I’m sure most of you are familiar with the book, “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.” Written by James Bartlett, “Bartlett’s” was first published in 1855 and currently is in its nineteenth edition.*
*(Note for Florida readers – I’m not sure if “Bartlett’s” has been subjected to the DeSantis “woke” test but I’m willing to guess that there might be a few “familiar quotations” that disturb enough Floridians (one Floridian?) to initiate the book’s banning from schools, libraries and bookshelves near you. I suggest if you do procure a copy and it is subsequently banned, get one of those brown paper covers we used in school in order to camouflage your illicit volume.)
The latest “Bartlett’s” includes quotations from contemporaries like Donald Trump, Barack and Michelle Obama as well as traditional quotes from the Bible and William Shakespeare and others.*
*(The Obama’s and Shakespeare…and it hasn’t been banned in Florida yet??? C’mon Ron stop campaigning, get back to Florida and do your job. How can you allow Floridians to be exposed to quotes from the evil Obama’s and the lewd Shakespeare? You’re not getting the nomination anyway.)
Because new editions of Bartlett’s are released only every few years or so, it occurred to me, particularly in a world of 24-hour news cycles and social media, there needs to be a more timely source of quotations.
With that in mind, into the fray and to the rescue, “Around the Block’s Unfamiliar Quotations.”
Of course since Bartlett’s has a 168 year head-start, “Around the Block’s Unfamiliar Quotations” will be a slow build. But in an exclusive to Around the Block’s dedicated readers, I thought I’d give you a preview.
Samuel Alito, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, during oral arguments in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen regarding the right to carry concealed weapons in New York…in what “Around the Block’s Unfamiliar Quotations” will categorize as the “OK Corral” quotation:
“So I want you to think about people like this, people who work late at night in Manhattan, it might be somebody who cleans offices, it might be a doorman at an apartment, it might be a nurse or an orderly, it might be somebody who washes dishes. None of these people has a criminal record. They’re all law-abiding citizens. They get off work around midnight, maybe even after midnight. They have to commute home by subway, maybe by bus. When they arrive at the subway station or the bus stop, they have to walk some distance through a high-crime area. And they apply for a license, and they say: “Look, nobody has said I’m going to mug you next Thursday. However, there have been a lot of muggings in this area, and I am scared to death. They do not get licenses, is that right?”
Further, in response to the comment by New York Solicitor General Barbara Underwood, “…it might be unwise to allow a lot of armed people in a closed space like a subway…,” Alito argued back, “There are a lot of armed people on the streets of New York and the subway now, aren’t there?”
Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama), in his defense of holding up the promotions of over 300 senior military officers including the commandant of the Marine Corps and generals and admirals focused on China policy, arming Ukraine, and modernizing U.S. combat forces after 20 years of war:
“People up here in the Pentagon. I don’t know what they do every day, but they’re more of giving advice. And, you know, it’s just a surprise to me that, you know, these are all number one, they’re Joe Biden civilian appointees, these secretaries of Air Force, the Navy, the Army.”
“I don’t care if we promote anybody to be honest. We got 44 four-star generals right now. We only had seven during WWII, so I think we’re a little overloaded to begin with.”
Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, in his other job – running (poorly) for the GOP presidential nomination:
In response to a direct question regarding whether he would pardon or grant clemency to Donald Trump and/or to the convicted January 6 insurrectionists, DeSantis, typically, did not directly answer the question but did say:
“We will use the pardon power — and I will do that at the front end. The Justice Department and the FBI have been weaponized’ to unevenly punish people from ‘disfavored groups.'”
And regarding “draining the swamp” as president:
“On bureaucracy, you know, we’re going to have all these deep state people, you know, we’re going to start slitting throats on day one and be ready to go.
Vivek Ramaswamy, GOP presidential hopeful, on climate change:
“I’m the only candidate on stage who isn’t bought and paid for, so I can say this — the climate change agenda is a hoax. And so the reality is more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change”
Reviewing these quotations brings up the obvious – given the egregious nature of each of them, perhaps they should remain unfamiliar.
By day, he played second base for the Brooklyn Dodgers. By night, he sold televisions in Queens.
I thought I’d take a break from my typical current events focussed commentary to reprint an article originally published in The New Yorker magazine on January 7, 1950 with the original headline “Success.”
In an era before multi-year mega-million dollar sports contracts, this is a must-read story for every sports fan – particularly those of us who grew up in NY/NJ in the 40s and ‘50s following the Dodgers, Giants or Yankees.
Jackie Robinson, the man who broke the color barrier that changed baseball and, possibly all professional sports forever, the 1949 National League MVP, the man who is so revered that his uniform number, 42, has been retired by every team in Major League Baseball was, in 1950, selling TVs and appliances in a store in Rego Park Queens!
Success
January 7, 1950
On learning that Jackie Robinson, the Brooklyn Dodgers’ second baseman, is spending Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings each week as a television-set salesman in the Sunset Appliance Store in Rego Park, Queens, we hurried over to the place to see how he is making out. From a talk we had with Joseph Rudnick, president of Sunset, just before Robinson appeared, we learned that he is making out fine. Rudnick, a small, alert-looking man, graying at the temples, whom we found in an office on a balcony at the rear of the store, informed us that the accomplished young man had been working there, on a salary-and-commission basis, for five weeks, and that if he liked, he could work there forever, the year around. “Business booming like wildfire since Jackie came,” Rudnick told us, looking down at a throng milling about among television sets, washing machines, and refrigerators. “Sports fans flocking in here,” he said with satisfaction. “Young persons, curious about the National League’s Most Valuable Player and one of the best base-stealers since Max Carey. Jackie signs baseballs for them and explains about the double steal. Since he’s been here, he’s sold sets to Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson, among others. The newsreel people shot him selling a set to a customer. He’s a natural salesman, with a natural modesty that appeals to buyers. The salesman wrapped up in himself makes a very small package. Campanella, Hodges, and Barney dropped by to wish him luck. Campanella’s his roomy. There’s Jackie now! With his business agent.” Robinson and a bigger, more strapping man with a florid face were making their way along the floor, the big man in the lead. “He’ll be right up,” Rudnick said. “Hangs his coat here. One other thing we do,” he went on, “when a bar buys a television set, we send Gene Stanlee over to the bar—the wrestler. Mr. America.”
Robinson and his manager for radio and television appearances came up, and we were introduced, learning that the latter’s name is Harry Solow. “Jackie don’t have to lay awake nights worrying about his condition, bucking that mob three times a week,” Solow said. Rudnick told us that Solow also manages Joe Franklin and Symphony Sid, and Solow explained that they are radio personalities. “Jackie’s all lined up for his own radio program,” he continued. “He’s mostly interested in boys’ work, though. Spends all his spare time at the Harlem Y.M.C.A.” “How I keep in shape is playing games with kids,” Robinson said in a well-modulated voice. “When I quit baseball, I intend to give it full time.” We learned that the Robinsons have a television set with a sixteen-inch screen and that their only child, three-year-old Jackie, Jr., likes Howdy Doody, Mr. I. Magination, and Farmer Gray better than anything else on video. As Robinson was about to go down to the main floor, it occurred to us to ask him if he’d developed any special sales technique. He looked surprised and replied that he didn’t think so. “If a customer is going to buy a set, he’s going to buy it,” he said philosophically. “You can’t twist his arm.” “On the other hand,” Rudnick observed, “the right angle for a salesman is the try-angle.”
We bade Rudnick and Solow goodbye and followed Robinson downstairs. A short man in a heavy overcoat got him first. He wanted to see a twelve-inch set. “There’s a bunch of them in the basement,” Robinson told him. “All playing at once.” He led the man down to the basement. We followed. It was quite dark there, but we could make out rows and rows of sets and see customers being herded from one model to another by spirited salesmen. Robinson conducted his man to a twelve-inch set, turned it on, adjusted the picture, and in rather a shout, to get his voice above the hubbub of the amplifiers, named the price and outlined the guarantee. “I like it!” the man hollered. “Could my wife work it—all those knobs?” “A child could work it,” said Robinson, and it was a deal.
And, is is possible that one man, Donald J. Trump, can and will do even more?
In these fraught and dangerous times, I often think back to the 2012 presidential election. You remember Barack Obama running for a second term was challenged by former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Make no mistake, I had fun in those days commenting on Romney’s campaign and the missteps he made. If you don’t believe me, take a look at excerpts of some from my Around the Block stories from that year:
Mitt’s Bad Day
I learned today that yesterday was a particularly bad day for Mitt Romney. He was booed at the NAACP convention, provocatively using the pejorative “Obamacare”, which he said he would repeal. This to a group who, according to most polls, strongly supports the Affordable Healthcare Act. Guess we can’t accuse Romney of pandering to all the people all the time.
Mitt Romney’s Character
I learned today that Mitt Romney’s explanation of his situation with Bain, when he left and what he controlled, is driven not by the facts but by what is politically advantageous to him. Romney actively invested in a Chinese company whose main reason for being was to take U.S. manufacturing jobs, fabricated his resume to provide a cover story to show he wasn’t responsible for that investment, used the fabricated resume to explain that he wasn’t involved in a company that eliminated hundreds of jobs, and off-shored his money to the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Swiss banks but won’t release his tax returns to show the details of that off-shoring. Is there more?
Mitt and Big Bird
I learned today that one of Mitt Romney’s deficit cutting plans is to eliminate Federal funding from Sesame Street. Here’s what he said on Radio Iowa yesterday:
“There are programs that I like, like PBS—I mean, my grandkids watch PBS, they like to watch Sesame Street. You know, I just don’t think we can afford to borrow money from China to pay for things we absolutely don’t have to do. So in the case of PBS, I’d tell them to get advertisers or more contributors, but the government is not going to pick up the bill by borrowing money.”
Advertisements? So, one of the greatest TV programs ever created for children, in which education and entertainment converge in the best possible way will, in Romney’s world, be supported by advertising. With all that good stuff we want our kids to have – Lucky Charms, Froot Loops (no “Fruit” in those “Loops”), McDonalds and all the other usual suspects. What will be next, product placement (oops, shows how old I am — I mean “embedded marketing”)? Will Burt and Ernie do their thing while eating Big Macs? Will Cookie Monster move from generic cookies to Oreos?
Teresa Didn’t, Why Should I?
I learned today that Mitt Romney’s latest defense of not releasing more tax returns is that Teresa Heinz Kerry didn’t in 2004 saying on Fox and Friends, “[Heinz Kerry] has hundreds of millions of dollars, [but] she never released her tax returns. Somehow, that wasn’t an issue.” Really? Did anyone tell Mr. Romney that John Kerry, not Teresa, was running for president?
Mitt, Jet-lag and the Energizer Bunny
I learned today that among the walk-backs, rationalizations and defenses of Mitt Romney’s astonishingly bad London visit, the best was this one from a campaign adviser who said Romney had misspoken because he was tired and jet-lagged. “Even the Energizer Bunny needs new batteries once in a while.” Tired and jet-lagged? If he becomes president, what happens when that infamous 3 AM call comes in? “Call back at 8; I need my 9 hours sleep.” Did he invoke the “dog ate my homework” excuse when he failed to hand in assignments at prep school? I guess “too busy bullying gay classmates” wouldn’t fly.
There were more, but you get the point.
In the end, Obama defeated Romney by almost five million popular votes and won the Electoral College, 332-206.
But despite all this, I did go on record saying, “You know, while I don’t agree with any of his policies or positions, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he won. I mean how much damage could one man do in four years?”
Could I have been that naive? Or is it that I, like almost everyone, did not anticipate that there was one man. And his name is Donald Trump,.
I could go on and on about the damage that this one man has foisted on the country, on the world. But rather than listen to me, I thought it better if you listened to journalist Mike Barnicle on MSNBC this morning.
If you don’t want to listen to the entire commentary, look at this transcription of one piece of Barnicle’s discussion.
Barnicle: (after commenting on Giuliani’s loss in the Georgia defamation lawsuit) “…the other thing is not so healthy, and it is the continued indictments and onslaught of stories about Donald Trump’s 91 indictments. It’s going to be with us every day for the next year, maybe a year and a half. And of all the damage that this man did to the country while he was in office, the damage that he’s done since he left office and on January 6th, and everything that we’ve encountered as a culture, as a society, as a political system since that time is going to be with us for decades, all because of one man’s arrogance, his selfishness, and his devotion only to himself, Donald J. Trump”
At times like this I think about Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 dystopian political novel (and subsequent play), “It Can’t Happen Here,” set in a fictionalized version of the 1930s United States which follows an American politician who quickly rises to power to become the country’s first outright dictator.
Can it happen here, in this non-fictionalized version of the 2020s United States? Folks, it already has happened here. And with Trump in a virtual dead heat with Biden in the 2024 polls, there’s an even chance the damage will not abate.
We already know how much damage one man can do in four years (actually more that seven years), I guess the question should change to “how much damage can one man do in another four years?” And will that damage be irreparable?
Put the First and Second Amendments on the back burner. The big story is the 14th Amendment and, particularly, Section 3
First, some background.
The Constitution of the United States has 27 amendments. The first ten amendments were adopted (September 25, 1789) and ratified (December 15, 1791) simultaneously and are known collectively as the Bill of Rights. The post civil war 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, collectively known as the Reconstruction Amendments, were ratified between 1865 and 1870. Those three are considered by some to be the most important amendments after the Bill of Rights. The 13th abolishes slavery. The 14th defines citizenship and contains the Privileges or Immunities Clause, the Due Process Clause, the Disqualification Clause and the Equal Protection Clause. The 15th prohibits the denial of the right to vote based on race, color or previous condition of servitude. And the last? The 27th, was, like the Bill of Rights, proposed on September 25, 1789. But it wasn’t ratified until May 7, 1992, an astonishing 202 years, 223 days later! What was in it that took almost 203 years to ratify? The 27th is that incredibly important amendment that delays laws affecting Congressional salary from taking effect until after the next election of representatives. As the late, great Jack Paar would have said, “I kid you not.”
Six amendments adopted by Congress and sent to the states have not been ratified by the required number of states. Three of them, at least in my view, would seem to reflect what America should stand for, but apparently doesn’t:
Child Labor Amendment which would empower the federal government to limit, regulate, and prohibit child labor. Pending since June 2, 1924. Latest ratification took place on February 25, 1937.
Equal Rights Amendment which would prohibit deprivation of equality of rights by the federal or state governments on account of sex. It was proposed March 22, 1972. Initial ratification period ended March 22, 1979 and the extension period ended June 30, 1982.
District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment which would treat the District of Columbia, as if it were a state regarding representation in the United States Congress giving DC representation in the Electoral College (which it already has per the 23rd Amendment which would be repealed in this new amendment) and participation in the process by which the Constitution is amended. [For reference, the District of Columbia has a larger population than two states with the representation sought in this amendment, Vermont and Wyoming.]
With all the above as background, why the sudden interest in the 14th Amendment ratified 155 years ago? And why is it currently so prominent in the public discourse among both liberal and conservative constitutional scholars? Can you say, “Disqualification Clause?”
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment
“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
So?
Heather Cox Richardson, the Boston College history professor and author of the newsletter, “Letters from an American,” firmly in the liberal/progressive/”Blue America” camp, began her August 19 letter with this:
“Various constitutional lawyers have been weighing in lately on whether former president Donald Trump and others who participated in the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election are disqualified from holding office under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.”
Wait, some doubters might ask, “do you really want me to believe a radical left-wing, nut-job like Heather Cox Richardson?” Of course not, silly. But how about listening to these constitutional scholars who are calling for Trump’s disqualification? (Rather than paraphrase or simply excerpt parts of these articles I will provide a short overview and also will include links to PDFs of each since not everyone has access to the articles.)
J. Michael Luttig and Laurence Tribe
Michael Luttig, a conservative former federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit appointed by President George H.W. Bush, and the more liberal Laurence Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus at Harvard University and one of America’s foremost judicial scholars, joined forces to publish an article in The Atlantic titled: “The Constitution Prohibits Trump From Ever Being President Again”
Luttig and Tribe’s central thesis: “The former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and the resulting attack on the U.S. Capitol, place him squarely within the ambit of the disqualification clause, and he is therefore ineligible to serve as president ever again. The most pressing constitutional question facing our country at this moment, then, is whether we will abide by this clear command of the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause.”
Edward B. Foley is an American lawyer, law professor, election law scholar, and former Ohio Solicitor General. A Republican, he is the theorist of the “blue shift,” a phenomenon in American politics in which in-person votes overstate overall percentage of votes for the Republican Party (whose color is red), while provisional votes, which are counted after election day, tend to overstate overall percentage of votes for the Democratic Party (whose color is blue). When the provisional votes are counted after the election, there is often a shift in totals toward the Democrat, or blue, candidate. His recent op-ed in The Washington Post was headlined: “Forget the Trump trials. He might already be ineligible for 2024.”
Foley’s opens his argument with this: “None of the criminal prosecutions of Donald Trump, even if he is convicted, can constitutionally stop him from running in — and winning — next year’s election. But there’s a serious argument that, separate from any criminal charges, Trump is constitutionally disqualified from returning to the White House because of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol. And if the Constitution bars him from the presidency, then he’s not entitled to be on the ballot, and it becomes the job of state election officials to keep him off.”
Baude, is a professor at the University of Chicago Law School and director of its Constitutional Law Institute. He is a scholar of constitutional law and originalism. Paulson, a member of the conservative Federalist Society, is Distinguished University Chair & Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas, They have a forthcoming paper to be published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review to be titled, “The Sweep and Force of Section Three.” In it they argue, “The bottom line is that Donald Trump both ‘engaged in’ ‘insurrection or rebellion’ and gave ‘aid or comfort’ to others engaging in such conduct, within the original meaning of those terms as employed in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.” They go on to write, “All who are committed to the Constitution should take note and say so.” Both Luttig/Tribe and Foley point to Baude/Paulson in their arguments. (At this point, only an abstract of the Baude/Paulson paper is widely available.)
I’m going to let all this sink in for a while pending a final review; I need to get ready for the first GOP presidential debate tonight. With Trump missing in action, do you think one of the candidates who so desperately wants to topple him will bring up the 14th Amendment and disqualification? I mean even one of their Federalist Society colleagues has. Ok, I doubt it. But maybe someone will surprise me. Chris Christie? Possible. Or mealy-mouth Mike Pence? LOL!
When it comes to the Republican party, that aid can’t come too soon! That is, if there are any good men…or women…left in the GOP.
“Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party” is a phase, originally designed as a touch-typing drill. I typically write it when I’m trying out a new fountain pen or new ink color. (You might have noticed that the writing in the image above is, appropriately for this story, red and blue.) Call me old-fashioned, but I still get pleasure writing with pen and ink – although with so little practice my penmanship has deteriorated significantly! But, as usual, I digress.
Given my familiarity with the phrase, I couldn’t help but link it with the current state of the Republican party, one of two political parties in our predominately two-party system, that is on the verge of imploding, bringing the country as we’ve known it, down with it.
How bad is it? How serious is the harm the GOP can do? How far has the Republican party, the party of Lincoln, the party of abolitionists, the party of the trust-busting Teddy Roosevelt, fallen? Let’s start off with the “Big Lie.” Perpetrated by it’s titular leader, Donald Trump, the twice-impeached, quadruple-indicted, morally corrupt former president, and amplified by spineless Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, third in line to the presidency, the most senior elected Republican office holder.
First, McCarthy:
And then, this: an incredible compendium of presidential candidate concession speeches from 1960 (Richard Nixon) to 2016 (Hillary Clinton). In this video, defeated candidates, Republican and Democratic both, give generous, heartfelt concession speeches linked by one overriding message: I lost, my opponent won, and we must go forward by congratulating the new president and supporting him for the good of the nation. That is, until 2020 and Donald Trump.
But don’t just take this from me. Read the incomparable Heather Cox Richardson, professor of history at Boston College and author of the newsletter, Letters from an American.
August 11, 2023 – As I try to cover the news tonight, I am struck by how completely the Republican Party, which began in the 1850s as a noble endeavor to keep the United States government intact and to rebuild it to work for ordinary people, has devolved into a group of chaos agents feeding voters a fantasy world.
August 15, 2023 – This morning, Trump posted on Truth Social a promise that next Monday he will present “A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia,” saying the report “is almost complete.” He went on: “Based on the results of this CONCLUSIVE Report, all charges should be dropped against me & others— There will be a complete EXONERATION!”
It appears that Trump Republicans have fully embraced what Russian political theorists called “political technology”: the construction of a virtual political reality through modern media. Political theorists developed severaltechniques in this approach to politics: blackmailing opponents, abusing state power to help favored candidates, sponsoring “double” candidates with names similar to those of opponents in order to confuse voters on the other side and thus open the way for their own candidates, creating false parties to split the opposition, and, finally, creating a false narrative around an election or other event in order to control public debate.
…Trump, and now his supporters, rose to power on their construction of a virtual political reality—pushing the story that former secretary of state Hillary Clinton had tried to “bleach” an email server until Americans believed it, for example (while Trump’s own recent attempt to delete security-camera footage after it had been subpoenaed by a grand jury has largely flown under the radar)—and Trump and his supporters continued to double down on that false world first to keep him in power and now to return him to it.
…Political theorists constructed political technology as a way to create a false world that would convince voters to elevate a strongman to power. It is not clear what happens when that false world is revealed to be illusory, as it increasingly has been with regard to Trump’s statements.
…At the very least, it seems unlikely that his announcement of “a major News Conference” to reveal why all the charges against him should be dropped will be met with the attention such an announcement would have attracted even a few years ago.*
*(In fact, as of this writing that “major News Conference has been cancelled. Gee, I wonder why? Could it be that there isn’t a “A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia,”)
I haven’t even mentioned the sham investigations and hearings that vindictive House Republicans are conducting, or Ron DeSantis’ never ending indoctrination of children to his “faux” right-wing causes – At first it was school libraries — are Florida’s public libraries next? –Palm Beach Post, August 14, or the fact that, based on a recent New York Times analysis, Trump, despite the indictments, despite his obvious lies, despite his crudeness and, most importantly, despite personal threats to perceived enemies as he makes a a mockery of the First Amendment (and a judiciary that, to this point is allowing him to do so) is very much a GOP voter favorite. The Times, in the story, “The 6 Kinds of Republican Voters”:
“Mr. Trump’s dominance of the Republican Party is founded on an alliance between the Right Wing and Blue Collar Populists, two groups that combine to represent nearly 40 percent of Republicans — and about two-thirds of Mr. Trump’s MAGA base of seemingly unshakable support.”
The Moderate Establishment (14%). Highly educated, affluent, socially moderate or even liberal and often outright Never Trump.
The Traditional Conservatives (26%). Old-fashioned economic and social conservatives who oppose abortion and prefer corporate tax cuts to new tariffs. They don’t love Mr. Trump, but they do support him.
The Right Wing (26%). They watch Fox News and Newsmax. They’re “very conservative.” They’re disproportionately evangelical. They believe America is on the brink of catastrophe. And they love Mr. Trump more than any other group.
The Blue Collar Populists (12%). They’re mostly Northern, socially moderate, economic populists who hold deeply conservative views on race and immigration. Not only do they back Mr. Trump, but he himself probably counted as one a decade ago.
The Libertarian Conservatives (14%). These disproportionately Western and Midwestern conservatives value freedom and small government. They’re relatively socially moderate and isolationist. Other than the establishment, it’s Mr. Trump’s worst group.
The Newcomers (8%). They don’t look like Republicans. They’re young, diverse and moderate. But these disaffected voters like Democrats and the “woke” left even less.
With Biden and Trump in a virtual dead heat, with resentful, revengeful, malevolent crazies dominating the GOP House delegation, a delegation ostensibly led by the weak, spineless McCarthy, with former Trump opponents like Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham now Trump’s most ardent sycophants, for the good of all of us, Democrats included, I must rephrase my original proposition:
“Now is the time for all good REPUBLICANS to come to the aid of their party.”
It’s been quite some time between Around the Block posts; let me try to ‘splain why.
You haven’t seen an Around the Block story in a while. Since I couldn’t remember how long it’s been, I looked back at my archive.
YIKES!
I last wrote a column almost two months ago, June 20th to be precise. That post, dealing with Trump’s second indictment – the one about the stolen Mar-a-Lago documents, was headlined, “I’m too busy to go through so many tax documents, in so many boxes, in so many places – so I’m not filing my tax returns.” It was so long ago that Trump has been indicted again (#3). You know the one I mean – the one accusing him of conspiring to overturn the election, interrupt Congress and take away every American’s right to vote and have that vote counted. Astonishingly, Trump will probably be indicted a fourth time next week in Georgia on charges that he and his supporters tried to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election in the Peach State. Not only is that indictment probable, it might include RICO racketeering charges! (Thanks, Rudy Giuliani for introducing RICO prosecution. Sweet irony isn’t!)
In the 54 days since that last post, plenty has happened…plenty to opine about, to lament, to satirize. So many things that I have lists and lists of potential subjects and themes. Yet, I’ve been silent. This post will be an attempt to explain to you…and to me, frankly…the silence. (At the very least, if I can satisfactorily explain my writer’s block to myself, I’ll save tons of money that would have gone to my therapist!)
Before I begin, a little background.
Some of you might recall a recent Around the Block headline very similar to today’s. The story, posted this year on May 11 was headlined, “Lucy, you got some ‘splaining’ to do.” That story dealt with the reason I changed Around the Block’s direction from a lot of satire, which I called “News with a Twist,” to mostly straight commentary with a sprinkle of satire. The reason? To quote from that column:
In the run-up to the 2016 election, Trump’s shenanigans and the inaneness of his GOP primary opponents provided ample material for “News with a Twist” posts. In fact, although I haven’t done an exhaustive examination, my guess is that at least 50% of my stories in 2015-2016 were satirical.
And then Donald Trump became POTUS.
And then satire…funny…wasn’t funny any more. In my mind, satirists at the time, like Andy Borowitz, Samantha Bee, Trevor Noah and others were trying too hard to be funny and cynical at a time when the world was becoming, not only unfunny, but dark and evil. So, I began writing less “News with a Twist” and more straight commentary.
Not only was I writing less “News with a Twist,” I was just writing less. My angst, my frustration, my anger at the idea that this country could have elected a person like Donald Trump got the best of me. In my initial post-election stories, I blamed HRC and Clinton hubris. I blamed the DNC. I blamed the wealthy who supported Trump because he would cut their taxes while working to cut support for the more needy and vulnerable. I blamed my fellow Jews who supported Trump because he “pretended to” love Israel, providing unencumbered support no matter what Israel did – but did so only to pander to his Evangelical base.
Is it that the last 54 days simply haven’t anything significant to opine about? Or, has it been that the last 54 days have been so chock full of horror that I’ve been overwhelmed? Or perhaps it is family matters and other projects, both writing and non-writing, have clouded my brain and muted my voice.
Whatever it was, I’m back. While I’m not sure how often I’ll write, allow me to use this post as a restart. Given the list of items and issues I’ve been saving for two months, perhaps the best way to restart is to go back to what I’ve wanted to write but didn’t, and briefly touch on them. Look at the following as a partial compendium of almost two months of bits and pieces that have been festering, but not commented upon.
Donald Trump
As he gets deeper and deeper into legal peril he becomes more unhinged while his MAGA supporters become more rabidly devoted. But despite that, a recent poll puts him dead even with Biden in the 2024 election. If you’re not concerned about that, you probably shouldn’t be reading my stuff.
Indictments, trials and free speech
Trump (and his cabal of supporting elected GOP officials) are making a mockery of the First Amendment as he disparages judges and prosecutors while intimidating prospective witnesses and juries with threats, the most egregious, “If you go after me, I’m coming after you.” When is free speech no longer protected? Well, according to the judge presiding over the third indictment case, Tanya S. Chutkan, who Trump and his sycophantic ally, Senator Lindsey Graham, have said “hates him” and “her family hates him,” there are limits. At a preliminary hearing, she warned Trump, in an unmistakable reference to the “If you go after me…” post, “I intend to ensure the orderly administration of justice in this case as I would in any other case, and even arguably ambiguous statements by the parties or their counsel [which] could be considered an attempt to intimidate witnesses or prejudice potential jurors, triggering the court to take action.” The judge went on to say, “I caution you and your client to take special care in your public statements in this case. I will take whatever measures are necessary to protect the integrity of these proceedings.”
Regarding Trump’s most devoted MAGA supporters, his lies, his calls for violent action against his enemies and his political opponents, his generally dangerous protected free speech inspires devotees like Utah man, Craig Robertson. Robertson made a Facebook post alluding to his intention to kill President Biden during the president’s visit to the state. “I hear Biden is coming to Utah,” the Air Force veteran wrote. “Digging out my old ghille [sic] suit and cleaning the dust off the M24 sniper rifle. Welcome, Buffoon-in-chief!” Robertson, who was killed in a confrontation with the FBI, posted a previous message (in all caps emulating you-know-who) about his “WONDERFUL DREAM” where he saw himself in a parking garage in Washington, D.C., “…STANDING OVER THE BODY OF THE U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL, MERRICK GARLAND, WITH A BULLET HOLE DEAD CENTER IN HIS FOREHEAD. IN MY HAND WAS MY SUPPRESSED SMITH & WESSON M&P 9MM, SMOKE WAFTING FROM THE MUZZLE.” And even earlier one, “The time is right for a presidential assassination or two. First Joe[,] then Kamala!!!” Welcome to the United States of MAGA World where we can wallow in the joys of unencumbered, protected free speech!
Ron DeSantis
The governor of Florida, sinking in the presidential polls, keeps doubling, tripling and even quadrupling down on his hateful campaign against “wokeness.” His obsessive, misguided, over-the-top, racist attacks on history, women’s rights, education and even Mickey Mouse seem to know no bottom. And yes, although he’s far behind, GOP voters still peg him #2 after Trump in the presidential race. (More on the Republican party in an upcoming Around the Block). With so much to write about and so little space – actually, I have no space restraints and no editors but do recognize that readers might not have the time or the patience to put up with my verbosity – I’ll focus here on a few of DeSantis’ recent activities.
Education
DeSantis is trying to indoctrinate Florida students with right-wing dogma with his attacks on education. He’s restricted or banned African American Studies courses; banned more than 40% of math textbooks that publishers submitted for review, claiming they contained “woke” ideology; and, under the “Don’t say gay act,” bannedtalk about sexuality and gender in grades K-12. His laws against the teaching of race, sexual orientation, and gender have led to strict book bans in various school districts. In higher education, the governor is rolling back diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, reducing tenure protections and moving school leaders to review core courses to make sure they’re free of “liberal indoctrination.” Most recently, his ban on books has resulted in, as a Palm Beach Post story headline stated, “Fearful Fla. teachers offloading books” (to used bookstores). Not to be outdone by South Florida, the headline of a recent Tampa Bay Times story read, “Concerns over sex content leads Florida schools to pull Shakespeare.” Why are these schools, teachers, librarians and principals doing this? It’s not because they believe in DeSantis’ Facist tendencies, it’s because they fear being fired!
Fascism
DeSantis’ full-throated embrace of Fascism goes beyond his anti-woke attacks. He, like Fascist strongmen before him, is using his position to fire elected officials with whom he doesn’t agree. (For more on Fascist despots, I encourage you to read Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s recent book, “Strongmen – Mussolini to the Present.” Among the strongmen included in the book, besides the titled Mussolini, are Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin, Putin and Donald Trump(!) I suppose Professor Ben-Ghiat will include DeSantis in an updated edition.) In the past year, DeSantis “suspended” two, duly-elected Florida State Attorneys (DAs in other jurisdictions), both Democrats, because they did not do his bidding. Last year, Hillsborough County (Tampa area) state attorney, Andrew Warren was fired despite having won his election against a Republican opponent by by a margin of six percentage points. This week DeSantis “suspended” Orange County (Orlando area) state attorney, Monique Worrell, for alleged “dereliction of duty,” claiming, “We had a duty to act to prevent this dereliction of duty, Prosecutors do have a certain amount of discretion about which charges to bring. What this state attorney has done is abuse that discretion and has effectively nullified certain laws in the state of Florida.” Worrell was elected in 2020 by a margin of 67% to 33%!
Despite the fact that under Florida law, the governor has the authority to suspend elected officials, that power is usually reserved for those who are accused of criminal wrongdoing. But I guess when you’re a dictator you don’t have to worry about the why’s, what’s or facts of your actions. At least he’s not “disappearing” his rivals like another of Ben-Ghiat’s strongmen, Chile’s Augusto Pinochet.
Free Speech
Let me finish my DeSantis discussion with a sample of his own unencumbered, apparently protected, free speech.
In a campaign stop in New Hampshire, DeSantis said he would “start slitting throats on day one” when it comes to taking on the “deep state.”
If you don’t believe a Yale undergraduate, Harvard Law School-educated, former Navy judge-advocate general who is now the sitting governor of the third-largest state in the Union would actually vow, out loud, to slit the throats of government workers, watch this:
Greg Abbott
I can’t end what has turned out to be a very long post without a call-out to Texas governor, Greg Abbott. I’ve written extensively about the DeSantis/Abbott race to the GOP governor bottom, with DeSantis almost always winning that race. But make no mistake, Abbott is working hard and might be catching up, at the very least, on the cruelty/inhumanity scale.
Border Control
As reported by PBS and NPR:
Texas uses disaster declarations to install buoys and razor wire to stop migration on border. Wrecking ball-sized buoys on the Rio Grande. Razor wire strung across private property without permission. Bulldozers changing the very terrain of America’s southern border.
Locals and lawmakers have started getting a closer look at wrecking ball–size orange buoys Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) had installed — illegally, Mexico and the federal government say — along 1,000 feet of the Rio Grande river between Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras, Mexico. The controversial buoys are chained to the shallow bottom of the river with a net of cables, and you can’t climb over them because they spin freely.
To make sure would-be asylum seekers don’t climb between them, Texas Public Radio’s David Martin Davies reported after a kayak trip to the barrier, “there are also serrated metal plates that look like circular saw blades between each buoy.” That detail also stuck with Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas) and Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) when they visited Eagle Pass on Tuesday. Garcia said she was “appalled” by Abbott’s “cruel and inhumane tactics” and unsettled by the “buoys’ true danger and brutality.”
According to USA Today:
The Department of Justice is planning legal action against Texas in response to horrific reports from the southern border. A 4-year-old girl passed out in 100-degree heat after she was pushed back toward Mexico by Texas National Guard personnel. A pregnant woman became trapped in razor wire and had a miscarriage. A state trooper said he was under orders not to give migrants any water. These incidents stem from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s “Operation Lone Star.”
Abbott has had barriers of buoys and razor wire placed in the Rio Grande to deter migrants from crossing. But governors cannot act unilaterally on immigration because the federal government has authority over our borders. The Supreme Court affirmed in 2012 that immigration is a federal matter, noting that states ‘may not pursue policies that undermine federal law.’
Abbott has vowed to “see you in court Mr. President” even thought most legal experts believe he will lose. But who knows, the current Supreme Court is not 2012’s Supreme Court!
There are many more items on my “to-opine about” list. But clearly this post has reached the outer limits of my, and, I’m sure, your tolerance. I appreciate your continued support and will do all I can to get back to a more regular schedule.
As Around the Block channels Donald Trump, I assert, “I don’t intend to file until the IRS asks, Please, please, please.”
As I’ve done for the last few years, I didn’t file my 2022 taxes this April. Similar to previous years, I was simply too busy to collect all the information I needed to send to my accountant. So I filed for an extension, dutifully ensuring that I estimated my tax liability so that I wouldn’t be subject to penalties when I did file.
It’s now June, two months later. I’m still busy. But I’ve noticed, based on watching cable news, that the former, twice impeached, twice indicted, disgraced former president used “being busy…as you’ve sort of seen”… as one of his rationales for not returning the boxes and boxes of classified information he took from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago playground. Perhaps “being busy” might be a good enough reason to not file my taxes at all…or at least not for a long, long while.
But then I got serious. The IRS wouldn’t stand for the “being busy” excuse for not filing taxes. Even though the agency is a bona fide member of the “Deep State,” they couldn’t be that gullible. I racked my brain. I needed to come up with more reasons, more plausible reasons, for not filing. And then I realized, why rack my brain? Just like that former president knows that being busy isn’t quite enough, I like him, could come up with plenty of more plausible reasons. So, I started a list:
I had stored some of my tax records in boxes in my guest bathroom shower. Unfortunately, we had guests staying with us who, not noticing the boxes (jet-lag), turned the shower on, soaking the documents. It will take weeks, maybe months for those documents to dry out and be readable;
Some of my documents (and some of my papers that are not documents) were stored in the guest room closet. Wouldn’t you know it, those same house guests upset the carefully placed pyramid of boxes spilling the contents all over the floor. I don’t know how long it will take me to sort through the papers and put them back in order;
I stored a good number of boxes in my own closet. Unfortunately, I had also used those boxes to store other things – my golf shirts, my pants, my shoes and other articles of clothing, clean and dirty – with my tax papers. I will need months to sort through and separate my personal clothing from my personal tax papers;
Because I was running out of space in my house to store all my boxes, I requested and received permission from my community’s HOA to store many of my boxes on the stage of the community clubhouse. I stored them upstage right so they would be as far out of the way as possible. Despite taking that care, during a performance by one of our clubs, a chorus line of active adult dancers stumbled over the boxes. Thankfully, no one was seriously hurt so I avoided a hearing in front of the HOA’s grievance committee. But more importantly, as in the guest closet, paperwork spilled out of the boxes which will require weeks and months of re-sorting and re-boxing.
Whew!
The filing deadline is mid-September. I can confidently predict that I will still be busy in September. I also know that the drying out, the re-boxing and re-sorting all these documents (as well as the papers that are not documents), and the separating of my clothes from my paperwork will not be finished by then. In any event, even when I finish, following that former president’s lead, I will not file until the IRS asks “Please, please, please.”
Note: The insight into my case for delaying the filing of my 2022 taxes comes partially from this:
DeSantis and Pence show their true colors by playing the game’s first round with the name “Bragg.”
In appearances this past Friday at the North Carolina Republican Party Convention, former Vice-President Mike Pence and current Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (pronounced duh-Sanits or dee-Santis depending on the audience and the day of the week), both declared candidates for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination (or in DeSantis’ case, dee-clared), played the “Name Game.”
The name they played was “Bragg.”
Let’s begin with contestant #1, DeSantis.
As reported by the Miami Herald:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, speaking at the NCGOP convention Friday night, said if he’s elected president he would reverse the recent decision to change the name of Fort Bragg to Fort Liberty. The promise by DeSantis to restore the name of the major military installation just north of Fayetteville, which earned loud cheers and applause from a ballroom full of Republican delegates at the Koury Convention Center in Greensboro, came just as President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden left newly named Fort Liberty after meeting with members of the armed forces. The presidential candidate was touting Republican successes in last year’s midterm elections in Florida, and in North Carolina, amid disappointing results in the rest of the country, when he brought up the recently renamed installation. “I also look forward to, as president, restoring the name of Fort Bragg,” DeSantis said to raucous cheers from the crowd.
He added that he would “thank the people that have served there, and they’re proud of their service there.” “It’s an iconic name and an iconic base, and we’re not going to let political correctness run amok in North Carolina,” DeSantis said as the crowd continued to cheer.
Fort Liberty, named more than a century earlier in honor of Gen. Braxton Bragg, a Confederate general from Warrenton, was renamed as part of a Department of Defense effort to adopt new names for military installations that were named for Confederate soldiers.
So, who was this Confederate General Braxton Bragg that DeSantis so desperately wants to honor?
While I’ll leave it to you to delve chapter and verse into Bragg’s overall generalship, suffice it to say that he is considered by historians to be one of the worst generals in the Confederate army. Two examples of his ineptness:
He fought the Union Army to a draw in the Battle of Perryville (October 1862) but was bitterly censured by his commanders because he was unwilling to fight to a decision. Despite this he was kept as the head of the Army of Tennessee, by Confederate President Jefferson Davis, a personal friend.
Despite crushing the Union Army at the Battle of Chickamauga, Bragg did not choose to follow it up, and two months later his success was undone at the Battle of Chattanooga when his army was routed by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s Union Army. Bragg was relieved of his command subsequent to his defeat at Chattanooga.
Despite being relieved of his command and that he was derided by both superiors and subordinates, Bragg was appointed as the military advisor to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. (I don’t know about you but I do see a tiny bit of Donald Trump in old Jeff Davis – but I digress.)
Why, based on his record, would DeSantis go to the mat for Bragg? He was a bad general. He was a slaveholder. (Yes, I know you “what about it-ists,” they all did it – Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson and others were slave holders as well). But more importantly, he was an insurrectionist who, as Dr. William Sturkey, a historian and assistant professor teaching the history of race in the American South at UNC-Chapel Hill* said, “It’s pretty rare for the country to have a major military installation named for somebody who fought against that country. It was the Confederacy against the United States of America. He was killing American troops. He didn’t fight under the banner of the United States of America and therefore, he was the enemy.”
*(A subject that I fear might not be taught at Ron DeSantis’ University of Florida system.)
Why then, Ron?
One word. No, I take that back. Two words:
“woke” and “pander.”
As Myron B. Pitts, an op-ed columnist for The Fayetteville Observer, Fort Liberty’s hometown newspaper wrote, “…let’s talk about how dumb their idea really is.”
Pitts, a Fayetteville native goes on:
“…DeSantis knows the U.S. president cannot wave a wand and change Fort Liberty back to Bragg. Bragg’s name change was not done in isolation. It is one of nine Army installations that shed their Confederate names as part of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, aka the defense bill. It is the law, passed by a bipartisan vote of Congress and signed by [none other than] Donald Trump.”
Pitts argues that the U.S. Congress would have to vote to change these names back — and that is not happening.
“Why? Because there is no real constituency in Washington to offer visible support to Confederates and the racism associated with them, most especially the immoral institution of chattel slavery.”
So once again, Ron, why?
It’s the base! (No, not the Army base, friends – the Republican base)
Pitts: “More troubling is the hearty ovation DeSantis received for his dumb idea from delegates at the convention. Why were people in the year 2023 cheering rolling the post name back to a regime that fought against our country and on behalf of slavery? That convention moment may not have been intentionally racist on all hands, but it wasn’t the stuff of (Martin Luther) King’s dream, I will tell you that.”
On to contestant #2, Pence.
How did a spineless, sycophantic, thoughtless man like Pence come up with this? Did “mother” make him do it? Or was he just confused? Since taking on his former boss did Pence think resurrecting the fort’s former name would be a major slap in Trump’s face. Did he think that there could no greater honor bestowed on one of the top names on Trump’s enemies list (after, of course, the “thuggish,” “deranged” special counsel, Jack Smith) than naming a U.S. military installation after this enemy?
I haven’t posted in a while – three weeks, actually. Why? I’ve thought about some possible reasons: Too much going on making it difficult to choose a topic? Current events ennui? Disgust with the state of America, the state of the world? Writer’s block?
My silence could be attributed to any of those. And then I awoke this morning and read an op-ed from Rex Huppke, a columnist formerly of the Chicago Tribune, now writing for USA TODAY. My goodness, I thought, Huppke is channeling my thoughts exactly, writing about what I should have been writing – the disgraceful, witch-hunted, 37-count indictment of former President Donald J. Trump, which in Trump’s own words was, “…[a] ridiculous and baseless indictment of me by the Biden administration’s weaponized Department of Injustice will go down as among the most horrific abuses of power in the history of our country. Many people have said that; Democrats have even said it. This vicious persecution is a travesty of justice.”
So rather than waste my time writing, and your time reading my my own ham-handed effort to opine on this travesty of justice, let me simply re-print Huppke’s own words.
(Full disclosure: Huppke, in his bio, is described as a humor(ish) columnist who, early in his career, declared himself “America’s most-beloved columnist,” a claim wholly unsupported by facts or empirical evidence. A national columnist at USA TODAY, writing staggeringly brilliant (according to him) columns on the news of the day three or more times a week.)
I don’t want to live in a country where Trump could be held accountable
By Rex Huppke, USA TODAY
Sun, June 11, 2023
Now that my favorite president, Donald Trump, is facing a 37-count indictment from the feds, I join with my brothers and sisters in MAGA, and with all sensible Republicans, in saying this: I’m not sure I want to live in a country where a former president can wave around classified documents he’s not supposed to have and say, “This is secret information. Look at this,” and then be held accountable for his actions.
I mean, what kind of country have we become? One in which federal prosecutors can take “evidence” before a “grand jury,” and that grand jury can “vote to indict” a former president for 37 alleged “crimes”? Look at all the other people out there in America, including Democrats like Hillary Clinton and President Joe Biden, who HAVEN’T been indicted for crimes on the flimsy excuse that there is no “evidence” they did crimes. THAT’S TOTALLY UNFAIR!
It’s like Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin wrote in a tweet Friday: “These charges are unprecedented and it’s a sad day for our country, especially in light of what clearly appears to be a two-tiered justice system where some are selectively prosecuted, and others are not.”
What kind of country holds a president accountable for alleged crimes a grand jury charges him with?
Or as Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn tweeted: “Where are the investigations against the Clintons and the Biden’s? What about fairness? Two tiers of justice at work.”
TWO TIERS! One tier in which President Trump keeps getting indicted via both state and federal justice systems and another in which the people I don’t like keep getting not indicted via all the things Fox News tells me they did wrong.
It’s like America has become a banana republic, as long as you do as I’ve done and refuse to look up the definition of “banana republic.”
Regardless of the Trump indictment, it’s clear this is all Biden’s fault
And of course, you know who’s behind this travesty of justice, right? It’s so-called President Biden, who is both frail and senile and also a laser-sharp master at conducting witch hunts.
Sure, they’ll tell you the indictment came via a special counsel investigation, and that the federal special counsel statute keeps such investigations walled off from political influence. But that’s complete nonsense, unless we’re talking about special counsel John Durham, who was appointed by Attorney General Bill Barr while Trump was president and tasked with investigating the NEFARIOUS LEFT-WING CRIMES committed in the Trump-Russia probe. Durham was above reproach, and the fact that the New York Times reported he “charged no high-level F.B.I. or intelligence official with a crime and acknowledged in a footnote that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign did nothing prosecutable, either” is something I will ignore.
This is a WITCH HUNT, and I believe that because Trump said so!
Current special counsel Jack Smith, on the other hand — he’s bad news. I know this because Trump has said repeatedly that Smith’s investigation is a witch hunt, and I’ve never known Trump to lie about anything.
Keep in mind, in 2016, Trump said: “I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law.”
So after he said that, you expect me to believe he didn’t protect classified information? Just because, according to the indictment, there’s a recording of him holding a classified document in his office at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and saying to two staff members and an interviewer: “See, as president I could have declassified it. … Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
You call that “damning evidence,” I call it, “What about Hunter Biden’s laptop?”
Putting Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden in prison? Now THAT makes sense!
Now I can already hear all the libs out there whining and saying that if it was Biden or Hillary or Hunter getting indicted, I wouldn’t be saying a word about two-tiers of justice or the weaponization of the department of justice or anything like that.
Well, those whiners would be right, but the difference is I believe Biden and Hillary and Hunter are all guilty and should be locked up for life, whereas with Trump, I believe he is great and innocent and the best president America has ever known.
It’s like this: If Hillary got indicted for murder, I would say, “Yes, she is absolutely a murderer. Lock her up.”
But if in some outrageous scenario President Trump was indicted for murder just because he told a bunch of people that he did a murder, I would say: “HOW DARE YOU CHARGE THIS MAN WITH MURDER WHEN OTHERS IN THE U.S. HAVE NOT BEEN CHARGED WITH MURDER! THERE ARE CLEARLY TWO TIERS OF JUSTICE, ONE IN WHICH MY FAVORITE PRESIDENT, WHO SAID HE MURDERED SOMEONE, IS CHARGED WITH MURDER AND ONE IN WHICH PEOPLE WHO HAVEN’T MURDERED ARE NOT CHARGED WITH MURDER!”
And that, my liberal friends, makes perfect sense to me and my MAGA companions. So watch out. The Trump Train’s a comin’.
If Hamlet was alive today would he say, ‘Something is rotten in the state of America?’
The Los Angeles Times published a list today, “The 15 most banned books in America this school year.” (Since many readers may not be able to access the link to the Times’ story, I’ve also included a PDF at the end of this post.):
Here’s the list (statistics from PEN America):
1. “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe.(2019 – 56 bans/150 challenges)
2. “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson. (2020 – 38 bans/86 challenges)
3. “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison. (1970– 32 bans/73 challenges)
4. “Out of Darkness” by Ashley Hope Perez. (2015 – 31 bans/50 challenges)
5. “Flamer” by Mike Curato. (2020 –25 bans/62 challenges)
6. “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas. (2017 –24 bans)
7. “Crank” by Ellen Hopkins. (2004 – 24 bans/48 challenges)
8. “Lawn Boy” by Jonathan Evison. (2018 – 23 bans/54 challenges)
9. “Tricks” by Ellen Hopkins. (2009 – 21 bans)
10. “This Book Is Gay” by Juno Dawson. (2014 – 21 bans/48 challenges)
11. “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie. (2007 – 21 bans/52 challenges)
12. “Thirteen Reasons Why” by Jay Asher. (2007 – 20 bans)
13. “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” by Jesse Andrews. (2012 – 20 bans/48 challenges)
14. “Sold” by Patricia McCormick. (2006 – 18 bans)
15. “Melissa” by Alex Gino. (2015 – 18 bans)
As you’ll see if you read the complete article, the themes covered by these books include, LGBTQ+ issues, race, child abuse, interracial relationships, suicide prevention, drug addition and sexual slavery. Several of the books were literary award winners; many were best sellers; some have been made into films.
To put both these bans and the current state of American culture and politics into perspective, the American Library Association. reports that in 2022 a record 1,269 demands were made to restrict or ban books and other materials in schools and libraries — up from 156 demands in 2020.
As I read the Times article, it struck me that while conservative zealots are banning books, ensuring that American students won’t learn about the real world, about real American history, about real people who might be their fellow-students, their friends, their neighbors, even their family members – these same ideologues have been noticeably silent about another phenomenon, dare I say crisis, that is affecting…more precisely…corrupting their children’s minds: Violent video games!
Here is a list of the “The 20 Most Popular Video Games Right Now” published by gaminggorilla.com. I’ve summarized the list below, including each game’s type/theme. If you have the stomach for it, the full description of each of these 20 best sellers can be found in the link in this paragraph.
20. Super Smash Bros – Beat-em-up/Cross-over fighting.
19. The Elder Scrolls V – Action role-playing/destroying an enemy.
18. Call of Duty: Black Ops II – First-person shooters, with lots of shooting, explosions, death and graphic content.
17. Spider-Man – Action/adventure in which Spider-Man takes out his enemy.
16. The Legend of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild – Another action/adventure take out the enemy game.
15. Super Mario Odyssey – A a “platform” game with the goal to take out an enemy.
14. Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII – See #18 above. (Note, this is the fifth version of the “Call of Duty” franchise even though it’s labeled IIII. It also is obviously teaching students how not to learn Roman numerals. But who, besides the NFL, cares about that mis-education?)
13. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive – First person shooter.
12. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds – Battle it out to the last man standing.
11. League of Legends – Battle arena “game” with the objective to destroy your opponents.
10. Roblox – Creation platform system, that allows users to create their own games.
7. Red Dead Redemption II – Shoot ’em up with the objective of trying not to be killed by rival gang members and government officials.
6. Super Smash Bros: Ultimate – See #19 above.
5. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege – Tactical shooter game.
4. Grand Theft Auto V – Action-adventure video game that allows you to play as a criminal, committing heists and evading government and police officials.
3. Fortnite – Online shooter survival game.
2. Minecraft – “Sandbox” building block game.
1. Call of Duty: Warzone (Modern Warfare) – See #’s 14 and 18 above.
There you have it. The 20 most popular video games, 17 of which involve guns, killing or overall mayhem, one that glorifies grand theft, leaving two, “Roblox” and “Minecraft” that might have some redeeming value.
Where is the outrage? Where are the calls for bans. Who are the parents who let their children buy and play these games while mindlessly banning books about the real world? Oh right, they’re in the garage or the family room cleaning their assault rifles while watching Fox “News!”
By the way, the if the descriptions of these games is not bad enough, here’s a sample of some game graphics:
Let me close today’s diatribe with this story, just in from the Florida newsroom courtesy of The Washington Post (This is an excerpt – full story PDF attached).
Teacher investigated for Disney movie says politics drove her to resign
Jenna Barbee said she wanted to give students a “brain break” during standardized testing earlier this month by showing them a movie. Barbee, a fifth-grade teacher at Winding Waters K-8 school in Brooksville, Fla., chose Disney’s “Strange World” because the film about journeying to a mysterious underground land related to recent science lessons about the environment.
But “Strange World” is also Disney’s first movie featuring an openly gay character, a fact that led a school board member to report Barbee to state officials, the teacher told the Hernando County School Board at its May 9 meeting. The Florida Department of Education is now investigating whether Barbee broke the state’s law forbidding public school teachers from talking about gender and sexual orientation with students, she said in a TikTok video, which has been viewed more than 5 million times in three days.
“This is the public education system, where students from all backgrounds, cultures and religions are welcomed and should be celebrated and represented. I am not and never would indoctrinate anyone to follow my beliefs,” she said at the start of the 6½-minute video. “I will, however, always be a safe person to come to that spreads the message of kindness, positivity and compassion for everyone.”
I ask you, readers, friends, opponents, do you agree that there’s something wrong with all this. Paraphrasing Shakespeare, is there really “something rotten in the state of America?” Are we, as Seinfeld might say, not just in, but fully vested in, “Bizarro World?
Here’s the PDF of the Times article, “The 15 most banned books in America this school year:”
Around the Block 