We created the problem and now agonize over fixing it

We are less than a week out from the United States shooting itself in the leg by going into default over the national debt. The Republicans, of course, are using the situation to do all they can to squeeze a few bucks out of future budgets... and it's always at the expense of the poor or the young or various minority groups.

Many have pointed out that the debt ceiling is made up and makes no sense in accounting terms or common sense. We took on loans for things past legislatures have approved and now there is a question as to whether we will pay our bills. It would all be laughable if it weren't for the possibility of the entire country suffering for an imaginary problem we could end with one vote.

A frustrating reality is that the Republican political machine rarely produces good results for the poor white people who make up a significant percentage of R votes... but the politicians and their media servants have found strategies to obscure the economic damage while claiming victories over progressive ideas like the right to choose for women and freedom to read for children. 

I sometimes can confuse the so-called leaders of the Angry White People Party with the everyday Americans who often vote for them, sometimes reluctantly but still... I saw a Bloomberg poll that showed 51 percent of Americans prefer the debt ceiling to be raised without being tied to spending cuts, while 25 percent are all for tying cuts to the deal. That leaves 24 percent somewhere in the middle, and that looks like what will happen in the next week.

The word "hostage" is being used a lot by Democratic politicians these days, and they point out that Dems never held the economy hostage when Trump was in office. It's not that Dems have never forced negotiations over the debt ceiling, but not in recent times.

Many Rs appear to be so "over" the idea of a fair fight or even acknowledging their opponents as humans worthy of respect. When winning is everything, no matter the consequences, the poor always get hurt in American politics. 

I am disappointed that Mr. Biden did not hold fast to "we will not negotiate" with terrorists (Rs) over the debt ceiling, but I suppose some sort of deal is necessary when minority rule has taken over the country. As long as Wyoming has as many votes in the Senate as California, there is little hope for any ideas that would benefit the vast majority of Americans... and politicians clearly don't care about national opinion.

After all, they don't get elected nationally, unless running for president (which R's can't win anymore). They get elected within a district or state, so who cares that over half the country prefers more gun safety laws, raising the debt ceiling with no strings, legalizing marijuana, and protecting women from laws that punish them for being the gender that gives birth.

Is it any wonder that the biggest threat to America is increasing feelings that nothing can be done. What does my vote matter? The rich and powerful will always get their way.

And that is my final thought as we enter Memorial Day weekend. I'm sure all those soldiers who died defending liberty are delighted to have sacrificed themselves for rich politicians who could not care less about dying soldiers, women, or children. 

This is not new in America. It's just become acceptable.

Is our job to make students a bit uncomfortable or to avoid challenges?

More "For the Love of Sentences" samples this week, with the first two referring to the recent coronation of Charles III. Americans are fascinated by British royalty and all the pomp and circumstance, even as we proudly proclaim our dislike of a very few people becoming rich and famous through an accident of birth.

Rachel Tashjian in The Washington Post weighed in on the ostentation of Charles’s coronation: “The red velvet robes trimmed in ermine, the five-pound crown, the gold robes on top of gold robes dragging over gold carpets — the regalia often made it feel like a Versace fashion show staged in an assisted-living facility.”

So many of these highlighted sentences depend a lot on the author assuming advanced vocabulary skills plus a wide-ranging grasp of popular culture, politics, and current events. There is a tendency to "dumb down" our examples and writing for media classes (maybe for most high school classes), but there are some solid arguments that take another tack.

We don't "dumb down" Shakespeare as a matter of course, preferring to guide students along the journey of learning new diction and syntax, not to mention the intricacies of iambic pentameter. Some might argue that students can't be expected to expand their working vocabulary if we don't push them a bit. 

"Ermine" and "regalia" may not be in many students' working vocabulary, but they could be. And they might not recognize "Versace" immediately, but adding that high fashion reference helps them see a wider world.

In The New Yorker, J.R. Moehringer, the ghostwriter of Prince Harry’s memoir, “Spare,” reflected on the impossibility of walking entirely in this particular man’s shoes: “I’d worked hard to understand the ordeals of Harry Windsor, and now I saw that I understood nothing. Empathy is thin gruel compared with the marrow of experience.” 

Here the use of "gruel" is almost Dickensian, particularly when discussing the British royalty. Students may need to have the characteristics of "thin gruel" vs. "marrow" -- presumably connoting something richer. 

Also in The New York Times, Robert Draper profiled William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director: “His ascent is an unlikely turn for a tall, discreet figure with wary eyes, ashen hair and a trim mustache, a sort you could easily imagine in a John le Carré novel whispering into a dignitary’s ear at an embassy party that the city is falling to the rebels and a boat will be waiting in the harbor at midnight.”

Few students will be avid readers of John le Carré spy novels, but he is so famous that we owe them at least a way to translate such references when they appear. 

And Michael Levenson reported in the Times on the odd dumping of hundreds of pounds of pasta alongside a creek in Old Bridge, N.J. “When photos of the discarded pasta were shared on a Reddit discussion about all things New Jersey, it became fertile ground for puns and dad jokes,” he wrote. “Someone commented: ‘We should send the perpetrators to the state penne tentiary.’” Town workers cleaned up and disposed of the pasta in under an hour. “It was not clear if a large fork had been used.”

This reporting combines a mystery with allusions to food. Will students immediately smile reading "penne" as connected to "penitentiary"? Who knows? But this example illustrates using a pun and simply stretching what is expected from language. 

'Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right'

Following up on my last post, America may have entered its "post-shame" period. More revelations about the corruption of Clarence Thomas (a hypocritical lost soul), about Donald Trump (a convicted abuser of women, not to mention a dingbat who can't bring himself to favor Ukraine over murdering Russians), and a long list of cowardly politicians (mostly Angry White People Party types) who keep feeding their base voters b.s. And those voters demand more of whatever lies make them feel better.

America has also become a country that creates policies and laws that place us all in a frustrating prison of "there's just nothing we can do."

There are, of course, all sorts of things we can do. We can feed poor children and families. We can provide health care for all. We can limit the manufacture and sales of the worst sorts of weapons. We can drastically reduce income gaps among our citizens. We can end the problem of government officials refusing to ever leave their positions of power. We can fix social security's finances. 

We just don't want to... and we have stopped even looking for HOW we can do these sorts of things. "Age of Decadence" may be a more appropo term for where the U.S. is right now. 

Most of our wounds are self-inflicted, but we act like everything is a simple act of God. 

At some point, leaders needs to prioritize to address our challenges. Everyone (except some nutcases) thinks it would be disastrous for the nation to default on its debts. But here we are, just a few weeks from doing so. It's a game, after all, though the bulk of citizens will experience the pain, not the leaders. 

The rich and powerful always do fine.

Right now, all our problems feel about the same weight... all streaming through chaotic media that has rejected any "rules" civilized society previously imposed. One outraged post on social media is just as loud as all the other outraged posts. 

CNN claiming that there was nothing that could be done to limit the lies and trolling of Trump during a "Town Hall" that was really just a Trump rally is a classic case of no shame, no responsibility, and no wisdom. CNN just wanted the money, and got it. 

Most sex offenders don't get a free hour of publicity to spread their ugliness... just a day or so after being convicted (I know... Trump wasn't convicted, technically, since this was a civil case, but that's a distinction most of us find laughable). Of course there were plenty of cult members eager to cheer and join in the game. There always are. 

Morons and publicity seekers aren't unusual. They have always plagued us. They always will.

We just don't need to put them on TV.

Watching the Supreme Court implode is sad; where is the shame?

I can see arguments that maintain that shame is a tactic/emotion that can lead to depression, fear, lashing out, withdrawal from society, and an excuse for the self-righteous to punish the guilty/spotlighted. Cancel culture, whatever that really means, is mostly an handy way for trolls to make others miserable, which may make the trolls feel fleetingly better.

But shame, or more accurately, the threat of shame, can be the factor that stops the worst choices or actions... before they can damage society and/or individuals.

The curious case of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and the clearly unethical financial decisions he has made are the latest example of how an absence of shame, particularly among many with great power, can make those of us who still experience shame (or fear of being shamed) a bit crazy.

He and his advisers can argue all they want about the letter of the law or the lack of codes to follow or whatever other juicy excuses they can conjure, but the plain fact is that a judge looks like he is open to being "bought," and that can't be tolerated.

There is only one mechanism for removing the guy... and that isn't going to happen because impeachment is impossible in the current environment. Thomas can just shrug, hide behind the walls and costumes of the court, and go on taking money and (possibly) granting favors to those who have invested in him.

That leaves shame as the only mechanism that could change the dynamic. If Clarence Thomas has convinced himself that he need not be ashamed of accepting money from the rich and powerful and that the mere acceptance of their largess is no big deal... well, he will remain until his death.

Of course, the point of shame is that society prefers certain choices over others. Sometimes society is wrong or prejudiced or just stubborn, but that is no reason to just ban "shame" as a tool in maintaining order and restraining excess. 

Putin can't be shamed at this point, and he functions as a dictator. Trump can't be shamed and he continues to run for re-election despite being a rapist, an insurrectionist, a petty thief, and a con artist. His rabid supporters either deny all facts about him or positively revel in his "getting away with it." Those people are beyond shame as much as Trump is.

The Supreme Court has lost a lot of it credibility among Americans by reinforcing our sense that the rich and powerful play by different rules. Clarence Thomas is not the only justice who blatantly uses his position for personal gain, but his lack of caring what the "peons" think is the most public and appalling. 

He needs to resign. Then he can find out if his supposed friends among the angry but wealthy white people will stick with him. 

He has been a tool of the Angry White People Party, at least potentially. It is ironic that a Black man can be used so publicly and blatantly by white people. Turns out that race makes no difference when it comes to greed. It's good to know that we really are more alike than different.

Tucker Carlson refuses to be shamed but his employers still removed him from his top-rated cable show. He won't go away, but at least his influence is momentarily diminished. 

Even FOX News can be shamed, just a tiny bit. 

Can Clarence Thomas?

Finding poetic devices in prose connects students to prior learning

This week's Frank Bruni "For the Love of Sentences" featured a number of examples of using those terms we had to memorize in English classes in middle school (or earlier).

Let's take a look at four. 

Alliteration
New York Times obituary writer Margalit Fox noted: “Barry Humphries, the Australian-born actor and comic who for almost seven decades brought that divine doyenne of divadom, Dame Edna Everage, to delirious, dotty, disdainful Dadaist life, died on Saturday in Sydney.” 

The Dame Edna character will not be familiar to today's students, but there are additional challenges here, mostly due to students not knowing some of the key vocabulary. Two terms that will need some background: "doyenne" and "Dadaist." But even young readers will be able to hear the repetition of the d sounds.

Margalit further defined Dame Edna as “a stiletto-heeled, stiletto-tongued persona who might well have been the spawn of a ménage à quatre involving Oscar Wilde, Salvador Dalí, Auntie Mame and Miss Piggy.”

Here the writer shifts to repeats s-sounds, and then ends with allusions to four famous people from history or entertainment. Students won't know Wilde or Dali, but may recognize Mame or the Muppets. The inclusion of a French phrase will likely need to be explained. But I hope students would grasp how repeating "stiletto" combines a descriptive use of the word with a metaphorical use. Bottom line: it's quite a complex sentence.


Allusion
New Yorker writer Louis Menand examined the creative impulse: “You need to have a pretty informed idea of what the box is before you can think outside it.”

This is a version of some common advice we often give students about them needing to learn the basics and understand underlying principals before they can unleash their creative urges. It could be fun to start discussion on this sentence by talking about various "boxes" students may be encountering (and perhaps being confined by).  


Metaphor
The Wall Street Journal sportswriter Jason Gay marveled at the price under discussion for the Washington Commanders football team: “Six billion. It’s far and away an all-time U.S. record for a sports franchise — all for a jalopy of sadness coasting on the fumes of decades-old accomplishments.” 

The metaphor is comparing an NFL team to a jalopy, and students may or may not have encountered that term for an old, dilapidated car. The second half of the sentence just begs for support to follow, and that is another great discussion point. This is where we can work on creating questions, whether the students know much about the team or not.


Hyperbole
In The Washington Post, Carl Hoffman reviewed “The Wager,” a new book by David Grann about a maritime voyage gone disastrously wrong: “Reading it is like living one of those anxiety nightmares in which you’re just trying to get to that job interview, but you’re lost and your teeth are falling out and, wait, when your car dies you realize you’re naked, and then you’re attacked by flesh-eating zombies.”

The exaggeration comes from piling on standard nightmares... eventually four misfortunes, and each misfortune becomes more dire for the dreamer. Building to the most "out there" example is a classic tactic for creating a series of examples that maintain momentum.

As we get near the end of the semester, it occurs to me that I need to go back through past blog posts that comment on Frank Bruni's collection of fine writing and find some ways to incorporate the best of them into some sort of lesson... or perhaps a series of short readings.

With only two weeks to go, and lots of important assignments still to come, maybe I should not be spending much time thinking about revisions to my writing courses... but that's where I am right now. More about potential changes next Friday.

A nation of (potential) killers

In the past few years, some Americans have begun asking about just what horrific mass shooting would move the needle on gun safety. Well, I have been wondering, anyway.

I am forced to make this observation: there is nothing that will be enough. No one massacre. No particular school shooting of children. No "knocked on the wrong door" outrage. No raw numbers of shooting and deaths and maimings. 

Guns are the number killer of American children, as new statistics show, but many states and many individuals simply accept those appalling deaths as a cost of "freedom." Leaders throw up their hands and claim there is nothing that can be done. 

"It's a mental health problem!" many exclaim, while offering not a single program that might actually address such issues. And no discussions about why the U.S. contains so many damaged people are allowed. No discussions of the overwhelming numbers of weapons can be shared. 

America is armed to the teeth and ready to fire at almost any provocation. And our TV and movie choices routinely offer spectacular murders, exhibit almost no remorse or guilt, and provide only the fleeing satisfaction of the "bad guy" being killed by the avenging guns of "good guys."

Many legislatures in Angry White People states are actually making it easier to own guns and many don't require as much as a training course in gun use for people to be packing. We haven't gone that far in Colorado yet, but even with Democrats firmly in control of all levels of state government, a bill to stop new sales of automatic weapons failed just this week. 

Ironically, the bill was killed early in the morning of April 20, the 24th anniversary of the Columbine HS massacre.

No matter what any of our fine leaders may claim, we really don't value children's lives as much as guns. Oh, they'll offer those pointless "thoughts and prayers," as will many of our pious neighbors who love their own children and grandchildren so much, or so they say, while continuing to support MORE weapons, more bullets, more danger. 

Douglas County, home of comfortable but aggrieved white people, elected a Democrat in 2022... a huge surprise. But he was one of the three Dems on the legislative committee who killed the attempt to limit assault weapons. He said he has promised his constituents that he would not support "more" gun laws. Mostly, he just wants to be reelected, I guess. In the end, he's just another gun worshipper.

Innocents are being shot -- and some killed -- every day in the "land of the free." Many, many more simply turn their guns on themselves. Strangers fire wildly at anyone they don't know or that randomly show up at their homes. 

And in place after place, the common refrain from the survivors is "this is not who we are."

But it is. 

When the three pillars of government all seem wobbly... the courts in particular

Perhaps this is just the way the world works: a long-standing institution, full of history and tradition, suddenly seems to break up right before our eyes.

The U.S. Supreme Court has self-destructed, though lots of forces have produced the rapid descent into squalor. It is happening quickly, but it seems likely that there has been a long period of norms and traditions breaking down. We just kept assuming the ship would right itself.

Clarence Thomas certainly rose from abject poverty to become a successful lawyer and judge on the highest court in the country. Got to give him that. But there is no cause and effect existing between "boy grew up poor and Black" and "man demonstrates strong morality, ethics, and judgment." 

In fact, there might be all sorts of motivators for someone desperate for money, fame, recognition, power, etc., to go off the rails, so to speak.

Thomas has now crossed into being a generally immoral or unethical man, along with his wife (who grew up among John Birchers in Nebraska, not that that should be an excuse). 

I assume he was guilty of most of the things Anita Hill (and other women) accused him of 30 years ago or more. But I also assumed that his close call might have been a wake up, and that he would at least keep his misogyny and overt sexism under wraps. Maybe that did happen.

But, at an even more fundamental level, Thomas's absolute power has produced a small, angry, and entitled man. Learning that he pals around with a billionaire who lavished Thomas and family with money and expensive trips and gifts may simply mean that our second Black justice is just like so many politicians and public figures. Greedy. Scornful of the general citizenry. 

But the latest revelations about him reaping a profit from selling that billionaire a home he inherited, and then having his mother continue to live there at no cost to Thomas... well, that is clearly breaking the law and clearly leveraging his position.

He's no Trump, but the difference between Thomas and Trump is more one of scale than content or quality.

Both are ugly blots on the nation. Both need to go away.

They can bathe in their wealth, but could they please do it privately? 

"Have you no sense of decency?" is the question from attorney Joseph Welch asked Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1954. McCarthy had no answer other than descending into alcoholism and dying in 1957. 

Where is the person with power on the Supreme Court who can ask Thomas a similar question? Until it is asked and answered, the court remains a travesty that few Americans can respect.