Solitary Space Confinement

Most science fiction subgenres have explored the concept of being stranded in space. A prominent example is Andy Weir's novel, The Martian, which exemplifies the 'stranded' narrative style. This scenario parallels the experience of being shipwrecked on a small island in the vast Pacific Ocean. The themes of isolation, fear, limited physical space, and scarcity of food and clean water can profoundly affect individuals, potentially leading even the most hardened criminals to reform. Until recently, this particular notion was largely overlooked, but it may represent a significant aspect of our future, especially considering that we currently have a duo stranded in space—not that they are criminals—though it might feel a bit like prison to them.

Cue the theme music for the 1960s sci-fi adventure-themed Swiss Family Robinson TV show, “Lost In Space”. Except now we can call it “Trapped in Space”. Instead of the hokey albeit sinister Dr. Smith causing problems for the shipwrecked spacefarers, insert the CEO and board of Boeing, whose hair-brained and super expensive attempt to get in on the tech billionaire space race lodged astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore in orbit with no immediate way to get home.

Say what you want about the prospect of commercial rocket racing—and here I will say that I’m not a fan, especially because I don’t trust billionaires with phallic-shaped ships and overt cases of rocket envy, to have the best interest at heart for anyone or anything except their bottom lines. And yet, these companies have had some stunning successes. Like a glimpse from a Ray Bradbury story made real, I recently watched two rockets land successfully using retro boosters.

Even so, commercial spaceflight feels dangerous and, after this summer, I hope everyone will think twice about going anywhere near a tech-billionaire’s rocket, no matter how cool it undoubtedly looks. Their programs do not seem to have the scientific rigor of a government organization like NASA or the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to back up their launches and trials.

For several months—most of the summer, in fact—tension built as media speculation put the two space sojourners in a sentence with a question mark at the end of it. Despite making it to the ISS, Boeing had no means to return them to Earth when their Starliner platform failed as a safe way to get them home. Now, it looks as if EV tycoon-turned Bond villain, Elon Musk will have the opportunity to rescue the astronauts in February of 2025 using one of his SpaceX rockets.

The entire catastrophe began when NASA awarded two billion-dollar contracts to tech companies to carry their astronauts to the ISS. Boeing Starliner received about 4.2 billion for their transit rockets, whereas Musk's SpaceX only got 2.6 billion. While that was probably quite a slap to Elon’s pride, he has now been tapped to be the hero, which will suit him.

NASA astronauts undergo rigorous training and are usually picked from a group of extremely tough-minded, smart and physically strong individuals. Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore are, if nothing else, well-prepared for this horrible situation. Both have done long-duration space missions previously and were aware that their current contingency was one of many possible eventualities due to a ship that had been fraught with technical and mechanical issues. In other words, that the Starliner platform failed was not a total surprise. Boeing's rocket platform was beset with problems from the outset. Even unmanned missions fizzled. If it were me, trained NASA astronaut or not, I wouldn’t have gone in the first place.

Although never clinically diagnosed, the thought of a tight space makes me a little giddy. Being pinned in a small area, even aboard the ISS, the prospect of being stuck for another six months might send me over the edge, no matter how much training I had. The circumstances, like the Starliner vessel, remain far from the intended outcomes. The marooned astronauts just have to make this work. While they waited to hear what solutions the frantic Boeing and NASA scientists could jot up on their whiteboards, I'm sure there were some long looks and serious contemplation about whether or not this trip had been a terrible mistake.

Willams and Wilmore are not villains or even criminals, of course, but it is fascinating to think about how effective their situation would be as a means to detain the world's worst evildoers. It might be fitting to think that a genocidal maniac or mad techno-genius could be locked away in a silent bubble far from the support of henchmen and in a situation that is impossible to escape from, except to plummet into orbit and be incinerated in the atmosphere. It does seem like a fitting punishment for the world’s worst bad guys, to me. It might be cruel and unusual, but at least it uses technology to promote planetary safety. I have a list of prospective prisoners handy, in case anyone wants to take on my billion-dollar idea. So long as I get credit and royalties.

Devil's Island, which ran the gamut of human horrors as a prison cannot hold a candle to the idea of the orbital penitentiary our astronauts are currently in. Dostoevsky’s Siberian wastes and Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago only compare in the immediacy of their nightmare systems. A prisoner absorbed into these cruel mechanisms might die of malaria or dysentery or from hard labor or from being tortured to death long before their eyeballs go to jelly due to a prolonged lack of gravitational pull. Just the strain of being away from clocks and Earth time and the dysphoria of not feeling the pull of circadian rhythms would push one’s cheese from their cracker long before their sentence was up. Please send me to Siberia or French Guiyana or a Federal Supermax prison in Oklahoma. I don’t want to rust in space for my crimes.

Eight months in low gravity is a trial on the body far beyond anything the evil minds that thought up solitary confinement concocted. Within three months, muscular atrophy is unavoidable. Longer than that and special exercises are required just so a person can walk when they eventually get back to terra firma. By the time the SpaceX Crew Dragon rocket heads toward the stranded pair, they will have been in orbit for long enough to need walkers and leg braces when they finally land. Once here, their stretched spines will contract in our gravitational pull, which might cause long-term nerve pain in the extremities and squashed discs and sore joints.

Fortunately, the ISS has food aboard and unmanned missions can bring them more necessities. Williams and Wilmore will be able to eat packets of specially designed high-protein food. NASA has been designing nutritional comestibles in zero-gravity containers since John Glenn first slurped a toothpaste tube of roast beef and potatoes as he orbited the planet for a mere three days in his tiny tin can. 

I find the question of whether we ought to put the world's worst criminals into a tiny floating prison in orbit to be quite fascinating until we consider that hundreds of people are wrongly incarcerated each year. This particular “clink” would have to be only for those tried and sentenced as genocidal maniacs or—far worse—those who threaten the peaceful transition of power in a democracy. 

While I am hopeful that Musk can eventually rescue Williams and Wilmore, I am less confident that I love living in a world where companies like Boeing and SpaceX and mad, would-be Bond Villains like Musk are awarded the rights to lead humanity into space. Corporate interests being what they are—and forgiving the humor—it feels scientifically cheap. 

So far, I have been unimpressed with billionaires, generally, and Musk and others have proven to be dangerously supportive of the worst ideologies imaginable. If this is the future of space science, then I would be very relieved if we could unplug the dangerous billionaire evil masterminds from any future cosmic forays.

But, as you read this, the SpaceX rocket Polaris Dawn is set to launch (or was) in late August, except for—you guessed it—setbacks caused by unforeseen helium leaks and other technical failures quite similar to those plaguing Boeing Starliner. Polaris Dawn was going to break the records set by the NASA Apollo missions and bring humanity even farther into the black sea of space than ever before. I hope whichever SpaceX rocket launches to rescue Williams and Wilmore is more prepared than this SpaceX mission. If not, who will rescue the rescuers?

With all the goodwill in the world (and in orbit) my thoughts go out to the pair of astronauts on the ISS for a safe return and the secret wish that, if the world is ever threatened by the worst of us, there’s a hint of how to deal with them in this situation. Just so long as I get the credit for the idea.

The Golden Victory Women

Ten years ago, if you would have asked me how I wanted to spend my retirement, I would have said that I planned to raise sheep and bees. This agrarian pursuit seemed a nice counterpoint to my fluorescent-lit desk job. It would allow me to be outside a lot, an idea which I love. It didn’t factor in reality very much, nor did the difficulty of raising livestock, but retirement plans rarely have their feet entirely on the ground. That’s why they are fun to fantasize about. I knew I wanted bees to figure prominently in that far-off future.

Bees are nature's golden warriors. From the time I was a young person, I have had a love/hate relationship with flying pollination machines. Our neighbor raised bees and we had several cabinets on our property. My stepfather’s boss from IBM had orchards and bees, too. I have been present from the opening of the cabinets, have used a smoker to calm the bees and have witnessed the pasteurization of the honey and though my little kid brain marveled at how brave these adults were since the bees could and often did sting them, something of the magic of apiary pursuits captured my imagination. It has never departed.

The reason that I’ve always been a little apprehensive about bees and buzzing insects (generally), is because one of the cabinets we had on our property was dropped and tipped over and the residents were perpetually on the defensive ever afterward. They had a distinctly warlike buzz and when (it was my job to mow our copious grounds, back then) I rode by on our mower, they would zoom after me in a threatening way. To be clear, I’ve never been stung by a honey bee. I’ve only ever been stung by the evil cousins of those wonderful creatures: the Vespidean monsters we call wasps and hornets. In recent years, I’ve become a little less threatened even by those armed predatory scavengers, too. They serve a purpose but their stings are quite painful and everyone needs to be aware of how volatile they can be.

Honey bees may have won my heart years ago, but not my fearlessness, yet a more recent experience cemented them in the ‘friends’ category of my natural worldview. Just a few years ago, while working on a podcast with work colleagues we interviewed a guest who runs a business that saves honey bee swarms and relocates those that get into trees or houses. We learned a lot from him during our discussion, but what happened after that talk was what helped me lose my fear and distrust of the honey bee.

When he pulled up to the recording studio, he set a small box of recently captured bees on the ground by his truck. They were inside a mesh grating that allowed them to breathe and move freely, but they were keeping with their queen. While we were recording, he let them acclimate to their surroundings outside, which kept their stress down. When we were through recording, we examined the box and as I was standing there, one of the thousands of soldier bees came and landed on my thumb. She wasn’t angry, or even disturbed. She just took a rest and I was the surface that she chose.

Initially, my heart rate was pretty high. Over the years, I have learned to associate bees and wasps with the dreaded pain of a sting, but honey bees are usually quite docile and only sting when they are in imminent danger. This little representative of her transient queendom was perfectly calm with me. It was the least I could do to return the favor. It changed my feelings about the danger of a sting from them, completely and helped allay my irrational fear.

Admittedly, the buzzing awakens the part of the brain that releases cortisol and adrenaline, awakening the fight or flight response. To me, growing up by that dropped cabinet, the discomfort that rises when I hear buzzing is visceral. That kind of fear is hard to get control over. That the buzzing will invariably lead to sharp, painful hypodermic attacks is an association that humans have had since time began. Even so, honey bees don’t want to sting and will often try other ways to threaten an intruder before stinging.

It is common knowledge that honey bees die when they sting. Their stingers are barbed and stay in their intended victim. This, in turn, pulls out their viscera and kills them. Not so the wasp or hornet. Their stingers aren’t barbed, so they can retract and sting again and again. Honey bees have venom in their stingers, but it is not nearly as potent as their waspy cousins. Each sting from a yellowjacket or hornet is like a blow from a roofing hammer heated in a blacksmith’s forge. I still retain a tiny red dot on my hand from my last, albeit accidental interaction with a yellowjacket, and though, luckily, we cannot conjure the memory of pain, it is nevertheless a very powerful reminder that such a little creature can cause a world of agony. A disturbed nest can trigger thousands of warrior wasps all stinging together. It’s a nightmare thought.

Around the same time we recorded the podcast, I was waging a one-man war against three yellowjacket nests on our property. I encountered them while doing my mowing and pruning chores, and in each case, I have been incredibly lucky. One was located right in the middle of our yard and I fortunately noticed them flying around a small hole before I walked into a landmine from hell.

Each nest I have taken out has been a delicate affair. I have heard so many remedies from pouring gasoline into their nest to buying specialized smoke bombs to place in their entrance. Even specially formulated wasp spray takes several dousings to work. Such campaigns take up a lot of time and require a lot of sneaking about in the dawn or dusk twilight when the hellspawn are less fanatical. I have recently learned that Dawn dish soap (or any grease-cleaning soap) mixed thoroughly with water and washed down their lair at night will kill them and flood their nests. The degreaser emulsifiers make it impossible for them to breathe. It is far safer than gasoline for the environment and way less dangerous for birds and other helpful crawlies, too, but also somewhat cruel.

Eventually, I captured victory from the ground hornets, but I am now super wary whenever I am out in the yard. Queens from undisturbed nests like to find wood piles and rotten logs to overwinter and in the late summer, they begin their colony-building work. By late summer, a very unsafe situation is humming along in the yard. It’s a terrible reality for bare legs. A small cloud of raging yellowjackets is a nightmare scenario. They will follow perceived threats for up to a mile, swarming the whole way. They can deliver three or four stings in the time the hand flaps down to squash them and, if you jump in a pool or pond, they will hover above the water and wait for you to run out of breath and attack when you gasp for desperately needed oxygen. The horrid little nightmare creatures are also able to survive without their heads and can still fly and sting.

Even so, I have been making a concentrated effort to not associate honey bees and other bee pollinators with their evil cousins. When we planted some lavender bushes in our courtyard and they began to expand and thrive, I noticed that each day we had a lovely cloud of golden sisters plumbing the fragrant flowers for nectar. That small cloud of hardworking friends came from a hive—probably someone’s urban cabinet—which helps to pollinate our flowers and veggies and provides a wealth of honey to whoever oversees that small society. It still made me nervous to go too close. The buzzing awakens a deep fear.

After we chatted with the bee man, though, and my visit with that one brave warrior, I realized that my trepidation was undue. They were not going to hurt me, nor I them and, if there was danger, the bee would communicate their intent well before they got to stinging. Bees can change their frequency of vibration. An angry hive broadcasts a tone that conveys their aggravation. It sounds sharp, upset, disgruntled. Likewise, they have a hum that represents the contented music of a hive that is placid, safe and productive.

Bees have had a symbiotic relationship with humans from time immemorial. There is historical evidence that suggests that we have had a relationship with bees for upwards of 10,000 years, but probably longer. References to honey are rife in ancient texts and myths. As recent as 5,500 years ago, humans were sealing honey in jars. In 2003 archeologists discovered graves in Georgia (the country, not the state) containing evidence of beekeeping and honey storage. Burying honey in this way suggests its value to those people and its importance as food in the afterlife, too.

The ancient Anglo-Saxon residents of England understood that bees were emotional and capable of being reasoned with (in their way) and developed a charm for calming upset hives. Translated, the charm goes like this:

Settle down, victory-women, sink to earth

Never be wild and fly to the woods.

Be as mindful of my welfare

As is each one of border and of home.

The Old English term ‘sigewif’ in the poem conjures a tiny armored shieldmaiden, and that, to me, is far more precise a description than I could manage. The charm is earth magic, common to that period (9th Century), and represented an understanding that an upset hive could swarm and go to the nearby woods and take with it its honey. Hives may swarm if the queen escapes or if a second queen is born and tensions build between their offspring, so the Anglo-Saxons knew how dicy it could be to keep the little warriors happy.

Honey is still valued today, mainly as a food staple. I enjoy some in a cup of hot peppermint tea every night before bed. We use it to add sweetness to desserts or morning oats. It is an incredibly versatile substance that rarely goes bad. Honey can be used in wound treatment for burns and other skin-damage and diabetic ulcers. Honey is naturally antibacterial. A spoonful of honey can aid in suppressing a bad cough or soothing a sore throat. Regular intake of honey is good at keeping important numbers in critical green zones. A few spoonfuls of honey can also help with an upset stomach or recurring bowel issues. Regularly eating honey might also help prevent depression, memory loss and neurological disease. Honey can balance the body’s delicate glycemic index and is a good dietary sweetener for people with diabetes and heart conditions, whether genetic or chronic (which is why I drink a little every night.) The ancients understood these benefits, too, which is how we know about them now.

The elder folk of Europe understood that fermented honey made a quaffable beverage with high alcohol content. The Norse god, Odin, understanding that the Mead of Poetry would give him great magical power, including the ability to know all things at all times (I mean who doesn't want that power), cut out his eye for a sip. Celtic warriors drank mead from a cow horn, which they believed gave them bravery and imperviousness in battle (it certainly removed inhibitions). The Greeks believed that the gods drank mead and acquired from it their immortality and divine power.

Meaderies have become popular again, in modern times. Mead can be mixed with fruit or brewed (fermented) from honey from bees that frequent orange, clover or lavender blossoms, which adds distinctive zest to the drink. I no longer drink any alcoholic beverages, so, no mead for me, but it is important to note that, without bees to pollinate, wheat and grapes would be in short supply and so, they once again prove to be an invaluable resource.

Unfortunately, honeybees have endured several serious threats in recent years. Insecticides concocted to protect crops from damaging pests also kill honey bees, causing a considerable detriment to bee populations. This is just one danger. Many stressors prevent bees from being secure in our world. These ecological problems have contributed to a 10% drop in bee populations every decade since the 1980s. Genetic and viral problems also exist, though scientists are working to breed sturdier bees that may be immune to such challenges.

Organizations devoted to protecting bees (and pollinators in general) are working hard to educate humans and find solutions to help our bee friends. Honey bees aren’t the only warriors working to keep food secure for humans, either. Lots of other bee-like creatures are avid pollinators and need our assistance. Not all pollinators are social. Those dreaded heavy bomber carpenter bees that drill perfect 1/2-inch holes in my deck and swoop and buzz at passersby are also important helpers in the war of pollination. Bumblebees (different, but no less important) also do a lot of heavy lifting in pollination. 

Even our vespid pals are good helpers. Wasps are scavengers and don’t produce honey (at least nothing anyone wants to eat) but they do kill pests. Adult wasps and hornets are vegetarian, but they kill and dismember bugs that eat your tomatoes and cucumbers and bring the parts back to feed to their rabidly carnivorous larvae. Although irritable, especially as food becomes scarce in the Fall (which is why yellowjackets congregate around trash cans and sip the beer and soda left by humans) these heavy-hitting, sting-happy monsters do have a place in the web of nature and are helpful (so long as we leave them alone).

So, when I retire, or maybe sooner, I will get the necessary licensure and raise bees. The sheep may be a foregone conclusion. We may have chickens and a goat or two, but several hives of happy, contented, placid bees. I may even plant some more lavender bushes, just for my little golden sisters. I’m so grateful for the bees. I’m looking forward to becoming more aware of my responsibility to the bees. I’m working on my irrational fear, but it helps to know that, without the golden victory-women, we most assuredly couldn’t survive.

Inanimate Magic

A significant part of anyone's life story revolves around a place or object that holds deep, cherished memories. This could be an old homestead, a tree, a table, a bookshelf, or items like a grandmother's rolling pin, a grandfather's toolbox, or a mother's sewing kit. Whether practical, like a door or chair, or specialized, like a well-worn tool, these objects absorb the essence of our experiences and tactile connections. As time passes, they become touchstones for memories, evoking emotions tied to moments or to people who are no longer with us. Each inanimate object, large or small, carries the weight of our combined stories, flooding us with emotion whenever we use, touch, or encounter it. Inevitably, we lose track or move on from some of these objects and places. This is as much a part of our story as the items themselves.

I have experienced this with many different places and objects by this point in my life. Each of my respective grandmothers’ houses, where once my childhood held a main stage, has now become someone else's place of memory. Visiting those houses now would be to discover that they have not been frozen in time as they are in my mind and heart. The new owners might be surprised to find out how intimately I know their spaces. I spent so much time playing on the kitchen floors, being sung to, fed, comforted, loved and learning how to cook and bake. To those families, it wouldn't feel like anything special, any more than their stories might be of significance to me. For me, they represent a formative part of my identity and it is impossible to understate how much they mean to me still.

Perhaps because of my unsettled upbringing or maybe just because I have a sensitivity to such things, I am very aware of the burden of memory, especially of objects that slowly and powerfully become part of my story as it is woven into the skein of the people I know and love.

These objects aren’t just valuable in themselves, but they have greater emotional weight and significance of memory. I can almost feel the aura of remembrance with certain objects.

What brought this to mind recently serves as a good example of what I’m trying to convey. When we first moved to our current residence, we purchased—among many other things—a gas range for our kitchen. For fifteen years (and only one major repair, and one kitchen renovation) that stove stood stolidly by and baked countless meals, holiday feasts, thousands upon thousands of homemade pizzas and batches of Micki’s amazing biscuits, loaves of bread, challah, soft pretzels, battalions of cookies, casseroles, meatloafs, lasagnas, baked zitis, garlic breads, cornbreads, cakes, brownies and loads of other tasty treats. We used it hard and it served us well.

Fifteen years isn't a very long time in appliance world, at least it didn't used to be. For our stove, it lasted us as long as we could hope. It had been on its last legs and we understood that the time had come to replace it. We both researched (separately) what we’d want and arrived at the same stove in our investigations and so I went to purchase our new one. 

In the logistical nightmare of lining up delivery with the gas company and the electricians, I was too busy (and overwhelmed) to think about how significant the old appliance had been to us. Once it was disconnected from the gas and we awaited the men to come pick it up; our old stove began to radiate intense memories that I felt distinctly.

Each Friday for years, we gathered in the kitchen to make homemade pizza (a tradition that Micki's parents started, that she carried on as a single mother and that we keep up to this day). Each of those meals, from preparation to clean up, had that stove figured prominently at the center of the process, and that was just one day of the week.

Ritual is very important in the human family unit, especially ours. Every time we cook or eat or gather together within the sanctuary of this home, around a table or counter in the kitchen, in the dining room or the den, we participate in a timeless liturgy of powerful natural magic. Objects become sacred with use, tactile contact and the outflow of memories from us, like an altar in an ancient propitiation of the elder gods. We shed some of our life into the objects as we use them. The act of creation, such as baking or frying up scrambled eggs is quotidian—utilitarian, and yet, when performed over and over, it builds up a charge of the magic that binds life and memory to the family and adds savor to our stories.

On the day that the men were scheduled to come to take our stove, I had a moment of real nostalgia where the significance of this inanimate appliance rushed over me in a flood. Like all such tools, we take them for granted. Yet, at that moment, I could see, as if standing in a river of flowing emotions, each meal, each loaf of bread, each golden pizza and smell the rich aromas of all the meals we'd ever produced woven together to tell part of the story of our family's combined and knotted life. Our children grew into adulthood within the presence of that stove. They cooked with it. It fed friends and far-flung family and became the unsung power at the heart of our culinary art.

My heart swelled with this gush of memories and I hurt a little to think that this particular appliance would be going away. Change of any kind is disruptive to someone like me, mainly because I spent so much time as a child wavering between the whims of two sets of parents. There wasn't much stability, and later, when my mother fell ill, and I was left to my own defenses, the house I lived in became a castle in which each stone and every floorboard mattered as a place of security and emotional safety. When my grieving stepfather forced us to leave after our mother’s death, it devastated me and that exile left lasting scars. The items that we couldn't put into a pickup truck were destroyed; objects that had been slowly gathering the memory of our mother and our family's story to that point.

This is why inanimate objects mean so much to me. I realize, too, that there is the deepest sense of the religious impulse involved in this way of seeing things. Only a person familiar with this impulse would liken an appliance to an altar. As much as I’ve attempted to clear myself of the cobwebs of faith, it might seem hypocritical to call an oven a source of ritual and family sanctity.

Man-made religions try to exploit the religious impulse and manipulate a natural inborn response to the power of human experience to gain control and solidify power through fear and repression and coercion. Natural religions, on the other hand, cement the concept that, within the natural order, humans have a specific place and a purpose in the web of nature. To me, that purpose is at least to try to see ourselves as a part of something larger and to seek to better understand our position relative to everything around us. If we can see this as a natural impulse, then it becomes part of something bigger than us that we can attempt to connect with.

Family, for me, is that higher power, and the daily rituals that facilitate the magic and traditions like meals and holidays, stories and memories, are the bindings that hold us together, not just as a family, but keep us safe within the larger mechanism of the natural order. Because we are imbued with this sacred connection to nature, we share that power with the objects we use and the places we dwell. It flows through us into our possessions, and that, in turn, reinforces our stories.

So, I bade our former stove goodbye as I might an old friend that I would never see again. And as I watched it leave our house after many years of devoted service, I admit that I was a little sad. It is the end of an era, and that is always cause for a tear, but I am so joyful about the memories we have made together as a family in our kitchen, and I hope that they will further bind us together as we make even more. The end of one thing, in the web of nature, is also always the beginning of another. In that way, too, we don’t end. We just become part of the world in a different way. 

Our new stove is ready to be the source of many memories for our granddaughter and other family members yet to be born or invited into our story. While I won’t rush it, I do look forward to those new tales unfolding and I know that, although my brief sadness is perhaps silly, it is also a testament to just how meaningful the tightly woven skein of our family’s memories, emotions and stories have been to this sentimental man.

A Problem of Bullets and Consequences

 In the weeks since the attempted assassination of former President Trump, new details have emerged, leading to increased mythologizing and speculation about the motives behind the attack. While the true intentions of the would-be assassin may never be fully understood, the incident has ignited a wave of conspiracy theories and, as usual, rabid public discourse. This essay attempts to explore the implications of this shocking event, acknowledging the complexities of the gun violence situation in our country while emphasizing that no one deserves to be targeted in such a violent manner. Ever.

The Escalation of Political Violence from Rhetoric to Reality

In 2015, when Donald Trump announced that he was running for president, no one expected that he would make it to the Oval Office. We were wrong. Throughout his term, he used wild rhetoric to rile up the worst in our society and he did it with indifference to the consequences, as long as it got him support.

A few weeks ago, I got a cold chill in my heart at the news that shots had been fired in my old home state at a Trump political rally. It was the same feeling I had when, on a cold January day early in 2021, I watched a mob of extremist goons hang out a noose for the then-incumbent vice president after beating several policemen and bystanders nearly to death while breaking into the US Capitol. As the news poured in from Pennsylvania, I felt worse and worse. A dark cloud of violence, racism, hate and conspiracy theories has dominated the Trump political movement since he came down the golden escalator to announce his candidacy. 

In Butler, Pennsylvania, it turned out that, once again, a “lone gunman” with an assault rifle took several shots from a nearby roof, one of which may have hit the candidate's ear as he ranted behind the podium. In the meantime, we at least know that the gunman's plot failed. Even so, this is a storyline we are all too familiar with in this country. Time after time, lone gunmen have tried to make their violent solutions to the politics of their day or to get their faces on TV for a few moments. The most recent one was essentially no different, except that, fortunately for Donald Trump, his attempt failed. Others at the rally weren't as lucky. Very little has been said by Trump about them.

The Legacy of Political Violence from Kennedy to Reagan to Trump

The attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley Jr. in 1981 occurred when I was a child, leaving an impression primarily through my parents' intense reactions. Their generation had witnessed the traumatic assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, and in the intervening years, they had endured the losses of Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X, and other prominent figures to political violence. Hinckley's attack on Reagan, even two decades after JFK's death, resonated deeply with those who had lived through this turbulent era of American history.

It was perhaps naive to believe we had moved into more sophisticated times, especially considering the 2011 shooting of Gabby Giffords, who fortunately survived. We now find ourselves in an era dominated by gun violence, not like in the Wild West, but under the influence of companies profiting from the sale of military-grade weapons to virtually anyone. Since Congress banned a CDC study on gun violence in 1996, incidents of gun-related violence have more than doubled—a troubling correlation. As states like North Carolina seek to relax gun ownership requirements, it raises the critical question: how many more lives must be lost before the focus shifts from profits to public safety?

As I write this Congress is grilling Secret Service and FBI leadership to find out more about how this latest iteration of the “lone gunman” was allowed to get as close as they did before being killed themselves. It is impossible to guess what led this person to do something so awful. We might speculate and there are some interesting points to consider, but none are satisfying enough to solve the problems associated with an attempted assassination. The most poignant question is how was this 20-year-old person able to get a firearm of this kind and plan things so successfully to have been able to endanger a presidential candidate.

While numerous theories circulate online, they are the intellectual equivalent of dollar store theories; thin, poorly made, easily dismantled. However, one perspective merits consideration: the potential link between Trump's policies and the assassination attempt. During his presidency, Trump's close alignment with the NRA and gun lobbies, coupled with his failure to enact stricter gun control measures following mass shootings, may have inadvertently facilitated the very attack he faced. The assailant's weapon was obtained legally, underscoring a critical point: easy access to firearms often leads to increased violence.

This situation highlights a broader issue as well: violent crime is frequently a direct result of readily available firearms. While this is a simplification of a complex problem, it addresses a fundamental question in the debate. In a sense, Trump's promotion of policies favoring unrestricted gun access and his use of inflammatory rhetoric may have contributed to creating a cultural environment that ultimately threatened his own safety. This irony persists regardless of the shooter's political affiliations, exemplifying the chaotic societal conditions that Trump's words and actions (and those of his supporters) have arguably fostered.

The Right's Gun Paradox of Rhetoric, Reality, and Responsibility

Now that a prominent figure on the right has been attacked, I can’t help but wonder if we’ll see right-wing legislators start to quietly reconsider access to assault rifles, despite their years of resistance to such measures. They’ve become quite skilled at saying one thing in public while doing another behind the scenes. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them even dare to suggest that it’s the left that has fostered a culture where gun violence is as common as baseball and apple pie.

These kinds of contradictory talking points are all too familiar in today’s political landscape. I still remember watching a prominent member of Congress fleeing from rioters in the Capitol, only to later endorse the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen. It’s striking how quickly they seem to forget the fear of being preyed upon by the very chaos they’ve helped create.

Over the past decade, far-right pundits and political candidates have consistently pushed a narrative of escalating crime rates and the purported necessity of home defense with assault rifles. This rhetoric, however, stands in stark contrast to their actions. While accepting billions in campaign contributions from firearm lobbies, right-wing lawmakers have consistently failed to address the root causes of gun violence.

The irony deepens when we consider their response to mass shootings. They're often the first to highlight the mental health issues of perpetrators, yet their policy record tells a different story. Many supported measures that have systematically dismantled progressive mental health resources nationwide. This glaring disconnect between words and actions on the right raises serious questions about their true priorities and the impact of their influence on public safety and health policy. It might be funny if it wasn't so tragic. This latest episode punctuates the problem with a bullet.

The conclusion one draws, then, is self-evident: the aftermath of this most recent gun crime is a direct result of the right’s complicity. They just aren't very good at reaping what they have sown, and the only way they face recrimination is by being voted out of office. Those who continue to vote Republican despite what the party has become, have shown they don't have the moral grit to accomplish that needed change. Despite atrocity after horrible atrocity, they continue to back Trump because they “don’t like” the other guy. That problem will soon be at an end, if he is re-elected. This has been foreshadowed in Trump’s latest soundbite in which he confirms that, if people vote for him, they’ll never have to vote again. This is where we stand.

The Conflict Between Your Personal Freedom and My Public Safety

I am not anti-gun; I recognize that firearms are tools with a legitimate—and carefully controlled—place in society. While I may not always understand or approve of how others use their weapons—be it for hunting or self-defense—I believe that responsible gun owners should have the freedom to possess them. However, I regularly encounter individuals in my town carrying guns who perhaps shouldn't. Unfortunately, the system is far from perfect. For some, possessing a firearm is as perilous as handling the president's nuclear football. A visit to any Walmart in my state can be quite revealing in this regard.

Owning and carrying a gun is about responsibility and accountability. Safe handling and legal controls set in place in a society are apt to guarantee safety from general gun violence in most cases. The most common argument for gun control has been parroted over and over. If we criminalize the possession of certain guns, then only criminals will be able to get ahold of them. This is a ‘false dilemma’ fallacy, though, because it pretends that the situation is an ‘either/or’ problem. It is not.

My position is that our home does not need to be defended with a gun and even if it did get breached, my first reaction wouldn't be to have that gun in my hand. Too much can go wrong. Especially if one takes their time to consider all the nightmare possibilities. I’ve never trained for close-quarters combat, my night vision is declining and muzzle flash and bang are disorienting to the user as much as to anyone else in the house.

My friend, a retired judge, once told me that when you fire a gun, you are legally responsible for the bullets or pellets until they stop moving. This is a horrifying thought. The pro-home defense propaganda suggests that the only way to truly protect your family from invaders (ignoring the deeply racist underlying insinuations of such a scenario—it won't be other “good guys with guns” presumably) is by having a semi-automatic firearm to hand when the dreaded moment happens.

My ambivalence about this comes from the many ways in which this scenario can go very wrong indeed. Imagine that, firing just one round from my gun, I accidentally shoot our son or Micki or one of our pets or myself. Imagine if one of my bullets travels through the house, penetrates my neighbor's home, and hits or kills one of them. What if it hits responding law enforcement or EMS or a passing driver? I would be legally responsible for each of these deadly mishaps regardless of whether or not I had discharged my weapon in this most appropriate situation.

This doesn't even take into account that homes with guns in them are statistically far more likely to be the place where a shooting death occurs, whether accidental or during the heat of an intense argument. Having a gun is a big responsibility.

In some situations, one’s home or property may get broken into. There are provisions that homeowners can make to prevent this without resorting to purchasing firearms for the defense of the homestead. These situations are never cut and dry. We might reach some kind of balance on the topic, too, if ever we could unfurl the crooked fingers of the gun lobby from our legislative branch.

The Bloody Sword of Rhetoric, Consequences and Hope in a Divided America

The gun problem in our country won't be solved anytime soon. The consequences of the morbid mishandling of years of research warning us against the dangers of an open-carry society are coming due. It won't be pretty. It hasn't been to this point. It will get worse before it gets better. Like almost everything in our country, we are deeply divided even on topics that ought to be easily solved by a modern, progressive culture. Winston Churchill once famously said that America will always do the right thing, once we have tried everything else. His quip is, as ever, barbed with a painful truth.

My mind keeps going back to Butler. A snippet of Scripture echoes in my head as I watch the former president duck and clutch his head endlessly on news channels and social media. “All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” It may seem heartless to suggest that Trump is responsible for his assassination attempt. I am glad the man didn't die because he doesn't deserve to be killed any more than any other person did that day. However, what I do wish is that he had the self-awareness to understand that his rhetoric probably caused this violence in much the same way that it caused 1/6, the attack on former House Speaker Pelosi's husband, and the brutal violence at Charlottesville, just to mention a few. 

The former guy got quite lucky. It was a lesson others paid for, as usual in his case and he has since attempted to exploit it. Sadly, he has proven time and again to be unchanging in his inability to accept consequences. He continues to seek to escape all culpability while promoting a pathological antipathy to accountability. After all, if he can just get back to the Oval Office, he can declare himself free of his nagging felonies and other pending investigations. Another Trump term would literally represent a get-out-of-jail-free card for him.

Despite his apparent delusions to the contrary, Trump is not immortal. His rebarbative lifestyle, the stress of his debt and felony convictions, his frenetic rally schedule and his poor diet will all come calling sooner or later. I can hope to outlive the man and still wish him a long life in which to face the steep consequences of his decades of reprehensible behavior ranging from sexual assault to stealing top secret documents to causing an insurrection at the Capitol. He’s due for a bit of accountability. There’s no telling what his supporters might do, if he got back into office, hoping to be exonerated for their use of weapons to eliminate their perceived enemies in that case. Had he been martyred, the world outside our doors might already be quite different. We ought to be thankful he’s still with us.

For all this, I take some hope with me each day, as I head out into this dangerous culture. We’ve fixed problems like this before and I believe we will, again. Critics of Trump can and should unequivocally condemn both the attempted assassination and his inflammatory rhetoric without contradiction. This stance against all forms of violence and dangerous speech sets us apart from his supporters, who often engage in deadly hypocritical double standards and lethal casuistry. There is no moral ambiguity here: one can vehemently oppose political violence while simultaneously rejecting the divisive and often reckless language that has characterized Trump's execrable political career. This position demonstrates a commitment to principled civil discourse and democratic values that transcend partisan loyalties. 

As we consider our nation's future, we must face crucial questions with rigorous honesty, engaging in genuine civil discourse rather than inflammatory rhetoric. The easy path leads to upheaval, while the challenging route demands a return to Enlightenment principles. True freedom requires safeguarding everyone's liberties, including protection from gun violence—a universal principle applying to all citizens and public figures. This difficult path is essential for preserving a just society under the rule of law.

To progress, we must seek common ground, balancing individual rights with collective security. By rising above partisan divides and recommitting to reason, equality and justice, we can build a society embodying liberty and justice for all, where the pursuit of happiness isn't overshadowed by the threat of a gunshot.