GOP's war on women

Just when you thought Republicans couldn't reach any deeper in their quest to control the rights of women through anti-abortion laws, up pops Arizona.

Last Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court (seven justices appointed by a Republican governor) approved a long dormant pre-Civil War law (1864) that bans abortions with few exceptions.

It seemed bad enough when the conservative United States Supreme Court sent the country back nearly 50 years by reversing Roe v. Wade a year ago, which legalized abortions in 1973. Now we have a state supreme court sending us back even further – 160 years to be exact.

The law predates Arizona's statehood (1912) by nearly 50 years, which means Arizona was simply a territory back then. Also, the law makes no provisions for rape or incest, allowing abortions only if the mother's life is in danger.

The state court also hinted that doctors who perform abortions can be prosecuted under the 1864 law. If that happens, resurrecting the 1964 law throws out a lower court decision that said doctors couldn't be prosecuted for performing abortions in the first 15 weeks. Doctors might now serve terms between two to five years if convicted.

The 1864 law, designed by men, also occurred before women were given the right to vote under the 19th amendment in 1920. You can see where this is going.

If immoral and incompetent decisions like this continue, the next thing you know, women will be required to remain barefoot and pregnant because that's a way for men to keep control over them.

Why is this thing even given new life after lying dormant for so long? The implications are enormous. How many obstetricians do you expect will remain in Arizona if there's a threat of a jail term hanging over their heads for virtually any treatment of a pregnant woman? How many industries will reject Arizona as a state with its head in the 19th century? How many women will die for the lack of proper health care?

All of this is pending, of course. The court gave the parties involved two weeks to file objections, so there's that. 

But for now, we're living in a world created by the rapist/ex-president/presidential candidate Donald Trump (You did this), who just so happens will be in court this week in Manhattan to begin a criminal trial, allegedly for paying two women (one of them a porn star) six-figure sums to keep quiet about their affairs with him prior to the 2016 election.

In technical terms, Trump is being charged with falsifying New York business records.

It was under Trump that Roe v. Wade was overturned by a court where he appointed three Supreme Court injustices for a 6-3 conservative majority and which ultimately set in motion the fevered time machine that is now engaged in reversing women's right to choose. 

Ironically, and sadly, a reversal for all of us...

Bombs away

I suspect there was a time when the Sunday between the Final Four on Saturday and the NCAA Championship game on Monday was pretty much considered dead time.

At least it was in my house.

But I'm guessing elsewhere, too.

I was a men's basketball snob. As a sports writer for The Dispatch, I covered men's basketball in the Atlantic Coast Conference for years, and then watched the men almost exclusively on television when I wasn't watching the ACC. 

In my defense, I don't think my snobbishness wasn't all my fault. I mean, when did ESPN start covering women's basketball on a regular basis? I rest my case.

Iowa's Caitlin Clark in practice.

Anyway, one March a few decades ago, looking for something to watch on that dead Sunday afternoon, I tuned into the women's NCAA final. I'm pretty sure it was Tennessee against somebody, and the scales fell from my eyes.

Pat Summitt was an intelligent coach. These women could run plays. They could knock each other over in the paint. And most impressively, they could hit consistently from the perimeter. Maybe even better than the men.

I figure it was pretty much Summitt and her Volunteers that brought women's basketball into national prominence. She posted a career record of 1,098-208 (.841) and won eight national titles.

At about the same time, the University of Connecticut was flexing its muscles under coach Geno Auriemma, further enhancing the women's game. Auriemma, still an active coach at age 70, has a career record of 1,213-162 record (.882) and 11 national titles. 

All of which brings me to today's championship game between Iowa and South Carolina. Interest in women's college basketball has never been higher than it is now, and a large part of that is due to Iowa's Caitlin Clark, who's swishing bombs from the logos on the court. Clark recently became the overall career Division I scoring leader – men or women – and she comes into today's game with 3,921 points. Whoa.

More than 14 million viewers watched Iowa defeat UConn 71-69 on Friday and I'm guessing that number could be even higher today. 

I have a feeling that South Carolina, undefeated this year under coach Dawn Staley (37-0), might have the better overall team. That's why I think the Gamecocks will win the title. But Clark will put on a show, and that's why the game might be the most watched women's game ever.

I'll be watching, too.

Get yer red-hot Bibles

As if we didn't know already, the rapist/huckster presidential candidate Donald Trump has created an even deeper bottom than he's ever drilled to before.

A few days ago, Trump offered us his version of the King James Bible, complete with an addendum of the United States Constitution, all for the low, low price of $59.99. Trump calls it his "God Bless the USA" Bible. And just in time for Holy Week.

Hurry. Come get yer red-hot Bibles before they're gone. Let's make America pray again. 

You don't have to look far to see that this is just another scheme – like his recent unveiling of Trump gold lame sneakers – to raise money to help pay his mounting legal fees. 

How incredibly offensive. On several counts.

His intended audience is clearly the evangelical Christian nationalists who, by blindly following the cult of Trump, have shown themselves to be a cult of hypocrites themselves. These people once followed the teachings of Jesus Christ. Now they are following the dictates of the Antichrist. There's no other way to describe this inappropriate indignity. Selling Bibles for personal gain.

Wouldn't a true Christian – and especially a professed billionaire – donate the sales of the teachings of Jesus Christ to benefit the poor, the destitute, the hungry?

One of the first things that struck me about Trump's latest loathsome endeavor was how he shamelessly combined government with religion: the Bible and the US Constitution in one leather-bound package. It's kind of a weak but obvious ploy to declare that only Christians can be patriots.

You, too, can be a God-fearing patriot for only $59.99 (Translation: help pay for my legal fees and vote for me).

And yet, in the 235-year history of this constitutional republic, there always has been a clear separation of church and state. It was intentional – the Founding Fathers knew what they were doing. There are 4,543 words in the constitution, and not a single one of them is the word "God."

The Founders were ever conscious of the persecution the pilgrims endured in their break from the Church of England, the state church.

It was not going to happen here.

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries," wrote James Madison, the chief architect of the U.S. Constitution.

In the First Amendment we find two provisions about church and state: the Establishment Clause and the Exercise Clause.

The Establishment Clause prohibits the government from "establishing" a religion. The Free Exercise Clause protects a person's right to practice religion as they please.

The country was to be a democracy, not a theocracy.

Thomas Jefferson was the first to coin the phrase "separation of church and state" in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, a religious minority that feared religious persecution. In his letter, Jefferson, then the president, cited that the free exercise and establishment clauses, in unison, built "a wall of separation between church and state."

And so it has been since 1789.

But now we have a former president who is also a current presidential candidate hawking bibles overtly  and intentionally combining church and state. It's dangerous. It's divisive. It's anti-constitutional. Because of Trump, who shows no moral values whatsoever, much less Christian values (think porn star Stormy Daniels. Think Trump rape victim E.J. Carroll. Think 4,000 migrant children torn from their families; six years later, hundreds are still to be reunited), we now live in an era of rising antisemitism and attempted Muslim bans. Are these groups – and others – finding religious freedom in this country, or are they finding persecution instead? Are we becoming what we were never intended to be? In Trump's narrow vision, it would appear so.

The irony is that Trump is hawking his Bible (which he cynically claims is his favorite book while grinning his Elmer Gantry grin) with the U.S. Constitution included, when it's clear he has read neither.

The First Amendment not only guarantees us free speech, but freedom of religion as well. And hopefully, freedom from Trump.

And it's Holy Week.

GOP cultism

Back in late 1954, social psychologist Leon Festinger asked – and was permitted – to observe a cultist group in Chicago known as the Seekers.

The Seekers were led by a person named Dorothy Martin who claims she had received messages from aliens (Just to be clear, not the undocumented persons we now call aliens and who are not to be confused with supposed creatures from another planetary system) whom she called the Guardians. The Guardians, from the planet Clarion, told her that our world would end by a flood on Dec. 21, 1954, and that her followers would be rescued a few days earlier by a flying saucer that the Guardians would provide.

 Festinger had a question: What happens to true believers when their convictions are confronted by reality?

You can probably see where I'm going with this. The cult of Trumpism clearly has infected and divided American politics, almost to the point where reasonable people fear for the survival of our Madisonian democracy. As we prepare for the general election in November, where the rapist Donald Trump is seeking a second term as President of the United States, his base and his cult continue to thrive on lies, misdirection and corruption.

I recently saw an example of this on a YouTube video where Trump supporters insist they will vote for Trump even though many concede that he is a rapist, a grifter, and a liar who accomplished next to nothing in his first term in office.

What kind of irresponsible voter is that, when you know the candidate is unqualified but still insist you will vote for him anyway? You become a cultist with a vote.

Back to the Seekers, who I think could be compared to today's modern MAGA movement (which to me sounds a whole lot like a bowel issue).

The Seekers gathered at Martin's house waiting for the appointed hour of their rescue. When the clock ticked down to midnight, and the flying saucer did not appear, Festinger says the group sat perfectly still for hours without saying a word.

Finally, early in the morning, Martin told the group she had gotten another Clarion call from the Guardians. Because the group was so faithful in their beliefs, she said, God had called off the destruction of the world.

Festinger put his study in a book titled When Prophecy Fails. In it, he found: "The more you invest in a set of beliefs ... the more resistant you will be to the evidence that suggests that you are mistaken. You don't give up. You double down."

Sound familiar?

I think it could be illuminating if Festinger's study in 1954 found purchase in today's GOP climate of political cultism.

•   •   •

As I write this blog on Sunday morning, Trump is just hours away from failing to meet the $454 million dollar bond deadline in his fraud case or else risk having his assets seized.

He claims he doesn't have the money available, although occasionally he also claims that he does. Liar.

Trump has skated away from trouble before (he's still not in jail, after all) and I think there's still an remote chance the money he needs might come in the final hour from an outside source, like Russia, China or Jared (Kushner, his son-in-law, who somehow came away from Saudi Arabia with $2 billion for real estate investments. The fact that Kushner has yet to do so speaks volumes).

Or maybe Trump will be rescued by a flying saucer from Clarion.

Masters of the Air

I had been waiting patiently – perhaps nearly a decade – for the production of Masters of the Air to finally make the television screen. 

It finally happened eight weeks ago when AppleTV+ aired all nine hour-long episodes, based on the 2006 book of the same name by Donald Miller, a professor of history at Lafayette College in Easton, PA. The final installment came this past week, depicting the end of air war in Europe.

Masters was the third prong of the Steven Spielberg-Tom Hanks produced World War II trilogy. The first was the exceptional Band of Brothers, which came out in 2001 and detailed the exploits of Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne. The miniseries was television at its best.

 Taking advantage of BoB's success, The Pacific was released in 2010. The 10-part series was also successful, although arguably not on the same level as Band of Brothers.

Then came Masters of the Air.

On the whole, I enjoyed the series, although I have a few nits to pick.

The United States Army Air Force had two primary heavy bomber types in World War II: the B-17 and the B-24. Thousands upon thousands of B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators were built during the war, but only a handful remain today and even fewer are airworthy. Consequently, the miniseries depends heavily on computer graphic imaging – CGI – to depict the massive 1,000-plane bomber formations that darkened the skies over Europe and the horrific missions flying through anti-aircraft fire (flak) and German fighter planes.

There seems to be a bit of overproduction when movies use CGI, almost to the point of overkill. The skies are vast and wide open, able to accommodate all manner of aircraft at once. The skies in Masters appear to be unrealistically crowded. I don't know. Maybe they were. I wasn't there. I base my assumption on actual combat footage that I've seen and there appears to be plenty of spacing between aircraft.

But if the object here is to show the absolute brutality of the bomber campaign and the toll it takes on human beings, I guess CGI is the way to go. That's where the miniseries succeeded, I think. The unimaginable horror.

The series also pulls away from too much aerial combat and occasionally drifts away to prisoner of war camps, rest and relaxation centers, and even a romantic dalliance shared by navigator Harry Crosby (who wrote his own book about his experience titled "A Wing and a Prayer"). It seemed a distraction.

What I was hoping to see were more tidbits from Miller's book. Like, for example:

1) Technical Sergeant Arizona T. Harris, who was a top turret gunner on the B-17 Sons of Fury. Harris died on Jan. 3, 1943 when his plane was shot down and ditched in the Bay of Biscay. One eyewitness account reads: "...two guns were still blazing, Harris' twin .50s. As sheets of white water rolled over the wings and the plane began to drop  out of sight, the top turret guns were still spitting flame as fast as the feeding arms would pull the shells into the guns. Arizona Harris was trying to protect the pilot and co-pilot, who were in the water and under fire from (German) FW-190s. Harris must have felt the winter water fill his turret and climb to where it cut off his breath, yet he kept firing until the sea swallowed the hot muzzles of his guns."

Unbelievable.

2) Maynard "Snuffy" Smith received the Congressional Medal of Honor when he was filling in for another man as the ball turret gunner. Smith had never flown in the turret before this mission, which was his first. On the way back from a bomb run over St. Nazaire, his plane was hit by flak and then attacked by FW-190s. Then a fire broke out near the rear of the ship, with ammunition exploding. Then another fire broke out in the radio room in front of him.

Now out of the turret, Smith got a fire extinguisher and doused the flames in the radio room. As he was doing this, he saw his wounded tail gunner crawling toward him. Smith broke out a morphine vial and applied it to the crewman despite the cold wind, fire and the crewman's heavy clothing.

Smith turned back to the fire and when the extinguisher was empty, he urinated on the fire and then tried to smother it with his hands and feet until his boots began to smolder. All this while under fighter attack.  Smith then manned a waist gun to shoot back at the German.

All this was witnessed by the crew of an accompanying bomber.

Smith, usually a total screw-up on base, almost missed his own award ceremony because he was doing KP duty for coming in late after a pass.

Why wasn't this in Masters?

3) Incredibly, on the same mission as Harris, ball turret gunner Alan Magee was blown out of his B-17, Snap, Crackle Pop, without a parachute at 22,000 feet. He fell four miles before crashing into a glass roof of the St. Nazaire railroad station. He survived but suffered lung and kidney damage, several broken bones and nearly severed his right arm. He ended up as a prisoner of war.

There are other stories to tell. My friend, Lee Jessup, interviewed his father, Dalma, who was a tail gunner on a B-17 and flew an incredible 40 missions for the 15th Air Force. His plane was down by an FW-190 and Dalma had to bail out, the first time he ever used a parachute. Lee said his father never flew again after that experience.

And Lexington's Bill Mitchell, now deceased, flew 30 missions in a B-24 as a group lead bombardier, including a perilous mission over Kassel. Mitchell invited me to his house shortly after I had written a newspaper story about my flight in a B-24 that had come to Lexington. Mitchell showed me a box that he opened that was full of jagged metal pieces. "That's shrapnel from flak," he told me. Then he pulled out another box. 

It was his Distinguished Flying Cross.

I kind of wish the Masters of the Air miniseries included stories like these.

The next Herschel Walker

Congratulations, North Carolina Republicans. You've just nominated the newest iteration of Herschel Walker in a bid to become our state's next governor.

That happened Tuesday during the state's Super Tuesday primary elections.

Mark Robinson

 Walker, you might remember, was Georgia's effort to put a MAGA Senator in Congress. But Walker turned out to be pretty much a political functional illiterate who ultimately lost his bid to Democrat Raphael Warnock in a race that was closer than it should have been.

Now, we here in North Carolina have been presented with Mark Robinson, the current lieutenant governor who is not only an election denier, but a Holocaust denier, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-Muslim, anti-abortion, anti-gun control, civil rights/voting rights mocker and conspiracy theorist who thinks both 9-11 and Jan. 6 were government plots and humanity really didn't put men on the moon.

He's got enough baggage here to start his own TJ Maxx franchise.

His list of offensive remarks for most people is longer than my arm, (just Google "Mark Robinson" to find out for yourself). There are several of his remarks I want to comment on.

The first is the Holocaust, which in 2018 he wrote "this foolishness about Hitler disarming MILLIONS of Jews and then marching them off to concentration camps is a bunch of hogwash."

And this coming from a guy who studied to be a history teacher.

Another is his view of the LGBTQ+ community, whose people he calls "that filth." After calls for his resignation as lieutenant governor, he said that he wasn't ashamed of his remarks.

Shortly thereafter, Robinson, said straight people are superior to queer folks. Sounds a little Hitlerish there, don't you think?

Also, there's a video clip  where he pines for a time when women didn't have the vote. I have to back up here a bit. That clip is only a snippet and taken out of context. Robinson was actually presented with a question by conservative commentator Candace Owens during a Republican Women of Pitt County event in 2020.

Owns asked Robinson "Which Americas would you want to go back to? One where women couldn't vote or one where Black people were swinging from trees?"

Robinson, a Black man, took the bait and said he'd rather live in an America where women couldn't vote.

The better answer would have been to ask what the hell type of question was that to ask in 2020? And then not to answer it at all. Next question.

The fact that he did give an answer – which will now serve effectively against him in the upcoming campaign – calls into question his ability to make rational decisions for this state.

Robinson will be going against Democrat Josh Stein for the state's governorship in November, and on the surface, at least, Robinson looks to be unelectable. But, as events have shown, even extremists seem to be electable these days.

Be careful. Be informed.

 

 

My friend Bernie

It was the standing joke between us that sometime in the near future, Bernie finally would write a lengthy letter telling me all that's happened in his life since we first met as childhood friends.

This promise happened year after year, Christmas after Christmas.

We did, in fact, exchange Christmas cards every year, complete with little notes inside updating key moments in our lives: surgeries, cruises, teams we liked, whiskeys we sipped, books we read, movies we saw. Stuff like that.

Bernie and I toast our friendship.

 We first met more than 65 years ago in a little town – a borough, actually – named Fountain Hill, PA, which was snuggled comfortably in the hillocks between Allentown and Bethlehem. Interestingly enough, I don't remember the particulars of our first meeting. But I'll bet it was in the borough playground, which was just across the street from where we lived on Stanley Avenue. I was probably 6 years old, Bernie was 5.

In those days, the playground was the beating heart of the Fountain Hill community and I'm guessing we might have met on the swings or the sliding boards of what most of us Hillers now fondly remember as this incredibly magical place to live. I swear it was a kind of Heaven on Earth that somehow helped mold us into the people we are today. Most Hillers still swear to that.

Anyway, no matter how Bernie and I first met, the friendship stuck. It stuck through measles and chicken pox. It stuck when Bernie got hit by a car while crossing the street to get to the playground (he escaped serious injury and was back on the playground within days). It stuck even though we went to two different schools – he went to St. Ursula's and I went to Stevens.

Bernie Gillen

 We'd flip baseball cards on the front porch of our house. We'd play in the little runoff creek that bordered the playground across the street from us, building beaver-type dams and catching crayfish. We'd play army in the woods nearby and run the bases on the Little League field next to the playground. We were inseparable.

But it didn't last. Dad changed jobs, we moved to Portsmouth, NH, and consequently, Bernie and I lost touch. Kids don't usually write letters to each other. They usually don't pick up the phone and call. Instead of each other's shadow, we were now each other's ghost.

 This separation lasted for years, and even though our family returned to Bethlehem so that Dad could attend Moravian Theological Seminary, Bernie and I never reconnected. Ghosts.

But then this happened: Because Dad had been assigned a church in nearby Coopersburg, I'd gone to Southern Lehigh for high school. Twenty-five years later, I decided to go to our 25th class reunion and so Kim and I drove the 500 miles up to Pennsylvania from North Carolina. We were milling around the banquet hall when, out of the blue, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and this pleasant looking fellow said, "Bruce, do you remember me?" 

I didn't. I had no clue. There was no name tag.

"I'm Bernie Gillen."

I took a quick look into his face as the memories flashed by and I could see it was him. We embraced. I nearly cried.

But how could this be? Bernie did not go to Southern Lehigh. He went to Bethlehem Catholic. How could this be?

Do you believe in serendipity? Do you believe in synchronicity? Do you believe in magic?

It turns out Bernie had married a girl in my class, Betsy Heimbach, and that's why he was here. And maybe, for this moment, that's why I was here, too. What were the odds?

We talked, we reminisced, we exchanged numbers and addresses and promised this time to stay in touch.

And we did, mostly through Christmas cards.

Bernie's Christmas cards were an adventure. His handwriting was atrocious and his little notes inside those cards were written in what amounted to be an undecipherable code. It could have been Latin, for all I knew. Didn't matter. I usually got the gist. A key word here and there always helped.

This kept up until my 50th class reunion approached five years ago. I asked him if he and Betsy were going, but he thought probably not. Then Kim suggested that we meet on our own while we were in Pennsylvania. And better yet, why not meet at the playground?

And so we did. We shared more memories, he treated us to a Philly cheesesteak lunch. And, at the alcohol-free playground, I broke out the champagne that I brought and we toasted our friendship, which was then in its 63rd year.

A few more Christmases came and went, complete with notes but never the lengthy letter. Typical.

The card we got this past Christmas had his shortest unreadable note ever.

"Why don't you just pick up the phone and call him?" scolded Kim in all her wisdom. "Yeah, yeah, yeah," I said. "Maybe later."

On Thursday, Kim called me from work. She'd been on the "You Know You're From Fountain Hill" site on Facebook, where the RIP's were piling up under Bernie's class picture from 1966. My throat clenched.

A little later, a friend of Bernie's from the Fountain Hill days, Bob Spirk, called me at Betsy's request to confirm that Bernie had passed. Bernie was 71 and had died of heart failure.

Our friendship ultimately spanned 68 years. I think about that. The corporeal friendship is over now, but the spiritual friendship will last into perpetuity.

Quieti tam amicus meus.

Rest well, my friend.