Working Through the Backlog

I acted out a relatively new summertime tradition during the holiday break. I set aside all the magazines I had received in the late summer and fall (really since the end of our beach vacation in July) and worked through all of them. This was my way of saying good riddance to what was in most regards a rotten news year. Those magazines, filled with news from 2020, didn't deserve to see the new year tomorrow. And after reading issue after issue in which either Covid, Trump, Biden, or Trump's jesters were on the cover, I know I'm right. 

The pile. 

Those headlines don't deserve to see the dawning of another year. 

What a bitter, awful, rotten, miserable, toxic year of news. A year in which Americans were at the meanest. A year in which selfishness was glorified. A year in which common sense had a hard time being seen or heard above the din of grievance and acrimony. 

I pulled some interesting tidbits from the pile of unread news, and it will help me incorporate thoughtful examples in my work with students. More importantly, it may help me turn the conversations in social settings with friends and family. I'm talked out, and even more importantly listened-out, from politics and Covid in 2020. I can't do it again in 2021. Perhaps the recovered news items I read will help me turn potentially contentious conversations into thoughtful ones. Here are some of the interesting items: 

• The pace at which globalization took place was slowing in the 2010s, well before Covid. There may be interesting ways in which automation, a re-think on supply chains, and a sobering reassessment of power relations make trade a little less vibrant in the next decade. 
• Print journalism was struggling long before the internet's threat became apparent this century. In fact, I probably need to think of my normal growing up (a thick Philadelphia Inquirer whose Sunday edition would take the better part of a Sunday to digest) as an anomaly, or special period in history (like the post-World War II boom) rather than as the normal. 
• It seems as if electric cars will be mainstream, and that this may happen more quickly in the next few years than I was expecting. That CR-V we purchased in November 2019 might be the last gasoline car I purchase, which hurts given how much I enjoy driving. 
• One of the most cynical but useful quips I've seen that may put my frustrations with social media into perspective: "If you're not buying, you're the product." By the way, I'm a paid subscriber to four distinct news outlets: The New York Times, The Economist, The Philadelphia Inquirer (digital only), and The Week. If one counts sports, I guess The Athletic would be a fifth. 
• I probably should stop the practice of drinking coffee immediately upon waking up. There's allegedly some science to how the caffeine may inhibit the metabolism of the breakfast sugars. 
• Get ready for a wave of mergers . . .
• . . . and an undertow of antitrust activity. 

And that's it for 2020. A year that saw me more engaged with the news than is probably healthy. A year in which I muttered to myself much more often than my relatively weak slate of blog entries would suggest. A year in which estrangement from loved ones with whom I disagreed politically seemed dangerously close.  A year that I pray gives way to a time in which we at least try to be more decent to one another in this country. 

Thanksgiving Thoughts

Happy Thanksgiving. I find myself grateful today for my health, my family, and my home. There's a twinge of sadness with that second item, though, as I celebrate a holiday weekend without seeing many in my family. As I write this, I'm still working through some grumpiness at having to miss out on time with Mom and Dad and siblings. Nephews and nieces, too. The three who are most immediate and who daily bring me joy are with me, and I need to keep that in mind. The home is in good shape (getting a little tired of it, of course). And the health would be better if I were ten or fifteen pounds fewer. 

I'm hoping that 2021 will give me more occasion to write than this past year did. I most often use the word crummy to describe 2020. Exhausting, though, might be just as apt. I set forth with this blog years ago as a means to comment on what I was seeing politically. As 2020 wore on, I found myself so fatigued and dismayed (and at times angry) that writing on that arena was the last thing I wanted to do in my spare time. When I hashed out arguments in my head, I was bothered by how often my tone turned to bitterness. I came across a quote today from Friedrich Nietzche that seems appropriate to what I experienced: "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster." 

Now I find myself trying to take care. My greatest hope for the upcoming year is that we simply become nicer to one another in this country. As I experienced it, political discourse became yelling. And I'm tired of the yelling. Communities, churches, families . . . too much yelling, not enough listening.  

I'm tired of the precautions and limits, too. I've been back at work now for more than three months. Masks. Social distancing. Limited numbers of students and teachers. Teaching in that environment has been exhausting, and I had thought three months of adhering to rules and enforcing rules would permit me three days of family and food. I was wrong, and I've surrendered to the fact that in this age of Covid-19, I put my mind to what I need to do and respect that I'll often not get to do what I want to do. I pray that one year from now freer to move about our communities, churches, and families, and that those realms once again remember how to be nice. 

M.O.P.

 

The difficult photo above is of a billboard I came across in north central Pennsylvania. I took the photo in July 2015. I don't know if it's still there. 

But the ugly and racist sentiment that motivated someone to erect it still exists. It put Donald Trump over the top to victory in 2016. And it's the force that I pray we defeat in the fall of 2020. 

Why am I raising this now? I miss My Old Party. I was a registered Republican until 2016. From time to time I harbor a small hope the party can take a more optimistic and healthy path. So I read David Brooks' most recent essay with interest, an essay in which he analyzes the possible directions leaders in the party could lead it in a post-Trump era. 

But he ends his essay acknowledging that the odds of any of those thought leaders' ideas resulting in something good as "under 50-50." 

I miss My Old Party. I don't think it's coming back. Ever. And that's a shame. And perhaps it's not worth saving after it decided that catering to and feeding to the racist sentiments in our country was a path worth taking in the 21st century. 

 

Parades

As I wound toward the end of a long (and, boy, do I mean long) biography on Ulysses S. Grant, I came across an amusing anecdote from the years after his presidency. The former president and his wife took a long journey across the globe. Literally. The left from an East Coast port and returned to the West Coast almost two years later. He was feted around the globe, and news accounts of his popular receptions through Europe and Asia redeemed his popularity in the U.S. 

So when he returned he was greeted and celebrated in cities across our nation as he made his way eastward toward home on the East Coast. But, according to the book, the finest parade and celebration for him was held in Philadelphia. 

Then I recalled that, yes, Philly is a great city for parades. Which got me to thinking of the big parade here in 2018. Which led me to YouTube to watch the video of Jason Kelce's speech. And of highlights from that Superbowl.

And I, a grown man, wept. 

I enjoyed that brilliant memory today. 

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The biography? It was good. I'm simply not much of a biography guy. I learned from it though, and find myself better understand the murkiness of our post-Civil War era. In some ways I feel like a political and social standoff followed the Civil War just as the Cold War followed World War II. It was called Reconstruction. We won the Cold War. 

I don't think we won the cold war that emerged in the years before, during, and after the Grant presidency. 

Knowing One's Place and Other Symbols

I am still somewhat astonished at the speed with which support for the display of the Confederate battle flag on public property has collapsed. Mississippi's vote to remove the symbol from their flag came surprisingly quickly. I welcome this development. 

The Economist surprised me, though, by giving the story very little space in its most recent issue. Just a photo and a caption. 

Seriously, that's all they wrote. 

The Confederate battle flag represents a lot of ugly messages, perhaps the most compelling one that I follow is the damning, menacing one suggesting that people of color keep their place. An articulate essay on this can be found here: Essay in New York Times. 

Before I get too happy that this accursed symbol is coming down, I might need to consider what symbol (or symbols) is coming to replace it. I'm troubled this spring and summer by images of protesters carrying firearms quite visibly. For instance, protesters arguing that Michigan's governor open up the state came to their protests brandishing AR-15s. This past weekend, militia groups came to Gettysburg to counter protesters they thought were set to destroy monuments and flags. Of course many came armed with assault rifles. 

Is the assault rifle the new Confederate battle flag? Is this the new symbol brandished by the majority to menace outside groups into minding their place? A news story from April caught my eye in which a political leader urged protesters against government-mandated lockdowns in his state to leave Confederate battle flags at home in order to present a more respectable image. I don't know, though, if protesters there showed up in camouflage and with AR-15s. 

The lesson for me here is that white supremacy doesn't vanish. It's a disease, a plague, on our society. And it will find ways to manifest itself even as it (hopefully) becomes smaller and less mighty. So I should be humble and watchful as I celebrate the fall of Confederate banners from many segments of American life. Out of sight doesn't mean out of mind.