In Case You Missed it (v46)

It was very busy here last week - let's dive in.

The first post of the week was from my Middle-aged White Lady Perspective, questioning whether a person can have more than one sense of outrage without offending people. In the post, I talked about the death of a young police officer, how people reacted in the moment, and how a friend of mine reacted to it now. 

I honestly share the outrage, expressed by my friend, a policeman's mom, over Corona's senseless death, and of the deaths of all the other officers killed in the line of duty. I hope that her son stays safe, on duty and off, and that other police officers do as well.

I also talked about my continued outrage at how blacks and other people of color are treated, including by police officers, and ended with this. 

I just as honestly wish it was socially acceptable to be equally outraged by both circumstances - because honestly, I often feel like it's not.

And that, to me, is also outrageous, and makes things worse, not better.

That was followed by three posts - that's right, three - covering the president's exclusive interview with Chris Wallace. Of all of the Sunday hosts, he's the only one I could see doing an interview like this - the rest of them, not so much.  Here are snippets from each of them.

• In our Sunday School entry, he talked about changing the names of military bases. 

So, there's a whole thing here. We won two World Wars, two World Wars, beautiful World Wars that were vicious and horrible, and we won them out of Fort Bragg, we won them out of all of these forts and now they want to throw those names away. And no, I'm against that, and you know what, most other people are. And I even - I don't believe in polls because I see the fakest polls I've ever seen, but that poll is a 64 percent thing, which actually surprised me. We won World Wars out of these military bases. No, I'm not going to go changing them, I'm not going to go changing them.

• In the Extra Credit piece, he talked about children learning to hate our country in school. 

I just look at - I look at school. I watch, I read, I look at the stuff. Now they want to change 1492, Columbus discovered America. You know, we grew up, you grew up, we all did, that's what we learned. Now they want to make it the 1619 project. Where did that come from? What does it represent? I don't even know - (Wallace said it was about slavery.) That's what they're saying, but they don't even know. They just want to make a change. Cancel culture - I hate the term, actually, but I use it. 

• And, in what I called the Sunday School Final Chapter, he spoke of the possibility of losing in November.

And you know why I won't lose, because the country, in the end, they're not going to have a man who has - who's shot. He's shot. He's mentally shot. Let him come out of his basement, go around, I'll make four or five speeches a day, I'll be interviewed by you, I'll be interviewed by the worst killers that hate my - my guts. They hate my guts. There's nothing they can ask me that I won't give them a proper answer to. Some people will like it. Some people won't like it... But, look, let - Let Biden sit through an interview like this. He'll be underground crying for mommy. He'll say mommy, mommy, please take me home. 

Yeah, that's the president of the United States right there - literally (not just Joe Biden literally) the jerk at the end of every bar in every dive in every city in every county in every state in the country. #MAGAMA

Wednesday's Wondering included a look at how newspapers are being challenged by their staffs over their opinion pages, with the Wall Street Journal being the latest to face this. And, there was some news from SecState Mike Pompeo, of whom I am definitely not a fan. Among other things, he gave us his very 'right' opinion on the murder of George Floyd, and how that has led to an attack on the very foundation of America.

In recent weeks, justified outrage at the actions of a rogue Minneapolis policeman has given way to outrageous efforts to erase American history by tearing down statues of our nation’s founders.

There was a really outrageous comment from him on our rights, and our founding fathers, and it gave me chills. Which is not really the feeling I expect to have when thinking of our chief diplomat, really.

I followed that up with a post about Mitch McConnell also getting all up in arms about people trampling on our freedoms and our rights. Coming on the heels of the Pompeo comments, I could resist paying attention to Mitch. Among other things, he offered this.

As I said a few weeks back, this goes deeper than just constitutional law. America has always prized the spirit of the First Amendment. We citizens must want to protect an open, civil discourse; a true marketplace of ideas. But lately, the political left has embraced something totally different.

You'll have to read the post to find the particular McConnell comments that prompted me to drag out the Irony Board and remind folks of what the Senate Majority Leader *really* thinks about speech, and who gets to exercise their rights.

My TGIF was a bit of a hot mess, with no common thread, really - although there were a couple of sports references, and some stuff about math.  And I did learn

You can get an MBA for only $12.99 through the Find Something New initiative co-chaired by Ivanka Trump as part of her workforce portfolio.

Yeah, seems like maybe someone is trying to game the first daughter with their training and continuing ed stuff, don't you think?

Salman Rushdie was mentioned in the Irony Board post on Thursday, but not for what he said in a June Washington Post op-ed. Here's a snippet of that message, which is timelier and more urgent, I think. And it was the focus of Saturday's Sidebar.

President Trump is, temperamentally, a tinpot despot of this type. But he finds himself in charge of a country that has historically thought of itself — by no means always correctly — as being on the side of liberty. So far, with the collusion of the Republican Party, he has ruled more or less unchecked. Now an election looms, and he is unpopular, and flails about looking for a winning strategy. And if that means trampling over American freedoms, then so be it.

So, there it is - the full veritable pastiche for last week.

I'll see you later with Sunday School.