The Election So Far Part 2

 We all know what happened last week. I still find it unbelievable that people are so delusional about who Donald Trump really is. I've seen videos of people, who after overrunning the Capitol, are told they won't be able to get on a plane to go home. Then they lose their job. "They called me a terrorist, and they're ruining my life," one said. Well, yeah. You are a terrorist, and you messed up your own life. It's clear now that people thought they could do whatever they wanted because they are White. I'll just put that out there. I don't see any other explanation. 

I'm listening to NPR news, and they said Vice President Pence won't invoke the twenty-fifth amendment. That's not a surprise. He and other Republicans want Trump to go away next week, but with a minimum of drama. That's not how it works. If Congress can get rid of him before January 20, I'm fine with that. 

I've never been a fan of the Republican Party, not since Spiro Agnew in 1968 dissed college students at a rally I attended when I was a college student. There are people who have been kind to me and to Joe who are Republicans, and I haven't "unfriended" them because we have a history, but I will keep a distance from them unless they beg me for forgiveness and agree to change. In Judaism, it's called t'shuva, or repentance. 

In West Virginia, two of the three congresspeople (not mine, amazingly) voted not to certify all the election results. They need to go. And our Governor, a "great friend" of the President, pooh-poohs the whole thing, and isn't worried about reports that people are going to attack all fifty state capitals. Our Attorney General, Patrick Morrisey, signed on to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's failed lawsuit to overturn the election. He may also have helped pay for robocalls to Republicans to come to Washington. Today, the state NAACP called for Morrisey's impeachment, because he questioned the election only in cities with large Black communities, notably Philadelphia, Atlanta and Milwaukee. I'm all for it. 

And then, when the terrorists attacked Congress, everyone was herded into a safe room, several hundred people in a small space. Many of the Republicans were not wearing masks, and refused to put on masks when asked. Now, several Democratic lawmakers have become ill with covid-19. Those Republicans should go to jail. 

Maybe I just don't get it. Maybe because I never watched his television show, or because I think macho swagger is phony and unimpressive, I don't understand how anyone can follow this grifter as if he were some kind of god. In Judaism, this is called idolatry, and it's a big sin. 

It doesn't help when big corporations say they won't give money to Republican election campaigns. So why were they donating to these campaigns in the first place? Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, has resigned, saying "This is not who we are." Our Republican Senator, Shelley Moore Capito said the same thing. They have both finally spoken out in the last week of the Trump administration. Despite the nice clothes, immaculate hair and good jewelry, this is who they are. They think being polite and well-dressed separates them from the scruffy people at the Capitol, but no, they are not better or different from those people. 

I wish I could be here in fifty years, to see how history treats this. I hope we still have a democracy then, but I have my doubts. My hope now is that the Republican Party implodes, and that lots of people go to jail. 

Panic and Grief

Things have been tough lately for a lot of people. The parents of a friend in California were evacuated from Santa Rosa because of the fires there, and may have lost their house. Many people in Puerto Rico are still without water, food and power weeks after Hurricane María blew over the island. In Miami, where I used to live, the main streets downtown were under water because of Hurricane Irma. And Hurricane Harvey in Houston flooded the city and poisoned the waters nearby when chemical plants were destroyed. A man in Las Vegas shot into a crowd at a country music festival. The whole nation is in crisis.

Then there is the current national administration. The President is clueless and vindictive. He models himself on Vladimir Putin. His henchmen, Mike Pence, Scott Pruitt and Jeff Sessions, are bent on destroying individual freedom, environmental progress, and the voting rights of many Americans. The President threatens a nuclear war with North Korea. That would likely be the end of all of us.

I was elected to Morgantown's City Council earlier this year. I was helped by people who are appalled at the clumsy stupidity and arrogance of our national government. In addition to approving bond sales for redevelopment, tweaking the city's codes and fixing the streets, we have signed Morgantown to the Paris Climate Accords, and will pass an LGBT rights ordinance next week. We are doing what we can to fight fascism in the United States. It looked like we would be attacked by bused-in anti-gay protestors, but so far that hasn't happened. Two weeks ago, while we were worried about this, the President was going to visit Morgantown, to be interviewed by Sean Hannity. Friends of mine were planning protests, and a motorcycle gang said they would come and protect the President. Meanwhile, the whole city would be shut down. I had visions of what happened in Charlottesville happening here in my town.

The President cancelled. He traveled instead to Las Vegas to meet with people injured in the mass shooting there. His party will block any attempt to stop the proliferation of weapons in this country. We are all just sitting ducks.

On a personal level, my life is good. I have a strong marriage; we own a modest house and two aged cars. We travel, and I will be at my fifty-year high school reunion this weekend. Suncrest, the neighborhood where we live, is suburban and leafy, but in the city of Morgantown, where I am the first openly gay man, the first in a same-gender marriage, to be elected to Council.

It's strange that what has most disturbed me this week is not any of the above. Last week, tree surgeons parked down the street from us, and started hacking off limbs  from a beautiful oak tree, still mostly green, and towering over a modern ranch house. At first, I thought maybe they would just cut a few branches. After a day, I saw five or six blue jays in the street by this house. Their nests must have been destroyed. I noted also, that some tree limbs were over the roof of the house, and that it was planted too close to the house. Actually, the house was likely built too close to the tree, probably fifty years ago. They cut the whole tree down. When I saw the workers there, I wanted to scream "Murderers!" at them, like I want to do with people who have NRA stickers on their car.

Maybe it's just that this tree was more visible to me than fifty-eight people shot to death in Las Vegas, or people without food and water in Puerto Rico, or the current EPA allowing the use of a pesticide known to have a negative effect on children's brains.  There's so much outrage over everything this administration has done in just ten months, that I can't process it. Instead I use the fallen oak tree as a means to process my grief and rage over every senseless thing that is happening in my country. That's what I think, anyway.

Charlottesville

I was in Canada the weekend of the Fascist marches and demonstration in Charlottesville.We didn't watch most of it, and didn't see what a big deal it turned out to be.

We came home, and I watched the HBO video, read the comments from the president of the Jewish congregation in downtown Charlottesville, and read as much as I could.

At the Morgantown City Council meeting on August 15, and previously on Facebook, I had asked for a meeting with members of City Council, the Monongalia County Commission and West Virginia University, and their respective police departments to firm up plans in case there was a similar march here in Morgantown.

I was out last Thursday downtown for an event at WVU, the Human Relations Commission and a social gathering. I took the PRT, WVU's ingenious driverless mass transit system, to get downtown and walked between the venues. I didn't stay long at any of them. Joe had a meeting, and I thought I would catch up with him at temple to get a ride home. Our signals were crossed on that, and the PRT had an emergency shut down. I got home much later than I expected, and way tired. That's when I lost it.

There was an op-ed piece in our local paper that day from Michelle Malkin, a truly horrible person, IMHO. Her response to criticism of the President over Charlottesville was "What about Black Lives Matter?" I also got a response from Morgantown's mayor, someone I like and consider a friend, who brushed off my concerns by saying he was sure the Morgantown police could take care of anything that might come up.

I get Black Lives Matter now, and "intersectionality." I will admit to (generally) being white and "passing" for straight, at least when I'm alone and not with Joe. My parents made choices for me in housing and schools that were not available to African-Americans. I had financial help from my family that a vast majority of Americans of any race could not imagine. I expect to be taken seriously. That's how I was brought up, as a White Male in the South.

And yet, when I was concerned about heavily armed young men with Nazi flags standing outside a Reform synagogue in a liberal college town, I was told to worry about African-Americans instead, or to not worry, it wasn't a big deal. That hurt, not so much the former from Malkin. I wrote a scathing letter to the editor about her, which was published this past Saturday. I was more hurt by the Mayor's response. I accused him in my response of not being worried because he is "straight, white and Christian." "Clueless" might have been a better adjective. My husband is the rabbi at the Reform synagogue in a college town 235 miles from Charlottesville, according to Google maps. And my family had relatives in Poland in 1939, who were murdered by the Nazis. That Nazis marching in America did not upset the Mayor, or the President for that matter, meant to me that my life doesn't matter. And Black lives matter even less.

This past Sunday, there was an article in Morgantown's Dominion-Post about preparations for events like those in Charlottesville. The reporter, Alex Lang, quoted me, but also sought out the local police and WVU officials. Apparently, they have thought about this issue, and there are plans in place.

Tonight, I attended a panel discussion about Charlottesville put on by the History Department at WVU. The speakers were good about putting events into perspective. They explained that many of the monuments to Robert E. Lee and others were placed in the early part of the twentieth century, to emphasize white supremacy, and that schools named for Confederate heroes were often built in the 1950s and '60s during the battles over school integration.

Ultimately, the issue is not about statues. It's about white people, almost always young white men, feeling threatened by Blacks, Jews, gays and women, and feeling left behind, like it's someone else's fault. I asked the panel tonight where the hatred of Jews comes from, and the embrace of Nazi flags and admiration of Hitler. The panelists said that young people have no knowledge of what Nazism really meant, no idea about Jim Crow or the Civil Rights Era.

Some of this is prejudice handed down. I know what Baltimore, where I grew up, was like in the 1950s and 1960s. People don't believe me when I say it was totally segregated, not just by race, but also by religion, and not just between Jews and Christians, but socially between Catholics and Protestants, between German Jews and Russian Jews. The Civil War was still an issue in Maryland 100 years after it was over, and to an extent, still today.

It's late and I'm rambling. The talk tonight put things into a historical perspective, and the failing Trump regime, which encouraged outbursts from Nazis and Ku Klux Klan people, will not last. As to racism, anti-Semitism, and our fear-based culture, our only hope is to be open with everyone about who we are, present everyone with a friendly face, and demand much better from our politicians. I'm working on being a good politician, writing letters to the editor (another went out today) and being open, in our city at least, about who I am.