Is it a war or only a skirmish? Is there a difference?

Culture wars have reached our quiet little village.  Does it matter?  Yes, it does.

At this point, the battling is contained to a few meetings with some belligerent confrontations and a bunch of letters and commentaries published in the local paper.  Some of those have included more than a tad of hostility.  But no dueling yard signs yet.  Maybe a truce will be agreed before things go farther.  Hope abides.

It started a few months ago when the local school district proposed a new elective course for high school students.  An ethnic studies course would be offered to juniors and seniors.  With some well-thought and passionate input from students describing individual stories of damaging prejudice and ignorance, a curriculum has been developed.

There's always opposition to change.  And, I get it -- change can be scary and it can be threatening.  That's why a lot of change gets done gradually.  Ethnic studies is one of those things that has been gradually changing and improving.  Compare a current American history textbook for high school use today with what was common decades ago (yes, I know, the memories are perhaps few and somewhat dim) to understand the vast improvements in the telling of non-majority stories in U.S. history.

Nonetheless, reporting of opposition presentations in school board meetings, as well as the writings published in our local weekly, indicated growing heat in the matter.  As a community member without a vested interest in a high school course -- no such students in this household -- my feelings about the matter (and/or my vanity?) convinced me that I could help reduce temperatures by contributing my thoughts to the public discussion.  So I offered those ideas in writing to our local weekly newspaper.  Here is what was published: 

Having read numerous articles and letters about the proposed ethnic studies elective course at (local community) High School, I want to say that I hope it is implemented.  I am confident that students will enjoy it and gain from it.  I say this as an "outside observer" because I am neither a parent of a student, nor am I a professional educator.  Even so, I hope the reader will stick with me for a few minutes because I have a story to tell.

I was young, college-educated, employed in a demanding professional career, recently-married and an avid student of American history when -- much to my surprise -- I discovered that the name "Manzanar" meant nothing to me.  I had inquired of my then-wife how her parents had met.  Learning that their encounter occurred at Manzanar, we journeyed into the Owens Valley to visit it.  There I started to understand how they, along with 120,000 others at Manzanar and nine other similar locations, spent a few years of their young lives.  In a fit of wartime xenophobia afflicting the U.S. government and much of the nation's population, they and their families were forcibly uprooted from their homes, leaving behind significant property and other items of value.  My wife's parents, along with most of the others incarcerated at Manzanar and the other camps, were U.S. citizens. But because they were Nisei, they did not look like the majority white American population, and so they were objects of suspicion and hostility.

This was not America's finest hour.  But it was a milestone in the anti-Asian prejudice and exploitation that had been part of the development and growth of the United States for the previous century and more.  (Unfortunately, events of the last year regarding the origin of the corona virus pandemic have created an additional similar milestone.)  And yet, my education had taught almost none of this history.

Learning from this delayed education helped to make me a better person.  It gave me a better understanding of others who have backgrounds different from mine.  Since this has been a national educational experience,  I feel it has made the United States better, too.  For any country much of its history is deserving of pride, but some is the stuff of shame.  Nations that recognize and learn from their mistakes of the past will grow, change and prosper.  Those that do not will, I think, be diminished.

The published remarks of the opponents to this ethnic studies class -- a course that appears to be a telling of otherwise overlooked histories -- seem to me to be based on a fear that it will subvert the telling of the American story as that of one undiluted success after another.  If that is so, then I will concede that their fear is to one extent well-founded:  education is the ignition of subversion.  Learning history helps us to understand the mistakes of our past and how to benefit from the lessons of those mistakes.  And, yes, education also provides the foundation and the tools necessary to subvert obstacles that are in the way of becoming better.

Most of what we have around us today is good.  Let's not get in the way of the young ones who want to learn how to take all around them that is worthy and add to it.  My high school education was all the poorer for not telling the century-long story of the Manzanar episode.  Curricular mistakes like that are too easy to make because there is so much history that needs telling.  The proposed ethnic studies course cannot be expected to avoid all such mistakes, but I think it will be a big help and an educational step in a good direction.

If this is a skirmish it will fizzle.  But it may be preamble to something big, possibly something like the answer to this question:  What is the American identity?  National identity is a fundamental cultural characteristic.  It is one that has changed before, each time in the face of determined opposition.  With each change the United States has grown, not diminished. There is no reason to think this time should be, or will be, different.

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Why did he bring that flag into the Capitol?

One image from the January 6 mob attack on the U.S. Capitol sticks with me. It is only one picture, but by itself it tells a story of conflict, prejudice and failed leadership.  The picture is of a man, one of the mob, who is strolling through the halls of the Capitol carrying a flag mounted on a pole resting on his shoulder.  The flag is the Confederate battle flag from the American Civil War:  thirteen white stars arrayed along two diagonal-crossed blue bars, all overlayed on a red background.

I know nothing about the man in the picture.  The flag, though, has a well-known story.  Throughout the Civil War it served as a symbol of rebellion and armed conflict.  In a time before radio communications, the flag was used to identify locations of Confederate military units and to help in their deployments when in battle against elements of the Union forces.

The Civil War was about slavery and the supremacy of Southern white masters over their property, the Black slaves.  Leaders in most of the slave-holding states were convinced that the institution of slavery was doomed by the Abraham Lincoln presidency, and feared that their wealth would suffer. To protect that institution, eleven Southern states (and parts of two others) seceded from the Union.  The thirteen stars recognized that secession.

The Union victory crushed the institution of slavery, but it did not end prejudice and lawlessness spawned by that prejudice.  The battle flag lived on, becoming an emblem of white supremacy.  Clearly, the flag is a part of American history, but it does not deserve to be a part of American heritage.  To see it displayed in the U.S. Capitol is offensive.  Keep it inside museums where it can be honestly and factually described for what it was and what it has represented; there is no other place for it.

I don't know that I can blame Donald Trump, losing candidate for reelection and outgoing president of the country, for this fellow bringing the Confederate flag into the Capitol.  But I believe that I can blame Trump for the words from his mouth and from his Twitter fingers that caused the perpetrator to think that he was entitled to carry that flag into the Capitol.  That makes Trump the Offender-in-Chief.

Let's review Trump's assortment of recent offenses against American democracy and see how they all can be tied together with that flag.

Trump has sought to overturn the election won by Joe Biden with evidence-free assertions of fraudulent voting.  He has trampled state laws by attempting to interfere in final voting certification, going so far as to demand in the state of Georgia that officials there should "find" more Trump votes.  As of this writing he has neither conceded to President-elect Biden, nor has he supported the necessarily complex efforts needed to assist in a smooth transition of powers from his Administration to Biden's.  He has publicly harangued his supporters to believe that he is the victor and Biden the loser.

In response, the January 6 mob -- including the flag-carrying man -- gathered at the White House that morning.  Trump spoke, urging them to assault the Capitol so as to stop Congress from accepting the votes of presidential electors pledged to Joe Biden.  Vice President Mike Pence was singled out as a target, too, since he had earlier refused Trump's demands to disqualify electoral votes for Biden.  (With good reason -- the Constitution provides no such powers to the Vice President.  Pence has apparently read the Constitution; it seems that despite his four years in office, Trump has not.)

Trump has not -- and, I think, will not -- accept accountability for his actions that set off the riotous behaviors of the mob of his supporters.  There were fatalities among the rioters and Capitol police; that and other violence will lead to numerous legal prosecutions for law-breaking.  Those consequences should be shared by the Instigator-in-Chief Donald J. Trump.

Put all of this together and Trump became a renegade president on January 6, 2021.  He is the only such president, and the House of Representatives has correctly impeached him for his actions.

Trump might end up being considered the worst U.S. president because of his actions on January 6.  No other president has attempted to subvert a presidential election and the peaceful transfer of power to a new president and administration.  

Nor should there be any doubt that such behavior is to be tolerated.  Having happened once, impeachment -- even if conviction is not delivered by the Senate -- and any subsequent lawful prosecutions lodged against Trump should be relentlessly conducted with sufficient strength to impress upon the country and the watching world that Trump has stirred up a righteous anger among the majority of the American populace.  We, that majority, fully support the fact that no person, not even a president, is above the law.  

Perhaps it is fitting that the flag of rebellion and armed conflict in a failed attempt to perpetuate slavery and the supremacy of one skin color over all others should be the enduring symbol of Trump's closing days of his presidency  

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Biden has a governing mandate like none before. He should use it to go big.

Joe Biden was always going to have a mandate to govern.  A winning margin of over seven million votes against an incumbent president -- one who insisted that the so-called stimulus checks from the 2020 CARES Act be printed with his signature so that voters would get the idea that they should give him thanks for the helicopter money -- is by itself a convincing mandate.  Incumbent presidents who run for reelection almost never lose.  Putting those pieces together provides President Joe Biden with leadership power that can come only from such clear evidence of the popular will of those who are governed.

Yesterday, January 6, changed all that.  President-elect Biden will be inaugurated on January 20 with a mandate to govern based not only on the math and the demographics and the state-by-state map of his victory, but also with the authority that comes from being the sole occupant of the moral high ground on which rests the leadership qualities of the Office of the President.  

In contrast, Donald Trump -- loser and outgoing president -- used his time yesterday to cede any possible claim to that high ground by personally inciting a mob of his followers to attempt insurrection against the American government.  In doing so, Trump's post-election behavior is perhaps more dishonorable than that of James Buchanan, acclaimed as the worst American president for failing to take action to stop the beginning of the Civil War in 1861.

The story of Trump's vanity project to subvert the election is well-known.  Prior to the election I wrote in this space and described him as "un-American" in recognition of his undermining of the country's democratic foundations.  Yesterday's events are a direct result of Trump's behavior; NPR has summarized January 6 in a timeline and with revealing photos.

I think we always knew that Trump's version of "law and order" was that of an outlaw.  Now that has been confirmed in full view for all the world to see.

As I sit here writing this, there is growing sentiment to hamstring Trump by invoking the twenty-fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and by conducting impeachment.  Amendment XXV requires action by the Vice President and the majority of Cabinet members; it would result in Mike Pence, as VP, becoming "acting president."  Impeachment is done by Congress, and would end with Trump being evicted from office and -- critically -- being forbidden from holding any elective office in the future.

Whether either of these actions comes to pass is an open question.  But even if neither happens, it is clear that Donald J. Trump no longer can claim even a shred of moral authority associated with presidential leadership.

And so we come back to president-elect Joe Biden.

When newly sworn-in, President Biden will be stepping into an office that has been severely damaged by predecessor Trump.  There is a leadership vacuum in America, and to prevent that empty space being filled by un-democratic elements Biden will have to occupy it with rapid and decisive actions that are visible and constructive.

He needs to show accomplishments -- the bigger, the better.  With Trump reduced to a malign specter, and on the heels of a massive vote win in the November election, Biden has the winds of a governing mandate at his back.

There is always temptation to put up an ordered list for a new president:  Do this first, and then that, and for third priority get going on. . .  In reality, of course, there are lots of Priority One's, and then there's everything else.

Even so, here's my list of things on which the new President Biden should Go Big:  An effective national pandemic strategy with clear, consistent messaging on safety measures, as well as assistance to the States for rapidly administering vaccinations; ensuring that there are consequences for the perpetrators of yesterday's insurrection, including Trump for his subversion of American democracy; an economic stimulus program that pours funding into research and development (especially for non-fossil fuel projects) as well as national infrastructure repair and rebuilding; reforms to immigration policy and practices that encourage and enable legal immigration, while simultaneously reducing motivations for illegal immigration by fixing security and economic problems in certain Central American countries; commitment of U.S. re-engagement with our traditional allies, alliances, treaties and agreements; actions for addressing the emergencies of climate, civil rights, nuclear proliferation, environmental protection, and world-wide human rights and democratic reforms; there's more, but that's a good start.

The downstream effects of what happened yesterday are potentially enormous and for some people they will be dangerous:  increased covid-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths will occur; damage to national security due to theft and vandalism within Congressional offices by the rioters could be significant; Trump's executive actions prior to yesterday, as well as anything he attempts to do over the next two weeks, could be invalidated as a consequence of his subversion of the election.  And also, the toxicity of the far-right social media forums that -- as The Washington Post is reporting -- "voice glee in the aftermath" of insurrection must be dealt with as an incubator for domestic terrorism.

All of this shows why we need a professional, knowledgeable, well-populated and experienced Federal government.  What is written above is a collection of problems that newly-installed President Biden will face, along with this question:  If government doesn't act to solve problems, then what good is it?

President Joe Biden will be dealing with a world that has changed much in the last four years.  Some problems are new, and almost all of the same old problems have become bigger and worse over that period.  To top that off, the Trump presidency leaves a swamp-like sucking bog of unresolved questions about covert hostile foreign influence that intends damage to American democratic institutions.  The report of the Mueller investigation must be revisited, and actions taken based on its findings.

Much time will be needed to score big accomplishments, but -- as the saying goes -- fortune favors the bold.  Biden should boldly assert his governing mandate, and relentlessly pursue big solutions and fixes to big problems.