Month / January 2021

by nflanagan

Why It’s Time to Get Rid of Snow Days

Several years ago, I was on the dais at the annual meeting of the Michigan Association of School Administrators—the superintendents—in Dearborn, Michigan. I was there as token teacher, making a few remarks, but the keynote speaker at the evening banquet was their annual award-winner.

He was telling a story about a mistake he made, as a first-year superintendent. The U.S. Weather Service had predicted 12”-16” of snow overnight, with blowing and drifting, in a rural area where snows like this are commonplace. Instead of waiting until morning, and having to activate an early-hours phone fanout and radio alerts, he went ahead and called school off, and went home, secure in the knowledge that there would be snow, and plenty of it.

Of course, the storm veered north and there was no snow. None. Roads were dry and bare. And he spent the next week fielding angry phone calls. When he came to the punch line of his story, a groan swept across the ballroom. They’d all been there.

All these school leaders knew that if there had been an early a.m. storm making roads dangerous, and stranding kids at their bus stops before school was called, he would have faced the same wrath from parents. When it comes to calling snow days, it’s a crapshoot in the snowbelt. Ya can’t win.

In every community, there are the ‘Hey I had to go to work and it wasn’t so bad’ folks who don’t stop to think that driving a school bus full of elementary kids might be different than traversing the roads in their 4-wheel drive pickup trucks.

There are overprotective mamas who don’t want their children out in near-zero weather and keep them home even if there is school. There are middle schoolers who insist on wearing light jackets and no boots during blizzards—and teachers with hour-long commutes because they can’t afford to live in the town where they work.

The most complicating factor is whether the day ‘counts’ in the mandated seat-time requirements each state has for public education. A hard winter, like 2019, will outstrip the six ‘free’ days Michigan allows for weather emergencies. There were MI schools that missed as many as 13 days that year—all of them justified—and the governor had to pass a law to keep them from having to go to school until the Fourth of July.

But now—nearly all school districts have had to deal with remote school. Remote school is not ideal, but pretty much everyone agrees that it’s better than no school at all. So why not scrap snow days? Call them off the day prior, giving everyone lead time to make arrangements for substituting remote school?

There are a handful of arguments against turning bad-weather school outages into remote-school days:

  • A healthy percentage of kids don’t have devices, bandwidth, technical assistance or a quiet space. This is, however, a problem that schools have been working diligently to solve, out of necessity. That groundwork could be used for another purpose.
  • Those very kids are often using school-owned devices and school-provided hotspots. As the pandemic fades, it’s worth considering the idea of the school as main provider (using federal or special state funds) of tech basics to every child (and teacher), so school is not, ever again, completely dependent on face to face learning to be good for kids in poverty. There will always be emergencies, up to and including another pandemic. (Sorry, but it’s true.) Having kids equipped and prepared for remote school as needed is a good investment.
  • Modern-day students will lose the magic of an unexpected day off from school. I taught for 32 years in a state with snowy winters. I loved those back-to-bed calls as much as any teacher or student. But I also know that after two or three days in a row, the excitement fades. When you’re looking at tacking days on to the end of the year, or taking them out of spring break, or re-thinking your entire second-semester curriculum, the reality isn’t so delightful.

John Spencer wrote a delightful piece / podcast about using snow days as an excuse for more play in the school. It has some lively ideas about using unstructured time and a unique environment (snow!) for learning. But there’s no reason why a snow day that keeps kids home shouldn’t be filled with interesting and engaging learning ideas provided by their teacher, counting as a full day of school.

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about suspending mandated high-stakes testing this spring. The assumption is that students won’t do well, that the essential knowledge and skills schools are responsible for teaching aren’t being absorbed with so many kids being schooled remotely. The data will show nothing we don’t already know: the haves are way ahead of the have-nots.

But plenty have teachers have pointed out that they’ve taught first graders how to mute and unmute, to share thoughts and ideas (and time in the spotlight), and to use their keyboards. Out of necessity, not because these things are optimum or even appropriate, especially for the very young. Still, these are real things, learned in an increasingly real environment. We shouldn’t underestimate these gains.

I don’t think it’s truly washed over us—parents, teachers, community leaders—that ‘school’ is forever changed. Having the option of remote school for emergencies as well as opportunities—not just weather-related—could end up being the new schooling model. Think of rural districts that have cut back to four days a week. Think of districts that depend on public transportation during a citywide strike. Think of a HS curriculum that lets seniors job-shadow or intern out of the building, and needs to track their work experience. And so on. School via computer is here.

A local district here, after returning to face to face school, has given students two Fridays off, three weeks apart, so their teachers can take part in a staffwide vaccination clinic at school. They chose Fridays, because many people are under the weather for a day or so after being vaccinated. It’s been an exceptionally mild winter—no snow days. Their superintendent says ‘districts are awarded a certain number of days by the state each year during which school can be cancelled without penalty. Vaccinating staff is a justifiable use of the waiver.’

Exactly.

by nflanagan

Eight Reasons to Ditch the National Anthem–from a Music Teacher

Quick! Which famous, Romantic-era American poet wrote these words?

Where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.

You’re already ahead of me here–yes, these words (and lots more problematic verbal embellishments) were the work of Francis Scott Key, author of our national anthem. Including this bit, speaking of foul: No refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave.

Of course, nobody ever sings those verses.

As a musician and school music teacher who has played and conducted the national anthem thousands upon thousands of times, I was fascinated by the gusher of praise for Lady Gaga’s creative (and, I thought, quite lovely) rendition of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’  Gaga changed the key (yes, there’s an official key–Ab) and the meter, crafting a unique arrangement and singing a notoriously difficult tune well.

Her critics mostly focused on her politics, rather than her performance. Some ‘classical’ musicians, who typically turn their noses up when amateur or pop musicians sing things at big public events, gave her a thumbs-up.

What we ought to be giving a thumbs-down is the national anthem itself. It’s a disgrace.

  • The tune is an old British drinking song, To Anacreon in Heaven. Our second best-known national song, My Country, ‘tis of Thee, also swiped its melody: God Save the King (or Queen, as the case may be). We need our own music, written by a bona fide American.
  • The vibe is warlike—not representing our core values. Seriously. Check out the actual words, above. Don’t we want something that, say, salutes democracy and patriotic concord?
  • The words are meaningless to modern Americans. They were written at a time when the continued existence of any American states, united or not, was in question. There is reason to study that time, as our current lack of unity is pretty terrifying–but my guess is that perhaps one out of ten American citizens can tell you what the song is actually about, with a lyric sheet in front of them.
  • The SSB is incredibly difficult to sing, with a range of an octave and a fifth (that’s 12 notes, from the bottom to the glaring pinnacle). It’s also in ¾ time, which makes marching difficult.
  • The archaic lyrics are eminently forget-able. Here’s proof.
  • The key of Ab is not easy for young or amateur musicians. Instrumental arrangers, trying to make something interesting out of a prosaic tune, often make the range and key problems worse by adding prone-to-crack trumpet or vocal flourishes, in an even higher key.
  • It was officially named the national anthem in 1931 because Woodrow Wilson used it to raise and lower the colors during his administration, and we didn’t have an official anthem during WW I, like all the other countries.  Evidently, Congress couldn’t agree on something better.
  • It does not lend itself to group singing—as you may have noticed if you’ve attended a professional sporting event—and what’s a national anthem for, if not a little dab of honest patriotism that all can participate in?

And yes, I’m thinking supportively of Colin Kaepernick et al, too. We need an anthem that embraces our multiculturalism, our principles of representative government, our gorgeous natural beauty—and (thanks, Joe) our national unity. If we ever get it.

I taught and performed the national anthem every year I was in the classroom. At first, I just taught the notes and rhythms, but stressed the importance of playing it well. My personal preference is a straightforward instrumental version, played at a rapid clip. The longer the song drags out, the more restless the crowd. The meaning shifts from a desire to appreciate our common values to a distraction from whatever it is the audience came for.

Later, I turned learning the national anthem into a humanities lesson, studying the drawbacks to our current anthem and exploring other options to the land of the free and the home of the brave. There are lots of picture books that present Francis Scott Key as noble patriotic hero, quill in hand as the battle rages in Baltimore Harbor, but his backstory as a slave holder from a wealthy American family added complexity and honesty to a classroom discussion with the mostly white students I was teaching.

I polled my students—what could replace the Star-Spangled Banner? It’s a great lesson for music teachers, K-12, vocal and instrumental—but also those who teach literature and civics. You can analyze the musical elements as well as the lyrics and cultural genesis of any number of potential anthems.

I added Lift Every Voice and Sing to the list, because it’s an honest picture of how much of our citizenry lives with generations of abuse and neglect—and still sings about faith, rejoicing and the harmonies of liberty. I was very clear with my students, after introducing the song, that it was the Black national anthem, not available for white people to steal, as they had already stolen too many cultural artifacts and ideas. That one idea could, by the way, could support an entire month of lessons.

Teaching at a middle school, my students would cluster-vote for This Land is Your Land, which is undeniably super-easy to sing and play. The protest verses made it attractive to them in the 1970s and 80s. Later, someone would always propose God Bless the U.S.A. as the national anthem—and many times, it was students’ consensus choice. Mostly, I think, because they’d heard it before, and could sing along.

Which proves my point: a national song ought to be widely known and easily sung.

Personally—and this is hardly an inspired choice—I would prefer America the Beautiful. Not for the purple mountains’ majesties or alabaster cities, but for this classic line, more relevant than ever:

America! America! God mend thine every flaw.

Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law.

by nflanagan

Think of a Leader. Who did you picture?

It was a fascinating article in the NY Times, about a management training exercise that directs groups of people to draw a leader. Originally designed to bypass detailed verbal discussion about leadership in groups where multiple languages were spoken, the assignment merely asked participants to sketch their conception of a leader, with as much detail as possible.

I was especially interested because this draw-a-leader technique was one I have used, many times, in workshops around teacher leadership, for diverse audiences. I can testify that if you want to clear a room of school administrators, who suddenly have to step out in the hallway for an ‘emergency’ call, start passing out chart paper, crayons, and markers–and ask them to draw something.

Management trainers and organizational psychologists who use this exercise agree:

In terms of gender, the results are almost always the same. Both men and women almost always draw men. Even when the drawings are gender neutral [which is uncommon], the majority of groups present the drawing using language that indicates male (he) rather than neutral or female. And yet, clients often insisted that what they meant by “he” is actually “both.”

Interesting. Because from my (admittedly unscientific) sample, female teachers, when asked to draw a teacher leader, draw themselves. Details include bulging tote bags, thought bubbles with visions of dynamic schools and thriving kids, the occasional placard. There are often mountains (to climb) in the background—and clever fine points like bags under eyes, sensible shoes, mandatory pockets and mugs of coffee.

I haven’t done a workshop since the pandemic began, but I am certain that teachers creating an image of a professional leader these days would sketch her wearing a mask, holding her mouse and sitting in front of little Zoom-heads, reminding kids to unmute.

Teacher leaders are pragmatic. They know taking on leadership roles means expanding the workload that already consumes their life. They understand that the only definition of leadership that matters in Ed World is keeping one’s promises. Getting stuff–the right stuff–done. Gender is irrelevant, they’ll tell you.

So why do we perceive leadership as a predominantly male characteristic?  

Holding unconscious assumptions about gender affects our ability to recognize emerging leadership. Studies confirm what many women have long known: even getting noticed as a leader in the workplace is more difficult for women than for men. And doubly difficult for black women.

There’s also that dogged, pragmatic streak where women just keep going: Witness the winner of the 2018 Boston Marathon, Desiree Linden, who considered dropping out, but rallied to finish first. There was a lot of blah-blah about physiology–proportions of body fat and pain tolerance–when considering the higher dropout rate for men, under terrible weather conditions.

Maybe, however, the kind of leadership that lets women place first in the Boston Marathon, as well as the classroom, involves something else: persistence through unimaginably difficult conditions. This has been borne out every day, during the pandemic and election season. Think of Stacey Abrams and her crew.

In a thought-provoking blog entitled Why Teachers are Walking Out, Seth Nichols (after noting that he’s the rare male in a female-dominated profession) kicks off with the following comment:

I am often confounded at what I have seen my coworkers silently acquiesce to, happily playing along, fueled only by the sense of the purpose they work from. I am not surprised that teachers in many states have had walkouts. I am surprised that they waited so long to start. The walkouts aren’t really ultimately about “pay,” the face usually presented. Women are done being taken advantage of.

It’s a great piece–recommended–but it ends with Nichols declaring that he’s walking out for good, at the end of the year, because he (unlike the patient and persevering doormat-women he works with) is really done with being taken advantage of, the petty daily humiliations of teaching.

So who’s the leader? The one with the dogged sense of purpose, or the one who feels disrespected and splits?

A YouGov survey in 2018 asked  “Do you personally hope that the United States elects a woman president of the United States in your lifetime, or not?” Sixty-six percent of all respondents said yes, while 34 percent said no–and 59 percent of Republicans were clear: They aren’t hoping for a woman president in their lifetimes.

There were few women who breached the Capitol during last week’s insurrection—notably ‘bullhorn lady’ who gave explicit directions to rioters on where to find their goal destinations. (My first thought, watching the video, was that she sounded like a teacher.) Mostly, however, the insurrectionists were angry white men.

Among the various forms of violence on display, one has been largely overlooked: misogyny, or hatred toward women. Yet behaviors and symbols of white male power were striking and persistent features of the riots. Members of the overwhelmingly male crowds defending a president well-known for his sexist attacks, embraced male supremacist ideologies, wore military gear and bared their chests in shows of masculine bravado. They destroyed display cabinets holding historical books on women in politics.

Members of the mob broke into [Pelosi’s] office and vandalized it. Items like mail, signs and even her lectern proved to be particularly popular trophies – symbolizing an attack on Democrats and the House Speaker, but also against one of the most powerful women in American politics.

This is not to say that the riots weren’t about racism—they clearly were. And now—TODAY!!—we have a woman of color as our Vice-President. I hope she becomes a pragmatic leader, keeping her promises and demonstrating persistence when the going gets tough. I also hope that the fact of her leadership becomes unremarkable here in the United States, as it is around the globe.

Until that day, we are operating under an outdated conception of just what a leader looks like.

Picture a leader. Who do YOU see?

by nflanagan

Be True to Your School

It’s an early Saturday morning coffee-meeting on Zoom. All of us are teacher leaders—what we have in common is awards for our good teaching. What brings us together is a mutual commitment to supporting both public education in our state and the teachers who hold this threatened enterprise together.

Some of us have left the classroom after long careers and moved on to new challenges, but we know that our observations matter little on this day, as the American republic itself seems to be on shaky ground. What we want to know is: What are the kids saying? How are the kids doing? Are they OK?

Of course, they’re not.

Our colleagues working in the classroom talk of their utter mental and physical exhaustion—every week like the first week of school, instructional mastery honed over years now replaced by calling students at home to ask: Are you still in my class? Is anyone in your family sick? Do you have enough to eat?

All I can think is ‘Thank God students have teachers like these.’ Teachers who understand students’ context. Teachers who care. Teachers who are a bulwark against isolation and fear.

One of the teachers mentions talking with her students—cautiously, but necessarily—about the riots and insurrection at the Capitol, and shares a comment from one of them: After all those people came screaming into the Capitol and smashed things and left it filthy, did you see who did the cleaning up? Black custodians. That’s the way it always is—cleaning up after white folks.

The teacher notes that not all of her students are black, but they’re all participating in this discussion. They’re not disengaged. They are riveted. This is real, unlike some of the things they’re supposed to be learning, so they can be tested.

It bears repeating: Public schools are the stage where all the strengths and weaknesses of American society play out. School is our students’ microcosm. School is where identity politics are first encountered. School is where they find their first allies—and ideally, hear truths.

It’s Sociology 101—parents seek the best classmates that they can afford for their children. And once they get their children into the ‘right’ school, they want them to be part of a group. Even Stephen Miller got his political wings by opposing teachers and denigrating custodians, in high school. And the large majority of schoolchildren attend fully public schools.

We all instinctively understand Dunbar’s number: the size of the group with whom anyone maintains genuinely personal and stable relationships is relatively small, somewhere between 100 and 250 people. It’s the theory behind the small-school movement—it’s a good space for learning when people in the community know each other well. Every elementary school teacher worth her salt begins the school year by trying to build a community in her classroom.

School is where values are shaped, and practiced.

It’s also the reason why some groups are interested in injecting fake patriotism into the curriculum. It’s why many education reformers are pushing as hard as they can to ‘unbundle’ education, to ‘personalize’ learning by chopping it into discrete bits to be delivered cheaply online, then tested. 

With so many students adrift, less connected to family and church than earlier generations, teachers and professors might have ‘too much’ influence over what students think.  Break up the public school monopoly (and teacher unions, while we’re at it)! The very essence of the DeVos Education Department.

Will this change, under a new administration? Jury’s out, but both the reformer-privatizer team and the be-true-to-public-education team are expressing hope. Prepare for a power struggle.

In the meantime, here’s an observation that hit me hard, in the post-insurrection reporting.  Daryl Johnson, a senior Homeland Security intelligence analyst in the Obama administration who wrote a government-funded report about the rise of right-wing extremism– later deep-sixed as too controversial—said this, warning that the Capitol riot was just the beginning:


The government is — if they’re responsible — going to be developing programs and resources to start combating the problem. These people have had over 10 years to stockpile weapons and ammunition to get stoked up and paranoid and fearful. So we’ve got to be very careful about how we go about cracking down on these groups. If there are gun laws passed, that’s just going to feed right into their narratives, draw more recruits, radicalize people.

It needs to be more about de-radicalizing. Funding organizations that have people that have left the movement and can develop strategies on how to do outreach and pull people out. There needs to be a massive marketing campaign on what should citizens be doing. If you’ve got family members, neighbors, co-workers that are part of these movements, rather than ostracize and debate and criticize and isolate them, we need to love them, have compassion and bring them into the mainstream. The only way you’re going to get rid of hate is through love. Every person I’ve ever known about that’s been a white supremacist has left the movement through an act of compassion or love. They didn’t leave it because someone convinced them that their belief systems were wrong.

It’s another way of saying, as Martin Luther King did, that we must meet the forces of hate with the power of love. 

We have all read shocking and horrible stories about what happened on January 6, and the people who took part—who invited them, who aided and abetted them, who gave them money, who told them they were ‘loved’ and ‘special.’  It is not enough to post angry and clever tweets (and I’m guilty of this) or cheer for those apprehended and punished.

Young people need places to be, places where their thoughts are heard and valued, where their talents are appreciated and nourished, where their observations about who’s once again cleaning up messes are honored by an adult listener.

Maybe it’s time to be true to public education, the place where all children are welcome.

by nflanagan

Books of 2020

One of my favorite things to do with my largely unstructured pandemic days and nights is read, then talk with people about books. Online. I’m always looking for new titles, recommendations of someone’s old favorite—and also thumbs-down reviews, especially when they’re about books everyone seems to be reading or praising (lookin’ at you, Bridgertons).

I’ve never been good about choosing my 10 favorite anything as the year turns over. But I did do a lot of intentional reading in 2020 (meaning I had to order library books online and wait three months for them to become available for curbside pickup—or purchase them). While some of these are new titles, some are recommendations from friends that I finally got around to.

It was a good year for fiction. I have been trying to read books around the issue of racism (an earlier review of several of those books here), and found the fiction just as instructive as the non-fiction. Salvage the Bones (Jesmyn Ward). The Night Watchman (Louise Erdrich). The Nickel Boys (Colson Whitehead). All powerful reading. More about fiction, later.

Non-fiction fell into three categories—that big bucket of reading about bias and prejudice, “school stuff” and (unfortunately) books about Donald Trump. The only book I read this year about our Crime Boss President that might have lasting utility was Hiding in Plain Sight: The invention of Donald Trump and the erosion of America (Sarah Kendzior). Kendzior has been absolutely prescient about all of Trump’s behavior. I’m almost scared to re-read it, because she got so much of this right, back when there was still hope that cherished institutions would save the day. On January 6th, she was proved right, yet again.

There were two big, don’t-miss education books on my 2020 list: A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The dismantling of public education and the future of school(Jennifer Berkshire, Jack Schneider) and Slaying Goliath: The passionate resistance to privatization and the fight to save America’s Public Schools(Diane Ravitch). Click the links to see earlier, blogged reviews—but note that the year began and ended with a warning that public education is genuinely imperiled. Even before the pandemic.

My two favorite non-fiction titles around the theme of anti-racism in an earlier review were So You Want to Talk about Race? (Ijeoma Oluo) and Caste: The origins of our discontents (Isabel Wilkerson). Since that review, I’ve read an additional book by each author—and they’re both awesome.

I read Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns: The epic story of America’s great migration, which made me understand my own hometown and why people lived where they lived, in that town—plus so much more.  And I just finished Oluo’s Mediocre: The Dangerous legacy of white male power. While her earlier book is a straightforward invitation to keep talking about race, dense with good ideas but written from a personal vantage point, Mediocre covers more scholarly turf. It’s a broad-ranging collection of evidence that white men don’t like it when you challenge their authority and power. If you’re either a woman or a BIPOC, you’ll find plenty to relate to. Oluo keeps the focus on making her case—but if you read this book, as I did, during the lead-up to the insurrection at the Capitol, she makes a terrible and prescient argument for what just happened. Highly recommended.

Now for the fun part—fiction. I am completely unsnobbish about fiction (as you will note). If it’s a good story, I’m in. Here are nine books and two authors I have enjoyed immensely during the Great Lockdown.

It’s a particular kind of irony that I read A Gentleman in Moscow (Amor Towles) during the pandemic year, as the aforementioned gentleman spent a long time (50 years?) in a single hotel, by government decree. I can relate. All the people who recommended the book were right—it’s a classic.

Chances Are (Richard Russo) is a minor novel by a major author, but I loved this one best of all his books. It involves a mystery and a weekend meeting, 50 years later, of three men who were in college together, in the late 1960s. In other words, three characters the same age as me—which is, of course, why I loved this book so much. By the book’s ending, we’ve been dragged through American history, and asked if any of us, given a chance to do it over again, would have made different choices.

 The Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern) If all fantasy books were like this, I would read nothing else. Imaginative, spooky, colorful, mysterious—with the lingering scent of caramel corn.

The Overstory (Richard Powers) I admit that I had to read this in chunks, with periods for digestion. But every time I went back, there were amazing new things to consider, mostly about my role in the ecology of my home, my world and my life. Truly a transformative book; worth the effort.

The Searcher (Tana French) This one is getting lukewarm reviews, but I am a huge Tana French fan, and if this book stretches beyond her usual Dublin Murder Squad m.o. it’s fun to see what she can do with a more introspective, character-driven mystery. Besides, there’s a wonderful kid in this book—Tana French has nailed a 13-year old better than anyone I’ve read in years.

Olive, Again (Elizabeth Strout) With the possible exception of Stewart O’Nan, nobody writes stories about old ladies better than Elizabeth Strout. If you liked Olive the first time, you’ll like this one, too.

Normal People (Sally Rooney) I am actually surprised I liked this book so much. Rooney’s earlier stuff was kind of tedious, mostly millennial relationship angst, in beautiful prose. But this book—although still about relationship building among young people–had an aching poignancy around the two central characters that anyone who was ever 18 and itching to be loved will recognize.

Sourdough (Robin Sloan) This was just a delightful read, a story with a moral as well as great characters, twisty plotting and a magic sourdough starter. The idea that a colony of micro-organisms could change your life was utterly believable in 2020.

One series I will always pick up is John Sandford’s Lucas Davenport books, which are reliably 4-star reads, with the occasional 5-star designation. Masked Prey, the latest, makes that cut. The plot centers around keeping a senator’s teenage daughter safe from a right-wing looney whom she has attracted by becoming an ‘influencer.’ The parallels—intended and unintended—between the storyline and the actual news were eerie.

New Authors:

 Liz  Moore, who wrote  Long Bright River and  The Unseen World,  deserves to be added to anyone’s list of authors to try. The two books are both delicious, even though they’re completely different. River is a cop story unlike other cop stories, and World is hard to describe—a mix of science fiction and a tender story about unusual people and families. Both are excellent.

And, finally, Donna Leon. Early on—last March—I was having trouble reading. It was difficult to muster up an attention span. Complaining about this on-line yielded a whole bunch of ‘what to read that will take your mind off the prospect of being locked up for months’ suggestions.

A guy I went to high school with suggested Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti series (thanks, Doug), noting that it was set in Venice. Bingo. I read eight this year—again, reliably good, with a couple of them outstanding. The first book in the series is pretty good, but jumping ahead reveals that Leon has really honed her character and made her work richer. Feel free not to read in order.

by nflanagan

Sticking to My Guns

God, I hate that phrase—stick to your guns! —because it represents everything that triggered the Capitol breach on Wednesday: Intransigence. The false glory of never yielding, even when your case is weak or based on falsehoods. Violence as means of accruing power.

In the past two days, as conversations sprang up and grew heated on social media, our new town square, a friend (a moderate Republican I’ve known for 15 years, through education channels) posted this:

Heartbreaking to see violent crowds breaking into US capitol. Reminds me of Vietnam protests and Kent State.

More than enough people immediately countered this—the two are nowhere close to comparable—but there were also several commenters who noted that the vast majority of Republicans are good people, appalled by low-rent protestors, who don’t represent the modern Republican party. This isn’t the party my father taught me to love, back in the day. Tsk, tsk.

I pushed back: The time for Republicans to redeem themselves was years ago. With the possible exception of Mitt Romney — who is hardly centrist— the entire party has been complicit. Feckless. They have incented domestic terrorism and protected liars.

I don’t know how you could have watched as nearly half of Congressional Republicans, hours after their very lives and the processes of American democracy were endangered, continue to promote the fallacy that the election was not free and fair, and come to any other conclusion. It is no longer OK to support the Republican party.

Republicans have utterly failed to come and get their boy. We’re seeing editorial columns and think pieces say the same thing, all over the country. It’s on them. From the NY Times, yesterday:

The modern Republican Party, in its systematic efforts to suppress voting, and its refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of elections that it loses, is similarly seeking to maintain its political power on the basis of disenfranchisement. Wednesday’s insurrection is evidence of an alarming willingness to pursue that goal with violence.

My friend’s response: This is not true. I hate it when you say Republicans. I am a Republican and I don’t think it’s right to lump everyone into one category because of extremists. It does no good to be just as accusatory as those you don’t agree with. Please stop saying this. It is hurtful and certainly not applicable in my case.

So—here’s where the rubber meets the road. Do you go ahead and destroy a friendship by sticking to your principles? Depends, I think, on how deeply you believe in what you’re defending.

I unfriended a woman who revealed herself as an anti-vaxxer a few months ago. I’ve cut ties to any number of folks who are apologists for ‘polite’ racism—the ‘all lives matter’ folks. I’ve blocked people in my social circle who trashed our governor because they wanted to go out to eat. I’ve sent out the same credible link about what Antifa is and isn’t to dozens of ill-informed folks.

I also have acquaintances who have publicly experienced a come-to-Jesus moment and relinquished their ties to the Republican party. That’s not to say they won’t be lured back, in the next election cycle, when (fingers crossed) Joe Biden gets the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act passed, or their taxes go up—but I give all kinds of credit to people who publicly stand up against a party gone so far off the rails, even if they once voted reliably R.

As I said, Facebook is the new town square. It’s where people forge relationships, where minds and hearts are changed. The rise of Parler, Gab and TheDonald when FB, Twitter, Instagram, etc. started aggressively fact-checking and suspending accounts are proof of that.

 It’s also a dangerous minefield, full of misinformation and opportunity for bitter conflict. As Tristan Harris said, in The Social Dilemma, maybe the only cure for the treacherous spread of lies and propaganda on social media is the opportunity to immediately counter them, on social media. The cause is the cure.

I’m not sure that’s true—but I don’t believe that taking oneself out of the game, permanently, by shutting down your account and pretending to be above the fray does much good. Breaks are good, but for genuine internal peace or supporting causes that mean the most in shaping our lives, refusing to be part of the conversation just means you have no say in the solutions. Also, the only people who can safely take themselves out of the political discussion right now are those with privilege and resources.

What happens in the voting booth is and always should be private. But nobody is born Republican—it’s a deliberate choice to declare allegiance to the party and what it represents, right now. Jonathon Haidt, in his book The Righteous Mind, ponders these questions:

Why do ideas such as ‘fairness’ and ‘freedom’ mean such different things to different people? Why do we come to blows over politics and religion? We often find it hard to get along because our minds are hardwired to be moralistic, judgmental and self-righteous. Haidt explores how morality evolved to enable us to form communities, and how moral values are not just about justice and equality–for some people authority, sanctity or loyalty matter more. 

This makes sense to me. I admit to being moralistic and self-righteous (not good things). I do evaluate justice, fairness and equality as far more important than respect for authority, purity or loyalty. Haidt offers a window into why someone would still claim that Republicans, as a group, are a worthy organization: when deep loyalty and respect for authority are the reason for forming a community, modern-day Republicans are indeed way ahead of any political party in history.

And you can see an echo of this in online conversations everywhere: People who change the subject, tilting it away from contentious talk about justice. People who soothe inflamed tempers, who reinforce relationships in spite of sharp political disagreement, who leap to defend someone whose feelings may have been hurt. These are people who should be incensed by what Republicans have done to their jobs as public school teachers, the health of their friends and families, our fragile democratic republic—but they’re avoiding active conflict in the name of civility and loyalty.

Well, folks. What’s at stake right now is truth. That’s not a rhetorical flourish. It’s about what happened on Wednesday, when millions were disenfranchised by people who lied for political gain, then lied again after the most sacred stage of the American experiment had been desecrated.

Republicans, do you believe Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the election? Your party says it doesn’t. And your party isn’t your grandma, someone you have to love in spite of idiosyncrasies or misunderstandings. It’s not your church, where you overlook the rules about birth control because going to church connects you to your family heritage. Your party is controlling the lives and fortunes of millions of Americans who have not had a choice. And it’s spent four years covering up for an evil, destructive demagogue.  Fish or cut bait.

This was my second response (after 24 hours of thinking it over) to the original post:

Sorry–but at this moment in American History, declaring that you are one of the ‘good’ Republicans does nothing to alleviate the danger and damage that Republicans have fomented.

Saying there are some good Republicans is like saying there are some good racists. Or some good anti-vaxxers. Or some good Nazis. Think about all those quiet villagers who lived near Dachau, who claimed to believe they were living near a work camp. That’s where we are–this is Trump’s Reichstag moment.

I might have been willing to agree with your statement–and feel that I was merely disagreeing, politically, with the Republican party–until a year ago, when not even 15 or 20 Republican senators, from all over the country, were willing to convict and remove Donald Trump in the impeachment hearings, after he extorted Ukrainian officials for personal political gain.  

I might have had some sympathy for hardcore conservatives if they hadn’t forced people into life-threatening situations, refusing to give them enough to survive on during the pandemic, at the direction of Mitch McConnell. I might feel differently if a majority of Republicans in Congress hadn’t signed on to a patently false statement about the election results, triggering yesterday’s coup. Yes, coup.

Of course, all three of the Republicans who represent me in the MI legislature and Congress signed, knowing full well that MI changed its mind about Trump in 2020. I’ve seen long guns in my own statehouse, and my Democratic governor the target of kidnapping and execution. Organized by the hands of Republicans. Not extremists—Republicans.

Where are these ‘good’ Republicans? I can tell you where they are right now: on TV, blaming all of this on the Capitol Police, and on Mayor Bowser for not being ‘prepared.’ Declaring that the 25th amendment is too cumbersome. Resigning, to avoid taking a stance. In the meantime, for the past two months, genuine preparedness for the next administration, a competent one that will serve both Democrats and Republicans, has been blocked. Costing us tens of thousands of lives. Threatening national security.

I’m not saying that there isn’t room for a party with conservative beliefs and practices–I’m saying that Republicans, the citizens who still call themselves centrists and moderates and those who embrace the party of their fathers, all look like Susan Collins today: Enablers. Weak. Supporters (by omission) of insurrection. Shame on all of them.

I probably lost a friend today—and that’s too bad. She’s smart and feisty– I’ve learned a great deal from her about issues in education that matter to both of us. But what matters even more is truth.

So be it.



Mi Senate Majority leader Mike Shirkey (R- Clarklake) meets with protestors in the gallery of the Michigan Capitol.