#276 – Dick Bernard: 11 bells; 3 volleys. Nov. 11, 2010 remembered.

/in , /by

“[My sister] Florence was born [Nov. 3, 1918] the year World War I ended. [Nov. 11, 1918] the hired girl and I were out in the snow chasing chickens into the coop so they wouldnt freeze when there was a great long train whistle from the Grand Rapids [ND] railroad track [5 miles away]. In the house there was a long, long telephone ringing to signify the end of World War I.”
Esther Busch Bernard memories, p. 122 of Pioneers, the Busch-Berning family history (2005).
November 11 I attended both the Armistice and Veterans Day events held one block apart, roughly halfway between the State Capitol and Cathedral of St. Paul.
That context is important.
I think I have participated in most if not all Armistice Day events since 2002.
This year I intentionally broadened my context, and distanced myself from all participants in both events. I wanted to catch more of the resonance or emotional distance between those who remember Armistice Day (reminding us of the end of WW I on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, continuing in many countries to this day); and Veteran’s Day (which permanently replaced Armistice Day in the U.S. in 1954.) I wandered between the groups, one city block apart, easily visible to each other.
On the way to the events, yesterday, I stopped at my barber, a Marine combat veteran in Vietnam whose brother, also a Marine, was killed in Vietnam. Tom and I are long-time good friends. He angled a little towards conversation about war and peace this day; I chose to angle away. We talked of other things.
On the wall was a flat screen television tuned to the sports network, ESPN. The coverage this day included live film from a U.S. military base in Germany. Part of the coverage included a field game, similar to what kids would play, only in this case it was Hand Grenade toss, to see which GI participant could come closest to nailing a humanoid figure in the eye of a bullseye with a hand grenade facsimile. Not much focus on peace, there.
Haircut over I went to the Veterans/Armistice day field of memories.
There seemed to be roughly equal numbers of outside visitors at each, though the Veterans group was much more formal and fancier, including people in uniform, lots of flags, and what appeared to be a high school band. Both groups were heavily laced with military veterans.
I noted, really for the first time in many years coming here, a large sculpture of a soldier with what I’d call pleading outstretched arms. He stood roughly half way between the groups, primarily facing the Veterans Day event at the Vietnam Memorial Wall.

He had been standing there since 1982, the plaque said.
11:00 was approaching and I returned to the Armistice Day gathering to witness the bell-ringing, 11 times, to signify 11-11-11. The speaker holding our bell said that the Cathedral of St. Paul down the street had agreed to ring their bells 11 times this year – a first. We waited. 11:00 came and went, no bells. The group rang its own bell.
I left, and went over to the Veterans gathering just in time to see their ceremony, three men brought forth a rifle, a pair of boots and a helmet to signify a fallen soldier. The MC ordered three rifle volleys from the armed color guard.
I found myself thinking back to that sculpture between the groups. The caption said “Why do you forget us?” as the sculpted soldier faced the Veterans gathering.
Behind him, I thought to myself, was an Armistice group that might change that quotation only slightly. “Why do you forget [“the war to end all wars”]?”
I left the parking lot. 11:15 and still no bells from the Cathedral, looming over us a few short blocks away. The silence was deafening.
There is a story waiting to be told….
Regarding “the resonance or emotional distance”? Remember the distinction between 11 bells and 3 volleys of rifle fire. That catches it, in my seeing and hearing. At one site, the symbol of honor was a rifle, serving as a body of a soldier, with boots and helmet. At the other, a simple bell of peace.

Veterans Day Commemoration


Armistice Day Commemoration


Related, here.

#275 – Dick Bernard: Armistice/Veterans Day. Remembering a Vet

/in , , , /by

The November 10 mail brought a newspaper column I had been expecting, a tribute to my brother-in-law Michael Lund, who died exactly three years earlier in Fargo ND.
The column, by Bob Lind in the Fargo (ND) Forum, Mike Lund Fargo Forum001 tells most of the story, and speaks profoundly for itself.
I had the honor of spending quality time with Mike as his life ended Nov. 10, 2007, at age 60, cancer.
A few hours before he died I was able to tell him a little about his Dad, whose death certificate came up in an internet search. I was lucky, and he was grateful: he never knew his Dad or anything about him.
This is Veteran’s Day, and Michael was an Army veteran. He was inducted 8 February 1971 and was honorably discharged 30 January 1973, with Good Conduct Medal and rank of Specialist 5th class – an unusual accomplishment for an enlisted man. Much of his service time was in Germany. It was an easy trip from base to the Munich Olympic Games of 1972, and he went.

Mike Lund, early 1973


As Mr. Lind relates, Michael’s early life was anything but easy. One wonders how he survived at all. His sister was my wife; his mother was my mother-in-law, a fine but very poor and disabled woman who did what she could.
A draftee, Mike once told me that he grew to like the Army. It brought stability to his life and he had thoughts of making it a career.
But as often happens, circumstances interfered. In Michael’s situation, the problems began sometime in the late winter of 1972 when someone unknown filed a complaint against him, very obviously concentrating on his short career as a school teacher in small town North Dakota. The 22-page military interrogatory transcript, of which he kept five copies for some reason, laid out the allegations against him. The primary complaint appeared to center on his allowing his high school students freedom of speech to protest against the then-raging War in Vietnam. Somebody didn’t like that. He was fired from his teaching job in mid-year, and then he was drafted.
He did well in the service, likely had a secret security clearance, and someone, probably a civilian back home, didn’t like that a person who allowed protests of the War was in an intelligence position. In the transcript, questions are asked about an apparently radical teacher at the college he attended. Was he in this teacher’s classes? Yes. He was dirt poor, and he was apparently behind on some small payments to stores and such, and that was on the tally sheet as well.
His Honorable Discharge is the only official record of his military service and there is not a single word on it that even suggests less than totally honorable service.
Still that 22-page interrogatory was his most important paper. For me it has become, in a sense, his biography.
Michael came home in the winter of 1973, his dream of an Army career apparently destroyed; his opportunities to get another teaching job probably destroyed as well. The rest of his life, which I witnessed from a distance, usually, did not reveal the tenacity of a kid who rose above all odds to not only graduate from high school but earn a B average in college. I am guessing there are things that went on in his post-Army life that I would rather not know. Nonetheless, when I make my list of heroes, he is near the top. He survived against all odds.
As life wound down for him – this began to accelerate with his mother’s death in 1999 – Michael lost his house. Winning the Minnesota Lottery or other sweepstakes had become his passion…. He mused about good places to be homeless. Becoming paralyzed from the waist down as a result of major surgery ended that idea.
It finally fell to me and a cousin of his to clear out the flotsam and jetsam of his life.
In a small chest in his room, by his bed, in a drawer by itself, was his crumpled up Army uniform, with a small box of medals. It was a mess, that uniform, but it was very important to him. Also there were his dog tags, and on their chain a little medallion he had purchased somewhere, sometime.
Then he died. One of the few people at his funeral was one of his high school teachers, Ann Haugaard. She spoke very positively of him.
This past summer I delivered that uniform and all of his important papers to the North Dakota State Historical Society in Bismarck. They accepted the gift.
Mike, I salute you.
Dick
U.S. Army, 1962-63

Mike Lund, May, 2007, Fargo ND




Related post here.

#274 – Dick Bernard: The State of the States, and the People Who Live in Them.

/in , , , , /by

Yesterday’s New York Times headline hit me when it showed up on my computer screen “Now in Power, G.O.P. vows cuts in State Budgets“.
Who can do anything but love trimming the fat of bloated, hated, “Government”?
It will be an interesting process as a new Minnesota G.O.P. majority in both House and Senate take meat axes to to try to eliminate a huge deficit created by assorted budget tricks the last several years of stalemate between the Democratic majority in House and Senate and G.O.P. Governor Tim Pawlenty. (Minnesota State Law requires balanced budgets, so to get around this little technicality, bookkeeping strategies, like ‘borrowing’ money from school aid to local school districts, were used in the brutal sausage making of legislating in a “veto” environment. Now, just in time for Christmas 2010, the bill comes due. Probably there will be a Democrat Governor in 2011, though when remains a question, as there will probably be a recount and a promised aggressive defense by the challenger G.O.P. The current Governor, G.O.P. and contender for Republican Presidential nomination in 2012, may well occupy the office well into the New Year, the new term.)
“Trimming fat” is an abstract thing, if one chooses not to notice the personal dimensions.
I have a personal example.
In the family constellation of my wife and I are eleven adults. The youngest is Down Syndrome, age 35, and thus not part of the work force. The other ten (including one former daughter-in-law) are all employable at the present time, and all working. So, technically, in our family there is full employment, and no unemployment.
One of the ten was laid off from a corporate job nine months ago, and went on unemployment.
He was only unemployed for a couple of months when he was offered a full-time State job for a maximum duration of a year. It paid far less than his former position, but it was a job and it had benefits, so he took the position.
What he does all day, every day, is receive and process phone calls from fellow Minnesotans who are unemployed. It is his job to redirect them to the appropriate agencies within the State of Minnesota system. The work is not fun. Neither is it in the specific trade he trained for.
Because the State job doesn’t provide adequate income, he works a part-time job, several nights a week.
Because he works during the day, he cannot do the requisite networking to find jobs in his area of expertise, and his expertise is rapidly going stale.
At the end of the twelve months, perhaps sooner if the meat ax reaches him, he will be unemployed again, struggling to find something, anything to survive.
Historically, getting a state job has been an entree into other State jobs. But that is a very unlikely scenario for this family member in this slash and burn time in our history.
There is an 11-year old boy in this scenario. Mom and Dad are divorced. Grandma does a great deal of heavy-lifting.
Oh, how easy to trim the fat of bloated government.
Oh, how easy….

#273 – Dick Bernard: Haiti. Some thoughts, 10 months after the earthquake.

/in /by

“Alone in the vast universe
I froze hell over
And walked on its ashes
To create my own history.”
(The Haitian struggle – the greatest David vs Goliath battle being played out on this planet.)
Ezilidanto November 8, 2010
Last week we attended a very impressively organized Festival for Haiti. People there, cared about Haiti and Haitians.
The venue was a hotel alongside Interstate 35-W in Minneapolis. Three miles down I-35 is the Freeway bridge that collapsed during rush hour, August 1, 2007, killing 13 and injuring many.
One of the speakers noted that bridge, in context with the ten months that have elapsed since the cataclysmic earthquake that devastated Haiti January 12, 2010. He noted that ten months after the bridge collapse all of the rubble had been cleared. Twin Citians all know that an attractive new bridge has long been in service, replacing the collapsed structure.
The Festival was ten months after the earthquake. The same recovery after the bridge collapse cannot be said for restoring Port-au-Prince and other areas devastated ten months ago. Hurricane Tomas has just raged through Haiti, and cholera has added a new fear.
Ezilidanto’s quote, above, came today. It is most appropriate for this time in Haiti’s history. Here’s a recent video from the Haitian perspective, also via Ezilidanto.
While I was listening to the assorted speakers at the hotel, I began jotting some notes on the back of the program. Beginning two days before the earth quake, when a well known Cite Soleil Priest preached at our church (he arrived back in Port-au-Prince just in time to get caught in the quake – he lived), I could count at least a dozen events I/we had attended in the last ten months which focused on Haiti.
There has been an immense outpouring of human and financial resources, particularly in the early weeks after the quake. Our church alone raised over $70,000.
But ten months later, even with an estimated over 10,000 NGOs in Haiti, the idea of recovery for Haiti is still a dream.
“Building Back Better” was voiced as a theme for the Festival we were attending Recent photos still showed immense numbers of Haitians living under what can only very loosely be described as “tents”.
It has been seven years since I returned from my first journey to Haiti – a place I hardly knew existed. It was my great fortune, then, to become acquainted primarily with people who supported President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. I learned the other side of the story – the story never told by the U.S. government, the source of information on which I had relied. Till then, I didn’t know there was another side of the story.
Less that three months later, February 29, 2004, Aristide was spirited out of the country in a coup d’etat engineered by the United States, with assistance of France and Canada. Democracy for Haiti’s peasants was apparently too risky for supposed democracies like the U.S to tolerate.
When I arrived home, in mid-December, 2003, I made a decision to work to learn the geopolitical relationships between Haiti and the United States. It was a good decision. It has yielded troublesome insights.
Few would disagree with this statement: “Haiti is a tragic mess”. I have heard this said in countless ways by most everyone.
But then comes the interpretation of those words. With many variations, some blame the Haitians for their own fate. Pick your own words, you’ve heard them. Haitians need to be saved from themselves: so goes the narrative in many ways.
Another point of view, which I share, also conveyed in many ways, subscribes to the idea that the big sin of the Haitians was to have the audacity to break free of the shackles of slavery in 1804. This audacity terrified the leaders of our fledging slave-holding nation; it angered the French and the white Euro-centric world, and the rest is history. (The linked timeline has an error: 1919 should be 1915, but otherwise I think the facts are reasonably accurate.)
The guest speaker at the Festival, a Haitian minister from Port-au-Prince, laid out Haiti’s history in a very clear way, from the Haitian point of view. Then he recited some statistics now, ten months after the quake (my apologies for any inadvertent transcribing errors). In Haiti there is 85% unemployment, 48% illiteracy, 66% use candles as primary light source, 76% use charcoal for fuel, 80% have no potable water, 85% of products imported, 70% live on less than $2 per day, 1 million families (1.2 million people) homeless, 75% of homes need to be repaired.
This, ten months after perhaps the greatest outpouring of human and financial aid ever.
Powerfully, the minister said “Instead of giving us fish, teach us to fish. Empower us.“.
The continuing disaster ten months out is NOT the Haitians “fault”.
Keep seeing Haiti.
Related: here and here.

#272 – Dick Bernard: War, and Peace

/in , , , , /by

A few days ago we finished the biennial reenactment of the Civil War – the 2010 elections. While this is a supposedly bloodless sport, the biennial result is “a house divided” where one side “wins” and the other “loses”. The aim, especially strong today, is to kill the opposing point of view, relevant though it may be.
The instant this political Civil War ended, the next one began. It’s a wonder our country survives. One wonders what our community, national and global landscape would look like if we didn’t insist on dissipating our energy and resources to fight constantly against each other, and, rather, try to work towards agreement on things.
Oh, it’s a dream.
In the election just past, one candidate for a Minnesota Congressional seat defeated the 35-year incumbent U.S. Representative who had a great record of representing the interests of the district. The challenger had no previous experience in government outside of military service. He was described as applying “a military theme to his campaign. His battered motor home was called the “war wagon”. Campaign staffers and volunteers were given military titles – commanders, captains lieutenants.” (Minneapolis Star Tribune, page A12, November 4, 2010). The district loses a representative with great seniority who effectively represented its interests. It gets a new representative with no seniority or experience who campaigned against the very things which led to his opponents many re-elections. The elder statesman was a casualty of a ‘throw ’em out’ mentality.
Destructive as it is to us, we love war, especially as a spectator sport.
(In 1860 the U.S. population was about 31 million, one-tenth of today’s. There were over 365,000 Civil War deaths in 1861-65, and 282,000 more wounded. In today’s political combat, there are no rotting corpses on assorted political battlefields, but there is residual and permanent damage to our effectiveness as a nation. The political goal is to render impotent the opposition. Back and forth we go….)
It was very good for me and many others to be able to shift gear at the end of election week, to move away from combat for awhile.
Friday night I attended a collaborative event of the Hawkinson Foundation and the Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers, “Building Generations Together: Creating a Culture of Peace“.
This was a tremendously inspiring event.
During the Awards section of the program, several younger people from many cultures received awards for their grassroots work on building community through working together. (Their bios and accomplishments are outlined at the aforementioned Hawkinson Foundation website).
At the end of the evening, the award winners joined in a dialogue with five elders (their profiles also at the website) in the Twin Cities Peace and Justice Community, to give their views on a number of different questions. The elders were Carol and Ken Masters, Rev Verlyn Smith, Rev. James Siefkes and Mary Lou Nelson. It was greatly refreshing to see the elders and youngers dialoguing together, while those of us in the audience, primarily elders, listened and learned.

Elder and Younger dialogue November 5, 2010


Everyone listened respectfully to the presentations and the dialogue.
I can only speak for myself: I left the evening tired but energized, with a couple of new insights, which for me made the time expended completely worthwhile.
In a few days we commemorate Armistice Day, November 11, the day “the war to end all wars”, WWI, ended in 1918.
Of course, the end of WWI didn’t end war; it just ensured a subsequent and even more awful war. That is the normal consequence of combat as a resolution to differences.
Peace may not be quite as fun as contemporary political combat, but it is certainly more productive.
Give Peace a chance.
Related post here.

#271 – Dick Bernard: Three Days After….

/in /by

Thursday afternoon I went over to the Tomb, formerly known as the local DFL (Democrat) headquarters in my town. There were several staff and volunteers working to make order out of the chaos that such places become at the end of a long and chaotic campaign.
This was a Tomb, not a Nightclub after a drunken debauch celebrating victory. Tuesday night was a bloodbath for Democrats in Minnesota and elsewhere. There were bright spots, but still today they are hard to see. Our three area legislators, whose headquarters was this building, were all defeated by newcomers to elected office. This happened despite the fact that the incumbents were veteran, even-handed and highly accomplished legislators, all given strong editorial endorsements by the state’s largest and most influential newspaper…which liberals consider to be conservative (and conservatives, liberal).
Going across the parking lot I spied an “I Voted” sticker affixed to the payment. Somehow it had a message of its own, including where I saw it – probably already run over by several cars.

Death.
I struggle to make sense out of the abundant nonsense that is this election. The people spoke, and it remains to be seen what the long-term implications of their vote will be…for them. We seem to be a society that needs to blame somebody other than ourselves for certain happenings. So, Tuesday is the President’s fault. That is a dominant narrative I hear and sense from all sides. He’s a good, visible target.
Perhaps the President didn’t do enough change quickly enough…or too quickly. If so, was it wise to pretty dramatically increase the power of the party which not only had created the disaster in the first place, but had blocked all attempts to make needed change in our national infrastructure after our near economic collapse in 2008? Somewhere in there is the very definition of national insanity.
As is true in all mid-term elections – unfortunately – perhaps 60% of those who voted two years ago voted this year. The final numbers won’t be in for some time, but it seems that past will be prelude. [UPDATE DECEMBER 1, 2010: SEE HERE. Actual turnout in 2010 was about 88,000,000 compared with about 133,000,000 in 2008: 67%.] There will be endless reasons and excuses for not voting. Few, short of emergency hospitalization, wash with me. But that’s how it is. (Check here for some interesting data from past elections.)
Another interesting piece of data I saw this morning showed that Senior Citizens – my cohort – really turned tail and railed against change…especially fear of change in their Social Security and Medicare or their own beloved medical plan or doctor. Talk about throwing somebody under the bus, or Grandma’s “death panel”: large segments of my senior citizen cohort were apparently right fine with sacrificing the future for keeping our own benefits. The kids can take care of themselves….
Fear and Loathing of others: Muslims, illegals, liberals (like me) and the like also played into the vote.
The apparent second priority of the Republicans (getting rid of President Obama in 2012 is the first) is to make as much mischief as possible with recently passed health care reform. The signals are very strong.
(Interesting about those “death panels” bandied about in this campaign season: yesterday I discovered in a box of my Dad’s important papers, an envelope on which he had written “Living Will of Henry L. Bernard executed 3-8-91“. That’s 19 years ago. He died in 1997, and that Living Will came in handy. I know. I was there.)

Finally (at least for this little essay) was the business of protecting the interests of those poor beleaguered wealthy people, and the huge corporations and banks, saved by “we the people”, who now worry they have been put at death’s door by re-regulation, etc. The peasant class rushed to the defense of the plutocrats, responding to the advertising these same plutocrats could fund without even revealing their identities. Only in America…. Last Sunday’s edition of “60 Minutes” had an unlikely witness to what we’re doing to ourselves. David Stockman, Ronald Reagan’s Budget Director, testified to the absolutely huge gains in wealth the wealthy have made in recent years. The segment, click here, is well worth watching.
Tomorrow, it’s three days since the American electorate took pen in hand and smote President Obama and the Democrats for not doing enough…or too much.
I come from a faith tradition that has a resurrection after three days in the tomb.
The three days are up. Time to look forward. We all have a huge mess on our hands…we all had a hand in creating it.
Related posts: click on November 2 and 3, 2010.

#270 – Dick Bernard: Yesterday, November 2, 2010.

/in /by

I write having only the sketchiest of information about yesterdays total election results. But I don’t write from inside a soundproof booth either.
Yesterday I spent 7 1/2 hours on election judge duty in a precinct ten or so miles from home. My assignment was to hand out and explain ballots, so I had eye contact with hundreds of voters from 2 p.m. till the polls closed at 8 p.m. My precinct was in a prosperous part of town, and the predominant “face” I saw was much younger than I, often with one or more little kids in tow. There were few who appeared to be anywhere near as old as I am. Except for a tiny number of “road rage” types – you can’t avoid these – the overwhelming majority were unfailingly polite and gracious – people you’d like to know. I don’t recall seeing anyone who appeared to be “down and out” in any sense of those words.
My work partner for the entire day was of the opposite political party. That is an absolute requirement for election day workers. There were ten of us in all who worked in this particular precinct yesterday. There is no way to tell who is Republican, Democrat or other in such a setting, except that you know your work partner is of another party, most always the other major party.
Invariably these are all truly “nice” people just wanting to serve and to assure the election is conducted fairly. My work partner was one of those truly nice people. So were the others.
With inevitable exceptions, the work relationship we had in my precinct likely happens in most every precinct in any community in any state.
There is little drama in voting locations on election day.
There was a very heavy voter turnout in my assigned precinct, and a very large number of on-site registrations due to the fact that there were many first time voters at the location. This was due to recent construction in the neighborhood. We didn’t have long lines. The flow was reasonable and constant. There was no down time.
At the end of the evening election workers don’t just leave and go home. We all had to stick around to help clean up, and most importantly to witness and verify that the vote count reported to the county was as it was recorded by the electronic reader which received the paper ballots.
In all, we spent well over an hour on the final tasks.
Near the end of the time we were all read the machine tally of the votes recorded in our precinct for the major races.
I can fairly say the vote in the precinct was overwhelmingly very, very conservative.
There were no ‘high fives’ or bursting into tears, or fist fights among the ten election workers.
There was a whole lot of quiet after the returns were read in that room last night.
Duties completed, we bade each other farewell and went our separate ways.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010, was indeed a fork in the national road.
It remains to be seen exactly what that means.
My clock reads 4:34 a.m. The Minneapolis paper was just delivered. Shortly I’ll see the first of endless reports and opinions….
Related post, here.

#269 – Dick Bernard: The Aftermath of the 2010 Election

/in /by

I’m writing this post on Monday night, November 1. I will click “publish” when I return from being an Election Judge sometime on Tuesday night, November 2. Except for the last sentence, this post was written before the polls opened anywhere in the U.S., or a single vote was officially counted.
Late this afternoon I was at a local supermarket and ran into a retired friend who was, like me, purchasing some incidental groceries. He’s a great guy, well respected. Indeed, at one point in his life he actively explored running for elected office, but changed his mind: it’s just too brutal. We chatted seriously about what is ahead tomorrow. Would anger or common sense prevail? Would fear drive the majority of the ballots cast, or hope? He and I know as much or as little as anyone else. We’re worried.
(As I completed the previous sentence, the phone rang and our good friend, Annelee, was on the line. She grew up in Hitler’s Germany and was talking about a very recent speech she’d given to a group of about 90 lawyers. She asks for questions in writing, so people feel free to ask more uncomfortable questions. One she dealt with was “what are the similarities between Hitler and Obama?” “None whatsoever” she responded, and went into detail. At the end of the q&a session, she said she got a standing ovation, and particularly strong compliments from a state legislator and a retired military general, both in the audience. The exchange and response was both troubling and hopeful: amongst the scarcely concealed hate in the anonymous question there was much thoughtfulness in the room. Which will prevail tomorrow?)
Whatever happens tomorrow, there will be endless analysis of what it all means. I’ve expressed my opinion often over the last 30 days (see the end of the October 31 post for all the links). Mine is just a single opinion. Mostly, honestly, I feel like I’m talking to myself, even though most of these blog posts are carried by a respected Twin Cities on-line newspaper, the Daily Planet…. You’ll probably see this one there, too, in a couple of days.
Leaving ideology aside, what troubles me most at this stage in our history is the almost absolute unwillingness of any faction on any side of any issue to truly enter into dialogue with others of differing beliefs and attempt to come to some kind of reasoned resolution to problems.
There was a day when negotiation could be done, including in the national and state legislatures. That day is not now. “Stand your ground” seems to be the political mantra; “that’ll force them [the other] to move to our side”.
Unfortunately, what is true is that the ‘truth’ espoused by one fragment or another is ‘truth’ only to that faction. If by some miracle they can get into power, and move their agenda, and even get judges in place to affirm their ‘truth’ – their position will ultimately fail because it reflects only their fragment of the body politic.
We seem to have become a nation of fragments. A healthy whole is the sum of many parts; we have many parts, but the whole is difficult to impossible to see.
When victory is said to determined by divide and conquer strategies, and by disempowering the losers, we have been conquered by ourselves.
I’ll be tired when I get back from the polling place tonight, so I’ll go to bed, and probably not go to any party. I’ll read about this election Wednesday morning.
We shall see.
Tuesday, 8 a.m. a good column in today’s Minneapolis Star-Tribune, here.
10:30 p.m.: back from a very long day as election judge. Over and out.