A Familiar Playbook is Back

TWO SUMMERS AGO, I had the chance to visit the German towns where my parents met and were married.  One of the towns is Northeim in Lower Saxony, about an hour south of Hannover. During my parents' teenage years in the 1930s, Germany's newly appointed Chancellor was granted authority to remake the country.  First, he was given unchecked powers to rule by decree, no parliamentary or court approval needed.  Second, he proclaimed a "Gleichschaltung" or an across-the-board coordination of how "true" Germans should behave and believe.  It led to steps that penetrated all aspects of social, cultural and political life and that singled out those that might object to being told how to think and act.  Everyone was to march to the same beat.  Those who failed, or were reluctant to abide, would be goaded, or threatened by whatever means.

My parents, and their parents, were among the families in Northeim and surrounding villages that backed the ideology of the National Democratic German Workers Party and its fiery leader. The Nazi party in Northeim took root fast in the 1930s, when Germany was economically in ruins and run on a barter system of trading this for that.  My grandfather ran a hotel in Northeim frequented by Nazi leaders and German soldiers.  My mother was a cook there, my father a soldier on the front.  They never joined the party, but supported early efforts to improve the economy and their own lives.  More than half the town's residents backed the Nazis and believed their propaganda, noted William Sheridan Allen in his book about the town.  My mother, in her remembrances of those times, said she and all the others were "brainwashed".

Today, in America, the country that my immigrant parents called home for most of their lives, I fear for the future.  Our leaders, like populist puppets, follow the autocratic playbook of the past in singling out people who oppose the president, or accuse of being criminals, illegal aliens, or simply troublemakers. We are hesitant to apply the German experience to this type of  political game, primarily because Americans firmly believe they are better, good and decent people.  And perhaps we are.  

Yet if my parents and grandparents were still alive to experience how our country's leadership orders federal agents and local police -- and now America's armed forces -- to go after civil protesters, paperless immigrants, and inquisitive journalists, they would be shocked to see the old playbook alive and accepted by so many witnesses. Firms are blackballed, universities threatened, journalists tazed, voices silenced, Senators cuffed and our leaders sigh and lie. Timid legislators acknowledge that fear rules the day.  Voters retreat to echo chambers, not libraries, to parrot the "news" from opinionated talking heads.  An uneven Supreme Court grants immunity to a twice-impeached president who seeks to paint America's White House an ugly red.

In the days and weeks ahead, the chaos, fear, and manipulation will continue, in one form or another, because that is what will keep everyone on edge. Dictators follow the same old playbook as long as they can.  Germany's darkest path lasted twelve years and we know where it ended.  If not corrected, our road ahead could lead us to think and act in ways we never imagined possible.  All in the name of making America great again. 

When Stars Align & Shine

THIRTY TWO YEARS ago, when I was a far younger man, my father's time on earth was inching away.   We did not know it at the time, so well he hid it, that he was fighting an unseen disease set to claim his life on earth within the year.  

My family and I were overseas, living and working in a country he had mainly known through the horrors of war.  His visits to us with my mother, Gerda, to see Austria and their German homeland in times of peace and prosperity brought us closer than we ever realized at the time.  

Today my father's passing in July 1990 is etched in our family's remembrance like a treasured Van Gogh. While our days together were much too short, he lives on in ways I could not have imagined. Memories of him now are the heaven within me.  

My longing words to him on Father's Day in 1989 remain alive to me, and hopefully a beacon of love for all the families he held so dear.

Three Wishes for a Star

Too far apart
to see each other grow
they sit in favorite easy chairs
wishing it were not so...
they think about old family times
when both were younger men,
and in some longing magical way
they wish
those days could come again...

A son nears forty, a father sixty-nine
together in thoughtful solitude 
accompanying the passage of time:
“I miss you, Dad,” he whispers,
wishing upon a star
“Me too, son, me too,” he hears him say,
from somewhere not too far –

It's a happy holiday isn't it
when two men think as one
sitting in favorite easy chairs

a father and his son...

I Miss Al McGuire

WHAT'S UP with college basketball?  Basically a sport you can play for free on playgrounds has become almost unwatchable on television. 

I was among the faithful who were glad to see March Madness back on track, after a year lost to Covid safety.  The scenes took me back to 1977 when my alma mater Marquette, then the Warriors, beat North Carolina to win the tournament in Al McGuire's last game as coach.  He cried as the clock ran down, overcome with his team becoming the best in the country. 

Al's gone now, and so is the veneer of equal competition.  March Madness is a lucrative televised event, customized for sports bars, with its own set of rules and suspenseful scenarios.  It's become such a money pit -- generating more than $900 million for broadcasters and institutions not players -- that colleges see little room for change.  Yet change is what we need:

What's with all the timeouts? As veteran sports reporter John Feinstein has counted, tournament basketball teams each get ten "media" timeouts in addition to the four each team gets by NCAA basketball rules. That's 12 timeouts in 40 minutes of timed play.  The televised game is stretched so long that you cannot only grill brats during timeouts and commercials, you can go out to buy the buns.

What's with all the video reviews?  Added to the timeouts are the invariable reviews of balls tipped out of bounds, charging or blocking fouls, or any number of other "close calls".  Few of them look close in slow-motion replay, yet referees still take an inordinate amount of time to make a decision.  Meantime, players and coaches can catch their breath, talk over strategy, visit the rest room. We can go out for brats.  

What's with the half-time show?  Rather than run a string of commercials that would eliminate the need for game-time media timeouts, viewers are treated to the Ernie, Ken and Chuck show, or something similar.  They're fun and knowledgeable guys, but way over the top in self-promotion and inside jokes.  Not much analysis or insight, beyond the stat sheets which any viewer can review.  Use the halftime -- you guessed it -- to grill more brats.

What's with the coaches?  Some of the highest rated coaches -- Michigan State's Tom Izzo, for one -- literally freak their players out with their frenzy, shouts, shoves and WTF's.  This approach might work when your team is stacked with future pros (unlikely since less than 2 in 100 make it).  But the gung-ho, tough-guy approach fizzles badly when your players are just trying to do their best, and come up short.  The coach looks like a jerk who cost his team more than the game.  

What's with the team rankings?  Men tournament teams are seeded by an NCAA committee of mostly male college athletic directors and conference commissioners.  This year they were infatuated with teams that bit the dust early. Like those from the Big Ten.  The Sweet 16 now left standing are those who "upset" the favorites.  In reality, the teams left to fight it out are those with coaches who don't need a timeout every two minutes and confident players who can actually shoot and defend as a team.  I know this from seeing Gene Hackman in "Hoosiers".

What's with all the brackets?  More than 70 million brackets -- including millions generated by computer programs -- are filled out, and this year all of them got busted in the first or second round -- including the brainiac behind "bracketology", the supposed rocket science of predicting winners.  Sports apps, websites, casinos, and Warren Buffet want you to fill out brackets multiple times, alone or in pools.  In turn, they profit and entrants can have fun.  But treat the official bracket challenge like the championship game.  One official entry, one official winner. 

All this opened my eyes wider to the women's basketball tournament.  It looks and feels like a throwback to a faster paced, less commercially manipulated game.  Instead of halves, there are four quarters, for example, with media timeouts sandwiched in between. And it's still played horizontally, where technique is everything.

But then the women's tourney is not marketed as March Madness.  It's treated as a stepchild by the NCAA, which decided the tourney did not warrant the trademark, financial backing, or even equal gym facilities.  Guys get Technogym, women get yoga mats.  A player's Twitter feed spotlighted inequalities, and put the NCAA on notice.

Change is going to come, for the men and the women.  Maybe even before Marquette wins another basketball tournament.

Postscript:  Al McGuire died from leukemia at 72 in 2001, after successful years as a college basketball analyst and speaker.  He told his players to graduate, and then to work for six months as a bartender and six months as a cab driver to better prepare themselves for life.  As for himself, he said he retired from coaching because he didn't want to spend the rest of his life "running around with guys in short pants."

Marquette paid McGuire less than six figures as a champion in 1977.  Marquette's recently fired coach earned millions, and made a mess of the university's basketball tradition.  I take it as a good sign that the new coach is named Smart.   

I Believe It's Only Make Believe

I BELIEVE that Conway Twitty was the greatest country singer of all time. He sang "It's Only Make Believe" like he really believed it.  For awhile:  "Myself I can't deceive...I know it's only make believe..."

My drift to Twitty was triggered recently by headlines that a space laser caused the wildfires in California,  and that the armed attack on Capitol Hill "was not new or unusual" -- the latter courtesy of Tucker Carlson, who I have come to believe has to be the greatest living pundit on the planet.  I further believe millions of people mistake his opinions for actual "news" and piggyback on them.  Which can only mean we should not be surprised if the Capitol is violently attacked repeatedly down the line. Because it's not unusual.  (Sorry Tom Jones)

The reverie posited more:

-- I believe eating pistachio gelato with potato chip scoops helps to control diabetes.

-- I believe my next door neighbor eventually will follow the law and leash her big dogs, so they do not end up startling my grandkids playing in our garage.

-- I believe you need at least a bag of lentils to make a good lentil soup, with neatly sliced frankfurters adding a nice hearty touch.  Plus some bacon.

-- I believe getting a pedicure is a good way to meet people or catch up on the news.

-- I believe right-wing extremists and left-leaning crazies are secretly working together to either tear down this country, or make it exceptionally greater than it's ever been.

-- I believe the UFO my friends and I reported to authorities in 1969 had something to do with the California wildfires.

-- I believe Packer quarterback Aaron Rodgers and Tampa's Tom Brady are not only GOATS but openly Bay brothers.

-- I believe walking 10,000 steps a day has surpassed eating an apple as a medical proverb.

-- I believe what's good for General Motors is good for the country.  Especially if they build only electric cars.

-- I believe there is a conspiracy among satanic forces to take down conspiratorial QAnon before the coming storm.  I heard this from a golf partner unexpectedly assigned to my cart.  Turns out he keeps a transistor radio set to ultra-conservative talk shows. Tennis anyone?

-- I believe naturalized citizens should be given their firearm of choice along with their copy of the US Constitution at the citizenship ceremony. 

-- I believe young people charged with non-violent crimes should be sentenced to three years of tutoring, and then assigned to the US Peace Corps.

-- I believe the more you hear lies, the easier it gets to believe them.

-- I believe Frankie Laine sang "I Believe" as he watched a flower grow during a rain shower.  "Above the storm the smallest prayer will still be heard."

I believe someone is humming along. 

Signs of the Times

ON THE DAY commemorating the invention of a favorite game -- basketball -- I was informed that a b-ball buddy of mine had died from complications of Covid-19.  Yes, we still play basketball at our old age, but have put the game on hold for nearly a year for safety reasons.

Bob was in his late 70s and competed with us in Wilmington's senior basketball league and in the annual North Carolina state tournament. He had a wicked mid-range jump shot, once perfected while playing at Florida State back in the day when leather balls were stitched and bloated.  

Off the court, Bob was a far-right-conservative who assumed that all of us ballers saw the world just as he did.  We didn't.  Nonetheless, he put us in his email group, posting and reposting messages he found humorous, enlightening or appealing.  Not all were received as he might have hoped.  The last message in late December 2020 entitled "He did it his way" reminded us of his fervent political views:  "It was an honor to have been alive these past four years," the message read. "God bless America."

Seminole Bob played his game until the very end.  He just couldn't compete against what he could not see.

Whatever our politics or religious leanings, our basketball group plans to pay our last respects to our teammate.  We don't know what kind of service we'll see.  Nowadays loved ones fight the brave fight and succumb, sometimes alone and sometimes with a few family members. Not like in the "pre" days, when pews were filled and eulogies paid tribute to the fallen ones.

Today. as I have come to learn,  the message that friends and family too frequently see on Legacy sites and pages of local funeral homes frames the mourning: "Due to the Covid-19, a celebration of life will be held at a later time." 

Game day postponed.  RIP Seminole Bob.

Image credit:  Google Doodle of James Naismith.

When Good People Get Played

MY FATHER & MOTHER, God bless them, grew up in 1920's and 30's Germany, when people were being told the worst about their neighbors. When propaganda targeted their heart strings, slippery slogans and lies dulled their senses to fact and truth, and uniformed officers and emboldened mobs intimidated their daily lives.

My parents were German patriots, they were God-fearing, and they loved their country, seeing better days ahead. Regretfully they were played. Played by people in power for their own ends.

The better days ahead numbered far under 4400. Within 12 years, by the time my parents entered their 20's, the Germany they knew had become the Germany on a warpath that nearly killed them. By year 12, war bombs had demolished their towns and homes.  War camps and graveyards, refugees and rubble crystalized damage done for all to see. Hospitals in cities and churches in Dorfs commemorated soldiers and citizens sacrificed for the cause. 

My thoughts drifted back to those horrendous times when the Trump rioters broke into our nation's Capitol on the 6^th of January. In Germany the attack on the Bundestag – the country's Parliament – in February 1933 had been instigated by the man sworn in as Chancellor just four weeks before. To solidify his base. He was bent on restoring Germany to his idea of "greatness" whatever it took.  

In Washington, DC, the shocking insurrection took place four years after the election of the man who vowed to make America great again. His position, frenzy and vicious voice incited a crowd of supporters to show strength, to take back “their" country and "stop the steal". To overturn results of a democratic election he called rigged because he lost.

Trump and his powerful enablers played millions of Americans like so many other authoritarians have  over time. We may be taught to love our neighbors yet often are swayed to hate them. 

It's important for us to remember the magnitude of what has happened, and why. The Capitol crowd was on an inspired mission, so much so that the riotous mobs did not even care to hide their identities, their hate, or their arms. Even now, a good many remain proud of their deed, showing no remorse or understanding. More than a few sought their minutes of fame. Schadenfreude.

The scenes underscore how millions of people were pushed over the edge by a sustained barrage of lies about the past, present and future. Taken on a ride by drivers drenched in fear who became ever more dangerous and threatening. They, like Trump, must be held accountable under the law. 

Much has been said about the politics of it all, Democrats and Republicans at each other's throats for much too long. But January 6th was a wake-up call in my view.  Some have called it a turning point, the day when the Trump fever broke in all its fury and ugliness. 

In the corporate democracy in which we live, where Inc. after your business name equates you with a person, the future will remain all about donors and money.  Many politicians with divisive, hateful messages may find it harder and harder to play their game.

But not all.  Already, the disgraced outgoing president has assembled a political action group sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars.  The Trump fund was built before the Capitol attack with money from faithful families and powerful corporate interests. You can guess who controls it. 

Photo credit: Reuters

Lou the Election Official: Days of Wonder...and Fright

MY HANDS WERE SLAPPING  the bed crazily when my wife suddenly awoke to shut them down.  My nightmare had surfaced.  Monkeys were popping up at the polling place to stuff ballots or to sneak them out.  Like whack-a-mole, I tried to hit them, slapping feverishly as they hopped around from voting booth to booth.  My wife thankfully broke the spasmodic spell, and saved me from losing to an army of feverish monkeys trying to subvert our election.

When I signed up to become an election official in New Hanover county, North Carolina, no one said a word about monkeys.  Just concerns that people would not show up out of fear they could become COVID infected, or that they would be intimidated by overzealous electioneering from one party or another, or that people would try to vote more than once, that ballot boxes could not be trusted.

The Election Board itself worried about attracting enough applicants like me to work half days or all day for ten dollars an hour to help guide things along.  Turns out they hired me and about 200 other people to staff nine early-voting sites around the county.  Everything from laptop operators registering voters, to external and internal line coordinators to greet and assist voters, to sanitation helpers keeping the voting booths and surroundings safe and clean.  Masks and sanitizers on hand for all who needed or wanted them. 

All election staff wore masks and so did all the voters who stood in lines of up to two hours and entered.  So did the hundreds more who qualified for curbside voting from their cars.

To keep it all above board, the major political parties sent observers to each site.  They did just that, sitting in chairs inside the sites watching, taking notes, and occasionally voicing concerns:  

"My big worry is having a bus drop off dozens of people who never voted before," one observer noted, eyeing the parking lot.  North Carolina does not require voters to have an ID, just other forms of identification tied to their county address.  No dreaded bus has come so far, only 58,000 citizens seeking to have their votes recorded.

Now a week into my post-retirement job as a "Greeter", nearly 45% of eligible county voters have already cast their ballots in person or by absentee mail.   Of the 58,000 cast, about 21,000 came from registered Republican voters, 17,000 from registered Democrats, and a whopping 19,000 from unaffiliated voters.  

Non-party people are the fastest rising group in our county, and throughout North Carolina.  Mail-in ballots are phenomenally on the rise -- so far, 780,000, a quadrupling of those recorded at this juncture in 2016.  The ballots, once counted on election day, could prove to be decisive in what pollsters call a "toss-up" state.

Among the first-time voters stood Miguel, an outwardly shy 18-year-old who I noticed hanging around the voting lines for two days but reluctant to step in.  When he finally did, he said he only voted for president and senator, describing himself as a "non-political" person.  I casually mentioned that the Election Board was still looking for temporary staff and maybe he should look to apply.  A colleague overheard and took him by the arm.  "Follow me," he said, and he did.  The next day Miguel had a job, and by day three he had transformed into a highly courteous and helpful staff member.  When I next saw him, he was walking an older voter back to his car. 

And so it went.  Few problems. Many touching scenes.  Families coming in with their young children, to show them how the voting process works.  Some wore their votes on tee shirts and hats, most kept them inside their heads.  Elderly couples wheeling themselves in, or walking slowly with canes and assistants.  Others meeting neighbors and fellow parishioners, and friends they had not seen in some time.  Voting rights groups moving to doo-wop, salsa and country western songs piped from a parking-lot food truck.  Voters taking selfies, proud of their "I voted" stickers.  A mother and son wearing Biden tees resetting a windblown Trump/Pence sign.

Yet we've had some "issues".  Some voters came because their absentee ballots had been blocked for lack of a witness signature; they were allowed to fix them and submit them provisionally.  A few wondered whether the pre-filled sample ballot they were handed from party workers was the "real" one.  It wasn't, just made to look that way.  My boss, the Chief Judge, came out to remind me that party pols had to stay 50 feet away from the voting lines, and then gave me a measuring tape to mark it off exactly.  She had heard that some pushy pols were encroaching.... 

For more, you might want to check in with Ryuichi Kanari, foreign correspondent for Asahi Shimbun, New York bureau.  He's on the Trump trail again.  His first book in 2017 chronicled conservative American politics in the midwest for Japanese and Korean readers.  He had come to North Carolina and Wilmington to see how things were going down south this time around.  During a lull in the lines, he asked me whether we'd seen more Trump or Biden voters and whether there had been any problems.  

As a non-partisan Election Official, I said there's not much I could tell him on the record.  Not even about my monkey nightmare.

Keep the Faith

HOWEVER THIS ELECTION turns out, one thing is clear.  Positions are hardening, especially for the people who pray for the best because they fear the worst.  They include some of the most God-fearing people I know.  

Some years back, an evangelical family member related how he felt like a societal outsider when it comes to his beliefs and lifestyle.  He believes in the Bible's teachings, often literally, and saw the country as hedonistic and radical in supporting gender and marriage rights, among other issues.  "We're now seen as the abnormal ones," he said, feeling oppressed.  Most of my extended family members might have agreed.

Evangelical Christians -- mainly Protestants  -- make up about one-quarter of U.S. voters, according to the Pew Research Center.  They stood among the strongest supporters of the Trump Republican party in 2016.  Most of them were white Americans, which cannot be overlooked.

Whether Trump attracts them in 2020 is iffy.  Christianity Today, the magazine founded by tele-evangelist Billy Graham, backed Trump's impeachment in a December 2019 editorial, saying "he abused his authority for personal gain and betrayed his constitutional oath."  It urged "evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his blackened moral record...to remember who you are and whom you serve."  Namely, the Lord.

Other evangelicals, like hard-liner James Dobson, don't agree.  Dobson urges followers to overlook what he describes as "frivolous personality characteristics" and vote Trump all the way.  His latest open letter to politician Newt Gingrich and 799,999 other Christians pushes the right buttons to lure them to his fold.

And then there's the son of Billy, who sees a storm coming.  "I believe the socialists in this country would like to shut our churches," warns Franklin Graham, evoking visions of his Dad's fiery Red Scare messages in the 1950s.  "Our country is in trouble...thank God for Donald Trump."

So the church is split, at least from the perspective of multi-millionaire evangelical point men. Even so, Christianity Today just last month reported that the man it said should be impeached may still claim the majority of white evangelical votes.  

Good News Blues

THE GOOD NEWS is that the overwhelming majority of Americans are good and decent people.  I know this because friends say I am one.  So good that I get teased for too loosely defending a 72-year-old in our senior basketball league.  "You gotta make him feel you," they cry.  "Play him tough and hard."  

We haven't played ball since last February.  Meantime, the proverbial bad news has come down.  Word is that some of my court critics are also Covid cryers.  They rail about losing their rights by being advised to wear a mask.  "I can do whatever I want.  This is America," they pronounce.  

A few believe that most of the Covid deaths would have happened anyway because the people were old, already sick, or just plain unlucky.  "Anyone who dies becomes a Covid case," they say.  "Besides, if I haven't caught it yet, I'm not going to."  

Good and decent people in many ways.  Yet wrong.  Look at Wisconsin, where friends and family live, and where I grew up.  Nine months in.  Guidance ignored.  Cases rising. Testing and contact tracing falling way behind. Winter coming.

"We know what's making it worse here," Susan Sanvidge, 74, a graphic designer, told a reporter in Oshkosh.  "It's the schools, and it's the bars.  And half of the people think Covid is a hoax anyway."  Others, including health officers, attribute the rising number of cases to cookouts, weddings, birthday parties, and indoor bowling leagues.  Health guidelines ignored, the virus downplayed. 

In Florida, a group of unmasked men and women stormed a Target in Ft. Lauderdale, flouting the store's policy and ridiculing customers who did wear masks.  Making a political, not health, statement: "We're not going to take it anymore."

And now, a month before the election, we're informed the White House and Senate is infected.  With the virus.  Godspeed to us all.  

Image: Yale.edu

"Halt Die Ohren Steif" & Other Reminders

RAGE IS SAD.  The new book by Bob Woodward -- aka "one of the Watergate guys" who documented President Richard Nixon's crimes back in the 1970s -- isn't so much news as it is an alarm.  It immediately reminded me of my father's advice when I left for the Army in 1971: " Halt die Ohren Steif,"  he said, using a German idiom for staying alert and keeping spirits up. You need to see what's coming.

Woodward's written about US Presidents for decades and knows one when he meets one.  Unlike all the others, Donald Trump is not one, he writes, a man who's shown himself to be unfit for the Presidency and dangerous for the country.  This from an ex-Navy man, lifelong Republican, and eminent reporter who had 18 interviews with Mr. Trump, most of which were recorded word for word.  

His book Rage made me sad and mad at the same time.  But mostly sad because it is hard to see how Americans can come together to form a more perfect union when we are led by a person of such deceit and incompetence.  He's not like the guy at the sports bar bragging about this and that trying to show how smart and tough he is.  He's the leader of the United States of America, yet couldn't even get to first base with all the softball questions Woodward threw at him. 

Instead, we hear a man whose principles boil down to blaming others for his mistakes, taking credit for things he did not do, and lying to achieve his aims.  He is charmed when ruthless North Korean dictator Kim refers to him as "Your Excellency" in a series of "love letters", and he is elated with all the perks of a presidency, right down to "doing whatever I want" when he wants.  No checks and balances in his world. 

Rage is Woodward's second book on the Trump Presidency, the first being called Fear.  A thread running through both -- alongside the disturbing picture of a dysfunctional president --  is the reduction of many decisions to money.    Mr. Trump rants that we are being played for suckers in our support of NATO in Europe, and South Korea in Asia, ignoring security aspects, and raves about tax cuts for the richest of Americans that place an even heavier financial burden on our country's debt.  He rails against "cheating" China while his flailing administration has no option but to buy masks and medical supplies from it.   

Now on the eve of a national election, the promises and threats become more urgent.  We are told there's not only a vaccine coming soon against the Covid virus -- which Trump still ashamedly downplays despite nearly 200,000 deaths --  but also a rushed Supreme Court nominee to interpret justice for the next half century.  Not to forget warnings that we are headed for a rigged election and national "insurrection" unless he wins.  

The gambits, threats and propaganda might work. For awhile. 

They did in 1972.  In late October, leaders headlined that "peace is at hand" in Vietnam even though soldiers like me at the Pentagon knew it wasn't.  Two weeks later in November, Nixon won reelection in a landslide.  He lasted until the summer of 1974 when he was forced to resign by his own Republican party.  Peace did not come, the war raged on, not ending until the spring of 1975.  

Weeks later I left the Army, a bit older, a little wiser. I learned my father's words rang true back then, just as they do now.

America Reboot

MY DAUGHTER TOLD ME the other day that 2020 should be deleted.  Malware: COVID-19, and America's haphazard response to it.  Time to clean the slate and start the rebuild.

Hard to argue that America does not need a reboot big time. The reboot challenge goes back more than a decade, and today it's entered again into the political discourse of 2020.

But what to delete and which updates to install?  As an ex-pat who spent a quarter of his life in Europe, what I think may pale in comparison to how "real" Americans see things.  But that's the rub:  just why do we so boldly categorize each other into one camp or another?  Who and what is a "real" American?  Who stands with whom?   

I took a long look at our family's "hard drive":  Throughout our extended family of more than 100 people, the social, political and religious views are all over the map. Literally.  Some of us live in the south, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, and Virginia.  Others up north in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Michigan, Wisconsin.  Still others out west in Utah, Arizona, and California. And a few in Germany, Italy, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, China....and Afghanistan. 

Our collective roots stretch back to five continents. We're racially black, brown, yellow, white and mixed in between.  We're culturally diverse, musically from country to rap and back through gospel and blues to salsa and oom-pa-pa. We're religiously and philosophically surrounded by Jesuits, Priests, Pastors, Rabbis, Imams, humanists and agnostics.  Our neighbors and friends tend to be like us, except in a few cases where those like us are in the minority.  

Even so, we're often on different pages over issues of law and order and the execution of justice, whether"blue" or "black" lives matter more, whether immigrants should be counted in the nation's census, whether to have a post office equipped to deliver ballots, whether patriotism means standing or kneeling, whether to shield ourselves and others during a known pandemic, whether the country's history we were taught is actually the history we should learn, whether the events we follow are fake or factual.  And so much more.

My thoughts expressed through =JustUS began four years ago, when I was still in Europe viewing America from a different lens.  The hateful, propaganda politics of 2016 were frightening. They triggered in me ramifications of the 1930s machine that targeted my parents and their families in Lower Saxony, Germany. To many of them, I have come to learn, the propaganda somehow rang true.  They ended up living through 12 years of mostly hell, even though it was made to look like heaven at the outset.

America's politics of 2020 are even more frightening, divisive and threatening.  A democracy that other countries once looked up to and sought to emulate is on the bend. Countries block Americans from entering for fear of becoming infected, haters spin conspiracies once confined to looney bins, and communities ask the President of the country to stay away for fear of the worst. 

Especially for families like my own whose diversity cannot be hidden, we need a reboot to elevate the goodness of America. To trash the bugs, scams and viruses infecting our lives. 

Reboot art by Linda Woods, available on FineArtAmerica.  Photo of faces, Aron Wedekind

Some Ham, Rolls, and a Singing Mayor

THE YEAR WAS 1963 and we had just moved to a neighborhood in Milwaukee where people of many ethnic backgrounds lived.  A family with Polish roots.  Another with eastern German heritage, Italian, Greek, African. 

Milwaukee's German-loving Mayor, Henry Maier, was into his third year and pushing for the city to get on the national map.  His dream was a downtown summer festival of beer, brats and polka music on the shores of Lake Michigan.  The dream came true in July 1968.

One dream wasn't enough:  Maier's number two was opening Summerfest each year with songs he would sing.  The "singing mayor" pulled it off because of his popularity -- he was elected seven straight times.  So he recorded a polka song to promote the festival:

Go to Milwaukee! How humming a city you’ll see. Sing in Milwaukee! Trah, lah, lah, lah, lee. Prosit Milwaukee! Toast Gaily and so Free. Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Milwaukee! A happy place to be!

My mother and father were Maier backers.  They had just purchased a corner bakery on the north side of the city, at 12th and Atkinson Avenue.  My father baked in the back room on the ground floor, and my mother sold the goods from the store in the front.  We all lived upstairs, seven of us. 

Sundays were big sales days.  Secretly my father hoped Mayor Maier would come in and order thousands of German hardrolls and bratwurst buns for the festival-to-come.  Maier would have had to wait.  Customers lined up at 6am to buy a pound of hot baked ham and get a dozen German buttercrust rolls free in the deal.  By noon, we were sold out when the after-church rush was over.

After the rush my father and I sometimes went to see the guy at the bar.  The bar was a tavern kitty-corner from our bakery, the desired spot for "Frühschoppen treffen", a German custom that gives men an excuse to meet for a late morning drink.  No drink for me, just 5 cents to play the Everly Brothers on the juke box.

The guy at the bar hated the singing Mayor.  He was in the 4% of voters against Maier in 1964. The haters didn't like the Mayor's stance for open housing -- black families legally were restricted where they could live -- and started calling him the "mayor of Moscow" for his political leanings. Meantime, in and around our neighborhood, white flight was gaining steam. Homes were sold as families moved to the suburbs.  They've stayed there ever since.  As recently as 2016, Milwaukee was cited as the most segregated metro area in the country.

Our bakery didn't survive the city's 1967 civil riots -- they broke out on 30 July, my mother's 46th birthday-- and the red brick building eventually became a church.  Today it's one of seven churches within a segregated zip code -- 53206 -- ranked among the city's poorest. 

The tavern died too, but not the Mayor's dream of Summerfest.  It debuted in July 1968 and is still going strong, along with a parade of ethnic and social festivals.  For a short time, they bring out the Mayor's vision of a better Milwaukee.   For insight, watch Black Nouveau's PBS special "Crossing the Bridge" hosted by JoAnne Williams, an award winning reporter and friend since high school.

Imagine That America

BILLED AS A "SHOWDOWN"and possible game-changer, America's first Presidential debate was anything but.  Mostly predictable, often boring, and mainly a shameful time for our country because it showcased the worst we have to offer as if it were the best.

As a people programmed to take sides, we were, and will be until election day, bombarded by pre- and post-debate spin that focused on who won and who lost, who's leading, who's behind, who's scoring, who's not.

As if the two candidates were even comparable in the slightest.  We seem so eager to protect our two-party system that even a supposedly wealthy extremest is not called out for what he is.  The pied piper of an old boys' club and certain Americans who put down people of other races, other religions, other lifestyles for one reason or another. 

If this is the best the Party of Lincoln can do for all Americans, we need a new Party of Lincoln faster than previously thought.  The present one looks spineless and hopeless for America's future.  It has a candidate for the Presidency of the United States of America who cannot be prepared for what would come.  Mr. Fixit is not fit.  Yet there he stands, wound up like a robot to repeatedly repeat loaded and misleading talking points that are nowhere near the subject actually being talked about.  No matter.  He's so programmed and full of himself that he still takes credit for scoring points.  

I sometimes play a game with my three-year-old grand-daughter called Imagine That:   Imagine being a dancer, can you imagine that?  Imagine being a teacher, can you imagine that?  Imagine being Queen of the World, can you imagine that?  The game always brings smiles of merriment and fascination.

What we are being led to imagine now as a country is far from a game. 

Imagine the churning, squirming, sunburning man on stage at the debate with the full power of the United States, not just an old boys' network, in his pocket.   Can you imagine that?

Roller Derby & the Woman in Me

ON A RECENT FLIGHT, I bumped into a roller derby girl, goes by the game name of Terror Nova. A college student, she plays for the Cape Fear Roller Girls in North Carolina.  She's what you call a "jammer", namely the skater who jockeys through the pack of pivots and blockers to score points.

Turns out Roller Derby is written in caps, ranking among the fastest growing sports nationwide for women.  Fans love it.  And why not?  Like Terror Nova, the players get to learn how to skate, pick out uniform numbers and helmets, and choose a game name -- Babe Ruthless, Rosy Sparks, Charli Horse -- that sticks.  Websites now even generate and suggest roller derby names for babies.

If I were a woman, I'd be playing, game name Lotta Luck, and be rolling around the track, jamming, blocking, bumping, maybe even grinding my way through the packs. The sport is locked in my brain, going way back as a kid watching bad girl rollers with my father when the Derby was on TV in the 60s.  The Bay Bombers from San Francisco were queens of the track back then, elbowing, jabbing, punching each other.  Their leader was the Blonde Bomber, a six-foot-tall skater who starred at pro softball on the side.

None of my four sisters ever took to the Derby all that much.  But it brought out the woman in me.

Amigos, Brothers, Sisters & the Flag

BACK IN MY ARMY DAYS in 1973, I was selected to be a moderator for an "equal opportunity" initiative designed to help soldiers of different races work together.  They called me a Human Relations Instructor, sent me to Fort Benning in Georgia for training, and then to the Pentagon to moderate classes filled with mixed ranks and races -- privates, sergeants, captains and colonels.

Few wanted to be there.  All were forced to be there.  Training was mandatory if you wanted to stay in the US Army.  The Department of Defense ordered it, seeing no alternative in an environment of racial tensions that threatened missions.

President Truman had ordered the integration of the armed forces in 1948, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara issued the "equal opportunity" directive in 1963 opposing discriminatory practices. It took years to get off the ground, but became military law.

What I learned in classes surprised and heartened me.  Hardly anyone spoke much during the first sessions.  They listened, they stared, mostly at me.  Slowly many started to speak to each other during classes and breaks, first to those of equal or lower rank, and gradually to others ranked above them.  Even privates to officers.  Talk was about the training, their backgrounds, their views, the civil rights movement and its aftermath in their lives.

Sessions opened much hidden history -- internment camps out west for Japanese-Americans during the war, Indian reservations, the Trail of Tears and Wounded Knee, women in the armed forces but not really (WACs), Buffalo soldiers, Navajo code talkers, Tuskegee airmen, colored troops and Puerto Ricans trained and sent to war in segregated units.  Hardly the stuff of standard history books, it was news to me when I learned it and news to the soldiers in class when they heard it.

The sessions certainly didn't end discrimination in the military, racial or other.  Such training continues today because it is needed.  America's black and other citizens of color learn to live in two worlds, one of which mainly determines their opportunities and future.

Nearly 50 years ago, we were introduced to many new faces, facts, and an American flag of mixed heritage.  We met Grace Wisher, an indentured servant, and Ira Hayes. a Native American soldier.  Grace at age 13 helped Mary Young Pickersgill make the famous Star Spangled Banner that inspired our national anthem centuries ago, and Ira at age 22 became one of the six soldiers memorialized raising the Flag on Iwo Jima in 1945.

Belatedly we saluted them simply by recognizing who they were and acknowledging their contributions to their country.  A start.

Swimsuit Police: Nice Job If You Can Get It

BACK IN THE 1920s, beach police arrested women in America for wearing the wrong kind of swimsuits in public.  Showing too much leg.

Nearly a hundred years later, in France and other countries, police again are tasked to arrest women for wearing the wrong kind of swimming suits.  Showing too little leg, and too much of their Faith.

French courts intervened to stop the "burkini ban".  Their colorfully robed judges don't show leg either.

Neither do they seem to have clout in the frenzied political climate.  Police in Nice and elsewhere ignored the order, and kept chasing down covered women on the beach to enforce the ban.

Very silly situation that goes back more than a century.  If French Inspector Clouseau were around to uphold law and order, at least we would get some laughs watching him take down Cato in his karate robe.

As it is, we are left to ponder visions and voices of troubling times.

(Photo credits:  France 24, National Photo Co., http://jjmccullough.com)

My Mother's Favorite President

MY MOTHER GERDA NEVER CARED much for Hillary Clinton, a woman too much of her own man.  Or Barack Obama, either, a too-smart talker.

The love of her Presidential election life was Jimmy Carter, even though neither she nor my father could vote for him as non-citizens in 1976. 

Gerda liked Jimmy not just because she considered him to be humble and honest, or an especially excellent President.  She liked him because he was once a farmer who lived in Plains, Georgia, a town she visited with my father on the way to their daughter's home in Florida in the 1980s. 

The small town of several hundred people looked a little bit like Tomahawk in the Wisconsin northwoods, where my parents owned a bakery.  And it reminded her of past homes.  Of Dörrigsen, a village in Germany where they had lived after the the Second World War and ran a bakery before leaving for America with four small children in 1954.  And of Palmer, Kansas, a farming town where they made their first American home and their first lifelong American friends.

"Jimmy was a good and decent man," she used to say, and his wife, Rosalynn, was a First Lady to admire.  They were role models to whom she related.

My parents admired the Carters for their love of country and each other.  They are all blessed to have spent a long time together.  My parents celebrated 44 wedding anniversaries on earth and 23 more in our memories of them together.  Jimmy and Rosalynn mark their 70th in August.

My mother passed away in February 2013, nearly 23 years after my father died in July 1990.  It's her birthday tomorrow and I am sending her love for her 95th.  And, as she did whenever she could, a congratulatory card and a contribution to the Carter Center in Georgia.

As for our next President, I like to think my mother, and maybe even all of my four sisters, would be swayed by Jimmy's views.  He endorsed Hillary this week, even though he's been critical of her at times. I like to think that my mother would have followed his lead.

I Miss My Wife

I MISS MY WIFE more today than yesterday.  For family reasons, we've had to spend a good deal of time separated over the past year.  The reasons involve a house in a foreign country, children on the move, a loved one fighting illness, grandchildren we see mostly on a flat screen, and getting on each other's nerves from time to time.  So there, I said it.

Heading into year 44 of marriage, you would think that spending some time apart is not a bad thing. We've heard the lines -- absence makes the heart grow fonder, recharges the juices, makes you appreciate what you may have taken for granted.

Truisms.  I really do miss togetherness, her smile, her touch, her thoughtfulness, her help, and 

Her cooking.  I tried to make spaghetti bolognese yesterday.  So simple but oh so sly in its resistance to adaptation.  With me in the foreign house and my wife stateside,  I tried to follow whatever recipes came to mind.  None did, so I read instructions on the pasta package that my brain translated:

Pour water in pot.  Add some salt.  Bring to boil, throw noodles in pot, turn down heat and stir to your heart's desire for eight or nine minutes. When done, pour the pasta pot into a strainer to drain the water.  Meantime, take the thawed ground beef and spice it up a bit.  Put some olive oil in a pan and heat it up.  Add the chunk of beef and chop it into easily digestible lumps with a spatula or something.  Add tomato sauce to taste and stir it up.

Since I had no tomato sauce, the beef lumped solo.   The lack of key ingredients is one reason why I resist recipes.  There must be thousands on the web for spaghetti bolognese.  And all of them will have one, two or three things that make you go to the store.  No time.  Too hungry.

Two hands are stirring and chopping as the minutes go by.  Everything looks good to go when the clock says it's time. I remembered someone telling me that well-cooked pasta sticks to the wall when thrown.  Not necessarily true.

So I ready the plate.  Fish noodles with a pasta fork, then scoop beef lumps and some natural juices that arose during the cooking process.  This goes to plan,  if you like snowball-sized clumps of pasta topped by lumpy beef and fairly watery sauce.

Which I do.  With ketchup, as my wife knows. She left just enough in the fridge.

My Russian Friend

ONE OF MY RUSSIAN FRIENDS works for a high-flying computer company in Vienna, Austria.  He tells me that his countrymen are superb hackers.  Watch out for you, he smiled, when I asked him about the suspected Russian hack of Democratic Party emails in the States.

We play basketball together a couple of times a week, and have been for years.  Alexander has permanent Austrian residency, something he cherishes.  He left Russia shortly after the Soviet Union disintegrated in the early 1990s, when he was in his early twenties.  He remembers the push for "privatization" that opened the door for deposed communist leaders to carve up property and assets and emerge as ultra-rich capitalists. 

For him and other less fortunate Russians, the future looked dark.  "In the name of privatization, the government gave every Russian a stake in what the government, or actually people, once owned.  We each got a voucher for 10,000 rubles."  About $15 then.

The vouchers were not money but barter, to be collected, traded, and sold whenever possible.  "It was funny, because people literally bought vouchers in one part of town and then sold them for 10 rubles more on the other side of town. That was our introduction to the market economy."

For Alexander and most Russians, privatization just drove up prices and consolidated property, money and power in the hands of the old communist apparatchik.  Including, of course, ex-KGB head Vladimir Putin who runs the country today and whom Donald Trump calls a buddy.

"I used my voucher to buy a bottle of champagne, which is about all it was worth,"  Alexander told me.  And then he left his homeland for good. --for a fuller take on what happened in Russia, check out Kremlin Capitalism: The Privatization of the Russian Economy, written by Joseph R. Blasi, Maya Kroumova, and Douglas Kruse. 

If You Say It Enough Times, People Believe You

TRUE LEADERS OF THE Grand Old Party are nowhere to be seen.  They weren't the main movers at their party's convention that nominated Trump as its presidential candidate.  They weren't on reputable airwaves beaming about the party's adopted  (and changing) platform.  And they weren't in the halls of Congress passing legislation that would fix any of the supposedly critical problems they attribute to President Obama.

Instead we have GOP surrenderists, like Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, joining Trump forces to paint Hillary Clinton as a dangerously driven woman.  McConnell -- who just a few months ago described Hillary as "intelligent and capable" -- now repeatedly is calling her a liar whose word cannot be trusted.  Which words of yours should we believe, Mitch?

Meantime Ryan is standing out as the duplicitous apologist and appeaser (some would say ass-kisser).  Trump's not perfect, but better than Hillary, Ryan says, and he has "good positions".   This from a family man who's been labeled a racist by Trump and who denounces sexism and sophomoric name-calling ("Pocahontas, "Crooked Hillary", "Lying Ted", the list goes on).  Ryan sincerely worries about what kind of America his children will grow up in.  If he's not careful, it will be the Donald's world.  Imagine him on the Bully Pulpit.  Just like third grade....

As most women who've risen to top positions, Hillary is used to being a target. Even Carly Fiorina, the anti-Hillary and Cruz's VP Choice, knows the sexist macho game: "Look at that face. Would anyone vote for that?"  Mirror check, Donald.  Don't stand naked.

Hillary's made mistakes, and has been called to account for them, sometimes over and over again.  Yet even crusader Mick Huckabee thinks she's a policy "genius".  Her downside?  She's not all that charismatic.  Like he is.

So Hillary stands a real chance to become President of all Americans, even men.  Which is why the chant is resounding to "lock her up, lock her up, lock her up"

It all sounds so familiar:  "The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over."

Thanks for the reminder,  Joseph Goebbels.  Wink  if you think most Americans are too smart for that ploy.