“I can be someone’s and still my own.” — Shel Silverstein

Those of you that know me know I’ve used that quote before. At a certain point, we get to an age where things get to us more easily. I read that story every year to teenagers when they prepare for Confirmation. I get choked up every time I read it. I know a lot of people that have new year’s resolutions at the ready on the first. It takes me awhile. All of this came into focus when I perused twitter and encountered yet another of those patented “I don’t understand how you could vote for…” and it occurred me that we are hearing this more and more often these days.

The obvious point is that it shuts down our collective discourse. It puts us into one side or another and determined that the other side is just a group of village idiots. So, my new year’s resolution is to raise my level of discourse. I will certainly still challenge individual members of the herd. It’s hard to avoid doing that these days, but I will do my red letter best to avoid transferring that to a whole ideology.

This brings me back to Silverstein. The line above obviously is directly related to the story it came from (“The Missing Piece”) but it is one of those rare lines that can stand on its own. As a writer I’m jealous. All of us want one of those lines at least once in our life. There was a time when I thought I could be a speech writer.

America is a unique place. It always has been. It combines the mythos of rugged individualism with a community feel where we do what we can to help each other get along. We can be someone else’s and be our own at the same time. So, our body politic must strike a balance between a collectivism the rest of the world embraces and an individualism that numerous tout. When we dial away party politics we get to a point where we each have our own personal take on where that balance rests. There used to be a day when Democrats and Republicans could set aside differences and meet in the middle of particular issues. I suppose it still happens under the rarest of circumstances. It is the ultimate difference between states people and performance artists.

Obviously, I’m just a teacher, so my thoughts and words have little to do with what actually happens in government. However, it can impact what happens in my little corner of the world. It can impact my personal relationships. It can impact the level of angst I feel on a daily basis or my level of optimism for the future.

I can be my own and someone else’s at the same time. I can manage my own happiness and practice a certain level of autonomy while allowing others to help me whenever I need assistance. I can be that helping hand to others when they need emotional or physical support. We can collectively be our own and each other’s at the same time. We can remember that our own personal belief of where we stand on that continuum does not define us as a human being. Our humanity must exist beyond that and so we cannot allow ourselves to get bogged down in the “I can’t understand how you can vote for….”

The list of crimes, lies told, corruption, self-dealing, fraud, theft, extortion, sexual misconduct, insurrection, obstruction, conspiracy, and cruelty committed by TFG is long, growing, and in plain sight.  Predictably, though, that very same list is totally invisible to MAGA Republicans.  Fearful of retribution from their mouth-breathing base and TFG himself, they perform more gymnastics than an Olympic athlete to avoid seeing what is obvious to the rest of us.  Congressional Republicans had TWO opportunities to get rid of him, and made the wrong decision.  Since he’s left office, they have continued to cow tow to him, regularly doing the MAGA Hajj to Mar-a-Lago to kiss his ring (and his ass).

It’s no surprise then, that the GOP has been completely blind to the slow motion train wreck of TFGland including investigations and convictions for tax fraud, election denial, insurrection, and, of course, his hoarding and concealment of over 11,000 US government documents including 100 classified documents and 90 empty folders marked classified.  They’ve also ignored the fact that the National Archives tried to get the documents back for 18 months, finally getting a federal grand jury subpoena that TFG promptly ignored.  When the FBI took the radical step of going and getting the documents themselves, GOP screamers amplified his lies that it was a “smash and grab” and “all they had to do was ask.”   They then fabricated the story that he “declassified” these documents “in his mind” tryin to excuse TFG’s behavior.

Then comes the discoveries of classified documents at Biden’s home and former office.  Numbering about 20, having those documents was sloppy at best, but was immediately reported to the National Archives, and Biden is cooperating in the investigation.  The incident is certainly not helpful to Biden, but it’s extremely unlikely there was any nefarious intent in having these documents.  Conversely, Trump took something like 50 boxes of government documents when he finally left office, concealed them, lied about having them, moved them several times to avoid having them found, and even had his lawyers lie that there were no more documents after returning about 20 boxes last year.  Beyond his attraction to shiny things, a worse reason for keeping them, as Maggie Haberman of the NYTimes reported, TFG was trying to use his possession of US government documents as trade bait to get files from the DOJ about their investigation of his longstanding relationship with the Russians and their interference in the 2016 election.  Believing you can trade something you stole for something that you would never get in a million years is insane, which explains why TFG thought it was such a good idea.

Not surprisingly, while looking the other way on TFG’s hoarding of thousands of documents, Republicans are going apeshit over the discovery of the 20 documents in Biden’s possession, and they are already launching an investigation of the incident in the House.  I say fine, investigate your ass off.  However, the Dems must be uncharacteristically aggressive here.  Each time the Republicans introduce some testimony or evidence about the Biden documents, the Dems must introduce ten times that amount of evidence of TFG’s hoarding, and then concealing his possession of the thousands of documents he took.  This is eye for an eye, fighting fire with fire.  It’s time to take their selective outrage and turn it on them in public.

The Chaos Wing of the GOP is going after a jaywalker while a serial arsonist is burning down the Capitol. It fits.

I’ve said it too many times – whatever Republicans are accusing you of doing, that’s what they are doing.

You know, like how Democrats vote illegally.

The wife of an Iowa Republican who ran for Congress in 2020 was arrested Thursday and accused of casting 23 fraudulent votes for her husband.

In an 11-page indictment, prosecutors say Kim Phuong Taylor “visited numerous households within the Vietnamese community in Woodbury County” where she collected absentee ballots for people who were not present at the time. Taylor, who was born in Vietnam, then filled out and cast those ballots herself, the indictment alleges, “causing the casting of votes in the names of residents who had no knowledge of and had not consented to the casting of their ballots.”

He still came in third place.

However, he did get elected to the county board of supervisors.  I’d check his footprints for bullhockey.

Even during the most depressing of political times, you could always count on the Republican Party to have entertainment supplied by political nincompoops. Republican always have at least one man who would do or say something so ridiculous that it distracted from anything serious that Republicans were trying to accomplish.

It was a sad day when we could no longer count on Madison Cawthorn after he lost his North Carolina primary. Cawthorn thrilled us all with allegations of insider trading, sexual hanky panky, improper payments, vandalism, bringing a handgun to the airport more than once, and appearing in a leaked nude video.  Nude is a polite word for stark raving buck ass nakkid.

And there was always Louie Gohmert, who was the East Texas congresscritter who appeared to be only vaguely familiar with the English language, did not believe in science, did believe the 2022 election was stolen and seriously asked if the Bureau of Land Management could please alter the orbit of the earth’s moon, or the earth’s orbit around the sun, as part of efforts to reduce the impacts of climate change.” Damn, we’re gonna miss him.

But as Newton’s Third Law of Thermodynamics (if the heat ain’t on you, it’s on someone else) commands, the vacuum of leadership in the nincompoop department is always filled.  Now we have newly elected George Santos of New York.

Thank you, Humor gods, for this man who made up his entire life and got elected.  We’re not even sure if it’s the truth that’s his real face he’s wearing.

Mere moments after pretty much the every Republican elected official in his district called for his resignation, Santos decided the appropriate response was to pick a fight with fellow Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger.  When Kinzinger tweeted that Santos should resign, Santos replied: “Go on CNN and cry about it.”

Well, that’s just real damn helpful and friendly.

Welcome, George.  Thank you for your efforts to destroy the Republican Party.

These get worse and worse every time you hear them. The victims get younger and younger and the shooters more and more alarming. This time it was a six year old that purposefully brought a gun to school and opened fire on his teacher. She survived the shot and hopefully will make a full recovery. Who knows if the 25 year old first grade teacher will want to teach again. These stories involve the worst parts of our collective humanity and yet they involve incredible acts of heroism. The victim had the presence of mind to successfully get most of the class outside the classroom. When she saw that she didn’t get everyone she went back for the rest. She deserves all of the medals and honors that any of us can bestow on her.

I began teaching in 1997. I was a mere 23 year old teaching kids as old as 18 and 19. Looking back, I shudder at how inept I was. I knew the material and did the best I could to deliver it, but nothing prepared me for the challenges teachers encounter every day. Over the years, I have had numerous successes and numerous failures. Yet, there was never a time when I seriously thought one of my students would want to hurt me. I certainly think some of my ex-students were capable of hurting others. I even had one student I worked with that was charged with murder. I’m not sure how that case is doing at this point.

No one goes into education expecting to make millions. My parents would regale us with stories about how they sold glass bottles back to the store to scrape the pennies necessary to buy groceries. Movie theatres would give them discounts and other businesses would as well. It was just understand that teachers would struggle. This is one of those deals where people in both parties talk about how teachers should make more. Obviously, some think we get enough already. I live a comfortable life. I could complain, but I really shouldn’t and can’t with any intellectual honesty. I’m not turning down more money, but money is not the biggest area of concern.

The biggest area of concern is how a six year old can get their hands on a 9 MM handgun and why they would feel the need to shoot their teacher. The rhetorical questions have answers, but none of them are satisfying. The other area of concern is to somehow reconcile the reverence people have for teachers and yet people outside the classroom interject their values and prejudices into it. Either you trust us with your kids or you don’t. I don’t think any kid really wants to shoot me, but I also don’t give them any reason to do it. Some teachers are more confrontational. Some teachers are more strict. That’s not my job, so I’m fortunate. Those teachers may have to be those things because it ultimately helps the kids in the end. I wouldn’t be foolish to say every teacher has the best interest of kids at heart. It’s an indefensible statement. Yet, that is the default position until proven otherwise.

We don’t need door control. We don’t need a cop in every hallway. We don’t need to wear bulletproof vests or arm the staff. What we need is common sense measures that will keep a six year old from having a 9 MM in his possession. It’s just one area where the rest of the world looks our way and scratches their head. We know what’s causing this and we know how to stop it. That’s only if we are being intellectually honest.

You’d think that Mike Pence would have learned a thing or two from TFG and apparently he did, just not anything helpful.

You’d think Mike Pence, having watched first hand TFG implode in a colorless rainbow of insanity, would have known not to repeat some of the same mistakes.

Well, you would have thought wrong.

Former Vice President Mike Pence’s Simon and Schuster autobiography “So Help Me God” was released Nov. 15, 2022, but on Nov. 9, Pence spent a hefty sum at an online bookstore, according to financial reports from the Federal Elections Commission.

In the fourth quarter of 2022, Pence showed that he spent a whopping $91,000 at Books On Call, LLC, the largest expenditure in his full financial report. The book then suddenly, or perhaps coincidently, scored a spot on the New York Times’ Bestseller’s List.

So, just like TFG and TFG, Jr, Pence got himself on the Best Seller List. The trick to this little scheme is that they use campaign funds to buy the books, but then get nice personal checks to themselves as their profit from the sale.  So, they make the Best Seller List and laundry money at the same time.

Cute trick.