Trump – Jack Henderson, Take 5

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 20^th, 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.

Divisions

Recently, much has been said and written about the divisions that we have in our country today. This led me to ponder the various dividing points that separate the 15,000 people who live here in our new home of River Falls.

Ironically, a street named Division is a major axis in River Falls. Main Street parallels the Kinnickinnic River and forms the primary artery on a north-to-south line. The east-west running street of Division, however, doesn’t bisect the town evenly into rectangular-grid quadrants, as the name might indicate. Instead, it is on the north edge of town, separating one of the newer sections from the older section. It gets its name, I would guess from the fact that it forms the border between Pierce County and St. Croix County. That’s right: people on one side of Division Street in River Falls live in one county, while those on the other side reside in a different one. St. Croix County hugs the river that gives it its name and straddles I-94 before it crosses over into the Twin Cities. We live in Pierce County, which is predominantly rural and contains about half as many people as its northern neighbor. It also borders the St. Croix River, but, with no major bridge crossing into Minnesota, it has less traffic and a slower pace of life. Aside from the fact that certain government services are centered in one county or the other, this county division is insignificant and appears only on maps. In fact, I have never even seen a sign saying that you are leaving one county or entering the next.

As in most places, sports rivalries play a big role up here. Growing up in Chicago, I know that the Cubs-White Sox rift is the most pronounced division in terms of sports in that town. While loyalty to the Bears, Blackhawks, or Bulls tends to unify Chicagoans, most would agree that, if you have any integrity at all, you can only support one of the two major-league baseball teams. River Falls is only about 25-30 miles from Minneapolis-St. Paul, but, in terms of sports loyalties, it seems to be more a part of Wisconsin than Minnesota. Packers’ fans appear to outnumber Vikings fans by a significant measure, and Wisconsin Badger supporters are more numerous than those of the Minnesota Gophers. However, in baseball, my purely unscientific and impressionistic estimate gives the nod to the Twins over Milwaukee’s Brewers.

There are other divisions that are unique to this town. For instance, living in a cold climate such as this, people take their windows seriously. Fights can break out between those who favor Pella windows over those who swear by windows made by Anderson. A local political controversy revolved around the two dams on the Kinnickinnic River. Some thought they should be should be destroyed and the falls should be restored to their natural state, while others argued that the dams, built in 1904, should remain in place. Just last year, it was decided that the dams will come down in stages over the next few years, but “Free the Kinni” signs can still be seen in windows around town.

More familiar political divisions are, of course, present in River Falls as well. Wisconsin, with its ten electoral votes is definitely one of the battleground states this year, having voted Republican in 2016 by only .77 of one percent. River Falls seems to be in a “purple” region of the state, being evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. The presence of a university in town means that many people are college-educated and lean toward moderate and progressive candidates. The area around the town, though, is rural and more conservative. As a result, a large number of people support Donald Trump, while a similar number of people tend to support democracy, equality, and the Constitution instead. For our part, Kathleen and I are delighted to finally live in a state in which our vote will mean something. For years, it was depressing watching Tennessee elections called on TV about twenty seconds after the polls closed.

The rigid political divisions that plague our nation today can be traced to three developments a few decades ago. In 1988, Rush Limbaugh began his syndicated talk-radio program that is still on the air. From the beginning, his programs were marked by vitriol, racism, and fear- mongering. He also created the myth that he alone told the truth about politics, and that no other news sources could be trusted. He gained a huge audience among conservatives who wanted to believe that anyone who differed from their viewpoint was part of a left-wing conspiracy or bias. Then, in 1994, as part of his “Contract with America,” newly elected Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich issued a memo to all Republican senators and representatives. The memo indicated that any person who crossed the aisle and voted for Democratic-sponsored bills would essentially be ostracized from the Republican Party and cut off from all party support. Within the next decade, Democratic congressmen responded with similar partisan tactics, and gridlock has resulted. Recent studies on the political logjam in Congress have all pointed to Gingrich’s time as Speaker as a key factor in creating the obstructionist politics and polarization that are such a problem today. Finally, in 1996, Fox News Channel began their one-sided broadcasts. The powerful network routinely ignores facts in order to put a right-wing spin on all events and has evolved into much more a source of opinions than an actual news channel. Today, there are half-a-dozen legitimate news sources available on television, and yet millions of people get a twisted, disingenuous, and misleading form of the news from Fox. In terms of division, these three events have had an impact on this country that have altered Fox’s slogan of “We report, you decide,” to a more accurate “We distort, you divide.”

Then, this week, former Secretary of Defense, retired Marine General James Mattis, a man who has spent his entire professional career staying apolitical and above the fray, issued a statement that urged Americans to unite without expecting leadership to come from the Oval Office. He wrote, “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.” These powerful words from a highly respected figure have been echoed in ensuing days by other military leaders, disillusioned Republicans, and former presidents from both parties. Even the intellectual voice of Conservatism for the past several decades, George Will, expressed his hope that the GOP will lose the coming election in order to awaken the party from the Trump-induced stupor into which it has fallen. His harshest words were reserved for the Republicans in the Senate who abandoned all sense of responsibility to the Constitution in their “Vichyite collaboration” with “this low-rent Lear raging on his Twitter-heath.” I usually disagree with much of what Will has to say, but the man can certainly write, and he always makes me think and question my assumptions.

I will wrap up this entry by pointing out that, in River Falls, the east-west road next to and parallel to Division is called Union Street. I sincerely hope that we as a nation can manage to traverse that half-block and find our way from Division to Union in the near future.

Laugh, and the World Laughs With You

“Laughter reduces pain, increases job performance, connects people emotionally, and improves the flow of oxygen to the heart and brain. Laughter, it’s said, is the best medicine. … And all the health benefits of laughter may simply result from the social support that laughter stimulates.”

—Psychology Today, 2005

As the coronavirus crisis drags on, and the number of deaths in only 3 months approaches the total of American lives lost in the Vietnam War over 14 years (58,000 from 1961 to 1975), we may have to work hard to keep our sense of humor. I know it’s difficult, but as the quote above indicates, there are actual physical, emotional, and psychological benefits to joking and laughing. If you think about it, this entire situation is funny in an absurd sort of way. Did any of us, just two months ago, envision a world in which we would be confined to our homes, wearing face masks in public, and washing our hands until our skin was raw? I guess what I’m saying is, as difficult as it might be at times, look for reasons to laugh. If you need something funny to read, try a Christopher Moore novel. I strongly suggest Lamb, Fool, or Noir; in each of those, he takes a familiar genre and turns it on its head. Laugh-out-loud funny.

It seems like a year ago, but as St. Patrick’s day approached, I heard a joke that I liked. Since we had reservations at a casino in Biloxi for March 17th, I thought perhaps I could casually throw it into a conversation at a blackjack table while the dealer was re-shuffling the deck. Then, of course, I never got the chance. So here it is:

A man walked into a neighborhood pub in Dublin, Ireland and ordered three Guinness Stouts. The bartender, who took his Guinness seriously, carefully poured three beautiful beers. In each glass, the dark brown, almost black, Stout was topped by nearly an inch of tan-colored foam. He placed them in front of the patron. Only then did he notice that the man was alone and planned on drinking all three beers by himself. “You know,” he said, “Guinness is best when it is freshly poured. If you ordered each of these separately, I think you’d enjoy it more.”

The man smiled and said, “Technically, friend, these are not all for me. See, a few weeks ago, my mother died and my brothers and I lost the farm we had rented since my dear, departed father passed. One brother moved to Sydney, Australia, and the other went to Chicago, in America. I moved from the countryside to Dublin and found a job. Before we parted, though, we three boys made a promise that we would go to our local pub every Wednesday and have a beer with our brothers living far away. So I plan to drink these three stouts and reminisce about my family—those dead, and those who have moved away.”

The bartender was touched by the story, and he left the man alone as he quietly sipped his dark beers. When the stranger left the pub, the barkeep related the story to the other patrons, all of whom were equally moved. From that day on, the ritual was repeated every week. The other men in the pub respected the ceremony, and the room grew silent until the stranger finished his three beers and left.

Several months later, the man came in and said, “I’ll have two Guinness Stouts.” A hush fell over the room as the bartender and the other patrons assumed the worst. The bartender silently poured the beer and brought them to the bar. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said quietly.

“What do you mean?” the man asked.

“You only ordered two beers today, so I thought that one of your brothers must have passed.”

“No, that’s not it,” the stranger said. “Today is Ash Wednesday, and I’ve given up beer for Lent.”

In this current type of a crisis, though, normal humor often takes a back seat to “Black Humor” or “Dark Humor.” This is a type of humor where a morbid slant on things is combined with comedy in order to give a disturbing effect or to point out the absurdity of life. Many times, the topics discussed under this genre are serious, but the approach towards it is very light and humorous. Some of my favorite films use dark humor to great comic effect. Dr. Strangelove, Harold & Maude, Heathers, Monty Python films or, more recently Pulp Fiction (or anything else by Quentin Tarantino) and Fargo (or anything else by the Coen Brothers) all used this technique. This type of humor is not for everyone. These are the sort of films that make you laugh aloud, but then you glance around to see if anyone noticed that you found those disturbing images humorous.

My family always dealt with loss or tragedy by resorting to the dark-sense-of-humor defense. On the morning my father died, my brother Mark was at the house while the Hospice people were still there, packing up their supplies. Mark asked, “So is this like a rainout, and you get to go home early?”

Kathleen and I went to Chicago for that funeral. My other brother, Dan, showed me a T-shirt that he had bought for me. It was from a local business and read “Chicago Jack” on the back. He tossed it to me from across the room and said, “I was gonna mail this to you, but luckily dad died and saved me the postage.”

I used a variation of that line later when I was sick and missed a month of teaching. Upon my return, colleagues were discussing a particularly lengthy and time-wasting faculty meeting that had occurred in my absence. I said, “That sounds brutal; thank God I had cancer and got to miss it.”

The point is that humor can get you through anything. If your kids are making you lose your temper during your first foray into home-schooling, get a T-shirt that says, “Good Moms Use Bad Words” (I saw that one recently). If watching the news and the gloomy predictions and statistics from doctors is getting you down, turn to the President’s daily press conference for a laugh. That’s right: even the Clown-in-Chief can be funny at times, albeit unintentionally. You can’t help but laugh as he staggers like a drunken sailor from one position to another, claiming dictatorial power one day, and throwing everything back to the states the next.

It is especially laughable to watch him try to shift the blame for his many mistakes. While President Harry Truman famously had a plaque on his Oval Office desk that read “The Buck Stops Here,” Trump refuses to take responsibility for any of his numerous blunders and flings blame around like confetti. In recent days, he has pointed fingers at the World Health Organization, governors of individual states (Democrats only, of course), and even former President Obama, who left office with a plan in place for possible ways to deal with a pandemic (that plan was scrapped by Trump in 2018). Yesterday, instead of providing any semblance of leadership, he touted miracle cures, such as hydroxychloroquine, sunshine, or—wait for it—injecting disinfectant. This puts our country in the bizarre position of having the FDA, CDC, and other government organizations warning people that they should ignore the snake-oil salesman we call a President. Yes, Trump’s antics would indeed be comical if all of this weren’t so damned serious. It is safe to say that no president in history, with the possible exceptions of James Buchanan, Herbert Hoover, or George W. Bush, was so ineffective in dealing with a national crisis. In each case, moreover, many people died because of their ineptitude.

My opening quote today refers to the old saying, “Laughter is the best medicine.” I did some research and found that the origin of that quote is probably the Bible, specifically, a proverb from the Wisdom of Solomon.:“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”

Laughter may not be the best medicine, but it beats the hell out of drinking Lysol.

He Was in Heaven Before He Died

Yesterday was a bad day. We in Wisconsin were forced to leave our homes amid this pandemic in order to practice that most basic right of American citizenship: voting. That is only remarkable because the Republican majority in the state house, in a blatant case of voter repression, insisted that there be no delays because they wanted to keep the turnout low and prevent people from voting who are more likely to support Democrats. Our President gave another farcical press conference marked by outrageous statements and a refusal to answer legitimate questions from the media. That conference came after he had dismissed the non-partisan head of the oversight committee whose job it was to see that the $2 Trillion allotted by Congress last week will be disbursed fairly and impartially. Trump, who has never done anything fairly and impartially in his life, will now oversee those funds personally in still another power grab designed to remove all restraints on his runaway authority. All of this occurred on a day when more Americans died from Covid19 than on any previous day. To top it all off, as I opened my newspaper at 5:00 this morning, I saw that one of those who died of the virus was singer and songwriter, John Prine.

I saw Prine perform many times. At one of those shows in Boulder, Colorado in 1978, he was explaining the idea behind a song of his called Bruised Orange. He recalled walking to church one dark morning to serve mass as an altar boy. There was a big commotion because a young kid, another altar boy or paper-delivery boy presumably, had been hit by a train and killed. A crowd gathered near the tracks and eleven terrified mothers waited to find out if the boy was their son. The Police finally revealed who the boy was, and, as Prine told it, “Everyone stared at the boy’s mother to see her reaction. But,” he added, “I’ll never forget the expressions on the faces of those other ten mothers.” That was the secret of his songs: he always saw the world from a slightly different angle.

I first became aware of John Prine in 1971 when his eponymous debut album came out. I was still in high-school and had only listened to pop music to that point. Something new was happening in music at that time, however. It was called “FM Radio,” and new stations were popping up that were not constrained by the limitations of Top Forty song lists. Prine was a Chicago guy, so many of these so-called “underground” disc jockeys saw him at area coffee houses and clubs and played his songs. From the first time I heard him, I was blown away. His songs told stories about ordinary people and their lives. And always, they came at you from a new angle that helped you understand the world and the people in it a little better. Somewhere, in the recesses of my mind, the thought registered that I, too, wanted to be a folk-singer. It would take a few more years before I acted on that thought, but when I moved to Austin, Texas to learn to play guitar in 1977, more than anything else, I wanted to write songs like John Prine.

Prine was not overtly political. Still, many of his songs hinted at political issues in subtle ways. In Sam Stone, he touched on the emotional and psychological battles being fought by returning veterans, long before anyone had used the term “Vietnam Veteran Stress Syndrome” (today called PTSD). That song still brings tears to my eyes. He addressed, in a humorous way, false patriotism in the form of people who put decals of the US flag on their cars, but hate most actual Americans (Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore). Six-o’clock News dealt with family secrets and unwanted children. As recently as 2005, he took a shot at our unjustified invasion of Iraq in Some Humans Ain’t Human. I can’t help thinking that he would have written another verse to that song if he saw our current president using a terrible human tragedy to advance his own political agenda.

Like Guy Clark and Steve Goodman, Prine never fit neatly into any commercially obvious categories, so record companies and radio stations didn’t know what to do with him. Rather than give up, though, he started his own record company where he was able to be himself, rather than some executive’s idea of what he should be. Performers such as Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd listed him among their favorite songwriters. Everyone from George Strait (I Just Wanna Dance With You), to Miranda Lambert (That’s the Way the World Goes ‘Round), to David Allan Coe (You Never Even Called Me by my Name) had hits covering Prine songs. In addition to numerous Americana music awards, he won two Grammys and, earlier this year, a Lifetime Achievement Award. So, while he was never a commercial success personally, he managed to find his own niche and earn the respect of writers and singers throughout the industry.

Prine could use words in an incredibly clever fashion, and he had a whimsical sense of humor. If you need a reason to smile today—and we all do—listen to Jesus: The Missing Years, Let’s Talk Dirty in Hawaiian, In Spite of Ourselves, The Other Side of Town, or Dear Abby. He was also a great performer, especially when he was young. Almost every time I saw Steve Goodman, John Prine would show up and do a couple of songs with him, and vice versa. They clearly had a ball performing together, and the enthusiasm was contagious. When I finally sang on the tiny stage at the Earl of Old Town, where both Goodman and Prine got their start, I felt as if I were in some sort of holy shrine. I got chills, and, as I often did, I forgot the lyrics to my own songs.

In 1975, for his Common Sense album, Prine wrote a song about his dad in which he said, “He was in heaven before he died.” I think the sentiment applies here as well. I once heard him talk about singing at an annual family reunion in Kentucky, where his parents were from. He said, “I always have to play the song Paradise about a thousand times; if I only play it nine-hundred times, they think I’m getting a big head.”

Still, I’d love to hear it one more time, John.