Running for the Cliff

 

“Mercy is most empowering, liberating, and transformative when it is directed at the undeserving.” Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy

Where’s Mike Pence? Where’s the VP while Don-the-Denier wanks and whines and blows idiot winds every time he opens his mouth? Has Mike jumped the Trump ship? Is he working on his story, a patriotic tale of how he, and he alone, prevented Trump from blowing up the world? Contrary to all the evidence, you can bet Mike Pence will portray himself, not as Trump’s docile lapdog, but as a ferocious behind-the-scenes champion of the American Way. Start putting the campaign ads together, because Mike Pence will be running for something soon enough. 

The Republicans, or as I now refer to the GOP, the Trump Party, hasn’t seemed to miss Pence. You don’t hear much about his whereabouts, which is a pretty good clue that even corruptible Mike Pence has a limit to what he’ll put his name behind. Mitch McConnell and the rest of the congressional gangsters, gadflys, goofballs, geeks, and grifters have no apparent limit. They represent a cesspool with no bottom. They lust after the power to force their minority viewpoint on the majority in this country. They’ve grown accustomed to wielding or withholding this power as they please. To them, compromise is a foreign, dirty word. Duty is in the eye of the beholder. Honor is reserved for the winners. 

The Democrats are generally less corrupt but no less owned and operated by Corporate America. I promised myself that I would not pay much attention to Biden’s picks for his cabinet and key agencies, knowing they would piss me off and make me feel discouraged before Biden assumes office. I  have watched Joe Biden for years, and to me he’s less a Democrat than he is what we used to call a “moderate” Republican. Believe it or not, there were quite a few of them back in the day, and they often joined Democrats in passing legislation that made the lives of working-class America less precarious. They’re all extinct now, not one to be found unless you count Mitt Romney, or possibly Larry Hogan, the Governor of Maryland. Hogan neither disgusts or scares me -- he seems like a sensible man and a decent human being. Mitt Romney disappoints me. He’s a wealthy man, beholden to no one except the Mormon church, with nothing at risk, and even Romney won’t step out and flatly declare that Trump’s clumsy, inept and stupid attempts to subvert the will of the voters is not only wrong, it’s dangerous for the nation.

Hey Trump Party members, answer me this: are y’all really going the Joseph McCarthy route, full batshit, conspiracies behind every door of every house in blue America; fever dreams about about brown and black people threatening to take over major cities; dire warnings about death-crazed Muslims intent on imposing sharia law in the white suburbs where the Christians live. Is that the deal with you people? Are you going to be bullied by a nihilistic movement -- I’m talking about Trumpism -- that is doomed to consume itself, and you with it? You need to repent by declaring yourself free of Trump’s hold. Crazy doesn’t work. Stand up and condemn the crap that Trump’s foisting on the nation day after day. Can’t you see how desperate he looks, and how dangerous what he’s doing is? Surely you can see. He lost. You know he did, the numbers don’t lie. The Supreme Court just sent you a very clear message. Joe Biden got 7 million more votes than Trump. Biden thumped Trump’s ass. That stupid Texas lawsuit is going nowhere. The election was a resounding repudiation of Donald Trump’s brand of dangerous, callous incompetence and madness. That so many people voted for Trump worries me greatly, but the majority declared that enough is enough.  

But no matter what, on January 20, 2021, the Trump Party will still be here. That diseased herd is running full tilt for the cliff, all chasing Trump’s long and ugly shadow, all willing to sell mind and soul for another handful of magic beans. They keep backing Trump’s play, mucking around at the perimeter of the law, afraid that Dear Leader will frown with disfavor and sic his most demented followers on them. Trump’s people are loud and mean on Twitter and Facebook, and  some of these fools are now showing up at the residences of elected officials, demanding they break the law and put the fix in for Trump. As for Trump, he’s never shy about his corruption, it’s business-as-usual to him, the way it’s done, so he calls the governors of swing states in broad daylight, from the Oval Office, and pressures them to rip up their state constitutions and order their attorney’s general to subvert the law and make Trump win. 

Trump is one dumb fucker, I have to say. It’s astonishing to me how stupid he is, how illogical and childish and moronic. He says the most ridiculous shit, like, “I won. I’m 2-0 in elections. I got more votes than Obama.” But you got 7 million less than Joe Biden, your opponent, or were you running, in that gelatinous brain of yours, against Obama’s ghost?

And how about Trump’s understanding of the Supreme Court? It comes down to this: If Trump appoints them, it means they are forever beholden to him and must always rule in his favor. It’s that transactional, that simple, they must obey the king. Trump still believes the Supreme Court, his Court, will somehow, some way, reverse the election results and hand him a second term. 

Where’s Mike? I don’t know and don’t really care. Maybe he’s hiding in the wings until Trump summons him to do him a service, to bend forward and kiss the ring, then produce a magic wand and make it all come true. 

The Presence of Justice

“True peace is not merely the absence of tension. It is the presence of justice.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Back from a four day trip to a place I’d never set foot in before, the Deep South, Montgomery, Alabama. My wife, 23-year-old son, and me. Our purpose was to visit the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. I was supposed to interview Bryan Stevenson on behalf of the Santa Barbara Independent, but his availability didn’t match our travel schedule. Still, I wanted to see the work of the man who wrote Just Mercy, was the subject of the HBO documentary, True Justice, and is soon to be portrayed by Michael B. Jordan in a feature film. Jamie Foxx is also in the cast. Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, spearheaded the building in Montgomery of a museum and a place of remembrance to the victims of racial violence. Makes sense, since the modern civil rights movement started in Montgomery, when Rosa B. Parks refused to relinquish her seat to a white man. The City of Montgomery recently unveiled a new Rosa Parks statue. 

Montgomery is also home to the Dexter Avenue Memorial Baptist Church, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. presided as pastor in the 1950’s, and from whose basement King and others organized the Montgomery bus boycott. We visited the church on a Saturday and got pulled inside by a woman who insisted we join a tour in progress. She wasn’t a woman one could say no thanks to. We toured the basement and then climbed 16 steps to the church itself. The next day we returned for the 10:30 a.m. service, which also happened to mark the 142nd anniversary of the church. The congregation, almost all African-American, was gracious and welcoming, many people approached us and asked where we were from and why we had come to Montgomery. There was a group from South Africa and a couple from Australia. The choir wore red robes and when they sang my wife cried. Because it was Dexter’s anniversary a guest pastor delivered the sermon. His name was James Nuckles. He started slow but once he built up a head of rhetorical steam I understood what a Baptist church in the Deep South was all about. 

We spent a morning at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. I didn’t feel a sense of guilt as a white person, instead I felt a sense of great sadness. EJI has identified more than 4,000 cases of lynching, though the actual number is probably higher. From Reconstruction well into the 1950’s, African-Americans suffered wave after wave of racial terror, a campaign designed to maintain a rigid social hierarchy, whites on top, blacks subordinate. Lynchings were often advertised in the newspaper and sometimes thousands of white people would gather to watch, the atmosphere almost that of a county fair or carnival. It wasn’t uncommon for spectators to fire pistols at the hanging body.  

Much of downtown Montgomery appeared blighted to me but a woman I spoke to at the Visitors Center said a lot of progress had been made to revitalize the area, particularly on Commerce Street. New hotels, a performing arts center, restaurants, bars, and the Legacy Museum were bringing more people downtown. Still, when we walked up Dexter Avenue to the state capital on Monday morning we saw very few people out and about. The huge state government buildings, white, with columns and porticos, were impressive.

We returned to Santa Barbara and the regular routine of our lives, work and household chores, paying bills, taking out the trash, turning the compost, laundry. I came down with a cold and felt lousy for a couple of days.