When character no longer counts

In April, 1987, then presidential candidate Gary Hart, responding to rumors of marital infidelity, threw down the gauntlet.  He challenged the press to "follow me around".

The Miami Herald took up the gauntlet and soon discovered his relationship with a young woman, Donna Rice.  

Not long afterwards, Gary Hart quit the presidential race . . . only to reverse course several months later with the declaration, "Let the people decide; I'm back in the race!"

During those days, I heard people asking the question, "Does character really matter when you're running for public office?"

I asked myself, "Why is this even a question?  Of course character counts!"

Apparently, many Americans did not feel the same way, because in 1992, even amid rumors of past infidelity, Bill Clinton was elected to the Presidency, and then re-elected in 1996.  

In 1998, the Monica Lewinsky scandal blew up.  

At that time, certain evangelical Christian leaders -- including Franklin Graham and James Dobson -- stood up and declared, "Yes, character counts in a President!"

Some of those same leaders, in 2016, reversed course and supported Donald Trump for president, despite his known affairs with at least two women and his disgusting remarks about women that were leaked to the media.  

Did character count then?

Apparently not.  

This is what happens when you are so fearful of one particular candidate that you end up supporting the other, despite the character flaws that you condemned so forcefully when the candidate was not the one you supported.

There are Presidents who have done things for this country and have been adulterers and have committed other sins during their time in office.  Thomas Jefferson is now well-known for his dalliances (some would say, rape of) with Sally Hemings. John F. Kennedy left of trail of infidelity behind him.  And FDR's relationship with Lucy Mercer Rutherford is also well-documented.  

As many things as they did for this country, for me, their legacy is forever tainted by the way they treated their wives.  Or, as in Jefferson's case, the women around them (I say that because Jefferson's wife had died by the time he was in the White House.)  

Should a person who has committed adultery -- or, for that matter, any other sin -- be permanently barred from running for public office?

I don't know.  I can only tell you what I think:  If someone has committed adultery, if they have repented, if they have gotten help, if they have remained faithful to their spouse since the days of that adultery, then no, I don't think that should permanently bar them from public office. People do sin. People do repent of sin. God does forgive sin. 

What I resent is the cries of, "Yes, character counts!" from respected Christians only to have those same Christians turn around and say, "Yeah, the guy has rotten character, but look at King Cyrus! God used him!" Or, "King David committed adultery with Bathsheba and God used him!" Or, "He wasn't elected to be our pastor!" 

Number one, the prophesy about King Cyrus was fulfilled when he allowed the Israelites to go home after 70 years of exile. That prophecy was not intended to be extrapolated onto a future President of the United States.

Number two, although God did use David after he sinned, there are two things to keep in mind:  a) David repented (see Psalm 51) and b) David paid a very steep price for his sins. The son he conceived with Bathsheba died. His daughter Tamar was raped by her half-brother Amnon, and David did nothing about it. David's son Absalom attempted to seize the throne. Absalom raped ten of David's concubines, and then was ultimately killed by David's own general, Joab.

No President is perfect.  We all sin.  Presidents sin. 

But what we saw on Wednesday afternoon unfold on our TV screens is the ultimate result of what happens when we decide that character no longer counts in a President. 

We end up getting a President who is unwilling to concede an election until absolutely forced to, who continues to propagate a false narrative about a stolen election, and who whips a crowd up into such a frenzy that they feel free to storm the US Capitol, with Congress inside, and break into the House and Senate chambers in order to take selfies and trash the place. 

We decided way back in 1987 that character no longer mattered in a President. 

We are now reaping the consequences of that decision.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Day of Infamy, Redux

Yesterday, January 6, 2021, a date which will live in infamy, the United States was suddenly and deliberately attacked by an out-of-control mob.

Like the attack on Pearl Harbor, we should have seen this coming, and many people did see something like this coming.

When a group of people who President Trump famously told to "stand back and stand by" announce that they will be in the nation's capital on the day the Electoral College was ratified, for the specific purpose of protesting the results of that Electoral College, and when the President of the United States himself welcomes them, tells people the time and date of a "stop the steal" rally, and then exhorts them informing them that "you will never take back our country with weakness", you should know that things have the potential to not end well.

Indeed, it ended badly.

The crowd, bearing Trump banners, Trump flags, Trump hats, probably Trump T-shirts, and most disgustingly, American flags and the Christian flag which hangs in many churches, marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, right to the building where, in their mind, the greatest threat to the United States of America sat:  the 535 members of the United States Congress and the Vice-President of the United States.

Once there, they forced their way past a police barrier and swarmed the steps of the Capitol Building.

I was watching CSPAN on my computer, thinking that I just had a ringside seat to political theatre and ready to spend several hours mentally rolling my eyes at the hot air and stupidity of certain Congresspeople (I'm looking at you, Ted Cruz!) 

Then I started hearing reports of protestors surrounding the Capitol, so I decided to pack up the computer and move to the TV. 

I left the room briefly.

When I came back, I saw people marching into the Capitol.  This is the Capitol building which has been off-limits to the general public since COVID hit. 

And that's when I said, "Oh, my God."

The world now knows the evolving and the devolving of the situation over the next several hours.

They now know that protestors rammed the barricaded door of the House chambers.

They now know that protestors got into the House chambers and the Senate chambers. One protestor got his picture taken in the seat that the Vice President uses to preside over the Senate when it was in session.

One protestor got into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office, plopped himself down in her chair, got his picture taken, and then swiped a piece of mail from her desk, leaving her a quarter to pay for it.  (Does he not know that the price of a stamp has not been a quarter for years?) 

A group of protestors were pictured scaling a wall to get onto the Capitol grounds.  If you are a Baby Boomer or an older Gen Xer, you may remember film footage of Iranian terrorists hoisting themselves over the walls of the American Embassy in Tehran, Iran in 1979.  I remember that footage, and the photo of the people climbing the wall brought back memories of that awful time.

Another group "borrowed" a scaffold to lower the American flag and replace it with a Trump flag.

Still other protestors broke windows of the US Capitol to get inside.  When I heard that piece of news, that, for me, was the point where that protest stopped being "peaceful" and started being "violent".

We also now know that there were people who acted at great risk to keep the members of Congress safe. They ordered everyone to get down, gave them gas masks, and had them lie on the floor while outside, people pounded on the barricaded doors.  

People in the building were ordered to stay away from windows and make no noise. Just like an entire generation of school children have had to do for the last 20 years to protect themselves from mass shooters.

One pipe bomb was found at the local offices of the Democratic National Committee.  Another was found at the local offices of the Republican National Committee.  Apparently, some protesters were non-partisan in their desire for destruction.  And if pipe bombs were not enough, the police also had to remove a cooler full of Molotov cocktails.  (I assume these were not on ice and were probably not intended to be served "shaken, not stirred".)

And where, during all of this turmoil, was our President? 

Sitting in the Oval Office, watching the unraveling of the law and order he so proudly championed during his campaign for Presidency and making no move to stop it.

Until he made a video telling everyone, we love you, you're special, the election was still stolen, but you need to go home.

Five people are now dead as the result of this madness.  One woman, Ashli Babbitt, 35, described as a pro-Trump California native and Air Force veteran, was shot by Capitol Police.  The other three -- one a woman from Kennesaw (metro Atlanta) -- died from "medical emergencies" on the scene.  The death of number five, a US Capitol Police officer, was announced as I was writing this.  

Over 50 police officers were hurt. I do not know how many protestors were hurt.  

In the camera shots of the front of the Capitol, if you watch long enough, you'll notice that there are protestors being escorted out.  When I saw that, I asked myself, "Okay, why are the cops not using their batons to break up this group?"

I wasn't the only one that picked up on that. A good number of people -- including President-elect Joe Biden -- commented that if these protesters had been mostly black, instead of mostly white, the police response would have been a lot different. I have friends who are convinced that the police would have started shooting into the crowd.  And, given the experiences of African-Americans with the police, I can't disagree with those who feel that way.

At the moment, we have growing calls for either impeachment or the invoking of the 25th Amendment, which calls for the removal of the President if he is deemed unfit to perform his duties.  We also have a list of staff members who've resigned, including Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who is also the wife of Senator Mitch McConnell. 

In the immediate aftermath of the Capitol riot, the now-traumatized Representatives and Senators, along with staff, went back to work.  For all of my criticism of Washington, DC politics, these men and women are to be commended for going back in and finishing the job they were Constitutionally mandated to do, which is, follow the Constitution and certify the results of the Presidential election.  

And, despite the stubbornness -- or stupidity -- of those who still protested the Electoral College results, Joe Biden was confirmed as the winner of the Presidential election, January 7, 2021, at close to 4 a.m.  

Donald J. Trump will be President for 13 more days, barring unforeseen events. 

I pray we last long enough to get to the inauguration.

I do not want another day of infamy.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Five letters, one hyphen, two numbers

Five letters.

One hyphen.

Two numbers.

Nothing else had a greater impact on our lives last year than those eight written symbols.  (And boy, am I glad to write those words, "last year".)

It was a year ago since the initial reports of "a new virus in Wuhan, China" first started trickling in.  In February, I visited my doctor and commented about how no, I didn't need to worry about "that new thing in China" because I hadn't been out of the country.

Just a few days later, I read a headline saying that the CDC was warning us to be preparing for "significant disruptions", and I thought, "This sounds like fearmongering, but just in case, I better start stocking up on food."

I count March 13th as the day all hell broke loose.

March 13th was the first day that my son was home from school on a school holiday that would have been a make up snow day.  He did not go back into a physical building until August. 

How to describe a visit to a local Kroger on that week?  People were not angry, or screaming, or shoving each other out of the way.  It was just a very busy buzz, people going up and down the aisles, grabbing the stuff they needed, standing in lines, not full of screaming anxiety but rather with jaws grimly set.  

I remember driving down the road that week in March, listening to the news, and thinking, "I will not panic.  I will not panic." I fall into the category of "prepper", and while I do not have an underground bunker against the unlikely possibility of thermonuclear war, I do believe in keeping a full pantry and a decent amount in savings. So when rumblings of a pandemic hit, my purchases were more in the category of comfort food (think Fritos, Lays, and M & M's) than in necessities. I did make a bread run and was nicely told at the checkout counter, next time, the limit is two or four loaves. I also yelled, "Score!" to someone who was coming out of Aldi with a package of paper towels.  She laughed. 

I cannot complain about how "no one else had to deal with . . ." because no one on earth remained unaffected by these five letters, one hyphen, and two numbers.  In fact, I feel rather bubbled.  My husband was able to transfer to working at home.  I already work at home.  Our biggest challenge was switching office areas and getting adjusted to a new schedule.  Going along with that challenge was getting my husband set up to be able to work at home!  

My poor son had a hard time adjusting.  Since he has autism, he has a difficult time with changes in routine.  And his poor mother had a meltdown when she couldn't get the scanner on her computer properly. 

But since then, we, along with the majority of the world, have learned how to work Zoom or whatever your communications platform is. ("You're on mute" is the sentence of 2020.)

We learned to work with online church and a chat room (which my son was the first to enter on Sundays.) And I learned how to make communion bread.  

For weeks, I mentally sang "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" while washing my hands.  When I got bored with that, I switched to "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat". 

And, like so many in the world, I watched and listened in alternating pride, disbelief, horror, shock, anger, surprise, and other words in the gamut of emotions as the year unfolded.

The term "essential worker" is now a permanent addition to our vocabulary. So is "social distancing". 

Who can forget the pictures of doctors and nurses slumped over in exhaustion, their faces bruised from the hours of wearing a medical-grade mask? 

And while sitting at my home office desk in Atlanta, I watched as simmering fury over the death of George Floyd while in police custody boiled over into rioting. In the days that followed, we heard and saw protest, grief, lament, and expressions of exhaustion.  (I know people who participated non-violently in local area protests.  I was very proud of them.)

And as I write this, our President still refuses to accept that he was voted out of office by the American people. While the simmering political anger has not yet exploded into major rioting and major violence, I am still waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Today is the first day of a new year, and like I said earlier, I was never so glad to say "last year" than I was when the ball dropped at Times Square and the socially distanced crowd counted down to "Happy New Year!" I nearly cried. 

I have no illusions that just flipping the calendar over, or putting a new calendar on the wall, is going to magically change anything.  I also have no illusions that a transfer of power on January 20th will magically pull our country out of our pessimistic funk. The best I hope for is a morale boost.  New starts, or at least perceived new starts, are helpful.

Today is a new start, a clean slate of sorts. 

But here is one of the biggest lessons I have learned from this pandemic.

Five letters.

One hyphen.

Two numbers.

COVID-19.

Those eight written symbols brought the entire world to its knees in 2020.  

I think we should all be humbled by that fact.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.