James M. Redwine

CNN

A Turn From The Right To The Right

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According to CNN this morning, 13 November 2024, President-Elect Trump will nominate former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister, Mike Huckabee, to be United States Ambassador to Israel. Mr. Huckabee was quoted this morning as denying the existence of a Palestinian people, referring to Palestine as Canaan and Palestinians as Canaanites. As the Republican Party will almost certainly have the majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives in 2025, Mr. Huckabee will likely be confirmed.

United States foreign policy in the Middle East will likely continue to be one of aggressive support for Israel, as it has been since Israel was created out of Palestine in 1948. But, it may turn from a philosophical position to a dynamic one. From a war more of words and increasing military materiel backing to one that shifts from old people making threats and spending our national treasure to our young people bleeding and dying. We have recently traveled this one-way road in Viet Nam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan and the Iraq War. Now is the time to change both our direction and our moral position.

Believe It Or Not

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How does a new religion get started? Islam fourteen hundred years ago? Christianity two thousand years ago? Judaism twenty-four hundred years ago? The Romans and Jupiter twenty-five hundred years ago? The Greeks and Zeus three thousand years ago? The Egyptians and thousands of gods four thousand years ago? Gentle Reader, these are just my guesses; you are, of course, free to make your own estimates or consult Google as you see fit.

However, my actual concern is the religion of presidential politics as practiced currently on cable TV in America. And I know when these new beliefs began. With FOX News, the new Defender of the Conservative Faith arrived when Donald Trump came down that golden escalator in 2015. As for CNN and MSNBC, their faith in a Liberal Deliverance was restored only a couple of months ago when Kamala Harris arose like the mythical Phoenix from the ashes of Old Joe.

As best I can tell, the liturgy of these conflicted beliefs relies heavily on denigrating whichever candidate a particular TV network does not like. Portentous warnings from talking heads claim that the election of the “wrong” candidate will cause crops to fail and Taylor Swift to become the new Pied Piper of American youth.

These dire warnings from CNN, FOX News, MSNBC and even occasionally, PBS, have become as ubiquitous as commercials and as vociferous as a Pentecostal sermon. CNN convenes numerous panels of “Never Trumpers” who have heard directly from on high that a Trump election will immediately boot America from our Promised Land. And FOX asserts that a Harris win will reign fire and brimstone all over our democratic Garden of Eden, or at least, everywhere but New York and California.

But, just as one religion after another from the dawn of recorded history has appeared and disappeared, we can all pray that this election will end before Armageddon begins. I foresee hope for salvation from this endless cacophony of vapidity, FOOTBALL! As we Americans have done since the first football game was aired on TV, we clutch at the hope our team will rise above the fray. We can seize onto the faith in our champions on the gridiron and set aside the ennui brought on by the gaggle of gloom bearers on TV. Unfortunately, football season only lasts through the Super Bowl in February of 2025. Of course, the networks are doing their best to force us to buy every game and the new Transfer Portal and Name, Image and Likeness rules are sorely testing our faith.

And, of course, whoever wins the election will be subject to four years of damnation from some of the disappointed anchors. Those sore losers will likely begin endless recriminations for venal sins they assert just over half of the electorate will have committed by worshipping a false idol. As for us in the captive viewership, maybe the INSP network will have enough Gunsmoke reruns to sustain us until the next two graven images are nominated four years from now.

Mental Gymnastics

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Former President Donald Trump is facing both state and federal charges in several courts of law. These charges present difficult challenges to the judges in each case with the most important judicial task being to guarantee that all parties receive a fair trial. However, that duty to the people directly impacted by each case must be carried out without violating the right that our Founders knew to be the right that was essential to guaranteeing all of our rights, Freedom of Speech.

While several of the Founders championed freedom of expression as fundamental to democracy, Benjamin Franklin, a newspaper publisher himself, led the debate:

“Freedom of speech is a pillar of a free government;
When this support is taken away, the Constitution of
a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins.
Republics derive their strength and vigor from a popular
examination into the action of the magistrates.”
 

Benjamin Franklin was born in 1706 and was immersed in the printing of politically focused newspapers in Philadelphia when fellow printer John Peter Zenger was prosecuted for libeling British Governor William Cosby in New York City in 1734. Zenger was jailed pending his jury trial but when he was tried the jury acquitted him in spite of the clear violation of the British Colonial law. The jury made up its own mind in spite of an atmosphere of bias from the government.

Currently, some of the judges in Donald Trump’s cases have fashioned gag orders that threaten punishment if Trump says things about the possible evidence, the witnesses, the prosecutors or the judges. The reasons given by the judges for these gag orders all claim they are to protect the parties and witnesses from attempted coercion and to prevent the tainting of any future jury pool. In other words, the judges have no faith that potential jurors can do what judges must do in every case. That is, put aside any irrelevant matters and decide Trump’s cases only on the law and the facts.

As a judge for over forty years I find this lack of confidence in jurors ill founded. Judges decide almost all cases without a jury if there is no plea agreement in criminal cases or no settlement in civil cases. In other words, people have confidence a judge in a criminal case may receive an indictment from a grand jury the judge impaneled or approve a charge brought by a prosecutor and still decide the case. Or, a judge may issue an arrest or search warrant based on in depth out of court statements and then set that information aside and still fairly decide guilt or innocence. If one person, a judge, can do this so can twelve. Of course, statements by parties that threaten physical harm should not be tolerated. However, comments about the evidence, the prosecutor or the judge that offend the judge come with the robe, even if those comments are unfair, unkind and untrue. Just ask John Peter Zenger, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, etc., etc.

Jurors can be trusted, just as judges can be, to do their duty. CNN or FOX News can be eliminated from the jury room. The voir dire procedure is designed to exclude potential jurors who cannot do that. Does the legal system occasionally fail and a biased judge or jury render a decision based on pre-trial publicity or emotion? Unfortunately, that happens. But to deny America the vital protection of the First Amendment in an attempt to eliminate human frailty is a fool’s errand and an affront to our Sixth Amendment, Right to Trial by Jury.

Gentle Reader, I would like to share with you one of my own experiences as judge as an example of the public’s faith in the ability of a judge, or jury, to set aside bias and still fairly handle a case. Now, I might not process this case today the way I did a few years ago but I will let you be the judge of what happened then. Anyway, what follows is true, if perhaps, somewhat askew legally.

When I received my honorable discharge from the United States Air Force the only job I could find in Indianapolis, Indiana where I lived with my wife and son was selling P.F. Collier Encyclopedias door-to-door. We only owned one car, a 1956 Ford Fairlane convertible. I really liked that car but we decided we needed a new one so I sold it to a guy I worked with on the basis he would pay me each week. Well, the week after I gave him the keys he disappeared with my car. I did not see him again for twenty-five years when he appeared in my courtroom charged with a home burglary.

I had forgotten his name and he surely did not recognize mine. He and his attorney and the prosecutor had filed a plea recommendation and requested that I approve it based on a pre-sentence report prepared by my probation department. After reading the report I realized this man in front of me had stolen my car. When I confirmed that fact, I told him I would recuse and get him another judge. He said, “Ah, Judge, were you going to take the deal before you remembered who I was?” I said, “Yes”. He said, “Well go ahead.” I said, “No, go out and talk to your attorney”. He did. Then he and his attorney and the prosecutor said, “Judge, we really want you to stay on the case so we can get this done now”. I said, “Okay, but what did you ever do with my car?” He said, “Well, when we got to Oregon it quit running and my wife had me cut off the top and fill it with potting soil then she made a planter out of it.”

Now, I know I had other options but one thing this case showed me was a judge or jury can be fair even when personally offended. So suck it up judges and have faith the jurors will not be any less pure than you.

 

The Mass Shooting Tocsin

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The definition of a “mass shooting” in the United States is a moving target based on the source of who describes an incident. While there is no neutrality on the issue of guns, the non-profit organization, Gun Violence Archive (GVA), defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people, not including the shooter, are killed from gunshots. Applying these criteria, the GVA has published its figures for the period of January 01, 2023 to April 10, 2023 and compared it to the same time for 2014. In 2014 there were 59 incidents of mass shootings in the U.S. and in 2023 there were 146.

While those who announce the statistics may have motives to mischaracterize the figures, the statistics starkly establish an alarming trend upward. In a country of 330 million people where more people commit suicide with guns than commit mass shootings, and more than 30,000 die in vehicle accidents each year, it may appear that mass shootings in America are not out of control. But the tocsin should sound to alert us to a possible greater danger of a change in our national character.

It is not the inanimate objects of firearms that may be our greater concern but the animus we feel for one another. The most significant issue we should concentrate on is not the number of guns in our country nor who can access them, although these are important. What may be in play is why are we as a people engendering a degree of nihilism in some members of our society that so devalues oneself and others that “death by cop” and the deaths of unknown others is preferable to living.

I own guns, have since I was a boy. We had long guns in the pantry right next to our family’s dining table. There were no locked gun cabinets and no need for one. If I wanted to go hunting, I pulled back the curtain on the pantry, grabbed one of the guns and went hunting. Every boy and man I knew owned or had access to guns. Guns were not a means to achieve attention. We knew approval came from school and work and how we treated others, disapproval too. National attention was not on our radar but if it had been we knew it would need to come from helping others not indiscriminately murdering them. Our family was like most others and if we ever achieved any news media notoriety it was for some small contribution to local culture. It did not compute for most people that fame and infamy were equally desirable as long as they spelled the names right. So, what happened? What went wrong and how can we fix it?

The news media is not to blame for fostering a climate of “If it bleeds, it leads.” As a newspaper columnist for 33 years, I am a member of the media and I deny responsibility for anyone else’s behavior. I have enough to do being responsible for my own. No, the media is simply following the demands and interests of the American public. Movies, songs, video games and television shows that garner ticket sales and awards for ad nauseam renditions of pornography and senseless violence are the harbingers of what news sources people will pay attention to. CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and others are in business. They follow the demographics and those demographics are that what sells is the denigration of our politicians and blood from our citizens. What does not sell is any mention of good character and acts of kindness.

So, what does a disaffected, depressed, detached and marginal person conclude from the media? If one wants to matter, he or she must denigrate others or spill the blood of innocent strangers and themselves. I realize we will not return to the Andy Griffith Show and Walter Cronkite country we transitioned out of when all politics and all news was local. However, we can reevaluate how we report, not comment, on people with whom we disagree or, perhaps, even despise. The facts should be enough. Adjectives as to a politician’s motives should be eschewed. If the object of a news story is wrong, the public can reach that conclusion without some news anchor repeatedly claiming, “That’s a lie!” A lie requires intent and how does the news anchor know one’s intent. It should be sufficient to state the evidence and leave it up to the viewer or reader to decide if it is a lie or a mistake or even a difference of opinion.

A gradual turning away from a culture where, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones”, might be a good place to start. Or, if not Shakespeare, how about our mothers’ advice, “If we can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all?”

I get it that this approach might take years to help assuage our epidemic of gun violence and mass shootings. But I ask you, Gentle Reader, do you think the problem will be solved by continuing to vilify everyone we disagree with? Maybe, at least, respectfully hearing out opposing views before we label someone a crook or a liar might pour oil on troubled waters and help reduce our national tendency to assassinate character. Such an approach of just reporting the news may tend to discourage people teetering on the edge from taking up arms and actually assassinating innocent people.

Letting Go

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Porta Batumi Towers. Photo by Peg Redwine

About 4:30 a.m. on February 06 in the country of Georgia Peg and I were awakened by a strange squeaking/creaking sound as if a giant was rolling around on bare bed springs. The sound appeared to come from above us and all around us. We checked through our small apartment and even ventured out on our 17th floor open air balcony and into the indoor hallway.

Peg advised we should exit our apartment but I said, “max nix, let’s go back to sleep; it is probably just a neighbor moving furniture.” These two reactions pretty much sum up how Peg and I address most situations. It turned out it was a neighbor, but the neighbor was the neighboring country of Turkey that was dealing with another kind of giant, giant 7.8 and 7.6 earthquakes. Our apartment in Batumi, Georgia is only 12 miles from the Turkish border and as it turns out, a little less that 400 miles from the epicenter of the quakes.

When we turned on CNN at 7:00 a.m. we learned about the devastation caused by Mother Nature. As we had just spent a week in Istanbul, Turkey the middle of January we were anxious about how the people of Turkey and its bordering countries, Georgia and Syria, had fared. Georgia came through unscathed, but Turkey and Syria have lost over 16,000 people to death and many more thousands to injuries, loss of homes, water, food, power and shelter from the bitter cold.

Batumi Radisson Hotel. Photo by Peg Redwine

The large Radisson Hotel building across the street from our apartment building had some internal shaking and furniture movement but our only effects, as far as we know, were the sounds caused by the barely swaying internal girders. We did have friends in other parts of our city who felt strong tremors and swaying structures. One of our friends told us she wanted to run out of her 10th floor apartment with her 3 year old daughter, but her husband said, no, he was going back to sleep, besides, it was cold outside. I guess the differing reactions Peg and I had to the quivering earth may be universal for wives versus husbands.

We were gratified that several friends and family members were so concerned about us we received emails and messages. They know our six-month mission to work with Georgian judges will soon come to an end and they want us to be safely home. As for us, we are beginning to feel our tour among our new friends, “getting short”. Of course, some folks reacted just as I did, that is, no reaction.

As we watched the relief and recovery efforts on TV we couldn’t help feeling as though we had been shot at and missed. Unfortunately, thousands of our fellow human beings were not so lucky. The videos are hard to look at and the feelings they raise are visceral. The entire catastrophic tragedy is summed up for me with one image, a father sitting in shocked disbelief, haunted by his inability to remove his young daughter from her tomb beneath huge slabs of concrete. He was just able to grasp part of her arm she managed to slip through a crack. The father held her hand as her life ebbed from her. He undoubtedly will always fault himself for being unable to do the impossible.

Batumi, Georgia Turkish Consulate. Photo by Peg Redwine

Mom Knows Best

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Tom Nichols is a staff writer for The Atlantic magazine. In his opinion piece of August 15, 2022, Nichols asserted the United States is living in a “new era of political violence.” Nichols compared our current political climate to America’s Civil War and declared:

“Compared with the bizarre ideas and half-baked wackiness that now infest American political life, the arguments between the North and the South look like a deep treatise on government.”

Of course, Nichols, as all of us do, meant those ideas he disagreed with. He wrote his article as a warning against “the random threats and unpredictable dangers from people among us who spend too much time watching television and plunging down internet rabbit holes.”

While I believe Nichols falls victim to the kind of incitement to political violence he warns the rest of us to avoid, I agree with him that much of our poisonous political atmosphere is both created and exacerbated by “instigators who will inflame them from the safety of a television or radio studio.”

When I try to glean news from Facebook, MSNBC, CNN, FOX News and even sometimes NPR and the regular commercial news outlets, I spend a lot of my time hearing the echo of my Mother’s sage advice, “If you can’t say something nice about somebody, don’t say anything at all.”

In our current political discourse it seems almost every discussion has to first set forth the commentator’s pro or anti Trump diatribe then morph into the “real news.”  I keep trying, with little success, to block out the opening statements as I wait for any significant new facts.

This atmosphere of dueling slings and arrows, some of which are more than mere rhetoric, is the “political violence” Nichols refers to. People committing random acts of physical violence against complete strangers for no reason other than to attempt to give some meaning to their uninteresting lives. And as many of us have suffered through the discomfort, or worse, of political conversations with our friends and family these last few years, it is not just random strangers who have accosted one another with Nichols’ “New Era of Political Violence”. Long-time friendships and relationships have often suffered due to competing political views.

A large contributor to the current “Era of Bad Feeling” is the tendency to classify those who do not share our political views as holding “half-baked” or “wacky” ideas because, in Nichols’ view, they suffer from “a generalized paranoia that dark forces are manipulating their lives.” The sense I get from our current political in-fighting reminds me of the McCarthy Era from the 1950’s when Senator Joe McCarthy held hearings that ruined countless lives with accusations of Communistic leanings among American citizens. Sure, eventually we, as a democracy, saw through the “Red Scare” but it was too late to save many good citizens.

It feels to me now as those Red Baiting times felt. We seem to go immediately to anger when the “other side” speaks its views. Perhaps we could learn from our history instead of repeating it. As Mom would have said, “Just because someone sees things from their viewpoint doesn’t make them wrong. And just because someone else voices an opinion opposed to ours doesn’t mean they are bad.” It kind of goes back to that old advice, “If it ain’t good, don’t say it.”

That does not apply to real news, only personal character assassination. We need our democracy to have unfettered access to information about many subjects. That is, we need facts to make good decisions. What we do not need is vituperative personal attacks masquerading as evidence.