A Trust toward Balance

As well as missing any religious attestation the citizenship oath fails to mention political parties or ideologies, extreme or otherwise.  Even the words democracy and republic are absent.  Also missing is any mention of one's race or ethnic group, one's sex, gender expression, educational aspirations, career paths, marriage intentions, or sports affiliations. 

I hope we, as a conflicted nation can survive the current and worsening damages of greed and ignorance forwarded by partisan powers. My hope has helped me to watch and learn as much as I can from the nearly countless and too often shrill talking heads one can find with a TV, laptop, or iPad. I'm not cowering or in denial. It takes an effort and some days I need more coffee than others. 

I have my favorite sources. They are not unanimous or univocal with each other. For instance Chris Hedges has held my attention for years more than Chris Miller or Ben Meiselas.  It is a list of what I believe are reasonable, attentive(at least), and for the most part progressive minds. They also are for the most part predictable.  I often stop reading or listening as soon as whatever was cryptic or ambiguous is clarified. I share their bias and I know there's "more to the story" than their take or mine.

I know I need more balance, particularly in my political and news commentary "exposures." David Brooks helps with that a little. There are a few others. I have a hard time tolerating the white male cynicism, projection and sloppiness that inhabits so much broadcast from the "right." Theirs is a different kind of predictability.

Still, I am trying to be more balanced. My sense is that my practice of citizenship is enabled by balance, whether it be news sources, political commentaries, economic theories, ethnic exposures, religious comparisons, educational attainments, etc, etc.  I also believe my citizenship is impaired by underexposure and denial. 

It almost goes without saying that partisanship, especially the bullying kind does not intend a balancing of thoughts and interests in its citizenry. Isn't it a kind of submission they intend?  Seems MAGA's version of citizenship comes from a top down homogeneity that shunts(drowns?) its diversities down into a pool to be called up like compliant and performative Sea World dolphins when ready to say the same things with the same inflection as their leaders.

It's worth admitting that much of the left side of our political ledger has plenty of performative or even theatrical "expectations."  There's not really a pool as much as an atrium with a kiosk displaying predetermined roles, so that lesbians know to do a particular lesbian-ish, blacks do black-ish, etc, etc.  Decisions are still made from the top. Think "super-delegates" at a contested party convention.

The attraction of a balanced citizenship is that it need not compete with the alien, legal or otherwise.  Our constitution is just as non-partisan as the oath of citizenship. It intends a blind acceptance of persons to be served and protected within the nation it defines.  

The recent lack of attention to "due process" in the rendition of some among the alleged gang members to a foreign prison reminds me of our constitution's blindness to a person's status.  I'm still hunting the video of Scalia's answer that aliens have due process protection just do citizens.  I'll work on my thoughts regarding the Roberts court's allowance for Trump's carelessness.  For now it is that one need not be a citizen to be protected by the 5th and 14th amendments to our constitution.

So from now on I will guard against any interpretation that appears to have citizenship defining a set of privileges.  My hope is to better identify those limits and responsibilities incumbent on all citizens, understood as having no advantages of class, affiliation, income etc. above others.  I will also strive to trust our constitution as intending no competition for the protections it defines for all persons -- citizen or otherwise -- within our nation.

BTW, the word citizen does not appear in the Bill of Rights.

Intending Anonymity under the Law

"The experiment of citizenship knows nor requires anything more than willfully admitted adherence to the Constitution."

It's obvious there is much more to say here but "adherence to the Constitution" is especially important when one is choosing to become a citizen of this nation into which they were not born by parentage or place. 

The oath of allegiance is the last act before one is declared a naturalized citizen. In that oath there is no mention of any office of government or an office holder to which one clings.  No President, Senator, Representative, Secretary, etc., not even a flag is named or indicated.  Only the Constitution and its laws hold our allegiance.

I am musing on what sort of nation would follow if all citizens were subject to the same oath of allegiance.  Our flag focused pre-game pledge of allegiance seems weak in comparison and is not strengthened by our modern anti-communist addendum, "under God."  That only cracks an opening for religiously practiced partisanships and confusion.  

As well as missing any religious attestation the citizenship oath fails to mention political parties or ideologies, extreme or otherwise.  Even the words democracy and republic are absent.  Also missing is any mention of one's race or ethnic group, one's sex, gender expression, educational aspirations, career paths, marriage intentions, or sports affiliations. (I'm winking at "America's Team" from Texas.)

There is a profound anonymity afforded us by our citizenship, naturalized or not.  It renders all possible inflections as wastes of our time and effort.  But waste we will and in that partisan confusion grasp at straws.  Straws out of which we fashion arguments to exclude so many from the very protections the constitution establishes for all citizens.  

Here I'm thinking of Tennessee's Healthcare Ban of transgendered citizens and "Bless her heart" Nancy Mace's sequestered congressional potties just to name two current examples of campaigns intending to define-down citizenship. Both instances intend to prevent the gift of constitutional anonymity and to promote partisanship above citizenship as the vessel of adherence.

There's plenty more to say because our nation is still learning, still experimenting through trial and error, legislations and judgements, and campaigns and elections how easily forwarded and accepted are substitutes for citizenship.  

Below is the Oath of Allegiance.  Recite it to a fellow citizen and have them do the same to you.

"I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God."

Partisan Buckets

I've been focusing on our contemporary struggles as partisans in a coarsening of our shared civic lives. Do you remember John Roberts during his consent hearing before the Senate characterizing the practice of the Supreme Court as "calling balls and strikes?"  That was heard as indicating a humble respect for "the law."  It was overly simplistic and hiding an ambiguity through which we as a nation now are lurching.

It might help to acknowledge that things are changing in Major League Baseball calling balls and strikes.  Experimental technology will help make pitch calls in Cactus and Grapefruit minor league play this year.  Inaccurate calls can be challenged. Similar to other sports there will be a limit to the number of challenges allowed during each contest.  

I am musing about an equivalent being practiced within our courts.  WOW!  Seems to me a long way off if ever to happen.  Instead I'd be happy with some version of humility in SCOTUS similar to one assumes results from an overturned umpire's call and as is approximately present by an appeal process in the rest of our federal courts.  The potential for appeal makes a difference and shapes the way lower court decisions are made.  

The varying appearances of humility from members of SCOTUS is not an isolated occurrence. It is part of that coarsening I spoke of to begin.  Humility is not "the law."  It cannot be legislated or enforced.  It is more in the realm of custom and character and thus relies on wisdom, respect and self-awareness.  None of which are built into video replays. 

As well, humility by itself is not enough. I'm thinking of something like Southern Baptist theologian Carlyle Marney said, "humility is not a virtue unless you have something to be proud of."  He was expanding his claims that denominationalism allows a false pride/humility in the specific orthodoxies.  His favorite target was "good Baptist."

Marney often said that our denominations were "buckets" for manifesting our relationship with God.  But he would continue, "the name for who we are in relationship to God is HUMAN! And the pronoun is US!" 

Roberts' was a false humility because it was hiding a deep partisan interest. In the end, Roberts didn't have anything of which to be proud because his bucket wasn't big enough.

Was it a ball or a strike?  We needn't review the video on Citizens United.  We have to live with that call until a Congress and President change the rules.  Sometimes real humility is better than the video.

Celebrating Citizenship

It is no accident that Constitution Day is also Citizenship Day.  September 17, 1787 a majority (39 of the 55) of those delegates assembled in Philadelphia signed the Constitution. Those that agreed intended for the legislatures of the then 13 states to add their affirmations and ratify the document into force.  With New Hampshire's ratification in June 21, 1788 a fledgling experiment in democracy was formed as a constitutional republic.  

It is the "gravity" of our Constitution that collects us, not a single president, or lurching legislature, or a pretentious bench.  No state pledges allegiance when the "stars and stripes" are raised.  Only citizens can make that pledge.  We are made a nation by an agreement begun nearly 238 years ago and sustained by our adherence to the same.

William Randolph Hearst had a good idea and eventually his 3rd Sunday in May “I am an American Day” was moved by a joint resolution of the Senate and House of Representatives to September 17 and added the name “Citizenship Day.”  Again, it is not a mistake or coercion to bind these two fundamentals together even acknowledging the 165 years it took to come about.   

How else are we to celebrate citizenship? Seems obvious to me that idolizing a President is well short of our pledge.  Just as short would be a rabid partisanship.  The constitution doesn't appear to contemplate political parties. One wonders what sort of adherence to our founders' intentions is expressed by SCOTUS's decisions such as Citizens United (irony?) or Trump v. U.S. (more so?). Both decisions misconstrued citizenship as something less than that for which we hope in our celebration.  

It's not just recent decisions, good or bad our history exposes a persistent unease with the practice of citizenship as foundational.  I'll long muse about the relationship, if any between John Adam's absence on September 17 and his expressed preference for property as determinative for voting status.  Suffrage has long suffered the proprietariness of propertied white men.  Our contemporary fixation on "voter fraud" wants to appear interested in this particular -- can I say crowning? -- exercise of citizenship and ultimately shows itself captive to the skewed partisan ALEC orchestration of gerrymandered state legislatures. That's putting it mildly. What should be protected FOR all citizens to choose is instead restricted to sustain the newest version of those old preferences for Adam's landed gentry or worse.

I am advocating for a citizenship that has been hoped for more than practiced.  Citizenship with its crown is meant to be the fuel of our constitutional republic, not family, property, race, sex, gender expression, privilege, or even merit.  The resistance to that understanding is centuries old and brand new. It is causative not merely coincidental that demographic shifts are triggering the fears of propertied white men so used to voting as a majority.  No wonder Trump is attacking birthright citizenship in his executive orders.  No wonder Georgia criminalized handing out water to voters waiting for hours at the their limited polling stations.  No wonder the escalator lapse of historic context that abuses asylum seekers and with calculating imprecision admits, "And some, I assume, are good people.”  I can't see a tiki torch without Charlottesville's cries of "blood and soil" ringing in my ears.

The experiment of citizenship knows nor requires anything more than willfully admitted adherence to the Constitution. Until my fellow, privileged, white, men admit their deeply seated and unresolved fears of being treated as their fathers before them treated through law, and religion, and social institution, and business in public and in private anyone who was not of their "station" my advocacy for a practice of constitutional citizenship, better than Adams or Hearst imagined will not cease.  

A Supremacy of Nerds

 "So the shift is away from RGLB as a covering theme to "finish the coup." Instead ours can be a counter movement within the re-embrace of citizenship." 

There has long been a limitation, you could say resistance to defining citizenship as the basic building block of our nation.  John Adams argued that 

"The same reasoning which will induce you to admit all men who have no property, to vote, with those who have, . . . will prove that you ought to admit women and children; for, generally speaking, women and children have as good judgments, and as independent minds, as those men who are wholly destitute of property; these last being to all intents and purposes as much dependent upon others, who will please to feed, clothe, and employ them, as women are upon their husbands, or children on their parents.”

So there is a history here that not only implies a caste-like ranking of the population but has worked to understand "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as preferably accomplished by those holding property.  Notice that Adams' argument does not leave all work to a "landed gentry" but clearly intends for those "destitute of property" to labor and earn their keep through employment, as dependent on the propertied as are "children on their parents." 

Certainly there were other currents working against a broad understanding of citizenship.  You'll not read any DEI adjacent arguments from those steamy late 18th century Philadelphia summers.  And finally Adams' argument as it came specifically to address voting was to "leave it to the states." I will not argue beyond indicating the long struggle between state and federal "forces" regarding the voting franchise than to say African-Americans were finally fully franchised by the federal government in my lifetime.  

My sad point is that our history has more years than not where the definition of citizen served other interests and suffered many prejudices and fears.  It's as if it was never really the first concern or default set in each era's arguments and contentions about our government.  I say this with some incredulity but how could we have missed(avoided?) it for so long and failed to integrate citizenship as the better unit of measure in the nearly 250 years of our constitutional republic, our democracy.

[Aside: I am curious that those who argue ours is a "republic not a democracy"(RND) are not only making a category error but exposing an old bias similar to Adams'. Indeed my experience in conversation is that a Venn diagram of those arguing RGLB and RND would render nearly concentric circles.]

To answer, I believe at the heart of this failure to embrace citizenship is what we now mostly call racism and with it sexism, classism, and all the divisive categories that populate the rhetoric of power.  Adams knew he was arguing for a way to protect power not just to seize it from a monarch but to hold and share within a body of people--men with property--like him.  

Wealth has other measures such that property is often more sign than source.  Think of Ted Turner's "fishing holes." You can grant that there may even be benevolent impulses at play but the truth is that the land itself is not from where his wealth was derived. 

There are other more lucrative wealth builders most of whom started with someone else's money. Think Trump or Bezos or Musk, all aided by their parents.  It's easy to build a longer list.  The business model that is most recently informing how government should run under the RGLB banner continues to look more like venture capitalism than hard work and thrift.  

The labor of this new "industry" requires no muscularity or leadership.  It's more video gamesmanship and chat rooms.  It's where allegations travel faster than facts and accountability is implemented by who is most offended (not really injured) and has a political power wielded by a trunch of lawyers.  

"Turning and turning" and it will not do for citizens to "defend the constitution" any more.  The idea empowering Musk's maddened attack on any department or executive agency that has scrutinized his many likely illegal, definitely predatory business practices is called accelerationism.  Think Matrix and Revenge of the Nerds had a baby. More later.

Illusory Truths, Part Two

From Part One: "the emerging "better business" practices of hedge funds and private equity make the [newest] RGLB rules. Instead of fiscal restraint and balanced budgets we see emptying the coffers of Social Security and Medicare because the latest mutation is that government funds are just fungible accounts to be liquidated."

I hurried to get to that closing point. I hope it's OK. It might help for me to say that US politics -- campaigns and governance conflated as -- have over time become an increasingly moving target.  That's what happens, especially when the wealthy are competing for power. What were uncomfortable playmates have become indistinguishable twins slipping in and out of each other's roles. It looks like an addiction has stolen our colleague from us. Is this the Chamber of Commerce or Opus Dei meeting? What were once open meetings at the local S&W are now invitation-only foursomes or dock parties.

It never really ends. No matter how lofted they become the new oligarchs must defend their holdings against those with less power.  In the end even democracy becomes a threat to be rebooted if not eliminated because it allows an access to power based on citizenship not wealth.

The shift of RGLB from promoting fiduciary trust to practicing equity liquidation is more rude and predatory with each election cycle.  The politically empowered are compelled to exhibit bravado and condescension so as always appear to be "winning" while governance slips further into perpetual campaigning.  They brag while they spoil $500m of USAID food exports on the docks in the name of ending waste. What was ended was an IG's investigation of Starlink's aiding Russians in Ukraine.

Another aspect of this shift as it takes advantage of the RGLB's blurred lines is the temptation to privatize government function in the name cost savings. Now it's hard to explain DOGE without admitting how far beyond fiscal restraint and balanced budgets we've moved.  Nearly simultaneous with the most recent Oval Office theatre using his toddler son as a shield Musk is awarded another multi-million dollar contract and gets to double his DOGE budget request.

Like Clemenceau taught, the last war teaches some us how to fight the next.  Some evolve, some don't.  Some play the name game, like Reagan's "peacemaker" or Elon's DOGE.  If you keep saying it, it becomes true. These illusory truths are weapons the powerful weigh open all discourse. Try using the phrase "Gulf of Mexico" in public.  Orwell's "thought police" no longer need uniforms, just little more than a link to social media. MAGA has moved beyond marginally mannered rebuttal and instead prefers to "flood the zone." 

So I'm thinking Bluesky's alternative provides some escape from the flood but is weakened by it's openness and transparency.  Perhaps the more evolved tactic finds us some other, less social media driven ways to share and explore ideas, to expose truth, to strategize and plan.  The way I see to know about but steer clear of the flood is not to use the previous conflicts' "guns."

In the same way that Jesus refused Judas' guerilla insurrection entrapment and Pilate's outright military rebellion accusations we can refuse the habits and practices of Trump's "winning."  Let's watch more closely but stop fighting on their terms. They needn't hear our complaints and protests. That just locates our base on their radar.

Besides, "winning" changes the frame and both sides use terms like lawfare and complain about weaponization.  So the shift is away from RGLB as a covering theme to "finish the coup." Instead ours can be a counter movement within the re-embrace of citizenship. Which is always monarchy's preferred victim. Think subject instead. Best to properly exercise our First Amendment protections before they're removed in the name of Trump's "unity." More on that later.

So write me a note. I'll share my address after I know who you are. Then mail it.

The Illusory Truth about Winning

I'm sorry I can't find who he was but the first candidate to campaign saying "run government like a business" (RGLB) was not completely honest with his voters. First heard, this claim sounds like advocating for fiscal restraint or balanced budgets. It is now 2025 and we have suffered at least 45 years of this belief's impact on the American taxpayer with neither real fiscal restraint or balanced federal budgets to be seen. 

In terms of the American taxpayer, more data than not supports the sad reality that RGLB has allowed if not intended the worst concentration of wealth in our history into the accounts of America's newest oligarchs. An ideology that enjoyed repeated assertion without evidence in our political rhetoric since before Saint Reagan's ascendency was then accelerated by his accompanying claim that government was the problem. Now we are left with the "blur" of governance and perpetual campaigns, the failure of checks and balances and the widest income gap on record. 

The illusory truth of RGLB is a kind of meat and potatoes to the current MAGA politico. Its repetition makes more critical thinking about the facts difficult or even worse, disloyal. RGLB is repeated as if there had been no use of bankruptcy provisions or legal settlements allowing predatory business practices to continue beyond insolvency or legality. These two categories (are there others?) imply a broad range of questions and concerns in particular for two business men elected to high office, Rick Scott and Donald Trump. There are plenty more but I'm already 71 years old so . . . 

Certainly many will offer that each is only guilty of "violating" the unfair standards and practices of "bad" government, think weaponization. Perhaps a question about the sequence of government empowerment, private initiative, system abuse and finally governmental lenience can help us recognize that something more like a blurring of boundaries than a war between ideologies is happening.

Doesn't it make sense that Rick Scott's medicare fraud happened AFTER a loophole was found? Was it his "better business practice" to exploit the loophole for profit? Is that what RGLB means to promote? Certainly "good government" wrote several provisions into Medicare rules but who looks at those provisions and sees loopholes when enjoying taxpayer funds?

Sensible or not, even the settlement wasn't accomplished without a "better business'" gaming of legislated standards, bureaucratic practices (more loopholes?) and judicial practice allowing Scott to retain most of his ill gotten gains AND then nearly immediately self-fund a run for political office.  

Trump's bankruptcies and courtroom choreographies though "legal," show an even greater "better business" gaming of the system. How else was he ready (and at least to appear so) to self-fund his first campaign for President AFTER at least 6 bankruptcies? Let's also include the court judgements regarding Trump U and Trump Charities as we make our way through identifying the "choreography" of his dancing through courtrooms. We should ask exactly when was Trump subject to bad governance? What are the lessons his business practices could provide except to find loopholes, reduce penalties and delay judgements. No wonder this descant of the RGLB anthem is also sung by the MAGA choir. 

There are others whose business practices have gained them high office and many were invited into department secretary positions with similar resumes. Many will say its too soon to tell if #47's appointments will render better proofs. I'm thinking we need not wait to find out. The lines are blurred beyond repair by recent elections. What used to be winning as a campaign strategy toward governance is now the perpetual monopolization of government.  

RGLB, with the new oligarchs as best witnesses, now means that the emerging "better business" practices of hedge funds and private equity make the RGLB rules. Instead of fiscal restraint and balanced budgets we see emptying the coffers of Social Security and Medicare because government funds are just fungible accounts to be liquidated.  

With Musk in the White House RGLB will not just continue to blur, it will mutate.

Part 2 coming soon.

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