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Scarecrows: Appalachian Tales by Steve Rasnic Tem
Steve Rasnic Tem has compiled a second new collection of short stories, “Scarecrows: Appalachian Tales,” that revisit the Appalachian states like Tennessee and Virginia, sketching memorable stories of the miners and kinfolk who live there.
When I read the story “Willie the Philologist,” the third story of the twenty-six stories in the 180 page volume, I felt that this story accurately captured this award-winning writer’s love affair with language. Explaining the term to Bill, the story’s protagonist, the author says, “That means you’re a lover of words, Bill. A bona fide lexical romancer…That was one of the things about words. They let you love them…You could still love them, even when you didn’t understand them.” The narrator remarks, “People ought to be like that with each other, but too often we’re not.”
Bill, in the story, lives in Norton and just loves words like “gregarious,” “rue,” “pell mell,” “slapstick.” “He repeats them over and over for a time, but then their meanings always creep away, as if ashamed of themselves, and all he has left is their carcasses.” Later, he admits, “They can’t see that he just loves his words.” This love of language and facility with it is true of Steve Rasnic Tem’s work, and it transports these semi-horrific stories into the realm of literary fiction.
Although I understand the wisdom of using the Appalachian setting as the unifying device for the collection (and, by the way, it’s not that easy to FIND a suitable unifying theme for short story collections), I thought to myself, “The author is a philologist, par excellence.”
Maybe his next collection will simply be titled “The Philologist?”
“The Cabinet Child” – The first story in the collection is set in 1901-1902 in Southwest Virginia. Jacob and Alma are the main characters. Jacob seems to have supplanted caring about people, replacing that with caring about furniture. “Sometimes, at night, she would catch him with his new acquisitions and talking to them as if they had replaced the family he no longer much cared for.” In time, “His family virtually abandoned him over his choice, but, as a grown man, it was his choice to make.” How did Jacob’s love of things rather than people affect Alma? “Over the years, despair worked its way into her eyes and drifted down into her cheeks and the weight of her grief kept her bent and shuffling.”
“Smoke In A Bottle” – This one had a lighter tone than many, with a poverty-stricken family in St. Charles, Lee County, in Southwest Virginia enjoying their father’s antics at Christmas-time. “We knew Christmas was over when Dad fell into the Christmas tree.” The town is typical: “I knew there was still a lot of good about the town, but it is not the kind of place you come back to.” Eddie, a neighbor, gifts Willie with a Christmas tree and there is little for the family other than that. The narrator says, “I hadn’t been back in St. Charles in twenty years. Not because I hated it. When you live in a place as poor as that people think you must hate it and you can’t wait to leave. I knew I was poor, but I didn’t know I was that poor.” The alcoholic father of the story does his best to soften the blow of their poverty, including his Christmas tree shenanigans and sharing the wisdom that “You got snow, you’re a rich man” because “Snow was good for covering up shabbiness, and ugliness, and essentials missing.” A bittersweet story of life in impoverished circumstances.
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The author and wife Melanie on their wedding day.
“The Bible Salesman”.
Daddy Frank is a state trooper and “Daddy always looked angry as hell, even in his sleep.” Jimmy, Sam and Molly witness Daddy’s King of the Castle demeanor firsthand. They are witnesses when a Pakistani Bible salesman sweet talks wife Janet into buying an expensive Bible. The book would cost $200 in four $50 installments and Daddy Frank, when he discovers Janet’s faux passe, isn’t having that. I instantly related to the line, “Might as well say some day they might visit the moon” in relation to any of the family visiting Pakistan (where the Bible salesman is from), only, in my case, the line applied to the Beatles coming to Chicago to play and me traveling to hear them. My elderly Iowa parents were not on board. I remember thinking that my chances of making it to the moon during my lifetime were better than my chances of seeing John, Paul, Ringo and George play the Windy City. (Probably why it was such a thrill when I actually did get to see them “live” in 1965 while spending a summer studying at Berkeley, 7th row, San Francisco Cow Palace, $7 ticket.)
“Old Men on Porches: Moony Holler is the setting for this one, that features Claire, Daddy, Billy, Momma, Aunt Jen and places like Big Stone, Storega, and Kimmerjam. Old, retired miners sit on the porches of the small mining settlement. “Those old fools wave at everybody what come by, friend or stranger. If the Russians was to march up this holler, those old men would just be grinnin’ and a wavin’ them on!” The story continues with poetic lines like, “The wet wind reached in and touched her face, pulling on her skin like she could just float out the window.”
“Nightcrawlers” – This short piece (poem) took me back to the childhood days when I would be part of a small group catching night crawlers so that we could fish in the nearby Wapsie Pinicon River in Independence, Iowa. It was always an exciting adventure to take a flashlight and go out to the green golf links and watch the night crawlers come up from the water-saturated ground of the neatly manicured greens. In this short piece “the worms danced there just like he said, their questing front and back ends pointing, then waving in distress.” The worms are under rocks in this story. The young person accompanying his father to the rocks says, “I wanted to go into the darkest woods where the worm songs go. But, to Daddy, they were bait.” I remember catching the nightcrawlers as being much more entertaining than sitting in a small rowboat the next day trying to catch fish. (We did catch a medium-sized catfish. Nobody wanted to cook it, so we put it in the beached boat, filled the boat with water, and watched it swim around for a few days before returning it to the river. But catching nightcrawlers was a great adventure for a young child.)
“Sundown in Duffield” – This one focuses on an unidentified horror in the cellar of his parent’s old house in Duffield, Virginia, off Pattonville Road, in Scott County. John and Franklin, John’s grandson, go back to visit the house where John had lived as a child. Why the family left the house in the first place is a bit of a mystery, shrouded in lost memory. “John couldn’t remember how old he was when his family left the house, fleeing in the middle of the night with time only to throw a few things into the car.” They left at least sixty years prior and the town has now shrunk to 73 inhabitants. Now, John is failing. His sister has left John the house and John wanted “one final look.” “How come he could remember the names of all these weeds and yet so little of anything important?” “He could feel his annoyance rising like a fever he could not control.” “He was of two minds. His grandmother used to say that. But in his case one mind was sharp and clear and the other overflowing with bewilderment. John never knew at any given moment which one was going to show up.” At one point, the narrator tells us that “He (John) wanted to call for his Grandson but at that moment he did not remember his (Franklin’s) name.” The fitting coda to the story: “In his experience, when someone said, “It will be okay, it usually won’t be.” This one was a favorite.
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Melanie & Steve Rasnic Tem.
“Saved” – Walt sets off during a time near the pandemic to visit his 93-year-old mother. It is set in Virginia and Tennessee. Walt’s brother, Frank, has sold their mother’s house and they are going to visit the nursing home where Doris Russell resides, the very same nursing home where their father died 10 years prior. Frank and his wife Peggy live nearby. Doris is totally confused when Walt visits her. She thinks she is in her Daddy’s house. An “alarmingly pale young man too thin for his jet-black suit and wrinkled white shirt” is there to give a sermon, which began with an elderly couple singing, accompanied by tinny-sounding music from a tape player. The new preacher from Harlan County, Kentucky, the Reverend Parkey, delivers his “wonderful message for all of us.” Reverend Parkey is quite the talker. Among many other things, including his allegiance to the Bible, he says, “It’s never too late to be saved.” He adds, “I’m so ready to go to heaven, aren’t you? Won’t that be a wonderful day?” Walt is not impressed. In fact, Walt waves the young reverend away from Mother Doris. “It made Walt angry to hear this youngster speak to them that way, of heaven and paradise and the beautiful world to come, when this fellow knew so little of growing old, when death for them was so close. This preacher was a young man who didn’t know what he was talking about.” (May I say, “AMEN?”)
“Scarecrows” – “Scarecrows” begins with a prison escape by a convict named Gibson. He and Frank Moore are working in a ditch not more than thirty feet from the woods. They make a successful run for it. Of course, that’s not the end of Gibson’s usually bad luck. He falls into the hands of “a crazy woman with a shotgun. Gibson’s (bad) luck was at least consistent.” The old woman with the shotgun has an entire field full of creative scarecrows. They are even named and Gibson attempts to take the clothes of the scarecrow the old woman calls Hector. When accosted by the elderly woman in her sixties, she correctly identifies him as “a jasper,” meaning an outsider (who grew up in Maryland and lived all over the South.) Since Gibson tried to steal Hector’s clothing, the old woman decides that Gibson will make a good replacement scarecrow, even though he promises to simply disappear. Things do not go well for Gibson during his enforced stint as a substitute scarecrow. “Pain had been such a constant companion he’d barely noticed.” An interesting open-ended conclusion with Gibson being addressed as Frank, since he has chosen to lie to the field’s owner about his true identity.
“Miranda Jo’s Girl” – What happens to Miranda Jo Wheeler’s daughter is grim. We hear of Betty and the Willisville Store. There are references to Big Stone, Ender’s Ivy, Castle’s Wood and Drunkard Bottom. Made me think of how “different” children were treated in Sparta—or Nazi Germany. Not a cheerful tale but, sadly, more true to life than fairy tales with happy endings.
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Steve Rasnic Tem.
“Mr. Belano’s Visit” – Mr. Belano makes a trip that he’d planned to take with his wife. Carla, the clerk at the Lowe Hotel finally calls the Point Pleasant Police when Mr. Belano doesn’t show up by the 11 p.m. curfew. A story of hotels, ghosts, faded photographs, and destiny.
“The Passing” -Granny Gibson has cancer. She is also a healer and a “seer.” Because her granddaughter unexpectedly becomes pregnant and the father runs off to Cincinnati, Granny Gibson has to work some special magic to make sure she is around to serve as midwife to her granddaughter—especially since the child’s mother (Granny Gibson’s daughter) has kicked her out after learning that she is with child. “Granny could do lots of things, but seeing was her special talent.” She has a plan to rid her own body of the cancer that is eating her alive. As the story notes, “Cancer was the magic word they used for all the different ways a body would turn against itself.” Granny’s philosophy? “Folks weren’t built to last forever and she’d grown content to take her turn on life’s big wheel.” However, Granny Gibson must attempt a plan that involves her terminally ill friend Rose, who is hospitalized, and what sounds like a voodoo doll and Black Magic. Only things don’t go as smoothly as Granny Gibson had hoped.
“La Mariee” – Focuses on Chagall’s painting(s). Jan is the admirer of a Chagall print. Line that resonated in this tale of Bristol, Tennessee, “…out of the relief of purposeful movement.”
“The Grave House” – A southwest Virginia setting. Annie is supposed to clean up “the grave house,” which is a mausoleum or tomb-like structure where relatives are buried. “She didn’t like the grave house, for sure didn’t like livin’ in the grave house, but she did like this part, makin’ the best out of a bad sigiation.” Annie’s father seems to have been a failure in life, if soft-hearted. “Nothin’ her pa made was ever worth much. Annie hadn’t made up her mind yet if that included her.” A spooky ending.
“Diorama” – Set in the southwest corner of the state, in Wise County. Aside from the cooked squirrel that Jake is offered, it centers on his relationship with Lily, who is suffering from breast cancer. (As a fellow survivor, I can relate.) The diorama comes in in reference to medical museum of the Civil War or, as the author phrases it, “windows into a lost time and place.”
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A twenty-something Steve Rasnic Tem.
“Deep Fracture”- This was one of my favorite stories. I think it’s because it is about a hidden city beneath the mines that might exist. (Or does it?) My home town of Independence, Iowa, has been making itself into a bit of a tourist attraction in the northeast corner of that rural state with an attraction called “Underground Independence.” The “underground city” part came about in my small home town when the river nearby (the Wapsi Pinicon) drowned the town and the city fathers simply decided to build ABOVE the flooded structures. You can now go visit “underground Independence” on certain special days of the summertime, which I did recently. https://www.weeklywilson.com/underground-independence-takes-us-on-a-stroll-down-memory-lane-in-independence-iowa-on-aug-19-2023/ This story got me thinking about, once again, setting pen to paper for something other than book and movie reviews. Great lines from “Deep Fracture:” “Shabby is the basic human condition.” “The need for maintenance never ends. Because of that, it’s doomed to fail.”
“Almost A Legend” – Jake Carter is playing in the Coeburn game with the Coeburn Blues against the Dorchester Cardinals. A “ringer” is brought in—someone who was once a promising baseball player, a pitcher—maybe even in the major leagues—but has fallen upon hard times. The ringer, this time, is introduced as A. B. Collins. The crowd knows this is bogus, because his initials spell “A-B-C.” Jake ends up carrying the bogus pitcher off the mound and away from the post-game chaos. Has some particulars about small-town baseball leagues and how they operate (and cheat) in Appalachia.
“Cattiwampus” and “Bingo Thompson’s Flying Cat” – These two stories had a lighter tone, especially “Bingo Thompson’s Flying Cat.” The humor between Paul and Ralph in the flying cat story was a welcome relief, especially when the final line is, “Lots more interesting than last Saturday, huh?” The term “cattywampus” is one that my Norweigan/Dutch mother used a lot. When I was a child, I managed to take the word and subvert it into misstatements like, “Don’t push me in crookwards,” to the amusement of my parents.
“Crawldaddies” – This one, set in Rayburn Twist with Josh and Arlene and other assorted cousins who all seem to be inter-related is NOT humorous. You do not want to meet a Crawldaddy. Jake even says, “Josh kept thinking how scared his own son Trace would have been.”
“Lookie Loo” – More bird imagery. Jackson had moved to Monroe County, Tennessee. (His ex, Sheila, had moved back to Ann Arbor). Jackson sees some odd-looking brothers, “shambling between the trunk in a dense stand of trees, like apes with their too-long arms, faces a dark shaggy blur, and in the shadows with those baggy coveralls they looked like a family of Big Foot, or Cave Yellers as they called them in Kentucky.” Eventually, Josh—who is an aspiring writer who thinks that, some day, he may write a book about these interesting folk called “Strange Tales of the Smokies”— ends up in the custody of the strange creatures. Josh’s book would not have been critical of the inhabitants of the Smokies. “He wouldn’t be putting the locals down—it would just show how interesting folks around here could be. He’d finally have something to say about the world.” My daughter lives in Madison, Tennessee. She went to school at Belmont in Nashville, so Tennessee is a state I know much better than before 2005.
Powell Mountain Cedar Grove – is a poem, not a story, although it manages to tell a story of nature within its 69 lines: “Grandad says cedars come first, take the sun. Poplars need shade, and soon take over. But they grow so big they darken their own seedlings, die out. Beech and hemlock grow last to fill the forest.” A short interlude.
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Steve and Melanie Rasnic Tem.
Redbud Winter – is a story about aging. Ted decides to drive his late wife’s station wagon to Norton to see his daughter Janet. She lives with her boyfriend and her daughter, Abby, Ted’s granddaughter. “There comes a time when you have to stop driving, stop doing everything.”..”A few miles out of town, the tires making a pleasant splashing noise on pavement dark with layers of leaf rot, he smelled it for the first time. The scent of death, clear and palpable, an unmistakable presence in his nose and lungs.” Things don’t cheer up much after that. You just know there is going to be some kind of mayhem with the car. And you’d be right.
“His doctors never mentioned a smell. But doctors don’t tell you everything when you’re old. They don’t want to upset you when there’s nothing they can do.” I could add, from personal experience, that ageism is rampant in the medical community. Some doctors probably wish that, after age 70, they could just hand you a card that reads, “Waiting to die” and have you go stand in that line until your time. Young doctors, in particular, will talk right past an elderly patient, even if that patient (my mother, in this case) is of perfectly sound mind. It used to drive me mad when I’d be taking her to the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics for appointments. My mom was more “on top of” things than I’ll ever be, and she remained so until the day she died. Yet they wanted to speak to me, then in my 40s, and Mom was just “old” and, therefore, not worthy of being directly involved in the discussion. So, maybe the doctor is trying not to upset you because “there’s nothing they can do” and maybe some of the younger generation of doctors are just NOT the compassionate types that made house calls during my youth and young adulthood.
“Old Crow” features a talking crow. Birds remain major images. I’m attributing this to the author’s home and its influence on his work. (See previous review of “Everyday Horrors”). After “Old Crow” comes “A Jack Tale.” A few notes I jotted down on “A Jack Tale” include “Jakob was tired, old, and he wondered if he’d ever tell another tale.” Thomas Oliver (a pig) features in the story and Jakob is Old Death’s Companion.” Those two shorter stories bring the final tale, “The Return.”
“The Return” – Joel goes back to revisit his childhood home after 40 years away. “The sun’s setting fast on this old town. You should have come back sooner,” say the locals. “Despite its problems, this had been a good place to grow up. He could find no justice in its abandonment.” “When you grow up in a place you never imagine it going away. People don’t last, but it seemed to him a town should.”
This line spoke to me when I realized that every single school I have ever attended, except for some classrooms on campus at the University of Iowa, has been torn down. My elementary school: gone. My 1st through 6th grade school: gone. My high school: gone in 2013. The school I taught at from 1969 to 1985: torn down. The school where my mother taught for 40 years: gone. Very off-putting to have institutions of higher education disappear before you do.
Joel gets a room in a hotel, but the landlady, after checking him in, seems to have disappeared. Joel’s memory is fading. His memories of his dead wife, Celeste, are growing fuzzy. “On the way back through town he tried to find the spot where their house had been, but as hard as he tried he couldn’t remember the address. He drove back and forth through the neighborhoods for hours with no luck…He wasn’t sure whether it was Friday or Saturday. Perhaps it wasn’t even the weekend.” Not only can Joel not find the landlady, he cannot find the house where he was staying. “He couldn’t find the place. He drove from one end of town to the other and beyond, trying every road, sometimes driving at a crawl to make sure he didn’t miss it, and found no indication of its existence…Joel couldn’t think of anything logical to explain this omission, or what a next reasonable step might be.” Joel seems to be losing it, in more ways than one: “He could remember nothing else and knew that what he could remember only yesterday had faded away.” I am happy to see that a writer as talented as Steve Rasnic Tem is not in Joel’s mental state, and neither am I. (Long may we remain cognitively alert and firing on all cylinders.)
CONCLUSION: Silver is an ongoing motif, signifying death in this and in others of the author’s stories. (“The morning came up all silver, and he was aware that something new was about to begin.”) Bird imagery re-emerges. The poetry of the prose is even augmented by some actual poems, in this collection. Death, dying, and deterioration are continuing themes, with our old adversary, cancer, always lurking in the shadows. But there are some truly ingenious and intriguing plots, as in the stories “Sundown in Duffield,” “The Passing,” “Deep Fracture,” and “Scarecrows.”
As a writer older than the author I limited myself to three stories a day, to keep from depressing myself over the indignities of aging and the inevitability of deterioration, decay and, ultimately, death. Once I got through my own unwillingness to deal with being in the last decades of life, I could enjoy the spot-on descriptions and empathize with the protagonist’s poetic language.
I can both relate to Steve Rasnic Tem’s stories on a personal level and appreciate his accuracy as a narrator. This collection, unlike “Everyday Horrors,” even has a couple of more lighthearted stories., which I enjoyed.
What I see happening in films by older directors (Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, Robert Zemeckis, Ridley Scott, Pedro Almodovar, etc.) is a recognition on the part of many of these creative types of their legacy. Many of them seem to be acknowledging that their opportunity to create is coming to an end. Not all dwell on it; some do. It seems natural, when we come near the end of our life. [*PLUG INSERTED HERE FOR RETURNING TO MY BLOG FOR MY PRESS COVERAGE OF “SUNDANCE” FROM 1/29-2/2).
While “Everyday Horrors” is almost universally somber in tone, “Scarecrows” has poetry, and even a couple of lighthearted entries. It is as well-done as any horror short story collection you’ll find—if you can categorize observations on life and living as “horror.” (After all, the book reviewed just before this IS entitled “Everyday Horrors.”) It’s literary fiction examining the human condition, with an emphasis on the last chapter of life and imaginative plots executed with Steve Rasnic Tem’s usual competent and evocative poetic language.
Kamala Harris Accepts Democratic Presidential Nomination; DJT Phones In on Fox
By Connie Wilson
On August 23, 2024
In Books, Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, News, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics, Television
I had planned to write a piece commenting on Kamala Harris’ acceptance speech on the final night of the DNC in Chicago, Then, (following the dry cycle of my laundry), I moved to the bedroom to change the now clean sheets and put them back on the king-sized bed. In the bedroom, Fox News was carrying the DNC.
While I changed the sheets, I listened to Donald J. Trump phone in and rebut Kamala Harris’ speech. I will insert the complete 37-minute content of Kamala’s acceptance speech (in case you missed it), but I have to assume that most of you were watching it, so suit yourself. Unlike Trump, who rambled his way through a basically unlistenable litany of untruths at the RNC, Harris hit most of the issues and delivered her speech with sincerity and enthusiasm. She looked and sounded presidential (because she IS presidential.)
Then I watched 8 voters in Allentown, Pennsylvania say that her speech had sold her to them (auto workers all) and they would be voting for her (they had been unsure in a previous meeting). One woman retained the right to decide later. One Black male (in real estate) said he’d vote for Trump. Listen to Trump’s remarks about how the auto workers are all supporting him in the phone call above. [*Apparently not the 8 that just spoke to a reporter in Allentown, PA.]
Trump’s illusion that he is “strong” (Macho Macho Man) was consistent with why Black males were supporting DJT over Biden before July 21st. It also explains why Black males find it difficult to get behind the idea of a female president, even if she is half Black (and half Asian).
CHANGE
People want change for the better. This was emphasized by John King, Chief National Correspondent for CNN, who has been traveling the country gauging the temperature of the nation. Coming into the convention, Trump had 55% of voters selecting him on the economy versus 43% for Harris and 53% on the immigration issue versus 44% for Harris. Harris led only on the abortion issue (55% to 40%.) [This was from the New York Times Siena Poll. ] In the next 75 days Harris and Walz must change these perceptions.
CONVENTION BUMP
There are 75 days during which Kamala has to convince voters that she, the current vice president, represents change for the better. That will not be simple, since Harris has been in office as Vice President for 4 years and the GOP will attack her on that basis. (as DJT already did in the phone call above).
The Siena poll showed that 56% of voters disapproved of Biden. Only 41% approved of Biden in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and the other swing states. Now, the Republicans are going to try to give Kamala “Biden Baggage.” It started tonight with DJT phoning in to Fox & Friends. (*Did Fox & Friends, who claim to be so “fair and balanced” offer Kamala Harris the opportunity to phone in and rebut DJT’s RNC acceptance speech? No.)
John King, who has been doing political reporting for 40 years, says that Kamala did well. I agree. He pointed out, however, that in 1988: Bush won over Dukakis, but Dukakis had left the convention enjoying a convention bump that put him 17 points ahead in the polls. Despite the post-convention bump, Dukakis lost “bigly” to George Herbert Bush. This was partially because people wanted change and partially because of the Willie Horton dirty tricks that depicted Horton as practically Dukakis’ running mate. (*For those of you who don’t remember Willie Horton, he was a convicted murderer and rapist, who was released on a weekend furlough from a Massachusetts prison in a trial program and committed a rape and murder while temporarily free. Dukakis was the Governor of Massachusetts. The Bush campaign used Horton’s case to tar and feather Dukakis in a textbook example of what is known as “dog whistle politics,” which is what Harris and Walz are about to encounter, if I were to take an un-wild guess.)
John King was born in 1963, which means he is 61. I haven’t followed politics for as long as John King, but I am close to 20 years older. I go back to every President since Truman. I’ve also written 3 books on politics (the campaign of 2008) and was named the Content Producer of the Year for Politics by Yahoo in the wake of my coverage of the 2008 election of Barack Obama. (See my books on that topic, “Obama’s Odyssey: The 2008 Race for the White House.”)
Taken during a McCain rally at the Cedar Rapids Municipal Airport during the 2008 presidential campaign. Cover of Volume II of “Obama’s Odyssey: The 2008 Race for the White House.” (Available on Amazon in paperback and e-book).
LIKEABILITY
I agree with the white-haired CNN commentator with the 40 years following campaigns, and I agreed with Geraldo (whom I watched on News Nation) who stressed that “likeability” was key to electing anyone. It was likeability that doomed Hillary Clinton and, to a certain extent, John Kerry, who always seemed a little bit too patrician. We’ve all heard the remarks about how “W” seemed like a guy you would enjoy sitting down and having a beer with (*I don’t drink beer, so that’s a no for me.)
TAX INCREASES
Bogus. Tax increases on the rich, yes. On the middle class, not so much. Trump’s point on companies taking their business to another country (increasingly Mexico, not China) is fair, but THAT HAS BEEN HAPPENING FOR DECADES. Companies moving to cheaper countries is not a Kamala Harris thing; to say it is is unfair. It is far likelier that DJT will raise taxes on the middle class to give tax breaks to people like himself.
BORDER
Trump said, of the bi-partisan border bill, “It was a horrible bill. It was a joke.” It was a bi-partisan bill that was said by those who worked on it long and hard to be quite good. Trump told his allies not to vote for the bill, because it was to be his border issue. If you really don’t know what was in the bill, click on the link above and it will tell you. Don’t just trumpet things that either candidate says; research it. (Anthony Fatone: that is for you, Dear Heart. And thanks for saying I’m “smart as a whip” because that should tell you that, if I’m saying you need to do more “reading up” on these things, maybe I’m right.)
MARXIST ACCUSATIONS
First of all, as our old friend Wikipedia tells us, “There is no single, definitive Marxist theory.[1]
It is likely that the “Marxist” accusations are a legacy from Kamala’s economics professor father, who taught at both Stanford and the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He has advised his country (Jamaica) on economic issues and some aspects were derived from Marxist writings of various sorts, but her father has remained completely out of Kamala’s career, refusing to be involved in her 2020 campaign and making a rather brusque rebuttal to a lighthearted comment that Kamala herself made (about smoking pot) on a radio show. She said something about smoking pot to the effect of, “Are you kidding? Half of my relatives are Jamaican.” Dad did not like it much, issued a rather public reprimand (Kamala did not respond) and has not had much involvement in his daughter’s career (or her life before that) since the couple split when she was in elementary school.
Jamal Simmons, political commentator on CNN, compared DJT to Midnight Elvis, calling in to talk shows, rambling around in Mar-A-Lago. Jamal mentioned Trump’s recent appearance in Howell, Michigan. White supremacists held a march there recently and voiced support for Trump, Hitler, Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. So, Trump’s strategy is to cater to THAT demographic. Roger Stone, a big Trump supporter, has a yearslong relationship with Proud Boys leaders, Enrique Tarrio in particular, and would regularly use members of the group as his personal security detail at political events.
Roger Stone.
I seriously doubt that DJT has much of an idea what Marxism is (and, quite frankly, it is difficult to pin it down as there are many offshoots.) There is actually a book on Amazon entitled “Marxism in Plain and Simple English.” It’s 62 pages. If Donald J. Trump really thinks that Kamala Harris is a Marxist simply because of her estranged father (a professor of economics), that is really reaching. I think The Donald needs a copy of that book. (*After all, Steve Bannon, his brain trust, is currently in jail until 2 days before the election, so the Wizard of Odd is having to rely on people like The Mad Hatter, Roger Stone, for intellectual guidance.) Another thing that his insult brings to mind are recent put-downs that DJT has made about Kamala Harris’ intelligence; she is quite obviously the child of two very bright people (while Trump’s own intelligence is often questioned, despite the supposed expertise and education that led to multiple bankruptcies.)
Here’s a snippet from “How to Compare Marxism to Capitalism.” It is quite clear that Kamala Harris is no Marxist. To wit: “Marxism, oftentimes interchangeable with communism, emerged from the writings of Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels in the 19th century, and is based on the theory that class conflict will eventually result in the establishment of a society where the public owns the means of production. The two theories are historic enemies, and their differences are most acute when examining their attitudes toward individualism, private property and profits.”
At no time has Kamala Harris sounded like she is not supportive of capitalism simply because she has argued for everyone in our society having a fair shake and an equal chance at making a life where they each of us has the freedom to make choices for themselves (as, for instance, in reproductive rights.) Trying to paint Harris as a Marxist or Communist is a page right out of the “dirty tricks” playbook of the GOP going back to 1988.
REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham (D. New Mexico), commenting after Harris’ speech, said she “showed us tonight what leadership looks like.” It is up to every woman of voting age in America to ask themselves whether they want the freedom to decide about their own health care and to decide if they do (or do not) want to have a child. Women need to mobilize like our grandmothers to gain us the right to vote. Only, this time, it is the right to live free (and not die) under an autocratic ruler who simply wants power for himself and his cronies.
IN CONCLUSION
As D.L. Hughley said at the convention, “The only way that Trump can keep Kamala out of the White House is if he buys it and refuses to rent to Black people.”