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Friday Night Lights

Republicans Declare War on Friday Night Lights

September 13, 2024
by Peter Feinman
Friday Night Lights and the social fabric

Friday Night Lights has been the topic in multiple blogs. Its story transcends high school to encompass the entire community in small town America. It joins with other stories like Remember the Titans and Hidden Figures among others to showcase the social fabric of the communities that make up the country. These stories stress family, education, church, and service to the country often told through a shared activity like high school sports. Needless-to-say, that social fabric has been taking a beating lately in a concerted effort to unravel it.

“Rural Republicans Are Fighting to Save Their Public Schools”

The subheading for this July article (Atlantic and ProPublica) is “Many State legislators see voucher programs as a threat to the anchors of their communities.

The article is about Todd Warner, a Republican member of the Tennessee House of Representatives, who resides in Chapel Hill, birthplace of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, a founder of the Klu Klux Klan. He is a champion for America’s besieged public schools.

The Trump supporter likes to talk about culture war threats like critical race theory, Sharia law, and so on. Yet despite these identifiers, he seeks to halt the efforts of Republican Governor Bill Lee push for private school vouchers, a cherished MAGA staple. Warner’s district has no private schools. Therefore taxpayer money from the district for private school vouchers will go to well-off families in metro Nashville, Memphis, and other cities where those children already are enrolled in private schools [to avoid attending schools with — you know — those people]. Warner objects to having his small-town constituents subsidizing the education of rich people’s kids.

I’m for less government, but its government role to provide a good public education. If you want to send you kid to private school, then you should pay for it.

Thanks to COVID, eleven states now have universal or near-universal vouchers. The beneficiaries are families with kids in private schools, not families seeking to escape struggling public schools. The current drain from public school funding is estimated to be close to $1 billion.

The response has been an unusual alliance between rural Republicans and Democratic lawmakers against the assault on public schools. For these Republicans, the reality of Earth 1 trumps the rhetoric of Earth 2. Many public schools are not only the sole education option in the real world, they are also the largest employer and hub of the community. The community school is where the community goes for holiday concerts, Friday-night football, basketball, school plays and so on.

“Demonizing public education in the abstract is one thing. But it’s quite another when the target is the school where you went, where your kids went.”

The response from Earth 2 is “Get with the program on vouchers or else.”

After reviewing additional examples of the impact of school vouchers, the authors write:

The highest-profile rural Republican resistance to vouchers has come in Texas, the land of Friday Night Lights and far-flung oil-country settlements where public schools anchor communities. Late last year, the Texas House voted 84-63 to strip vouchers out of a broad education bill. In response, Governor Gregg Abbott launched a purge of anti-voucher Republicans in this year’s primaries, backed by millions of dollars from the Pennsylvania mega-donor Jeff Yass, a finance billionaire.

Representative Drew Darby said:

But without good public schools, these rural areas [which he represents] will wither.

The Republican effort to destroy the public school system continues unabated.

A dangerous precedent is being created.

If you don’t want to use the municipal swimming pool, should tax-payer money be used to finance your private pool or membership in a private club?

If you don’t want to use the municipal tennis courts, should tax-payer money be used to finance your private tennis court or membership in a private club?

If you don’t want to use the municipal recreational facilities, should tax-payer money be used to finance your private gym or membership in a private gym?

If you don’t want to use the municipal school system, why should tax-payer money be used to finance your home school or private school?

Republicans have declared war on communities by unraveling the social fabric of what holds the communities together.

Gleaming New School in Yonkers was designed as a community hub

 The subheading for this front page article in the Sunday local newspaper in September is “Whole Child is the Focus.” The school is a brand new k-8 school “gleaming full of amenities, and as green as a school can be.” Author Gary Stern writes that the school “is meant to serve as a true community hub for children and parents in its dense, largely Hispanic neighborhood.”

These amenities include a medical clinic with mental health providers, dental and eye-car services, food and clothing programs among others. There is a clinic, cafeteria, gymnasium/multipurpose room which will be open to the community after school hours and on weekends. The clinic will operate in partnership with St. Joseph’s Medical Center. The community wing accessible from the street will host a Saturday academy for children, a parents academy, and events run by community agencies.

Even the roads around the school have been repaved!

Anibal Soler, the new Yonkers superintendent said:

This school is about the whole child, the whole family, and the whole community. Our job is to make this school the hub of their lives.

Mayor Mike Spano added:

Now they have a bright, shiny new school, a real community school. It’s really a good situation. 

In a separate article about Tarrytown schools right above the Yonkers’s school article, Washington Irving Intermediate School 5th grade teacher Christine Creary is quoted as saying:

I think it’s important to create a sense of belonging and community from the very first day that they walk in the classroom. Having a theme really does bring that immediately, where they know there are part of something. They are part of this classroom. They have a place where they know they can be listened to, they’re cared for, and it’s safe place for them to come every day.

She even took it upon herself to give the classroom a fresh coat of paint. 

By coincidence, the back page of the front section has a full page ad “Friday Night Lights” with football hero and small-town hero Rob Gronkowski and T-Mobile partnering to bring 5G lights to high school football.

Instead of trying to eliminate the Department of Education and to undermine the communities in the country, there should be standards and guidelines on what a public school should offer. Teachers shouldn’t have to paint their classroom. The public schools should be nurtured as the hub of a community.  If only there was a Friday Nights Light candidate for national office.

Indian Mascots: Maine and the Wabanaki

March 30, 2023
by Peter Feinman

On February 21st, the Atlantic Black Box (ABB) hosted an online film screening of “Fighting Indians” followed by a conversation with filmmakers Mark Cooley and Derek Ellis and Passamaquoddy language-keeper Dwayne Tomah. According to its website, ABB.is a “grassroots historical recovery project that empowers communities throughout New England to research, reveal and  begin reckoning with the region’s complicity in the slave trade and the global economy of enslavement while recentering the stories of its Black and Indigenous communities.”

The presentation drew over 250 people which I consider to be a lot. A few days later there was a follow-up conversation which drew 30 people. We divided into 5 groups of six with half my group being from outside Maine.

The impetus for the movie was the decision by the State of Maine passing on May 16th, 2019, An Act to Ban Native American Mascots in All Public Schools, which ABB claims was the first legislation of its kind in the country.

The film “Fighting Indians” chronicles the last and most contentious holdout in that struggle, the homogeneously white Skowhegan High School, known for decades as “The Home of the Indians.” This is the story of a small New England community forced to reckon with its identity, its sordid history, and future relationship with its Indigenous neighbors. It is the story of a small town divided against the backdrop of a nation divided, where the “mascot debate” exposes centuries-old abuses while asking if reconciliation is possible. (ABB)

The framework for the movie was a series of school board meetings, sometimes contentious, where the school board gradually shifted from maintaining the Indian mascot to removing it. The film included the board meetings themselves, interviews particularly with some Wabanaki, historical textual screens about horrific events in colonial times, the Washington Redskins, Buffalo Bill, Indian boarding schools, and a local baseball player Louis Sockalexis who preceded Jackie Robinson by decades and caused the Cleveland baseball team in 1915 to name itself “Indians” in his honor.

The sentiments of the filmmakers were evident throughout.

Here are my thoughts about the film.

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS

Friday Night Lights is a book, movie, and TV series about the place of high school football in a fictional town in Texas (but based on a real one). While its ratings weren’t high, Friday Night Lights became part of American vocabulary for evoking the significance and importance of small-town football in the identity of a community. Part of its appeal was it showcasing its place as part of the very fabric of the community.

Election Results: Amazon versus Hallmark November 27, 2018

Friday Night Lights: Risking Lives for the Dow May 21, 2020

I didn’t get the sense from the filmmakers that they appreciated the role of Friday Night Lights in small-community America. Rather it was somewhat derisive of the Americans with their century old traditions about the high school.

PALEOINDIANS

By contrast the Wabanaki claim of having been in the area for 10,000 years was accepted on face value. For me the claims of having been in the land for 10,000 years demands the same scrutiny as does any other such claims. I do not know if there has been any archaeological work involving Paleoindians in Maine but if there has been it should have been mentioned in the film. In addition, if such people have been discovered, then one would need to substantiate a link between those people thousands of years ago and the Wabanaki today.

Such considerations also lead to the question of the Wabanaki historical legacy. At what point did they start to refer to themselves as having been in the land for 10,000 years. If one were to examine the records from colonial times, would one find reference to a Wabanaki claim to having been in the land for 10,000 years? Was such a claim made in the 17th century? Was such a claim made in the 18th century? Was such a claim made in the 19th century? How about the 20th? It seems to be that the Wabanaki learned this number from Americans and incorporated it into their own heritage stories.

WABANAKI/EUROPEAN-AMERICAN HISTORY

According to the Wabanaki website:

The Wabanaki Confederacy, translated to “People of the Dawn,” was unified in 1606. The confederation was comprised of the principal nations, Abenaki, Micmac, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy and Penobscot. At the time these tribes came from present day Maine and eastern Canada. of the territory that would become Maine in 1820 and eastern Canadian tribes. 

The Wabanaki Confederacy played a key role in supporting the colonials of the American Revolution against King George. The Treaty of Watertown of 1776 formalized the relationship. The Treaty was signed by the Micmac and Passamaquoddy tribes, two of the Wabanaki Confederacy’s members. General George Washington expressed his appreciation for the alliance in a letter.

Despite the tribes’ support of the colonials the favor of support was not returned after the war. During the time of the Wabanaki Confederacy (1606-1862) and beyond the Wabanaki people were radically decimated due to many decades of warfare, but also because of famines and devastating epidemics of infectious disease. 

This information was not in the film, only the atrocities were. But consider this passage from a book review of Andrea Smalley of Snowshoe Country: An Environmental and Cultural History of Winter in the Early American Northeast by Thomas Wickman (American Historical Review April 2020):

In the First Anglo-Wabanaki War of 1675-1678…the English carried out a preemptive early winter massacre against the Narragansetts, signaling a frightening departure from their previous military tactics. The initial success of [the] colonists’ wintertime attack, however was answered in resounding fashion in both the First and Second Anglo-Wabanaki Wars. Indians employed a brutal attritional winter strategy against the colonists, taking captives, killing livestock, and burning buildings…. Wabanaki independence and autonomy remained generally unscathed throughout the seventeenth century, in large part due to their continued wintertime mobility.

Eventually, the colonists learned the ways of the snowshoe that provided the Wabanaki an edge. They then turned the weapon against the Wabanaki. “English settlers erased from memory the decades-long context for winter power, along with the Native Americans who had once skillfully wielded it.”

It would seem between the snowshoe and the baseball glove/bat, it should be possible to create a better logo in the event one wanted that draws from local history.

According to an article in my local newspaper in New York on October, 12, 2022, most schools in Maine fall short on teaching Wabanaki history. The study by the Maine Department of Education reported that the decades-old law requiring such teaching in the ten school districts was not being fulfilled. The Main Indian Tribal State Commission joined in the report.

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?

In the Q&A following the screening of the film, I asked about education. I was told that the curriculum is under development. The article from October 2022 gave the same answer I heard in February 2023. What happens when it finally is developed remains to be seen. Will it be integral to the existing curriculum or stand-alone modules that teachers may or may not teach? Will the Wabanaki be treated as separate from American history or as part of American history? Decisions on what to teach in the classroom are made locally in Maine. The state provides resources on its website. I didn’t see anything about the training of teachers once the curriculum is created.

A bigger question is the reconciliation between competing views. During the Q&A and in the breakout session a few days later, I heard mention of civil discourse and of the need to practice when the community is so divided. Such conversations and dialog were considered essential to healing the divide which existed. Did the film contribute to the “reconciliation” ABB mentioned above asking if it is possible.

In this blog I have referred to the film as a “film” and not a “documentary.’ That choice was deliberate. I characterize it as a sermon. My guess based on my limited contact with the audience is that the film was preaching to the choir. It was not an attempt to reach across the aisle or to engage people with the opposite point of view. It evinced no attempt at reconciliation. That would require a different film than the one I saw.

City on a Hill to Trumphole Country: A Day in the Life of America’s Worst President Ever (July 10, 2020)

July 13, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Do Trumpicans Want to Survive? (Courtesy Simply Psychology)

One day there will be a story told of how the United States degenerated from a City on a Hill in the 1980s to the Trumphole country it has become today. It is a sad story of decline where the resolution is not yet known and the restoration has not yet begun. Whether or not the downward spiral of the United States will be halted or when we will begin to dig ourselves of the very deep hole that America’s worst President ever has dug remains to be seen.

It wasn’t that long ago when things were different. In the 1980s, President Reagan ran as a City on Hill President. He confronted the leader of the Evil Empire with the famous call in Berlin to “tear down that wall.” A short time later, both the wall and the Soviet Union collapsed.

By contrast, only a few decades later, Putin’s Pence is complicit in the Russian scheme that offered bounties to the Taliban for killing American soldiers. What once would have been unthinkable and an impeachable offense scarcely makes the front page given all the other actions or lack of actions by Swampbuilder. In addition, he is far from welcome in Germany today, a country he treats more as an enemy than he does Russia.

No one day can be definitively defined as the bottom of the barrel in this administration. There is always something new to startle us – see the Puerto Rico sale? Maybe China will purchase Puerto Rico after buying Iran in another coup for the American deal-maker.  In this blog, let’s examine just a slice of the decline by focusing on one day. It is an approach that can be used for any number of days. I choose to use the morning paper (NYT) of July 10, 2020, as an starting point to illustrate how much of a Trumphole country we have become.

The frontpage above the fold headline was deceptive: “President Is Not ‘Above the Law,’ Justices Decide.” Why should such a headline even be necessary? No one in their right mind would say that the President is above the law. My purpose in mentioning it is not to discuss the absurd claim made by the lawyers who should be disbarred that was shot down by the Court. Rather it is to note that by the time I sat down that evening to read the paper, the legal world had been turned upside down with the commutation of the sentence of renowned political operative and trickster Roger Stone.

The incongruity of trying to read the paper with that headline while listening to the talk shows was overwhelming. On the one hand, we were to congratulate ourselves for being a country of the rule of law despite the authoritarian proclivities of our leader; on the other hand, here was proof positive that, with the strong encouragement of key political advisor Sean Hannity, we really were a Trumphole country.

Unfortunately, going through the newspaper page by page painted a bleak picture.

CORONAVIRUS   

The first news pages (1, 4-10, 14) covered the coronavirus at home and abroad. This has become typical for the reporting format. At this point, the wartime President is in complete retreat. All he can do now is repeatedly claim victory, call for a miracle, and engage in happy talk about nobody in the world is doing better than he did. [It turns out he is capable of taking vigorous action: disparage Fauci! That will put the coronavirus in its place; for a preview of this attack see The Twilight Zone and the Coronavirus April 8, 2020.]

Back on May 21, 2020, I wrote a blog Friday Night Lights: Risking Lives for the Dow. It was written just after we celebrated V-Zero Day over the coronavirus per the White House Council of Economic Advisers. It was written just before we would be looking back at the crisis per the Vice President of the United States. I raised the issue of Friday Night Lights football as a canary in the mine prelude to the return to school debate. Come August, it would be time to start practicing. Even before classroom schooling was scheduled to begin in September, there would be this moment of truth. Schools would decide yea or nay on authorizing football practice. Football is an essential component of the social fabric of many communities especially in Texas where the book, movie, and TV series were set.

What has happened since then? Even though at the federal level, the fight against the coronavirus has ceased, at the state level it has not. Trumpican governors for the most part have been forced to abandon the happy talk for the real world. The situation is dire in many states. Not only were we late to the war, we fought it badly. At this point we have the national record for the number of cases daily. Florida exceeds New York at its worst. Florida each day surpasses many countries to date in total! Medical facilities are being maxed out. Medical personnel are being stretched to their breaking point and sometimes beyond. It’s as if April-June never occurred. What do we have to show for the effort then outside New York and some other states?

So on Thursday, the NBC headline was:

Friday night lights could go out in Texas as coronavirus threatens high school football

The superintendent of Dallas schools, Michael Hinojosa, says he doubts there will be gridiron action this fall.

The Dallas Superintendent channeled his inner Fauci in responding to questions about the potential delay. SHOW ME THE DATA! His decision would be based on the facts on the ground, not out-of-touch baby talk from our clueless President.

The decision goes beyond football. The vow that schools will open is backed by nothing. Then there are issues:

1. will parents obey the command of the wartime commander to risk their kids especially as the number of cases skyrockets? – STOP THE TESTING and the problem will be solved!

2. how many more teachers will take early retirement complicating the staffing problem even more?

Yes, parents would love to be able to send their kids back to school but they don’t want to commit suicide in so doing.

BOUNTIES

Headline: “Top General Says He’ll Be ‘Outraged’ if Bounties Are True” (page 13)

Will there be an impeachment in December?

SHARPIEGATE

Headline: “White Pressured NOAA Officials” (page 15)

How much longer will Inspector General Peggy E. Gustafson remain on the job? In addition, tampering with National Weather maps is a civil (criminal?) offense. While it is not an impeachable offense, it still is illegal. There will be a special exhibit in the Unpresidential Library about Sharpiegate.

Unfortunately, the significance of Sharpiegate is worse than that. If someone cannot admit error on a hurricane path, what are the chances of admitting error on coronavirus? If a person rates a 10 and wouldn’t change anything he did, what is his explanation for why there are over 135000 Americans dead now? Why did Europe quarantine us? There’s really nothing that could have been done differently? Ask him.

RUSSIA COLLUSION

Headline: “Judge Asks Full Court to Hear Flynn Case” (page 17)

Does anyone think Flynn spend any time in jail? There will be a special exhibit in the Unpresidential Library about Michael Flynn.

MORE RUSSIAN COLLUSION

Headline: “Ousted U.S. Attorney Recounts Tense meeting with Barr at Luxury Hotel” (page 20). There will be an entire room in the Unpresidential Library about the Russian Collusion.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN WAS A REPUBLICAN

On Friday, before the commutation, the Very Stable Genius shared with the American people some unbelievable information he had acquired:

“Like people don’t remember, nobody ever heard of it until I came along, nobody remembered it for a long time, or they didn’t use it at least, I use it all the time: Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. You know you say that and people say, ‘I didn’t know that’, but he was Republican, so we’re doing a great job.” 

He seems to repeat this claim frequently. Why he repeats this to his Confederate audiences, I do not know. Maybe he thinks they admire Lincoln along with Lee. Regardless, he is so proud of himself for this knowledge. It’s like acing his cognitive skills test that showed he was not demented. When I wrote about his knowing Lincoln was a Republican three years ago (My Birthday and the Day I Was Born Are the Same Day: Previewing the 2020 Election [Part 1] May 17, 2017), I asked why he thought Lincoln was a Democrat in the first place. My best guess is the Civil Rights March at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. Imagine what Fred Trump must have said about that gathering to his teenager son. His lack of knowledge about Lincoln reinforces the claims of Mary Trump. When you don’t know Lincoln was a Republican, you damn well better hire someone to take your SATs.

The comment also shows a learning disability. He is capable of learning that Lincoln was a Republican. But he is not capable of learning that everyone already knew that. You would think after boasting about his superior knowledge once, he then would have shut up for repeating what seventh graders know [in New York, seventh grade social studies traditionally has ended with the Civil War].

And then to wrap up the day there was the Roger Stone commutation. There will be a special exhibit in the Unpresidential Library about Roger Stone, too.

It looks like we are past the moment of truth for the Trumpican Party. Back on June 8, 2020, I wrote Mitch McConnell: Howard Baker (Time to Go) vs Stay the Course (Go Down with the Ship). I suggested that McConnell had a decision to make as an adult who lived in the real world. I had no expectations that he would be a profile in courage and he hasn’t been. Since then, there was a teacher on Cuomo Prime Time who mentioned Maslow (the hierarchy of needs). She did so to express her concern for teacher safety and security in returning to the classroom. The unmentioned first level is for survival. Apparently no Republicans including McConnell are interested in it except the Never Trumpers.

Friday Night Lights: Risking Lives for the Dow

May 21, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Friday Night Lights versus the Coronavirus (https://www.nccfnl.com/)

We have now celebrated V-Zero Day over the coronavirus per the White House Council of Economic Advisers. In a few days we will be looking back at the crisis per the Vice President of the United States. Next month we will be back to normal per the son in-law of the President of the United States. We have prevailed. There is light at the end of the tunnel per the President of the United States. We’re back!

What does it mean to be back to normal? For Trumpicans, the coronavirus crisis has been an economic crisis and not a medical crisis. People in New York got the virus. People in prisons did. People in nursing homes did. You know…those people did. Real Americans didn’t get the coronavirus.  As a person at a plaza in an Atlanta suburb said:

“When you start seeing where the cases are coming from and the demographics⸺I’m not worried.” (quoted in the Washington Post and by Michelle Goldberg, NYT 5/19/20).

The counter quotation on the same day was by Rebecca Patterson the girlfriend of Ron Wilkins in Texas who endured 37 days on a ventilator and has the medical bills to show it.

“People don’t really understand how serious this is until they know somebody who’s going through it. It’s only a matter of time before everyone in the country knows someone. I don’t know what the solution is but I don’t think hurrying to open is it.” (USA Today, 5/19/20).

If she was a Trumpican, it doesn’t seem like she is anymore.

Friday Night Lights

Sports, like every other segment of society, has been part of the coronavirus crisis. The Olympics have been postponed. Professional basketball and hockey seasons ended. Tennis tournaments and gold matches weren’t held. There was no “Play ball” for baseball. Football is trying to figure out what to do. Colleges are struggling with how to play sports if there are no students on campus or in the stands. But what about high school sports which affects every community in the country?

Friday Night Lights has been a book, a movie, and a TV series. It carved out a niche for itself as a tale of the role of high school football in a Texan community. It almost was an anthropological window into the way of life of a people and with a story to boot. Even people who were not from a Friday Night Light community themselves were drawn into its storylines of small town life with larger than life meaning.

But besides all that other stuff, it also was about football, about high school kids playing football, about high school kids playing football with practices in August which is only a few months away. Forget about all the talk about reopening schools in September for a moment and think about reopening football practice in a little over two months. Kids practice wearing helmets not masks; they practice near each other with no social distancing; and they sweat a lot especially in the hot and humid south.

And then there are the games. In a Friday Nights Light community, the whole town turns out for the games. It is not like high school in urban communities especially ones with professional sports. It’s tough enough to get coverage of college games yet along high school games there. Friday Night Lights and College Town football are different worlds from City Professional sports. Are you going to deprive these communities of the events that are essential to the social fabric of a community?

The game is more than a game. The whole community is involved. Politicians, families, local businesses, churches…you name it, it is part of the experience. So are the after game parties. So are the caravans to the away games. So is sitting in the stands. Real men don’t wear masks. Real Americans don’t get coronavirus. Who’s going to tell people in the stands to wear masks? Who’s going to tell them to sit apart? Who’s going to enforce it? Friday Night Light life poses an immense challenge if the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, the son in-law of the President of the United States, and the White House Council of Economic Advisers are wrong and we have not prevailed, are not looking back, and there still is no light at the end of tunnel.

Church       

Friday Night Lights are not the only places where people gather on a weekly basis. There also is Sunday morning church. That debate isn’t waiting for August, it’s happening now. Weekly services are part of the routine of life for millions of Americans. For others who attend church for marriages, funerals, and the big holidays, the world of people who religiously attend weekly is as remote as Friday Night Lights football communities are. Simply being there in a religious building on a regular basis is part of the way millions bring order to chaos, strengthen themselves for the days to come, and find comfort. Are you going to deprive people of what is essential to their way of life?

We know that people gathered together indoors for an extensive period of time provide a ripe venue for the spread of the coronavirus. Outbreaks have occurred when simply one person has attended such family and religious events. People may not be in churches for as long as they are in a nursing home, a prison, a meat plant, or a cruise ship, but at this point, no one knows how much time it takes to spread the virus. It’s one thing for people to be willing to take the risk with their own lives; it is quite another for them to risk the lives of others. That’s the equivalent of not taking a vaccine.

Political Rallies

Our president feeds on the adulation of people who have accepted him as their Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name. How long can he go without being fed? How long can they go without praising his name, laughing at his insults, and reciting the approved chants? He needs his rallies.

These rallies are indoors and for long periods of time.

No one who wears a mask will be allowed inside. Only Fox will be able to cover the events, the mainstream media won’t be able to.

Only Trumpicans will be present. They are immune to the coronavirus and the crisis is over.

Is there any doubt that Trumpicans will flock by the thousands to rally on behalf of their Lord and Savior once they are finally able to? After all, what could possibly happen to them?

Trumpican Presidential Convention

The single longest and largest concentration of Trumpicans will occur this August at the Trumpican coronation. Nobody will be allowed to wear a mask and there will be armed freedom fighters stationed at the entrances to ensure that no weak and wimpy people are allowed in. There will be no social distancing either. For days, Trumpicans by the thousands will rally indoors on behalf of their leader. And then they will walk the streets of the city in search of food and alcohol where they can continue the celebration. After all, what could possibly happen to them? We have prevailed, we are looking back, and we have reached the light at the end of tunnel.

The reopening of the country will pose many problems. First is the lack of reliable information from our national government. Second is the lack of reliable information from our state governments. Third is the belief in one’s invulnerability which doesn’t end when you stop being a teenager. Fourth is the fact that we are social animals who need to be with other people and touch them physically. Fifth is the origin of this country with the “Don’t Tread on Me” ethos that complicates the challenge of getting people to obey the government or common sense. And finally, of course, there is our impulsive immature child president who lives in an imaginary world where he creates his truth simply by speaking it and helped cause this crisis to begin with. All these factors do not bode well for the reopening.

Election Results: Amazon versus Hallmark

November 27, 2018
by Peter Feinman

Amazon decided to locate its new headquarters in Long Island City, Queens, New York, and Alexandria, Virginia. These two locations possess the characteristics Amazon considers desirable.  They have highly educated and mobile workforces. They are located at both national and international transportation hubs. They have significant other business sectors so Amazon will not be the 600 pound gorilla that everyone turns towards to solve local problems. They have an excitement about them: people want to move there. The bottom line is that the midsize cities of mid-America simply do not have the base to support the Amazon behemoth. The other major cities simply do not have the resources or the proximity to the politicians and regulators Amazon needs to buy and sell.

As it turns out, Amazon probably would have chosen these two locations even if there had been no government prostitution. Other communities made more lucrative offers but they could not match the actual requirements for a successful match. For all we know, Amazon may well have been leaning towards these two winning locations even before the search began even if they it never consciously acknowledged it to itself yet alone to the public. In the meantime, Amazon gathered a great deal of information about a multitude of sites throughout the country that will be useful.

One cannot help but notice that the desirable characteristics for Amazon coincide with the burgeoning demographic areas of the Democratic Party. By contrast Republican areas were not even in the running.

Politically, Amazon’s choice in New York will not make much difference. New York already is a democratic state. Republicans have no chance of winning any statewide election. At the state level success for a Republican is obtaining 40% of the vote. Its last hold in power, the State Senate, witnessed an eight seat drop this past election. Instead of vying for majority power it has had for roughly 75 years with some breaks, Republicans now are an also-ran with little if any power to do anything if the Democrats are united. Even without Amazon, the 2020 census is likely to accelerate this trend as the one-party city itself and the Democratic suburb offshoots gain in power. In the reapportioning, the Republicans are likely to lose even more of what little they have left at the federal and state level.

The situation is a little different in Virginia. Republicans still have no chance of winning a statewide election there but the margins are not as stark as in New York. Part of the difference is due to one-party Washington, D.C. not being in the state of Virginia the way one-party New York City is in New York. As the Washington suburbs served by the Metro continue to expand especially with Amazon, the state will become more and more Democratic. It will not take a coin toss anymore to determine who is in power in the legislature. Republicans in Virginia will be restricted to the rural non-growth areas. The biggest difference from New York is where upstate New Yorkers retire to the South, rural Virginians are already there.  Amazon is quite willing to sell to these people but it would not want to locate there.

Hallmark’s audience is quite different from Amazon’s. The Hallmark movie universe tends to be the rural one with mainly white Christians, probably Protestants. If the city is involved, such as New York, it is the place the hero/heroine leaves. They either return home to be reconnected with their loved ones and to save the family home/store/factory. They tend to be in their thirties so they may have known some success in the big city but it comes with a price to their soul and happiness. They regain their soul when they return to the place where everyone says “Merry Christmas” and the community lighting of the Christmas tree is a big deal…unlike say in New York City where Rockefeller Center is devoid of all signs of Christmas and no families are present!

If they are not from the rural paradise and are the mean person sent there to shut it down or buy the store/factory/inn, then they soon succumb to its charms for its money they have and peace they lack. Hallmark could tell big city-based Christmas stories but they are the exception not the rule despite their being where the American people live.

And if there is not a rural American paradise to which to return, then there is always a small kingdom in Europe that no one has ever heard of desperate for an American princess. Considering the real stories of not only Grace Kelly but Meghan Markle, it turns out that fairy tales can come true.

Still the Hallmark world has an attraction to the Amazon world but only a part-time basis. People in the city buy second homes but rarely in another city. Someone in New York does not buy a second home in the Boston or Philadelphia area. They may visit a child in college in those cities but for a second home for weekends, summer, and maybe retirement, they often chose the Hallmark world. Excluding the glitzy Hamptons, many New Yorkers choose to go north to the Hudson Valley, the Catkskills, the Berkshires, and beyond. They want land, they want space, they want peace and quiet as long as they can go to Starbucks and get the delicacies and entertainment they want. These people do not want to live in Mayberry, Bedford Falls, or Cicely, Alaska. It’s nice to leave the rat race and visit Brigadoon every now and then. They need the Field of Dreams but only for a moment.

Did you ever notice how popular and important Friday Night Lights was for people who did not live in a Friday Night Lights community? A Friday Nights Light community is a Hallmark community with more realism. It does have conflicts. It does have tensions. It does have rivalries with similar neighboring communities. But unlike the Hallmark communities, the Friday Night Lights communities gather together every Friday and not just once a year. In these communities, the people have their community songs, their community flags and banners, their community traditions, and a community spirit that is passed on from generation to generation. If you buy a second home in such a community you will be an outsider even if your city money enables you to throw your weight around. This separateness especially will be true if you have no kids attending the local schools.

In this regard, a Friday Nights Light community is like a Jane Jacobs city block or street. The social fabric is strong. People have a sense of place, a sense of belonging, a sense of community. These are not the characteristics of an Amazon community. The people who move to the big cities in other states have limited connection to the history of that state, that city, that community. Here in New York we are celebrating the bicentennial of the building of the Erie Canal. That project put New York on the national map on its way to becoming the world capital. That project launched a can do period in American history that lasted until we placed a man on the moon. Yet today the Erie Canal has no meaning to the people of the city. It remains an underutilized asset of American history in upstate New York of little interest to people in downstate New York. They would sooner visit the canals of Europe than those of New York.

The fate of the Erie Canal story highlights the shortcomings of the piecemeal approach. America has a big story to tell. What the two political parties have in common is that neither is trying to tell it. No candidate proposes a vision for We the People of the 21st century and the less said about our shallow, superficial, simple-minded President the better. Clearly there is a need for such a vision. Clearly there is a need for such a storyteller. Clearly there is a need to connect America’s citizens to the story of their country. In 1976, my father temporarily relocated to Washington, D.C., and bunked with Congressmen to reduce living expenses when he worked on the Bicentennial. In July 2016, the United States Semiquincentennial Commission was established in preparation for the 250th anniversary of the United States. It will occur on July 4, 2026, the bicentennials of the deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams on July 4. Will we be a united country then or will the experiment have run its course?