Sunday, July 4, 2021

When revolutionaries and insurrectionists hold Fourth

Two days before the Fourth of July 2021, 71-year-old Waco attorney David Bass, dressed in an all-white suit, sought to repeat a patriotic ritual conducted at the steps of the McLennan County Courthouse over the past decade or so in which criminal defense attorneys read aloud the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. As Bass said two years ago, the words of the Founding Fathers need annual review at the very least because "we live in unusual times." But this year, because of the stifling noon-day heat, post-pandemic holiday getaways or perhaps the widespread malaise that has left some Americans feeling less than patriotic, not many defense attorneys showed up for public reading duties.

And so attorneys and non-attorneys ranging from a young woman in a “Black Lives Matter” T-shirt, to a community organizer with Waco Immigrants Alliance, to a former county court-at-law judge, to an attorney wearing an oversized Fourth of July party hat and whose most infamous case involved a Williamson County man who sent a chocolate candy bar in the shape of a penis to a McLennan County Sheriff's employee each stepped forward to share in the public readings. Witnessing this edifying bit of patriotism and civics in the crowd of a dozen or so: two bearded, middle-aged men, one distinguished by his red, white and blue Waco Tea Party gimme cap, the other by a red T-shirt with the sketch of a tree and the inscription: “Thomas Jefferson: Tree of Liberty Refreshment, Inc. The Blood of Patriots and Tyrants, 1776, est.”

Somewhere amidst neighborhood parades, backyard barbecues and evening fireworks, the Fourth of July should demand of all meaningful meditations on what our nation has gone through recently and how it stacks up alongside what the Founders expected of subsequent generations. Example: For years in Waco, every Fourth of July I pondered the 2001 Independence Day brawl on the east end of the iconic Waco Suspension Bridge in which a self-acknowledged white supremacist (complete with tattoos of Adolf Hitler and the phrase "white power" on his legs) stabbed four black teens in what he later claimed was a mob attack (though he walked into the situation with three friends of his own, begging the question: Who constituted the mob that evening?) All of this occurred one bridge south of the Washington Avenue Bridge where Sank Majors, a 20-year-old black man accused of assaulting a white woman, was lynched less than a century earlier. One newspaper headline about the 1905 hanging: "Judge Lynch on the Bench: Texas mob, 800 strong, executes summary judgment on prisoner." The 2001 violence, erupting by rockets’ red glare, eventually sent the white supremacist away for life (thanks to prior felony convictions for burglary and cocaine possession) but also contributed to greater awareness of local racial disparities and fueled broader efforts by city leaders to encourage and invest in the redevelopment of East Waco, heavily populated by African Americans and not surprisingly often left behind amid the growing revitalization of downtown Waco just across the Brazos. The 1870 Waco Suspension Bridge and the 1901 Washington Avenue Bridge link the two.

And certainly the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on our nation's bustling symbols of commerce and military might was on many minds during Fourth of July 2002 celebrations, the first in which foreign enemies threatened to disrupt America's anniversary of national independence. To quote a July 4, 2002, editorial in the Waco Tribune-Herald: "Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Americans have become familiar, although not comfortable, with the contradictions of the new reality. The United States is the world's oldest representative democracy. It has survived to enjoy 226 Independence Day celebrations due to the firm foundation laid down by the nation's founders: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.' The stirring words in the Declaration of Independence launched a bold experiment in self-governance that has proven capable of withstanding wars, economic depression and internal strife. America, a nation governed by generous people, is not perfect. People are not perfect. But with a unified commitment to continue to live up to the principles spelled out in the nation's birth certificate, the United States will prevail over terrorist enemies who do not believe in nations that derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." President George W. Bush, by then viewed as a fellow McLennan Countian by virtue of his nearby ranch, set a similar tone during a Fourth of July 2002 ceremony in West Virginia honoring veterans: "Unlike any other country, America came into the world with a message for mankind that all are created equal, and all are meant to be free. There is no America race; there's only an American creed: We believe in the dignity and rights of every person. We believe in equal justice, limited government and in the rule of law. We believe in personal responsibility and tolerance toward others. This creed of freedom and equality has lifted the lives of millions of Americans, of citizens by birth and citizens by choice. This creed draws our friends to us. It sets our enemies against us, and always inspires the best that is within us. In this 226th year of our independence, we have seen that American patriotism is still a living faith. We love our country; only more when she's threatened."

So for anyone who loves our country and is versed on foundational principles ranging from the peaceful transfer of power set in 1801 (and after a knock-down, drag-out presidential campaign) to the rigorously informed citizenry Thomas Jefferson insisted democratic governance demanded to be its very best, a dilemma naturally arises on the Fourth of July 2021: How does one commemorate and celebrate founding principles overshadowed by a riot or insurrection or tourist frenzy or what-have-you that just six months ago overwhelmed the U.S. Capitol, sent elected lawmakers fleeing for their lives and impeded, if only for a few hours, the constitutional certification of our nation’s presidential election? Ignore it and set off a few more firecrackers?

We can’t even agree what we all saw on TV on Jan. 6. Some of us saw a justifiable citizen protest exploding in rage over what QAnon disciples, Republican “patriots” and MAGA apologists tell us was a presidential election stolen from a long-awaited political messiah who put Americans first and sought to “make America great again.” Others of us saw a spectacle grounded in white grievance, paranoia and hatred whipped into a mad frenzy by a demagogue desperate enough to unleash a mob to do what state and federal courts and his own otherwise subservient vice president and attorney general refused to do – overturn enough election returns so this president could remain in power.

Therein lies a clear and present danger. When the president of the United States doesn’t respect election returns compiled through the extraordinary efforts of thousands of moms and pops staffing polling places, and in the middle of a deadly pandemic, when he won’t bow to an orderly transition of power after what the president’s own Department of Justice insisted were free and fair elections, when he presses self-styled patriots from all over the nation to head for the U.S. Capitol where election results are to be formally recognized, and to "fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore" – well, then American patriotism has been prostituted for despotic ends.

One is reminded of English essayist, lexicographer and wit Samuel Johnson’s 1775 truism: Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. When a president literally wraps himself in the U.S. flag, some of us simply see an American unabashedly demonstrating his patriotism. Others of us see a charlatan successfully playing naïve souls for selfish ends. Some of us wax eloquent in our adoration of the flag, even as we utter hollow or unthinking allegiances to what that flag represents. Others of us see something disgraceful in those who during the 2020 election lowered their U.S. flags at home and ran up Trump flags in their place. Some kept those royal blue Trump flags flying well after the election was done, indicating how they felt not only about the outcome but our country.

A relevant question any day, not just on the Fourth of July: Is the burning of the U.S. flag –
something —
lately identified, fairly or not, with nationwide Black Lives Matter protests over the death of former Texan George Floyd at the hands of police and the continuing scourge of racial injustice across America – anymore profane than protesters enraged over a supposedly stolen election using poles with U.S. flags attached to beat into submission police officers trying to defend what some of us regard as the citadel of democracy? Can patriots reasonably claim to respect the rule of law and the thin blue line when they practice, cheer or condone what erupted on Jan. 6? Some 140 police officers were injured in the unrest. And does the Declaration of Independence at the heart of Fourth of July celebrations vindicate or condemn those forces storming the Capitol? Does the “American Scripture” of 1776 affirm them as idealistic and enlightened revolutionaries in the Jeffersonian mold or stamp them as mindless rabble dispatched by a manipulative, conniving rabble-rouser-in-chief?

The pride and the passion

The cries of "1776" amid the spray-choked, flag-waving unrest; President Trump's tweet hours into the violence proclaiming ominously that "These are the things and events that happen when sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long"; and, then, in ordering his supporters home, his exhortation that they cherish the experiences at hand: "Remember this day forever!" – all these beg to move the Sixth of January into the same liberty-loving sphere as the Fourth of July. And yet one comes up short if seeking definitive, thought-out, long-term principles behind the rebellion, given that the party of this president on occasion of the 2020 national convention nominating him for re-election voted to forego any timely and updated political platform beyond a general commitment to “continue to enthusiastically support the president’s America-first agenda” – and that any effort to amend the 2016 platform “will be ruled out of order.” In short, leave all such niceties to the man. Nor does one easily glean high insurrectionary ideals from court documents and social media posts, the latter often posted amid the near-orgasmic glee of the Jan. 6 havoc. Much of what surfaces is pent-up rage over President Trump’s electoral loss and various forms of white grievance and maniacal patriotism, perhaps best summed up in the rush of invincibility 57-year-old Stacy Hager of Gatesville, 40 miles west of Waco, acknowledged upon scaling Capitol walls amid what he described as flash bombs bursting during the Trump-roused attack. To this euphoric feeling Patriot Hager added online, according to a subsequent arrest warrant affidavit: “We waited twice to regroup before reaching the second wall designated with a third bullhorn guy yelling a steady drone of ‘Patriots move forward.’ This was the wall that divides sane and insane, civil and disobedient, frantic and mayhem, relative safety and imminent danger.” Charges now facing Hager include disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building as well as violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol Grounds. Flip-flopping alt-right media personality Anthime Gionet, 33, alias “Baked Alaska,” later arrested in Houston, displayed similar gung-ho confidence amid the violence, conducting a 27-minute livestream video while urging some 800 others onward. At one point, he declares: “We are in the Capitol building, 1776 will commence again.” Later: “America First is inevitable. F--- globalists, let’s go!” Still later, in accusing a police officer of shoving him: “You’re a f--king oath-breaker, you piece of s--t” and “You broke your oath to the Constitution.”

And consider the video evidence indicting 30-year-old Ryan Nichols of Converse, Texas, who climbed the Capitol steps with a bullhorn and declared, “If you have a weapon, you need to get your weapon!” In another video, he yells: “This is the second revolution right here, folks! […] This is not a peaceful protest!” And there’s Troy Smocks, 58, of Dallas, who posted on Parler, the social media platform of Trumpers: “Today, January 6th, 2021, We Patriots by the millions have arrived in Washington, DC, carrying banners of support for the greatest President the World has ever known. But if we must… Many of us will return on January 19th, 2021, carrying our weapons in support of Our nation’s resolve, to which the world will never forget. We will come in numbers that no standing army or police agency can match.” (Jan. 19 was the day before Inauguration Day.) And there’s this spirited day-after reflection by Mark Middleton, 52, a Republican Party precinct chairman who along with wife Jalise lives in North Texas but may soon take up new quarters for allegedly assaulting Capitol police officers: “Afterwards [the rally at which President Trump and other Republican leaders pumped the crowd], patriots marched all the way to the Capitol, chanting and singing the national anthem. The atmosphere makes you feel proud to be an American, ask anyone that was there, I guarantee you that’s what every single person will tell you. As we approached and gathered at the back of the Capitol, even after people occupied the high and low grounds, national anthem, Pledge of Allegiance, chantings for Trump, USA and singing of patriotic songs, singing hymns and praying are all that you hear. Then came the tear gas.”

Later Middleton adds defiantly, betraying the same logic President Trump employed about elections and the size of his campaign rallies: “You CAN’T convince me there was no voter fraud found when I stood on the street for 20 mins and still couldn’t see the end of the crowd!”

Further confounding messaging of the Sixth of January that may be revolutionary or insurrectionary or anarchic or something else entirely is the religion factor, particularly white evangelicals' overwhelming and unquestioning faith in President Trump who, for all his personal failings and obvious ignorance of Christianity, is perceived as a divinely anointed savior and strongman who can press for a long-awaited return to a more wholesome, less conflicted America. In a newly released survey of 1,248 adults from all 50 states and Washington, D.C., conducted in the wake of the Jan. 6 unrest, Baylor University researchers gleaned findings indicating “that religious belief, religious identity and religious participation are all positively and strongly correlated with believing in popular contemporary falsehoods," said Paul Froese, director of Baylor Religion Surveys and a professor of sociology. "The link between religiosity and conspiratorial beliefs is in part correlated with political partisanship." The Baylor findings suggest biblical literalists, self-identified “very religious” people and weekly church attenders are significantly more likely to believe the 2020 election was rigged, COVID-19 vaccines are untrustworthy and top Democrats are involved in sex-trafficking rings — this last-mentioned one of the most notorious and foundational of QAnon conspiratorial themes. Indeed, the mixing of QAnon conspiracy theories and religion should be a wakeup call for religious leaders of the work ahead. Consider ever-provocative North Texas real estate Jenna (or Jennifer) Ryan's tweet after flying to Washington, D.C., on a private jet and participating in the Capitol attack: “The truth of the matter is that Q was correct. Evil people will have their day. God's timing is perfect.” During an interview with my Trib colleague Carl Hoover, Froese added one further damning insight that no longer seems hard to believe: "Biblical literalists often don't read the Bible."

Some of these findings materialized in the Jan. 6 rally, including a protester’s makeshift sign that showed an image of Jesus peeking around its edge along with the quote, “I saw what you did with those ballots,” and other demonstrators’ flags reading: “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president.” One protester wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the latter slogan carried a sign that read, "Every legal vote counted, every illegal vote removed." Another: "In God We Trust, Stop the Steal!" Nor is all this politicization of the Christian faith strictly limited to white evangelicalism: Engaging, Waco-based Christ the King Baptist Church televangelist Ramiro Pena, a former Baylor University regent who famously supported Trump in 2016 (citing abortion and border issues as reasons in his interviews with me), served in the Trump White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative headed by prominent prosperity pastor and white televangelist Paula White. Rev. Pena was present at the Jan. 6 “Save America” rally that ultimately dispatched Trump supporters to the U.S. Capitol. The night before the rally, the reverend posted a video of himself near Trump Hotel on the streets of Washington beseeching supporter prayers ahead of the rally and insisting that he felt “the angels of the Lord around us right now.” A few days after the insurrection, he somberly offered online sentiments from home about Isaiah 9:6 and "the government of Jesus" taking hold in people's lives. And less than a month afterward Rev. Pena was offering worshipers discounts of up to 66 percent on pillows marketed by beleaguered My Pillow founder, diehard Trump supporter and election fraud conspiracist Mike Lindell "when so many in the cancel culture have chosen not to sell his products anymore in their big box stores." Later this year Rev. Pena is to share the stage at a Pena Ministries event with prominent white evangelical author Lance Wallnau, who has long viewed Trump as an "Isaiah 45 Cyrus," a king envisioned as doing God's work a theme Rev. Pena has stressed as well, notwithstanding inconsistencies in a constitutional democracy supposedly done with kings and tyrants.

Anyone perusing autumnal letters between Jefferson and John Adams, long after they put
behind them bad feelings over the rowdy 1800 election, knows that for a revolution to take root requires not only a commitment to vetted principles but “virtue” in the people. Otherwise, anarchy and tyranny result. One wonders then what revolution of liberty is rooted in severely restricting voter rights – a manifestation of the Jan. 6 mobocracy and Trump’s months of destructive lies – instead of seeking ways to efficiently expand voting rights as befits a healthy, proud democracy. One wonders what revolution of liberty is rooted in smothering greater awareness of critical race theory, which in its fundamental form highlights past American atrocities of inequality and racial injustice lest we forget and repeat them. Indeed, to the degree principles and ideals exist in the Trump revolution, they show little fealty to the Constitution. Fervor for the Second and Tenth amendments and a strong chief executive (assuming it’s Trump or a sycophant) eclipses the constitutionally set Article I powers of Congress and even an independent federal judiciary. This suggests making America “great again” might resemble Jacksonian democracy brimming with guns and states’ rights. President Trump has even compared himself to President Andrew Jackson, though this arguably sells short even Jackson – yes, a onetime hot-tempered backwoodsman who nonetheless had been a senator, a judge and a general before he was elected president in 1828. Two years before his death, Jefferson, contemplating Jackson in the White House, described him as “one of the most unfit men I know of for such a place.” Yet even President Jackson rallied at one point, defying a movement in South Carolina encouraged by his own vice president to nullify federal laws over which it simply disagreed. Jackson issued a terse, constitutionally based proclamation in response in December 1832: “I consider, then, the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one state, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.” This proved Jackson’s finest moment as president, something of which he seemed well aware, judging from a letter of May 1833
to his cousin Andrew J. Crawford: “I have had a laborious task here, but nullification is dead and its actors and exciters will only be remembered by the people to be execrated for their wicked designs to sever and destroy the only good government on the globe and that prosperity and happiness we enjoy over every other portion of the world.”

Given the enduring influence of our most recent former president, one could argue that what we have witnessed in Texas this year highlights Trumpian ideals (and Texas remains one of the top states generating Jan. 6 insurrectionists and rioters thus far formally charged). In a likely bid to run for president as Trump’s Republican successor, the governor of Texas is now crowdfunding to build the former president's border wall (despite the U.S. Constitution’s reserving such matters to the federal government); defying federal gun laws as a “Second Amendment sanctuary state”; demanding voter rights be rigorously restricted in the name of election integrity (despite the Republican Texas Secretary of State’s insistence that Texas had “smooth and secure” elections in 2020); and pressing for more ways to circumscribe the teaching of critical race theory when a bill doing just that (and which the governor signed on June 15) didn’t go far enough for him. Race indeed surfaces as a factor in much of this apparent idealism, reflected even beyond the updated stats analyzed by the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Threats showing that of the 532 Capitol arrests thus far, 93 percent are white and 86 percent are male. Some of the specific voting initiatives under attack by Trump-supporting Texas legislators in 2021 were those favored by pandemic-wary Texas minorities in the 2020 general election, including drive-through voting in heavily populated Harris County as well as early voting hours on Sundays popular among churchgoers in African-American communities who after services travel to the polls. 

Perfect example of all this spilling into hypocrisy: Conroe-based attorney Brandon Creighton, Republican author of a 2021 bill in the Texas Senate discouraging the teaching of critical race theory in schools, authored in the 2019 legislative session a bill making it harder to remove old statues and monuments commemorating the “Lost Cause” of the slave-holding Confederacy – statues and monuments erected generations ago to reinforce Jim Crow laws marginalizing African Americans after the Civil War was lost and the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments supposedly became the law of the land. However else one considers these two Creighton bills, they offer conflicting stands in supposed Republican grievance over "cancel culture" and jointly seek to appease the white paranoia now driving the Republican Party. Perhaps nothing illustrates this better than a March Twitter dustup in which North Texas real estate agent Jenna Ryan, responding to someone’s Oprah Winfrey meme showing the talk show host pointing and exclaiming, “You goin’ to jail,” returned fire: “Definitely not going to jail. Sorry I have blonde hair white skin a great job a great future and I'm not going to jail. Sorry to rain on your hater parade. I did nothing wrong.” (The arrest warrant affidavit based on a Facebook live video shows Ryan chanting, at the front of the Capitol, “U-S-A! U-S-A!” and “Here we are in the name of Jesus!” and, once inside the building, joining in a chant, “Fight for freedom! Fight for freedom!” and yelling, “This is our house!” At one point, she pauses to tout her real estate business.One of the few intensely radioactive right-wing causes left to die by the Texas Legislature in the wake of all this: a movement to put on the ballot the question of whether Texas should again secede from the nation – a proposition that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott very likely (and correctly) considered unworthy of anyone seriously contemplating the White House and leading the country one day. That said, I can confirm an observation that African-American historian and Harvard University professor Annette Gordon-Reed offered during a Fourth of July 2021 C-SPAN interview about a recent visit to her native Texas: "When I was growing up, I recall seeing the Confederate battle flag only occasionally. In the past few years [when] I was in Texas, and I was going around in the country, riding around and visiting, I saw more Confederate flags on that trip than I'd probably seen in my entire childhood growing up in Texas. I mean, something has happened where the Confederate identity it may mean something different now because it's attached to current-day political things. Maybe that's what it is.”

Revelations at the QAnon altar

As the world marvels at our impotence and self-delusion, Americans grapple daily with an information age corrupted to the point that both ends of the political spectrum employ “cancel culture.” Right-wing media in particular such as talk radio and renegade "news" networks long on opinions and short on news deliver misinformation confirming the biases of many whites unwilling to experience epiphanies about themselves and their place in a changing society – epiphanies that might guide and reassure and benefit them about the steep challenges ahead for all Americans. (Not that right-wing media alone are guilty; defenders of critical race theory are now under siege largely because of the New York Times’ 1619 Project and its wrong-headed claim that slavery was “one primary reason the colonists fought the American Revolution.”) To quote celebrated American-born journalist Anne Applebaum, the situation is perilous for democracies precisely because democracies depend on constituents who are more discriminating than their sometimes fickle and deceptive political leaders: "Thanks to a global epidemic of nihilistic trolling, manipulative disinformation and addictive outrage, modern democracies are facing an existential challenge: It’s not merely that their citizens don't agree on politics, they don't agree on the nature of truth itself." Applebaum's insight – offered here in endorsement of another writer's book, Jonathan Rauch’s “The Constitution of Knowledge” holds special relevance: She obviously understands how the embrace of such concepts as human rights and civil liberties and equal and just application of the law are integral parts of our complicated national DNA, reinforced through serious media publications and history classes and political campaigns and even on such occasions as the Fourth of July — and thus can easily be taken for granted in certain situations warranting vigilance and discernment. As one who has spent much of her career in Eastern Europe, she also understands the perils that face budding democracies anything but certain in the long term, including how some media dynamics can contribute to their downfall. Her own take on the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, expressed in a tweet posted just before the Fourth of July: "No doubt about intentions and motivations. They wanted to stop the vote count and believed that Trump had told them to do so."

There's no denying the addictive qualities of latter-day media confections. Some of my own acquaintances now follow the mystical QAnon oracle supposedly originating from a deeply placed, well-informed source in Trump circles. It offers ambiguous reassurances and preposterous alarms, including crazy and crazier predictions and claims. One: that President Trump, with U.S. military backing, would not only be sworn into a second term on Jan. 20 despite his November electoral loss but that he would have senior Democrats arrested and executed. In the wake of this obviously failed prediction, the oracle then claimed Trump would be sworn back into office with military backing on March 4, the original swearing-in date of presidents till passage of the 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In the wake of that obviously failed prediction, Trump now will be reinstated as president come August. One wonders how many failures QAnon must serve its followers before it rates the same contempt serious news media rate among this crowd of true believers and willing dupes. After a retired Texas sportscaster of my decades-long acquaintance succumbed to such falsehoods and began reveling with others in Trump's sure return to power despite the 2020 election (along with warnings to fellow believers to stock up on food and fuel for the brief period of Trump’s transition to power), I asked how on earth a journalist such as himself could fall for such claims, to which he replied: "Oh, I'm no journalist. I was a sportscaster!"

Recently I reviewed editorials and columns published through the years by the Waco Tribune-Herald on occasion of the Fourth. They included this editorial, insightfully written by former Trib colleague John Young and published in 2008 when President George W. Bush was still president and spent summers at his Prairie Chapel ranch 20 miles beyond Waco: “Today's birthday celebration is steeped in patriotism, which should not be measured simply by waving the flag or setting off fireworks. It also should be measured by getting involved in community affairs, participating in local government, staying informed and voting. Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, warned, ‘If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.’” Yet, as Mitch Daniels, president of Perdue University and former Republican governor of Indiana, recently remarked, “Liberty, of course, requires constant vigilance, but who would have thought until recently that the idea of truth needed defending?” As we contend with what some call an insurrection, others call a peaceful protest, the seeming impossibility of shared truth justifies societal anxiety. This is especially so as we consider all that our nation has gone through and where we are today as a people divided not only over culture, politics and race but what constitutes a constitutionally ordered democratic republic. How hopeful can we be on the Fourth of July when we remain so conflicted about the Sixth of January?

Shortly before the Fourth, 49-year-old Trump supporter Anna Morgan-Lloyd wept before a Reagan-appointed federal judge for briefly mixing amidst the chaos and conspiracy in the Capitol. Like many protesters, her own words on social media had indicted her. She beamed on Facebook the afternoon of Jan. 6 that it was the “Best day ever.” At another point she noted: “I’m so glad we were there. For the experience and memory but most of all we can spread the truth about what happened and open the eyes of some of our friends.” A couple of weeks later she was recognized while applying for a firearm permit back home in Bloomfield, Indiana, where 96 percent of the residents are white.

“I would just like to apologize to the court, the American people and my family,” Morgan-Lloyd said in court during the June 23 sentencing. “I went there to show support for President Trump peacefully, and I’m ashamed that it became a savage display of violence.” Her attorney added: “Once Mrs. Lloyd understood the destruction and lawlessness of many who entered the U.S. Capitol, she was upset, contrite and remorseful. Though she did not defile or destroy any property, she acknowledges that her presence may have given comfort to those who committed acts of violence and acts of destruction.”

“I felt ashamed that something meant to show support for the president had turned violent,” Morgan-Lloyd elaborated in a remarkable confessional letter to the judge. “This is not the way to prove any point. At first, it didn’t dawn on me, but later I realized that if every person like me who wasn’t violent was removed from that crowd, the ones who were violent may have lost the nerve to do what they did. For that, I am sorry and take responsibility. It was never my intent to help empower people to act violently. I take responsibility for my actions on January 6th. I will do what the court requires of me to try to set things right. I will cooperate with my probation officer fully.”

This confession Morgan-Lloyd wrote at her attorney’s urging suggests an awareness that the riot was at least partially grounded in white and Christian victimhood. She cites books and movies recently consumed, including “Just Mercy,” “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” and “Schindler’s List” – again at her attorney’s suggestion – to demonstrate her improved perspective on America. “I’ve learned that even though we live in a wonderful country, things still need to improve. People of all colors should feel as safe as I do to walk down the street. As an American I feel very lucky to have been born in this country. As someone who is part-Native American, I feel my roots strongly. I would never want to live anywhere else. It’s not perfect, but I believe it can and will get better for all people.”

Impressed by Morgan-Lloyd’s remorse and guilty plea to a single charge of unlawfully entering the Capitol (winnowed down from several charges), U.S. District Judge, Texas native and Army veteran Royce Lamberth granted her three years of probation, 40 hours of community service and a requirement she pay $500 in restitution. "This wasn’t a peaceful demonstration,” he declared. “It was not an accident that it turned violent. I also think some of these defendants in these cases are not going to do what you did. Some of them are not going to say they did anything wrong." The judge was especially rankled by some federal lawmakers comparing the riot to a "day of tourists walking through the Capitol."

A day later Morgan-Lloyd, the very first person sentenced over the Jan. 6 unrest, cheapened her apologia by appearing on Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s TV show, claiming not only that she did nothing wrong on Jan. 6 but that during her brief time in the Capitol she saw no violence “and I don’t believe it.” While Morgan-Lloyd struck me as exceedingly guarded in what she said on air her stated disbelief possibly refers to her astonishment at the violence, not denial of its happening her decision to nonetheless play unwitting victim on a show famous for inflaming right-wing sensibilities may have thrown under the bus other Capitol-storming patriots now also seeking mercy and judicial understanding. Indeed, at one point Ingraham claimed Morgan-Lloyd was "forced to deliver that Soviet-style confession at the behest of her attorney" and acknowledge before Judge Lamberth her "white privilege" as well as her guilt. Other federal judges will surely take notice of this post-legal charade and be more reluctant to play patsy to defendants who express remorse in court and contemplate victimhood in right-wing venues and insurrectionary echo chambers.

Fake news & fake Elvis

Among those playing this same game are alleged law-and-order lawmakers who voted against
the bipartisan commission to investigate the violence and follow-up legislation to beef up Capitol security and pay for damages incurred by rioters. Among them: Recently elected Republican Congressman Pete Sessions of Waco, who wisely cleansed his Facebook page of a photo of his merrily welcoming “Stop the Steal” protesters to the Capitol shortly before the riot. To confound matters, he later launched a series of attack spots targeting Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for maintaining protective fencing around the Capitol complex, even as reports of additional possible attacks by domestic terrorists streamed in. Maybe what’s left of his Boy Scout scruples to “tell the truth” prompted Sessions to balk at vindicating the Jan. 6 rioters, even as he ridiculed a bipartisan commission producing anything but tainted findings “before we know the real truth” through courtroom testimony and judgments. Fair enough. But can Sessions and his colleagues even handle real truth anymore? Can their supporters? Any citizen who knows our nation’s tumultuous history and founding documents knows the storming of the Capitol is not an event to be dismissed and ignored, even if a Republican colleague from Georgia incredibly likened the violence to “a normal tourist visit.” Photos by a Roll Call photographer show this same lawmaker frantically barricading House chamber doors on Jan. 6.

Congressman Andrew Clyde has indeed gained infamy for likening Capitol Hill rioters to tourists during a recent House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing; far more telling is his contention that what we all saw on Jan. 6 was not a proper insurrection: “The only insurrection I have witnessed in my lifetime was the one conducted by members of the FBI with participants from the DOJ and other agencies under the banner ‘Russia, Russia, Russia.’ High-ranking employees from these federal agencies and members from an independent counsel coordinated and fed a false narrative for over two years that the 2016 election was stolen and illegitimate. Democrats were on the news almost every night saying the evidence is there, and the mainstream media amplified the fake news. This was indeed a very coordinated and well-funded effort by a determined group of people to overthrow our duly elected president, Donald J. Trump.”

Between Congressman Sessions’ let’s-not-rush-into-this rationale and Congressman Clyde’s dismissal of the Jan. 6 violence as a proper insurrection, one finds those who would rather file the whole business under “Much Ado About Nothing” and return to normality, if that’s even possible. Arguably among them: Chris Grider, 39, owner of a nearby Eddy vineyard and now facing a seven-count federal indictment for his role in the unrest. Recently, court documents suggested he wasn’t content to be grateful for his hard-won Feb. 22 release from detention pending trial. To pursue family vacation travel, he pressed an already lenient federal judge to further relax court restrictions, including the wearing of an ankle monitor while out on bond.

U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson stressed how fortunate Grider is to be back home with his wife, children and winery till trial: “As the court explained during the detention appeal hearing in this case, the decision to release Grider pending trial was an extremely ‘close call’ given the nature and circumstances of the alleged offense and the weight of the evidence against him. And although the court ultimately determined that Grider’s detention was not required, that decision was contingent upon the court’s imposition of conditions of release that would reasonably assure the safety of the community while Grider awaited trial – conditions that included GPS monitoring and a curfew.” Considering pivotal actions by Grider unwittingly leading to the death of determined QAnon follower and fellow Trump devotee Ashli Babbitt – shot dead trying to climb through a smashed-out window to the Speaker’s Lobby, a window smashed out with a helmet Grider had been carrying and reportedly lent to another protester – Grider would be wise to spend more time back home in rural Central Texas pondering his legal defense than contemplating family outings. (Incidentally, Grider and his family have recently revived some of their winery’s festive weekend gatherings in Eddy with headliners such as Elvis impersonator John E. Cobb.)

Meanwhile, Republican Congressman Paul Gosar, a zealous Trump loyalist and former dentist, has taken to using congressional hearings and other opportunities to pointedly ask who “executed” Ashli Babbitt, which should prompt this equally pointed question: Who climbs through a smashed-out window while peacefully protesting? In pressing this inquiry, Gosar and others picking up on this theme arouse and inspire perennial misfits and malcontents who now see Babbitt as a revolutionary martyr – a notion that has gained sufficient currency that Kmart markets a T-shirt emblazoned with the jarring image of a black and white U.S. flag and the words: “Ashli Babbitt: American patriot.” Such marketing, rhetoric and fact-free spinning is sure to only outrage federal law enforcement, including prosecutors, possibly even judges. It’s not good, either, for Chris Grider, who appears to mirror most protesters loose in the Capitol that day – unaffiliated with self-styled militias such as the Oath Keepers or right-wing street-fighting gangs such as the Proud Boys and, rather, just a white guy from Central Texas loyal to President Trump and unthinkingly swept up in forces he may not have fully understood. That said, some scholars steeped in the psychology of riots such as Matthew Radburn and Clifford Stott now reject the popular “mad-mob theory” of riots as inadequate and claim that “when people riot, their collective behavior is never mindless.”

Nor is continuing rhetoric by the former president alleging a stolen election helping his most devoted insurrectionary supporters, none of whom seem to attract his attention, let alone his sympathy, during his rants and raves of personal victimhood, such as at last week’s rally in Wellington, Ohio, which happens to boast two residents now facing possible trials and prison time for Jan. 6 unrest. “You’re seeing judges going out of their way to reference these concerns about Donald Trump, the ongoing baseless claims about the election,” says Washington-based NBC reporter Scott MacFarlane, almost single-handedly covering the legal milestones of alleged rioters and insurrectionists on a one-by-one basis. “These are the judges who will be sentencing Jan. 6 defendants or officiating jury trials.” MacFarlane also reported last week that attorneys for alleged Jan. 6 conspirator Thomas Caldwell, 65, sought a change of venue for his case well away from Washington, D.C., for reasons including “yellow journalism” and fans at a Washington Nationals game booing President Trump.

In an age when, to quote disgraced Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, “truth isn’t truth,” maybe Pete Sessions is right. Maybe we don’t need a bipartisan commission to dig deeper into what some call a revolution or protest, others brand sedition or treason. I was raised in a staunchly conservative household to trust what I see and hear and know about — and on Jan. 6 I saw and heard the president incite a crowd of disciples to “fight like hell” on his behalf. Shortly thereafter I saw people wearing the same red Trump gimme caps and waving the same blue Trump flags that I saw at the Trump “Save America” rally storming the Capitol, clearly spurred by Trump’s anger at his vice president’s refusal to overstep his constitutionally set authority on his boss’ behalf. One rallying cry at the Capitol that day, egged on by an inflammatory tweet from the president during all the violence: “Hang Mike Pence!”
Yet only hours afterward political spinsmiths were peddling the claim that the Capitol riot was the cunning work of antifa leftists dressed up as law-abiding, Constitution-loving Trump supporters, right down to the red gimme caps and blue Trump flags, and that the effort was engineered to reflect badly on President Trump – a claim that reportedly outraged some of the insurrectionists at the Capitol sincere in their beliefs they were fighting on behalf of democracy as well as Trump. A Fox News personality now suggests the riot was engineered by the FBI – a rumor supposedly concocted by a former Trump official not only fired for links to white nationalists but apparently hindered by an inability to read and understand court documents and legal terminology.

In a nation lost to crazed partisanship and rampant misinformation, perhaps society is better off drawing conclusions from what scholars, security experts and real journalists uncover. The University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Threats tracks charges filed against the alleged rioters (now numbering more than 550). Among its findings: This is a violent mass movement rather than merely an insurrection concocted by right-wing organizations; 88 percent of those charged (presumably including winemaker, veteran and former teacher Chris Grider) are “unaffiliated with pre-existing militia/extremist organizations and groups.” Trump is seen as their leader. Many insist they were only following Trump’s call to action. So who’s really to blame if these defendants are to be believed? Trump or those who took him seriously and literally? As the University of Chicago study notes, a woman from Texas claimed she entered the Capitol Rotunda because “He said, ‘Be there,’ and so I went and answered the call of my president.” A business owner from California said she “felt called upon by President Donald Trump to travel to D.C. to change the outcome of the election,” which she believed was stolen. And the colorful Navy veteran and QAnon shaman who invaded the Capitol in horns, a bearskin headdress and war paint said he was there along with other patriots “at the request of President Trump.”

One suspects we’ll soon see some stunning transformations in court. Jacob Chansley, the aforementioned, attention-commanding QAnon shaman, gloated after the unrest: “The fact that we had a bunch of our traitors in office hunker down, put on their gas masks and retreat into their underground bunker, I consider that a win.” Last week his lawyer filed a brief noting examples of Chansley’s sterling citizenship and model behavior in the melee, including “the defendant attempting to thwart a theft from a breakroom in the Capitol; the defendant extolling everyone to be respectful and peaceful; the defendant saying a prayer; the defendant permitting selfies to be taken of him outside the Capitol while hundreds walk by and into the Capitol; the defendant helping law enforcement clear out the Capitol after then-President Trump finally publicly requested everyone to go home.”

Then again, Scott MacFarlane's reporting on cases suggests the hearts and minds of many other protesters haven't changed much – and that trials may well offer further insight into political impulses driving the Jan. 6 violence. "A lot of the recent arrests are people accused of damaging media equipment, trying to set it on fire, breaking it – tens of thousands of dollars of equipment," MacFarlane reports. "One case stood out in particular – Joshua Haynes of the Roanoke, Virginia, area. Reading through his court filing, the feds say he was interrogated by agents June 14, nearing the six-month anniversary of the insurrection, and prosecutors say Haynes told agents that those who assaulted police were heroes for trying to stop election fraud. In the court filing, they also allege Haynes bragged of breaking media equipment, of kicking the fake news' [ass], of running off some CNN reporter. It gives you some insight into what federal prosecutors say is the mindset of some defendants this many months after the insurrection." My own perusal of the Haynes court filing reveals another common thread in those participating in or sympathetic with the Jan. 6 riot: "Haynes stated that he was deeply upset with the contrast between how the events that occurred on January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol were being handled and how the Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots that occurred in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere in 2020 were being handled. Haynes told the interviewing agents that he believes that those who participated in the unlawful events at the U.S. Capitol were being treated unfairly, and that those involved with the rioting and vandalism related to the BLM movement were not being held accountable." For the record, thousands of protesters and rioters were arrested early on in the summer 2020 demonstrations in the wake of George Floyd's death, and on a wide range of charges; by contrast, most of those invading the Capitol were allowed to leave the mayhem and rubble and return to their homes before their own social media posts and big mouths led to their questioning and arrests, again on a wide range of charges.

More to come?

Cynthia Miller-Idriss and Brian Hughes of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab in American University’s Center for University Excellence raise disturbing possibilities from the Jan. 6 violence – that its success in briefly forcing “a bunch of our traitors in office to hunker down” (to quote QAon shaman Chansley) and briefly halting certification of votes favoring President Trump’s challenger may well encourage radicalized but otherwise disparate forces to come together again. The researchers suggest “there are increasing indications that the typically fractious world of the extreme far right is becoming more unified toward an objective of overthrowing the country’s prevailing political and social order.” The Jan. 6 riot complete with astonishing lapses in preparation by Capitol police leadership and smartly executed paramilitary tactics by such groups as the Oath Keepers now qualifies as “an example of a victory that almost was and might still be. It has empowered and emboldened its admirers while offering an opportunity to exercise the common terrorist tactic of studying and learning from failed actions.” Defendant Joshua Haynes reportedly said much the same when federal law enforcement visited him on Flag Day about his role in the melee, noting that "if the country continues to go in the direction that it is now going, then what happened on January 6, 2021, would not be an isolated event."

In a letter from pre-revolutionary Paris to John Adams’ son-in-law in November 1787, Thomas Jefferson famously declared the “tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” What country, he asked, “can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?” Granted, this is typical Jeffersonian man-of-the-people swagger, here alluding to Shays' Rebellion,
the armed uprising in Massachusetts over taxes and debt, but offering solid evidence of why Jefferson later looked so fondly upon the French Revolution even after its descent into chaos, madness, violence and political retribution left Washington and other Founders horrified. Indeed, the French Revolution highlights what can befall even a cultured society whose masses have little or no tradition in representative government or, through manipulation and brain-washing, conclude they’re living under tyranny and come to see force as a more convenient alternative in short, a mobocracy embracing assumptions and digesting rumors and employing violence in the absence of justice and regular elections and an orderly government rooted in an informed citizenry. While Jefferson's animus toward Mother England remained strong well after the American Revolution, while he continually excused blood-stained excesses in a far-off revolution that he concluded was born of the principles championed in the Declaration of Independence, he surely sold short some of the representative framework and traditions that the British did invest in the colonies, limited though those might have been. These traditions at least offered a starting point for the new republic to build upon not only in its daily laws and court traditions but in the Articles of Confederation, then in the U,S. Constitution. France lacked these traditions and spiraled into dictatorship. And even Jefferson expressed concern over rebellions mired in thickness and myopia and delusion – certainly not the case with the enlightened elites who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 but arguably the case with Shay’s Rebellion, which Jefferson acknowledged was “founded in ignorance” (though it spurred the Founders in the crafting of the Constitution during the summer of 1787). Of rebels rooted in ignorance and misinformation, Jefferson declared mercifully in his letter to Adams' son-in-law: “The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them.”

Yet such remedies are challenged today by not only a vicious and unending whirlwind of beguiling misinformation eagerly consumed by a massive and undiscriminating segment of our population but a decided loss of virtue in the people that George Washington so deeply feared. If his landmark 1796 Farewell Address has any relevance today, it’s in remembering that it was crafted in the context of the Whiskey Rebellion that violently defied the first tax of the new federal government, one elected under the recently ratified Constitution and ironically addressing federal debt: “The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.” That’s a critical distinction to consider when reflecting on the rousing Jan. 6 cries of “1776!” and “America First!” and “Our house! Our country!” It's a distinction that refutes the inclination of Americans who believe free and fair elections driven by the will of the people are occasionally insufficient in a constitutional republic, that one must then resort to rebellion and violence utterly contrary to the republic, the very sort of flag-waving defiance mirrored in Central Texan Stacy Hager's identification with that long-ago anti-tax rebellion in western Pennsylvania that, to quote eminent American historian Gordon S. Wood in "Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic," reached the point where citizenry "hoisted their own flag, set up mock guillotines, erected their own extralegal courts and talked of marching on the federal garrison in Pittsburgh to seize weapons." As Hager himself put it on a Facebook site apparently launched after the Jan. 6 insurrection, a credo identifying with both rebellion and flag, "The Whiskey Rebellion Flag not only represents the fiery nature of the American people but it shows how the government can't be trusted with its power. The sparks that led to this rebellion were of the same flint as those that triggered the American Revolution. To this day, the Whiskey Rebellion flag is seen as a reminder that we must remain vigilant against an oppressive government." (For the record, historians remain divided as to whether the familiar Whiskey Rebellion flag sold in stores – the one featuring an eagle holding a ribbon in its beak with 13 six-pointed stars in the backdrop is genuine as a rebellion flag or actually associated with the federal cause.)

The words on Hager's site are articulate,
moving and ultimately errant: Foundational in the need for such vigilance is the ability to discriminate in news of the day and better differentiating between fact-following, truth-embracing journalism and genuine “enemies of the people” seeking to mislead fellow citizens. Foundational in the need for such vigilance is the willingness to sort out narrow partisan self-interest versus real policies and initiatives stressing the betterment of all. Foundational in the need for such vigilance is the ability of a people to see beyond political idolatry and personal passions and recognize the possibility of a country under an autocrat of the sort renounced by Jefferson and fellow patriots in the Declaration of Independence — recognition surely made easier by a bumbling, would-be despot’s ignorance of and contempt for the Constitution, the user’s manual for governance in America as agreed to by the founding generations. Foundational in the need for such vigilance is acceptance of the hard reality that elections never please all of the people all of the time, and that those of us who dispatch to centers of governance lawmakers, presidents and governors to fight for us and to never compromise lamentably fail to understand that, in contemporary America, others across our land also dispatch to centers of governance lawmakers, presidents and governors to fight for them and to never compromise – a point I stressed to Congressman Pete Sessions during a rollicking Waco Tribune-Herald conversation shortly after his 2020 election and, from what I can see, to absolutely no avail. Without some way forward in earnest consensus and painstaking compromise, our nation drifts further into stagnation and corruption rooted in that government chosen time and again by the very people themselves (and I refer here to both state and federal governance). We drift into absurd vilification of one another while our many global enemies appreciate new and easier ways to undermine us – a concern that Jefferson, for all his seeming acceptance of occasional citizen outbursts, also cited as gravely relevant. We drift into an unhealthy national hero worship that, for anyone familiar with the apocalyptic, armed-to-the-teeth religious cult east of Waco and its "sinful messiah," can only signal trouble ahead. Finally, whether one acknowledges an avalanche of court rulings scuttling allegations of fraud in the 2020 election, rulings from federal judges and justices appointed by Republican and Democratic presidents alike, including Trump; whether one accepts Trump’s hard-headed, dutiful attorney general labeling allegations of widespread election fraud in 2020 “all bulls--t” after investigations by his own prosecutors; whether one grimaces at sufficient numbers of elected lawmakers on Jan. 6 certifying election returns favoring the president’s challenger, these collectively constitute George Washington’s “established government.” It's also our established government, warts and all, and in a vibrant democracy we can improve matters through means other than insurrection and lawlessness and ignorance, willful or not. Such improvement counts on each of us engaging and even persuading our friends and neighbors and fellow citizens and not through the easily disproven lies and careless exaggerations and knee-jerk name-calling that only undermine our own credibility, character and relevance with the passage of time. Our friends and neighbors and fellow citizens will forever remember where we stood at a time of national crisis. 

The question that should percolate in the minds of Americans proud of our high ideals and hard-earned rights this Fourth of July and ever afterward pivots on whether the fine distinctions and constitutional safeguards of an enlightened class of Americans generations ago can hold sway amid the din and misinformation and animosity and self-delusion driving a latter-day movement of neo-Nazis, white supremacists, Christian nationalists, conspiracy theorists and simple-minded human flotsam now that they collectively clinched a measure of success on the Sixth of January. The problem eclipses anything George Washington could have imagined, even in his visionary Farewell Address, yet this renders his parting words no less relevant today. Even Jefferson and James Madison – who, amid ideological rifts late in Washington's presidency, more often wound up at odds with the old man – acknowledged late in their own lives the absolute importance of Washington's admonitions and cautions to his fellow citizens and even encouraged their exposure to new generations at Jefferson's cherished University of Virginia. Madison, so-called “Father of the Constitution” who also shepherded to ratification the Bill of Rights, praised "the sound sentiments" characterizing Washington's Farewell Address and included it among other foundational guideposts that he recommended including the Declaration of Independence (obviously brimming with Jefferson's heaven-storming idealism); the so-called "Federalist Papers" (written for newspapers of the day by Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, pressing for ratification of the Constitution); the resolution of the General Assembly of Virginia in 1799 (authored by Madison) condemning the Alien and Sedition laws as unconstitutional, given the First Amendment; and Washington's 1789 inaugural speech (bolstered through editorial suggestions by Madison).

Given Madison's reading list for the proper education of Americans about the young nation before them (to which I would add the later but vitally important "Democracy in America" by inquisitive and refreshingly frank Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville and some visionary writings by Thomas Paine), it's interesting to note that, of that august founding company of Washington, Adams, Jefferson and himself, Madison remained the most optimistic about the future, even seeing potential for good in the creation of political parties – yet another development that Washington feared and cited in his Farewell Address. Washington wrote that the consuming spirit of political parties "serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection." Indeed, in its longing for an America that never quite existed if one factors in segregation of blacks from whites as well as feverish paranoia about communists amongst us that extended to our neighbors in the post-war prosperity of the 1950s – a reborn America that would pivot on the marginalization of some and a denial of changing demographics and global dynamics – today's Republican Party under the malevolent spell of Donald Trump neatly represents just what the Father of Our Country predicted before wearily retiring to Mount Vernon. Washington warned that parties, for all their potential for good, "are likely in the course of time and things to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion." And our idealized and often flawed memories of the past touted by a political party obviously bankrupt of real nuts-and-bolts ideas? To quote former New York Times and Wall Street Journal reporter (and onetime newsroom colleague) Jackie Calmes in her book, "Dissent: The Radicalization of the Republican Party and Its Capture of the Court," published last month: "When one major party comes to believe the other is the threat to that mythic way of life – because that other party, the Democrats, includes minorities, immigrants, feminists, non-Christians – then democracy is too big a gamble, in adherents' views. So Republicans gerrymander political districts. They pass restrictive voting laws to limit turnout of that other party's supporters. And if Republicans still lose, they reject the result or, worse, turn to force or countenance those who do."


All of which possibly complements a point attorney David Bass made at the steps of the local courthouse the
Friday before an overcast, humid Fourth of July weekend in Waco: The Declaration of Independence lists, and at length, offenses committed by the British crown against American subjects – and the Bill of Rights so vigorously demanded by the Anti-Federalists consequently arms citizens to a significant degree against overarching governance. Even so, I asked my friend how Americans should approach the Fourth of July a year after outraged protesters spilled into the streets over racial injustice that remains well out of reach for many persons of color and six months after the Capitol was stormed by the president’s mostly white supporters over what they maintain was a stolen election. “They should take heart in knowing where we came from and learn from our past and learn that this was a country that was built on laws that are shared by everyone,” Bass said. “And while people might say reckless things, say untrue things, and do reckless and illegal acts, that doesn’t change the bedrock principles of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights or the Declaration of Independence. It just shows that the country has to be resilient and it has to be educated and it has to be literate and well-read. It has to do those things, and that’s why we’re doing this today – to try and remind people of that because, as criminal defense lawyers, we’re always hopeful that will be the way people see this country and see themselves.”

Tuesday, June 15, 2021

Taking a final bow — sort of

First things first: I'm delighted with the 2021 Texas Associated Press Managing Editors convention wins (minus the convention) in column-writing (first place) and editorials (second place), announced last Tuesday and marking my final year in the newspaper profession. The former award recognizes some 2020 columns I wrote on racial injustice, allegations of local police brutality and a massive essay on the steady erosion of white evangelicalism locally, statewide and nationally, collectively earning this from the judge: "Well written, thought-provoking and engaging columns. A diverse set of columns, showing not just incisive thinking but extensive research, interviews and relevant memories." The latter award recognized several editorials that I wrote on topics ranging from the fine line that the Texas Supreme Court drew on disabled voters being permitted to vote by mail to nagging questions over a public health director fired by the city of Waco in the middle of a deadly pandemic. That done and said, I’m also pretty damn sure such honors come my way largely because of the steady loss of so many worthy and far more accomplished colleagues. Many have left our misunderstood and oft-maligned profession because of crippling newsroom layoffs or because some journalists simply and understandably decided to pursue more reliable livelihoods in the best interest of their families and loved ones. Many newspaper companies no longer demonstrate a patriarchal sort of embrace of their employees, who after all work nights and holidays and weekends for modest pay and more recently have endured open castigation as “enemies of the people”; furthermore, latter-day newspaper companies (with rare exceptions) no longer undertake bold civic initiatives benefiting the communities they supposedly cover and serve. Which, among far more important matters, means fewer of us are left in the newsroom to compete for these annual journalism prizes. And as long as I've been in the business, the Texas APME awards have found us competing regularly with our considerable Texas peers — and learning from one another in analyzing and scrutinizing those stories and headlines and photographs that win.

Granted, like the Academy Awards or Pulitzer Prizes, state journalism awards come down to subjectivity, including particular tastes and biases of individual judges. For instance, I won first-place awards in both column-writing and editorial writing for work involving a Sunday afternoon 2015 rumble between two motorcycle "gangs" that left nine dead and resulted in the arrest of 177 others. (Most of my work actually involved extensive followup in how the local and state justice systems bungled biker arrests, jailings and the prosecution of subsequent cases.) Yet I won only second place as coveted "Opinion Writer of the Year" in the very same competition, confounding my editor. As one who thinks in a logically linear fashion (a major help during newspaper editorial board meetings, given my own leaps in drawing conclusions), he couldn't quite make sense of the seeming inconsistency. It defied all logic. (My column-writing honor garnered these remarks from the judge: "His entry stood out because of attention to the local, high-profile and incendiary issue of the biker arrests. This writer takes a stand, with some risk of reader push-back, and that sometimes goes unappreciated in journalism today. He also notes correctly that more attention is needed now that the big media has rolled outta town. Good job." The editorial garnered similar comments: "Powerful yet nuanced, well-reported and well-reasoned, and also rather courageous standing up for due process for motorcycle gangs is not exactly a crowd-pleaser in most communities these editorials are a model of what the editorial-writing craft should be." No comment accompanied my second-place win.) Yet these three awards also routinely involve different judges, each applying different standards and feelings and natural-born biases to everything from submission length to writing style to political sentiment in sorting out submissions for honor (if any is deserved). It could also reflect what they had to eat and whether what they had to eat is sitting easily on their stomachs. And in any case that year I considered coming in second to celebrated El Paso Times Editor Robert Moore an honor; after a celebrated career of some 38 years, mostly in West Texas and often devoted to picking apart overheated and often misleading rhetoric about exceedingly complicated Texas-Mexico border issues, Moore went on in 2019 to found El Paso Matters, a "member-supported nonpartisan media organization that uses journalism to expand civic capacity in our region." In short, the guy's doing something gutsy and innovative in his retirement years to reverse the decline of daily journalism in most cities. More power and honor to him!

Some of my Waco Tribune-Herald colleagues found amusement when a couple of years ago I jokingly grumbled during budget meeting one day how a former colleague of mine still laboring in the West Texas salt mines where I began my newspaper career beat me in column-writing with earth-shaking topics such as turning 60; the death of his mother-in-law; and an illness his local pastor suffered — all of which struck me as interesting but nowhere near as newsworthy as the hard-news topics I covered, all of which involved shoe-leather reporting and dogged research on my part. Yet, truth be told, I was happy for my friend, knowing the challenges he faces daily even now in trying to oversee a shrinking newsroom in a community in which the paper no longer commands the respect and awe it once did. And however unnewsworthy his topics might have seemed at first, he might just also be a better and more clever writer than I am. He might just demonstrate a keen ability to communicate with flair and wit. He might just grasp that each of us has a way of touching the public nerve. And my onetime colleague Greg Jaklewicz, now editor of the Abilene Reporter-News, is an exceedingly talented guy in news, features and sports in ways I'll never be. And when I next see him, the beer’s on me. (Incidentally, my colleagues suggested that I try writing a column about turning 65 and seeing if that works in the journalism award arena.) Incidentally, Greg scored well this year, leading his team in chronicling the local impact of former Texan George Floyd’s death, including calls for changing the names of four schools and the hiring of Abilene's first black police chief. If winning a first in deadline writing, a second in Opinion Writer of the Year and leading his team to a first in community effort wasn't enough, he scored a first-place honor as a sports columnist. The judge's comments on the paper's win for community service certainly demonstrate Greg's leadership: "There is an excellent balance of hard news and human interest news regarding what is happening in the local community. I also looked at the stories that surrounded the wonderful TAPME entries that depict the fabric of the community the publication serves. Really enjoyed reading those issues." I should note that my Tribune-Herald colleagues scored a first-place win for News Package of the Year, which Editor Steve Boggs touted to judges as something of a respite from a traumatic year involving a deadly pandemic and political anarchy: "In a world seemingly coming part at the seams in 2020, we decided to slow things down as the year came to a close. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, our news staff profiled a cross section of local artisans, a part of Waco’s burgeoning craft scene. The series, called 'Waco Makers,' examined local shops where handmade goods were forged and sewn from scratch. Each installment includes video."

I’m retired now. I divide time between the pursuits of deeper reflection that Cicero advised for those past a certain age: Lots of book-reading. (I recently finished military journalist Thomas E. Ricks' wonderfully insightful "First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country," Ty Seidule's confessional "Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause" and Carl Hoffman's alternately warm, crazy and disturbing "Liar's Circus: A Strange and Terrifying Journey into the Upside-down World of Trump's MAGA Rallies," which the author, fresh from studying jungle tribes, pronounces the "black mass of American politics." I've just started Capitol Hill legislative aide-turned-columnist-turned-TV commentator Chris Matthews' memoir.) There's been a lot of hiking and walking, allowing more time coincidentally to wander in my thoughts about the past, present and future. There's been a lot of contemplating about travel to other climes outings delayed and confounded by a retirement that began amidst the pandemic. And there has been writing, more than I imagined — occasional rambling blog pieces that few read plus some long-form essays and concise editorials for my erstwhile colleagues at the Waco Tribune-Herald where, after all, I worked the better part of the last two decades. The latter pieces remind people I'm still alive and can still stir things up. As for writing awards, they're nice but they're not why most of us toil in this profession. More often than not, they're relegated to a shelf in the closet. (Mine fittingly sit in the closet next to a foot-long trilobite fossil.) Some of us in this profession just like to write. Some of us in this profession just relish covering history in the making, if only to better explain it beyond the 60-second sound byte or now the reckless and misleading meme — if only to better understand it ourselves. Some of the most enjoyable aspects of my job the past dozen years have involved editorial board meetings with my colleagues — in recent years Editor Steve Boggs and then-publisher Jim Wilson. Somewhere amidst the humor and irreverence so characteristic of newsrooms, the three of us used this inner sanctum to come up with serious positions on complicated issues local, state and national.

To remind anyone reading this of what my newspaper colleagues still in the saddle face day in and day out — or perhaps just to remind myself some hopefully distant day of what so occupied my time — I list here what kept me so damn crazy busy in 2020. Here goes: Gauging local measures and protocols (and in detail) aimed at preventing police brutality while acknowledging local lapses in the broader quest for racial justice; appreciating the gains in racial equality pressed by late civil rights leader John Lewis with an able assist by locals who knew him (and who suggested to me that, no, his strides were not in vain — thanks, Baylor law professor Pat Wilson and former Waco congressman Chet Edwards, who counted Lewis as his closest friend on Capitol Hill); reflecting on the awful corruption of white evangelicalism under the spell of a charismatic libertine and the disturbing parallels with the apocalyptic cult headed by would-be messiah and rock guitarist David Koresh 10 miles east of Waco (with some divine guidance provided me from religion history scholars and evangelical watchdogs David Bebbington and Tom Kidd as well as newsroom colleague Tommy Witherspoon, who had the honor of getting caught in the crossfire between bumbling ATF agents and hellfire-bound cultists in February 1993).

Much time was spent championing and, yes, sometimes faulting noble efforts led by Waco's mayor (Kyle Deaver) and health experts (notably Dr. Jackson Griggs of Waco's Family Health Center and Dr. Marc Elieson of Baylor Scott & White Hillcrest Medical Center) to safeguard lives from a mysterious killer virus on the loose amid chaotic national strategies involving “leaders” who couldn’t resist politicizing a pandemic. This included reflecting on precious lives lost to SARS-CoV-2 while state and national politicians quibbled, dithered and even dismissed viral spread as a pressing public concern. Some time was also spent lamenting assumptions we draw about our neighbors’ scruples based entirely on political signs in their yards during the fall election season; respectfully but aggressively dissecting a moving defense of President Trump offered by a friend of mine (former federal judge and independent counsel Ken Starr) on the floor of the U.S. Senate during the 2020 impeachment trial; and highlighting growing Republican hypocrisy, radicalization and adoration of Donald Trump in several columns and Q&As involving a broad swath of candidates running for Congress in the 2020 Republican primary — a grueling but extraordinarily revealing exercise pressed by friend and Trib colleague Steve Boggs that political scientists will one day mine in analyzing what befell our nation. (That said, I absolutely dreaded the experience. Then again, in hindsight I see the significance of this carnival cavalcade of intriguing characters and misfits pursuing the congressional post, including a final candidate Q&A with arguably the most unprepared and most evasive candidate it has been my privilege to interview.)

There was also time for other occasions, such as the brief eulogy in memory local veteran Manny Sustaita, whose life after military service didn’t stop at tributes to fellow service members lost in Vietnam but focused on folks on the home front and their welfare and their rights as our nation teetered away from democracy and toward an American Caesar. And risking reader anger, some time and print were devoted to advising voters to demonstrate more care in whom they select for public office, given the sorry example of the state attorney general, elected twice to the post even though evidence of corruption and incompetence were evident at the very outset in 2014. (Since then, he has become further mired in corruption allegations.) And, yes, some effort, time and ink were invested, and on different dates, in pressing the president and federal lawmakers to remember their duty in prioritizing fit and up-to-date accommodations for our armed forces; safeguarding voting rights for "We the People" (long a priority for me as Trib opinion editor), including repairing the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and crafting, negotiating and passing long overdue reforms addressing police brutality and, more broadly, racial injustice in America — certainly all more relevant and timely than fights over Army fort names and making Juneteenth a federal holiday. (Note: I'm personally for jettisoning from U.S. Army installations the names of men who broke their oaths and took up arms against their country and the U.S. Army during the Civil War; on the other hand, I'm have some reservations about adding yet another federal holiday that most of us in the private sector won't get to mark and will costs millions of taxpayer dollars in a nation sinking deeper and deeper in debt.)

Such was my final year, some of it recognized by the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors Association. Such, too, are the loose ends I and others moving into retirement leave to watchdog journalists still in the harness. None of this acknowledges some of my greatest professional and personal joys, spent doggedly editing and advising and shepherding into print guest columns by community folks of all backgrounds, all perspectives, in the process showcasing the Waco Tribune-Herald opinion page as the public forum it was long before I happened along. My colleagues continue to maintain this forum, as critical to a thriving democracy as the watchdog reporting that former colleagues in Waco and beyond continue to provide.

Friday, May 21, 2021

Evangelist smites Baylor

Given the disturbing transformation of white evangelicalism in America in recent years, no one should be surprised at Dallas megachurch pastor and Trump ally Robert Jeffress' angry condemnation of Baylor University. During a right-wing radio rant this week, the Baylor alumnus ridiculed a May 14 declaration by Baylor's board of regents laying down certain guiding principles for campus treatment of LGBTQ students, up to and possibly including allowing such students to form a formal student group.

Jeffress’ judgment, issued from on high May 18: “I believe there are some great Christians who teach and attend at Baylor, but what they teach and the underlying philosophy is anti-Christian. And I don’t think any true Christian parent who wanted their kids to have a Christian education would allow their child anywhere near Baylor University.” The ever-provocative pastor of 13,000-member First Baptist Church of Dallas and fire-breathing Fox News commentator went on to lament his congregation’s having long sent students to Baylor only to “have their faith completely torn apart by infidels in the religion department.”

Thus Pastor Jeffress in his almighty tirade serves up good reason for preferring democracy to theocracy in America. Jeffress’ view of the Christian faith hinges on a nightmarish perversion of Old Testament condemnation, marginalization and vengeance, arguably in lockstep with some Americans’ politics of late but at odds with Jesus’ teachings of charity, hope, love and, yes, tolerance. As a journalist who has rigorously chronicled and questioned Baylor’s failings in crises through the years, I’m perhaps better positioned then to celebrate Baylor when it demonstrates Christian humility, compassion and outreach.

Sure, some people have mixed feelings about the LGBTQ question, but to their credit Baylor regents this month signaled a move forward and above the rancor. In their declaration, they stated a desire “to establish trust with our LGBTQ students so that, among other things, they might seek out the resources provided by Baylor.” They acknowledge Baylor’s “responsibility to serve the needs of all students entrusted to us across all areas of their development – academics, personal and spiritual.” That’s not exactly a hearty embrace of what Jeffress calls “ungodly activity” but it conveys inclusiveness, stewardship and caring.

Jeffress ridicules Baylor’s claim to be “unapologetically Christian but the fact is all they do is apologize for being Christian.” This may well refer to BU leadership’s effort to address the stench of racism one might expect of Texas’ oldest continuously operating university. To help students, faculty and the public better grasp the harm of not only slavery but the Jim Crow era, Baylor through the past year has tapped historians far and near to set important historical context; held discussion groups with students; and issued a report seeking to correct symbolic matters regarding campus statues and memorials.

And a day after Jeffress slammed Baylor leadership, university officials joined Waco Mayor Dillon Meek in honoring “faculty, staff and alumni who have demonstrated efforts to foster greater appreciation and advancement of diversity, inclusiveness and equity for communities of color at Baylor and in Waco.” They include Elizabeth Palacios, dean for student development, Division of Student Life; Lakia Scott, assistant professor of curriculum and instruction, School of Education; and Dominque Hill, director of wellness, Division of Student Life.

Given the strong influence Rev. Jeffress acknowledges First Baptist of Dallas legend and Baylor critic W.A. Criswell has had on his life (Criswell died in 2002), perhaps this week’s blistering criticism isn’t so surprising. During the interview with conservative commentator Todd Starnes (who said some 30 pastors in the Waco area wrote Baylor to protest its nuanced approach to the LGBTQ dilemma), Jeffress, 65, railed about his long-ago days as a Baylor student. Professors back then, he charged, would “stand up and talk about all the errors in the Bible, the contradictions in the Bible, how the Bible was just a collection of men’s thoughts about God.”

Yet if the supposedly divine and infallible word of the Bible cannot withstand college-level scholarship about its origins, questions regarding those who wrote biblical text (inspired or not) and what latter-day interpretations hold for those of faith, then these texts will and should not endure the ages any more than the U.S. Constitution which is analyzed, questioned, debated and dissected daily, and in great detail, by academic scholars, working attorneys and federal jurists. Perhaps attorney and former federal judge Ken Starr — whose tenure as a popular and enlightened Baylor president ended in 2016 amid a #MeToo scandal of sexual assault and administrative indifference overwhelming the BU campus — can offer a proper defense of the university he once championed when he appears on Jeffress’ Sunday morning church program to plug his new book, “Religious Liberty in Crisis.”

Jeffress certainly isn't alone in his scathing condemnation of Baylor. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Al Mohler — whom religion journalist Mark Wingfield in his insightful Baptist News Global analysis describes as "defender of the official faith of the Southern Baptist Convention” — tweeted of the Waco-based Christian university of more than 16,000 students and a regent board that includes some chosen by Baylor alumni: "This is a picture of institutional capitulation disguised as care. Accepting a chartered student organization identified as LGBTQ is incompatible with holding to biblical convictions. The great surrender continues." Tweeting right back at Mohler was Dwight McKissic, senior pastor of Arlington-based Cornerstone Baptist Church, who raised questions of accuracy and consistency in Mohler's stance: "Baylor affirmed a biblical view of sexuality without compromise in [its May 14] statement. SBTS accommodated you as president affirming the Lost Cause Theory & permitted [Baptist lay leader and retired state appellate judge] Paul Pressler to declare “the wrong side won the civil war,” without any public reprimand. Jesus showed compassion." [Rev. McKissic is black; Pressler and Mohler, predictably, are white. The Lost Cause narrative, of course, offers a wildly misleading and benign portrait of the antebellum South, secession, slavery and surrender in the Civil War.] Yet Rev. Jeffress' stance is attracting most attention, no doubt given his relative tolerance and acceptance of high-profile sinners in political realms who gain his personal favor.

Many following Starnes and Jeffress this week have expressed doubt at what they heard and read. One tweeted: “Even if there were ‘infidels’ in the Baylor faculty, if your adult children cannot engage with non-Christians without having their faith shattered... maybe that's not saying much for how stable the faith you taught them is.” Another, aware of Jeffress’ earthbound idol, tweeted to Starnes: “Deepest apologies to you and @robertjeffress/@firstdallas that my grad school alma mater doesn’t expressly set out to clone his particular ilk of Trumpist idolators of power.” Another asked Jeffress directly by tweet: "Why do 'Christian' ministers like you work so hard to find people to hate?"

A bracing truth: All religions at various times haves perpetuated evil in the world. It’s to Baylor’s credit that “infidels” in the religion department explore the spiritual, ethical and moral challenges of being a Christian in times when false prophets among us are many. With growing emphasis on everything from scientific research to scrutiny of religious texts to studies of the human condition, Baylor is best when encouraging critical thinking in defiance of tribalism, echo chambers and demagoguery. To that end, Rev. Jeffress is one more distracting voice in the din of an increasingly corrupted society, complete with bloviating religious charlatans and God-fearing snake charmers that complement Thomas Jefferson's long-dreaded "soothsayers and necromancers” imperiling American democracy. Altogether they highlight the steep challenges confronting us in the here and now.

Tuesday, May 4, 2021

Legislative shell game adds to Texas disappearing democracy scheme

Every so often, the jaded political observer must pause in his labors to marvel at some display of self-serving, politically motivated deceit in the Texas Legislature, a spectacle worthy of inclusion in the Machiavellian bag of tricks that scheming and unscrupulous politicians keep close by. And so I paused last week to marvel at a political shell game so illusionary it will confound most voters unaccustomed to critical thinking and thus pass by ignored. Then again, what transpired in the Texas House Elections Committee last Thursday is really no Rubik’s cube at all  just plain outrageous and audacious.

Thursday morning, boyish-looking Rep. Briscoe Cain, 36, a Deer Park Republican, apparently tried to hoodwink his own committee and the public. As chairman, he tried to scuttle Senate Bill 7 – an election-reform bill painstakingly crafted by Republican Sen. Bryan Hughes and co-authored by our own Sen. Brian Birdwell – and nonchalantly replace it with a “committee substitute” that turned out to be Cain’s own rival election-reform bill, House Bill 6. Democratic representatives cried “bullshit” – literally – and Republican Rep. Travis Clardy declined to vote at all on this trickery.

That might well have been the end of Cain’s Machiavellian effort – his motion failed because Clardy quite correctly abstained – except that when the committee reconvened come evening, Clardy had either been admonished by House higher-ups or experienced a political epiphany – and this time Senate Bill 7 disappeared in the lower chamber and in its place was Cain’s HB 6 which, to quote committee vice chairwoman Jessica González, is “substantially different” from the Senate bill.

Interestingly, when Cain first explained to fellow committee members he was offering a “committee substitute” to SB 7, he didn’t exactly volunteer it was his very own House bill masquerading as the committee substitute. What’s more, Cain – and whoever put him up to this skullduggery – escaped the rigors of another grueling public hearing on the logic that because the committee substitute to SB 7 was HB 6, and because HB 6 had already undergone a 17-hour-long public hearing on April Fool’s Day, further public input was unnecessary.

Thus, the public would be unable to cry “bullshit” on Cain’s switcheroo with high-priority Senate and House legislation in a public hearing. The spectacle in the Texas House of Representatives, unfolding with the apparent blessing of new Speaker Dade Phelan, means rival election bills House Bill 6 and Senate Bill 7 are no longer rivals at all but one and the same, at least in the lower chamber, even though SB 7 continues forward as the work of Hughes and his Senate colleagues.

For those who compare the art of legislation with sausage-making, welcome to the slaughterhouse.

Quite a guy

Cain is certainly emerging as the poster boy for the Trump-infused Republican Party. A month ago he created an unnecessary stink by refusing to allow questions about his election bill from Rep. Nicole Collier, chairwoman of the Texas Legislative Black Caucus – her presence hardly surprising, given credible claims Cain’s bill is hostile to minorities, restricting voting measures statistically favored by them. More? How about a seemingly bungled procedural move by Cain that ended a hearing on this same election bill, sidelining hundreds of Texans who traveled to the Capitol to testify on HB 6, some in his favor? This also ironically slowed the legislative progress of Cain’s bill in a time-limited Legislature.

And if all that’s not enough to question Speaker Phelan’s judgment in tapping Briscoe Cain as House Elections Committee chairman, consider Cain’s tweeted threat to Beto O’Rourke upon the latter’s suggestion of restricting so-called “assault weapons” after the 2019 mass targeted shooting of Hispanics in El Paso: “My AR is ready for you.” Pretty mature, huh? Cain clearly sought to score points with the NRA crowd, notwithstanding 23 dead in Texas. More? Well, Cain offered his legal skills to the Trump bandwagon suing to overturn citizens’ votes in Pennsylvania after the contested 2020 presidential election – a misguided effort that won a slapdown from no less than a Trump-appointed federal appeals judge outraged at what he saw in the lawsuit.

Political observers more seasoned than I suggest Cain’s move last week was taken as an unorthodox means to speed up the legislative process on bills given high priority by Gov. Greg Abbott, simplifying matters for House members who, till Cain’s actions, faced not one but two main options for election reform in two different omnibus bills. Cain’s move and the committee’s belated approval (by a 5-4 vote) would ultimately leave sorting out of differences in the bills to Senate-House conference committee members whose final patchwork bill would presumably include parts of SB 7 (as Hughes and the Senate crafted it) and HB 6 (or SB 7 in House guise). Key Senate compromises could also die there, especially in the mad rush that typically ensues in the final weeks of the legislative session. The result could be a crazy-quilt, even more oppressive bill for legislators to then vote up or down on. There’s evidence such a scheme is indeed underway: Neither Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (who a month ago voiced great pride in Senate debate producing SB 7) nor Sen. Bryan Hughes (who voiced great pride in public testimony offered on SB 7) has voiced any public protest over the latest House machinations. Are they complicit in some conspiracy to stifle public protest regarding all this? To add insult to injury, Cain added to the deception on his Facebook page a day after his effort to pull a fast one on at least some committee members, not to mention the public: “Great to see House Bill 6 in the Calendars Committee! Senate Bill 7 is close behind after being voted out of committee last night.”

Who's being played?

Take it from me after hours of hearing testimony and debate on Senate Bill 7 and House Bill 6: Sen. Hughes not only graciously entertained public testimony for and against his bill as chairman of the Senate Committee on State Affairs but withstood tough questioning from fellow senators during floor debate. He managed SB 7 throughout with patience, professionalism and civility – and even included Democratic suggestions for improving the bill. For instance, a toxic provision requiring that disabled citizens furnish documentation proving they’re truly disabled – a de facto poll tax – was jettisoned from SB 7 before Senate passage. Smart restrictions, too, were placed on poll-watcher videos being downloaded anywhere but the Texas Secretary of State’s Office. (That would mean poll-watcher video of your decrepit Aunt Bertha hobbling into a polling place with her cane and fumbling forever for her voter registration couldn’t end up on YouTube for all eternity). In contrast to Hughes, who seems familiar with every iota of his legislation, Cain has shown stunning confusion not only about what’s in his own election bill but in state election law.

Make no mistake about SB 7 or HB 6. For any red-blooded, fully cognizant patriot who appreciates democracy in America, these bills are an affront to everything in our founding documents as well as the 14th and 15th Amendments and the hard-won Voting Rights Act of 1965, the latter the work of civil rights icons Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis. These bills demonstrate continuing fealty to a pouting, self-indulgent former president and his spurious and destructive claims of a stolen election. They’re the flip side of the insurrection that on Jan. 6 overwhelmed the U.S. Capitol, halted Congress in fulfilling its constitutional duties of certifying Electoral College results and left several dead and many injured in its violent wake.

One question yet unanswered: Is the public now witnessing the spectacle of Texas Republicans sandbagging Texas Republicans in the State Capitol? Or is the public itself being played in some bewildering Machiavellian drama so operatic as to leave Trump himself envious? Either way, this much is clear: Democracy remains in the crossfire.