Category: Editorial Page 11 of 37

In this age of Donald J. Trump and the Mueller investigation, you can expect updates on what is happening to our country and its Constitution.

Trump Is Ineligible to Be President, Say Legal Scholars

By Connie Wilson

On August 22, 2023

In Editorial, Education, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, Local, News, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics, Pop Culture

According to a recent publication by two Constitutional scholars, Donald J. Trump is ineligible to be President of the United States, because of the Constitutional prohibition under Section 3 of the 14th amendment, which bars anyone from elected office who has “engaged in” or “given aid or comfort” to an “insurrection or rebellion.”

The scholars—William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas—argue in a law review article that Trump’s attempted coup d’etat “automatically” disqualifies him. The scholars say that “every official, state or federal, who oversees elections has the authority to bar Trump from the ballot.

Baude and Paulsen are not Biden-loving partisans, according to Matt Ford in “The New Republic.” They belong to the Federalist Society, the powerful right wing organization that helped stock the Supreme Court with conservatives.

Section 3 addressed the problem of Southern states sending Confederate official to Washington D.C. after the Civil War. The terms “insurrection” and “rebellion” should apply to “only the most serious of uprisings against the government.”

Baude and Paulsen’s “powerfully argued” case reaches the “obvious conclusion” that Trump tried mightily in several extra-legal ways to overturn an election he had clearly lost. Thus, he “engaged in insurrection and rebellion and gave aid and comfort to other who did the same.”

Legally, the argument is “very compelling,” said Zack Beauchamp in “Vox.” However, MAGA Republicans might well react with violence to a Supreme Court that might agree with Article 14, Section 3, making January 6th into a prelude to more disaster.

“Underground Independence” Takes Us On A Stroll Down Memory Lane in Independence, Iowa on Aug. 19, 2023

By Connie Wilson

On August 20, 2023

In Editorial, Education, Local, News, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, travel

Independence, Iowa, was named as the seat of Buchanan County in June of 1847. A second town, New Haven, and its mill, were located on the west bank of the river. In 1854, the State Legislature merged the two towns. Ten years later, in 1864, Independence was incorporated. Quasqueton, then called Quasquetuk, which I wrote about as the location of a Frank Lloyd Wright home, is quite near Independence (located on what is often referred to as the Independence/Quaskie diagonal). Quasqueton was originally the county seat, but that distinction was moved to Independence in 1847 at a time when there were only 15 residents in Independence.

The bridge connecting the East and West banks of the city had become impassable. Built just above river level, the bridge was at the mercy of floods and frost. A flood in 1865 finally swept the bridge away entirely. [I’ve heard stories about an elephant falling through the other downtown bridge, while in town for a circus, but I’ve never been able to document that interesting bit of trivia. I will say that, on my visit there for the Mini Reunion on Aug. 11^th, we had to use this secondary bridge because the city fathers had blocked off Main Street for something called Music on Main.]

How Underground Independence Came to Be:

It was decided to raise the bridge to make it less vulnerable. In doing so, the level of the street on the East side would also need to be raised, thereby changing the grade of the entire street. A massive project began. Retaining walls were constructed. Dirt was hauled from further up the hill to the East to raise the street from the river to beyond 3^rd Avenue N.E. As it progressed, the entrances to stores fell below street level. A walkway was maintained so that merchants and customers could still do business. I’ve been told that the revelation of this “buried” level of the city was not fully realized until about 2011. I grew up there and knew nothing of it, but the Episcopalian minister of St. James Episcopalian Church, Sue Ann Raymond, whose father owned Raymond Printing Company for years, said she was aware of this subterranean nature of the city, because part of it was located beneath her father’s store.

By 1866, the new bridge was completed. Samuel Sherwood began to make plans to erect a new, much larger woolen mill, which is now known as the Wapsipinicon Mill. The 1867 mill, now called the Wapsipinicon Mill, was a source of electrical energy from 1915 to 1940. Some structural restoration occurred in recent years, and the mill now functions partly as an historical museum. We visited the Mill, the Loft Chamber of Commerce at 112 1st St. E, the Gedney Bakery at 116 1st St. E, the Sanity Room at 117, 1st St. E, Eschen’s Clothing at 211 1st St. E, and Quilter’s Quarters at 213 1st St. E. Tours are self-guided and stairs are steep: be warned.

A courthouse was built in 1857, on the east side of the town, on a site described at that time as “the highest tract of land in the neighborhood,” which offers “a fine view of the city of Independence, the valley of the Wapsipinicon, and the surrounding Country”. The original courthouse was replaced in 1939 by a Moderne or Art Deco structure. My father was then the Democratic County Treasurer of Buchanan County (partially a fluke, as his Republican opponent died before he could be sworn in, and they offered the post to my father, who was re-elected for a total of four terms. Dad helped lay the cornerstone of the new County Courthouse. He was 37 years old.)

Dad began thinking about establishing a second bank in town as his term was coming to a close, contacting the bank examiners and being put in touch with investors from other parts of the state like Mason City. Security State Bank opened in 1941. I have the first check that cleared the bank framed on the wall of my study. Check Number One is dated October 8, 1941, between the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and Security State Bank in the amount of $971.97. I learned that what is now called NSB (Northeast Security Bank) now has deposits of $421,617,000 with branches in Independence, Dysart, Fredericksburg, Decorah, Fairbank (my dad’s home town, where he began in banking as a cashier), Sumner, Rowley and Fayette.

In November of 1873, a fire started behind what is now Hartig Drug Store and burned the buildings going East. Six months later, in May of 1874, a second larger fire began in the middle of the West side of 2^nd Avenue, N.E. (my old home street). It burned the entire West side of the street. Everything from the river to what is now the NSB (Northeast Security Bank Corner), formerly the Security State Bank that my father founded in 1941. A livery, four residences, and a church in the block behind were also burned.

In May of 1874 a second larger fire began in the middle of the West side of 2^nd Avenue, consuming the buildings on the north side of 1^st St. E to the river. High winds allowed the fire to jump to the south side of the street. Within 10 days of the second fire, merchants and land owners began rebuilding on the existing limestone foundations, leaving underground storefronts as they were. The devastation led to an opportunity to recreate the downtown with beauty and continuity. The buildings were crafted in the Italianate architectural style of the day.

The block on the West side of 2^nd Avenue burned down again in 1960, something I vividly remember, as a high school student who was viewing the film “Exodus” at the Malek Theater, one short block from my house at 214 2^nd Avenue, when the fire broke out. Because sparks were landing on the roof of the theater, we were asked to exit the theater and I began trying to walk home, which was not easy, because fire trucks and firemen were clogging up 2^nd Avenue directly in front of the post office. The locker plant across the street was destroyed as were all other buildings on the block.

I finally took the alley behind St. James Episcopal Church back to my house at 214 2^nd Avenue N.E., the former railroad station master’s house. My father was out on the front hill with a garden house watering the area down as sparks drifted across the street. I was 15 years old. I remember it vividly, just as I remember the Independence Senior High School burning down in 1956. (It was just before I was to enter 7th grade in “the new junior high school,” which quickly became the high school/junior high combined. This building, Jefferson High School, was torn down and a new high school was erected in 2013.)

Rush Park: Axtell & Allerton

For a few years in the late 1880s and early 1890s, Independence was a nationally known horse-racing center, and was sometimes referred to as the “Lexington of the North”. This came about as a result of the meteoric financial success of Charles W. Williams. A telegraph operator and creamery owner from nearby Jesup, Iowa, Williams (with no experience in breeding horses) purchased in 1885 two mares, each of which within a year gave birth to a stallion. These two stallions, which Williams named Axtel and Allerton, went on to set world trotting records, with the result that Williams’ earnings enabled him to publish a racing newspaper titled The American Trotter, to build a large three-story hotel and opera house called The Gedney, and to construct a figure-eight kite-shaped race track on the west edge of town, on a large section of land called Rush Park, where he also built a magnificent horse barn and his family mansion. Williams eventually (1889) sold Axtell for $105,000, a record price for any horse at the time. (*Axtell broke down as a 4-year-old and never raced again.)

The grand opening day for the kite track was August 25, 1890. At least 225 horses valued at over one million dollars were on exhibition for the price of $1.00 at the gate. Season tickets, admitting the holder to all 5 days, could be purchased for $4. Season tickets for a lady and gentleman cost $7. There was no extra charge for teams or admission to the grandstand.

The burgeoning community was soon home to other mansions, churches, and even a trolley-car service. My mother used to tell me about the Gedney Opera House burning down; I believe that the trolley car came down 2^nd Avenue (Chatham Street) to the Gedney, bringing big name horse racing enthusiasts to the races. That street was paved with red brick throughout much of my growing-up years in Independence, and you could hear the Amish buggies clip-clopping down the street to the sale barn on weekends.

The Wapsipinicon Old Mill basement.

The horse races at Rush Park were an effective magnet. The fifty cents admission fee paid by over eight thousand spectators must have delighted Charles W. Williams. Charles W. Williams would have beamed with joy as he saw twenty-five hundred people jammed into his $10,000 amphitheater, happy to pay an additional thirty-five cents for the privilege. Purses totaling $2400 had lured many of the fastest horses in the state to Independence.

Williams went on to raise other record-breaking horses, but he lost much of his fortune in the Panic of 1893. Williams subsequently moved to Galesburg, Illinois, where (among other things) he became acquainted with the young Carl Sandburg (as mentioned in Sandburg’s autobiography, Always the Young Strangers). Today, the location of Williams’ race track (which was the original site of the Buchanan County Fairgrounds) is a corn field. His house is still standing, but, in recent years, the Rush Park barn was demolished by a bulldozer, to make way for a fast food drive-in and an auto parts store. There was a point when two wealthy California natives tried to make an upscale supper club within the famed Rush Park barn, but that, too, ended up being short-lived.

In the years that followed the race track days, the town lost most of its importance when the railroad terminal at Independence was pushed further west to Waterloo, Iowa. Today, the old depot stands on the highway that leads to Oelwein and serves as a visitor center, but it is no longer a functioning depot. I remember my parents taking the train to Chicago and staying at the Palmer House for bankers’ meetings, but that would be impossible today, just as my trips from Iowa City to Chicago would be impossible with the sub-par rail service in Iowa today.

Of additional interest are several other buildings of historic and architectural value. Among these are the Christian Seeland House and Brewery at 1010 4th Street Northeast (1873), an Italianate style mansion and brewery; Saint John’s Roman Catholic Church at 2nd Street and 4th Avenue Northeast (1911); the Munson Building, formerly the Independence Free Public Library, at 210 2nd Street Northeast (1893–95); Saint James Episcopal Church on 2nd Avenue Northeast, just north of 2nd Street (1863, 1873); and the Depression-era United States Post Office Building at 2nd Street and 2nd Avenue Northeast (1934), not for its architecture, but because hanging inside in the lobby is a WPA mural from the 1930s, titled Postman in the Snow, painted by a former Independence resident named Robert Tabor. (*There was another Tabor painting of a small child wearing white galoshes and a pink coat and holding a book up to the librarian to check out. I was told by the librarian that that child was me, then aged about 5, which would have been painted when Mr. Tabor (who did not begin painting until he was 52) was about 68 in 1950, as he was born in 1882. Since I spent all of my free time at the library, I can believe this.)

About 10 miles east of Independence, south of U.S. Highway 20, near Quasqueton, is the Lowell Walter house or Cedar Rock, a state-owned Frank Lloyd Wright house that is open to the public from May through October. (See previous blog article.)

For me, as a St. John’s student from 1950 to 1959, I worshiped weekly at St. John’s Church a block away from my childhood home. I remember when a tornado tore the roof off St. John’s Church (established 1911) and deposited the wreckage in our back yard in about 1947. My father made a playhouse out of the shingles and boards, which my parents referred to as “the hookey.”

The Library mentioned was right down the alley. I made almost daily trips there to read, as we did not purchase a television set until I was a junior in high school in 1962. (My mother’s prescient remark was: “Pictures were never meant to fly through the air;” she had pronounced television to be a fleeting fad.)

St. James Episcopal Church, the oldest continuously operating church in town, is one house away from my childhood home. I remember when my parents hired a Chicago architect to remodel our home in 1957. He was quite smitten with the church with its beautiful stained glass windows, and made frequent trips the 100 yards to tour it on his own.

One of my favorite library stories was when the librarian thought I was too young to check out a book about the Zulu uprising in Africa. She called my mother at home and asked her if she should allow me to check out the book. Mom replied, “Sure. Go ahead.” (Good going, Mom!)

At the 2000 census there were 6,014 people in 2,432 households, including 1,588 families, in the city.

Points of Interest:

Historic Downtown

Wapsipinicon Mill
Independence State Hospital, a historic mental hospital (1873) located on the outskirts of the city. The place is huge and “Gothika” has nothing on the Independence Hospital for the Insane, as it was once known. I have read that tours can be arranged. I still have nightmares about appearing in a Christmas Nativity program as a first-grader at St. John’s. (I forgot my tin foil angel wings at home and had to find my way back to the auditorium alone after being taken home to get them. Not a great memory!)
Heartland Acres Agribition Center, an agricultural history museum.
Independence Motor Speedway
Independence Public Library
Malek Theatre – spent many hours within this structure, including the showing of “Psycho,” the night I held a slumber party. Since I had already seen it in Waterloo, I managed to completely freak out the row of girls staying at my house by coming up behind them in the back row, left, and grabbing them during the shower scene.
Illinois Central Station – now is located on Hwy #218 that leads to Oelwein.

AXTELL

Year of Birth: 1886

Immortal: Yes

Elected as Immortal: 1955

Year of Death: 1906

Gait: Trotter

Record: t, 2:12

Sire: William L.

Dam: Lou

Mambrino Boy

Axtell was foaled in 1886, son of William L. out of the non-Standard mare Lou. His breeder was C. W. Williams of Independence, Iowa. Axtell was trained and raced by Williams on the famed Independence kite-shaped track. He lowered the two-year-old stallion record to 2:23 and won every race in which he started. As a three-year-old Axtell again won every start and lowered the world’s stallion record to 2:12. In 1889 Williams made history by selling Axtell to a syndicate for $105,000, the highest price ever paid for a horse of any kind at that time. Axtell broke down as a four-year-old and never raced again, but retired to stud. His progeny included the foundation sire Axworthy 2:15 1/2, and he became one of the highest priced sires of his day. His 1891 stud fee was $1,000. Axtell died on August 19, 1906 in Terre Haute, Indiana.

The 2024 GOP Presidential Primary Race Is Getting Pricey

By Connie Wilson

On July 11, 2023

In Editorial, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics

The 2024 presidential primary race is shaping up to be a pricey one.

According to the GOP Primary Ad Spending reports, Florida’s Governor Ron SeSantis is spending literally twice as much as Donald J. Trump, who is said to be the front-runner in polls.

DeSantis has committed $4.4 million dollars to the primary battle, versus Trump’s $2.2 million.

Other leaders in the race are represented as follows:

Senator Rick Scott: $3.5 million

$3.5 million (PAC group)

Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota: $2.6 million

Anti-Trump PAC: $1.7 million.

Other candidates to oppose the Democratic candidate in 2024 include Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson, Mike Pence, Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamey and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez.

Trump is not going to come to the Iowa gathering, probably because the organizer is an outspoken Trump opponent.

In New Hampshire, the spending is as follows:

Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota: $2.8 million

Trump Super PAC: $2 million

Senator Rick Scott: $2 million

Senator Rick Scott Super PAC: $1.9 million

Florida Governor Rick DeSantis Super Pac: $1.3 million

In South Carolina, the DeSantis Super PAC is spending $3.7 million.

The Anti Trump forces are investing $1.7 million

In Nevada, the DeSantis Super PAC is spending %631,000.

So, as I sit here on the Illinois side of the Iowa/Illinois Quad Cities, it looks like the state of Iowa will rake in big bucks and the primary campaign will cost roughly $20 million dollars.

The entire tactic of doing well in Iowa and using it as a launching pad for the nomination was pioneered by Jimmy Carter in 1974, when he began campaigning ahead of the 1976 presidential race. That was nearly 50 years ago.

In the wake of Watergate, 17 Democratic candidates came out of the woodwork to capitalize on the Ford pardon of Nixon and the stigma of Watergate. Carter took an early lead in Iowa and New Hampshire despite having almost no national profile. He was able to secure the Democratic presidential nomination with close to 40% of his party’s primary vote. Ever since Jimmy Carter pioneered the technique of winning early in Iowa and New Hampshire, it has continued to be the path to victory.

Chris Christie: GOP Savior or GOP Gadfly?

By Connie Wilson

On June 22, 2023

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, News, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics, Television

Christie in 2022

Frank Bruni is a contributing Opinion writer who was on the staff of The Times for more than 25 years. He wrote a June 21^st opinion about Chris Christie’s recent remarks during his CNN Town Hall appearance. Mr. Bruni found Christie’s remarks as refreshing and as necessary as I did, in watching this appearance.

I had also just completed reading Margaret Haberman’s book on Donald J. Trump. Haberman, the New York Times writer assigned to cover Trump over decades, interviewed hundreds of personal friends of DJT and related that Christie was very definitely trying to snag the VP nomination for himself during 2016.

Most of us who watched Mr. Christie during his Sunday morning talk show appearances know that he was the politician tapped to “prep” Donald J. Trump for debates during his run, although DJT was not a willing student at all times. One of the more startling facts that Haberman rehashed was how Trump, himself, kept Christie wondering about who would ultimately be his running mate. The three finalists were said to be Pence, Christie and Newt Gingrich. Trump called up the Indiana Senator and told him to fly out for the announcement, and Christie got wind of the Pence family’s arrival in Teterboro, N.J. It was not a happy conversation when Christie realized that Trump had been jacking him around for literally months, I’m sure.

Here’s what Frank Bruni had to say: “Chris Christie made a complete fool of himself back in 2016, fan-dancing obsequiously around Donald Trump, angling for a crucial role in his administration, nattering on about their friendship, pretending or possibly even convincing himself that Trump could restrain his ego, check his nastiness, suspend his grift and, well, serve America. But then Christie, a former two-term governor of New Jersey, had plenty of company. And he never did style himself as a saint.

It’s all water under the George Washington Bridge now. The Chris Christie of the current moment is magnificent. I don’t mean magnificent as in, “He’s going to win the Republican presidential nomination.” I don’t mean I am rooting for a Christie presidency and regard him as the country’s possible saviour.

But what he’s doing in this Republican primary contest is very, very important. It also couldn’t be more emotionally gratifying to behold. He’s telling the unvarnished truth about Trump, and he’s the only candidate doing that. A former prosecutor, he’s artfully, aggressively and comprehensively making the case against Trump, knocking down all the rationalizations Trump has mustered and all the diversions he has contrived since his 37-count federal indictment.”

In a poll released on Friday by The New Hampshire Journal, Christie had pulled into third place among Republicans in the state, far behind Trump, who had 47 percent of the vote, but not far behind Ron DeSantis, who had just 13. Christie had 9, followed by Mike Pence with 5. That partly reflects Christie’s decision to make his initial stand, so to speak, in New Hampshire. But it also reflects something else: He’s excellent at this.

Christie is to DeSantis what a Roman candle is to a scented votive. He explodes in a riot of color. DeSantis, on his best days, flickers.”

I would like to add that Christie’s performance on that CNN Town Hall, was, indeed, more like a Roman candle than the halting delivery of second place runner Ron DeSantis. I found his one-on-one answers to members of the audience to be spot-on, even when one asked about the infamous Bridgegate controversy that ended his time in New Jersey politics.

My enchantment with Christie’s fireworks makes me a cliché. In an observant and witty analysis in The Atlantic on Monday with the headline “Chris Christie, Liberal Hero,” David Graham inventoried the adoring media coverage Christie has garnered, noting that while there’s zero evidence that Christie could actually win the contest he has entered, “pundits are swooning.” It should be noted here that hard-core GOP voters were less thrilled with Christie’s sudden emergence as one of the few Republicans to let the truth prevail. Many of the most faithful Republicans—up to 70% in one poll—said they would not vote for him.

But the swoon isn’t about Christie’s prospects. It’s about the hugely valuable contrast to other Republican presidential candidates that he’s providing. And about this: The health of American democracy hinges on a reckoning within the Republican Party, and that won’t come from Democrats saying the kinds of things that Christie is now saying. They’ve been doing that for years. It’ll come — if it even can — from the words and warnings of longtime Republicans who know how to get and use the spotlight.

Did you see Christie’s CNN town hall last week? Have you watched or listened to any of his interviews? He’s funny. He’s lively. He’s crisp. And he’s right. Over the past few weeks, he has described Trump’s behavior as “vanity run amok.” Trump himself is “a petulant child.”

At the town hall: “He is voluntarily putting our country through this. If at any point before the search in August of ’22 he had just done what anyone, I suspect, in this audience would have done, which is: said, ‘All right, you’re serious? You’re serving a grand jury subpoena? Let me just give the documents back,’ he wouldn’t have been charged. Wouldn’t have been charged with anything, even though he had kept them for almost a year and a half.”

Other candidates, who prefer not to talk about the charges against Trump, are reportedly worried that his indictment will mean ceaseless chatter about him and extra difficulty promoting their own (muted and muddled) messages. Josh Barro, in his Substack newsletter Very Serious, nailed the absurdity of that, pointing out that Trump’s front-runner status and enormous lead over all of them guarantee that he’ll always monopolize the conversation, indictment or no indictment.

“The Republican nomination campaign cannot — and will not — be about anything but Donald Trump, and the media is not going to invite them on TV to talk about topics other than Donald Trump,” Barro wrote. “So, since they are going to talk about Donald Trump all the time, they had better talk about why he should not be nominated.” Christie is getting invitations and attention because he is doing precisely that. Maybe, just maybe, some of them will take note and wise up.

To the conundrum of what, if Christie qualifies for the Republican primary debates, he’ll do about the required pledge that he support whoever winds up getting the party’s nomination, he has apparently found a solution that’s suited to Republicans’ willful and nihilistic captivity to Trump, the stupidity of the pledge and the stakes of the race: He’ll sign what he must and later act as he pleases.

“I will do what I need to do to be up on that stage to try to save my party and save my democracy,” he told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday morning.

Let’s pivot from Trump and Trump analogues to Trump sycophants. In The Atlantic, Tom Nichols described how J.D. Vance, who once spoke with such disparaging and devastating accuracy about Trump, did a self-serving about-face in his 2022 Senate race in Ohio and, reprogrammed by that victory, never looked back: “What he once wore as electoral camouflage is now tattooed all over him, in yet another fulfillment of the late Kurt Vonnegut’s warning that, eventually, ‘we are what we pretend to be.’”

Chris Christie, superhero? He has his own supersize vanity. He is arguably playing the only part in the crowded primary field available to him. And those dynamics may have as much to do with his assault on Trump as moral indignation does. Even so, saving his party and country agrees with him.

DeSantis, Pence, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley and other Republican presidential candidates are clearly telling themselves that they can’t do any good down the road if at this intersection they provoke Trump and run afoul of his supporters.

Where have we heard that before? It’s a version of what Christie said to himself in 2016. He now sees the folly of that fable.

Will the Real Ron DeSantis Please Stand Up

By Connie Wilson

On June 13, 2023

In Editorial, News, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics, Pop Culture

Excerpts from “Mother Jones” DeSantis Article

(“Laboratory of Autocracy” by Pema Levy)

The following are some quotes from the “Mother Jones” article by Pema Levy, the July and August (2023) issue. It is important to learn these things about the second most popular Republican nominee, especially since the leader of that pack is Donald J. Trump, who was arraigned on 37 felony charges today in Miami. (No, that is not a joke.)

“DeSantis has demonstrated a path to power based on circumventing the democratic process and preying on fear of minorities—a template that is already being adopted by GOP legislatures around the country. If DeSantis becomes president in 2 years, critics warn, his brand of authoritarianism could take hold from Washington, D.C. ‘If you’re uncomfortable with the book banning, imagine giving him the keys to the U.S. Department of Education. If you’re uncomfortable with the migrant flights dumping people in a deserted parking lot somewhere, imagine giving him the keys to Border Patrol and ICE. If you’re uncomfortable with the way he goes after voting rights, imagine the same conversation that Donald Trump was having with Georgia election officials, demanding they “find” votes he needed, but it’s Ron DeSantis on a call that’s not being recorded. DeSantis would finish what Trump started, which is wrecking our democracy.”

That was the closing statement of this article, but the evidence in the article demonstrates that “his governing style is the logical evolution of Trumpism, from a chaotic politics of reprisal to a calculated system of repression and power-grabbing.” Florida Watch’s Anders Croy says, “This really is what’s coming to the country. Florida, essentially, is a laboratory of authoritarianism right now.”

Early on, DeSantis won a fight to take over the power to dictate maps for voting, and dismantled 2 majority Black districts. He appeared at the Villages, the massive retirement community and Republican stronghold that covers 32 square miles of central Florida and touted his “Freedom First Budget.” He bragged about his cuts, his latest show of power. “While the governor’s office defends the cuts as fiscally responsible decisions, critics believe that DeSantis was making an example out of them for opposing his redistricting takeover.” As one observer (a Democrat who served in the state House until last November) said, “I’ve never seen a group of people so willing to give a governor a blank check.” The GOP super majority retroactively authorized DeSantis’ Fox-ready stunt of flying asylum seekers from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard. They also gave DeSantis the power to appoint the board that would oversee municipal affairs at Disney World. This is all part of Disney’s escalating feud over DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” law.

Many have commented on DeSantis’ lack of charm. He is not a back slapper and does not seem comfortable trying to become one. Therefore, “the only way that he’s going to be able to move his agenda is through fear and intimidation.” The former agricultural commissioner who served alongside DeSantis in the Florida Cabinet said DeSantis never joined in when other fellow members bantered about their families or exchanged pleasantries. In 2019 when on a trade mission to Israel DeSantis always stood apart from the 3 other members and never rode in a vehicle with them. He wouldn’t engage in friendly chit chat in the elevator, either.

As the article describes, authoritarian personalities are not always charismatic. Putin is an example. Turkey’s Erdogan, likewise. As a New York University historian (author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present”) said, “People who come from the realm of bureaucracy don’t necessarily have to be charismatic because they want to be feared and not loved. Now, somebody like Trump needs to be loved as well as feared, but DeSantis just wants to be feared. His remoteness is actually a shield which helps him to be ruthless and dominant.”

A baseball player and fraternity brother at Yale recalls DeSantis as “so charmless.” After he graduated from Harvard Law School he served as a Navy attorney at Guantanamo Bay and Iraq. In 2008, back in Florida, he took an assignment as a federal prosecutor and ran for Congress in 2012. He spent 3 House terms as “a loner” and a “backbencher.” When the opportunity to run for Governor arose, he sucked up to Trump on Fox News for his primary endorsement.

Trump gets by mostly by saying stuff, not doing stuff. DJT talks much more than he throws punches. He throws more punches than he lands. Says this former colleague, “DeSantis can’t win that way. He has to do stuff. DeSantis has hollowed out state government, filling out key posts with loyalists, which is similar to DJT. The academic term is “autocratic capture.” During his first term in office, DeSantis installed 75% more donors in senior government roles than his predecessor Rick Scott had done in the same time span. These sorts of power grabs are “a cornerstone of authoritarianism” and certainly we saw it with Trump in office.

DeSantis in 2021

FROM WIKIPEDIA: DeSantis signed a 2013 “No Climate Tax Pledge” against any tax hikes to fight global warming.^[50] He voted in favor of H.R. 45, which would have repealed the Affordable Care Act in 2013.^[51] DeSantis introduced a bill in 2014 that would have required the Justice Department to report to Congress whenever any federal agency refrains from enforcing laws.^[52]^[53]^[54] In 2015, DeSantis was a founding member of the Freedom Caucus, a group of congressional conservatives and libertarians.^[33]^[55]^[56]

DeSantis opposes gun control, and received an A+ rating from the National Rifle Association.^[57] He has said, “Very rarely do firearms restrictions affect criminals. They really only affect law-abiding citizens.”^[58]

DeSantis was a critic of Obama’s immigration policies, including deferred action legislation (DACA and DAPA), accusing Obama of failing to enforce immigration laws.^[59]^[60] In 2015 he co-sponsored Kate’s Law, which would have increased penalties for aliens who unlawfully reenter the U.S. after being removed.^[61] DeSantis encouraged Florida sheriffs to cooperate with the federal government on immigration-related issues.^[62]

In 2016, DeSantis introduced the Higher Education Reform and Opportunity Act, which would have allowed states to create their own accreditation systems. He said this legislation would also give students “access to federal loan money to put towards non-traditional educational opportunities, such as online learning courses, vocational schools, and apprenticeships in skilled trades”.^[63]

In 2016, DeSantis received a “0” rating from the Human Rights Campaign on LGBT-related legislation.^[64]^[65] Two years later, he told the Sun-Sentinel that he “doesn’t want any discrimination in Florida, I want people to be able to live their life, whether you’re gay or whether you’re religious.”^[66]

DeSantis proposed legislation that would have ended funding by November of that year for the Mueller investigation of President Trump.^[68] He said that the May 17, 2017, order that initiated the probe “didn’t identify a crime to be investigated” and was likely to start a fishing expedition.^[69]^[70]

DeSantis’ Books:

DeSantis released a book in February called “The Courage to be Free” in which he said: “American has entered a post-Constitutional order where federal agencies have become an all-powerful 4^th branch of government that must be “brought to heel” to restore democracy. This is, in effect, declaring war on our judicial system and our voting system. Says the author Levitsky, “In almost every autocracy, we find one of the first moves is to pack the state—whatever state agencies exist.”

DeSantis championed an Orwellian 2022 law known as the Individual Freedom Act, also referred to as HB 7. It restricted educators’ ability to teach concepts like critical race theory, structural racism, sex discrimination, white or male privilege and affirmative action. The law limits how private employers can discuss such issues. The law is generally referred to as the Stop WOKE Act. There is a threat in college classrooms that students might turn in their teachers. The law was passed by the Republican dominated House in 2021, intending to combat perceived discrimination against campus conservatives by authorizing students to secretly record professors in order to bring lawsuits or report them to school authorities. With that kind of Big Brother Is Watching mentality, it has become more difficult to attract top-notch talent to teach in Florida’s schools and colleges. Students are asked to fill out an annual Intellectual Freedom and Viewpoint Diversity survey as an oversight tool. “These efforts call to mind a surveillance state, where snitching is encouraged, the government keeps enemies lists, and free speech is censored.”

DeSantis orchestrated a take-over of New College, a small Florida liberal arts school. He installed culture war provocateur Chris Rufo on its board. Republican Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska ended up in charge of the University of Florida without any disclosure of the process. A secret search continues at New College for a new president and DeSantis’ handpicked board fired its president, naming the Governor’s former Commissioner of Education as its interim leader. A quote: “They want the hiring process to be about who politically toes the governors’ line.”

As the article says, “DeSantis’ attack on academic freedom has already taken a toll. Despite years of growth in the center’s graduate program, Morse says, this fall enrollment will go down by more than half, as many admitted students declined offers, usually citing Florida’s political climate. And departments without enough enrollment get closed. As long as they just scare people away and make Florida a hostile area for this kind of work, that can achieve the same goal as an outright ban. The onslaught of rules, surveillance, lawsuits, lists, and bans has created an atmosphere of chaos and fear on Florida campuses.

Trump was known for whipping up political mayhem, but on a day-to-day basis he seemed to largely unleash it on his inner circle. DeSantis, by contrast, strategically deploys chaos to advance his political priorities.

In November, Judge Mark Walker blocked the Stop WOKE Act in higher education, writing that “one of the 8 prohibited concepts is mired in obscurity, bordering on the unintelligible and features a rarely seen triple negative, resulting in a cacophony of confusion.”

University of Law Professor Mary Anne Franks says, “DeSantis, we need to remember, is a product of Harvard Law School. His attempts to punish Disney, for instance, his attempts to restrict what private employers are doing—he knows that that violates the First Amendment. What he is trying to figure out is, can he remake the law? Can the new far-right conservative movement, which seems to be a kind of might-makes-right movement, can he put that into effect?”

People are now refusing to communicate in certain ways. The House speaker requested that e-mails be turned over. “By starting with the list-making and searching people’s e-mails, now, people are on edge. Graduates have contacted the program asking to be removed from alumni lists. Everyone is starting to see the possibility for increased surveillance.” Said one Florida department chair, “A few people have come out to me, some of them department chairs, who said, ‘We’re not getting candidates for our searches.’” As the article concludes, “DeSantis is willing to burn this entire system in the fire of his own political ambition. But the mess he’s creating with these attacks on public ed, both K-12 and higher ed, are going to significantly and deeply harm Florida for decades.”

After Disney came out against the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, the governor responded, “There is a new sheriff in town and accountability will be the order of the day.” Disney felt that it was “left with no choice but to sue over DeSantis’ targeted campaign of government retaliation.” (Disney World was hosting its first Pride night in June.) “DeSantis’ willingness to bend the power of government to punish Disney for having an opinion always meant that he would be willing to do that to individuals and small businesses, too.” DeSantis has been at the vanguard of the nationwide assault on transgender people and has gone after small businesses that host drag shows.

A University of Michigan sociologist who studies corporate political behavior describes what is happening because of DeSantis as “an existential crisis regarding the future of American democracy.”

DeSantis staged an attack on the voting rights of people with felony convictions. The law had changed 5 years ago to allow most felons who had paid their debt to society to vote, but DeSantis, after taking office, immediately set out to undermine the amendment. The system is impossible to navigate, but DeSantis said that the new voters must first pay all of their legal fines, fees and restitution, but did not make it possible for its citizens to find out if they have any such debts. Ex-felons who were trying to vote were arrested, including Nathan Hart. They had served their time and believed their voting rights had been restored. People convicted of murder or sex felonies were not allowed to vote.

Quote from the article: “He likes to call us the Free State of Florida, but that freedom only applies to people that look like him and that think like him. And if you don’t, then this state is not free at all.”

“After Democrats surpassed Republicans in voting by mail during the 2020 election, DeSantis signed a law that made postal ballots harder to obtain, limited drop boxes, restricted third-party registration efforts, and banned providing food and water to waiting voters. Signing up to vote by mail now requires more forms of identification, and the request must be renewed every two years. The March municipal elections in Broward County fell by half from 2021 and the drop-off is predicted to drop off in 2024.

In conclusion, when I sold my businesses in 2003, my husband asked why I didn’t buy a second vacation home in Florida, rather than investing in a condo in downtown Chicago. I explained that my son and grand daughters and daughter-in-law lived in Chicago, whereas I know no one in Florida. “I would have to buy a ticket to fly to Florida, but I can hop in the car and be in Chicago in 3 hours, so why would I want to buy a place in Florida?” I also would add, “The only way I’d purchase a place in Florida is if I wanted to travel back in time.”

“My Cup Runneth Over” (and Ruineth My Kitchen): Polar Vortex Strikes Again

By Connie Wilson

On June 3, 2023

In Editorial

Today’s random rant will be about the polar vortex and how it ravaged my kitchen in my absence (Texas).

This despite our having turned off the water and kept the heat on.

Now comes the part where the insurance company tries to tell us that they aren’t responsible, despite the many plumbers saying that we did everything “right” in preparing for an absence: shut off the water, kept heat on, etc. I have not had very good luck with insurance ever wanting to cover anything, despite having insurance and paying my premiums on time. I remember a space heater setting fire to a carpeted area and the insurance saying it was not covered and another time when flooding ruined some carpeting in my basement, and that, too, was deemed uncoverable. And it’s happening again, at the moment.

The insurance agent suggested that we could never leave our house, that we had to be in it to have our insurance cover this major league damage. Does that mean that, if you are here in town but go out for the evening and have a water main break, your insurance will not kick in? The two plumbers who have come and gone say that they had numerous calls this winter for broken pipes on interior walls of homes with people in them when it occurred. But nevermind.

Now come the delays: interminable “estimates” of what fixing the damage is going to take and waiting through weekends and holidays and waiting for the insurance adjustor people to respond. Snail-like progress.

It appears that a new sub floor is going to need to be put in. The people who removed some of the cabinetry want us to buy all new cabinets, even though the cabinets that currently are in place do not appear to have been harmed much or at all and the bottom parts would never match the top parts (and the Wood Mode cabinets were exorbitantly expensive when put in in 1993). One laborer, who had said he would intercede with the insurance company on our behalf, seemed quite put out that we don’t want to invest huge sums of money in all new cabinetry when the current cabinets appear to be largely okay. One went so far as to say, “They could collapse,” which seems highly improbable. There is talk of signing some sort of waiver that would protect from something like the recent collapse of the Davenport on Main building in Davenport, Iowa.

Currently, many of my removed cabinets are in my garage, as are several boxes of new wood boards that need to be laid to fix the “floating” floor, which floated into oblivion. (Apparently, the entire idea of a wood floor “floating” is passe. That floor had been laid 9 years ago.) I can’t put my car in the garage and, last night, a large black dog that apparently belongs to the neighbors on the corner got loose and was so vicious as our car entered our driveway that I was afraid to get out. (Sheesh!)

From May 13 until the end of May we had no water in our kitchen, and it was nearly impossible to open the door to the refrigerator because of the various cabinets that have been pulled hither and yon. Large fans (5 or 6 of them) ran around the clock to dry out the floorboards and the area under the sink where the pipes burst. You had to unzip a zipper on a plastic door to enter the kitchen. (We chose to go outside the house and enter through the deck door). The fans were noisy (difficult to hear TV over them) and a heater was employed for a while, which drove the temperature in the room up to 87 degrees. The fans were loud. My spouse told the workmen that I would not have had to run my “wind machine” at night, because the fans were that loud. That would be funny, but not if you’re living in the middle of it 24/7.

Meanwhile, I headed to Chicago to review “Relative” on May 22nd and, upon learning of the lack of water in our kitchen (and, for a day or so, in our bathrooms!) said, “No water, no me.” I remained in Chicago until this past Thursday, 2 days ago, an absence of 2 weeks. This seemed like the kind thing to do, since me whining about all this was not going to hurry things along.

So, here are some pictures of what was once my lovely kitchen, which I am quite sad to say has been ruined by the pipes breaking during the polar vortex. I hope we can speed up the process of replacing the old cabinetry and laying a new sub floor and a new wood floor, because there are various kitchen items all over my house, including the small couch that is now in my family room. If I can find pictures pre-flood, I’ll put some up. Otherwise, check back in a month or so to see if Humpty can be put back together again.

Wish us luck!

Anti-Semitism on the Rise in the United States

By Connie Wilson

On March 27, 2023

In Editorial, Education, Pop Culture, Television, Texas

I’m almost caught up from the recently concluded SXSW film festival.

I still have a review of a screened horror film (“Appendage”) and one that is embargoed until April 24th for a drama financed by National Geographic commencing May 1st that will focus on the brave young woman who helped hide Otto Frank and his family in war-torn Amsterdam. Most of us know the story of Anne Frank from her recovered diary and the many spin-off dramatizations that sprang from it. Most of us did not know about Miep Gies, however.

It was Miep Gies, then a 24-year-old secretary to Otto Frank at his business (a jam factory called Opetka) who agreed to hide Otto Frank (Liev Schreiber) and his family of four (Otto, Edith, Anne and Margot) and five other Dutch Jews from the Nazis during WWII and the occupation of Holland. They lived in hiding for 2 years, until they were turned in.

Only Otto Frank survived the war after the Nazis captured the family, hiding in a hidden annex built above Mr. Frank’s business establishment, Opetka. He and his family were sent to concentration camps, separated as a family, and only Otto survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.

Together with her colleague Bep Voskuijl, Miep retrieved Anne Frank’s diary after the family was arrested, and kept the papers safe, returning the papers to Otto Frank when he came back to Amsterdam from Auschwitz in June of 1945. Gies had stored Anne Frank’s papers in the hopes of returning them to the girl, but gave them to Otto Frank, instead, who compiled them into a diary first published in June of 1947,

Bel Powley, who portrays Miep Gies in “A Small Light.” (Photo by Connie Wilson)

In collaboration with Alison Leslie Gold, Gies wrote the book Anne Frank Remembered: The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family in 1987. Born in 1909, she died just one month shy of her 101st birthday in 2010, which was surprising, considering the fact that she was instrumental in saving many Dutch Jews from the Holocaust. [She denied any involvement in helping hide the Franks when their hiding place was discovered.]

Considering that anti-Semitism is at its highest point since the seventies, the choice to dramatize this story at this time in history is a timely one. The Anti-Defamation League began keeping records of anti-Semitic activity in 1979. In the past 5 years, the incidences of assaults or robberies or other crimes have increased 500%. On college campuses, the incidences have risen 4o% and in Kindergarten through 12th grade schools, the incidences of such wrongdoing are up 50%.

Specifically, incidents of violence against Orthodox Jews are up 67%. Incidents of vandalism are up 51%. General harassment is up 29% and assaults, in general, are up 26%. As the experts have said, “Extremists feel emboldened right now” and various other spokesmen called it a “battleground against bigotry.”

As one CNN expert said, “It may start with the Jews, but it doesn’t end with the Jews.” A super spreader of such hatred would be social media outlets. When social influencers (like Kanye West and Mel Gibson) express hatred for the Jewish people, there are surges in such evil acts. There is a reverberation effect within and among conspiracy groups; the actions condoned by the MAGA hordes are germane.

Signs of people in positions of authority condoning, explicitly or complicitly, man’s inhumanity to man contributes to the deep-seated problem and exposes a sickness in society. Kanye West today tried to dig himself out of the deep hole he had dug for himself with his anti-Semitic rants, saying that watching Jonah Hill in “21 Jump Street” had changed his opinion to one that is more positive. Not only is this a weak defense against his previous bigoted words and actions, but it hardly seems likely to stem the tide of actions like those that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia from August 11th to 12th in 2017. That Unite the Right rally was a white supremacist rally that seems, now, to have been a watershed moment in giving radical groups permission to act in uncivil and illegal manners. It is worth noting that it took place during Donald Trump’s presidency.

The focus on the heroic actions of the Miep Gies’ of the world comes at a time that should give the excellent production “A Small Light” a welcome platform. (Review to follow in April).

Texas Attorney General Paxton Racks Up $3.3 Million Settlement Bill & Wants Taxpayers to Pay

By Connie Wilson

On February 19, 2023

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, News, Politics

[This editorial from the “Austin American-Statesman” is in reference to the $3.3 million settlement that Texas taxpayers are supposed to pick up the tab for. It ran on Wednesday, February 15^th.]

Image result for image of attorney general ken paxton texas

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton

After agreeing last week to settle a whistleblowers’ lawsuit against him that will likely cost Texas taxpayers $3.3 million, ethically compromised Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Friday tried to falsely spin it as a win—for taxpayers.

“I have chosen this path to save taxpayer dollars and ensure my third term as Attorney General is unburdened by unnecessary distractions,” Paxton said in a statement.

Even for a public official as shameless as Paxton, this absurdist political spin is breathtaking. The fact is that Paxton’s firing of 8 whistleblowers who credibly accused him of bribery and abuse of office is almost certain to cost Texas taxpayers millions, just as it has cost the Texas attorney general’s office reputational damage that can only be repaired when Paxton, re-elected to a third 4-year term in November, is no longer in office.

Settlement Agreement Raises Questions About Use of Tax Dollars

The mediated tentative settlement agreement requires a $3.3 million settlement payment to 4 of the whistleblowers and an apology from Paxton to the plaintiffs, but not an admission of wrongdoing. The agreement raises serious questions about the propriety of asking Texas taxpayers to pay the settlement on Paxton’s behalf. The agreement is contingent on “necessary approvals for funding,” which means the Texas legislature may have to consider a funding request.

It’s certainly convenient for Paxton to ask taxpayers and Texas lawmakers to clean up the mess he made while professing he’s doing it “to save taxpayer dollars, but lawmakers must not let him off the hook easily, and should investigate whether the payment is an appropriate use of tax dollars.

Paxton has argued that Texas law allows for the expenditure of tax money to defend against multiple lawsuits filed against him during his tenure as attorney general. But Andrew Cates, who wrote a book called “Texas Ethics Law” said that doesn’t make it right, especially when the issue is a multi-million dollar settlement stemming from the firing of whistleblowers.

Cates said, “This is one of those just because you can doesn’t mean you should situations. I, personally, believe it would be more appropriate for him to take it out of his campaign fund.” Cates pointed to a Texas statute that allows campaign donations to pay the legal bills of a candidate or office-holder.

The whistleblower saga began in 2020 when 8 attorneys in the attorney general’s office—all of them appointed to their positions by Paxton—either resigned or were fired after telling federal investigators that they were concerned that Paxton was using the power of his office to help Austin investor Nate Paul, whose home and offices were searched by federal investigators in 2019. They accused Paxton of illegally using his office to help Paul, in exchange for benefits that included a $25,000 donation to his re-election campaign, remodeling Paxton’s home, and giving Paul’s alleged mistress a job. Overriding a decision by his agency’s Charitable Trusts division, Paxton also directed his office to intervene in a lawsuit against Paul lodged by The Mitte Foundation.

Paxton’s Legal Bills Are Adding Up

The allegations against Paxton are sadly unsurprising when considering his time in office. For 7 years he has been under federal indictment for securities fraud and the State Bar of Texas has sued to sanction him for his shameful role in trying to overturn the legitimate presidential election of 2020. Nor should Texans be surprised that, once again, Paxton is asking for a handout to help him pay for his legal fees. So far, according to the Dallas Morning News, Paxton has run up half a million dollars in legal fees. Instead of relying on state attorneys, Paxton hired outside attorneys, one of whom charged $540 an hour, paid by taxpayers.

After years of questionable behavior that has been rewarded by election to a third term, we’d be naïve to expect Paxton to become a paragon of virtue at this late stage of his career. …Texas needs an attorney general who is looking out for their best interests, not just his own

“Pray for Our Sinners” at the 58th Chicago International Film Festival Has United States Premiere

By Connie Wilson

On October 19, 2022

In Editorial, Movies, News, Politics, Pop Culture, Reviews

“Pray for Our Sinners,” a documentary written and directed by Sinead O’Shea with music by George Brennan had its United States Premiere at the 58th Chicago International Film Festival. The 1 hour and 21 minute film documents the abuse of women and children in Ireland in decades past, perpetrated with the approval of the Catholic church.

The abuse took place in Ireland for literally decades until at least the 1980s.

Sinead O’Shea focused on her own home town of Navan in central Ireland and interviewed women who, as young teenagers, were sent away to mother and baby homes and forced to give up their babies. She interviewed female victims who had suffered this fate when just teenagers, and also spoke with now adult victims of brutality in the schools, suffered as children. Much of her conversation was with Dr. Mary Randle, who, along with her doctor husband, fought against the injustices. One of the topics was the local parish priest of those years, Father Andy Farrell. (It seems that Father Farrell discovered malfeasance in church finances and was spirited out of his post when he reported it.)

In 1921 Ireland earned its independence from England, but by 1937 the Catholic Church had managed to incorporate its beliefs into Irish law. In a country where 91% were church-goers, 6% said they attended occasionally, and only 3% said they never attended church, Ireland had more people institutionalized than any other civilized country. A citizen could be sent to an institution for all manner of misbehavior, as viewed by the church. For instance, if you talked about your feelings you could be declared “hysterical” and put away.

God was everywhere. That was the point. Few women worked. There was a law forbidding women from working after marriage. Women were to be submissive and produce children. However, unwed mothers were shamed into submission and forced to go to mother and baby homes, where the nuns who ran them made it their mission to “punish” the pregnant girls. There were at least 21,000 illegal adoptions from these homes during the era. According to a 2021 study, 9,000 babies and their mothers died in the homes.

Pregnant girls were treated like criminals. Even during delivery, they would be chastised for their bad behavior in becoming pregnant in the first place. Contraception was not available if the doctor did not want the woman to have access; divorce was forbidden. As one former resident of one of the homes said, “Your mail would be read. You were made to wash floors, even when 9 months pregnant. There was no breastfeeding. They wanted to do something to hurt you.”

Writer/Director Sinead O’Shea.

If women were mistreated, children were also targeted. The Catholic church ran the schools. Corporal punishment was the norm in towns across Ireland. Into this sea of misery a husband and wife doctor team in Navan, Mary and Patrick (“Paddy”) Randle, chose to speak out when others were too cowed to do so.

A 10-year-old boy. Norman, was beaten with a leather hose with metal inserts because he was left-handed. When Paddy Randle found out, he spoke up and demanded that such abuse cease. Twenty children who were brave enough to speak out were gathered. Since the local paper would not tell their story, the “News of the World” in London interviewed the children and ran a story on Sunday, May 4, 1969, under the title “Children Under the Lash.”

When the local priests in Navon learned that the paper was going to run the story, the newspaper was seized as it was entering the city. Norman was kicked out of school by the church authorities at the age of 9 and, even today, he has no papers to document his life in Ireland. He is like a ghost without a country in “Europe’s last theocracy.”

As Dr. Mary Randle described her efforts and those of her now-deceased husband to help the struggling women and children of their small Irish town. She said, “It was like a whole empire designated to punish girls and children.It’s just, yet again, a diminishment of women, how they were treated.”

I am Irish Catholic. My home county in Iowa, the Dubuque diocese, was very Catholic. Back in the sixties, drugstores in Dubuque, Iowa, would not sell the birth control pill to unwed girls. When I was in the hospital, having just given birth in 1968—a married woman, age 23—one of my doctors (who was a devout Catholic) refused my request for a prescription for the pill. He would pass such requests along to his Protestant partner, who had no such reservations.

There are political forces abroad in our land right now who would like nothing better than to deny United State females the right to purchase the birth control pill, because the ability to choose when (or if) to have a child empowers a woman. The immediate battleground is the issue of abortion, but the signs are there that that is just the first stop on the path of the current Conservative Supreme Court.

As for corporal punishment, when I was introduced to my very first classroom in the fall of 1969, a fellow teacher handed me a paddle and instructed me on the “proper” way to use it to paddle misbehaving students. I was appalled. I threw it away immediately. This disciplinary method had been ongoing in the district. If you think nothing like these Irish stories could ever go on in the United States, guess again. You just have to be old enough to have lived it, as I have.

I remember all the pregnant girls in my high school who were “drummed out of the Corps.” Once it was determined that a girl was pregnant out of wedlock, she was banished from attending class. (The boyfriend who had impregnated her suffered no such punishment.) The expectant mother would disappear to a mother and baby home run by the Catholic church. The home would house her until she delivered her child.

As one of the women in the film testifies, “There’s no point in talking about today and then, because it was so different.” Yes, it was. I remember it well. I am saddened to see the same power play(s) being perpetrated upon this generation of women in the United States via the currently red hot abortion issue. It’s done in the interests of refusing to empower women.

The most important decision a woman will make in her lifetime is whether or not to give birth. It will affect every facet of her life from that time forward. It should be her decision, in consultation with her doctors and her family. It should not be legislated or decided by a group of men in Washington, D.C.

Director/Writer Sinead O’Shea does a nice job of painting a picture of yesterday that I lived through and remember only too well. By quoting Dr. Mary Randle (“There is always a way to resist”) and painting a picture of the abuses of the Catholic Church against the weakest among their charges, O’Shea has vividly illustrated how irreparable harm can be done in the name of religion.

The law banning corporal punishment in the schools of Ireland passed in that country in 1984. Divorce is now legal and laws banning women from working are a thing of the past. The attempts to roll back Roe v. Wade in the United States under the cover of religion are ongoing and on the ballot in November.

Another documentary by Sinead O’Shea is 2017’s “A Mother Brings Her Son to Be Shot.”

“The Natural History of Destruction” at the 58th Chicago International Film Festival

By Connie Wilson

On October 15, 2022

In Editorial, Movies, Politics, Reviews

“Babi Yar. Context” (AP 1944 Photo)

Perhaps the most succinct thing that can be said about “The Natural History of Destruction,” a film that screened at Cannes by Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa, is that there is nothing “natural” in destroying what has taken civilization centuries to build. There is nothing “natural” about massive civilian loss of life. This screening was the North American Premiere of the film.

On October 22nd, the film was awarded the Silver Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival, with the following comments:
Silver Hugo
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DESTRUCTION (Germany, Lithuania, The Netherlands)
Dir. Sergei Loznitsa
Sergei Loznitsa has accomplished a pure cinematic experience which displaces our political positions, and compels us to empathize with the German citizens living through the war they instigated. By means of meticulous and slow editing, a complex array of scenes, rich with nuanced sonic detail, unfold in front us. The archival black and white images are breathless and relentless: they confront us without buffer with the horror of the war machine, to which there are no winners and everyone is a victim. The rare and strategic placement of speeches, as well as the occasional leak of color into the scenes, punctuate the otherwise non verbal stretches of accumulating horror: we witness war from all angles – from above and below, from close up and from afar, from within the machine performing the wreckage, from the factory assembling its parts, and from the bottom of the ruins it leaves behind.
This 1 hour and 52 minute film is based on the book by German writer W.G. Sebald, “Air War and Literature.” It has no narration, as such, and consists solely of archival material of bombs being made. Bombs being loaded onto war planes. Planes dropping bombs. Bombs exploding. Dead bodies on the ground. Civilians suffering the after-effects of the bombings.

There is, however a prelude of sorts where we see the happy civilian populace of a variety of cities—mostly in Germany, it appears, from the blimp flying overhead (OL-2129) with the German swastika on its tail. The people are enjoying life, unaware of the tragedy that is about to befall them.

Most of the footage is black-and-white, but it lapses into color periodically. What we see of the unnamed cities are bombed-out craters, buildings on fire, and complete rubble. In other words, it looks a lot like the Ukrainian cities that are being bombed by the Russians now, or like the remains of Naples, Florida after Hurricane Ian.

What little narration there is may be mumbled voices saying things like: “I’ve never seen anything like this.” “Neither have I.” “4,000 pounds just went up.” “Good show!”

The use of “Good show” pins down the bombers as being the RAF (British Royal Air Force), but the Luftwaffe is also involved in a variety of dogfights, and we hear other speakers (Churchill, Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris, Field Marshal Mongtomery) talking about the entrance into the war of the United States: “Now we are no longer alone. We have powerful allies. Many tonnage of explosives can be carried into Germany.” Prime Minister Winston Churchill is shown being applauded by crowds in the streets and saying the British shall “stride forward into the unknown.”

Churchill is also heard saying: “We shall drive on to the end and do our duty, win or die. God helping us, we can do no other.” Churchill also urges German civilians to flee the cities where munitions are being made and watch their country burn from afar (or something else remarkably uncharitable).

A German voice, unidentified, decries the “shameful bloody campaign of today” and vows to fight on using counter-terrorism. You get the feeling that the director simply wants to make the point that killing innocent civilians of ANY country is unjustified, but the lack of identification of cities or speakers or air forces leaves one adrift. Are we looking at the ruins of Germany or of England? It probably doesn’t matter to the director, who simply wants to make the point that this sort of wanton destruction is wrong, no matter what.

British officer Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris is heard saying, “There are a lot of people saying bombing can never win a war. So, then, I say, we shall see. Germany will make a most interesting initial experiment.”

I live near Arsenal Island in Rock Island County, Illinois. The island has been involved in making munitions for the U.S. Army for a very long time—at least back to the Civil War, when it also served as a POW camp for captured Confederate soldiers. In the event of a nuclear Armageddon, which seems more and more likely with leaders like Vladimir Putin on the loose, we will have a big target on our backs as the enemy attempts to wipe out the capabilities of this large government installation.

I hope this Ukrainian filmmaker’s plea that people wake up and quit wreaking destruction on peaceful civilians in such horrible ways finds an audience of sane leaders, but it seems less likely with every passing day. “The Natural History of Destruction” opens on October 17, 2022.