The Legacy of Brutus: Is It alive in 2024?

(From a homily delivered by Ken Germanson to the Community of the Living Spirit, a nondenominational worship group in Waukesha WI on Jan. 14, 2024)

The inspiration for today’s homily comes again from my great grandfather William Day Simonds who as I’ve told you before was a prominent Unitarian minister first in Madison WI and later in Oakland CA. He often gave sermons based on various Shakespeare characters, and today we’ll be talking about Brutus.

Brutus, let me remind you, was a friend and companion of Julius Caesar, and appears in Shakespeare’s famous play, Julius Caesar.  Brutus may be the most interesting figure in the play that featured not only the Great Caesar, but Marc Antony, Cassius, Cinna and other prominent figures of ancient Rome.

Indeed, in the play and in recorded history, Antony praises Brutus thusly, saying “This was a man!”

New Yorker, Jan 15, 2024.

What made Brutus so notable and so important for us today is that he sacrificed his life to protect democracy from being destroyed by Caesar and his allies. 

This all occurred in the years from 49 BC to 42 BC, when the mighty Caesar, riding high on the worshiping from the citizens of Rome due to his victories in the Pompeiian Wars, threatened to destroy the democratic form of government that Rome had established.

Brutus saw the dangers arising from the prospect of his longtime friend, companion and mentor Caesar who appeared to be headed toward destroying the world’s first democracy and turning it into a dictatorship.  In seeing the growing tendency of Caesar to do away with democratic processes in Rome, Brutus after much debate with himself had joined with others, like Cassius (another prominent Roman tribune) to assassinate Caesar.

Brutus – always a man of great honor and integrity – joins with the conspirators to stab Caesar to death, at the same time urging his fellow murderers to treat their victim with honor and not disfigure him.  Brutus is the last to raise his knife to slay his longtime friend, with the dying Caesar uttering the words (in Shakespeare’s play), “et tu, Brutus.”  Historians dispute that Caesar did speak as he was being slaughtered.

Brutus is troubled by his action and makes this comment in the play:

“If there be any in the assembly, any dear friend of Caesar’s to him I say that Brutus’ love to Caesar was no less than his.  If, then, that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer – not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.”

Indeed, many have characterized Brutus as a traitor to Rome for his role in the assassination of Caesar.

Pastor Simonds, however, believed that Brutus’ motives were strictly to save democracy and the Roman state.

Rome of the year 44 BC sounds strangely like the United States in 2024.  Caesar’s victory over Pompey had so enamored him with the Plebeians of the day that they were ready to make him king – the equivalent of being a dictator.  Mobs of that day must have shouted out with the same wild cheers that Donald Trump gets every time he mounts the stage.

Alas, the emperor may have no clothes, but his followers see only he’s wearing all the fineries of an ancient ruler.  Today in 2024, some 30 to 35 percent of Americans care nothing for the crudeness and ruthlessness and the dishonesty and lack of integrity shown by Mr. Trump.  He’s mesmerized his supporters, as Caesar had done more than 2000 years ago. A demagogue is dangerously close to succeeding in ending our democracy; Caesar was planning to become dictator in 44 BC and Donald Trump has already declared that he will become a dictator on his first day in office. 

Obviously, we don’t advise the assassination of the former president as Brutus and his allies did, but we do indeed need to find people who would follow the example of Brutus and show courage to speak up to tell the truth about Trump and his plans . . . even if it endangers their own personal fortunes.

A few already have, like Michael Cohen, a onetime Trump attorney, but he did so mainly to save his own skin so as to receive light sentence.

Perhaps the person who may best exemplify the spirit of Brutus’ courage is the Cassidy Hutchinson, a young woman who at age 25 found herself as chief aide to Trump’s top deputy, Mark Meadows.  Her testimony in 2022 of what she saw going on in the bowels of the White House has been devastating in the effort to hold Trump responsible for his actions in seeking to overthrow the results of the 2020 election.

Cassidy could easily have succumbed to pressure from Trump and his lackeys, who had hired an attorney to represent her in the Congressional hearings.  The attorney basically told her to shut up and tell the examining committee nothing about what she saw; she fired the attorney chose to go with the truth, even though it meant divorcing herself from the connections and relations she had with her peers in the Trump Administration.

Make no mistake about it: it takes courage to be a “whistle-blower,” to go against the flow.  In most cases, the truth-teller finds himself or herself all alone, out on the limb of a tree that feels like it might break off soon and plunge the person to a crushing fall.

To her fellow conservatives – the young Cassidy certainly came into the White House as a committed one – she was cast as a traitor.  To those who dislike Trump, of course, she was a heroine.

I can’t imagine what it was like for this young woman from a working-class family in New Jersey to find herself deep within the workings of the most powerful office on earth.  Remember, she was about as close to the source of that mighty power as anyone, particularly in her position as chief assistant to Mark Meadows, the man who had the ear of Donald Trump.

As it has happened, Cassidy has gained notoriety and has even authored a book, entitled “Enough,” from which she expects to profit.  This leads one to wonder: were her motives as pure as they seem?  Or, did she really seek personal profit in her actions?

Of course, we can’t probe her mind to find her true purpose, but the point is she had the courage to step forward to do right by her nation.  It was a patriotic act, no matter how you want to cast it.

Shakespeare’s Brutus, as Pastor Simonds reminds us, was not a perfect person.  Historians have described him as being arrogant and intolerant toward anyone of a lower status in society.  Also, his wife, Portia kills herself, largely because of Brutus’ long absences from home, and because he refused to accept her warning that he should abandon his mission to destroy Caesar.

Regardless of the human frailties that Brutus may have exhibited, Pastor Simonds offers him as an example of what a human being must achieve.  His sermon ends with these words (please excuse his use of the male pronoun, remember this was in 1898).  He said:

“Our ideal man we can say – his aim is high and pure. His thought is broad and just.  He seeks no conquest save over ignorance and cruelty and crime. . . His creed is peace.  His religion is love.  He rejects a patriotism that is only selfishness disguised, and courage exercised in cruelty. . . ‘The world is my country and to do good is my religion,’ is his confession of faith.”

That is the point of this sermon about Brutus.  In all things, we must seek and tell the truth and to have the courage to speak up and act on that truth.  That is the key to saving our democracy and our own souls.

READINGS:

“His life was gentle; and the elements
So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, THIS WAS A MAN!”

― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

*****

I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
— Julius Caesar (Act 3, Scene 2, lines 73–108)

*****

Psalm 23:1-4

The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing.  He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters,  he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.  Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.  You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.  Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

*****

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” ~ Mother Teresa

*****

“The opposite of courage is not cowardice; it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.” —Jim Hightower

Labor’s popularity offers opportunities for 2024

Subscribe to continue reading

Subscribe to get access to the rest of this post and other subscriber-only content.

Already a subscriber?

Wisconsin at forefront of child labor reform; now GOP seeks to end key protections

Recently, two Republican legislators in Wisconsin offered a bill that would eliminate the need for children, ages 14 and 15, to obtain work permits before taking jobs.

To many child advocates such a bill will just make it easy to exploit children by paying them low wages, perhaps encourage school drop-outs and likely exposing them to dangerous and unhealthy jobs.  Commented Stephanie Bloomingdale of the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO:

“Work permits are an important piece of safety for children in the workforce and we are opposed to any further reduction in the age which would require a work permit.”

Six years ago, the state had removed the permit requirement for children aged 16 and 17 when Republicans controlled the Legislature and Scott Walker, a Republican, was governor.

It’s ironic that Wisconsin is joining a national trend among GOP-led states to loosen restrictions on child labor.  The state has a long record of laws protecting child labor, beginning in 1867 when the law passed stating that no employer could “compel” a child under 18 to work more than 8 hours a day.[i]  While that law was rarely enforced, it set the precedent that Wisconsin lawmakers recognized the need to protect children from working excessive hours.  In 1899, the law was amended to require work permits.

Historically the state felt permits were necessary to verify the ages of the children, and since the permits required the school to sign off to assure that the child was not skipping classes. 

Thus, if the current Republican proposal was enacted, it would end the use of work permits – a practice that had been going on for the last 124 years.  (I remember getting my first work permit in 1942 at age 13 so that I could become a paperboy.  I got another one two years later to work in a drugstore at age 15.)

During the 19^th Century and into the early 20^th Century, children worked in all types of industries, especially mining, garment-making, and various manufacturing workplaces.  The practice was widely condoned, even by parents who felt such work was good for the children, building into their nature a “work ethic” that would serve them well in life.  Factory owners were notorious for recruiting younger children from among the orphanages, immigrant families and runaways.

For the most part, labor unions opposed the practice.  As early as 1836. The National Trades Union convention called for a minimum age for child laborers.  In 1911, child workers joined the adults on the line in the famed Lawrence Textile Strike.  In a Congressional hearing about the strike, a child worker told how her hair had been snagged by a machine, ripping off part of her scalp and forcing her to spend seven months in the hospital.  Helen Taft, wife of then president William Howard Taft, heard the testimony, spurring her interest – and the country’s – in seeking reforms on the practice of hiring child workers.[ii]

This is one of the many photos taken by Lewis Hine that spurred the campaign for child labor reform.

Helping to spur the national outcry against child labor was Oshkosh, Wisconsin-born social worker and photographer, Lewis Hine (1874-1940).  He was hired by the muckraking National Child Labor Committee, formed in 1904 to take photographs in the campaign for child labor reform.  Hine journeyed to farms and mills in the industrializing South and the streets and factories of the Northeast. He used a Graflex camera with 5-by-7-inch glass plate negatives and employed flash powder for nighttime and interior shots, hauling upwards of 50 pounds of equipment on his slight frame.

To gain entry into factories and other facilities, Hine sometimes disguised himself as a Bible, postcard or insurance salesman. Other times, he’d wait outside to catch workers arriving for or departing from their shifts. Along with photographic records, Hine collected his subjects’ personal stories, noting their ages and ethnicities. He documented their working lives, such as their typical hours and any injuries or ailments they incurred because of their labor.

Notably, the National Child Labor Committee’s efforts resulted in Congress establishing the Children’s Bureau in 1912 and passing the Keating-Owen Act in 1916, which limited working hours for children and prohibited the interstate sale of goods produced by child labor.

Lewis Hine, Oshkosh native

Although the Supreme Court later ruled it and the subsequent Child Labor Tax Law of 1919 unconstitutional, momentum for enshrining protections for child workers had been created. In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which finally established restrictions and protections on employing children.[iii]

Yet, child labor violations continue to this day.  Recently a Wisconsin food safety sanitation services provider paid $1.5 million in penalties for illegally employing more than 100 children, ages 13 to 17, in hazardous occupations including overnight shifts at meat processing plants in eight states, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

A Department of Labor investigation found that Packers Sanitation Services, based in Kieler in Grant County, employed children working with hazardous chemicals and cleaning meat processing equipment including back saws, brisket saws and head splitters. At least three minors suffered injuries in the hazardous work, according to investigators.[iv]

The children of migrant farmworkers are particularly victimized to work in the fields because of family circumstances, as was described in the third reading from Jesus Salas’ new book, Obreros Unidos.  He further described how the repetitious, tiring work threatened to deaden the spirit and curiosity of the children.

“This system was most cruel . . . to those of us who were healthy of body and independent of mind and spirit.

“There was no other role for us, there were no other choices and the only variety to our lives was the different crops we harvested.  It was as if we had been born to be society’s beasts of burden.  . . . While the sickly and weak struggled, migrant fieldwork was most oppressive for those of us who had our own mind and desired a different life.”

I have known Jesus since the 1968 Grape Boycott marches and over beers through the years he has described his childhood.  Based in Crystal City, Texas, the family would drive to harvest seasons each year in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and finally Wisconsin.  Some years, he said, he attended seven different schools.  His father finally bought a farm in Central Wisconsin and later opened a restaurant in Wautoma, and the family settled down. 

While conditions in the work camps have improved through the years, there’s little evidence to show that children aren’t still being victimized. 

Child labor violations actually declined greatly in the years before 2015.  Since then, violations have been on the rise since 2015, according to the U.S. Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division.[v]

In 2015 — the low point in the data — the Wage and Hour Division found 1,012 minors employed in violation of child labor laws, with an average of 1.9 per case. In 2022, that number more than tripled to 3,876, averaging 4.6 per case.

Beyond the federal law, all states have similar child labor laws, some stronger and more effective than the federal statute.  Wisconsin’s permitting process has worked for more than a century, but the laws are being weakened, largely by Republican leaders influenced by factory owners, restaurant operators, owners of large industrial farms and others who are seeking to more easily put children to work.  They claim such work is good for the soul, but it’s obvious their motives are purely to make greater profit, the health and safety and education of the child be damned.

---

[i] https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?httpsredir=1&article=4584&context=mulr

[ii] https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2017/article/history-of-child-labor-in-the-united-states-part-2-the-reform-movement.htm

[iii] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-photographer-who-forced-the-us-to-confront-its-child-labor-problem-180982355/

[iv] https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2023/02/28/wisconsin-company-employed-100-children-in-meat-packing-plant-jobs/69953196007/

[v] https://www.npr.org/2023/02/26/1157368469/child-labor-violations-increase-states-loosen-rules

Whose life is more worthy?

In mid-June, some 630 men, women and children fleeing the misery of Middle East troubled nations drowned in Mediterranean Sea when their overloaded boat sunk.  It’s a good bet that you – and many other readers of this blog – never heard about this disaster. 

More recently, 41 migrants died in a shipwreck off the Italian island of Lampedusa. A group of four people who survived the disaster told rescuers that they were on a boat that had set off from Sfax in Tunisia and sank on its way to Italy.

Did you also realize that more than 1,800 people have lost their lives so far this year in the crossing from North Africa to Europe?

A typically overloaded boat of migrants

More likely you’re well aware of the fate of the Titan, a deep-sea submarine lost with five voyageurs, including four who paid S250,000 each for the vanity adventure.  They were looking for the ruins of the Titanic, some 1200 feet (about 365.76 m) deep in the North Atlantic. 

Readers of the New York Times might have seen the story of the deaths of these migrant families; it even appeared on the front page.  The story, however, was focused on the rescue efforts performed by the captain and crew of a luxury yacht that was nearby.  Apparently, the Times reporter and editors felt the most interesting part of the story was not the massive drownings, but that a rich man’s yacht was involved.  (To his credit, the yacht’s captain said he felt he did nothing special in that he merely followed the traditions of the sea in that a ship must always go off its main course to help rescue a ship that was in distress.) 

These episodes raise the question:  Are the lives of these four wealthy persons and the pilot of the craft to be valued more than the lives of the migrants who drowned in the Mediterranean? 

This question burned even more deeply into my thoughts recently when I participated in a golf tournament and my cart partner was a retired Air Force pilot.  He told me he had something like 135 missions over Vietnam in which he dropped hundreds of pounds of bombs.  “This was the best year of my life,” he told me. 

“The best year” of his life was spent dropping bombs that no doubt killed or maimed Vietnamese, many of them surely innocent noncombatants.  It is estimated that up to 65,000 North Vietnam citizens died in the U.S. bombings; another estimate places the number at 182,000 casualties during Operation Rolling Thunder. 

Without denying the bravery required in piloting planes into anti-aircraft fire and enemy fighter plane opposition, my golfing partner’s comment nonetheless would appear to demean the value of life to the citizens below.  True, he was “at war,” and we’ve always been propagandized into demonizing the enemy.  No doubt in the heat of war, my pilot friend gave no thought to the lives he would be destroying. 

These incidents dramatize how we value some lives and don’t value others.  Judith Sunderland, of the Human Rights Watch, commented in a New York Times interview that when there’s talk about the treatment of migrants “we cannot avoid talking about racism and xenophobia.”     

Donald Trump began his first presidential campaign in 2015 calling the folks who were seeking to enter the United States along our border with Mexico “undesirables.” 

While riding down the escalator, he said famously: “When Mexico sends it people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” 

There’s a disturbing upward trend in this country of considering the life of white, Christian men as more valuable than the lives of any other persons.  Any effort to bring about equality for people of color, for women, for members of the LGBTQ community is dismissed as “woke,” whatever that means.  Such efforts are scorned as “political correctness,” as if such efforts are wrong and negative. 

In “red” states, legislatures are seeking to enshrine the white Christian as a superior race.  Texas may be among the worst as it seeks legislation to, among other things, require the posting of the Ten Commandments in every classroom.  In arguing against the bill, Rep. James Talarico (D-Austin), a former schoolteacher and Christian seminary student, hit the nail on the head with this comment: 

“This bill, to me, is not only unconstitutional, it’s not only un-American, I think it is also deeply un-Christian.  And I say that because I believe this bill idolatrous . . . exclusionary . . . arrogant and those three things, in my reading of the Gospel, are diametrically opposed to the teachings of Jesus. 

“We both [Christians and Jews] follow a teacher, a rabbi, who said, ‘Don’t let the law get in the way of loving your neighbor.’  Loving your neighbor is the most important law.  It is the summation of all the law and all the prophets.  I would submit to you that our neighbor also includes the Hindu student who sits in a classroom, the Buddhist student and an atheist student.” 

When we feel we are the smartest, the most moral of persons, perfect in any way, we become sinfully proud and arrogant, and we are violating the very basis of our Christianity.  We are also violating the key principles of our American democracy. 

Because I am a white, male American makes me no better than the black, Hispanic or Asian person seeking asylum in this country.  And if you’re richer than me, your life is no more valuable than mine.  Ken Germanson, Aug. 9, 2023 

Patriotism: Must It Blind Us?

(Remarks prepared for a homily delivered by Ken Germanson at a service April 2, 2023 before the Community of the Living Spirit, an ecumenical worship group in Waukesha WI)

A few days ago we marked the 20^th Anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by American troops.  What a disaster that turned out to be! 

According to official Defense Dept. statistics, there have been 4,431 deaths of U.S. service personnel just in Iraq, with another nearly 32,000 listed as injured, many now beginning to populate our VA hospitals across the nation.

But sadly, the numbers of Iraqi citizens killed – nearly all noncombatants – number anywhere from 280,000 to 315,000 and even those numbers leave many others to be counted.  Do the math:  for every American killed, there were about 75 Iraqis who died.

I ask you: how in good conscience can we ignore the deaths of so many human beings?  Is the life of a Muslin or any other Iraqi worth any less than that of an American boy or girl who is killed when caught in the web of a military action?

And I ask you also: was that Iraq venture even necessary?  History by and large has concluded it was a mistake.  But the nation was riled up by a wave of resentment fueled by the 911 attack, some of us to a level hate against all Muslims? 

How could we have let this happen?  We were called upon to be “patriotic;” if you didn’t heed President George W Bush’s call to exact revenge upon the perpetrators of the attacks against the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and the crash in the Pennsylvania countryside you were being unpatriotic.  So we blindly went along with Bush and his call that weapons of mass destruction were being readied to attack us.  So we attacked the wrong nation, didn’t we?  Most of the perpetrators of 911 were from Saudi Arabia – a nation we felt we couldn’t alienate because of oil.  And, as we learned too late, there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq . . . their existence was a myth.

The unexpected damage done by IEDs made fighting in Iraq most difficult for U.S. Troops.

In perspective, we must acknowledge that we rid that nation of Saddam Hussein and his dictatorial regime.  But the freedoms today in Iraq are still limited, and the nation economically is still reeling from the ravages of the war that we, the United States, started.  Life is not easy there.

In a way, the Iraqi war’s results were not much different than the results of any of the wars our nation has engaged in since World War II. 

When we ended World War II in 1945, most of us were feeling triumphant that the awful fighting was ended.  Some of us even had hope that this was the war to end all wars!  It turned out to be a vain hope, just as World War I was supposed to be the war that ended all wars.

Many Americans looked forward to a future of lasting peace; peace conferences began even before the final Japanese surrender and the United Nations was founded.

I was in high school during much of World War II, knowing full well that upon graduation I would likely be asked to serve.  As a junior in 1945, I became fascinated by a book, The Anatomy of Peace, by Emery Reves.  In an appeal to Americans and the world, the front flap of the book’s first edition in 1945 had an “Open Letter to the American People,” signed by Owen J. Roberts, and Senators J.W. Fulbright, Claude Pepper, Elbert D. Thomas, and other dignitaries.  The letter began:

The first atomic bomb destroyed more than the city of Hiroshima. It also exploded our inherited, outdated political ideas.

A few days before the force of Nature was tried out for the first time in history, the San Francisco Charter was ratified in Washington. The dream of a League of Nations, after 26 years, was accepted by the Senate.

How long will the United Nations Charter endure? With luck, a generation? A century? There is no one who does not hope for at least that much luck- for the Charter, for himself, for his work, and for his children’s children. But is it enough to have Peace by Luck? Peace by Law is what the peoples of the world, beginning with our selves, can have if they want it. And now is the time to get it.^[3]

In a few words, Reves’ message was that the existence of nation states – sovereign unto themselves – was at the core of the unending series of wars.  What we needed, in essence, was a world federal government – that is a United States of the World.  I was put onto this book by two buddies and one of our teachers at Wauwatosa High.  What a revelation!  Finally, I saw that our notion that the USA was the center of the world was wrong.  I had been led to believe that the magnificent United States was the font of all wisdom . . . that we were the BEST and FINEST nation in the world.  Now, to learn that the USA was NOT the center of the world.  That was a shock.

Surprisingly, this idea of a world federal government grew popular and by 1948 was found to be the 4^th best funded lobby group in Washington.  Reves’ book sold 800,000 copies and was translated into 31 languages.

Yet, for many in the United States, this world federalist idea was heresy.  How could one be a patriot and support the idea of ‘one world government?’

And, indeed the idea of a world government soon fizzled, killed by the Cold War.  People who championed such ideas were soon to be labelled “unpatriotic,” “kooks” or “commies.”  The Cold War called upon all of us to march in lockstep, never to challenge the status quo, never to question that values of a Capitalistic economy or the Judeo-Christian cultures.

The fear of communism ran rampant in the country by 1948, spurred on by the House Un-American Activities Committee, the Hollywood blacklist, the Hearst newspapers, Walter Winchell and finally our own Joe McCarthy.  The more militant trade unions were tagged with being communist; in each case, they lost the protection of the Nation’s labor law and they were targeted and lost membership and income, including the United Electrical Workers, the Mine, Mill and Smelters Union and certain factions of the UAW.  Remember the 1947-48 Allis-Chalmers strike, which involved an effort the UAW national leadership, including Walter Reuther, to rid UAW Local 248 of its supposed “communist” leaders.  Managements could easily blunt the influence of the more militant trade unionists by labeling them as unpatriotic and even ‘commies.”

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover kept a file on Martin Luther King, Jr., in a challenge to King’s outspoken advocacy.

Fighters for civil rights, including notably Martin Luther King, were also targeted; J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI kept close look on the reverend.  I heard many accuse Father James Groppi of being communist. 

Thus, those that opposed any progressive change in our nation – any efforts to challenge the status quo – turned to using the “unpatriotic” or “commie” label to weaken their opposition.

Now, let’s see how the concept of “patriotism” may have clouded our nation’s decisions to go to war in the last 75 years.

Take Korea, for instance.  In the years leading up to our entry into Korea in June 1950, the growing fear of communism had taken over the nation.  The Truman Administration had been accused of “losing China” when the corrupt Chang Kai Shek fled in favor of Mao and the Communists.  With elections in the offing, Democrats could hardly resist entering Korea for the “purpose of stopping the rise of communism.” 

Now Vietnam!  It had been deserted by the French in 1956, and the popular Ho Chi Minh took over north Vietnam.  Ho, you’ll remember was no friend of the Chinese communists; he was, indeed, more of a Vietnam nationalist.  But he was also a sympathizer of communism, making it easier to tag him as spreading the red threat … he had to be stopped.

By the early 1960s, the US had troops in Vietnam, small numbers to be sure but sent by President John F. Kennedy in order to stop the spread of communism.  Gradually more and more were sent in as Lyndon Johnson became president.  The public generally supported this.  We were easily conned to support the escalation . . . largely because most of wanted to be conned.  After all, it was our patriotic duty.

In the middle 1960s, all of us who dared to challenge our Vietnam adventure were called unpatriotic.

It was a sad irony that the Vietnam war was fought largely by young men and women from lower income families; if you recall, young men (and it was only men who were subject to the draft) who attended college were exempt from active duty until they graduated or quit school.  So the ugly battle in the jungles was largely carried on by the sons of working class families.  It is further irony that many of our political leaders never served in the Vietnam War; Bill Clinton had successfully requested 5 or 6 deferments as did the ‘chicken hawks’ who took us into the Iraq War, people like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld while George W. Bush himself was able to have his father wangle enrollment in the Alabama Air National Guard to avoid going overseas.

By the time of Desert Storm in 1990 and the Iraq invasion 13 years later, we were relying on our armed forces to be totally volunteer, also filled largely by young people from lower income families.  Less than one percent of U.S. families has a member serving today, making such war adventures remote and largely ignored by most Americans.  If you have a loved one in Iraq or Afghanistan, you definitely care about the decisions being made in such wars.  The rest of us may be more worried about our taxes or whether the potholes in our streets will ever get filled.

Now, we’re facing decisions about the Ukraine.  More than a year after Putin invaded that country, it’s seems there’s no end in sight for the fighting, bringing more devastation and death to that nation.  The Biden Administration has poured hundreds of billions of dollars and military resources into the battle, which has become by and large a stalemate at this point. 

What should our nation do?  The choices are:  One, to continue as we are, supporting Ukraine with weapons and other resources; two, send our own troops in to support Ukraine forces and face nuclear reaction from Putin; or three, force Zelenskyy to compromise and seek a settlement that would include ceding much of its eastern territory to Russia.  None of these answers are satisfactory.

Also, we’re seeing China assert its own aggressiveness, not only with threats to occupy Taiwan but in its very open efforts to seize control of the South China Sea.  What should we do? Send an aircraft carrier force into South China Sea to challenge the Chinese effort? Should we station troops in Taiwan?  Any of these actions may end up creating a war, with possible use of nuclear weapons.

I don’t know the answer to any of these questions.  Certainly, I’m not preaching isolationism.  Our nation, I believe, stands for protecting the dignity of all persons, and we do care about citizens in other nations.

My only point is that as we not let phony patriotism blind us to making the wisest decisions.  But it is hard to challenge the popular view of the day.

Dr. King said it best:

“Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world.”

All of us must be engaged and knowledgeable about the decisions our nation must make.  We must not be content with waving the flag and going along with the popular view if we believe such a view is misguided.  It will require courage, but it’s our obligation as good citizens to face the challenge of telling truth to power.

_____

Significant readings: 

Isaiah 2:4 – And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

*****

“Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world” – Martin Luther King

*****

“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”

Martin Luther King

*****

Our work for peace must begin within the private world of each of us. To build for man a world without fear, we must be without fear. To build a world of justice, we must be just.

Dag Hammarskjold

Dr. King’s Dream: Is It Relevant Today?

Excerpted from homily presented by Ken Germanson, Feb. 5, 2023 before the Community of the Living Spirit,

a nondenominational congregation based in Waukesha WI:

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

“I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right down in Alabama little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., March on Washington, Aug. 28, 1963

This year marks the 60^th Anniversary of the famed 1963 March on Washington and Martin Luther King’s remarkable “I Have a Dream” speech.  Already, the speech has become one of the most memorable in U.S. History, rivaling in greatness and inspiration Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Patrick Henry’s “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech, and John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address.

Dr. King at the 1963 March on Washington

In another great speech, George Washington placed upon the citizens of this young nation in 1789 the curse of “exceptionalism” that many persons believe makes our nation special and supreme in the world.  He said in the memorable First Inaugural Address that fate “has been pleased to favor the American people with opportunities for deliberating in perfect tranquility, and dispositions for deciding with unparalleled unanimity on a form of government for the security of their union and the advancement of their happiness.”  He was saying that this nation would be an experiment in democracy that could revolutionize the practice of self-government to work for the welfare of ALL its citizens.  And now, 234 years later, we must ask: has our nation failed in living up to his lofty explanations?

All of these speeches force us to reflect upon the special place that our nation rests upon the world of nations. 

Think about it:  Patrick Henry’s speech summoned the revolutionaries to have the courage to challenge the superior British army in order to establish our nation; at Gettysburg, Lincoln reaffirmed that the carnage of the Civil War may have been necessary to reinforce the fact that our nation is  “of the people, by the people, and for the people;” and JFK reminded us that we must not expect that the country exists to do for us, but that we must do the best for our nation. 

And in 1963, just three months before President’s assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. summoned us to continue the dream of a democratic nation dedicated to equality, both socially and economically.

Now 60 years later, the legacy promised by Patrick Henry, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and Dr. King is being challenged as it has ever been.  Is the exceptionalism of the United States of America a myth?  Is Dr. King’s dream just that, a dream, from which we awake to a morning of fear, horror and disgust?

Dr. King’s dream of seeing a white child in Alabama walking hand-in-hand with a black child has – for me – always been the symbol of a utopia that we have yet to achieve . . . it’s been an image that has always been most motivating for me.

In many ways, of course, that marvelous image of sisterhood and brotherhood has been realized.  We do indeed see black, white and brown children playing together – but truly that’s not the norm.  In high school cafeterias kids still gather into racial enclaves; black kids still play with black kids and so on.  Whites marry blacks more often now, but it’s still exception . . . and the children of those marriages aren’t always treated fairly.

Jobs are more integrated now . . . or are they?  Check it out: don’t you more often see black or brown men (or women) bussing tables in a restaurant while the waiter is white?  We see segregation in job hierarchy everywhere, don’t we.  Black players dominate the ranks of the NFL, but their teams are most likely to be coached and managed in the front office by white men.  And so that’s America’s job market.

Where do we live?  Don’t we still tend to live in neighborhoods dominated by people of our own race. 

A lot of this segregation – if not most – is caused by economics.  The earnings of black and Hispanic workers are – on the average – 20% less than white workers.  Housing prices and rents in decent neighborhoods are far too high for these workers of color.  Young workers of color enter the workforce with fewer years of education, or with an inferior level of learning experiences . . . thus dooming their earning potential for years to come . . . and relegating their children to futures fin jobs with low wages and lousy advancement potential.

It’s a usually a never-ending cycle of poor expectations.

This sorry state of affairs has persisted – and in many cases may have gotten worse – throughout American history.  The promise of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution and Dr. King’s dream have yet to be realized. 

That’s why it is timely today – at the beginning of Black History Month – to look back to the 1963 March on Washington when Dr. King gave his famous speech.  The Dream speech is well-remembered, but Dr. King’s remarks were only one part of an otherwise memorable day . . . his words in fact did not reflect the real goal of the day . . . and that was to call for economic justice for ALL.

The March was organized by A. Philip Randolph, founder and longtime President of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and Bayard Rustin, an activist closely allied with America’s labor unions.  Much of the support came from labor unions, mostly the United Auto Workers, whose Caucasian President Walter Reuther was a major speaker.  (Incidentally, in the early 1960s, many unions still practiced racism in their ranks.)

Most notably the event was called “The March for Jobs and Freedom,” thus highlighting the key purpose of the occasion.  In fact, in many other of his speeches, Dr. King recognized the need for economic justice for black workers as necessary to key full justice.

Today, we need to understand, as Martin Luther King understood, that the underpaid and exploited white worker is in the same boat with the underpaid and exploited black, Hispanic or native American worker.  Unfortunately, there are those who would try to separate the fortunes of the lower-income white worker from her or his co-workers of color . . . and they’ve succeeded in doing that.  Witness how the white working class male vote has increasingly gone to Republicans, who largely take on issues that hardly benefit workers and their families.  Repeatedly, I think, they vote against their own well-being – at least as far as the economics go.

Republicans have discovered that racist arguments feed into the fears of white working class and rural Americans, blaming “them” and “those people” for their poor economic situation.  The non-college-educated white man between the ages of 34 and 54 today is actually less well-off than his counterpart was a few decades earlier; only one in ten, for instance, belong to a union, where their economic fortunes might be higher.  Weekly earnings of a white college graduate in 2021 according to BLS hit a median of $1,673, while those with only a high school degree earned $940 a week and the dropouts but $691.  Is it any wonder that suicide rates of non-college-educated men keep going up and they’re dying at a faster rate than any other age bracket.

Thus Dr. King’s message was not only to boost Black citizens, particularly working people, but to economically boost ALL workers.  He saw that poverty in the white community would become an insidious infection that would doom forever any chance that his dream of white and black children walking hand-in-hand would ever come true. 

Despite the racism that persisted in many of America’s unions at the time, Dr. King saw in the union movement the best hope of realizing economic justice for all workers.  Sadly, because of unfair labor laws and lackluster union leadership in many cases, the number of workers in unions today has dropped from approximately 33% in the 1950s to under 10% today … and less than 7% in the private sector.  Thus, labor’s power to right these economic wrongs has dropped.

So, the question today is:  how can we fulfill Dr. King’s dream if we cannot figure out a way to bring economic equality among ALL of America’s families?  Can we revitalize the labor movement or must we find new ways to attain economic justice … and along with it full equality for all citizens in all facets of life in order to make Dr. King’s dream become reality?

Beware the Deceivers: Iago is Alive Today

Shakespeare’s Othello – written some six centuries ago – remains relevant today.  I realized that a few months ago when I learned, my great grandfather, William Day Simonds, a prominent Unitarian minister in Madison and later in Oakland, California had published a book called “Sermons from Shakespeare,” in 1898.

I was surprised to learn during Google search on family genealogy that the book is still available in reprints, so I bought it.  What I got in return mail was a photographic reproduction of the original, which was fine.

I checked out his sermon entitled “Faultless Desdemona,” based on the play Othello and realized that the play offers great lessons for today’s mixed up world.

Pastor Simonds calls “Othello” one of the Bard’s greatest dramas and also says it is perhaps the most deeply religious of Shakespeare’s plays.  He wrote that it portrays the “fundamental principal in New Testament teaching … [of] the presence among men of a persistent and malignant evil, a power cursing humanity, a Father of lies deceiving the world, a dread, destroying spirit of darkness.”

Iago, in the play, is truly one of Shakespeare’s most evil villains, as you’ll find out as we trace Iago’s behavior.

The play is set in motion when Othello, a heroic black general in the service of Venice, appoints Cassio and not Iago as his chief lieutenant.  Iago, who thought he should have the appointment, is enraged and sets about to plot Othello’s downfall by falsely implicating Othello’s wife, Desdemona, and Cassio in a love affair.

Iago is the conniver, the manipulator, the deceitful one who makes all this tragedy happen.  As Pastor Simonds writes, “we are to watch the Evil One as he snares his prey. . . daring, gifted, dangerous Iago has made evil his God.  He will play with men to their hurt . . .”

Iago indeed an evil genius.  He feeds each person’s particular needs with lies that are cleverly fashioned to get that person to do what he wants them to do.  First, succeeds in getting Roderigo, a wealthy businessman who has his eyes on romancing the lovely Desdemona, to fuel the hurt felt by Desdemona’s father over his daughter’s marriage to the Moor.  She married Othello without first telling her father, and he was deeply hurt.  Othello is told: “Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see. She has deceived her father and may thee.” Thus, the seeds are planted in Othello’s mind that his young wife may eventually be unfaithful.

The ultimate lie comes when Desdemona accidentally drops a handkerchief.  (The piece of cloth was the first gift given her by Othello.)  It was found by Emilia, Iago’s wife who has been serving as Desdemona’s maid.  Emilia gives the hanky to Iago, who then plants it into Cassio’s apartment.

Iago had already misled Othello to believe that Desdemona was having the affair with Cassio.  It was an outright lie, since Cassio was involved with another woman and had no desires for Desdemona.  Iago also setup a phony conversation within earshot of Othello that indicated the affair was real.    These slender “proofs” confirm what Othello has been all too inclined to believe—that, as an older black man, he is no longer attractive to his young white Venetian wife. Overcome with jealousy, Othello kills Desdemona. When he learns from Emilia, too late, that his wife is blameless, he asks to be remembered as one who “loved not wisely but too well” and kills himself.

Iago’s duplicities eventually lead to the deaths, not only of Othello and Desdemona, but also to the love-struck Roderigo and to his own wife, Emilia, who he kills after she exposed his duplicity.  In the end, Iago profits little: his scheme exposed, he’s arrested, tortured and humiliated – perhaps the most damning punishment he could face.

Listen to how Pastor Simonds describes Iago’s treachery: “He proceeds to the lowest tricks of fraud and most foul lying, weaving around Desdemona a chain of circumstantial evidence. Facts are made to fit falsehoods and give Othello’s maddened brain the last sad evidence of guilt.  It all apparently goes the devil’s way.”

And my great grandfather concludes his sermon “Friends, evil is about us and within us.  An Iago may try at any hour the mettle of our spirits.  To be above temptation’s subtle power virtue must be the sole lord.”

So, I ask you: “Who is Your Iago?”

Evil – in the personification of Shakespeare’s Iago – enters our lives in one of two ways; either through internal weaknesses within ourselves or through external forces that corrupt our thinking, our aptitudes and our actions.

Let’s spend a short time on the internal aspects of evil. We all face temptations; most often we struggle through them without succumbing.  There are times, however, we give in.  Like, for instance, when I walk past the tray of chocolates on our dining room table and thus fall victim to the sin of gluttony.

Many of us find the need – rarely, I hope – to “white lie,” and if it’s a harmless one meant to spare someone else’s feelings, that’s fine.  But if it’s said to protect your reputation or to hide an embarrassment, you’re committing a sin of vanity.  Much of this is, of course, harmless; yet, it’s just plain dishonest . . . and believe me, it’ll eventually catch up with you.

Greed, sexual exploitation, selfishness and outright lying are all examples of internal weaknesses in the traditional Christian theology.  Pastor Simonds says bluntly, “The Christianity of Christ is a battle – not a dream.  It is the armed conflict of virtue and vice.”

I was struck by a note the mass murderer wrote before firing on persons in November this year at the Walmart in Chesapeake Virginia.  “Sorry everyone but I did not plan this I promise things just fell in place like I was led by Satan.”

What?  Was he trying to say that Satan pulled the trigger?  I’ve always been troubled by Christians who like to blame their sins upon the Devil or Satan; when I have done something morally wrong, frankly, I did it.  Blame me.

Now how about the external forces that often lead to our corruption, that lead us to accept falsities and untruths, and, most seriously, lead us to act upon those so-called false facts.

As we have noted in Shakespeare’s play, Iago has truly mastered the art of deception.  He has cleverly used the exaggerations, selective omissions of fact and just plain lies to achieve his evil ends.  He has fed into each person’s fetishes, beliefs and fears to plant seeds so that they will eventually perform the deeds he wishes to see done.  Make no mistake about it, he is a genius in this craft . . . an evil genius if you will. 

Shakespeare’s play offers warnings for the present day that we must be wary of those who would play into our emotions convincing us to take actions we might otherwise never think of doing.

Take patriotism, for example?  If a teacher or a college professor wishes to discuss slavery or the continuing scourge of racism, isn’t that instructor sometimes accused of being anti-American by certain folks?  Our children need a balanced education – an education based on reality and not myth.  That principle is being overrun by the current assault on our schools that any discussions into our historical examples of shame is somehow unpatriotic.

One of the classic examples of an untruth that has persisted now for forty years is Ronald Reagan’s portrayal of the vodka-drinking welfare queen – as he called her — who drove to the Chicago welfare agency in a Cadillac to collect her benefits.  It never happened!  Yet, the image has continued to poison the minds of millions of Americans who resent having to pay taxes for free-loaders.

More recently, you’ll recall a certain presidential candidate opening his campaign stating “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best . . .  They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Both of these statements help to feed the fiction that providing decent public welfare benefits is wasteful and corrupt.   Such deceptions interfere with making sound public policy.

Of course, the ultimate deception these days is the myth that President Biden stole the 2020 election.  Some 30% of Americans profess to believe that myth . . . as do some 65% of registered Republicans.  A vague video of two election workers placing a suitcase under a table has grown into evidence of a massive fraud that should have been cause to overturn the results in Georgia.  This terrible myth has thrown many Americans to distrust the electoral system, probably bringing many to avoid voting.

A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth in the minds of so many persons.

How do you fight against such deceptions.  Telling the truth ALWAYS is the best policy.

As Pastor Simonds concludes: “Truth is ever of God, in the Bible, in literature, in science.  . . . Othello was written in the upper air, where no shadow of unreality fell upon the page.  Its moral teaching, therefore, is truth and its moral purpose is clear.  Shakespeare here exposes the treachery of evil, and let’s men into the devil’s secret.”

Thus beware of deceivers.  Iago is very much alive today. Ken Germanson, Nov. 28, 2022

What the World Needs Now Is More Respect

(Edited from a homily given by Kenneth Germanson on April 3, 2022 to the Congregation of the Living Spirit, an ecumenical group in Waukesha, WI.)

I’ve been watching with awe as Ukrainian refugees are being accepted with wide-welcoming arms by most of the people of nearby Eastern European nations, particularly Poland.  Rarely have nations received displaced peoples with support, not only with food, water and shelter, but with such open acceptance.  Usually migrants are treated with disdain, disgust and horror.  Nowhere has it been truer than in our own country.  

Sadly, too, the treatment of migrants has become a political football.  Donald Trump, of course, helped to stoke the fires of resentment to immigrants when he announced his candidacy for President while riding down the escalator on June 16, 2015 and said:

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us [sic]. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” ^[i]

Ukraine refugees were welcomed into Poland and other neighboring countries.

Perhaps the difference in the treatment of the Ukrainian refugees is due to race; the Ukrainians, of course, are white and of Slavic backgrounds, very similar to the Eastern European countries that are accepting them.  The Syrians, like the Latinx from Mexico and Latin America, are dark-skinned.  

Immigrant populations have long been subject to discrimination of the worst sort, particularly in our own country.  Think of the arriving immigrants from Ireland, Italy and Poland in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  And, of course, our own African-American diaspora.

In comparison, also in 2015, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said as thousands of Syrians, Iraqis and Afghanistans sought refuge in Germany, “we’ll manage this.” Her generous reaction to the immigrants brought an avalanche of hateful and negative retorts.

Now, what does all this have to do with today’s topic:  Respect, the forgotten virtue?

I remember from my Catholic upbringing and the teaching of my convent-reared mother about the importance of the seven virtues: Prudence, Justice, Temperance, Courage, Faith, Hope and Charity.

To those I would add “Respect.”   Before you can respect yourself, you must respect others. Note that I said we must respect “others,” that means people and groups of people who are not like us.

There’s a tendency among most people – even those of us who believe we are caring, generous and open-minded – to think we are superior to other groups of people.  That type of thinking comes naturally.  Reflect upon these words by Erik Erikson, a famed psychoanalyst, who in 1973 noted how easy it was for a group of people to feel they are the “chosen species,” and how this belief clouds their ability to think and make reasonable and intelligence decisions.  This belief is dangerous since it creates, according to Erikson, a “kill and survive” mentality, a form of unthinking machoism in which a person may turn to aggression and even violence to fight those they deem to be wrong or who might challenge them.^[ii]   

You’ve likely heard the phrase, “they’re not our kind of people.”  While it sometimes refers to a difference in skin color, it can also mean people who live in another, possibly less affluent, part of town; it can also mean a professional person who might look down his or her nose at a plumber, street laborer or sanitation worker, i.e. the garbage man or woman. 

I’ve always been offended by the term “red neck” to signify a person of lesser intelligence, that is, a lesser human being.   But when you think of it, shouldn’t “red neck” be a badge of honor, since in its purest form it refers to the person who has labored in the sun day-in and day-out, most likely doing the necessary work of growing our foods or building our highways.

The late George Meany, longtime head of the AFL-CIO, has said this to folks who might question the high hourly cost of hiring a tradesperson.  Noting the even higher hourly rate charged by attorneys, he suggested that most residents of New York City would agree that a plumber was more important for their daily existence than an attorney.  

Basically, respect becomes a virtue when you can respect all human beings, regardless of what station in life they inhabit, what the color of their skin, whether they be wealthy or poor or whether they may be homeless or panhandling on the street.  Now, let’s not be Pollyannaish about this.  In my mind, you may also dislike a person’s point of view, their actions or even their manner of dress.  

Recently, I finished the book, “Four Winds,” by Kristin Hannah, and I must say it affected me more than any book I’ve read in recent years.  This book could be a modern-day “Grapes of Wrath,” in the way it describes the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and how a family in Texas was smothered in the despair of the period.  It describes among other things how a single mother with two children migrated to California and found the people there – with a few notable exceptions – to be cruel and unwelcoming.  This desperate mom repeatedly was shunned or mistreated because she was dirty, unwashed and smelled.  Yet, she tried to maintain her dignity while trying to raise her children.

After being told to get out of town by a shopkeeper, the mom’s 13-year-old daughter was both infuriated and embarrassed and sounded off: 

“Who does he think he is? Just ‘cause he hasn’t hit hard times, the crumb thinks he has the right to look down upon us.”

In truth, don’t we all need to be treated with respect?  We need that to feel we have a purpose on this earth.  It gives us dignity.

In my more than 35 years as a labor union activist, we found that the issues that truly motivated workers to seek a union, or to risk going on strike, were the issues of being treated with dignity.  

These signs highlighted the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers strike.

You may recall that Martin Luther King made his famous “mountain top” speech on the eve of his death at a strike rally for garbage workers in Memphis. He said:

“The issue is injustice. The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers. . .” ^[iii]

The strikers in Memphis carried signs proclaiming, “I Am a Man.”  That says it all, doesn’t it?

Think back, too, to the fight to end slavery and to the quest for women’s rights.  Those motivations, too, were based on the need for dignity and respect.  

 Sojourner Truth’s famous speech in 1851 to a women’s convention in Akron, Ohio, says it all:

“That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?”

There’s a common thread to all of these examples.  Everyone of us needs to feel we are somebody.  I think a lot of those folks who support Donald Trump and his foolishness are frustrated just because they’re may feel they’re not respected.  That feeling has been fueled by rightwing politicians who claim the “elites” of society, as represented by the “mainstream media,” do not respect them and their position in life.  When a person is feeling disrespected, that person is prone to follow a demagog.

Yes, respect certainly could become the eighth virtue.  Perhaps, too, we can paraphrase the golden rule to read “Respect others as you would have them respect you.” 

---

[i] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apjNfkysjbM&t=208s

^[ii] . . . Different tribes and nations, creeds and classes (and, perchance, political parties) consider themselves to be the one chosen species and will, especially in times of crisis, sacrifice to this claim much of the knowledge, the logic and the ethics that are theirs.”

• Erik H. Erikson, The 1973 Jefferson Lectures in Humanities.

^[iii] View speech here: https://www.afscme.org/about/history/mlk/mountaintop

Hope in Our Bleak Times

(Edited Remarks of Ken Germanson, March 6, 2022, to a virtual service of the Community of the Living Spirit, a nondenominational worship group in Waukesha WI. The complete service may be viewed here.)

Can our nation and society survive the multiple challenges facing all of us today: the threats against democracy by forces of the right; the divisiveness that has crippled our Congress and turned too many State Legislatures into passing absurd anti-democratic laws; the growing impact of climate change that could eventually doom millions and millions, the ongoing pandemic and, now in March of 2022, the attack by Russia’s Putin on Ukraine.  It goes on and on?

I’ve heard many say that never before have we been in such dire straits.  Sadly, too many also feel hopeless.

Yes, things are a horrifying mess, but I look back just in the past 92 years of my life to see we’ve been here before. 

I was born August 8, 1929.  Less than three months later, Oct. 29, the stock market crashed, bringing on the Great Depression that lasted through the 1930s.  One out of every four Americans were unemployed at the peak; it was a worldwide Depression with little hope on the horizon.  My dad, a tannery worker, was lucky because he was not laid off, but his wages were cut so drastically that my parents lost ownership of our house.  We continued to live there because the owner couldn’t sell the house, paying $35 a month rent.  I was too young to understand why I couldn’t get all the toys I wanted, but we always had food on the table and a weekly treat of a pint of ice cream to share among the five of us for Sunday dinner.

It was a dark time, indeed.[i]

Then, in November 1932, when the nation was at its lowest point, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected in his inauguration speech of March 4, 1933, he gave us these encouraging words:  “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.”

FDR brought us the New Deal, fueled by the input of pragmatic idealists like Harry Hopkins, Frances Perkins and Wisconsin’s own Edwin Witte, often called the father of Social Security.  FDR’s leadership created jobs through the WPA, PWA and CCC, gave us Social Security for seniors and collective bargaining that prompted millions of workers to organize and create a better life for all working Americans.  And much more.[ii]

Voters seeing the progress and a better life ahead, supported Roosevelt overwhelmingly in the 1936 election as we slowly rose out of the depression.

September 1, 1939.  Hitler attacks Poland and overwhelms it in 30 days.  In six short weeks in spring of 1940, Hitler took over Belgium, the Netherlands and France.  His troops are poised on the shores of the English Channel, as he begins to terrorize London with his bombs.  The tragedy of Dunkirk occurs as 330,000 British troops have to be evacuated across the English Channel in June of 1940, and on June 18, Winston Churchill strengthened British resolve with one of his most famous speeches saying their resolve in the face of devastating bombing would be “their finest hour.”[iii]

Later in 1940, my uncle, who lived with us and helped raise me and my brothers, was drafted and sent to Camp Polk, Louisiana.  Then came, Dec. 7, 1941 and the attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor.  Within months, the prospects of stopping the well-prepared forces of Japan and Germany seemed bleak indeed.  German submarines were sighted and one even landed on the shores of New Jersey while Japanese subs posed a threat to the California coast.  In April 1942, the U.S. surrendered the Philippines to the Japanese and the Bataan death march occurred.  Photos of skeleton-like U.S. soldiers struggling to walk while guarded by Japanese soldiers traumatized Americans that month.

Even in the heartland city of Milwaukee, we practiced air raid drills.  My dad was a block warden, charged with making certain our neighbors’ homes weren’t emitting any lights during the air raid drills.  Meanwhile, seniors in my high school were being drafted even before graduation, and the rest of us boys knew the draft board would get us eventually.  Virtually every house on our street had a blue star flag (signifying a family member in the service) and, sadly, a few had a gold flag.

In 1945, the war ended and we cheered. 

The good cheer didn’t last for long.  Within two years, the cold war began and our country (unified during the war effort) drifted into divisiveness as some of our politicians (Wisconsin’s Joe McCarthy, for example) stirred the up public about the “communist threat.”  Soon, anyone who might have an unconventional idea or supported worker or civil rights was castigated as a “communist.”[iv] 

That feeling grew intense in the 1960s with the Vietnam war.  Many of us who saw early-on that the war was wrong began speaking out, marching or campaigning to get out of Vietnam.  We were called unpatriotic or accused of being communists.  Meanwhile, our returning veterans reported being spit upon or treated badly.  It was an ugly time.  The division then was as bitter and unbending as we have today.  The basic difference and saving grace then was that neither party – Democrats or Republicans – were 100% in either camp.

Also, in the 1960s, the civil rights battles were raging.  Riots in the summer of 1967 overwhelmed many cities, even prompting Milwaukee’s Mayor Maier to place the city on a weeklong lockdown.  After Martin Luther King’s assassination on April 4, 1968, more than 140 American cities experienced disruptions, some of them violent.  It was a time when racists like Bull Conner, George Wallace and James O. Eastland strutted their nasty stuff.  But many Americans strived to bring peace and equality to society, including King, James Lewis, James Groppi and many more.[v]

Yes, now in March 2022, the future seems bleak to those of us who care about humanity, our earth, economic equality and social justice.

The lessons I’ve learned in my long life is that we must have hope.  As we’ve seen in the past, we’ve emerged from many of the past periods of chaos to create some form of resolution, never perfect, of course, but with a relative level of peace and often positive change.  For some folks, they may find hope in prayer.[vi]

Hope, however, is not enough.  We have to work to make positive changes, just as FDR’s “brain trust” helped lead us out of the Depression and the heroism of our soldiers, sailors and marines led us to peace in 1945.  My hope rests in the millions of ordinary people who are working unselfishly to save the earth from climate change, to heal racial differences, to bring economic justice and to end the pandemic.[vii]  The future of Ukraine is troubling, of course.  Yes, times are bleak, but we’ve been here before.  Ken Germanson, Jan. 22, 2022.

---

[i] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIKMbma6_dc …. or  let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

[ii] FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, 1941 STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS “THE FOUR FREEDOMS” (6 JANUARY 1941)

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression–everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way–everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want–which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear–which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor–anywhere in the world.

[iii] Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: This was their finest hour. – Winston Churchill That’s the position Britain found itself in the late spring of 1940. Poland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France had all fallen under the Nazi jackboots. Britain was the only thing standing between Adolf Hitler and control of Europe. With Britain tottering on the abyss, its prime minister, Winston Churchill, gave one of the great rallying cries in world history, the “finest hour” speech of June 18, 1940.  To hear his words, listen here.

[iv] https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10155257250556184

“Have you no sense of decency, sir.”  Joseph N. Welch, Army-McCarthy Hearings. June 9, 1954.

[v] “This is a conflict between the forces of light and dark, and in the end there will be victory for justice and democracy because will will triumph . . . If you can’t rub, walk; if you can’t walk, crawl, but keep moving forward!” – Martin Luther King sermon at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel on the University of Chicago Campus, April 13, 1956.

• [vi] But those who hope in the Lord
  will renew their strength.
  They will soar on wings like eagles;
  they will run and not grow weary,
  they will walk and not be faint.  Isaiah 40:31

[vii] “All the greatest things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honour; duty; mercy; hope.” Winston Churchill.

Does racism explain voter switch in rural and small-town Wisconsin?

Consider Wisconsin’s Adams County, a largely rural county of some 20,000 residents.  Voters there in 2012 favored the reelection of Democratic President Barack Obama by 54%, a surprising total given that the county (over 96% white) voted to re-elect a black man.

Now, come to 2020 Presidential election; despite carrying Wisconsin, Democrat Joe Biden got only 36.6% of the vote in Adams County – a drop of nearly 18%. 

Adams County is shown in red

That’s a surprising shift in political attitudes, but the results Adams County voters were replicated in county after county in Wisconsin in 2020.  How are we to understand such changes?  Why have voters in rural counties and small-town Wisconsin moved from favoring an articulate, intelligent man like Democrat Obama to supporting a know-nothing creature like Donald Trump?

Going back to 2008, we find that President Obama carried 59 of Wisconsin’s 72 Counties, winning over Republican John McCain by nearly 14 percentage points.  And this was in a state that had an African-American population of 6.7%[i]  When the results of that election were finalized, it was easy to believe that finally the nation had progressed so that race and color were no longer an issue to the American voter. 

Remember the joy and enthusiasm many of us felt when Barack Obama and Michelle mounted the stage in Chicago’s Grant Park on election night to claim victory.  It truly was an overwhelming win, with Obama winning overall by 9.5 million votes. 

Our joy, sadly, was soon to turn.  The realization is that this nation – and Wisconsin, in particular – is tragically still a racist society, and that racism is clouding the minds of far too many of our citizens.  There have been lots of explanations as to why 58 of Wisconsin counties, nearly all rural or small town-oriented, voted for Trump in 2016.  Some has been attributed to the popularity of the right-wing media such as Fox News, One America News (OAN) and Newsmax that many have chosen as their sole source of news information.  Others call attention to the overwhelming numbers of lies perpetrated by Trump and his followers, perhaps proving the theory that if you say a lie often enough it soon becomes accepted as fact.

This misinformation has so clouded the mind of citizens, mainly in rural and small-town America, that they blame their gripes and ills upon liberals, so-called elitists, city politicians, immigrants, the poor and unemployed, civil rights groups and labor unions.   To be sure, rural and small-town Wisconsinites have cause to feel they’re being crapped upon.  Too many jobs in those areas are poorly paid, the family farm can rarely survive in today’s corporate farm economy, small town stores went away with the rise of our Walmart-Amazon based shopping system, and other issues. 

Having been fed a pack of lies for the last five years, these hard-working Wisconsin citizens have come to believe that people on welfare (in their minds, black people) are feasting off their tax payments.  Nonetheless, far too many of our non-urban Wisconsinites find it easy to believe that the average person of color is a lazy, good-for-nothing sucking away at the public trough. 

Meanwhile, Democratic politicians champion – rightfully – a host of causes that would seem to reward only people of color.  Such policies include seeking to bring pay equity to workers, to reform the justice system, including the “defunding of the police,” to regulate discrimination in the workplace and in the public market, and on and on.  Indeed, the Democratic politician is seen as favoring “those people,” while turning his/her back on the hard-working white citizens who struggle to make a living on their farms or in low-paying small-town jobs.

If you look closely at many of the lies and claims being championed in the last five years by Donald Trump, his followers and his puppets at Fox News et al, you can see the ugly snake of racism slithering along underneath. 

This nation with the election of Barack Obama in 2008 appeared to have turned the corner and had begun to repair our racial divides.  That progress all ended with the election of Donald Trump eight years later, and racism is flourishing once again.  Shame, shame, shame, Trump!

We find hope in the fact that most Americans – including huge numbers of rural and small-town Wisconsinites – are of good faith and are working to reverse this trend and revive the progress toward a color-blind society.  Ken Germanson, Jan. 11, 2022.

---

[i] U.S. Census Quick Facts. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/WI