Where is the Power of the People?

The movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington frustrates me every time I watch it. It frustrates me because Mr. Smith loses, as do his supporters. His filibuster fails and the kids trying to get the truth out via his little newspaper and the people that try to march in support are assaulted and stopped cold. Public opinion is completely against him. The power of "the people" FAILS. Truth fails. The system fails. It is only because one, corrupt, powerful man, Senator Joseph Paine, at the VERY end, suddenly has a change of heart and tries to kill himself and then shouts a confession to the whole corruption scheme that Smith is supposedly vindicated - though we never see that supposed vindication.

The people lose. The entrenched men who control the media and the message, the rich men who control the money, they defeat Smith at every turn, and the power of the truth, in the hands of people, does NOT win against them. 

Donald Trump has committed high crimes and misdemeanors, and continues to do so. He has betrayed the people of the USA over and over, both legally and ethically. Citizens are taken off the streets of Portland by unidentified federal agents, his agents use chemical agents against peaceful protesters (something Sadam Hussein did to Iraqis), public lands are being given to oil companies, he is becoming richer and richer in violation of the Foreign Emoluments Clause in the USA Constitution, he ignores court rulings, and families with LEGAL immigrants live in fear of speaking out, since green cards and even citizenship has been arbitrarily canceled. Children are in cages, some die, and families are separated. He undertakes actions to benefit Russia, like ordering troops out of Germany. He coddles Nazis. He has killed people and permanently disabled people through his inaction regarding the current pandemic. And no matter how many well-researched media reports reveal his corruption, no matter how often he is investigated, no matter how many times a court rules against him, he walks away, unscathed and even more empowered. Nothing has stopped him. 

Our system has failed. We are supposed to have checks and balances that prevent a President from being a dictator, from rewarding himself and his friends financially, and from our country sliding into fascism. Those checks and balances have FAILED. 

And we have almost six more months of this, at least... and maybe more, if the election is canceled - you saw Trump's tweet today, right?

Our country is in a perilous situation. It absolutely will continue to get worse. And there's no Senator Joseph Paine that is going to have a sudden, high-profile, well-publicized change of heart and save us all.

What now?

My neighbors deserve to live

I live two doors down, and across the street, from residential homes for adults with intellectual disabilities. There is one staff person on-site at all times. Each resident has their own room, has to pick out their clothes and dress for the day, has to do their own laundry (though some need assistance) and has keep their own room tidy. Some also have a night when they are responsible for cooking the meal for the residents, with assistance, and some have jobs: dishwashing in a restaurant or picking up debris at a hotel with large grounds. And still others have a school or program at a nonprofit they attend most days of the week.

Two of the residents are deaf. One is legally blind. Most are over 50. At least one resident had cancer. I'm pretty sure each of them has some kind of medical condition, like diabetes or high blood pressure. Most battle with being overweight.

The residents tend to live most of their adult lives in these homes. Outside of work or a program, if they have such, they watch TV, walk around the neighborhood, take mass transit to go to Wal-mart or McDonald's (favorite destinations of both), or sit on my front wall and watch traffic or watch me do yard work. Before COVID-19, two residents loved to put my garbage bins out on garbage day, or bring them in, or push my yard waste bin from one end of the yard to another as I mowed.

One resident loves all things Disney, especially Mickey Mouse. She's always wearing a hat or t-shirt with something related to Disney on it. She also loves to get her nails done.

One resident has never left the house in the seven years I've lived in my home. She also is the person who always answers the front door and she has flashing Christmas lights in her bedroom, and has them on very late into the evening.

One resident wears pink. She will also stand out in the front yard chirping when she's frustrated about something, like not being accompanied to the store for a soda (she's the one resident who isn't allowed to walk anywhere by herself).

One resident rides his bike everywhere, and since he's not allowed to smoke on the grounds on the residence, sits on my wall under some bamboo to smoke.

One resident loves cars, trucks and motorcycles, and though he has no idea what mechanical terms mean, will ask you, "Is that a v-6 or a v-8? Fuel injection? I bet it gets great gas mileage." When I ask him what's up, he says, "Nuttin'", and I get to respond, "Nut-n-honey?"

One resident has been my shadow for years, walking my dog with me every afternoon. For a couple of years, in Spring and Summer and Fall, we would ride our bikes together exactly 10 blocks most evenings. He loves cops shows. He loves going to church. He loves collecting bottles and returning them for money. He loves the cat that he's not supposed to have (it stays outdoors). He loves being judgemental about people that do not pick up their dog's poop.

All of these residents, and more, are my neighbors. They are my friends. I like them. But even if I didn't like them, even if I didn't know them, even if they didn't enrich my life in various ways, I would never challenge the idea that they do not have lives worth living.

Yet, I hear people say that thousands upon thousands of deaths from COVID-19 are inevitable and that these people I have just profiled for you, and thousands like them, and all who are medically vulnerable to the disease, are expendable. These people should die so you can go to Chili's. They should die so that your kids can play soccer. They should die so you can go to a bar. They should die so you can have steak made by someone else. They should die so you don't have to wear a mask.

Donal Trump told reporters during a press conference that while the death toll is “bad,” and “the numbers are going to increase with time,” we’re "going to be opening our country up for business, because our country was meant to be open."

In other words: people must die so that my hotels can stay open.

Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick told Tucker Carlson of Fox News, "No one reached out to me and said, ‘As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?’" But if they had? "If that is the exchange, I’m all in," Patrick said. He continued: "That doesn’t make me noble or brave or anything like that. I just think there are lots of grandparents out there in this country, like me, I have six grandchildren, that what we all care about and what we love more than anything are those children. And I want to live smart and see through this, but I don’t want the whole country to be sacrificed…I’ve talked to hundreds of people, Tucker, and just in the last week, making calls all the time, and everyone says pretty much the same thing. That we can’t lose our whole country, we’re having an economic collapse. I’m also a small businessman, I understand it. And I talk with business people all the time, Tucker. My heart is lifted tonight by what I heard the president say because we can do more than one thing at a time, we can do two things. So my message is let’s get back to work, let’s get back to living. Let’s be smart about it and those of us who are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves. But don’t sacrifice the country, don’t do that, don’t ruin this great America."

I am happy to sacrifice for my community - ALL of the community. I am happy to wear a mask, to socially-distance, to give up all sorts of conveniences, if that's going to keep my neighbors alive.

But I am not happy - nor willing - to sacrifice neighbors because I am inconvenienced. 

Coronavirus may never go away, even with a vaccine

Even after a vaccine is discovered and deployed, the coronavirus will likely remain for decades to come, circulating among the world’s population. Experts call such diseases endemic — stubbornly resisting efforts to stamp them out. Think measles, HIV, chickenpox. There are already four endemic coronaviruses that circulate continuously, causing the common cold. But COVID-19 kills and permanently disables. The USA desperately needs a road map for the trillions of dollars needed, and a fixed navigational point to replace our nation's current, chaotic state-by-state patchwork strategy.

It's what a May 27, 2020 Washington Post article is saying. In fact, it's what a February 25, 2020 article in The Atlantic said as well (James Hamblin's articles are worth reading, regularly).

On our way back from Baja, California, Mexico, I knew things were going to be different for months, not for just weeks. People saying "this is only for two weeks" - I couldn't understand those comments at all. All you had to do was spend 15 minutes a day reading the news and that was obvious.

Within a week of being home, at the end of March, I wondered why there wasn't a nationwide lockdown declared through July 5th, with a massive mobilization for widespread, frequent testing - it seemed obvious to me that that was what was needed in order for schools to be open in the Fall.

And everything I've read since well before COVID-19 has said that while face masks don't do much to protect you, but they protect others FROM you and whatever you might be carrying - and the February article referenced earlier said that most people don't get sick.

In April, I asked repeatedly on Twitter where the social media messages targeting 20 somethings and 30 somethings were, why no one was targeting that age group specifically. I never got an answer.

I just don't get it. We all had this information. Why are we pretending we didn't? Why is everyone acting shocked now that our world may be different?

Not that I like it. I hate it. But I'm furious at the state of denial the world seems to be in. And I'm furious that it's very likely I'll pay the price for it. 😡🤬

I finally saw Hamilton

I've finally seen Hamilton. Like many thousands of others, I downloaded Disney Plus to my phone (to my cheap little android phone that continues to over-perform) and used Chromecast to watch it on my TV. I made an event of it, watching it with no other distractions - I love to single focus on a movie or TV event (which is why I still love going to the movies - or, I did before COVID-19...).

It's nice to finally be a part of the "in" club that has seen it.

This was absolutely the right call by Disney, to make this freely available. They deserve nothing but praise for this gift to the nation, a gift we really needed right now.

I was probably never going to get to see Hamilton live with professional performers, and no offense to high schools or community theaters, but if I couldn't see it first with a professional cast, I just didn't want to see it at all. 

It is a brilliant piece, no question. The amount of thought and years of work put into this astounds me. I am entranced with the idea of someone - Lin-Manuel Miranda - being so inspired by a thought, and idea, a biography, that they spend YEARS to create such a work. To have a muse like that... I'm jealous. I crave to be so inspired.

I'm also surprised that this play has struck such a chord with so many. While I didn't fall in love with it the way so many, many of my friends have (and that's FINE - to each his own), I have been touched by how much people have loved it, especially young people. I've been there, with other pieces, and I know what that thrill is like - it got me through college and made my brief stints in New York City back in the late 1980s and in 1990 utterly magical.

I read a lot of gushing from people on social media who fell in love with Hamilton off-Broadway, but that gushing felt very different than the explosion of love for it in 2016 coincided with the anger people felt about the rise of Donald Trump and all that he stood for. The way it was valued off-broadway and broadway was, from this observer, very different. But I kept trying to keep my distance from seeing or reading in-depth about it - I wanted to have my own experience and feelings when I watched it.

And my own feelings about Hamilton:

• I love the celebration of a person who is, truly, self-made, someone who, by every definition now, is "at-risk" and "disadvantaged", raised by a single parent, who truly had to make his own way in the world - and did so, in a hugely important way.
• I was astounded at the complexity of the female characters AND the complexity of their music. In fact, that's when I teared up - that's the moment when I became emotionally involved. 
• The cast was mind-blowingly talented. Just astounding in every way. And casting all the principal American characters with Black Americans, Latinos and Asians brought an ownership to the story and themes that's long overdue. 
• It was fascinating to see a musical celebrating Hamilton, Jefferson and Washington at a time when so many in the USA are questioning or lionization of those three - and so many others - and tearing down statues not only of Confederate traitors but the so-called "founding fathers." Miranda wrote about these figures just a decade ago, before this became a national, fevered conversation. Were he writing now, perhaps he would have written about Jefferson and Washington in particular VERY differently. But no piece can be absolutely comprehensive, no piece can represent every point of view and explore every theme, and I have no criticism of him whatsoever regarding these characterizations. In fact, I was glad at the very stark reminder about Washington staunchly refusing to seek another term and what that act meant for the future of our nation - it's a message that is more timely now than at any time Hamilton was performed live on Broadway. 
• Yes, there is a lot of important history that gets left out. I can't believe people want to focus on that. Some of the same people who praise the cross-cultural casting - which, technically, is historically inaccurate - complain about the historical inaccuracies. And they complain at what got left out. Folks, I deeply admire John Adams. I have often wondered what would have happened had he gotten the second term he absolutely deserved. The story of John and Abigail Adams is one that I think should be detailed in every American history class. John Adams believed while he was president that Hamilton explored the idea of a coup in order to remove him. They were NOT friends. Am I upset that none of this gets mentioned in Hamilton? Nope. Am I upset that, historically, the playwright is on Team Hamilton when I am clearly on Team Adams? No! That would be ridiculous. Stop being ridiculous. It's a work of ART. Like all art, it reflects the views of the artist. If you can't get past that, you are going to be miserable not only in theatres, but in art museums.  
• Gonna say it: it didn't have as much rap as I was expecting and for that I am grateful. And I was SO glad the show was subtitled because I wouldn't have understood a lot of it otherwise. Hi, I'm old.    

So, there are my thoughts on Hamilton. I celebrate it for what it is, I'm not going to criticize it for what it isn't, and while I'm not enthralled by it the way so many are, I sure am enthralled by it's brilliance, which cannot be denied, and how it's inspired so many, especially young people. More of this, please.

Also see Fathers & theaters.