Month: January 2021

Austerity Month

February 1st marks the launch of an annual tradition that Kathleen and I started some six or seven years ago. We call it “Austerity Month,” and this year promises to be a special one.

This tradition began one year when, like many people, we struggled to recover from another holiday season. By mid-January each year, we felt as if we had spent several weeks eating too much, drinking too much, and spending too much money. In order to regain control of our waistlines, our livers, and our pocketbooks, we decided that we would cut back on everything for an entire month. It is no coincidence that Austerity Month each year is declared for February, which is, of course, the shortest month on the calendar. We wanted to cut back, but we weren’t going to be crazy about it.

The rules were simple. 1) No drinking. That one was pretty straightforward. It felt strange not having a couple of beers while watching the Super Bowl or Gator basketball games or having wine with dinner, especially at restaurants, but we soldiered through. This rule was occasionally broken, as when our friend, Joy, had a destination wedding in Aruba in early February. Then, last year, during our first winter in the frozen North, we allowed ourselves a glass of wine with our wonderful happy-hour group on Wednesday afternoons. This year, there will be no restaurants, happy hours, or destination weddings, so we should be okay there.

2) Lose a few pounds with healthy eating. This, too, is fairly easy to follow. We select meals based on the point system of Weight Watchers, cut out snacks, and avoid sugar and starches.  It’s not too bad, and, when combined with a lack of high-calorie alcoholic drinks, we can usually drop a few pounds during the 28 or 29 days of the month.

3) Cut way back on spending. After throwing money around like sailors on liberty for two months, we refrain from all extra purchases during the month. As long as we plan ahead a little, we’re usually pretty good about this as well.

After all of this abstemious living, we are ready for March to arrive, and we welcome the new month with dinner out and a nice bottle of wine. March was the month when I had spring break from teaching, March Madness in basketball, and the start of the baseball season. We usually threw in a trip to Vegas for good measure. We were able to tackle those challenges feeling virtuous and rested after our ascetic month.

This year, the arrival of March will be especially welcome. You see, yesterday, we received our first shot of the Covid vaccine. We got ours at a local clinic in Baldwin, Wisconsin, and the entire process was remarkably easy and well-organized. We are scheduled for the second shot on February 26th. We have to wait another week for that one to kick in, but by that first week of March, we will be good to go.

A short time ago—okay, it was 48 years ago—in January 1973, I was in my freshman year at Knox College in Illinois. As with most colleges, the school brought in well-known speakers, and this particular night, they had Dick Gregory speak. At that time, he was a well-known stand-up comedian (a major influence on Richard Pryor), author, and civil rights and anti-war activist. I had read his semi-autobiographical book and related to him because he had been a middle-distance runner at Southern Illinois University in the 1950s. After studying the life of Gandhi, he began to use hunger strikes as a political tool. That night in 1973, he explained that he was on a hunger strike until the Vietnam War ended. From the podium, he said, “So if tonight we get word that the peace talks have resulted in an end to the war, I wouldn’t recommend standing between me and the nearest hamburger.”

Similarly, on March 3rd or so, when Austerity Month has ended, and we are officially cleared to re-enter public life, I wouldn’t recommend standing between us and the Nutty Squirrel.

(Footnote: I saw Gregory on January 22, 1973. The Vietnam War didn’t end that night, but a few days later, Jan. 28, a cease-fire was signed that effectively ended the US role in the senseless conflict. What did happen that night, while Gregory was on stage, was he received a note that told him LBJ had just died. It was fascinating to see him explain the note and stand there silently for several minutes, struggling with his emotions. He said that he regarded Johnson with great ambivalence. After all, as President, he had done more for Blacks than any politician since Lincoln. On the other hand, he started the War in Vietnam by lying to the American people about an attack on US ships in the Tonkin Gulf, near North Vietnam. We now know that attack never took place. Gregory said, “I have never loved a man so much or hated one so much as I did LBJ.” It was a poignant moment for me, sitting in the audience, and I’ve never forgotten that night.)

Great Again?

September 11, 2001. That was the last time I felt gut-punched like I did yesterday. That was the last time that someone attacked our government, our democracy, our country. As we did on 9-11, Kathleen and I spent all day glued to the television, flipping channels, and trying to make sense of the disgusting images unfolding on the screen.

As I write these words, I am already breaking my New Year’s resolution to avoid talking about politics in my blog. Obviously, the events of yesterday moved me to take this step and made it impossible to remain silent. As a historian, I had images flashing through my mind of other times when our Capitol was under attack. In 1812, invading British forces took the city and burned the White House; in 1856, a Southern congressman used a cane to beat a US Senator bloody and unconscious at his desk in the Senate chamber because he was an abolitionist who spoke out against slavery; a few years later, that same issue resulted in a civil war in which Washington DC had to be turned into a fortress because the city was under assault from an invading army; in 2001, the Pentagon and White House were targeted by another enemy who sought to destroy our government. Those efforts all failed to accomplish their goal and our country survived. Even yesterday, all that was accomplished by the sickening, lawless mob was a slight delay of the inevitable. Late at night, despite these attacks and weeks of threats and failed law suits by Trump, both houses of Congress officially affirmed Joe Biden’s decisive victory.

For months leading up to the election, Donald Trump warned the voters that the election of Joe Biden would result in anarchy. He was right. He just didn’t explain that he would be the cause of that anarchy. I now have new images of attacks on Washington to join those of my historical memory. Thousands of seditious thugs tried to stop the operation of democracy while their hats, shirts, and flags bore the slogan “Make America Great Again.” They seemed to have no sense of irony at the fact that the four-year-long reign of terror by King Donald has ripped apart and destroyed a formerly great nation. Nor did they see the disconnect between the waving of American flags while attacking the very things that the flag stands for. All of this happened at the behest of their messiah. At a rally earlier, he repeated his lies about a “rigged election,” and exhorted the mob of mindless cult members to march down to the Capitol Building to disrupt the proceedings. (You can now add “inciting a riot” to his long list of criminal acts while president).

It reminded me of a film biography of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong that I used to show my students in World History. In 1966, in an event known as the Cultural Revolution, Mao became angry that China seemed to be slipping toward capitalism and away from “pure communism.” He started holding massive rallies with young people and college students, stirring them up with propaganda, and he organized them into groups he called “Red Guards.” They wore red bandanas similar to the MAGA hats and carried copies of a small book called “Quotations of Chairman Mao” (AKA, The Little Red Book). For three years, these people worshipped Mao as a god and became fanatical, marching through the streets attacking journalists, intellectuals, and anyone else who disagreed with their narrow view of the world. (See picture above) Hundreds of innocent people were killed, and by 1969 the nation was so disrupted by their mob actions, that the government had to step in, quietly force Mao into retirement, and try to restore order. Many of the fanatical followers, however, refused to cease their activities, so they were “sent down” to the countryside and forced to do hard labor that sapped their revolutionary energies. I vividly recall a film clip of one such girl who was so unrepentant and radicalized that they harnessed her to a plow in place of a draft animal. The film showed her with a huge smile on her face, happily straining to pull the plow through the fields for the good of China. Perhaps, after January 20th, we can do something similar to the Trump lemmings who attacked our nation yesterday.

Seriously, though, yesterday’s events were all a result of the forces of hatred and intolerance unleashed by a narcissistic president who believes himself to be above the law and who cannot admit to himself that he is a loser.

Something else has been unleashed by Donald Trump, however. During the chaos of the afternoon, the final votes were tabulated in Georgia, and Jon Ossoff was declared the other winner of the runoff election to determine the state’s two senators. In a result that would have been inconceivable just a few years ago, Ossoff, a Jew, and Raphael Warnock, the first Democratic African-American ever elected to the US Senate from a Southern state, will now become part of a Democratic majority in the US Senate, US Congress, and the White House. They, like President-Elect Joe Biden were pushed over the top by people voting for the first time, many of them Black, people who were moved to exercise their right to vote by the dangerous excesses and dictatorial power wielded by Trump. The events of the past four years moved them to take this step, and, like me, it became impossible to remain silent. And make no mistake, the electorate, like the country, is changing. Voters of the near future will be younger, more engaged, and more accepting of differences in race, color, sexual preference, and religion than the people who elected this horrible man.

Hopefully, this dramatic change in government leadership is just the beginning of something that will, indeed, make our country great again.