A Graduation Speech for Both This Age and The Ages

 

That was a hell of a graduation speech that singer/songwriter Eric Church gave at Chapel Hill. The man's a good writer, and he delivered that thing as though he was speaking off-the-cuff. I don't know how he could have memorized it, it's so long and so intricately constructed. Eric Church seems like a righteous, smart dude, and we share the Southern Baptist upbringing. UNC-Chapel Hill thought enough of the speech to make the entire thing easily available for viewing (above).

In 2018, leading up to Trump's first mid-term election, Church made this comment to Rolling Stone about the president his wife voted for in 2016 -- Church himself didn't vote: “I’m conflicted. I like that he’s thrown a monkey wrench into things. I think that chaos is good. I enjoyed the North Korea thing. Why haven’t we talked to that guy? Tariffs, I don’t know yet. I don’t want a trade war, but I’ll walk with him down that road a little farther. At the same time, I have a ton of problems with him. I don’t like the racial overtones. I hate the tweeting. It seems insecure, petty, not presidential.”

In a graduation speech that never mentioned Trump or the current national mood, Church nevertheless managed to telegraph an mistakable update to the preceding opinion.

Why I'm Not Writing More

 

I'm actually writing a lot. Just not about current politics. None of it ever likely to see the light. So I've neglected WataugaWatch, even though I spend every morning trying to get a hold on the political world and find something to write about. My looking inevitably turns into doom-scrolling, and I end up retreating to the garden to pull weeds. Red Hornet asks when I'm coming back from the beach.

I'm not good company right now. Hasn't Trump 2.0 exhausted you? Even when it's all hilarious. Especially when it's all hilarious. Like Trump's staying up all night to throw turd balls at his grudges on Truth Social and then falling asleep in the Oval in front of guests and dignitaries pleading their cases. Trump even stages those White House events deliberately, and in the strangest (most hilarious) way: Trump arrays himself in front, seated, with only his drooping head and about half of his chest showing, with the experts and his loyal supporters arrayed behind him who are orating on various topics supposedly of great interest to Trump, while Trump closes eyes, loses consciousness. You can't miss it, because Trump puts himself in the forefront.

Why is that not the common laughing-stock of the country? 

I took a vow back in his first term that I wasn't going to focus on him, and I've kept myself mainly aloof from the chaos because there are plenty of commentators memorializing and analyzing every aspect of Trump's lack of ethics or morals. Not only am I and my written opinions not needed, they would be wholly irrelevant anyway. What does it even matter to share a strong opinion at this peculiar moment? We are in the hands of a Fate that will play out in waves -- convulsions might be the better word -- starting in just six months and ending God knows when or how.

I'm too exhausted to do anything much more than wait.  

BTW what does he dream about, that man? Does he relive his greatest moments of grandiosity? The roar of his crowd? Hear again the great and famous stroking his ego? Does he dream of planting a new Trump property in a place he can corrupt and bully?

 

Pity the People Left on the Beach

 

I see a lot of ink today amazed at yesterday's Indiana Republican primaries for General Assembly seats. Trump endorsed seven of his dogs against seven stubborn state senate Republican incumbents, and the incumbents got chewed the hell up. Fox News was thrilled to report that Trump Is Still Lord. Others couldn't help but notice the Mafia vibes in the sudden death of politicians who had refused to kiss the ring (re-jigger the state's congressional maps). Many reporters noticed the severed horsehead in the bed. Don't cross boss Trump.

I say "good!" to those Republican primaries. I'm counting on the cult's keeping its politicians firmly in the trumpy mold, under the trumpy thumb, because it will be an ever more convenient target for the Blue Wave, as the opposition to Trump picks up more independents and disgusted lifelong Republicans. There are actually very good conservatives who don't like mob bosses and wide-open corruption. To have a clear and unitary enemy with a brand name and a history is a pure-dee gift for the goddamned Democratic Party.

Otherwise reasonable, logical men and women who hold office as elected Republicans have weighed their choices, and they've consciously chosen to throw in with whatever Trump says or demands or does, because that's the way politics works, at least politics in a democracy that demands votes. We join parties, and even when we can plainly see our party's alienating the majority, or that our leader is fucking wrong, we stick with our party. 'Tis better to die together than hang separately. 'Tis actually better to die for someone's stupidity than never to have taken a side at all and declared our values. (We would have made excellent soldiers in Pickett's frontal attack at Gettysburg, and would probably have considered it both right and fitting pro patria mori.)

Lord knows how many masts I've lashed myself to over the last 60 years of political advocacy and community organizing, only to see the whole ship go down and me with it. I get the psychology of staying with the sinking ship. It's considered noble -- in a fashion that Falstaff would have mocked as folly, but still. What's the alternative to embracing defeat when it's inevitable? Disengagement? And the blissful aloofness of independents who always piously claim, "I vote for the man, not the party"? That kind of cynical detachment is unthinkable for the likes of us, the eternally engaged and outraged. We are known for the fiber of our spines because we have experienced political death and have returned, often transformed by death, not quite like the phoenix but maybe more like stinkweeds that develop rhizomes.

So I applaud the wholly owned Trump Party, once known as the GOP. Keep the faith, babies, but don't park your beach chairs on the sand. 

 

Sam Page Braves the Rampaging Public School Teachers

 

Look who came to the teachers protest march on Friday in Raleigh:

Rockingham County Sheriff and NC "Senator Elect" Sam Page seemed only too happy to associate himself with the protesting teachers in Raleigh last Friday. He was there to shake hands, give interviews, and ingratiate himself with a voting bloc not any other Republican General Assembly member would associate with. But Sam Page was there to share the message: Damnit, there's no state budget, and teacher pay has sunk to 46th lowest in the nation. Page was overheard telling Christina Cole, president-elect of the NC Assoc. of Educators (NCAE), and others that "teacher pay needs to be raised to highest in the Southeast." Cardinal and Pine had video of him saying forthrightly that raising teacher pay was his top priority, that and public safety. Several pics of him posing with individual NCAE members appeared on social media. He created something of a stir.

Of course he was wearing one of his cowboy hats, a sensible straw. The hat's a sigil -- "NOTICE ME" --and the name "Sheriff Sam Page" is already well known to people who follow North Carolina politics, which would include a sizable number of public school teachers. Especially the ones who know he beat Senate President Phil Berger who was no friend to teachers. As far as anyone has testified, Page was the only Republican politician to show his face on Friday. Cool move, partly because it is causing agita among fierce MAGAs, who go rigid when reminded that May Day protests were once a vehicle for the International Communist Party.

I'd like to think that Sam Page showed up -- if even for a little while (I doubt he marched) -- because he's a good guy on the need to pay our public school teachers a living wage. He didn't have to do that for votes. It's quite certain that he will beat the Democrat running against him in November. It's an R+9 district. He doesn't need the teachers' votes but he's embracing a message that will cause the gnashing of teeth for the man who Page beat and who has been the chief block against treating teachers right. 

 

"Far Right Fielder"

 

Have not seen an attack on Congresswoman Virginia Foxx before that's quite as hard as this one

 

This popped up on Facebook -- no indication of who produced it. It has the earmarks of an independent expenditure, but it might also be a purely homegrown expression of contempt for Virginia Foxx. Doubt it. The level of professional  polish here suggests money. First time I've seen this. If it's showing up in other venues, with or without a "Paid for by" declaration, I'd like to hear about it. Anybody?

The attack does not even mention Democrat Chuck Hubbard, nor does it say anything about an election. The display is meant to lower Foxx's favorables, not explicitly boost Hubbard's.

Is the attack effective? It's all about her age, which is fair, and tying her to Trump policies, which notoriously can cut both ways in the 5th District. She's done what she can to make sure there's no air between her arms and Donald Jethro Trump, and this attack supports that. Many people in the 5th like her precisely for that. The strangest call-out: "She was 26 years old when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon." A strange slap again at her advanced age, but baroquely obscure compared to the visual trainwreck of the photograph.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is Zach Wahls the Next Iowa Senator?

 

Greeted this a.m. with news that Sen. Elizabeth Warren would be making campaign appearances on behalf of Zach Wahls in the Iowa Democratic senatorial primary coming up on June 2nd. That Iowa Senate primary is another hot Democratic contest of left insurgency vs. establishmentarian moderation, by which I mean Chuck Schumer's preferred (safe) candidate -- Josh Turek, a 46-year-old Gold Medalist in wheelchair basketball -- is clearly losing to a younger (dangerous) Wahls, who is polling well ahead of Turek. Wahls also wins hypothetical matchups with the Republican candidate he'll face in the fall. It's an open seat because Joni Ernst had had enough.

So I needed to refresh my memory about Zach Wahls: Way back in 2011, as the 19-year-old straight man and former Eagle Scout raised by married lesbians, Wahls stood up during public comment in an Iowa House hearing about a bill to ban gay marriage in the state's constitution and delivered a clear and impassioned defense of his own family. That speech went viral online, quickly garnering a half-million views on YouTube which eventually climbed into the millions. Here is it again, if you have a hankering for persuasion and the language arts:  

 

 

Wahls was a new student at the University of Iowa, studying engineering, when he made that 3-minute speech. He became instantly famous, an unapologetically heterosexual young man who was raised (very well, as it turns out) by two lesbians. No one could speak more powerfully for gay rights. He dropped out of the engineering program to write a book that was published in 2012, My Two Moms: Lessons of Love, Strength, and What Makes a Family. He became a public speaker willing to challenge orthodoxy. A Catholic college felt compelled to cancel not one but two scheduled appearances by Wahls, sponsored by the Gay-Straight Alliance and the College Democrats, after his book came out. That September of 2012 Wahls was given a speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention in which he thanked President Obama for the courage to support same-sex marriage.

Wahls went back to the University of Iowa and got his degree but kept active in Democratic Party politics. He became a Hillary Clinton delegate to the National Convention in 2016, the same year he earned his degree. In 2018 he ran for a safe Democratic state Senate seat, and in 2021 he was voted Senate Minority Leader by his colleagues.

Wahls's rise has been steady and deliberate. But the articulation of difficult topics by a surprisingly mature 19-year-old in 2011 has matured (hardened in a sense) into accomplished politician-speak. He's so prepared and so damn articulate that he can begin to sound rote. He and Graham Platner may end up being sworn into the same Senate, and would be political allies (we assume), but in manner they are very different. Graham Platner's economic populism smacks of lived experience which doesn't do weak nibbling around the edges. Platner's populism is plain-spoken and tough minded. Wahls's seems more rehearsed. He talks in paragraphs. His attachment to the Democratic establishment message about "affordability" doesn't have the smell of sweat about it. Here is Wahls recently on Morning Joe: