Ichabod's Kin
A place for politics, pop culture, and social issues

On the heels of Halloween comes Thanksgiving. Scary times followed by gratitude for them. And the latter, it may be said, is fast losing popularity to the former. Thanksgiving’s real attraction isn’t its excuse for dietary excess, but the big, fat four-day holiday. Take that away and folks will lose interest and many birds would live longer.

           A multitude of platitudes surround the end of November. A day for Giving Thanks amounts to the start and end of the dinner prayer, which dare not be too long or the gravy will get cold. Then it’s off to whatever is next, whether the droning voices of the Macy’s parade anchors or an NFL game that may or may not be exciting.

Being thankful is of course obligatory. But you have to look hard. This is not a pretty world and signs otherwise are not easy to come by. For the day, we forget about the worst of it, and dream that it’s all good, which it’s not. What life and the world are, at best, is bittersweet–a cup both half empty and half full. Pretend otherwise and your tongue will stick to the roof of your mouth.

           How can we think of it all without wanting to do what we can to help or alleviate the hurting, hoping that all of us altogether can somehow make a difference? I’m not thankful for the state of the world or my country right now. Thoughts and prayers won’t do much for it unless prayers have teeth and that means doing something. Words alone are hollow, and even the Good Book urges us to be “doers” and not just “hearers” if our words are to be transformative. That nagging little biblical verse, “Faith without works is dead,” is pretty plain.

           I’m not thankful for gun violence because we groan about it and do nothing. Even when the victim is someone we love, as was Charlie Kirk by apparently so many: those who did bemoan the tragedy and lift not a finger to ensure the safety of the rest of us.

           I’m not thankful for racism, sexism, misogyny and intolerance of same-sex love. What the hell’s the problem? “They all get politicized and never seen through the lens of morals, ethics and of religion a lot better than what’s practiced in these United States. If love and peace were impossible, that would be one thing, but they’re not. Stubbornness and hate and bad faith are the blockades to their reality.

           “Say Grace, please,” someone will say at the turkey-laden table. Grace means something we don’t deserve, but much of what we’re thankful for comes by the sweat of our brow. The “ultimate source” of it is what’s already there, but we can also thank you and me for what we sow and cultivate, protect from damp and cold and protect from spoilage; by what we dream up and invent, the beauty we create or pursue—and all the good we’re faithful to, which, by the way, is an interweave of community and cooperation.

           We can also give credit to science, imagination, and the fine arts. So for whatever’s good, okay, thank God and Allah, Zeus and Wakantanka; it’s a free country. And thank sun, rain, wind and trees and our eager and ambitious hearts–all that is a partnership of pleasure and makes for a rich harvest of mutual blessing. So whatever you’re thankful for, thank each other.

           That’s “Grace.” And we have it. And now we’ve said it. Do I hear an “Amen”?

           Tom Harris’ 1967 wildly popular book, “I’m OK/You’re Ok,” led to a humorous rejoinder: I’m Not Okay, You’re Not OK—and that’s OK.

No, we’re not. We should only wish. We’re royally self-screwed–living in a hail of bullets. This is not a medical condition or something that fell out of the sky. This is our own doing. Heretofore there’s been less right-wing outrage about gun violence because you can’t know who’s falling out of the boat if you don’t hear the splash. You pay attention when it’s someone you care about.

           The death of Charlie Kirk is not okay. Neither were all the prior killings of school children before his but this time it’s someone that white Christian gun-lovers care about. Nor is it okay that MAGA World is making the most of Kirk’s death by shutting down free speech. How much more will we endure before we rise, united, to say enough is enough.

           I hope all who read this feel as I do that this is not the way we want differences to end, whether political, social or personal ones. Assassinations disrupt the democratic process and interfere with the reasonable, peaceful synthesis that results from dialogue and new understanding.

           I admit that Charlie Kirk was not on my radar. I was not aware of his success in engaging youngsters and coming to have a remarkable influence on them. And I want all those who mourn his untimely death to feel the same way for all those before and who will come after him whose lives are brutally snuffed out in our lax gun culture. There are countless other broken hearts whose children have been slaughtered in places that should have been the safest of all for them.

           I also hope we will stop politicizing his tragedy. Those who feel its okay now to suspend free speech: compare the assassination of Harvey Milk in 1978—another brief career but of one who was an icon in San Francisco and  in its LGBTQ community. He wasn’t killed because he was gay–the mayor of San Francisco died with him–but by Dan White, a disgruntled former employee of the city.

           Both were elected Supervisors; White, a conservative and former cop, and Milk, a liberal, appeared together on talk shows where Milk expressed willingness to work productively with White despite their differences.

           The deaths sparked city-wide vigils and Milk became a martyr both to civic service and to the gay community. But there were widespread celebrations of his murder among police who proudly brandished White’s revolver, thus inciting clashes with citizens.

           Cops from White’s former precinct celebrated his crime and viewed him as a colleague who had carried out their “dirty work.” Some wore “Free Dan White” T-shirts and raised money within their ranks for his defense. Free speech? Apparently so, and it opened deep rifts between law enforcement and LGBTQs.

           White was convicted on a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter instead of murder and served only five years. Milk is not forgotten and much has happened since to stir LGBTQ and related sympathies.

           After Kirk, there is no free speech. Heads are rolling and venom is visited on the slightest remarks of disagreement. When Rush Limbaugh was criticized for extremist statements he begged off saying he was just an entertainer. So are Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel but their heads are on the chopping block. This too is not okay.

           Among my searches of interest regarding Charlie Kirk I found many comments and assertions that were inflammatory. I found frequent ad hominem charges and cruel accusations. He was more than merely confrontational.

His targets were widespread, including calling Simone Biles a “national disgrace” when she struggled with mental problems in 2021—before she recovered and re-gained international prominence. You can easily google to find what I found.

The free speech Kirk’s supporters wanted for him they will now deny to others. There’s even a call to make his birthday a national holiday while Kimmel is told he must apologize and pay restitution to Kirk’s family. This is all baldly absurd.

           It all comes to this: I’m not OK. You’re not OK. We’re not ok.

           And that’s NOT okay.

           Having been pushed to the limit by November’s atrocity, and no longer recognizing this land of the free and home of the brave, we have given ourselves a shot in the arm.

           We have been treated as Trump’s Toy: he who plays golf while markets the world over free-fall; who has not an inch of likeness to Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and either Roosevelt, who led by consent of the governed; he has stirred us to a rebellion of our own. The resistance taking hold where we live is the punctuation mark of a brewing revolution.

           Recently, High Street in Newburyport was a flash-point of energy stretching as far as one could see, palpable enough to be virtually seen as it was felt, and the stream of vehicles honking steady, loud approval was the kind of tonic that showed we’re made of the stuff long said of Americans before the day we woke from a nightmare.

           This can be the real Tea Party, the one begun when our forebears baptized the continental beverage and called England’s bluff. Not the misfit, outlaw bag of worms that started this early century in the chaotic townhalls. Republicans, bereft as usual of any ideas, didn’t know what it was but knew it was something and told the miscreants their problem was Democrats.

           That was one big lie, and all the pieces of banalitly, bad behavior, crudity, and plain stupidity came together like the pieces of corpses that became the mythical Frankenstein. The biggest lie is now with us and those who don’t know between that and the truth have been cheering it on.

           Now there is a change in momentum. One cannot but feel it. To this time of boiling point, bone-heads have had the day, led by a clown-car cabinet who are dumb as posts, chosen because they are bootlickers of the worst sort. I’ve said before that the governor of Florida governor is a punk; now Rubio and Vance have joined that growing club, fawning over Trump and giving agency to his madcap ideas, misnaming them “policies” when they are none of the kind. It’s all theater, whether tariffs, loss of our best longtime allies, or giving Europe back to tyrants.

           The future judgment of Trump’s self-declared greatest-show-on-earth will be that knuckleheads were in greater number than ever we dreamed; yet they are but a flash in the pan. Make no mistake, this is going to be a fight but it will be one of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the ballot box, and not of lawlessness.

           But our blow-back came not all at once. Things have been brewing and the far-right is of late in panic of the coming mid-terms. Their own minions are not happy with them and threaten to vote for others or not at all. Cowering leaders in Congress and the courts—including the Supremes—who pledged never to do what they are doing, have needed to hear from us. If they continue to do so, they’ll begin to behave more like savants than shills.

           Mussolini famously embraced the notion that people the world over were tired of freedom, and he was last seen hanging by a leg in Milan. Yes, there are times that the fearful want someone else to do everything for them. Other times there were no options: life meant eat or be eaten, beat or be beaten, and might was right. Tyranny ended only when another one began, not because subjects had a choice.

           Democracy is elastic because citizens decide. A bit ago some made an ominous choice and here we are. But elections are like whack-a-mole: one is done, another looms. Big changes can come all too soon for America’s most celebrated felon. Democracy, unlike dictatorship, is elastic, not a wall replaced by another wall.

           Trump and his ilk love to poke us in the eye. Now they’ve poked the bear and we’ll see who can take a punch.

           In a like time the poet Byron, overlooking the Bridge of Sighs, wrote: “…Freedom, thy banner torn but flying/streams like a thunder-storm against the wind.” Yes, and Old Glory can soon be ours again.

           I’m not saying it’s dead, but I’m sure as hell asking. First be clear about the “soul.” Many believe in it, insist they have one, and good for them. Regardless of its mention from ancient times to modern, it’s speculative at best; a good metaphor but a catch-all too for things we sense but don’t understand and can’t describe. We don’t “see” x-rays or radio waves but we know them by their effects. Soul is another matter. It’s whatever anyone says it is.

           America’s soul, in reference to an entire people, may also be said to be its ethos. The national soul may not be sick unto death but it’s in bad shape–the worst being its racisms, antisemitism, anti-gay sentiment and prejudice against women.

           Racism is a grave sicknesses of the human spirit; even legislation against it during an enlightened era has no lasting effect. We see it today. It is part and parcel of our national governance along with dismissal of DEI policies that sought to address so much inequality. In a trice, they’re gone—only for now, we can but dearly hope.

           Antisemitism is not just old but maybe the oldest of soul-sicknesses. Today it’s muddled, sad to say, by a miscreant strain of Israeli leadership.

Hatred towards those who romantically love their own sex is also complex, muddled in part by subterranean sexual feelings within some haters—i.e., fear of their own proclivities. Then there are those for whom it’s just a political football. Other reasons rest sadly in religion’s worst failings. Today the plight of other sub-groups and the Trans population is due largely to ignorance and misunderstanding.

           We should all admit that just being a woman may not be the entire reason that the U.S. can’t elect one as president, but enough to be the deal-breaker in close elections. Other nations of course are long past this hurdle. Here the emergence of women as truly equal in their humanity is perceived as a real, though an unnecessary, threat to the male sex.

           I’ve faced all these in my several careers, Anything said or done supportive and inclusive of all the above was met with anger, withdrawal of friendship, support and even occasions of physical violence. Go figure. When LBJ said that when he lost Walter Cronkite’s trust, he’d lost America’s–the same can be said when religion relinquishes its place in the great moral issues of the day.

           As leader of a local poetry group at the Senior/Community Center, I called recently for local versifiers to share words of Black poets from days of enslavement to modern times—or to write something from their own understanding of the Black experience. To my surprise, along with much testimony from the historical archive, most of them offered their own heart-felt soul-searching of the damaging, long shelf-life of animus towards other races. Those present were deeply touched, the respect earned.

           If, to Shakespeare’s mind, a play might “catch the conscience” of a king. maybe now poetry can save the soul of America. April is National Poetry Month for an art that is and can be about everything, and what can heal the America’s sin-sick spirit. I deem it Sacred Scripture because it comes as deeply from the heart as any other art. During April, revisit poetry that touches you deeply, maybe poetry you read long ago. And/or go to a Reading.

My local initiative, “Poetry In Public Places,” posts it where people can see while going about their daily lives, “that they who run may read,” as the saying goes. I’ll have a solo show again throughout NU Kitchen’s ample art-space during April: professionally printed on large foamboard.

Many thanks to our Chamber of Commerce: they will post our poetry downtown during the month. And a shout-out to the Art Association for embracing poetry as complement to the theme of each exhibit. As its Poet In Residence let me say that it’s more about visual Art willing to clasp hands with another expression of, yes, the human soul.

           America’s soul is sick. Please don’t let it die.

          I’ve used the heading above in Octobers past, as when the Doomsday Clock loomed near midnight or at other times of misgiving.

What scares me now is what may happen to America and its remarkable Democracy. Such a scare, speaking biblically, may be called Legion, for it is many. Lacking space or time to speak of all, herewith some thoughts:

For well over a hundred years we’ve torn down the old one-room schoolhouses and upgraded, rehabbed or completely replaced their successors with learning spaces and technology undreamed of. We’ve been blessed with access to wisdom past and present by those better trained to mentor our minds than at any other age.

So why at this time in history, with an exceptional heritage from lofty minds of the ancient past and homegrown geniuses of our own, does half our population believe that the successor to our eminent line of presidents should be one who is absent all marks of such traditions? Why do half the voters find it difficult to distinguish the truth from lies and favor a personality and character that falls short of those who have led us before?

During early school days I heard prophetic voices admonishing our state of education, that someday we would pay the price for having scrapped morals, ethics and critical thinking from the nation’s curricula. Silly them. Many thought such things fell out of the sky or were part of our nature.

In every sector of the U.S., are kids who never crack a book being shuffled through their school years and graduated amid prideful tears of their parents when the truth was they were suited for nothing but following the road of family knee-jerks and prejudices.

Yet it continues, and is elsewhere exacerbated by a burgeoning caste system of educational opportunity. The result is no morals, no ethics and certainly no critical thinking. We’re back to a hankering for the authoritarians of old who would tell us what to say and think.

Check all the boxes of cultish behavior: slavishly following leaders regardless of their failings; fear of the outside world as a certain threat; distrust of independent thinking; and rejection of the lessons of history that inform prospects for the future. And that’s a short list.

For those who like to be scared (what I call the Chainsaw Massacre Generation) this may be a happy time, but what may actually come to pass risks the worst becoming real and insuperable till all lessons are forcibly learned and life will be a vast hole out of which to desperately dig ourselves.

Lies didn’t matter in the ancient struggle for dominance; despots and dictators got where they wanted by war and terror, after which lies became the truth that kept them in power. Today it’s the reverse: lies that we love and embrace can bring us to being complicit in the conflicts and torments to come.

No more giant leaps for humankind; only great strides backwards. Already we have overturned Roe and Affirmative Action and are banning books and reversing DEI. One hundred years since Emancipation, over 50 years since the 1960s landmark Civil Rights Acts and the death of MLK, Jr. , we’re back to white nationalism.

Now that the worst has happened, dictatorships may spread and even some who have opposed such will start making nice toward them, saying, “Well, they pick up the trash and make the trains run on time, don’t they?” Sound familiar?

Neighbors south of our border have less to do with the silliness of Halloween and more with the Day of the Dead that follows, with little home altars of photos and keepsakes from beloveds past, as they hold and think on those days. If such is your bent, you might include a small American flag and a pocket-sized copy of our beloved Constitution. If they mean much less after Nov. 5, that will be scary for sure.

So what frightens me most? Three guesses, and the first two don’t count.

          So we’ll own our disappointment, rest up and wait till the dust clears. But no whining and no quitting. Crisis always includes opportunity.

          And no finger-pointing. If ever a political campaign was done well and deserved success, it was the one that had the farthest to go in the briefest of time. Better to embrace the alternative that keeps its head high and makes by far the fewest mistakes.

          Kamala’s remark on “The View” that she couldn’t think of anything she would change in the Biden administration, was a misstep. And maybe calling Trump a fascist should have been he “talks” like a fascist, which he does. Strike both of those and he still would have won.

          The country is in thrall to a cult leader, he won, and I say to them: get back to me in a year and see how that’s workin’ for ya; live with what all he said and promised and ask, can a nation really thrive on vitriol, vulgarity, violence, book banning, enemies’ lists and a Clown Car of a cabinet? I think not. Sadly, all of us will pay the price for it, but there will come a reckoning.

          There’s a long view to history. Lose democracy and the world will turn to darkness. For now, Trump can do no wrong—until he will. He’ll go farther than we imagine. But free reign comes with the biggest pitfall of all: Aristotle’s notion that those who have all they need to own the world, ultimately do themselves in. I.e., pride goeth before a fall. And those who have a Bible with his name stamped on it are reading the wrong book. Regardless of his current triumph, he’s everything that is wrong with America, and he will disgrace it all and voters will learn the lesson of the choice they made.

          The lean to the right by certain Latinos obscures that the majority remains Democratic and progressive, and macho-men will soon be reminded wherein real strength resides. The Black male cohort that feels a woman of their own color is unfit to lead forget, when the foot of the White oppressor was on their necks, humiliating and killing them, who it was who held their heads, picked up the pieces and kept the people together. And young men who feel threatened by feminism and hope for a return to the world of Mad Men will not see strong women disappear; that cat is out of the bag.

          All whom Trump called names, insulted their spouses and families, and ruined their careers—are rushing back to his good graces. Some minorities simply want to go where they think the opportunity is, that’s human nature, but they’re selling their souls to do so. The man who lost the respect of those who filled his last administration will repeat his blunders, and worse, to the amazement of his followers. A leopard does not change its spots.

          Don’t fault Kamala. And don’t blame Joe—he saved the day last time and did so well it was plausible that he should try again, but the vagaries of age intervened at the worst possible time: a fateful, undeserved intrusion on the political moment.

          Yet everything needed to restore sanity is already in place—all the movements large and small, the surge of woman-power, the nonprofits and charities that came into being since Trump’s first accession, are there. There was and is nothing wrong with all of that. MAGA world did everything wrong in 2020, said, “Hey, that didn’t work, so let’s do it again!”—and won the day.

Women especially will continue their rise in influence and power, and those who disrespect themselves and will put up with lesser men are free to endure abuse, neglect and second-class citizenship. It’s their choice, and a bad one. Let the dust settle and next steps will become clear. But apathy, discouragement and the blame-game must find no harbor. Stand up for all we’ve long believed in; be strong allies to minorities who will suffer right-wing fallout and join voters of the future in disowning what will become a flame-out from misrule.

And by the way, it’s been a year of surprises, and more may yet come. Karma bites when least suspected.

(John Burciga may not always be right, but he’s never wrong. But when challenged to a duel, he always opts for snowballs in August)