Yom Kippur Lunch, Not A Joke but a Conversation

Emma Goldman was an anarchist political activist in the late 19th and early 20th century in the United States. Fleeing oppression in Russia she came to the US with the idea the it was "the free country, the asylum for the oppressed of all lands."  She quickly realized that oppression of the working class went on in our country as well and she slowly began to become more radical, especially after the Haymarket Square tragedy in Chicago in May of 1886 where a bomb exploded at a rally against police suppression of a strike.  In the aftermath many labor activists were charged and convicted of the violence that would take the lives of several rally goers and police officers.  She realized that she needed to speak out against the working conditions and the brutal actions of what she saw as the ruling class.  But not only did she focus on freeing the body from the oppression she felt as a factory worker and as a woman, but to free the mind of the oppression that she saw was forced on people.  One was that of religion.  While she saw the world through Jewish eyes drawing on the values of emphasizing justice for all, she was a atheist who had no place for Jewish law that was controlling.  She often spoke on Jewish topics, used Yiddish to reach Jewish audiences and found Judaism as a culture to be light to the world.  But when it came to religious practice she found it confining and thus did not create an environment of freedom.  Her open rejection of religious practice led her to promote and participate in a Yom Kippur Picnic in 1907.  A day seen by many as the holiest of the year when Jews fast for 26 hours.  She was encouraging people to gather to eat, in public, in face of religious Jewish authorities that would publicly attack Jews for eating on that day.  It was a challenge that opened eyes of people.  Goldman was a radical that truly made people question the status quo in politics and religion.  Her vision may have been ahead of her time and her legacy is seen in activists today who argue for the rights of many who are oppressed because of who they are.  But Goldman's vision of Judaism not as a strict religion, but as an ethical guide has helped many find a home in Judaism when disagreeing with some of the more traditional views of what it means to be Jewish.  But outrage over something like a Yom Kippur picnic will always exist in the Jewish world, as noted this year.   

 Rabbi Ilana Zietman, according to her biographic blurb,  is a pluralistic rabbi who loves to create Jewish experiences and foster communities that are relevant, thought-provoking and most importantly, welcoming.  She is the community rabbi for GatherDC is a Jewish nonprofit that serves as the one-stop-shop for everything 20s and 30s need to live their best Jewish life.  The goal of the organization is to reach out to young Jews to build relationships between them, connect them with Jewish life they are seeking and the institutions that can help.  Their website, for example, lists over 50 events on Yom Kippur from services at various synagogues from Chabad (A Chasdic Orthodox movement) to mindful Yom Kippur hikes and everything in-between.  But with shades of Emma Goldman, one event is getting Rabbi Zietman and the organization a lot of social media flack. The event is called  GatherDC 2022 High Holidays Intentional Yom Kippur Lunch Meetup, an Rabbi Zietman was promoting it on her account.  The event is described as such:

We know that there are many who do not fast on Yom Kippur for important personal, health, and religious reasons. This is something that should be celebrated because Jewish tradition acknowledges that fasting is just one of several valid ways to observe the holiday. This year, we’re experimenting with organizing a lunch meetup for those who would find it meaningful to gather with other people who also do not fast and even engage in a Jewish ritual to honor the act of intentional eating on this special day. GatherDC will pick a central meeting point on the SW Waterfront following our Alt YK morning experience, where you’ll have time to meet others and Rabbi Ilana for schmoozing and intention-setting before embarking on a self-led lunch excursion on the beautiful waterfront. We’ll be in touch separately with those who sign up. You also do not need to join our morning experience to participate.

Now the idea of eating on Yom Kippur is one of those lines that a lot of Jews feels shouldn't be crossed. Even Jews who have no connection to other prohibitions in Jewish law.  But when I look at this I see a different kind of energy.  There are those who, by Jewish law, must eat on Yom Kippur, if not eating may put your health in danger for example.  There are those who find to concept of fasting meaningless to them and choose not to fast even if they acknowledge the themes of the holiday.  Rabbi Zeitman is trying to find a way to make a space for those people to engage the holiday without feeling like they are on the outside looking in.  She is not Emma Goldman.  

Emma Goldman was a direct attempt to take down religion and religious leadership that she saw imposing rules and restrictions on free thinking people.  Goldman was like an invader in the ancient world that would destroy local temples and use the stones to rebuild a temple to their own gods.  Goldman wanted to use the foundation to build something new while erasing what she saw as oppressive. She maintained some of the visions of Judaism based on justice, but the religion of Judaism she wanted to end.   Rabbi Zietman isn't trying to tear down the proverbial temple.  She is building an approach ramp and creating a new door way in.  Too often there are Jewish people who find it hard to fit into a community and the age group that GatherDC (20s and 30s) find it harder to find a home in many place.  To me it looks like GatherDC and Rabbi Zietman are trying to provide an opportunity for a meaningful Yom Kippur experience, while not judging those who don't follow all the rules. 

There are many who are critical of GatherDC, calling out Rabbi Zietman, even suggesting she is not a real rabbi.  Many who don't appear to have problems violating the Shabbat as many of the posts appeared on a Saturday.  I would encourage them to meet with those who view Yom Kippur and other holidays differently.  On Passover we hear of the 4 children, each approaching the narrative of freedom differently.  One has been called Wicked because that child doesn't see the story as meaningful, but that child is there to hear the story.  There are many who think of a 5th child, one who isn't even at the table.  One who can't hear the story, one who cannot even reject what is meaningful because they will never find a way in.  GatherDC is looking for a way to add a chair at the table for that child.  

While I will fast on Yom Kippur but will not judge those that don't.  I find meaning in the fast, and that is what our tradition and frankly all traditions should be about, meaning.  In the end, Rabbi Zeitman may find a way to make meaning for Jews who had not place to do that, and help with self-reflection.  Isn't that what this time of year is about. 

 

The Enemy of my Enemy Isn't Always a Friend.

In the Torah, Noah is called an Ish Tzaddik, a righteous man.  But the Torah modifies it to complete the line saying he was "blameless in his age".  His age was the age of the people who were lawless  and corrupt.  The ancient rabbis took note and suggested that Noah was righteous, only when measured against those of his age.  Further commentary and even the Torah reveals that Noah was far from perfect.  

I think of this when I hear people speak of Liz Cheney.  Cheney is an arch-conservative whose father was once referred to as Darth Vader.  Cheney has a history of voting against virtually everything Democrats hold dear.  In fact, when she first ran for Congress she made anti-gay statements despite her sister being a lesbian.  Cheney is not a friend of the left, or Democrats or even moderates.  But after she lost her primary to a Trump supported candidate who is less than qualified to serve in the Senate, a number of voices on the left were praising her.   Praising her for the simple fact that she is one of the few Republicans who are publicly denouncing the former President's complete and utter lie about the 2020 election and helping to investigate the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol and by extension our very Democratic government.  An attacked by people called to Washington D.C. by the former President and ginned up by many of his most ardent supporters.  

The old adage that politics makes strange bedfellows was used to describe this situation but I would argue this is not about politics.  It is about embracing the reality that the 2020 election was fairly won by President Biden or the fantasy of wild conspiracies that somehow an elaborate system of cheating took place.   I do have respect for anyone on the right who stands up to Trump and is criminal and antidemocratic attempts to hold on to power or regain it.  Early on there were many who found Trump to be unfit to serve as President.  Reince Pribris famously said early in the 2016 election season, as then chair of the Republican party, that as Trump gained ground on the primary field he was pouring Bailey's on his breakfast cereal.  He then went on to be his Chief of Staff.  Only to be neutered by Trump and eventually forced out.  Many on the right called themselves never Trumpers who know support him and what we are calling Trumpism, the authoritarian effort that is reshaping our system of government.  So Cheney, who loses her seat in Congress, should be seen as a profile in courage.  She could have denounced the investigation on January 6th instead of joining it.  But she did what so few others have, put country over party or power.  

As we watch the 2022 election cycle we have seen candidate the GOP, through the former President has promoted more candidates that have no business anywhere near making our nation's laws.  In Georgia, Hershel Walker, a man with a violent domestic violence past and seems to understand little of how government works and has trouble with complete thoughts even in his own ads.  In Pennsylvania, a famous quack doctor who actually lives in New Jersey is running on his celebrity but a recent attempt to attack the high cost of food and blame the President.  It was so cringe from his misnaming the store, to him saying the wrong prices while attempting to buy items for crudités.  Also in Pennsylvania there is a candidate who has someone working for his campaign who doesn't want, even if conservative, Jews in the campaign.  Because all over the country the Republicans are embracing Christian Nationalism.  One currently sitting member of Congress has suggested we should do away with the the separation of church and state.  These are just a few of the highlights that have gone so far as the calling the execution of people who oppose Trumpism. 

I understand the desire and comfort one might have to embrace Representative Cheney as she stands in a small group of conservatives who haven't fallen under the spell of Trumpism.  But we should be aware of who she is and not put all our faith in the standing up against those who have decided to jettison the values of the party and in fact the country.  We can feel bad that a person who continues to live in reality is no longer going to serve.  But the idea that she should serve in the Biden administration or be on the next Democratic ticket is nonsense.  We can support her in her efforts to find the truth.  We can admire her efforts to maintain her values in the face of the  rotting of party that she grew up in.  But lets be careful how close we get to what we have always fought against.  As in everything, the enemy of my enemy isn't always a friend.  

Criminal Behavior Has Consequences

 Yesterday, the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-A-Lago, the current home of former President Trump, in what is reported an investigation of him taking documents with him when he left office.  The FBI, headed by a Trump appointed director, organized evidence of crime to bring before a Federal Judge, appointed by former President Trump, to obtain the warrant.  This is not something that we have seen in our history but that doesn't make it wrong or unAmerican.  For all those saying this is somehow us devolving into a third world country or a banana republic I would say this is the most American thing that could happen.  

The former President was accused of taking Presidential records to his home at Mar-A-Lago and the National Archives asked the FBI to investigate when they weren't returned.  There is some reporting that some of the records may contain highly classified documents that could damage our national security if they fell into the wrong hands.  Others are just normal records that by law must remain in the custody of the Federal government.  Since there has been little to no effort to return all the documents intact the FBI collected evidence and filed an affidavit with the court to obtain the warrant it executed.  That is the process and what is good about it is that even a former leader is not immune from the rule of law.   

We have never been to this place because we have never had a President who so brazenly flouted the rule of law both before, during and after his time in office.  In fact we never had a President call a gang of supporters to Washington DC to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.  This is not a typical thing, that doesn't make it a politically motivated investigation.

For months, a lot of people on the left have been asking why the Attorney General is not moving faster to prosecute Donald Trump for what they see as obvious crimes.  The response from many on the right is the reason why.  When you are in power and your political opponent is under investigation it gets tricky because it has the appearance of being political.  The Department of Justice has worked really hard to not appear to be doing that and even worse get over their skis in pursuit of a crime.  They knew regardless of how locked down the information was, how damning the evidence is and how many on the right support the moving forward with an investigation or charges the right wing noise machine and the Trump sycophants in Congress will call it retaliation or worse.  House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has already threatened the Attorney General is the Republican take back the House.  Some on the right have been more measured. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina said "We need to let this play out and see exactly what happens. But we should have been stunned and surprised and shocked with what happened yesterday," That earned him many on the web calling him a RINO, an acronym that used to me Republican In Name Only.  Today for many it means anyone who doesn't give full throated support of Trump.  There are voices on the internet saying they are coming for Republicans who aren't in the streets to Trump.  This is why it is difficult to investigate, charge and convict a political figure when they are of the opposition party and may be the nominee for President.  

Is Trump guilty of violating not only the Presidential Records Act but bringing seriously classified material to his home and out of government control.  No one really knows.  What we do know is that he had a history of destroying documents he was supposed to preserve.  That is played fast and loose with classified information and some reported caused an important human asset in Russia to have to leave the country quickly.  We know that flushing documents down the toilet is part of a new book on the Trump White House (which begins to answer the question why he was obsessed with low-flow toilets).  This execution of the warrant may lead to serious charges.  It may lead to the former President's lawyers turning everything over.  It may go nowhere if the agents, who spent hours at his home, got what they came for.  What I do know is that those screaming about their outrage the loudest don't know either and they are damaging the image of the country almost as much as the fact that the FBI felt the need to issue this kind of warrant on a former President.  

So what I would say is this:  We have a Department of Justice that will move forward with this investigation and I certainly hope that as they do they report appropriately to Congress when warranted.   I hope that if the President is found by a Grand Jury to have committed a crime that a fair and impartial jury will judge him without a lot of noise from those on the right.  I don't expect any of that.  Months ago I told someone when and if the DOJ did make an aggressive move in the investigation of any of Trump's alleged criminal behavior there will be ignorant outrage and threats of violence and that is why they are moving slowly.  I didn't realize just how bad it would be.  But in the words of a man that I fear will probably be retracting them by the time you read this We need to let this play out and see exactly what happens.

How Does It Get This Far?

Another elementary school has suffered a tragedy that should not happen with the frequency that it does in this country.  A teenager fought off police to enter the building and slaughter 21 people, mostly children.  Children, whose bodies were so abused by the bullets, could only be identified by DNA.  While many of the children in the one classroom are dead, the ones who survived are deeply wounded, some physically, all emotionally.  This happened on a Tuesday and by the weekend another story will push it off the front page.  Like so many before it is a few survivor victims, family members and a handful of elected officials who will remind us, but often they don’t get the forum they deserve.  It is clear we have given up on trying to keep kids safe in order to not even do some reasonable and Constitutional restrictions of gun ownership.

Instead, we run children through drills to deal with the possibility of an active shooter in their school.  Those too are traumatizing.  Children have suffered psychological damage after such drills.  On twitter one father told how his Kindergarten student was taught that if they are near the door as a shooter comes in to wave their arms at the shooter and throw things, so their classmates might have a chance to escape.  We are asking 5 year olds to put themselves in harm’s way to save others.  Another comment mentioned the fact that if a student is outside the classroom when an active shooter is in the building, you must not let them in the room.  Even if they pound on the door and start screaming. One adult who remembers being caught outside the room during one such drill was so unnerving (he didn’t know it was a drill since his school did them by surprise) he needed therapy.  “The life of the many must outweigh the life of the few or the one” should never have to be a 1^st grade motto.

 When events like this occur the camps are already in place.  Too often if you raise a concern using the latest example of a shooting you are told to not politicize it.  If you talk about common sense gun reform you are attacked for wanting to take everyone’s guns away.  If you discuss the gun at all the clap back is we need better mental health or criminals will still get guns.  However as I write this the shooting in Buffalo and in Uvalde were committed by 18 year olds with no criminal background to speak of and their mental health issues seemed to be ignored or go unseen.  They both had easy access to guns and in fact in Uvalde, the shooter had access directly due to the fact that the law was changed so someone his age could buy the weapons he used with no real questions asked.  The law stopped him from buying it sooner, he waited until it was legal.  A law that not long ago would have prevented him from buying the weapons until he was 21, but the current state government was embarrassed that more guns weren’t being purchased in their state. 

There is no panacea for this, I know that by the time this is read there will likely be another mass shooting.  But we can put up speed bumps to perhaps find a way to prevent it.  I don’t want people not to be able to own and use fire arms.  I know why there is a second amendment and why the founder felt the need for a state based way of responding to tyranny.  I know what it is like to have a loved one murdered in my home. I know that guns are both a way of defending oneself, a hobby, and for some a way to feed their family.  We shouldn’t want to ban all guns.  That is not what most people want.  But most people want to find some way to find a way to make it harder for people who shouldn’t have weapons to get them.  Simply raising the age one can purchase certain weapons, limiting high capacity magazines and universal background checks.  I would love to have waiting periods for buying more than one weapon but that is a tougher thing to get passed and may get too close to the 2^nd amendment.  Calls to repeal the Second Amendment, by the way, are non-starters.  It is that kind of rhetoric that is as bad as those who think “cannot be infringed” means there are no rules.  Both do not help the debate.   

There is also a cultural issue in our country that can’t be denied.  We fetishize guns and that has to change.  Be it the way guns play a role in cultivating an image in parts of the entertainment industry, or those whose family holiday card includes everyone holding a rifle this is not healthy. 

Little kids should not have to make a split second decision to Run, Hide, Fight.  They shouldn’t have to think like a forward battalion in war zone deciding who will live and who will die.  They shouldn’t have to know how to see a classmate so destroyed by bullets that even their parents can’t recognize them.  We can work together to fix this.  We can find a way.  

I am Not a Biologist

 When Ketanji Brown Jackson, the latest Supreme Court Justice, was asked in her confirmation hearings to define a woman, she replied "I am not a Biologist".  Of course this made the right wing of the country set their hair on fire.  The answer was terse to a question that was way outside of the discussion.  Another culture war question from a party that has devolved into discourse worthy of a social media comment section.  But her answer does make sense.  It is far harder to define what is a woman or man as the long known diversity of human sex, sexuality and gender becomes more mainstream.  About 30 years ago I helped organize a conference on the Cultural Construction of Sexuality.  This looked at the then changing view of homosexuality, bisexuality, polyamory and what we called the heterodoxy of our culture.  It explored the wide variety of gender expressions, sexual attractions and the overall view of sexuality at the time.  I am surprised that an entire generation has grown up since then and we still are having the same discussions.  

This question was likely prompted by the recent win by a female transsexual college athlete.  So how do you define a woman.  Well by looking at her.  No, you can see an expression of gender when you see someone, but you know nothing about a person's sex just by seeing them in public.  Fully clothed.  Virtually everyone has encountered someone where they assumed a sex and made a mistake.  Now we are probably hardwired to tried to identify the person we are looking at as a potential mate and look for attractive features.  But we know those can be faked and disguised.  There is also the question of non-gender conforming people whose appearance could not fully define one way or another.  This is not as uncommon as you think and hasn't been for a long time.  So mere physical appearance isn't a good indicator.

Now, for some, it is whether a penis is present.  You will hear this a lot.  If someone has a penis they are male.  In most cases that is true.  But it would also make the opposite true, without a penis means female.  Here is the problem.  When a child is born sometimes their physical appearance is unclear, or worse undeveloped. In the Dominican Republic there are children known as  Guevedoces , which effectively translates as "penis at twelve". These are boys born with what looks like a vulva and vagina.  At puberty they develop a penis and tentacles descend.  So now they are girls for their entire life, brought up as such and suddenly are not boys.  There are also cases were an injury causes the removal of a penis does the make someone a woman.  Those big eunuchs of the past would be woman by that definition.  

So some say the ability to give birth makes one a woman.  Well, there are many women incapable of giving birth, does that make them men?  Senator Josh Hawley used this definition and was immediately stymied by the fact that post-menopause woman can't have children.  Do they become something else?  

So genetics is the answer right?  XX is a woman, XY is a man.   Well it isn't that simple.  You see there are six fairly common genetic possibilities in the human genetic code for sex chromosomes.  They are:  

X – Roughly 1 in 2,000 to 1 in 5,000 people (Turner’s syndrome )

XX – Most common form of female

XXY – Roughly 1 in 500 to 1 in 1,000 people (Klinefelter's symdrome)

XY – Most common form of male

XYY – Roughly 1 out of 1,000 people

XXXY – Roughly 1 in 18,000 to 1 in 50,000 births

Each of these has their own different expression and in some cases, like Klinefelter's, a person may not know their genetic make up or that they have anything wrong in their genes and it is not uncommon.  So genetics might not be the answer either without making some subjective discussion.

Couple this with the fact the gender and sex are not the same thing, that for about 100 years we have been able to perform sex reassignment surgery and in very recent times we are returning to a time when gender expressions were far more comfortably diverse, the question requires even more than a biologist.  

Human sexuality, sex, gender and social interactions are all complicated.  Saying it is simple doesn't make it so.  Real fear of this diversity is more of a problem that if someone wants to redesign their body and outward appearance to match their mind.  

It is difficult to make a lot of change quickly for many people.  But the fact that members of the Senate are trying to use it as a cudgel to divide the country is disgusting.  I would hope that as a culture we can embrace the diversity that exists in the human condition and not continue to force people to hide who they are.  In the meantime, I am glad that Justice Jackson is confirmed on the court.  Maybe next time we won't have to deal with this nonsense.   

I Shouldn't Have to Tell You This

There has been so much nonsense vomited out on the internet recently that I thought I would vent a little about it.  Some will make you angry and some will just make you wonder how the person talking dresses themselves and finds food.  It continues to be an amazing world on the web.  

1,  Your Inconveniences are NOT like the Shoah* (Holocaust) :  Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said this at a rally, “Even in Hitler’s Germany you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.” This was in references to recent restrictions on people who have not been vaccinated against Covid 19.  It isn't the first time he dabbled in Godwin territory.  This however was an extra stupid an offensive statement because the unvaccinated could easily get out of their, so called crisis, by getting a shot.  But what is more interesting is that RFK Jr. apparently didn't read to the end of the book. 

2.  Speaking of the Shoah, a recent county in Tennessee decided to remove the graphic novel MAUS from the school curriculum citing a drawing of a nude woman (which is a mouse) and bad language (found in many other books in the curriculum).  Of course that and several other recent statements by many on the teaching of Nazi Germany (true story, one Indiana lawmaker suggested it would should be taught objectively, this trying find out if he is Swiss), have led to people asking why the Shoah should be taught and what makes it unique.  I would be able to write a book on why but here are a few points.  

a.  Germany at the time of the rise of the Nazis was a Republic and Hitler and his supporters used the system to change to a dictatorship leading to the events of World War II. 

b.  The government didn't just attack the Jewish people and others they didn't like, they used the tools of state and then built vast infrastructure for the purpose of killing an entire people, with the vision of doing it worldwide.

c.  By killing the Jews of Europe that was not land won, there was no political gain, and very little economic gain to be had.  The Nazis killed people simply because they wanted them dead. 

d.  It wasn't just the Germans or the military who helped in the effort.  Ordinary citizens supported the deportation, killing and cover up of the Shoah, and we are still uncovering stories today.  

The idea that this is unique does not diminish the horrors of other genocides or attempted genocides in the 20th or 21st centuries.  But it is a point in history we can all learn from and hope to stop in the future.  And no, you having to wear a mask to go into Kroger or the Court House is not a sign imminent concentration camps. 

3.  A law professor, who has become a favorite of the right wing noise machine, Jonathan Turley, suggested the President Biden's pledge to appoint a black woman to the Supreme Court may be unconstitutional.  For someone who teaches classes on the constitution he may want to read it.  Still others in the echo chamber that is the Republican disinformation cycle also suggested it violates the Civil Rights Act.  Neither is true of course because, like many of the Executive Branch responsibilities, it is absolute and the review is the advise and consent of the Senate.  He can nominate anyone, doesn't have to be a lawyer.  He can announce who he wants to nominate long before there was an opening.  Which he did by saying during the campaign that he would nominate a Black Woman to the bench.  Some have called that unprecedented.  However they are either massively ignorant of the history or the court or are simply lying.  Ronald Reagan, while running for President, promised GOP women that he would appoint a woman to the Supreme Court if given the chance and they repeated it.  When a seat came open he did just that.  When this was pointed out they said that Reagan didn't do that.  They said he never ruled out anyone.  That of course is nonsense.  But the right wing noise machine finds facts to be an allergen.  

4.   Joe Rogan, who apparently wants to be the next Alex Jones, had Jordan Peterson, on the show.  Two white guys who decided that the only people who should be called Black are those in what they called the darkest parts of Africa.  Trevor Noah, a man who grew up in Apartheid South Africa and current host of The Daily Show, did a segment on what it means to be Black.  Including reminded the two ignorant fools that in Africa no one referred to themselves as black.  In fact in the United States there were rules about how even the smallest of African ancestry made you black.  So of course someone who wants to appear relevant in the right wing theater had to speak up. Josh Denny, a comedian of sorts, decided to say that Noah had only lived in the US as a millionaire so Denny, an Irishman, knows more about being Black than Noah.  Seriously, he said that.  But then he got fired from the Food Network for suggesting he knows that woman can tell they are pregnant within 6 weeks of conception.  So being without a uterus or dark skin doesn't stand in his way of thinking he knows better about what that is like than people who do.  He is wrong but that is not unusual. 

These are just a few of the things that are just part of the mountain of nonsense that gets dumped on social media and the right wing airways every day.  It is always a good idea to take any of it with a grain of salt.  But I shouldn't have to tell you that.  

*Shoah is the Hebrew word for catastrophe.  Used since the 1940s it is a more direct description of the killing of 6 million Jews by the Nazis.  In English this is often referred to as the Holocaust, which is Greek for sacrifice by fire and has a religious connotation.  

CRT Is Not the Problem: Ignorance Is.

In 1897 the Indiana State Legislature tried to pass a bill that would legally make the value of Pi, a mathematical constant that is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, 3.2 when in fact it is an ever growing decimal approximately 3.14159 (so they couldn't even round correctly).  Thankfully a professor from Purdue University was able to help stop the nonsense.  And nonsense it was.  While the idea of solving the unsolvable problem of trying to square the circle, the was a clear thought that math can be changed for the sake of discomfort.  So it is no surprise that the wise leaders of this state are at it again, with how to teach history.

There is an epidemic of state Republicans who are trying to make laws to limit how and what teachers can teach.  A response to the ginned up fear of Critical Race Theory (CRT), state elected officials are passing laws to prevent anything they think might connect itself to this legal and social theory in the public schools.  Most can't seem to understand what CRT is but they think it is bad for children.  This has led to laws both proposed and passed that would limit among other things, certain books being part of curriculum, certain words being banned from the classroom and in Indiana allowing a few as one parent to object to something in the curriculum for it to be removed.  This led one State Senator to say even European Fascism of the mid-twentieth century should be taught objectively.  Apparently there is a good size to Nazism for some Republicans. 

Republicans across the country have been trying to use the power of the State House to define what teachers can and cannot say using CRT as the reason they must step in.  They have expanded this to include any attempts by schools to move forward any social justice discussions.  This could include LGBTQ+ rights and in some cases acknowledgment and for some religious freedom.   Much like Indiana in 1897 they are swayed by nonsense that has led some to trying to outlaw words or concepts including “equity,” “inclusivity education,” “multiculturalism” and “patriarchy,” as well as “social justice” and “cultural awareness".  Others are looking to literally burn some books they don't like.  Funny how they love the Constitution until they don't.  

They also have created a list of things they are calling patriotic education.  In some cases it smacks of jingoism training.  But what is funny is just how ignorant some of the elected officials are of their country's history while trying to disappear so many stories of people.  In Virginia a new bill lists a series of things that should be taught in school.  It included, in the text of the bill, that one thing to be taught is the debates between Abraham Lincoln and Fredric Douglas.  Except Lincoln never debated that Douglas. It was Stephen Douglas and  my guess is that the moron who proposed it never read any of the debates they had.  This new crazy move by Republicans in a growing number of states feels like an attempt to make any education on the growing pains our country continues to have illegal.  This is not American and nor is it better for us.  

Let's be clear, CRT is not taught in our schools.  It is a complex academic concept that suggests that racism is not merely a product of individual hate but deeply imbedded in our societal structures. It also sees race as a social construct and we know this to be true because several ethnic or national groups were once considered non-white but not today.    At times the racist ideology is clearly the product of intentional discrimination and other times one can promote racism without intention because our bias is unnoticed.  Recent discussion of race and anti-racism have caused a large number of conservatives to react and try to lump all of any social justice movements in CRT and also tried to link CRT to the Critical Theory of the Frankfort School.  (Can you say Marxism).  Thus the ever popular RED SCARE is back in fashion, only around race and social justice.  When confronted with the fact the CRT is not a Marxist ideology (though to be far some academics who work in the area are Marxists) the sputtering sounds like my old lawnmower without adequate gasoline.   

CRT does have an influence on education as it broadens the stories of our history and brings in narratives lost due to willful bias or unconscious neglect.  Take the role of people of African descent in the Revolutionary War.  People will easily remember Crispus Attucks, a sailor of mixed race (African and Native American) who was killed at the Boston Massacre by British soldiers.  By many accounts the first to die and thus the first to die for the Americans in the war.  Celebrated since he has been seen as an icon during abolish, a hero to many especially African Americans, referenced in poetry and rap songs and is well known to most middle school students.  Worthy of praise there is some discussion to be had when it comes to who else might we remember.  Four times as many people of African descent fought on the side of the British than for the colonists and among them Harry Washington.  Washington was a slave to future President George Washington and was one of many who declared loyalty to the King and when the war was over was a free man who made it back to Africa.  Attucks died for a new country that kept black people enslaved for another century almost, while Washington lived out his life no longer a slave.  My guess many people never hear of the black loyalists and the various lives they lived after the war.  It expands the discussion and looks more deeply at something a scholar once asked at a conference:  Who's History is Black History?  

Who's indeed?  And that is final argument of these conservative carnival barkers who have attacked anything that even attempts to discuss racial justice as anti-American.  They couch it in the idea that parents should have the right to control what their kids are taught.  To the point that if it makes them feel uncomfortable it needs to be banished.  But it isn't all parents they want to extend the power to, that has become clear.  For decades ethnic and racial minorities have been made to feel less than in many classrooms and there was no attempt to give them the power to choose textbooks or curriculum.  Only when the status-quo of today is challenged does the ugly head of censorship rise from the conservative caucuses around the country.   So when you see your school board trying to ban books, words and ideas, stand up.  Say something.  Truth and reality are important to us all.  Be it that Pi is not 3.2, that Abraham didn't debate Fredric and that when you add a new narrative to the story of America you don't have to edit out the others, just make sure that when we see them together we can see a bigger, clearer and brighter picture.  

 

What is the Color of Their Sky

 As I write this we are a few hours away from the anniversary of the attack on the Capitol building by the right wing Trump supporters hell bent on stopping the certification of then President-elect Biden as the new President.  I remember sitting in my office occasionally checking in on the certification process when I saw it was delayed.  Then I saw what really happened.  Crowds of violent right wingers pushed passed police barricades and broke windows and doors to enter the building.  Chanting things like "Where is Nancy?" and "Hang Mike Pence".  They were not interested is securing anything like democracy.  They were a gang of anti-democratic and anti-American hoodlums who, egged on by the outgoing President and his gang of sycophants, driven by their blood lust.  They were and are criminals.  They attacked the heart of what makes our country great.  They were the opposite of patriots.  Driven by a lie and the idea that they knew better than every elected official running the election they almost succeeded in ending the great American experiment.  But they failed, on that day, to stop it.  And while some of their allies in the Congress tried to continue the charade of upholding election security by challenging the decided, investigated and certified election, the true patriots worked late into the evening to make sure we had a new President.  But now we deal with the aftermath.

One would think that the sight of so many people looking to attack and maybe even kill members of the Congress of both parties might stir the country.  Seeing a gallows built in front of the Cathedral of Democracy would chill many to the bone.  Seeing people destroy, steal and desecrate the personal belongings of our elected official might make one rethink their allegiance.  But it didn't.  For a few hours we saw some in Congress who stood behind the former President during even his most egregious actions while in the office speak out against him.  But that didn't last long.  It was less than a few days until their tune changed.  The Republican party has since created narrative after narrative to try to take any blame away from the then President, themselves and even the people who did the attack.  It is maddening watching members Congress who have said in open hearings and in speeches that it was like a tourist visit, that they were not Trump supporters but Antifa or Black Lives Matter protestors.  There were even those who blamed the FBI.  I am sure most don't believe what they are saying, in part because the facts don't agree with the nonsense.  But they say it.  It is echoed by the right wing noise machine and trickled down to the average Joe or Jane on the street.  The same people radicalized by the then President who didn't come to Washington.  And we are off to the fascist races.

But if it was just the right wing gangs who are promoting the anniversary tomorrow not as a day of sorrow but one of joy.  It is the actual Republican party that will host events lionizing the criminal rioters who stormed into that sacred space to do violence.  It is the former President who had intended to have a press conference of a sort on January 6th to somehow give his view.  It is famous members of the very Congress that was attacked who call those arrested and waiting trial political prisoners and those serving their time martyrs for a cause.  What cause?  

I don't understand.  There was no massive fraud in the last election.  Joseph Biden won in a free and fair election.  If you can't believe that and justify the attack on our country as a good thing, as a patriotic thing, as a blow against tyranny then I have to ask if you have become detached from reality.  Last year a man, unfit for office, voted out by the people, tried to stage a coup.  Using gullible angry people who said they were ready to kill the sitting Vice-President to keep the outgoing person in power.  The threat was so high that if stories are to be believed, that same Vice-President didn't want to get into a car with the Secret Service for fear he wasn't going be brought back to fulfill his duty.  If you continue to support the idea that attack on January 6th was good for the country and led by patriots then you are either fully delusional or evil.  There is no other choice.  I pray that you will come to your senses as the year continues.  However I have little hope.  My hope is however in a committee that will work day and night to find the truth, in a DOJ that said today that they are on it and working from the low hanging fruit to the top of the tree, and on the spirit of America.  In the meantime we hope that the color of the sky in the world that those who continue to support Trump as a good American is pretty enough to distract them and those who are with us can focus on fixing the broken world we now inherit from him.

It Has Been Awhile Since I Wrote Anything

Last Tuesday the State of Virginia did what it has done for the last several election cycles and voted in a Governor from the opposite party on the recently elected President.  The Washington Press Corp created a tsunami of stories about how this was a referendum on President Biden.  It wasn't really.  The politics of the race has little to do with the Biden agenda.  But the Washington Press Corp sees their jobs as trying to find fault with whoever is in power.  Then the House of Representatives passed an historic infrastructure bill that was a huge win for the President and the press corp focused on 6 progressive Democrats who voted against it in protest.  That came after they knew enough Republicans had voted for it.  But then why would these journalists do any research or deep exploration.  They had a story to sell.  The Democrats in disarray.  

On the same day as the election Republicans from the QAnon/Trump wing of the party gathered on Dealey Plaza in Dallas.  Why?  They were expecting John F. Kennedy Jr. to show up, declare Donald Trump the real President, and arrest most of the federal government.  This group has quite a hold on the GOP and we see it in the way people are campaigning for the next election.  But this was blip on the radar.  JFK Jr. has been dead for 22 years and yet the GOP is apparently holding out hope he will come back and usher in a new Trump era.  This is on top of the nonsense coming out of the mouths of the Pillow Guy and Giuliani and the Fox News, OAN, Newsmax propaganda wing.  

While Democrats may be having arguments with each other over how far the government should go to help those suffering and to create a nation that mirrors most Democratic Republics in the world, the GOP is arguing with Big Bird.  Sesame Street got back into the vaccine game as they did in the late sixties and early seventies to help children feel at ease with getting the Covid vaccine.  A member of the United States Senate, Ted Cruz, tweeted out to Big Bird that the beloved muppet was engaged in propaganda.  Meanwhile there are other high ranking elected officials announcing they will be running campaigns to restore masculinity to America.  I wish I knew what that meant.  Did we lose masculinity?  How are we defining it?  

Not to be outdone, one Republican member of Congress posted  on his personal and government twitter feed of a cartoon video of him killing another Representative.  Still others are calling for the release of violent mob members who stormed the Capital in and attempt to overthrow the government.  

But still the media is hyperfocused on the Democrats and President Biden, who have done more to rebuild our country and create a pathway out of the pandemic.  But instead of looking at the disgusting mess the GOP has or the accomplishments of the Dems there is a steady diet of low approval numbers, distrust among caucus members and of course personal attacks on the President.  This is what I call Storm the Castle journalism.  It is the lazy nonsense that somehow the media is supposed be the loyal opposition to those in power.  They aren't, the media should report facts and do deep analysis of them.  Not with the idea of getting at the power but in a way to give the American people the eyes to look into the government they hired.  If the media was doing their job they would cover the Dealey Plaza nonsense from the perspective that this kind of ginned up anger coupled with politics has always led to violence.  They should be asking Republicans what they are doing about their fellow party leaders fantasizing in public about killing another member or why some members think January 6th never happened and the violent mob members who were arrested should be set free.  

Yes it is important to hold the country's leadership's proverbial feet to the fire.  But when during a long speech the President closed his eyes of less than 10 seconds you don't have to play the video and asked if he fell asleep.  All the while ignoring what is becoming a huge threat to democratic principles with the Trump wing of the GOP.  This is serious, and as people fail to get access to quality journalism the very core of who we are as a nation suffers.  The Washington Press Corp has to stop seeing themselves as playing characters in a drama about government and start seeing themselves as a megaphone to let the American learn what is going on.  January 6th, the Dallas gathering and of course the constant din coming from the former President about all part of a bigger story than if President Biden nodded off during a droning speech or the progressives did exactly what they said they would.  We need you more than ever, so start doing your job. 

What I Learned From YouTube...

In the last 20 months or so the world has been remarkably chaotic.  The US Presidential election and the Covid 19 pandemic and subsequent politicizing of it, as well as the wars around the world there was a lot of news and little good.  In the before times I would spend a couple hours each evening watching news and/or opinion shows.  But by April of 2020 the anxiety it produced was too much.  At the time we also had lockdowns so sports shut down for a while (I actually spent time watching marble racing and NASCAR drivers doing E-racing) but the savior was YouTube.  While Dianne and I did catch up on some movies we missed and a few released to streaming services YouTube became a bit of a savior.  In part because there were show length programs but also a few minute videos that could serve as a slight bit of entertainment without an investment of lots of time.  This came in handy while working at home, after a particularly bad or tense meeting or phone call it was great to walk into the other room and be mindless for 5-7 minutes of escape and get back.  What I found was a world of wonderful things I was surprisingly ignorant of and wanted to know.  So here are a few.  

The first thing you learn about YouTube is just how long 5 seconds is...you know or you don't.

Herons:  Our pond near the house is home to a number of herons at various times.  I love those majestic birds and so does Dianne.  It is always cool to watch them pull small fish out of the pond to eat.  Well there is a whole category on YouTube of Herons eating and small fish are just an appetizer.  I had no idea that that they eat fish up to 20% of their body weight.  But also rats, gophers, chipmunks, baby ducks, (sometimes not so baby baby ducks) snakes, frogs, alligator babies, and all kinds of other things.  They are skilled hunters on water or land and will snatch animals out of their underground lairs.  It is amazing.  Watching them swallow a large rodent is remarkable and could be the stuff of art or nightmares.  

Cows:  There is a man in southwest Scotland named Graeme Parker known as the Hoof GP who travels the area in Scotland and England visiting farms and trimming cow hoofs.  I didn't know that was a thing.  His videos are remarkably educational about the care of the animals he trims and sometimes attempts to heal of damage or disease of the hoofs.  While I guess it makes sense that cows, especially on large farms where cows are kept indoors a lot, that cows aren't going to naturally keep their hoof horn trimmed and cleaned properly but it was amazing to me how much you can learn from him.  His love of the job, the countryside, the act of farming and the animals comes out strong and he hit 1 million subscribers today after about 5 years of posting.  

Sovereign Citizens:  I can't post a link for these guys because I don't want to give them traffic.  There are people, in the US and other Western Democracies, that declare themselves sovereign and the law of the land doesn't apply to them.  They use misinterpretations of court cases and historical documents to declare themselves not under the authority of the legal system.  They have even in some cases created their own language and declare their legal names are not theirs.  It is amazing what these people believe and they spend a great deal of time taunting legal authority from police and sheriff personnel to judges and DAs when they are finally arrested and brought to trial.  In some cases they pretend to have legal documents from their friends claiming they have legal authority.  Often they pretend to be lawyers saying that they don't have to be admitted to the bar to practice on behalf of someone else.  FYI:  Judges don't put up with that.  

1st Amendment Auditors:  Closely related to the sovereign citizen movement are so-called first amendment auditors.  These are people who seem to chosen a vocation of trying to provoke people by filming in public from what they would say is a public property.  Filming in public is legal in many places but they do it in a way to provoke fear.  Like filming outside a corrections facility or government office or filming inside a courthouse or other municipal building.  When approached by police they often are rude and insulting and sometimes belligerent.  While testing the 1st amendment could be an admirable thing most of these YouTube heroes don't understand the limits of the amendment and often run afoul of the law by crossing the line.  Their intent is to provoke in the hopes of suing.  

YouTube Itself:  Ann Reardon is an Australian food scientist and dessert making with a popular YouTube channel called How to Cook That.  She will teach on the channel how to make funky cakes and such but what I was interested in was her debunking videos.  She spends a great deal of time debunking wild viral videos about cooking.  Many of these videos show fantastic results from simple things you can do.  The heavily edited videos, for example showing adding Skittles to popcorn as it pops will make rainbow popcorn, will not work and while entertaining to watch can even be dangerous.  People have been seriously hurt following some of the video ideas.  Reardon shows how these are made by massive operations that post same or similar videos across several platforms and accounts to gain revenue.  While YouTube has rules against some of this behavior the click bait generated has gain them awards from YouTube.  This often leads to real individual content providers with innovative and instructive videos are often pushed off the platform as the algorithms promote the fake stuff over them.  

These are a few of the things that caught my attention over the course of the last 20 months or so.  I am sure there are much more.  What is great for me is learning there are things I knew almost nothing about and finding out more has been a delight.  I will never trim a cow's hoof nor likely create a content rich YouTube channel but I love learning about the inner workings of those things.  It is amazing the vast amount of stuff I don't know and rarely encounter.  So I am glad to have stumbled into what at first was a mindless endeavor to be truly educated and perhaps the connections will take me to new places.  

Masks are Back and We can do This.

So many Americans didn't listen to the warnings.  They didn't follow the simple rules and suggestions and they didn't get vaccinated.  And now, after a few weeks of thinking there was a clear vision of a horizon and not just a light at the end of the tunnel, we are back in the dark.  Cases are rising again and the unvaccinated are filling hospitals in several states.  We are back to seeing tired medical professionals pleading for people to take the virus and its new variants seriously and stories of people saying good-bye to loved ones as they struggle for enough breath to express their regrets for not listening.  And of course we are now back to wearing a mask.  For me, I never really stopped wearing one but didn't all the time.  But now there is one always on my desk at work, in my car and several hanging near my keys.  They are part of a regular routine and frankly I am back to forgetting I have it on.  But with masks comes the amateur epidemiologists with their quips about masks.  My favorite is that the virus is so small that a cloth mask is as much of defense to it as a chain link fence is to a mosquito.  But here is the thing.  While it is true that a cloth mask has a weave that would allow singular virus particles to come through, they would be unlikely to survive for long, be taken into the respiratory system of another, nor survive the trip into someone's body to attack the cells needed to duplicate.  And frankly an exhaled virus particle would have to be pretty damn lucky to make it through one face mask, float through the air, land on someone else's face mask, make it through that and take root in the system of that person.  What the mask does stop is the variety of fluids we exhale when we talk, breath, sigh, sneeze, cough or burp.  Each carrying thousands if not millions of those virus particles that are more likely to remain atomized and inhaled carrying a lot more virus to survive the first lines of defense in our system.  The mask holds them in place.  Going back to the  chain link analogy, the virus is less like a mosquito, which will fly around to find a suitable host to bite, it is more like a tick that is opportunistic.  The chain link fence will not stop an individual tick, but will stop a deer, rabbit, fox or neighbors dog who is carrying hundreds of ticks that could be deposited in your yard ready for your animal or you to collect it as you go out.  Stopping the spreading of large amounts of virus or ticks makes it less likely to contract them.  It really is simple. 

But in this day and age simple facts like this are lost on the those who follow politicians who spew nonsense for political gain.  Members of the Republican party in leadership positions are not only not mandating or even suggesting masking as a way to try to quell the massive spreading of the new variants, but are making it illegal (or attempting to) for communities and businesses to impose masking.  They are also downplaying vaccines with the help of their right wing noise machine amplifiers, all of whom have been vaccinated.  They seem to be attempting to fund raise off of the people of this country who refuse to believe the reality of pandemic because it is too big for them to think it just happens like this.  Even today people think it is overblown, still use the word PLANdemic and suggest nonsense about how they are safe because of their immune system.  It appears certain members of the right wing want their vote, their money and their eyes and ears on their shows more than they want reality and science to help us get through this tragedy.  In recent weeks we have heard stories of some of the people the GOP is exploiting who caught Covid and from their hospital and even death beds explain they were wrong.  Trying to maybe see the errors of their ways and help others who fell for the carnival barkers of death.  Yet even today, as some states are reaching capacity in hospitals again, their governors are punishing school systems and employers for trying to mitigate the spread of Covid.

Listen, for many of us the last 18 months have been a nightmare, we want it to be over.  I know I want to sit in a crowded bar and listen to music and dance with my wife and look like a fool.  I want to go to the theater or see a movie with full Dolby sound on a IMAX screen.  I want to hug my friends.  I want to travel and feel safe.  I want to be free.  But we won't wish it away and the solution is simple.  Get the vaccine, wear a mask in places the virus is rampant, remember to stay distant and to protect children and others who can't get the vaccine.  And listen to the experts, directly.  Not the spin of a news industry who gutted their science teams to the point they mix up Hydrogen and Helium in a story.  Not the politicians who, trust me, do not have your best interests top of mind, not radio hosts who look for anything to make the other political party look bad while ignoring their own party short-falls, or celebrities, sports figures or your Uncle who sends you those grainy pictures with the subject line WE FOUND BIGFOOT (yes all in caps).  You didn't Uncle Bob that is a fir tree.  

We as a nation and a world can do this.  We can defeat this disease or at least make it less of a killer.  I know this because I am typing this on a device small enough to fit in my briefcase yet more powerful than the devices used to send people to the moon (yes Uncle Bob we did send people to the moon).  I know this because there are thousands of people around the world who have dedicated their lives to not simply responding when a virus like this shows up but trying to predict how it might and create the proper mitigation.   I know this because humanity survives.  So mask up again, think of it as another way to show your brand, get vaccinated if you haven't.  Get the booster if it seems necessary.  Pressure those in power to respond based on science and not politics.  And vote, every time you can, for those who will put you above their own personal interests.  You are worthy of that.