have my peace of mind.

Charles Rogers is unsettling case, proof that latent savagery can lurk beneath the surface of the most ordinary people.  Guys like him aren’t supposed to lash out like that.  Then again each of us has a breaking point.  Fred and Edwina had made their son’s life a living hell.  His only respite from dysfunction were his years in the Navy, the brief interlude living alone just after the war, and his business trips.  Barricading himself in his bedroom must have become unbearable.

If you’re willing to overlook the way he went about it, Charles Rogers won his fight to be free on his own terms.  His was a case of winning ugly, if you will, and he had the good fortune to be living in a much different and less intrusive time than ours.  

It doesn’t seem like Charles looked over his shoulder much in the two decades between his parents’ deaths and his own.  This takes supreme self-assurance, and perhaps a little recklessness as well.  But let’s look at everything working in his favor.  There was a small degree of doubt as to his responsibility for the murders, and you might recall he was never charged but only identified as a material witness to the crime.  Charles spent most of his exile in northern Mexico, where the authorities might be inclined to turn a blind eye if there was some benefit in it for them.  The forensic tools available to criminologists nowadays were far in the future. 

There was one more thing.  I’ve pointed this out in other posts about old crimes, but it helps to remind ourselves we live in a significantly different world since the arrival of the internet.  This difference multiplied with the advent of smartphones and social media.  Charles Rogers didn’t leave much of a photographic record.  There are a handful of childhood pictures, a few more from his wartime service, and the Shell employee identification photo from nearly ten years before the murder.  That seems to be it. 

Which brings me to another thing your author has in common with his subject.  You may not believe this, but I just might be one of the least photographed people of the digital age.  I’ve always been camera shy, and I’ve done my best to ensure my life, past and present, remains visually undocumented.  After my parents split when I was a kid, my mother’s disorganized lifestyle and our frequent moves guaranteed the loss of family albums with their studio photos and snapshots.  Being fairly tall, I was often put in the back row for group photos and I would always try to hide as much of myself as I could so as to be less likely to be recognized later.  I avoided having my picture taken for the high school yearbook. 

My mother died years ago; she was so debt ridden her house was foreclosed.  Mom’s habits were as squalid as Fred and Edwina’s and she was as much of a packrat, and I’m told the new owners had to bring in a specialized cleaning service to haul away the house’s contents to the landfill.  It’s pretty unlikely any childhood pictures of me exist aside from class photos.

Most photographs of me as an adult are on ID cards, passports, driver’s licenses, and the random snap in someone else’s hands.  I’m not on social media.  I don’t think anyone has ever pointed their phone at me with the intent of taking a picture of me.  (Most of my social circle, such as it is, are over forty so that might explain that.)  I restrict recording in my classrooms as a matter of policy.  You just won’t see me unless it’s in person.

That leaves us one last contemporary bar to anonymity—public surveillance.  In 1965, all you had were public sightings.  And Charles made as sure as one could be that he would be undetected as he left the Driscoll Street house and made his escape from Houston.  Even though he was forced to improvise after accomplice Anthony Pitts bailed on him, he was recognized only in retrospect by the Fluor employee who spoke with him briefly as he got the keys to his escape car from his girlfriend Jean.  That’s impressive.

Hiding in plain sight just isn’t an option anymore, sad to say.  I am impressed by the way Charles’ associates kept mostly quiet in the days, months, and years after the Ice Box Murders.  Dan O’Connor seems to have been a man who knew how to lay low and would have been sufficiently intimidating to anyone who was stupid enough to try to threaten or blackmail him.  Like Charles, Anthony Pitts lived at the edges of the law and while he could be flamboyant after a few drinks, he was always a step or two ahead of everyone else.  John Mackie was a drunk and a braggart whom no one took seriously. 

I use the past tense because of course Charles and Pitts died premature deaths and Mackie and O’Connor would be near-centenarians if alive.  That leaves the enigma of Charles’ girlfriend, the woman identified simply as Jean by the Gardeniers.  She was a few years younger than Charles and may still be around.  An actual identification would be difficult, however.  I suspect the Gardeniers gave her a pseudonym.  Even though the statute of limitations on any applicable offenses had passed by the time she was found, Jean appears to be someone who guarded her privacy as much as Charles.   It would be reasonable to assume that if she is still living, she is the last link to the strange saga of Charles Rogers.

One final question concerns the inaction of law enforcement.  After media attention faded, the Houston police did little to find or pursue leads.  The U.S. State Department, FBI, and other federal agencies did not attempt to track Charles; surely the possibility he left the country or at least had left Texas should have brought them into the mix.  Charles’ freedom of movement was in no way hindered for the better part of two decades other than his brief detention in a Mexican jail. 

It could be, as the Gardeniers suggest, that the possibility Charles had his father’s betting records might have led Houston authorities to hold back.  Fred Rogers, save for an arrest in the 1950s, had operated on the wrong side of the law with near-impunity for years.  His demise, however grisly, was welcomed as he knew things city officials would prefer not to have made public.  If they left Charles alone their reputations and careers would be safe.  

The passage of time made any prosecution unlikely, even as the official corruption of 1960s Houston gave way to clean government.  Memories faded.  People moved on and passed on.  Other, more recent cases with better evidence needed clearing.  Until Hugh and Martha Gardenier began their detailed investigation into Charles Rogers’ life there were personal and business relationships of Charles’ which never came up in the rather cursory police investigation.  Of course, Charles was many years dead by the time the couple published their book in 2003 rendering any reopening of the police investigation moot.

Let’s suppose law enforcement was successful and got their man.  If I was taking bets on the outcome, Charles’ story would end with him dying of old age as a free man. 

Surprised?  Here’s why I believe this would have been the ending.  Charles would inevitably be prosecuted for first degree murder.  If convicted, the death penalty would be the probable punishment.  The reason I propose Charles would have been set loose eventually is that criminal justice in that era, even in Texas, was much different than today.  The death penalty in Texas, as unbelievable as it sounds now, was on its way out in the 1960s.  Across the country death sentences were carried out less frequently as public debate over capital punishment’s suitability intensified. 

If he’d been caught soon after the murders, the ensuing media attention would probably delay the trial’s progress.  Let’s suppose the trial verdict and sentencing would occur sometime in 1967.  Texas hadn’t executed anyone since 1964, and the state would never send another condemned prisoner to the electric chair before the U.S. Supreme Court negated all existing death sentences with its 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia.  Charles Rogers would never have paid the ultimate penalty.  Following the resumption of capital punishment after Gregg v. Georgia in 1976, Texas would go on to execute hundreds of prisoners but Charles would not have been one of them with his sentence having been reduced to life imprisonment because of Furman.  Moreover, since life sentences without parole were uncommon then there would be the possibility of freedom down the road no matter how notorious the crime.

Granted, making parole would have been tricky given his was a notorious crime.  Charles would first become eligible sometime in the mid- to late 1970s.  But the chances of him committing another violent crime would have been slim and the public’s memory of the Ice Box Murders would have dimmed, so I see our hero walking out of prison on his first or second attempt.  Charles Rogers would be free to resume his life free of Fred and Edwina.  Not such a bad fate, though the one he made for himself wasn’t so bad if you don’t count the way he’s said to have met his end.

And there we have it.  The tale of the Ice Box Murders and the unlikely escape of Charles Rogers will continue to engage generations of true crime aficionados.  We’ll never see its likes again because it could never again be duplicated.  As with other vintage crimes, it’s a time capsule mirroring the customs and preoccupations of its place and people.  The fact that someone could carry out such brutal killings—of one’s own parents, no less—and dodge the penalties was exceptional.  Such an escape today, with all the tools available to authorities to track even those of us with a minimal digital and public presence, would be nigh short of miraculous.  The mystique of this crime lives on.

© 2019 The Unassuming Scholar