Mulligan

He stood at the 5th tee, basking in the morning sunlight, waiting to take his swing. There would be no encores. He didn’t care. Who needed an encore when you’d already brought down the house?

They simply stopped believing him. Every time he opened his mouth to speak, they knew what was coming–another lie. That was his way: he knew nothing of truth, paid it no heed. The only truth, as far as he was concerned, was himself, and since he had made himself, he also made truth. And the truth was that he was a lie, an enormous lie.

But few cared. In fact, they loved him for it, and he loved them. They didn’t care that they didn’t believe him. It was exhilarating to appear before them. He had mastered them so well that he was continually surprised they believed nothing he said, yet loved him anyway. Such control. Such power. Such absurdity. Worthy of some playwright, though he couldn’t think of any to name.

It was a pinnacle, to be sure. He didn’t know how he could top this. That he would be remembered, never forgotten, that his mark upon the world was permanent, that he might be the be-all and end-all!–here, but here, upon this bank and shoal of time, well, Shakespeare could not have said it better. Whether he went out in a blaze of glory or crawled through the mud mattered not. He would be immortalized.

He bent over and stuck his tee into the ground, then set the ball on it. He took a couple of practice swings, then stepped closer and thwacked the ball. It tailed to the right into the high rough. He shook his head, reset the tee and another ball, and struck again. Right down the center. He looked at his playing partners, who gave him a thumbs up. He nodded. “Damn straight,” he said. They smiled. No one had to say mulligan. They just knew.

(Free image of golf ball courtesy of Clipart for Education)

–Sobering News

 

Santa Fe High School

Yet another mass shooting. More precisely, another mass murder. This time in Santa Fe, Texas, at Santa Fe High School. You’ve no doubt seen or read about the carnage: ten people (eight students, two staff) who were alive at 7:30 a.m. on a Friday morning, dead–murdered–within minutes (thirteen more wounded). The lives of survivors, families, and friends now forever marked. A horror, aided by firearm proliferation, killed them, with a shotgun and a 38 revolver.

Law enforcement tried to stop him. A school liaison officer was there and was himself wounded trying to stop the shooter. The seventeen-year-old murderer, originally planning to end his own life after his killing spree, could not bring himself to do it and, after a fifteen minute gun battle, gave himself up and was taken into custody.

The normalization of such events should, by now, be self-evident. We expect mass killings and are no longer surprised when they occur. Except for the victims’ trauma, the shock soon wears off for the rest of us, and we go about our lives hoping that the Russian roulette of firearms’ proliferation never catches up with us or our loved ones. The suspicion and lack of trust that results keeps us on edge, wary of who is carrying, and what they intend. We grow weary of it, want to hide our heads in the sand, perhaps even turn fatalistic, and resign ourselves to the next mass killing coming ‘round the bend.

Such a looking-away, without question, insures that more killing will ensue. Inaction creates the void by which others will act. Thus, we hear from the rabid second amendment crowd that guns don’t kill people, people kill people, or the way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Such simplification hides that much of the killing is done because of the wide availability of guns, many of them increasingly lethal, and that a well-armed populace has become a danger to itself.

Calls for keeping guns away from the mentally ill proliferate, as if determining mental illness capable of mass murder before it happens is a simple matter. As if someone perfectly sane before he bought a gun cannot become insane or have a lapse of sanity after the purchase. As if parents who own weapons can or will prevent them from falling into the hands of their problematic sons.

But the NRA and its supporters and sympathizers continue to sell fear, and firearm manufacturers yet more guns. One could almost accuse the NRA of liking mass shootings. If Dana Loesch can accuse the media of loving them because of high ratings, why not the NRA and gun manufacturers for increased sales? After all, if good guys with guns are to stop bad guys with guns, then more guns need to get into the hands of good guys, a boon to gun commerce if there ever was one.

One can see this in the aftermath of nearly every mass shooting. Calls to arm teachers or other good people (whoever they are), to harden soft targets, take on renewed vigor. Pleas to restrict firearms in the aftermath often spike more gun sales, as fear that government will legislate more controls becomes the stimulant for buying more guns. Thus, mass shootings become a way to sell more fear and increase gun sales, which will not likely deter murderers, but only increase the chances that more guns will fall into the hands of murderers and would-be murderers. That’s what is called a descent into the maelstrom. Do we have the will to stop it? Can we? That remains to be seen.

This is where the NRA and its defenders march into the room. As one apologist put the problem recently: “Banning bump stocks, assault rifles and high round magazines might make people feel good about taking a step toward public safety, but that’s shallow reasoning. What are you going to do about all such weapons and accessories currently in circulation?” Indeed. Unwittingly, perhaps, the writer has put his finger on the problem: advocates of extreme second amendment rights, led by organizations like the NRA, have created a nation that has lost any semblance of reasonable control of firearms. It’s as if someone were to promote widespread distribution of opioid painkillers. Oh, wait a minute. Pharmaceutical producers of opioids, like firearm manufacturers, have promoted widespread use of their product for years, and we’ve become a pain-free nation. Right? Silly me. Opioids don’t kill people; people kill people.

Presented with such fait accomplis, what can anyone do but argue for more of the same? More opioids, more weaponry, please, into the hands of the nation’s citizens. What’s not to like? To deter the armed insane and incorrigibles requires more weapons that have put us into the position we now find ourselves in, which will require even more weapons in the future. Is there naloxone for guns?

When anyone can determine definitively who the insane and incorrigibles are, and who the saintly are, let the rest of us know, please. An anxious nation awaits your call.

–Sobering News

Republicans hell-bent on being . . . well, hell-bent

The road to perdition is paved with good intentions. If that’s true, Republicans may want to resist any infrastructure spending to keep that highway in good repair. That’s one road where the more bumps and potholes it has, the better off the GOP may be.

All hope abandon ye who enter here. Dante and Virgil at the Gates of Hell, as painted by William Blake.

Bumps and potholes have a way of keeping you awake and unsettled, of slowing you down, of making you aware of where you’re headed, especially when the road courses through a dark wood. The Gates of Hell are never far away wherever you are.

Possibly all Republicans need is a good chaplain. They’re so hell-bent on being . . . well, hell-bent, that a good Jesuit like Father Patrick Conroy, the House chaplain, might reclaim their souls. Which at this point appear to be lost. And praise the lord that Speaker Paul Ryan saw the light and rescinded his firing of the good padre and reinstated him (the Catholic vote, after all). I don’t know that Ryan has saved his own soul, but it’s a start. He still has much to answer for.

Father Conroy, I’m sure, would be more than willing to hear the speaker’s confession. The speaker professes to be a Catholic, despite his affinity for the teachings of the atheist Ayn Rand, and may know the inside of a confessional well. Of course, one has to acknowledge his sins before he can confess them. Flaws and sins are difficult to admit. Perhaps Trump’s attitude about not admitting them is contagious:

As petty as Father Conroy’s firing was, it pales in comparison to the Speaker’s and his party’s other sins. The list is so long that it’s difficult to know where to begin. I suppose the mortal sin is how Republicans have acquiesced to or, in too many cases, outright supported the president (Gallup shows 88% of Republicans now approve of the president).

Despite all of the rumblings in the press that Republican congressmen and -women don’t like their president, only a few Republicans have had the temerity to speak out against the president’s conduct, and, so far, just one Republican congressman, Mark Sanford (R-S.C.)–yes, he of the Appalachian Trail–has spoken up about Trump’s behavior regarding the porn star and hush money. Someone has forgotten to tell the submissive others that sins of omission can be as deleterious to the soul as sins of commission, that remaining silent doesn’t mean you’re not traveling that paved road. You should have felt the bumps and potholes by now. And I haven’t even mentioned the Mueller investigation.

Senators Flake (R-Ariz), McCain (R-Ariz.), and Corker (R-Tenn.) are perhaps the most prominent congressional Republicans to have castigated the president publicly over a number of issues. The trouble is that two of them (Flake and Corker) won’t run for re-election because they now fear the base of the Republican Party. They couldn’t survive a primary challenge and, thus, have little to lose by speaking out now. Senator McCain, because of his cancer diagnosis, well, what can one say? I hope for his, his family’s, and the nation’s sake he’s with us much, much longer. His voice is needed when such a president has control of the bullhorn.

I write this commentary with a lack of religious conviction. Agnosticism, verging at times on atheism, inhabits me. Some who read that admission may therefore consider me to be a traveler on that same road to perdition. Be that as it may, I’ve got plenty of companions. Who knew so many on that road would be Republicans? I’m in rich company.

(Image by W. Blake not under copyright per this link: http://www.wikigallery.org/wiki/painting_115505/William-Blake/Dante-and-Virgil-at-the-Gates-of-Hell-%28Illustration-to-Dante%27s-Inferno%29)

–Sobering News

About Face! President 180 Does It Again

Mack Sennett, creator of the early 1900s Keystone Cops, apparently has taken up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. If you thought Donald Trump lived there, you’re not entirely wrong, but it’s Mr. Sennett who runs the place. Trump is simply one of the actors, an important one, to be sure, in the lead role, who’s living up to, one could say, expectations–if the Keystone Cops are your idea of presidential expectations.

You’ll remember the Keystone Cops, comic heroes of the silent-film era, depicted by Mr. Sennett as the bumbling incompetents of many slapstick scenes. Perhaps you’re thinking that the comparison between Trump and his lawyers seems backwards, since it’s the cops (i.e., the Mueller investigation and the Southern District of New York) who in this case are the competent ones. The bumblers? Trump, his lawyers, and others in his administration supposedly running the show. For this movie, Sennett has reversed the roles.

A recent scene: the May 2nd interview of Rudy Giuliani (interview begins at about 11 minutes in) conducted by Sean Hannity. In the interview, Giuliani, newly hired as another of Trump’s attorneys, revealed (about 40 minutes in) that Trump had reimbursed his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, the $130,000 that Cohen paid Stephanie Clifford (Stormy Daniels). Trump had previously denied knowing anything about the $130,000. Giuliani indicated otherwise, and further stated that, since Trump had Cohen on a $35,000 per month retainer, the reimbursement had nothing to do with any campaign finance violation. It beggars belief, however, that Trump knew nothing about the payment to Clifford, which occurred a couple of weeks before the November 8 election. When something doesn’t smell right, there’s likely a stink in the air.

The president followed up Giuliani’s interview with a series of tweets that confirmed the payment. But on Friday (5/4) the New York Times reported that the president, on his way to Dallas for the NRA convention, undercut his new hire, saying of Mr. Giuliani, “He’ll get his facts straight”; and then, in response to a question about when he found out what the retainer was being spent on, the president added, “Well, you’re going to find out, because we’re going to give a full list. And people know. And virtually everything said has been said incorrectly, and it’s been said wrong, or it’s been covered wrong by the press. . . .”

President 180 performs yet another about-face. Who said this man was incapable of making a pivot? His underlings know otherwise. That’s why the West Wing seems inhabited by the Keystone Cops, trying to follow their leader’s twists and turns, whose swift changes make Taylor Swift envious.

Giuliani?  On Friday he walked back his remarks from Hannity’s show.

This instance of continuing chaos actually commenced on Thursday (April 26), when the president was interviewed–that’s being kind–on Fox and Friends, his favorite TV show. If you like listening to thirty-minute, incoherent tirades, this one is for you. Watch the faces of the three hosts as the rant goes on; they become progressively dumbstruck. Finally, they have to end the “conversation” by telling the president they’re sure he has a multitude of important things to do. High theater, that. It makes one wish for the return of silent movies.

Because President Trump thrives on chaos, we should not be surprised that he and his allies attack valued institutions without remorse or reprieve. The Great Disrupter has disrupted. His pummeling of the Mueller investigation, the Justice Department, the intelligence agencies, the press, anyone that opposes him, will not end soon, but only increase and intensify. Hang on to your hats, ladies and gentlemen, the Keystone Cops are driving the vehicle. Here’s hoping the nation survives the ride.

(Top photo not under copyright per https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KeystoneKops.jpg; bottom photo copyright unknown)

A slightly different version of this article appears in the May 5, 2018 Appleton Post Crescent.

–Sobering News

Ryan Sees the Light

Yesterday, Thursday, Father Patrick Conroy, the Jesuit chaplain of the House of Representatives for the last seven years, rescinded his forced resignation and was promptly reinstated by House Speaker Paul Ryan the same day, May 3rd.

The speaker apparently prayed an Act of Contrition (see post below), saw the light, amended his life, and reinstated Chaplain Patrick Conroy as House chaplain. Mr. Ryan had forced the chaplain’s resignation, which was to have been effective May 24th, last April. At the time, reports indicated that the speaker cited reasons that members’ “pastoral needs” were not being met, which surprised Father Conroy and many members on both sides of the aisle.

For his part, Father Conroy at first complied with the speaker’s demand to resign, but rescinded his resignation yesterday in a letter that challenged the speaker’s authority to force his dismissal. The letter also disputed the accusation that he hadn’t provided for the “pastoral needs” of the members or lacked engagement in “spiritual counseling.”

In an announcement yesterday, Speaker Ryan reinstated the priest, citing that the House was best served by avoiding a “protracted fight over such an important post.” One wonders why he began it in the first place.