Author: Paul Deaton

Categories
Living in Society

Angering the Gods

Tulsi Gabbard in the author’s neighborhood. Photo by the author.

Tulsi Gabbard was one of the first female members of the U.S. Congress with combat experience. I interacted with her twice: once at a 2016 event hosted by then Congressman Dave Loebsack, and again in 2019 when a neighbor hosted an event within walking distance of my driveway. Gabbard’s campaign for president was gasping for oxygen the day I last saw her. I baked an apple crisp for the event. She took the leftover dessert with her and dropped out of the race the following week.

That Gabbard is a combat veteran, and was a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the House Armed Services Committee, and House Homeland Security Committee, does not qualify her to be Director of National Intelligence (DNI) as was announced this week. In 2022, Vladimir Solovyov reported on Russian media Gabbard was Vladimir Putin’s agent in the U.S., according to Julia Davis who monitors Russian media.

The staffing announcements by the president-elect this week were a continuous showing of bad hires for jobs that take real skills. It is no wonder he bankrupted so many of his businesses. That Gabbard is suspected of being a spy while potentially being DNI is just scratching the surface of how bad the next administration will be for the United States.

What does that mean? We engaged activists need a new approach to dealing in public with the new administration.

On Feb. 1, 2017, my guest opinion, “What if the jobs don’t come back?” appeared in the Cedar Rapids Gazette. The mistake I made then, and won’t make again, is treating Donald Trump like a normal president, instead of the criminal he is.

In her Nov. 13, Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson said this about the president-elect:

Trump has made it clear that his goal for a second term is to toss overboard the rule of law and the international rules-based order, instead turning the U.S. government into a vehicle for his own revenge and forging individual alliances with autocratic rulers like Russian president Vladimir Putin.

With four years of experience and frustrations, the president-elect can now move immediately to implement his agenda. With Republican majorities in both the U.S. House and Senate, and with the full backing of right wing billionaires and the Heritage Foundation, I expect he will move quickly. He already asked the U.S. Senate to forego confirmation hearings on his nominees so they can be appointed according to Article II, Section 2, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution:

The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

That means without the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate. Or, as Rachel Maddow put it:

I hope not to anger the gods and get on the president-elect’s or his minions’ hit list of people against whom he wants revenge. I have enough energy to roll this thing forward one more time, so I’d better make the most of it. So, should we all.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Autumn Yard Work

Burn pile Nov. 12, 2024

Now that the election is over, I’m motivated to work in the garden. If all goes well, I’ll plant garlic before the snow flies. The weather forecast looks good to get it done this week between planned activities off the property.

Because it’s been raining, I felt okay about burning brush. I need a place to store fence posts and chicken wire fencing. I burned it today and got the mower out to run over the tall weeds and make room.

Fallen leaves have blown off the plot where the garlic will go, so all I have to do is turn it over, fertilize, and run the rototiller through it. The hardest part is turning the soil over. I feel like working on it, something I could not say during the run up to the election.

I’ve been busy inside as well. Organizing stuff, getting rid of stuff, consuming stuff, recycling stuff. It’s been a week of stuff. There is too much of it and it prevents me from focusing on what is most important. Funny how quick;y the recycling bin filled today.

For the next while, my posts are going to be short and to the point. Increasingly, that’s the way I like them. So it will go.

Categories
Sustainability

COP29

Image of Earth 7-6-15 from DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory)

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accords, as he did during his first term. His re-election cast a pall over the 29th Conference of the Parties which began Monday in Baku, Azerbaijan. The United States has been a world leader in mitigating the worst impacts of climate change. Trump’s direction of breaking down the international order where the United States is a leader seems clear.

Azerbaijan is the third consecutive petrostate to host the conference, and arguably intends to stop decarbonization if they can. The work must continue, yet it is expected to slow because of the prospect of the U.S. intentionally hobbling it. In an email this week, the Climate Reality Project said, “Wealthy petrostates and fossil fuel companies are misleading the public, lobbying country leaders, and taking over the COP process, trying to stop progress every step of the way.” Addressing the climate crisis will continue to be an uphill struggle.

Based on the seven days since the election, Trump seems better prepared to implement policies the Heritage Foundation handed him in the form of Project 2025. I must pick which parts of society in which to exert my personal influence. I need more dust to fall and settle before deciding what to do. The climate crisis ranks highly on my list.

Categories
Living in Society

Armistice Day 2024

Flags at Oakland Cemetery in 2012.

Remarks as prepared for the Armistice Day observance in Iowa City on Nov. 11, 2024.

Thank you for joining us during this observance of Armistice Day. My name is Paul Deaton. I was a founding member of the Iowa Chapters of Veterans for Peace. When we organized the chapter, we had veterans from every armed conflict going back to World War II. Some of our members have died, and I ask for a moment of silence in their honor.

I intend to keep my remarks brief. Some of you who know me may realize how difficult that will be for me. Nonetheless, let’s get started.

In World War I we find the beginnings of the misinformation and disinformation that became so prevalent in our society. There are 5 things I would like to say about that.

Point 1: There were conspiracy theories about the war.

Was World War I a hoax? No, yet conspiracy theories were prevalent. During the War, the American home front was awash with them alleging internal German enemies were intentionally spreading disease among both human and animal populations, most egregiously during the 1918 influenza pandemic. While false, these stories nevertheless revealed Americas’ shifting relationships to the environment, warfare, and the federal state. They channeled immediate fears over what type of war, and what type of enemy, the nation faced, as well as deeper, Progressive-era anxieties related to the dramatic expansions of government and scientific expertise in American life. It underlines how the war permitted individuals to discuss, denounce, and contest state and scientific authority at this moment in the early twentieth century. In my view many of the conspiracy theories we hear today have their roots in this.

Point 2: Allied Propaganda

Propaganda was used by both the allies and the Germans during the World War.

Allied governments launched propaganda efforts in the days after the invasion, pushing out terrifying, often untrue tales, published in newspapers, fliers, and pamphlets. There were stories of bayoneted babies, mass rape of girls, and old men who obediently turned over useless rifles, and were shot on the spot by heartless “barbarians.” No doubt the intent was to stoke the fire of support for the war.

Point 3: German propaganda.

For the Germans, the goal of propaganda was to make the war seem less devastating than it was. More soldiers were needed at the front, so government officials downplayed the number of casualties to recruit them. The truth about the scale of casualties – an estimated 40 million civilian and military personnel dead and wounded – could only be kept secret using propaganda. The total number of deaths includes more than 9 million military personnel. The civilian death toll was between 6 and 13 million. Disease, including the influenza pandemic, took about a third of these lives. World War I ranks among the deadliest conflicts in human history. Suppression of this fact was a goal of German propaganda.

Point 4: The Armistice.

I visited the Glade of the Armistice while I lived in Europe. It’s in the French Forest of Compiegne where the Germans and Allied Supreme Commander signed the Armistice we commemorate today. They used a rail car for the ceremony. Years later, in 1940, Hitler used the same rail car to accept the French surrender. Hitler had obvious propaganda reasons for doing so. I saw a similar rail car in France while I was there, although not the same one used in 1918. The original disappeared after the Nazis took possession of it. I remember how quiet it was in the forest that day. It was a day filled with meaning.

Point 5: Living History

Veterans of World War One are deceased. The veteran I knew was my Grandfather who never spoke to me of the war. We were more concerned with his black lung disease contracted during decades of coal mining in Illinois. Family lore is Grandfather arrived in France shortly before the Armistice and did not see conflict. He was there six months waiting to return to Illinois. If you have a memory of the war and its veterans like mine, today is a day to remember.

As living memory fades let us hope and pray that the World War I dead shall not have died in vain.

In conclusion, I’d like to read a poem used by the allies to recruit soldiers. The idea was for new people to take up arms to replace the fallen. You may know this one. In Flanders Fields is by Canadian physician John McCrae, published December 8, 1915.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
    That mark our place; and in the sky
    The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
    Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
        In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
    The torch; be yours to hold it high.
    If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
        In Flanders fields.
Categories
Living in Society

A Long Way Home

Trail walking on Nov. 10, 2024.

I’ve been trail walking earlier in the day since the general election. To make it a better form of exercise, I pick up the pace to get my heartbeats per minute elevated enough to do some good. I don’t know what I will do for exercise once the snow flies and I’ve shoveled the driveway. If autumn continues the way it has been during the hottest year in recorded history, I may not have to worry about it as we could well skip winter.

On Saturday I made a stew with plant protein meatballs. I found some old carrots and celery in the vegetable drawer and wanted to use them up. After peeling the carrots and cutting them into big chunks, they went into the Dutch oven with the chopped celery. I added the rest of the small-sized garden onions, and peeled and halved a pound of garden potatoes. I covered everything with vegetable broth and seasoned with bay leaves, salt, pepper, oregano, dried parsley, and powdered garlic. Once the root vegetables were fork tender, I made a slurry of corn starch and vegetable broth to thicken the stew. Toward the end, I added the meatballs and a couple handfuls of green peas. It came together well. With my spouse away from home, there will be leftovers for days. The flavor reminded me of a dish Mother made using beef. I took that memory into the next day and made rice over which to ladle leftover stew for lunch. It wasn’t her cooking, yet her presence was strong that day.

It seems doubtful I will reconcile with the Iowa Democratic Party. Donald Trump grew his support in the most liberal county in Iowa from 21,044 in 2016, to 22,925 in 2020 to 26,069 in 2024 or a total of 23.9 percent growth during the eight years. Democrats here walloped Trump with Clinton getting 50,200 votes in 2016, Biden 59,177 in 2020 and Harris 58,772 last week. The strong Johnson County performance this year did not win the election in the First Congressional District. Winning there takes gains in the rural vote which wasn’t there in sufficient numbers. Trump increased his winning margin in Iowa overall. We knew we had to do better than this after the results in 2020. Everyone I knew, including me, was doing work to get Democrats elected. The electorate was not receptive to the Democratic presidential candidate this year or since Obama won in 2012. Iowa certainly is Trump country today. More’s the pity.

I will continue to take walks along the state park trail. I will continue to cook a lot of our family dinners. I will work more on my physical and mental health, and overall wellness. As a septuagenarian, I realize there are only so many years left. There is not enough time to spend on activities that don’t produce needed results. For now, and maybe permanently, politics can take a holiday.

The Republicans I know are, for the most part, good people. Misinformed, yet the kind that will help a neighbor or contribute to community projects. There is some racism and misogyny as there has always been locally and in American society more generally. Any improvements I make in my politics will be close to home, among people I know well, and despite our differences.

There is no going back to what was. Today, it seems like a long way home.

Categories
Living in Society

Into a Landing Zone

Along the state park trail, Nov. 8, 2024.

I changed my digital footprint now that the election is past. I deleted some social media accounts, reduced the number of friends in the remaining ones, and evaluated how I get news. It is part of a self-care process to improve my physical and mental health after the recent traumatic revelations about American society. I feel better already. It was a suitable landing zone after the election.

Journey Home is a public blog and I intend to keep it that way. Writing here helps me develop narratives that can be used in other parts of my life. It is part of a process of understanding the world and society. It also provides a constant struggle to say things better with fewer words. My typos here are frequent, yet I eventually catch most of them. Each of us needs a way to think through the experiences we have and this is mine.

I resisted the recent reaction to Jeff Bezos putting the kibosh on Washington Post political endorsements before the election, and kept my subscription. Subscription to a national newspaper is needed for someone like the author of this blog. All the other national newspapers have similar problems and I don’t want to punish the reporters because of what their owner did.

The Cedar Rapids Gazette has done a good job in 1). staying in business, and 2). creating a diverse community of readers. One sees this by reading the editorial page, or what they call “Insights.” Liberal advocates, conservative crackpots, and everyone in between abound there. I welcome them all. Usually, because of their printing schedule, I hear news they report from other sources because that’s the kind of society in which we live. Subscribing to a newspaper is about the writers: local reporters, syndicated columnists, and readers who write letters to the editor and guest opinions. I wouldn’t miss some of them if they were cancelled, yet we also need them all.

For social media, I’m down to: Goodreads, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Goodreads is how I keep track of my reading and find new books. Facebook is people I know from my experiences in the real world. Instagram is a place to post photos and auto post them to Facebook. Threads is a way of live blogging my life. For now, this is enough to manage. I deleted my BlueSky and LinkedIn accounts this week to reduce the clutter.

People know me from writing in public and tell me so when we meet in person. Unless we enter a police state where political enemies are harassed by the government, and citizens spy on and get nasty with their neighbors, I will continue. What else am I going to do?

Categories
Living in Society

The Sun Rose in the East

Sunrise over Lake Macbride on Nov. 6, 2024.

The morning after the 2024 general election I went walking on the state park trail at dawn. It was light enough to see the ground, and the sun rose in the east as I entered the main part of the trail. The air was clean and I took deep breaths. I needed that a few hours after reading the general election results.

I was as prepared as I could have been for Trump to win. As a result, I am weathering the aftermath reasonably well. I can’t say that about everyone else to whom I spoke in the last two days. Some were on the verge of tears over the disrespect to women the majority demonstrated by voting for Donald Trump. The country has descended to a very different place than we thought we were.

Something needs to change in my life. The best advice I give myself is to take time to plan effectively.

It has been two months since I tested negative after suffering from COVID-19. While the main symptoms are gone — the constant coughing, particularly — there have been substantial changes in my muscles, blood pressure, and the tests the clinic does for diabetes. Things are not normal so my plan is to evaluate my health today. That’s going to take a while and a better action plan. It is not only me that needs to change.

To return to a majority, Democrats need to change how we live. We must recognize that political campaigning is a subset of everything else we do. We must build relationships more broadly than within our small coterie of like-minded people. We value our relationships, yet to succeed in politics new ones must be in our collective future. My modest proposal is to blow up the current organization of the Democratic Party and start over. We do not understand the electorate and need to. The bonds of affection we developed over years are hard to break, yet we must.

I have gotten good at picking myself up after failing to effect needed change. At some point, our goals for society need calibration. Our methods need to change. It makes little sense to get back on the same horse to keep riding when what we need most is to send the beast to the glue factory. Doing this is harder than we think.

I have a long to-do list today. I expect the sun will rise again in the east. It is time to dust myself off and get back to work building new goals and a new way to achieve them.

Categories
Living in Society

2024 Local Election Results

Big Grove Precinct election sign on Nov. 5, 2024.

Here are the election night vote totals for the top four races in Big Grove Precinct. I will update these numbers, if needed, after the official canvass. It was another Republican night in Big Grove Township, and in Iowa.

RaceRepublicanDemocrat
PresidentTrumpHarris
699598
U.S. HouseMiller-MeeksBohannan
700617
State SenatorDriscollChabal
741526
State RepresentativeLawlerGorsh
716545

Statewide, Trump won Iowa easily. Miller-Meeks has a 799 vote lead out of 408,337 votes cast, with 20 of 20 counties reporting. That race is too close to call and there will be a recount according to the Cedar Rapids Gazette. District-wide, Dawn Driscoll and Judd Lawler both won their races.

I have reactions to the results, although I will save those until all the counting is done and the results certified.

Categories
Writing

A Writer in Iowa City

Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

After my post-masters degree tour of racism in America I decided to stay in Iowa City. My reasons were not complicated.

I had to decide whether to be in a relationship with someone, and Iowa City was a regional social hub offering a large pool of potential friends and mates. The rest of the state seemed a primitive agricultural landscape, desolate and barren of intellectual engagement. As a young Iowan possessing two degrees, of course I chose to live in Iowa City.

Having established my desire to write, Iowa City seemed an excellent place for that. It offered a broad intellectual life, not to mention being the home of the writers workshops. I expected to find other writers of varied skills, along with what it took to support a writers community.

Work was available. The money I banked in the military would soon run out. I needed a job to pay monthly bills. I had no idea of supporting myself beyond the next rent payment. I could live paycheck to paycheck indefinitely, working a job that would leave energy each day for writing. The idea of long-term employment with decent benefits had already begun to fade from American society as Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president in January that year.

In the pre-internet days, relationships were in person or they were difficult. A long-distance relationship involved telephone calls and letters. We made our life where we lived and it took a year to discover what was possible in Iowa City. It became my year of being a writer.

In undergraduate school I saw writers come and go in the shared house on Gilbert Court where I lived. The pattern was simple. Find a place to live and write, find enough income to pay bills, and then go on living with a view toward producing a book of poetry or prose. It was no different when I finished graduate school.

When it came time to get my own apartment, I found a small one with a kitchen while most students were out of town on summer break. When I toured the apartment, a tenant still lived there. I deduced she was a writer of some kind, “a writer’s workshop type.” She had photographs of writers on the walls, and many books by workshop alumnae in a peer cabinet in the living room. My quick analysis of her book shelves was she displayed types of books I tried to avoid. My future landlady had had a run in with her, and described her as a little backward. I didn’t care much about all that drama. I was ready to move in and get started with the next iteration of my life.

The apartment on Market Street had six windows. It helped me feel more in touch with the world after living in a windowless basement with my friend Joe. I felt in union with events going on around me in the vibrant county seat. I felt a power living in the old part of the city, and I was in its midst. It took me two days to settle in.

From a logistics viewpoint, the pieces of a life were coming together. What I realize now, and didn’t then, was I needed something to write about. That flaw made it difficult to get words down on paper in the time before we knew what Reagan and his coterie were up to.

This is a draft of the first chapter of the second part of the author’s memoir.

Categories
Living in Society

One More Wake Up

Sunrise June 23, 2020.

Tomorrow is election day in the United States. At lunch on Friday, a candidate asked the sheriff if he was coming to the election night party in the county seat. He wouldn’t be, he said. Because of the election they had extra officers on duty to address uncertainties of what might happen when the polls close. His presence was required to command that group.

Our politics changed since I began voting: we need a standby police force to address potential conflict. Hopefully the extra staff won’t be needed. In Iowa’s most liberal county conflict escalating to violence seems unlikely.

For the first time since I can remember, I finished my list of voters to contact on Thursday before election day. We used to go right up to the poll closing with our efforts, yet this cycle we got ahead of the game. I continue to do two or three things each day to contribute to electing Democrats. Unless something dramatic and unprecedented happens, I plan to stay home on election night.

The tension created by this year’s political campaigns is palpable. Regardless of who is elected president, the tension will be real. I recall the reaction among the electorate when the first black man was elected president in 2008. If the first black woman is elected tomorrow, I expect an intensified encore of the drama. If Trump is elected, his chaotic governing will be unrelenting. I’m braced for both possibilities.

In an email sent Nov. 3 at 6 p..m., Jen O’Malley Dillon, Campaign Chair, Harris for President, wrote the following:

We feel very, very good about where we are. More people — and more diverse people — are voting than ever before. We are currently on pace to turn out the voters we need to get to 50%+1 in each battleground state.

We continue to have a few paths to victory: By winning the Blue Wall (Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania), by winning the Sun Belt (Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina), or by winning a combination of the two. We are seeing what we need to see to pull at least one of those paths off.

Volunteers knocking on doors, making calls, and making sure voters have what they need to head to the polls are making a difference in this race. So much so that undecided voters in the last week are breaking for the Vice President by double-digit margins.

We know that, among the remaining pool of undecided voters, more are open to voting for the Vice President than for Trump. Our team on the ground is kicking ass reaching those voters and we have to keep it up in the days to come.

The day before election day, we are standing by to see what happens. I’m confident the best qualities of being an American will prevail.