Letter 170: to my hero for Black History Month

Fittingly, to close out African-American History and Appreciation Month, I want to introduce you all to my Black hero. No reader has likely heard of him. Nonetheless, this man made me a better, more honorable human being. During my college summers, I worked in a large integrated steel mill, the J.&L. rolling mill in Hazelwood (Pittsburgh).

Through that work, I earned great summer money but frittered it all away on my 'mis-spent' youth. The enduring and inward riches I received from those mills, just prior to the industry collapsing in the eighties, has made that wasteful dissipation utterly forgettable. Though I would not study the Jeffersonian ideal of the ‘natural aristoi’ until my last year at W.&L., after my blessèd time with this gentleman, I instantly recognized him as somehow special.

Charlie Blango was Black and probably never went to college. He did not read Thucydides or Sylvia Plath during his breaks. His vocabulary was likely a fraction of mine. Yet Charlie Blango outclassed me in every way, something I knew even then. How? After all, being a mill hunky was a repetitive, dead-end job in life; part of me bought into that snobbism back then.

To Charlie Blango, however, the prospect of routine work for decades did not matter. What he cared about, passionately, was his personal best-effort toward excellence right here, right now. He led by example, pushing us to be more productive by pushing himself to start off the same hard work we were expected to complete. Each day was new to Charlie Blango, with a unique demand and invitation to build, and to lead by, what I now view as 'republican virtue'.

Working his way up to plant foreman – akin to an Army First Sergeant or Sergeant Major – Charlie Blango was proud of his work, his slow advancement. His innate reserve, perhaps humility, gave him a certain dignity of leadership that simultaneously awed and intimidated me. Would I measure up to the high, if never spoken, standards of this man?

While most other mill-workers respected Charlie Blango in his presence, they often whined about him in his absence. When assigned to Charlie Blango for the day, most of us would groan because we knew that we would have to sweat . . . a lot. Privately, I would not welcome the sweat but would embrace the work. 

Charlie Blango had the smarts, of course, to sense his nominal unpopularity, only to carry on without the slightest notice. A few of us, however, found in Charlie Blango a refreshing integrity, a certain grit, of character that inspired us to reach inward and bring forward the best in each of us who heard his silent call . . . even in the furnace of 150 degrees, chipping away slag (i.e., the refuse peeled off of steel being re-heated) calcified against those walls in the four-foot-high chamber of Hell.

Among others, one painfully beautiful gal working with me, also in the 'summer' labor pool, responded just that way, too. Sylvia Plath and Charlie Blango made that beauty and me fleeting mill buddies. Simply said, she and I each wanted what Charlie Blango had. Hell, after the first week or so, I did not even notice that Charlie Blango was Black; for me, at that age, such a suspension of the ‘obvious’ was a big deal. Racism abates with time and experience.

Let me put the sensation in terms of this analogy. Charlie Blango was like my first sushi dinner after years of surviving on a diet of junk food. That sensation of having eaten all my life only to realize I had been starving all along was an eye-opener and, frankly, a bit unnerving. Best of all, Charlie Blango appreciated my work ethic; occasionally the slightest smile would cross his stoic and noble features.

Such victory tasted sweet. Charlie Blango’s hair was mostly grey and his moustache turning white in the seventies. Forty-plus years later, Charlie Blango has almost certainly departed by now. Nevertheless, I still revere him quietly for showing me that nothing need stop anyone from reaching beyond himself toward virtue in the here-&-now, of seeking natural aristocracy. Aptly said, he was my first mentor outside of the class-room.

Something tells me that were Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, President Lincoln, William Sherman, Joseph Johnston, President Grant, P.G.T. Beauregard, or President Garfield to encounter Charlie Blango on the street, each would tip his hat to the other in recognition of, and out of deference to, a fellow gentleman of honor.

That is what our painful history must teach us: each of us (e.g., me), no matter how desolate inside (i.e., me), can recognize greatness near us –in what we may consider the most unlikely of circumstances – and grow toward it. No, Charlie Blango, will not show up inside of Wikipedia as do the others just mentioned, but he is a reference book inside my head and, more importantly, inside my heart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LETTER 169 to friends and familiares: thoughts on this second impeachment

 

B.L.U.F. (bottom-line, up-front): Trump got away today but that will change. Trump was convicted but not punished.

INTRODUCTION
President Trump managed to skate around a conviction for committing any number of crimes or transgressions in his effort to overturn the election of 2020. The Senate faced a quandary with respect to jurisdiction. Senator McConnell was beyond disingenuous in stating the Democrats had chosen to deliver the Article of Impeachment too late in the game when, in fact, he would not accept delivery until the day before President Biden was formally installed. 

The good news is that a tense, but ultimately, peaceful transfer of power took place on 20jan21. Since people know the ins and outs of the charges and this week’s Senate trial, I would like to air out some thoughts in this letter home without repeating what we all know.

FIRST to SENATORs BURR, CASSIDY, COLLINS, MURKOWSKI, ROMNEY, SASSE, and TOOMEY
We ought to be grateful that seven Republican Senators had the courage to vote for conviction. These men and women are already catching heat from their home states and may be facing stiff primaries from Trump-like opportunists. Yet they opted to place what they viewed as their duty ahead of what they know to be their immediate comfort.

The most heartening vote to convict was that of Senator Richard Burr (R-N.C.). As Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for much of Trump’s noisy tenure, Senator Burr saw first-hand what, if any, dealings Trump may have had with other nations as well as what the man behind the curtain was really up to.

PRÉCIS of the THREE SENATE TRIALs of MY LIFE-TIME
Of the three Senate impeachment trials of my life-time, this one was the hardest for me to support conviction. As a risk management type, I am accustomed to handicapping tough decisions by assigning percentage weights to the choice I select and to the other, or several, that I do not select. 

Though these percentages are entirely subjective, after a while, I settle on numbers with which I am comfortable. Those intuitive weightings give me a sense of how strong my conviction is (pun inevitable). So here are those percentages on the two partisan impeachments during my life-time and the one arguably non-partisan affair.

lmpeachment and Senate trial of President Clinton in 1999. Though the most partisan of the three impeachments, when I was still a nominal Democrat, I would have voted 60% versus 40% to convict at the time. The impeachment and trial were trying to convict President Clinton of a trivial offense as a proxy for far graver but unproveable malfeasance (i.e., like hanging the tax evasion rap on Al Capone).

Since then, with the intervening generation granting me perspective, the level of conviction has gone down to the 51-55% range. In the end, President Clinton did perjure himself and abused the power of his position. Nevertheless, one can understand why others believe that President Clinton should never have faced impeachment.

The first Trump impeachment of 2020. Also a partisan impeachment but for different reasons. The partisanship did not come from the waste of time and resources to nail a President in any way one could, as had been the case with the impeachment / trial of President Clinton. What made the impeachment partisan were two aspects. First, its proximity to the 2020 election calling into question the real motives behind the trial.

Far more importantly, the unwillingness of the Democrats to address the imbalance of power between the executive and legislative branches that made Trump's drumpfing the Constitution possible in the first place. In essence, the trial came across as the Democrats trying to throw Trump out of office on the cheap (i.e., not at the expense of that power imbalance). The Democrats wanted that excess power for themselves to enjoy in the future. Still, I would have voted 65% versus 35% in favor of removal based upon the case made and evidence presented.

The second Trump impeachment of 2021. Aside from some problems of mis-handling evidence, the House Managers won their case, easily. Nevertheless, my vote to convict would have been 50.1% versus 49.9%. That diffidence reflects the question of jurisdiction – the principal juridical argument argued by Team Trump. Three things, however, tipped me into favoring conviction.

1. Trump was impeached while he was still President precisely to avoid the January exception.
2. The Constitution grants sole power to the Senate to try impeachments; without contrary prohibitions explicitly stated within the Constitution, that power implies the ability of the Senate to define jurisdiction.
3. The most important reason, at least for me, remains the President becoming a willing accomplice to a spontaneous conspiracy to assassinate the Speaker of the House and the Vice President.

TEAM TRUMP: assessment
Very effective until Saturday morning, when the Velveteen Babbit (the pandering Van der Veen) acted out like a whiney brat, yelling at, and attempting to coerce, Senators into voting against witnesses. That display merely hardened votes against Trump. To me, at least, that manner betrayed a lack of faith in his own case. So, I am glad that Van der Veen's peevish rampage disabused me of thinking trump had the better case.

Van der Veen’s idle threats of issuing more than a hundred subpoenas to force witnesses to ‘travail’ to Philly for depositions represented more of the same crass brow-beating to which we have become accustomed over the last five years. The only sad part of the hissey-fit extraordinaire was that the Senators should have been laughing at Trump for the last five years as they did at Trump’s counsel on Saturday.

The relentless harping on due process did not make sense to me, at least as I understand what due process is meant to be: one cannot lose his or her liberty, life or property without the due process of law. The Senate trial was not a criminal court empowered to take any of those things from Trump. He would not be going to jail had he been convicted; he would be getting fired, permanently. His life was not in danger.

The only thing he was losing today was the 'property' represented by legal fees paid for his defense. But even that money, arguably, does not comprise Trump’s property, since it has been sitting in a war chest funded with donations (i.e., other people’s money) for his defense. The other two attorneys proved an excellent good cop / bad cop tandem. Mr Kaster was the best of the three due, yes, to the meandering opening presentation. 

Mr Kaster made two important but subtle points, necessitating his longer and nuanced analysis. These points taught us key lessons if our Republic is to endure. First, Mr Kaster tried hard to persuade the Senators -- and us all -- to detach from our immediate feelings toward Trump. Many who mourn the cult of personality surrounding Trump hate him. Yet they overlook their own seduction into a cult of anti-personality as invested in Trump's failure as the cultists of personality remain devoted to his success. 

The whole drama reminds me of August 1974, when President Nixon resigned. I had hated President Nixon as a teen and felt overjoyed to see his destruction. When I watched the disgraced President's departure speech on the television, and gnashed my teethe at it with my passionately righteous hatred of that petty little man, a seed subtly took root that day 46½ years ago. 

That unseen seed bloomed later, with a nudge from President Ford's unwitting and remote mentorship, into the self-awareness that my hatred of Richard Nixon, not the fallen man himself, had diminished me. Only then could I start to view President Nixon in his proper light: as a tragic hero with a tragic flaw. Two things I know for sure; I will . . . 

• . . . never like Richard Nixon but neither shall I hate him.
• . . . not forget what damage Trump tried but failed to do to our republican governance, yet I shall not hate him, either.

That was Mr Kaster's masterfully presented message: if one is to judge rightly, (s)he must place at least a yard and breath between the self and the passion. Mr Kaster's second important message emerged from the first. Almost all democracies across history have collapsed due to the failure of citizens honestly to try placing their Republic's interest ahead of their own, whether it be for personal gain or out of a misguided allegiance to a narrow faction.

Mr Schoen complemented Mr Kaster's strong case in the context of history with a hard-hitting and thoughtful defense in the context of a court-room. Once he picked apart the visual evidence presented by the Democrats, showing key remarks by Trump to be taken out of context, I knew that the President would be convicted but not punished. 

MITCH McCONNELL’s IMPORTANT MESSAGES 
Senator McConnell’s speech following the hearing echoed much of Senator Schumer’s masterful soliloquy, except for his ham-handed maneuver of blaming the Democrats for their delay in delivering to the Senate the impeachment article. Nonetheless, Senator McConnell conveyed significant messages for the Lord of the Lies, as the latter revels in his unique status as a victim at the center of the universe. (Such a unique status is easy to attain in a universe of one.)

1. You, Trump, are now a persona non grata to the G.O.P. Get the Hell out of here and start your latter-day Bull Moose – wait President Roosevelt had integrity and class. Start your Bull Sh*t Party (d / b / a, Patriot Party) and leave us alone. 
2. You may very well face consequences imposed by Congress by having your retirement allowances, pension, health insurance and other privileges, as well as your ability to run for future office legislated away as a persona non grata to the U.S.G.  
3. As a sub-component of privileges stripped away, do not even think about gaining financial support or U.S.G. recognition for your presidential library. Building your own private Taj Mahal will be up to you; and, P.S., it will likely be as ‘tremendously successful’ as your first Taj Mahal. 
4. You were convicted but not removed. The actions carefully documented in this Senate trial will interest key stake-holders in the criminal justice system.

In short, Mr President, your goose is cooked; you are no longer viable for us or valuable to us; you are to be cast away as the awful social offal we well know you to be.