“I’m sick and tired of bein’ sick and tired!” That’s what Fannie Lou Hamer, the magnificent Civil Rights leader and head of the Mississippi Freedom Democrats said, and I thought I understood what she meant back in the 1960s. But now I understand it in my bones. You determine to manufacture affirmation. It’s a deliberate decision. You seek affirmation as if it were a place, and so it is. It’s the place where Yes We Can comes from. Anger can get you there–and women especially have a hard time with anger. But we’re learning to walk that path. Religion gets some people there. Love get some people there. There are many roads. It’s the mysterious place of reserve from which we draw resilience, imagination, even humor. Endurance--and pride in endurance. Art flourishes there. Like jazz and lullabies. Signals flash there, like songs, puzzles, quilts with codes that map directions...
I became so incandescent yet inarticulate with rage on hearing Trump say flat-out, whether from arrogance or ignorance or both, that of course he would accept foreign interference in U.S. elections if that would permit him to retain power, that rather than stammer any comment in tongue-tied fury I thought it preferable to rely on my betters. Here are two startlingly applicable examples of my betters holding forth with their highly relevant views. The first is George Washington. The Framers were particularly and justifiably worried about foreign intervention into the fledgling nation, so that was not only the subject of the now-famous-because-so-violated-by-Trump Emoluments Clause in the Constitution but it also took up a substantial proportion of Washington’s great Farewell Address. Here is a small excerpt: As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, . . . attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do...
Upside down, backwards, sideways. No wonder we feel dizzy and nauseated much of the time. Legislators discuss ”consensual rape,” presidential spokespeople insist there are ”alternate facts,” and lies become beyond brazen since there are written, photographic, video, audible, publicly witnessed records and testimonies exposing the lies. Crowd size, for example. What was said in an un-doctored videotaped interview or speech. What crime was boldly committed and baldly denied. When enough of these accumulate—and they come in an avalanche daily—they leave tiny pits, then dents, in a citizen's self confidence about recognizing reality, until the blizzard of pebbles becomes a pelting of stones and finally a hillside of boulders roaring down to bury the self, the truth, the real. This happens through language and action both, via short-term tactics and long-term strategies. It’s so blatant it bewilders the rational mind. It’s so continual it exhausts attempts to select one discrete example and...
“The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.” You might recognize that line, from Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2, as famous, but its meaning has been roundly debated. Some scholars insist that the speaker, a ne’er-do-well character aptly named Dick the Butcher, is serious because he detests lawyers, since they are virtuous defenders of justice. Other scholars insist just as loudly that because the scene is one of Shakespeare's comic-relief guttersnipe-street-people scenes, the remark is spat out as a laugh line aimed at corrupt lawyers and their high fees. Me, I think Will was, as usual, slaying two meanings with a single line. That would work today, too. On the one hand, more than 700 and still counting former Federal prosecutors have signed an open letter stating that had the acts committed by Donald J. Trump as outlined in the Mueller Report been committed by any other American citizen, that...
