For What It’s Worth

For What It's Worth is the title of a Buffalo Springfield song that begins, “There’s something happening here, But what it is ain’t exactly clear.”  The refrain then states, “It’s time we stop, Hey, what’s that sound?  Everybody look, what’s going down.”

Buffalo Springfield from 1968

Perhaps now is the time for everyone to look at what’s going down.  Conservatives who will whip out a copy of the Second Amendment faster than Marshall Dillon could clear his holster, want to skip right over the First Amendment.  They will cherry-pick parts from the First that suit them but ignore the rest.  They will support free speech if it is their speech.  They love a free press if it is in line with conservative thinking.  The right of the people to peaceably assemble will be restricted to just white people assembling for conservative causes and the peaceful aspect of it be damned if they feel that violence is warranted.

Matt Dillon (James Arness) from the television show Gunsmoke

The part that they mostly ignore, skip over, and regularly try to regurgitate as something never intended by the writers of that Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  This has uniformly been interpreted to mean that the federal government is prevented from establishing an official religion.  The government may respect religion but not establish a religion.  It has been long accepted that this Establishment Clause bars any government support that would tend to establish any religion.  This would mean that the government is prohibited from sponsoring, providing financial support for, or active involvement in, religious activities.

Religious neutrality is at the core of the First Amendment and protects both believers and non-believers.  This would be inconvenient to those who would like to establish Christianity as the formal national religion.  In this regard, the First Amendment is “inconvenient” to those who advocate the governmental adoption of Jesus Christ as the spiritual leader of our country.  To “reinterpret” the meaning of the First Amendment, conservatives want to do an end-run around that pesky obstacle.  Their actions have sometimes been subtle but recently, they have become more forthright with their goals.

They want to control all three branches of government.  They denied President Obama his appointment to a vacancy on the Supreme Court claiming that one year was “too close” to a new election to even consider the matter.  They cited the “Thurmond Myth” like it was an official rule.  This allowed Donald Trump to later appoint three conservative Supreme Court justices; Jackson, Barrett, and Kavanaugh.  All three were supportive of some of the more extreme conservative religious values.  Despite denials to the contrary, once on the bench, they would use religion to influence decisions.

For abortion rights, the appointment of those three judges meant iacta alea estdie, the dice had been cast.  Those newly minted conservative appointees tipped the scales favoring Christian morality and Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey were both overturned by Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.  This was done, not with some new legal insight but by twisting the law in favor of a powerful minority.  I say minority because, while the numbers may vary a bit between polls, somewhere around 85% of Americans think abortion should not be made illegal in all circumstances.  50% think it should be legal in certain circumstances and 35% believe it should be legal in all circumstances.  But, like gun control, policymakers will contradict the will of the majority to placate a vocal and tenacious minority.

The conservatives are also using the education system to promote Christian values in our schools.  We have seen certain books banned that didn’t meet Christian standards.  We have also seen a starving of public-school funding through the diversion of tax dollars to private charter schools and some schools of parochial sponsorship.  Once underfunded public schools begin to falter, better-funded private charter schools can take their place.  Private and parochial schools won’t be so bothered with a pesky First Amendment when it comes to promoting Christianity.  This also allows them to “reinvent” history by only approving those books that make White people feel more comfortable when talking about topics like slavery, Jim Crow laws, and our past oppression of people of color.

Thomas Jefferson; the third president of the US; drafted the Declaration
of Independence; spent $15 on Lousianna Purchase

Thomas Jefferson stated that the First Amendment created “a wall of separation between church and State.”  This was from a letter he wrote to the Danbury Baptist Assn. on Jan 1, 1802.  This statement was quoted in 1947 in Everson v. Board of Education where the SCOTUS said that this wall “must be kept high and impregnable.”  It went on to state that neither the Federal Government nor the state can set up a church, or pass laws that aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another.  They confirmed that “no tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions.

Sherlock Holmes

It doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to see how this ruling is being regularly violated by the newly emboldened White Christian nationalists and their elected stooges.  Using campaign donations and the voter support of their parishioners as a giant carrot, legislators will twist the First Amendment into a pretzel.  They will do this to satisfy the desire to impose Christian morality on all within our borders.

In their zeal to impose this Christian will, they will ignore the sins of their puppets.  By no stretch of anyone’s imagination is Donald Trump a religious man.  He is immoral, untrustworthy, and as un-Christian a person as you might ever meet, yet he will sing whatever tune the choir puts before him to achieve his own goals.  More dangerous still is Ron DeSantis, arguably the next presidential hopeful from the GOP camp.  He is imposing Christian morality on the citizens of Florida.  With teacher salaries just two up from the bottom, charter schools are his solution.

The White Christian nationalists use fear of reprisal to control the non-believers.  To get back to our musical lyrics, “Paranoia strikes deep, Into your life it will creep, It starts when you’re always afraid, Step out of line, the men come and take you away.”

Hurricane Andrew and Hurricane Trump, Lessons Learned

California has its San Andreas fault and is prone to earthquakes and the occasional plate shaker.  Kansas is in tornado alley and once a year around holiday time Dorthy is blown away to Oz.  South Florida hangs beckoningly into the Atlantic and dares hurricanes to test their strength.  My first home in Florida was built right after WWII and was of traditional CBS or concrete block and stucco construction.  The roof trusses were built on-site by carpenters who knew how to use a framing square to calculate roof pitch.  The trusses were topped with tongue-in-groove planks nailed to those trusses and topped with tar paper and heavy cement tiles.  Our second home built in 1959 used pre-fab trusses that used gang nails at joints and these were topped with plywood and the usual tarpaper and cement tiles.  

My current home was built by an old-school builder who followed the same roof techniques that we saw back in 1959 albeit with an asphalt shingle top.  The development right next door to mine was not built the same way.  The "builder" had no license but "rented" one from a business in the Bahamas that got a license for Florida.  Their construction was shoddy, they used substandard materials, and they didn't follow code.  Inspectors were either blind or paid to be myopic.

Hurricane Andrew in blue/orange
Hurricane Trump in red
TBD which disaster did the most damage.

South Florida has some of the most stringent building codes in America. They are sometimes used as a model for other states with coastal exposure to hurricanes. Those strict codes were in place in August of 1992 when hurricane Andrew violated all the normal “rules” that previous hurricanes had followed. Hurricane Andrew came in from the east, was a mostly dry hurricane with less than 14 inches of rain, had gusts recorded up to 177mph, killed 44 people in Florida, and left behind a record $25 billion in damage.  My home suffered comparatively minor damage while the previously mentioned nearby development had major failures.

Damage from 1992 Hurricane Andrew
Building codes were not enforced and were inadequate.

Those “stringent” building codes were put to the test and they were found wanting. The codes of 1992 weren’t strong enough to protect South Floridians from Hurricane Andrew. It was also found that many builders and developers didn’t comply with the codes as they were written. Some cut corners to save money and inspectors were lax with their enforcement. The population explosion of the 70s and 80s brought shortcuts in construction. The community of Country Walk had been built with cheap wafer plywood where roofing was held on with staples instead of nails. That development was destroyed while others survived.

Within two years of Hurricane Andrew, the South Florida Building Code was updated to focus on wind resistance and roof integrity. The revised building code was now strictly enforced. Floridians had learned a hard lesson and responded accordingly.

In 2016, America suffered from another foul wind in the form of Donald J. Trump. He blew in from New York as a massive low-pressure system filled with hot air and won the presidency. Like his predecessor Hurricane Andrew, he did not “play by the rules,” he also didn’t follow established principles of decorum, if policies or laws were unwritten, they didn’t exist, and those laws that did exist were mere suggestions because he was president and king of all that he surveyed. This country had never seen the likes of Donald J Trump.

Before Hurricane Donald, people assumed that all persons occupying the Oval Office would be reasonably intelligent humans who would continue with the traditions and the playbook that had been “written” over our 200+ years of existence as a beacon of democracy. But to Hurricane Donald, laws, rules, and traditions were of no consequence as he bragged on January 23, 2016, that he could "stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody" and not "lose any voters." He was above the law.

Above the law

Not since Julius and Ethel Rosenberg has our national security been so damaged as it has been under Hurricane Trump. We will never know why this president wanted to steal classified documents we just know that he never does anything unless there is a profit in the foreseeable future. He was famous for never reading anything longer than a tweet, so those classified documents weren’t for his own edification. Trump regularly made unsecured phone calls that compromised national security. He called his US ambassador to the EU in Kyiv to discuss his desire to move forward with investigations into Joe Biden. Others in the restaurant heard both ends of the conversation and you must imagine Russia was on that party line.

What's his name with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Trump regularly confided in foreign “strong men” leaders as he did in 2017 when he passed highly classified intelligence to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. That conversation jeopardized a human intelligence source. Trump also used security clearances as either gifts or punishment. Son-in-law Kushner got a top-secret clearance against the advice of his security office, and he took away the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan as punishment for his critical remarks.

Image of documents recovered from Mar a Lago
Trump had stolen public records and government property.
There were Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (need to know)
 documents that are not to be used outside special facilities.

Hurricane Trump has further damaged national security by politicizing the declassification of documents. He ordered the declassification of all documents relating to the FBI’s ongoing investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. This would include interviews with sources and the text messages of his perceived personal enemies such as former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former FBI investigators Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and Justice Department official Bruce Ohr.

Trump’s personal lawyer and former cybersecurity advisor was none other than the infamous Rudy Giuliani. It was Rudy G. in his capacity as Trump's personal envoy who often butt-dialed reporters and left revealing voice messages. Trump also violated security protocols by tweeting, and thereby instantly declassifying, high-resolution imagery of an Iranian space facility damaged in an “accident.”

Trump's ego was more important than national security.
This hi resolution image from Iran gave up valuable data
and taunted the Iranians.

 

Trump and his family regularly used personal cell phones and email accounts to communicate with government officials. Hurricane Trump has been an intelligence bonanza for foreign intelligence agents as he treats our top secrets as casually as a plate of ketchup-topped French fries delivered air mail to the nearest wall.

Bill of Rights, have some Freedom Fries with ketchup!

Hurricane Andrew started out as a tropical depression off the coast of Africa. Hurricane Trump started out as an abomination in the City of New York before blowing through Washington DC and later moving on to Palm Beach, Florida. Hurricane Andrew caused catastrophic damage across the Bahamas, Florida, and Louisiana. Hurricane Trump caused devastating damage across the entire nation and much of the world.

Just as South Florida revised and began strict enforcement of its building code, perhaps it is time to re-think the laws and powers of the presidency. We should learn from the recent blunders, mistakes, and outright violations of our existing laws and realize that we need to reign in or at least better define what it means to be a proper president in the United States. We can no longer trust that traditions, protocols, and laws that are either vaguely defined or have been left unenforceable, will keep another careless authoritarian from playing fast and loose with our national security and our democracy.

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Postscript 1:  Hurricane Andrew was the only hurricane since the 40s I did not witness firsthand as I was out of town on business in Texas.  In what I assumed would be a normal check-in phone call home, Sue told me she was amazed the phones were still working as she was hunkered down in her walk-in closet with four others.  I had not even heard about this hurricane.  Before I was able to leave Texas I called to see what, if anything, they needed.  Everyone was in desperate need of generators and chainsaws.

I made a trip to the local hardware store and bought a small portable generator and a chainsaw.  I was able to check the generator as baggage and the chainsaw was my carry-on.  Yes, pre-911 I was able to walk onto a flight carrying a chainsaw.  Both the generator and the chainsaw were used around my neighborhood which was now barely recognizable.  Much the same as our country is today.

Postscript 2:  I have held federal, state, and local jobs in the government.  All government employees know that the removal or destruction of ANY government property can get you in serious trouble.  It is a simple rule that is easy to understand.  I held a Secret clearance in the Navy that required a simple background check by the FBI and they visited a few neighbors to vouch for my character.  I would venture a guess that there are elected officials who, if it weren't for their elected status, would not pass a background check.  I would include former President Donald Trump in that group.