Dear Alabama

          A fourteen-year-old girl… A FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD GIRL… A thirty-two-year-old man. Disgusting.

 There will be a special election in Alabama on December 12, 2017 to elect a United States Senator. The incumbent, Luther Strange, had been appointed to the post by the governor of the state to replace Jeff Sessions, who had been selected Attorney General of the United States by the republican president, Donald Trump. Strange lost the republican primary election to Roy Moore, a former district attorney and Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.

          Roy Moore has been accused of sexually molesting a fourteen-year-old girl. He denied it. He was accused of sexually assaulting a sixteen-year-old girl. He denied that too. He was accused by three additional women of pursuing, dating, and/or kissing them when they were teen-agers and he was a thirty-something District Attorney. Mr. Moore denied it all. When asked by Sean Hannity if he dated ANY teen age girls during his thirties, Mr. Moore’s denial was not absolute, saying he didn’t remember, but stating that if he did such a thing, it was always with “their parent’s permission.”

          The republican party controls the United States Senate by two votes. Normally, the safest Republican seats in the Senate are the two seats allotted to the state of Alabama. It would be a true sign of the apocalypse for one of Alabama’s seats to go to a democrat. The republican party is caught between a rock and the gates of Hell. The majority leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell has decided that he “believes the women”, and has encouraged Moore to terminate his candidacy. By doing so he signaled to every other republican senator his expectation that they do the same thing, which they did. So officially, the republican party has said no to a child molester, even if it opens the doors of the Senate to a democrat.

          Ironically, McConnell is too wily a politician not to have a plan “B”. It is quite probable that he believes the voters of Alabama will elect the alleged pedophile anyway. If that happens, McConnell is laying the groundwork to immediately expel Moore from the Senate. Once that happens, Donald Trump can fire Jeff Sessions from his position as Attorney General, with the understanding that the Governor, Kay Ivey, would promptly give him his old senate seat back. Meanwhile, Trump could nominate a new attorney general that would not be recused from “the Russia thing”, and do his bidding to shut all that unpleasantness down.

          Mr. Moore has indicated that he will not step aside. I will not be the only one shocked if he changes his mind about that. That leaves the decision in the hands of the people of Alabama, my friends, my family, the people I grew up with. I left Alabama for good when I was thirty-one years old. I was old enough to understand the culture of the state. I knew Black people and white people. I knew poor people, rich people and middle-class people. I had seen bigotry and charity, equality and discrimination. I was old enough, mature enough, and intelligent enough to know that dating teen-agers at my age was not just wrong, but immoral as well. The people of Alabama will decide if they would rather have a child molester or a democrat represent them in the United States Senate.

          Many of the people I know today are unaware of my Alabama origins. My accent is gone. I don’t discuss the state unless I’m talking about Auburn football. Nevertheless, I still care. Thanks to the internet, I still read the local newspapers. Thanks to Facebook, I stay in touch with my high school friends. Most of them are good people, kind and loving people. We don’t always agree, but not once have I felt disrespected by any of them.

          There are times when local events in Alabama will have national impact. This is one of those times. The republican party has had a difficult time passing any legislation with their two-vote majority in the Senate. This election could reduce that advantage to a single vote. Fox News and the rest of the conservative media has been incredibly successful in demonizing democrats. Their success has reduced any democrat to the equivalent of a first cousin to the anti-Christ. For the vast majority of my home-state voters, voting for a democrat will be a very difficult thing to do. It will require the most difficult kind of courage, the courage to be different from your tribe, friends, family, and neighbors. It will require many to vote for a non-republican for the first time in their life.

          Most of the people watching this unfold outside of the state don’t believe that Alabamians will have that kind of courage. They have a condescending attitude towards everything and everybody in Alabama and a grudging respect only for the Auburn and Alabama football teams. They believe that Alabamians are so dense and bigoted that they will believe Roy Moore’s denials, or decide that it doesn’t matter as long as he is a republican.

          I think the rest of the country is wrong. I believe that my friends, family, and high school friends do believe that their children are more important than politics. The nation will be watching.

More will probably be watching the Iron Bowl…

But this election is more important.   

Who You Callin' a BITCH??!!??

         

It’s not about the flag. It’s not about disrespecting anything. That is the insidious power of ignorance. I often tell myself that ignorance is everywhere. Stupidity is everywhere. Racism and bigotry can be found in every country, every state, and every city. It pisses me off that the President of the United States would go to the state of my birth, Alabama, to one of its most beautiful cities, Huntsville, to vomit all over what this nation is supposed to be.

On July 6, 2016 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Alton B. Sterling, a 37-year-old African American man was arrested by two white police officers. They wrestled him to the ground. While he was pinned to the ground at least one of the officers pulled his service weapon and shot him several times. Mr. Sterling died. The event was captured on cell phone video and broadcast to the world on social media.

The following day, Philando Castile, a 32-year-old African American man was driving his car in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota. Riding with him was his girlfriend. Her 4-year-old daughter was riding in the back seat. Police officers pulled him over. According to his girlfriend, Mr. Castile informed the officer that he had a license to carry a firearm and that it was in the car. The officer shot him as he sat in the car. Mr. Castile died. His girlfriend used her cell phone to record the scene, including the haunting image of the officer’s weapon pointed menacingly inside the car. The video was broadcast around the world on social media.

On July 19, 2015, a Cincinnati police officer shot and killed Samuel Dubose in the head while he was sitting in his car. Mr. Dubose was not obstinate or belligerent, he was not threatening. He was stopped for not having a license tag on the front of his car. America and the world saw and heard it all.

On July 10, 2015, a Texas State Trooper stopped Sandra Bland. Her mistake was changing lanes without turning on her turn signal. The trooper got angry when she refused to put out a cigarette, threatened her with a stun gun, ordered her out of the car, wrestled her to the ground, handcuffed her and took her to jail. A few days later she was found dead in her jail cell. The officer’s dash-cam and a bystander’s cell phone recorded it all.

On June 5, 2015, McKinney, Texas police were called to a pool party attended by Black teenagers in a gated community. Cell phone video captured one of the police officers pointing a gun at several of the teenagers before grabbing a Black girl in a bathing suit, tackling her, and shoving her face into the ground.

On April 12, 2015, cell phone video allowed the world to see Freddie Gray being arrested and dragged into a Baltimore police van. He was in obvious pain. His legs were not moving. He would die of a spinal injury a week later after being tossed around without a seat belt in that van before arriving at the police station.

On April 4, 2015, in North Charleston, South Carolina, a bystander with a cell phone recorded video of a white police officer shooting Walter L. Scott eight times in the back as he ran away. Scott was not a suspect in any crime. He was unarmed. He had been pulled over for a traffic violation. He died on the scene.

On November 22, 2014, In Cleveland, Ohio, 12 year old Tamir Rice was playing with a toy gun in a public park. A white police officer arrived, got out of his cruiser and immediately shot the Black boy twice from point blank range, killing him. Surveillance video captured it all.

On August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri, cell phone video shows Michael Brown, an 18 year old Black teenager lying in the middle of the street for hours after he was shot and killed by a white police officer. He was unarmed.

On July 17, 2014, in Staten Island, New York, several police officers tried to arrest Eric Garner for selling illegal cigarettes. Mr. Garner was wrestled to the ground, placed in a chokehold, and strangled to death. A friend’s cell phone recorded it all.

According to the Washington Post, Black people are seven times more likely to be killed by police than white people. In 2015, 259 were killed. In 2016, 233 were killed. So far in 2017, 165 have been killed.

        

Colin Kaepernick was once the starting quarterback for the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers. He is the only player in NCAA Division 1 history to amass 10,000 passing yards and 4,000 rushing yards during his college career. During the 2012 NFL season he led his team to the Super Bowl. In 2013 he led the 49ers to the NFC Championship game. During the NFL’s preseason games in August of 2016, Kaepernick decided to sit during the national anthem to protest the killings of Blacks by American police. He would later start to kneel on one knee during the playing of the anthem for the same reason.

          My father was a minister. Since I was old enough to remember anything, I have been taught to kneel to pray. I kneel as a sign of reverence and respect for the God that I pray to. I was taught that Jesus Christ took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee to the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before his crucifixion, fell to his knees, and prayed. If kneeling before God or even a pagan king is a sign of reverence and respect, how in the hell is kneeling during the playing of the national anthem a sign of disrespect?

          There are several definitions of the word “bitch”. They include; “The female of a dog”, “a lewd or immoral woman”, “a malicious, spiteful or overbearing woman”, etc. On Friday, September 22, 2017 in Huntsville, Alabama the President of the United States referred to any National Football League Player that kneels during the playing of the national anthem as a “son of a bitch”. He also said they should be fired, repeating the “fired” for emphasis. The crowd roared, and America sank even lower into the cesspool of bigotry.

          As an educator, I have spent most of my life trying to help young people understand that the foundation of our country is the right to peacefully protest. Freedom itself is the right to disagree. The very first amendment to the Constitution, the first thing enumerated in the Bill of Rights guarantees the American people freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to assemble, and the right to petition the government to address our grievances.

        

Professional athletes and all the rest of us have a constitutional and unalienable right to protest the indiscriminate and racially motivated killing of Black people by the police. We will continue to do that.

That son of a bi….got in the White House won’t stop us.  

2018

          Since Donald Trump was elected President of the United States nothing he has said or done has surprised me. I have been angered, I have been disgusted, I have been embarrassed, but I have not been surprised. I am reminded of the late football coach Dennis Green, who was so disgusted after his NFL Arizona Cardinals team lost a game they had no business losing that he screamed something during the post-game interview that he will forever be remembered for; “THEY ARE WHO WE THOUGHT THEY WERE!!!!”

Donald Trump is who I thought he was. Bigoted, narcissistic, ignorant, xenophobic, dishonest, petty, criminal, misogynistic, racist…

          For the past ten months, I did not want to think about it, read about it, write about it or talk about it. I have been struggling with the “why” question? I wanted to understand why good, caring people would vote for such a monumentally flawed human to be President of the United States. My conclusion? It’s complicated. Possibly, the answer is as simple as “Americans just screwed up”. Sometimes that happens. People make mistakes. Nations make mistakes. There is no question that buyer’s remorse is rampant in the body politic. Donald Trump’s approval rating is at a historic low, during a time that would normally be considered a honeymoon period for an incoming President.

          So, what do you do when you screw something up? First, you admit it. Only when you can accept that a problem exists can you develop a solution for it.

          The American constitution provides three remedies for a Presidency that presents a clear and present danger to the nation itself. The 25^th Amendment to the constitution states that the Vice President and a majority of the cabinet secretaries may notify the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate that the President of the United States is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. In other words, Mike Pence and more than half of Trump’s hand-picked cabinet would have to declare that Trump is so mentally ill that he can’t do the job. However, if Trump says, “there is nothing wrong with me!”, (he’d probably do it with a tweet) the dispute would be decided by congress, a congress that currently is controlled by republicans in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. It would take a two-thirds vote in BOTH houses to send Trump back to Trump Tower in New York.

          Don’t hold your breath on the 25^th Amendment.

          The second remedy provided by the constitution is impeachment. There are currently FIVE official government investigations into Donald Trump, his presidential campaign, and his business transactions. All of them have the potential for discovering activities that could be impeachable offenses. They are being conducted by the Senate Intelligence Committee, the House Intelligence Committee, the Special Counsel via the Justice Department, the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. According to the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, the issues being investigated include;

·         Russian meddling in the 2016 election

·         Michael Flynn’s connections to Russian officials

·         Trump disclosing classified information to Russian officials

·         The firing of FBI Director James Comey

·         Collusion between Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Russian Officials

·         Ties between Trump associates and Russian officials

·         Possible obstruction of justice by Trump and financial crimes among Trump Associates

·         How to prevent and deter foreign interference in U.S. elections

·         Russian media’s attempts to spread fake news during the 2016 election

All of these investigations might conclude that all of the allegations are true, that Trump is guilty as sin, but Article II of the constitution grants the power to impeach the President only to the House of Representatives. If the House of Representatives approves articles of impeachment, it is the same as an indictment. A trial for the President would occur in the Senate. Two-thirds of the Senators must vote for conviction in order to remove the President. It has never happened in the history of our country. Chances are, it won’t happen with Trump either.

          The third option available to the American people for a Presidency gone off the rails is a simple one, an election. Every two years America elects the entire House of Representatives, all 435 of them. We also elect one-third of the Senate, 33 or 34 seats, depending on the year. The reason why the first two options are unlikely to happen is because republicans control both houses of congress. They currently have 247 of the 435 seats in the House, a majority of 29 seats. The republicans also hold 52 of the 100 seats in the Senate. The vice-president has the tie-breaking vote in the Senate, which gives them a majority of three in the Senate.

          American politics are currently poisoned by blatant tribalism. We focus on those things that make us different, instead of what makes us whole. This sickness is fed by the influx of unlimited money into our political system, allowing local and state elections to be unduly influenced by corporate interests with no interest in what is truly beneficial for the people that actually live in the place where that election is held. The election of Barack Obama ignited an unprecedented obstructionism in the nation’s governing bodies, a vicious backlash in conservative media outlets, and a racial polarization unseen in this country since the dawn of the modern civil rights movement. Then came Donald Trump, who capitalized on all of this madness and rode the wave all the way to the White House.

 

          There will be an American election in 14 months. It will be the most important election in our lifetimes, and one of the most important elections in the history of our country. In November of 2018, America will get a do-over, a mulligan. America screwed up in 2016. We will get a chance to fix it in 2018. If the democrats can pick up 15 seats in the House of Representatives, Donald Trump will be impeached. Even if the republicans in the Senate refuse to convict him, his legislative agenda will have no chance of passage.

          2018 will be a referendum on Trump. If the American people leave the republicans in charge of the House and the Senate, then we deserve whatever fate has in store for us.

          As for me, I choose to believe that the American people have seen enough, and will do the right thing in 2018. If I’m wrong, may God help us… and the rest of the world.

The Agony of Defeat

Today at 12 noon, Eastern Standard Time, Donald J. Trump will be sworn in as the 45^th President of the United States of America. That is a fact. There is nothing that I can say or do that will change that. If there was something I could say, I would say it. If there was something I could do, I would do it. The reality is, Trump won the election, and Clinton lost.

For me, that hurts. It hurts to say it. It hurts to write it. It hurts to think it.

When I went to bed (early) on election night I felt physically ill. I love my country. I have studied its history intently since I discovered my school’s library in elementary school. I am still moved by the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address. I am inspired by America’s heroes that have given their lives to preserve its freedoms and defend our rights. I am proud of its achievements in science, engineering, architecture, medicine, and the arts. I take pride in my country’s role in protecting human rights around the world and alleviating the suffering of those less fortunate than ourselves. I am proud of our way of life, our standards of living, and our progress in making our own country a beacon of opportunity for people all over the world. But when I went to bed on election night I was not proud. In fact, I was ashamed. I was angry. I was embarrassed.

I wonder who felt that way the night Barack Obama was elected President of the United States? I wonder if they would have the courage to ask themselves why?

I was ashamed because Donald Trump thinks that we should torture people and “take out their families”. To me, that means murder. Torture has been outlawed with the consensus agreement of the entire civilized world. So, our new President wants to be a war criminal and murderer. Donald Trump was caught on tape bragging about “grabbing them by the pussy”. He feels he can do that to women because of his celebrity. That makes him a misogynistic, admitted sexual abuser. Not to mention he has been accused of sexual assault by at least twelve different women. He feels that when we invaded Iraq we should have just “taken their oil”, and “presto!”, ISIS would not exist. He doesn’t seem to realize that invading a country and seizing its natural resources is the height of imperialism, and the type of thing the Nazi’s were sentenced to be hanged for at Nuremberg. Nevertheless, this is our new President.

I was angry because Donald Trump believes that we should have guns in our schools. Elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, colleges. He thinks we should have guns in our churches. He thinks we should have guns in our bars, guns in our airports, guns in our supermarkets, guns in our theaters, guns in our offices, guns in our malls, guns at our sporting events, guns in our restaurants, he thinks everybody on our streets should have a gun. Then, and only then, will we be “safe from the terrorists”. I am angry because I served in the United States Marine Corps, and I know what guns can do. I was a high school Principal for almost ten years, and I know how beautiful, brilliant, immature, impetuous, and stupid teenagers can be. I know how it feels to deliver a eulogy for a young person gone too soon. I still feel the pain of the parents of those elementary school children in Newtown, Connecticut. Gunned down with a weapon designed for the battlefield. I went to bed angry that night because I despise racism and those that promote or perpetrate it. Donald Trump created his political base by insisting at every opportunity that America’s first Black President was a fraud, illegitimate, born in Kenya and ineligible to be President. Donald Trump said that Barack Obama was “the most ignorant President we have ever had”. Trump started his campaign by insisting he would build a wall on the Mexican border to keep the Mexican’s out of the country, and institute a ban on Muslims entering the country to stop terrorism. He has said nothing about keeping illegal immigrants that happen to be white out of the country.

When I went to bed on election night I was embarrassed because our children are watching. People all over the world are watching. The American President has incredible power to influence the actions of others. They are the supreme role-model. Some of our children have already begun to emulate the despicable behavior displayed throughout the campaign at Donald Trump political rallies. They are insulting minorities, ridiculing the disabled, and threatening violence against those that may disagree with them.

I fear for what comes next for my country and the world. War is more likely than peace, and nuclear weapons makes it possible for Donald Trump to destroy civilization itself. Trump is beholden to the Russian government. Evidence indicate the reasons are financial as well as sexual. I fear what the Russians will extort from our new President.

ABC’s Wide World of Sports was an American institution from April 1961 until January 1998. It’s iconic opening sequence featured a terrible crash of a ski jumper, Vinko Bogataj. Just before Bogataj’s crash, the announcer, Jim McKay says “the thrill of victory”, and as the crash occurs, he says… “and the agony of defeat”. Watching the crash, you can’t help but assume that every bone in Bogataj” body is broken, and he probably died.

Bogataj survived the “agony of defeat”. I pray that America will survive it too.