The insurrection that didn't happen

            The day after Independence Day last week, Huffington Post had a fitting "tribute" to – well, let's have HuffPost say it:

            "They rejected democracy. They lied. And they spent July Fourth calling themselves patriots."

            Featured was a collection of gushing faux patriotism from Republicans who have shown since Jan. 6 they have a serious problem with this thing called the United States.

            Sen. Ted Cruz: "I'm proud to be an American and proud to be free."

            Sen. Josh Hawley: "This is the greatest nation in the history of the world."

            Funny that Hawley and Cruz should say those things, considering they and many of their Republican brethren have done their best over the last six months to undermine what this nation is all about: self-government and the rule of law.

            Truth be known, Cruz, Hawley and their Proud Boy buddies desire something wholly apart from the nation they say they love.

            What they want is Haiti. Or Yemen. Or Somalia.

            No, not places without running water and lots of black people.

            What Cruz, Hawley and friends want is a country where the mob reserves the right to rule. Where elections have scant consequences. Where "One person, one vote" is the oath of the enemy. Where the peaceful transition of power is an annoyance. Where civil war never ends.

            Certainly they have a constituency – one sworn to uphold a lie. Not just any lie, the Big Lie. The biggest and most destructive lie in American history.

            The other day, reading about another time when ruthlessness was on the losing end of history, I thought about what might have happened if things were different here on Jan. 6, 2021.

            What triggered these thoughts was the fate of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

            Milosevic, who ordered ethnic cleansing during the violent sundering of Yugoslavia, was defeated at the polls in his bid for reelection in 2000. He refused to acknowledge his defeat.

            When a popular uprising formed against him, Milosevic, having commanded Serbian armed forces, assumed the troops would blunt it. He was wrong. The military gave him no cover.

            Now, imagine if Donald Trump got what he wanted Jan. 6. Imagine that Mike Pence refused to certify the results of the election. Imagine that Trump, like Milosevic, wouldn't leave.

            Instead of the insurrection that happened Jan. 6, we would have a whole other uprising. It would have taken a little longer to assemble, because unlike the one Trump himself stirred to violence that day, this one would come from every corner of our land as people found out that he who was defeated at the polls was going to ignore the fact. 

            I'm guessing that the troops Trump assumed were under his command would decide that they were under the voters' command.

            I'm imagining Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka, Jared and Kayleigh McEnany – armed only with their cell phones – giving up the ghost when the gates were breached by people who assumed elections have consequences.

            Who would be the patriots then?

            I imagine Ted Cruz speed-dialing his travel agent.

            I imagine Josh Hawley hailing not a mob but a cab.

            Yes, it's a tough proposition when one can call an election, set a date for certification, count votes to the best of mankind's abilities, and put an end to a corrupt administration.

            In Haiti, whose president was just assassinated, the people don't know who's in charge now. Central to the discord that preceded the horrific events was a dispute over when the presidential term ended – that is before gunmen ended it.

            Here, in America, we know when the president's term ends. Until this past January we had never had a president refuse to acknowledge it.

            Or an entire political party, for that matter.

            Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

A valedictory about pride -- and prejudice

            The valedictorian left the podium empty-handed, except for his hold on classmates' hearts.

            The principal took away his microphone and his prepared remarks, but when grads shouted, "Let him speak," another mic was produced and, by memory, he said all he intended.

            "For so long I tried to bend and break and shrink to society's expectations," Bryce Dershem said at a moment when he was told to do exactly that.

            But he went on with words to inspire many, not just the audience at Eastern Regional High School in New Jersey, but millions online. His dad shared it on YouTube

            The principal had forbidden Bryce to say he is gay. Thank goodness he persisted.

            He talked about getting treatment for anorexia. He talked about having considered suicide. His voice faltered only once.

            But there he was, a pride flag draped over his shoulders:

            "I am a fighter, and today I am a survivor."

            He's not the only one. Consider Gavin Grimm, a transgender individual who sued when his school in Virginia prevented him from using the boys' room.

            A four-year battle ended in victory for Grimm and others like him when the Supreme Court refused to review a lower court ruling allowing transgender individuals to use the facilities with which they identify.

            How sad that a high schooler needs to wage such a battle for the rest of us. Reminds us of other young people who have walked through school entrances under duress along history's arc.

            The good news is that this is just one of many victories for LGBTQ rights, regardless of what oppressively stone-age edicts emanate from red-state legislatures.

            The Supreme Court – yeah, that Supreme Court – ruled in June that federal civil rights law protects gay, lesbian and transgender workers.

            Meanwhile the U.S. Senate – yeah, that Senate – has confirmed Joe Biden's choice of Rachel Levine, a pediatrician, as assistant U.S. secretary of health, making her the first openly transgender individual so confirmed.

            Our nation has its first openly gay Cabinet member in Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. Colorado's Gov. Jared Polis is openly gay. The general response from Coloradans is, "Who cares?"

            Ah, but some Americans care.

            Robert Jeffress, Donald Trump's favorite holy man, would no doubt denounce Colorado for having abided in the devil's doings.

            Jeffress recently lashed out at devoutly Baptist Baylor University as full of "infidels" for even considering approving a new LGBTQ group.

            The offending statement in a Baylor press release said that it hasn't changed any principles while it "continues to place a priority on the care of all students."

            Now, wait just a minute, said Southern Baptist Convention seminary president Art Mohler. He accused Baylor of "institutional capitulation disguised as care."

            Tut tut. Imagine a Christian university showing it cares about all students.

            At this point, let us reflect on the reaction young Bryce Dershem got from his classmates. They loved him. They embraced him and what he had to say.

            Sounds almost biblical.

            The sirens of the right – Republican leaders, religious leaders – are positively deaf to what young Americans have to say about LGBTQ rights. Most young Americans are fully in support. 

            They don't think of gay-ness as a sin. They think of it as part of the person, like the curly hair like Bryce Dershem or the angular nose on my face.

            Most young Americans think, as do I, that the real sinners are the political and religious leaders who marginalize people for no reason other than basic prejudice.

            It's the kind of prejudice that at one time made a crime of same-sex intimacy. The leaders behind those policies were pathetic and wrong. As with those who placed all their chips on Jim Crow, history will look at them as losers.

            Bryce Dershem, however, is a star.

            Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

 

Doers and dreamers at the border

            Visiting the southern border last week, Vice President Kamala Harris said this:

            "We're talking about children. We're talking about families. We're talking about suffering. And our approach has to be thoughtful and effective."

            You could just hear the Republican Party snort.

            No reference to drug dealers and rapists? No "hordes"? No "swarms"? Surely she could throw in a "caravan," and of course "COVID."

            Rest assured Donald Trump will throw in all of them when he visits the border in his civilian role as troll.

            Then Gov. Greg Abbott will do the monkey-do thing.

            The rhetoric allowed the GOP to look the other way when families were separated at the border and when Trump left office without doing anything to reunite them.

            By contrast, President Biden immediately established the Task Force for the Reunification of Families. It has been doing its job, having reunited 36 families so far, with so many left to go. The GOP policy left over 2,000 children and their families in limbo.

            Trump and his acolytes will not, cannot, acknowledge the humanity represented by the people seeking asylum or just a better life by crossing the border.

            They don't acknowledge, for instance, how vital immigrants are to our economy and have been for decades, how many have lived sparkling lives among us, their children growing up smart and strong.

            They talk about human beings only as a drag on our system, when in fact providing a path to citizenship would change the tax equation in positive ways.

            The Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy estimates undocumented individuals pay more than $11.74 billion annually in state and local taxes through a combination of sales taxes and their share of property taxes (through rentals) and payroll taxes.

            In 2013, an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office found that legislation to increase immigration and a path to citizenship to millions would provide $459 billion over 10 years based on new collection of income and payroll taxes.

            But that wouldn't be the biggest benefit. That would come in the economic activity of letting a shadow population comport itself proudly in the light of day.

            The most dramatic benefit of the 1986 measure signed by President Reagan granting amnesty of 3 million undocumented individuals is that their pay increased 5 to 10 percent over a decade according to several studies.

            Attached to that was the peace of mind and sense of permanence by which they could invest in homes and businesses, no longer walking the razor's edge of deportation. Similarly, their children could strive in school without fear.

            As was phrased by one of the authors of a study by the Partnership for a New American Economy that touted economic benefits of immigration – words that should seem second-nature to all Americans – immigration itself is "an entrepreneurial act. Picking up your things, leaving your relatives behind and coming to a new country is about wanting something better for yourself."

            While Trumpians make siren sounds about all those people wanting in on the American miracle, the U.S. Census points to what analysts call "demographic stagnation." A layman's definition of that would be an older, less-driven economy.

            To change that equation, New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo urges regulating immigration much like we regulate inflation.

            Maintaining robust immigration levels, he writes, would "keep America's ratio of working young people to retired old people stable."

            So, rapists and drug dealers? Or entrepreneurs and doers? Actually, it's all of the above – the good with the bad – but that applies to the native-born of this nation as well.

            We could have North Korea. We could have Iran or Saudi Arabia. We have the United States of America.

            The doers and dreamers begat us, even the scoundrels and charlatans among us.

            Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.