Tom's Musings

I’m back after my short hiatus to spend time with in-laws. I survived quite nicely, it was fun actually. Life is full of surprises.

What to chat about today. There are so many outrages that selecting a topic on which to display my ignorance is not an easy task. But the abortion medication kefuffle in the courts managed to capture my attention after considering other possibilities.

The specifics are not complicated. A Trump appointed Federal Judge in Texas (Matthew Kacsmaryk) reversed a 23 year old FDA approval of the medication (Mifepristone) long used to induce abortions essentially. His decision essentially removed that as a remedy for unwanted pregnancies. In recent years, about half of the estimated 600 to 900 thousand annual abortions were terminated in this manner. The ruling is a big deal.

Within days, a Federal Judge in the State of Washington reversed that order in response to a number of Democratic Attorney General’s who anticipated the Texan’s conservative ruling. President Biden made a statement that the Texas action represented an assault on the Federal Drug Administration and, by extension, the federal government. The U.S. Department of Justice entered the legal fray along with the impacted drug companies.

Underlying the specific issue in contention are a bubbling set of oppressive legislative acts, either effectuated or contemplated. Conservative States are arming themselves, or thinking about at least, jailing those who seek abortions, as well as those who perform them, even those who aid in the transportation of those seeking such a remedy in another state or country, and so forth. The consequences include heavy fines, increasingly longer jail terms, and at least one state floated the idea of the death penalty which makes some logical sense if you see the termination of a fetus as murder.

This legal tempest raises an issue for me that I’ve noodled for some time now. Does anyone still believe that CONSTITUTIONAL LAW is something concrete or defineable which can be discerned through analytical analysis or judicial review. If that were the case, we would not see so many narrow judgments along ideological, if not partisan, lines. We would not have seen the emergance of the Federalist Society, a conservative body dedeicated to tilting the judiciary to the right. We would not see knock down battles over appointments to the High Court or the Federal Courts, nor would state High Court races be so hotly contested. Even a generation ago, the $40-plus million spent on the recent Wisconsin race for a spot on that state’s high court would have been unthinkable. Nor would anyone have predicted that such a race in a backwater state could possibly garner such national attention.

The thing is that justices, particualry on the Supreme Court, the federal appelate benches, or on State High Courts are no longer seen as diviners of some innate truth. They still wear the black robes, sit on platforms that rise above those pleading their cases, and conduct their deliberations in secrecy (usually). All such niceties are designed to sustain the illusion that they speak with some divine certainty. No rational person can possibly believe that nonsense any longer. Now, more than ever (at least recently) the principle of ‘post-decisionism’ comes into play. Justices know how they will decide as they go into a legal case, especially if it controversial and has partisan implication. Their arguments, deliberations, and consultations involve rationalizing their prior decision which they brought to the bench. All pretense to nonpartisanship is gone. They have become another branch pf political hacks though I love the hacks that support my view of the world.

As this becomes clearer, hardball tactics will increase. The liberal who won the Wisconsin race for the state Supreme Court has already been threatened with impeachment by a Republican supermajorty controlling state government (through gerrymandering). It likely will not happen but they might try simply because they don’t like her politics. Some observers criticized her becuse she was open about her opinions on abortion, voting rights, and so many hot button issues. They said that candidates for the Court should not reveal their likely opinions since that smarts of prejudging cases that will come before them. Are you freaking kidding me! Everyone knew her opinions as well as the opnions of her hard-right opponent. That’s why millions poured in from around the country to elect her AND to defeat her. No secrets there.

So, is this a new phenomenon? In truth, nothing is new. As I pondered our latest judicial crisis, my mind drifted back to just before the Civil War and right after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850. Two cases involving Wisconsin captured national attention in those dark days. Dred Scott, and his wife Harriet, separately filed petitions in a Missouri Court that they should be released from bondage after having spent several years in Fort Snelling, Wisconsin (the man who ‘owned’ them at the time was associated with the military). On the basis of once free, always free, the outcome of the case seemed certain. They would win.

It took 11 years for this drama to be decided. The result was the 1857 Dred Scott decision, termed by some the worst in Court history [It should be noted that the Court at that time was dominated by Southern conservatives]. Roger Taney, writing for the majority:

“They [African Americans] were at the time [of the Constitutional ratification] considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugcated by the dominant race and whether emancipated or not, remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges…”

In short, blacks were not, and would never be, citizens who might avail themselves of the rights of citizenship.

BUT, and there often is a but, one Joshua Glover escaped bondage and fled to Racine Wisconsin around 1853. He was captured and jailed in Milwaukee pending being sent back into slavery acording to the infamous Fugitive Slave Act. But the same harsh divisions we see now in America were boiling then. An angry crowd surrounded the Milawukee jail, freed Glover by force and spirited him off to Canada where he found freedom and where a park honoring his name can yet be found in Toronto.

The story does not end there, however. Charges were brought against several individuals seen as responsible for freeing the prisoner in contradition of federal law, abolitionist Sherman Booth being one of them. They were convicted and faced fines and jail sentences. These cases made their way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court where the State’s High Court reversed their sentences. In effect, a political and ideological battle raged about the morality of slavery and the relative authority between the federal and state governments. Obviously, this is an abridged version of far more complicated events and legal arguments. But I do love one quote from the Wisconsin decision.

“In Virginia he [Glover] may be, indeed, a chattel; but in Wisconsin he is a MAN … the laws of Wisconsin regard him as a person here …”

Perhaps in response to the Glover issue, which garnered national attention, a group of two dozen or so mostly dissafected Whigs gathered in a school house in Ripon Wisconsin. Among their most pressing concerns was the scourge of slavery and that it might be extended into the West. They also feared that northern states might be forced to assist southerners in the perpetuation of this monstrous institution. So, they created a new party … the Republican Party. In several short years, they elected Abrahan Lincoln to the White House and the rest is history [Another note: Today’s Republican Party bears no resemblence to the liberal party that emerged in the mid 1850s].

What we see in the Judiciary is merely one reflection in the national rupture tearing apart the country. We saw it in the 1850s as well. The end result was a tragic Civil War. How will our cultural and judicial unrest end? I wish my spouse, a former official of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, were still around to chat with about such issues. She could at least tell me what I got wrong. She was good at that.]

Easter season is here. So, in lieu of my usual political rant or one of my solopsistic ramblings, I thought I’d post something appropriate to this day. Don’t faint now. I do sometimes think before I write, just not often.

In an earlier post, I wrote about the institutional aspects of religious belief systems as being mostly ‘noise’ designed to bind followers to a divisive dogma and to keep the contributions flowing. A bit cynical perhaps but there you have it. But there is a more spiritual dimesnion to belief and I find good in that.

At some point, when I was in college, it struck me that virtually all religious traditions had a common core, though those central doctrines often were obscured in their sacred texts and certainly by the interpretations by those guarding the inner sanctums. In the end, they came down to this … be good and be kind to others. You know, the ‘golden rule’ or treat others as you would be treated. I can remember sitting in a car late one night with a comely coed during my undergraduate days. Her name has long slipped into obscurity. Since I had no money, I thought my best chance of getting to any base was to sound wise, or at least smarter than a sack of rocks. So, I went on about my philosophy of life for a bit … telling her about my moral compass so to speak.

That so-called ‘compass’ was simple as I recall. “We are born and sometime down the line we pass from this mortal coil. In the meantime we must decide how we shall spend that time which, I was convinced, was fraught with unhappiness and disappointment and even pain(I am irish after all). I told this gal that I only hoped to make life just a fraction easier for those on this journey with me, likely by making them laugh just a little.” I can’t recall for sure but I doubt this BS got me to second base but, on reflection, it hit me that I actually might believe such sentiments.

Spirituality is a journey. We can walk it alone or we can share it with others, trying to negotiate the rough patches as best we can. The trick is how to assist others along the way. That is not always apparent nor easy most of the time. Adding to the challenge is that males and females are dropped on to this planet with wildly different dispositions and skill sets. Guys have less innate empathy and, when they try, it usually comes out as an instinct to ‘fix’ problems. How different are the two genders. The next pic captures an essential difference.

Now, since I was an only child I had no young siblings of the female persuasion who risked being in my presence during our early years. However, I am a typical male in most respects (how freaking sad). I can recall my long suffering wife sharing whatever crisis she was facing on a given day. Immediately, I would leap into ‘fix-it’ mode. I was always perplexed when that proved ineffective and when she withdraw into sullen silence. Yes, I was an idiot. Not a complete idiot though. I was never one of those guys who thought sending some female I barely knew a foto of my ‘family jewels’ (private parts). Really, how moronic cana guy be to think a foto of his junk will turn on a female. For heavens sake, try your bank statement instead.

My lesson for today is not whether we should help others but how. I will admit that even I, not the swiftest arrow in the quiver, eventually got it that fixing someone’s ‘hurt’ was not always the best response. It occerred to me, after many failures, that this response made me feel better but was not always the best approach to the other’s situation. If not that, what was?

Oddly enough, for reasons I won’t bore you with, yesterday I had two separate conversations with female friends. Each coincidently shared some wisdom contained in a New York Times piece that I found insightful. Essentially, it focused on a question that some school teachers found very useful for dealing with their younger students who were feeling emotionally overwhelmed. It is a simple question:

“Do you want to be helped, heard, or hugged.”

Someone who is sharing pain with us is reaching out. However, a dullard like me is woefully unprepared to detect what they need in response. There is research that each response (hearing, hugging, helping) evoke or stimulate distinct chemical and/or emotional responses. Like my experiences as a policy wonk, I understood in that arena that you have to get the quesiton right in the first instance to make any progress. Getting it wrong can result in more harm than good.

I am thankful to these two female friends. This approach strikes me as intuitively sensible. Then again, I thought sharing my philosophy of life with a comely co-ed in college would get me to second base. So, what the hell did I know?

I would add one more H to this question. Humor!

Do they want me to make them laugh. I add humor since this is in my wheelhouse. Making people laugh is my strength, my go-to response in most situations. And I have found that humor is especially effective with females. Even as a young man, I realized that every time I took my clothes off in front of a woman they would double over in hysterical laughter. Just a gift I suppose.

One final thought. We assume that we, homo-sapiens that is, are the pinnacle of evolution. Given our hubris, we assume that we are the best and the brightest and most advanced. We just might be. Sometimes, though, I see other primates who evidence collaborative behaviors and demonstrate the kind of intimate bonding that might well put us to shame. Few other species have refined technology to slaughter others of their own kind. Think about that for a moment. I leave you with the following image.

BTW …. I am off on a short trip. There likely will be a brief break in these fantastic blogs :-).

Welcome to the United States of America in the 2020s. In Tennessee, two Democratice state lawmakers were expelled by their Republican legislative colleagues for protesting gun violence in a legislative chamber. They did so in response to another mass killing of school children and educators in that state. In Wisconsin, the defeated conservative candidate for the state’s Supreme Court turned his concession speech into a virulent and vitriolic attack on the liberal woman who defeated him. Speculation now swirls that Badger State Republicans will use their supermajority in the State Senate (thanks to gerrymandered voting districts) to impeach the newest member of the high court because she is a liberal and supports abortion rights for women. Several Republican Congressional representatives in Congress have publicly called for a national ‘divorce’ or separation between conservative and liberal parts of the country, a sentiment espoused with increasing frequency by right-wing pundits in the media echo chamber of the hard-right.

At the heart of these kerfuffles is the new American culture war, a fight for what American’s increasingly see as the battle for the nation’s soul. The front lines of that apocalyptic battle are conflicts over guns, abortion, sexual expression, the definition of marriage, and fears of government over reach. Underlying this culture war are longstanding , often sub-rosa, American disputes over racial and ethnic and religious nationalism and diversity (The two Tennessee lawmakers expelled were Black while a third White legislator escaped this fate).

The hardening battle lines crop up in odd ways. Alabama U.S. Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville, a former college football coach, has used his key Congressional committee position to single handedly stop promotions in the U.S. military. Pentagon officials increasingly decry the threat to our military preparedness and security at a time when international turmoil with Russia, China, and North Korea are on the rise. Tuberville’s issue? The military issued rules ensuring that female members would have access to abortion services.

Nothing strikes the citizens of civilized nations around the globe as more absurd than America’s willingness to sacrifice school children in the slavish worship of guns … particularly military-style automatic weapons that have no role in deer hunting or personal defense, unless you plan on protecting your house from a Russian invasion. This is an odd issue on which to defend one’s right to forfeit their final attachment to sanity. There have been 377 school shootings in the U.S. since 1999. Some 623 children, often young victims, have been killed or seriously injured. It has been estimated that almost 350,000 school children have been directly exposed to gun violence during school hours while millions have been exposed to the anxieties associated the loss of security in their classrooms.

In my day as a young student (the 1950s), we did have our worries. I recall fearing polio a great deal, which was eradicated by a vaccine that many of today’s Republicans would likely oppose as government over reach. I also feared that the Russkies would drop the ‘big one’ on our school, but was comforted by the notion that my demise would be quick. And, of course, I worried I would fail my exams. I still have nightmares that I am approaching exams after not having attended any classes. But I never, not in my wildest and most improbably dreams, ever conceived that a disgruntled student or deranged adult would walk into my classoom with an AR-15 weapon (or the equivalent from that era) and gun me and my classmates down.

During one period of time in the 21st century, an international comparison of school mass shootings was done. There were 288 such events in the States during the period of the study. In the nation ranked just below us, Mexico, there were 8. The slaughter of our school children (in a place that should be safe for them) is a clear example of American exceptionalism and certainly our national insanity. And don’t get me started on the 2nd Amendment … I’m still looking for that well-regulated militia which bears no relation to permitting every wing-nut access to military hardware.

If we were a rational nation, we would be focusing on different issues … things like the threat to jobs and the economy posed by the rapid evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies or the threat to the species emanating from anthropogenic climate change. But no, the front lines of our ideological battle fields are disputes over things like guns, abortion, gays rights and, as always, diversity. These are the touchstones that define us as a culture and who we are as a people. Many, not a majority, see America as white, as Christian, and as rooted in what they perceive as traditional values like personal freedom and independence. Notions like collaboration and consensus, the principles of democratic rule, are conflated with socialism and moral decay in their minds … i.e., with those who identify themselves as Democrats In the end, this portion of America yearns for a strong man to right all that is seen as wrong about us. They yearn for a return of the nation to ancient verities that never existed.

Is this sense of internal conflict unique in America? Not really, few things are seldom new. By the 1850s, the broiling diputes over slavery were reaching a crescendo. And let us not be confused, ‘slavery’ was a front-burner issue that stood for deeper cultural divides. The northern part of the nation sought to sustain democratic principles (as badly as they were conceived in that era), to encourage some social mobility and improvement, welcomed education and new ideas or innovation. The Republican Party emerged in Wisconsin in the mid-1850s precisely to pursue this vision of America. Abraham Lincoln risked everything, and sacrificed 600,000 lives to force two distinct cultures back together in the pursuit of unifying norms and a political dream where all might have at least a chance to be what they could be.

But the run up to war was a period of geographcal hate and suspicion, violence in our legislatures, and a breakdown in normal discourse. recall that one U.S, Senator from the South attacked and almost killed another member for speaking out against slavery. We are close to such levels of acrimony today. Then, it was mostly north versus south. Today, it is largely urban versus rural.

But here is the question that nags me, and has for some time. Our Civil War, our national bloodletting, succeeded in forcing two opposing cultures back together within a single political body. But did the marriage work?

I am doubftul. It strikes me that the simmering conflict in America would merely was suppressed while de jure apartheid permitted pernicious practices of exclusion and exploitation to continue in many parts of the country. The ‘rights’ movement of the 1960s rectified old wrings nut opened the old scars over time.

Frankly, I’m not sure. I have doubts we can stay together as one country and remain an effective political body. The divide simply is too deep. Lincoln himself saw the weakness of his own herculean efforts to bind us together … “a divided house cannot stand.” On the other hand, I have no idea how to effectute a civil divorce.

I had a pleasant surprise this morning, aside from discovering that I was still alive thanks to some minor miracle. The advanced copy of my latest and greatest (Refractive Reflections) was waiting for me outside my door. The months of labor were near an end, though writing for me is hardly work. That is a good thing since I consider ‘work’ to be the worst four-letter word of them all.

I must admit. Writing has taken over my life in these so-called golden years. Perhaps that is not such a surprise. As a young kid growing up in an ethnic, Catholic, working class neighborhood in Worcester Massachusetts, I was an oddball. I still am. Okay, I was a misfit in many ways but one stands out in particular. I dreamt of being a great writer. No one else on my block had such an aspiration. The only thing my ruffian friends read was the side of the cereal box in the morning. In my home, I was lucky enough to have a collection of Reader Digest’s Condensed books and a bunch of Earl Stanley Gardner’s Perry mason mysteries (my dad .

True enough, I never recall any of the budding delinquents among my circle of buddies sharing anything about the latest literary gem they had just finished. None joined me when I mentioned I was heading off to the library, treating my destination as if it were one step below Devil’s Island. They all had the common aspirations of my world in post war America. They talked about becoming soldiers, cowboys, athletes, and mobsters … though there were no Italians among my friends which made the final option less likely.

I never knew where such goofball ideas came from, and I had many. For example, as a rather young kid I joined the World Federalist Society, a group devoted to moving away from nationalistic identifications towrd the concept of a single world. It likely was a Communist Front organization but it cost nothing to join. The only other group I signed on for was th Boston Celtics Junior Boosters. That didn’t cost anything either, money was tight. I did give the Boy Scouts a look but they kicke dme out beffore I made ‘tenderfoot.’ My craziest thought was becoming a missionary Catholic Priest but came to me senses after about a year and a half.

But being a writer remained my secret and unexpressed passion. In high school, I was an unispired and uninspiring student, to say the least (in truth, I was never a great student at any level but HS was the worst). Still, one day our English teacher had us write a short story for homework. This was great. It was not like those algebra conundrums about the boat going upstream at 10 MPH and the rive rflowing the opposite way at 5 MPH, and a wind hitting the craft obliquely at 15 MPH. Then the question: How long did it take the captain to eat his lunch? I had a better chance of curing cancer than figuring those things out.

But a story… somehting creative that did not involve numbers. That wa sin my wheelhouse. That night I was busy scribbling out my first masterpiece. When our teacher (a Xaverian brother) asked for a volunteer to share his creation, my hand shot up as the other students slunk under their desks. he looked at me with a familiar ‘oh no, not that moron.’ But i was his only option so he sighed and gestured to me. I rose and started reading. As I came to the end, sweat broke out on my brow as my confidence ebbed. What if my clasmates were laughing at me, storing up their insults to hurl at me at theoir earliest convenience. Why had I subjected myself to such public ridicule.

I had written a simpple story but one that drew the audience in one direction until the very end when there was an unexpected twist. I thought it clever but now that I had revealed all in public, my confidence evaporated like a snowball in July. I looked up with great trepidation. There were no smirks, no usual looks in my direction that screamed ‘what a schmuck.’ They were shocked. The teacher was shocked. I wasn’t as dumb as a sack of rocks. Who knew?

Perhaps this one gift came my father, an Irishman blessed with that Celtic blarney. He was just a working stiff after a youth walking on the wild side but I could tell he was smart and a good story teller. Once, perhaps after he had passed, I was going through his effects. I came across a story that had been printed in the local paper from the ealry 1930s. There was a picture of his HS basketball team and a narrative that included questions of the players about different things including what he wanted to do as an adult. My father said he wanted to be a journalist, a dream beyond his reach as a por Irish kid during the height of the depression. But his aspiration always made me wonder.

When I somehow made it to college (you would think any decent school would know better than to let me in), I recall the time I ran into my English Lit professor. Here was another coourse I loved. We were in a food line so he had no escape. I shared my dream of being writer one day. He did not laugh as I recall. He simple had one question for me. “Can you tell a good story?” I had no freaking idea so remained moot in that moment.

Other than writing a novel while in India (Peace Corps), I put aside that childhood passion. I now wonder if that first try was any good. I think it got thrown out with some dirty underwear after a decade or two. No, I stumbled into a career as a policy wonk and an academic. It was a fun life where I got to work on interesting challenges of my own choosing while working with really smart people from around the country. I even loved teaching. The classroom can be fun when you are on the correct side of the desk … LOL. Besides, they paid me to have fun so I always had a roof over my head and three-squares a day. Not sure that would have been possible as a writer.

So, as my spouse’s health began to decline (alzheimers), there was less travel and other things to keep me occupied. I went back to that early passion about a dozen or so years ago. Since then, I’ve rolled out works of fiction, memoirs, and policy works … at least a dozen, more if you include rewrites of the early works. And guess what, I’ve loved every minute of it.

Below are a few of my fictional works. I’ll share the non fiction gems in the future.

Did I choose the right path in life. Who knows. I loved doing policy work. I always received wonderful feedback as an acadmic writer, even from those hard ass economists. And I loved the college students whose lives I shaped. But there will always be a nagging doubt that I compromised in life … that I did not pursue my first passion.

Oh well!

If you had been able to read my entire blog yesterday, you would have seen that I ended on a down note. I was about to pack the car with my essential belongings to emigrate to the ‘civilized’ country to our north … assuming that the Wisconsin Supreme Court had remained in Republican hands. After all, the party of Trump controlled some two-thirds of the State Senate, almost the same pluraity in the Assembly, a majority on the State Supreme Court, and 6 of 8 U.S. Congressional districts. They only lacked the Gubernatorial Seat though veto-proof majorities might only be an election away.

The Red Tide in what had been one of America’s beacons of democracy and good governance, especially in the heyday of the ‘Wisconsin Idea,’ would have been complete. Trump’s party would have been positioned to cement authoritarian rule on the state’s citizen for at least a generation. Say goodby to the American experiment in democracy.

Pundits from around the nation focused on this special election for our Supreme Court. Robert Reich called it much more important than Trump’s arraignment, basically a pro-forma legal event, while the always eriudite Heather Cox Richardson labeled it a ‘huge’ event. Most placed the election in national terms, reminding us that a shift to Trump of some 43,000 votes in several swing states could have kept our last President in power despite losing the election by 7 million votes. Local politics matter … a lot!

The Republican stranglehold on power since the onset of the 21st century has resulted in the stark erosion of democratic principles in the Badger State. Though objective observers estimate that the Democratic Party likely has a small plurality of aggregate support statewide in Wisconsin, gerrymandering and voter suppression have rendered those in the center-left with virtually no power. The prospect of facing the 2024 Presidential elections without safeguards over the electoral process worried many on the national scene and here. The implications for the right were not lost on them. When the results came in early this morning, far right activist Ali Alexander said “we (Republicans) just lost the Wisconsin Supreme Court. I do not see a path to 270 in 2024.” He realized that his party might have to win elections legitimately for a change.

My eloquent blog yesterday was cut off when I was talking about why my spouse retired early from her position as Deputy Director of the Wisconsin High Court (and unified court system). She had worked for liberal and conservative judges in her position for over two decades, respecting virtually all of them even when she might disagree with some of their values. But she saw where the winds of change were leading. Huge amounts of corporate money poured into what had been non-partisan judicial races in an attempt to impose a right wing agenda on the court’s legal products. Collegiality was replaced by bitter partisanship culminating in a conservtive male justice putting his hands around the neck of of a liberal female peer before backing off. At that moment, she knew it was time to retire and get out of Dodge just as the 20th century ended.

During the early years of this millenium, Republican court candidates prevailed and assumed a 6-3 majority on the bench some 15 years ago. All the hot button issues like protecting easy access to the polls, creating voting boundaries, overseeing election integrity (or not), and abortion were fully in Republican hands. We Badger State residents recall that the Republican legislature hired a former Supreme Court Justice to investigate alleged Democaratic voting fraud in the 2020 Presidential election. After spending a considerable amount of money and time, he and his team found absolutely nothing. Benghazi all over again.

Almost a decade ago, Republican control of Wisconsin seemed unassailable. They had the trifecta (senate and assembly, the high court, and the governor’s seat). Scott Walker, a darling of the hard right, won reelection by five percentage points over his Democratic opponent in 2014. It looked bleak to those of us who still believed in democracy, reason, civility, compassion, science, and community. If my spouse had not been suffering from early onset Alzheimers, my car would have been packed and my compass pointed due north.

While, in the short term, little can be done about local races in what pundits have claimed is the most gerrymandered state in the U.S., the statewide races have begun to shift in a blue direction. In 2018, Democrat Tony Evers (definitely not a glamorous campaigner) edged out a victory over Trump acolyte Scott Walker (49.6% to 48.5%) for the governor’s seat. In 2020, a Dane County liberal judge named Jill Karofsky beat the then incumbent Republican member of the high court who had been appointed by Walker with relative ease (taking 55.3% of the vote). Then, in 2022, the still exciting Tony Evers (sarcasm) managed to beat his Republican opponent for reelection with some breathing room (51.2% to 47.8%). Was the Red Tide finally receding?

Only time will tell. But the 2023 high court race is encouraging. Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee judge handily beat conservative Dan Kelly by over a 10 percentage point margin. The race garnered not only national interest but became an intense ideological conflict. The vote turnout was easily a record for such an election. And the money spent was over 3 times the previous record amount for such a high court race, which took place in Illinois in 2004. One national pundit found it shocking that as much money as was spent for a Canadian national election had been expended on this state court race. Of course, as the results became clear, the Republican candidate refused to congratulate his liberal opponent, calling her ‘deeply deceitful, dishonorable, and despicable.’ As usual, a class act. I swear, today’s Republicans engage in more ‘projection’ than any other group I know.

Is the so-called blue trend real? Only time will tell. Going in, I was more optimistic than usual (for me). My hopes were raised when I voted yesterday and I had trouble finding a parking spot and there was a queue waiting to scan their ballots. When the totals were counted, some 240,000 plus votes were cast in Dane County (Madison) with over 80% of the total going for the liberal candidate. Dane cast more votes than its bigger neighbor down the road … Milwaukee which gave the liberal 70 % of their votes. Moreover, the population of Dane continues to grow exponentially, which must worry conservative operatives greatly. They will likley increase their attacks on the University of Wisconsin which they see as an incubator of liberal sins. But even smaller counties, especially in the southwest and northern parts of the state, swung into the democratic column. These are good signs.

It wasn’t a perfect night. A special election for a State Senate seat went Republican by a slim margin (50.9% to 49.1%). This will give the conservatives power to exercise impeachment powers though does not give them a veto-proof majority. Many expect great mischief in the future, including trying to throw the newly elected justice off the bench for specious reasons. Such arrogance would likely spark great resentment in the state though appeal strongly to the MAGA base. But even here there are signs of hope. U.S. Republican Senator Ron Johnson, easily the dumbest member of that august body, took well over 60% and then 54% of the votes in that area during his past two contests. The preference for conservatives here may well be on the wane as this Milwaukee suburban area seemingly swings in a blue direction.

In any case, I am not packing my car this morning to emigrate to Canada. Our friends to the north are spared my presence in their beautiful land. I am sure they are most grateful for that.

And here is hoping you get the entire blog this AM.

Remember when Wisconsin was a laboratory for democracy, a beacon of progressive and good government. President Teddy Roosevelt praised the state as such during the heady days of the ‘Wisconsin Idea’ when the country looked to the Badger state for legislative ideas in support of working Americans and the less fortunate. A collaborative relationship between progressive Republicans and University academics spawned a generation of new ideas such as workers compensation, the progressive income tax, unemployment compensation, open primaries, the social security system and so much more. A strong Germanic-Scandinavian culture supported active government on behalf of the common man and woman … Milwaukee had a socialist mayor until 1960. It was widely presumed that if you wished to see good government in action, you should look to Wisconsin.

Nominally, the state is evenly split between the two major parties. Predidential elections and state-wide elections are hotly contested and decided by very small margins. Yet, hard right Republicans have enjoyed a growing policy stranglehold on the state where they control the State Senate, the Assembly, and the Supreme Court. On a personal note, my spouse was the Deputy Director of the Supreme Court (and unifi

SHIT … I was having trouble and apparently most was lost. Damn, it was a good one.

I suppose I was like most guys who grew up in my post WWII era, totally clueless and inept about the ‘other’ gender. Those of the female persuasion not only struck us losers as being from another planet, they seemed to come from another galaxy located on the other side of the cosmos. My interactions with this alien life form ranged from the mildly amusing to the outright pathetic.

I won’t bore you with the litany of disasters that beset my bumbling attempts to ‘get to second base‘ since ‘scoring‘ so to speak seemed beyond the known laws of probability in that era. Come to think on it, the odds never improved all that much after that but they did get marginally better. You would spend weeks trying to decipher the clues or ‘tells’ that you were told existed. What would happen if you asked her out or ‘made a move.‘ Great thought went into what might constitute interest in your object of desire that included discussions with the other hapless and clueless guys with whom you shared your ignorance.

It mattered not. When you screwed up your courage, the end was the same … “go out with you! I would rather eat crushed glass.’” The kinder ones might use the familiar dodge of the grandmother passing on (for the 8th time that month) or the dog needing to be washed that night (cleanest dog in town). I’m still scarred from these early memories!

In truth, I did marry a wonderful gal. We would have celebrated 50 years of marriage this past December had she not passed away last summer. It was a remarkably happy union. The fact that a shotgun was employed at the marriage ceremony should be ignored. She never discovered that the shotgun I used to envourage her to say ‘I do‘ was not real. Here we are just before I pulled out the shotgun.

But we are talking about my early ‘love’ life here … memories that rival my root canal work and my prostate biopsies for personal pain.

Let’s see. There was one real girlfriend in high school. I don’t know how I got her. My best guess is that I was her penance for imagined sins she had committed. All I know is that she committed NO SINS with me But we did laugh a lot. Okay, she laughed at me when I tried being romantic. Here we are on prom night. Maribeth eventually got a Doctorate in Literature but I lost track and never found out what she accomplished in life.

After my brief attempt at becoming a saint, I went to a college known as a den of ‘atheists and communists.’ Even better, there were few Catholic broads. I thought I would be in erotic heaven. But no, you can take the klutz out of his religious straightjacket but the retraints are still there.

Yet, I managed to stumble upon two serious female acquaintances. I cannot say lovers but we spent a great deal of time together.

This was Carol. She caught my attention because she wasn’t Catholic … being Jewish in fact. She had another point in her favor. She was already engaged to some schmuck who was in the military serving in Alaska. This was perfect for a commitment phobic guy like me. No threat of anything ‘serious.‘ But I liked her a lot. She was smart as a whip, ranked 1st in our class I believe. I thought if I hung around her my grades might improve by some form of osmosis. That didn’t work but we had deep and wonderful conversations. She went on to Harvard for her doctorate and later became a Dean at Rutgers.

Then there was the ‘love’ of my early life:

Here is Lee when she graduated from Clark. She was the one gal from those years with whom I experienced a ‘Hallmark’ moment … seeing her from across the crowded room and ‘falling in love.‘ I don’t recommend that for anyone. It still took me weeks to make my patented move which she rejectd but nicely (no threat to eat crushed glass). After being ‘shot down’ (which I should have been used to by then), I hid in a closet for weeks. For once in my pathetic life, though, I tried again (I must have been smitten). It worked, she just had to work through her guilt than involved a guy from back home who was pursuing her.

I won’t bore you with the tragic story. Neither of us were healthy enough to talk about our feelings. When the time came to put up or shut up, I wandered off to the other side of the world (India). Amazingly, I did raise the issue of marriage in letters but in rather oblique ways. She made the sensible decision of marrying a post doc while working at Harvard.

That should be the end of that but it wasn’t quite the end. After some 4 decades of no contact, I stumbled across her on Facebook and reached out. We were able to have all the conversation through cyberspace that we never had in person while in school. She went through two marriages and was happy in the second, which pleased me greatly. She also earned a doctorate, in some hard science subject like micro-virology or something I do not understand.

The far more important thing is that it turned out she did love me. She had kept evrything I had sent her from India in fact, or given her in college. But she was Greek Orthodox (who unfortunately are very much like Catholics) and therefore had been as neurotic back then as I was. All this mattered not since she was soon to pass away from cancer. But I found the knowledge that we shared an unexpressed love in the early days very comforting for some reason. I hadn’t been rejected, not really.

Hmmm! Perhaps I wasn’t as loathesome as I had feared for all these years. We just may have been two ships destined to pass one another in the fog of youth.

There was something similar about all four women. They were whip smart, witty, independent, and (most important of all) had no standards when it came to men. I would like to think that, were I to do it all over again, that I would do things differently. But that is BS! I’d still be hapless, no doubt about it.

Below is the ill-starred Don Juan in those days. If interested, I explore my early years at length in A CLUELESS REBEL.

It will be difficult for anyone who knows me now to accept the fact that I was a good kid in my youth. I never ran afoul of the law and I even studied my lessons (sometimes), not that it did me much good looking at my grades. In any case, after high school I entered a Catholic Seminary to become a missionary priest. That ill-starred effort only lasted about a year and a half but it signified my intention, or ambition at least, to lead a decent life.

I wonder what happened to that good and pious young man? Oh well!

Nevertheless, while I have led a conventionally debauched and selfich and irresponsible adult life, I yet have this instinct to tell others how THEY ought to live. And unlike those disgusting tele-evangelists, I do it for free since that is just about what it is worth.

Yes, this is me posing in some borrowed clerical gear. I did look the part, like a competitor to Bing Crosby (who played the kindly and wise priest in those 1940’s movies) though my favorite was Gregory Peck in Keys of the Kingdom.

And here I am on the right with my two seminary roomates. They were still there when I left as I recall but I doubt they lasted. Vocations collapsed after my ill informed try. I wonder if I was somehow responsible. The college level Maryknoll Seminary located just outside Chicago was bursting at the seams when I entered in 1962. It was out of business when I brought my wife for a visit a decade later.

But to my spiritual lesson:

These two memes capture what it was all about for me. It was never about a personal deity which I never believed in, not really. It was never about any religious institution or tradition which generally were perverted to conform with their leader’s preferences.

No, it all came down to the message found in many spiritual lessons. Love. Be kind. Be understanding. Be compassionate. Be accepting.

That’s it, the rest is noise or non essential ritual. I went into the seminary because of the core message. I left because I realized a belief in a personal god wasn’t necessary to live that message. Unfortunately, the message is the first thing lost to most of us, especially those who proclaim their religious convictions the loudest.

Rather we should find grace in those who perform quiet and unnoticed good acts. If you are looking for Providence, that’s where you will find Him or Her.

Father Tom

It is snowing in Madison on April 1 (not an April fools joke), so I’m already in a bad mood. It took me virtually no time to stumble across a news article that deepened my despair. It seldom does.

A school principal in Jacksonville Florida recently prohibited his student’s from viewing a 1495 painting titled ‘The Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist and St. Mary Magdalene.’ He felt this masterpiece by the great Renaissance painter Bartolomeo was ‘an assault on family values’ and showed a ‘lack of enthusiasm for motherhood’ and (horrors) was ‘a partisan attack on the pro-life movement.’ Yeah, right! As if a 15th century Italian artist put brush to canvas while thinking, “how can I advance the woke liberal agenda in the 21st century.’ On cue, the genius heading Florida’s state government, Ron Desantis, appluaded the school prinicpal’s alertness and courage. Real education must be stamped out.

This is just the latest in a long line of valiant efforts by conservative stalwarts to protect our young from becoming literate and educated. For example, we have the case in Pinellas County (Florida) where the showing of a documentary of Ruby Bridges (the 6 year old black girl who first desegregated Lousianna’a schools) was suspended. This had been shown during Black History month for years but was yanked after a couple of parents complained pending firther review. Then there was the Wisconsin case of a song by Dolly Parton and Cyrus Miley being banned from a school performance presumably because it fostered acceptance of others. Heaven forbid that a song reflect the core teachings of Jesus. And we have the instance where students were not permitted to view Michelangelo’s classic sculpture of David, a Biblical hero, since it displayed his marble penis. Right, as if science (and our kids) had yet to discover that males have genitals. Just shoot me.

Censorship is becoming big business and book banning remains the favored flavor of this exercise in contemporary Fascism. Between July 2021 and June 2022, some 1,648 titles by 1,261 authors were banned or restricted somewhere in the U.S. A Texas Republican legislator has proffered a list of some 850 books to be ‘investigated,’ primarily on suspicion that they teach Critical Race Theory or what the rest of us call American history. Besides our children being driven further into ‘the New Illiteracy’ as Harvey Graff calls it, many household names in literature have come under attack over time …. Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Shakespeare, and God. These and more have seen their clasiscs attacked as vile and pernicious (though in truth the Bible was written by at least 40 ancient authors presumably under God’s direction). Over the past half century plus, J. D, Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye; Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird; Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Beloved; Ashley Hope Perez’s Out of Darkness have been banned. The classic most often removed from our shelves is George Orwell’s masterpiece 1984, a work that influences us even today.

Book burning is not new of course. In 212 BCE, Chinese Emperor Shih Huang Ti burned all the books in his land and had some 460 Confucius Scholars murdered. At least our Republicans have yet to institute a death penalty for those perusing classic literature or art, not yet at least. Literary purges, of course, have been evidenced thoughout time with the years of the Counter Reformation being a particularly active period as Protestants and Catholics vied for the control of minds and hearts. Not just religious books were suspect. King James the 1st banned Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World in 1614. Perhaps even then, it was realized that those who write history control the future. The Victorian Age was famous for exercising control over the public’s tastes while the U.S. postal service was vigilant in the first half of the 20th century while searching for prurient literature like Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer published in 1934. Banished in Boston became a shorthand expression for government’s zeal in shaping public morality.

Today’s Republican orthodoxy, however, brings censorship back to the front burner in a frightening way. It is not just that public officials are taking advantage of our slide toward authoritarianism and totalitarianism for political advancement. They are being aided by gullible citizens and parents who routinely attack teachers, librarians, and all others who labor to educate the next generation. These are underpaid and ill respected professionals. I recently conversed with several former teachers of my acquaintance (one of whom I found out via a phone call passed away as I was writing this). They either retired early or stated they never would enter that profession these days because the environment is so hostile and crippling. The image of Nazi’s throwing books on to huge conflagrations is recent enough to be be recalled by many of us. We know where that led, an ending that should NEVER be repeated.

In all this doom and gloom I can find one ray of hope. I came of age during the 1950s. I had McCarthyism, Catholic orthodoxy including the ‘Legion of Decency’ telling me which movies I could watch, sitcoms where words like pregnancy were not used and married couples could only be shown sleeping in twin beds with a night table separating them, and the list goes on. And yet, I grew into a debauched adult who marched against the Vietnam war and spent his life endorsing secular and progressive ideals. When I taught policy courses at the University level, I tried very hard not to tell stdents what to believe, and the few conservatives in my courses went out of there way to thank me for that. I thought my mission was to provide an environment within which they could learn how to think critically, though that did not always work of course. I think it did often enough to make it all worthwhile.

Those who seek to control others will fail in the end. That is my fervent wish, at least. I just hope it turns out to be true.

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