The Rittenhouse Decision and Its Implications

The Kyle Rittenhouse trial had me reeling and consequently I dashed off a Letter to the Editor of my local Palm Beach Post newspaper, one that had to be limited to 200 words.  I sent it to Bruce Rettman, my longest tenured friend from our college years.  I’ve written about our friendship in this space before.  The first such time I included another terrific essay he wrote.

When I sent my piece to him, he responded with something he wrote, not necessarily for publication, but he just wanted to “let it out,” his own reaction to the Rittenhouse decision.  While space made me focus on one aspect, our society’s increasing permissiveness for carrying military style weapons, his is broader, making him ask why he should even stay in this country, the title of his piece, appropriately, I Would Leave.

I thought it was excellent and he agreed to allow me to publish it here.  And as my letter to the Post was restricted in length, I take this opportunity to add back what I had to cut out to make the paper’s length restrictions: 

The absence of sensible gun control laws led directly to the jury’s decision.  They could reach no other verdict in a society which not only allows for the possession of military style weapons but increasingly promotes “Stand Your Ground” laws, either explicit or implied.  Our society and its leaders have actively advanced the 2^nd amendment to an absurd degree.  In this respect our judicial system has been rendered as ineffective as another branch of government, Congress.  Gerrymandering and the effort of Republican states to appoint electors to the Electoral College who might be amenable to not certifying future election results also have frightening implications for The Republic’s future. 

As students sixty years ago Bruce and I recited John Masefield’s On Growing Old, never imagining it would happen to us.  Now we come together in that unimaginable future, and find ourselves in a nation we no longer recognize, one slouching towards autocracy.

I Would Leave 

by Bruce Rettman

If I were younger, I would leave the United States of America and make my life in another country.  The trial in Kenosha gives us yet another example of our broken, barbaric society giving legitimacy and permission to a person, in this case an adolescent, to carry a military assault weapon on the street and to use it to commit murder.  Our judicial system has constructed laws that put such action in the category of reasonable behavior so that a jury must return a verdict of not guilty.  A murderer is free to kill again.

I would leave.  What kind of society elects Donald Trump as its president and on his behalf attacks the capitol threatening the lives of legislators and bringing death and destruction to the building that stands as a symbol of our democracy?  What kind of country elects representatives who become leaders of one of its major political parties and defend such action?  We are a society in violent decline plagued by the prejudices that have haunted our history.  We have shown ourselves unequal to resolving our national crimes.

I would leave, but where would I go?  I would go to a society that does not allow its citizens to bear arms and does not have an armed police force.  I would go to a society that offers universal health care.  I would go to a society that advocates the end of the use of fossil fuel and not only takes climate change seriously but does what it can to save the planet from the ravages of our wanton destruction.  I doubt we will act to save ourselves, and I have little faith the USA will do what decent people should do.  We would rather fund what has brought us to prominence.  The USA will continue to fund a military that fights to protect wealth.

What decent person does not advocate for free education? Who would support a system that creates elite colleges and preparatory schools attended for the most part by people of substantial means?  I would look for a society that housed and fed the poor and the elderly and did not complain that such action constitutes entitlements that burden the rest of us.  I would look for a society that offered child care so that the very young and their parents could live healthy lives.  I would look for a society that guaranteed food and shelter for all of its citizens. 

The USA is over.  I know without a reasonable doubt that the United States is not, as most all of its elected leaders feel required to repeat, the greatest country in the world. Rather, it is a country of savage cruelty, at home and abroad, that is responsible for the suffering of people around the globe.  We are a military state and have been at war incessantly, war without end.  I would look for a society at peace with itself and the world. 

I would leave the USA.

My November 25 letter in the Palm Beach Post:

 

 

The Season of Ebbing

 

I am at the age of trying to make up for lost time, time that was primarily devoted to the duties required of a man of the 20^th century, the hunting and gathering, attracting a mate, raising a family, and of course forging a meaningful career.  But how things change; it appears one does not have to work much anymore, just day trade memes and SPACs and buy Bitcoins.  Also, now that traveling is more a thing of the past, we of that certain age are left with managing our health and pursuing deferred dreams which, for me, involve mostly writing and piano.

I’ve had little formal training in either.  To write, one must, well, write.  I’ve done most of that in this blog space, but creative writing, particularly the genre I’m drawn to, the short story, is different.  The best training is reading creative fiction, both the short story and the novel and I’ll include drama as, in essence, plays are short stories in dialogue. The profundity of the old aphorism, “so many books, and so little time” is taking on a breathless truth.

Consequently, I try to read at least one short story daily, all with other reading.  Recently, somewhat inexplicably, that occasionally has meant returning to novels I read ages ago, ones I might have looked at differently as a younger man.  I have also dipped into some young adult literature.

Yes, “YA” as they say in the library world.  My parents were not readers and I had no real reading guiding light.  In fact, it wasn’t considered “cool” by the crowd I ran around with in my early school years.  So, my reading was confined to school assignments and occasionally science fiction.  I enjoyed Jules Verne in those days, as well as some of the then contemporary Sci-Fi writers, Asimov, Bradbury.  So I never got to read a young adult book.  In my defense, YA was not yet a formal category of writing, but there were numerous books that would have been appropriate, had I only known. 

Making up for lost time is my mantra.  Recently I read the obituary (read them regularly now, wonder why) of Gary Paulsen, just a couple of years older than I, and we shared similar childhood difficulties, his reaction very different than mine: “Paulsen’s teenage years were tumultuous and when things were particularly rough at home, he escaped by running away to the woods where he hunted and trapped animals to survive.”  I “survived” by getting out of the house as much as I could and running around with the wrong crowd.  I like Paulsen’s approach, but what did I know of surviving in the woods as a NYC boy?

Paulsen captured his wide range of self reliance experiences in some 200 published works, his most famous being Hatchet, the story of a 13 year old who is being flown in a small plane to the northern regions of west Canada to join his father for the summer. So, being the new YA reader that I am, I got the book!  

The protagonist’s parents are divorced (mine, unfortunately, were not) and his mother gives him a hatchet as she knows he might find it useful in the woods. Neither she nor he knew that his life would depend on it.  Remarkably our young hero, Brian, lasted for two months in the woods with only his hatchet after the pilot of the small plane had a fatal stroke.  Brian actually controlled the plane well enough to belly dive into a lake and make it out, with his hatchet.

Reading the book I felt I was starting to make up for my own lost childhood.  Needless to say, it is an easy, fast read, but nice pacing, suspense and an opportunity for the reader to project himself into the story.  Paulsen uses certain word repetition for effect.  I found myself thinking of ways to survive while reading about Brian’s ordeal, projecting my 13 year old self into the story.  I remember that person, not a confident boy, and neither was Brian until he was forced to grow up in a hurry and forage for food and shelter, with only his hatchet as a tool It conjured up the unforgettable Tom Hanks movie, Cast Away in my mind (I wonder whether the writer of the film owes some attribution to Paulsen).

I recognized the author’s foreshadowing of the possible resolution to his predicament, the plane being so far off course, in the middle of nowhere.  Paulsen plants that solution early on but never mentions it again until the end.  And the end of course, is uplifting, Brian becoming a local news item for a while, but, becoming a man in just a couple of months, with a new outlook on life.  This is exactly the kind of fiction I should have been reading as a 13 years old, the kind which cries out, ‘read more!”

At the same time I was rereading one of my favorite author’s earlier novels, Straight Man by Richard Russo.

It takes a “straight man” to get the laugh from the insanity surrounding him.  Is the world gone crazy and is “Hank" Devereaux Jr. the only sane person in the book, in spite of his behavior for which he is persecuted?  When I originally read it I laughed uncontrollably, but now, in a later stage of life, I see this work as philosophical as it is funny.  Ocumen’s Razor, which Hank claims to be guided by in figuring things out, keeps getting twisted by human interactions.

I originally read it when I was about the age of the protagonist.  Then, I identified with him.  Rereading, it is still funny but more meaningful than I remember, a great balance between poignancy and hilarity.  Plus there is some stunning writing.  The following could have been written by Updike: "Basketball is a beautiful game for a tall, graceful man like me.  At times I'm overwhelmed by its beauty that I lose touch with reality.  When my shot is falling, when I'm moving across the lane and back out to the perimeter for my jumper, I forget my age and position in life."  (That would be in his 50's, a tenured professor at a mediocre Penn. college.).

Without getting into the details of plot (and there are many characters and subplots), this tale of small-town American university life, brings us through Hank’s midlife crisis as the temporary chairman of his University’s English Department, or as his friend Tony Coniglia puts it, “…youth is the Season of Deeds. The question youth asks is: Who am I?  In the Season of Grace we ask: What have I become?”

It is a hilarious labyrinthine path that leads us on Hank’s journey through the remnants of his “Season of Deeds” to his “Season of Grace,” a concept he still rebels at:  “…I conclude that if William Henry Devereaux Jr. is less than ecstatically happy…it must be because he has not fully accepted his good friend’s invitation to join him and Nolan Ryan and Dr. J., and Nadia Comaneci, and all the others who have lost their best stuff, in entering the Season of Grace.”  And yet, he is relatively at peace at the end, especially after a surprisingly effective kumbaya conclusion, all the characters coming together, a celebration of life, the humor and the sadness all connected by our friends and families.  And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t?  We’ve got Company!”

Our Short-Term National Memory

To illustrate the topic of this entry, only about a month ago the worry was the end of the financial world as Congress was playing political brinkmanship with the National Debt ceiling.  After circling the wagon train, preparing for the worst, hark, the sound of the cavalry bugles at the last minute, Congress agreeing to raise debt levels, extending the issue “all the way” to December 3.  Meanwhile, the financial markets resumed its steady march to the heavens, particularly as the Federal Reserve is between a rock and a hard place, not wanting to raise rates. Clearly, the Treasury cannot afford to pay more interest on the steadily mounting debt.  Short term memory: everyone has conveniently forgotten December 3.  Soon it will be headline material again, a hot potato political issue.

Meanwhile, the Trumpublicans are pleased about the recent elections, demonstrating that their lord and master showman’s prestidigitatorial gas lighting can still opiate the American mind.  Simple formula, tar all Democratic candidates as “socialists” or associate them with the big bad wolf (Critical Race Theory, something most Trumpublicans cannot explain), and equate any reasonable COVID policy with a “loss of freedom.” Nice little sound bites for somnambulistic sheep.  However, no doubt their obedience has been nurtured by the intransigence of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

The most serious reminder of our short-term national memory, however, is the upcoming (only two more months) one year anniversary of the most serious domestic attack on our native soil since the Civil War, the January 6^th insurrection.

We all watched it.  Our elected representatives experienced it.  We have the evidence how it was masterminded, what the end game plan was, and several Senators and Congress people who decried it during the immediate following days, now have all conveniently whitewashed it and have allowed the architects of that horrible day, unfettered by consequences, to do it again, perhaps now more “legally” given voting law changes in Republican states, redistricting, appointments of State Election Commissioners who will do what they are told as well as conservative judges at the local levels of Government.

Imagine if this attack was orchestrated by the Duchey of Grand Fenwick – we’d be bombing the hell out of them.

Why our Justice Department cannot swiftly act on this matter defies understanding.  Are our political system and the American psyche so poisoned?  Even our 4^th Estate seems to have left the scene of the crime.  The montage of headlines the day after this egregious breach of democracy was filled with outrage.  Where is it now?