Tilting at Windmills:  The White House’s Crazy Assault on Children’s Health

The far right seems to be living in Don Quixote’s world of imaginary giants, tilting at every windmill they see in the distance.  At a White House circus masquerading as press conference yesterday, Trump linked Tylenol to autism.   There is no definitive scientific evidence of a link between the active ingredient in Tylenol — acetaminophen – and autism, however, according to many autism researchers and groups. I am not arguing that autism is unimportant. To the contrary, chasing these conspiracy windmills is counterproductive, it sets back critical autism research.

The study cited by the White House was published in August this year and was conducted by Harvard’s Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.  The study claimed an “association” with autism.  The study did not say that acetaminophen should not be given to pregnant women but limited.  They used the term “judicious.”  

Acetaminophen should still be used to treat high fever, according to the study’s authors, because high fever can increase the risk of neural tube defects and preterm births.  Doctor Trump, nonetheless, told pregnant women to stop taking Tylenol, thereby potentially harming women’s health and their pregnancies.  I guess a woman’s body and health are expendable commodities on the right.

Meanwhile……

Our children continue to die from gun related injuries more than any other cause of death. 

If we are serious about protecting our children from harm, America’s tolerance and acceptance of gun related deaths must change.  America is not a battlefield, a treeless rain sodden ‘no man’s land’ where children must die in a perverse act of patriotic sacrificial bloodletting in the name of the second amendment.   Children die in a mass shooting at a Catholic Mass on the first day of school and, ……wait, wait, wait ……. prayers and thoughts.  Nothing more.  Tragically, a rightwing commentator is fatally shot on a university campus in Utah, and all hell breaks loose, to include calls to throw out the Constitution, jail leftists, criminalize dissent, and censor critics.

Almost a decade ago, the authors of a study published in the National Institute of Health’s National Library of Health in 2016, titled “The Major Causes of Death in Children and Adolescents in the United States, summarized their findings on gun injuries as a leading cause of death among America’s kids: 

“In 2016, children and adolescents (1 to 19 years of age) represented a quarter of the total estimated U.S. population1; reflecting relatively good health, they accounted for less than 2% of all U.S. deaths.  By 2016, death among children and adolescents had become a rare event. Declines in deaths from infectious disease or cancer, which had resulted from early diagnosis, vaccinations, antibiotics, and medical and surgical treatment, had given way to increases in deaths from injury related causes, including motor vehicle crashes [20 percent], firearm injuries [15 percent], and the emerging problem of opioid overdoses.”

According to an accompanying chart, in 2016 there were 3143 firearms related fatalities of children.  This included 1865 homicides, 1102 Suicides, 126 accidental, and the remaining 50 undetermined.  Horrific statistics that hide immense pain.

By 2020, however, firearm injuries overtook motor vehicle accidents as the leading cause of death of America’s children and adolescents, according to a 2024 report by John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  The implications are staggering:  It means that your child or grandchild or great grandchild has a greater risk of dying from a gun related injury than by any other cause.  Is that an America we want?

Thanks to Kennedy, however, that shocking and unacceptable leading cause of death of American children will be augmented in forthcoming years by higher mortality rates of children through declining rates of childhood vaccination.  You will note that the study indicated that deaths by injury eclipsed childhood deaths from contagious disease because, among other things, of near universal access to childhood vaccinations.  Think about it. Before the measles vaccine, on average, approximately 400 to 600 kids died per year of measles.  Do we really want to go back to that era?    

So here we are, instead of addressing gun violence and related kid’s deaths, Kennedy and Trump continue to tilt at windmills, pointing fingers at Tylenol and vaccines and women.  Funny how the right always finds a way to blame women’s actions.  If we truly want to make America safe for our kids, let’s quit sacrificing them on the altar of the second amendment and do something meaningful, instead of offering soothing poultices of prayer after another child’s needless and preventable murder. 

Early voting is now open in Virginia.  Get out and vote.  Get your family and friends to vote.  Let’s stop the madness in Virginia.  We don’t want to go down that authoritarian path Texas, Florida, Oklahoma and many other states have gone down.  

Where Have our Better Angels Gone? Four murders, four Americas

“The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely, they will be, by the better angels of our nature”

Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address

George Floyd, Brian Thompson, Melissa Hortman, and Charlie Kirk were murdered.  Yet, how America responded writ large to these individual murders is a telling insight into today’s divisions in America, of who has political capital, the power to weld it, and importantly, who lacks it.  

Murder is not unusual in America. In 1991, for every 100K Americans there were almost 11 murders.  By 2014 that number dropped to about 5 per 100K.  In 2024 that number was relatively the same after a pandemic spike in 2020 of 7 per 100k.  Most were gun related murders, averaging about 17K to 18K per year.  The leading cause of death of kids under 18 in America is gun violence.  As a nation we offer them prayers, for a select few, we fight over their deaths.

It is not surprising then, that three of the four persons mentioned above were shot to death.  Floyd’s death was unusual, a prolonged public spectacle when a police officer used a knee to compress Floyd’s neck for a prolonged period on a busy street, in broad daylight ,while two other police officers stood by, and witnesses filmed the unfolding murder while pleading to not hurt him.

Today, I am not concerned with their manner of death but with American’s reaction to them.  

In 2020, George Floyd’s murder sparked nationwide protests over policing practices and culture in America and the disproportionate killing of black men by police officers; along with other issues of mass incarceration and disparate treatment by the justice system.  The Black Lives Matter movement emerged from these protests.  Backlash was immediate.  Conservative media outlets pointed to Floyd’s criminal record or his alleged drug use to exculpate the police officer’s actions.  

Despite the backlash, some reforms did occur at local and state levels, but not at the federal level.  Today, physical representations of that protest movement that pushed for nationwide police reform are literally being bulldozed.  In March of this year, the Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington DC was torn up and paved over after pressure from President Trump.  

In 2024, Brian Thompson, the CEO of the major health insurance company United Healthcare, was gunned down in midtown Manhattan in the early morning hours by a lone gunman.  Unlike most murders, it garnered national attention.  After a five-day manhunt the alleged shooter was arrested.  Again, unlike most murders, the shooter became something of a social media folk hero, a modern-day Clyde of Bonnie and Clyde Fame.  He even was given the nickname ‘the adjuster.’  This reflected deep anger by everyday Americans on both side of the aisle against health insurance corporate bureaucracy and greed.  Not much empathy for Thompson or his family.

In June 2025, Melissa Hortman, Minnesota’s state legislatures House Speaker, and her husband were gunned downed at their home by a lone gunman.  The gunman also shot two others at another home.  The nation was stunned and shocked by these politically motivated killings and shootings.  However, the right-wing and President Trump unfortunately decided to use the killings to score political points.  Attacking Minnesota’s Governor Walz, a political opponent who ran against him on Kamal Harris’s ticket, Trump called him “wacked out Walz” and refused to call him to offer condolences, saying it would be a “waste of time.”  Some on the right said the killer was a ‘Marxist.’ Elon Musk blamed the “far left” for the shooting.

For her and her husband, no reforms, no National Day of Mourning, no flag at half-staff, no White House rage at a political killing.  The other day, when asked about the double standard of ordering the lowering of the flag for Kirk but not Hortman, Trump, whose better angels are dead or deported, responded that he “wasn’t familiar” with the Minnesota shooting.  

On September 10, Charlie Kirk, a right-wing activist and influencer, was shot to death at an event at Utah Vallery University by a lone gunman.  Shock once again swept the country.  National leaders on the left expressed near universal regret and sadness.   The right expressed near universal outrage and anger.  Over the past week, that rage and anger grew, it seemed.  On the right, vengeance was promised and the White House vowed to investigate far left networks or groups for the Kirk killing, without evidence of a conspiracy.  

Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who has already called the Democratic Party a terrorist organization, vowed to “identify, disrupt, eliminate and destroy this network.”   The Justice Department said it was going to investigate “hate speech,” although the Attorney General did back track after criticism.  Nonetheless, calls to criminally investigate the Soros organization and the Ford Foundation as terrorist funders were made.  Even labelling some domestic left leaning groups ‘terrorist organizations” was floated, to include by Trump, who said he wouldn’t mind appending the terrorist label to Antifa.  Antifa has no known organization to which to attach it to.  It’s more idea than organization.  

The Pentagon vowed firings and crack downs on posts deemed critical of Kirk or celebratory or his death. The Department of State also vowed a crackdown on visa holders who criticize Kirk or celebrate his death.  I don’t recall similar vows when Representative Hortman and her husband were killed.   

Elon Musk in a video played at a far-right protest in England said, “We either fight back or die.”  And in a post, demanded the arrest of one rapper for criticizing Kirk and accused universities of “programming people to murder.”  Some right-wing social media called for mass arrests and even civil war. 

It’s one thing for social media influencers, cranks and crackpots, and fringe elements to threaten and intimidate and engage in conspiracy theory spin.  It is completely another thing for senior government officials to threaten vengeance and engage in conspiracy theories while calling for the extirpation of left leaning speech and organizations. Is the criminalization of dissent coming in a forthcoming executive order?

In an example of our government’s authoritarian shift,  yesterday ABC cancelled Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night comedy show after threats by the Chair of the Federal Communication Commission to pull licensees after Kimmel made remarks about the Kirk’s killer’s political affiliation.  Meanwhile, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade said on-air last week that mentally ill homeless people should be executed.  His co-hosts offered no rebuttal.  No threats from the FCC to cancel licenses for advocating mass executions. Another example of our authoritarian government’s willingness to control speech of those that do not conform to the governments messaging.  

So, here we are.  Four murders, four different reactions, four different Americas it seems.  I do not want to flatten or simplify the reactions to the murders because there were many individual and collective responses by a broad range of folks, some good, some bad, some ugly.  But as a nation, we have struggled to find common ground or cause over politically motivated killings because we now instinctively split into our respective camps, which increasingly aren’t ideological – like a working-class consciousness — but ones based on race and religion.  80 percent of Trump voters were white.  

It is clear we are now led by a sectarian national government, a government increasingly narrow-minded and protective of ‘tribal’ affiliations.  Kirk was the personification of this sectarianism and white Christian nationalist identity politics for young Americans, young American men in particular. This white Christian nationalism movement dominates our national government.  

Kirk didn’t deserve a violent death for his racist commentary, trans bigotry, or anti-Islam sentiment.  However odious someone’s speech may be, they are engaging in speech protected by the First Amendment.  We must disagree through discourse and words, not violence and bullets.  Unfortunately, our government seems to have abandoned this principle and is playing favorites as to who has the right to speak freely without fear of government discipline and punishment.

How then, as a nation, can we find common cause and ground to express our views openly and without fear of retaliation when even our government has abandoned the principle of free speech, plays favorites?  Can we ever find that common ground as a nation, bring out our better angels?

It’s not coincidental that I end I began this essay with a quote from President Abraham Lincoln’ first inaugural address.  He too died from a cowardly assassin’s bullet. He spoke these words when secessionist war clouds threatened America over an intractable issue:  slavery.  I think as a nation we are at a similar inflection point over a myriad of seemingly intractable issues.  

Social Media, Violent Rhetoric, and Assassination in America

The reactions to the killings of Melissa Hortman and Charlie Kirk are worlds apart.  When Hortman was gunned down at her Minnesota home, the response on the political right was to taunt. The president participated in this taunting by publicly humiliated Governor Wall, refusing even to call him.  When Kirk was gunned down at a public event at a university in Utah the other day, the response on the political right was rage.  Why the difference if the principle is the same?  I have not tracked the response of the left by members of congress or ex-presidents, but I kind of doubt the posts were mocking or provocative or taunting.

Let me begin my short discourse on political violence in America with the proposition that assassination is not the solution to any problem, in particular, resolving cultural, moral, political, and social differences in a deeply divided country like ours.  Not ever acceptable.

Historically in America, political violence has ebbed and flowed like the tide, as tensions within American society rise and fall.  Traditionally in our country, assassinations of political leaders have had a multitude of triggers and drives.  Mostly lone wolves swallowed up by a mental health crisis.  It appears, however, that a new drive and trigger have been introduced to the political violence equation:  Social Media. 

Being president of this country comes with a high mortality rate.  A remarkable 9 percent of our presidents have been killed in office.   

The first attempted assassination of a U.S. president was in 1835.   Richard Lawrence, an unemployed house painter who had emigrated from England, attempted to shoot President Andrew Jackson while Jackson was walking the through the capitol rotunda after a funeral. Lawrence tried to shoot him with two pistols.  Both misfired.  Jackson, so the story goes, thumped Lawerence with his cane.  

Lawerence was charged with attempted murder and plead not guilty by reason of insanity.  The District of Columbia’s prosecutor, Francis Scott Key of Star-Spangled Banner fame, accepted the novel plea.  Lawrence spent the remainder of his life in a mental institute, now known as Saint Elizabeths.

We all can recall from our history books the assassination of President Lincoln in 1865 at Ford’s Theater, but many don’t know about presidents Garfield’s or McKinley’s assassinations. 

President Garfield was shot at the now demolished Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station in Washington DC in July 1881, by a stalker whose life had imploded, Charles Guiteau.  Garfield died two months later of his wounds. 

The 20th century brought more assassination attempts of presidents, two successful.  In 1901, at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY, President McKinley was shot at a reception in the Temple of Music while shaking hands by anarchist Leon Czolgosz.  He eventually died of his wound’s days later.  Teddy Roosevelt assumed the office of President.

In 1912, former president Teddy Roosevelt, who was campaigning for president as head of the Bull Moose Party, was shot in the chest while exiting a restaurant on his way to give a campaign speech.  The bullet’s impact was reduced and deflected by a copy of his folded speech he was to give.  Bloodied, he gave the speech that same evening.  While visiting Miami, Florida, in 1933, an attempt was made on President-elect Franklin Roosevelt’s life by Giuseppe Zangara.  The assassin fired five bullets, missing Roosevelt, hitting and killing Chicago’s mayor Anton Cermak and wounding four others instead. 

The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed 4 young girls on September 15, 1963, marked the start of a decade of assassination, political violence, and turbulence.  Weeks following the bombing, in Dallas, Texas, President Kennedy’s was assassinated by Harvey Lee Oswald.   The list of those gunned down in that decade is long:  John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr, Malcom X, Medgar Evans. These names come to mind almost immediately, but the list also can and should include the disappearance and murder of many civil rights workers and activists. 

President Gerald Ford, in his brief tenure as president, was the target of two unsuccessful assassination attempts. Ronald Reagan survived the attempt on his life in 1981 because in the confusion and chaos of the shooting the Secret Service brought Reagan to George Washington University Hospital vice the designated hospital in Maryland. He most likely would have bleed to death if they had taken a longer route to the pre-planned hospital.

What can we learn from this long sad list of killings and attempted killings?

The vast majority were lone wolves.  Guns have been the preferred means for killing and attacking our presidents.  A mix of pistols and rifles. An odd blend of motives and triggers, however.  The motives ranged from psychosis; personal or political vendetta; to the unknown.   Triggers include mental health crises (Lawrence, Guiteau, Zangara, Hinkley, Oswald?); the Civil War (Booth); anarchist movement (Czolgosz); right-wing backlash to the civil rights movement and left-wing backlash to the Vietnam War (various).

Events show that mental health crises triggered most of the assassinations of high level political figures in the United States.  Social tensions, a leading cause of the political violence and turbulence in the 1960s.  

The lone wolf model continues. The recent attempts on Donald Trump (twice); the attack on Speaker of House Nancy Pelosis’ husband; the assassination of Minnesota’s Speaker of the House Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark and the attempt on another lawmaker; Unitedhealthcare CEO Brian Thompson; and now Charlie Kirk, seem driven by a mix of mental health crises, personal vendettas, and social media attention seeking.  All suffused at some level by a social media ecosystem of conspiracy theories that fuels hate, fear, and rage. Never a good combination. 

The possible motive and trigger for the Kirk killing are only being uncovered following the alleged killer’s arrest.  Speculation would be unwise and unhelpful still at this point.

It appears, nonetheless, that social media plays an important role in the actions of some of these previous shootings or attacks.  The proliferation of conspiracy theories, I argue, in tandem with reckless social media posts by our leaders and right-wing news media (and yes some of those on the left), are the primary driver of political violence in America today.  We have always had fringe politics in America, but it is now mainstream in one party. 

We can see the social media frenzy at work in the aftermath of the most recent shooting.  The previous posts of violent memes and vitriolic taunting – such as Senator Mike Lee of Utah posts following the killings of Hortman and her husband – do not help, but create an environment of fear, hate, and vengeance.  An endless cycle of violence driven by violent rhetoric and conspiracy theories. 

Trump’s unhelpful comments of “beating the hell out of” liberals, or in his words “radical left lunatics,” following Kirk’s killing does not help, but only perpetuates and accelerates the feedback loop of violence.  If this trend continues, expect more such acts of violence sparked, sadly, by our own president and right-wing media outlets.  Yes, I am pointing the finger mostly at the right, the extreme left needs to watch their words as well.  

According to multiple studies of Trump’s word choices, he has used the most violent rhetoric than any past presidential candidate, ever.  Trump is the Right.  One doesn’t need studies, however, when you hear, read, and see Trump’s almost daily spectacles of hate, fear mongering, and violent rhetoric, to conclude he is bad news.  Violent language begets violence, and our country is reaping what Trump has sown.

War Pigs

Generals gathered in their masses/just like witches at black masses/evil minds that plot destruction/sorcerer of death’s construction

Opening lyrics to War Pigs, Black Sabbath

Why do I feel under siege?  It seems that our government is at war with half the country.  Since inauguration day, Trump and his goons have engaged in asymmetric warfare against childhood vaccinations, the civil service, the Constitution, freedom of the press, higher education, immigration, law firms, law and order, medicine, museums, public education, pluralism, public health, science.  And that is just the domestic war.  He is also at war with the world, welding missiles and tariffs and now extrajudicial killings, making us a country with zero friends, and many enemies.  Now he is going to war against the people, not just institutions.  

I don’t recall a time in modern American history when a president threatens war and destruction against its own citizens, even jokingly.  The Chipocalypse Now meme of the president overseeing an attack on Chicago is insane, equating deporting people to napalmed bodies.  Trump is acting very much the war pig.

In response to Trump’s post, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, in the understatement of the year, said that Trump’s threatened war with an American city was ‘not funny.  Not normal.’   When questioned about his meme and comments, an irritated Trump berated and belittled the reporter.  

Given his past actions, I don’t think Trump is being the comic.  He wants to provoke an incident – a blue on green shooting or something similar – to invoke the Insurrection Act or perhaps even martial law.  We have, I think, slipped from proto authoritarianism into autocratic rule, even as the lower courts fight a losing rear-guard action. Two courts issued a series of rulings over the past two weeks regarding his deployment of the National Guard and Marines in Los Angeles and the imposition of universal global tariffs.  “Illegal” is the operative word used by the judges.  

The attack on, and sinking of a ship, allegedly carrying drugs and the murder of her 11-man crew is another example of Trump’s war mindset, displaying to domestic audience his willingness to kill.  I think Trump does not see a difference between domestic and foreign ‘enemies.’ Caught up in his own warped rhetoric and inability to distinguish fact from fiction as his mental state of mind deteriorates rapidly.

Thank you, Chief Justice Roberts.  The blood of those who died in that attack are on his hands as much as Trump’s and Hegseths’.  Given this administrations propensity for outright lies and bullshit, I don’t believe the purported intelligence of drug smuggling, and the timing is suspect.  They were sacrificed on Trump’s altar.  

Even if the crew was smuggling drugs, it’s a law enforcement problem, not a military one, and certainly not an excuse to engage in extrajudicial killings.  The White House defended the murders by claiming fentanyl kills tens of thousands in the U.S. and taking out the ship and crew was a righteous act of war.  Well, if that logic is true, shouldn’t American pushers of opioids like the Sackler family be targeted for a drone strike?  Add the modifier terrorist and Trump claims a license to kill.  He isn’t helping end the drug epidemic he is making it worse.

After several years of declines in opioid related deaths, however, the number of deaths in 2025 is ticking upward, according to the CDC.  This uptick parallels the economic dislocation, stagnation, and uncertainty brought about by Trump’s policies: 

  • Job growth is at an all-time low not seen since the pandemic.  A meager 22K in August.  Even Sleepy Joe did better than that.  
    • Unemployment is rising, up to 4.3 percent.
    • The average hourly earnings (wages) grew 1.23 percent from the first to the second quarter of 2025, according to the Brookings Institute.  This rate is below the average hourly earnings rate growth of 1.56 percent in Biden’s final year (2024).
    • Overall, wages are still trailing post-pandemic inflation.  The Trump job market slowdown won’t help bridge that gap.
    • Trump fueled Inflation is on the rise and is expected to get worse as the full impact of tariffs are felt.  
    • Grocery prices are set to rise as Trump mass deportations impact harvests and meat processing plants.
    • Manufacturing has lost 75,000 jobs under Trump’s Tariff regime.  

So instead of focusing on the economy, Trump decides to rebrand the Department of Defense the War Department.  This rebranding is more than just a distraction, it is also a symptom of a greater evil brewing in the White House.  Traditional boundaries of keeping the military out of domestic politics ….. and domestic law enforcement is eroding.  

The South was militarily occupied after the Civil War.  Something the South still bristles at: Humiliated militarily and occupied.  The Union Army was used to suppress white terrorism against African Americans in a period called Reconstruction.  This included the army policing the rural south and ensuring elections were relatively free from violence against voting African Americans. 

However, as Reconstruction waned, the South wanted Army troops out.  The Army appropriation act of 1878 banned the use of the Army to enforce laws, known as the Posse Comitatus Act.   The Army withdrew from policing and protecting African Americans, resulting in a surge in terrorism and violence against African Americans that persisted well into the mid 20th century. 

Paradoxically, this southern white supremacist inspired law banning the use of the military to directly conduct law enforcement duties, e.g., arresting people, became a cornerstone of American civil society and rule of law.  The National Security Act of 1947, which created the Department of Defense (and the Central Intelligence Agency), further codified the military from acting directly as law enforcement officers enforcing civilian laws.  It is in fact a felony to ‘knowingly and willingly’ deploy active-duty military in direct law enforcement actions unless authorized by law (for instance the Insurrection Act) according to federal criminal law.  

State National Guards, which are controlled by the governors, are generally excluded from the Posse Comitatus Act, when mobilized by the State’s governor, are vestiges of state militias.  The original intent of the Second Amendment was for states through their militias (now National Guard) to defend themselves from a powerful and tyrannical central government and its standing army.  In a perplexing and bewildering perversion of our history, the second amendment crowd is in league with our increasingly tyrannical central government. Go figure that so many of these gun toting self-appointed defenders of liberty and freedom are stepping up to crush liberty and freedom for all. 

A federal judge in the northern district of California ruled last week that Trump’s federalization and deployment of units of the California national guard and active-duty marines in Los Angeles violated the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.  It is a victory for the rule of law; however, I believe a temporary one. 

The decision will be appealed and eventually reach the Supreme Court.  I suspect the Supreme Court will side with Trump, handing him even greater power: A complete monopoly to domestically deploy the state’s immense power of violence contained by the military against civilians for any conjured-up reason.  

In another very recent example of the Supreme Court taking Trump’s side, yesterday in a 6 to 3 decision they ruled (without explanation) in another emergency docket case to permit ethnic profiling of Latinos for citizenship purposes.  That is using ethnicity as one of several factors as reasonable suspicion to conduct investigatory stops to determine whether someone is in the country illegally.  It’s crazy that the Supreme Court conflates ethnicity with non-citizenship and illegality.  The ruling also sounds eerily like the black laws in the post-civil war south where blacks were rounded up for, you know, being black.  Given Trump’s criminal record, stopping, big white, fat orange tinted fucks at random is also permissible, I suppose. 

Another week, another round of setbacks for democracy and America.  Where do we go from here?  Now’s not the time to sit on the fence.  Get mad, get angry, get busy.  The extrajudicial killings off the coast of Venezuela, Trump’s war memes on American cities, the conflation of ethnicity as a legal marker of citizenship and determinant of criminality, and his evolving uncontained police state should give all Americans pause as the country slips into the penumbra of authoritarian rule. 

Liberty’s Chrysalis

“The love of power is natural; it is insatiable; almost constantly whetted; and never cloy’d by possession.”

Henry Saint John, 1st Viscount of Bolingbroke

This spring my wife and I planted a small rain garden.  The plantings included several swamp milkweeds, the preferred plant for Monarchs to lay their eggs on.  It’s Latin name is Asclepias incarnata for the serious gardeners out there.  The other day, to our delight, we discovered a dozen monarch caterpillars denuding the milkweeds.  

It took several days for them to consume every leaf.  Fully fueled with toxic bitterness and relatively immune from predation, they slowly wandered off to other plants, leaving the bare stalks of the milkweed as testament to their presence.  One by one they moved on, rambling off into the garden seeking leaves or branches to safely transform into chrysalises.  

Within several days of the caterpillar migration, we spotted two bright green chrysalises hanging under leaves.  A third caterpillar wasn’t quite there yet. We hope that within 14 days, given the mild weather, the caterpillars will be reborn as butterflies.  A well-tended garden brings unexpected joys.

The discovery of the caterpillars reminded me of the words of Henry Saint John, that liberty is like a tender plant.  He penned these words close to 300 years ago and the metaphor could not be more relevant in our time: “liberty is a tender plant which will not flourish unless the genius of the soil be proper for it; nor will any soil continue to be so long, which is not cultivated with incessant care.”  

He wrote these words in the early 18th century, a time of upheaval in England: political factions vying for power in a deadly struggle.  He didn’t always choose wisely, backing the Stuart’s claim to the crown and the ensuing Jacobite Rebellion, ending up in exile in France for some time.  He is most famous, I think, for his essay “The Idea of a Patriot King,” arguing that a King should be above faction.

This idea of a King above faction is important in our own history. It informed how Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and John Quincy Adams saw the presidency.  A president above faction.  They tried mightily to be above faction, not always successfully, however.  Andrew Jackson threw the notion of a patriot president out a White House window along with the contents of a chamber pot.   

Today, we are ruled by an unsound and troubled president hell bent on hyper factionalizing our country, resorting to violence and armed soldiers patrolling city streets.   He has taken the notion of faction to new extremes in America, not seen since the late 1850s.   This includes sending the military to occupy blue cities to show his political muscle;  flaunting the rule of law; criminally investigating critics; ruling solely by dictate; musing publicly about being a dictator; rewriting our history; engaging in extrajudicial killings on the high seas off Venezuela; and setting the stage to nullify next year’s mid-term election results unfavorable to him.

Our garden of democracy needs tending.  And damn quickly.  

We must steadfastly feed and nourish our democracy.  Stay informed in the face of daily trespassing against our liberty.  Although in today’s world where most Americans get their ‘news’ through social media, ‘informed’ is perhaps obsolete.  There still are reliable news sources out there.  Social media is not one of them.  Social media is an avalanche of computer driven feeds designed to elicit clicks, rage, and profit.  Curate your news sources. Go old fashioned and read books, lots of them.  The more you read, the more you realize how little you actually know about things you thought you knew a great deal about. That’s a good thing.

We must clear out the authoritarian weeds that plague our garden of democracy.  We must elect leaders that reflect our values and are in tune with today’s generation and willing to fight.  The continual reelection of octogenarians does the party no good.  

We must go to the polls this November and elect Abigail Spanberger governor and weed out the noxious plants occupying Virginia’s governor’s mansion.  We must not just elect her but elect her in a historical landslide. We don’t want to become an autocratic state like Texas or Florida. 

We must seed our garden of democracy with plants that are robust and acclimated to our current political reality:  An opposition party bent on one-party authoritarian rule.  We can do that by supporting new faces and ideas in the Democratic party at all levels.  Starting with David Rogers who is running for the Mineral seat in our local board of supervisors.

We must amend the soil of our garden.  Get friends and family to register to vote, get them to the polls on election days.  Attend rallies or local meetings.  Donate to candidates you support.  If you can, canvas for that candidate. Volunteer with the Louisa Democrats.

We must not only resist the orange piped piper of Mar-a-Lago but fight him at every junction.  Write or call your representatives, write the Supreme Court Justices, write our governor.  Tell them your story and how you are impacted by Trump’s dangerous and illegal actions.  That food, housing, and healthcare will be unaffordable and unattainable once the full impact of Trump’s tariffs, deportation of farm and food processing workers, and regressive taxes are felt.   

Plant a garden an act of subversion against Trump’s war on climate science.  Whether you have only a south facing front door stoop, a small balcony, or quarter acre, or ten acres, plant a garden in the dirt or in pots.  Every plant you grow feeds or houses an insect or animal and soaks up carbon.  Get radical and grow a victory garden.

Our garden of democracy is in big trouble, but with our incessant care and nourishment our democracy can flourish once again.  Together we must tend the garden of democracy and create the space and time to protect and nurture liberty’s chrysalis from Trump’s insatiable drive to possess absolute power. 

The Minstrel Show Presidency

“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,” 

President Donald Trump, 2025

Ignorance is strength I suppose.  Trump, perhaps the least read and most historically illiterate president this country has ever had, continues his campaign of whitewashing American history.  Trump’s sole understanding of slavery, it appears, is informed by Disney’s “Song of the South.”. A dated and romanticized depiction of slavery.  The Trump White House is theater, an increasingly odd mix of minstrel show and Nuremberg Rally.  

According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, a museum is “an institution devoted to the procurement, care, study, and display of objects of lasting interest or value.”   It should include ‘interpretation’ as well.  But it is essentially correct in that it preserves things ‘of lasting interest and value.’ 

In America, that meant museums sidelining, excluding, or denigrating peoples and their cultural objects that did not conform to America’s myths of exceptionalism and manifest destiny, that shiny white city on the hill.  Reducing the ‘other’ to an asterixis of history.  More heritage and nostalgia than history.

The National Museum of the American Indian and the National Museum of African American History and Culture were remedies for this deliberate exclusion from America’s origin myths. Trump, however, wants to return America to a dated interpretation of our history by recasting the Smithsonian’s museum’s interpretations of our history back through the white male gaze.

Our history is complex with many paradoxes, for instance slavery and freedom.  But one can’t speak to the future without knowing where we came from.  America must confess to the sin of slavery before it can move on.  Slavery was and is bad and showing slavery for what it was and is should not be controversial.  Enlightened and benevolent plantation slave masters did not exist.   A mature country, sure of itself and its future, acknowledges its horrific failures as well as its great successes. Obviously, despite his MAGA moniker, Trump really does not believe in America’s potential for greatness or future as a thriving pluralistic democracy.

Over generations, millions endured brutal dehumanizing conditions: Sexual assaults, beatings, whippings, amputations as punishment, malnutrition, murders, executions, burnings, hangings, forced sales and separations of children, wives, and husbands.  This system of violence and oppression became the cornerstone America’s economic system from its founding to 1865. America was not merely a country with slaves, but a slave society.  

African American history is American history.  Africans were in North America even before the English, arriving as explorers with the Spanish.  The first permanent presence of folks of African descent in English settlements arrived in 1619 near Jamestown, Virginia.  With them came new foodways, new cosmologies, new medicines, new music, new cultural infusions that make us what we are today:  American. 

African American history is larger and more complex than just the institution of slavery, however.  It’s a story about agency, determination, family, resilience, survival, and even thriving in the face of relentless state sanctioned violence to oppress and control.

If you are interested in your own further readings on the subject, below is my list of books that I think are worth a close read. The list is far from complete and is not meant as a comprehensive historiography of America’s ‘peculiar institution’ but merely a starting point for further exploration.   They are not listed in any order, but there is a distinct Virginia tilt.

Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870. An excellent primer on the Atlantic Slave trade.

The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century: A Documentary History of Virginia, 1606-1689. Edited by Warren M. Billings.  Traces Virginia’s establishment and legal evolution of race-based slavery through statutory acts.  For example, in December 1662, Virginia’s General Assembly passed a law stating that “all children borne in this country shalbe held bond [slave] or free only according to the condition of the mother.”

Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery — American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia.  Argues that colonial Virginia’s long and deep experience with slavery is a central paradox in America’s revolutionary demands for freedom from English “slavery.”

Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Traces the transformation of society with slaves to a slave society and back again and how the relationship between enslaved and free continuously remodeled over time.   

Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts.  First published in 1943, it was part of a growing academic response and challenge to Columbia University’s ‘Dunning School’ of historical interpretation that originated in the late 19th century.  This ‘school’ dominated scholarly discourse on Reconstruction and policies and laws in the Jim Crow South well into the 1930s.  The Dunning school defended racist laws that oppressed African Americans using arguments based on ‘scientific racism’ then popular in the late 19thcentury.  For more on ‘scientific racism’ see Stephen Gould’s excellent book Mismeasure of Man.

Douglas Egerton, Gabriel’s Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 and 1802. An excellent account of the attempted rebellion by a Gabriel in Henrico County and its aftermath.

Zora Neale Hurston, Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo. From Hurston’s 1927 interview of Oluale Kossala, the last survivor of the Clotilda, the last documented slave ship to carry captive Africans to American shores in 1860.  The book is a fascinating retelling of Kossala’s life in Africa before his harrowing capture and transport to the U.S., his subsequent enslavement (renamed Cudjo Lewis) and life after emancipation.  Of note, the remains of the Clotilda were discovered in 2019.

The Slave Classic Slave Narratives: The life of Olaudah Equiano, The History of Mary Prince, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.  

Charles Ball, Fifty Years in Chains or the Life of an American Slave.  Excellent first-person narrative.  The story of Chales Ball is extraordinary. A truly epic account of loss and resilience and hope.  An American version of the Iliad.

Annette Gordon-Reed, The Heminges of Monticello: An American Family.  A superb recounting of the Heminges family history while enslaved by Thomas Jefferson.  Flips the script of telling the story of slavery from the perspective of the enslaver to that of the enslaved taking center stage.

Adam Rothman, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South.  Explores the reasons why America’s revolutionary generation – the ones screaming loudly about being slaves of the English and all the enlightenment language on equality – did not abolish slavery, but expanded it under their watch in the early Republic.

Tiya Miles, All that She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, A Black Family Keepsake.  A beautifully written cultural history of a canvas sack and its contents given to a daughter by her mother after her child was sold.  The canvas bag survived the vagaries of time.  If you read one book from this list, this is it.

Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life in the Antebellum Slave Market.  It’s a story of the slave showrooms in New Orleans, how being on the sale block was negotiated from the perspective of the enslaved and the slave holder.  Excellent read.

Steven Deyle, Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life, and Michel Tadman, Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slave in the Old South.  Two excellent studies on America’s domestic slave trade which developed after the constitutional ban on the importation of slaves after 1807.  This ban, in conjunction with America’s Westward movement, sparked a massive internal slave trade from Virginia and North Carolina to the ‘deep south.’

Alan Taylor, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772 – 1832.  This is the story of those enslaved African Americans that fought with the British to gain their freedom.  

Jonathan Daniel Wells, The Kidnapping Club:  Wall Street, Slavery, and Resistance on the Eve of the Civil War.  A story of northern complicity in perpetuating slavery for Wall Street profit. How New York City cops, courts, lawyers, judges, and politicians conspired with southern slave owners and slave catchers to kidnap free blacks and capture runaway slaves and send them South.   

David Waldstreicher, Slavery’s Constitution:  From Revolution to Ratification.  The author cogently and convincingly argues that “slavery was as important to the making of the Constitution as the Constitution was to the survival of slavery.”  While one won’t ever find the word ‘slave’ or ‘slavery’ in the constitution, there are at least 11 clauses that directly or indirectly concern slavery. 

M. M. Manring, Slave in a Box: The Strange Career of Aunt Jemima.  A provocative book that explores the legacy of slavery and racial subservience in America’s consumer revolution in the late 19th century.  You won’t walk down the aisles of a supermarket or watch a commercial on TV or streaming the same way after reading this book.

As we careen wildly and OUT OF CONTROL towards an authoritarian government, reading will become an act of resistance.  Please share this list with your friends and family.

Liberation Day: A Real Story

Where does one start this week’s essay on democracy’s erosion in America?  Do I focus on the criminalization of dissent in America?  Should the latest threats of national guard and military deployments to democratic party led cities such as Chicago and New York lead this week?  Or, perhaps, should the essay focus on Trump’s outrageous observation that slavery is being misrepresented by the nation’s premier museum system, the Smithsonian.  Is there a positive argument for slavery…..ever? All part of his re-erasure of American history that includes people of non-European heritage.  All that will be left of ‘official’ American history will be reinvented myths of dead white men.

I want to tell an authentic American story of liberation instead.

About a decade ago a cousin of mine, a doctor in residence at a military hospital on an Air Force base, was asked by a fellow resident if he was related to so-and-so.  His response, ‘Yes, he was my grandfather.’ The follow up was startling.  The name, he said, comes from his family’s lore.  My grandfather, he revealed, rescued his family from certain death in a Nazis concentration camp.

This story of escape from death added an hitherto unknown dimension to my grandfather’s experiences during the second world war.  His division, the 104th, landed at Normandy a couple weeks after D-day in 1944.  In April 1945, his division helped liberate a slave labor concentration camp in Nordhausen, Germany.  

According to my father, my grandfather never talked about the war, and not about Nordhausen in particular.  The story of his father being a ‘hero’ of a Jewish family was new to him and brought tears to his eyes.  My father never cries.  While my grandfather did not talk much about the war, he did, however, write a description of what he witnessed at Nordhausen for the Minneapolis Star, based on a letter dated from April 5.  Eighty years later they have not lost their punch and graphic images of that day:

“…….. I visited a town called Nordhausen where I saw the most horrible sights.  You may have read about it or seen pictures.  We overran a German concentration camp.  It was filled with thousands of dead and half-dead POW’s and political prisoners.  The bodies of the dead were unburied.  Others were lying in rows and beds where they had died, most of them from starvation.  The fields, for over a mile were strewn with bodies where the SS had mowed them down with machine guns.”  He continued, “the living were mixed with the dead – too weak and too far gone to move.  Several died while our medics were taking them to the hospital.  Nearly 3500 unburied bodies were found, many which with evidence of torture before death, nearly all starved.”  Observing that he had heard of such places before arriving a Nordhausen he added, “I have read stories of such places but never thought I would see such a thing as I did.  Since then we have had reports of other camps that have been over run – nearly as bad.  But I have seen enough…the brutality and inhumanity of the German SS Troops is beyond belief….If I had not seen the results with my own eyes.”  I have his map that traces his unit’s route, with cities and towns they liberated — circled in red pencil — as they moved east.

One can only imagine what my cousin’s fellow doctor’s family must have endured.

That two grandsons – one from an American soldier and another from a survivor of a liberated nazi concentration camp – both bound by that same day in history, would meet by chance somewhere in the American mid-west some 70 years later is astonishing.  

Furthermore, that same month in 1945, 600 kilometers directly to the north, my mom, then a girl of six, and her family were liberated from five years of Nazi occupation.  While my grandfather is long dead and only his writings remain of that fateful month, my mom still lives.  She doesn’t remember much about the German occupation, mostly recalling food rationing, but I think mostly because the occupation was relatively calm.  The Danes surrendered quickly and the occupation mostly uneventful.  The Danes weren’t ethnic ‘Slavs’ and thus spared the rage and violence that enveloped Poland, the Ukraine and eastern Russia.  Still, she remembers the trucks coming for suspected collaborators that lived nearby after liberation. She fears Trump, and with good reason, it seems.

My grandfather was asked to stay on active duty after the war, rising through the ranks. His career was abruptly dead ended, however, when he was accused of communist sympathies during the McCarthy era.   It seems that his running for mayor of Minneapolis in the 1930s as a candidate of the Farmer-Labor Party had attracted attention once again.  In 1953, the army reopened old, pre-war accusation of his alleged communist sympathies and weeks before the McCarthy hearings focusing on the army started, the Army purged him from their ranks, recommending his dismissal and removed from command.  He was eventually reinstated after appeal, promoted to Colonel, but was exiled to the Reserve Officer Training Corps at the University of Alaska for the remainder of his career.

Purges, massive interment and concentration camps, masked government agents, disappearances, politically directed criminal investigations, erasing of peoples histories, military occupation of the capital, and collapse of the constitutional system. They are not theoretical constructs, they are real and here today. For me it is all too personal.

Today, our country stands at a fork in the road, one diverging right to authoritarian rule, perhaps even fascist rule, the other, the well-trod path pathway of democracy now seemingly blocked, detour signs pointing right.  My family’s roots scream at me to resist the lurch to the far, extreme right, with everything I have.   My grandfather words about the  “…the brutality and inhumanity of the German SS Troops is beyond belief….If I had not seen the results with my own eyes” speak to me clearly.  We must not cease resisting, we must not cease caring, we must not give up.  

We are heading down that path of brutality and inhumanity where so-called ‘superfluous’ peoples are erased.  But we can stop it dead in its tracks if we stay engaged and active as wave after wave of Trumpian bullshit tries to overwhelm and batter us into submission.

This mean calling your representatives weekly or daily if needed, join protest/resistance groups, make resistance artwork, spread the word, donate to campaigns, write a blog, vote.  Don’t let the fascist bastards get you down.   Let us walk together down that road to democracy together. Please share this essay. Thanks.

Creeping Normalcy: America’s Long Slide to Autocracy?

Using alleged claims of ‘blood thirsty criminals’ running rampant as a pretext, in an extraordinary move Daddy Trump virtually seized the Federal District this week.  Is it another deliberative act of incrementally normalizing authoritarian behavior and a conspicuous display of white supremacy.

It is a symbolic military occupation of the nation’s capital.  Deploying 800 (maybe a 1000) guardsmen and taking control of the Metropolitan Police Department is more symbol than practical, but a dangerous one, nonetheless.   The capital is the heart of our democracy and conspicuous displays of military power at checkpoints and patrols smacks of authoritarianism.  But in a week or two, it will be normalized, like the deployment of National Guard troops and Marines in the heart of Los Angeles.  

In addition to the deployment of DC national guardsmen, the Pentagon announced plans today to increase the readiness of National Guard units to deploy forces to contain civil unrest. They call them Quick Reaction forces, which you normally find in combat zones.  Why I ask, when there is no civil unrest, does the pentagon need to stand up National Guard quick reaction forces?  Is this foreshadowing? Perhaps Trump plans some actions that would provoke civil unrest.  Like declaring martial law in blue states.

It is also a conspicuous display of white supremacy.  Last week the White House announced that two statues of confederates removed several years ago will be reinstalled in the district.  It is not coincidental, I believe, that he juxtaposed announcements of the return of symbols of white supremacy with an out-of-control criminal element in a District ruled primarily by elected African Americans.   Weekly it seems, the Trump administration continues to normalize white governance and supremacy.

The takeover of the capital must be understood in the context to other incremental actions by the president and his regime.  These recent actions follow weeks of an agitated Trump going on rants about treasonous presidents and former cabinet officials.  Histrionics that seem more likely to come out the mouth of a tweaked-out meth head than a president.   

Aiding him is a Justice Department that no longer pretends to wear the mantle of independence, creeping ever closer to Stasi-like policing:  purges, investigating political opponents, grand jury inquests against state’s attorneys and independent counsels that investigated Trumps varied criminal acts, and flipping civil rights investigations on their heads.  Even the Department of Labor is not immune from purges as the head of Bureau of Labor Statistics was fired by Trump after a jobs report that showed dismal growth.    

Three in the morning tweets from Daddy Trump alleging criminal mischief by his political enemies are now normalized behavior – endless fodder for late night comedy no doubt– when in fact they are disturbing displays of Trump’s unstable state of mind.   They invariable result in leaders at the Justice Department and FBI to order criminal inquiry’s days later.  This is how authoritarians do business and it’s become normal.  That the Justice Department, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security are morphing into Trump’s personal praetorian guard should scare the crap out of Americans.  They are loyal to him, not us. I am surprised at how easy it was to do.  

In an earlier piece, I cautioned my fellow federal law enforcement officers that they have a choice when the president orders them to do immoral and illegal things, that they will have a decision to make.  Sadly, too many in the Department of Homeland Security have already made their decision it seems.  They went to the dark side…. apparently succumbing to promises of bonuses that run in the thousands of dollars.    More 19thcentury slave catcher than 21st century federal agent.

Our much-cherished separation of powers is gone, it appears.  Congress?  Absent as usual.  Speaker Johnson basically prorogued the House of Representatives to prevent hearings regarding Trump’s deep involvement in a sex trafficking pedophilia scandal.  A bit later the Senate left the Capital like a lover slips out of a lovers window as a spouse arrives home.  When they return, they will be returning a different Washington, one militarily occupied, at least symbolically, and controlled by Trump. So much for the conservative mantras ‘liberty or die’ or ‘don’t tread on me.’

And where is the Supreme Court?  Oh, never mind.

There’s a term of art for what is happening in America: creeping normalcy.  The incremental normalization of the abnormal through gradual shifts in behavior.   It is plain and clear what is happening, but it feels like most Americans, clutching their myth of American Exceptionalism like a security blanket, are in denial, unwilling to acknowledge the incremental normalization of authoritarian behavior as we slip and slide toward the demise of our democracy.  

At this point in time, I fear, momentum alone will take us to that place we don’t want to go.  The enablers – Republicans in Congress and the Supreme Court – keep handing Trump increased power, acting like there will never ever be another elected Democratic President to use those new powers.  Perhaps that’s the plan, starting with normalizing National Guard deployments to quell so-called civil unrest.

Daddyism:How Conservatives Came to Hate the Nanny State but Love the Daddy State

It seems ancient history, but do you remember when conservatives blew up about being told what to eat, drink, and smoke?   In particular, New York City’s mayor Bloomberg’s public health campaign to combat obesity and heart disease.  This included limits on trans fats in foods, calorie labelling on menus, restricting smoking in restaurants and public spaces, hiking cigarette taxes, even trying to ban large sugary drinks.  Cries of excessive government intrusion into personal choice and freedoms were raised.   His public health campaign was derided as the personification of the “Nanny State,” which Cambridge Dictionary defined as “a government that tries to give too much advice or make too many laws about how people should live their lives, especially about eating, smoking, and drinking alcohol.”  Other definitions use ‘overprotective’ or ‘unduly interfering.’

In a great 2022 article in the Columbia Political Review, “The Nanny State:  A Conservative Concern or a Misogynistic Myth,” Alannis Jaquez, cogently argues that it is a misogynistic myth, concluding “If conservative politicians continue to dismiss certain policies merely because they appear to feminine, effective policies will continue to be lost.  It is only once we leave behind the language that connects the welfare state and paternalism to women and femininity that we will be able to extend beyond the limitations human prejudice poses in lawmaking.”  I think she hit the spot, especially considering more recent history.

Unsurprisingly, during the last election cycle, conservatives went full boar (no not a misspelling) on the nanny state, not only doubling down on misogynistic attacks on female candidates, particularly Harris, but going full tilt into fetishes of spanking errant girls and inventing what could only be termed the “Daddy State.”  How Epsteinian!

One only need recall Carlson Tucker’s introduction of candidate Trump at a political rally to understand the MAGA transformation into hypersexualized daddyism: “Dad comes home. He’s pissed. Dad is pissed. And when dad gets home, you know what he says? You have been a bad girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking because you have been a bad girl ….”   This followed shouts of ‘daddy, daddy’ at the Republican national convention.  

Fox News recently swooned over Trump’s “dad strength” following the NATO Secretary’s ill-conceived comment about ‘Daddy Trump.’  The White House even posted a video of Trump set to Usher’s sexualized “Daddy’s Home.”   Check out some of the lyrics:  “And I won’t knock, won’t ring no bells/You just float that bottom up in the air/I’ll get you hot, I know you, oh-so well/And when I walk in, all that I wanna hear.”   Given the Epstein sex trafficking and statutory rape scandal enveloping Trump, one would think the White House would avoid such postings.

This is all about sex, gender, and Patriarchy.  It is the main battleground in America’s culture wars.  For the evangelical right, it is grounded in biblical interpretations of God’s word and the reestablishment male preeminence as head of the family and government.  This is not new in American history.  It brings to mind the brutalist treatment of women suffragettes and arguments made by Southern slave holders desperate to redefine slaves as members of a broad loving family lead by a benevolent father, as the abolitionist movement gained traction in the north.  

To add complexity to this notion of patriarchy, MAGA Republicans have weirdly fetishized it, however.   This does make some sense given conservativisms long voyeuristic angst with women’s sexuality and bodies, homophobia and transgender folks.  If I were to define Daddyism it would be an American 21st century fetishized revival of patriarchy and male paternalism, white male paternalism in particular, of family and government.  

When you study Trump’s mannerisms, his dictates, his threats, his attempts to discipline and punish errant children, and his followers’ fervent shouts of daddy, his governing style comes into focus. It is extreme paternalism, it is authoritarian.  He is Pappa Don.  

What galls me the most, however, is conservatives hypocrisy.  They decry the so-called nanny state and an overbearing government, but welcome with open arms a patriarchal regime that wants to dictate practically everything in our daily lives, like a strong father is supposed to rule his family.  I welcome the quaint old days when government was interested in my health, not my reading list, not my history books, not my kids gender identity, not my daughters or wife’s body.

Burn it Down!  No, not the Country, your Progressive Socialist Rural Mailbox

This essay started with a conversation my wife and I had while on our way to Fredericksburg.  Of all things, it was about why Postal Service mail trucks needed to be redesigned.  Grumman Long life Vehicles, apparently that’s their official designation, were designed well before the age of Amazon.  

Whenever the mail truck in our neighborhood passes by, it seems overflowing with boxes large and small, like an overstuffed sandwich.  Eventually it sparked questions, questions we could not answer, like when did home mail delivery began.  We’ve all heard of the pony express and that Ben Franklin as the first Postmaster General, but what about the nuts and bolts – the who, what, when, and where –of getting mail to our mailboxes. Why do mailboxes look like they do — black and cylindrical for the most part — and why are mail drop boxes blue?

Very rural Louisa got its first post office in 1800.  It was in a tavern and Inn owned by John Jouette, who in 1781 became Virginia’s Paul Revere when he rode 40 miles to warn members of the Virginia General Assembly and Governor Thomas Jefferson that a British raiding party was on its way to Charlottesville.  In many instances in early America, taverns and inns served as focal points for local government business and ‘court days’ when circuit judges (hence the term circuit courts) came to town.  It was also a time of drunken revelry it seems.  Local militias also meet to drill on these dates.  Hard cider, rum, whiskey, and politics, what could go wrong?  The Louisa Courthouse, built on, over, or around the Tavern, served also as the post office later. This according to the town’s official history. 

Free home delivery in urban areas began in the mid-1850s.  It was not until 1896, however, that free rural delivery began.  It had a fitful start in 1892, when Congress balked at the six-million-dollar price tag.  Quite a sum in those days.  In 1893, Congress appropriated $10,000 to “experiment” with rural delivery routes.   The new Postmaster General, however, refused to act.  Additional monies were appropriated by Congress for free delivery route experiments, but it was not until 1896 that Postmaster General William Wilson began experimental free rural delivery routes in his home state West Virginia.  It was a success and spread rapidly to other states. 

So successful that “free” was dropped in 1906. RFD as it was called, began in Louisa County on October 1, 1903.  Yep, the postal service has a specific date for Louisa.  The mail was delivered via horse and wagon for the most part and I wonder how many horses were employed in such tasks. According to one estimate, by 1906 there were about 700,000 miles of rural routes.  The mail carriers also sold stamps, money orders, and registered mail.  They were, according to the postal service, essentially “travelling post offices.”

What struck me about the history of free rural delivery is its progressive roots.  Postmaster General John Wanamaker (1889-1893) when he proposed free rural mail routes in 1891 spoke about populist movements – such as the Farmers Alliance —  that demanded mail delivery in rural areas:  “I think the growth of the Farmer’s Alliance movement and other farmers’ movements in the past few years has been due to his hunger for something social as much as anything else.”  

Wanamaker’s statement was an understatement.  The Farmer’s Alliance and other farmers’ movements were very active politically and had been since the 1870s or so.  They even ran a candidate for President in the 1890s following the Depression of 1893, the worst economic calamity the U.S. faced before the Great Depression.   Their party platform included such things as free rural routes, government regulation of railroads and telegraph companies, silver as legal currency in addition to gold, rural electrification, income tax vice tariffs, low-interest government backed loans for farmers.

It never occurred to me that the free rural delivery was a result of late 19th century populist progressive politics.  While the Farmer’s Alliance fractured and faded — as someone once said, third parties “are like bees, they sting once and then die,” their ideas did not. Many propositions on the platform were adopted by reform minded progressives of the early 20th century and became law.  For instance, the Progressive Party Platform in 1912 called for the ‘extension of rural delivery routes,’ which resulted In1916 “Rural Post ‘Goods’ Road Act,” provided federal funds for rural post roads.  Many of the roads we travel today in Louisa had their origins then.  Additionally, legislation to create federal loan subsidies was also part of this progressive legislative spree in the early 20th century.  

Now that ‘progressive’ has become a pejorative in conservative circles, for those farmers and denizens of rural America who want to Make America Great Again and eschew progressive ideals and legislation, go get your chain saw and cut down your progressive socialist mailbox.  And stop driving on all those damn progressive rural mail roads.