Barrett Rainey's Second Thoughts

For anyone with an honest interest in the true profession of politics, the name James Earl Carter may have been on your mind for the last few months. If you’re fortunate to have access to any form of media expression, coupled with that sincere interest in all things political, you’ve been wrestling with what to say about the Carter story – and how to say it – since his disclosure a year ago that he has cancer. And a resulting remission.

The best regional piece I’ve read was from friend Marc Johnson in Boise, on his blog “Many Things Considered” awhile back. Something thoughtfully political with a great deal of heart and substance.

Historians will continue to debate the Carter presidency as they do those of all temporary occupants of the Oval Office. The good – the bad – the important – the trivial. That’s their job and they’re welcome to it. Not possessing any of their scholarly credentials, don’t look for any of that here.

But, I’m an adult American male with some longevity and understanding of what I admire in someone of that same simple description. Politics aside, I can think of almost no other public figure who rises to the common definition of role model and just plain decent human being as does James Earl Carter.

I’m a cancer survivor. So far. As such, I’ve watched Carter’s public discussion of that very private issue of possible death with interest. In sum, his public statements about his battle contain what every medical professional looks for in someone in their care – thoughtfulness – perspective – reflection – understanding. And humor. Humor from – and directed at – the human experience that death is a part of living. If religion is part of someone’s life – as it certainly is for Carter – invoking one’s faith is not only relevant but crucial in how matters of fate can be accepted.

But, within a few hours, matters of politics soon interrupted these moments of witnessing humanity at its best. In less than a day, one of the cretins running for president took a public shot at the Carter presidency. A shot not only ill-timed but factless. As too many of recent statements have been. Embarrassment and personal humiliation don’t exist in Cruz world.

But Cruz and others – whoring for dollars and votes – have offered the most glaring examples of how far the institution of national politics has fallen compared to the humanity and moral stature of a Jimmy Carter. Trump is the worst as he usual is when taking about the value of someone’s humanity. His outright prostitution is selling himself for public adulation and to gorge his billionaire-sized ego

Try to simultaneously hold in your mind the kind of personal and public life lived and the contributions to humanity made by Carter since his White House years, while also considering those “candidates” who got into the Republican primary this year. Pick any one of the strident voices from the entire pack – just one – from whom voters could expect a future personal life of humanitarian service, public dignity and selfless contribution. I can’t.

Our recent political history is befouled by money, lies, unfounded fears of government spread by callous but well-paid voices, wide-spread willful ignorance, candidates far, far exceeding the “Peter Principle” and scores of office holders not qualified to do the jobs to which they’ve been elected.

The National Republic Party is reaping a harvest of shame from years of accepting the lowest denomination of unqualified candidates. This scrum of flotsam has been propped up by billionaires determined to set our country’s agenda for decades to come. For Democrats, the candidate is someone whose run has long been “ordained” but who’s not been sufficiently publically challenged in this campaign and who’s become profoundly rich at the public trough.

And it’s our fault. We’ve accepted all that. With the exception of Clinton and Sanders, we’ve accepted vastly unqualified people who’ve disdained educating themselves or participating in the knowledgeable conduct of their government. We – you and I – have not been involved enough with a selection process that puts names on the ballot – the names from which we have to chose who’ll determine our national course. We’ve stood at the polling place too often and cursed while making a choice of “the lesser of two evils.” By our careless and uninformed vote, we’ve allowed office seekers – and holders – to become whores chasing dollars and taxpayer-funded retirements while rewarding big donors with favoritism. We’ve failed to demand high standards and have allowed incompetence to be perpetuated and accepted. We’ve wrongfully allowed elected office holding to be perpetual employment.

Then, a former peanut farmer from Georgia displays the grace, dignity, acceptance and guts of someone you can’t help but admire, whatever his politics. He does it in our living rooms, face-to-face, showing us how to deal with our own mortality by offering the finest of ourselves.

For centuries, travelers have navigated by the North Star because of its reliability and brightness. Future presidents would do well to navigate their courses using the same qualities of humanness as James Earl Carter.

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As our kids and grandkids grow up, most of us have recurring thoughts about what kind of world they’ll inherit – whether they’ll be better off than we were – whether their lives will be more peaceful – and loving hopes they’ll experience better conditions than we have.

The way everything changes so quickly these days, it’s hard to tell what the reality of those hopes will be. Some things better – others not so good. Given the nuclear fractiousness we live in, there may be no world to inherit.

But something new – something more personal – has come to mind lately – something that worries me more than all other situations they’ll face. And it all springs from our current national disgrace of a presidential election.

Few media types enjoy writing or talking about Donald Trump. National talking heads excepted. Most of us do it with clenched teeth. Ridenbaugh Press Prop. Randy Stapilus, for one. He’s midway through a 100 day exercise of 100 reasons – often excellent reasons – why Trump should never be president. His jaw has been excessively tight for the last few weeks. Teeth grinding is probably involved, too.

The fear I have is not Trump – the most unqualified, most dangerous candidate for national office in my long lifetime. Nor is it the monumental, simplistic ignorance of millions of Americans who plan to vote for him without the slightest thought of how a Trump presidency would damage the political, legal and moral fibre of this entire country. No, my fears are of something else.

I’m deeply frightened how such a disastrous occurrence would adversely affect the next several generations of Americans. More specifically, my fears are for our children and grandchildren.

Talk to classroom teachers right now. Anywhere. Ask them if they’re seeing more “acting out” – more one-on-one violence – more playground bullying – more disruptions – more bad behavior from kids in the lower grades. Go ahead. Ask ‘em. And don’t be surprised when they answer “yes” to several or all of those factors. And more.

How can children not be affected with the 24-hour cacophony of accusations, lies, confrontations, charges/countercharges, despicable behavior, violence and adults behaving badly that surrounds them? Many kids get regular, traditional lectures about proper behaviors expected of them – civility and courtesy to others; lessons we all were taught. But, what they’re seeing and hearing on all those electronic devices they live with is just the opposite.

Under no condition – none – will there be “peace in the valley” when this national mess is declared over on November 9. Not a chance. The divisions that separate us now will – if anything -be more sharply drawn and more formally pronounced. Donald isn’t going to disappear “into that good night.” In fact, I believe he’ll be an even greater presence with or without the key to the Oval Office.

I believe he’s going to look to the millions of votes he received as a “mandate” to continue his arrogant, racist, misogyny-laced, lying, bomb throwing. Roger Alies – the deposed sexual deviant from Fox News – has not taken up space at the top floor of Trump Tower just to enjoy the view. With Ailes political proclivities and media contacts – and Donald’s ability to come up with the big bucks – creating a “Trump Media Company” would be a no-brainer.

With it, he could outfox Fox. Trump would get his international podium and Ailes would be able to hold his middle finger high in the face of Rupert Murdoch who embarrassed him and separated Ailes from the blonde airheads in his former playground. Trump disavows the idea. Now. But, remember, this is a guy who, if he told you the time, you’d still look at your watch. I don’t believe him for a second. The only thing real about Trump is his ego. His word on any subject isn’t worth the hair spray on his over-coiffed head.

But, even if that doesn’t come to pass, Trump will continue to dominate national media whenever he opens his uninformed mouth as he’s been doing for over a year. Millions will continue to treat him as a “messiah” – deeply flawed but their “messiah.” The divisions he represents – deep and wide – will still be dangerous threats to the life and welfare of our Republic. His political blasphemy isn’t going away.

Adults – at least thinking and informed adults – can and likely will tune out most of his noise and BS. And the wrong-headed millions who support his civic and political ignorance will continue to do so. But, what about the kids? What about young people who – though they’d deny it – take their cues from what they see and hear their elders doing and saying? How could they not be affected? What societal, civic, political and governmental foundations we’ve historically nurtured will erode because of this cretin?

It’s not our future in jeopardy. It’s theirs.

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Imagine a small meeting room filled with about 25 people – more than half in some stage of a pregnancy. They’ve come to hear about plans for a brand new multi-million hospital and what they hope will be a state-of-the-art Ob-Gyn department. Imagine the reaction when the hospital administrator says it ain’t happenin’.

That’s the picture in remote Gold Beach, Oregon. Prospective parents looking for hope – and a couple of authoritative voices saying in no uncertain terms “no.”

Gold Beach is the county seat of Curry County on the far Southwest side of Oregon, just above the California border. It’s one of the prime tourist spots in the state. It’s also one of the poorest counties and – from a political standpoint – Curry is the most screwed up place I’ve ever lived.

Some background just in health care delivery there. The county has about 23,400 residents and one small hospital in bad shape, built in the ‘50’s. About two-thirds of county residents live outside the boundaries of the hospital district and pay no taxes to support it. They also live 25-70 miles away from it. Bad situation all round. Yet all the folks expect the best care when they need it even though they pay no taxes to support it.

More than half the county population is in the Brookings-Harbor area 25 miles south of the hospital and outside the district. The hospital is trying to build an emergency room and a couple clinics in Brookings – where most of the people are – with some of the money approved for the new physical plant in Gold Beach. Dollars are stretched very, very thin.

Still, it was quite a shock to hear the hospital CEO and the Board President speak so candidly about the planned absence of Ob-Gyn services. None.

Curry Health Network CEO Ginny Razo: “If you’re planning on having a child lin Curry County, you’re rolling the dice. We don’t even have a physician to care for your baby. If things go wrong with a midwife and you come here, you’re putting yourself in a dire situation. This organization is not prepared to take care of such an emergency.”

Razo again. “I can’t afford three RNs and a physician to catch a baby. You’d have to have two Ob-Gyn docs because one can’t work 24/7/365. You’d also need several nurses and all that would cost another million dollars.” The situation now, she added, is there aren’t enough babies born in Curry to keep one doctor busy.

Board President Ryan Ringer: “It’s very black and white. We’re not interested in Brookings (25 miles South) because we want to serve Brookings. We want to make money off Brookings because it brings services here (25 miles North at the new hospital). I’m ultimately responsible for the health and well-being of this community. But I’m also responsible for the well-being of this organization (the district).”

Pretty tough talk. But, as I said, Curry is a mess in a number of ways. Unincorporated Harbor – where most people live – time and again has refused to merge with Brookings, which is incorporated. They don’t want to pay the city taxes. They want the services but don’t want to pay for them. Just as they pay nothing in taxes to support the hospital district.

Which puts more than half the people 25 miles away from a hospital they want and need but for which they pay nothing in direct support. So, if you live in Brookings-Harbor, you’ve got a 25 mile, twisting coastal drive when Mom’s labor starts at 2am or you rush 30 miles South to Crescent City, California, to another facility where there may be a qualified doc at 2am. Or, maybe not.

There’s more to this story if you widen your focus to all our Northwest neighborhood. A lot of other small towns are fighting all sorts of battles to keep their hospitals open and up-to-date. Some are losing. Burns, Moses Lake, Grangeville American Falls, Chelan and dozens more. Because health care is first and foremost a business. As patients, we don’t often give that a thought. But, birthing babies is a money loser. The profits are in surgeries, outpatient clinics and orthopedics.

Maybe that’s why the chiefs at Curry Health Network were so plain spoken in a room with a couple of dozen expectant parents. You gotta put the bucks where the institution is or it won’t be there. Makes perfect business sense.

But, to a 20-something woman in her last trimester and already feeling the baby inside, it’s not “business sense” she wants to hear. She must have had a long, dark drive home at the end of the meeting while feeling the kick of a tiny foot. God love ‘em both!

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When the first Colin Kaepernick caper happened a couple weeks ago, it didn’t really hit my radar screen. Just another jock with a $114 million contract trying to get some attention. But, when he did the same thing a second time – and I’d learned more about his thinking – it registered. ‘Cause, in some ways, he speaks for me.

I’m not going to carry any water for the guy. He’s a big fella. He can take care of himself, though he’s been pounded on heavily by a bunch of disagreeable types who put mouths in gear before engaging brains. With ignorant racial name-calling, anonymous demands he leave the country and a few death threats from Bubbas even Freud wouldn’t understand, he’s clearly gotten the public attention he sought. Though, from the mostly off-the-point reactions, not a lot of people have received his intended message.

Kaepernick presents himself to society as a black man, though he’s really mixed race as is Barack Obama – a white mother and black father while his adopted parents are both white. Like our President, he’s chosen to present himself to the world as a black man. Largely, I suspect, because of the color of his skin though there may be other reasons as well.

Kaepernick wants to call attention to a number of things: unarmed and often innocent black people being killed by police; failure, he sees, to punish the shooters; societal prejudices, mistreatment of some returning military personnel – especially blacks. He picked the national anthem to make his stand because he sees – especially in the third verse – references to slavery and because it was written by a man who owned slaves.

Kaepernick says he’s doing what he’s doing because he has the platform and public notoriety that most people don’t. He plans to keep ignoring the custom of standing for the anthem until he sees what he terms “improvements.”

Maybe I tend to give Colin a bit of space because, in some ways, I have some similar feelings. I, too, see some significant faults within our society/government and hypocrisy in some of our national rituals. Not having the “platform” of a star athlete, I’ve conducted my own personal “protest” by not fully engaging in some common practices we too often take for granted.

For example, for many years I belonged to a fine national service organization which opened every meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance. I can’t tell you why, but one day, I was reciting along with everyone else until it came to the last line. My throat tightened and I couldn’t say the words – “with liberty and justice for all.” Nothing came out.

I hardly noticed. But, when it happened the next week, something inside said “you need to do some thinking about this.” I did. It simply boiled down to my own sincerely held belief that this nation has not provided “liberty and justice for all” and saying the words wouldn’t make it so. It seemed false and amounted to mouthing words that didn’t mean anything.

A second such experience came in church sometime later as we sang “American the Beautiful.” The words “…Thine alabaster cities gleam undimmed by human tears.” and the phrase …“brotherhood from sea to shining sea.” Again, for the first time, the words wouldn’t come. Our cities long ago lost their “alabaster” qualities. “Brotherhood?” And our polluted oceans haven’t been “shining” for many decades. Suddenly, the words had no meaning. For me.

Now, I’m not advocating anyone stop singing the National Anthem or refuse to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Not at all. I am saying give the words some thought. Write them down and look at each one. Those words and the others. Think about their meanings. Apply those meanings to the reality in which we live. Do you still find them relevant? Can our country still be defined by their use? Was it ever?

Nearly all organized religions in our Western world are losing adherents. Most leaving say they don’t need a building or hymn singing to define religious experience. Many say they’re opting for a more internal, personal approach to fulfill their spiritual needs. They complain organized religion is too often just rote memory or – to them – platitudes that aren’t being followed with action. They see little meaning to rituals, printed prayers or worshiping with others in a congregation. They express a need for more direct connectedness with their God. One-on-one.

In some ways, these folk are not far removed from the real meanings behind what Colin Kaepernick is doing. He’s opting to turn his back on the crowd at a strategic, very noticeable moment to say “to me, things aren’t working.” He’s turning from the expected ritual – i.e. standing at an appropriate time – to say “We aren’t the shining country we once were because too many people are not being treated justly. Our cities are not ‘alabaster’ but too often crime-ridden slums where a lot of Americans are born without the possibility of living life as full-fledged citizens. There is no ‘liberty and justice’ for all.”

We’ve fought many a war to defend Kaepernick’s right to do what he’s doing. And for the copy cats who’re now appearing. It may be hard to accept, but it’s one of our most basic rights. The First Amendment.

Our society and our reality are going through some massive and lasting changes. We’re never going back. Maybe we’ve reached a time when we need to carefully scrutinize what we’re doing, note what’s still relevant, dismiss what isn’t and change what needs changing. If that’s not Kaepernick’s message, I guess it’s just mine.

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