THE GREAT DIVIDE

By Ruth A. Sheets

I recently read an article I found quite disconcerting.  The article is “The Left-Right Divide is Not Bridgeable” by Dennis Prager and appeared in townhall.com in February this year.  I found the article in a braille magazine I read each week and have done so for 41 years, since it was first published.  I am about to end my subscription, though, because there are too many articles like this one which I suspect was included in a false attempt to be “fair and balanced.” 

Yesterday, jury selection began for Donald Trump’s trial for hush money he paid to a woman to cover up a liaison he had with her, to hide information from the American voters.  The actual crime involves fudging campaign funds and records to potentially cover up the transaction.  Even though this issue is not part of this article, it fits into that divide Prager describes.  On the “right” side of the divide, without even understanding the law and the crime Trump is accused of, the folks are sure this is a “witch hunt” (they don’t know what that actually is either).  On the “left” side of the divide, people have looked at evidence and are pretty sure Trump has committed several crimes to cover up a liaison with a porn star, to keep voters from knowing who he really is. 

Throughout his article, Prager tries his best to tell readers there is no way for the right (which is clearly his darling) and the Left (the stupid naïve folks in his eyes) to meet and bridge their world view, or even be able to understand the other side’s thinking.  He, then proves he can be as racist, misogynistic, homo/transphobic, as any of his right-side-of-the-divide’s readers.

 The examples he gives of what can never be bridged include:

• Those who believe men can become women and women become men and those who can’t (as though this is a choice)
• - those who believe colorblindness is racist and those who see it as an antidote to racism (this one is strange because it seems only people on the right even use the term colorblindness – the rest of us know colorblindness is impossible at this time)
• - those who see Israel as the villain and Hamas as the victim (I don’t  know anyone on the left who sees this as a complete divide, noting both Israel and Hamas are wrong)
• - those who believe children should be brought to drag shows and those who don’t (this one is also odd since most drag shows are not for children – although some drag performers do offer special programs specifically designed for children which are pure childhood entertainment)
• - those who believe reducing the number of police will reduce crime and those who want to increase the number of police to stop the growing crime rate (crime is going down significantly and the people who want fewer police want mental health workers to be called so someone with a “break” can be cared for by experts)
• - those who want to suppress “free speech” if they deem it hateful or misinformation and those who believe in “free speech” (free speech was not meant to say that people can say any hateful lying thing against someone and not potentially be held accountable for it – Is the writer trying to justify the appalling lies the right-of-the-dividers have spewed against anyone who does not see the world as they do?)

Prager tells readers that every one of the above positions is “mutually contradictory” and that there are plenty more such diverse positions.  With no evidence, he claims that everyone who holds these positions agree that they are unbridgeable.  Then he adds that only the “left liberals” are so naïve that they don’t agree.  What!  I thought he just said that everyone on both sides of the divide agree.

The comments on columns in the “New York Times” by folks on the left prove to Prager that his pathetic hypothesis has merit.  He tells readers those who comment are college grads and have sufficient disposable income to subscribe to the NYT, which makes them what?  His rant next moves to a column about Christian Nationalism by Ross Douthat, the one NYT columnist who supposedly properly defends conservative Christianity.  Prager defines Christian Nationalism as “the left-wing smear of conservatives.”  He says it is just like “sexism, racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, fascist, and threat to our democracy.”  In Prager’s thinking it is the left who just use these to “smear” conservatives rather than debate with those with whom they differ.  Huh!

It became clear to me just how that divide Mr. Prager whines about happened.  He and his fellows on the conservative side have decided they can’t possibly be any of those things they say they are accused of, so either those things don’t exist or it is the “left” making them up to label decent god-loving people who. 

• - claim they don’t despise LGBTQ+ people, particularly trans persons, while voting to deny medical care for young people in transition. 
• - don’t despise women; they only want to force women to give birth and make them incubators for embryos and fetuses that have more rights than adult women have. 
• - don’t despise immigrants; their own grandparents came from afar, but they want an impenetrable wall, sealing in all the “right people” and keeping those people out. 
• - are not racist, but work really hard to take away voting rights for people who just happen to be Black, Hispanic, or another group they don’t care for despite the right to vote guaranteed in our Constitution.  Then, there’s the history thing. 
• - complain that people of color want police departments reformed but ignore the number of Black people killed by police because “I was afraid for my life.” 

There is a divide, but not the one poor Mr. Prager is worried about and believes he is on the correct side of.  The divide is separating those who have experience of the world and its diversity and those who have little or none.  As part of that divide are “religious” people who select from the Bible the parts they like and ditch the rest.  They seem to like the passages that prove to them, they are the ones god loves while despising the rest.  Prager doesn’t realize that on both sides of the right-left divide are religious people who try to hold love and caring for others as a requirement of their faith. 

That divide is not nearly as wide as people like Dennis Prager and his colleagues would like us all to believe.  Broader education and more honest debate would help to build the bridges.  It will take more than one bridge because the issues are many and varied and the bridges will need to vary too.  The biggest block right now to any bridges being built are our media.  For money, views, and likes, they will pump out all kinds of nonsense, much of it that can be harmful to their fellow citizens.  They like the divide because it serves the purpose of keeping people on edge, suspicious of those they don’t understand.  Suspicious, fearful people can be manipulated and alas, that is what conservatives with power have decided is their task and right now, they are doing it well along with their media collaborators. 

Shame on Dennis Prager, picking a few comments supposedly by left-wing people as his evidence of a divide that he and his friends have done a great deal to create, then complaining about it and blaming it on those they have pushed across a chasm.  This involves the right’s work to ban books they don’t like, dyssing curricula that teaches our history including the discrimination and violence against those not white and male, condemnation of drag shows which they probably have never even seen, denial of medical care to LGBTQ+ youth, to make them seem like criminals because they want to use bathrooms that match their gender. 

The best way to get a bridge across the divide is for as many Americans as possible to vote Democratic in November.  That could slow the fascist push by those who love the divide and want to make the gap larger.  They don’t want people meeting in the center to talk, listen, and maybe even eat dinner together.  We do have more in common than we think.  It will take caring open-minds all along the divide to start the bridge-building process.

Perhaps it could start by having someone on the left invite Dennis Prager to a scary drag show, maybe even hold his hand so he isn’t too terrified.

A BLOG OF DELIGHTS

By Ruth A. Sheets

I don’t know about you, but for me the past couple of months have been difficult.  There is winter that is not cold enough and global warming is on my mind with every weather report.  There is the political insanity of an indicted man, convicted of rape, running for our highest office when he was an appalling failure the first time.  There is the regular coverage of two wars, neither of which should have happened:  Ukraine and Gaza.  And to top that off, there were family challenges and the loss of loved ones to work through.

Then two things happened that lifted my spirit.  The first was that I went on a cruise with my sisters to the Caribbean.  I got to visit a place I had wanted to see for years, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and it was as special as I thought it would be. 

The second was an interview I heard with poet and essayist Ross Gay.  He had written The Book of Delights a few years ago and just finished The Book of More Delights.  His premise is that there are delights all around us but we miss them as we move quickly through the world, hardly noticing them.  The darker side of life is presented as though it is the most common experience and we should expect the negativity.  Ross Gay says that is ridiculous and that if we changed our perspective, life would improve significantly.

He set out to write an essay a day for a year including the daily delights he encountered.  He didn’t quite get an essay a day, but he did write many.  They included simple things like an unexpected bird landing on a branch to more complex delights like observing an encounter with strangers.  I really enjoyed learning what he considered delightful and often found myself smiling as I read.

I am not as ambitious as Ross Gay, but I have decided to identify a few delights  of the past couple of weeks.  Maybe we can start a trend in noticing the world around us and just how amazing it is.

Delight 1:  While we were on the ship, I often walked onto our little balcony and felt the wind on my face, and heard the ocean as the ship moved through the water.  The sounds changed based on whether there was a storm or fair weather or depending on the time of day.  One day I thought I heard rain and opened the door.  It was pouring, but only on our little part of the ship.  It lasted about 5 minutes, raining just for us, with our own little cloud.

Delight 2:  I love food, all kinds of food.  I used to say I never met a cuisine I didn’t like and it is still true.  Again, on our vacation, I ate a simple meal of fish and chips 4 times.  It was prepared so well and tasted so good I enjoyed every bite.  My sisters did too which was fun since they don’t like most of the things I do.  Each piece of fish and French fry was a bit crunchy on the outside and soft and yummy on the inside.  As I write this, I am delighted all over again.

Delight 3:  My sister’s niece and nephew came to visit a few weeks back.  Their daughter was 5 months old at the time.  I got to hold her for quite a while and she seemed to like sitting with me.  She was doing her baby giggle and it made me  want to laugh too.  That’s a delight parents and grandparents of young children get to experience every day if they take time to notice.

Delight 4:  The birds are back!  When I walk outside in the morning, I hear a variety of birds chirping, arguing, calling out for attention and I know spring is here.  For a couple of years, few birds were making their noises and I missed them.  I hope the ones in the chorus these days are planning to stay.  I heard birds hanging around my balcony.  I am hoping my grackles are back to start their family.  Last year, there were two sets of chicks, a delight every day while they nested there. 

Delight 5:  I am a major radio aficionado.  I was listening to WRTI, Philadelphia’s classical and jazz station last week when there was a whole day of music I love.  I knew most of the pieces that day and enjoyed one after another.  My favorite, Mozart’s French Horn Concerto #4.  I felt as though they had checked out my albums and picked a bunch to play, ones that would please lots of other people too.

Delight 6:  I have the honor of leading worship at my church through the last weeks of Lent, through Easter.  It has been delightful looking through the hymns and other music to include.  I want to be sure not to repeat hymns so I had to find others that could work.  It’s a lot of work, but when a service comes together, it is truly a delight.

Delight 7:  A friend of mine from graduate school send me a book and pamphlets she had written.  Since I can’t read print, I shared them with friends at church.  One of the women was looking through a book and asked if I knew she had written a poem dedicated to me.  I didn’t know.  She read it for me and It was amazing that she thought of me as someone who mattered in her life.  I don’t get to see her because she lives in Iowa, but we have kept in touch for more than 35 years.

Delight 8:  Did you ever bite into something that was just perfect and tasted like what one might imagine Heaven is like?  Well this morning, I took a bite of my breakfast burrito, made by my own hands, seasoned with Penzy’s spices (a great company that not only produces fair trade spices but supports “liberal” causes), then wrapped with a slightly toasted tortilla.  Then to follow that bite, I sipped my mug of chocolate macaroon, my favorite tea.  It gave me the energy to face the insanity of my inbox.  

Since I started focusing more on the delightful aspects of my life, I think I have been better able to handle the rest of the craziness that is going on.  I am not as talented as Ross Gay in presenting my delights, but it has been fun remembering those I described here.  I highly recommend people try it.

OUR SUPREME COURT - NOT FOR THE PEOPLE

By Ruth A. Sheets

On February 8, 2024, the Supreme Court heard the case that challenged Colorado’s right to keep Trump off the primary ballot of the state due to his being an insurrectionist.  I was pretty sure the SC would force Colorado to put Trump back on the ballot but was not sure exactly how it would be done. 

I knew the Colorado case was lost for sure when Justice Brown shared a reading of aspects of history related, she said, to the 14^th amendment.  I didn’t get much from her argument, but since it sounded very lawyeresque, and Justice Kagan joined in opposing Colorado, also on some grounds I didn’t understand fully, it was clear Colorado had lost, even though no decision has been handed down yet.    When even the “liberal” justices took up the “conservative” cause,” there was no hope that Colorado, a state that had the right according to the Constitution to keep insurrectionists and those who aid and comfort insurrectionists off the ballot would be able to do it.

So, let’s see, states can gerrymander to their heart’s content, can make up all kinds of voter suppression laws despite the Constitution’s stated right of every citizen of this country age 18 and older has the right to vote, can decide that state legislatures can control women’s bodily autonomy, they can ban books and threaten to jail women for miscarriages or leaving their state for medical assistance, but can’t keep an insurrectionist off the ballot.  Uh-huh! 

Unfortunately, it seems our current Supreme Court (mostly the conservatives) has proven itself over and over that it likes the Constitution only when it agrees with their own beliefs, often religious ones even though most of our founders believed in a clear separation of church and state.  The “conservatives” claim to be "originalists," trying to pretend they know what the founders were thinking if they thought about the issue at all, then rejecting any of those supposed thoughts that don't agree with them.  On rare occasions, when little is at stake, they might rule in a way that helps someone other than themselves and their donors, like same-sex marriage, but not if it is a major decision with critical consequences for this nation.   

• - They gave the presidency in 2000 to W. Bush who had not won the popular vote or the Florida vote, had the ballots been permitted by the court to be recounted. 
• - They decided corporations are persons but not that they should be actually treated as persons, except when it comes to money, claiming those corporate "persons" should be able to donate as much money as they want to PACs and political campaigns and no one actually had to know to whom and how much, while actual citizens can't do that (Citizens United). 
• - They gutted the Voting Rights Act even though it was confirming the rights of Black Americans to vote (15th amendment), wrongly declaring racism and its discrimination were a thing of the past (Shelby). 
• - The Dobbs decision lied that abortion was not legal at the time of the founding so it was up to the states to decide a woman's fate on the grounds that a 17^th century witch hunter knew anything about women or abortion.  The 14th Amendment gives everyone privacy, but to the SC conservatives and their state pseudo-christian supporters, not women. 
• - Religious groups can discriminate against anyone they don’t like or who does not share their world view even when the case brought is a fiction (the case involving wedding websites).

Trump is an insurrectionist and even if he was not physically present at the Capitol on January 6th, he was the architect of the violence and would have been happier had there been more deaths, particularly that of Mike Pence.  Had any other American plotted or incited such an event, he/she would have been in jail for decades if not life.  Somehow the con artist, created TV star continues his Teflon status where everything just slides off him. 

Trump was recently declared by the DC Court to have no blanket immunity as president, so he and his “lawyers” has sent that decision to the Supreme Court.  The Court will be faced with the dilemma that if they give their Donnie immunity, Biden would have it too and could then legally arrest Trump for his significant crimes and hold him in jail without bail.  What one president is allowed to do the others may too, or that’s the way it should be if all things were equal.  Unfortunately nothing related to Trump is equal.

Trump should be disallowed from the ballots in every state, but our SC just can't manage that for fear of the Trump supporters that the Court has permitted to be armed and dangerous.  The Supreme Court justices might worry about violence done by Trumpers and Trumpettes, but they cared nothing for the suffering women would face if they passed off abortion rights to states.  Yep, the 6 will in this case, care what their donors and Trump supporters think.  After all, they are mostly white and a bunch of them have guns.  Those folks have regularly nearly with impunity, threatened anyone who dares to  publicly criticize their Don, their deity. 

The SC seems to be working hard to undermine our democracy on behalf of rich white “Christian” men and corporations, and I don't see any change in its direction.  Their idea of making America great again seems to be moving backward toward the 19^th century courts that nearly exclusively gave rights to rich white men over everyone else. Well, it is important that we make it clear that those days are gone and our diverse society demands something different. 

It is not clear why our SC might stand with a former president whose behavior is regularly on the edge of illegal, crossing over now and then.  It is too bad so many people in our nation choose not to see that in reality, Trump is a whiney child-man who is an insurrectionist, and who, along with his congressional troop of insurrectionists, should not be permitted to hold any office ever again.  Our SC is expected to find a twisted way to force states to let their Donnie and the other insurrectionists stay on ballots and hold office if elected.  That shows us all that for our Supreme Court, following our Constitution is conditional, making them not very trustworthy.  To keep future and current presidents from becoming criminals, the SC may deny Trump immunity or just revert the case to the lower court.  They may take a long time to do it though to give their Donnie more time on the campaign trail.  

The SC needs to be reformed.  Term limits for the justices, a limit on the number of justices a president can appoint per term, expanding the SC to 13 or more members, a code of ethics that has real consequences, and limiting the scope of their rulings would be a good start.  Congress can according to the Constitution do all of those things.  The question, will they?  Not with the current make-up.  

Therefore, if we want a Supreme Court that is for the people and that will protect and defend our democracy, we had all better vote and get everyone we know to the polls or we will lose many more of our rights, possibly our democracy too.  This is no longer a hypothetical.   

 

WHAT ARE WE DOING?

By Ruth A. Sheets

Yesterday afternoon, a news brief came on the radio.  The voice of Donald Trump blurted out giving his assessment of NATO and a made-up conversation between (I am guessing) himself and a NATO member about paying their dues.  It was not exactly clear what he was suggesting, but it sounded as though if they don’t pay up, they deserve whatever they get from Russia or whomever and we won’t help.  It was a clear threat, but also a promise to his cult that he was still their guy, their playground bully who if allowed back in power, he would try to force everyone to accommodate his/their prejudices.  Of course, he focused on money, ironic considering how much he ignores paying for things.

I am currently reading a book entitled Becoming Mamma-san by Mary Matsuda Gruenewald.  The author was interned along with other Japanese and Japanese-Americans during World War II. 

These two things suddenly came together for me when Ms. Gruenewald talked about the “loyalty oath” all interned prisoners had to sign.  After depriving these persons of their homes, their livelihoods, their dignity, and their freedom, the United States Government was demanding a loyalty that could put their lives further at risk, requiring young men to go into the army and young women to serve in a women’s service branch.  If they refused to agree, the “no-nos, they were dumped into concentration camp, Tule Lake in California, a remote desert hell, and were considered pariahs by the people of this nation as well as by other interned Japanese people. 

The question that came to me was “what are we doing!  We the People seem to easily forget where we have been and we let people whose humanity is lacking, have power they should never have, then we believe that what they say should matter.  We buy into their “insanity” and pretend the damage done by them isn’t something we can do anything about. 

In one case above, with absolutely no evidence, people of Japanese descent were forced into concentration camps behind barbed wire and towers manned by soldiers with machine guns.  In the other case, with tremendous amounts of evidence that he is a serial liar, a tax cheat, and an insurrectionist who was legally voted out of office is still not behind barbed wire and is trying to get back into office by whatever means necessary.  The difference is pretty obvious it seems to me, no evidence is necessary if it is a group of people different from the majority and no matter how much evidence is presented, a rich white man can actually be disloyal to our nation and not only get away with it, but plans to do it again and take revenge, something the Japanese internees didn’t do, and they had cause where Trump has none.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, numerous investigations were conducted finding there was essentially no evidence of espionage by Japanese people in America.  Major Karl Bendetsen and Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, two officers of the Western Defense Command ignored the FBI and other reports of no evidence and pumped out conspiracy theories that “the fact that nothing has happened so far is more or less . . . ominous.”  DeWitt claimed this indicated there was control being exercised within the Japanese community that would shortly fail and that control ended, the sabotage would be massive.  Gov. Earl Warren of California and President Franklin Roosevelt, again with no evidence, agreed, both responding to their own biases against Japanese people.  Roosevelt signed order 9066 which forced West Coast people of Japanese descent into concentration camps in the most inhospitable places they could find in this country.

Two of the men who perpetrated the crimes against the Japanese community have names few remember but two, Franklin Roosevelt and Earl Warren, are seen as heroes.  The conspiracy theories that Karl Bendetsen and John DeWitt perpetrated took 40+ years to even discuss as a nation.  I suspect the conspiracy theorist in chief of today, Donald Trump knows little or nothing about it and could not possibly care less.

How do conspiracy theories work?  They start with someone who has a bit of recognition, sometimes respect.  The person does not like reality because it does not fit with their biases about a specific person, group, event, or process.  The conspiracy theorist makes up stories about something that has happened and distorts it enough to make the change harmful to the target but still somewhat believable to those receiving the “message.”  The theorist has sufficient prestige to “credibly” pass on information only they know to individuals and groups who also want that special knowledge.  We do have free speech in this country, a critical right.  It permitted two military officers to lie about Japanese people living on the West Coast and for Governor Warren and President Roosevelt to lie to the American people, through the media, enhancing and feeding the public’s fear of Japan and people of color in general.  Trump passed to his cult the idea that the election was stolen from him encouraging them to believe a lie which was reinforced by media platforms and spokesmen tied through loyalty to Trump.  It is one thing when a regular citizen lies to friends and family but something quite different when a prominent person lies or incites hatred of or violence toward others. 

The ones who forced Japanese people into concentration camps were wrong but never held accountable for what they had done.  I believe all were dead by the time President Reagan finally stood up to acknowledge what had been done to Japanese people here in the United States.  We as a nation have not fully come to terms with what was done to somewhere around 120,000 men, women, and children.

Donald Trump has used wealth to promote him to a status where he can make statements that are lies or threats and people will not only listen, but also act on them.  His actions could have brought down our democracy and still could if We the People don’t stand up to him.  He has targeted NATO before, but things are a bit different now that Republicans are following Trump’s move toward favoring Russia’s Putin over our actual Ally Ukraine.  That seems to me as having some similarity to an American favoring Japan or Germany during WWII.  Many Americans did favor Hitler’s Germany over our democracy.  Had the Japanese not attacked Pearl Harbor and the US entered the war, those fascist Americans could have succeeded in seriously damaging our democracy, if not destroying it.  One wonders how Trump’s and Tucker Carlson’s fondness for Putin will impact our current situation.  What conspiracies are they planting among their cult? 

We are going to need a lot of help to counter the anti-democratic moves by Trump and his Republican Party.  It is pretty clear we will not get sufficient help from our courts.  Trump and his Senate appointed so many of his cult to the courts that they will protect  him regardless of the law (Judge Cannon and the Florida classified documents case).  The Supreme Court showed us on Thursday, Feb. 8^th that they will force every state to have Trump on their ballots despite our Constitution because a Republican insurrectionist with enough influence can do pretty much whatever he wants and the SC will back him or at least not get in his way.  They did the same During WWII when Japanese-Americans brought a case against Japanese internment.  The Supreme Court declared it was legal, though without evidence that it should ever have happened.  They ended up protecting Roosevelt’s signature instead of doing the right thing for the incarcerated innocents. 

So, my question, what are we doing?  Why are we not protesting loudly in large numbers?  Why are we not demanding our media call lies what they are?  Why are “journalists” not challenging statements made by Trumpers and Trumpettes that are just plain wrong, and doing it on air?  When someone says he would prefer fascism to democracy, the interviewer needs to ask, WHY!  Do you have any idea what fascism is, what it would mean for you? 

The Democratic Party seems to be spending more effort on begging for money than actually countering the Trump conspiracy theory and lying presentations.  Republicans have decided that racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homo/transphobia, and fascism are their modus operandi and along with their lies and misinformation, are what they will use to get power to do whatever.  They are not clear on exactly what, but they do have a plan for 2025 which is appalling.  In any case, a whole lot of people will suffer if they get their way.  The rising fascists somehow think it won’t be them, rich, white, straight men.  It will be those people.  What are we doing?  Why are we listening to a man every single day who respects no one, lies incessantly, threatens his fellow citizens and the nations of the world, who is losing his ability to think clearly while being led along by people who are as power-hungry and lacking in morality as he is?  Do we really want that crew back in power?  It seems our media thinks so.  Trump is covered in our media broadcasts more than our president and vice president who are competent and working hard on behalf of this nation.  Trump is working for no one but himself.  What are we doing?