Parents' Rights and School Shootings

According to Progressive Democrats of America,  "last week’s deadly shooting at Oxford High School in suburban Detroit was one of 222 school shooting incidents in 2021, an all-time high, according to the Center for Homeland Defense and Security’s K-12 School Shooting Database." The difference in this shooting versus many others is that the parents of the alleged shooter are being held jointly in connection with the murders of four students and seven injured. Maybe, it is as it should be. With school boards being loaded by parent activists who want more say over what their children learn and experience in school, perhaps it is time we also hold less active parents accountable for what their children do in America's schools.

 It may have escaped the notice of some liberals, but conservative right-wingers are using authoritarian messaging that sounds ever so wholesome but is really part of a power grab at all levels. Concerned parents who don't want to vaccinate or mask their children, but are okay if your kid gets sick; who don't want them exposed to Critical Race Theory or books that they deem to be thematically "pornographic" due to LGBTQ themes, but are all about allowing bullying to occur and are still mostly okay with their kids handling guns. Heck, the parents of the latest shooter apparently provided their son the gun as a holiday gift. It was only later they were surprised to learn that their son had taken the gun from an unsecured location within their home and brought it to school as a twisted "show and tell".

  If parent activists want to have a say over what their children learn at school then it is fair to expect that we have some say over what they learn at home. Parents should not have the ability to treat themselves like the gun manufacturers who have had laws adjusted to not hold them accountable when a gun is used as it is designed--to kill people. No, parents should absolutely be treated as either an accomplice or a co-conspirator when their child kills at school. No more of this child being tried as an adult, let the parents step in there and man up. 

It seems that since Congress is not doing much to stop the killing, it will rely on main street moms and dads to be responsible for the 220+ school shootings that happened this year and who knows how many next year. If we lock up enough parents who are lax with their children about guns, maybe there will be fewer children shooting up schools. I mean, like Republican Iowa Senate leader Jake Chapman said, "someone has to protect the children."

With Liberty, But Not Justice For All

 Should your pursuit of liberty be an existential threat to my pursuit of life? To hear Republicans and others tell it, yes, absolutely. If I don't want to vaccinate myself against a viral disease that has killed millions around the world and significantly compromised the health of millions more, I don't have to. Nor do I have to tell anyone and no one can prevent me from doing my work,, at least according to some courts. The Constitution allows me to do this. But, does the Constitution guarantee this in all cases? Well, I guess we'll wait and see. 

Protecting the rights of the minority has long been a way to ensure that the majority does not stifle their voices, however in the case of war and other life-threatening situations such as natural disasters or crying "fire" in a crowded theater there are limits. Certainly in the past when epidemics have broken out, this has been a bone of contention. So when exactly does the public good supersede the individual's rights? Apparently, the answer has been: it depends.

In many ways, this is a challenge. Fundamentally, I believe most of us value our freedom of choice, and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are as ingrained as part of American culture. But when we are talking about how our actions impact others, can this attempt at rationalizing our heritage for our selfish act truly be just? We have successfully stopped smokers from smoking everywhere and chemical plants and cars from belching toxins without regard, but the idea of reducing the national risk of a devastating global pandemic is a line that can't be crossed?

So let's consider the exceptions first. I won't do this for religious reasons. Well, major religious leaders are calling on their memberships to be vaccinated except for health reasons. Typically those religions that do not "believe" in vaccines are relatively small in number. But, what of those "unaffiliated" religious people or those who use religion as a reason why they don't do anything they don't want to do? To them, I simply ask, what would your God want you to do?

And what of those for whom vaccination is dangerous to their health because of pre-existing medical conditions? To them, I say get a medical exemption and then think about how you keep yourself and others safe as you could be or become a carrier, even if you don't contract it yourself. How are you going to keep your family or people you care about well? Use your freedom to figure that out.

However, to the greatest number of people who are not vaccinated, who'll I'll categorize as the stubborn, the arrogant, and the patently misinformed, I ask, are you that nihilistic or sociopathic? I refer to the kind of people who won't evacuate during a hurricane because they'd rather ride it out (remember those rooftop evacuations during Hurricane Katrina?). They are the people who think the government is trying to control them (e.g., microchips tracking, vaccines actually giving them the disease) and treat Facebook "expert" posts as the gospel while warnings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fall on deaf ears. These are the same people who also don't want to or won't wear a mask or do other things that mitigate against COVID-19 and its variants. These are those who gleefully point out that vaccinated people have gotten sick, never taking into account the difference between illness and death--the lion's share of which has happened mostly to the unvaccinated. If this number were 1% or even 10% of the country, chances are they wouldn't matter so much, but because their numbers, while a subset, are so large (about 40% according to the CDC), they are not ignorable.

From a societal perspective, you can argue perhaps it is good that there is all of this controversy surrounding vaccination because it does attach itself to what democracy is supposed to be about, that is the people deciding their course of self-rule. And that is the missing ingredient in the discourse--self-rule as a nation. Through our representatives, we make laws all the time that dictate what color paint you can use in a gated community or what side of the street we can park on, or even what your variable tax rate will be scaled at. We trust regulators to keep us from getting sick from the milk we drink to issuing warning labels on plastic bags so our kids are not accidentally suffocated. We do this because democratic rule is not the same thing as anarchy or libertarianism, it is a series of debated concessions we make so that we all can experience the closest thing to life, liberty, and justice for all. Because it is an ideal and not a fact, democracy is a process, not a status quo. 

Democracy is a governance that is built on justice. Justice is an important facet of liberty. Justice insists that everybody gets a fair shake at a decent life. Justice needs to be supported by not giving in to the whims of people who regard their lives as more or less disposable than others. We don't have to understand everybody's motivations to know that life is valuable and that conceding some of our autonomy to serve that end is a tradeoff for our freedom. If we really believe that justice for all is guaranteed by the Constitution, we have to willingly sacrifice a small amount of freedom so we can all have a better shot at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Disempowering Women With Law On Your Side

 The Supreme Court is hearing a case that could prevent most women from seeking an abortion after 15 weeks. The person spearheading the effort is the Attorney General of Mississippi Lynn Fitch who suggests that allowing women to choose abortion actually disempowers them. And she should know, as she was able to divorce her husband and raise three children on her own (with the help of a nanny, childcare professionals, and a web of supportive mothers like her and also have a high-level career. Ah! If life were only that simple for all women without privilege. In her case, abortion was never an option--she being a devout Christian never considered it, but she doesn't think you should either--and if the Supreme Court agrees, you won't have much time to a) know you are pregnant 2) have time to process what is the best decision for you 3) find a health care provider and schedule a procedure in the 15-week window you have, if you should choose to terminate the pregnancy. 

Though the law in question "made exceptions for life-threatening pregnancies and for fetuses with “severe … abnormalities,” it included no caveats for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest." So, a fair number of women are put at risk of delivering babies who were forced upon them. Fitch believes it is empowering for women to have it all whether they want it or not and hence repealing Roe v. Wade is actually pro-women.

This kind of reverse judo has been used to take choice away from women in a lot of states and made it more likely that unwanted babies will be brought into the world with little chance that the same protestors who claim to be pro-life will support these children, but more likely be yet another bludgeon to be used to blame parents for a society that candidly does not support life after birth in terms of childcare, health care, education, gun safety and more.

While AG Fitch has a point of view that is embraced by the religious right, most Americans continue to be on the side of women's choice. With about 60% of surveys showing support for Roe v. Wade, the question is will the SCOTUS allow their bias to paint their decision and recreate the environment that made Roe v. Wade a decision that truly empowered women by giving them choice and time to deliberate on that choice? 

Fit the Power

Public Enemy famously rapped back in 1989 "Fight the power, we've got to fight the powers that be" as a rallying cry to Black Americans. These days it seems like many kinds of people aspire to be the power that is by fitting themselves into the mold du jour. If you are a Republican wannabe, you are likely tearing a page from the Book of Trump to rabble rouse yourself to a place of importance/power (e.g., Josh Hawley, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz). If you are a Democrat, you are likely trying to decide between the more diverse Bernie Sanders/The Squad model or the whiter M.O.R. model that Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are driving. In other words, whomever you are, you've got to fit the powers that be.

By doing so, you create and build on a set of calculating core beliefs that give you amplification and the perception of power in the form of fundraising, public voice, and social media notoriety. Borrowing again from Public Enemy, "You've got to give the Peeps what they need" is the mantra that rallies the mob (corporate or public) to your side. 

We have a vortex of power, a massive wave of energy that is largely like a stalled hurricane, always a threat, but more likely to peter out in the end. Do enough of this and a person might believe that democracy is failing. A question I'd raise is "Maybe democracy has not happened yet?"

If we stop trying to fight the power and come at it with our own power, what then? For one thing, we have to join forces over lines of division. Color, culture, economics have got to be approached with a sense of purpose. We the people are just people who want to get along and have peaceful lives free of violence and exploitation. As long as we continue to fit the power, the power wins. When we realize that we are the power, then we all are on the road to giving the people what we need.

The Copification of America

 In America, we used to trust the police department to deal with enforcing the law. Today, thanks to more lax gun laws and even more lax criteria for self-defense pleas, we have created a nation of deputies-in-waiting. Armed people essentially looking for a fight. Take Kyle Rittenhouse (please), the 17-year-old cause celebre who was acquitted of killing two men and badly injuring another in Kenosha, Wisconsin--a city not best known for being the hometown of Orson Welles, Mark Ruffalo, and Al Molinaro (from TV's "Happy Days"). You may recall that Rittenhouse's dad lived in Kenosha and young Kyle moved by the left-winged rioting and right-winged social media to walk the streets and offer to render medical aid while toting an illegally acquired AR-15 style weapon. 

Not surprisingly, young Kyle alarmed protestors by appearing to be a loner gunman and leading to three altercations that ended up in the deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber, and the shooting of Gaige Grosskreutz. Ironically, both Rittenhouse and Grosskreutz were there to provide medical assistance and both were armed, albeit in Grosskreutz's case with a concealed weapon drawn only to confront an armed attacker. A sympathetic jury dismissed all charges against Rittenhouse who testified for his defense team and whose almost semi-epileptic breakdowns on and off the witness stand (and upon the reading of the verdicts) were convincing enough for the jury to let him go and to get on with his plans for an appearance on Tucker Carlson's low-key Fox Network show.

Thanks to Republican-led statehouses, people like Rittenhouse are presumed innocent even when they cross state lines and shoot a rifle that their friend illegally bought for them. It turns out that the prosecution has to prove that you did not shoot to defend yourself. You can say a lot about this case, but the people who were shot by Rittenhouse definitely went after him because they perceived him to be a threat and he shot them because he could.

Imagine for a moment that Rittenhouse had arrived in Kenosha with nothing but his medical kit and just cleaned graffiti (as he had done earlier in the day). Would any of these three men see a reason to scrap with him? Chances are very unlikely that he would have been in a situation to defend himself. But, he was armed and in a chaotic situation. He had been told by a police officer that guys like him were appreciated for being there--and defending a used car lot from vandals and looters that he volunteered to do to an owner of the lot (who also claimed did not ask him to do it or even agreed to allow). 

Kyle Rittenhouse may have seen himself as a good guy with a gun, but how was anyone else to know that? Tensions in the community were running high and it was just as reasonable for the men shot to think that Rittenhouse was more likely a danger as a protector. Rittenhouse was Paul Blart, Melee Cop--a self-appointed deputy in the service of keeping the peace by all means necessary. 

How many more Charles Bronson vigilantes will be claiming self-defense when they show up in your town? It doesn't matter. What matters is it is the Wild West and frontier justice is being doled out by a leaderless posse that thinks it is making America great again by fanboying the police. Let's see if Rittenhouse joins the thin blue line or merely uses his newly found fame to get rich quick. Certainly, he will not be the first person to claim to be a hero, he was just doin' his job, ma'am. Heck, even the Gunowners of America is giving him an award--an AR-15.

Build Back Biden

The President is literally down for the count as he is having a routine colonoscopy done today. However, while time will tell if the wins on the infrastructure bill and, as of this morning, the House passing the social spending bill which includes reforms to immigration, climate change, and goodies like child care subsidies, universal preschool, paid family leave, renewable energy tax incentives and extensions of both the expanded child tax credit, efforts to slash prescription drug prices, and enhanced health care subsidies spell a needed lift for Biden. Using a cheap colonoscopy metaphor, Biden and his surgeon are getting a little behind (in polling number terms).  

As we have seen, you can't keep Joe Biden down and as his policies take hold, barring cold feet from the Senate, he should see an ascendency to his popularity. Still, this is not foolproof, as the Republicans will keep beating the drum about inflation, the debt, illegal immigrants, socialism, and so on. The election theme that Biden would be a steady hand on the wheel, for the Republicans is replaced by the new theme of taking the car keys away from Grandpa. But, you can't argue with Biden's success since in less than a year many of his policies have been wrangled through the sausage grinder that is Congress. Sure it has been herky-jerky and with a lot of self-inflicted wounds by his own party, but the change he has promised is coming to fruition. Not Everything. Not perfectly. And hopefully, like his colonoscopy, everything will work out at the end.

Iowa's State Government (almost) One Party System

 With the exception of State Auditor and Treasurer and discounting the State's Attorney General, largely defanged by the Party That Be, Iowa's state government is run by Republicans. They run the House, Senate, Governor's Office, and Secretary of State's Office. In actuality, the House, Senate, and Governor's offices have been in lockstep since 2017. It is not likely to change much unless Iowans gain control of their senses (and as my previous column suggests, there seems not much chance of that happening). So in a span of five years, the Republicans have managed to run the table (save the aforementioned offices that Democrats have yet to lose). 

 In 2022, you can bet that the goal will be to gain the omnipresent Tom Miller's AG's office and, probably more importantly to this crew, regain the auditor's office where Rob Sand has actually done the credible job an auditor is supposed to do--which is to point out mishandling of the public's dollars (or make sense of the non-cents). But that is not making Glorious Leader Kim and her island of broken toys under the rotunda very happy. How dare he point out that she used funds inappropriately to pay for her staff's unreported raises. That was so partisan of him to call out her partisanship. It is safe to say that Sand has a larger target on him than the retail chain by the same name has on their stores.

And this is an example of what happens when one party is entrusted to run the whole show--no checks and definitely no balances. To the citizenry of Iowa who still likes to say their liberties they prize and their rights they will maintain, um--how? You see when there is limited opposition, you kind of get a pass on legalities and ethics because, you know, you don't really need 'em since you are in charge.

You know how we don't want to become like North Korea or be one of those one-party states? Well, we kind of are. The only way out of this is to vote for change (or for a change, if you are one of those seasonal voters). Buddy, can you spare the time?