This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

“Fucking Commies!”

This celebratory Fourth of July phrase appeared recently on our town’s Facebook group page. It was, I believe, a reaction to a post reminding residents of the extreme fire danger posed by high winds, dry grass, and searing heat.

Another local resident offered a similarly ballistic diatribe over fireworks restrictions, grunting cathartically about the “tyranny” of past COVID-19 protocols. To both writers, public safety measures clearly represented an existential affront to the guarantees of freedom explicit in our founding documents (and sports bars everywhere).

This hyper-partisan rhetoric trickles from the top. During a past holiday speech at Mount Rushmore, Donald Trump drifted far off script. As The New York Times reported, he “read from an apocalyptic script as the stony faces of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln looked on. He said the word ‘communism’ so many times, you might’ve thought the Cold War was still on.” To him and his followers, opponents are not just political rivals; they are “godless” and “evil.”

Fucking Commies.

Across the street, my invariably pleasant neighbors have a massive “FREEDOM” banner staked into a yard ringed with American flags. Up and down most American streets, flags fly and fireworks explode—damn the risks, and God Bless America.

Ambivalence and an Experiment

At a moment when our democratic republic seems most fragile—if not already irreparably shattered—I found myself scanning my mind and heart this holiday to find a reason to feel celebratory or proud.

As to “celebratory,” my family and I certainly enjoy freedom’s fruits; our privileges and opportunities are manifest. But as to “proud”? Not so much. I’ve always found “Proud to be an American” an odd claim. Most of us did precious little to achieve it. We are lucky, plain and simple.

My grandparents emigrated from Sweden and Holland. While they were hardly escaping tyranny, they found their small slice of the American dream and built a solid foundation for my parents, who in turn made my life possible. I feel genuine gratitude for this good fortune. The American experiment, as promised in the Declaration of Independence and codified in the Constitution, allowed this multi-generational flourishing.

Yet, one cannot celebrate such good fortune without noting the nation’s original sin: slavery. White folks’ freedoms grew expansively from generation to generation because its roots were planted in that same stolen soil, while Black women and men have realized only a halting, incomplete freedom.

This holiday ambivalence led me to a spontaneous experiment. I searched a digital text of the entire Declaration of Independence for the word responsible or responsibility. The search yielded “no result.”

Curiosity piqued, I pasted the United States Constitution into a document and repeated the search. Again: “no result.” I don’t claim a rush of historical originality, but it is an analysis I have never encountered. And I think it matters deeply.

The Perversion of Freedom

Our nation came to be through fighting oppression and escaping tyranny. In 1776, the declaration of freedom meant something entirely different than it does today. We have luxuriated in that freedom for most of our existence. Now, the word has been twisted and perverted, stripped of any collective meaning.

In the examples on my timeline—the fireworks-obsessed neighbor or Trump’s apocalyptic rhetoric—”freedom” has degenerated into a petulant cry: “I can do what I want, dammit.”

Our founding documents would have been infinitely more elegant and prescient had they paired our freedoms with our responsibilities. Responsibility provides the moral tether that holds raw freedom at bay, ensuring that one person’s liberty does not become another person’s burden. While this notion is occasionally honored in First Amendment jurisprudence—the classic “your fist ends where my face begins” analogy—that is about as far as it goes.

In matters of gun violence, fireworks stubbornness, and public health, individual freedom must be balanced with community responsibility. On a broader, vastly more consequential scale, the capitalist’s freedom to profit must be circumscribed by the health, welfare, and economic security of the community. Freedom without responsibility is inherently anti-democratic. It is merely selfishness masquerading as patriotism.

If I were inclined to decorate my home for the Fourth of July—which I am not—I would fly a banner with a single word printed in bold red, white, and blue: Responsibility. Perhaps we can start a trend for next year.

The Poet’s Duty

Several times a year, I find a reason to return to my favorite poem by the late Grace Paley, with whom I had a nodding acquaintance while living in Vermont. It serves as a vital reminder of what we owe to one another:

It is the responsibility of society to let the poet be a poet

It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman

It is the responsibility of the poets to stand on street corners giving out poems and beautifully written leaflets also leaflets they can hardly bear to look at because of the screaming rhetoric

It is the responsibility of the poet to be lazy, to hang out and prophesy

It is the responsibility of the poet not to pay war taxes

It is the responsibility of the poet to go in and out of ivory towers and two-room apartments on Avenue C and buckwheat fields and Army camps

It is the responsibility of the male poet to be a woman

It is the responsibility of the female poet to be a woman

It is the poet’s responsibility to speak truth to power, as the Quakers say

It is the poet’s responsibility to learn the truth from the powerless

It is the responsibility of the poet to say many times: There is no freedom without justice and this means economic justice and love justice

It is the responsibility of the poet to sing this in all the original and traditional tunes of singing and telling poems

It is the responsibility of the poet to listen to gossip and pass it on in the way storytellers decant the story of life

There is no freedom without fear and bravery. There is no freedom unless earth and air and water continue and children also continue

It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman, to keep an eye on this world and cry out like Cassandra, but be listened to this time.

Listen to her.

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The post Responsibility: The Missing Half of the American Experiment appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

There is a small, noble campaign centered in Boulder that seeks Refuser Protection (RP), legislation meant to protect those who refuse to follow illegal orders. RP laws would prohibit  retaliation or punishment of any person who refuses to follow any order or instruction that violates the Constitution, statute or any relevant regulations .

This campaign is led by Matt Nicodemus, founder of Sworn to Refuse (StR). Nicodemus has been engaged in this work for more than a decade and has drawn a few encouraging responses, but no definitive results, from legislators including Congressman Joe Neguse and Maryland colleague Jamie Raskin.

Niciodemus’s efforts gained elevated relevance as a result of the Trump administration’s unsuccessful attempt to indict a group of lawmakers, including Colorado Congressman Jason Crow, for making a video reminding the world that one can – must – refuse to follow illegal orders. The impetus for the video was, seemingly , the arguably illegal deployments of active military to American cities and the illegal actions of ICE agents that took place afterwards .

Rep. Jason Crow visits Buckley Space Force Base in Aurora, Colorado. (Photo: U.S. Space Force)

The lawmakers’ arguments included a broad claim that all members of the military are  already trained to know not to follow illegal commands. Congressman Crow went as far as to cite his own experience as an Army Ranger:

But let’s be really clear. The man (Trump) has never served a day in his life in uniform. I went three times to war for this country in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was a paratrooper and I was an Army Ranger. From my first day of boot camp, we were taught about the law of war. We were taught about the Constitution. Before we ever deployed, I sat my men down, my soldiers, my paratroopers, and I taught them about their obligations under the law and the Constitution. This is ingrained in service.

The video was more a publicity stunt than a selfless public service. While I support the lawmakers, it is baldly contradictory to claim that all members of the military are routinely reminded of this obligation and then say the video was to inform the military folks of their rights and obligations.

Crow’s statement is also not reflective of my experience.

I was drafted in 1966 at the height of the war in Vietnam. On my first day in boot camp we were not “taught about the law of war.” We did pushups and were taught to keep our mouths shut. For the next year I did pushups and tried to keep my mouth shut through boot camp, advanced individual training (AIT) and Officer Candidate School (OCS). In a year of training to potentially serve in an immoral war, I can’t recall a single mention of the Constitution. We were, instead, conditioned to dehumanize the enemy by using ethnic slurs (gook) and shoving bayonets through dummies painted with slanted eyes. I was lucky and served in Georgia and Thailand, not Vietnam.

Although the horrific slaughter of 504 women, children and elderly men in the My Lai massacre is emblematic of illegal military cruelty, we Americans killed as many as 2,000,000 innocent Vietnamese in our indiscriminate ignition of hellfire during the war. 

In his book, Vietnam: A War Lost and Won, prolific British author Nigel Cawthorne wrote:

“But what the Viet Cong and NVA feared most was the B-52 strikes.  They called them the ‘whispering death’ because the first they knew of the presence of the bombers high above the jungle canopy and the clouds was the whistling of the bomb.  Aerial bombardments could go on for days or weeks at a time. Even the most battle-hardened veterans lost control of their bodily functions, soiling their pants and shaking uncontrollably.  Some went mad and no one who survived could ever be cured of the abject terror a B-52 strike inspired.   A B-52 mission could drop up to 54,000 pounds of bombs on a single target . . . Tran Thi Truyen, a sixteen year-old nurse who served in a field hospital in southern Laos, recalled how intense American bombing denuded the jungle and there was no place to hide.  During her month-long march down the (Ho Chi Min) trail, she carried a rifle, a sixty-pound knapsack, and a shovel.  When American planes came overhead, her group would disperse and dig foxholes.  After the bombing had stopped, she said she could not focus her eyes and her head ached for hours.  Wounded Vietnamese soldiers were brought up the trail for her to treat in her underground hospital.   Most were so badly wounded, nothing could be done for them.”

I watched those B-52s take off from a Thai airbase, heavy with bombs, and return to the base in time for happy hour at the Officers Club. It was nauseating.

All these years later, I read with fresh horror of our slaughter of innocent Iranian schoolchildren – collateral damage on a smaller scale than our role in the genocide in Gaza, where 75,000 Palestinians are dead by way of our complicity in Netanyahu’s bloodlust.

While protecting the rare refuser is an important ethical obligation, what is needed is a broad reckoning of who we really are.

We refuse to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) because, to paraphrase our national narcissism, “Nobody can tell us what we can do!”

In a  frantic flailing after 9/11, we avenged 2,977 deaths by killing several hundred thousand innocent Iraqis, who had nothing to do with 9/11.

In Gaza, the ongoing slaughter and starvation of 75,000 Palestinians is retribution for the – admittedly horrific – deaths of 1,195 in Israel on October 7th.

In Iran, the deaths of schoolchildren and many other innocents are retribution for, perhaps, the attempts to expose the president’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein’s international child sex ring. 

Most soldiers would be hard-pressed to distinguish between legal and illegal orders. They, like their corrupt and incompetent commander-in-chief, are not well-versed in the Constitution or other legal or regulatory matters. A careful reading of proposed Refuser Protection legislation reveals good, but overly broad and overreaching, intentions. RP laws as suggested would encourage and protect those who refuse to do anything that appears to violate a law, a statutory clause, a pledge or oath, a rule or a workplace regulation. Given the predilections of many folks to litigate, I can imagine chaos ensuing as grievances proliferate.

I doubt that Nicodemus’s efforts will spark ethical legislation in a Congress that can’t reign in an absurdly incompetent, grandiose authoritarian wannabe. While useful to look after the rights of conscientious objectors, what we must do is focus on those who issue illegal orders, defy the Constitution, and possess the power to unleash mayhem within and outside our borders.

We don’t have to protect the powerless if we hold the powerful to account. 

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The post Right to Refuse Laws Sound Good. One Veteran Isn’t So Sure. appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

There’s this old fogey in me that I usually try to restrain. I’m no “get off my lawn” guy. I love kids, small and large and generally tolerate popular culture.

Today the restraints gave way.

This country is in big trouble, in ways the media covers ad nauseam every day. An incompetent sociopath issues endless, senseless, illegal orders. He tries to jail political opponents or anyone who ever made fun of him. He thinks the military is a set of action figures he can deploy whenever and wherever his impulses.suggest. His cabinet makes a clown car look dignified and distinguished. He and his smarmy family members are bit-coining and scamming their way to billions. Nary a day passes when he doesn’t commit an act that would be impeachable in any other era. And so it goes.

But my inner fogey wishes to rant about an insidious coarsening of society that accompanies the governmental dumpster fire and will persist long after the MAGA era self-implodes by way of incomprehensible stupidity.

Let us begin with Snoop Dogg.

I love the Winter Olympics and have watched everything from curling to skeleton. Snoopy has his mug in every venue, hobnobbing with the athletes and the other preening celebrities.

It’s not that I am dismayed that a “rapper” has branded himself into America’s sporting life. I thought Bad Bunny’s halftime show was a pretty good cultural rebuke of white nationalism, although the slack-jawed members of that demographic were busy watching Kid Rock lip sync about two beats behind the crappy music.

But Snoop is a different matter entirely. He should probably be in jail and here he is cavorting for NBC Sports and flashing his peacock bling on Peacock. He’s like the mascot for the U.S. team. Of all the dogs, they chose this Dogg. A Golden Retriever would have been nice.

My inner fogey does not object to a little weed. I take CBD for various creaks and smoked a joint once in a while long before my joints gave out. But Snoop Dogg has branded himself as the pothead-in-chief of a nation full of impressionable teens. From what I can tell, his “art” is the kind of rhymes and rhythms a stoned adolescent could whip up. His background is disgusting and should be disqualifying. I pasted part of his Wikipedia resume at the bottom of this post. He’s a career criminal who is wrapping himself in the flag. The muckety-mucks at NBC know he draws eyes, so his sordid past is not a dealbreaker.

Enough about the Dogg.

Trump, who’s idea of culture is bad country music and cheeseburgers, has announced plans for our 250th birthday. If we had to have a tyrant, at least we could have had one with more refined taste. Benito Mussolini used opera for nationalistic propaganda. Trump has Lee Greenwood on retainer.

For our birthday we will have an automobile race through our historic monuments Lots of beer and beer ads.

And then, on the White House lawn, a spectacle just below feeding humans to the lions will commence. Men, and probably a few scantily clad women, will try to beat each other to a pulp in the distinctly American Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). The late Senator John McCain called it “human cockfighting.”

It seems that Americans have an insatiable appetite for watching people beat the crap out of each other. This commercialized savagery has desensitized a broad swath of the country that sees it as entertainment. The normalization of this brutality seeps into the milieu in which our children are steeped.

Over 70 million subscribers can watch all the fights on Paramount+. Families with small children can watch this brutality with their Doritos and Jellycats.

And then, the granddaddy of the “are you kidding me??” phenomena.

Gambling.

Scandals in pro sports are emerging left and right, but that will not inhibit the gamblers. In 38 states you can bet on the Winter Olympics. I’m not sure how they stop the other 12.

I wonder how many folks lost their sequined shirts by betting on figure skater IIia Malinin, the American shoe-in for gold, who went from Quad God to OH MY GOD!!!!! in four agonizing minutes.

If millionaire pro athletes get caught manipulating games, just imagine the potential for Olympic manipulation. You can find the odds for nearly every event at FanDuel.

A pussy-grabbing, vulgar liar at the helm. Snoop Dogg as American brand ambassador. Human cock-fighting and race cars for our birthday party. And you can bet on everything!

America the Beautiful!

Snoop’s qualifications to represent the United States at the Olympics:

1989–1990: Felony possession of drugs and three-year prison sentence

Shortly after graduating from high school in 1989, Snoop Dogg was arrested for possession of cocaine and for the following three years was frequently in and out of prison.[23] In 1990, he was convicted of felony possession of drugs and possession for sale.[299]

1993–1997: Traffic violation, gun possession and guilty plea

In July 1993, Snoop Dogg was stopped for a traffic violation, and a firearm was found by police during a search of his car. In February 1997, he pled guilty to possession of a handgun and was ordered to record three public service announcements, perform 800 hours of community service, pay a $1,000 fine and serve three years’ probation.[300][301][302]

1993–1996: Murder trial and acquittal

While recording Doggystyle in August 1993, Snoop Dogg was arrested and charged with first-degree murder in connection with the shooting death of Philip Woldermariam, a member of a rival gang, who was actually killed by Snoop Dogg’s bodyguard, McKinley Lee, aka Malik.[28] Snoop Dogg had been temporarily living in an apartment complex in the Palms neighborhood in the West Los Angeles region, at the intersection of Vinton Avenue and Woodbine Street—the location of the shooting.

Both men were charged with murder, as Snoop Dogg was purportedly driving the vehicle from which the gun was fired. Johnnie Cochran defended them.[303] Both Snoop Dogg and his bodyguard were acquitted on February 20, 1996.[304] In February 2024, the case was sealed.[29]

1998–2010: Misdemeanor marijuana charges

Snoop Dogg has also been arrested and fined three times for misdemeanor possession of marijuana: in Los Angeles in 1998;[305] Cleveland, Ohio in 2001;[306] and Sierra Blanca, Texas, in 2010.[307]

2006–2007: Airport arrests and convictions

On April 26, 2006, Snoop Dogg and members of his entourage were arrested after being turned away from British Airways’ first class lounge at Heathrow Airport in London. Snoop Dogg and his party were denied entry to the lounge due to some members flying in economy class. After being escorted outside, the group got in a fight with the police and vandalized a duty-free shop.[308] Seven police officers were injured during the incident. After a night in jail, Snoop Dogg and the other men were released on bail the next day but he was unable to perform a scheduled concert in Johannesburg.[309]

In September 2006, Snoop Dogg was detained at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California, by airport security after airport screeners found a collapsible police baton in his carry-on bag. Donald Etra, Snoop Dogg’s lawyer, told deputies the baton was a prop for a musical sketch. Snoop Dogg was sentenced to three years’ probation and 160 hours of community service for the incident, starting in September 2007.[310]

He was arrested again in October 2006 at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank after being stopped for a traffic infraction; he was arrested for possession of a firearm and for suspicion of transporting an unspecified amount of marijuana, according to a police statement.[311]

The following month, after taping an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, he was arrested again for possession of marijuana, cocaine and a firearm. Two members of his entourage, according to the Burbank police statement, were admitted members of the Rollin’ 20s Crips gang and were arrested on separate charges.[312]

In April 2007, he was given a three-year suspended sentence, five years’ probation and 800 hours of community service after pleading no contest to two felony charges of drug and gun possession by a convicted felon. He was also prohibited from hiring anyone with a criminal record or gang affiliation as a security guard, talent manager or driver.[299]

2015: Sweden arrest for illegal drug possession

Snoop Dogg, after performing for a concert in Uppsala, Sweden, on July 25, 2015, was pulled over and detained by Swedish police for allegedly using illegal drugs, violating a Swedish law enacted in 1988 which criminalized the recreational use of such substances – therefore making even being under the influence of any illegal/controlled substance a crime itself without possession. During the detention he was taken to the police station to perform a drug test and was released shortly afterwards. The rapid test was positive for traces of narcotics and he was potentially subject to fines depending on the results of more detailed analysis.[313][314] Although final results “strongly” indicated drug use the charges were ultimately dropped because it could not be proven that he was in Sweden when he consumed the substances.[315] The rapper uploaded several videos on the social networking site Instagram criticizing the police for alleged racial profiling; police spokesman Daniel Nilsson responded to the accusations, saying: “we don’t work like that in Sweden”. He declared in the videos, “Niggas got me in the back of police car right now in Sweden, cuz”, and “Pulled a nigga over for nothing, taking us to the station where I’ve got to go pee in a cup for nothin’. I ain’t done nothin’. All I did was came to the country and did a concert and now I’ve got to go to the police station. For nothin’!”. He announced to his Swedish fanbase that he would never again go on tour in the country because of the incident.[316][317][318]

Civil2005: Alleged assault of a fan and lawsuit

Snoop Dogg, Compton rapper Jayceon “the Game” Taylor and group Tha Dogg Pound, were sued for assaulting a fan on stage at a May 2005 concert at the White River Amphitheatre in Auburn, Washington. The accuser, Richard Monroe Jr., claimed he was beaten by the artists’ entourage while mounting the stage. He alleged that he reacted to an “open invite” to come on stage. Before he could, Snoop Dogg’s bodyguards grabbed him and beat him into unconsciousness.[319] He claimed attack by crew members; Snoop Dogg and Taylor were included in the suit for not intervening, but both parties denied ever having any involvement.[320][321][322] The lawsuit focused on a pecuniary claim of $22 million in punitive and compensatory damages, battery, negligence, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.[323] The concerned parties appeared in court in April 2009; Snoop Dogg was cleared of the lawsuit in May. However, Snoop’s label Doggy Style Records was found liable.[324]

Death Row bankruptcy case and compensation loss

In May 2016, through the Death Row Records bankruptcy case, Snoop Dogg lost $2 million.[325]

Sexual assault lawsuits

In January 2005, Snoop Dogg was sued by a makeup artist who claimed that Snoop Dogg and several others drugged and raped her backstage at a Jimmy Kimmel Live! taping in 2003.[326] Snoop Dogg had filed an extortion lawsuit against the woman a month before she brought her case. In August 2005 the two parties settled, with the accuser stating “the matter has been resolved amicably”, and Snoop Dogg’s representative stating no money was exchanged.

In February 2022, a woman sued Snoop Dogg for $10 million, alleging that he sexually assaulted her in May 2013 following a concert in Anaheim, California.[327][328][329] Only a few months after its filing, the suit was withdrawn, then reintroduced in July.[330] In May 2023, court documents revealed that the case had been dismissed.[331]

Regional or international banishments

2006–2010: United Kingdom

On May 15, 2006, after his arrest on vandalism charges in London, the region’s Home Office decided that Snoop Dogg would be denied entry to the United Kingdom for the foreseeable future and his British visa was denied the following year.[332][333][334] As of March 2010, however, Snoop Dogg was allowed back into the UK.[335] The entire group was banned from British Airways “for the foreseeable future”.[336] According to Snoop Dogg, Queen Elizabeth II overturned the ban, saying: “This man has done nothing in our country. He can come.”[337][338][339]

2007–2008: Australia

In April 2007, the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship banned Snoop Dogg from entering the country on character grounds, citing his prior criminal convictions.[340] He had been scheduled to appear at the MTV Australia Video Music Awards on April 29, 2007.[341] The Australian DIAC lifted the ban in September 2008 and had granted him a visa to tour Australia. The DIAC said: “In making this decision, the department weighed his criminal convictions against his previous behaviour while in Australia, recent conduct – including charity work – and any likely risk to the Australian community … We took into account all relevant factors and, on balance, the department decided to grant the visa”.[342] He later visited for the 2014 Big Day Out festival, the 2023 “I Wanna Thank Me Tour” and is expected to provide entertainment for the 2025 AFL Grand Final.[343][344]

2012–2014: Norway

Snoop Dogg was banned from entering Norway for two years in July 2012 after entering the country the month before in possession of 8 grams (0.3 oz) of marijuana and an undeclared 227,000 kr in cash, or about US$29,400 in 2022 terms.[345][346][347]

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The post America the Beautiful appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

Nelson’s Corner

A vicious, radical leftist was shot dead by a heroic ICE agent in Minneapolis this week after she attempted to murder the agent and his fellow officers by running them over with her compact SUV.

Or . . .

An innocent 37 year-old mother of three was murdered by an incompetent, cosplaying ICE agent who resented her failure to instantly comply with illegal orders and attempts to illegally extricate her from her car, without cause or warrant.

So, shall we believe the President of the United States, the Secretary of Homeland Security, many “dignified” members of Congress . . .?

Or . . .

Our own lying eyes?

We know that Trump and his band of merry sociopaths lie like a posse of pre-schoolers caught with fingers in the M&M bowl. But this incident is unusual in that the world has seen videos from multiple angles showing that the ICE version and the shameful characterizations made by Trump et al are, to quote Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, “BULLSHIT!”

The murder victim, Renee Nicole Good, was born and raised in Colorado, graduated Virginia’s Old Dominion University, was a fine poet, and has been uniformly described as kind, generous, and sensitive.

Kristi Noem, decked out in high fashion, cowboy hat and Botox-saturated epidermis, called Good a “domestic terrorist.” I suspect that no human on Earth has called Kristi Noem kind, generous or sensitive. A woman who brags of shooting her own dog is not likely to be a good judge of character.

If you have been spared the video experience, here is an executive summary:

Good’s car was parked in the middle of a snowless, one way street, perpendicular to the flow of traffic. Conjecture supposes she was protesting ICE activities, but there was ample room for traffic, including ICE agents to proceed. ICE agents and onlookers were milling around. An official vehicle arrived, ICE agents got out and briskly approached Good’s car. The first to reach the car aggressively tried to open the driver’s door, yelling obscenities while ordering her to get out.

In a few short seconds, the shooter had gone around the car and stood at the left, front bumper. Good backed up briefly to position the car to drive away. As she turned and tried to flee, she was shot through the windshield, followed by two shots from the side, just for good measure.

Given the real possibilities in this context, one can imagine what Renee Nicole Good might have felt with a small gang of unidentified men with guns drawn surrounding her car and violently yanking the door handle. Countless women, children and men have been abducted and “disappeared.” She was likely aware that being a citizen was thin protection. She had a hell of a lot more to fear than the brute who killed her.

There was no evidence that the shooter was even grazed by the fender as she passed, and he was observed, after her car crashed into a parked vehicle, strutting to the scene and strutting back without having offered any assistance to the dead or dying woman. The video showed the car’s interior, air bag deployed and blood splattered profusely.

Every BULLSHIT rationale offered by the government officials is refuted by video and multiple eyewitness accounts. The somewhat legitimate media, New York Times et al, tiptoed gingerly and refrained from calling it “murder.”

Writing for legitimate media, I’ll offer no such restraint. Renee Nicole Good was murdered in cold blood at the twitchy hand of a unqualified goon who appeared to be looking for any slight provocation that would allow him to fire his surrogate member. Renee Nicole Good had about as much of a chance as Kristi Noem’s dog. And to ICE, and the amoral thugs who enable their wanton violence, Good’s life had about as much value as Kristi Noem’s dog.

Public outrage has flared because the victim is sympathetic, but that detracts from the grim truth about ICE, immigration policy, and the lawlessness of the actions in Minneapolis and elsewhere. This incident would be equally horrifying if the victim had been an undocumented, brown-skinned immigrant.

Like the decaying rot that emanates from a fish head, this culture comes directly from the salmon-colored head of state. From early campaign rallies to daily social media screeds, Trump has encouraged violence against any person who dares challenge his – well, his anything. He too is a thug, just in fancy suits and too cowardly to act on his own orders. I was in Southeast Asia while he pulled his golf socks over his bone spurs, so I have special qualifications to call him a chickenshit. I have seldom typed a sentence this absurd, but I would respect him more if he had the balls to execute his own vile impulses.

There has always been a police inclination to expect immediate compliance with their every directive. It is often necessary, including for their safety. But many, if not most, police officers are trained to modulate this inclination and follow the rules of engagement that are crafted to protect all involved. A well-trained police officer would seldom do what we all saw in Minneapolis. (I recognize the deep irony of that assertion in light of the fact that Derek Chauvin snuffed out the life of George Floyd, only 8 blocks from Good’s murder.)

We have become a third-world nation, streets patrolled by unqualified men with anger issues; locked, loaded and trigger happy.

At least 16 people have been shot by ICE agents, four dead. Another 32 died in ICE custody in 2025. I challenge any reader to name a single one.

A murdered white woman draws disproportionate attention. That doesn’t minimize the tragedy of her death, but it shouldn’t overshadow the deaths of the others.

Perhaps her murder will bring some belated justice for the others.

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The post Murder in Minneapolis appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread,” – Anatole France, French author and Nobel Laureate

Ah, the majestic equality we’re living today! The kind that finally allows the much beleaguered white man to have his manifest disadvantages take their rightful place in the pantheon of injustices.

If history survives with any clarity, ours will be known, in part, as the age of the Grand False Equivalence.

My morning reading this week included an eminently “reasonable” piece in the New York Times crafted by a Harvard sophomore. As always, the comments surpassed the essay, both in volume and grievance. You should read it all, if your post-holiday stomach can take it.

The essence of the actually pretty well-written piece was: The progressive, “woke” excesses of the past few decades were horrid, but the conservative response has been little better. Progressive orthodoxy has been replaced by conservative orthodoxy on Harvard’s campus.

An excerpt from my 2016 book is relevant in challenging this equivalence:

Conventional wisdom, or what passes for wisdom among many folks, is that the progressive era of the late ’60s and early ’70s ruined virtually everything. Moral values disappeared in a haze of marijuana smoke. Highly sexualized music and an epidemic of free love led to a decline in marriage and erosion of family values. Progressive political values created a spineless, dependent populace, which accounts for the tens of millions of feckless “takers” who look to the nanny state for care and feeding.

And permissive progressive education created a generation of self-indulgent brats who were told everything they did was right when, in fact, they didn’t learn anything at all. This misrepresentation of progressive education suggests that child-centered means spoiling children, that self-esteem means every child gets a trophy, and that in progressive schools the teachers wear Birkenstocks and flax shawls and smoke weed as their students run wild and barefoot. This caricature is often advanced by folks who seem to have lingering resentment over the “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll” era. (I’ve always suspected that their resentment lingers in part because they didn’t get enough of those things.)
There are many problems with this narrative, foremost of which is that none of it happened, at least not to an important extent.

As a veteran of the ’60s, I testify from experience. The vast majority of young folks who joined the counter-culture, wore bell bottoms, smoked weed, went to Woodstock and protested the war, were no more genuine than Justin Bieber wearing saggin’ pants, lots of bling and a big brimmed cap on sideways. Most hippies were no more Che Guevara than Bieber is 50 Cent. It was almost all costume and fad or, to use a more current quip, all hat and no cattle.
I attended many anti-war demonstrations in the late ’60s and early ’70s and most protestors couldn’t find Vietnam on a map! In my middle/upper middle class community, many bra-less girls and bell-bottomed boys had been Brownies and Cub Scouts a few years earlier, and would be aspiring bankers and real estate agents a few years later. At the core there were, as now, small numbers of deeply committed activists, but the majority of folks were along for the ride – and it was a fine trip!

But the bigger lie is that the progressive educational practices of the ’60s and ’70s eviscerated standards and account for the allegedly miserable state of education today. So-called reformers want rigid accountability, more structure, longer school days, longer school years, more tests and more discipline. Undoing the damage of those loosey-goosey progressive practices is arduous work!

That didn’t happen either.

There was a brief flurry of progressive activity in the ’60s and ’70s, when some schools adopted open floor plans and a few humanistic and humane programs poked through the dull homogeneity of public education. Most schools were designed in spirit-numbing form, and curriculum and pedagogy trudged along in the same rote, uninspiring way.
Here too I’m a veteran and I testify as both participant and witness. I graduated high school in 1964. My younger brother went to the same schools in the late ’60s and ’70s. I had children early and my daughter began school in the same community in 1975, my son three years later. That’s pretty good coverage of the alleged progressive era. All of this happened in one of America’s most progressive suburban communities (Cleveland Heights, Ohio)

Progressive education never happened there … or most anywhere around the country.

What existed at Harvard and other campuses before Trump – and the anti-woke complaining – was so distant from progressive power as to be laughable. The power has always rested with fabulously wealthy trustees and donors and the mostly compliant leaders they hire. The things that irritated them were futile efforts by powerless people to address actual injustices: Like undeniable racial injustice, pitiful representation of women in positions of power (along with low wages), insufficient progress for LGBTQ+ people (especially violent rejection of trans folks), and many more.

The powerful take satisfaction in diminishing these justice advocates by calling their actions“cancel culture,” calling them “social justice warriors.” They then lend a sympathetic ear to the privileged white majority who had their feelings hurt now and then. Of course there were loud and excessive examples to cite as woke-run-amok when, for example, young women and men tried to keep virulent racists and homophobes from speaking. And, of course, affirmative action was swept into history’s dust bin because, gee whiz, today’s brilliant white kids are not responsible for what happened generations ago. And all this absurd pronoun business!

As in my excerpt, the fact is that progressives have very little power and never have. Intractable wealth inequality and poverty are proof enough. As a nation we have primarily excelled at breaking the promises offered in our founding documents. The insufficient granting of civil rights in the 60s and the grudging acknowledgement of gay rights were signs of progress, but real power then, as now, was consolidated in the private and institutional clubs of white men.
For the Harvard student and, seemingly, the majority of white Americans, the current pendulum swing is equivalent.

That view is intellectual and ethical malfeasance.

First, there is a factual and moral difference between those who fight for racial justice and those who claim that there is no injustice. There is a moral difference between those who support transgender humans and those who despise them and deny basic rights and dignity. I would offer more examples of non-equivalence, but leave you to consider them yourself.

But the most egregious violation is willful blindness of the role of power. The reversal of human rights gains, the imposition of conservative curricula and faculty, the denial of trans rights, the erasure of gender studies, the elimination of DEI programs, the canceling of research grants, closing of entire departments . . .

These are not cultural or policy swings of the pendulum. They are direct manifestations of an increasingly authoritarian government which uses immense economic power and, frighteningly, military power to effect the changes they desire. And almost all of these things are in service of providing comfort and control to white men who feel their hegemony slipping.

The occasional excesses of the so-called woke movement and the full force of the United States government are not remotely equivalent.

As with the progressive era of the 60s and 70s, the progressive uprising the conservatives are now crushing never happened either.

The post It’s All About the Power appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

“I don’t know, because I am the least racist person you will ever meet.”

This whopper was Donald Trump’s response to Wolf Blitzer’s query as to why white supremacists were drawn to him.

Trump would not be the least racist person at a KKK rally.

Two recent cases in point were particularly striking, although singling out any particular racist utterances is a bit silly.

In a broad salvo, Trump called Somalia and all Somalians “garbage,” especially noting the Minnesota Congressperson Ilhan Omar. He showed the breadth of his good taste by calling Minnesota Governor Tim Walz “seriously retarded.”

As reported in the New York Times: “We could go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country,” Mr. Trump said. “She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people who work. These aren’t people who say, ‘Let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great.’”

It’s worth noting that VP Vance pounded the table with undisguised glee as his boss spewed verbal sewage.

Omar responded, “His obsession with me is creepy. I hope he gets the help he (Trump) desperately needs.” JD could use some help too.

In his first term, Trump bemoaned immigrants from “shithole countries,” Somalia among them. Humorist Andy Borowitz wrote a typically clever “news” release claiming that Somalians were no longer willing to emigrate to countries with “shithole presidents.”

More recently Trump called ABC reporter Rachel Scott “obnoxious” when she dared ask him a question about releasing the video of Caribbean murder. He had blithely agreed to release the video, then denied saying so, despite video evidence to the contrary. He also called her “a terrible reporter,” a phrase he seems to reserve for any reporter who asks questions in lieu of fawning praise.

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that Omar and Scott are women of color, because he is the least racist person. It’s also a coincidence that they are women, because he loves women. I believe he is also the least misogynist person you will ever meet, although “misogynist” is beyond his vocabulary. Misogynists hate women and would never, ever, “grab ‘em by the pussy,” as is his frequent wont.

Please pause with me to consider that in my first 300 words I’ve typed “garbage,” “retarded,” “shithole” and “pussy,” all in the journalistic service of accurately quoting the President of the United States.

I could be somewhat juvenile and point out that each of these pejoratives might be examples of rhetorical projection. But I won’t.

What with the mountains of lies, the litany of illegalities, the too-ridiculous-to-parody narcissism and just terrible decorating taste, there is just so much overload. Any reasonably dispassionate observer could cite several instances a week that would have sunk any other presidency. He has been called “Teflon Don,” because so much doesn’t stick. But it’s more like throwing spaghetti at a wall and finding it doesn’t stick because the wall is already covered with spaghetti.

But put all of that aside.

The most succinct descriptor of our president is “indecent.” The man is manifestly, malignantly, magnificently, majestically “indecent.”

His indecency is without equal. With all the self-claimed superlatives and the nauseating sycophancy of his supplicants, here is an area in which he is indeed peerless. He needn’t cheat, take surreptitious mulligans or pay millions of dollars to get phony prizes and honoraria.

He may not be the cruelest or least competent leader in human history (or may be), but his indecency stands alone, even in the company of the world’s greatest despots.

In a Senate hearing in 1954, U.S. Army chief counsel Joseph N. Welch responded to Senator Joseph McCarthy after McCarthy insulted a young lawyer in Welch’s firm:

”Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. … Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

Trump makes McCarthy look like Emily Post.

The post Indecency appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

At my age, running a fool’s errand is foolish. There is scarcely time to run the errands that have good odds for success.

Using my inelegant words to describe the poetic documentary, Come See Me in the Good Light, is like taking up a paint roller to explain Picasso.

The film is a love story, often comic, about the late Colorado Poet Laureate Andrea Gibson (they, them) and their partner Megan Falley as they love and live into death. Gibson had incurable cancer and died in July, a month shy of 50. Much of the film is sited in or near their Longmont home.

The love story is poignant and painful, not unlike other love stories – perhaps like all love stories. The film captures the poignancy and the pain with raw brilliance. Love is complicated, but the film is like a gently boiling pan, the complexity evaporating as death nears. Love is all that’s left when the steam has gone. It is exhausting and exhilarating.

In a January interview, Gibson offered perspective that has stayed with me for days.

“I was known, I think, as a fairly optimistic writer that leaned toward the light,” they said. “But when I got diagnosed with cancer, I just thought, ‘Oh, look at all this that I’ve been missing. There’s so much beauty here.’ I could truly feel every second of the day as this very generous gift. And so it changed my writing.”

I am also a “fairly optimistic writer,” although my prose is a basket of rocks compared to their thimble (a nod to Ms. Falley) of gemstones. I’ve also been diagnosed with cancer, though there too I’m no match.  My prognosis leaves me with years, not seconds, as generous gifts.

I am taken with the idea, from where I don’t recall, that age would be better measured from the end backwards than from the beginning forward. At 49, Gibson was older than I am at 78.

Whether at 49 or 78, the end drawing nigh (ish) invites – requires – one to see beauty. A diminishing remainder of sunsets makes each one slightly more compelling. My wife and I gaze at our wheat grasses in the evening sun with reverence once reserved for drives through Vermont’s Green Mountains in October. (Ok, not quite. Get a grip.) But beauty is as we behold it, even when the field of vision narrows.

I don’t mean this to be as maudlin as it sounds in my mind’s ear, but age leads to reckoning that a great many things may be for the last time. When buying appliances or sturdy boots, that’s a good thing. But when touching loved ones or hearing Bach, the thought of “last time” is unbearable. But thoughts of “last time” also make moments of unspeakable beauty.

There is so much to learn about life in death. I suppose we don’t recognize the lessons because they’re often too late. The documentary’s gift was to give a preview for those open to it. We were.

When living in Vermont we had the great pleasure of acquaintance with the late Grace Paley, a marvelous poet and short story writer. At a reading in a tiny café in rural Vermont, Grace fielded questions from a small audience of aspiring poets and political progressives who just liked being in her feisty presence. One pretentious looking fellow in full flax, goatee and beret, asked Grace what her poem “meant.” She looked piercingly and responded, “I don’t know. You decide.”

There is a lifetime of wisdom in 104 minutes of Come See Me in the Good Light. The film is a poem. Perhaps you’ll find meaning as we did. (Update: This marvelous film received an Oscar nomination in January, 2026.)

Watch the film and you decide.

The post You Decide appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

Years ago I argued against the prevailing argument about climate change. It was fashionable in liberal circles to demonstrate the many ways that good environmental practices are profitable.

My rebuttal, in brief, was that the logic was ethically compromised. Harnessing environmental responsibility to profitability gives tacit permission to abandon good environmental practices if they are not profitable. This is among the many reasons that global warming marches on with relatively feeble resistance.

A similar concern dampens my enthusiasm over recent election results. Yes, it was mildly encouraging but – with the exception of Zorhan Mamdani – the Democratic winners are just a tad to the left of moderate Republicans. It was hardly a progressive triumph.

The parallel with environmentalism is the incessant focus on “affordability.” It became the blaring Democratic mantra. “Everything is too damned expensive and electing me will improve your life.” If I never hear “food on the table” again, it will be too soon.

I suppose I needn’t, but I will acknowledge the economic stress endured by too many families. High prices require real sacrifices that my relative privilege can avoid.

But the pragmatic benefits of campaigning to pursestrings leave other issues to rot on the political sidelines. So-called culture wars must be assiduously avoided in service of electing candidates who promise to lower the cost of eggs. To listen to 2025 political rhetoric is to believe we are a society that subsists on eggs alone.

So heres’s the rub and the analogous problem:

It is a given that Republicans do not give a tinkers’s damn about a warming planet or its most vulnerable inhabitants. Environmentalism, social justice and human rights writ large are subjects of mockery and disdain. So Democrats are reluctant to embrace anything that might risk any loss of centrist or crossover votes. Even campaigns resisting authoritarianism are placing affordability above anti-authoritarianism. This only makes sense alphabetically.

So we promise lower egg, gas and housing costs. May I remind of Hoover’s (incorrectly attributed) “chicken in every pot” promise in 1928? The great stock market crash of 1929 made chickens and pots unaffordable.

A more honest assessment of the state of our world would highlight: precipitous reversing of racial justice advances of the last 60+ years; threats to LGBTQ+ rights, including anti-trans violence and humiliation; terrifying, unmitigated consequences of human-driven global warming; wealth disparity that would make the robber barons blush; and the unconscionable treatment of immigrants, documented and otherwise.

I don’t suggest that successful Democratic candidates don’t care about these things. They may, but their convictions seem lukewarm. I suppose a charitable reading would acknowledge that having I LOVE DEI!! posters might not be a winning theme.

On the other hand, as in the environment/profitability case, if the promises of “affordability” are not kept, the rationale for electing Democrats is erased. Any sentiments toward social or Earth justice will be irrelevant, and the teeter-totter will tilt back toward the current crew of rapacious capitalists and capitalist enablers.

This dilemma is the inevitable consequence of the shift toward living in an economy rather than living in a society. While not the prime driver of the current moral bankruptcy, this shift rapidly accelerated during the Clinton campaign when James Carville coined, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Even the economy we live in is predicated on lies. Free enterprise is an oxymoron. Trickle down is stale urine. Ever since St. Ronnie, Americans have believed that their ships will soon come in. Never going to happen, since the entire fleet is owned by a handful of billionaires. Neither they nor the politicians they’ve purchased will ever say that we need to buy less and consume less. We live in a self-destructive system that is predicated on more people, more products, more consumption, more waste and more degradation of our planet. Even when terror struck the Twin Towers, we were urged to shop our way out of it.

I don’t see a solution, and it saddens me – for my children and grandchildren.

So, yes, the off-year elections were better than nothing. But a pragmatic nod to “affordability” is watery gruel when we need a revolution.

The post A Dash of Cold Water appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

We are not only losing our democracy, we are losing our humanity.

A recent New York magazine article is among the pieces of necessary journalism capturing the wanton cruelty visited upon children, women and men by masked ICE agents and other deputized thugs. This piece wields its power through images – exquisitely unbearable. You should look, if you can bear it.

Fear and despair are etched on faces, mainly brown and Black. It has always been so. It is easier to dehumanize brown and Black people. It is the ugliest truth of systemic and unrelenting racism.

I don’t write to dissect immigration policy or weigh in on the manifold complexities of race and class. There is something far more horrifying running through us. We are losing, or have lost, our capacity to feel the consequences of what is being done by us and to us.

Gradual numbing and normalization glaze moral vision. It has been going on for all of human history, but seems at a new, generalized level of anesthesia in the United States. Our political leaders and a sizable plurality of citizens are only temporarily discomforted by our complicity in blowing Palestinian children to bits in Gaza, cavalierly exploding boats in the Caribbean, or tearing screaming brown children from their parents’ arms and shelter beds in Chicago. Worse, if such a bland adverb suffices, is that many men – and they are mostly men – appear to enjoy the process and the product. Indifference or enjoyment are co-equal exhibits of raging anger or deep sociopathy.

Distance offers no excuse. The masked monsters who throw women to the pavement or manhandle terrified children are directed or enabled by men and women in fancy suits and suites who justify the cruelty without so much as a single teardrop. They are as guilty of war crimes and urban felonies as a psychopath who hires a hitman to kill his wife.

These images of real-time socio-pathological violence are deeply unsettling, but just the tip of America’s frigid indifference to the suffering of children, here and abroad. We seldom see pictures of the tens of thousands – or more – of malnourished children who depended on USAID to cling to life. How are the actions of American leaders different than snatching pieces of bread from the bony hands of starving children? Is it less vile if we don’t see it?

An estimated 50,000 children under age 5 die from preventable malaria each year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. Malaria is agonizing, often ending in coma and death from multi-organ failure. Our abandonment of just one such child is a profound moral failure.

Groups of smiling white men – Donald Trump, Russell Vought, JD Vance, Stephen Miller, Mike Johnson, et al – slash budgets and agencies, killing brown children as surely as if they slashed their throats.

I’ve often ridiculed the idea of American Exceptionalism. I was wrong. We are exceptionally cruel, exceptionally arrogant, and exceptionally calloused. Even before the needless government shutdown, resources for the most vulnerable among us were being withheld under the American doctrine of “you get what you deserve and deserve what you get.” In a matter of days things will get exponentially worse as Trump golfs, preens like a vainglorious baboon and takes literal and metaphorical wrecking balls to our shared history.

No Kings Day was necessary but wholly insufficient. Every day we should line the streets and the empty halls of Congress with images of the pain being inflicted on the world’s children – and our own – with our silence as proxy.

I can’t – or perhaps don’t want to – believe that all ICE agents and other officials derive pleasure from watching other humans cower in fear or scream at the terror of losing a child. Instead of blind obedience, we need civil disobedience. I know and understand the objections to comparing our authoritarianism-lite to the rise of the Third Reich. But the difference is in scale, not nature.

Are there no people of moral courage in the chains of authority? Can no military man say, “No sir, I will not fire on a boat in international waters.” Can no government agents step in front of a helpless family and say, “You cannot do that to a child.” Have we lost all ability to see our own children and grandchildren in the terrorized or emaciated faces created by our actions and inactions?

Preserving our democracy and preserving our humanity go hand in hand. If we save one, the other will follow.

But we cannot, must not, look away.

The post Losing Our Humanity appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

Being retired, if not exactly retiring, I spend entirely too much time reading political analyses. I find most less than enlightening, a few quite cogent, and occasionally a mix of nauseating and infuriating.

A nauseating case in point was the recent mewling by Times columnist Ezra Klein, who opined that Charlie Kirk was essentially a good political operative and skillful debater. Of course Klein noted Kirk’s nastiness, but that notation was a mere sidebar.

Klein’s piece dismayed his friend Ta-Nehisi Coates, who was apparently offended by Klein’s rather casual diminishment of Kirk’s overt racism. Coates and Klein then published a dialogue in the Times, wherein they gently negotiated their differences. Therefore my nausea.

It’s to be expected from Klein, who is invariably a pragmatic insider, not a strong, clear voice for, well, much of anything. But I expected more from Coates, including better taste in friends.

In the Coates/Klein duet, many words were spilled over the dilemma for Democrats. Klein’s approach, which I will tersely summarize, is to bend principles beyond recognition in order to gain a seat or two here and there. For example, he suggested putting up a few pro-life Democrats in red or purple places, thereby giving them a leg up, sacrificing women a bit in the bargain. Nauseating pragmatism.

Klein also cited Obama’s shift on same-sex marriage, suggesting that he would not have been electable had he supported it pre-election. Perhaps it was a political calculation, and not the only one from the somewhat centrist Obama, whom I greatly admire and recognize the complexity of his achievement. James Baldwin would have been unelectable – even in 2008.

Just today, September 30th, the Times published another political analysis from historian Timothy Shenk. The essay, titled,” Democrats Are in Crisis. Eat-the-Rich Populism
Is the Only Answer,” offered a similar set of pragmatic steps Democrats should take to regain power. As the title suggests, Shenk proposes shelving all the culture war nonsense and getting back to the pocketbook issues that most voters care about. Sort of a reprise of James Carvilles’s “It’s the economy, stupid,” campaign slogan for Bill Clinton.

The extent to which racism, homophobia and transphobia have been normalized is astonishing. The posthumous legitimization of Charlie Kirk is full moral capitulation. He was a manipulative, opportunistic bigot, who used a cheap gimmick, pretending to “debate” college kids, when he was just drawing them into semantic tricks and traps. Having a man with an undeserved megaphone – Ezra Klein – treat him as a worthy ideological opponent is ethical and political malpractice.

It was unintentional, but take a gander at the roster of pragmatic apologists mentioned in my short piece:

Ezra Klein – white, privileged heterosexual male.

Timothy Shenk – white, privileged, heterosexual male.

James Carville – white, privileged, heterosexual male.

Bill Clinton – white, privileged, heterosexual male.

How easily and glibly they are willing to sacrifice 60+ years of social progress in service of pragmatic political strategy.  They all pay lip service to civil rights, but it’s hard to hear them as they furiously backpedal. And of course trans folk are entirely expendable, left to be run down in the streets by MAGA Clown Cars.

Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote in a recent Times Magazine essay:

Robin D.G. Kelley, a historian at U.C.L.A. whose scholarship on racial injustice also landed him on the Professor Watchlist, is struck by how rapidly our society has changed since Trump took office a second time.

Kelley pointed to the fact that Trump was widely condemned during his first term when he called the white supremacists who rallied in Charlottesville, Va., “very fine people.” Now, Democrats and political centrists were lining up to honor a man who promoted the same Great Replacement Theory that served as the rallying cry for that march. At a time when the president of the United States is using his power to go after diversity efforts and engaging in a mass deportation project, some progressives are arguing that people of color, immigrants and members of other marginalized groups who felt dehumanized by Kirk’s commentary, podcasts and debates have to find a way to locate common ground with his followers.

“There has been an extreme shift,” Kelley told me. “This treatment is authorizing the idea that white supremacy and racism is not just a conservative idea, but a legitimate one.”

The problem for Democrats is not their lukewarm commitment to social justice. The problem for Democrats is that they are battling a battalion of pathological liars.

Trump is a serial liar.

Nearly all Congressional Republicans are blatant liars.

Every employee of Fox News is a lying liar or too stupid to discern truth from fiction.

All the voices on Newsmax, OANN, Breitbart and Truth Social are liars and/or so drenched in their own nonsense that they’ve come to believe it.

Every member of Trump’s cabinet is a liar or brain-wormed disabled.

It is unclear whether all right-wing podcasters and social media stars are liars, or just saps that swallow all the lies emanating from the liar list above.

Although my social media consumption is mostly local, it is remarkable how consistently the MAGA folks cite information from the dishonest sources I’ve noted. That’s why Trump won and why many Republican candidates win in tight races. The margins are thin and the election deniers and conspiracy theorists are enough to turn an election.

This is what Democrats must attack head on and unapologetically. Call out the lies and the liars. Don’t engage in phony debates or try to find common ground with bigots.

And most of all don’t throw women, folks of color and LGBTQ+ folks under your campaign bus.

The post The Democrat’s Dilemma appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

I believe a new word has been coined: Kimmeled.

Little did I expect to be among the many to be Kimmeled over Charlie Kirk’s murder.

I offered a relatively mild piece suggesting that Kirk’s dismal record of bigotry made his lionization by the right wing quite astonishing. Flags at half staff, Medals of Freedom and all.

Apparently some local conservatives began calling YS advertisers, threatening to boycott their products and services because of my/our insufficient reverence. As is the case in communities around the nation, my hometown, Erie, CO, is quite divided along partisan lines. The current mayor, whom I’ve characterized as MAGA-lite, has moved the town away from its gay-friendly recent history and its tenuous commitment to affordable housing. He and his slate-mates hold a 4-3 majority on town council. It is not clear that he or his mates are actively encouraging the boycott effort.

The boycott group remains anonymous, except for first names, which may be fiction. I am routinely dismayed and humored that such folks are unwilling to be identified with their repressive efforts. My opinion pieces, which seem a major catalyst for their campaign, are always clearly attributed to me.

The group has started a petition at Change.org, seeking to gain more support for their efforts to silence the YS voice. The publication operates on a shoestring budget and the loss of advertising revenue is a serious threat. I decline a modest fee for my columns, as the income would be relatively inconsequential and the survival of independent journalism is more important.

The petition uses my pieces as evidence of the magazine’s “radical” and “hateful” content. One assertion is that I/we hate white men, which is only partially accurate. I do dislike many of my brethren, including the very white men leading my community and my country.

Among the choices made by the local, straight white men was to remove the Pride Flag during Pride month, citing some convoluted bullshit about proclamations, precedent and local statutes. They, like conservatives everywhere, are relegating diversity efforts to the sidelines and promoting patriotism and the town’s annual Biscuit Day.

This partisan dynamic is not new, but was doused with rocket fuel by the murder of Charlie Kirk. It seems that Kirk is a hero and martyr, dying for the manifold causes of bigotry, sexism, homophobia, Christian Nationalism and racism. Quite a hill to die on, Charlie.

Having barely finished disappearing the Pride flag, the leaders of the Emirates of Erie lowered the Stars and Stripes to half staff, conforming to the commands of the despot-in-chief. Remarkably, Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a gay man, joined right in the honoring of a man who dishonored him. Polis has triangulated more than a geometry teacher or geocacher so it wasn’t shocking.

Charlie Kirk did not deserve to die, of course. Nor did a Minnesota lawmaker and spouse, whose savage slaying merited nary a peep from local or national “leaders.”

Jimmy Kimmel didn’t deserve what he got either, although he will not suffer.

I asked town council why they lowered the flag for this man:

Mr.Kirk  was a fierce proponent of Stop the Steal, preaching to his young acolytes that the 2020 election was stolen.

He spread misinformation about Covid-19, arguably leading to unnecessary illness and death.

On his opinion of Black people:

“If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’”

“We know, you (Black women) do not have brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously.  You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”

On Martin Luther King, Jr:

“MLK was awful… He’s not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn’t believe.”

On transgender people:

“I refuse to lie. I will not call a man a woman or a woman a man, like, I refuse to do that. And in fact, I reject the entire premise of transgenderism. I don’t think it really exists. I think it’s a mental disease, and we’ve allowed it to all of a sudden become an identity… Transgenderism is a brain problem, not a body problem, and that’s how we should go about it.”

On feminism:

“…it is the leading feminist organizations in the country that are either silent or complicit in pushing this [transgender rights], because feminism was never about advancing female rights. Feminism was about hating men. What better way to hate men than to take young boys and chop off their parts?”

On Jewish people:

“Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them… It is true that some of the largest financiers of left-wing anti-white causes have been Jewish Americans..”

On immigration:

“America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that.”

On what women should really want:

“The biggest thing is this: more younger women need to get married at a younger age and start having kids. The single woman issue is one of the biggest issues facing a civilization.

We have more single women in their early 30s that are the most depressed, suicidal, anxious, and lonely in America’s history because there’s a biological clock that’s going off and they realize that they’re not going to be able to have kids, that they’re not as desirable in the dating market or in the dating pool, and so they start to lash out on the rest of society by voting Democrat.”

On the importance of keeping Americans armed:

“Yes, people die from gun violence. It’s tragic. But that’s the price of freedom. Unfortunately, it’s worth it to keep the Second Amendment intact.

I think it’s worth it. It’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God given rights. That’s a prudent deal. It is rational.”

The Mayor responded politely, saying the President ordered it. Following this president is a moral failing. So much for courage.

Btw, I was not Kimmeled, despite the local cancel campaign. YS publisher, Shavonne Blades, said, “You just keep on doing you.”

If only wealthy, powerful media people had such ethical clarity.

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This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

Allow a moment for the requisite sympathy for Charlie Kirk’s wife and children. Sympathy, not empathy, because Charlie didn’t believe in the latter.

. . . . .

Moment’s up.

Political assassinations are 3rd World stuff, oddly apt given the 3rd World state of our disunion.

The reactions from the political right and left have garnered as much press as the assassination itself. Locally, my progressive friends have, by and large, acknowledged the horror of the shooting and the grief experienced by his family and friends. Many have then quickly segued to the trail of ugliness he left for all to consider.

I avoid right wing dens, so my observations are fewer, but the political righters, locally and nationally, cite the same horror and similarly acknowledge the grief. They then also segue, but take a different trail.

It presents another grandly false equivalence. Rather like comparing January 6th with a Quaker peace gathering.

My wise wife suggests an extended time of just shutting up. There is something tawdry about itemizing Charlie’s vitriol before the blood is dry. There is also something tawdry about sanitizing and lionizing a man who made hatred more palatable by offering it up on a seemingly “dignified” platter. I’ve listened to Charlie. He was just a bit better dressed and schooled than the average racist Christian Nationalist.

But since our media-saturated society has no appetite for a period of just shutting up, an examination of the noise is unavoidable.

Kirk’s record speaks for itself. He thought the Civil Rights Act was a grave mistake. He thought women should be submissive. He thought more people should have guns – ironic, that. He promoted the Great Replacement Theory. He thought there should be no separation between church and state. Homosexuality is a sin. Transgender care should be illegal. George Floyd was a “scumbag.” MLK, Jr. was a “bad guy.” A Black pilot is a great risk because of affirmative action.

He was a fierce proponent of Stop the Steal, preaching to his young acolytes that the 2020 election was stolen.

He spread misinformation about Covid-19, arguably leading to unnecessary illness and death.

There’s this dandy from 2023:

“WE KNOW, YOU (BLACK WOMEN) DO NOT HAVE BRAIN PROCESSING POWER TO OTHERWISE BE TAKEN REALLY SERIOUSLY.

YOU HAD TO GO STEAL A WHITE PERSON’S SLOT TO GO BE TAKEN SOMEWHAT SERIOUSLY.”

There’s more, but one must be cautious when dishonoring the recently deceased.

But to those who think this partial list of offenses inappropriate, I offer the “other” side.

Trump will grant this man the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Flags ordered at half staff for a podcaster.

Congressional prayers for Kirk, but not a slight bow of sympathy for the children shot on the same day, nor a mention of sorrow over the murders of Minnesota Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark.

“He was loved and admired by ALL . . .” – Donald Trump

And as to the grand false equivalence . . .

All of the things I and others report about Charlie Kirk are true. Accurately chronicled and meticulously sourced.

The lionizing and celebration of a man who spewed such hatred, albeit in relatively dulcet tones, is offensive.

It is, perhaps, analogous to the possible appointment or election of a person to high position or office. The plaudits and praise that fill the resume or are chanted in the campaign must be countered by less laudatory – even unsavory truth. A man who has been multiply bankrupt and convicted of sexual offenses should not be given awards or positions based on high character and great accomplishment. The campaign rhetoric and the facts are not remotely similar, despite the claims of equivalency. Oh, wait!  We already fell for that.

So back to Charlie Kirk. Sad. Abhorrent political violence. Evidence of the easy access to deadly weaponry – ironic, that – again.

But don’t tell one side to go easy on defining him as a schmuck when he’s being nominated for sainthood by the other.

Y’all raise those flags back up and withdraw the sainthood nomination. Then I’ll be semi-reverently silent . . . for a while.

Democracy needs journalism more than ever. We’ve been telling the truth for 24 years. Your support helps us keep telling it for at least the next four years.

The post Saints and Sinners appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

Gotta love the MAGATs. They have now become fervent supporters of the First Amendment.

I do wonder how many of them have actual read the text. Certainly not the President, for his Constitution is buried somewhere beneath his huge piles of unread Holy Bibles.

Here on the local front, the paragon of civic rectitude, Ben Soelberg, passionately cited the First Amendment in a social media post wherein he defended the Erie Town Council for their protection of our flagpole from the Pride and Juneteenth flags.

Unchallenged by the Mayor and Erie’s straight, privileged white man majority, he pointed out that letting the Pride flag or any flag of Black solidarity fly – gee whiz, we’d have to let “. . . a KKK flag or Satanist Flag or Confederate Flag . . .” fly too. You know, free speech and all.

Council member Brandon Bell expressed similar sentiments during the “debate.” Our token woman, Emily Baer, excused herself from the meeting after Mayor Andrew Moore crudely, arguably illegally, smugly and dismissively cut her off mid-utterance so he might invite his pal Bell to offer a motion instead.

The flag-flying option Baer and her two minority colleagues supported would have allowed the Council to decide what flags the town might display. Apparently, Moore, Bell, Brian O’Connor and John Mortellaro are not comfortable distinguishing between a KKK flag and a Pride flag.

It takes a rather odd mindset to place the KKK flag and Pride flag in the same legal or philosophical category.  If I were Mayor or council member, I’d have no problem telling the KKK folks to place their flag where the sun don’t shine and the fresh breezes of Erie can’t reach it. And space in that sunless cavity should be saved for the Confederate flag request. How or why Soelberg brought up the Satanist Flag is beyond my ken. What the hell is that?

It is a contrived and disingenuous argument. Unfortunately, it seems that the conservative majority in our town just doesn’t want to be “that” kind of town, despite many of our neighbors happily honoring their LGBTQ+ and Black residents. Maybe banners, the Mayor offers?

This opportunistic allusion to the First Amendment is a hypocritical blight on the national landscape.

The MAGAstapo is picking up folks for irreverent social media posts. The Constitutional separation between church and state is filled with publicly-funded Christian schools all over the map. A baker doesn’t have to make a cake for a gay couple, but a Mayor can’t refuse to endorse the KKK?  The right to peacefully assemble is interrupted by illegally deployed members of the National Guard. Ask pro-Palestinian protestors how vigorously the government is protecting their rights.

Looking beyond the local squabble, the dynamics are crystal clear. Most Republicans, presumably our conservative council members among them, have had enough of “identity politics” and the “special” considerations LGBTQ+ and Black folks seek.

This backlash to years of social progress, albeit uneven, asks us to stipulate to the idea that now things are just dandy. No affirmative action needed. All Lives Matter. Back to that holy state of marriage only between a man and a woman. Get the damn men out of women’s sports! This is an important crusade, despite the NCAA President admitting that he knew of only 10 transgender competitors among the NCAA’s 510,000 athletes.

My wife and I moved to Erie to be near our family. We were initially wary of the political and cultural climate. Erie does have a bit of Stepford sheen at first glance.

We were enormously heartened by the June 2020 March in Solidarity Against Racial Injustice and establishment of Being Better Neighbors. I wear the T-shirt as I write. That event, and a joyful Pride celebration, gave us the comfort of kindred spirits. We are not Black or gay. Just human.

If we, a relatively privileged, comfortable, straight white couple, felt relief and support from this visible demonstration of support for those in the minority, I can imagine the powerful impact on the LGBTQ+ community and folks of color. Despite the post-racism nonsense propagated by the right, systemic and persistent racism and anti-gay bigotry are flourishing. Gestures and symbols of kindness and understanding are necessary. Especially for children.

It is deeply disappointing to see that support eroding.

Putting aside arcane posturing over the First Amendment, I ask questions our conservative neighbors are unlikely to answer: What is the cost you bear as a result of strong support for others? Does the Pride flag on our pole diminish either your rights or your well-being? Does it hurt your feelings? Does the assertion that Black Lives Matter make your lives matter less?

Proudly and prominently flying these flags is an expression of a kind community. The kind of community we want to live in.

Kindness costs nothing at all.

Democracy needs journalism more than ever. We’ve been telling the truth for 24 years. Your support helps us keep telling it for at least the next four years.

The post Free (?) Speech in Erie appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

More dead children, shot by a disturbed young adult in Minneapolis. More thoughts and prayers.

Late that evening, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and MSNBC’s Jen Psaki tearfully suggested that we see our own children in the latest shooting victims, an 8 year-old boy and 10 year-old girl.

Imagining that pain, they and others suggest, may motivate meaningful change.

The shooting in Minneapolis was indeed horrible. And yes, I imagined my own beautiful grandchildren. Who wouldn’t?

Albeit painful, it’s easy to imagine and feel pangs of terror if the dead children are white and American.

If the tragic deaths of cute, white, American kids can lead to meaningful reductions in gun violence, I suppose the “imagine your own children” empathy is valuable. But I’m sure the sincere tears will have no impact. By the next morning, conservative mouthpieces were spouting the same vile nonsense about “people kill people, not guns” and vicious demonization of all trans people.

Gun manufacturers, dealers and lobbyists rake in millions with no regard for the mayhem they create. The rhetoric is unbearable. “Guns are just tools.” “It’s not a gun problem, it’s a mental health problem.” That one is particularly galling because our Dear Leader and friends are also decimating mental health services.

It’s been clear for a dozen years that if 20 dead, white, American children in Sandy Hook couldn’t change our approach to gun violence, nothing would.

The scale of death increases geometrically and empathy shrinks when the children do not look like ours.

You may know that gun violence is now the leading cause of death for American youth. You may not know that Black kids are 8 times more likely to be the victims. I invite you to reflect on the relatively meager media attention drawn to the violent deaths of young Black children.

And our empathy seems to shrivel away entirely when the children are at some distance.

On August 15th, Donald Trump welcomed Vladimir Putin to a friendly chat in Alaska. Red carpets were rolled out for both “dignitaries,” a word I enclose in quotes because these two are the antithesis of “dignified.”  Trump exited first and, as Putin approached the red carpet intersection, clapped his hands and grinned like a child about to receive an ice cream sundae.

Less than two weeks later, on August 28th, Putin unleashed a horrendous airstrike on Ukraine, killing 23 innocents, including four children. An estimated 2,500 children have been killed or maimed in Russian attacks since the war began. I guess that Nobel Peace Prize will have to wait.

Israel, fortified by American support and weaponry, kills 28 Palestinian children every day – an estimated 18,000 in all since the genocide commenced. Not a thought, prayer or “imagine your own child!” is heard.

Our complicity in child mortality is not limited to war violence.

The Washington Post reported, “An analysis by a 15-member research team from Spain, Brazil, Mozambique and the US, published Monday in the medical journal The Lancet, estimates more than 14 million people could die by 2030 as a result of USAID cuts, including 4.5 million children younger than 5 years old.”

The Guardian writes, “Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will be ‘personally responsible’ for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children after he refused to renew US funding for a global vaccines body, public health experts said.”

And, closer to home, the Secretary of “Health” and Human Stupidity is blowing up the CDC, making it quite sure that children will die from any number of diseases that could be prevented or cured.

Gun violence in America is a moral failing. But the failure to see “the other” is immoral on a far more massive scale.

A dead child in Gaza or Kyiv is as great a tragedy as a dead child in a Minneapolis pew.

RFK, Jr. is as responsible for the preventable death of a child in an underdeveloped country as a shooter is for a death in the Annunciation Church.

And Donald Trump would have the deaths of “4.5 million children younger than 5 years old” on his conscience, but he has none.

The loss of any child is unbearable.

And not just if they look like ours.

Democracy needs journalism more than ever. We’ve been telling the truth for 24 years. Your support helps us keep telling it for at least the next four years.

The post We Kill Children appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

I suppose I’m not alone in my Epstein Files fatigue. The political bantering and media attention are incessant and absurd.

A few observations before moving on . . .

Anyone who thinks any salacious Trump details are forthcoming is a fool. The criminals who command the Injustice Department long ago erased any seriously incriminating material.

Fierce Trump supporters will find a way to claim his association with Epstein as proof of his divinity. If pussy-grabbing, sexual assault convictions and leering at teen pageant contestants didn’t tarnish his godliness, a few long-ago party smirks and bad dances won’t dent the teflon. BTW, his dance skills have not improved over the years. The videos with Epstein showed the same pathetic fist moves. YMCA.

Last night as I barked at MSNBC’s inane, repetitive, faux serious opining, I went from cynicism to despair. A commercial break transitioned from Trump’s disgusting nightclub visage to an ad for one of the many charitable organizations seeking donations to feed children.  The contrast is telling and heartbreaking. Children in America are food insecure, and our progressive talking heads are blathering on about the goddamn Epstein Files.

Donald Trump is a monster, but his monstrosity should not be measured by flights on Epstein’s plane or the number of 14 year-olds he ogled. We all know he’s an entitled sociopath whose entire life has been spent wallowing in adolescent indulgence, exploiting everyone in his orbit for profit or crude gratification.

The victims of Epstein’s perversion deserve empathy and justice, but this entire tawdry business is child’s play – pardon the accidental double entendre – compared to Trump’s full oeuvre.

I don’t understand, and can’t forgive, the oh-so-sincere “journalists” and members of the House and Senate who twitter on and on about this tarnished object against the backdrop of dead, dying, bloodied and starving children left in the wake of Trump’s cruel and immoral campaign of revenge for every slight that ever pierced his pathetically thin skin.

It is insulting to watch the chuckling roundtables of hosts and guests trying to score political or ratings points.

50,000 children in Gaza have been killed or maimed by American weapons, authorized by the pompous fool who would sign any executive order placed before him. He loves his signature more than he has ever loved another human. The carnage continues because of his indifference and vanity.

2,500 Ukrainian children have been blown to bits by Putin’s attacks because, in part, Trump is unwilling to restrain a strongman he so deeply admires.

Because of Donald Trump’s complete capitulation to the cruelest mob of right-wing zealots, millions of low income Americans will lose basic health care. Thousands will die from preventable illnesses, many alone and without comfort.

A Lancet report estimates that 14 million lives will be lost as a result of cuts to USAID funding,  4.5 million children under the age of five among them. Rather than reading this as an abstraction, picture children, tender and vulnerable as your own, crying themselves to death because truckloads of food were destroyed to make a political point.

How many small children will contract measles or other preventable diseases because Trump has empowered a mentally-ill conspiracy theorist who is dismantling an infrastructure of science and good practice that has protected children for generations?

The number of adults killed, maimed, starving and left to die by dint of American action or inaction is many multiples of the small corpses left in Trump’s wake. I don’t mean to sanitize this grotesque reality, but it is the children’s faces that break my heart.

I have three grandchildren and would do anything in my power to save them from pain. I cannot look at pictures of children starving in Gaza or hungry in American cities and towns without my mind’s eye briefly superimposing my own grandchildren on the image.

It is a natural defense response to blink away such images, but it is rational and necessary to take away the understanding that each child – each of 50,000 in Gaza, each of 2,500 in Ukraine, each of 14 million around the world – was loved as much as your own. And to know that we are all indirectly complicit should haunt every human with a conscience.

Every person with political power, every influential person in the media, should rage against this wanton inhumanity, not sit and chitchat about the Epstein Files.

I had the privilege of brief acquaintance of the late poet and storyteller Grace Paley. Her poem, Responsibility, is timeless and urgent. We must all cry out like Cassandra before it’s too late.

It is the responsibility of society to let the poet be a poet
It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman
It is the responsibility of the poet to stand on street corners
giving out poems and beautifully written leaflets
also leaflets they can hardly bear to look at
because of the screaming rhetoric
It is the responsibility of the poet to be lazy     to hang out and
prophesy
It is the responsibility of the poet not to pay war taxes
It is the responsibility of the poet to go in and out of ivory
towers and two-room apartments on Avenue C
and buckwheat fields and army camps
It is the responsibility of the male poet to be a woman
It is the responsibility of the female poet to be a woman
It is the poet’s responsibility to speak truth to power as the
Quakers say
It is the poet’s responsibility to learn the truth from the
powerless
It is the responsibility of the poet to say many times: there is no
freedom without justice and this means economic
justice and love justice
It is the responsibility of the poet to sing this in all the original
and traditional tunes of singing and telling poems
It is the responsibility of the poet to listen to gossip and pass it
on in the way storytellers decant the story of life
There is no freedom without fear and bravery     there is no
freedom unless
earth and air and water continue and children
also continue
It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman     to keep an eye on
this world and cry out like Cassandra, but be
listened to this time

The post They Are Our Children Too appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Alligator Alcatraz. Catchy name. Trump, DeSantis et al, think it’s really funny. Lock up brown people in concentration camps surrounded by deadly animals. The strains play out in my head.

“My Country ’Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Liberty . . .”

Many voices decry the horrors perpetrated by this administration. Masked thugs kidnapping brown children. Due process rights violated with impunity. Cruelty is not an isolated byproduct of enforcement. Cruelty is the policy.

Decent people recoil at the extreme measures our increasingly fascist government employs. I suspect that most Americans are slightly more humane, even if MAGA propaganda has persuaded them that we are being overrun by “illegals” who take our jobs and threaten our communities, even though those things are demonstrably false.

But in the constant debate over policy and practice, one element of immigration is never acknowledged: It takes great courage to enter a new country and culture and forge a life. Most Americans are comfortable and complacent and could not muster the strength to do what most immigrants do.

When I lived in Manhattan, I watched the daily influx of service workers from the outer boroughs. They often traveled several hours on buses or trains before most of us awoke and finished our first latte. They were invisible as they took their daily stations, cleaning for us, serving our meals, caring for our children. They probably had children too, left in the care of an older relative or neighbor. They saw our lives. We never saw theirs.

Many of them spoke little English, but were eager and open to learning and trying more. Few of us have ever had the strength to travel to a place where English is not commonly spoken. But if and when we do, our presumption is that they do speak English, or should speak English. If you’ve been a visitor to such a place, you may have heard an American speaking very loudly, enunciating every syllable, as though insisting that the host must understand!  Such Ugly Americans, to reprise an apt but forgotten book, make no effort to learn even rudimentary phrases in the native tongue. They don’t have to. In many places nearly everyone involved in local commerce has learned English, both as a matter of pride and of commercial necessity. Money talks. Money talks English.

The immigrants I encountered in New York, and everywhere else, work harder for lower wages, often because some opportunistic employer takes advantage of their undocumented status. When moving to Colorado, these impressions remained and new ones appeared. In our almost all-white privileged community, the first sounds each morning are lawn care workers or the construction starting up for the day on the new development of $650K homes rising out of the empty field just out of sight.

There is the rat-a-tat of roofing nails, guns wielded by brown men straddling roof peaks in the 100 degree afternoon. Or painting crews huddled beneath the one shade tree in a parched lawn, taking a short break for a drink of water.

We are conditioned by our comfortable biases to believe that we deserve what we have and that they, despite our absolute lack of any knowledge of their lives, also deserve what they have – or don’t have. That their poor English is due to ignorance, but that our inability to utter a word of Spanish, except perhaps “Margarita,” is because, well, why should we? It’s our country, right?

Imagine, if you can sufficiently liberate yourself from what is to consider what if, a reversal of circumstances.

Think of Donald Trump hanging onto a grimy subway strap at 5 a.m. as he heads to his job as a porter in a pre-war apartment building on the Upper Westside. The tenants are all wealthy El Salvadorans and ignore his efforts to say hello in his native (not very good!) English. Or Melania squeezed between two man-spreaders as she commutes to her job cleaning and cooking for a family of Dominican hedge fund titans.

I don’t mean to be preposterous, although these vignettes are surely preposterous. But why? What personal virtues or diligent acts makes Donald Trump entitled to a better life than Gallo, Jorge, or any of the bright, good-spirited porters in the building we called home for 19 years? They also spoke much better English than Trump.

And the sensitive, dignified woman from Eastern Europe who took public transportation to clean apartments in our building – including ours.  She has remained our friend some eight years later and her soul shines brighter than all of Melania’s diamonds.

So to all you pompous Republican bottom dwellers in Congress and the members of the criminal enterprise in the Whitehouse:  I challenge you to walk a mile in immigrant shoes. You couldn’t do it. You’d take a limo or a golf cart.

The post Who Has Real Strength? appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

There are many ways to make other people feel unwelcome. Among the most effective is to leave the room every time they enter. This is what the conservative – reactionary – justices on the Supreme Court encouraged last week.

The Court ruled in favor of a group of Maryland parents who sued for the right to remove their elementary school children whenever any LGBTQ+ or LGBTQ+ adjacent subject matter entered the classroom.

The majority ruling was anchored in the right to religious “expression.” In this and other cases, from hairdressing, wedding planning to cake-making, the religious “expression” seems to be “fuck you!”

Critics of the ruling, including the eloquently dissenting liberal justices, worried, with justification, that the Alito crowd had opened the door to endless opt outs when classroom materials or discussions violate parents’ beliefs.

One can imagine any number of curriculum items, including evolution, that violate the beliefs of someone’s religion.

In this case, Alito opined, LGBTQ+ presence in any form “. . . substantially interferes with the religious development of their children . . .”

The corrupt and chronically bitter Clarence Thomas complained about “. . . the inclusion of the storybooks” and the “exclusion of traditional religious views. . .”

This is not the first time that Thomas constructed a remarkably stupid false equivalence. Storybooks about other humans don’t violate the establishment clause. Teaching traditional religious views in public schools is a blatant violation, although to be fair, blatant violations are a daily affair in the form of “Under God” in the pledge and “In God We Trust” on kids’ lunch money.

The very Christian conservative justices are perplexed why anyone would fail to see the impeccable logic in service of their inerrant beliefs. These Christians and so many others see their beliefs as incontrovertible and see themselves as oh-so-tolerant when begrudgingly acknowledging that non-believers have any rights at all in their country.

The opt-out precedent established is worrying, but trivial compared to the consequences on children and their families.

Imagine the inner experience of a child of same-sex parents when a group of those “religiously developing” children are removed from the classroom when a family that looks like their own is offered in a book or discussion. How disgusting must they be! Their classmates must be shielded from the kind of people they love.

How sad might a child be if already feeling vague stirrings of affection for another child of the same gender? For how long will such a child’s love feelings be clouded by the implicit scorn of their judgmental peers? If this does not strike you as a real issue, you have forgotten what it is to be a child.

Alito thinks Uncle Bobby’s Wedding and Pride Puppy, about a puppy lost during a pride parade, substantially interfere with childrens’ religious development. Some religion that.

And how about the ones whose religious development includes teachings that those books – those people – are so dangerous to their well-being that they can’t go to school? Imagine their future ingrained bigotry. And imagine the deep, perhaps lifelong, conflict they will feel if they are among the estimated 10 percent of humans who eventually find their real selves with a love partner of the same gender.

The other opt-out concerns are real, but relatively trivial. A bunch of kids absent when evolution is taught – or glancingly noted – would only have other kids scratching their heads in bemusement. “What the heck is wrong with them? Who cares if they or their parents don’t believe in evolution? Their loss.”

But this is different. After decades of uneven progress for our LGBTQ+ community, the momentum is in reverse gear and accelerating. In Erie, the town where I live, the Pride Flag became a hot-button issue this year. Most observers think the faithful justices in the majority are just waiting for a well-funded litigant to bring a case that will allow them to whittle down or erase the right to same-sex marriage. Crimes against our LGBTQ+ friends and neighbors have risen for four straight years. LGBTQ+ folks are nine times more likely to be targets of hate crimes.

The “religious development”Alito cherishes is inculcating bigotry not faith, hate not love.

The multicultural community earned through decades of legal and political work is being dismantled at a furious and infuriating rate.

That is precisely what Alito, Thomas and the other conservative justices want.

The post Developing Little Bigots appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Day after day “Harvard” graces the front pages of America’s newspapers. This week it is the Trump administration effort to bar international students. Last week it was termination of various federal grants. The week before it was threats to take away its tax exempt status.

In dramatic worst case scenario scenarios, apoplectic Harvard-related folks fret that the venerable and venerated institution will perish under the Trumpian barrage.

Color me meh.

I suppose a disclaimer is unnecessary, but I applaud not a note of Trump’s poorly orchestrated campaign. Barring students, withdrawing support, weaponizing the IRS and all else is mean-spirited administrative terrorism. And a dollop of appreciation is due Harvard for not immediately surrendering dignity, as so many others have done.

But among the vile acts committed by these vile people, ruffling Harvard’s golden feathers is petty stuff.

To grind an old axe, the Harvard mystique is perpetuated by the same misconception that pervades education. Simply put, colleges and schools are generally celebrated as superb based on their selectivity. They take a thin slice of the already glittering applicant pool and then boast that they are a great school because their students have shiny credentials.

It is like a school auditioning athletes through a series of regional races and then claiming superiority because their students run fast. These analyses have nothing to do with the quality of the school. It is a self-perpetuating cycle of cutthroat striving that does more harm than good.

This, of course, does not diminish the achievements of some students and faculty members. But their capacities and contributions would be no less at other institutions. I have argued, with evidence, that the grinding process leading to “elite” college acceptance often extinguishes the qualities that matter most and erodes mental health in unimaginable numbers of young adults.

My “meh” is not that I wish Harvard dead. Unlike Trump and his second-rate band of resentful psychopaths, I hold no grudges against so-called “elite” colleges, law firms or inadequately subservient entertainers. I didn’t work hard enough in my carefree youth to even get in Harvard’s  rejection pile.

My “meh” is twofold.

First, if Harvard suffers or ceases to exist, there is little to grieve in that there are several hundred other places than can do everything that Harvard can do. Its death would just cause a quick redistribution of applicants, students, scholars, grants and U.S. News rankings.

The second concern is of much more gravity.

New York Times headlines about these pesky attacks on Harvard are a reflection of misplaced journalistic and social priorities.

They are normalizing genocide by relegating Israel’s atrocities to a small mention below the fold. The dismembering of small bodies by American-made munitions is not less horrifying because it happens every day. It is compounding and more horrifying and we are growing numb. Murder of innocent children, women and men cannot be normalized.

Ask the people of Ukraine how much they care about Harvard’s tax exempt status. Every day Russian attacks kill hundreds of innocent civilians. We never know their names or see their faces.

Scores of organizations serving critical human needs are shuttering their doors every week because of what Trump goons are doing. Trans folks are fearing for there lives. Immigrants, undocumented and fully documented, are being terrorized by Homeland Security thugs who operate with impunity. Civil rights are violated without consequence.

It isn’t really about Harvard. My anger is at the hierarchy of concern that elicits public and media attention. Somehow we stipulate to the idea that attacks on Harvard are so much more important than attacks on lesser known places. It is the celebrity death that we collectively mourn.

The attacks on Harvard are displacing no one. Its international pool is comprised of the privileged. They and all other students can go virtually anywhere they choose. Their preeminent faculty members would be welcomed at any of our community colleges. (Just thought I’d throw that in as a suggestion that would actually be helpful.)

But all over the country, homeless youth are finding hostility and shrinking resources. Public health facilities are closing and leaving millions without care. Reproductive health care is vanishing, leaving thousands with unwanted pregnancies and no resources to care for the children they will bear. Millions of children suffer from daily hunger in miserable living conditions.

The magnitude of this diffuse human suffering is incalculable. Most of American misery is invisible, except to the selfless folks who are trying to hold the shredded pieces of our national compassion together.

These violations of humanity should be screaming headlines every day until the complacent majority starts paying attention.

Harvard can take care of itself.

The post Harvard, Meh . . . appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Progressive? Not so much.

Last week Colorado Governor Jared Polis vetoed SB25-005, a so-called “union bill” that sought to eliminate a provision of an 82 year-old law dealing with collective bargaining.

Polis offered up a word salad to defend his veto, but it was mighty hard to swallow. Like other dishes on his faux-progressive menu, this was an example of progressive-lite, which to my tastes is rather like lite beer. Why bother?

His rationale, in a dry distillation, was that he wanted both parties to play nice and come to a bland compromise that he could sign without pleasing or infuriating anyone. In a drawn out era wherein labor strength has shriveled and corporate power is unfettered, a half-assed compromise is not what Colorado or the nation needs.

In the likely event that this issue is unfamiliar, here is the essence:

Forming a union is generally a two-step process. 30% of employees sign a supportive card, leading to a general election wherein 50% plus 1 – simple majority – vote “aye.”

The archaic Colorado law then requires a second election with a higher threshold – 75% –  in order to enable collection of union dues from all employees, whether they are pro-union or not.

This is not a new issue. For decades, pro-business forces have encouraged employees to opt out of paying union dues. “Not fair!” they complain. “I don’t like the union. Why should I have to pay dues?”

It matters not to the pro-business forces or the anti-union employees that all employees benefit from a union’s negotiating prowess. Higher wages, job security, worker safety, overtime protections . . . are afforded all employees. The union asserts that therefore all employees should contribute.

The “I didn’t vote for it so I don’t want to pay” position is emotionally appealing, I suppose. But this issue can only be viewed through the frame of a centuries-old tension between labor and wealth. The first union was formed in 1794, and without this movement small children would still be working 80-hour weeks in coal mines to power the locomotives of oligarchs.

Well, I embellish, but the labor movement has been an essential element in lifting workers out of poverty and danger. This libertarian-ish “I don’t wanna pay” rhetoric is just another card in the deck increasingly rigged in favor of corporate power.

To elucidate the principle at play here, here’s an imperfect but apt parallel.

Think of the United States as a large corporation (too true these days, I know). Our elections, at the national, state and local level, often present comparable tension. For the most part, whether referenda or candidate elections, a simple majority is required. Because of our representative democracy, these issues are often mediated through our elected leaders, who ostensibly express their voters’ will on matters where a simple majority also prevails.

It is thereafter not optional that we all pay our dues. When taxes are levied, one does not have the option to refuse on the basis that “I didn’t vote for this!” When a bond issues passes to improve schools, your childless neighbor antes up whether she likes it or not. There are no “second elections” called with a 75% requirement in order to enforce the majority mandate expressed in the first election.

You might imagine the utter chaos that would ensue. Congress enacts Social Security, every eligible American receives benefits, but a second vote requiring 75% fails, so y’all don’t have to pay into the system if you don’t like it. But go right ahead and cash that check.

Union membership and influence have steadily declined for decades. Much of this is due to conservative propaganda, temporary and contract work, and the greed which prompted corporations to exploit workers in other places – longer hours, lower pay, higher death rates. Those pesky unions just forced them to find places where those gilded age practices of the 19th century are still possible.

Damn it, when your head is being held under six feet of water, you don’t compromise by settling on three feet under. That’s what Polis and so many other so-called progressives are doing.

When you’re six feet under, you fight like mad and, if necessary, kick your oppressor in the nuts.

That’s where we are as a country. Drowning. It’s not time for mealy-mouthed compromise.

The post Word Salad From Jared Polis appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

The tension radiates from the head down.

At the top, sits the most profoundly ignorant and grotesque president in American history. Does engaging with him, in any way, normalize the abnormal?

There seem to be two distinct realms; the arguably necessary and the apparently entirely optional.

In the first realm are visits from the likes of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. Like it or not, the rotten head of our executive branch can make life miserable for other nations. Carney threaded the needle with great skill and emerged with his dignity intact, a feat no Republicans can manage. Carney was clear during his recent campaign that he had no affection for Trump and his absurd lust to annex Canada. His firm stand may have sealed his victory.

In the Oval Office meeting, Carney pleasantly absorbed Trump’s fawning gestures of friendship, yet directly dismissed the 51st state overtures. He did what he had to do, despite what I’m sure is deep disdain for Trump’s crude, boorish, unethical self.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been equally deft, even when JD Vance, Trump and others in the CCC (clown car cabinet) humiliated him in a White House ambush. Zelenskyy, even more than Carney and others, must walk a tightrope in the interest of his country.

There are other obvious examples of the arguably necessary.  But what about optional interactions?

I omit a class of optional ass-kissing, consisting of rich people who want to be richer. That class has too many members to count. One can only surmise that a majority of corporate or financial wizards is several levels of magnitude smarter than Trump and think him a pompous fool. But members of that same majority have likely splattered chunks of their integrity along the road to their conspicuous success. What’s a little more compromise when the payoff is so enticing?

A controversial case in point was comedian/arrogant pundit Bill Maher’s White House dinner. Maher characterized it as necessary in order to bridge the trench and stench of partisan divide in the country.

In response, comedian/writer and equally arrogant pundit Larry David penned a sharp New York Times essay titled “My Dinner With Adolf.” In David’s characteristically sardonic voice, the parody body-slammed Maher’s choice to sit with the oaf, hoping to either understand the monstrosity or set an example of getting to know your MAGA neighbor.

Another needless example was the April 28th White House event for the Super Bowl Champion Philadelphia Eagles. Some players declined, but made inoffensive excuses. No one, to my knowledge, said they refused to meet with a racist tyrant. Did management set some rules?

And finally, the optional-choices-once-removed.

Members of the Leonard Bernstein family co-authored a NYT piece justifying their decision to sanction performances of Bernstein’s works at the Kennedy Center in Washington. Other performers have opted out, not wanting to be associated with the Center following Trump’s self-appointment as Chairman and filling Board seats with an assemblage of sycophants.

Part of the family’s justification, rather presumptuously in my estimation, was that Lenny would have wanted his music played. As with some of his lesser compositions, that record is not clear. (Apologies for the mess of a double meaning.) Their other argument was that great musical works can be uplifting and/or carry meaning of value – even subversive – at a time of existential crisis. Shostakovich and Stalin come to mind. The difference, and a great distinction indeed, is that Shostakovich composed at the time of and in direct defiance of Stalin. Bernstein did no such thing.

Staying at a Trump hotel or playing at a Trump golf course would be among many other optional-once-removed examples.

And finally closer to home – literally. Should we visit with MAGA neighbors over the back fence or at neighborhood gatherings? Will that mend fences or change minds?

A reader may be grateful or confused by my failure to offer my own opinion, although a semi-astute glance might reveal it by way of my word choices.

FWIW, my words and actions would lean – run away – from any gesture that holds any risk of normalizing. I can say “hello” in response to a cheerful greeting from a MAGA neighbor, but no dinner date or neighborhood gathering. I would not play at the Kennedy Center or go to the White House.

Any person, with or without power or position, who supports this descent into undemocratic indecency, is complicit.

I seldom receive comments, but I would really like to hear from you. There are legitimate arguments on both sides.

The post What Would You Do? appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

WWJD?

This acronymic question adorns bumpers and bracelets across the nation. In the unlikely event that you are unaware, it stands for “What Would Jesus Do?”

I suppose one response is, “God only knows.”

I certainly don’t. If there was indeed a Jesus, in the biblical sense, what Jesus did or did not do is highly speculative. The notion of a historical Jesus is widely supported and a field of serious scholarship. I have neither the interest nor the patience to traverse even the modest Wikipedia entry, but be my guest.

The scholarship may or may not be accurate. Its veracity is questionable at least in so far as that various sources are contradictory. It reminds of one of my favorite quotes, from where long forgotten: “There are 7 (or choose a number) major religions and they can’t all be right.”

When judging the reliability of any historical record, one need only jump ahead several millennia and consider scholars excavating 2025 videos from Fox News or yellowed copies of the New York Post to understand that declaring any version of history accurate is a fool’s errand.

But allow me the grace to stipulate to the basic idea of the historical and the mystical Jesus: A modest man, living in relative poverty, filled with love and compassion, champion of the downtrodden and willing to risk all to speak truth to power.

So, I surely don’t know “What Jesus Would Do,” but I might hazard a guess at what Jesus would not do. Which takes us to the front page of the New York Times.

Two events reported with straight reportorial faces might qualify under the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s succinct definition of hard-core pornography: “I know it when I see it.”

A rather unfortunate word choice for a SCOTUS Justice, but we knew what he meant.

The events to which I refer both featured outlandish costumes, outsized egos, unseemly preening, extravagant surroundings, one with red carpets the other with blue, and accompanied by an absurd level of breathless excitement. Short of pornography, but bordering on the obscene.

One was the Met Gala.

The other? The conclave to choose a new pope.

To be fair to Catholicism, the conclave may only be runner-up in the race to commit more sins or violate more Commandments, but it’s a close call. Pride, greed, envy, lust, coveting, gluttony, idolatry . . . just to name a handful. Each event was chock full of ‘em.

The Catholic Church is the planet’s second largest real estate holder, bested only by Britain’s Royal Family. I don’t know which entity wins the precious gem contest, but they’re both in the bejeweled stratosphere. And perhaps on this one night, the Met Gala is in the running.

I dare say that Jesus, to my limited understanding, would assiduously avoid both events. The Met Gala would not let him through their velvet ropes even if he wished to visit for a moment. He would have been more likely among the Palestinian activists who were blithely ignored by the glittering entourage of social climbers.

The doings at the Vatican would either confuse or enrage the Prince of Peace, who would not be able to reconcile his gentle and modest teachings with the garish display of pride, gaudy red robes, contrived solemnity and political machinations.

Though Jesus probably couldn’t imagine Catholicism at all, he might have had a beer with the late Pope Francis. And lest my Catholic friends and family disown me, the social justice bona fides of Catholicism are admirable and practiced by many millions worldwide.

And how might we reconcile the front page coverage of both exorbitant indulgences in America’s so-called newspaper of record? Shuttled to the margins were the usual and normalized tragedies du jour. Children starving, natural disasters, the despoiling of Earth, our descent into fascism, unrelenting genocide in Gaza – I, and you, could go on.

According to the U.N., nearly 750 million people in the world go hungry every day. Half of children’s deaths are due to severe malnutrition. 9 million people die from hunger-related causes every year.

It just seems a lousy time for the Cardinals in Rome and the peacocks at the Met to preen and posture.

But, but, you say, “The Met Gala was for charity!” They raised $31 million!!

For costumes.

But at least women were allowed to attend that event.

The post What Jesus Wouldn’t Do appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Kennedy Schmennedy. Who needs the Kennedy Center when we have Erie’s Red Hawk Elementary School?

Donald Trump has kidnapped Washington’s Kennedy Center entirely, naming himself Chairman and installing such artistic luminaries as Lee Greenwood and Laura Ingraham as Trustees. Performances from Kid Rock and Ted Nugent can’t be far behind.

He may even traipse his birthday military parade through the center with a drill team of Proud Boys twirling AR-15s and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt leading a pom-pom troop wearing crucifix sweaters. Trump will head the parade in the popemobile, driven by Pete Hegseth, fueled by a few mimosas. Such patriotic fun!

But don’t despair! The arts are alive and well, including subversive theater.

This weekend, May 2nd and 3rd, the 4th and 5th graders from Red Hawk mounted a stirring performance of Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang.  Chitty, for short, is based on a book by Ian Flemng – yes, the James Bond guy – later adapted for stage and screen.

The performances were superb, although full disclosure that my grandson played Jeremy on Friday night may indicate a teeny-tiny bias. Herding several score of elementary school kids is no mean feat, and the lioness’s share of credit goes to music teacher Amy Abbott, who manages this feat every year, aided by a great crew of assistants and volunteers.

What these kids may lack in polish, they more than compensate for in enthusiasm and charm. Kennedy Center aside, I’d rather attend a children’s performance than a Broadway show any day of the week.

These kids worked all semester, rising before dawn for 7:30 rehearsals at least three days a week. It paid off. There were no botched lines or choreographic bobbles. The singing was brilliant, although not intonational perfection. The melody was always nearby and usually rediscovered. Delightfully costumed, mic’d-up and made-up, the roles were not indicated, they were inhabited – to use a bit of theater vernacular.

It is at some peril that I highlight any specific performers, as the lead roles were all played with great aplomb and confidence, especially since both nights played to a full house of 600 or so. How many of us could perform flawlessly for 600?

Peril be damned, the Baron and Baroness were hilarious and just over the top enough on both nights. (Different casts for different nights, with a few double-ups.) The pas de deux of evil spies mostly skulked on the stage perimeter, but hammed it up to a “T.” They could have been a skit to themselves.

The production was chock full of complex ensemble pieces, imaginative props and clever gags. Not a beat was missed, although, like the melodies, a few were dropped and picked up with a flourish.

Among my favorite moments were the frequent times an ensemble member would search the audience for family or friends in the midst of a song or dance number. You won’t see that on Broadway!

Why subversive theater?

Well, the evil empire in Chitty is Vulgaria. What name could better capture the spirit of the current administration, with its Vulgarian-in-Chief?

Vulgaria’s Baron is a fool. The Baroness hates children, so the regime will not tolerate children, especially those who arrive from distant places. Sound familiar? Taken in this light, the character called Child Catcher hauling off children in a cage was eerie.

Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang itself was vaguely reminiscent of a Cybertruck, what with its metal panels falling off.

I can imagine someone younger than I writing and staging a parody of the Trump administration based on Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. The Kennedy Center Board and its boundlessly ignorant Chairman would probably attend and completely miss the point. Trump would think he was Truly Scrumptious and his buddy Elon would see it as a glamorous Tesla ad.

But in the end, it was the children saving the day, overwhelming the bumbling fools of Vulgaria and flying home in Chitty-Chitty. Here, of course, the Cybertruck comparison fades, as no self-respecting never-Vulgarian would entrust children to a Cybertruck.

And isn’t that our great hope? That children will save the day?

On these two nights such hope seemed possible, thanks to Amy Abbott and the Red Hawk School community.

The post Chitty and the Children to the Rescue! appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

The most dangerous dimension of the right wing takeover of America is hiding in plain sight.

While illegal deportations, tariff idiocy, Hegseth incompetence, egg prices, ad infinitum . . .  dominate the headlines, the makeover of our education system is the most consequential threat we face.

I don’t mean the absurd attacks on higher education, although they are troubling. When (if) these storm clouds clear, Harvard and others will be just fine. In saner times, colleges and universities can quickly regain control of their own missions and destiny.

Primary and secondary education, not so much.

The impetus for this post is the case argued last week at the Supreme Court. Oklahoma has started an online Catholic school, directly funded by the state. You can visit the specifics of the case here.

Its essence is simple: Does a state-funded religious school violate the 1st Amendment’s prohibition on the government establishment of religion? During arguments, as might be expected, the liberal justices seemed to see it as a violation. Conservative justices, also true to form, found every possible kernel of nonsense to support the school. One specious argument, offered by Brett Kavanaugh, was that forbidding this direct support would be precedent to also forbid state funding of things like Catholic foster agencies. As if that is remotely similar.

The lawyers for the school cheerily noted that the school would be open to all faiths. I can just imagine the atheist, agnostic, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim families queuing up for early admission. And it is important to note that LGBTQ+ students and faculty are not welcome at this or other “Christian” schools, although they will surely be prayed for.

Heretofore, the slippery slope toward Christian nationalism in education has been lubricated only indirectly by the contrivance of passing money for religious schools through parents’ hands, using the appealing mantras of school choice and parental rights. The Oklahoma case will open the floodgates, permitting states to directly fund explicitly religious schools. The slippery slope will become a torrent.

This is the long game: Grassroots indoctrination.

My atheism is a tolerant sort. I, as true for most reasonable constitutional scholars, recognize the 1st Amendment’s elegant balance. It provides for both the freedom of religion and the freedom from religion. I honor any person’s faith experience, however befuddling it seems to me. I’m sure I befuddle aplenty too. But my tolerance ends when any faith intrudes on the public sphere, demanding that our laws and our citizens abide by religious dogma.

The real threat is not the dogma. It’s the abiding.

While many faith communities express and act on salutary progressive values, that is not what the architects of this strategy intend. It is not fear-mongering to suggest that the current Trump retribution tour is a hint of what comes next. Diversity, equity and inclusion – gone. Any hint of gender and sexual identity – gone. Accurate teaching of American history will be replaced by a Christian-centered fairy tale of American Exceptionalism. Reproductive rights, birth control and gay rights will be further assaulted.

Even the lawyers for the Catholic school in question acknowledged that all parts of the curriculum will be filtered through a Catholic lens. That Catholic filtering is nearly benign when compared to the fundamentalist, anti-science, hate-mongering schools that will line up at the public trough when the floodgates open in every state.

It is not that every child in America will be saturated in fundamentalist prayer water. But as seen in the current era, the fate of a liberal democratic republic hangs in the margins. Trump’s victory was the result of several hundred thousand votes in a nation of 340 million. The Christo-fascists don’t need everyone. They just need enough to never lose again.

Like Trump himself, many of this strategy’s engineers don’t give a tinker’s damn about religious freedom – or religion. They know full well that red states, like Oklahoma, are champing at the bit to establish conservative religious schools on the public dime. For years, the charter and choice movements have yearned for the wholesale demolition of a secular public system. This decision may pave the way for the wrecking balls to roll in.

Even if many states dodge the wrecking ball, generations of earnest little anti-science, Bible-soaked, low information, white nationalist voters will be escorted through the education pipeline.

They will ensure the perpetuity of the kinds of legislatures that fund the kinds of schools that produce the little voters that ensure their perpetuity. It is a devoutly vicious circle.

This is what I fear most. And if SCOTUS rules as I predict, I don’t know that it can be stopped.

The post Our Schools May Destroy Our Country appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

“Put a Little Love in Your Heart!”

This tune by Jackie DeShannon was a hit in 1969, later reprised by Annie Lennox and Al Green.

It was among the social anthems of a tumultuous era when the civic and cultural temperature was high. Anger over the war in Vietnam and racial resentment had the nation at a constant simmer, occasionally boiling over.

Assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. dampened hope, and optimism that had briefly surged in the mid-sixties was deeply submersed by the election of Tricky Dick Nixon.

It is paralleled by our time now, when the hope inspired by Barack Obama’s tenure was drowned in the surge of racial and cultural resentment that produced the most profane, incompetent and mean-spirited president in American history.

History is usually described by political eras and in policy or economic terms. I’ve never believed that this is accurate. History is actually written in broad social and cultural strokes. The economic or policy issues are almost incidental. This is why, for example, that a certain segment of the electorate will vote against their own interests. It’s not that they are too ignorant or stupid to understand the ramifications of their political actions. It’s that they don’t care.

That’s why Trump has succeeded. He knew, or the puppets pulling his strings knew, that all of politics is a culture war, not a battle of ideas and analysis. “Owning the libs” is the only objective of Republican politics. Egg prices, tariffs, Panama, Greenland and most of DOGE activities are a sideshow. A dangerous and damaging sideshow to be sure, but not in the center ring for most conservatives. They are just happy that the libs are finally getting screwed and getting it good and hard.

It’s the libs at Columbia, the libs at Harvard, the libs at the Kennedy Center, the libs at the Smithsonian, the libs in the media, the smug eggheads in NIH, the lib know-it-alls in major law firms . . .

Trump’s cabinet members are all – every single one of them – second rate posers. It is laughable to watch a faux tough guy like Pistol Pete Hegseth preening around in his fashionable mod suits, heading up chats that are insecure in every meaning of the word.

Watching the incompetence was surpassed only by the disgust I felt at the Signal chat glee expressed when their bombs blew innocent civilians to bits. The emojis were like a celebration of a middle school football victory. I have no affection for Houthis and have no insight into whether the strikes were useful or necessary. But killing any humans, much less innocent bystanders, should be a somber and sobering experience, not cause for whooping it up.

Watching Mike Waltz, insecure Director of National Security, explaining how a journalist got into a classified chat about the execution of a war plan was like listening to a dog-less child explain how the dog ate his homework.

It is only in an environment like this that a nasty little prick like Stephen Miller could weasel his way into a position of influence. Or a clearly lightweight blonde princess out of a parody of 90210 could stand at the podium in the White House briefing room.

It is amateur hour in Washington all around.

Imagine if a group of giddy high school kids took to the Broadway stage as the cast of Hamilton. Or if the tipsy winners of a corner bar’s karaoke contest mounted a production of Madame Butterfly at the Metropolitan Opera.

In addition to the DEI purges, the trans hatred, the bumbling chat sessions, the Elon Chain Saw Massacre, the masked men capturing legal residents on street corners and the full disassembly of public schools . . . these lib-owning doofuses seem committed to removing every competent human from government service. Ya see, real competence embarrasses them.

So, having gotten that off my chest, what to do? There is an encouraging upswing in activism to join or support. But many folks I know are choosing to back away a little from the endless torrent of psychological sewage.

I think when all else seems grim or hopeless, take Jackie DeShannon’s advice. Put a little love in your heart.

Several times a week my wife and I go to the elementary school to pick up our grandson. Watching small children swinging through a playground can even make a troubled heart smile.

We may not be able to stop these nasty dilettantes from changing the country. But we can’t let them change us.

It is time to hold our loved ones, especially children, close.

The post Put a Little Love in Your Heart appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Back in the day – way back – I was tangentially involved in civic affairs in Cleveland, Ohio. The city had been unfairly tarred with slogans like “The Mistake on the Lake.” It didn’t help that the Mayor had caught his hair on fire, the Cuyahoga River had caught fire, and none of Cleveland’s sports teams had caught fire.

The Greater Cleveland Growth Association (aka Chamber of Commerce) initiated a new branding (gawd, how I despise “branding”) campaign to reinvigorate tourism and convention booking. Among other silliness, they called Cleveland the “North Coast.” Ya know, the surfing and sunny brilliance of Lake Erie, which had not caught fire, but was trying very hard.

(Disclosure: I lived in Cleveland or thereabouts for 24 years and adore the underrated city.)

The centerpiece of rebranding was a short promotional film, funded by the Cleveland Foundation. The Growth Association and Foundation held a gala luncheon to preview the film for the press, all of Cleveland’s luminaries and a few not-so-luminary folks like me.

It was introduced with great fanfare. The high-gloss presentation made Cleveland look like Paris, Lake Erie like the Mediterranean, and the Cleveland Indians like the Yankees.

As the lights came back on, the Growth Association Chair, Cam Elliott, invited questions from the press. A reporter from the Call and Post, one of the nation’s last remaining Black newspapers, rose to his feet. As well as I can recall:

“The film is lovely. But why, when the city of Cleveland is 80% Black, was there not one Black person in the film?” You could have heard a flea fart.

To his credit, Cam Elliott did not stammer, stumble or deny. He immediately apologized and said the film would be remade to better reflect the whole city.

I recall this to contrast the brouhaha with the Colorado Board of Regents and its sole Black member Wanda James.

James recently reacted to a state-funded marijuana education campaign called “The Tea on THC,” produced by the Colorado School of Public Health at CU’s Anschutz Medical Campus. The images embedded in Tea on THC were all Black faces. She was rightfully and righteously indignant that the dangers of high potency weed were associated so obviously with race. For background, consider that marijuana use is higher among us white folks, so the caricature was as wrong as it was offensive.

She complained to Governor Polis and the University. The images were pulled but a debate about the program’s funding yielded no significant change.

The germane point is that the Board of Regents is investigating her (!) with potential censure at stake. The claim is that she has a conflict of interest in that she is the pioneering Black founder of Simply Pure marijuana dispensary and that The Tea on THC would harm her business and thus clouded her objections and alleged efforts to stop or redirect the funding.

James is no shrinking violet. She has described the investigation as a “public lynching” aimed at her because, as the Denver Post reported,  “I called those images out and they’re upset. The Board of Regents at CU has decided to be judge, jury and executioner for the sole Black woman on the board for speaking out on racist tropes.”  As to “public lynching,” I can assure you that James is no fan of Clarence Thomas. The similarity stops there.

I know James only from news reports and one long conversation when I interviewed her for Yellow Scene Magazine during the Regents campaign. On both scores, I believe her to be highly principled, gracious, and uncompromising. The notion that she took this stance to make a buck is ludicrous and offensive.

CU Board of Regents Chair Callie Rennison and Vice Chair Ken Montera, who called for the investigation, are white. Oddly, Rennison is the Director of Equity, and Title IX Coordinator at the University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus. You might think she would know better.

So, James is investigated and the chain of decision-makers who produced the vile images fade into the background. That should be the story.

Almost 50 years later and here we are. In one case, no Black faces where there should have been many. In the other, only Black faces where there should have been few.

In 1976 Cleveland, Cam Elliott had it right. “I’m sorry. We should have known better.”

In 2025 Denver, it’s a Black woman getting the heat.

The post A Public Lynching appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

The Constitution is thus preambled. Of particular note is that “establish Justice” is preeminent.

The preamble and the whole of the Constitution might make valuable reading for Jeff Bezos and his obscenely wealthy peers.

This week David Shipley, the long-time opinion editor of Bezos’s Washington Post, resigned when Bezos refocused the Post’s editorial stance on “personal liberties and free markets.” Although I cancelled my subscription in the wake of previous journalistic abominations, this takes the cake. It is no longer a credible newspaper, just a very elaborate newsletter for The Federalist Society.

This particular journalistic abomination is no trivial matter as it reflects a fundamental shift in our republic. The shift is semantically represented in Bezos’s announcement, but more broadly represented in our politics, jurisprudence and common belief.

“Personal liberties” are nearly diametrically opposed to “Justice,” as understood by our founders. Personal liberty is, by definition, a solitary notion. Justice is a collective commitment. Personal liberty should be confined by justice. Justice should not be violated by personal liberty.

A gradual shift from justice to personal liberty began with St. Reagan in 1981 and has accelerated recently to a point where there is so much “liberty” that justice is vanishing. What had been a careful, constantly recalibrated balance between personal liberty and social justice is now a scale rusted in permanent imbalance.

Examples of how far we’ve shifted are plentiful. The most excruciating example is found in the twisted interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. Here, the personal liberty to possess and employ deadly weapons overrides any notion of justice as a collective commitment.

As practiced by Jeff Bezos et al, the personal liberty to amass enormous wealth has been accompanied by well-crafted propaganda characterizing “taxation” as “confiscation.” Whether expressed as trickle down economics or entrepreneurial spirit, the P.T. Barnum “sucker born every minute” aphorism has been increasingly apt.

Another way to express this is the idiom, “Waiting for my ship to come in.” That ship was never likely to arrive, but now all the ships and ports are owned by oligarchs.

The implicit promise is that everyone can be like Jeff! Pie growth is infinite and everyone can have a larger slice!  History shows that regardless of the pie’s size, the heaping platefuls are reserved for the few and the rest of the suckers fight over the crumbs. The chasm between rich and poor has never been greater. Here are a few pie charts to accentuate the point (couldn’t resist).

The second part of the Bezos approach to journalism is the utter nonsense of “free markets.” The irony of Jeff Bezos celebrating free markets is magnificent. He has done more than virtually anyone in the world to decimate free markets by creating a de facto monopoly. Now, at least on the editorial side, he has established the Washington Post as a propaganda instrument in service of his sprawling economic empire.

The concentration of wealth created by the turn to Reaganomics has been further abetted by the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United. Now the wealthiest among us not only have the personal liberty to dominate the economy, but also have the unfettered right to buy the politicians who will secure that liberty for them in perpetuity. It is a protection racket that would make Al Capone proud.

Yes, justice must confine personal liberty. It may seem contradictory, but a free society can only endure through the collective acceptance of constraints.

It is an open question whether ours will endure.

But Jeff Bezos will be just fine.

The post Liberty? Or Justice For All appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

The publisher of Yellow Scene recently identified the owner of our neighborhood bike shop as a MAGA sort. She alleged that he scoffed at diversity issues, trans rights and was otherwise rude and dismissive in dealings with her.

I will seek confirmation of her allegations, but I have no immediate reason to doubt. If true, this will lead me to a small personal boycott, even though I enjoy the convenience and have had pleasant experiences there.

This one is easy, as everything they sell and services they provide are available within 10-12 miles, including at REI, a co-op with great values and value.

Virtue signaling? I suppose so, although I’ve always wondered why signaling virtue is a bad thing. If the signals are not linked to action, I guess criticism is merited. But I suspect that those who “signal” also do.

Signaling virtue may draw snide retorts from the virtue-free conservative opposition, but has another salutary effect. It sets an example to emulate, signals a cause to join, and may raise an issue others have not noticed. Boycotting a small business is small potatoes, but it is a start.

During my many decades of progressive inclination and progressive exhortations, I’ve never entered ethical calculations into the majority of my economic choices. In recent years I’ve assiduously avoided the homophobic leaders Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby and shifted my home maintenance shopping from the odious Home Depot to the slightly more reasonable Lowes, but for the most part have been indiscriminate.

Now, as we wobble on the precipice of autocracy and watch our democratic norms crumble, these ethical calculations seem more urgent. I wish it was as simple as bike shop boycotts and avoiding mediocre fast food. But it is not.

Unless one has the strength and circumstances to live off the grid, in all senses of the phrase, ethical compromise is inevitable. The tentacles of corporate greed are all around us. As an older couple with the usual array of maladies we are at the mercy of Big Pharma and corporate health care. There is no realm of life where total avoidance of corrupt corporate practices is possible.

But we can and should try our best.

Many good folks have begun assembling lists of the good and bad actors in various business sectors.

Here is a piece about companies who continued or discontinued diversity initiatives since Trump’s ascension.

Here’s a Newsweek report on Trump financial supporters.

At the end of this post is a long list by sector of companies that contributed to Trump’s campaign or inauguration. I cannot attest to its accuracy or completeness, but it can be a reference to start your own review of spending choices.

I strongly urge you to visit The People’s Union USA and join the boycotts they organize or support. If you visit their Command Center, you will find details about a February 28th total boycott and several specific weeklong actions, including against Amazon and its many subsidiaries. You may be surprised how much you are unknowingly contributing to Jeff Bezos.

And, of course, do everything in your power to enfeeble Elon Musk, although we are all but gnats trying to dent an elephant’s ass. I see that there are Tesla owners with bumper stickers like “bought it before we knew how awful he was.”  Now that’s virtue signaling I can disdain. Sell the damn car then. Or drive it over a cliff just like Elon is driving our country over a cliff.

Anyone who owns a Cybertruck is beyond hope, so just don’t let your children near the monstrosity or its owner.

When this reaches my wife’s inbox, she’ll challenge me to put my money where my mouth is. Fair enough.  We, like other concerned folks, should at least look at where we can do better.

I expect we’ll at least support the People’s Union boycotts.

And I know where I’m not getting my much needed mountain bike overhaul.

The List

Cars

Buick

Cadillac

Chevrolet

GMC

Hendrick Motorsports

Home-Goods

Ace Hardware

Ashley Furniture

Dirt Devil

Farberware

George Foreman Grill

Hoover Vacuum

My Pillow

Oreck Vacuums

Stanley Black and Decker Hardware

Stiletto Tools

Toast Master

Electronics

Boost Mobile

Garmin Sports Products

Motorola

Groceries

Chiquita Brands

Dean Foods

Dole Foods

Folgers

Land o’ Lakes

Martins Famous Pastry Shoppes

Purdue Farms

Publix

Smucker’s Products

Automotive

ArmorAll

Auto Zone

Discount Tire

NAPA Auto Parts

Shell Oil

Sunoco

Turtle Wax

Travel Services

Allegiant Air

Horizon Bank

Las Vegas Sands

Norwegian Cruise

Omni Hotels

Wynn Resorts

Clothing

Anthropologie

Brooks Shoes

Champ Clothing

Hanes

Marshalls

L.L. Bean (likely just one family member donated)

Leggs Pantyhose

Soma Intimates

TJ Maxx

Urban Outfitters-Free People

Restaurants

Arby’s

Baskin and Robbins

Buffalo Wild Wings

Carls Jr.

Cinnabon

Dairy Queen

McDonald’s

Papa John’s

Schlotzsky’s

Wendy’s

Retail

ACE Hardware

Marshalls

Sierra Trading Post

TJ Maxx

Walmart

Underwear

Bali Underwear

Fruit of the Loom

Hanes

Leggs Pantyhose

Maidenform Underwear

Playtex

Soma Intimates

Alcohol

Bacardi

Coors Beer

Grey Goose

Miller Beer

Milwaukee’s Best Beer

Molson Beer

Tito’s Vodka (Tito’s claims they do not support any politician)

Sports Teams

Arizona Diamondbacks

Buffalo Bills

Los Angeles Angels

New Orleans Saints

NY Yankees

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Miscellaneous

1800 Flowers.com

Bausch + Lomb

Big Heart Pet Brands

Fruit Bouquets.com

Harderg Diamonds

Keller Williams Realty

Public Storage

Rayovac

The Popcorn Factory

Wow! Cable

Vanity Fair Paper Products

Rental Cars

Alamo Rental Cars

Enterprise Rental Car

The post Use Your Dollars Wisely appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Well, just when you think the man can’t be any more offensive . . .

In a rambling set of remarks on Thursday, Donald Trump blamed Wednesday night’s tragic plane/helicopter crash on DEI. In the relentless MAGA campaign against any form of social justice there is nothing that cannot be blamed on DEI, CRT or transgender women and men.

This needless and cruel absurdity was accompanied by the release of another executive order, this one with a sweeping mandate to remove any wisps of DEI, CRT, gender fluidity, white privilege, structural racism or unconscious bias from America’s schools. In their stead, schools must inculcate patriotism and American exceptionalism and give the Christian God His rightful place in the classroom.

The Order also encouraged aggressive expansion of vouchers, so Americans can escape the recalcitrant public schools and send their children to a school that already does all of those nice “Christian-y” things.

I’ve frequently written about the conservative campaign to eliminate any and all vestiges of the civil rights era. By attacking the 1619 Project, dismantling affirmative action and making patently false claims about DEI and CRT, they express what appears to be pent-up frustration felt by a plurality of Americans. Whenever life seems unfair or difficult for white folks, the resentment toward what they see as racial preference soars. I’ve used the crude phrase “shit slides downhill” to characterize this phenomenon. It is a historic truth that those who feel dumped on by life are the most inclined to dump on others.

The “patriotism” demanded by the executive order exemplifies a very narrow and ultimately dangerous concept. Patriotism itself is problematic. Love of country can, I suppose, be rooted in appreciation for and understanding of the elegance of our system and the principles on which it was founded. But the “patriotism” implicit in the MAGA movement is not about those things. It is a demand for conformity and unquestioning allegiance, two notions that are diametrically opposed to the imperfect beauty of our democratic republic. Every step of progress over our 249 year history has come from rejecting conformity and demanding that our allegiance be earned.

While the analogy may seem forced, the relationship between citizen and state cannot be like like an arranged marriage. Love is a choice, not a command. It should be self-evident that no person can be instructed to love another. It is only through knowing, questioning, examining and challenging one another that real love can emerge and be sustained. And so it is, or should be, with love of country.

Like personal love, love of country has reciprocal obligations. A democracy is a sprawling community with expectations that we both participate in and benefit from the arrangements that we agree upon. It is part contract, in the sense of the Constitution and body of laws to which we stipulate, and part social contract, in the sense of the extra-legal understandings that guide our community values and social relationships. As with personal relationships, neighborhoods, towns and cities, national harmony is possible only to the extent that the arrangements provide reasonably for the needs and aspirations of the community’s members.

Our trajectory as a country reveals undulating progress, where imbalances that threatened the community were addressed by revolt, redress, recalibration and reconciliation. These things include the end of slavery, sliding back into Jim Crow, moving forward toward voting rights and civil rights, and now sliding back into an insincere complacency where conservatives are screaming “Enough already!”

That undulating progress continues only if the coming generations are encouraged to be loving critics, not compliant minions. Loving criticism demands honesty and transparency. The absolute worse thing for children is to pledge thoughtless devotion to a God, a flag or a nation. They should not required to say our country is “exceptional” when they can see that it is not. They should be encouraged to acknowledge their “white privilege” so that they might be willing to yield now and then. Believe me, kids of color have no problem identifying white privilege!

I find the broad rejection of DEI to be infuriating and bewildering. Diversity, equity and inclusion are prime among the aspirations that have animated nearly every bit of progress that might make the United States admirable. And this is what our government, with eager complicity among so-called progressives, is banishing.

If our kids must pledge something, how about this:

I pledge allegiance to the ongoing project to create a beloved community, founded on the principles of liberty, justice, diversity, equity and inclusion for all.

The post Pledge of Allegiance appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Sometimes a picture is worth more than a thousand words. I’ll write the words too, because the pressure of my disgust needs relief.

The world saw a powerful display of speaking truth to power on Tuesday at the National Cathedral. Bishop Maryann Budde ended her sermon, looked directly at Donald Trump and gently, simply, asked him to show mercy toward our society’s most vulnerable. In the highly unlikely event that you’ve not viewed the video, I urge you to watch it here.

It is necessary to emphasize what she did not say. She did not insult, attack or demean Trump, his family members in attendance, or his political allies and supporters. She did not speak in opposition to any policy or political act.

She did ask for mercy and kindness, emphasizing the people, especially young people, who are currently afraid. She bravely included gay and transgender children, who fear the possible consequences of policy proposals and mean-spirited rhetoric. As you are likely aware, one unnecessarily cruel executive order erased transgender humans from existence.

Her most elaborate invitation was mercy for millions of immigrant workers who work the fields, prepare the food, and care for the youngest and oldest among us. She asked that this grace be extended to those with and without proper documentation. She did not propose amnesty or sanctuary. She merely asked for human kindness and understanding.

In an effort to connect the president with the nature of her request, she alluded to his own statements about the hand of God having intervened on his behalf when a bullet grazed his ear in a Pennsylvania field. Surely a man who felt the hand of a loving God in such a providential way would see the goodness of extending God’s grace to frightened children and to parents anticipating the terrible possibility of splintered families.

Surely not.

For contrast, I offer a partial list of the actions and intentions from Trump’s first days in office.

Immediate mobilization of the military to the Mexican border.

Termination of birthright citizenship for innocent children born and raised in the U.S.

Pardons or commutations for violent felons, including child molesters, involved in the January 6 insurrection attempt.

Suspend the Refugee Admissions Program

Bar asylum for people newly arriving at the southern border.

Resume a policy requiring people seeking asylum to wait in Mexico

Ensure that states carrying out the death penalty have a “sufficient supply” of lethal injection drugs.

Cuts in Medicaid for the poorest Americans

There are many more where, as often observed, the cruelty is the point.

Trump’s response was predictable. He demanded an apology. He said her sermon was “nasty.” Women who say anything slightly critical are always “nasty.” He called her a “ so-called Bishop” and a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater.”

That response was not what drove bile to the back of my throat. It was the facial expressions captured by the camera trained on the first pews. Trump was, at first, impassive. As her gentle but insistent words landed, impassivity turned to smirk. Melania looked dark, but usually seems without life or love. J.D. Vance raised his eyebrows and tried to engage Usha with a “Can you believe this?” whisper. Other Trumps – Eric, Don Jr., Ivanka, Tiffany and their families – fidgeted and looked irritated and incredulous. All these people, minus the “converted” Ivanka, claim to be Christians.

The contrast between this entitled, mean-spirited, arrogant, smug, ceaselessly ambitious and intentionally cruel assemblage and the modest, gentle woman at the pulpit was remarkable. For any person with a heart, the heartlessness was heartbreaking.

At a time of great human suffering, a group of the most powerful and privileged people on Earth cannot accept a dignified request to go about their lives and work with care and compassion for least powerful and privileged. She asked only that. Nothing more. Nasty woman.

I have no respect for anyone who supports and enables this callously inhumane regime.

The post Preaching Truth To Power appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Dear Pete,

I watched your confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Forces Committee with great interest, Don’t feel either singled out or special. I watch everything on Earth with great interest.

It was somewhat disappointing to hear your regular references to me. First, I have no place in the secular proceedings of Congress, as my inclusion contradicts the 1st Amendment of your Constitution. The fact that such contradictions are increasingly commonplace makes them more, not less, problematic.

Two aspects of your testimony were particularly troubling.

As you know, perhaps, the Bible refers to me as the Prince of Peace. I’m actually not a biblical literalist, as it gets many things wrong, but that part is essentially accurate. It is, therefore, deeply troubling that you uttered the words “warrior” and “lethal” throughout your answers. While justifications for war are seldom convincing, your posture and rhetoric were those of a man spoiling for a fight; your right, I suppose, but not a personal or professional quality with which I wish to be associated.

If you know your Bible, this may be familiar:

“For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;
   And the government will rest on His shoulders;
   And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
   Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.”

I am that son.

While, God forbid, the government does not rest on My shoulders, it may partially rest on yours. I fear your inclinations seem more belligerent than peaceful.

The other thing that troubled me deeply was your apparent belief that I have offered or could offer you redemption.

“I have failed in things in my life, and thankfully I’m redeemed by my lord and savior Jesus.”

I might offer the retort,”Who says so?” Your public assertion, reverting to my original faith, takes a lot of chutzpah.

But let us stipulate that I can offer redemption. Given that redemption, whether through good works, 12-step programs or profound honesty and remorse, is possible, you have not earned such grace. (By the way, the claim that I could turn water to wine was metaphorical, not a suggestion to drink wine like water.)

In response to questions about your serial infidelities, sexual assault and many episodes of public and private drunkenness, you could only say, “Anonymous smear.” While that might have served as cover for your MAGA enablers, the so-called “smears” are not anonymous. Inconveniently for you, at least as redemption goes, I remind you that I’ve seen it all – and I don’t mean that in the, “Well, now I’ve seen it all!” sense. I’ve actually seen it all.

The victims of your aggressions, assaults and indecency were absent in the testimony, both by affidavit or by any acknowledgment or statement of remorse on your part. And to think that you dodged those issues in part by alluding to a child born of your affair with a mistress while married! Chutzpah on steroids.

Frankly, I’m quite tired of you mortals sliding by through false and convenient piety. The whole Catholic confession thing was not my idea, but a rather transparent “get out of jail free” exercise. It is particularly galling that in the gradual contortions of Christianity, only priests can gain absolution, which is rather like an unconditional pardon. I trust that you recognize the injustice in a system of belief that offers such relief only to the men who have committed the most venal of sins – molesting innocent children.

I did find the tribute to your wife quite touching. I hope you meant it, but for her sake I also hope for an airtight prenuptial agreement.

“Thank you to my incredible wife Jennifer, who has changed my life and been with me throughout this entire process. I love you sweetheart, and I thank God for you. And as Jenny and I pray together each morning, all glory—regardless of the outcome—belongs to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. His grace and mercy abound each day. May His will be done.”

Being somewhat of a deist myself, the “outcome” to which you refer is not in my hands. But if My will were to be done, a misogynist, dishonest, serial womanizing, uncontrollable alcoholic would never be in close proximity to nuclear weapons.

Love,

Jesus

The post Dear Pete, appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Last week a Kentucky federal judge struck down the Biden administration’s effort to extend Title IX protections to transgender students. The issue driving the ruling was the expectation that teachers and administrators use a student’s preferred pronouns.

Republican backlash over the proposed protections was centered on the 1st Amendment, with critics insisting that no person should be compelled to say anything they don’t want to say. It is, apparently, a excruciating experience for some adults to say “they,” “them,” “he,” “she,” “him,” “her,” “their, “his,” “hers,” or any grammatical variation thereof. Oh, the agony!

The most offensively ironic aspect of the ruling and its celebration by conservatives is that they claimed that the Biden proposal would threaten other provisions of Title IX. This sudden and profound concern for the rights of women and girls follows the Dobbs decision and the incoming administration’s many advocates for male supremacy and the re-kitchenization of American women. Concern for women and girls is not top of mind for Trump et al.

There are more issues to unbundle with the judge’s decision and its aftermath than space allows, but I’ll give it a partial try. The dialogue is awash in red herrings.

In recent Congressional testimony, the Commissioner of the NCAA estimated that there are about 500,000 NCAA athletes. When pressed, he acknowledged that he was aware of about 10 transgender athletes. The fetid flood of conservative angst over locker room use or unfair advantage given to hormone-riddled coeds is utter nonsense. The NCAA, or a sanctimonious conservative bigot, could build a separate field house for each of the 10 if they are so deeply concerned about an inadvertent glimpse of unexpected genitalia.

And the idea that young folks are undergoing transition therapy or surgery in droves is entirely conservative propaganda. What is happening in “droves” are school shootings, which neither party has the balls (or ovaries) to do a damn thing about. But those trans kids running into poor, innocent girls soccer teams!!  Scour the internet (not fact-free and feckless social media) and find me one – 1 – uno case of a trans kid hurting another athlete.

As to “free speech” under threat, one can innumerate endless daily compulsion of speech in schools. Start with the Pledge of Allegiance. Yes, I know it is theoretically possible to opt out, but show me a kid in Texas, for example, with the cojones to stick her hands in his pockets and zip up their lips while the other more patriotic kids mouth the words “to witches stand” with their hands dutifully over her heart. Catch the pronoun use? It caused me no anguish whatsoever to cover all the identity bases in one fell swoop.

What about the compulsion to use various honorifics despite the abundant evidence that they are undeserved. “Yes, sir!” “Yes Ma’am!”

Or the Hitler Youth level of prescribed chanting required by students and teachers in some of America’s charter schools.

In response to the NYT article about the judge’s ruling, the supposedly “liberal” members of the Times’s readership weighed in heavily in favor of the overdue rejection of wokeness. The volume of insistence on biological binary was deafening. A few charitable cluck-clucks were offered to the poor misguided transgender misfits but, by God, nobody should have to honor another person’s chosen pronouns.

For decades -still in some primitive quarters –  homosexuality was a “choice,” “lifestyle,” or “preference.” Given the historic hostility to gay folks, it always seemed an odd choice or preference. For millions around the world, living this reality has been frightening and dangerous. Now it’s gender identity characterized as a perverse “choice” or “preference.” For the trans folks I know, the only thing harder than this “choice” was living in the wrong identity.

The biological, social and cultural dynamics of gender identity are undoubtedly complex. Even on the athletic level there are sincere concerns about fair competition, especially since hormones and various substances can confer an unfair advantage, completely aside from gender identity. But, as mentioned above, the number of controversial cases is vanishingly near zero. The political and cultural hullabaloo is about bigotry, not biology.

At the center of the legal case, and the issue generally, is a fundamental lack of kindness. I find it nearly incomprehensible that anyone would experience discomfort by extending courtesy to another human by referring to them by the name or pronoun of choice.

When I served as head of a school, the expectation of simple kindness was the operative ethical principle. It is so easy to extend a moment of generosity, especially to a child who might most need it.

I suggest that teachers who find discomfort in honoring a student’s or colleague’s pronouns find another profession.

The post Just Don’t Call Me Late To Dinner appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

O Canada!

Our home and native land!

True patriot love in all of us command.

With glowing hearts we see thee rise,

The True North strong and free!

From far and wide,

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

God keep our land glorious and free!

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

My roots are partially planted in Canadian soil.

I met my wife in Windsor, Ontario and we married there not long thereafter. We lived in Windsor briefly in 1971 and in the U.S. forever thereafter. She has retained Canadian citizenship, in part because the Vietnam debacle loomed large, activating the possibility of Canadian shelter. The possibility of Canadian shelter has since been a constant theme, although work and family kept us in the U.S.

Only by serendipity, our daughter also married a Canadian, although that was, unfortunately, not forever after. Their daughter now has dual citizenship, attended a Canadian university, and is now a second year law student in Vancouver, British Columbia. I suspect she will not again grace the United States with her sublime presence, except to visit now and then.

Our amoral, ignorant, felon-in-chief has suggested annexing Canada as the 51st state. Trump claimed on his Truth Social platform that “many people in Canada LOVE being the 51st state.” Many Canadian commenters think he’s joking or bluffing, including the threats to impose crippling tariffs.

Trump’s blathering imperialistic threats are like some reasonable Christian’s views of the Bible. Paraphrasing, I suggest that the threats needn’t be taken literally to be taken seriously.

(Although taking the threats seriously doesn’t preclude humor. Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo suggested renaming the United States “Mexican America” after Trump offered up the “Gulf of America.”)

To twist the famous retort with which Lloyd Bentsen deflated Dan Quayle, “Believe me Donald, I know Canadians and they do not LOVE Canada being the 51st state.”  Even Canada’s Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, pegged as likely successor to Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister, agreed with Trudeau’s view: “Canada will never be the 51st state.” Poilievre might well be described as Trump with a smaller body and bigger brain, so he’s not stupid enough to fully align with someone as irredeemably ignorant as Donald.

Trump’s Monopoly Board ambitions also include Greenland and the Panama Canal. Here too, there is no roll of the dice that make those annexations probable. Trump’s bluster has always been bullshit. His real estate “empire” in New York and elsewhere has been largely comprised of developers that paid a licensing fee to slap his name on a building erected and managed by others. His erections have always been less significant than advertised.

The danger to Canada is not annexation. The danger is, and always has been, cultural and economic suffocation. And, to that extent, systems of government and sovereignty are almost incidental. The behemoth to Canada’s south needs no invasion to dominate its northern neighbor. It just needs unwitting cooperation. And that seems to be forthcoming.

Doug Ford, Ontario’s Progressive Conservative (??) Premier, pooh-poohs Trump’s threats, but is eager to succumb to the temptations of mutual greed, especially when it comes to energy. Perhaps not Trump himself, who has neither knowledge nor ideology, but his behind-the-scenes co-conspirators lust for Canada’s resources. They are not interested in poutine, maple syrup, curling or vast swathes of nearly uninhabitable tundra. They want oil, timber, water, minerals and more.

Even though the U.S. currently produces more crude oil than any other country, Canada’s reserves are 5 times – 5 times! – greater. Trump et al are ignorant about many things, but prescient when it comes to wealth. Our past foreign policy has had some balance, but the present and future is more about raiding someone else’s pantry after we’ve eaten everything in our own and essentially burned down the house when we finished. Los Angeles anyone? If you think current wildfires are not related to oil, money, greed and global warming, I’ve got a Trump Bible to sell you.

Yes, Trump is just doing his trademark bullying, using economic threats like tariffs and geopolitical “threats” about annexation to cut favorable deals for the U.S. and plunder Canadian resources and soil Canadian culture with the cheap bangles he’s used to dazzle his ignorant supporters.

So beware, you few Canadians who think Trump or Trump’s America seems a dandy prospect. His American supporters are, for the most part, stupid, believing that he wants to make America Great Again when he really just wants their money. That’s what he wants from you too.

Resist, resist!  Remember, nothing good has ever come from getting into bed with Donald Trump.

The post Oh? Canada? appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

“He annoyed the right people.”

This anonymous tribute to Jimmy Carter was buried in the mounds of commentary following Carter’s death on December 29th. As the world knows, he slipped into eternity in the gap between his 100th birthday and the looming inauguration of Donald Trump. The prospect of Donald Trump presiding over his funeral may have convinced his stubborn body and soul to get on with the transition.

Conventional wisdom is always conventional but seldom wise. In this case, the conventional view is that his presidency was a failure and that his post-presidency was quite noble. Half right, as his post-presidential grace, dignity, and tireless work for peace are historically peerless. Even – especially – after leaving the White House, he “annoyed the right people.”

But the dismal view of his presidency has been inaccurate and unfair. Threads of a fairer assessment run through the recollections and reconsiderations offered on his death.

Readers can find thorough recounting of his remarkable life elsewhere. I offer perspective, not biography, although the arc can be scribed simply enough.

Poor boy excelled, attended Naval Academy, rose to Navy Lieutenant, retired, returned to peanut farming, entered politics, served Georgia as State Senator and Governor, elected president in 1976 against long odds, defeated by Ronald Reagan in 1980, returned to his modest home in Plains, Georgia, established the Carter Center, built houses and performed other good works, here and abroad, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and navigated a 77-year marriage to Rosalynn, a feat of durable love he called his “greatest life accomplishment.”

His presidency, as often the case with presidencies, was plagued by factors not of his making or fully within his control. Inflation, long lines at gas stations and the Iran hostage affair were unfairly placed at his feet. As with presidents Obama and Biden, Carter inherited the slop left by Republican predecessors. The 1981 Iran hostage release was deviously manipulated to make Carter the goat and Reagan the hero.

On the positive side of the ledger, Carter’s negotiation of the Camp David Accords and the subsequent Egypt-Israel peace treaty are universally praised. Also noteworthy is the establishment of Departments of Education and Energy and his prescient, yet often thwarted, commitment to energy conservation and investment in energy alternatives. He negotiated SALT II, a nuclear arms reduction agreement, with Leonid Brezhnev.

Yes, Carter “annoyed the right people” and that partially led to his 1980 defeat. “Annoying the right people” means annoying those who most need to be annoyed. But annoying the people who most need it can quickly turn on a guy. Strategically, Carter annoyed the wrong people in that some who needed annoyance were establishment Democrats who therefore sabotaged his political ambitions.

On the largest scale, he annoyed the American people when, in a 1979 speech, he spoke of a national malaise, a growing disrespect for the structures of democracy and a turn toward “. . . worship of self-indulgence and consumption.”

He promised to tell the truth, but facing the truth can set you free or piss you off. Pissed-off Americans elected Ronald Reagan in a landslide, because he told them what they wanted to hear rather than what they needed to hear. And we’ve never been the same.

While Clinton and Obama were reasonable centrists (one quite more dignified than the other), they too were carried along in the same steady, fetid stream of consumerism. Since 1980, there has not been a crisis we couldn’t shop our way out of. Carter was the first – and only, to my knowledge – president who dared say that unfettered growth was not beneficial to a nation or world with declining resources and increasing populations.

Carter recognized looming climate change and championed conservation, development of solar energy and electric cars at a time when gas-guzzling muscle cars were all the rage. I recall bumper stickers in those years that bragged about massive high power, low mileage cars.

As an atheist, I hesitate to elaborate on Carters’s deep Christian faith, but my faithlessness aside, Jimmy Carter exemplified Christian teachings throughout his life. He was also exemplary in that he neither shuttered his faith from view nor imposed his faith on others. In contrast with today’s charlatans, who profess their devotion from Washington’s corridors of power, Carter honored the constitutional separation of his church from his responsibilities as head of state.

His personal example was instructive. Beginning with walking to his inauguration down Pennsylvania Avenue with Rosalynn and daughter Amy, he pressed to de-imperialize the presidency. He insisted on carrying his own luggage and “annoyed the right people” by wearing a simple cardigan sweater during a fireside chat during which he suggested that people turn down their thermostats. Ever since, Republicans, awash in oil and gas lucre, have turned up the heat, literally and figuratively.

The 1980 presidential election was a turning point in American history. Jimmy Carter told us the truth, but we didn’t want to hear it. Instead we elected a mediocre actor who made people feel good by telling us that we were exceptional; a shining city on a hill.

Our country and the world would be in a better place had Jimmy Carter been reelected in 1980. It is symbolically poignant that his last political act was to vote for Kamala Harris.

He never gave up on the possibilities for peace and justice in our country and the world.

John Lewis the recently departed Congressman and civil rights leader said, “Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”

To Jimmy Carter, that required annoying the right people – and he did.

His modesty, courage, prescience and honesty should place him among our greatest presidents. That he is not remembered that way is our failing, not his.

His gravestone should read, “Here lies a good, good man.”

The post Jimmy Carter Annoyed the Right People appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Our society is sick and UnitedHealthcare will surely deny any claim for treatment. It’s The American Way.

I needn’t rehash the assassination of UHC CEO Brian Thompson or the story of Luigi Mangione, the killer whose act is being applauded by millions. I’m not applauding, but have empathy for the victims of a greedy corporation’s amoral and immoral policies and algorithms. Navigating a boatload of fairly recent health issues through Medicare is about the only reason I’m glad I’m old. My care has been seamless and nearly free. Every person should have the same.

By cosmic and somewhat comic coincidence, the day of Thompson’s murder was also the day of a hearing of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. It’s a short tangent.
The hearing was about “junk fees” charged by airlines for baggage, seat selection and other services. Senator Richard Blumenthal said:

“Our investigation found that in 2023 alone, American, Delta, United, Frontier and Spirit collected more than $3 billion in seat fees — only seat fees. That’s not airfare, that’s just fees for booking a specific seat in advance, or selecting a slightly better seat.”

The hearing got sparse attention, as did most other things on December 4th. But, courtesy of C-Span radio, it got my full attention as I engaged in my hobby of staying in the car while my wife and daughter shop. The hearing exposed the same poverty of integrity that the murder revealed.

These airline industry practices are not news to any traveler, but the magnitude of the greed and the devious strategies were somewhat of a revelation. From a CBS News report:

“Overall, five U.S. carriers collected $12.4 billion in seat fees between 2018 and 2023, in addition to baggage and other charges, according to a report released last week by Democrats on the subcommittee.”

I invite any reader to report an instance of airplane seats being a better experience in recent years!

This may be unsurprising. Air travel pricing has been incomprehensible for decades, and the opacity is a very intentional, frustrating and profitable strategy. The American Way.
Comic relief was on offer from both Senators and airline execs. Senator Josh Hawley was his usual offensive and abrasive self, but for a justifiable cause in this instance. He offered this gem:

“You guys do appreciate that flying on your airlines is a disaster, don’t you? Flying on your airlines is horrible, it’s a terrible experience. I mean, I say this as a father of three young children . . . nobody enjoys flying on your airlines, it’s a disaster.” 

The Subcommittee investigation revealed that Spirit and Frontier have an incentive program that pays gate agents to nitpick about carryon baggage, forcing passengers to pay up to $77 to gate check. The incentives paid in 2022 and 2023 added up to $26 million.

The airline executives were a mumbling and evasive clown show. The phrase “guest experience” was trotted out several times. Every deceptive process was described as providing “equity.” Perhaps on some ironic level they really meant shareholder equity.

It was apparent that they resented and did not understand the scrutiny. After all, it is The American Way.

There isn’t enough room to fully explicate the widespread reality of The American Way as exemplified by UnitedHealthcare and our airlines, but I’ll list a few.

Property and auto insurance companies enhance the “guest experience” by exorbitant rate increases and nearly random cancellations. Costly extended warranties and seductive, but rapacious, payment plans accompany many if not most product purchases. Oil change facilities lie about change intervals and scare “guests” into other needless products and services. Subscription plans renew automatically, details in indecipherable fine print.

I suppose somewhere an enterprising car dealer is still pushing rustproofing to go along with the utterly devious rebate, financing and trade-in practices. In the car business, as in so many others, the negotiating game is just like in casinos. The dealer always wins. Life insurance plans are peddled constantly on television, where low premiums are pitched, but the coverage is minimal and actual costs are exorbitant. Intentionally deceptive and dishonest. Carshield and other extended warranty programs are rip-offs, profiting by scaring the “guests.”

Going full circle, the constant drone of ads for Medicare Advantage programs has been deafening. Older folks are enticed by promises of “dental and hearing benefits,” when the programs maximize profit by “deny, delay, depose,” as Luigi Mangione memorialized on bullet casings. One free dental cleaning is the trade-off for a denied cancer treatment. At least the corpse looks better in the coffin, I suppose.

Hearing the responses from UnitedHealthcare and the airline executives made me think they are genuinely perplexed. After the murder, Brian Thompson’s replacement as CEO told employees, “Our role is a critical role, and we make sure that care is safe, appropriate, and is delivered when people need it.” I guess they have free Kool-Aid in the executive dining room.

The glorification of free markets and wealth accumulation demands that they do anything “legal” to maximize returns for shareholders and executives.

The chasm between “legal” and “ethical” is not one for them to consider, but the rest of us fall into it.

Unfortunately for his family, so did Brian Thompson.

The post The American Way appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Cruelty is the point.

Marjorie Taylor Greene threatened to punch out newly elected Rep. Sarah McBride if she saw her in the women’s bathroom. McBride, if you missed it, is the first trans woman elected to Congress.

The grandstanding Rep. Nancy Mace started the ball rolling by introducing a resolution banning any person from using a bathroom other than that aligning with their biological sex. Mace, who was apparently “pro-trans” in a former life, found mileage and money to gain by quite intentionally targeting her new colleague. Speaker Mike Johnson cheerily endorsed the measure. Welcome Wagon this is not.

The success of Trump’s re-election campaign is at least partially attributable to tapping into anti-trans sentiments. The campaIgn spent $21 million on ads falsely attacking Kamala Harris’s record on transgender issues. Harris has been far from trans-friendly although, to be fair, she hasn’t threatened to punch anyone.

I have written previously about my experiences with a handful of brave, sensitive, intelligent transgender students – now adults. That a nation’s continued existence would pivot on this minuscule, powerless minority is a travesty.

The bathroom issue is, of course, a political sideshow. If there is reason for anyone to fear using a bathroom, it is evidently Marjorie Taylor Greene you should be on the lookout for. It does make me wish Caitlyn Jenner was the new representative in Congress. The Greene v. Jenner Netflix special would dwarf Jake Paul v. Mike Tyson.

We are in a precarious political and cultural time. Human rights progress is being peeled back, layer-by-layer and allegedly progressive folks are yielding with barely a whimper. As the saying goes, give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a mile. Daunted by accusations of “wokeness,” the entire Democratic establishment is conceding miles, not inches, and setting back social progress light years.

Even so-called trans activists are equivocating. A NYT article this week summarized the capitulation and was accompanied by scores of comments in the “It’s about time!” vein. Profiles in social justice courage are hard to find.

Universities are “cracking down” on pro-Palestinian protests. It would be a shame to have concern over the slaughter of 42,000 innocent humans interrupt campus decorum and distract hard-working MBA candidates from their selfless missions.

DEI programs are being abandoned. Affirmative action, already dead, is pilloried anyway, just in case it tries to rise from the ashes of conservative incineration. A significant majority of the population appears to believe that “reverse racism” is the real racial problem in America.

The whole damn liberal commentariat seems to believe that “identity politics” is the ruination of the nation. Even some Black, gay, women, Latinx folks and others of non-white-male identity have joined that chorus. Baffling.

Because what do we have but our identity? We straight white men have never been obliged to contemplate our “identity” because it confers nothing but advantage. I cannot for the life of me recall any instance where my “identity” was a disadvantage or drew me to seek common cause with other white men to protect our fragile rights or position in society. But to others, “identifying” with kindred spirits by race, sexuality, gender or other defining characteristics, is a crucial comfort in navigating a world that often seems inhospitable.

“Identity politics” is the act of assessing the overt and covert ways that one’s existence is under threat from the majority and organizing with others to seek justice and equality. The ones who revile and resist identity politics would erase your reality by insisting on colorblindness or defining you as aberrant. Such people cannot and will not acknowledge that there are ways to be in the world that vary from their own perception and experience.

It is difficult to imagine an area of political activity where identity is a neutral variable.

Economic policies disadvantage people of color.

Climate change disproportionately affects poor and Black people.

Health policies – especially post-Dobbs – disproportionately harm women.

Anti-gay legislation – well, duh.

Anti-trans resolutions get you punched by Marjorie Taylor Greene.

I could fill pages with more (and better) examples.

Yet when voters, students or others find common cause with those who endure the same systemic and systematic harm, they’re dismissed as engaging in “identity politics.”

When I observe people with power and privilege attacking trans folks I want to scream, “Pick on someone your own size!”

But really, that’s unrealistic. There aren’t many people as small as Nancy Mace and Marjorie Taylor not-so-swift Greene.

The post Tempest in a Pee Pot appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

I posted this abbreviated history lesson in many social media nooks yesterday. It seemed to be greeted with yawns, although I’m an amateur at generating clicks.

2016 – competent white woman lost to disgusting white man

2020-  mediocre white male candidate beat disgusting white man

2024 – competent Black/Asian woman trounced by disgusting white man

Anyone discern a pattern here? The rest of the analyses are useless noise.

The punditsphere is frantically flopping from one explanation to another, often one in direct contradiction with the next. Too much social justice.Too little social justice. Too much support for Israel. Too much sympathy for pro-Palestinian justice. Too much playing up race and gender (she didn’t). Too little focus on the historic nature of her candidacy.

The many plausible and implausible explanations for Trump’s triumph would seem to relegate my abbreviated history to the trash bin of over-simplification. But bear with me and pause your skepticism.

The contradictory flopping I describe helps to make my argument. Ultimately, the factors on the margin simply cancel themselves out. If you scrape away the statistical parsing and partisan pontificating, only one thing remains.

Clinton lost in 2016 because we weren’t ready to elect a woman and Harris lost by much more in 2024 because we really weren’t ready to elect a Black/Asian woman.

The pattern was identical in Blue and Red states, urban and rural, North, South, East and West. In county after county, state after state, the blue vote ebbed and the red vote rose – by virtually identical proportions. This truth contradicts many or most of the other factors. Economic factors, immigration impacts or any of the other “reasons” people offer for voting for Trump vary enormously from place to place. The proportions I describe were precisely the same in poor rural Georgia as in wealthy suburbs, despite the relevance or irrelevance of bacon prices.

You tell me – what one factor was the same?

Adding strength to that simple truth is that although Trump was a horrible, unqualified candidate in 2016, he was an even more horrible, unqualified and disqualified candidate in 2024.

I welcome any of Yellow Scenes’s erudite readers to refute the basic logic offered thus far.

Then it turns to the counter-arguments. If it’s all about gender, why did 44% of white women vote for a misogynist who orchestrated the death of reproductive rights? Beats the hell out of me, but it’s irrelevant. 44% of anything didn’t elect Trump. He was elected on the margins, not by an overwhelming factor of anything except the white men, especially the racist ones (most?all?), who form the center of the cancerous mass on our body politic.

Many of “their” women are in that mass/mess with them. Those women have been anti-feminist for decades and probably account for the seemingly odd fact that many states passed abortion rights measures while voting for Trump. Right-wingers and their partners have unwanted pregnancies too, but they sure aren’t going to join up with the libs – who ironically have fought to allow them control over their bodies.

The rest of the noise is, to phrase it delicately, mostly bullshit.

I love the rationales offered for Trump votes. The economy is a dandy excuse. How many times have you heard that it’s egg prices? Eggs. As though the price of eggs overrides decency. “You know, I would have voted for the Black woman but damn, egg prices convinced me to vote for a vulgar felon.”

Combine bacon and eggs and it’s cause to vote for Hitler, or our dumber version thereof. While I don’t casually dismiss the real economic stress on many families, neither Harris nor Trump has any influence on the global dynamics and corporate greed that affect food prices.

I am not arguing that any particular person was not influenced by other factors. Myriad factors always influence voters. Propaganda and stupidity affect voters. None of that is new, although both propaganda and stupidity are at record highs.

A New York Times graphic showed the remarkably consistent shift to red across the country.

Believe me, egg prices didn’t cause that.

A Black/Asian woman did that all by herself.

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The post The Price of Eggs appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

“Thank you for your service!”

On many occasions I’ve been offered this dollop of gratitude when someone learns that I served in the U.S. Army as an officer during the war on Vietnam. My “service” was without real distinction, although I earned my commission through a grueling year of basic training, Advanced Individual Training in the Infantry arts, and 6 months of Officer Candidate School (OCS).

I did not volunteer for any of it, except OCS, because I thought being an officer justified the extra year I signed up for.

Because I was (and am) anti-war, I used to decline the gestures of gratitude, not wishing to further the knee-jerk, mindless patriotism implicit in “Thank you for your service.” More recently I smile and say, “Thank you.”

My shift is not because I’ve grown more enthusiastic about violence or think, “By god, I deserve it. I gave up three years of my life.” The shift is because my perspective on both service and the thanks for it have evolved.

As to service, the vast majority of women and men who serve in the military or a branch of first responding do so for salutary reasons. I am confident that very few sign up because they have a strong desire to kill anyone. They may have a romanticized view of valor and heroism or enlist because it is the best life option they see. Military service offers a life of purpose, constantly reinforced by civic and political rhetoric about keeping us safe.

If each member of the military forces was, in fact, keeping us safe, thanks are very much deserved. Although the military adventures of the last 80 years have not, by and large, kept anyone safe, their intent has merit.

It is the decisions made by politicians that give lie to the mythology of selfless service in defense of the rest of us. In Vietnam and nearly every subsequent military excursion, sincere women and men were sacrificed to the poor or malicious choices made by political leaders, most of whom have never worn a uniform. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan . . . wars built on misinformation and misjudgment, placed honorable women and men in dishonorable circumstances.

The extent to which our bloated military is a deterrent is unknowable. I know that peace on Earth does not flow from threats of violence, so our aggressive posture seems escalatory, not conciliatory. But these ethical and philosophical considerations are not front of mind for America’s young recruits, nor should they be.

When passersby say, “Thanks for your service” to a person in uniform, I believe they are recognizing the choice made to offer oneself, not the manipulation of that choice by others. Especially in those cases where a high price was paid, it is unfair – cruel – to withdraw gratitude and empathy just because the “cause” for which they sacrificed was corrupt.

A disabled veteran of the immoral and dishonest war in Vietnam deserves no less gratitude than the disabled veteran of WWII, who served a more necessary cause.

The saying, often attributed to St.Augustine, “Hate the sin and love the sinner,” has an applicable paraphrase: “Hate the war, and honor the warrior.”

Which brings me to current relevance.

Right now, Pew Research reports that voters who served in the active military or reserves prefer Trump to Harris by a margin of 61% – 37%.

This lopsided support for a man who faked a medical disability to avoid service – like mine.

This lopsided support for a man who has called dead soldiers “suckers and losers.”

This lopsided support from a man who insulted Gold Star families.

This lopsided support for a man who denigrated John McCain for being a prison of war.

This lopsided support for a man called a fascist by the Generals closest to him.

This lopsided support for a convicted felon who has stolen classified documents and carelessly shared top secret information with our geopolitical rivals.

Many – most -Republicans claim the mantle of patriotism. They salute the flag, They pledge allegiance and ask God to bless America. They paste “Support Our Troops” stickers on bumpers.

I don’t share their exuberant and demonstrative version of patriotism or their religion. (I love the irony of their bitching about virtue signaling.) But I can and have found common ground with them. Not if they support Donald Trump.

I have challenged the more conservative candidates for election in Erie to disavow Trump. None has done so. They are evidently afraid to alienate the MAGA base.

They are Andrew Moore, Andrew Sawusch Travis Pinz, John Mortellaro, Brian O’Conner, Brandon Bell and Dan Maloit.

If they will not disavow Trump they don’t deserve your vote. They don’t deserve anyone’s vote.

And don’t thank me for my service. I’ve learned to graciously accept “thanks” even though I don’t particularly care.

But any person who supports Trump does not have the moral standing to thank any American for their service.

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The post Thank You For Your Service appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Oh, what a bind they’re in!

The dynamics in my town’s local election are a window into the vise that grips Republican candidates nationwide.

“My town” is Erie. Candidates for Mayor and town council have divided into two pods, despite the supposed non-partisan nature of the election.

One pod’s candidates are seemingly Democrats, the others seem to skew Republican. The apparently Republican-ish pod has been dubbed the “slate,” because of their lockstep views on some issues and their ubiquitous clusters of campaign signs. The campaign is spirited and the spirit is sometimes unpleasant. As a writer for Yellow Scene, and a lively contributor to social media, I’ve added more than a bit of spice.

The dynamic I reference flared when I posed this question to the candidates:

A challenge to our Erie candidates:

Ordinarily, this question would be somewhat irrelevant. But in light of the recent “testimony” from multiple members of the Trump administration, including Generals Mattis, Milley, and Kelly, that Donald Trump is a fascist and unfit for office, can you affirm that you will not support him?

It seems reasonable to know whether local elected officials support a presidential candidate who has been characterized as a fascist authoritarian by conservatives and highly respected military leaders.

Have you the integrity to respond? A failure to respond will speak for itself.

Not one of the “slate” – and I’ll name them for the record – responded. They are Andrew Moore, Brandon Bell, John Mortellaro, Andrew Sawusch, Travis Pinz, Dan Maloit and Brian O’Conner.

Each pea in the other pod readily stated their support of Harris/Walz. They are Justin Brooks, Ben Hemphill, Anil Pesaramelli, Emily Baer, Dan Hoback and Richard Garcia.

None and all. The difference is stark.

“Slate” supporters took me to task for inserting partisanship into what they think should be a friendlier and more civil campaign. Many complained that the federal election is irrelevant. I won’t explicate the many contortions the “slate” and their friends performed to avoid the issue.

So why won’t they answer and why is the question relevant and important in a local election?

I don’t believe that most Republican-leaning candidates, federal, state or local, are “afraid” of Donald Trump. They are afraid of Trump supporters.

I will stipulate that the members of Erie’s “slate” may otherwise be decent enough folks, although there has been some electoral mischief ascribed to several of them. But if they denounced Donald Trump, for any of the myriad reasons he should be denounced, their electoral prospects would significantly dim. That’s the nature of politics these days. A rock and hard place squeezes decency from nearly all Republicans – here, there and everywhere.

Perhaps they don’t respond because they are ashamed. I suppose that would be slightly better than being a proud Trump supporter. But that’s a distinction without a difference.

It is relevant because the refusal to denounce this particular candidate and his rancid rhetoric is tacit agreement.

Because my local candidates will not speak out or step up, it is fair to make these assumptions:

They support a candidate who does not respect or honor democratic norms, therefore one might question their support for democratic norms.

They support a candidate who encourages violence and retribution, therefore one might question their support for peaceful and civil governance.

They support a candidate who is crude, coarse and serially dishonest, therefore one might question whether their own values are firmly grounded in honesty and decency.

They support a candidate who has exhibited racism in speech and action, therefore one might question whether they are tolerant of racist speech and policy.

They support a candidate who wishes to deport millions of brown children, women and men without regard to due process or a modicum of human decency, therefore one might question their attitudes toward immigrants in our community.

They support a candidate who has been convicted in criminal and civil court, therefore one might question whether they consider criminal conviction, without remorse or rehabilitation, as disqualifying for one seeking the public trust.

They support a candidate who has been convicted of sexual assault and accused of such by dozens more women, therefore one might question whether they value the protection of girls and women from sexual aggression or predation.

They support a candidate who is on the record stating that he would be a “dictator on day one”  if elected again, therefore one might question their own attitudes toward authoritarianism.

They support a candidate who has declared admiration for Hitler, Putin, and other brutal leaders, therefore one might question whether they have lost all sense of decency. 

My initial challenge should be addressed to every candidate for office in the United States.

In my small community, in the shadows of the magnificent Rockies, the silence from Andrew I, Andrew II, John, Dan, Brandon, Travis and Brian is complicity.

They are indeed in a bind. But it’s no excuse.

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The post Damned If You Do – Or Don’t appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

It’s really quite simple.

Don’t be distracted by arcane arguments about water rates, grocery stores, traffic patterns and other bits of town business. Swirling beneath the surface details is profound disagreement about what kind of community we want to be.

My Facebook friend, Lindsey (The Terror) Terranova, recently penned a fine letter to Yellow Scene magazine. She was attacked, trolled, dismissed and dissed by proponents of the “slate,” comprised of Mayoral candidate Andrew Moore and council candidates Brandon Bell, Dan Maloit and others.

The sometimes nasty nature of the attacks was largely centered on Terranova’s volunteer commitments to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). This, paired with her support of Mayor Justin Brooks’s re-election campaign, put her in the crosshairs.

On Tuesday evening my wife and I attended our grandson’s absolutely delightful Red Hawk 4th grade chorus concert at Erie High School. The homogeneity of the community was on clear display. There seemed no Black children on stage, although a few kids of color, perhaps Latinx or South Asian, speckled the risers.

Earlier in the day we picked up our granddaughter at Erie Middle School. Here too the lack of racial diversity was painfully obvious.

We moved to Erie in 2017 to be near these grandchildren. There’s much to commend Erie, including lovely (albeit cookie-cutter) homes, walking and cycling paths, a great library, the Rec Center, good parks, a revitalized (gentrified?) downtown and a dentist on every corner. It is a safe, comfortable, convenient place to live. But it is not America.

It is a white, heteronormative, suburban community of privilege. This is not what my family values, but our disappointment has been softened by the presence of a socially progressive faction. We were heartened by the creation of Being Better Neighbors, the Juneteenth celebration, Erie Pride and other gestures of inclusion and celebration.

I, among others, have repeatedly asked candidate Andrew Moore, and others who comprise the “slate,” whether they are committed to these kinds of affirmation of and for those who are in the minority or on the margins. The silence has been deafening. Evidently kindness and affirmative support are just a little too “woke” for these staunch supporters of a white, heteronormative community of privilege.

As the head of a New York City school for 19 years, I learned from and listened to my colleagues and students of color. I learned that micro-aggressions are searingly painful, not something to be haughtily dismissed by smug white folks. I learned about the challenges Black kids have navigating a white-dominant culture.

I learned how hard it is to create, sustain and support a diverse community. And I learned the profound benefits gained in the process. (We produced a film titled “I’m Not Racist . . . Am I?” I wish every member of our Erie community would watch it and learn from the raw honesty and growth of the students in the film.)

And I learned that it is hard, bordering on impossible, to bring diversity to a overwhelmingly white school or community. It can be quietly agonizing to be the only Black student in a class or one of the only Black families in the neighborhood. Events like the ones the “slate” refuses to endorse provide a community within the community for folks of color, our queer neighbors, and those of us who are not content to be isolated within our privilege.

Even the “controversy” over affordable housing is intentionally obfuscated by arguments about density, traffic, parking and scale. The not-so-subtle subtext in most objections falls into the “not-in-my-backyard” realm. If the “slate” prevails, the Erie welcome mat is not going to be rolled out for “the other,” whether “other” by race, ethnicity or economic status. Our “affordable” housing is not particularly affordable, so they needn’t fear. But god forbid we had actual low income housing (which I would love to see). The screams from the golf course would be just awful.

Yes, this election is about what kind of community we want to be and what kind of community we want our children and grandchildren to grow up in.

I want my grandchildren to experience the richness of real diversity, not the false comfort of a de-facto gated community. I want them to learn humility, the irrelevance of wealth and the beauty in difference. I want them to recognize and challenge their implicit biases and grow into a better generation than preceded them.

We can find other ways to introduce them to the world they will live in, but it would be more powerful and enduring if they lived in it now.

One group of candidates hopes for this too. The other evidently fears it.

Vote hopes, not fears. The choice is mighty clear.

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The post The Definitive Erie Election Guide appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

“Did he lose the 2020 election?” – Tim Walz

“Tim, I’m focused on the future.” – JD Vance

“That is a damning non-answer.” – Tim Walz

Yessiree! That JD Vance is sure focused on the future, what with his incessant reminiscing about those good ol’ days when a woman knew her place and teachers had lots of children (but no cats). It reminds of the delightful Michael J.Fox film, Back to the Future.

That would be a mighty good campaign slogan for the entire not-so-Grand Old Party. It is hard to find any Republican position that would not be comfortably at home in the ‘50s. Pick your century, 19th or 20th. In the 1850s, women and Black folks had no rights whatsoever. In the 1950s they had a few, but hadn’t yet started all that unseemly bitching of the 1960s. Those were the days!

The more serious takeaway, of course, is the ethical decay that is evident in Vance’s inability to acknowledge the simple truth because of his pitiful need to please the multiply indicted, multiply convicted, serial liar and dim star to whom he has hitched his wagon.

It is equal parts amusing and dangerous to observe Republican leaders walk the rhetorical tightrope when asked about January 6th or the true result of the 2020 election. Speaker Johnson, in his best boyishly innocent certainty, complains that such stuff is so “yesterday.” Apparently we should just get on with the planning for the next round of false claims of voter fraud and stolen elections.

They must not displease the Wizard of Orange, lest their political ambitions be savaged by a Truth Social tweet.

The “damning non-answer” phenomenon is not unique to national politics. Another example arose right here in good old Erie, courtesy of Mayoral candidate Andrew Moore.

Before explicating the Moore instance, I acknowledge that the “damning non-answers” are not equivalent. Andrew Moore seems a decent sort, compared to Vance’s utter indecency. Moore’s non-answers and other campaign elisions are more in the “politics as usual realm,” which is, nonetheless, not a  particularly noble realm.

In an Erie Facebook group, Moore was asked quite explicitly whether he, as Mayor, would support the several town-supported events and organizations that promote and celebrate diversity and inclusion. I have been quite heartened by events like Erie Pride, Hispanic Heritage Day, Juneteenth and others. These activities are joyful affirmation of folks in the minority who can be nearly invisible in a mostly white community.

These events also signal decent intentions, however short we may fall in our actions to craft a more inclusive town. I hope that this commitment makes Erie a more attractive option to folks of color and LGBTQ+ folks, if the costs aren’t prohibitive.

But Moore’s silence on this issue speaks volumes. A non-answer is fairly interpreted as a lack of support. In my view this should be disqualifying. I recall, although I can’t find the reference, a vague rejection of any affirmative efforts to be more inclusive in employment. It is a rather common conservative position, along with: “we’re all equal,” “hiring and admission should only be on merit,” or the dual piles of manure, “colorblindness” and “content of character, not color of skin.”

In Moore’s case, the non-answer is partnered with the “non-mention” on his campaign website. Here are his campaign priorities:

• champion the building of an outdoor waterpark/aquatic facility to align with strong resident support

• expand our amenities around our airport, such as a community park along Coal Creek Trail, so families can watch the planes and learn about flying

• invest in new events, including a dog/animal parade and other community-uniting activities

• expand our July 3 fireworks celebration to one we can all be proud of

• start with a survey of possibilities to ensure you have a voice so we can assure Erie is the  best place to raise our families, not just today but long into the future (that future thing again!)

The man is apparently indifferent or pleasantly hostile to a Pride or Juneteenth event, but by golly he’s all in on a dog parade and plane watching!

And as to elision, some of his critics note that he is on the Oil and Gas slate, which he kinda, sorta slides around about. His website biography reads:

Andrew is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at the Colorado School of Mines, a prestigious STEM-focused public university in Golden. Before joining Mines, he was the CIO at the Boulder Valley School District and held leadership roles at Sun Microsystems.

Er, ah, . . . what happened to the 12 years working at Chevron? Seems Oily and Gassy to me.

The post Non-Answers Are Damning appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

On a recent sunny late September morning, my wife and I watched the highly entertaining Jogathon at our 4th grade grandson’s elementary school. The delightfully chaotic event was held on an upper field on the school grounds. The 4th graders jogged, ran, walked and giggled around a 100 meter loop defined by red cones.

We entered through a gate in the fence that circumscribes the playground and stopped for visitor name tags at a table staffed by PTO volunteers. It was an appropriate gesture of security, I suppose, but to no realistic end. The field where children giggled and adults snapped photos, is essentially open in every direction.

Later in the week we picked up our 8th grade granddaughter after school. At dismissal, hundreds of kids burst into the afternoon sun, some walking home and others headed to bikes, buses or waiting grandparents.

I note this to revisit a point I frequently make. School security measures may be necessary, but are utterly insufficient in a culture besotted with guns and the many angry, delusional, disturbed or sociopathic men and boys who itch to use them.

During last week’s VP “debate,” the slick and ambitiously dishonest JD Vance clucked sympathetically about school shootings and then suggested making doors and windows stronger along with a recommendation for more resource officers – good guys with guns. I don’t suppose he considered open fields of joggers or swarms of middle-schoolers blinking into the afternoon sun. (Statistically, the vast majority of shootings  occur outside school buildings.) All of these school security measures are tantamount to shutting the barn door after most of the horses are romping in the pasture.

Tim Walz was only marginally better, wincing slightly at the notion of schools as prisons, but quickly pivoting to his and Kamala’s gun-toting bona fides, including a declaration that they are both big Second Amendment supporters.

It often seems that the Constitution has only two Amendments, #1 and #2, with the First cited to protect religion and the Second cited to protect the right to bear arms of any kind, anywhere, any time. Many folks like their God and guns, often in combination.

In 2008, candidate Barack Obama, referring to working-class voters in old industrial towns decimated by job losses, said: “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment. . .”

Obama was excoriated for this apt description of a segment of Americana. Little did he (or we) know that he was predicting the entire platform of the 2024 Republican Party.

Accompanying the prisonification of schools is a burgeoning security industry. It is apparently not enough for schools to drill the kids relentlessly in faux-academics. Now they must be proficient in active shooter drills, learning when, where and how to cower in fear. 40 states mandate active shooter drills.

My granddaughter has expressed anxiety about the possibility of gun violence. Her school has initiated several lockdowns – and we live in a safe and privileged community. Both grandchildren have told of gun-related anxiety, among their friends and them. I believe that this anxiety is always present, despite that their schools at least don’t engage in “realistic” drills with little bodies strewn on hallway floors.

The toll of this stress is both inestimable and invisible. There has been some recognition of the psychological damage done by the more frightening iterations of safety drills. New York City schools are now banned from “. . .conducting full-scale exercises that mimic an actual school shooting in coordination with emergency responders and with the use of props, actors, simulations, or other methods,” according to ASIS International.

Our unwillingness to protect children is a moral failure that will reverberate for decades.

A moral nation would ban weapons of war completely, with severe legal consequences for selling or possessing.

A moral nation would mandate registration, licensing and insurance for any weapon.

A moral nation would outlaw carrying any weapon in public with significant fines and confiscation for any violation.

A truly moral nation would repeal the archaic and irrelevant Second Amendment so that the above legislative actions could be taken without absurd constitutional challenges.

Instead we conduct deeply frightening drills and announce our gun bona fides on national television.

I, for one, don’t think my grandchildren are safer because Kamala Harris has a gun and Tim Walz loves hunting.

Let’s be honest. We love our guns more than we love our children.

The post Guns Over Children appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith called the latest school massacre in Winder, GA “pure evil.”

Smith was among the predictable chorus of voices who ascribe demonic forces at work every time children (and adults) are slaughtered in America.

Colt Gray, the 14 year-old charged in the murders, is called “evil” and has been charged as an adult. Initially, the death penalty was mentioned, until the judge realized that a minor can only be sentenced to life in prison. Trying him as an adult is a travesty. He is a boy – a sad, desperate product of terrible, heartless dysfunction. He did something unthinkable, but a compassionate society does not compound the cruelty.

Colt’s father Colin has also been charged with, among other counts, second degree murder. Colin apparently allowed Colt to have unfettered access to the AR-15 with which he executed his classmates and teachers. What sort of bizarre logic tries someone as an adult and charges the father for being a bad parent – which I suspect he is?

The elder Gray claims to have properly raised the boy, including, according to the New York Times, sparking interest “in the outdoors, and away from video games. . . .” “The son, then 13, had recently shot his first deer, and his father kept a photo on his phone of the animal’s blood smeared on the boy’s cheeks — a common tradition among hunters.”

Spare me the affection for hunting “traditions” and contemplate the image of a vulnerable 13 year-old boy with blood smeared on his cheeks. Now imagine featuring an image like that of your child on your phone or desktop.

I am sick to tears at the national paralysis over gun violence. Columbine didn’t matter. Uvalde, Sandy Hook, Parkland . . . bloody little corpses prayed over and then largely forgotten until the next one, and the next one and . . .

Along with the prayers, a few politicians mewl over the tragedy and whimper soft rhetoric about “common sense” gun measures. It hasn’t made a damned difference before, and it won’t now. Universal background checks, red flag laws, assault weapons bans and other largely symbolic measures might – might – slightly diminish the annual body counts, but no one seems able to muster the simple moral courage to tell the truth. Guns are killing machines, not “tools,” and any boy or man desperate enough to spray a classroom with bullets can and will get their finger on a rapid fire trigger when our guns outnumber our population.

Conservatives and others use “they want to take your guns away” to solidify opposition to any gun control efforts. To neutralize this rhetoric, it seems mandatory to establish gun bona fides. Even Joe Biden, pitifully, used this by mentioning that HE keeps his guns locked up. I cannot count the number of times politicians talk about “their” guns as though that bolsters their moral authority.

Where is the politician or other leader with the courage or clarity to say, “Guns disgust me and I will not have one in my home.”?

J.D. Vance, like most others, prays and then proposes more school security. Trump thinks we should just “move on” from such tragedies. It is like suggesting gas masks for a nation exposed to toxic fumes, rather than addressing the source.

Georgia, like other states, has loosened gun restrictions. Governor Brian Kemp produced a campaign ad in which he held a shotgun on his lap. Members of Congress wear AR-15 lapel pins. Lauren Boebert struts around packing heat. I could give scores more examples. Then many of them shake their heads somberly intoning, “This is not who we are” as they demonstrate that this is exactly “who we are.”

As to GOP rhetoric, yes, I do indeed want to take your guns away. Of course I have no influence, but perhaps a few others share my belief that a gun-free society would be a better society. It is ironic that the “freedom” to bear arms has diminished the freedom to be safe in school, at a movie theater, at a nightclub, in rush hour traffic or at a parade celebrating freedom.

The horrifying event at Apalachee High School left many victims in its wake, including Colt Gray. While I do not equate him with those he murdered, he too is a victim of a culture of violence and indifference. He was unnoticed, despite ringing the alarm bells himself, both with online postings and, according to his aunt, asking for mental health support. Instead, his 13 year-old face was smeared in deer blood.

I don’t believe in the “good vs. evil” paradigm, particularly in its association with a divine power. But aside from its religious implications, calling Colt Gray “evil” absolves us of any responsibility for the desperation felt by too many boys and young men who are marginalized, humiliated and ignored.

Do that to boys, immerse them to a culture of “getting even,” make death machines tantalizingly available, and frequent eruptions are inevitable.

And it’s only September.

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The post Blood on His Cheeks and Hands appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

There’s a great deal to like about the Kamala Harris/Tim Walz phenomenon. I, like many millions, feel guarded optimism, not the chronic despair that preceded Biden’s abdication.

But there is a dimension to the enthusiasm that is slightly troubling, particularly on this first day of school for my 4th grade grandson.

Sparked by Walz’s seemingly off-the-cuff comment about the other guy and his acolytes, “weird” has become the cutesy campaign theme. This has grown old already, and is the antithesis of Michelle Obama’s suggestion that “when they go low, we go high.” Harris, Walz and their campaign surrogates would do well to heed this advice.

My allusion to the first day of 4th grade is to remind that children absorb political rhetoric, even if lacking sophisticated context. Hearing leaders name-call is unhelpful at a time when bullying is sadly common and often deeply hurtful.

The good folks at MSNBC and elsewhere  relish the use of “weird,” partially because it seems to have gotten under the Trump/Vance skin. This is no triumph, as getting under Donald’s skin is a trivial task. His skin is so thin as to be translucent. Many folks also justify its constant use by citing the vile torrent of bullying that characterizes Trump’s rhetoric. Tit for tat. Gooses and ganders.

But in politics as in schools, the flimsiest rationale for childish taunts is to offer, “He started it!”

He did indeed, but “when they go . . .”

There is added reason to object based on semantics. “Weird” is simply the wrong word as it is a descriptor that doesn’t really apply.  A dictionary definition of “weird” offers: “suggesting something supernatural; uncanny.” Trump and minions are neither supernatural nor uncanny. In the context of school, “weird” is often used to characterize children who are different, non-conforming, shy or unusual in affect or appearance. Suffice it to say that such name-calling can be deeply hurtful. The school version is often “weirdo,” and it’s not a compliment.

Somewhat ironically, Trump et al are the antithesis of “weird.” They are conformists and braggarts who ridicule “difference.” To the extent that “weird” can be seen as positive – and it can be – the eccentricity and originality associated with “weird” are utterly absent in the MAGAverse. So for that reason too, we should refrain.

People who are called “weird” are usually the marginalized. Trump and his supporters are the marginalizers, not the marginalized.

It is not as though accurate descriptors are in short supply. Trump is inarguably dishonest, crude, sociopathic, narcissistic, vain, lazy, mean, amoral and ignorant – just to offer a few. He can accurately be called a felon, a sexual assaulter, a fraud, a fraudster, a serial liar, a racist, a misogynist and more. Characterizing him in any of these ways is not only fair game, but necessary. These are not playground taunts. They are supported by the public record.

Vance is also not “weird.” He can properly be called opportunistic, mean-spirited, inconsistent, smug and dishonest too, although his dishonesty pales in comparison to the liar-in-chief. (Returning to semantics, I concede that some of his ideas are mighty strange – cat ladies, votes for kids, etc. But even here, the word “weird” is misapplied.)

The flip side of Harris/Walz has no downside. They are emphasizing “joy” at a time when we all need some. Turning laughter and smiles into political assets is brilliant. Although I hope Walz might turn his enthusiasm down from 11 to 9.5, it sure beats the scowls and apocalyptic tone of the MAGA campaign.

It was clever for a minute, but enough with the “weird.” Use accurate characterizations and don’t succumb to the temptation. It should be beneath candidates and a campaign that have so much to work with.

I’m not terribly worried about 4th graders calling classmates “misogynists, felons, fraudulent, treasonous, racist (unless they are!), narcissistic, or sociopathic.”

Remember, “When they go low, we go to the truth.”

The post Many Things, Not “Weird” appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Politics aside, I can’t imagine any more satisfying end to Trump than to be soundly thrashed by a woman – a woman of color no less.

In a rare explosion of Democratic Party sanity, Biden’s withdrawal glided smoothly into what I predict will be a Kamala Harris juggernaut. Harris is dynamic, wicked smart, confident and prepared. Her VP pick – I predict Mark Kelly – will further strengthen the ticket. (I do think J.B. Pritzker would be great, just for a J.B./J.D. VP showdown.)

The naysayers are annoying. It is like watching snooty shipwreck victims refusing to get in the lifeboat because they don’t like the color of the hull.

Some of the armchair critics think her ascension is just another manifestation of identity politics. Hmmmm . . . and neither Trump nor J.D. has ever, ever, benefitted from identity! I digress a tad, but the only “identity” that has conferred great advantage throughout American history is whiteness. I know of what I write, as I have enjoyed a lifelong American trifecta – white, male, straight.

Even some of Harris’s friends have her identity wrong. On MSNBC they gushed over her as an African-American. I suppose I needn’t remind that she is a spicy blend of Afro-Jamaican and Indian.

Her candidacy has me more hopeful and excited than Obama’s. It is not that I prefer her politics. She is far from my progressive ideal . . .  but remember that lifeboat idea. And Obama was more pragmatist than idealist too. In neither case do I intend criticism. I, for example, with my democratic socialist/atheist bona fides could not mount a successful dogcatcher campaign.

As I have previously confessed, I am a New York Times comment junkie. The aggregate voices in the comment threads provide a revealing picture of what one slice of the electorate is thinking. As to Harris; enthusiasm tempered by policy nitpicks, worries that America is not ready for a woman of color, snide remarks about her laugh, and great relief that Biden stepped aside. Unsurprisingly, the most unconditional joy was expressed by women. Count me among them.

Yes, there is a complex Electoral College map to traverse, but a 30,000 foot analysis is good enough for me.

• No die-hard Trump voter will change in any way but blood pressure.
• No Biden fan will be quite sexist or racist enough to switch to Trump.
• Many folks who were too dispirited to engage are now activated.
• The cumulative power of Black women – even the Afro-Jamaican/ Indian ones! – will rumble across the land.
• Reproductive choice will animate local, state and national races.

Unfortunately, the campaign will be partially waged in the peculiar American style, aka “What have you done for me lately?” If I never see or hear another, “Are you better off today than you were 4 years ago?”, it will be too soon.

A disappointingly large segment of the electorate will be assessing their voting preferences by “kitchen-table” metrics. Gas prices, egg prices, blah, blah, blah. I admit very real empathy for struggling families, but I have a sneaking suspicion that most of the inflation-gripers spend more on streaming videos than they do on groceries. And, of course, most “kitchen-table” metrics have absolutely nothing to do with the president, whoever she or he may be. But there will nevertheless be hundreds of thousands who will say, “I don’t like some things that Trump says, but that gas pump . . .” I was particularly struck by one alleged Democrat who says he can’t pull the lever for Harris because she opposes fracking and supports Medicare for all.

Millions of us find protecting our precious Earth and our collective well-being more compelling than lowering heating bills and saving a few bucks in taxes.

I believe there are more good folks who care more about the lives of thousands of young women who must endure the agony of unwanted childbirth than there are who lose sleep over the price of unleaded at Costco.

There are more of us who find utter horror in mass deportation than there are low information voters who believe the vile MAGA lies about immigrant crime.

Quibbling over the inflation rate or contemplating the unanswerable calculation of your own “better-offness,” is a fool’s errand in a nation and world on the brink.

Vote for Kamala like our lives depend on it, because they do.

.

The post Get In The Damn Boat! appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

“This is not who we are!” – President Joe Biden and several million others in response to the assassination attempt.

As is the case in mass shooting after mass shooting, all the attention is diverted from the real issue of gun violence in America.

Perhaps most absurd among the absurdities are the pleas to ratchet down the rhetoric. Not that ratcheting down is a bad thing, but the ease with which Democrats swallow the false equivalence is startling. The rhetoric to which MAGATs refer are comments about threats to democracy and the rise of authoritarianism. That’s accurate reporting, not inflammatory rhetoric.

By contrast, Trump implores his supporters to beat the hell out of protestors, his allies suggest executing political rivals, the violent insurrectionists are “patriots,” his Republican colleagues threaten opponents, MAGATs strut around with automatic weapons and fly “Don’t Tread on Me” flags (which derive from “real harm will come to any person or group who might plan to step or tread on colonial Americans”). You Proud Boys stand back and stand by!!

Here’s one Trump fanboy’s enthusiastic political speech:

“. . . and then we’re gonna fucking go through the FBI and just start throwing you fuckers into jail. Or, you can steal another election, and then the guns will come out, and we’ll hunt you fuckers down and slaughter you like the traitorous dogs you are in your own fucking homes. In your own fucking beds. The last thing you’ll ever hear are the horrified shrieks of your widow and orphans. And then you know what we’re going to do? … We’re going to slaughter your whole fucking family.”

By acceding to this narrative, Biden et al are aiding Trump’s ascension to martyrdom, emerging bloodied and triumphant from what lowlifes like Lauren Boebert call a Democratic conspiracy to kill him. God saved him, which perhaps explains why He is too busy to tell Biden to leave the race.

While I’m not a fan of internet memes, this one works:

I’m begging y’all to care like this when it’s a third grade classroom instead of an ear.

While the characters are more prominent, this incident is just one more chapter in the American story of unending gun violence. A crescendo of thoughts and prayers. Everyone wants to know more about the shooter and his motive. As though that will prove something.

Little is known about the gunman, but I suggest that any person who clambers onto a rooftop, or shoots his way into a school, or goes on a rampage in a gay bar or . . . is not just an overheated political partisan. Such a person has become twisted and desperate, often by complex family and/or social dynamics, and seeks some combination of perverse justice, insane catharsis or suicidal notoriety. Irrational acts evade rational analysis. But we keep trying, thinking that if we can figure it out, there won’t be a next one. There is always a next one . . . and a next one . . . and a next one.

What is certain is that this tortured soul managed to get his trigger finger on an AR-15 style rifle. In a never-fails-to-shock reprise, it seems his suburban Dad bought it. It doesn’t really matter, for any enterprising 20 year-old can acquire a semi-automatic weapon if he really wants it. If Dad helps, it’s just a little easier, but no more or less deadly.

I suppose there is some value in finding out what internal demons or external cruelties drove this particular shooter. But our society has no more appetite for softening the psychic blows we rain on boys than we have appetite for restricting access to deadly weapons. Neglecting the aggregate effect is lethal.

Addressing the root causes of male anger and violence would require decades of cultural reflection. Addressing the easy availability of military-style weaponry would only require a few hours of political courage. But that will not happen.

This time it was an ear and a spectator. It won’t take long before it’s a school again.

You see, the Second Amendment is just more important than the Third Grade.

No, Joe. This is precisely who we are.

The post This IS Who We Are appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Well, the Biden press conference performance last week was better than the debate. Faint praise indeed. “Vice President Trump” was gaffe grande and Biden seemed to not notice. He did, slowly, recognize that he referred to someone else as Commander in Chief.

Some Pollyannas in the punditry gave high marks to his command of foreign policy. I found his rambling digressions unbearable, but he did understand some questions. I fail to grasp how any objective person found his performance reassuring.

My opinion is neither unique nor important, but there is a dimension to this debacle that I’ve not seen explicated elsewhere.

However fit or unfit, however fair or unfair, the mere fact of the raging debate renders him unelectable. The Trump campaign now has a Blockbuster catalogue of video clips of prominent and influential Democrats calling their own candidate unfit. This on top of a smaller catalogue of videos clips of Biden proving himself unfit. Even George Clooney has spoken, which is as close to Godlike as Biden will likely hear.

If Biden doesn’t step aside or get dragged off the stage with a Democratic hook, we are doomed, barring a Trump health catastrophe. (This is among the few times in my life that I regret my lack of belief in the power of prayer.)

The replacement derby is already well underway. The bulk of speculation swirls around Harris. Is she polling better than Biden against Trump? Will Black folks sit on their hands come November if she’s passed over? Can she be a better candidate than during her primary run? (Not a Herculean leap.)

James Carville has proposed a semi-bizarre process that resembles America’s Got Talent, hosted by Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Some Democratic operatives love the idea of an open convention. Others fear chaos.

Beyond Harris, the list is ample: Gavin Newsome, Gretchen Whitmer, Andy Beshear, J.B. Pritzker, Josh Shapiro . . . even an anti-Trump Republican or two. There’s much to commend each option, although conventional wisdom places Newsome on the sidelines, as, well, you know, California.

Whitmer has favorable odds in the early betting. A white woman would be nice if the Black woman is jilted.

Shapiro is a Jew. A Jew would be nice if the white woman and the Black woman are jilted.

Beshear is popular and uncontroversial, which would be nice if the white woman, the Black woman and the Jew are jilted.

Pritzker is filthy rich, which would be nice if . . . you get the point.

But why is one name conspicuously missing from the list?

Pete Buttigieg.

My wise wife disagrees with me, but this rapidly regressing nation is not ready for a gay president. We are “readier” for a Black woman, a white woman, or a Jewish man. (We’ve always been ready for filthy rich men, but Pritzker is not really in the mix.)

But not a gay man.

Buttigieg was the most compelling candidate in the 2020 primaries. He is brilliant, lucid, and can explicate complex issues in compelling prose. He carries himself with confident dignity. He has a sense of humor and agile intellect. He could slice through Trump’s nonsense like rapier wit through blubber.

My wishes will make nothing so. But a guy can still wish.

It would be mighty righteous to elect President Buttigieg. I would love to see his lovely marriage fill the White House with joy. And imagine the apoplexy in the Supreme Court when the marriage they try to outlaw is that of the President and the First Gentleman!

The MAGAverse is comprised of virulent homophobes. Their racism and misogyny are bad enough, but at least they recognize Black folks and women as human, albeit with fewer rights.

Electing a woman, especially a Black woman, would be a marvelous rebuke to the Republican platform and the truly frightening Project 2025.

But Mayor Pete! That would shove their Project 2025 back to the Dark Ages, where it belongs. Or, equally fine, to somewhere else where the sun don’t shine.

The post Why Not? appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Amidst political cacophony it is particularly important to still the mind and open oneself to beauty and the interconnected strands of life around us. I had such an experience this week.

Among my daily mountain bike rides, several each week pause at a small waterfall. The waterfall is not steep or high and decidedly mundane, particularly in that it is man-engineered. Nonetheless, I step down the rocks and sit on a block of granite, just a dozen feet from the swirling pool at the fall’s base. In a  sub-urban high desert, it is a slight refuge to be sure. But an intentional focus of perspective and silencing of the extraneous lends the place a sense of magic, not entirely distant from the experience of a “real” waterfall in the remote Rocky or Adirondack Mountains.

Last fall I had a first sighting of a Great Blue Heron, fishing in the gentle swirl. Through the autumn months, the sightings became more frequent. I know too little to identify gender with certainty, but her size suggested female. I watched her and she watched me. If I crossed an invisible line, she would fly. That space between us narrowed over the weeks. I began talking to her, gently, whenever our visits coincided.

In June, to my surprised delight, she was there again. I can’t know that it is the same bird, but the narrowed space between us quickly returned to what had been earned in the fall. I felt a connection to her, although I am realistic enough to understand this as a form of anthropomorphic romanticism. Of course, my romanticism is not anthropomorphic. My sense of connection is real, but the projection of reciprocity is perhaps a bit fantastic. Or is it?

When I leave home, I’ve come to telling my wife that I hope to see my “friend” on the ride. If so, I usually take a photo and send it to her before remounting.

On a recent hot Wednesday, I rode down the gravel Coal Creek Trail, approaching the bridge over the creek, where I turn to my rocky perch. Perhaps 200 yards before the bridge, I saw a large bird in my peripheral vision, coming hard from my right. She flew directly in front of me, at head height and no more than 5 or 6 feet away. I could nearly touch her.

I expected that she had been startled by something else and was fleeing our usual meeting place. But she was not fleeing. As she passed by, she elevated into a soaring arc, turning back toward the waterfall and disappearing behind the weeds and reeds on the creek’s banks.

I rushed ahead to my turn beyond the bridge and immediately saw her, tall and still on the rocky ledge. She saw me too, and we both settled into our simple ritual, I gently talking and she periodically thrusting her beak into the foam, emerging with a small silver fish, flashing in the hot sun.

It is, I suppose, a bit dramatic to posit that she intentionally crossed my path and circled immediately to that spot, expecting me to follow. But it is not impossible either. I had never before had a large bird fly directly across my field of vision, nearly close enough to touch. No one or anything else was nearby. It may not have been intentional in the way I posit, but it was no accident either.

I am not expert in the study of interplay between species, but there is more than ample evidence to suggest that the kind of kinship I feel with a Great Blue Heron is not entirely imaginary.

And to an extent, it really doesn’t matter. In those moments, she and I are together in that space, familiar and safe. That alone is enough.

The post A Friend appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

As so many others have expressed, within a minute into the ill-named “debate,” I knew it was a certain train wreck. Biden looked like so many old men I observe going into a restaurant, for example, slack-jawed and confused – even before looking at the menu. Unlike the spin doctors who claimed that his performance improved over time, I found that generosity preposterous.

His energy rose slightly only when he traded 2nd grade taunts. “You’re the worst president ever!” “No, you’re the worst president ever!” “Your son’s a felon!” “You’re a felon and had sex with a porn star!” “I didn’t have sex with a porn star!” “Everything you said is a lie!” “No, everything you said was a lie!”

It feels odd to criticize Biden without lambasting Trump. His sociopathy was on flagrant display, but it is a measure of the near-panic over Biden’s performance to acknowledge that Trump “won” the thing, whatever the thing was. And this is the state of the union.

The actual debate playing out on many fronts is over the possible replacement of Biden on the Democratic ticket. A plurality, at least, of pundits falls on the Joe Must Go side. Those who feel they must dance with he who brung them, no matter that “he” is well past dancing days, feign great enthusiasm while showing clips of Biden’s next day rally, where he appeared revitalized and energetic. Of course he was reinvigorated by the comfort of a teleprompter and only needing to stay on his feet, not think on them.

While columns and comments on the New York Times website are not an infallible barometer, the Joe Must Go sentiments were near-unanimous, accompanied by the requisite and deserved praise for his service, yadda, yadda. Several doctors, or so claimed, suggested that his open mouth, stiff movements and slow cognition resembled early Parkinson’s. Perhaps not fair or accurate, but a damning assessment nonetheless.

Count me in the Joe Must Go camp. The stakes are far too high to defer to his incumbency, his pride or the complexity of changing horses mid-race, a task made both necessary and easier by the fact that the horse is barely moving. I believe it is inevitable anyway, so rip the bandaid off before it’s actually too late. My uneducated guess is that those close to him are waiting and hoping that the fury will fade. It will not.

It takes a simple pragmatic exercise to reinforce the wisdom of finding an alternative. There are plenty of decent options, each with a balance sheet of assets and liabilities. In this unique situation, the Dems must advance the candidate who best exemplifies moderatism and has the least number of disqualifying facets. My personal values range from progressive to radical, but this is no time to nominate a candidate based on the loftiest lefty ideals. We need someone who provides as few reasons to vote against as possible.

Now, consider this analysis.

* Most if not all MAGATs will not vote for Biden or anyone but Trump. Forget them.

* Nearly anyone, if not everyone, who plans to vote for Biden will also vote for my hypothetical alternative. Not a single Biden voter will choose Trump over a new option.

* Few of the many “neither” voters will be suddenly infatuated with Trump if Biden is gone. They may well get off the “neither” train when presented with an option that requires no nose-holding.

Those three points, in the aggregate, predict a slightly better outcome if Biden steps aside. There is no scenario in which another candidate does less well than Biden. While many, including me, think Biden has done as well as possible in many realms (except his damned enabling of Gazan near-genocide), his support is more about saving democracy than because he is charismatic or visionary.

And, while no other candidate can do worse, any other candidate can do better at prosecuting the case against a pathological, autocrat with the “morals of an alley cat.” (Joe’s one good jab in a fight he otherwise lost)

There is absolutely nothing to lose by replacing Biden before it’s too late. There is everything to lose if we don’t.

The post Joe Must Go appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Just one more reason to be glad I don’t live in Louisiana. Governor Jeff Landry just signed a law requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted in every public school classroom. He accompanied the law’s signing with the snickering comment, “Can’t wait to get sued!”

I’ll bet.

The religofascist Republican Party just loves this nearly failsafe technique. Legislate or litigate nearly any issue, no matter how absurdly unconstitutional or nonsensical, and know they can depend on their friends in high places, aka the Supreme Court. Governor Landry knows that any challenge will wind its way up to the heavenly judicial body and the conservative/devout majority will uphold the law. Want to wager?

Sam and Martha-Ann, joined by Clarence, Ginny and Harlan, the resident beer-lover, the prim Ms. Coney Barrett and the proper Justice Gorsuch will prevail, even if the slightly less radical Chief Justice waffles a bit. In the event you don’t have the time, interest or stomach to follow the case and read the majority opinion, here it is in CliffsNotes advance version:

The Ten Commandments are just traditional and ceremonial, like “In God We Trust,” “Jesus Loves You,” “God Bless America,” “Under God” and other stuff that belongs in a Christian nation’s classrooms and if you don’t like it you can go sit in the hallway or move to Cuba.

When the regressive right wanted Affirmative Action outlawed, they found just the guy to manufacture a grievance, assemble an amici mob, feign harm and trot it before the disciples so they could zap it.

Decades of right-wing scheming finally bore fruit when Leonard Leo and his posse finally crafted a court that took away women’s health autonomy in the Dobbs decision. It is worth noting that Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett all lied under oath during confirmation hearings, thereby violating one of the Commandments, when they pledged fealty to legal precedent.

As Clarence Thomas ominously offered in his Dobbs concurrence, the Supreme Court “should reconsider” its past rulings codifying rights to contraception access, same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage. He was the only one to openly acknowledge what the theocourtocracy desires. They all await the chance to unravel a few more human rights. It’s kind of what you might expect when a majority on the court is Catholic. Even the “somewhat-reasonable- for-a-Pope” Francis recently showed his true colors (sorry Cyndi) when using a disgusting homophobic slur.

There are few more apt applications of the boiling frog metaphor. As it goes, put a frog in boiling water and it will leap right out. Put it in tepid water, gradually turn up the heat and it will passively submit. We Americans are in the “passively submit” phase of our transition to a de facto theocracy.

As a life-long, self-described atheist, I’ve pleasantly enough accepted the symbolic presence of Christianity in most aspects of life: The Pledge in school, the currency I use, the ceremonies I attend, the National Prayer Breakfast, the hand-on-bible oath convention, the God Bless America at sporting events, the apparently obligatory public thanks to God given by athletes . . . it could be a long, long list. I’ve only been made to feel slightly unwelcome, but as a privileged, straight white man, it’s a pretty minor irritation. For gay and trans folks, the concerns are much more than minor irritation. Their rights and humanity are at risk.

There are many things to be concerned about these days. A second Trump term will surely put a few more dents in our democratic republic. There are platoons of well-armed bozos ready to take to the streets if he loses. Sort of a heads they win tails we lose situation.

Despite these real concerns, the majority of Americans have not lost their minds – including some who will cast ballots with one hand and hold their noses with the other. I don’t believe most Americans will drift complacently into autocracy. But the incursion of religion into public life is met with less concern. Public funding of religious schools is just one piece of a broad strategy to marginalize secularism and craft a more Christian nation.

The considerable harm done by re-electing Trump can be undone in subsequent elections. But the harm done by a religofascist court will take decades to reverse, if possible at all.

We should be more worried than we appear to be.

The post Thou Shalt Not appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Happy Juneteenth!  Or, perhaps not so happy.

I needn’t offer up a comprehensive history of the event that inspired the holiday, but it is considered the culmination of the long-fought battle for the freedom of slaves.

June 19th, 1865.

Several years after the Emancipation Proclamation, the estimated 250,000 slaves in Texas were free (ish). But the celebration was premature. As Janis Joplin sang, “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.” It seems that there was plenty left to lose after all.

Many Black folks remained enslaved despite proclamations to the contrary and the ugly reality of Jim Crow was just around the corner. Imagine, if the image is not too trite, several Black runners approaching a finish line, pulling up a bit early to celebrate, and having a herd of white dudes knock them over and break the tape, as has always been the case.

I suppose it would be unnecessarily grim to suggest that life is not much better for Black Americans in 2024 than in 1867, but we are headed in that direction. Some esteemed leaders like Ron DeSantis enjoy pointing out the benefits that slavery offered. That enlightened view is what Florida’s lucky schoolchildren get to consider. The impact of such careless rhetoric on Black children is immeasurable.

Of course even the most regressive GOP legislator would stop short of ankle chains or neck shackles. But systematically depriving Black citizens of full democratic rights is well within the scope of their moral depravity. One such calculated effort to roll back rights culminated in the Supreme Court’s notorious decision in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013 and the comparably damaging ruling in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee. Both decisions blunted the most effective measures enabled by the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Cheered by the shackles of justice being removed, white majority legislatures immediately passed more than 400 laws restricting voting rights, largely affecting Black citizens. Gerrymandering has become a GOP mainstay, with Black votes, if they’re possible at all, to be diluted to the point of electoral irrelevance. A clever way to say, “Well, you can vote, but it won’t really matter.” Just last month, the current Jim Crow Supreme Court reversed a South Carolina trial court finding that a vote-diluting scheme was unconstitutional.

Most of the MAGA fraudulent claims of a rigged 2020 election are essentially arguing that too many Black votes were counted. That they were rejected by every lawsuit is irrelevant. The white nationalists at the helm of the GOP are undeterred by the law. It is a matter of white Christian destiny, and that Trumps all legal or moral imperatives.

On the social and cultural level, the ground has similarly shifted. Affirmative action is dead because a group of well-funded, resentful white men orchestrated a decades long campaign to kill it. Even a majority of so-called liberals have been persuaded that it just WASN”T FAIR. We live in a meritocracy, they say, despite mountains of empirical evidence to the contrary.

I will not approach the DeSantis vulgarity, but for millions of Black Americans, mired in poverty, without adequate health care, relegated to deteriorating schools, suffering from police overreach (and too frequent overkill), subjected by cruel policy to disproportionate amounts of carcinogenic pollution, living in healthy-food deserts, and having their democratic rights restricted, the benefits of legal “freedom” are of meager solace.

The problem with Juneteenth, just as with Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, is that it gives racists the opportunity to say, “See! It’s fine! ‘They’ even have a holiday!” And that’s the “good” ones. Check out a MAGA website to see the Juneteenth haters having a good rant.

It is sad and ironic that news of Willie Mays’s death came on Juneteenth. With great respect to the arguable GOAT, Mays is the kind of Black man conservatives could embrace. He entertained them and proved that anyone can make it in good ol’ America. And Mays was conveniently unthreatening, as he would not be drawn into racial justice work. He had every right to look the other way, I suppose, but I prefer athletes in the Colin Kaepernick tradition.

Happy Juneteenth anyway. I guess it’s better than nothing at all.

The post Happy (?) Juneteenth! appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.