Category Archives: yeah, it’s a rant

needless death on the high trestle trail

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I ride the High Trestle Trail a few times a year. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. The HTT trailhead is about a mile from where I live. The trail itself is 25 miles long, but it’s linked with the approximately 100 miles of dedicated intra-city bike paths, so even if I just ride around town, I’m often on some section of that trail.

Like a lot of Rails-to-Trails bicycle paths, the HTT tends to be long and straight. Once it leaves the city limits, there’s a long stretch that runs through flat, open farmland. We’re talking corn and soybean fields, which means there’s nothing to protect you from the sun and the wind. And the wind can be brutal. The section of the HTT is great for folks who (unlike me) ride road bikes for fitness or exercise; they can put their heads down and fly.

That’s the section of the HTT where I usually saw Corey Petersen. I didn’t know her; I’ve never spoken to her, but I’ve seen her several times. We’ve shared waves and head-nods the way cyclists do. I didn’t know she was a Marine Corps veteran, but it doesn’t surprise me. Anybody who rides a hand-cycle on a trail known for wind is a bad-ass.

Corey Petersen, cyclist, USMC veteran.

You’ll notice I’m speaking in the past tense. Corey Petersen was killed a week ago while cycling on the HTT (please watch the news video). She was hit by a truck while crossing a busy country road. I’ve always hated that particular intersection. It’s a sharp turn, so you have to slow down. Worse, the trail is designed to make you ride parallel to the busy road, so you have to look back over your shoulder for oncoming traffic behind you. Even worse, there’s a low hill on the road, which limits a driver’s visibility just before the trail crossing. And to make it still worse, the speed limit on that road is 55mph, and many vehicles are traveling above the speed limit.

The intersection where Corey Petersen was killed.

It’s a badly-designed, dangerous crossing. It was almost certainly designed by somebody who didn’t understand how bicycles operate. It’s a car-brained design. It’s dangerous enough for folks on regular bikes; for anybody riding a recumbent bike or hand-cycle, which are lower to the ground and much less visible, it’s significantly more dangerous. Although I’ve personally never had a close call there, I’ve been on group rides and witnessed close calls with members of my group.

We don’t know all the facts that led to Corey Petersen’s death. The driver of the truck may have been traveling at the legal speed limit; he may have been paying attention to the road, he may have done everything right…but a vehicle traveling at 55mph covers about 80 feet in a second. At most, a driver cresting the small hill in the road would have 4-5 seconds to respond to a cyclist crossing the road. At most, 4-5 seconds. Make that a recumbent bike, which would be more difficult to see…make that a hand-cycle, which has less immediate torque…and you have a tragedy. Even if the driver is doing everything right. And let’s be honest, how many drivers are doing everything right?

This is a hand-cycle. Cyclist ‘pedal’ with their hands. It’s very low to the ground.

The High Trestle Trail draws a lot of cyclists. The Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation estimates that, on average, around 3000 people ride some section of the trail every week. A popular (and economically important) bicycle trail is an asset to the State and to the towns along the trail. There is absolutely NO reason for such a dangerous crossing to exist on that trail. Granted, the HTT was opened in 2011, but that means they’ve had 14 years to fix a known problem.

There is a petition to make that intersection safer. Please consider signing it.

Back in 1896, the journalist Nellie Bly interviewed Susan B. Anthony. The subject of cycling came up during the interview. This is Anthony’s take on cycling:

Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. It gives a woman a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. It makes her feel as if she were independent. The moment she takes her seat she knows she can’t get into harm unless she gets off her bicycle, and away she goes, the picture of free, untrammelled womanhood.

Cycling clearly meant something to Corey Petersen. I can’t speak for her, but I know that being on a bike gives me a sense of freedom and joy. I’m confident Corey felt something similar. I wish ‘she can’t get into harm unless she gets off her bicycle‘ was true.

Sadly, it’s not.

innocence doesn’t matter

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Okay, first you have to understand that I’m a criminal defense guy. I spent several years as a private investigator specializing in criminal defense. Prior to that, I’d been a counselor in the Psych/Security unit of a prison for women; a significant proportion of the inmates there didn’t need (or deserve) incarceration. I’ve also taught courses in criminology and policing at American University in DC and at Fordham in NYC. I have a solid understanding of how the criminal justice system works. Or fails to work.

Second, you need to understand that I am completely opposed to the death penalty for any crime. I can present lots of arguments against capital punishment, but to spare you that, let me simply say this: the State should not be in the business of killing its own citizens. That’s it, end of argument for me.

I’m telling you this up front so you’ll understand my position when I see a social media post that makes this claim:

[W]e killed an innocent man in Missouri last week; his name was Marcellus Williams.

Criminal trials are about evidence–testimony and forensic evidence. Can the State present enough evidence to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the crime of which they are accused? At best, it’s an imperfect system. Sometimes factually guilty people will go free, sometimes factually innocent people will get convicted. That’s an indisputable fact (and also a solid argument against the death penalty).

Marcellus Williams

A lot of people are making the claim that Marcellus Williams was innocent. Was he? Despite those claims, we don’t really know (another argument against the death penalty). What DO we know? We DO know the following:

  1. Felicia Gayle was murdered. She was stabbed 43 times with a knife taken from her kitchen.
  2. Her purse, jacket, and a laptop computer belonging to her husband were missing at the crime scene, presumably stolen by her murderer.
  3. Henry Cole, a convicted criminal, testified that Williams admitted killing Gayle while they were both in jail for crimes unconnected to the murder. His testimony conformed to published public reports of the crime and contained no new information. He did NOT come forward until after a reward for information was offered (he accepted the reward: US$5000). Although there’s no overt connection to this case, when Cole violated his parole the State chose NOT to revoke his parole. It’s possible this may have been influenced by his decision to testify against Williams.
  4. Laura Asaro, Williams’ girlfriend at the time of Gayle’s murder, testified Williams admitted to her that he’d killed Gayle. She also said she saw a laptop in Williams’ car and found a purse that contained Gayle’s ID. In addition, she testified that she saw scratches on Williams’ neck, blood on his shirt. Although she did NOT accept any reward money, a neighbor said Asaro claimed she was getting paid to testify. No flesh was found under the fingernails of the victim, making her testimony about scratches moot. Asaro, who’d been arrested for solicitation (prostitution), lied about that arrest during deposition. No bloody shirt was found during a later search, nor was Gayle’s purse recovered.
  5. A warranted search of Williams’ car produced a calculator belonging to Gayle and a ruler with the logo of Gayle’s employer.
  6. The laptop taken from Gayle’s home was recovered from a witness who claimed he’d bought it from Williams.
  7. There was no physical forensic evidence tying Williams directly to the scene of the murder. No fingerprints that matched Williams; none of his shoes that were tested matched the bloody footprints found at the scene; DNA taken from the murder weapon did not match Williams. Police suggest Williams may have worn gloves and could easily have disposed of a bloody shirt, shoes, and Gayle’s purse.
  8. All capital cases are tried before death-qualified juries. Potential jurors who are categorically opposed to the death penalty are automatically disqualified. Research strongly suggests death-qualified juries are more likely to vote for convictions.
  9. Williams was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.

The Innocence Project (a group I respect) made much of the fact that the State offered no motive for Williams to have murdered Gayle. Despite what you see on television, motive is rarely a major factor in a criminal investigation. The fact is, people do stuff all the time without being able to explain why they did it. That’s even more true of people with drug issues or problems with impulse control. The absence of an obvious motive doesn’t mean much when it comes to criminality.

Back to Williams. Was he innocent? There was evidence that he was involved in the murder, but that evidence is largely circumstantial. There was testimony that he’d confessed, but the veracity of testimony given by a fellow inmate who sought a reward and an ex-girlfriend is questionable. Williams offered no explanation for why he had the victim’s calculator and ruler in his vehicle, or why another witness testified he’d sold the victim’s laptop. The evidence presented to the death-qualified jury was enough to convince them of his guilt.

So, was Williams innocent? Maybe. Maybe not. We don’t know. I’m inclined to think he was probably guilty. But in the end, I really don’t care.

His guilt or innocence doesn’t matter to me in terms of his death sentence. Even if he murdered Gayle, I don’t believe the State should have the power or authority to kill its own citizens. I also believe that when we base our opposition to the death penalty on the innocence of the accused, we’re tacitly agreeing with the argument that it’s okay to execute the guilty.

The State should not have executed Marcellus Williams, regardless of his guilt or innocence.

goddamnit

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Let’s talk about Neil Gaiman. No, wait. Let me first offer up my creds.

I was, for several years, a private investigator specializing in criminal defense. I helped criminal defense attorneys defend criminals. That sounds awful, I know. But two things. First, the US Constitution says every person accused of a crime deserves a fair trial, and a fair trial means the accused has the right to challenge the evidence of the State. The other thing is this: my job was to investigate a criminal case and report facts and evidence to the defense attorney. Not facts and evidence that HELPED the defendant. Just facts, just evidence. It didn’t matter to me if the facts/evidence helped or hurt the accused. A good defense lawyer needs an unbiased account of the case.

I’m telling you this so you can judge for yourself whether or not I’m full of shit when I talk about Neil Gaiman. He hasn’t, to my knowledge, been charged with a crime. He has, though, been accused by multiple women of sexual abuse.

I believe them.

I wish it wasn’t true, but it almost certainly is.

A lot of feminists (and I like to count myself as a feminist) say we should always believe women. I don’t always believe anybody. If there’s anything I learned as a PI, it’s this: everybody lies. But as a criminal defense PI, I never had a case in which a woman lied about sexual assault. Some women may have confused some of the details of the assault (no surprise; sexual assault is pretty fucking traumatic), but I never had a single sexual assault/rape case in which the accusation was unfounded. I’m not saying women don’t lie about it; I’m just saying I never had a criminal case in which a woman lied about it. (I should amend that; I never had a case in which an adult woman lied about it. I did, sadly, have two cases in which adolescent girls lied about sexual assault—one apparently out of spite, one for no apparent reason. Kids don’t always act logically.)

But back to Neil Gaiman, a writer I’ve long respected and admired. He always struck me as being thoughtful, caring, sensitive, and honest. He may actually be some of those things most of the time. But based on the reports I’ve heard and read, I believe he also used his position and influence to coerce or pressure women to engage in unwanted sexual acts.

When the first woman reported, I hoped it would turn out to be an isolated incident (which, of course, is one incident too many). That was my hope, but I fully anticipated there’d be more. It’s always safe to assume influential men will be assholes. Hell, it’s always safe to assume all men, influential or not, will be assholes. I mean, patriarchy is built on a foundation of men being assholes, and believing in their absolute right to be assholes.

At this point, I think three more women have now come forward with accusations against Gaiman. Why is that important? Because any form of abuse can be a single act. A person might get roaring drunk and piss their pants once and never do it again. A person might get angry and hit somebody once, and never do it again. A person might pressure somebody to have sex once, and feel bad about it, and never do it again. Everybody is capable of acting badly. But a pattern of behavior is what defines an abuser. It’s necessary to distinguish between a person who commits a bad act and a person who’s a bad actor.

Neil Gaiman, it appears, is a bad actor.

Is it possible he’s being unfairly accused? Sure. But it’s highly unlikely. Is it possible that he believes all these acts were consensual? Sure. But he’s forfeited any claim to actual innocence, and my experience suggests these women are telling the truth.

EDITORIAL NOTE: This is further evidence (as if we need any more evidence) that we must burn the patriarchy. Burn it to the ground, gather the ashes, piss on them, douse them in oil and set them on fire again. Burn the patriarchy, then drive a stake directly through the ashes where its heart should be, and then set fire to the stake. Burn the fucker one more time. And keep burning it, over and over. Burn it for generations.

fuck everything, especially those guys

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Yeah, I’m talking about those Nazgûl motherfuckers on SCOTUS. Like almost everybody I know, I spent yesterday vacillating between 1) feeling depressed and helpless and 2) wanting to set fire to the entire combustible world. The decision yesterday that POTUS (and Trump in particular) is essentially above the law was appalling and frightening, but the fact that it was delivered in smug terms by the most conspicuously corrupt and openly partisan SCOTUS in history was insulting. It’s like they’re standing there, grinning in their black robes, saying “Fuck yeah, we’re corrupt. And ain’t nothing you plebs can do about it.”

Justice Sotomayor, in her properly raging dissent, wrote, “in every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.” And she’s right. That whole notion that nobody is above the law has gone straight down the porcelain facility. This is an unprecedented fuckwankery. This is deep fuckwankery; fuckwankery down at the cellular level. I mean, the spouses of two of the Justices (Alito and Thomas) openly supported the insurrection/insurrectionists, and yet those two tainted pricks didn’t have the fundamental sense of decency to recuse themselves from the case.

What makes this even more galling is the fact that those arrogant motherfuckers on SCOTUS were put on the bench by partisan politicians who represent a minority of US citizens. A combination of partisan gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the absurdity of the Electoral College means that the US is largely ruled by the minority. And in recent years, that minority cheated, lied, and wriggled around enough to install three partisan hacks onto the SCOTUS bench.

Wipe the smiles off the faces of 6 of these corrupt wankers.

Every single one of the Justices sitting on this SCOTUS testified under oath that they respected stare decisis, the legal concept that courts should follow precedent. At least six of them lied about that. This Court has largely shat all over precedent. For almost half a century, Roe guaranteed a woman’s right to choose. That’s gone. The Bakke decision on race-conscious admissions in higher education was the law of the land for almost as long. Not any more. For 40 years, Chevron — Jesus suffering fuck, people, there have been 70 SCOTUS and some 17,000 or so lower court cases based on Chevron, which states courts need to defer to the experts in various regulatory agencies when deciding how to interpret a law. A judge probably doesn’t know enough to decide what level of exposure to a certain chemical or substance would be harmful to a child. A judge probably doesn’t have a fucking clue about the long term effects of effluent run-off from a hog containment farm into a local river upstream from a small town. Experts need to decide this shit, not judges. But nope, this SCOTUS has turned that power over to elected or appointed judges.

Wait…I forgot bribery. Last week, this SCOTUS (and I am NOT MAKING THIS UP) made the bizarre decision that while it’s illegal for a public official (like, say, a mayor or a member of Congress, or possibly a judge) to accept a bribe, it’s perfectly for fine for them to accept a gratuity. A bribe is the offer of money (or something of value) from a person/entity before the public official makes a decision affecting that person or entity. A gratuity is accepting the same fucking thing after the decision is made. Seriously, the Court says bribes are bad but gratuities are okay. This decision was written by the Justice whose massive credit card debt was mysteriously paid off before he was nominated. You know who I’m talking about–the guy reliably accused of sexual assault. That guy. (Okay, Kavanaugh.)

If you’re reading this hoping that at the end I’ll suggest some way to make you feel better about the situation…sorry. If you’re hoping I’ll cobble together ideas for a way forward, or maybe offer some practical advice on how to minimize the damage…nope. Maybe tomorrow or at some point in the future. For now, all I have to say is let yourself be angry or depressed for a while. Maybe just be numb for a while.

But pretty soon we’ll need to get over it and resist. Resist in any way we can. Resist in every way we can. But today it’s literally raining here in the heartland, and for today that’s fine.

gender bullshit

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There’s a long…and I mean seriously long, as in Please babby Jeebus, is this thing ever going to end long…opinion piece on the meaning of masculinity in this morning’s Washington Post. It’s entitled Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness, and frankly, that title alone would normally be enough for me to ignore it. Except it was written by Christine Emba, whose opinion I value. So what the hell, I read it.

And hey, she does a good job of examining the ways people are trying to define masculinity these days. The piece is well-researched, thoughtful, well-written, and determinedly even-handed (which is probably why it’s so fucking long). But as I continued to read it, I kept asking myself the same question: who the fuck cares?

There are some really really really broad categories of being that are ultimately undefinable. They resist definition because they’re so broad and vague and elastic. Who is a man? Who is Black? Who is an artist? Who is a parent? Who is a Red Sox fan? Who is a healer? Who is an athlete? Who is an influencer? Who is a cook?

I mean, it’s possible–even necessary–to organize a specific set of requirements necessary to meet professional standards to define some roles. There are prerequisite training and skills to become, say, a licensed hair stylist. But that’s an administrative thing; if you style your own hair, then hey bingo, as far as I’m concerned you’re a hair stylist.

But trying to define these broad generic categories is basically bullshit. Don’t nobody get to set any goddamn rules on who is (or is not) a man or a woman. And why the fuck would anybody want to? Why would anybody waste a single fucking moment fretting about it?

Toward the end of her opinion piece, Emba writes this:

For all their problems, the strict gender roles of the past did give boys a script for how to be a man. But if trying to smash the patriarchy has left a vacuum in our ideal of masculinity, it also gives us a chance at a fresh start: an opportunity to take what is useful from models of the past and repurpose it for boys and men today.

Well, she’s right that the past DID give boys a script for how to be men (and for girls to know how to be women), but isn’t that the source of the problem? A script is just the written text for a performance. We don’t need no script to be who we are. We are already who we are. People need to stop acting and just fucking relax.

(Engraving by Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc)

Emba also mentions that ‘trying to smash the patriarchy has left a vacuum in our ideal of masculinity.’ Well, yeah. That’s the whole fucking point, isn’t it. Scrap that shit. Scrap the ideal of femininity too. Scrap the concept of ideals, because they’re imaginary. There IS NO IDEAL man or woman. No ideal cook or artist or Red Sox fan or parent or Black person (and stop thinking of Idris Elba, okay, just stop it). There’s only somebody’s bullshit notion of what they think is ideal.

Here’s another part of the problem. If we smash the patriarchy and replace it with the matriarchy, would that be better? Well, yeah, probably. But that has its own set of problems, and eventually we’d need to smash that as well.

Emba ends her opinion piece with this:

The old script for masculinity might be on its way out. It’s time we replaced it with something better.

This is just my opinion: if you define yourself as a man, then you’re a man. If you refuse to define yourself along any gender line, ain’t nothing wrong with that. Because the problem isn’t gender, really. The problem is the script. Emba got that point right.

People are comfortable with a script. A script tells them what to do, how to behave, where to stand, what to say and when to say it. People like a script. So yeah, maybe Emba is right that we need to replace it. Not just the ‘masculinity’ script, but the gender script. Maybe all we really need is a script that says this: Don’t be an asshole.

That’s a good script because asshole is also one of those categories that resist definition because they’re so broad and vague and elastic. If the script is don’t be an asshole, the actor would have to consider their entire galaxy of self-defined asshole behaviors. And then NOT do those things. That would solve a whole lot of problems.

club-headed

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A statistically significant number of US citizens have completely lost their fucking minds. It’s perfectly reasonable to think of them as victims of Cordyseps MAGA. For the few remaining people who haven’t either played the game or watched the HBO series The Last of Us, cordyseps is the mutated endoparasitoid fungus that turns humans into hideous zombies (which, now I think of it, is redundant; there are no attractive zombies, are there).

Although it’s just a plot device in The Last of Us, cordyceps is real. In fact, there are several hundred different cordyseps species. A small number of them are parasitoids actually capable of affecting the host insect’s (yeah, it’s limited to insects) decision-making and behavior control mechanisms. Making them zombies, in other words. One of the behavioral changes caused by that form of cordyceps they become increasingly careless, which makes the host insect vulnerable to predators. When the parasite-ridden victim is consumed by a predator, the cordyceps fungus starts feeding on the new host, allowing the fungus to spread even wider.

Post-mortem cordyseps-infested fruit fly (photo by faiz b.)

Cordyceps is a useful analogy for explaining the club-headed MAGA fuckwits who…wait. Damn it. Tangent Alert! Cordyseps comes from the Greek term kordýlē, meaning ‘club’ and the Latin suffix -ceps, meaning ‘–headed’. So basically, cordyceps means ‘club-headed.’

Right, back to the analogy. This is similar to what happened with the sort of club-headed MAGA fuckwits who stormed the Capitol on January 6th. Hell, it’s what is STILL happening. The ‘entertainment’ hosts on FOX News are effectively feeding viewers Cordyceps MAGA spores, which remodels their decision-making and behavior control mechanisms, making them easier prey for predatory fascist and authoritarian ideologies, which in turn allows the fungus to spread even more widely. The only meaningful difference is that the fungal parasitic FOX News hosts themselves are apparently NOT under the influence of Cordyseps MAGA. They’re deliberately and willfully spreading the fungus because it gives them power and a big paycheck.

Here’s an example. Tucker Carlson recently made these claims about the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6th, assaulted police officers, defaced and desecrated the building itself, and attempted to disrupt the historically peaceful transfer of presidential power.

“They were orderly and meek. These were not insurrectionists, they were sightseers. Footage from inside the Capitol overturns the story you’ve heard about January 6. Protesters queue up in neat little lines. They give each other tours outside the speaker’s office. They take cheerful selfies and they smile. They’re not destroying the Capitol, they obviously revere the Capitol. They’re there because they believe the election was stolen from them. They believe in the system.” — Tucker Carlson.

Nine sentences, eight of which are direct, intentional lies. The ONLY true statement is that the insurrectionists believe the election was stolen. But club-headed MAGA assholes only believe that bullshit because predatory pricks like Tucker Carlson have been feeding them spore-lies for a couple of decades. That’s how parasitic fungi work.

Speaker Pro Tempore of the House of Representatives

The larger problem is that parasitic fungi benefit and thrive to the detriment (and sometimes death) of their host. When FOX News deliberately spreads lies and misinformation, they pose a serious, no-shit risk to the host, which is representative democracy in the US. Even though it sounds far-fetched, they could end up destroying democracy in the United States.

As it is, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives shows very clear symptoms of being zombiefied. Just yesterday, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy appointed Marjorie Taylor Greene as Speaker Pro-tempore. The GOP decision-making and behavior control mechanisms have been severely diminished. This is zombie behavior. This makes them easier prey for predatory fascists. This makes the entire US vulnerable.

Far-fetched? Yes. But not far enough. This could be the last of us.

fans

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Most etymologists agree that ‘fan’ is a shortening of fanatic. But ‘fanatic’ comes from the Latin fanaticus, meaning “mad, inspired by a god.” This, in turn, is derived from fanum, meaning “a temple, shrine, or consecrated place.” In the 1880s, when the newly-invented game of baseball began to catch on, the term fan became associated with sports. It now applies to any form of entertainment. Fans are basically crazy people.

Here’s the important distinction between being a fan and being a supporter: fandom is about passion based on faith and group identity; support is grounded in agreement. Supporters encourage and promote a person (or a group or a cause) because they share the views of what that person is doing, with what that group believes, with that cause. Fans support a person (or a group or a cause) because of who they believe that person (or group or cause) is.

For example, nobody supports the Chicago Cubs because they agree with the team, or because they share the team’s beliefs, or because they agree with the Cubbie’s cause. The team (as opposed to individual players) doesn’t have a cause. The Cubs exist to play baseball–that’s it. Cubs fans love the Cubs because they’re the Cubs. Maybe it has to do with the city of Chicago, or because of the team’s history, or because of a specific player (who doesn’t love Ernie Banks?), or even because of the friendly confines their iconic stadium. The reason for fandom isn’t as important as the fact of fandom.

Chicago Cubs fans

Back in the 1990s, a researcher named Daniel Wann created a Sport Spectator Identification Scale–a series of questions to determine how deeply sports fans are invested in a team. He found strong correlations between identification with a team and a fan’s 1) self-esteem, 2) belief in the trustworthiness of others, 3) belief that the depth of one’s support can influence the outcome of a game, 4) consumptive behavior (the willingness to spend money, wait in line, consume media related to the team), 5) willingness to anonymously injure an opposing team player/coach, and 6) willingness to anonymously cheat to help one’s team.

Sound familiar?

Here’s a True Thing: Comrade Trump has few actual supporters; but he’s got a very large fan base. Trump fans aren’t all that different from sports fans. True fans (as opposed to weekend fans) will frequently change their lives to accommodate their fandom. They feel a powerful need to publicly demonstrate their membership in the fan base. They join clubs with other fans, they prefer to associate with other fans. They attend events (rallies, speeches, conventions, games). They wear hats and jerseys and scarfs to identify themselves as fans. They adorn their vehicles with fan stickers. Some will even fly flags showing their allegiance. They’re often loud and obnoxious in their support; they’re often louder and more obnoxious in their opposition to competing figures/teams.

Trump fans aren’t supporters of Trump’s beliefs (if he has any) or his political or religious ideology (if he has any) or his policies (if he has any); they’re fans of Trump his ownself. They want Trump to win, of course, but the thing about fan loyalty is that it doesn’t require winning. True fans (as opposed to fair weather fans) will continue to support a losing team; they’ll rationalize the losses (the referees are incompetent or corrupt, the home office is failing the team, the other teams cheat). Fans will even defend their team if/when it’s accused of cheating–even when there’s undeniable evidence of cheating. At the very least, they’ll justify the cheating.

Trump fans

When reporters ask people who attend Trump rallies, “How can you continue to support Trump when he has (fill in the blank with something awful and inexcusable)?” the answer lies in fandom, not reason or logic. And that’s a really big problem. Why? Because it’s almost impossible for a Cubs fan to stop being fans of the Chicago Cubs. That’s also true for Trump fans.

Remember this: groups of passionate sports fans can turn violent. Hell, the most common form of group violence among white men is the sports riot. This is true whether their team wins or loses. After the Detroit Tigers beat the San Diego Padres in the 1984 World Series, Detroit fans celebrated by a riot that left one person dead, eighty injured, and millions of dollars in property damage (the eight rapes that took place are often overlooked, because capitalism and misogyny place more value on property). The same thing happened in Chicago when the Chicago Bulls basketball team won the NBA final in 1991 (and again in 1992, and also in 1993, not to mention 1996 and 1997). We’ve seen similar sports riots in every nation with a passion for sports.

When asked why they rioted, sports fans usually claim they just got caught up in the moment. Which is also the most common excuse given by the January 6th insurrectionists.

That sort of unreasoned, passionate fan loyalty (and subsequent willingness to get ‘caught up in the moment’) applies to Trump fans. That’s scary in itself. It’s even more scary considering a LOT of Trump’s true fans are also true fans of the Second Amendment. The only thing worse than than a rabid fan is a rabid fan with a gun.

an inspiration?

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At the end of Thursday’s hearing by the House Select Committee, Liz Cheney made a point of praising the women who testified before the committee. She named Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards and Georgia election workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman, as well as Sarah Matthews who had testified moments before. But Cheney singled out Cassidy Hutchinson for particular praise.

“She sat here alone, took the oath and testified before millions of Americans. She knew all along she would be attacked by President Trump, and by the 50, 60 and 70-year-old men who hide themselves behind executive privilege. But like our witnesses today, she has courage, and she did it anyway. Cassidy, Sarah and our other witnesses, including Officer Caroline Edwards, Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, are an inspiration to American women and to American girls.”

Yes. And no. And yes again. Yes, all of these women deserve praise for doing the right thing. But let’s look at the totality of their circumstances. The two Georgia election workers were just doing their job like tens of thousands of election workers in every precinct in the United States. It’s an important job, but not an especially demanding one; it took no courage for them to do the right thing. Their courage was tested afterwards, when they were vilified for having done their job properly. Partisan politics didn’t play a role in their jobs.

Officer Edwards at the fist barricade

Officer Edwards was doing her job as well, but on January 6th her job put her in direct physical danger. She was one of a handful of officers who were the first line of defense at the Capitol building. They were quickly overwhelmed; she was knocked down, knocked unconscious, suffered a traumatic brain injury–then after she regained consciousness, she went back to work and for several hours fought in close combat with rioters. That clearly took courage and dedication. Partisan politics didn’t play a role in her job.

Partisan politics is why Sarah Matthews and Cassidy Hutchinson had their jobs. They each made a deliberate choice to work in the Trump administration. They supported the Trump administration. They knew who Donald Trump was–how he behaved and how he treated others. They knew his history. And they chose to work for him They directly witnessed how he ran the White House, how he reached policy decisions, how frequently his staff quit or were fired, how he demanded loyalty without returning it. They knew Donald Trump and they willingly supported and represented him.

That makes them complicit in Trump’s behavior. They worked for him diligently for four years, during which they were willing to disregard or condone his bad behavior. It wasn’t until he actively urged an angry mob to engage in a violent insurrection in order to illegally retain power that they decided he’d gone too far.

It’s to their credit that they were willing to draw the line at sedition and insurrection. And it’s to their credit that they were willing to testify against Trump. That took courage, because Liz Cheney is right–they both knew how Trump and his supporters would treat them. Because they’d see him do it to others. Because they were okay with him doing it to others. It took courage for them to step up; but it doesn’t make them heroes.

Officer Edwards, unconscious.

So yes, the courage of these women should, as Cheney said, be “an inspiration to American women and to American girls.” But no, there’s nothing inspirational about being willing to work for corrupt, cruel people until their corruption and cruelty becomes intolerable. And yes, it’s better to draw the line too late than not draw it at all.

They were all just doing their jobs. Cassidy Hutchinson and Sarah Matthews aided a corrupt White House until the corruption became too much for them to accept. Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman simply processed ballots according to the rules, and were unfairly vilified for it. Officer Caroline Edwards helped provide security for the Capitol Building and protect the people inside.

You want inspiration for redemption, look at Hutchinson and Matthews. You want inspiration for honesty and integrity, look at Moss and Freeman. But if you want a hero, look at Officer Edwards.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Just a reminder that patriarchy is a social structure kept in place by ordinary folks. Pay attention to how people in power treat people with lesser power. Call out assholes, even if they’re people you generally agree with. Support decency, even if it comes from people you disagree with. And every chance you get, add a match to the fire that will burn the patriarchy to the ground.