#241 – Dick Bernard: The Tyranny of the Minority; and the (theoretical) Power of the Majority

/in , , , , , /by

Last night on the national news of one of the Big Three (CBS, NBC, ABC) I watched a reporter contextualize for viewers the conflict over allowing 2000-era federal tax cuts to sunset (expire) for those earning over $250,000 a year. The over-$250,000 group is said to represent about 2% of American taxpayers. For the rest of us, the holiday would continue.
In order to be “fair and balanced” (I suppose), the perhaps-three minute report focused on the negative impact on “small business”, and employment, if the two percent over $250,000 small businesses would lose their tax break in 2011. Two business owners were interviewed, and of course, said that they’d have to cut some jobs if they had to pay more taxes.
At the end of the segment, the reporter took pen to white board, and gave his interpretation of reality: as I recall the numbers, he said that 2 1/2% of small businesses are in the $250,000+ category. BUT this represents almost 900,000 small businesses.
Segment over, back to the news…. Those poor business owners.
One might feel sympathy for these entrepreneur small business owners, and especially for the employees they say they’ll have to let go, but there is a “wait a minute” aspect to this – an aspect not touched (intentionally, I believe) by the news program.
What was not stated was that 97 1/2% of American small business, apparently nearly 24,000,000 of these businesses, the overwhelming vast majority, would not, under the Presidents plan, be faced with the possibility of going back to 2000 era tax rates. Only the two or so percent who are the wealthiest among us would have to wear the hair shirt of the additional tax, which means only going back to the rates prevailing at the time the ill-advised tax cuts were made.
We should feel sorry for those over $250,000 folks for having to help the lessers among us recover from near catastrophe?
Sorry.
(I don’t think the break point of $250,000 is nearly low enough. But that’s for another conversation.)
I think back to my own work experience. I worked an entire career, and within my constellation of relatives and friends, I would probably be considered to have made a really good living.
In my working years, it would take several YEARS of earnings to equal $250,000. I never got close to reaching a six figure annual income. Nonetheless, I lived well (by my standards). By no measure could I be considered “poor”…or “wealthy” either.
The ‘tax holiday’ between 2001 and the present was good for me. I have all my old tax records so can retrace all of those steps, and do an essentially ‘apples to apples’ comparison. Federal tax went down; state tax stayed pretty constant; property tax went up, but not by a lot.
I had ‘more jingle in my pocket’ those tax-holiday years, but I can’t really say that it did me any good at all. And when I compare it against the catastrophe it spawned in huge federal debt to pay for a war; and all of the credit card debt we all incurred living outside our means, it certainly wasn’t worth it.
I’m within the 98% of Americans who will indirectly benefit if the tax holiday is lifted for the top 2%.
Why, then, can the top 2% high-income folks count on the rest of us fighting their anti-tax battle for them, which is exactly what they are counting on?
Tables-turned, they’ve generally never been in the corner of the least among us.
It’s very simple: we have been taught to fight amongst ourselves, and to want what is unhealthy. To be rich is a positive value….
Have we learned anything? I’ll see how election day 2010 plays out.
If we choose to go back to the days of the 2000s that almost killed us, it’s our fault…and it will be our problem.
COMMENT received from Michelle Witte September 9 2010
Dick – what has become of facts? If I were in charge of the DNC
communication machine I would run 24 hour ads about what the facts really
are around these initiatives. For example – when we in Minnesota had the
transportation/gas tax bill in the state in 2008… there were dire reports
of businesses closing, the evils of taxes, etc. I then calculated what the
FACTS were and how it would affect our family. I figured that based on our
Honda minivan driving about 12,000 miles a year at 16MPG we would pay
perhaps $38 dollars A YEAR extra. And for $38 I would get…. an amazing
array of infrastructure improvements. $38. I can’t even fill a hole on my
driveway for that. Get a grip people – taxes allow you to access resources
for a much lower cost than you could if we just all got our cash and then
hand to build our own roads, levies, social security system, food protection
system, schools, ambulance, fire… on and on.
So, let’s look at the sunset of the Bush Tax Cuts – first of all – they are
not RAISING taxes. They are putting back in place a tax structure which
COMPLEMENTED the highest economic growth in the last 30 years during the
Clinton Administration. Those soaring profits we all once enjoyed came on
the back of those taxes being in place. So, we’re now talking about simply
restoring those taxes.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that a family with income of
$300,000 per year would be paying approximately $3,995 more in taxes under
Obama’s plan. That sucks. But it’s certainly not crippling. AND… looked at
the way it should be – those families got 10 years of a tax BREAK while the
rest of us did not.
My neighbor is an accountant and actually voted for Dems after seeing the
effects of the Bush tax cuts on her wealthy clients. They got huge
$10-20,000 checks back from the government after doing their taxes that
first year – they didn’t need it, weren’t expecting it, and clearly, it did
NOT lead to a robust economy where all those people who were business owners
were hiring employees, etc. Instead, people simply extended their credit and
greed and put the economy in the tank. Why would we repeat that again?

#240 – Dick Bernard: Rene Collette Celebrates a Birthday

/in , , /by

Today – September 8, 2010 – Rene Collette of Lemon Grove CA is 90.
These days, 90 is “just like a kid” in some contexts, another year hardly worthy of notice.
Rene is definitely worthy of notice, any year, any time.
The family invitation says “Rene [as in the French pronunciation wren-a] chose not to have a party, so we are planning a month long CARD PARTY!…Select any day in September and send a card or a note to Rene with any message you want to send. He will be so pleased to hear from you. That’s all there is: …No RSVP…No gifts…No traveling…No dressing up…No crowds…No rich foods…Just a nice quiet afternoon or evening of your own choosing to do whatever you want.”
Rene’s address: 2520 Bonita Street, Lemon Grove CA 91945. Go for it! (If you’d like to take a peak at where Lil and Rene have lived for many years, a few miles inland from San Diego, here it is.)

Lil and Rene Collette, Lemon Grove CA, January 20, 2008


I’ve been privileged to know Rene for years, but it’s only since the 1990s that I have really got to know he and his spouse of 63 years, Lillian (Sando).
He is especially in mind now as he helped me get my start on researching our shared Collette family history in 1981. His handprints, shoe leather, pen and ink, miles on the road and intellect are all over the 500 page history of the Collette and other French-Canadian families that I just completed, and which will be printed within a couple of weeks. For many years, Rene has had a passion about preserving the family roots, the family story he grew up in during the 1920s and 30s. The book is an unintended birthday gift for Rene and for Lil (part of whose Norwegian family story also appears in the book.)
Rene was born in Grafton ND, the son of Edmond Collette and Clara Rheaume, and grandson of Ovide Collette and Olivine Laberge. He grew up in the largely French-Canadian Oakwood community just east of Grafton.
I know only fragments of his most interesting history, but I do know it included military service in Asia during WWII. He and Lillian Sando of Grafton area married, May 17, 1947, and have five children. Rene had a long working career in the San Diego area, and a hugely productive time in retirement, with active interests in many things. His backyard orchard was a place to behold, and his colony of large turtles would surprise a new visitor to their backyard. He helped rebuild historically significant airplanes at a Balboa Park facility in San Diego, and he was proctor at southern California Bar exams for many years. Life has been interesting for Rene, and in turn he has made life interesting for many, including myself. I was privileged to visit with he and Lil a number of times at their home.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RENE!
An undated photo of Rene, his parents and three of his four siblings, is at upper left on page 41 of the Sacred Heart of Oakwood 1981 Centennial Book. A pdf copy of the entire Sacred Heart Centennial Book can be viewed in four parts, accessed here.

#239 – Dick Bernard: Reflections on Labor Day

/in , , , /by

Most Sundays the patrons of “my” local coffee shop will hear a somewhat odd trio in conversation along the east (street side) wall. Commanding one table is a retired middle manager of a major international corporation, someone who was fairly high up in the food chain in an important division of his company. At the middle table is a union guy who comes in most every weekend and is, by every indication, a very gifted “key” employee of his corporation, and (perhaps) sometimes a curmudgeon in his own union. Then there’s me, a retired Union organizer – one of “those” people – someone who spent 27 years trying to make sense out of nonsense – “the man in the middle” of assorted disputes and conflicts between working people and their managers.
After the usual bantering back and forth, when the conversation wanders back to the more reflective and serious, we three tend to agree much more than we disagree. The specifics of what we talk about are not as important as the fact that we are not as odd a bunch as we might seem to be. We might see problems and their solutions a little bit differently, but not as differently as one might imagine. We talk about things most people might talk about these days: work, workers, money in (or not in) the economy, how the national organism needs everyone to thrive to survive….
Sunday, as usual, I left coffee, went home, got set for the trip to my Church, the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis.
Driving out of our town home development, we saw some cut firewood on a lawn, with a little sign – “Firewood, $5”. It was a small deal; somebody had been cleaning up a neighboring tree lot. My spouse, who’s President of our Homeowners Association, noted that somebody would complain about this little neighborhood enterprise – our Association has rules against that sort of thing. Then she said that the guy had lost his job recently, making the neighborhood enterprise make more sense – even if it was against the rules.
At Church, I picked up the Sunday bulletin. The front page commentary was by Janice Andersen, whose full-time job with us might well translate as “Social Justice”. The headline of her column: “Imagine being able to move out of homelessness with absolutely no furniture“. She then succinctly summarized the story of three anonymous people who had benefited from our Church’s St. Vincent de Paul Thrift store “gently used furniture” program: #1 – “Bill” finally has an entry level job after being out of work for some time…He makes enough money to pay for his rent and food….”; #2 – “Mary”…who lived in her car for two years…participating in a program that teaches interview skills and is looking for work”; #3 – “Ann” is a disabled senior who recently received custody of her grandson. She had no furniture other than a mattress on the floor….”
The visiting Priest, Fr. Greg Miller from St. John’s Abbey, pulled it all together for this Labor Day weekend, basing his comments on Luke 14:25-33, a key section of which says “anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”
Using a symbol familiar to all Catholics – a Rosary – Fr. Greg demonstrated the difference between Grasping (Greed) and Receiving (Generosity). In the first instance, a clenched down-turned fist, holding and hiding that Rosary; in the second, an open up-turned hand, receiving, then giving. Pretty dramatic.
“What we love is what we become“, he said. And he asked us to be especially cognizant, this Labor Day, of those who are “Unemployed, underemployed, and those who have given up looking for work.”
Good messages.
As a nation, we become together, exactly what we are individually. Period. Our “community” is much, much broader than what most of us might define it.

#238 – Dick Bernard: A close encounter with a Mosque

/in , , , /by

Related post Nov. 14, 2010 here.
The abundant insanity (that’s what it is – insanity) around the proposed (and approved) Islamic Center in lower Manhattan caused me to revisit a significant time in my youth.
In the summer of 1953 I was about to enter 8th grade. We had moved to the tiny village of Ross, North Dakota, hardly even a wide spot in the road between Minot and Williston; on the main line of the extremely busy Great Northern Railroad.
This was the first oil boom in the Williston Basin and housing was at a premium. I was the oldest of five kids, and the only housing for our parents was next door to the school in which they both taught. The “teacherage”, as such buildings were called, had two rooms and a kitchen. As I recall, we showered in the basement of the school building, and that was where the telephone was. Our conditions were primitive.
But 1953-54 was a rich one for me. Among other happenings was meeting a farm kid whose name was Emmett. Emmett and I became friends as kids do, and while I don’t recall that we spent a lot of time together I have kept in contact with him to this day, 57 years later.
One time during that year I was invited out to Emmet’s home in the country. I rode my bike out there, met his parents and his sisters and brother, had supper, saw the barn and the horses, and went home. Driving down that dirt road seemed like a long trip then, but three years ago I revisited the town and the now deserted farm, and it was perhaps two or three miles at most from my home to his.
Emmett was a little darker complected than I with somewhat different facial features than most North Dakota country folks. I might have known then that he and many families around the town were of Syrian ancestry, but it really never registered with me – it wasn’t important.
Similarly, at some point somebody must have told me that these Syrian folks with unusual names were “Mohammedans”, but I don’t remember who, or when, that might have been.
We moved on after a single year in that tiny town and went somewhere else.
It was years later that I came to learn that along that country rode I’d biked sometime in 1953-54 was probably the first Mosque in the United States of America; and later still that someone – probably Emmett – told me that his Mom (both parents and the current Mosque are pictured at the referenced website) was one of the key persons in keeping the Moslem faith alive in outback North Dakota.
Dad was the Superintendent of the tiny school at Ross, and he tended to keep records for posterity. In his papers I came across the attendance records for the Ross school in the year I was there. Typewritten on the roster was the name of my friend, Emmett ____. Handwritten to the left of Emmett’s name was “Mohomed”, more like Emmet’s true given name. Even then, perhaps, there was no desire to raise any unnecessary “red flags”.
I visited the Ross Mosque and the Cemetery in the summer of 2007. I recognized many last names and it was an emotional experience for me.

The first Mosque near Ross ND from Plains Folk, North Dakota\’s Ethnic History , Playford Thorson, ND Institute for Regional Studies 1988, p. 360

Intolerance is one of our many inheritances in this country.
I hope that the powers that be do not cave in to intolerance in New York City or anywhere else.

Ross ND High School Graduates 1954

Update November 13, 2010:
This evening I have been invited to give a very brief presentation concerning this blogpost. The above blogpost itself will be in the groups program booklet.
Following are some brief notes in addition to what is already described above.
In addition to having a one year and very positive encounter with the Muslim community of Ross ND in 1953-54, I also have family experience of having lived in many small towns in North Dakota in my youth. Both my father and mother taught in the schools of these communities. In recent years I have had a great interest in family history so that has also given me more reason to pay attention to things most people might not notice.
In 1991, I inquired about the Ross school, and the then-County Superintendent provided me with my Dad’s year-end report for the high school which that year had 30 pupils in grades 9-12. In 1953-54, the report shows, there were at least six and possibly seven members of the Ross Syrian Community in the public school. Two were seniors, one from Emmett’s family.
We, on the other hand, were clearly religious outsiders: our family was Catholic, and I would doubt there were any other Catholics in the community. We attended church in the nearby trade center of Stanley.
A 1988 book, “North Dakota’s Ethnic History: Plains Folk” (ND Institute of Regional Studies, North Dakota State University, multiple authors), has been a frequent resource for me in my family history work. Pages 354-363 of this book discuss Syrians (Lebanese) and their presence in many parts of North Dakota. On page 360 is this quote, particularly relevant to this discussion: “In Mountrail County, near the village of Ross, other Syrians put down roots during the homestead rush at the turn of the [20th] century. Sam Omar, probably the first settler of Arabic background, in 1902 took land on section 26, Ross township. Later in that year, twenty-two other men came to Ross Township and nearby Alger Township. Within several years almost seventy Lebanese men had taken up land in Ross, James Hill, and Alger townships.
The Mountrail settlers were unique in that, with two exceptions, everyone was of Muslim background. Their descendants today remember two home towns “in Syria”: Bire (Berrie) and Rafid. These villages, in eastern Lebanon adjoin each other and lie only three miles from Ain-Arab. Beirut is twenty-eight air miles to the northwest.
Families in the early days came not only from Lebanon and eastern American seaports, but also from settlements in Nebraska as well….”
I saw these families through an eighth graders eyes in the single year of 1953-54.
I don’t recall so much as a thought or a mention that they were ‘different’. They were simply part of the community.
Lest I be accused of seeing the world through rose-colored glasses, North Dakota was no less immune to prejudice than anywhere else. In my own Catholic case, for instance, in the late 1920s there was a Ku Klux Klan movement that was anti-Catholic in its focus, led by a Protestant minister, and was very damaging. In the late 1940s an anti-garb law was passed prohibiting Nuns in habits to teach in public schools. And, of course, there was the shameful matter of treatment of American Indians.
With the coming of the mid-1950s came two major Air Force bases, at Minot and Grand Forks, and large numbers of African-Americans. I am sure this was an occasional matter of concern.
But in my interlude in Ross, meeting a Muslim kid named Emmett, and experiencing the hospitality of Emmett’s farm family, I developed lifelong affection for these fine rural folks in northwestern North Dakota, and an appreciation for the religious tradition which they held.

#237 – Dick Bernard: "Howze your boy doin'?"

/in , /by

A couple of national surveys in the past week have caused me to think back to a conversation in Minneapolis in mid-December, 2009.
I had gone to the premiere business club in Minneapolis to hear a panel discussion on Minnesota politics. It was a breakfast meeting, and I sat down. Presently, someone joined me. The name sounded familiar, and we compared notes. We had had some contacts 25 years earlier on a particular issue.
We talked on this-and-that as new acquaintances do. At some point we tip-toed into politics. My breakfast companion said he’d voted for Barack Obama in 2008. He also recounted an apparently recent business meeting where somebody he knew well, a mover-and-shaker in the business community, had come up and said, “Howze your boy doin’?”, a direct reference to now-President Obama.
We went on to other things, but the one thing I have never forgotten about that breakfast conversation was the “boy” reference to Obama. I’m left to fill in all the blanks. “Boy” is not a compliment to African-Americans.
This past week came two national surveys which were rather startling in their dissonance. In one, over 70% of the American people surveyed laid responsibility for the dismal state of our country on Republican policies particularly in the eight years of the Bush administration. But another survey, one taken since the 1940s, said that if given the choice, over half of the respondents would vote for a generic “Republican” in November, and only slightly over 40% for a generic “Democrat”. This was a greater gap between the parties than there has ever been.
The two surveys, side-by-side, make absolutely no sense: a collective death-wish perhaps? But in this case, the figures don’t lie.
How can all of this insanity be?
It is, likely, a combination of many circumstances. Some percentage, probably distressingly large, just don’t want a “boy” in the White House.
The Democrats, charged with the responsibility of cleaning up the abundant messes left behind in the wake of the years preceding 2009 are left with very disagreeable work…and the minority Republicans are doing an excellent job of obstructing every attempt at progress, and the resulting inadequate progress will, paradoxically, be politically useful against the very people who have been the leaders in even limited initiatives for change.
Business, naturally closer to Republicans, might be doing less than it could to increase employment: cruelly, hardship among the rabble is to its advantage in the short term. (Other reports indicate business is awash in available money which it has so far been reluctant to use for assorted reasons.)
Then there are those on the left who are angry because Obama and the Democrats have taken too moderate a course.
Of course, every one has their own pet issue which is NON-NEGOTIABLE.
We all want what we want, apparently. The common good be damned.
Thursday I was out at the Minnesota State Fair, just walking around, and happened by the booth of the Independence Party. I happened to notice the parties slogan: “Real solutions. No special interests“, and that slogan intrigued me.

Minnesota State Fair booth September 2, 1010


Rather than having “no special interests“, the Independence Party, the party of Jesse Ventura, is totally comprised of people with their own special interests. It is more special interest laden by far, than the traditional parties. It’s members don’t want to be constrained by other peoples priorities.
Maybe the American people at the national and local levels will wave their magic wands in November, and vote back in the very crew that they know almost destroyed them in the eight years prior to current Obama/Democrat administration. They will all do this self-righteously.
I’d only suggest that they all be very, very careful what they hope for….

#236 – Dick Bernard: "Hope in a Time of Crisis, Peace Island, a Solutions Driven Conference"

/in /by

Two years ago today – it was the day after Labor Day, 2008 – eight of us got up very early, and made our way over to Concordia University in St. Paul, to make final preparations for, and open, the Peace Island Conference, sponsored by the Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers.
It turned out to be a very successful event. Something like 400 people registered for all or part of the conference; there were 23 major speakers**, and 31 exhibitors. Subsequent evaluations were very positive. It was probably one of the more successful, as articulated in the program booklet, “Peace, Justice, Harmony, the Environment and Global Issues” conferences ever held in the Twin Cities.
I ‘see’ this conference every time I go into my garage. The Peace Island box is in clear view and, like any archive, gathering dust..

Peace Island archive


An immense amount of planning and hard work went into the conference. There were nine on our committee*, two of us were laid low for extended periods of time by serious illness. All but one of us were retired people.
Peace Island started out with a dream of Susu Jeffrey, a Twin Citian who envisioned St. Paul’s Harriet Island as an island of peace during the Republican National Convention. I’m not certain when she first had her dream, but it began to take shape in a conversation with Dennis Dillon at a conference of Network of Spiritual Progressives in Minneapolis in mid-October, 2006. Not long after, a few of us jumped on board and (each of us probably thought at one point or another) didn’t have the good sense to jump off the conference ‘train’ until it was ‘running too fast’. Dreams don’t just come true – they take a lot of passion and effort.
As with everything else, every word in the title of the conference was (even though we were generally peaceful people) fought over.
The crucial element in this conference, we all agreed, was that it be positive and constructive – a “Solutions Driven Conference” – and that is how we billed ourselves, and how we encouraged our speakers to frame their presentations.
At this link Peace Island 9-2008001 is the tattered cover of my conference program, along with two Peace Island buttons – our official presentation of the conference.
It was difficult, we learned, to keep people focused on Solutions. It is far, far easier to focus on Problems. To actually accomplish Solutions requires lots of efforts on one’s part; a Problem can easily be ignored or cast off onto someone else – it’s THEIR problem.
I have thought a great deal about ‘solutions’ since our conference ended on September 3, 2008.
Two months after the conference closed Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, and there was – very clearly – an unrealistic expectation placed on him to not only solve the abundant problems awaiting him, but to solve them yesterday. The worst financial crisis in living memory exploded two weeks after our conference adjourned; the United States economy virtually imploded before the time that the new President took office in January, 2009, and it’s been a rough ride ever since. Pres. Obama and the new Congress inherited a very, very sick national ‘horse’.
I’m sure we’re all looking for “solutions”, but I often wonder about our expectations, particularly on ourselves, as the essential agents of Change.
I wonder, too, about our standards for judging that Change: Is accomplishing something positive, even some little thing, better than nothing? Or is there some invisible and unstated criteria that whatever has been accomplished is too little, and that the only adequate solution is immediate gratification of what we want…accomplished by someone other than ourselves.
Rabbi Michael Lerner, visionary leader of Network for Spiritual Progressives (NSP), was the speaker at that October, 2006, conference where Susu and Dennis had their first conversation about Peace Island. I’d guess that all of us on the committee were at that conference as well. In an editorial in the September/October 2010 issue of NSPs magazine, Tikkun, Rabbi Lerner makes a statement I think needs to be the operating philosophy of those wanting positive change in this country: “…we…need to do the mass educational work…and [become] involved with our work to advance these ideas.”
Check out NSP here, and as Gandhi so famously said, become the change you wish to see in the world.
* – The Committee (in alpha order): Dick Bernard, John and Marie Braun, Dennis Dillon (chair), Rebecca Janke, Susu Jeffrey, Ann Lewis, Bob Milner, Verlyn Smith
** – Speakers: Ron Bowen, Leslie Cagan, Matthew Commers, Susan Cornell Wilkes, Marv Davidov, Mel Duncan, Sara Flounders, Bruce Gagnon, Terry Gips, Jim Harkness, Anne Hastings, Lili Herbert, Susan Hubbard, Douglas A. Johnson, Antonia Juhasz, Kathy Kelly, Richard LaFortune, Lisa Ledwidge, Ray McGovern, Bharat Parekh, Sami Rasouli, Coleen Rowley, Sandy Spieler, Starhawk, Kaia Svien, Ami Voeltz, Kevin Winge, Ann Wright

#235 – Dick Bernard: The "sustainability" of Rage

/in , , , /by

It was a bit over a year ago – July 24, 2009 – when I wrote my first blog post about Health Care Reform.
It was about that time when I got the first of many forwarded e-mails raging about intrusion of the government into health care policy, citing chapter and verse from some huge draft bill then beginning to float through Congress. The intention was to “kill the bill”.
August, 2009, became the “days of rage” when Congresspeople came home for recess, and were tarred and feathered by hostile loudmouths, whose performance was duly reported in the media.
It was a very nasty time.
In due course, a few months ago, a Health Care Reform actually passed Congress and was signed by the President. It was by no means adequate, but under the circumstances it was the best that could be done.
Since then, the focus of the Rage has been turned to other things, most recently, once again towards Muslims and their places of worship.
Rage, as it usually manifests in Anger and Fear, is no doubt a good seller. Rage, and its ‘children’, has a good market.
Sometimes I do wonder, however, how sustainable or even useful rage really is.
Endless rage is really debilitating. Worse, even if its aims are realized, its results are rarely positive. So…you defeat Health Care Reform – you “kill the bill” -, or burn down the site of a proposed Mosque. What do you really accomplish?
I don’t have the data, but I think I can very safely say that in vast numbers of murders, the killer initially feels a positive rush of accomplishing something really good*. “Take that, you ____ .” Often the victim is someone well known and close to the perpetrator – I’ve heard police say that intervening in “Domestic disputes” is among their most dangerous duties. A 911 call to somebody’s house is not one approached casually.
Up until now, it has been easy to identify the angry and rageful in the political debate. They appeared at rallies with outrageous placards and quotes. They despise and they hate, openly.
Last Saturday’s gathering in Washington D.C. marked an apparent change in tactics by those behind the organized rage: it was described as a gathering of nice down home folks; all polite, no signs. A very family friendly event.
It was all a tactic.
The rage continues, only it is better hidden. The smiling person without the sign is the same person who had the hateful sign in public a few weeks ago. All that is different is the marketing image.
As the righteous killer always finds out, the pleasant rush of success at his or her accomplishment is short-lived. There are negative consequences to killing someone or something.
Rage is difficult to sustain, and it is very unhealthy to the person who carries it, particularly long term.
The current campaign of rage, even if it appears to succeed short-term, will not last. But it can do an immense amount of possibly irreparable damage to our society at large.
It is up to us to be the witnesses for positive and continuing change.
* – A number of years ago I attended a very interesting study series on the “Ten Commandments”, conducted by a Catholic Priest and Jewish Rabbi. One of the text references said this about the Hebrew law on Murder: “The Hebrew text does not state “you shall not kill”… but “you shall not murder”. The Sages understand “bloodshed” to include embarrassing a fellow human being in public so that the blood drains from his or her face, not providing safety for travelers, and causing anyone the loss of his or her livelihood. “One may murder with the hand or with the tongue, by talebearing or by character assassination [emphasis added]. One may murder also by carelessness, by indifference, by the failure to save human life when it is in your power to do so.” Etz Hayim, Torah and Commentary, The Rabinical Assembly The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, p. 446
By this standard, contemporary American Politics would cease to exist, or have to be considered a society of murderers.