Hard Truth
Averted: A Slingshot Dictatorship
by Sally Herrin
[Jan/Feb 2021]
Hard Truth #1
The South has risen again. As far as Dixie is concerned the Civil War isn’t over. On the contrary, the country music cohort through talk radio and Murdoch media have fashioned themselves a culture and a people in diaspora. Monuments and flags? Respect for history, my Aunt Eldrane! The Confederate flag means today what it always meant.
The South is another country. I am not being metaphorical. My family moved from the Great Lakes region in 1963 to Atlanta. I was twelve then and I never lived outside (I include Southern Indiana for cause) the South until 1976, when I washed up in Lincoln, Nebraska driving northwest on Highway 2, over the Cheney ridge, before me Salt Valley and the Capitol bleaching in the August afternoon. “Wow. What a beat little prairie town,” I thought. “Good thing I’m not going to spend the rest of my life here.”
Two years later I was due to graduate and return to the South to marry my childhood sweetheart and get my doctorate at the University of North Carolina, where Doris Betts and James Dickey would have promoted my development and success. Instead, like Mari Sandoz before me, I made an unsuitable marriage to the handsomest cowboy in Cherry County.
In so doing I placed myself beyond saving by the Childhood Sweetheart forever by Marrying the Wrong Man. Despite the obvious drawbacks of an unsuitable marriage and having to make up from scratch an entirely new life, I do not regret my move, because it meant I did not go back to live in the South.
If you have not lived in the South, you cannot know the South. I personally love the South though I cannot live there myself. Some of the people I love best in the world live in the South and would live nowhere else. Indeed many—maybe even MOST—White Southerners would live nowhere else. Even liberal Southerners feel this way. “Why on Earth would I want to go live with a lot of Yankees?”
The truth is that Southern culture is deeply caste driven, beginning with demanding that toddlers address their elders as Ma’am and Miss (from Madam and Mistress), as Mister (Master) and Sir (Sire). Even liberal Southerners feel themselves superior, never mind the middle and the poor (so long as they can look down on People of Color)—in manners, in cuisine, in language, in friendship, family and values—and look down on the rest of the USA. Exceptions to this rule are Old Guard Civil Rights, anti-war and union folks, and in any case almost invariably brown of skin.
Think Israel and Palestine. Palestinians have never forgotten that they are a people, wherever they are. Likewise the South, in place or in diaspora. The Trumpery Confederacy, if you like. Trump, the GOP and rightwing media have empowered these people, in every state now—impossible to contain or create a Confederate homeland or reservations. Without some national accounting, and a lot of commitment to peace and reconciliation work by communities and individuals, we could still be headed for a long stretch of insurrection.
Hard Truth #2
The coup-makers must face consequences. If we are to be a society governed by law, justice must be pursued. Let the mills of justice take as long as they take, just so long as the job gets done.
Those responsible for the failed coup of January 6, 2021, are likewise caste-driven—Rupert Murdoch (FOX media), Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, the Kochs, Donald Trump, Republican leadership at national and state levels all the way back to Reagan, White Supremacists, religious nationalists (those last two have overlap but are not identical), Heritage Foundation true-believers who want to disempower/defund/destabilize the U.S. government so the bottom 90 percent cannot use that government to level the playing field and control the excesses of the richest families and corporations, QAnon and the webs of conspiracy, and foreign states/actors which want to destabilize the US, period. Not incidentally social media giants apparently could have short-circuited Trump (and to some extent QAnon) at any time.
One would really love to be a stinging fly on the wall when Rupert Murdoch meets his Maker, which odds are won’t be long now. May his karma ripen swiftly. Namaste.
To quote my good friend “Anonymous”, “GOP members of the House and Senate...conspired via their vote against accepting the Electoral College vote/report, [and thereby they] committed sedition/treason against the Constitution and America, and deserve no wiggle room to distract/divert/spin to pretend this was about ‘policy’ differences. This was a damn insurrection led by Trump and facilitated by the GOP to create a slingshot dictatorship!
“They have to pay, end of story, full stop! These jerks are not ‘patriots’! They are traitors! GOP members of Congress went back to the floor and voted against the Electoral College certification of the vote confirming Joe Biden as President-Elect! Those GOP members did that based on Trump’s and their bald-faced lies, which led to and facilitated the insurrection and attempted coup!
“These same GOP members continue to lie, even as they call for ‘unity’ and say that impeachment will be ‘divisive.’ Absolutely unacceptable and ludicrous.
“Was the insurrection/coup attempt aimed at unity by trying to disavow what the majority of Americans voted for? Trump’s own Cybersecurity Chief confirmed that the 2020 election was the most secure ever and the Georgia Secretary of State confirmed the same as did Pennsylvania with the only fraud being by GOP voters. The GOP and their FOX/Limbaugh enablers need to be called out for blatantly using and spewing those lies to demean our election system so they could ultimately try to hijack it.”
Hard Truth #3
The failed coup may yet prove to be a crucible moment for Americans. On June 9, 1954, at the pinnacle of anti-communist fears and witchhunts, lawyer Joseph Welch, testifying for the U.S. Army, asked extreme rightwing Senator Joe McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency?”
My other good friend “Anonymous” (no relation) shared this:
“There are three stages to the adoption of the truth. In the first stage, the truth is ridiculed. In the second stage, the truth is fought. In the third stage, the truth is adopted by all as self-evident.”
The failed coup of January 6, 2021, has forced many—both people in power, and even some of Trump’s base—to admit perhaps for the first time the terrible dysfunction of this administration. Too often it takes a great shock to change minds enough to create historic change.
Those whose eyes have opened, and now social media too, have been forced to admit that the truth matters, indeed that untruth risks the very foundation of our Democracy.
In the face of the greatest internal threat to our government since the Eighteen Sixties, magnified by the here-to-fore unknown power of social media, culminating in the U.S. Capitol attack, our Democracy has survived. So far.
Hard Truth #1
The South has risen again. As far as Dixie is concerned the Civil War isn’t over. On the contrary, the country music cohort through talk radio and Murdoch media have fashioned themselves a culture and a people in diaspora. Monuments and flags? Respect for history, my Aunt Eldrane! The Confederate flag means today what it always meant.
The South is another country. I am not being metaphorical. My family moved from the Great Lakes region in 1963 to Atlanta. I was twelve then and I never lived outside (I include Southern Indiana for cause) the South until 1976, when I washed up in Lincoln, Nebraska driving northwest on Highway 2, over the Cheney ridge, before me Salt Valley and the Capitol bleaching in the August afternoon. “Wow. What a beat little prairie town,” I thought. “Good thing I’m not going to spend the rest of my life here.”
Two years later I was due to graduate and return to the South to marry my childhood sweetheart and get my doctorate at the University of North Carolina, where Doris Betts and James Dickey would have promoted my development and success. Instead, like Mari Sandoz before me, I made an unsuitable marriage to the handsomest cowboy in Cherry County.
In so doing I placed myself beyond saving by the Childhood Sweetheart forever by Marrying the Wrong Man. Despite the obvious drawbacks of an unsuitable marriage and having to make up from scratch an entirely new life, I do not regret my move, because it meant I did not go back to live in the South.
If you have not lived in the South, you cannot know the South. I personally love the South though I cannot live there myself. Some of the people I love best in the world live in the South and would live nowhere else. Indeed many—maybe even MOST—White Southerners would live nowhere else. Even liberal Southerners feel this way. “Why on Earth would I want to go live with a lot of Yankees?”
The truth is that Southern culture is deeply caste driven, beginning with demanding that toddlers address their elders as Ma’am and Miss (from Madam and Mistress), as Mister (Master) and Sir (Sire). Even liberal Southerners feel themselves superior, never mind the middle and the poor (so long as they can look down on People of Color)—in manners, in cuisine, in language, in friendship, family and values—and look down on the rest of the USA. Exceptions to this rule are Old Guard Civil Rights, anti-war and union folks, and in any case almost invariably brown of skin.
Think Israel and Palestine. Palestinians have never forgotten that they are a people, wherever they are. Likewise the South, in place or in diaspora. The Trumpery Confederacy, if you like. Trump, the GOP and rightwing media have empowered these people, in every state now—impossible to contain or create a Confederate homeland or reservations. Without some national accounting, and a lot of commitment to peace and reconciliation work by communities and individuals, we could still be headed for a long stretch of insurrection.
Hard Truth #2
The coup-makers must face consequences. If we are to be a society governed by law, justice must be pursued. Let the mills of justice take as long as they take, just so long as the job gets done.
Those responsible for the failed coup of January 6, 2021, are likewise caste-driven—Rupert Murdoch (FOX media), Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, the Kochs, Donald Trump, Republican leadership at national and state levels all the way back to Reagan, White Supremacists, religious nationalists (those last two have overlap but are not identical), Heritage Foundation true-believers who want to disempower/defund/destabilize the U.S. government so the bottom 90 percent cannot use that government to level the playing field and control the excesses of the richest families and corporations, QAnon and the webs of conspiracy, and foreign states/actors which want to destabilize the US, period. Not incidentally social media giants apparently could have short-circuited Trump (and to some extent QAnon) at any time.
One would really love to be a stinging fly on the wall when Rupert Murdoch meets his Maker, which odds are won’t be long now. May his karma ripen swiftly. Namaste.
To quote my good friend “Anonymous”, “GOP members of the House and Senate...conspired via their vote against accepting the Electoral College vote/report, [and thereby they] committed sedition/treason against the Constitution and America, and deserve no wiggle room to distract/divert/spin to pretend this was about ‘policy’ differences. This was a damn insurrection led by Trump and facilitated by the GOP to create a slingshot dictatorship!
“They have to pay, end of story, full stop! These jerks are not ‘patriots’! They are traitors! GOP members of Congress went back to the floor and voted against the Electoral College certification of the vote confirming Joe Biden as President-Elect! Those GOP members did that based on Trump’s and their bald-faced lies, which led to and facilitated the insurrection and attempted coup!
“These same GOP members continue to lie, even as they call for ‘unity’ and say that impeachment will be ‘divisive.’ Absolutely unacceptable and ludicrous.
“Was the insurrection/coup attempt aimed at unity by trying to disavow what the majority of Americans voted for? Trump’s own Cybersecurity Chief confirmed that the 2020 election was the most secure ever and the Georgia Secretary of State confirmed the same as did Pennsylvania with the only fraud being by GOP voters. The GOP and their FOX/Limbaugh enablers need to be called out for blatantly using and spewing those lies to demean our election system so they could ultimately try to hijack it.”
Hard Truth #3
The failed coup may yet prove to be a crucible moment for Americans. On June 9, 1954, at the pinnacle of anti-communist fears and witchhunts, lawyer Joseph Welch, testifying for the U.S. Army, asked extreme rightwing Senator Joe McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency?”
My other good friend “Anonymous” (no relation) shared this:
“There are three stages to the adoption of the truth. In the first stage, the truth is ridiculed. In the second stage, the truth is fought. In the third stage, the truth is adopted by all as self-evident.”
The failed coup of January 6, 2021, has forced many—both people in power, and even some of Trump’s base—to admit perhaps for the first time the terrible dysfunction of this administration. Too often it takes a great shock to change minds enough to create historic change.
Those whose eyes have opened, and now social media too, have been forced to admit that the truth matters, indeed that untruth risks the very foundation of our Democracy.
In the face of the greatest internal threat to our government since the Eighteen Sixties, magnified by the here-to-fore unknown power of social media, culminating in the U.S. Capitol attack, our Democracy has survived. So far.
Hard Truth
The better angels of America seem to have awakened and the
Worst — Four More Years — has been averted. This time.
Worst — Four More Years — has been averted. This time.
by Sally Herrin
[Nov/Dec 2020]
Hard Truth 1: Our national nightmare is far from over. Countries which once get cozy with a right- wing demagogue are often in for a bumpy ride over the following decades. Being as we are now over our touching but misguided belief in ‘American exceptionalism’ (RIGHT?), that means us. Trump can do a lot of mischief between now and mid-January, and I am sure he intends to do all he can to further part out the resources of the country to hand over to unfettered capitalism.
Do not expect too much from a Biden Administration, O best Beloved… nor yet too little. All the rest of my years on Earth will not see undone all the harms the Trump years have wrecked upon our democracy, but there is hope now and much that can and must be done—beginning with sound pandemic policy, including so-called stimulus money to aid disaster-stricken Americans, and restarting—indeed, doubling down upon—U.S. participation in the Paris Climate Accords.
Before it all blows by, please take note of Big Pharma’s role in national events. Pfizer withheld news of its vaccine until after the election. To have done otherwise might have tipped the balance towards Trump, and I for one am grateful for this act of restraint. The decision may have been made as a public relations move, to counter widespread and entirely justified disgust and outrage at the industry’s exorbitant profits, but at this moment I don’t much care. I’m way past demanding a pure motive too, when somebody does the right thing.
Hard Truth 2: Little can change in Nebraska so long as Citizens United is the law and the Ricketts family has money to spend.
Altogether, Pete Ricketts and his parents made an investment of $928,000 in Nebraska elections in 2020, some of it to fight extended gambling and in legislative races to secure the Republican majority which extends and protects Ricketts’ powerful hold in our nominally non-partisan Unicameral. There are rich people, and there are really rich people. Pete Ricketts’ brother is Trump’s lead fundraiser. Just so we’re clear.
When a governor effectively buys legislative seats, no good can come to the people of the state. This kind of patronage is bad for the relationship of the senators to the governor, and it is bad for the relationship of the senators to one another, creating as it does a two-tiered system of those who take their marching orders from their patron—Senators Brewer, Erdman, Bosselman, Groene, Albrecht and the like—and the rest who are resolutely NOT the governor’s to do with as he likes, who often find themselves hamstrung.
It remains to be seen whether the so-called grand compromise—how Nebraska will pay for public education— passed this last session will survive the pandemic. Will state revenues be enough? Will TEEOSA (the school funding formula) be revisited? One thing is sure. Pete Ricketts will never allow a structural solution to the problem of over-reliance on property tax to fund K-12 education, because he wants an income tax cut.
Hard Truth 3: Just as white supremacists won’t give up their dominance without a fight, so the folks who make money off fossil fuels are targeting renewable energy production every chance they get.
Along with cash from the surviving Koch brother (Ricketts’ soulmate and partner in “Americans for Prosperity”), the governor’s money also poured like manna overflowing to fund campaigns in public power races, in order to defeat candidates who champion renewable energy. Nevertheless, Mary Harding retained her seat on the NPPD board as did Amanda Bogner (OPPD) and, with newly-elected directors including Aaron Troester (NPPD) and term limited state senator Sarah Howard and Mary Spurgeon (both OPPD), all stand ready to fight the good fight against the entrenched power of the fossil fuel industry.
But facts are facts (see “Hard Truth” Sept./Oct. 2020 Nebraska Report), and just as climate change is busily expressing itself everywhere these days in drouths and flooding, storms and rampant loss of habitat (including human), new diseases and climate refugees, renewable sustainable energy development can only be messed with and delayed, not stopped. Wind, solar, geo and biofuels energy production is bringing new income, not just industry jobs but also land rent, to the farmers, ranchers and landowners of Greater Nebraska, Governor Pete and his posse notwithstanding. Funny how Pete and posse are always saying, Nebraska is open for business and We are taking advantage, but when this chance—renewable energy development— comes along to build a rural tax base while we counter global warming, THIS they can’t support?
To leave you with hope, I offer here some good news for Nebraskans in every zip code—the farm to table movement may offer a safe harbor in the pandemic storm now and beyond, through a federal farm to schools initiative. A coalition of producers, school lunch staff, farm organizations, a food bank, UNL Extension and the Nebraska Departments of Education and Agriculture, is working in Nebraska to facilitate farmer to school relationships as an alternative to industrial food product supply lines. Readers of the Nebraska Report understand what is at stake here, as the farm to school project has been the subject of articles for some time now. This is a tremendous opportunity for forward-leaning farmers and ranchers to sell what they raise into the nation’s largest restaurant chain—the school lunch program—and the dollars these ag producers earn will circulate again and again in their home communities. Developing a domestic market for food for humans sustainably produced in this country is the very best way to help producers diversify their operations.
Hard Truth 4: If you love me you will leave me alone for the holidays.
Nebraskans are smart, a general practitioner from God’s country told me on a Zoom meeting. Then he said Nebraskans have the highest rate of vaccination of all 50 states. The highest. So says the CDC. So if Nebraskans are so smart, can we practice pandemic safety?
As I write, daily new cases in the U.S. are approaching 200,000 a day. Nebraska Governor Posse Pete Ricketts is saying “steps may be taken”, furrowing his considerable brow to indicate his grave concern, but no statewide mandates to counter covid will come down from this governor. Luckily, you don’t have to wait for a mandate from a governor to stay home. And unless you really mess up badly, the governor cannot prevent you FROM staying at home. So stay home.
I know you love your family and friends, so protect them. When you CAN stay home, do. You may be tempted to say, I’ve had a rough year and the bastards can’t take the holidays from me. I’m gonna sit down like a human being and have a meal with my relations. Don’t do it. Don’t unleash a holocaust of contagion into our communities.
There are a hundred no contact ways you can let the people you love feel that love. My neighbor brings me noodle soup. Friends bring their dogs by and we chat at a generous distance, me on my deck, guests in my yard. My best friend from high school talks to me on the phone for an hour and a half. Neighbor kids bin my garbage and recycling and bring me origami and painted stones. My son splurges on streaming for me and texts me the titles of great movies, history, science and travel and cooks tours to watch. A friend drops off tomato soup from tomatoes she grew and roses in a plastic cup. My prayer group is on Zoom once a week, and a lovelier bunch of folks I’ve never known.
Want people to know you love them? Write all the really important people in your life a letter. On paper. Put those letters in envelopes, affix each with a Forever stamp and mail them off on Thanksgiving.
That’s love.
Hard Truth 1: Our national nightmare is far from over. Countries which once get cozy with a right- wing demagogue are often in for a bumpy ride over the following decades. Being as we are now over our touching but misguided belief in ‘American exceptionalism’ (RIGHT?), that means us. Trump can do a lot of mischief between now and mid-January, and I am sure he intends to do all he can to further part out the resources of the country to hand over to unfettered capitalism.
Do not expect too much from a Biden Administration, O best Beloved… nor yet too little. All the rest of my years on Earth will not see undone all the harms the Trump years have wrecked upon our democracy, but there is hope now and much that can and must be done—beginning with sound pandemic policy, including so-called stimulus money to aid disaster-stricken Americans, and restarting—indeed, doubling down upon—U.S. participation in the Paris Climate Accords.
Before it all blows by, please take note of Big Pharma’s role in national events. Pfizer withheld news of its vaccine until after the election. To have done otherwise might have tipped the balance towards Trump, and I for one am grateful for this act of restraint. The decision may have been made as a public relations move, to counter widespread and entirely justified disgust and outrage at the industry’s exorbitant profits, but at this moment I don’t much care. I’m way past demanding a pure motive too, when somebody does the right thing.
Hard Truth 2: Little can change in Nebraska so long as Citizens United is the law and the Ricketts family has money to spend.
Altogether, Pete Ricketts and his parents made an investment of $928,000 in Nebraska elections in 2020, some of it to fight extended gambling and in legislative races to secure the Republican majority which extends and protects Ricketts’ powerful hold in our nominally non-partisan Unicameral. There are rich people, and there are really rich people. Pete Ricketts’ brother is Trump’s lead fundraiser. Just so we’re clear.
When a governor effectively buys legislative seats, no good can come to the people of the state. This kind of patronage is bad for the relationship of the senators to the governor, and it is bad for the relationship of the senators to one another, creating as it does a two-tiered system of those who take their marching orders from their patron—Senators Brewer, Erdman, Bosselman, Groene, Albrecht and the like—and the rest who are resolutely NOT the governor’s to do with as he likes, who often find themselves hamstrung.
It remains to be seen whether the so-called grand compromise—how Nebraska will pay for public education— passed this last session will survive the pandemic. Will state revenues be enough? Will TEEOSA (the school funding formula) be revisited? One thing is sure. Pete Ricketts will never allow a structural solution to the problem of over-reliance on property tax to fund K-12 education, because he wants an income tax cut.
Hard Truth 3: Just as white supremacists won’t give up their dominance without a fight, so the folks who make money off fossil fuels are targeting renewable energy production every chance they get.
Along with cash from the surviving Koch brother (Ricketts’ soulmate and partner in “Americans for Prosperity”), the governor’s money also poured like manna overflowing to fund campaigns in public power races, in order to defeat candidates who champion renewable energy. Nevertheless, Mary Harding retained her seat on the NPPD board as did Amanda Bogner (OPPD) and, with newly-elected directors including Aaron Troester (NPPD) and term limited state senator Sarah Howard and Mary Spurgeon (both OPPD), all stand ready to fight the good fight against the entrenched power of the fossil fuel industry.
But facts are facts (see “Hard Truth” Sept./Oct. 2020 Nebraska Report), and just as climate change is busily expressing itself everywhere these days in drouths and flooding, storms and rampant loss of habitat (including human), new diseases and climate refugees, renewable sustainable energy development can only be messed with and delayed, not stopped. Wind, solar, geo and biofuels energy production is bringing new income, not just industry jobs but also land rent, to the farmers, ranchers and landowners of Greater Nebraska, Governor Pete and his posse notwithstanding. Funny how Pete and posse are always saying, Nebraska is open for business and We are taking advantage, but when this chance—renewable energy development— comes along to build a rural tax base while we counter global warming, THIS they can’t support?
To leave you with hope, I offer here some good news for Nebraskans in every zip code—the farm to table movement may offer a safe harbor in the pandemic storm now and beyond, through a federal farm to schools initiative. A coalition of producers, school lunch staff, farm organizations, a food bank, UNL Extension and the Nebraska Departments of Education and Agriculture, is working in Nebraska to facilitate farmer to school relationships as an alternative to industrial food product supply lines. Readers of the Nebraska Report understand what is at stake here, as the farm to school project has been the subject of articles for some time now. This is a tremendous opportunity for forward-leaning farmers and ranchers to sell what they raise into the nation’s largest restaurant chain—the school lunch program—and the dollars these ag producers earn will circulate again and again in their home communities. Developing a domestic market for food for humans sustainably produced in this country is the very best way to help producers diversify their operations.
Hard Truth 4: If you love me you will leave me alone for the holidays.
Nebraskans are smart, a general practitioner from God’s country told me on a Zoom meeting. Then he said Nebraskans have the highest rate of vaccination of all 50 states. The highest. So says the CDC. So if Nebraskans are so smart, can we practice pandemic safety?
As I write, daily new cases in the U.S. are approaching 200,000 a day. Nebraska Governor Posse Pete Ricketts is saying “steps may be taken”, furrowing his considerable brow to indicate his grave concern, but no statewide mandates to counter covid will come down from this governor. Luckily, you don’t have to wait for a mandate from a governor to stay home. And unless you really mess up badly, the governor cannot prevent you FROM staying at home. So stay home.
I know you love your family and friends, so protect them. When you CAN stay home, do. You may be tempted to say, I’ve had a rough year and the bastards can’t take the holidays from me. I’m gonna sit down like a human being and have a meal with my relations. Don’t do it. Don’t unleash a holocaust of contagion into our communities.
There are a hundred no contact ways you can let the people you love feel that love. My neighbor brings me noodle soup. Friends bring their dogs by and we chat at a generous distance, me on my deck, guests in my yard. My best friend from high school talks to me on the phone for an hour and a half. Neighbor kids bin my garbage and recycling and bring me origami and painted stones. My son splurges on streaming for me and texts me the titles of great movies, history, science and travel and cooks tours to watch. A friend drops off tomato soup from tomatoes she grew and roses in a plastic cup. My prayer group is on Zoom once a week, and a lovelier bunch of folks I’ve never known.
Want people to know you love them? Write all the really important people in your life a letter. On paper. Put those letters in envelopes, affix each with a Forever stamp and mail them off on Thanksgiving.
That’s love.
