Bead June 6 to June 13, 2020

I read twenty five or thirty articles a week. In lockdown I have begun a discipline of capturing their essence, pulling a quote and wondering how they might string together.

The beads I have strung together this week come from and point toward those who take personal responsibility for the health of their communities. They start with a General saying “I should not have been there” and end with a retired Army enlisted man now mail carrier saying “you have got to focus on the people”

“I should not have been there,” Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a prerecorded video commencement address to National Defense University. (1) General Milley was referring to his presence at the Trump stunt with a Bible prop the week before. A standoff with Esper and Milley poses an unusual challenge for Trump — especially when he’s seeking reelection. He reportedly doesn’t want to fire them. But leaving them in place makes him look less than the strongman he aspires to be. (2) Yet when the moment calls for neither pugilism nor promotion, he has little to say. (3)

It turns out Doctors have a lot to say and do so in poetry. “... medical journals are increasingly the top choice for doctors who believe poetry is the best way to capture the fragility, tenacity and universality of the human experience. During the pandemic, some of those journals have been deluged with submissions.” (4) A trip across our country moved Mary McNamara to a paradoxical, poetic expression of the best kind of patriotism - “Ours is such a beautiful country, an impossibly diverse and gorgeous country, cracked wide and piled high and full with every color, every shape you could ever dream of seeing. It is a stolen country, a settled country, a brutalized country, a wild and endangered, enduring and fragile country. A country worth the effort, no matter how great that effort might be.” (5)

Rep. Karen Bass has taken the burden of such a great effort - to pass legislation regulating procedures and tactics used by police across the country. “She has a real gift for having tough conversations,” (6) She will need that gift because the powers are deeply entrenched. “.... the problem is that even though it’s politicized, both Democrats and Republicans have been beholden to police for years. From the Republican side, they love cops, because cops brutalize minorities and they’re racists. On the Democrat side, cops are public employees and they have unions, so they tend to let that go along too.” (7) “We’ve heard ... from some quarters in recent days, that police brutality against Black people is not systemic but merely the work of “bad apples.” That argument whiffs on the core problem: Systemic features and practices enable those bad apples and make it insanely difficult to throw them from the barrel.” (8) It is a battle in the culture war. “Warrior enforcement culture needs to be replaced with a kind of guardian-style approach that rewards problem-solving engagement between officers and the communities they protect.” (9)

The saddest casualties in the culture wars are basically decent people. Main stream media reporters and commentators savaged Mitt Romney in 2012. “Now it is the right that attacks Romney’s character while the left has a strange new respect for it, not because his character has changed, but because it hasn’t. What he isn’t — and wasn’t in 2012 — is a racist, a sexist or a cold-hearted monster.” (10)

Another casualty is James Bennet, formerly Opinion Editor of the New York Times who was forced out of his position because he published a controversial editorial by Sen. Tom Cotton. “Last week’s decision by this newspaper to disavow an Op-Ed by Senator Tom Cotton is a gift to the enemies of a free press — free in the sense of one that doesn’t quiver and cave in the face of an outrage mob.” (11) Bennet’s sacking raises a tough question - “When exactly did the artistic/intellectual culture shift from “I strongly disagree with your view to You should not be able to work?” (12) It results from the momentum of what Wesley Yang calls “the successor ideology - a kind of authoritarian Utopianism that masquerades a liberal humanitarianism while usurping it from within.” (13) If you doubt its presence and power, listen to this from Michelle Goldberg, a NY Times opinion columnist. “When I first saw the Cotton Op-Ed I wasn’t as horrified as perhaps I should have been; I figured he’d helpfully revealed himself as a dangerous authoritarian. But as I’ve seen my colleagues’ anguished reaction, I’ve started to doubt my debating-club approach to the question of when to air proto-fascist opinions.” (14) When Goldberg felt the wrath of her peers she became ashamed of her assumptions about the debatibilty of issues!! The loss of vigorous debate and the resort to simply slapping the label “facist” on noxious opinions, would be a terrible loss. “It’s also an irony. Who, after all, has gained the most from the turmoil at The Times? That would be Tom Cotton, who first got the benefit of a public furor that helped make his piece the most read Op-Ed in The Times last week — and then got to pose as a tribune of free speech against the censorious leftists and stampeded editors at the “Fake News.” (15)

Finally three lovely people just doing their jobs and being blessings

The first, a flight attendant who turned up in an article about flying during the pandemic. She accepted that part of her work was a “jump seat therapy” “people need to come and talk about their problems. This week it was someone going to the doctor for chemotherapy and someone else picking up their child’s remains. Before you pass judgement on anyone flying during the pandemic, remember that you don’t know the reasons.” (16)

The second, Chit - an officer in the Thai army, a college professor and a guide in the art of home brewing beer. “I don’t care if you make craft beer a business, or even if you make good beer, but I want you to feel the experience of releasing your potential,” (17)

Third, James Daniels, 59 years old, has carried mail for more than 10 years since retiring from the Army. He has been a dependable link to the world for many during the pandemic, both by delivering the mail and just by showing up….being a visible present human being. When asked about the talk of destroying the Postal Service Daniels said “You can’t think about them up there, you’ve got to focus on the people.” (18) It can’t be said more simply or powerfully than that. “You’ve got to focus on the people.”