Tag Archives: politics

D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Not at all Writing Related

Monday Musings: Political Rant, No Punches Pulled

Okay, serious question: When did the world get so insane?

When did people start believing wackadoodle conspiracy theories while refusing to believe that wearing a mask over their nose and mouth would keep them from spreading germs that come from their nose and mouth? When did they start believing a President who says that Democrats at the DNC refused to say “under God” during the Pledge of Allegiance, despite the fact that we have video showing them saying “under God” during the Pledge of Allegiance each night of the convention?

When did people who believe in strength and faith and patriotism start to worship a President who blames everyone else for his failings, uses churches and the Bible as props, and seeks help from foreign powers in order to win domestic election campaigns?

When did the richest country in the world, the self-proclaimed greatest nation on earth, become so clusterfucked, so dysfunctional, that it would find itself leading the world in Covid-19 cases and deaths?

How did this happen? I really want to know.

I hated Ronald Reagan – I know many consider him a great President and even liberal historians cite him as a hugely consequential one. But I was in college and grad school during his Administration, and I despised him. And yet, I cannot imagine Ronald Reagan letting Russia get away with placing bounties on the lives of American soldiers.

I hated George H.W. Bush, too. I cannot imagine him allowing efforts to protect people from a lethal virus to be hamstrung by liberty junkies and science deniers who put their own hang-ups before the public good.

I couldn’t stand George W. Bush and I believe he was a terrible President. I cannot imagine him coddling white supremacists, praising anti-Semitic marchers, demonizing immigrants and peaceful protesters.

I grew up in a Democratic household – we ALWAYS supported Democratic candidates for all offices. But we understood that having two vibrant parties made our nation stronger. Just like the Yankees need a strong Red Sox team to make their successes meaningful, so the two parties need each other to engender of productive debate over how to govern a sprawling republic. I cannot imagine the Republicans I recall from my youth – Howard Baker, Alan Simpson, even Barry Goldwater – tolerating, much less enabling, the malfeasance, racism, and disregard for Constitutional norms that we see from this Administration.

We have faced crises before. We have had Presidents of both parties who lied to us, who held beliefs that to this day make my skin crawl, who were overly partisan and too obsessed with their own electoral prospects.

We have never had a President who lied as frequently or as blatantly as this one. We have never had a President who was so willfully ignorant and lazy. We have never had a President who was so corrupt and who surrounded himself with so many crooks and liars and incompetents.

But beyond all of that, we have never had a President who demonstrated such utter disdain for the norms of republican government, for the Constitutional principles that have guided our elected leaders for more than two centuries.

America, it turns out, is far more fragile than we thought. Yes, we survived a Civil War, and a Constitutional crisis in the 1970s. But we are in danger of seeing our democracy collapse because this President recognizes no limits on his power and refuses to acknowledge that Congress and the Courts are co-equal branches of the government. Without respect for our institutions and governing laws, he will soon make us nothing more than another failed state, another moral backwater ruled by a kleptocratic despot.

That day, I fear, is far closer than any of us imagined it would ever be. This President is willing to use the Department of Justice as his own personal consigliere. He believes the armed forces exist to impose his will on the people he is supposed to serve. He sees in every act of governance an opportunity to enhance his family’s wealth. He has far more in common with the tin-pot dictators of what we used to refer to, in our arrogance, as “the Third World,” than he does with any of his predecessors. And his reelection would be a death blow to all that we Americans have held as sacred and good in our system of government.

These are the thoughts – the terrors – that consume me on this, the first day of the Republican National Convention. No, I will not be watching, thanks very much.

But I did watch the DNC last week. I have given to the Biden-Harris campaign. I have volunteered to write letters to voters in swing states on behalf of the Sierra Club.

What have you done?

Have a good week.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Writing

Monday Musings: How Are You Doing? How Am I Doing?

How are you holding up?

No, really. I’m asking. I’m asking you, and I’ve been asking myself over the past week or so.

This is a remarkable time we’re living through. Obviously, I don’t mean remarkable as in “This is great!” But remarkable as in, “We’ll be talking about this, and recovering from this, for years to come.” It is fraught and troubling and disorienting and challenging and, well, insert your own adjective here. I tend to be a news junkie; I rarely tune out the world. But I know many people who do, who prefer to keep politics and social issues in the background except for those moments – Election Day, for instance – when they feel they need to tune in.

Right now, though, we are living the news on a daily basis. There is no escaping it. There seems to be no distance between the world and our lives. There’s a direct line from those Covid maps on CNN and MSNBC and the cloth masks we put on to shop or go to the bank. Nor does it help that the Administration, which has failed utterly to develop a strategy for combatting the pandemic is, nevertheless, more than happy to exploit it in the most cynical ways possible for political gain.

But I have addressed those issues in past Monday Musings, and I’m sure I’ll do so again in future ones. Today, I’m focused more on the personal costs.

How am I doing? Thanks for asking. As I say, this is something I’ve been asking myself recently.

I’ll start with this: In all ways that matter I’m fine. My family and I have been fortunate so far and have avoided the virus. I am also fortunate in that I’m self-employed and have resources to fall back on even as the publishing industry has ground to a halt. I’m white, upper-middle class, and I live in a relatively isolated area. For those who are non-white, who lack financial security, who live in cities or crowded suburbs, all of this is far, far worse.

That said, I find that I’m struggling. I miss my kids, who I haven’t been able to see in months because of Covid concerns. Our older daughter is supposed to come pick up our old car tomorrow – our first time seeing her since December – but even this visit will be brief (just the evening) and distanced. Our other daughter we haven’t seen since March, and even that is far too long. I also miss my brother and his family, who we likely would have seen at some point this summer or fall.

I honestly don’t mind masking at all, but I miss seeing people – friends and even strangers. I miss going to a restaurant or bar. I miss travel. Problems of privilege, I know, but I’m being honest here. I really miss conventions – hanging out with friends, talking shop with fellow writers, interacting with fans. This past weekend, I was supposed to be in Calgary for a writing festival. A couple of weeks from now I am supposed to be in Atlanta for DragonCon, a highlight of my professional year. I work alone, and most of the time I enjoy delving into my imagination each day. That’s my job. These days, though, it feels particularly lonely.

I walk every day, but I miss my more vigorous workouts at the gym. And because I’m dealing with an unrelated medical issue that is affecting my shoulder, I have had to cut way back on my home workouts as well, which I find deeply frustrating, even depressing.

Mostly, I am weary of thinking about the pandemic, about the politics of the pandemic, about the logistical gymnastics we all have to go through for even the most mundane of errands because of the pandemic. This is exhausting – and way more so for those who have compromised immune systems and/or belong to at-risk groups. It would be terrifying if we had no health insurance, or lacked faith in the medical professionals in our area. Again, I recognize that I am very fortunate.

(And this, by the way, is what makes the Trump Administration’s mail-system machinations and its blindly foolish insistence on opening schools — just to name two of its worst offenses — so insidious. We are, all of us, dealing with heightened emotions, tensions, apprehensions. I can hardly imagine being the parent of school-aged children and, on top of everything else, worrying now about sending them to school.)

I get mad at myself when I am less productive in my work than I would like to be, or when I let everyday chores slide. The truth is, I should be cutting myself a bit of slack. We all should. The stress induced by this particular moment in history in unlike anything I’ve experienced in my lifetime. To my mind, it is rivaled only by the aftermath of 9/11.

I am, in the end, tired of it all. And I’m tired of whining about it. But for all of us who care, who take the threat as seriously as it merits, this is hard. I have no answers, no wisdom to dispense. As I said, I’m struggling, too. I do believe life will get better. I won’t say I expect us to go back to the old normal, but I expect the new normal – whatever that looks like – to be far more enjoyable than this.

Until then, please know that I am wishing all of you good health, simple joys, moments of peace and laughter and love. Stay well, be safe, take good care of one another. We will get through this.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Not at all Writing Related

Monday Musings: Lightning Round!

Sometimes my Monday Musings posts are pretty easy to write – a topic comes to me and I riff on it or rant about it. Other times, nothing comes to me at all, and just getting started is next to impossible.

And there are days like today, when I have about 20 things to say and not a lot to say about any of them.

So, welcome to the Monday Musings Lightning Round!!

This coming week, Joe Biden is expected to announce his running mate, and in the lead-up to the announcement, things in the upper echelon of the Democratic Party have been getting surreal. Seriously. First of all, why Biden would have angry old white men on his VP selection committee is beyond me. Don’t get me wrong. I like Joe. I will vote for him with conviction if not enthusiasm. But doesn’t he pretty much have the angry old white man demographic covered on his own? Does he really need Ed Rendell and Chris Dodd to be part of this conversation?

And what the hell is the matter with those two? Rendell complains that Kamala Harris, a leading candidate for the VP slot, and my personal favorite, is “too ambitious,” a charge only ever leveled at women. Ambition in men is seen as a good thing. Why not Kamala? And excuse me, but every person who has ever run for President or announced their willingness to be VP is, by definition, ambitious. What the hell am I missing here? This would be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, but sadly Dodd has him beaten. Old Chris has been complaining that Harris hasn’t been “contrite” enough in conversations about her primary campaign attacks on Biden. When in the history of politics has any male candidate for ANYTHING ever had to express contrition as a prerequisite for a political post? I’ve been a Democrat all my life, and so I feel funny saying this, but Chris Dodd and Ed Rendell need to shut their fucking mouths.

The other night, Donald Trump announced that he was going to issue an executive order requiring that health insurance companies cover pre-existing conditions. He called this “a big deal” and said it had never been done before. Which, of course, is not at all true. This was, and still is, a cornerstone of Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, a law that even now the Trump Administration is trying to convince the Supreme Court to overturn. Is he just that ill-informed? Is he just that cynical? Is he both? Is he just a moron? Inquiring minds want to know.

The continued viability of Major League Baseball’s abridged 2020 season is balanced on a knife’s edge. Outbreaks among several teams, most recently the St. Louis Cardinals, have caused game cancellations across the league. This abbreviated season, scheduled for 60 games rather than the usual 162, is only about two weeks old, but already I find it hard to imagine how it lasts more than a month. Other professional sports leagues, notably the National Basketball Association and National Hockey League, have created “bubbles” in single venues – places where players, team staff, and press are isolated from anyone else. MLB, on the other hand, has allowed its teams to travel to their home cities. The results have been predictably poor. Seems like it’s just a matter of time before the season is called off.

As you might have guessed, I’m a baseball fan, and I am getting my baseball fix not from watching games on TV, but from playing in an online Stratomatic league with a group of friends and acquaintances. Basically, we all get to draft our teams from a large pool of all-time greats, our choices limited by a strict salary cap, and then the computer plays out the season while we tinker with our lineups, pitching rotations, and strategies. SO MUCH FUN! I know: It’s entertainment for nerds. But I love it. This is our second league since the pandemic began. In the first, my team was middle of the pack. Not great, but not terrible. I was in the hunt for a wild card playoff spot until the last two weeks, when the proverbial wheels came off. This new season, with all new teams, is going pretty well for my crew (which includes Ted Williams, Tom Seaver, and Joe Morgan), but it’s too early to draw any conclusions.

Like all of you, I’m sure, the pandemic is getting to me a bit. I would love to go out for dinner, or have a get-together with a bunch of friends. I miss my daughters terribly, having not seen either of them for way, way too long. But I count myself so fortunate for the simple reason that I love my spouse and she, for reasons surpassing understanding, seems to love me back. She goes to work every weekday, and I am working on stuff at home, but in the evenings and on weekends we basically have each other. And that’s enough. We cook together, watch TV or movies together, sip wine or Scotch or beers together. We talk a lot. We also sit next to each other on the couch reading our books or playing on our phones, saying not a word. And that’s nice, too. Here’s a phrase I never thought I’d type: There is no one with whom I would rather endure a pandemic…

I’m writing this outside on our porch (she’s working on the porch as well). It’s hot, but the breeze is picking up. We have one hummingbird feeder in the garden fronting the porch and another hanging off the porch to the side. And there must be at least ten hummingbirds harassing and chasing each other around the feeders, facing off in midair like hovercraft, buzzing past us at breakneck speeds, their wings whistling. I’m no more than ten feet from the nearest feeder, and they’re so intent on one another that they couldn’t care less about me. It’s quite entertaining, although now and then they buzz by so close to my head, that I duck belatedly.

And with that, I will wish you a wonderful week. Thanks for playing Monday Musings Lightning Round with me!

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe

Monday Musings: Covid-19 and America’s Character Flaw

Many of you know that I have a Ph.D. in U.S. History. My years of studying America’s past have taught me a lot and left me fully aware of the dangers inherent in making broad, sweeping generalizations. And yet…

I believe our nation is failing so completely in combatting Covid-19 at least in part because we, as a society and as a nation, are not capable of doing what we must to succeed. The ethos of American culture, such as it is, revolves around “individualism” and “personal liberty,” values that are fundamentally antithetical to communal sacrifice and collective thinking. The pandemic was bound to hit us hardest, because we are not wired for the sort of social solutions needed to combat it.

Right now, the United States, which accounts for about 4% of the world’s population, has seen approximately one quarter of all reported cases and deaths worldwide. Yes, there are legitimate questions about the accuracy of the figures released by a few other countries, but there can be no doubt that the U.S. is faring far worse against Covid-19 than it should, and far, far, FAR worse than the countries we consider our peers and closest allies. Some of the blame for this falls squarely on the Trump Administration, whose response has been scattershot, ineffective, and deeply irresponsible. Some of the blame falls on local politicians, who have parroted Trump’s denials and lies. Some of the blame can also be tied to the size of the United States, and the diffuse nature of our various levels of government.

But that is also where we start to see the impact of our obsession with “liberty.” Months ago, the Federal Government should have issued an order requiring the use of face masks in all public places. But many state leaders would have screamed bloody murder at such “Federal overreach.” Localities, they would argue, ought to have the final say in what sort of dictates are imposed on their citizens.

Unless those dictates are deemed too onerous by the Liberty Junkies. Brian Kemp (Moron — Georgia) has sued the mayor of Atlanta, Keesha Lance Bottoms, and the Atlanta city council, because they dared to issue a mandatory mask order, in violation of his ban on such orders from all localities in the state. Kemp claims to believe that people ought to wear masks, but he is adamantly opposed to making this mandatory. Similar debates are taking place all across my state of Tennessee. A coalition of doctors here asked our governor, Bill Lee (Spineless — Tennessee), to issue a mask mandate. He refused, instead authorizing county mayors to issue such directives if they so choose. Too many have chosen not to, including one who said explicitly, “We were debating masks when we should be discussing liberty, freedom, and personal responsibility.”

I want to ask these people if their belief in personal responsibility extends to driving 100 mph on their county roads, or if their troopers will still be ticketing for that. To my mind there is little difference between speed limits and mask requirements. Experts tell us that filling the roads with drivers who drive at excessive speeds will lead to property damage, injuries, and deaths. Controlling speeds is a matter of public safety. Experts tell us that the spread of coronavirus will be slowed by people wearing masks that protect themselves and others from the spray of infected liquids that results from human respiration and conversation, not to mention coughing and sneezing. It, too, is a matter of public safety.

Will wearing masks prevent all new infections? Of course not. Nor will speed limit laws prevent all accidents. Is it possible that someone not wearing a mask will manage to avoid getting sick and infecting others? Sure, it’s possible. And it’s possible that some asshole driving 97 on a twisty county road will reach home alive. That doesn’t make it a good idea.

The problem is, the Liberty Junkies have never gotten over being nine years old and shouting “It’s a free country!” every time someone tells them to do something they don’t want to do. Honestly, I don’t understand the vehement reaction of mask-wearing. It’s just not that big a deal. Even if it were more onerous, though, that wouldn’t change the essential facts: Wearing a mask makes each of us less vulnerable to the disease. It makes it less likely that we will spread Covid to someone else. And, by keeping us healthy, it also protects our friends and loved ones from subsequent infection. That, to my mind, should be the end of the discussion.

In New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and many European countries, infection rates spiked and then subsided because people took quickly to masking, to social distancing, and to complete and prolonged economic inactivity. And, actually, those steps briefly worked here, too. For just a moment, we had started to get a handle on this thing. The advice of the experts worked. (And, I’ll add, it also didn’t hurt that all of the other countries I mentioned have universal health care coverage, making it easier for the sick to get the treatment they needed.)

But here, too many people still refused to wear masks and to distance, and attempts to close down the economy were met with impatience and outright resistance. It doesn’t help that many in Congress have been unwilling to extend the sort of financial relief that would make a lengthy economic shutdown less destructive. That’s part of the American obsession with individualism as well. As a nation, we don’t want “socialized” anything. We don’t want to give people “handouts,” even when such benefits are precisely what circumstances demand. Because somehow catering to the public welfare in such a way is equated with “weakness” and moral turpitude.

Lots of factors have contributed to our country’s disastrous response to the pandemic, and I believe the Trump Administration bears much responsibility. But I would argue as well that Trump and his lackeys couldn’t get away with their demonization of experts and their rejection of masks and other simple, proven methods to contain the virus, if our national culture didn’t make such tactics so easy. For too long, we have idolized America’s “rugged individual” and fetishized “personal freedom.” Is it any wonder that so many in this nation find it perfectly acceptable to ignore the common good?

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Not at all Writing Related

Monday Musings: Covid-19 Anger Redux

Back in mid-April, I wrote a post about the pandemic that drew a bit of attention. In it I expressed a good deal of anger. Anger at claims that the virus was not as bad as some were making it out to be. Anger at people who were calling dire projections of high fatalities a “hoax” because the CDC had lowered some of its worst-case estimates. And anger at government leaders who were calling for an early re-opening of the economy because, really, how bad could the virus be compared to a steep recession.

If you think I was pissed off then, how angry do you think I am now?

Let’s start with those fatality projections. Here is what I wrote in that April post:

“How many of you have heard people claiming that, because the national death toll is now projected to be lower – ‘merely’ 64,000 rather than 100,000-240,000 – the more alarmist projections were a ‘hoax’ and symptomatic of panic and overreaction?”

First of all, how quaint that experts were projecting a death toll of 64,000 in April. We’re beyond twice that number now, and deaths in the U.S. are rising again. We’re over 135,000, heading toward God-knows-what. When I wrote that piece, the U.S. had 682,000 Covid-19 cases (we’re over 3.2 million now) and 23,000 deaths. And we thought things were terrible. It was a crisis. We took solace in that 64,000 death projection, horrible though it was.

As I said at the time, those who were shouting, “Hoax!” because the projections had gone down, ignored the reason those estimates fell: namely that the country had adopted safety measures recommended by health experts. We were washing our hands, starting to wear masks, distancing ourselves from the people around us. And we cut way, way back on our economic and social activity. The popular phrase was “we closed the economy.” Those measures worked. That’s why the death toll seemed to be falling, why the outlook improved so markedly.

Let me pause here to say this: The pain of a recession, particularly one that begins so abruptly and dives so deep, is no trifle. People are hurting. Those who have lost jobs are in danger of losing their homes as well. They may lose access to health care, in the short term at least, and in the long-term as well if the Trump Administration’s attempts to destroy the Affordable Care Act finally succeed. I do not mean to ignore the suffering caused by this economic downturn.

But the fact is, we opened up too soon. Here’s something else I wrote back in April.

“…The President’s talk of opening up the country before his own health experts deem it safe is a recipe for disaster. We are in the first wave of this pandemic. More waves will come. Flattening the curve now does NOT mean we have won. It means we have bought ourselves a bit of time.”

Look, I’m not trying to engage in a gotcha game of “I Told You So.” I’m not a medical expert, and I don’t claim to be. Everything I said in that first post I learned from others, from reading articles and listening to reports from respected news sources. Anybody could have written that post, if only they had been paying attention. Anybody should have been able to see coming what has happened in our country over the last month. Cases are spiking all through the South and the Sunbelt. All those states that looked at New York and New Jersey and said, “Well Covid-19 is their problem,” are learning now what they should have understood then: New York was not the exception, it was their future.

It is too simplistic to blame one party, much less one person. But let’s be honest about this, too: Donald Trump helped set the stage for this by engaging in wishful thinking, by downplaying the danger of the virus when all his medical advisors were telling him how bleak our future might be. And people like Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis and Brian Kemp and Doug Ducey (the governors of Texas, Florida, Georgia, and Arizona respectively) were all too happy to parrot him.

As a result – and this is the truly tragic and infuriating element in all this, as pointed out recently by Rachel Maddow – the sacrifices we made back in March and April, when we did close the economy, when millions upon millions of people lost their jobs, when social distancing denied so many grieving families the opportunity to mourn properly for lost loved ones, have turned out to be for naught. We sacrificed so much, and because we were careless and impatient and overeager, we are suffering mind-numbing losses anyway.

And still people don’t get it. Every day throughout the country, people whose definition of “liberty” suddenly means “not having to protect themselves and others from infection by wearing a mask” are making matters worse. They have decided that being “free” is more important than being part of a community. They have decided that their right to risk their own health is more important than your right, and my right, not to be placed at risk. Pardon my bluntness, but fuck them. We wear masks to protect ourselves and to protect those around us. We wear them to protect our families and friends who might be at risk if we contract this vicious disease. We wear them because smart people, qualified people, people who are experts in medicine and epidemiology, tell us that doing so is the prudent thing to do.

Those same smart people are now trying to warn us, to warn our President and the political sycophants who run so many states, that reopening schools without taking extraordinary precautions could put our children at grave risk as well. The President is having none of it. Same with too many governors.

Are we willing to see tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or millions of school children infected with Covid-19? We have already seen this sort of scenario play out. We know how this could end. We have gotten so much wrong since this pandemic began. Our leaders have failed us in so many ways. We cannot take this chance.

Please.

I don’t want to write another post like this three months from now. I certainly don’t want to write it about children.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe

Monday Musings: Speaking Out

In the spring of my senior year in college, an event took place on campus that changed me forever. It was called a Speak-Out, and it was organized by the school’s Women’s Center. Those running the Speak-Out set up an open microphone and loudspeakers at the upper end of the residential quadrangle that was home to the school’s few fraternities and social dorms. And on a cool, rainy morning, at a rally that followed a silent march through campus, one woman after another stepped forward to tell their stories of humiliation, harassment, misogyny, homophobia, abuse, assault, and rape.

Many of the stories they told focused on their treatment at the hands of men who lived in the buildings surrounding the crowd that gathered there that morning. Other incidents they described took place elsewhere. Almost all of them involved members of our university community. The impromptu remarks these women offered were raw, shocking, eye-opening, deeply personal, heartrending. Nearly everyone who spoke cried. Nearly everyone listening cried. I know I did. I believe — I hope — that for many in attendance the event proved cathartic.

I remember that day vividly and, thirty-five years later, I still think of it often. I knew some of the women who spoke, either in passing or fairly well. But that was less important than this: I knew intimately the behaviors, attitudes, and actions they described.

I had always thought of myself as a sensitive, enlightened guy. I suppose, by comparison to some, I was. I learned that day, though, that men don’t have to be rude to be guilty of harassment, that we don’t have to be abusers to be abusive, that we don’t have to be rapists to be complicit in emotional assault. I recognized in myself, and in too many of the guys I hung out with, just the sorts things the courageous women at the Speak-Out described.

The Speak-Out was intended to give voice to women who, for too long, had been ignored on our campus. It was also an emotional cudgel aimed at the privilege of well-to-do Ivy League men. But to my mind, it was an incredible gift. I said at the outset that the day changed me, changed my life, and it’s true. What I learned about myself that day forced me to rethink every relationship, current (at the time) and past. And the lessons of that day have echoed through every day and every relationship since. They made me a better person, a better friend, a better romantic partner; ultimately they made me a better husband and a better father to my daughters.

Jump ahead thirty-five years, and in recent days, with several men in the science fiction/fantasy field being outed as serial harassers and abusers, the Speak-Out has been on my mind even more than usual. Three and a half decades later, we are still fighting the same battles. Women are still struggling to be heard and believed. Men are still hiding behind our privilege in order to perpetuate a gender hierarchy that ignores and even rewards unacceptable behavior.

And as with issues of race, which I have written about frequently in the past month (here, here, and here), it falls to those of us in the privileged group to change and speak up and act. For too, too long, women have been calling out the harassers and abusers and assaulters, and still those men continue to harass and abuse and assault. Many of my friends in the industry have offered themselves as protectors at conventions and other public events, and I admire them for that. I offer the same to my friends regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation. If you need me, I am here for you.

But we men have to do more than that. We have to call out the guys who do this shit, not just in response to public incidents, but also in the privacy of male-to-male conversations where, too often, we offer shelter and complicity by not speaking up, by not drawing attention to sexism, objectification, homophobia, trans-directed prejudice, misogyny, and worse. We have to be more than heroes. We have to be advocates, even when it’s uncomfortable.

Those who suffer the most from the harassment and abuse found their voices long ago, and they continue to speak now — with courage, with conviction, with candor. Yes, we hear them. Yes, we believe them. But no, that isn’t enough.

Now, we have to speak out ourselves.

Wishing you all a good week.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Writing

Monday Musings: Challenging Ourselves

I will admit that my first impulse for this Monday Musings post was to write about something other than race and politics. Not because those things aren’t still on my mind. They consume me. But rather because I was thinking, “I’ve written about White privilege two weeks in a row. I don’t want to seem like I’m harping on it.” [Here are links to my post from two weeks ago and last week.]

My next thought, right after that one, was, “Why the hell not?”

College Town Protest March, David B. CoeThis past Friday our little college town had a peaceful protest march followed by a rally on the college quad. It was a terrific event: somber, but also uplifting. Several people spoke, including my wife, who is provost of the university. Most of the speakers were Black; Nancy is not. And her message was directed at the many White allies who were in attendance. Showing up is great, she said. But it’s not enough. We who consider ourselves allies of those fighting for racial justice, but who also carry enormous privilege, have to challenge ourselves to act, to fight every day for a better world. And she, in turn, challenged us. Think of things you can do. Commit yourselves.

She and I have been making donations to organizations that fight for racial justice. We are committed to voting, to supporting candidates who will help put an end to systemic racism. We have reached out to our Black friends to make sure they’re doing all right. We are more than willing to have difficult conversations with family and friends. We would be willing to have those conversations with our daughters as well, but, frankly, we have more to learn from them than they have to learn from us.

But after those things, I found myself wondering in response to Nancy’s challenge, what else I could do? The answer came to me pretty quickly; it should be obvious to anyone who knows me.

I write.

That’s what I do.

I’m not saying that race and racial politics will be the subject of every Monday post for the rest of time. But one of the great problems with American politics is that we as a nation have no attention span at all. We become obsessed with the issue of the day, the tragedy of the week – a mass shooting prompts calls for serious conversations about gun control. Until the next police shooting exposes for the thousandth time the need for a meaningful conversation about race. Until the next ridiculous or outrageous Tweet from the Infant-In-Chief prompts renewed obsession with the campaign and the latest polling numbers. Until a new spike in Covid-19 cases reminds us of the devastating toll the virus is exacting. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat.

My thoughts about this post are symptomatic of that short attention span. Two weeks in a row writing about race? Yikes! Time for another post about my five favorite rock ‘n roll albums.

And more to the point, that short attention span is an expression of privilege. I have the luxury of being able to turn away from the conversation about systemic racism if I want to, because I’m White. Because I don’t have to worry that my next traffic stop could prove fatal. Because while the unemployment rate among my people is high, it’s not at 16.8%, as it is for Blacks. Because my health care is affordable and readily available.

I can eventually look away after the next shooting sparks a new debate on guns, because while gun violence should concern all of us, Blacks are (according to the Giffords Law Center) ten times – TEN TIMES – more likely than Whites to be murdered with a firearm.

I can be distracted from the pandemic, because while Whites get the disease and die from it, preliminary data indicates that we are proportionally less likely to get sick than are Blacks, and we are far less likely to die from the illness than are Blacks and Latinos.

We in the White community can afford to lose interest, to get distracted, to move on to other issues. But we, as White allies in the struggle for racial justice, can’t. Just this weekend in Atlanta, Rayshard Brooks was shot and killed by Atlanta police in an incident that began with him sleeping in his car. I guarantee you, that is a sentence that has never been written about a white man.

And so, yes, I am writing about race again. Because once we open our eyes to the prevalence of bias and bigotry and harmful stereotypes (and it is another expression of lifelong privilege that we have the choice of whether or not to do this) we can find them everywhere. The only way to avoid them is to ignore them, or to be utterly oblivious. Race creeps into everything. The next time you’re watching TV, pay close attention to the commercials. Look at how race is treated. Watch for the racial sub-narratives. Be attuned to the archetypes. Once you start to see them, you can’t stop. Listen to sports commentary (if and when we ever get to watch sports again). Pay attention to the adjectives used to describe White and Black players. How many times are Whites referred to as “hard workers”? How many times is Black success credited to “natural athletic ability”?

“Why,” we hear people ask, “do they have to make everything about race?”

And the answer is, because people of color in this country – and throughout much of the world – inhabit a different reality from the one we Whites live in. In their world, racism is omnipresent. It is unavoidable. It is the knee on the neck. Being an ally means looking and seeing, listening and hearing, discussing and speaking out. It means answering my wife’s challenge by pushing ourselves outside of comfort and complacency, and committing ourselves.

And for me, it means writing.

Wishing you a wonderful week.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe

Monday Musings: On Race, Privilege, and Uncomfortable Conversations

As I white progressive, I have struggled with how to write this post. I know that the white progressives in my audience will struggle to read and process it. All of this, I believe, is to the good.

This past week, as I discussed with my adult children the protests taking place in cities across the country, my older daughter sent me an article called “I, Racist,” written by John Metta back in 2015. This is an extraordinary piece and I urge you to read it right now, before continuing with my post. Seriously, read the article. We’ll wait.

Much of what follows here is my working through of Metta’s piece – the thoughts reflected here are more his than mine. There are four main points to Metta’s argument that strike me as central to all discussions of race in America.

First, “Black people think in terms of we because [they] live in a society where the social and political structures interact with [them] as Black people. White people do not think in terms of we. White people have the privilege to interact with the social and political structures of our society as individuals.”

Second, “The entire discussion of race in America centers around the protection of White feelings.”

Third, “the reality of America is that White people are fundamentally good, and so when a white person commits a crime, it is a sign that they, as an individual, are bad…. People of color, especially Black people… are seen as fundamentally bad.”

And finally, perhaps most important: “White people, every single one of [us], are complicit in this racism because [we] benefit directly from it.”

Last week, my Monday Musings post focused on White privilege, and I suppose this week’s does as well. The truth is, I am thinking all of this through as I write, so forgive me if this comes across as a work in progress rather than as something more finished. I know better than to claim that my thoughts on race and Metta’s essay are well-organized or comprehensive. Like so many of us right now, I am processing, figuring things out, asking myself questions. The fact is, Metta’s observations make for uncomfortable reading for Whites because they are so very hard to refute. But that is also the source of the article’s power and value.

Let’s start with points one and two. Once we accept the notion that Blacks think in terms of “we” while Whites enjoy the luxury of interacting with the world as individuals, we begin to understand how the conversation about race in America has failed so utterly to move our society forward. As Metta points out, Whites take such conversations personally. We see in the notion of systemic racism an attack on ourselves – which leads us to turn conversations about race into conversations about our bruised feelings. White privilege is by definition systemic. It filters into every element of our lives – our health, our shelter, our our finances, our relationships with institutions and their representatives (including police), and on and on.

And, I have to say, most of the progressive Whites I know are open to conversations about privilege and its prevalence. To a point. The problem comes when we turn to the notion of complicity. As Metta puts it, we Whites are unable to “differentiate [our] participation within a racist system” from accusations of being racists ourselves. We conflate the two, turn the conversation to our sense of being attacked and accused, and therefore shut down the discussion entirely. I know this pattern. I have too often gone down that path myself.

Hearing that we are complicit in a racist society hurts. No doubt. Our first response is to deny, to draw a clear line distinguishing ourselves from defenders of the the Confederate Flag, from the idiots who call 911 on people of color in parks and stores and “nice” (re. White) neighborhoods, from those who assault and murder. Defensiveness, though, helps no one, and it certainly doesn’t change reality.

In fact, I would argue this: If only we Whites could STOP taking these conversations personally, if only we could back away from our individual privilege and begin to look at our world and society as part of a larger “we” instead of always as “I, me, my” – in other words, if we could talk about the issues more like Metta argues that Blacks do – we might find that conversations about race progress far more smoothly. Our privilege is actually no privilege at all. It hurts us. It cripples our society. It hurts the people of color around us.

Recently, I happened upon a brief (one minute long), wonderful video that first came out in 2016 featuring educator and activist Jane Elliott. She is White, speaking to an auditorium filled with White people, and she asks them to stand if they would be willing to trade places with Black people in America. Not one person stands up. She asks a second time. No one. And then she tells them the obvious: that they know there is a racial problem in America, and they are willing to accept its consequences for others, but not for themselves. That is privilege.

Only when we can accept that our society is inherently racist, that we as Whites benefit every day, in every way, from that racism – only then can we start to improve our country for all Americans. It’s not enough to differentiate ourselves from the conspicuous racists we see on TV and read about in the headlines. It’s not enough to say “but my heart is in the right place,” even if it is. We have to be willing to do more – something my daughters have been telling me for some time now. We have to donate to organizations that support those who are fighting racism. We have to stand up and say to our fellow Whites, “Open your eyes and ears – see what is happening, listen to the people who live this racist reality every day.” And instead of saying, “I am better than those other racists because I have not done those terrible things,” we have to say, “From this day forward, I will be better than I have been, and here is how.”

Wishing you all a peaceful week.

Blogging, David B. Coe, Not at all Writing Related

Photo Friday: Not My Image, but Wow…

Justice and hope
Photo by Steve Helber – Associated Press

For this week’s photo, I couldn’t see myself posting a pretty picture from Nancy’s garden or nearby natural sites. Instead, I offer a photo from AP photographer Steve Helber. This is, to me, a remarkable image from this week’s protests, so heartbreaking and yet also filled with hope. Plus, the symbolism of “Justice” upside down… A really incredible photograph.

Wishing all of you a safe, peaceful, thoughtful weekend.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Not at all Writing Related

Monday Musings: A True Story of Privilege

I can’t shed my privilege – it is part and parcel of who and what I am, as impossible to separate as chewed gum wadded in tissue.

This is a true story. Every detail. I swear.

When Nancy and I were in graduate school, we lived in Mountain View, California, about seven miles south of Palo Alto and the Stanford campus. Some days we rode our bikes to school, but mostly we drove. About two thirds of the way back to home from campus, on the left side of El Camino Real, the main thoroughfare running through that part of the South Bay, there was a strip mall. It was actually more square than “strip” – a horseshoe of storefronts surrounding a parking area. It included a grocery store, a drug store, a few restaurants, some specialty stores and clothing stores. It included a Tower Records. It included a bank.

One day in early spring – California spring; it was technically still winter – I went home at midday to work on my dissertation. I had done some teaching in the morning. I might have had office hours. But I was going home to write. On the way home, I stopped at the Tower Records. I had a birthday coming up, and I probably was looking for one CD or another to add to my growing collection. I remember that I didn’t buy anything that day.

As I pulled back onto the El Camino, turning left across traffic, a police car eased in behind me and began to follow. I was pretty sure that I had made my turn legally, so I didn’t think too much about it. After about a block, though, he turned on his lights. I pulled over at the first opportunity, my heart rate speeding up a bit. I rolled down my window, expecting the police officer to approach me on the driver’s side.

He didn’t. He opened his door and got out of the car, but he remained behind the open door, his right hand out of sight. From there, he called to me to get out of the car, to move to the sidewalk, and to brace my hands against the building there. By now, I was truly scared. I did exactly as I was told. The cop approached me, as did two more guys in uniform and one plainclothes cop. I hadn’t see the others arrive. All of them had their weapons drawn. They frisked me, asked me to remove my wallet, the one thing I was carrying, from my pocket. They wanted to know if the car was mine, and they had me show them the registration.

The more they talked to me, the calmer they grew. My panic subsided. They asked if they could search my car – a Toyota Corolla hatchback – and I gave them permission to look through every inch of it. I asked what they thought I had done and they told me that someone had just robbed the bank next to the Tower Records. The suspect fit my description ALMOST to a “T”: brown curly hair, beard and mustache, blue t-shirt and jeans. But – and this is why they were feeling calmer – the guy was described as being at least six feet tall. I’m five-seven on a good day, with a strong tailwind.

By this point, people were watching us – a crowd had gathered. Flashing lights, cops with their weapons in hand, a guy being frisked on the street. Of course we’d drawn attention. But after about ten minutes of conversation – “Where do you work? Where do you live? How long have you been in the Bay Area? Where are you going now? Why did you stop at the shopping plaza?” – they let me go. I got back in my car, shaken, but feeling that I would have one helluva story to tell Nancy that night. As I drove home to our apartment, I was almost certain someone was following me, probably the plainclothes cop checking on my story. When I pulled into the apartment complex, he drove on by. I never saw any of them again, and I don’t know if they ever caught the guy who robbed the bank.

That was on March 8, 1991.

How can I be so sure of that? Remember what I said at the outset: Every detail of this is true.

I know the date because it was the day after videotape of the Rodney King beating first was aired on a news broadcast in Los Angeles.

During the entirety of my encounter with the police, I never once feared for my life or my physical safety. Yes, I was scared, but that was because I didn’t understand why I had been stopped or why they had their weapons drawn. Throughout the incident, the police treated me with courtesy and respect.

Privilege comes in many forms and manifests itself in many ways. That day, my privilege kept me safe. It kept me from being beaten or shot. It kept me from being handcuffed or put on the ground. I have no doubt that, had I been black, had the suspect been black, I would have been cuffed, face down on the sidewalk, a knee in the small of my back, if not on my neck. It wouldn’t have mattered how short I was.

But really the larger point is this: I don’t need to go back nearly thirty years to find examples of how being white gives me privileges denied to those whose skin is brown or black.

As most of you know, I birdwatch. On spring mornings, I walk through local neighborhoods with my binoculars, peering into bushes and trees. Sometimes, I’m sure, it looks like I’m skulking rather than birdwatching. We don’t have to imagine what the reaction to this would be if I were black. Just look at what happened to Christian Cooper in Central Park last week.

Then again, if I were black, I wouldn’t need to be birdwatching to draw unwanted attention from ordinary citizens and law enforcement. I take walks just about everyday. Walking while black can get a person harassed. It can get a person arrested. It can get a person killed. And yet, it’s safer than running while black. Ask Ahmaud Arbery. It’s safer than driving while black. Ask Philando Castile, or Sam Dubose, or Alton Sterling, or too many others.

If I were black, but everything else about me and my finances was the same, I would 1) have a lower credit score; 2) pay a higher mortgage; 3) pay more for every car I’ve ever bought; 4) have a harder time booking places to stay when we travel; 5) have a harder time being seated in restaurants; 6) have less access to affordable quality health care; 7) have a lower life expectancy. These are not guesses on my part. This is fact, supported by research and data.

Privilege, as I say, takes many forms. All of it, though, leads to the same place: The freedoms I am able to take for granted as a white man in this county – the freedom to enjoy American prosperity, the freedom to avail myself of the health care system politicians are so fond of boasting about, the freedom to walk and run and drive and recreate without fear for myself or my family – all of these freedoms are denied to black Americans. There is no freedom when you fear agents of the State. There is no freedom when your economic viability is subject to the prejudices of strangers who wield the power to destroy you. There is no freedom when white people in parks, in playgrounds, in college campus common areas, in malls and supermarkets and Starbucks, have the power to sic the police on anyone they deem too different.

Friends of mine, people of color, have written about all of this with more eloquence than I have to offer. But change will only come when all of us speak up, including – especially – those of us who enjoy the privilege of being white Americans.

Our country is on fire right now. It is on fire because a white police officer, after stopping a black man for far less than suspicion of bank robbery, knelt on the man’s neck until the man died. He knelt on the man’s neck. Until the man died.

Our country is on fire because our President, the very embodiment of white privilege, is more interested in firing up the white supremacists in his electoral base than he is in promoting tolerance and healing and greater equality.

Our country is on fire because after a shameful racial history that dates back four centuries plus, we remain a nation that is governed by prejudice and fear.

I can’t shed my privilege – it is part and parcel of who and what I am, as impossible to separate as chewed gum wadded in tissue. What I can do is use my privilege to speak up, to say “enough,” to draw attention to the advantages I enjoy in the hope that this will make my brothers and sisters in privilege see what is denied to those who aren’t as lucky as we are.