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.

Waiting to Exhale

My best friend and I argue about many things. I think he enjoys it. There are times when I am sure that he takes a position on a certain topic for no other reason than he knows that I feel differently about it. He calls it “poking the bear”, and it works… We fight about football, baseball, basketball, golf, guns, movies, books, food, history, politics, and a thousand other things. One of our more memorable arguments was about the causes of the American Civil War.

We both have read extensively about the war, and visited the battlefields together. We agree that the Civil War was the pivotal event in American history, an existential threat to the nation itself. I have always believed that the reason for the war was slavery. He insisted that the cause was “states’ rights”. For years, he used that argument as the proverbial stick to “poke the bear”. It worked every time. Every time he brought it up he would truly piss me off, and he knew it. Eventually, we decided to agree that the root cause of the Civil War was the Confederate States’ insistence on their “right” to own slaves.

Imagine that. Our nation split in two. State against State. Brother against Brother, Neighbor against Neighbor. We went to war against each other, because one half of the nation, convinced of its racial superiority, insisted it had the right to own Black people as slaves. By the time the war was over, more than 620,000 men would lose their lives in the line of duty, more than World War I, World War II, Korea, and Viet Nam, combined.   

That is the power of racism. It is a human defect that has been present within us since the beginning of time.

The Civil War began in 1860. Four score and four years after the Declaration of Independence. One hundred years later, in 1960, the nation found itself engaged in another existential struggle caused by racism. The Civil War had resulted in three amendments to the United States Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship rights to African Americans and former slaves. The Fifteenth Amendment granted the right to vote to African Americans and former slaves. Nevertheless, one hundred years later, in 1960, none of the rights granted by the war and these amendments were reality.

The Civil Rights Movement was required to ensure that the 620,000 lives sacrificed during the Civil War were not given in vain. The movement ensured that the majestic words enshrined in the Lincoln Memorial were not meaningless. More sacrifices would be required. More blood would have to be shed. More tears would have to fall, but once again, the scourge of racism would be forced to retreat, and America would move ever closer to the promise of its creed.

Forty-eight years later, America would elect its first African American President.

Many thought that the election of Barack Obama was clear evidence of a post-racial society. Many thought that his election was proof-positive that American racism was a thing of the past. They were wrong. Racism is not an American problem. Racism is not a Southern problem. It is a human problem, and the election of a Black man as President of the United States was more than most racists could stand.

On Tuesday, November 8, 2016 (just two days away), America will elect a President to succeed Barack Obama. In many ways, Obama’s successor will be more fortunate than he was. They will inherit a nation with few of the problems Obama faced on his first day in office. The worst financial crises since the Great Depression is no more. Interest rates are at record lows, inflation is non-existent, unemployment is 4.9%, and the country has enjoyed 72 consecutive months of job growth, the longest consecutive streak since 1939! Last year, the country had the largest increase in median household income since 1968! And, the number of Americans without health insurance has reached a record low. Not to mention the two wars (Afghanistan and Iraq) that were raging are no longer claiming American lives.

I believe that Hillary Clinton will be elected President of the United States, but I’m not absolutely sure. Donald Trump could win, and that scares me. After watching and listening to Trump for the past year, I am astounded that 40% of American voters are willing to make him President. There have been so many times when he has said and done things that embarrassed me as an American because I know the world is watching, I know that impressionable children are watching. How can tens of millions of American citizens believe that this man should be the leader of the free world? I have asked myself, “is racism that powerful?” “Is ignorance that pervasive?”

I have heard the arguments that all of this is a manifestation of “economic populism”. I listen to the people on television who are paid to say intelligent stuff talking about how all the manufacturing jobs are gone because of “immigration” and “bad trade deals.”

But then I think about the changes that have occurred since the Civil Rights Movement, how the racial caste system was finally destroyed and how the legal barriers to minority achievement have begun to level the economic playing field for minorities. Perhaps that is why minorities are overwhelmingly Democrats, despite the fact that economically and socially they are still suffering more than white Americans.

I hear the pundits talking about how the jobs that only required muscle are gone overseas (where wages are lower). They talk about our “21^st Century” economy that places an emphasis on education. Today, educated minorities are visibly more successful than uneducated whites. Their once “superior” status, which was based simply on being white, is a thing of the past. Many of them still live in towns that have been adversely affected by these fundamental changes.

Is this what they mean when they say they want to “take our country back”?

When Trump says, he will “Make America Great Again” is he talking about before all of this happened? Before the Civil Rights Movement? Before the Civil War?

Who will he take the country back from? The Latinos? The Jews? The Muslims? The African American in the White House?

My best friend and I argue about a lot of things, but we agree on Trump. He is an existential threat to the United States and civilization itself. His appeal is rooted in racist appeals and bigotry. Many of his supporters are victims of an evolving economic system that demands more than they have to give. This is a problem that could, and should be addressed. America has solved bigger problems before, but this one will require Democrats and Republicans working together.

Abraham Lincoln, when facing the nation’s first great existential threat, said “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature”.

It seems as if I have been holding my breath, waiting for this election to end. I pray that this threat to our nation, the “last great hope of mankind”, shall soon pass.

Jane Doe v. Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey E. Epstein

In prison culture, a pedophile is called a “short eyes”. A “short eyes” is despised by the rest of the inmates. They are usually separated from the rest of the prison population to prevent them from being killed. They are the lowest of the low.

Donald Trump’s attorneys have been ordered by the United States District Court, Southern District of New York, to appear in courtroom 1506 on September 9, 2016, for an initial status conference for case No. 16-CV-4642 (RA).
https://timinhonolulu.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/20160630-7-order-and-notice-of-initial-conference.pdf

Why? Donald Trump has been accused of raping a 13-year-old girl in 1994.

During his campaign for the Presidency of the United States, Donald Trump has said many things that would seemingly disqualify him for the position. Nevertheless, he has persevered, triumphed, and continues to survive. Despite ominous recent polls, he still commands the support of a bedrock base of 35% of the American electorate.

For some reason, despite around-the-clock coverage of the Presidential campaign, the major news organizations refuse to touch this case. It is possible that they all believe it is simply a frivolous lawsuit that could not possibly be true. It is also possible that the consequences of informing the American public would be so catastrophic that no organization wants the responsibility of breaking the story, destroying Trump, the GOP, and its elected officials, and later having Trump exonerated.

Nevertheless…

This is the third time that Donald Trump has been publicly accused of sexual assault or rape.

His first wife, Ivana, in a 1989 deposition accused him of attacking her, pulling her hair out and forcibly penetrating her without her consent. According to the “Daily Beast”, he was angry with her because she had referred him to a cosmetic surgeon to perform a procedure to cover a bald spot, but the result was painful, which is why he pulled her hair out. They were later divorced, and Mrs. Trump later said she did not mean “rape” in a “literal or criminal” sense.

In 1997, According to the “Guardian” and the “Huffington Post”, Jill Harth alleged in a federal lawsuit that Donald Trump violated her “physical and mental integrity” when he touched her intimately without consent after her husband went into business with him, leaving her “emotionally devastated (and) distraught.” She later withdrew the suit when a parallel suit against Mr. Trump brought by her husband was settled. As recently as this year Ms. Harth has stood by her sexual assault allegations.

Lisa Bloom, a legal analyst for NBC News, attorney, and best-selling author described the Jane Doe case in a haunting article in the Huffington Post. In it, she said;

Jane Doe says that Mr. Trump “initiated sexual contact” with her on four occasions in 1994. Since she was thirteen at the time, consent is not an issue. If Mr. Trump had any sexual contact with her in 1994, it was a crime.

On the fourth incident, she says Mr. Trump tied her to a bed and forcibly raped her, in a “savage sexual attack,” while she pleaded with him to stop. She says Mr. Trump violently struck her in the face. She says that afterward, if she ever revealed what he had done, Mr. Trump threatened that she and her family would be “physically harmed if not killed.” She says she has been in fear of him ever since.

New York’s five-year statute of limitations on this claim – the legal deadline for filing – has long since run. However, Jane Doe’s attorney, Thomas Meagher, argues in his court filing that because she was threatened by Mr. Trump, she has been under duress all this time, and therefore she should be permitted additional time to come forward. Legally, this is called “tolling” – stopping the clock, allowing more time to file the case. As a result, the complaint alleges, Jane Doe did not have “freedom of will to institute suit earlier in time.”

Two unusual documents are attached to Jane Doe’s complaints – sworn declarations attesting to the facts. The first is from Jane Doe herself, telling her horrific story, including the allegation that Jeffrey Epstein also raped her and threatened her into silence, and this stunner;

“Defendant Epstein then attempted to strike me about the head with his closed fists while he angrily screamed at me that he, Defendant Epstein, should have been the one who took my virginity, not Defendant Trump…”

And this one;

“Defendant Trump stated that I shouldn’t ever say anything if I didn’t want to disappear like Maria, a 12-year-old female that was forced to be involved in the third incident with Defendant Trump and that I had not seen since that third incident, and that he was capable of having my whole family killed.”

The second declaration is even more astonishing, because it is signed by “Tiffany Doe”, Mr. Epstein’s “party planner” from 1991-2000. Tiffany Doe says that her duties were “to get attractive adolescent women to attend these parties.”

Tiffany Doe says that she recruited Jane Doe at the Port Authority in New York, persuaded her to attend Mr. Epstein’s parties, and actually witnessed the sexual assaults on Jane Doe.

“I personally witnessed the Plaintiff being forced to perform various sexual acts with Donald J. Trump and Mr. Epstein. Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein were advised that she was 13 years old.”

It is exceedingly rare for a sexual assault victim to have a witness, but Tiffany Doe says;

“I personally witnessed four sexual encounters that the plaintiff was forced to have with Mr. Trump during this period, including the fourth of these encounters where Mr. Trump forcibly raped her despite her pleas to stop.”

I will never be certain that Mr. Trump did or did not commit this unspeakable crime. What is certain, is that the allegation has been made. We are certain that a witness that worked for Mr. Epstein at the time corroborates the allegation. We know that a personal relationship between Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein existed at that time, and that Mr. Epstein is a billionaire pedophile who is a “Level 3 registered sex offender”, “a threat to public safety” – after being convicted of misconduct with another underage girl.

I am also certain that I am in agreement with the prison population of America when they say they want nothing to do with any man that would sexually abuse a child. They don’t want a man like that on their cell block or in their cell. I don’t want a man like that in my neighborhood or in my house. They think a man like that is disgusting. I do too.

I’m trying to picture a man like that in the White House.

Short Eyes.

I can’t do it. 

America, is better than that.

How Obama Destroyed the GOP

The Republican Party is at war with itself. Thirty-five percent of the party faithful is enamored with Donald Trump, the bigoted, xenophobic, vulgar, narcissistic, ignorant, billionaire racist from New York. The other seventy-five percent of the faithful can’t agree on who to support for President instead. The conventional wisdom at this point, is that Trump will win the Republican nomination for President, or all hell will break loose at the Republican Convention in Cleveland this Summer.

 I believe that if Trump gets the nomination, the rest of the Party will form a third party and run someone else for President. I also believe that if there is a brokered convention, and the powers that be somehow manage to give the nomination to someone else, Trump will leave with his middle finger in the air, take his thirty-five percent of old white people, uneducated white people, poorly educated white people, bigots, racists, and Obama haters, and run for President on a third party ticket himself.

Either way, the Republican Party, as we know it today, will cease to exist.

Ironically, that could be a good thing for all of us, Republicans included. Believe it or not, it’s happened before, to the Democrats, for similar reasons.

In 1948, President Harry Truman (a Democrat) ordered an end to discrimination in the military. More than two million Blacks had served in World War II, and Truman decided that they deserved equal pay and the same benefits from the Veteran’s Administration that white veterans were getting. Truman’s executive order, in effect, was the beginning of the modern struggle for civil rights.

Since the end of the Civil War, the former Confederate States had been a literal block vote for the Democratic Party. They were, understandably, totally opposed to the Republicans, the “Party of Lincoln”, the man responsible for freeing their slaves, killing their sons, taking their wealth, and destroying their way of life.

When the Democrats nominated Harry Truman for a second term during their convention, the Southern Democrats were incensed. A few days later they held their own convention in Birmingham, Alabama. Out of that convention the “State’s Rights Democratic Party” was born. They would come to be known as the “Dixiecrats”, and their nominee for President would be the true-blue segregationist from South Carolina, Strom Thurmond. Twenty years later, Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” would use the fierce anger and percolating racism of southern whites resulting from the Civil Rights Movement, and the Democratic President Lyndon Johnson’s support of the movement to completely transform the “Solid South” from a Democratic “block vote” to a Republican one.

So, what does Barack Obama have to do with what’s happening now?

As of today, Donald Trump has won 12 states. Among them are Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky, with Florida, Mississippi, and North Carolina yet to vote (Trump is leading the polls in all of them). The only former Confederate state he did not win is Texas, where Ted Cruz, a Texas Senator, prevailed, and Trump placed second.

Few will admit it, but it is nevertheless true. In all of these states, “Race” trumps everything. The Civil War was never reconciled, and at least thirty-five percent of the population truly believes “The South will Rise Again”.

The election of Barack Obama, a Black man, as President of the United States was unacceptable in the former Confederate States. The Republican Party today “IS” the former Confederate States. They cannot win a national election if they lose any one of them. That is the reason why so many believe the President is not an American, that he is a Muslim, that he is deliberately trying to destroy the American way of life. That is the reason why the Republicans vehemently opposed everything he tried to do, even when he adopted their own ideas. That is why they have disrespected him and the office he holds. They are in agreement with Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney, who famously ruled that a Black man had “No rights that a white man was bound to respect”.

It is because of Obama that the “tea party patriots” were created. Hatred of Obama fueled the insanity espoused by the National Rifle Association. It is because of Obama that the Republicans were able to dominate off-year elections, promising their followers that they would stop Obama no matter what. They were able to win state legislatures, governorships, the U.S. Senate, and solidified a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. All of them ran against “Obama”. All of them were going to “stop” him. None of them did.

As Donald Trump would say, all the President did was “win, win, win”. He won on healthcare, immigration, Iran, the debt limit, climate change, Cuba, same-sex marriage and deficit reduction. He added 14 million new jobs, with more than 70 consecutive months of job growth, reducing the unemployment rate from over 10% to 4.9%. He saved the automobile industry, rescued the economy, and provided health insurance for 20 million people that would otherwise not have it.

The confederate, uh, Republican faithful are tired of losing, especially to people that are less than them, like Blacks and Latinos, and Muslims, and Syrians. They like Trump because he says what they’re thinking. They don’t like the Republican establishment because they lied to them, tricked them, hoodwinked them. They fell for the Okey Doke. The Republicans said they would put the Black guy in the White House in his place, the faithful gave them their votes, and they didn’t do what they said they would do.

The Confederates were once all in with the Democrats. When the party decided to do the right thing on equality and human rights, they split, and the Republicans welcomed them with open arms. This Summer, they will split again, unfortunately (for them), there will be no future as a majority party available.

As a result, America will be a better place. The body politic will be healthier. The recurring viral infection of racism, bigotry, homophobia, and xenophobia will go into recession. Unfortunately, some day, it will be back. Both parties have been infected by this cancer, who knows which party it will reappear in?

In the meantime, we can thank Barack Obama for destroying the cancer this time.  

The Fierce Urgency of ... 1967

She was a beautiful little girl, fourteen months old. She had an exuberant smile, with plump cheeks that begged to be kissed. Her name was Maleah Williams. On Christmas Day, in an apartment complex in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Maleah and her mother were outside celebrating Christmas with almost a dozen other children and their parents.

Maleah’s mother, Tylena Williams described what happened next. “….. I saw a car drive through the parking lot, then back up a hill before stopping near a set of dumpsters… then a man inside the car started spraying bullets into the yard below… he just started shooting and I started running… I felt my body being so warm and my baby was just bleeding so much and gasping for air, and I kept telling her I love her, please don’t leave me.” 

Maleah had been shot in the head. She would die three days later.

Maleah was not alone. According to the Washington Post, twenty six other people were shot and killed on Christmas Day, 2015. They would include a barbershop owner in Alabama, a grandfather in Texas, and a young couple in Ohio. In addition to that, 63 other people were injured by gunfire. Not to mention suicides. Incredibly, more people died on Christmas Day in the United States last year than the number of people killed in gun homicides for the entire year in Austria, New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia, Estonia, Bermuda, Hong Kong and Iceland combined.

Today, 45 of the 50 states have “open carry laws”, which allow citizens to openly carry firearms on the streets. Imagine what would happen if a group of determined Black men were to listen to police calls on police scanners, rush to the scene of black people being arrested with law books in hand and inform the person being arrested of their constitutional rights? What if those men also happened to carry loaded weapons (in accordance with the law) which were publicly displayed but were careful to stand no closer than ten feet from the arrest so as not to interfere with the arrest?

This is exactly what happened in Oakland, California in 1967. The California legislature responded to these “Patrols” with the “Mulford Act”, which banned open carrying of loaded firearms in California. The law was supported by the governor of California, Ronald Reagan. The bill’s conservative sponsor, Don Mulford, also a republican, argued as late as 1989 that “openly carrying a gun is an act of violence or near violence”. The bill also had the support of the NRA.

On May 2, 1967, a group of thirty young Black men and women arrived at the California State Capitol in Sacramento. They were armed with shotguns, but were careful to keep them pointed towards the sky. As they neared the entrance to the building, they were noticed by the Governor, Ronald Reagan, who was speaking with a group of children. Reagan turned and ran. The group continued into the building and eventually arrived on the Assembly floor, which was debating the Mulford Act. Bedlam ensued. Many of the legislators dived under their desks screaming “don’t shoot”. Security guards responded immediately, surrounding the group and pushing them out into a hallway. Reporters were everywhere, clamoring for information. They all seemed to be asking “who are you!!!” As the group was ushered into an elevator, one of them, a 16 year-old named Bobby Hutton replied, “We’re the Black Panthers. We’re Black People with guns. What about it?”

Less than a year later, On April 6, 1968, two days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Bobby Hutton would be killed in a gun battle with Oakland police. He would be shot more than 12 times after he had surrendered and been stripped down to his underwear to ensure that he was unarmed. More than 1500 people would attend his funeral. More than 2,000 would attend a rally held after the funeral. Those in attendance included Marlon Brando and James Baldwin. Bobby Hutton was 17 years old.

The Mulford Act is still the law in California. California is one of only five states that still prohibits the open carrying of guns. The law was not conceived in ideology. The law was motivated by the fear of Black people with guns threatening the police and the lawmakers themselves not with actual violence, but the mere possibility of violence. Fear demands an immediate response. The fierce urgency of now.

Today, the National Rifle Association is a fierce opponent of any and all laws that might restrict in any way the purchase or ownership of guns. The NRA owns the United States Congress. They bought it fair and square with campaign contributions. They control it with fear. They use the same methods many parents in the South used on their children, I would often hear my parents say, “I brought you into this world (congress), and I’ll take you out”. Republican politicians wear their “A+” grades from the NRA like a badge of honor. They will not be moved by that bullet in Maleah Williams head on Christmas day.

But, as quiet as it’s kept, the NRA, for most of its existence, supported gun control. In the 1920’s the NRA proposed legislation requiring permits for concealed weapons, adding five years to prison sentences for crimes committed with guns, banning non-citizens from buying hand guns, requiring gun dealers to turn over sales records to police, and creating a one day waiting period to purchase a gun. The NRA helped Franklin Roosevelt draft the first federal gun controls; 1934’s National Firearms Act and 1938’s Gun Control Act. These laws imposed high taxes and registration requirements on machine guns, sawed-off shotguns and silencers, making it all but impossible for average people to own them. Gun makers and sellers had to register with the federal government and convicted felons were barred from gun ownership. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld these laws in 1939. The Gun Control Act of 1968 came in the aftermath of the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963, the Black Panther’s visit to the California Legislature in 1967, and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassinations in 1968. The law added a minimum age for gun buyers, required guns have serial numbers, and excluded the mentally ill and drug addicts from owning guns. Only federally licensed dealers and collectors could ship guns over state lines. People buying certain kinds of ammunition had to show ID. The NRA supported all of these measures.

Today, on this national holiday on which we dedicate our thoughts to the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., it seems as if we live in what seems to be an alternative universe. During the great March on Washington in 1963, in his iconic speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial Dr. King spoke of the “Fierce Urgency of Now”. That “Urgency” of 1967, to make the nation’s people safe by addressing the violence of guns cannot be found. As I celebrate, commiserate, contemplate, where we go from here on this very special day, I think of the victims, not just the high profile mass killings that make the national news and set the twitter world afire, but the Maleah’s and their parents, the daily carnage that makes our nation the most violent in the history of the world. None of us are safe. We must find the courage to fix this.

As Dr. King said on that historic day in Washington, “Now is the time…..”

Now is the Time.  

The Myth of Reagan

When I heard the first news reports that National Airport in Washington, D.C. would be renamed "Ronald Reagan National Airport" I immediately embarked on the five stages of grief. Denial and anger kicked in almost simultaneously. I think I skipped right over bargaining and eventually settled into depression. Although this happened in 1998, I'm still fighting with acceptance.

So what’s my problem?

My issues with Reagan began when he announced his second campaign for the Presidency. In 1980 he made a speech at the Neshoba County Fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi. This is the place where three civil rights workers were killed in 1964. Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman were buried in an earthen dam by the ku klux klan. Their murders would help to galvanize the nation in support of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Reagan went there and made a speech in support of "States Rights". He might as well have pissed on their graves. Any one from the South knows what "states’ rights" means. This was the Confederacy's politically correct excuse for starting the civil war. This was their rationale for slavery itself.

Reagan would also go on to tell an audience in Atlanta that "Jefferson Davis is a hero of mine", and describe the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as "humiliating to the South". If there remained any doubt about how Reagan felt about equality and human rights, he made his feelings clear in 1986.

The Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act was passed by Congress in 1986. It imposed sanctions on the racist, minority South African government that was violently enforcing strict racial segregation. The law outlined five preconditions for lifting the sanctions that would essentially end the system of Apartheid. The law enjoyed the support of the entire civilized world.

Ronald Reagan vetoed it.

The US Congress overrode the veto and the Bill became law. The Senate voted 78 to 21, and the House voted 313 to 83. Apartheid came to an end in South Africa in 1991.

As quiet as it's kept, the Reagan administration was one of the most corrupt in American history. More than 100 members of the Reagan Administration were convicted, indicted, or resigned while under investigation during Reagan's eight years in office, including some of his most prominent aides. The list includes Edwin Meese III (Attorney General), Lyn Nofziger (Senior Aide), Michael Deaver (Senior Aide), Caspar Weinberger (Secretary of Defense), James Watt (Secretary of the Interior), Ray Donovan (Secretary of Labor), Elliot Abrams (State Department), Robert McFarlane (National Security Advisor), Oliver North (White House Staff), John Poindexter (National Security Advisor), Alan Fiers (CIA), Clair George (CIA), and Duane Clarridge (CIA).

On December 21, 1982 President Reagan signed an appropriations bill that included the Boland Amendment. The amendment made it illegal for the United States to provide assistance to the Contras, a group in Nicaragua that was trying to overthrow the Marxist Nicaraguan government.

In 1985 the Reagan administration agreed to secretly supply anti-tank and other weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran in exchange for Iran's help in obtaining the release of six Americans being held hostage in Lebanon. The administration then took the money generated from the sale of these arms and gave it to the Contras in Nicaragua, a clear violation of the law that Reagan himself signed just three years earlier. Subsequent investigations resulted in several indictments, convictions, resignations, and pardons of high ranking administration officials. Reagan himself was forced to testify under oath, and incredibly answered "I don't remember" 130 times.

Many Americans are familiar with the phrase "once a Marine, always a Marine". I was once a marine, and on a Sunday morning in October of 1983 I experienced a spasm of anger that I will never forget. On that day, 241 American servicemen, 220 of them marines, died when an Iranian suicide bomber crashed a truck filled with explosives into their barracks while most of them slept. They were in Beirut, Lebanon on a "peacekeeping" mission.

Reagan responded two days later by ordering an invasion of Grenada, a small island in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela. The US sent more than 7,000 troops to "rescue and protect" 61 American medical students on the island. The United Nations condemned the military action as "a flagrant violation of international law" by a vote of 108 to 9. A similar resolution failed in the Security Council as a result of a veto by the United States. Seven Democratic Congressmen introduced an unsuccessful resolution to impeach the President.

The entire Granada operation lasted less than three months. Reagan declared victory against the spread of communism. The United States suffered 19 killed and 116 wounded. More than 5000 medals and commendations were awarded to the participants. Meanwhile, the 241 servicemen that died in their bunks in Lebanon were out of the headlines.

The most baffling part of the revisionist history enveloping Reagan has to be his stewardship of the American economy. Has everybody forgotten what REALLY happened to the economy during those eight years??? How could they forget "Black Monday", October 19, 1987 when the stock market crashed by 508 points (22.61%)? Have we forgotten prime interest rates of 20%? Have we forgotten home loan interest rates of 16%?  That’s what was happening in the "Reagan Years". The Reagan years also saw unemployment rise to 10.8%, the highest rate since the Great Depression!

Reagan, today's patron saint of the conservative movement, increased federal spending by 80% during his eight years in the White House, doubled the federal deficit, MORE than doubled the national debt, and raised taxes seven of the eight years he was in office. Had he not, the deficits would have been much worse.

 Imagine what would have happened if this was the record that the Obama administration was leaving with us.

  Somehow, for some reason, the American people, the American press, and the American intelligentsia have allowed the Reagan loyalists to create and perpetuate a myth of historical proportions and sell it to America and the world.

Simon Hoggart, writing in "The Observer" said this about Reagan, "His errors glide by unchallenged. At one point....he alleged that almost half the population gets a free meal from the government each day. No one told him he was crazy. The general message of the American press is that yes, while it is perfectly true that the emperor has no clothes, nudity is very acceptable this year."

 If we really need another hero, is this the best we can do?

Apocalypse Now?

The date was January 14, 1963. Fifty two years ago. The streets of Montgomery were packed with visitors from all over the state. Many others were there from other states. The local, state, and national media were there as well. The occasion was the inaugural address of the newly elected governor. The speech had been written by Asa Carter, founder of the local Ku Klux Klan. The editors of the local daily newspaper, the Montgomery Advertiser, had urged the fiery young governor-elect to remove the fateful passage from the speech, but their request was denied. He stood on the portico of the Capitol building, looking down on the mass of people stretching down the boulevard known as Dexter Avenue. Surely, he was aware of the symbolism. This was the same place that Jefferson Davis had stood as he was sworn in as the first (and only) President of the Confederacy.

And then, he said it.

“Today I have stood, where once Jefferson Davis stood, and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate then that from this Cradle of the Confederacy, this very heart of the great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us have done, time and again through history. Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny….and I say….Segregation today….Segregation tomorrow….Segregation forever!”

Five years later, the man that said these words would run for President as an Independent. He would carry 5 states, including Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama. He would garner 46 Electoral votes, 13.5% of the total vote, and 9.9 Million votes. In other words, he was not alone in his sentiments or his vision for the future of America.

It would be foolish to think that this point of view on diversity, that was so demonstrably prevalent 50 years ago no longer exists.

Xenophobia, homophobia, and racism are all fueled by fear. So what are so many people in America afraid of? Why the intolerance? Why so many voter suppression efforts? Why so many reactionary laws targeting the LGBT community? Why so much animosity toward immigration reform efforts?

According to the US Census Bureau, the percentage of the American population classified as white was 75.1% in 2000. In 2010 it had decreased to 63.7%. At the current rate, it is estimated that in less than thirty years America will no longer be a country where white people are in the majority. In 2005, only 28% of the American public supported same-sex marriage. Today, more than 50% of the public supports it, thirty seven states have legalized it, and a conservative Supreme Court seems primed to make it the law of the land.

America is changing. Rapidly. And “Change”, is scary.

The number of Americans that are 65 years or older is larger than it has been at any time in the country’s history. According to the 2010 census, more than 40 million Americans are 65 or older. They make up 13% of the total population. They also make up the base of the Republican Party. They grew up in the sixties. Many of them did not go to integrated schools, do not socialize with minorities, and did not compete against them in the workforce. They are very resistant to the change that is occurring in America today.

The firestorm generated by Indiana’s religious freedom law is the latest example of the conflict between competing views of America’s future, the old and the new, “segregation forever” or “I have a dream”.

The differences are real, deeply ingrained in the fabric of our nation’s culture. They will not go away easily, if ever. It is a cultural divide that was settled, but not forgotten, by civil war. Economic forces have forced the Indiana legislature to reconsider its effort to clothe its bigotry in subtle legislation. The same forces have prompted the governor of Arkansas to reconsider his legislature’s similar effort. Nevertheless, every Republican presidential candidate did not hesitate to weigh in on the side that the Republican base demands. They know that they cannot win a Republican primary without pleasing the base.

I am reminded of the first shots fired at Fort Sumter.

Once, George Wallace was asked why he started using racist messages. He is quoted as having said, “I tried to talk about good roads and good schools, and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about n*****s, and they stomped the floor.”

They stomped the floor. They stomped the steps. They stomped the street and they stomped the grass in Montgomery….On January 14, 1963.

The minorities are coming. Will the older, white Americans allow it to happen? Or will they take America with them, to their graves?

Oklahoma

On the first day of May in 1911, Austin Nelson, a Black man, stole a cow from Claude Littrell, a white man in Okemah, Oklahoma.

Nelson was married to Laura, and they had a 14 year-old son that they called L.D. and another infant child. Austin admitted stealing the cow, saying that the reason he did it was to feed his family. The next day, George Loney, a deputy sheriff in Okema and three other white men arrived at the Nelson home to investigate the theft. Upon the arrival of the men at the Nelson home, L.D. grabbed a rifle. His mother, Laura tried to take it from him. The gun went off and Loney, the deputy sheriff, was shot in the leg. He bled to death.

In an effort to save her son, Laura said that she was responsible for shooting Loney. Nevertheless, all four of them, Laura, her infant child, L.D., and Austin were taken to jail. On May 11, both Laura and L.D. were charged with killing George Loney. On May 12, Austin pleaded guilty to larceny and was sentenced to three years in the McAlcester State Penitentiary. Laura was placed in a cell at the courthouse to await trial. She kept her baby there with her. Her son L.D., was placed in the county jail in Okemah for the same purpose.

Sometime around midnight on May 25, 1911, a vigilante lynch mob of more than twenty men arrived at the county jail. They kidnaped L.D., and then went to the courthouse and took Laura and her baby as well. Both were taken to a bridge over the North Canadian River. Laura was raped. She was then allowed to leave the baby at the foot of the bridge before she and L.D. were hanged from it. The bodies were still hanging from the bridge the following day.

A large group of white people returned to the bridge the next day, posing on the bridge for photographs with the bodies of Laura and her son still hanging from it. The photographs were later sold and used as postcards from Oklahoma. It is not known what happened to the infant child.

One hundred years later…..

On March 7, 2015, America was given access via video to a party bus filled with members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, one of the oldest and largest college fraternities in the world. The brothers and their dates were in a very good mood, a singing mood. The video depicts them belting out a short ditty that sounds exactly like the song “If You’re Happy and You Know It”. But the words were different. America was shocked to hear these privileged white students of the University of Oklahoma chanting “There will never be a n****r SAE, There will never be a n****r SAE, You can hang them from a tree, but they’ll never hang with me, There will never be a n****r SAE!”

The reaction was swift and relentless. The President of the University, David Boren, could barely contain his anger. He immediately banned the frat from the campus. He gave the members two days to vacate the fraternity house and offered to pay for their bus tickets out of town. The National office of SAE shut down the OU chapter. The football and basketball teams at Oklahoma staged separate protests with the full support of their coaches. The students staged protests and vigils. The leaders of the chant on the bus were expelled, and issued apologies for their actions. The news media from coast to coast were unanimous in their condemnations.

Okema, Oklahoma is not very far from The University of Oklahoma in Norman. Using interstate 40, you can make the trip in less than an hour and a half.

There is also not a lot of difference in hanging someone from a tree and hanging them from a bridge.

 Some would say there is not much difference between 1911 and 2015. Many white people in Okema in 1911 would agree that Black Lives DID NOT Matter then.

How many people on that Sigma Alpha Epsilon bus would agree that Black Lives DON”T matter now?

Martin Luther King Jr. once said that it was important for us to remember that we should love our enemies, but he was glad that Jesus did not say that we should “like” our enemies. He said it was hard to like somebody that disrespected you, someone that discriminated against you, or someone that lynched you. He said it was hard to like somebody that bombed your home, your churches, and killed your children. I can summon my training as a Christian and love those that may hate me, but God knows that I don’t like them. I respect the righteous anger of the Oklahoma President. I believe that it was genuine. I can only wish that it was prevalent. The reality is that those kids on that bus are not alone. There are countless others that share their sentiments and beliefs. They are silent now only because bigotry is no longer socially acceptable.

Like it was one hundred years ago.

In Okema, Oklahoma.

The Heart of Dixie

The license plates reflect the self-image of the people of the state. In Mississippi you are welcomed to “The Hospitality State “. Louisiana will remind you that they consider themselves the “Sportsman’s Paradise”. My home state, "Sweet Home Alabama”, takes pride in being “The Heart of Dixie”. Personal bias aside, I think that Alabama got it right. In fact, I believe it would be entirely appropriate if all three states adopted the same slogan, since collectively, politically, ideologically, and geographically, they are the “Heart” of Dixie. 

Unfortunately, “Dixie” is dead. It died at Appomattox Courthouse in 1865 when Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederacy’s Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant and the Union’s Army of the Potomac. There have been various attempts to revive it since then, but inevitably, its proponents are faced with the reality of the futility of trying to raise the dead.

However, the “South”… the land that I love, is alive and well. The land of breathtaking beauty, mountains, beaches, rivers and lakes is still there. The incomparable cooking, naturally friendly people, beautiful women, and that wonderful way in which they speak that sounds like music to my ears is still there.

God has blessed Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana with incredible natural resources, including timber, water, fertile soil and wildlife, iron ore, limestone, coal, petroleum, natural gas, as well as fish, and shellfish.

Each state is home to highly respected universities, including The University of Alabama and Auburn University, The University of Mississippi and Mississippi State University, and Louisiana State University.

But, for whatever reason, too many people in all three states can’t get past the war. The Confederate generals are deified. The battle flag is memorialized. When I was in school the teachers and the textbooks did not even call it a “civil war”. It was “The War Between the States”. Too many people are still fundamentally opposed to accepting the fact that “All men are created equal”… that “the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners” could possibly be equal. Somehow, the educators in the schools I attended managed to convince themselves and their students that the Civil War wasn’t about “slavery” at all. It was simply a question of “State’s Rights”.

I am convinced that this carefully nurtured illusion of innocence for one of the great crimes against humanity is the reason why Mississippi ranks 50^th, Alabama 49^th, and Louisiana 48^th in education. This is why Mississippi ranks 50^th, Alabama 47^th, and Louisiana 49^th, in poverty rates. This is why only 10% of the white voters in Mississippi, only 10.5% in Louisiana, and only 13.3% of white voters in Alabama voted for America’s first Black President in 2012.

During World War II Germany and Japan were mortal enemies of the United States. Both were totally defeated and forced to surrender unconditionally. Today both countries are among America’s strongest allies. Both are among the world’s most economically powerful nations. Both Germany and Japan faced and condemned the mistakes of their past and forged a future with constitutions forbidding a repeat of the mistakes of the past. Both countries have highly rated educational systems for their children. Neither country attempts to glorify those that led them into war and defeat. Neither country makes excuses for or tries to minimize or justify the atrocities committed in its name.

As I watched two American Presidents in Selma, Alabama commemorating the 50^th anniversary of that “Bloody Sunday” on the bridge that bears the name of an insignificant Confederate general, I was struck by the symbolism. As they walked across the bridge, one Black, one white, one in the right lane, the other in the left lane, one republican, one democrat, the white President that signed an extension of the Voting Rights Act, the Black President that watched helplessly as the Supreme Court rendered it impotent. As the two American Presidents walked hand in hand with others across that bridge with others that had been there 50 years earlier, I wondered what the 90% of white voters in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana that did not vote for the Black President were thinking. As they passed underneath the stately arch that bears the name of the grand dragon of the ku klux klan for which the bridge is named, I wondered what he and the other klansmen thought of the spectacle.

Finally, I thought of the blood, the blood shed by so many to make that moment necessary and possible.

The “heart” of Dixie lives on, but “Dixie” is dead. It died in the war. The war was wrong. The Confederacy was a tragic mistake. Slavery was an abominable sin. It’s over. I hope that someday, the people of the South will let it go. The incredibly brave soldiers, Union and Confederate, that died in that war deserve to rest in peace, knowing that their sacrifices were not in vain. The best possible legacy for all of them would be for the people of the South to have the best education in America, not the worst. It would be fitting if the people of the south were as economically solvent as the people of Germany and Japan, and if the children of the South was taught what really happened in American history.

It would be fitting if the people of the South could vote for their President based on the “content of his or her character, not the color of his or her skin”.

I believe. One day. They will.