Lemon Pledge

The content of this seventeen-year-old article is every bit as relevant to the problems we face today as it was when it was written, and for the same reasons.

Publication: The Columbus Dispatch;Date: Mar 1, 2004;Section: Forum;Page: 7

Reciting Pledge of Allegiance problematic in a modern light

    Let's talk about the Pledge of Allegiance. How much do you really know about it? I dare say few of us left school without being introduced to the national anthem's Francis Scott Key. Yet most of us recited the pledge at the start of every school day without knowing much about its provenance.

    This year, in a case that has generated more raw emotion than a Jimmy Swaggart repentance, the u.S. Supreme Court will determine whether the pledge is constitutionally viable. Michael Newdow, a father, lawyer and atheist, challenged the recitation of the pledge in his young daughter's public-school classroom.

    Newdow objects to the words under God, claiming, logically, that the phrase is an expression of religious conviction – a belief in a deity – and therefore violates the separation of church and state. Amazingly, a federal appellate court agreed: and the government's appeal is set for argument before the Supreme Court on March 24.

    There is no getting around the historical fact that the phrase under God was intended as an overt statement of religious belief. It was inserted by Congress in 1954, 62 years after the pledge was written, purposely to proclaim the United States as a believer nation, in sharp contrast to the official atheism of the Soviet Union.

    An intellectually honest court would say that professing a belief in a deity as part of a daily ritual in our public schools violates the Bill of Rights. However, if the high court required the words under God to be excised, the resulting political uproar would lead to the passage of a pledge-protection constitutional amendment faster than you could say Tom DeLay.

    Either way, this is not going to end well for liberty.

    So, here's my modest proposal: Stop directing schoolchildren to say the pledge or any rote recitation of national fealty, not because of the roiling under-God debate, but because loyalty oaths are a backward approach to generating allegiance and are beneath us as a nation.

    Instead we should be imbuing young people with a thoroughgoing understanding of our founders' vision, and investing in civics classes that teach the meaning of liberty and justice for all and how this country, sometimes fitfully, expanded individual rights and the franchise to all its citizens.

    That is how you inspire loyalty. Daily oaths and pledges of allegiance are for nations that don't have as much to be proud of as ours. We have freedom: we don't need a pledge.

    There is another reason why we should retire the pledge: Francis Bellamy, its author. Bellamy penned the simple prose in 1892 as part of a quadricentennial celebration of Columbus Day. But there are many aspects of Bellamy's thinking that would be uncomfortable to 21st century Americans.

    He was an avowed socialist, whose thoughts were very much in line with his more famous cousin, Edward Bellamy, the author of Looking Backward, 2000-1887. Published in 1888, the novel describes the United States in the year 2000 as a nation transformed into a command economy, in which every adult is enlisted in the nation's industrial army. There is no private enterprise. Goods are obtained through the government with the use of ration cards. And everyone is granted the same annual"income." In the Bellamys' view, this socialist vista was utopia.

    Francis Bellamy's pledge also prescribed a "military salute" to accompany its recital. Originally, there was no hand upon one's heart; rather, the flag salute resembled that adopted by the nazis: right hand straight out, level with the forehead, palm down. As the words were said, the palm was to be turned up toward the flag.

    Old pictures of students striking this pose don't generate the warmth typically associated with seeing young people express their love of country; instead they are chilling reminders of the danger of blind loyalty.

    Bellamy's pledge may have sounded like an ode to equal justice, but he was a bigot himself. As editor of the magazine, The Illustrated American, he wrote editorials denouncing southern European immigrants: "A democracy like ours cannot afford to throw itself open to the world," he wrote in 1897. "Where every man is a lawmaker, every dull-witted or fanatical immigrant admitted to our citizenship is a bane to the commonwealth. Where all classes of society merge insensibly into one another every alien immigrant of inferior race may bring corruption to the stock."

    This is the man to whom American schoolchildren essentially pay homage every morning by reciting his words.

    Ending the pledge is obviously a nonstarter in a country that busts a gasket when even a small adjustment, such as returning the pledge to its original text, is suggested. Apparently, you are not a patriot unless you believe that government employees should lead schoolchildren every morning to profess a belief in God and declare how this nation loves liberty. Who says this country suffers from a dearth of irony?

    Robyn Blumner writes for Tribune Media Services.

The Real Danger Is...

 

...Ron Johnson and those who follow him.

Despite the batty image in the editorial cartoon below, Ron Johnson is not crazy. Johnson is a racist demagogue who knows exactly what he's doing. The dangerous game he's playing is designed to reassure the bigots in his right-wing base that he's with them and working to undermine the rights of those he and they hate.

link to source

Kvetch As Kvetch Can

 

As Democrats work to govern, Republicans kvetch.

link to source

Other than cutting taxes for the richest among us, Republicans offer no - as in ZERO - policy proposals for solving the problems facing our country. In fact, they deny the very existence of real problems and instead spout debunked conspiracies to distract the public from their self-serving agenda.

With Apologies and Thanks to Harper Lee

link to source

Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird is my all-time favorite novel. The lessons it teaches about prejudice and injustice in America are profound. They have shaped my political beliefs and idea of what justice is and what it is not.

In Lee's novel, a clearly innocent black man, Tom Robinson, is unjustly convicted by all-white jury members that are blind to their own racism. In a few days, it is expected that enough all-white Republican members of the United States Senate, equally blind to their own racism, will acquit a clearly guilty, racist, former president, Donald J. Trump. 

The parallels between the injustices in both the novel and expected acquittal have led me to rewrite Atticus Finch's summation to the jury in defense of Tom Robinson found in To Kill A Mockingbird for use as an appropriate summation by the impeachment managers to the U.S. Senate for the conviction of  Donald J. Trump.

In anticipation of the defense's most likely argument and expected acquittal of the former president at the end of his second impeachment trial, I have taken the liberty of borrowing and rewriting selected sections of Atticus Finch's summation to Tom Robinson's jury in Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird for the impeachment managers to use as a model.

The defenders of the former president, with the exception of six senators, have presented themselves to the American people, to this impeachment tribunal, in the cynical confidence that their lies would not be doubted, confident that a majority of Republican senators would go along with them on the assumption—the evil assumption—that all Democrats lie, that all Democrats are basically immoral beings, that all Democrats are not fit to hold positions of political power, an assumption one associates with minds of their caliber. 

Which, my fellow Americans, we know is in itself a lie as obvious as those told by the former president and the right-wing talking heads who support him and spread his lies. You know the truth, and the truth is this: some Democrats lie, some Democrats are immoral, some Democrats are not fit to hold positions of political power. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular political party. There is not a person in this chamber who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no person living who has never been tempted to put self-interest over duty. But there is one person not present here who built his entire career, including his recent, four-year term as president, on lies, immorality and self-interest. 

I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the wisdom of the framers of The Constitution and the impeachment process it contains— that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Senators, an impeachment tribunal is no better than each one of you sitting before me in this chamber. A trial is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the people who make it up. The Constitution to which each of you swore an oath tasks you with reviewing without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and convict Donald J. Trump. In the name of God, do your duty.

* * * 

This is the text of Atticus Finch's summation in To Kill A Mockingbird which I rewrote for the impeachment managers: 

“And so a quiet, respectable, humble Negro who had the unmitigated temerity to ‘feel sorry’ for a white woman has had to put his word against two white people’s. I need not remind you of their appearance and conduct on the stand—you saw them for yourselves. The witnesses for the state, with the exception of the sheriff of Maycomb County, have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court, in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption—the evil assumption—that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women, an assumption one associates with minds of their caliber.

“Which, gentlemen, we know is in itself a lie as black as Tom Robinson’s skin, a lie I do not have to point out to you. You know the truth, and the truth is this: some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men are not to be trusted around women— black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men. There is not a person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire.”… 

…“I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system— that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty.”

Vaccine Vaudeville

People attempting to sign up for the COVID vaccine online find themselves confronted with a maze of widely differing procedures and forms to complete depending on  where they live and which websites they visit. The reason for the confusion is described in the following excerpt from an article from Science News.

Click here to read the full article.

Why is it so hard to get a vaccine?
Vaccine distribution in the United States has been plagued with problems. Not only are limited doses available to people in currently eligible groups but everyone who gets Moderna’s or Pfizer’s vaccines needs two shots for full protection (SN: 12/3/20).

The logistical issues also come in part because each state — sometimes down to the county or town level — is handling the situation in their own way, Barry Bloom, an immunologist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said January 28 in a call with journalists. Who is even eligible for the shots varies from place to place, causing confusion and frustration. Such a local response “is very difficult to coordinate, which I think is a real tragedy and a hindrance to knowing exactly where the vaccines are needed, exactly how many doses should go, which vaccines they have the facilities for,” Bloom said

* * * 

After many attempts and much frustration, I was able to figure out a way to navigate that maze and thereby to receive my first shot. I am a computer geek, so I sent an email to a number of friends here in Ohio offering to help them sign up for the vaccine online if they were having difficulty.

Several friends called, and I helped them get signed up. Today, however, a help session turned into...

A COVID Comedy of Errors

My friend Tom called me with questions about how he could help his daughter register for the vaccine. I asked him if he was at his computer, and he said he was. I wanted to mirror his progress in following my instructions, so I directed him to the Ohio Department of Health's Coronavirus website and called up the same link on my computer. The website shows a map of the State of Ohio covered with 970 blue dots, one for every vaccination location in the state. 

In order to show him how to reconfigure the map to display only the vaccine administration locations in a specific part of the state, I asked Tom for his daughter's Zip Code.

To this, he replied, "Marietta's Zip Code is 43220."

I carefully entered 43220 into the search field on the web page, expecting to see blue dots near Marietta, Ohio located on the Ohio River. The map however reconfigured to show three blue dots in the northwest corner of Franklin County, which is smack dab in the middle of Ohio and definitely not on the Ohio River.

I said, "Something's wrong, Tom. 43220 is not the Zip Code for Marietta, Ohio."

Tom laughed and said, "Marietta is my daughter. She lives right here in Columbus."

Moral: Even during a pandemic funny things happen to computer geeks.

* * *

Obligatory Political Comment: You can blame Donald Trump's failure to create a national response to the COVID-19 pandemic for the mess described in the "Science News" article referenced at the top of this post.

Destination Decision

On May 13, 2009 when it became clear to me that the GOP was actively courting members of the KKK, I created the image below and used it in a blog post entitled Rebranding the Right.

On March 15, 2016 I updated the image with the hair of the GOP's presidential candidate, a man who was clearly in favor of the party's affiliation with white supremacy groups.

I had hopes that those images would go viral and alert voters to the danger of a Republican party that appeared to be abandoning belief in America as a melting pot in favor of the myth of white supremacy. Perhaps my caption was too subtle and those who saw the images did not recognized the cross in the eye of those logos as the "Blood Drop Cross" of the KKK.

Now, after four years of a Trump presidency, it is crystal clear that the GOP has completely embraced white supremacy and fully supports those who, on orders from Donald Trump, stormed the U.S. Capitol with plans to capture and kill members of the House and Senate as well as the Republican party's own Vice President.

That brings us to yet another revision of the GOP logo...

a timeline,

 

and a wish.

I sincerely hope that thinking Republicans choose to leave the GOP's seditious parade and join the voters of Georgia, who have rejected white supremacy and chosen to follow The Road To Inclusion.

America's Herd Mentality

Today a friend posted the following to her Facebook page:

It will never cease to amaze me that there are so many weak-minded people who will so easily believe a con artist. How is it possible that there are so many easily-duped people?

To my friend's observation and question I offered the following:

From childhood on, self-serving misleaders of political and religious institutions tell middle class Americans that they need someone to follow because they are inherently (by economic status) and/or spiritually (because of original sin) incapable of making good decisions for themselves.

Those are lies.

Parents, steeped in the lies and encouraged by their misleaders, lambaste educators who attempt to teach their children how to think and reason, calling them morally bankrupt corruptors of the social order.

As a result, what passes for education in America is little more than occupational training for worker drones in a corporatocracy - a nation of sheeple tended, fed, and let to slaughter by the wolves of Wall Street.

A Case of Coincidental Nomenclature

I found it eerily coincidental that Ashli Babbitt, the woman killed participating in the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, shared her surname with the title character of a 1922 novel by Sinclair Lewis.The following synopsis of Lewis's novel contains words which, in my opinion, describe the mindset that drove several thousand Americans, including Ms. Babbitt, to travel to Washington D.C. and mount an insurrection against the results of an incontrovertibly honest and fair election and which Donald Trump and his cadre of self-serving political and self-righteous religious abettors have exploited to enrich themselves and amass power. For emphasis, I have underlined and colored those words in red. 

Babbitt

Babbitt, first published in 1922, is a novel by Sinclair Lewis. Largely a satire of American culture, society, and behavior, it critiques the vacuity of middle-class American life and its pressure toward conformity. An immediate and controversial bestseller, Babbitt is one of Lewis’s best-known novels and was influential in the decision to award him the Nobel Prize in literature in 1930. The word "Babbitt" entered the English language as a "person and especially a business or professional man who conforms unthinkingly to prevailing middle-class standards".

US Congress

Woman shot and killed in storming of US Capitol named as Ashli Babbitt

Police shot Babbitt, 35, a military veteran and Trump supporter, reportedly as she tried to break through door

Ben Doherty

 @bendohertycorro

Thu 7 Jan 2021 13.52 ESTFirst published on Thu 7 Jan 2021 08.35 EST

Shares

2,847

 Ashli Babbitt was a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. Photograph: Facebook

A woman shot and killed by police during the storming of the US Capitol by a pro-Donald Trump mob has been named as a 14-year veteran of the US air force and of four foreign military tours, including to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ashli Babbitt, 35, had travelled to Washington DC from San Diego, her husband told the local news station KUSI, adding that she was a passionate Trump supporter.

Three other people died from “medical emergencies” during Wednesday’s siege of the Capitol, according to the Washington DC police chief, Robert Contee.

Contee has confirmed to reporters a woman was shot by Capitol police – a federal law enforcement agency responsible for protecting the US Congress – but has not released further details.

Less than a day before she joined the Trump loyalist protest, Babbitt, an avowed and public Trump supporter as well as a subscriber to a number of alt-right conspiracy theories, had vowed the insurrectionist movement could never be halted. “Nothing will stop us … they can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours … dark to light!” she wrote on Twitter.

Babbitt, 35, was reportedly shot as she and other rioters tried to break through a barricaded door in the building where Capitol police officers were armed on the other side. 

On video footage circulating on social media, a single gunshot is heard during an attempt to storm the barricaded door. Other footage shows police attempting to perform emergency first aid on a woman lying on the floor bleeding.

Babbitt was taken to hospital with a gunshot wound but later pronounced dead.

On Twitter, Babbitt described herself as a veteran and a libertarian. Her social media account is filled with declarations of support for Trump and condemnation of November’s presidential election, which Trump lost.

Babbitt also apparently supported many of the conspiracy theories shared by alt-right groups, including one about a vast network of high-profile and powerful paedophiles. She regularly retweeted the controversial lawyer and conspiracy theorist Lin Wood, a high-profile Trump supporter who has litigated several of the president’s failed lawsuits contesting the election result.

Play Video

0:51

 Pro-Trump mob storm Capitol as lawmakers meet to certify Biden's win – video

She had also called on the vice-president, Mike Pence – who has split with Trump in refusing to oppose the certification of Joe Biden’s election win – to resign and face charges of treason.

Babbitt’s mother-in-law, Robin Babbitt, told the New York Post: “I’m numb. I’m devastated. Nobody from DC notified my son and we found out on TV.”

Everything was “pretty surreal”, Babbitt’s brother-in-law Justin was quoted as saying. “It’s hard, because we haven’t been officially notified.”

One of the other people who died on Wednesday was Kevin D Greeson, 55, from Alabama, who had a heart attack outside the Capitol building. His widow Kristi Greeson told the New York Times that he had been excited to attend the rally, believing that the election had been stolen.

At least 56 Washington police officers were injured, Contee said. One was taken to hospital after being dragged into a crowd and assaulted, another suffered “significant facial injuries” after being hit by a projectile.

Contee said at least 68 people had been arrested. Only one of those people were from Washington and eight were women. Contee said his department was working “to identify and hold each and every one of the violent mob accountable”.

“We have collected numerous images of persons of interest that we are asking the community to help us identify,” he added.

A cooler packed with molotov cocktails was also found on US Capitol grounds. Police recovered two pipe bombs at the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee offices.

The mayor of Washington DC, Muriel Bowser, declared a citywide public emergency until 21 January, the day after Biden’s inauguration as president. Bowser called the attack on the Capitol an “affront on our American democracy” and urged city residents to abide by the city’s curfew.

US education secretary Betsy DeVos resigns, blaming Trump 'rhetoric' for violence

 

Read more

“I urge anyone who is not in place in your home or your hotel – and if you mean to cause trouble in the streets of DC you will be arrested,” she said.

Bowser said Trump held ultimate responsibility for the violent protests. “We saw an unprecedented attack on our American democracy incited by the United States president. He must be held accountable. His constant and divisive rhetoric led to the abhorrent actions we saw today.”

UNFIT TO SERVE!

1. There is video evidence Derrick Evans was not only part of the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 but also a leader of those who forced their way into the building.

2. (excerpt from the article below) ...He wrote that he did not have "negative interactions" with law enforcement. He said he did not participate in "any destruction that may have occurred."

3. Evans clearly does not understand that his participation in an act of insurrection has done damage far beyond the broken windows and ransacked offices of members of Congress. It has damaged the very fabric of the nation he was elected to serve and the Constitution he has sworn to protect.

4. By both his actions and his words Evans has shown himself to be UNFIT TO SERVE!

Video Shows Newly Elected W.Va. Lawmaker Among Mob That Stormed The U.S. Capitol

January 6, 2021 10:33 PM ET

DAVE MISTICH

W. Va. Del. Derrick Evans, shown taking the oath of office in Charleston on Dec. 14, 2020 was seen in a video as part of the group of pro-Trump rioters who forced their way into the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday.

Perry Bennett/West Virginia Legislature via AP