I miss my mom. She would have turned 71 this year. Unfortunately, cancer took her in 2009 at the age of 59.
She was a great mom. She was an even better grandmother. Unfortunately, she didn’t get to nurture that talent nearly long enough. It’s incredibly sad to me that two of her grandchildren were born after her death and that a third was too young to remember her at all. We, her family, are all a little less because of time lost with a truly inspirational woman.
And in memory of my mom, I will tell you that she was one who never ran from a fight. She was very active in her community and she was a tireless advocate for the children and families she counseled with later in life. She believed in standing up for what you believed in even if it was hard. I’ve spent my adult life trying to live up to her example.
Which is why I am no longer content to rage away here on my own personal blog or whine and moan among my tight circle of friends who feel the same way I do politically. Anyone who has ever read a posting from this blog knows my feelings about President Trump. I am not a fan.
I find President Trump to be reprehensible and a true threat to the soul of who we are as a nation. Despite his MAGA campaign slogan and his constant draping himself within the flag, I believe his approach to governing and life in general to be un-American. It has nothing to do with issues. In a number of instances I probably agree with what he has tried to accomplish. But the price has not been worth it.
So if that is what I believe, what am I supposed to do? Sit back, keep my mouth shut, and hope he doesn’t get re-elected? Write the occasional blog post that highlights his latest example of buffoonery or worse? I suppose I could do that. But I decided to try something a little more.
A couple of months ago, I reached out to the organization, Republicans for the Rule of Law. They are an organization made up of individuals who believe in conservative values, but cannot in good conscience support Donald Trump. This group asked me to submit a short video explaining my background as a Republican and why I can’t support the president. I did so.
That short explanation turned into a conference call which produced material that was edited into a three minute video and was released this morning on the website, http://www.rvat.org. In conjunction with the release of this page, the New York Times ran the following story covering the initiative.
My picture sits atop that article, so I guess I’m out there whether I like it or not.
In a tweet dated October 23rd of last year, President Trump described people like me who are known as Never Trumpers as HUMAN SCUM!
Well, like the Trump supporters who reveled in being labeled deplorables, I take great pride in this label. I will happily be recognized as someone Donald Trump thinks is human scum. However, there are some labels that I will not accept from him nor anyone who supports him. To those individuals, I would say the following:
I am not a liberal. I believe in the same compassionate conservative values I held when I voted for George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney. I didn’t shift. You did!
I am not a RINO (Republican In Name Only). In fact, I’m not a Republican at all anymore. I waffled on leaving the only party I had ever known during my adult life up until the day Donald Trump turned his back on the Syrian Kurds who helped us defeat ISIS in exchange for protection from a Turkish invasion. They kept their end of the bargain. Donald Trump did not and as a result, thousands of our allies lost their lives and hundreds of thousands were forced to leave their homes and join the massive ranks of the world’s refugee population. I won’t be a member of a party that accepts that. In fact, I would suggest that such a move is totally against all values I understood Republicans to stand for. So who are the RINOs really?
I do NOT hate America. And how dare you suggest otherwise! I respect your right to espouse your views without calling your patriotism into question. I vehemently disagree with them, but I respect your right to espouse them. Loving all things Trump does not make someone a patriot. Conversely, calling out reprehensible behavior on the part of our president does not disqualify an individual’s patriotism either.
For the last four years, I have heard the following justification of Mr. Trump: Oh, I wish he wouldn’t say some of the things that he says, but he’s doing such a good job. Well, I’m sorry but what he says matters a great deal. Mr. Trump has spent the last two weeks basically accusing a media personality he doesn’t like of murder, without the slightest shred of evidence. Think about that for just a second. The leader of the free world is trying to intimidate a member of the press by repeatedly accusing him of crimes of which there is not one shred of evidence and which can also be easily refuted. That’s horrifying! And that kind of behavior can be directly tied to protesters in Kentucky hanging their governor in effigy. You know, the kind of idiotic crap that third-world dictators pay their mobs to do in the streets.
Well, that’s just Trump being Trump.
No, it’s a problem. It’s unacceptable. And if it were President Obama doing the exact same thing, Trump supporters everywhere would be calling for his removal. If we lived in an alternate universe where the president today was Hillary Clinton, the cries of “Lock Her Up!” would be ringing across the nation. Unfortunately in 2020, it’s just another day at the office in the Trump White House.
I can’t accept that anymore. Not without trying to do something about it.
I fully recognize that my efforts will amount to little more than nothing. As I have indicated in a previous post, I unfortunately believe Mr. Trump will probably be reelected. I hope not, but I suspect it will happen.
But I am going to follow the example my mother set for me and stand up and do what little I can. I’m doing it for a number of reasons, but first and foremost because I want my children to see in me the same resolve that I saw in her. That’s important to me.
Secondly, I believe in my country. America didn’t need to become great again. It was great already. It was great before Donald Trump got elected and it was on the road to becoming greater all the time. I believe in the years since his election, he has become the largest impediment to its greatness. And I believe we as Americans deserve better. So let’s demand better, even if we have to spend the next four years putting our house back in order to do it.
There aren’t many things in this life that will get an American more excited than an opportunity to make a prediction about future events. And even though we’re wrong about 97.6 percent of the time, the dopamine rush when you get a prediction right is just intoxicating. Which is why we feel the need to share what we think is going to happen in every facet of life despite having no qualifications, knowledge, experience or insight. We just know we have better brains than the experts and we’ll trust our guts over the generals eight days a week and twenty times on Sunday.
So with that said, I am here to present my own list of predictions for the rest of this year based on keen observation and my generally myopic view of the world. And be prepared: if even one of these suckers works out, know that you all are going to hear about my genius for years to come.
A High School In Washington State Changes Its Native American Themed Mascot To The Murder Hornet.
In 2012, the Washington State Board of Education passed a resolution asking all educational institutions in Washington who still had Native American themed mascots to consider changing them. At the time, approximately 50 schools still had mascots which met this criteria. But with the arrival of the Murder Hornet in the state, these schools have been provided a special opportunity. I mean, no school is going to get too excited about changing their mascot to the Hornets. Hornets? Big Deal! An appropriately placed boot can wipe out several standard hornets in one stomp.
But Murder Hornets? That’s a whole different ball game. Think of the intimidation factor. “You better not mess with us Murder Hornets, or we reserve the right to kill up to 50 of your small children over the course of the next year. Uh huh! That’s what I thought!”
You heard it here first. Be on the lookout for the St. Mary’s Blessed Children of the Poor Murder Hornets, the charter school of your nightmares, coming to a high school athletic contest near you in 2020/2021.
MikePence Contracts COVID-19 Through An Outbreak That Occurs At The National Republican ConventionAnd Requires Hospitalization And Isolation In The Very Mayo Hospital He Toured Without A Mask In April.
Republicans have said they are moving forward with a live, in-person convention in Charlotte, NC in August. This is likely precipitated by the strategy the president is taking of declaring victory over COVID-19 and doing all he can to focus the election on a recovering economy. I do understand his strategy and I understand the reasoning of moving ahead with an in-person convention. It would be hard to make the case that you fearlessly defeated an enemy if you are delivering the speech touting said victory in a zoom meeting while you hide from said enemy.
No Movie Released During The Rest of 2020 Surpasses A Worldwide Box Office Of $500 Million.
I realize $500 million is a lot of money. But for perspective, in 2019 two movies made over $500 million in North America alone. A movie making $500 million worldwide last year would have been the 15th most successful movie of the year. But this year, despite the loud voices of a few, I don’t believe the general public is going to be in a hurry to head back to theaters. In fact, as a second associated sub-prediction, I believe we’ll see the trend of releasing films directly to rental streaming continue beyond social distancing requirements. I also sub-predict several national movie theater chains will suffer the same fate as JC Penney.
Demand For New Automobiles Decreases Such That The Average Overall Price For A New Toyota Camry Drops Below $20,000.
I’m planning on buying a new car later this year. It just so happens I’m very interested in a Toyota Camry. There’s a chance this may be more wishful thinking than an actual prediction.
This Will Be The Ugliest Presidential Campaign Of Our Collective Lifetimes.
What do you do if you are a generally unlikable human being and you are put in a position of trying to make someone else look even more unlikable than you? That’s the predicament now facing Donald Trump. And boy, don’t doubt for an instant that he, and his vile little mini-me 1 and mini-me 2 aren’t up to the task.
Over the weekend, Donald Jr. leveled the claim that Biden is a pedophile. No proof of course, because in Trump-world proof is never required. What is required is to define your opponent with a slanderous allegation first, before that same definition can be assigned to you. With 23 named women-some of whom were minors at the time-on record with allegations of sexual misconduct against the president, it’s going to be important for the Trump campaign to get the stink of sexual miscreant slathered all over Biden as soon as possible. That way, when the damaging label comes calling for him, the hope is that we the public will have given the entire subject of sexual deviancy a collective shrug. Sounds almost Clintonesque doesn’t it?
Meanwhile, Eric Trump spent his weekend trying to breathe life into the ridiculous claim that COVID-19 is an overblown hoax meant to take down his father. He further claimed that once the election is over, COVID-19 will magically disappear. I could offer further thoughts and perspective on this, but instead, I’ll just go with what most rational human beings would say to this idiocy…Man, just shut the h*** up, you freaking Jack-wagon!
But here’s the problem. This is just a preview of what’s to come. You see, Trump isn’t just going to dust off the Clinton playbook on how to deal with your political adversaries, he’s going to give it a massive overhaul complete with dual exhaust, gold rims and a hydraulic lift system. He knows he is going to have to generate as much dislike for Biden as existed for one of the most unlikable presidential candidates ever to come down the pike in the form of Hillary Clinton. That’s not an easy task. It’s gonna take a river of money the size of the Amazon all spent on advertising designed to bombard us into the stone age. And that’s just on the Republican side. I’m already tired of this election and it hasn’t even really started yet. And to make it worse, I live in a designated swing state. Maybe I should just join a monastery for the next six months. Or better yet, I’ll just disconnect my Facebook and stay in quarantine with just my Disney+ subscription to keep me company. When is the second season of The Mandalorian supposed to drop anyway?
Republican Senators Will Eventually Attempt To Have Former President Barack Obama or Current Democratic Presidential Nominee Joe Biden Testify Regarding “Obamagate”.
Boy have we seen this movie before. President Trump throws out the wackiest of claims and then demands that nationally elected GOP Senators and Reps back him up. Initially, these elected officials do all they can to avoid getting swept up in the latest hi-jinx of Trump’s on-going reality series Keeping Up With The KarTrumpians. But in the end, after months of non-stop conspiracy theory validation (minus any actual proof, of course) from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, the pressure from their radicalized base gets too high and these GOP politicians trade in their solid reputations for a ticket to board the express train to Wackoville. Republican senators will follow this model once again and we should expect hearings on this Trump self-described “biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA.”
Which leads me to my next prediction:
Republicans Will Lose Control Of The Senate.
Way back in 2016, I made a prediction that despite how much fun it would be for Republicans to throw the world’s biggest temper tantrum and elect Donald Trump, in the end, The Notorious DJT would ultimately damage the party so severely that it would take decades to recover. For the record, I am standing by that prediction. For evidence, I say look no further than my home state of Arizona. I recognize that election day is a long way off, but polling today suggests that by January 2021, Arizona will be represented by two Democratic senators for the first time since 1953. It didn’t have to be this way. Had Republicans not run off Jeff Flake in 2018, there is sufficient evidence to suggest he would have held on to his seat in a general election. But he had committed the ultimate crime in the new Trump-GOP era. He spoke ill of the king. That’s not allowed. He voted for the president’s agenda over 90% of the time. But that’s not good enough. You have to kiss the ring, or anything else for that matter, whenever The Don says so or you are a Dead Man Walking. Well, it’s possible that the GOP could follow Jeff Flake into attaining Dead Man Walking status in Arizona if trends don’t change. The same is true in Maine, Colorado and Nevada. Georgia is now looking to be in play nationally in 2020 as is North Carolina and possibly even Florida. Now I don’t believe those states will all flip over into the blue column, but the writing is on the wall. Trump has done nothing to expand the base. Nothing! He may still win the White House based on his Reality TV/Larger Than Life persona, but those traits don’t play well down ballot. And a scenario that seemed all but impossible to Mitch McConnell one year ago now looks more and more like a real possibility: his days as senate majority leader may be coming to an end.
Democrats Will Screw Up A Prime Opportunity And Lose The White House In 2020.
The playbook is simple. Republicans laid it out for them in 2012 and 1996. You can’t win a presidential election by simply pointing out what an idiot/miscreant/sultan vile betrayer/demon overlord the other guy is. It never works. These parties live in a bubble and listen to what their base is saying and always fail to hear what the voters who make the difference are saying. Loyal democrats hate Trump. They hate him more than cats hate water. But while the middle of the road voter might not actually care for Trump, their overriding concerns are about actual issues that affect them. They care about their jobs. Voters that will decide this election in the states that matter care about manufacturing jobs, oil production jobs, and maintaining a way of life that mirrors the romanticized lives of their parents and grandparents. For all of his faults, Trump gets this. Time and again, Democrats have proven that they don’t. We’ll see if Biden figures it out in time, but if he’s forced to placate the progressive wing of his party then we’ll know he hasn’t. And we’ll know that he’s going to lose.
By December 2020, A Majority Of Folks Will Just Be Too Exhausted To Be Angry And Scared Anymore.
I wish this was a real prediction. Heaven knows we need it to come true. Everyday just feels like we’re all on a never-ending loop of the Jerry Springer Show and it sucks. We need to stop. We need to start seeing every other person for who they actually are and not for the radically segmented portion of the population they supposedly represent.
So instead of a prediction, let’s call it my 2020 Christmas wish. I wish for us all to calm down. I wish that if a world-threatening pandemic strikes us again, our most concerning thoughts will be on the welfare of others and not on who should take the political blame or what political statement I’m making if I wear a mask. I wish for 24-hour news channels to be banned as part of the final COVID-19 bailout bill. I wish for people to care about each other. All the time.
Bottom line, I wish for the impossible…and I know it. But like I said at the top of this post: ridiculous odds aren’t gonna stop me from making such a wild prediction. Because imagine the dopamine rush I would get should I happen to call this one right.
When you break it down fully, life has very few moments that truly live up to “memorable” status. For me, I would guess there are maybe 50 moments in my life that have deep enough significance that I remember them clearly. Relationships are similar. In the grand scope of people you know over a lifetime, there are very few that gain admittance into your inner-circle. At least for me anyway.
But over the last two days, I’ve been given plenty of opportunity to reflect on both.
Like everyone else, the Rapiers have been learning to cope with an altered reality over the last two months. As days settled into weeks, it became easier to forget all we had given up. But as Arizona started its reentry into the “normal” this past week, we realized that our aimless drifting through time had placed us smack up against a hard deadline.
My son, Braden, received his call to serve a two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Dallas, TX, on March 10, 2020. Three days later, the country literally began to shut down. Going on a mission is a rite-of-passage for young adults in my faith, and it is no small undertaking. A great deal of preparation is required, much of which requires shopping.
Unfortunately, shopping for mission supplies and clothing is not very conducive with worldwide pandemics and so we coasted along, basically avoiding thoughts of how we might deal with Braden’s approaching report date of June 17. That was all good at the end of March. It wasn’t really that big of a deal throughout April. However, when we learned that some retail stores might be opening this past weekend, it was shocking for us to realize we are not months away any longer, but rather weeks and days. And we were nowhere near ready.
Going on-line, I quickly learned that most retail shopping was still unavailable and that if we wanted to get anything accomplished, it would likely require an appointment. Thankfully, the good people at Pomeroy’s clothing store in Mesa worked with me and we were able to get in for their first appointment of the morning, even though there were technically no appointments available. I played the “woe is me, we’re from out of town” card pretty hard and they took pity on me.
Anyway, all that to say that I had no idea how emotional shopping for suits and slacks was going to be. I can’t explain it, but seeing my son in his suit for the first time made this whole adventure he’s embarking on a lot more real. And it also drove home how close we are to having him leave…in some ways for good. Standing next to rows and rows of shoe boxes, I actually teared up a bit watching him get sized. Thankfully, between my glasses and my mask (which was required) I don’t think anyone noticed.
I have a feeling that time will make the poignancy of that moment fade. But I also think I’m never going to forget it. Maybe I will. Maybe I’m overreacting and maybe events still to come in the next month or so will push this one deeper into the vaults of my memory than I realize. But in the moment, this one was pretty powerful.
Meanwhile, during our drive down to the Valley for this touching and yet ridiculously expensive family outing, I received a text message from my bishop. The message informed me that a man in our congregation had passed away in the early hours of the morning. Due to the list of tasks I had to accomplish, I did my best to push this news to the back of my mind. However, roughly 18 hours later when dawn broke on Mother’s Day, I was no longer in such a position.
The man in question was a person I would unequivocally declare as good. There really isn’t any other way to put it, he was just a good, good man. I have known his family for much of my life, but I never really knew him until we moved into our current home 15 years ago. But once I met him, and felt his all-encompassing arm around my shoulder welcoming me into the ward, I have consistently looked up to him.
To make matters worse, his passing reminded me that I would spend yet another Mother’s Day without my own mother. I miss her. You would think a decade going by would make things easier, and in some ways it does. But on other days, the feelings of intense sadness and loneliness are just as raw as the day she said goodbye to this earthly existence.
I look at my two young daughters, one who was not yet a year old when she passed and the other who was four years too late to meet her at all. I mourn for the love they will never feel physically from a grandma who quite literally lived for her grand kids. I think of my oldest daughter who I sometimes fail to connect with fully. She was my mother’s first grandchild and there was a bond there. I can’t help but wonder what their relationship would be like now.
I have the best wife in the world. My children have one of the two greatest mothers I have ever known as their mother. They’re lucky. I’m lucky. And sadly, I don’t think I make a big enough deal about how special she is on Mother’s Day. For some reason, I just never seem to have the heart.
So as Mother’s Day weekend 2020 fades into the past, I pray for a lot of things. I pray my son will be safe. More than anything I want him to be safe. He’s going to struggle, and that’s okay. I just want him to go, learn what he needs to learn, and then come home safe. I pray for the Gardner family. I’ve been where they are. Sadly, they’ve been where they are all to recently with the loss of a son and brother. I hope they know that their father was not just special to them, but was special to a number of people they will probably never fully realize. In the months following my mother’s death, people I had never met would come up to me and tell me about the significant role she had played in their lives. I was stunned at all the things I never knew about her. I imagine the same will happen for the Gardners. It should. He was that good of a man.
I also pray for the women in my life. I pray that everything I believe is true. Because I can’t stand the thought of never seeing my mom again. It just has to be true. It just has to. And I pray for my sweet girls. This world is not getting easier and I worry they have such an imperfect father to try and help them get going in it. I worry I’m failing them. And I’m left praying that a Father in Heaven will somehow make up for my shortcomings.
And lastly, I pray for my wife. She’s amazing, but I don’t think she knows it. I try and tell her, but for good reason I believe she stopped putting stock in my opinion a long time ago. This life of mine would empty and useless without her. I love her. And hopefully, between homemade waffles (okay, Bisquik) and a card, she got just the slightest glimpse in to how much. Happy Mother’s Day, Sweetheart, one day late. I’m sorry you’re stuck with me, but don’t think about it too hard. Instead you should buckle up and hold on. I think this sending out a missionary thing is going to kick both our butts a whole lot harder than we think.
Lately, I’ve discovered a fascination with nature shows. It started several months back when I happened upon Planet Earth on Netflix and it continues to this day. The beauty of life and the complexities of what happens on this big ol’ planet of ours is unreal. And it can also be horrifying.
Earlier this week, I was watching a National Geographic show called Wild Yellowstone. Shockingly, it was entirely about Yellowstone national park. Anyway, there was this very intense scene where a young elk calf was being pursued by a hungry male Grizzly. The calf had to hide and basically hope that the Grizzly passed it by while the mother elk could do nothing but watch helplessly from a distance.
As my six-year-old daughter and I watched, I was totally prepped to cover her eyes as I was pretty sure this was going to go badly for the young elk. To my surprise, things went the other way as the Grizzly finally gave up and moved on. Wisely, the mother led her young calf to a swift flowing stream/river to get away and wash away their scent. As they started across the flowing waterway, much to my surprise, shock and horror, it proved too much for the calf and it got swept away. The mother looked on helplessly as the narrator said, and I quote, “The calf survived the hunt of a Grizzly, but Yellowstone claimed him anyway.”
Ouch!
But there it was on full display, the harsh realities of life and death. And in the case of wildlife in Yellowstone, only the strong survive.
As we enter this new phase of COVID-19, there is a growing chorus of themes that are picking up steam among the population. One of those themes is that all this virus is doing is thinning the herd and that we should probably let it run its course. Of course, this isn’t exactly the way this theme is worded, but that’s the general gist. People are going to die and as unfortunate as it is, we’re just going to have to accept it and move on.
As much as I hate this viewpoint, I have to admit that it has a certain level of validity. I can actually see it from both a scientific and spiritual point of view. One, mother earth has a way of keeping populations from getting out of hand. And at our growth rate, it is an easy argument to suggest the human population might be getting out of hand. Two, according to scripture, God has sent plagues to torment his people before. And in the grand scope of biblical plagues, this one is not remarkably severe.
Either way, for those making this argument, I can grudgingly see their point. I don’t know what the correct way to handle reopening our country is, and the longer this goes on, I’m beginning to believe that no one really does. But I will acknowledge that if the majority of our citizens begin to subscribe to the idea that we have to get back at it regardless of the human toll, then that’s what is going to happen, in spite of what I may think.
But there is one idea percolating out there that I cannot grudgingly accept. Along with the anger that has built up regarding the loss of jobs, or the loss of milestones in life, or even the loss of basic human interaction; a political anger has sprung to life that has reignited the talk of this entire exercise being a hoax. This insidious idea suggests that nefarious forces have been conspiring in the background to use a normal everyday illness, that really isn’t that bad, to sink the economy and ruin the reelection chances of Donald J. Trump.
I’m sorry, but that’s unacceptable.
78,000 people confirmed dead at the hands of COVID-19 in a matter of four months is not a hoax.
But wait, those numbers are inflated. I mean, nobody dies of pneumonia or the flu anymore. They’re just calling everything COVID-19, so it’s really not as bad as they say.
Yeah? Prove that!
And I’m sorry, verbal diarrhea spewing forth from the mouths of Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson or Laura Ingraham is not proof. Anecdotal urban legends about your cousin’s wife, who works at a hospital and is the person responsible for reporting COVID-19 deaths, being bullied into changing numbers in favor of more virus deaths is not proof. I want to see actual data where confirmed COVID-19 deaths are being fabricated. Otherwise, shut the h**l up!
Because you see, for a lot of people who have really faced this first hand, they know for a fact this has not been a hoax.
Take for instance, the family of Kious Kelly. For them, to suggest this excruciating nightmare we’ve been living through is a hoax would just be cruel. Kious was a nurse who worked at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. When his hospital ran short of PPE, he volunteered to continue seeing patients without that protective gear so that others wouldn’t have to. Kious was remembered as a kind individual who was always providing small acts of service to everyone around him. Were it not for COVID-19, he would still be providing those acts of service. Kious Kelly was 48.*
For the 18-year-old daughter of Madhvi Aya, COVID-19 is anything but a hoax. Madhvi was a physician’s assistant who worked in the Emergency Department of Woodhull Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY. Her daughter, Minnoli, is studying pre-medicine at the University of New York at Buffalo and would talk with her mother every single night to catch up and share their daily experiences. She says what makes this entire grieving process worse is that she has absolutely no bad memories of her mother. To quote her, “All of them are good.” Madhvi was confident that she had contracted the disease from a patient she had cared for at work. Were it not for COVID-19, Minnoli would still be talking to her mother every night.*
Finally, for Dr. Lorna Breen, the horrors of COVID-19 were most definitely not a hoax. As the Emergency Department medical director for New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, Dr. Breen contracted COVID-19 while treating dozens of patients infected with the disease. After recuperating, she returned to work and continued to try and stem the tide of COVID-19 patients flooding through their doors. In the end, it proved too much for her. She was sent home to further recuperate and eventually moved in with her parents in Virginia. In the days that followed this move, she spoke to her father repeatedly of the scenes she had witnessed including those of patients dying from the virus before medical personnel could even get them out of the ambulances. After several days of mounting detachment and exhibiting symptoms synonymous with depression, Dr. Breen killed herself. According to her family, she had never suffered from mental illness prior to her experiences associated with COVID-19.**
These are just three of the thousands upon thousands of stories associated with those who have lost their lives to this scourge. All of them real people with real families who would still be with their loved ones had COVID-19 not torn through our country and their lives.
That is not a hoax.
To me, one of the greatest tragedies that will be associated with COVID-19 will be the politicization of this pandemic. It will be that we lived in a time where caring about our fellow human brothers and sisters all too often took a back seat to our political indulgences. In 2001, 2,753 people died in the attacks on the World Trade Center. In the weeks that followed, people stopped being Republicans and Democrats and just became Americans. Millions of us had never been to New York, but we mourned with our fellow citizens just the same.
Since February, 26,581 New Yorkers have died from COVID-19. And sadly, there are far too many people on right-wing media and social media discounting their deaths as a ploy by the left to defeat President Trump in the fall. I’m sorry, but that’s just not right.
Because once again, I can understand the desire to get back to regular life. And I can understand those who would argue that death is part of the grand scheme and we are just going to have to accept it as we open up our country and move on. I may not entirely agree, but I can understand and empathize.
But a hoax? That’s vile!
This world is bigger than Donald Trump. Human life and the dignity of those we have lost are bigger than Donald Trump. And I can say unequivocally that millions of people did not become infected with COVID-19 to undermine Donald Trump. Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide did not die just so they could stick it to Donald Trump. To suggest otherwise is just stupid.
As I see it, we had a worldwide pandemic that caught us all by surprise. We weren’t ready and in many situations we responded too slowly. Not Republicans, not Democrats, all of us. We had people doing the best they could. We had experts trying daily to get their arms and minds wrapped around what was happening and they did their best to try and protect as many of us as they could. Did they do it perfectly? No. Should we have even bothered with all of this shutdown business? Well, Dr. Fauci said from the beginning that if we handled this thing right, then we’d all be complaining that we overreacted when we were done. And now two months later, there are a lot of people claiming we overreacted. And that’s with 78,000 deaths and counting.
As the months and years go by, there will be a lot of armchair quarterbacking of this pandemic event. But the one thing that can’t be changed is that it happened. People died. A lot of people. And for most of us, at one point or another it was scary. Let’s never forget that.
And let’s also not allow ourselves to continue this talk of a hoax. That kind of argument devolves our entire shared experience in to being about one man. And I’m sorry. Despite what he himself may believe, he’s just not that important.
*These examples were provided by an article entitled, American hospitals have lost dozens of medical workers to the coronavirus. Here are some of their stories, published May 3, 2020 on the website, Business Insider.
**Details of this story were provided by an article published in the New York Times on April 27, 2020, entitled, Top E.R. Doctor Who Treated Virus Patients Dies by Suicide.
On March 17, a post/meme appeared on Facebook that read:
U.S. deaths since 1/22
COVID-19 – 27
Flu – 4,700
Abortions – 118,000
Facebook removed the post due to the fact that both the flu number and the abortion number were not actually known for that exact time period and that based on previous year’s data, both would significantly incorrect. But like most data driven arguments on social media, it’s not really about facts. It’s about generalities that are kind of true that make your point regardless of how factual they are. And to be fair, on March 17, those numbers would paint an abstract argument that would land in the ballpark of accurate.
For instance, in the most recent year we have data for (2017) there were 862,000 abortions performed. Should that number be broken down into the time frame referenced in the post/meme, evidence suggests that the number referenced was actually a little low. As for the flu number referenced, it also would be a little low based on data from previous years. COVID-19 numbers? Well, we know that the number referenced on March 17 is probably not a fair representation either.
But regardless, the message of the meme was clear: why are we going to all this trouble to save a few lives from a virus that isn’t that bad when we let almost a million lives get terminated each year through abortion. As someone who is adamantly opposed to abortion, I think it’s a good question. However…
Can we flip that around? The argument against abortion is that life is precious. Right? All life! That’s why the anti-abortion movement prefers the moniker, Pro-Life.
Let’s put this on hold and come back to it a little later.
Since the inception of the COVID-19 crisis, the political movement behind: minimizing the virus, suggesting the virus is a political tool to weaken the president, isn’t as bad as the flu, is pretty much the same as the flu, and pushing for an end to “tyrannical” rule and “martial law” has been the Republican party and “conservative” media. This movement has even gone so far as to say the following:
“It is always the American government’s position to say, in the choice between the loss of our way of life as Americans and the loss of life, of American lives, we have to always choose the latter…. It is policymakers’ decision to put on our big boy and big girl pants and say it is the lesser of these two evils. It is not zero evil, but it is the lesser of these two evils and we intend to move forward that direction.” – Indiana Representative, Trey Hollingsworth (R)
“Every premature death is a tragedy, but death is an unavoidable part of life.” – Wisconsin Senator, Ron Johnson (R) after advocating for the reopening of the US Economy despite scientific data that suggests doing so would result in additional deaths which would not occur if the economy remained shuttered.
“The Cure Cannot Be Worse Than The Disease.” – Donald Trump.
Some may argue that the last quote does not advocate sacrificing more lives for the sake of the economy, but I would say those would be pretty weak arguments since the cure clearly refers to lock downs and the disease would be infections and deaths associated with COVID-19.
I could provide dozens more examples from Fox News personalities and politicians along with memes posted by private citizens on social media that further my point. But I would just be repeating myself and frankly the message from President Trump and a large swath of conservatives is brutally clear:
An individual life, or even tens of thousands of lives, are NOT more important than the economy or jobs.
But the economy and jobs are not the only thing less important than life. Take for instance this same political movement’s stand on assault rifles.
I mean, I get it. I understand the second amendment. US citizens have the right to own guns. However, they are not allowed to own RPGs. Nor are they allowed to own surface-to-air missiles. Heck, the United States doesn’t allow most countries to own nuclear weapons. So it would appear that there are limits as to what kind of weaponry should be allowed into the hands of private citizens. After seeing the amount of death an assault rifle can deal to unarmed and unassuming citizens, it might be safe to ask what benefit do they provide by being in the hands of private citizens, especially if we are concerned about life.
Because crazy people are always going to be with us and things like mass shootings are probably just a new normal we have to accept. But the reality is, the number of lives lost if we banned assault weapons would likely drop dramatically in those horrific situations. Do we honestly believe 59 people would have died during the Las Vegas shooting if the shooter had not been able to spray the crowd with bullets from assault rifles? An honest answer would be no.
Nevertheless, conservatives and Republicans the across the nation (a vast majority of which do not own assault rifles) continue to rail against gun control specific to assault rifles. The message?
Life is NOT more important than gun ownership, even in the most extreme of circumstances.
Finally, hundreds of thousands of refugees are spilling out of Syria and other nations of the middle east where war has destroyed lives and Islamist extremism has displaced individuals and families from all socio-economic levels. Some refugee camps are well run and relatively clean. Others, not so much. Death as a result is common. And that’s if refugees can even make it to the camps. In 2019, over 1,000 refugees drowned in the Mediterranean Sea trying to cross on ill equipped rafts. Almost 2,500 deaths were recorded in the same year for migrants travelling on well-known refugee migration routes.
Meanwhile, the Americas have their own refugee concerns. Over three thousand people are murdered in Honduras a year. A vast majority of these murders are gang related. To give perspective, in 2012 Honduras had 7,172 murders among a population of 9 million. The EU that same year had 5,000 murders among a population of 500 million.
Honduras is not alone, and as a result, thousands of people flee this area of the world headed for the United States in the hopes of saving their lives, or at least the lives of their children.
And what is the response of the United States?
In 2019, Donald Trump signed the Asylum Cooperation Agreement with Honduras which will allow the US to send asylum seekers to Honduras, even if the people seeking asylum aren’t from that country. The US already has similar agreements in place with Guatemala and El Salvador-additional countries known for their high gang activity and murder rate. People sent to these nations will not have the ability to seek asylum in the United States.
The basic responses from Republicans and conservatives are: These people just need to go about it legally. They should stay in their own country and try to improve it. It’s sad, but we just don’t have room for everyone. They would take American jobs.
Under the current administration, practices such as separating children from their parents and not allowing asylum seekers to reside in the United States while their cases are being considered have been put in place. According to an article in The Guardian by Ed Vulliamy from February 18th, kidnappings of migrants have gone through the roof with a report finding that 80 percent of migrants waiting to enter the US have been kidnapped by mafia controlled gangs in Mexico. 45% of those kidnapped have experienced violence or violation. Prior to President Trump’s directive, those individuals would have been in the US awaiting their hearings, not in Mexico.
Meanwhile, the number of refugees allowed to resettle in our country has been slashed over the last four years. In 2016, the ceiling for refugees who would be allowed to resettle in our country was 85,000. That number in 2020 is 18,000. The message?
Life is NOT more important than immigration law and keeping people out of our country.
Bottom line, I’m tired of hearing about the Pro-Life movement. I was told how important it was to vote for Trump in 2016 because we needed supreme court judges who would overturn Roe vs. Wade. Apparently, stopping abortions was so important that we needed to sell our souls to an immoral, dishonest narcissist who has time and again shown himself to be unworthy of our highest office. Why? Because life is that important, right?
However, to a majority of those making that argument, it is clear that life really isn’t THAT important. Only unborn life. The lives of those who have already passed through the birth canal are pretty much meaningless and disposable.
So please, can we stop calling it the Pro-Life movement? Calling it the Anti-abortion movement is fine. But to call Republicans and conservatives pro-life, especially those who unequivocally support Trump, is the ultimate in hypocrisy. And frankly I’m sick of it.
So, as we all continue to wait out COVID-19, much of the country is looking to Facebook to provide needed escapism. Of course, if your Facebook feed is like mine, much of it is filled with political opinions regarding COVID-19 from a variety of sources who are just as clued in to epidemiology as you or I are. But hey, if they’re wearing scrubs and were ER physicians at one point in their lifetimes, they must know more than everyone else, right?
Anyway, I find that Facebook memes regarding COVID-19 are my personal favorite. The world is full of truly gifted comedians who just keep pumping these things out day after day by the dozens, and yet here I am still laughing. My personal favorite today is:
I’ve always wanted to wear a cravat. And if my religion didn’t forbid smoking, a pipe is probably the way I would choose to ingest my daily tobacco allowance, so I think this meme has merit. However, I also own some golf shirts that would give me street cred cover to call it The Rona from time to time as well, so…
Anyway, a current Facebook trend is the Album Cover Challenge. The Album Cover Challenge says that each day for 10 days you should post an album cover that influenced your musical preferences throughout your life. You aren’t supposed to make a comment, you’re just supposed post an album cover and then let everyone else comment on how crappy your musical taste is.
Well screw that!
I blog and therefore, I will post all of my album covers at one time and I will comment on each and every one of them. So there!
(Yes, I’m a talker and I am just as bored of this COVID-19 quarantine as the rest of you. Commenting far and above what is necessary is what’s keeping me sane. So indulge me a little. Plus, if I don’t explain some of these…well, I just feel better commenting here and there.)
So without further ado, I will now present the top 10 music albums that have been most influential on my music listening over the course of my life. I will not go in order of current favorite, but rather chronologically. And who knows, maybe it will be more than 10 or maybe less. I don’t know.
This is the first album I remember owning myself. The song was Elvira and I was eight-years-old. I played the living crap out of this album. I mean, to this day I worry that my brother Jerry might have recurring nightmares of being stuck in an Eastern European prison as the words, “Oom-papa, oom-papa, mow, mow” echo off the stone walls in time with the dripping water outside his cell. I loved this album and although I cringe a little when I hear that particular song today, I still have a great love of four-part harmony (not barbershop, so calm down Mike Bradley) that I believe began with Oak Ridge Boys. Harold Reid of the Statler Brothers died this week and it reminded me of this album and the Statler Brothers and Alabama and all the country groups I used to listen to religiously as a kid.
In high school, I went through my rap phase. Don’t get me wrong, I’m just as white as the next white guy and the rap music I loved was limited to the commercially successful rap that was packaged largely for the suburbs. But man, I loved Bust A Move. I still love Bust a Move. I have It Takes Two on my iPod, as well as the Run DMC/Aerosmith version of Walk This Way. I owned the 45 single of Parents Just Don’t Understand back before we learned that Will Smith had a real name and wasn’t actual royalty. But this album was my favorite and definitely got the most play during my high school days.
I still can’t explain what happened my junior and senior year when I became enamored with this album. I played it over, and over, and over. Not just to the point that I drove my family nuts. I played it so much that now if I hear songs from this album, I want to punch a hole in my wall. A Little Respect was the song, but the whole album was like a high school romance. Intense, powerful, and something I can’t explain to my children.
This marks the peak of my Garth phase that just about everyone my age went through at some point and time in the early ’90s. I think No Fences is a better album top to bottom, and I did purchase In Pieces after returning home from my mission, but this was the album that got the most play on my car stereo and was his current album when I liked Garth Brooks the most. Also, it should be mentioned that Papa Loved Mama is right up there with Goodbye Earl as one of the best upbeat songs about murder you’ll find.
I no longer care for Garth all that much. He’s as annoying as h**l to watch sing live. (I mean is there anyone who comes off more like a used car salesman when he tries to sing songs meant to tug at the heartstrings?) And I really got annoyed when he started releasing greatest hits collection after greatest hits collection and you had to buy each one in order to get the one new song he had produced. He was also one of the last holdouts with regard to iTunes. But if you go back to the early ’90s before all of that, he was pretty good. And I did play this album a lot as I drove around Eastern Arizona College in my father’s prized 1970 Chevy Nova in the years before I left on my mission.
To understand the number of country albums that appear in the early part of this list, you have to understand that growing up in the small town where I did, we had two radio station options and both of them were country. It was kind of inevitable. So when I returned home from my mission, where my music selections consisted of hymns, Michael McLean and…pretty much Michael McLean and hymns, it was inevitable that I would jump as far into the genre I had been deprived of as possible. Neither of these artists have a song on my iPod currently. However, with Joe Diffie passing away recently from COVID-19, I have thought about adding John Deere Green and Pickup Man to my playlists. I haven’t done it yet, but I’ve thought about it. Tracy Byrd, on the other hand, no longer holds any interest for me. His album is kind of like that girl/guy you semi-dated back in college that you smile about real quick when you initially think of her/him, but then immediately shudder and thank all that is good in this earth that the relationship didn’t last.
For the first ten years after I got married, I purchased every Alan Jackson CD that came down the pike. But the Greatest Hits Collection probably got the most play because it had most of his best songs as well as being the only album that the single Livin’ On Love appeared on. I don’t listen to much country today, but I still like his smooth voice and the easy melodies that he put out album after album. One of my favorite concert memories is going to see Alan and George Strait in Sun Devil Stadium when Abby was just a baby. Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure that all of those Alan Jackson CD’s are somewhere in my storage closet. I should go pull those out and…nah, it’d take way too much effort and I don’t even own a CD player anymore.
We’re gonna count these as one because I can’t decide which would be more representative. I listened to both of these, A LOT! Just ask my wife. Brad would be the last country artist I really consider myself a fan of and I think his lyrics are truly some of the most clever and effective out there. Plus, how many people can duet with B.B. King and hold their own on the guitar. Brad’s awesome and I still have a ton of his music on my playlists. Just ask my kids. (They are not fans, by the way.) The interesting thing about Brad Paisley is that he and I are roughly the same age. So as he was experiencing things in life that affected his music, they happened to line up with my life experiences, such as getting married, having kids, becoming more socially aware, etc. I’ll always feel connected to Brad even though he would probably consider that statement just a little bit stalkerish.
Speaking of being a stalker, I have been to Chris Isaak concerts five times and, thanks to my wonderful brother and his husband, Kirt, I have met him and sat front row with my wife and son at one of those concerts. I have a signed picture on my wall (not in my bedroom, just clarifying). I actually have video of his base player’s guitar stalk swinging out over my head.
I knew who Chris Isaak was, barely, when I was in college. But in my late thirties I rediscovered him and realized how much I loved his music. Amazing guitar and catchy tunes. Plus, best rock-a-billy falsetto singer, hands down! Bottom line, he was a better Dwight Yoakam than Dwight Yoakam ever was.
We’re going to count these three as one. I know it’s cheating, but…crap, I’m not even doing this on Facebook so…my blog, my rules. I’m almost ashamed to admit this, but I didn’t really listen to these artists, or anyone else in the big hair band genre until long after I was married. I knew who they were. I knew their songs, somewhat. But I just didn’t really have an interest. Now, I have all of these artists on my playlists while most of the music I listened to in high school and college has gone away. Go Figure! However, I still don’t like Guns & Roses, despite my wife’s affinity for Don’t Cry, November Rain, and Sweet Child o’ Mine. I just think Axl Rose’s voice is the musical equivalent of raking a cheese grader over a chalk board. But let ASU’s marching band play the first three notes of Highway to Hell, and I am ready to jam out to the three bands above all the way home (which is a three hour drive from Sun Devil Stadium.)
This album is symbolic of my growing love of Broadway musicals. It started back in my 20’s but has only grown with the passing of time. I love music from a lot of the biggies: Phantom, Wicked, Dear Evan Hansen, Hamilton, Mary Poppins, Joseph, The Producers, and so many more. But I also love the experience of going to the theater and being taken away to another place in a way only live theater can. Assuming COVID-19 allows, The Band’s Visit is supposed to come to Gammage this season and I desperately want to get tickets. But so far, all of them pale in comparison to my first experience seeing Les Mis. I know it has to do with the power of the actual story, but the music of Les Mis is, in my opinion, inspired. I first heard it 25 years ago and yet I could still put on the soundtrack tomorrow, sit in my comfortable chair, and drift away. As long as it’s the original London cast that is. No Russell Crowe as Javert for me, thank you very much.
This is my last album on the list and my current obsession. I love the songs. I love his voice. But add his voice to R&B classics from the 1960’s and you have something special. This album actually represents my love of R&B in general. I have never really cared for Jazz, but I can groove to R&B all night long.
So there you have it. My answer to the Album Cover Challenge. Some of those listed make me nostalgic. Some just make me a little embarrassed. But, whether I like it or not, the above is a pretty good representation of my historical taste in music. Feel free to let me know how sad it is or simply laugh in private. I’m good either way. But right now, I just feel like plugging in my headphones and letting all thoughts of COVID-19 melt away. Because there is nothing better than music to do just that.
Have you ever noticed how much people who live in America claim it’s the greatest nation on earth? I live here and I think it’s pretty great and so I tend to agree (mainly out of national pride), but it’s a pretty common refrain among Americans. In fact, I’d be willing to bet you individuals from other nations who have had to deal with us Americans are probably pretty sick of hearing it.
But do you know what else is a pretty common refrain among Americans? That politicians suck! That anyone who has ever held political office should be thrown out and replaced by like-minded individuals who will actually work for the people who sent them there. You know, the voters!
You know what is also interesting, though? That the system works pretty much the way it’s supposed to. Majority voters in just about every congressional district and state are represented by people who act in a way their voters want them to. For instance, it is not uncommon to hear conservatives rail against dirty and corrupt liberal politicians they don’t like, such as Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer. It’s also fairly common to hear liberals cry out for the head of Mitch McConnell. But if you ask a majority of voters in San Francisco, New York or Kentucky about those individual politicians, you’ll find that they are pretty satisfied with the job their own representative is doing. So it’s not that we dislike all politicians, we just don’t like the ones who represent people who disagree with us.
Now, all of this quarreling about politics and who is right and who is of the devil is all well and good when times are normal, but when something like COVID-19 comes up, then…not so good. And when lives are literally on the line, it can become much more difficult to be the representative your constituents want.
But the problem is, in the age of social media, people have more power than they have ever had before. You see, the public that thinks all politicians are corrupt and moronic (except their personal favorites, of course) has a much more direct say on what they expect of their representatives. Social media mobs can form in a heart beat and they can kill a political career faster than an affair with an intern ever could. And unfortunately, here’s a sad truth that most people aren’t going to like to hear. In large groups, human beings as a whole become very ignorant and…frankly non-smart, very quickly.
Which brings me to my ultimate point today. Being a politician during this pandemic has got to be the worst. Especially if you are a politician that actually wields a significant amount of power. It’s this reality that actually makes me feel a little bit bad for President Trump. Not real bad, but at least a little bit.
You see, conservative media and President Trump downplayed COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic, which turned it into a political issue rather than the health issue it always should have been. It was called among other things: a hoax, a tool of liberals to bring down the president, nothing more than the common flu, etc. But as days went on, it became more and more clear that COVID-19 was serious. How serious? The truth is we’ll never know. Many states, followed eventually by the President, started issuing directives designed to “flatten the curve” and limit the effects. When this started, Dr. Fauci acknowledged that if those efforts were successful, we would all claim that we as a nation had overreacted. But regardless of how successful we’ve been at limiting the damage of COVID-19, there is no doubt that it was serious and it was something never to have been taken lightly.
Which is why I now feel bad for the president. For reals! I feel bad for the president and frankly any governor who is faced with the responsibility of how soon and how widely to open back up our country.
You see, it’s easy to be a media commentator who coins the phrase, “The cure can’t be worse than the disease.” It’s also easy to be a media personality who downplays the realities of facing another day without a paycheck to pay for rent or food or any other necessities. It’s incredibly easy to be a protester who goes and waves a sign around demanding that your God-given freedoms be returned to you, when in actuality your freedoms to endanger the lives of others were never granted under the constitution, nor by God. On the other hand, it’s quite simple to be a social-distancing shamer who happens to be living out their quarantine in a comfortable home with a loving family while their income continues to be automatically deposited into their bank account as opposed to a battered wife who is now imprisoned 24/7 with a much more immediate danger to her life than COVID-19.
In other words, it’s easy to be anyone other than the person who has to make these ultimate decisions.
I’ve never seen the problem our president and our governors face better illustrated than in the movie, The Dark Knight. In that movie, there is a scene where two ferry loads of people are pitted against each other and given the choice of blowing up the other ferry boat before they themselves get blown up. The ultimate catch is that if neither boat chooses to “turn the switch” then both boats will explode, killing everyone.
When the situation is presented to the passengers, everyone has an opinion. One boat even takes a vote, with the vote producing the outcome that the passengers on the other boat are expendable because they are prisoners currently serving time. The catch is, they only need someone to turn the key.
And nobody can.
Because it’s easy to claim life is expendable when placed in comparison with the greater good. It’s easy to say that 60,000 additional lives are a reasonable sacrifice if the rest of us can get back to work. Heck, it’s easy to SAY anything. DOING? That’s hard. Because if you are a governor, or a president who gives in to the pressure to open everything back up too early and COVID-19 deaths spike as a result of your decision, that’s on you. No protester, media personality or low-rung politician whose vote ultimately didn’t matter is going to step up and take responsibility for you. You’ll be on your own.
But on the other hand, if a large swath of the population have nothing left when they emerge from their homes because you let the economy go completely down the toilet due to an over-abundance of caution, that’s on you too.
The difficulty of this situation is playing out before our eyes. It’s obvious the president wants to open things up, like…yesterday. He tweets about it like we should move forward right now. He makes comments practically goading governors to open non-essential businesses. But when the governor of Georgia actually makes the call on opening up his state, the president immediately says he’s acting too soon.
So which is it? Liberate Michigan? Or is the current liberation of Georgia irresponsible? We’re not sure. No one is. But those people we denigrate and run-down every day as corrupt and dirty politicians are now the ones we have to trust to make those decisions.
And as far as I’m concerned, I have to believe they are doing their best. Because, at the end of the day, we Americans live in the greatest nation on earth, right? So then we have to acknowledge that the system we’ve had in place for over 200 years demands that politicians make these calls. Politicians we voted for as well as politicians that our political foes voted for. It’s just the gig.
So to bring it home, I wish President Trump all the best as he wades through this time of extreme trial. I still think he’s a disaster. I still think he should shut up just about every time he opens his mouth. But he’s the guy who has to make tough decisions that I’m very glad I don’t. And as an American, I need him to get those decisions right. So I’ll pray for him. And I’ll pray for Governor Cuomo and Governor Newsome and most especially Governor Ducey. Because I, and 350 million of my closest friends, can’t really DO anything else. We can talk and argue and speechify all we want, but the doing is in the hands of a very select few. And boy am I glad it’s not me.
Okay, that’s not totally true. Most of the podcasts I come across I consider idiotic wastes of time. So it would be more accurate to say I love a select few podcasts. Anyway, I was listening to one of the few podcasts I truly enjoy this past weekend and the topic was about delight: what is delight and how do we find it. In these current days of never-ending monotony, it was a truly uplifting hour. And it got me thinking about when I have experienced moments of delight or true joy in my life.
Now the culture in which I exist asks this kind of question all the time. When are you truly happy? What is true happiness versus momentary joy that is fake or unsustainable? Of course the expected answer in those constructed moments is that my faith, my good choices and my family are what brings me true sustainable joy. And I acknowledge those answers to be true. But in reality, those very things also bring me some of the biggest frustrations in my life. So that realization made me reflect a little deeper with the hope that I could identify when I have felt most at peace, most contented, most delighted.
Over the last few years, I can pinpoint several moments when I have felt truly peaceful and contented. And it is interesting to me how many of these events share similar characteristics. What is also interesting to me is how I have documented a few of them, but most I haven’t. I’ve never been a great journal keeper and one of the main reasons is, I can’t figure out who would ever want to read about my life. Having lived it, I can attest that it is remarkably uninteresting.
Yet, I blog. For what purpose? None, really, other than it provides an outlet for me. But looking back at my posts over the years, I realize it is somewhat like a journal and it’s probably the closest I will get to effectively journaling. So today, I’ve decided to document those moments I can recall with perfect clarity when I have felt pure joy and contentment. I know there are probably many others, but these stick out in my memory for reasons I cannot explain. Anyway, without further ado, my moments of delight.
5th Anniversary Trip
For the first five years of our marriage, Shannon and I did not go on a vacation by ourselves. We went on a trip with my parents (which they largely paid for) and maybe the odd overnight getaway, but never a true vacation. For our fifth anniversary we decided to change that.
Now our actual anniversary is in January, but we weren’t able to get away until the end of February. Nevertheless, we were excited to go spend a week in Disneyland and see this brand new park that had opened up just a couple weeks earlier called, Disney’s California Adventure. Overall, it was an amazing trip. Everything about it was great. It was rainy and so the crowds were remarkably light. We walked on to just about every attraction all week. I remember going on Soarin’ Over California for the first time and being awestruck. It’s still my favorite theme park ride out there.
Unfortunately, so much of that trip has been lost to memory. I don’t recall exactly where we stayed. I don’t remember what we ate. We were there for a total of three days and I don’t remember maybe even an hour’s worth of experiences. But there is one part of that trip I can recall with vivid clarity and I can still feel the joy associated with it. What memory could be so worthy?
The drive.
Okay, not the entire drive necessarily. In fact, the moment I recall is very short, but I love it. In the early days of our marriage, Shannon was not inclined to rise before the sun. She often railed against the very idea. But that first morning, I convinced her we needed to get up about 4:30 a.m. and get on the road. It was dark as we left our condo in Mesa and drove across Phoenix. As we passed Buckeye, the first light of morning started to illuminate the open expanse of desert all around us. The road was a dual strip of asphalt that stretched as far as we could see and the colors playing off the mountain to our right were spectacular. We were listening to our favorite CD’s because we weren’t really radio people and iPods were not a thing yet. In that moment, I felt…free, happy, content and delighted.
As I stated before, the entire trip was wonderful, but if I could bottle one moment and relive it periodically, it would be that moment in the car just a few miles outside of Buckeye, AZ. I was sitting next to my best friend. I was enjoying music that seemed to understand and compliment the scenery unfolding in front of us. The morning was brand new, symbolizing the anticipation we felt as we headed out on our first “family vacation.” It was amazing. Since then, leaving on road trips before the sun rises has become a thing for me. Maybe it’s because I just love that feeling and am constantly trying to recapture it.
Holding Maggie
I didn’t want a fifth child. I was happy with four. Very happy. So when I found out we would be welcoming a fifth child into our home in the same year I turned 40, I was not as excited as a new parent probably should be. But the first time I held Maggie, it was perfect. In many ways, it was no different than when I held my other children for the first time. But with Maggie, I was in need of a severe heart softening. I knew in the weeks leading up to that morning that I would do my best to be a good dad. I knew I would fulfill my familial responsibilities to this child. What I didn’t know was how I would feel toward this little girl prior to her arrival. What I did know was that I resented all the life rearranging she had caused to interfere with my well-planned out existence.
When the nurse handed her to me, that all changed. She was perfect. And she was perfect every time I held her after that. She was perfect as I held her in my recliner at home, rocking her to sleep. She was so perfect, that I was reluctant to let anybody else have that experience of getting her to sleep at night. She fit so perfectly on my chest and she would lay so still. I miss those evenings with a desperation I cannot begin to describe. They truly were an unforgettable delight.
Still My Sweetie, at 4 Years Old
Kaanapali Beach – 15th Anniversary
When people talk about going to their “happy place,” this is the place I think of. For our 15th anniversary, Shannon and I traveled to the islands of Maui and Oahu for a week-long getaway. The first morning after our arrival, I woke up early (which I always do when I travel) and slipped out to the beach just beyond our hotel while Shannon got a bit more sleep.
If you look up top 10 beaches in the world on the internet, Maui’s Kaanapali beach will show up on a lot of those lists, and rightfully so. The sand, the water, the view…they are all beyond amazing. Which is why I was stunned to find myself entirely alone that morning. Yes, it was 6 a.m. but still. I could literally see only one other person, approximately half a mile down the beach, walking a dog. Beyond that, there was not a single other soul within view.
The horizon had a pink hue to it and I could see the islands of Lanai and Molokai off in the distance. The water was perfectly clear and neither warm nor cold. The sand was the whitest and softest I’d ever experienced. I’ve taken a lot of deep breaths in my life, but none has ever put me in a relaxed state like the one I took that morning as I lay with my legs slightly submerged in the water, leaning back on my elbows, just staring out at the perfect horizon. I consider that morning a personal gift from God. I realize I was probably just lucky; that it was the right time of year to be there, that it was earlier than most people would be out, that…fill in the excuse. But to me, it will always be a personal moment between me and my Creator as He showed me just a glimpse of the true delights He is capable of.
Wrong Time of Day, But Still Amazing
The Guys Trip
I can already see the eyes rolling as I say one of my moments of pure delight was on a guys’ weekend, largely due to the reputation associated with a guys’ weekend. How can four dudes hanging out in San Diego produce moments as meaningful as the ones described above? Well, what can I say?
Last year, my golfing friends and I traveled to San Diego to golf the world famous Torrey Pines Golf Club. It was a trip we had been planning for two years. So much about the trip was great. The golf was beautiful. The weather outstanding. My obnoxious golf shirt with a parrot/palm frond pattern was exquisite. But the two moments that I look back and remember as being filled with joy had little to do with golf. The night we arrived in San Diego, the four of us went looking for a place to eat in the commercial section of the village we were staying in. We found a nice little restaurant that served amazingly good food. The memory of contentment is the camaraderie of four friends. We have been golfing together for well over 10 years. We have seen each other through a lot of life’s different twists and turns. Hopefully that will continue long into the future. But that night, it just felt like a culmination of what good friendship should be. We tried taking a selfie only to learn that apparently 40+ year-old men are not very good at selfie taking. Dan called us a bunch of girls, which earned several glares from the table next to us which was filled with actual girls/women. To this day, we refer to that evening as Girl’s Night. The golf that played out over the next three days was great, but none of it was quite as delightful as that night was for me.
Along the same lines, the next night one of the guys and I walked over to the beach near our rental. Without any real plan, we set off walking past the hundreds of people playing on the beach and in the water as the sun set on the ocean. The conversation drifted all over from deep life topics to very surface non-important topics. I don’t even remember any specific thing we talked about. I just remember the bond of friendship. I’ve always appreciated good friends. These selected memories of that weekend are symbolic to me of what good friendship can and should be.
Play It Where It LiesI Told You My Shirt Was AwesomeLast Day At Coronado Island Golf Club Was Pretty Legit As Well
Seattle – The Hike
Shannon and I had never been to Seattle before I got a chance to go for a business trip in 2018. It’s a beautiful city and we had a great time experiencing all that it had to offer. But the moment of true peace and joy for me came on our first full morning there. We had awoken to some unfortunate news that would have required our immediate attention if we were home, but we weren’t. So there was little we could do except continue on with our planned morning, which included a drive and then hike at Wallace Falls State Park.
In that morning of turmoil, a hike through some of the most beautiful forest I had ever experienced, with my ultimate best friend, was the exact thing I needed to bring a little peace to my soul. Hiking in the desert beauty of Arizona is something not to be missed. But hiking through a literal rain forest in the Pacific Northwest, at least for me, holds no equal. The views spoke to me. I desperately wanted to capture what I was seeing on “film”, but as anyone can guess, that was impossible.
I can remember the smell of the soggy wet earth. I can remember the cold that caused the slightest running of my nose, but yet was not unpleasant. I can remember the feel of an occasional raindrop as the weather remained undecided on which course of action to take. And I remember the awe-inspiring beauty of the falls when they came into view. I remember being grateful for what I was seeing and that I could see it with Shannon. The memories associated with that morning are a shared delight we hope to see again in the future.
Again, Pictures Don’t Do These Well Over 100-Foot Falls Justice
On The Road Again
The last two years I have taken my two sons and embarked on ridiculously long road trips across great stretches of our nation. In 2018, we traveled to New Orleans via San Antonio to see the July 4th fireworks on the Mississippi and visit Tulane University. In 2019, we traveled to Salt Lake City, UT, Rexburg, ID, Reno, NV, San Francisco, CA and Los Angeles, CA to visit BYU, BYU-I, and Stanford and see Hamilton in San Francisco. We also planned on watching the July 4th fireworks over the bay near the Golden Gate Bridge, but learned that fog generally kills that experience.
Both of those trips are filled with memories that I will cherish for the rest of my life. Not many dads get to have this kind of experience with their sons. Not many dads have teenage sons who would necessarily want to do this with their dad, so right there I feel incredibly grateful.
But the two memories that stick out the most with regard to peace, contentment and pure delight are a mirror of the memory I started this post with. Both trips began long before the sun rose. On our first trip, we discovered the joy of listening to the podcast This American Life. With absolute clarity, I can still remember the peace and gratitude I felt as we drove through Lordsburg, NM, the sun just beginning to rise, as we listened to the struggles of Abdi Nor. Abdi is a Somali refugee to our country and the podcast chronicled his experience of winning the immigration lottery and the travails he would experience along the way to eventually arriving in America. I can’t begin to explain the emotions I had listening to his story and all the sacrifices he had made as the dawn rose on the first day of our “historic” trip. Both of my boys were listening with rapt attention just as I was. Despite the anxiety associated with the podcast, I remember feeling peace and contentment as we drove, the anticipation of all we would experience ahead of us. Just as it had been almost 20 years earlier, the experience was remarkable. It has stayed with me more strongly than so many events of that trip. It’s a feeling I wish I could duplicate. However, I have learned that most of the time, you must enjoy those moments when they come because they cannot be planned and they cannot be replicated. They just come, and then they leave.
Thankfully, a year later, I would experience the same feelings as our trip began. I can remember the sun rising over the Salt River Canyon as we neared Show Low, AZ. My boys will eventually grow up and leave me. One will actually do so in less than two months. But I will always have those early morning delights that no one can take away.
From Our Driveway at 3:15 a.m. Before Setting Out for SLC in 2019Official BYU Visit 2019The Name Above It All Speaks For Itself. San Fran 2019Official Stanford Visit 2019Jackson Square 2018The Mighty Mississippi, July 4, 2018
Music
Finally, I cannot deny that some of my most contented and peaceful moments on this earth have come through encounters with music. Two of those moments came in All-State Choir concerts in which my son, Braden, has taken part. When done right, music can transport my soul, and both of those concerts accomplished that for me. Unfortunately, this past Saturday would have been my son’s third and last opportunity to take part in the Arizona All-State Choir Festival. It would have been held at Arizona State University’s Gammage Auditorium. It was the one event he had been looking forward to more than any other during this, his senior year. But like so many other events across the world, it’s gone. It also would have been my son Logan’s first opportunity to try out and possibly take part. It was huge loss for our family.
But thank heavens for the two concerts we do have and the possible future concerts that remain. I love music. I love listening to it, I love making it, I just love being a part of it in any way. The feelings of peace, joy, and delight that music provides I have felt not only in Braden’s concerts, but also my daughter Abby’s concerts at EAC, Shannon and I’s own concert experiences at EAC, various professional concerts we have attended in a variety of genres, and so much more. But one area that rarely fails to provide me an experience worth remembering is musical theater. One other aspect of the second trip I took with my sons was the opportunity to see Hamilton in San Francisco. I didn’t know much about it, but as I sat there and the production unfolded, I was blown away. It was truly incredible. And like so many times before, the music provided me a level of peace and delight that is all too rare in this earthly existence.
I am grateful for music. In fact, I am grateful for all of these experiences I’ve mentioned. I am grateful for them, and so many other delights in my life, and I am grateful to be allowed such clear and vivid memories of when pure contentment has settled upon my soul. For those who actually made it this far, I hope you take a moment and reflect on the moments of true delight in your life. During this COVID-19 event, you should have plenty of time to do so.
In recent days, there has been much clamoring for the re-opening of America and it’s economy. Living where I do, I have to admit that I totally understand this sentiment. As I have documented previously, our little county in Arizona identified two cases of COVID-19 back in mid-March. Both of those cases have fully recovered. Since that time, not a single test for COVID-19 in our area has come back positive. NOT ONE!
Does anyone have any idea how difficult it is to stay committed to stay-at-home orders or true social distancing when not a single case of the dreaded disease everyone is hoping to avoid hasn’t shown up in your backyard for over a month? Of course some of you do, because you are probably experiencing something similar. And I get it, everyone just wants to get back to normal, get back to work, and get back to…being America.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, this yearning for normal has lead to some less than ideal arguments being floated into the grand marketplace of ideas. For instance, Indiana Republican House Representative, Trey Hollingsworth, suggested that the “lesser of two evils” is to let more Americans die rather than let our American way of life (our economy) die. He later walked back this comment to a certain degree, but he is not alone in his view that in order to save the greater good for a greater number of people, we probably need to re-open the nation, let everyone get back to work, and let the virus do its worst. Most people advocating this view tend to be younger than retirement age and free of underlying health concerns and therefore feel a little more at ease with their chances.
The tough part is, frankly I get it. My wife and I have both been extremely blessed to remain employed through this historic worldwide event. There are many who haven’t been as fortunate. But we can relate in the slightest of ways. My son is preparing to leave on a religious mission for two years. These missions are largely paid for by the missionaries themselves and their families. For the last year he has held a job that was providing money to pay for his mission. On March 20, that job went away. I would very much welcome the opportunity for him to go back to work. It would be a true financial benefit for our family if he could go back to work. So please believe me when I say I understand the allure of the idea now permeating a large portion of our culture, “The cure can’t be worse than the disease.”
It’s tough, though, when facts get in the way. Since January, we’ve been hearing the refrain that COVID-19 is nothing more than the flu, or that the number of those dying is not even reaching that of those killed by the flu each year. The truth is, the CDC reports that in the 2018-2019 flu season 34,200 Americans lost their lives to the flu. Admittedly, in previous years that number has been as high as 57,000. Yesterday, the United States experienced its highest 24-hour period of fatalities related to COVID-19 to date with a number of 4,951. Our total deaths related to COVID-19 in the United States now stands at 35,371 and we’re not even close to done.
Never fear though, numbers like those can be explained away easily in this age of social media which overflows with an endless supply of unverifiable information. The new arguments sprouting up all over Facebook and Twitter, perpetuated by those hell-bent on re-opening the country, are that the numbers being reported are inflated. I suppose it’s possible. There is absolutely no verifiable proof that this is true, but I suppose it’s possible.
But the main issue is that we can’t lose our American way of life, our liberties, our freedoms. That’s the only thing that matters here, am I correct? What we are doing nationwide with social distancing and stay-at-home orders is an overreaction that cannot stand for the mere argument of safety. Freedom comes with a cost. That’s just the way it is, right?
On September 11, 2001, America lost 2,977 people to terrorist attacks carried out by Islamic extremists. As a result, all flights were grounded for a week, but then we got right back to normal. Except that when travelers returned to the airports, they were told to arrive two hours in advance in order to navigate new stringent security measures that had been put in place. The days of people walking their friends or family directly to an airport gate were over. Large trash cans were placed in airport security areas as thousands of bottles filled with personal hygiene products got thrown away due to new restrictions on the amount of liquid one could carry with them onto a plane. Weeks later, after another attempted terrorist plot failed, millions of Americans were forced to remove their shoes and belts every time they passed through airport security. What followed in the coming months were implementations of machines that would basically provide the TSA a very reliable view of what you looked like naked. It was a little off-putting, but…in the same of safety, right? All of these basic removals of privacy and loss of freedoms were accepted by the masses in the name of safety. Overreaction? I guess we’ll never know. We didn’t like it, but it was being done in the name of saving American lives.
What’s interesting is that if you fly out of an airport in Canada, you don’t go through all of that extensive security. Don’t get me wrong, you do go through security, but you don’t remove half your clothing and the process is much simpler and less invasive. Since 2001, Canada has not had a single significant terrorist attack related to airplanes originating in their country. So why do we keep up these ridiculous over-reactive practices at our airports?
We want to be safe! We want to feel safe and if that is the price we have to pay, personal liberty and privacy be damned.
Since 9-11, the number of individuals killed in airline related terrorism inside the United States is 0. The number of individuals killed in reported domestic terrorism incidents unrelated to air travel but associated with Islamic extremism in the last 18 years is 83. However, because of this threat to American lives, we currently have a travel ban in place for individuals from the following countries: Yemen, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania.
Please understand that I understand that these nations are home to a significant number of people who want to do harm to Americans. However, these same people also want to do significant harm to citizens of their own countries. Refugees pouring out of Syria since 2011 due to a never ending civil war are doing so under the threat of death. The entire number of Americans killed in the US due to terrorism since September 10, 2001 is 3,060. The number of Syrians killed by Islamic extremists since 2011, ten years less than the American time frame, is over 400,000. The UN Refugee Agency estimates that between the number of Syrians who have fled their country after being displaced (had their houses and livelihood utterly obliterated) is approximately 5.6 million. An additional 6.6 million are displaced but still reside in Syria with no ability to escape. That is a total of 12.2 million people who are without homes and without hope due to Islamic extremism. Most of those people are Muslims.
I don’t know, looking at those figures it could be argued that being a Syrian is much more dangerous in the face of Islamic extremism than being an American. And that doesn’t even touch on the numbers of those affected in the other nations listed above.
In 2016, United States policy allowed for 110,000 refugees to be vetted and resettled within its borders. In 2020, the total number allowed, the ceiling, the most we will accept, is 18,000. Each year, the US generally takes in about half of the number allowed which means that the US could expect to see 9,000 refugee resettlements in 2020.
Why? Why would a nation that claims to be steeped in the traditions of Christianity turn its back on millions in need? Don’t get me wrong, I understand that we can’t take everyone and that the vetting process should be extensive, but 9,000 out of literally tens of millions?
States like Arizona and Utah have made clear to the federal government that they are more than willing and ready to accept refugees. Utah especially has had amazing success helping refugees displaced from middle eastern nations acclimate to a new home in the Rocky Mountains. They are begging for more. But due to US policy, there aren’t any more to send them.
Again, why? Because we’re afraid? Because we’re concerned that a terrorist might slip in among the innocent and kill us? Again, since 9-11, 83 people have been reported killed in the United States by Islamic extremism. By comparison, over 50 died when a wacko white guy broke out a window in the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas and shot up a music festival.
Now follow me here. If not losing our American way of life is important enough to open back up our nation even though doing so could cost us thousands of actual American lives, wouldn’t it be just as important not lose our Christian identity and ideals by opening up our borders to the tired, the poor, the huddled masses that are fleeing certain death in their homelands? By the way, of those 83 people killed by domestic Islamic extremism, exactly zero were killed by refugees vetted and allowed into our country through the refugee resettlement programs. ZERO!
So, if we’re going to get all patriotic and self-righteous about our liberties and freedoms by demanding a reopening of our country despite scientific evidence that suggests it may not be the best idea to do so, then I think we should get equally serious about remembering who provided those liberties and freedoms to us in the first place. We need to really open this place up. It’s time to do what’s right for more of God’s children than we currently are, especially if we have decided that loss of American lives is no longer a barrier to protecting our American values and Way of Life.
This era of COVID-19 and social distancing has at times given me way too much time. As such, I have engaged in behavior I am not necessarily proud of.
One, this last week I broke my rule of arguing with people on social media. I have managed to stick to my guns on not posting things that are argumentative and political in nature, but I did get into it pretty heavy with an elderly grandmother type who self-described as an”old white woman” (definitely her words, not mine) in the comments of Mitt Romney’s social media page. By the way, that is a place to avoid at all costs. It is also a place filled with individuals who do not understand the definition of the words “traitor” or “decency”, but that is a whole different discussion.
Two, I keep looking at the Total Deaths number both worldwide and in the US on Worldmeter.com. Don’t do that either. It’s not uplifting nor is it productive.
On the other hand, I have continued to enjoy uplifting news where I can find it, and I’ve enjoyed spending time with my kids on a more regular basis. I’ve documented the latter over my last two posts pretty extensively, but those efforts do continue in earnest, mainly because…those poor kids have no other choice.
However, it’s this time I’ve been spending with my kids that has forced me to confront a real controversy that exists in the world. Before COVID-19, I had managed to avoid it. But last Friday, that all ended as I finally sat down and watched Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. And so today, I weigh in on that ongoing controversy of: J.J. Abrams vs. Rian Johnson, Last Jedi vs. Rise of Skywalker, casual fan vs. zealot.
Now for a majority of human beings, the conventional thought might be, “What controversy?” To that I would reply, “Oh dear, you’d better sit down!” (BE WARNED, SPOILERS TO ALL STAR WARS MOVIES ARE FOUND BELOW)
Let me start by providing context and a heavy dose of personal opinion. First of all, I am not a fan of the original Star Wars movie, now entitled Star Wars:A New Rise of Final Hope or something like that. It was in that movie that Luke Skywalker earned the title of whiniest protagonist ever in a motion picture, a title he would hold for well over a decade until Paul Reubens came along in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.
There are so many problems with that movie that I could spend a day enumerating them, but I won’t. In contrast, I very much enjoyed The Empire Strikes Back, which was the first movie in the series I actually saw, and I thought Return of the Jedi wasn’t too bad. It helped that I managed to collect all four collectible glasses at Burger King when it came out, which might have influenced my enjoyment of that movie since I was, you know, 10 , but there were Ewoks so…
Furthermore, I firmly believe the three Star Wars prequels that George Lucas directed and produced some twenty years later are among the most wasteful uses of celluloid ever documented and did a lot to show us what a mediocre writer and director he actually is.
It seems to me that a great deal of the allure surrounding the original Star Wars trilogy was that people were seeing special effects on screen that had never been seen before. I’m pretty sure it was those special effects that clouded the senses with regard to the weaknesses of the movies themselves. The three prequel movies did not benefit from such an edge. They came out around the same time as Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy and suffered greatly in comparison. Both had stunning visual effects, but Peter Jackson actually used his in benefit of a strong story whereas Lucas tried to make up for a lack of story by filling the screen with so much eye candy that it actually rotted out movie screens across the world. (Okay, I made up that last bit, but…just barely.)
I realize that by writing those words, many Star Wars fans will consider me guilty of gross acts of blasphemy, but I submit the following as an endorsement of my opinion. Disney agreed with me. Don’t believe me? Then ask yourself, why was the first order of business for the Mouse, after purchasing LucasFilm in 2013, to fire George Lucas and scrap all of his ideas for the final trilogy that would make up the original canon? I’ll tell you why. Bob Iger sat through Attack of the Clones at some point in his life and swore that he would never helm a company that would put out that kind of atrocity. The fact that Disney then released The Long Ranger years later proves that he made that promise rashly, but still…
Which brings us to the latest and last trilogy in the original canon Star Wars saga. Disney brought on J.J. Abrams to direct The Force Awakens because he had the touch for salvaging franchises that were languishing or near dead (See: Star Trek and Mission: Impossible). Unfortunately, in the era of social media, Abrams faced a fresh challenge that has eviscerated many a director: the die-hard fan base.
The Star Wars fan base has evolved over time to the point that Charles Manson would be kicked out of their ranks for being a little too lax in his commitment. These individuals (many of whom weren’t even alive when the original Star Wars came out) believe in their hearts that they are the true owners and protectors of the mythology that makes up the Star Wars universe. They destroyed Lucas himself for years (and I agree, rightly so) when the famed director decided he couldn’t leave his movies alone and kept going back to re-edit them over and over despite the fact that, you know, we’d already seen them. This annoying habit of his culminated in the most controversial move of the entire series when he changed the scene introducing Han Solo so that it appeared that the bounty hunter fired first at Han instead of the other way around. As if we would all forget the real sequence of events we had watched a dozen times before. It was like he was providing a tutorial for how to run a country to his young padawan and eventual emperor, Obi Don Trumponi, or something. (Sorry, sorry. That was bad on so many levels. No more politics or bad puns based on Star Wars type names, I promise.)
Anyway, J.J. set about trying to make a movie that would be both fresh and appeal to the faithful who, as a rule, want nothing changed from the original formula. The result was The Force Awakens and the response was immediate. Half the faithful loved and half hated it, which was about the best he could have hoped for. The biggest criticism was that he basically remade the original movie. And to be fair, that’s pretty much what he did. The difference was, he made it a million times better. So bottom line, success. The faithful were not storming the gates and the rest of us had an original Star Wars movie to watch minus the whiny refrain, “Unnncle Ooowennnn.”
But J.J. has a history of being a one and done director when it comes to his reclamation projects. He remains a producer, but he likes to hand the reins over to someone else, and so for the second movie in the latest trilogy he turned things over to a man named Rian Johnson.
Now in my opinion, Johnson’s entry into the Star Wars ethos is the best movie of the nine. BY FAR!!! And the reasons I love it are the very reasons the faithful seem to absolutely loathe it. I mean they HATE it! From the first early preview showings the grumblings began about how Luke Skywalker would never act in the way Johnson portrays him in The Last Jedi. And what did he do? He showed true emotion. He was fallible. He was bitter. He was real!
The fact that he wasn’t a carbon copy of the wise, older Jedi played by Sir Alec Guiness, Liam Neeson, and the world’s most recognizable rubber mask was awesome. It provided layers of texture and realism to a stable of movies decidedly devoid of such things. I also loved that his villain had moments of doubt and instability. It was the first Star Wars movie I had ever seen where I actually wasn’t sure what was going to happen next. I reveled in the final showdown between Luke and Kylo Ren which turned out to be a complete facade. I loved the cockiness Luke displayed which provided a complete contrast to the whiny kid we had met in the original movie. I loved the maniacal rage of Kylo Ren when he realizes he’s been had. Vader would have never got played like that. We all know it and in that moment, we knew he knew it. There was more human drama on display in that one sequence than we saw in the entirety of Hayden Christensen’s portrayal of Anakin Skywalker. (That poor sucker watched his entire career go down the drain thanks to Lucas. Or maybe he really can’t act. I guess we’ll never know.)
Bottom line, I believe Rian Johnson produced the best movie of the series by far. And…Star Wars nation killed him for it. They didn’t want all those things I mentioned above. They wanted the fan fiction they had created in their minds and in their dreams many years earlier when they would go to sleep clutching their Luke Skywalker action figure.
Which is what J.J. Abrams was facing when he came back aboard to direct the final movie in the original canon series. I’m sure that wasn’t daunting at all (sarcasm definitely intended). And so, J.J. did what he had done before. He made a decent movie for the die-hards instead of a great movie for the masses.
Don’t get me wrong. I think Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is a good movie. However, I would rank it third in relation to the other two in this particular trilogy. As a point of reference, I would also rank it third in the list of nine, but under no circumstances will it ever pass the first two. The suspensions of belief required so that fanatics can get another look at the Emperor were just a little to much for me. I prefer the emperor’s ending in Return of the Jedi. His return, to me, felt…forced. Also, as much as I like Disney, I didn’t care for the Tangled, Beauty and the Beast, Frozen treatment for Rey at the end of the climactic scene. C’mon, really? And finally, we saw that Leia nearly died when she was ejected into space one movie earlier. Yet in this movie, we have characters riding around on horses on the outside of a spaceship that is currently in space. (Picture me shaking my head ruefully as I’m typing this because that is what I’m doing.)
So bottom line, Rise of Skywalker wasn’t made for me. I accept that. The fact that I actually didn’t see it until this last weekend drives that point home. I am not a member of the faithful. And for those who are, I hope (and have heard) that the final chapter gave them the closure they were looking for.
But for those of us who don’t own a full-on Storm Trooper outfit or a golden metal bikini, I now hope the faithful will ease up. Because I believe the story telling possibilities that exist within the Star Wars universe are endless and wonderful. I absolutely ate up The Mandalorian, not because it was Star Wars, but because it was the best Western movie/series I had seen in a decade. I want more of that. And I certainly don’t want future film makers to be held to an unrealistic standard of “What Would George Do?” because that kind of expectation is completely unattainable. I mean, let’s be honest, we’ve actually seen what George would do. It was called Jar Jar Binks, and the sooner we’re all able to collectively forget that the better.
![Young MC - Stone Cold Rhymin' [LP] - Amazon.com Music](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/717X-359ZcL._SY355_.jpg)
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Ryan's Rapier Wit 