Remembering History's first Video Group Chat - 43 Years ago

 They say the worst thing you can have in live television is “dead air”. Suddenly in front of a room full of government and media dignitaries, with broadcasting history literally hanging in the balance, that is exactly what we were facing. Dead air.

The date was Thursday, October 15th, 1981. Two days earlier, I had boarded an Amtrak train in Columbus, Wisconsin, along with Mike Daugherty, John Garrett, Tom Gehrmann, Chris Kerwin, Anne O'Brien, Becky Weirough, Glenn Zweig, Steve Funk, and Mike Kennedy, Now in the ballroom of the Capital Hill Holiday Inn in Washington D.C. a live satellite demonstration, linking our group of American kids, and a group of young people in Brisbane Australia had just gone on the air.

We were there along with other young people who shared the unique experience of being media users, not just media consumers. We were from the “Kids 4” television project in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Kids4 had been on the air since 1978, and was an educational partnership between the local public access cable channel and the American Council for Better Broadcasting (ACBB, later renamed as the National Telemedia Council )

Joining us there in Washington, was a group from the KIDS ALIVE! Project in Bloomington, Indiana. Together, we were hosting a live cultural exchange via satellite with a group of young people from down under in Brisbane Australia, who hosted the popular children’s program WOMBAT on Australia's Channel 7.

The kids from the Australian television show went first, showing an amazing video montage of their studio, the gold coast of Australia and the stories they produced there at Channel 7 in Brisbane. Then it was our turn. Or so we thought...   

Kerri Brinson from KIDS ALIVE!, looked in the camera and cheerfully announced; “Well, here’s our video montage!”  And … nothing.

A technician from COX Cable Television, hurried into the room and whispered in the ear of a nearby adult that the Video tape player in the satellite truck, was not working, and therefore none of the prepared footage we had brought with us to Washington could be shown. So we proceeded to do what we always did when doing live television. We improvised. 

The kids from Indiana looked at us like we were nuts. They were not used to working live. One of the great things about the Kids 4 program is we started out doing all of our shows live. It was only after two years we switched to recording them first, then airing them.

Still, with a ballroom full of media dignitaries watching you , plus trying to fill time  with stuff off the top your head, AND cope with at least a 5 second time delay between you and the people you were trying to interview, it was bit tense, even by our standards. But the end result turned out to be something amazing and unexpected.

That one technical glitch turned what would have been a largely scripted exchange into an actual conversation.

Instead of following a script,  we talked.  Asking each other about school, about hobbies and what was it about working with television that interested them, as well as sharing our own experiences as kids learning to use media and not be used by it.

Of course at the time, it felt like a disaster.

Looking back on that day, now, more than four decades ago, I marvel at how much the world has changed. At the time, what we were doing in Washington DC that day was not all that remarkable from a technical standpoint. Live satellite broadcasts were hardly unusual in 1981. Yet from a cultural and educational standpoint, the Kids-to-Kids interconnect was nothing short of revolutionary.

As much as I say that live satellite television was commonplace in 1981, that isn’t to say the mechanics of it were simple. The path of the satellite interconnect - from Washington, D.C. to , Brisbane, Australia was a complex series of relays starting with a signal carried by cable to trucks parked just outside in the courtyard of the hotel. From there, the signal was  beamed by microwave across town to PBS Headquarters.

PBS then sent  the signal to KQED In San Francisco via a  satellite, 22,300 miles above the Earth. Which THEN transmitted it up to another satellite which relayed it across the Pacific Ocean,  and  down to the an earth station near Sydney, Australia.

Finally from there the signal travelled via land lines to the studios of Channel 7, Brisbane, where the Australian children received it and responded. Their messages back to the U.S. travelled in the reverse direction using landlines and satellites back to Washington, to the on-site satellite dish located in the courtyard of the Capitol Holiday Inn, which fed the signal into the ballroom room where it was seen on  large screens by all of us there.

Whew! Did you follow all that? Don’t worry, there won’t be a quiz. But here is what you need to know, everything that I just described, in all its complicated glory, the average teenager can now do with the phone they carry in their pocket. No trucks needed, no delay and now we don’t even think twice about it.

 .
The Interconnect didn’t radically change the media landscape, or advance broadcast technology. What it did do, was in the space of a few short hours make the world a remarkably smaller place. It showed that live satellite broadcasting could be used for more than breaking news and sporting events

More than that, it laid the foundation for the type of personal inter connectivity that today, we take completely for granted. I know this, because I do it nearly every day. At least three times a week I will face-time, or WhatsApp video call or Facebook messenger video call with friends and family scattered all over the globe.  From London, to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to San Francisco, and  Madison, Wisconsin,  and dozens of points in between.    What is commonplace today,  was nothing short of history making on that day in 1981

The interconnect was the first global Zoom meeting.

The greatest take away from that day for those of us fortunate enough to have been part of it, was the power of broadcast technology to bridge distances and connect people in new and exciting ways. It was, at least for me, a  life changing experience. A live demonstration of the power of broadcast technology to connect people and be a platform for sharing experiences and ideas, in (nearly) real time.

Media Literacy is more crucial now than ever before. Teaching young people how to harness the power of media, and connectivity as tools for education and empowerment is more important today, than it has ever been.

Teaching young people to be media users, not just media consumers has always been at heart of the mission of Kids 4 and The ACBB / National Telemedia Council . That mission, which took a gigantic step forward in 1981 continues today. Now as the International Council for Media Literacy You can find out more about the IC4ML and it's mission and legacy on their website,:  https://www.ic4ml.org.

 In a world where if kids in Sun Prairie, WI  want to talk to kids in Brisbane, Australia , all they need is a smart phone and a decent WIFI signal, the lessons of the Interconnect are even more important today than they were four decades ago.

Still more than 40 years on, it remains an experience that played a tremendous role in shaping my path in life I am so very grateful to have been a part of it.

Remembering a September Morning...

  (The following is an update of an entry from Sept. 11th, 2011)

This week  the media, and the blogosphere will  undoubtedly be full of all sorts of remembrances and commentary around the 23rd  anniversary of the terrorist attack on the United States on September 11, 2001.

To be honest I really don't like to dwell on the topic. Not out of any sense of personal pain, but more out of respect, for those people I know who were far closer to the events of that day than I was. My experience that day was a somewhat surreal one.

I had gotten up very early and caught a flight from Chicago Midway to Houston. I was heading there for work. It was about 20 minutes into the flight, the seat belt sign had just turned off, and people where shifting about, getting comfortable. I had just pulled out my laptop to work on the presentation I was going to be giving later that day. Suddenly the seat belt sign came back on, and the crew announced that everyone was to return to their seats and prepare for landing, the flight would be returning to Chicago.

The Pilot then came on the speaker system to say that there was nothing wrong with the plane, and we were returning to Chicago because the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) had ordered the flight to return to "clear air traffic". He said that was all the information they had, and he apologized for the inconvenience.

Everyone on the plane thought the same thing. (Not terrorism.) Chicago Midway had upgraded to a new Air Traffic Control System earlier in the Summer and a few weeks prior, there had been a series of glitches that had delayed several flights.  Everyone groaned, made comments about "Government Efficiency" assuming it was yet another problem with Midway's system that was going to mess up  our day.

This  assumption that was bolstered when the captain came back on the loudspeaker  and announced  that we were not returning to Midway but rather we were diverted to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

The woman sitting next to me was happy about this thinking at least it might be easier to get on the next flight out to Houston. I nodded, and said "I hope so", thinking of how I might salvage the rest of my schedule that day and make my afternoon meetings on time.

It took us about 30 minutes of circling over O'Hare before we could land. Sitting in a window seat I watched as the line of planes waiting to land stretched to the far horizon and oddly enough, no planes were taking off. I commented on this to the woman next to me, and she said "wow Midway's systems must be really screwed up!" I laughed and said that what we get for Ronald Reagan having fired all the good Air Traffic Controllers. She laughed and said she had forgotten about that.

We landed and had to wait an additional 20 minutes to get a gate. but finally pulled up to a jetway , and we all lumbered off the plane into the gate area I was getting annoyed because people were not clearing the area in front of the door but were all standing around the televisions that were tuned to the CNN Airport Network. I was about to say a loud "excuse me!" when I happened to look up at the TV and saw CNN  replay footage from ABC of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center.

CNN then cut to live shot of a column of smoke and ash where the World Trade Center Towers were supposed to be, but weren't. I called my office and my boss told me not to come in, The area in downtown Chicago around the Sears Tower was being evacuated. I called my parents and let them know I was not in Houston, got on the CTA Blue Line and went home.   The rest of that day I did what most Americans did, watched the news, and when the images became overwhelming, I put on my roller blades and went blading along the Lake Michigan shoreline.

It was a brilliant sunny day. One of those late Summer, early Fall days that you get in Chicago that make you appreciate what a beautiful city it is. As I stopped at Oak Street Beach and admired the downtown Chicago skyline, I didn't think that somehow the "world had changed". But rather I found myself thinking how the United States had  sadly, finally  joined the rest of the world.

Before that that morning, Terrorism was something that happened in other places, Israel, Lebanon London, Belfast , places far away. Even the first World Trade Center bombing for many people, didn't seem like international terrorism. After all, the people responsible were caught when they tried to get the deposit back on the rental van they had used. (How sinister could people that dumb be?)    That is what changed I think, it was the moment America lost the illusion that somehow our two oceans would keep us safe from global terrorism.

For the  many  friends of mine who lived in New York on that day,  I understand  that  today  is a much different  experience for them.   A  friend of mine is  a New York City Police Officer  who  lost an arm in the attack that day.   Another friend of mine worked  for an investment bank housed in the  North Tower,  she had a doctors appointment so she didn't go into work  that morning.   For her, today  is a reminder of  the  friends and co-workers  she lost on that day.

For the numerous friends of mine who have served in the Middle East  with the American and British Armed Forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan, they deal with the effects September 11, 2001 on a far different  and more directly personal level than most people ever will.

So I, along with  people all over the world  will remember the events of that day, pray for those who were lost, and show solidarity and support for friends and family for whom this anniversary is far more personal than political.

God Bless America, God bless us all.

Dear DNC Protesters...

 

To all the “activists”, “organizers” and “influencers” descending on Chicago to protest the Biden Administration’s positions on the war in Gaza,  allow me to clue you in on something…

You are idiots…  All of you.  Complete Morons.

And I say that with love.  Your desire for peace in the Middle East is not the problem.   I’m with you there.     

But your completely delusional idea that disrupting the Democratic National Convention is going to move that part of the world closer to peace, OR ‘force a change in US policy’ again,  just shows how incredibly dumb you are.

Before I go any farther down this road, I want to take a minute to address the “Queers for Palestine” crowd.    Or as you should more accurately be described as; “Chickens for KFC”. 

 A 2021 report on LGBT acceptance by UCLA’s Williams Institute examined  175 countries/territories. Israel ranked 44^th Palestine came in at 130 , behind Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Georgetown University likewise placed Palestine 160th out of 170 countries on their women’s peace and security index. 

Amnesty International’s 2020 report on human rights highlights the fact that, in Gaza, male same-sex relationships are punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment and points out complete lack of legal protections against anti-LGBT discrimination and harassment.

This lack of civil rights has led hundreds of gay and bisexual Palestinians to flee to Israel to escape persecution. One such refugee, Ahmad Abu Marhia, a 25-year-old gay Palestinian man, was living under asylum in Israel when, in 2022, he was kidnapped and beheaded in the West Bank city of Hebron. His murderers uploaded footage of the killing to social media.

When confronted with the glaring contradiction of your  support for Hamas and condemnation of Israel (the ONLY nation in the middle east where it is safe to LGBTQ)  you proudly stick your  fingers in your  ears and yell; “LA! LA! LA! NOT LISTENING! PINKWASHING!  LA! LA! LA!”  

Again…  Idiots.   Complete Morons.

Sorry to splash the cold water of reality on your other favorite response to facts you don’t like, but to point all these things out is NOT to be in favor of the suffering currently being endured by the people of Gaza or to be in support of   the policies and actions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But the idea that yelling your way through downtown Chicago this week, waving your “Ka-Bomb-ala Harris “signs   is going to do anything to help the people of Palestine is so obtuse as to boggle the mind. Let’s examine the choice you seem to be desperate to ignore.    The choice between Kamala Harris and the Democrats and  Donald Trump and the Republicans.

Back in May 2018 then President Trump took the unilateral action of moving the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  An action which at the time was done for two reasons.  The first, to give Donald Trump something to Tweet about that didn’t 't involve Russia., and in Israel, shift the news cycle away from the growing corruption scandals that were surrounding Benjamin Netanyahu.

It is worth noting at the embassy opening ceremony back in 2018, sitting right in the front row was the late Sheldon Adelson.   

A man who had recently written a 30-million-dollar check to the GOP and was a major donor to  the "Temple Institute" An organization that actively advocates the destruction of Islamic holy sites to build the "third temple" on Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and whose widow Trump just praised at a campaign fundraiser as being better than soldiers who received the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Add into this mix Conservative Christian Evangelical Pastors John Hagee and Robert Jeffress. Both spoke at the embassy opening and are counting on Trump to deliver a really big war between Israel and the Arab world.  Because they think that will trigger the "end of days” so they can get  beamed up to White Jesus' magical gated community in the sky.

These lunatics not only oppose a two-state solution, but also oppose ANY idea of Palestinian self-determination.     And under a second Trump Presidency, US support for continued Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and military action in The West Bank and Gaza would go on completely unchecked.

But sure, Kamala Harris is who you are protesting…  Idiots.

The Democrats lack of clear aggressive opposition to Netanyahu and his policies is rooted in the political reality of America’s divided government.   You want change?  ELECT PROGRESSIVES TO CONGRESS especially in the United States Senate.  All your DNC street tantrums will do is give Fox News and the Trump Campaign a great set of visuals and talking points to use with undecided voters in the swing states.   

The other set of morons in this equation..

Your delusional denial of this doesn’t change the reality of it.   You ARE essentially campaigning for Donald Trump and the GOP and against the cause of the Palestinians you claim to be “solidarity with’. Your mindless determination to make the perfect the enemy of the good will however, accomplish one thing.   It will definitely feed the GOP swing state narrative that “It’s the radical leftists at the 1968 DNC all over again!”    

See how that works out for everyone.  Oh wait… We HAVE seen how that works out.  Back in 2016 when Hillary wasn’t “progressive enough” for many of you.    You held firm to your “our way or no way” convictions which I’m sure felt really good at the time. Then over half a million Americans died because of the incompetence of the choice you saddled the rest of us with.   And Benjamin Netanyahu got a green light to expand settlements in the occupied territories and ignore the peace process.  Which obviously helped fan support for Hamas in Gaza

But hey, well done you… 

So go ahead, run amok through the streets of Chicago making demands that a second Trump Administration will just laugh at.    As long as you look good on Tik Tok doing it, right?

Idiots.

The limitations of hindsight....

 79 Years ago this week, the United States and Japan both earned singular places in world history. The U.S. as the first and only nation to ever use atomic weapons in war, and Japan as the first and only country ever to be attacked with such weapons .

It has become rather fashionable in some quarters to debate the decision by President Truman to drop the Atomic Bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In recent years it has even become commonplace to hear the bombings referred to as “American War Crimes”. The arguments range from saying Japan was already defeated and the bomb was dropped partly as some grotesque military science experiment, and partly as a geo-political shot across the bow of Soviet Russia. A warning to Stalin to mind his manners and place in the world.

How much of that is true, and how much of that is ideological historical revisionism, we will never know. The only man who can truly answer those questions is Harry Truman, and from the day the first bomb fell to the day he died Truman maintained that his decision was the correct one.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/X-aXwokBdL8

Truman's statement after the Hiroshima bombing

To say that by August 1945, Japan was defeated is both accurate and overly simplistic. The question was not was the Japanese military defeated. but rather would Japan stop fighting in spite of the reality of that defeat The overwhelming evidence at the time, including statements by the Japanese high command clearly indicated the answer to that question was No. Japan would fight on, and a full-scale invasion of the Japanese home islands would be inevitable.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/HKD-0mJ94B4

BBC Documentary "Hiroshima"

I often tell the story of friends of mine in Europe and in Asia and the different questions they have asked me about this moment in American history. German friends of mine will ask with genuine curiosity why did the US drop the atom bomb? While friends in Korea, Thailand and Philippines will ask with equally genuine curiosity why The United States only dropped two atomic bombs?

The argument that use of the Atomic Bomb was immoral and inhumane is something of a straw-man. ALL acts of war, even those that can be militarily justified are immoral and inhumane. The firebombing of Japan by American B-29’s had already killed more Japanese civilians than would die in both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks combined. Japan had already killed more Chinese civilians than Jews killed by the Nazis in Hitler’s death camps.

The atomic bomb was not dropped to win the war, but to end it. Ending it without having to invade Japan,. The best estimates held that the invasion of Japan would cost 268,000 casualties. Personnel at the Navy Department estimated that the total losses to America would be between 1.7 and 4 million with 400,000 to 800,000 deaths. The same department estimated that there would be up to 10 million Japanese casualties. As opposed to the roughly 200,000 deaths from the atomic attacks on both cities

I find this perennial argument flawed on so many levels. NOBODY thinks dropping the Atomic bombs on Japan was a GOOD thing to do. The issue is was it the correct choice at the time.? To employ hindsight driven hypothetical scenarios is remarkable easy in 2024 and blithely dismisses what the otherwise inevitable invasion of Japan would have cost in lives on both sides.

The desire by some to cloak this debate in terms of were the bombings “justified” or moral is an overly simplistic attempt in hindsight to avoid the more relevant and complex hypothetical questions of what were the real alternatives at the time? War is not a moral act. The causes that compel nations to war have underpinnings of morality. Be it to end slavery or, free an oppressed people, or even self-defense. But war itself is killing on a mass scale. There is no getting around that.

To try to view Hiroshima and Nagasaki solely in that one dimension, and to frame it as a critique of the 40 years of an atomic arms race that followed, may be ideologically satisfying to some, but it is both intellectually lazy and factually dishonest.

The Annual Pride Debate....

  Well it's June... So you KNOW what that means.

Like the rainbow flags going up on Market Street in San Francisco , the annual debate over the merits of LGBT Pride celebrations re-surfaces like a perennial weed that just won't stay down.

It's a debate that rages  inside and outside the  LGBTQ community. Inside the community, the question is; does some of the imagery of Pride celebrations hurt the cause of equal rights? Also, in the wake of legal victories such as Marriage Equality; some ask  do we even need pride celebrations anymore?

While critics and opponents of equality love to point to that same imagery as evidence of Gay folks wanting "special rights", and then pull out their favorite chestnut, of asking why are Gay Pride Celebrations acceptable but Straight Pride celebrations are not?

Sigh.... Really? It's like asking why isn't there a "White History Month". I get tired of trying to explain to people who really do know better, just how stupid they sound whey they try to make these types of arguments. But fine, since clearly there is some "genuine" confusion out there as to the reason for LGBT Pride celebrations , allow me to clarify.

States in the USA where you can be fired for being Straight =0
States in the USA where you could have been fired for being Gay = 28
Countries that will execute you for being Straight = 0
Countries that will execute you for being Gay = 11 (actually 12 Uganda just re-joined the list)


Growing up, how many books, songs, television programs, and movies did you see that featured straight couples meeting, falling in love and living happily ever after? Pretty much all of them. Ask someone who is LGBT how many positive images in popular culture they had growing up that affirmed who they are? The answer is, none, or at best few, if any at all.

Thankfully this has been changing dramatically in the past few years.

But until those recent advances, Gay characters in movies and television were either creepy villains or camp comic relief. If you doubt that, you really should check out the groundbreaking HBO documentary, "The Celluloid Closet".It shows clearly the disparity in popular culture where messages about sexual orientation were concerned.

 
The Celluloid Closet - Trailer

Then there is the area of religion. The number of straight kids who have been told they are going to hell simply for being heterosexual = 0. The number of LGBTQ kids who have been told that they are going hell simply for being who they are?  = Too many to even try to count.

To my Straight friends, I have to ask, how many times have "respected" public figures, politicians, pundits and clergy gone on national television demanding that everyone be given the chance to VOTE on your civil rights?

How often has someone told you that not being able to discriminate against you was somehow an attack on them? When was the last time you heard a member of the Supreme Court saying that simply by being allowed to exist, you were "an attack" on the moral fiber of America?

Anyone?? Yeah...I didn't think so...

I have a flash of the obvious for you, EVERY month is Straight Pride Month." There is a word for someone who truly feels that equal rights for people they don't like is somehow an attack on them. That word is "Bigot".

Saying LGBT people are human too, isn't an attack on straight people. Those people who really think it is, are, quite simply, bigots. People who say LGBT Pride celebrations need to be stopped, are in fact, the exact reason they all started in the first place.

In 2024 one would think such battles would be long over, but in the light of LGBT rights victories in the U.S. over the past few years, the American Talibangelicals have turned their sights to new targets; Trans Kids and Drag Performers.

The rhetoric on the American cultural Right Wing,  would have you believe a man in a dress and high heels reading  books to kids, is a greater threat than the LEADING cause of death for children in the United States: Gun Violence.

Are Pride celebrations good or bad for the cause of equality? The answer is both. With visibility comes closer examination.  

Opponents of equality love to show images of drag queens, leather daddies and shirtless men   dancing on parade floats, and scream "See! it's not about equal rights! They just want to recruit your kids into THIS!! They never show the families, advocacy groups, welcoming and inclusive religious denominations, and workplace affinity groups who participate in Pride parades.    After all, that wouldn't fit their desired narrative.

Media coverage is often complicit. CNN loves to show the drag queens and gogo boys, but when straight allies like the CEO of Kaiser Permanente, the largest non-profit health care company in the U.S.rides on a float in the SF Pride parade every year, with over 1,200 employees, their families, friends and colleagues, you'd think we all were invisible.

You never see CNN asking Tony Perkins, head of the certified Hate-Group, the "Family Research Council" on Fox News about the deadly cultural fetishization of guns and violence towards minorities on the cultural right, and how that had led directly to lethal antiemetic and homophobic attacks.

That would be admitting something of an inconvenient truth. 

It's much easier to just point at a group of shirtless men on a flatbed truck or women on motorcycles and say that they are the real threat to families.

I have always said that Pride celebrations are not really for the people who attend them. Instead, they are for the people who cannot attend them. Growing up as a Gay kid in a small town in South Central Wisconsin, there were times when I was convinced, I was the only gay person on Earth.

The constant message from popular culture, religion, family and peer groups was "boy meets girl, they fall in love, get married (or not) and have kids and live happily ever after". There was no happily ever after for someone who felt what I was feeling.

Then, for one weekend in June, I would turn on the TV News and see thousands of people just like me, in places like New York, San Francisco and Chicago saying "No, that's not true, you are not alone, and there is a big wide world out here beyond Sun Prairie Wisconsin. So hang in there .... we're here and we're waiting for you!"

1986 Pride Television Coverage

Now more than three decades  later, I watch coverage like this, and it seems so endearingly cheesy. Yet at the time, it was a lifeline to people like me, living with the fear and isolation of being "in the closet".

Pride Celebrations are the original "It Gets Better Project".

My straight friends never needed to be told that being straight was okay, and that they were okay because nobody ever told them they weren't.  

Pride isn't about celebrating being Gay, it's about publicly showing that being LGBT is just as much a part of the human experience as being straight is. I for one would love to see the day when Pride is obsolete. When that scared closeted gay kid, in some small town doesn't need to be told that he or she is fine just the way they are.

So this month we will see joyous crowds gathering in places like Market Street in San Francisco, Oxford Street in London, Halsted Street in Chicago, and Fifth Avenue in New York City, Hillcrest in San Diego, Montrose in Houston, and so many more.

And there is reason to celebrate. We have a President, and administration that honors the idea of "E Pluribus Unum" - that America is one out of many. So in this Pride Month , it is still vitally importing to add our voices voice to the chorus celebrating the diversity of America and the American Experience.

If for no other reason to let that one scared kid know, it really does get better. There is a world where "boy meets boy" and "girl meets girl", where you can be the person that every fibre of your being is screaming for you to be. A world where yes, you can fall in love and (if they want to) get married, and even live happily ever after...

Happy Pride Everyone.

Unprecedented thoughts…

With the unanimous thirty four count guilty verdict in Donald Trump’s criminal fraud trial in New York this week,  the media as been stumbling all over itself to find new and novel ways to use  the word  “unprecedented” .   The context of course, being that having a  former President of the United States,  and presumptive  nominee for his party to run to be the next President charged, tried and convicted of multiple felonies  is  something that  we as a nation have never been faced with before.

Yeah ok….  So what.

I mean it, so what.     You know what else is unprecedented?  Having  a former and wannabe again President who is so singularly focused on his own enrichment and self-aggrandizement. So it can be said that everything about  the sad,  sordid  dismal legacy of Donald Trump the political figure has been  outside of what we knew as precedent .

The implication from folks like House Speaker Mike Johnson is clear; The uncharted territory of all this means normal rules, and even laws should not, and must not apply.   Johnson went so far as to suggest that the United States Supreme Court, (which itself is not having a very good week). should ‘weigh in’ on the matter.   The fact that there is absolutely no legal, constitutional or even common-sense basis for such a thing is irrelevant to Johnson because Trump actually being held accountable for crimes he committed is for him and the GOP, too unprecedented.

Trump himself has stayed entirely true to form.   In 2016 when he lost the Iowa Caucuses and the Wisconsin Primary, he claimed both races were “rigged against” him.   When his fake charity and bogus scam university were shut down for blatant violations of the law, he decried the “rigged court decisions”.   When his TV show “The Apprentice” would drop in the ratings he said the Nielsen system is rigged, and when he didn’t get nominated for an Emmy Award claimed it was a vast Hollywood conspiracy to deny him one.

Lastly, Trump was so unable to process his 2020 election loss that he literally tried to have a mob of his supporters overthrow the Government and kill the Vice-President, and to this day still can’t admit the reality of that loss.  Desperately clinging to the lie the election was rigged and stolen from him.

For Trump, life is only fair when he wins.  

Is it any surprise that his only way to deal with the reality of his current situation was to throw daily tantrums  outside the Manhattan Courthouse, overflowing with delusional accusations of corrupt judges and prosecutors, biased jurors and the entire thing  orchestrated from the shadows by the Biden-Harris Campaign.

Because that is what all this is about.   For Donald Trump, having to face reality, devoid of the protection his personal fantasy world has long provided him, is perhaps the most unprecedented thing of all.

That is why Donald Trump desperately wants to be President again, to keep reality at bay. 

Not to DO the job.  He never DID the job.  During his disastrous four years the vast majority of his time was spent, not actually being President, but playing President.  Constant MAGA rallies of the same recycled grievances and dog whistles.  Hours upon hours of “executive time” spent in the White House residence, waiting for  Fox News hosts to say nice things about him so he could retweet it.    And more time spent golfing than the last three Presidents combined.

Not to rehash traumatic recent history, but the last time Trump was in the White House he was so disengaged from the job that by the time he noticed the Covid Pandemic wasn’t going away, the best he could muster was to suggest we all inject bleach into our bodies and shove lightbulbs up our asses.     Trump’s inability to deal with reality cost the lives of over half a million Americans and did trillions of dollars of damage to our economy we are still trying to recover from.

Being convicted of falsifying business records so voters wouldn’t find out he paid off a porn actress to keep quiet bout their hook up is the least unprecedented thing about all this.   

What is really beyond the realm of precedent is that there are people in this country who think returning this delusional, corrupt, incompetent narcissist to power would be a good idea.

The fact that the grand experiment of American Democracy may come to an end, not via the evil our politicians  but through the ignorance of  our own citizens, that... is what I call  unprecedented.

God Bless America?

WARNING! This is going to be about religion… So if that makes you uneasy feel free to skip this post.

I don’t often write about my own faith. I tend to subscribe to the advice of the late Waite Phillips who once said he’d “rather see a sermon than hear one any day.” Faith is something that should always be seen more than heard. So I find myself watching the loud exhortations by the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, proclaiming his version of Christianity with a increasing feeling of frustration and yes, dismay.

It is tempting in times like these when a national political figure waves their religion around like a cape at bull fight; to reference Jesus’ own words on this sort of thing. How in Matthew Chapter 6 Jesus makes it very clear the “See how holy I am!” crowd have missed the entire point of the practice of faith. Or how in Luke, Chapter 18 Jesus tells the story of how people who claim how their faith makes them better than someone else, are anything but.

Yet I am reminded about a common question that politicians often get asked, especially at events like the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where a common query to would-be Presidents of the United States, is; “What is your favorite bible verse?”

When conservative radio host Bob Lonsberry asked Donald Trump that question in 2016, the resulting word salad was…. Impressive.

"Well, I think many. I mean when we get into the Bible, I think many, so many. And some people, look, an eye for an eye, you can almost say that. That's not a particularly nice thing. But you know, if you look at what's happening to our country, I mean, when you see what's going on with our country, how people are taking advantage of us, and how they scoff at us and laugh at us. And they laugh at our face, and they're taking our jobs, they're taking our money, they're taking the health of our country. And we have to be very firm and have to be very strong. And we can learn a lot from the Bible, that I can tell you."

Um…. Okay.   Wow.

The new Speaker of the House in his own podcast in 2022, framed his Christian faith in terms of a battle that needed to be waged. Saying that God wanted more aggression and less turning of the other cheek. "Obviously, this is an increasingly hostile culture," Johnson told the audience. "We all know that. We need to understand why that is, and we need to commit to do our part to confront it. The kingdom of God allows aggression."

He then referenced Scripture from Matthew 11:12, which according to a more recent translation, states: "From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it."

Johnson sees his elevation to the office of Speaker as part of some divine battle plan. A Christian nationalist blueprint for an America where reproductive rights, birth control, divorce, LGBT people, and all separation of (his) church and the state is done away with.

Also, according to Speaker Johnson, God wants everybody to have guns. Lots and lots of guns. Telling Sean Hannity in 2016 that God is big supporter of the Second Amendment. And he is not alone in that belief. A 2021 survey found that “among Whites who said America should be a Christian nation, more than 4 in 10 named the right to keep and bear arms as the most important right. Not freedom of speech. Not even freedom of religion, but gun rights.”

The concept of “Christian Nationalism” has had a resurgence of popularity on the political and cultural right these days. The belief that the United States is or should be a Christian Nation first and foremost and the secular idea of any kind of separation of (Christian) church and state is the work of the Devil.

A conservative friend of mine recently asked me what my favorite bible verse was. I was tempted to pull out something ridiculous from the book of Numbers just to see his reaction, but instead I answered honestly. Proverbs 3:6

I’ll save you the effort of googling it. It reads: “In all your ways acknowledge God, and God will make your paths straight.”

My friend was really surprised by this, responding that it was an odd choice for a Gay man. Saying “that verse sounds like an endorsement of conversion therapy!” Clearly thinking “make your path straight” could refer to becoming heterosexual. I laughed and said if he was going to take every word in the bible literally, then he was clearly going to hell for eating shellfish and wearing cotton blend.

For me, one of the core tenants of my Christian faith has always been “Emanuel” or God with Us. The idea that we do not walk alone through life. But if we listen for God, we will find God. Not in the Mike Pence “God told me to run for President “way, but in the sense of knowing the right thing to do when it matters most.

Hearing God speak to us not as a booming voice out of parted clouds but in opportunities we find in our path. That verse in proverbs has always been for me, an invitation to be open to opportunities to live my faith, rather than just talk about it.

I remember the bedtime prayer I would say a child. Many of you may have said the same or a similar one. There are multiple variations on it. We said the 1932 Grace Bridges version:

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray my lord my soul to keep,
In the morning when I awake
Help me the path of love to take.

I have always found the difference from the New England Primer version, the “if I should die before I wake” version to be significant. The path of love wasn’t some celestial escalator to a gated heavenly community in the sky. But rather the choices and opportunities that I would face that next day.   The path of love is the “straight path” Proverbs 3:6 invites us to be open to.

And to be clear, it’s an UPHILL path. Unlike the opposite. The path of pointing fingers at others, the path of “lets build a wall to keep THOSE people out”, the path of some voices mattering more than others because of the color of faces they come out of, or how they vote, or because they don’t come from people who loudly pray as they kneel on the House Floor for the CSPAN Cameras. 

That path is easy. Because that path leads downward.

And like most downward paths, when you start on it, gravity kicks in and helps propel you faster. The more people you can claim are less than, or are less ‘favored’ by your version of God the faster that downhill journey goes. The path of hate, the path of exclusion the idea that the Grace of God is a zero-sum proposition. America is God’s favored Nation so clearly other nations aren’t. That path is very easy.

The path of love is about the work of the Kingdom of God, here and now. Not about building a wall and hiding behind it waiting for Blond-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian Jesus to magically beam you up and all the people you don’t like are ‘left behind’. 

It is being open to things as simple and as complex, as looking for God in the people and situations we encounter every day. You will find work to do if you follow that "path made straight'. You will find people who are very different from you, who think different, act different and live differently.

Yet being open to a path made straight, can lead to lots of other things. Even to finding a sense of purpose. In the Lutheran liturgy in the service of Baptism there is wonderful moment when the congregation speaks words of welcome to the newly baptized:

"We welcome you into the lord's family, we receive you as fellow members of the body of Christ, children of the same heavenly father, and workers with us in the kingdom of God.”

What has always resonated for me in those words, is the idea that the  Kingdom of God is not, some distant Asgardian realm with glowing sidewalks and flying chariots. But is the here and now, with work to do. The path of love is an uphill one. Accepting that invitation in Proverbs 3 to be open to letting God make paths straight, is to accept that we need to do the work of the kingdom of God here, today.

We often hear religious figures talk about “Sharing the Good news” I have always defined that as trying to live a life were others “see a sermon” rather than hear it. Mike Johnson defines sharing the good news as telling people he disagrees with that God loves them less because of where they were born, who they love or how they vote. 

I like how Luther defined Evangelism as one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread. Its not about having all the answers it’s about helping others look for them along with us.  

Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson and I have very different ideas about what “evangelism” is. For him it’s about who and what he needs to oppose. For me it’s always been about what is it that I need to try to do today, to move just a little father up that path made straight,  the path of love.

One my favorite versions of the Easter story is found in John’s gospel. Where after finding the tomb empty Mary Magdalene lingers looking for clues as to where the assumed grave robbers have taken Jesus’ body. Then encountering Jesus, she doesn’t recognize him, until Jesus says her name. It is upon hearing Jesus call her by her name, she recognizes the risen Christ and is given instructions to take back to the disciples, she is given work to do. A path made straight.

In the weeks and months ahead, there is going to be a lot of noise. People like Mike Johnson will loudly proclaim they speak for God. That God has a preferred choice in the 2024 election, and people who don’t agree with that choice are enemies that God wants destroyed. I hope that in the year ahead we can listen for our name to be called. That we look for that uphill path and the work to be done here and now.

If America IS God’s country, shouldn’t we try harder to act like it instead of just saying so?