Sailing To Oblivium: August 26, 2017

In over 40 years, I’ve received very few requests to perform acts associated with my profession that “didn’t meet the smell test.” None reached the level of high crimes or unconstitutional acts, but I declined each. Thank goodness, I declined each.

One induced me to leave a high-paying job and drift at the periphery of my profession for a while. I returned with my reputation intact and never looked back. I started my own firm where I could set the standards of conduct.

With another, I left a good contractual situation in an act of solidarity with a falsely maligned colleague. They hadn’t come for me at the time, but I knew they would. I could have enjoyed the making of money in the interim, but what price shall we place upon our reputation and self-respect?

 The lessons of life are apparent, there is the (modified) warning of “First they came for people of color, but I wasn’t a person of color … .” I also remember the advice of a friend, and attorney, “First they ask to just to do something that doesn’t smell right, but it’s not illegal. Then ….”

Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm far from perfect. My faults are legion. I think, though, we can make it as an individual, or as a nation, as long as the center holds.

In short, honor, duty, and allegiance to the United States Constitution are heavy burdens to carry through life, but worth every effort. Avoiding that effort will surely help pry open the door to the abyss.

 There isn’t much to say. No time for cheap laughs, just two mentally disturbed men meeting in the crossroads of history.

One accomplished an “in your face” feat designed to taunt and insult Arkansans who believe in the Constitution of the United States of America, as revised. It wasn’t undertaken because of love of the Galilean. If you want to study the work of a man who loves the Galilean, come to Little Rock, Arkansas and follow the Reverend Hezekiah Steward of “The Watershed” around for a few days.

As a quick aside, the first time I ever saw Reverend Stewart, he was strolling around Little Rock’s legendary Riverfest Festival. He had a basket strapped to his shoulder and was mingling among the crowd asking dollars for the poor. He still follows that goal, and one of the great pleasures of my life is when I am able to find him and do my share. He inspires love, compassion, and generosity. I believe the Galilean would be pleased.

Back to the other two I'm talking about today, one uses his “religious” antics to divide us and to make us hate one another because of our personal spiritual beliefs. It is sad that he has reached a position of some minor political power. He inspires distrust, antagonism, and greed. Shame on us for not electing better people to office.

The other mentally disturbed man in question used the power of his automobile and his unfortunate disability to destroy the crowning achievement of the other, a religious marker of a single religion placed in a public place. Sad. I hope the destoyer inspires concern, understanding, and public support for the ill. Shame on us for not taking better care of the least of those among us.

Let us try, then, in this brief life, to be more like the Reverend Stewart and to support medical help for the other two.

Meanwhile, the Galilean and I are trying our best not to bust out laughing.

True

Reconciliation: 22

Ear-worm of the week: “He do the police in different voices.” This is, perhaps, my favorite line from T.S Eliot’s classic The Waste Land.” Why did national politics initiate it as germinating thought?

Wait one.

Eliot must have liked the quote as well, for he used it as working title for the poem. It is, actually, a quote borrowed from Our Mutual Friend by Charlese Dickens. A character named Betty is complimenting a savant orphan named Sloppy: “You mightn't think it, but Sloppy is a beautiful reader of a newspaper. He do the Police in different voices.”

As for Eliot, who can guess completely what he had in mind. A most difficult poem, I spent the first year of my life following discharge from United States Navy studying it. I came of the experience freed from religious mythology but otherwise clueless. Perhaps, in a moment of cosmic prescience, he intended the poem as a cacophany of voices of the type that would eventually determine our fate. 

Which brings us to politics. Seems a reporter had the temerity to ask a Montana candidate for the U.S House of Representative a question about a matter coming before House, on the night before the election. The candidate's answer was a physical attack. Then the “different voices” started.

The reporter: “He body-slammed me.”

The assaulter’s campaign manager: “It was the reporter, actually, who attacked our candidate.”

The Police Chief: “Too many witnesses for ignoring the event. The reporter was, without doubt, attacked for asking a question about national events. Let’s just say it was a misdemeanor and let it go at that.” (There is a persistent rumor that when someone started turning to the First Amendment to the United States Constitutes, the Chief, who had donated to the miscreant’s campaign, ordered him stop, adding there was nothing to see there).

The leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump: “A glorious [political] victory.”

The Democratic Party leaders: “This man must not be seated by the House.”

The voters of Montana: “He (the assaulter) is our man. Kudos.”

This blog’s right-wing correspondent: “Summbitch got what he deserved.”

This blog’s left-wing correspondent: “Impeachment.”

The rest of America: “Groan.”

The upshot of it all was a resounding victory for the misdemeanorant. (Is that a word? If not, let’s make it one. We may need it in the future). What are decent folks to think?

Some of us are in hopes that this sad moment in our nation’s history may be, figuratively, the “My Lai” or “Kent State” in what has been a long battle in our country against common decency and civility. Perhaps it might even lead to … to … shall I say it … reconciliation?

One can only hope.

James Thurber forseeing the current
state of political discourse in America.

Reconciliation: 14

Don’t know about you, but I rejoice to know we still live in a nation governed by laws. The country had, it seemed to me, been drifting too much along the lines of the Weimar Republic to permit a comfortable night’s sleep.

Politics is a messy business that many people don’t understand. In my household, decisions involve only two people. Even then, they may involve hours of analysis, scenario-imagining, alternative analysis, and fiscal computations before she decides what we will do and I begin figuring out how to do it.

Imagine, on the other hand, if you had to convince a majority of 99 other people to follow your thinking on the resolution of a single issue. Imagine further that a majority of that majority will not form a decision based on your logic, or any logic at all. Factors as disparate as ideology, party loyalty, donor demands, and personal prejudices will control any number of votes.

The truth is, it is a miracle that laws ever get passed at all. The rare individual who is good at getting them passed at all may be a creature more ruthless than redemptive. But, consider Lyndon Baines Johnson. Hardly admirable in his personal habits, and unable to evade the tragedy of Vietnam, millions now have health care and millions more are free to exercise a right to vote because of this man who wouldn’t shrink from the most deplorable methods to pass a law.

Perhaps that is why we often hear the quote, “One should never watch sausages or laws being made.” It is ofttimes attributed to Bismarck. Don’t know if he actually said it, but it’s popular from time to time to attribute quotes to him, so what the heck?

That having been said, there should be boundaries that we don’t cross, and it seems we have crossed a few lately. When such a danger looms, it is the rule of law, not prayer, that saves us as a country, one more reason for the First Amendment separation of church and state. Is this to say personal spirituality doesn’t matter in our voting patterns? Of course not. I even place my voting habits on a segment of Christian literature. Yes, I do. I always try to offer my vote to the candidate who best fits my favorite scripture in theology, to wit:

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn: for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek: for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness: for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful: for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they will be called children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Does anyone ever make all eight points? Of course not. The real terror is that we elect so many that fail to score even one point, while trying to force their own brand of religion upon us.

Just thinking.