Month: February 2022

I rarely encounter overt Trump supporters in my daily interactions. On occasion I might pass a pick-up truck decked out in Trump stickers with American flags waving in the wind. Every now and then, I might see a maskless supporter strutting in a store, itching for someone to confront him. And for the first time, I encountered a Facebook friend of a friend who supports Trump. I’m aware that I can have a big mouth and that I lack patience in the face of stupidity. So, not surprisingly, this wasn’t a positive experience for either of us. But it did prompt me to think about why someone would abandon all reason, morality, and reality to embrace someone like Trump.

I looked up definitions for the word “cult” to determine for myself if the Trump supporters I encountered were actually members of a cult as others have described them. One definition taken from my Dictionary phone app defined cult as: “a group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc.” From my observation, Trump supporters do revere or adore Trump and they are definitely glued together by their reverence and loyalty to him. Their intensity is downright dangerous as demonstrated by their attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, believing his lie that the election was stolen from him.

The woman I encountered on Facebook was quick to assert that Trump won the election and to attack Biden as a person with dementia, as only caring about himself and his “crackhead son”, and to attack me personally as a person who didn’t know the truth and not worth listening to, especially after I told her I wasn’t buying her nonsense which lacked evidence, context, history, logic, and common sense. I called upon her to watch Biden’s press conferences and speeches and to listen to actual journalism and no longer allow herself to be feed a bunch of propaganda. I suppose I only succeeded in making her furious. Funny thing is, I never got angry, never lost my cool, and never resorted to calling her names. At the end, she called me a liberal and told me to grab an ice cream and go sit in a creepy basement with Joe Biden and then to go sit under a rock with my BS. I ended by thanking her for the compliment and saying there was nowhere else I would rather be and that at least my liberal BS is based in reality.

Coming from a career in higher education, I’m not accustomed to dealing with people who uncritically accept rumors, gossip, innuendos, false accusations, conspiracies, and lies as truth worth acting upon. The scary part is that these people have not only armed themselves with guns, but they are actively running for local, state, and federal offices to enact laws that fit and defend their perverted version of reality. They are also enthusiastic about voting. God help us if they gain power in our local, state and federal governments. History tells us that truth-bearers like academics, journalists, and their books are the first people on the chopping block in a society run by immoral lying autocrats who depend on an ignorant and apathetic populace.

The reality is that our society currently has too many people who cannot distinguish between actual news and propaganda. I believe that if they knew better, they would do better. I realize it is unwise to wait until college to teach critical thinking skills. Trump said out loud that he loved the uneducated. Indeed, every autocrat depends on the loyalty of those who are simple-minded, apathetic, and easily swayed.

In conclusion, I learned from my encounter that Trump supporters won’t be swayed by reason nor evidence. It is therefore up to those of us who rely on evidence, appreciate democracy, respect science, and demand social justice to rally all those around us to vote in the mid-terms this year to elect reality-based candidates and to do it again in 2024. Otherwise thinking people and this country will be in big trouble.

If I step back for a moment, I can clearly see why President Biden says we are in a battle for the soul of America. We are currently deciding whether we will be a democratic republic that values truth, voting, and fairness or if we will be an autocracy that uses propaganda, lies, and violence to oppress minorities under the guise of preserving freedom.

During the years when President Obama was elected and then re-elected, many white political conservatives and under-educated whites which included many white evangelicals, began to feel threatened by progressives pushing an agenda for diversity, inclusion, and equity that demanded access to opportunities and seats at the decision-making tables for people whose access had previously been denied, first through overt discrimination, then through covert tactics. In order to maintain power and superior wealth, the political conservatives needed a unifying strategy.

Before I get to that strategy, let me say again how many white university students came to school wrongly believing that we were a colorblind society and that discrimination ended with Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. Because they believed these myths, they attributed poor education, generational poverty, mass incarceration, and widespread unemployment among people of color to personal failings among members of these groups. They also viewed Affirmative Action as reverse discrimination because they honestly believed that urban public schools with high concentrations of black and brown students were comparable to their wealthier and heavily resourced suburban or private schools. They honestly believed the falsehood that prisons were full of black and brown people simply because they were the ones committing all the crimes. Through education and exposure outside their segregated neighborhoods they learned the reality of the systems of oppression at work in our country.

I credit the persistent work of academics, activists, and journalists for exposing the ongoing inequities in education, employment, housing, banking, and criminal justice. This information has fueled demands for diversity, inclusion and equity for women and minorities across the country. It became evident to a lot of educated citizens that the U.S. was not a colorblind society, that women had been subjected to sexual harassment with impunity along with lower pay, and that black and brown people were unfairly and routinely targeted and brutalized by police. The term, “white privilege” became a catch phrase to explain the ongoing inequities. And I saw firsthand how things became very uncomfortable for white males upon learning that a system was in place to boost their success while disadvantaging others. I knew the pushback was coming. I repeatedly asked why white males would be eager to change a system that favored them. So, I wasn’t too surprised to see young white males marching in Charlottesville, including a student from my own university.

I argue that having President Obama in the White House served as both a trigger and a red herring for white political conservatives, closeted white supremacists, and white evangelicals who desperately wanted to end abortion and stop LGBTQ rights. In a perverse way, President Obama’s presence provided a moral cover for white evangelicals who stubbornly clung to a mythical colorblindness to deny ongoing racial injustice while joining the camp of conservatives with white supremacist leanings. But the conservative leaders knew that abortion and gay rights were not enough to enrage to actively engage white evangelicals and the socially liberal in their ranks. They needed to unite white people by reinforcing that mythical colorblindness while simultaneously stoking a fear of losing 1) their job opportunities to illegal immigrants, 2) their religious freedoms to discriminate against LGBTQ folks, and 3) their right to protect themselves against those dangerous black and brown people. And today, the conservatives have added the false fear of losing their “right” to make their own healthcare decisions by not wearing a mask nor getting vaccinated during a pandemic (and just how is this pro-life?).

It could be argued that supporting the immoral and bombastic Donald Trump was perhaps a bridge too far, but they did it anyway because he promised judges and a return to covert discrimination that would keep white people firmly on top without the inconvenient exposure of an unfair system of white privilege. He and the conservatives attacked the Black Lives Matter Movement as racist and unamerican. They cozied up to white supremacists as good people who love their country. They promoted conspiracy theories to gain additional supporters no matter how ridiculous. And now they are banning books and the teaching of Critical Race Theory which they equate with the racist parts of our history. They want to erase the widening knowledge of the system of white privilege that serves them so well. To rake in high ratings and the accompanying dollars, Fox News and conservative radio are happy to serve as the propaganda wing of the Republican Party, pushing stories that stoke these fears and support Trump and his lies.

As cynical as it may seem, I’m convinced that their primary motivation continues to be both power and money for the few conservative white males holding the reigns. It no longer matters that they are leading the country towards autocratic leadership, Covid-19 deaths, shortages, inflation, racially motivated violence, book bans, voter suppression, and who knows what else. Their motives are sinister, lacking morality and patriotism, but empowering bad actors.

Last week, a Neo-Nazi group hung banners over a freeway overpass in my county that read, “Honk if white lives matter” and “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” These bigots are pushing the propaganda that white people are in danger when it continues to be black and brown people who are struggling for equity.

I would never have guessed just a few years ago that U.S. citizens would become so vulnerable to the kind of propaganda that pits Americans against each other over issues like public health, fairness, equality, science, history, decency, the rule of law, and common sense. But here we are.

And we’re here because there are greedy white men willing to mislead and arm enough uneducated, frightened and sometimes bigoted white people to help them stifle equity and fairness to preserve their continued superiority in wealth and power.

I asked myself this week whether rules, mandates, and laws are necessary? And if they are, why is it that some people break them with impunity while others are held to the strictest codes? In particular, these last few years have been stressful with newly invented rules, mandates, and laws on the one hand and the constant breaking of established rules, mandates, and laws on the other. The constant flux is both frustrating and confusing, especially when the changing rules, mandates, and laws are detrimental to our safety, our education, our civility, and our democracy. Do we even need or want rules, mandates, and laws to govern our behavior?

I suppose what I believe about human behavior informs my opinion about the need for rules, mandates, and laws as well as their enforcement. It comes down to the degree of faith I have that my fellow humans will behave in a public manner that is decent, reasonable and beneficial to society without the assistance of behavioral boundaries. My answer is, “not much”. I don’t have much confidence that my neighbors, family, friends, or leaders will to be considerate of others without them. And yet sometimes the rules, mandates, and laws themselves are immoral and deserve to be challenged. Civil disobedience is absolutely essential to challenge and overturn laws that discriminate and harm people.

Rules provide us with structure within our families, communities and institutions. They are an agreed upon set of behaviors that make our interactions with others safe and predictable. We start learning them as soon as we are born. For example, a rule each of my breastfeeding babies learned was not to bite mama’s breast. My swift and highly negative reaction to that first bite was enough to ensure that not one of them bit me a second time. By kindergarten, most children have learned to share, take turns, to reframe from hitting others, to follow the instructions of the teacher, and to say, “please” and “thank you”. Rules help us to get along with others without continuous conflict and a constant battle of the wills. Without rules, the determined, the strongest, and the bully always gets his way. However, history reminds us that we must be suspicious of rules made by bigots and bullies because other people will suffer. Rules are only enforceable through social means. So, when someone breaks social rules, they experience the displeasure of the entire community. In the past, the fear of public shaming, physical violence, or even death was enough to ensure people obeyed the rules.

Mandates are rules put in place by those whom we have given the authority to lead. It could be a parent, a teacher, a boss, a school board, or a governmental leader. Mandates are rules meant to respond to conditions faced by the community to benefit the whole by keeping everyone safe or helping things run more smoothly. A parent might mandate a new bedtime in response to their kids having difficulty waking up in the morning. A teacher mandates an assignment deadline. A boss might mandate new work hours in response to consumer demand. A school board might mandate face masks in response to a pandemic. And a governor might mandate vaccines to prevent unnecessary deaths and the collapse of the healthcare system. So long as a mandate helps and does not harm people, it should be supported.

And then there are laws. Laws are carefully thought-out restrictions meant to provide legally enforceable guardrails for human behavior in service to the public good. Laws tell us what we can and cannot do within a particular city, state, country, and even internationally. We have police to issue citations or to arrest suspected law breakers and to deliver them to the justice department who determines whether or not there is sufficient evidence to prosecute them for breaking a given law. A jury of their peers might be called upon to determine whether or not the law was broken. And a judge will ascribe the penalty for the crime. In our country, a person convicted of breaking an existing law has the right to appeal their conviction to the Supreme Court if they believe that the law itself violates their rights under the Constitution. It often takes massive violations of a particular law before that happens, making civil disobedience an important tool for overturning unjust laws.

However, what we are witnessing today is a dangerous collapse of our system of rules, mandates, and laws because they are not based on benefiting the public, but on satisfying the immoral desires of bullies. I first noticed something was really wrong when Donald Trump announced his presidency despite having broken all the rules of common decency and morality both in his personal life and in his businesses. His was openly bigoted. He insulted and called his opponents names. He admitted to sexually assaulting women. He lied about everything. He bragged about his wealth and his brains. And he never apologized for anything. For some who wanted the freedom to be bigoted, rude, and obnoxious, he was a breath of fresh air, and they supported him. We later learned that many of his supporters were too embarrassed to publicly admit their support. They didn’t want to be lumped in the “deplorable” category. His winning the election was a blow to our system of rules, mandates, and laws that had been marching toward greater justice and decency.

Another blow to positive progress was when Senator Mitch McConnell refused to hold hearings on President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. For the sake of Republican political power on the Supreme Court, he broke a longstanding Constitutional mandate that the Senate provide advice and consent for a president’s Supreme Court nominee. Instead, he introduced a new rule that there would be no hearing close to an election. Of course, with an evil smile he later broke his own rule under Trump and provided an advice and consent hearing for a justice even closer to the election than Obama’s nominee. In addition, McConnell changed the longstanding rule that required 60 votes to approve lifetime appointments to federal and supreme court justices. Instead, he lowered it to a simple majority, seizing extraordinary Republican influence on the legal system. And the final blow from McConnell was his refusal to find Trump guilty in his two impeachment trials, despite overwhelming evidence of criminal and moral wrongdoing.

It is fair to say that Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell paved the way for the broken rules of common decency in America and opened the door for a slew of immoral laws and ridiculous violations of public health mandates. Under their leadership, the rule of law is in jeopardy.

Mask and vaccine mandates are under fire from people who either believe lies, are deplorable in their selfishness, or a combination of both. Some of these people have died, caused others to die, or have stressed our healthcare systems to the brink of collapse. How is it okay for 2500 people to die every day when we have vaccines and masks to prevent those deaths? It’s scary to think these ill-informed bullies are prolonging a pandemic that causes needless deaths and hurts the economy because Trump and McConnell destroyed the guardrails wherein social pressure once led people to do what was beneficial for the community.

And finally, we continue to watch the over-policing of people of color followed by too many wrongful convictions and longer sentences. The justice system has shown itself to be controlled by politics, given that Trump has been breaking law after law without arrest and prosecution. We are quickly becoming a country absent any accountability for rules, mandates, and laws for the well-placed white male. And as we watch these things erode with each passing day, every day of inaction on the part of the Department of Justice with regard to Trump, emboldens the bullies. One day our communities and our nation will be governed, not by reasonable rules, mandates, and laws for the public good, but by the selfish whims of the uniformed, the violent, and the indecent.

Within the past few months, I’ve had numerous conversations with family and friends about how the actions of Trump and the Republicans threaten our democracy, freedoms, and the rule of law. While they express universal agreement about the threats, there is no commitment to join the fight to save our country beyond voting. It’s not that they don’t care enough, but more that they aren’t inclined to join the fight.

The mindset that I’ve found to be most prevalent is apathy or a lack of concern. I’m assuming that many people are like my close associates. Some believe that none of what happens in the country’s politics will actually affect how they live. As a result, they believe it’s a waste to invest their time, energy or money in a political struggle. The completely apathetic have to be convinced to vote. Others believe in the power of prayer to the extent that they take this burden to the Lord and leave it there for God resolve on our behalf, saying that perhaps these are the end times and things are supposed to get really bad before Jesus returns. And then there are the “don’t worry, be happy folks” who don’t want to hear, “no bad news”. They surround themselves in positivity and blissful ignorance. Apathy makes authoritarianism and legalized oppression possible.

Another reason expressed for not engaging in our current political struggle is a legitimate preoccupation with work, illness, and family life. It makes sense that work, illness, and family life take up massive amounts of emotional and physical energy and time, leaving little to no time nor energy to watch the news, let alone do anything about it. The busiest among my family members and friends were largely unaware of some of the issues we were facing. They had a vague idea that something was wrong but had no time nor energy to get sucked into it. There are others who are willfully distracted by the desire to enjoy life above all else. They are too distracted by television, video games, sports, and partying to engage in real life issues. This group of distracted folks will vote only if it’s convenient and if they aren’t too tired. The overly distracted are the unwitting enablers of authoritarianism and legalized oppression.

And then there are the fearful. They are afraid to speak up about their beliefs for fear of offending people, alienating people, losing relationships, or being judged. Others are afraid of current threats or future threats should things turn south. They don’t want to leave a trail of opposition that might lead to violence or imprisonment in the future. They point to the KKK cross burnings, the lynching of black people, the acts of intimidation, the arrest of protestors, and the growing number of death threats and believe their personal safety depends on their silence. The threat of armed poll watchers may stop them from voting. However, history tells us that intimidating people into silence is a tool of the authoritarian and the oppressor. The tyrant depends on the coward to gain ground. We are seeing this play out in real time with Trump and how he took over the Republican Party and is making them disregard our Constitution, decency, and the rule of law. The cowardly silence and compliance of the Republican leadership has opened the door to an overthrow of our democracy in favor of a Trump authoritarian government where elections are truly rigged in his favor and opponents are thrown in jail.

And finally, I’m amazed by my family and friends who have no sense of agency with regard to what happens in their lives or in the country. They are resigned to a false notion that others, not them, decide everything. They throw up their hands and say that they can’t do anything or that nothing is going to change. When I was in education, I encountered students who didn’t believe their voice, nor their actions mattered. I would spend time convincing them that this was their community and that they had a say in its future, too. I would tell them that they did not have to accept injustice nor mistreatment. I had to convince them that just because that was how things were didn’t mean that was how things had to stay. I truly believe that each person can be an agent of change and I was able to convince many of my students of this fact. Those with a resignation mindset don’t bother to vote because they don’t believe their vote matters. Given the Republican efforts to install partisan election officials who can disregard election results, they might be right if we don’t stop these changes.

In my retirement, I am doing my best to convince as many people as possible to join the fight for our democracy. I’m witnessing firsthand the apathy, distractions, fears, and resignation among family and friends and it scares me. If we don’t collectively get beyond our immediate self-interest and do just a little bit in this fight, like vote, then our democracy will be lost and restoring it will be an even harder task.

In truth, even the busiest, most distracted, or fearful person can donate to upstanding candidates or organizations like NAACP or ACLU or Moveon.org who are fighting the legal battles for civil rights and voting rights. How long does it take to send an email to a local lawmaker expressing your support for equal access to voting or your opposition to banning books in our schools? Is it possible to carve out 15 minutes in the day to watch NPR for news? Will enough people be determined enough to defy history, overcome voter suppression, and vote in the mid-terms this year to increase democrat majorities in the House and Senate?

Our collective future as a democracy is at stake. So, these days, I’m sounding the alarm along with others with the hope that enough citizens will join the fight to save our country before it’s too late. I’ve determined that I’ll keep sounding the alarm, keep donating, keep writing to lawmakers, keep supporting good candidates for office, and I’ll vote in the mid-terms. My hope is that others will join me and that the apathetic, the distracted, the fearful, and the resigned will at the very least vote in 2022 and 2024 to preserve our nation.