Holes in the Wall

Istvan’s Story

The evening air was cool. It was a relatively clear night. Istvan could see the half-moon through thin clouds. That was a bad thing. If he could see the moon, the moon might help the guards see him and his friends.

Istvan crouched with his friends near the fence. The wooded terrain was rough and muddy. He nodded silently at Anton. No words were necessary. He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to form them. Fear, anxiety, and hope made it feel like his heart would leap out of his throat. He rubbed his hands together. His palms were sweaty, despite the cool night air. In a matter of hours, he might taste freedom for the first time in many years. In a matter of minutes, if Anton was wrong, he’d be dying in the mud with a bullet in his back.

Istvan watched Anton run his hands along the fence. It wasn’t much of a barrier. It was 1955. The Iron Curtain had quite a few tears and worn spots, especially in this secluded region near the Austria-Hungary border. Anton’s hand stopped. Anton looked at his watch, and then peered at the distant guard tower. Anton nodded, and peeled back the broken stretch of chain-link fencing. Istvan went through, followed by Adam, and then Anton.

Istvan and Adam looked apprehensively at Anton. Anton tried to flash a quick smile to soothe their nerves. It didn’t work. The time for smiling would be on the other side of the border. The Austrian side. The side without Communism. The side without oppression.

Anton slapped Istvan on the leg. “Follow me,” he whispered. Anton shuffled at a crouch, then ran low and hard into the darkness. Istvan followed, with Adam behind him. Istvan could feel his lungs burning. He waited for the flash of floodlights on the treeless clearing. He waited for the sound of the rifles. The hairs on the back of his neck rose, waiting for the bullets that would follow the sound. Their entire plan was dependent on this moment. Anton claimed to know when the guards changed shifts. At the shift change, the guards’ attention would be on reports and forms, not on the clearing below them. If Istvan and his friends were to escape Hungary, they had less than 90 seconds before the guards’ eyes would be back on the border.

Where they’d see three scared men running for their lives.

Istvan saw a cluster of bushes at the edge of the clearing. He saw Anton through the thin shrubbery, motioning for them to join him on the other side. Istvan slid past the bushes and shuffled to join Anton in a crouched position behind the largest of the shrubs. He heard Adam clumsily bust through the bushes behind him.

“Quiet down, you oaf,” Istvan whispered fiercely.

“Sorry,” replied Adam, gasping for air.

Istvan felt sweat trickle down his forehead. Floodlights didn’t illuminate the area. The guard towers were silent. They made it to their first waypoint. Istvan looked eagerly at Anton. Beyond Anton, he saw a rough wooden sign with warnings written in both German and Hungarian.

DANGER! MINES!

The skull and crossbones and exclamation marks accentuated the point. Just ahead of them, death lurked once more. An explosion would certainly attract the attention of the guards, and likely take a few limbs from Istvan and his friends. The pain would be temporary, because they would be shot.

Istvan shuddered. Maybe not. A Hungarian without a leg wasn’t a threat; he was a source of information. Death might be preferable at that point. If he was captured, he would be tortured. He thought of Edna, his sister, sitting at the dinner table back home. She would never leave Hungary, even while it was ruled by an oppressive Communist dictatorship.  But if Istvan were captured, the police would come for Edna. They’d torture her, just for sport. Istvan gritted his teeth. He couldn’t let that happen.

Anton removed a small piece of paper from his pocket. Istvan peered over his shoulder at it. He expected to see a map. Anton promised a map. Instead he saw a few scribbled words.

Clusters in center. Heavy clusters on right. Keep left. Left mostly clear.

“What the hell is that?” whispered Istvan fiercely. “You said you knew where the mines were!”

Anton shrugged and tried another smile. “This tells us where the mines are. Let’s keep to the left and watch our step, eh?”

Anton slapped Istvan on the leg and moved forward at a quick shuffle, crouching low to avoid drawing attention to their position. Although they were out of immediate danger, a guard with a keen eye would still be able to spot movement from the tower.

Istvan grunted and followed closely behind Anton. From what their sources told them, the mines in this field were likely inept. The few that were present had been there for years and were cheaply made at the end of World War II. That thought was of little consolation to Istvan. A cheap landmine could still blow off his foot. He kept his eyes on the ground in front of him, looking for any wires or metal, jutting up from the soil below. After what seemed like hours, he reached the edge of a concrete embankment. Below them was murky sludge and muddy water. It was a poor man’s moat, designed to serve as a barrier to American and British tanks.

Past the moat was Austria. There was no fence on that side of the border. They had no reason to keep people trapped in the country like animals.

Anton smiled at Istvan. “See, I told you. Left was good.”

“Yeah, yeah, left was good. Let’s get the hell out of here,” he replied.

“Right,” said Adam behind him. “On with it, Anton. You first.”

Anton hopped down. The water and mud came up to his waist. “Come on in, guys, the water’s fine!” he said.

“Shut up,” replied Istvan, sliding into the water. Water was a euphemism. This stuff was semi-solid and smelled like shit. He came to the sickening realization that it was likely the run-off trench for all the sewage coming from the guard post.

“Oh, God!” whispered Adam, making his way through the muck. “Who shit their pants?”

“Will both of you shut the hell up?” grumbled Istvan, doing his best to breathe out of his mouth. It didn’t help. Smelling it was preferable to tasting it. He strode purposefully through the sludge. He could see the tree line in the distance. Austria was within sight.

After ten grueling minutes, the trio reached the other side. Istvan reached up and grabbed Anton’s hand. Anton pulled him up out of the concrete trench. Istvan helped Adam do the same.

They made it. They were in Austria.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

Istvan could see the first glimmers of daylight emerging from the east. He was exhausted and smelled terrible. He glanced at his wristwatch, a gift from his deceased father. After 6AM.

They’d emerged from the forest after several hours, and were following a rough road, hoping to find civilization.

Hoping to find freedom.

Istvan patted the plastic bag in his pocket, containing his identification papers and a letter requesting asylum. He hoped it would be enough. Even after crossing the border, they were still not out of danger. If they ran into a Communist sympathizer, they might get pointed back to the border instead of the asylum office. If the asylum office turned them down, they’d get shipped on the next train back to Hungary.

Istvan shuddered at that thought. What if this were all for nothing?

Anton patted him on the back. Istvan nodded and put his hands in his pockets. Anton was good at reading emotions. He could tell that Istvan was anxious. Anton was probably anxious as well. He was just better than Istvan at hiding it.

Istvan saw the shadows of buildings ahead. He clenched the plastic bag in his pocket. This was the moment. In the far distance, he saw the umbrellas and picnic tables of a beer garden. His stomach rumbled. What he wouldn’t give for a sandwich and a beer right now!

A middle-aged man emerged from a side street and looked at the three men skeptically. He scratched his beard. Istvan waited for him to break the silence. He could feel his palms beginning to sweat again.

“Ungarn?” asked the man curiously, pointing the three of them. He pointed past them, toward the southeast. “Ungarn, ja?” he repeated.

“Ja,” said Istvan, recognizing the German word for Hungary. Istvan pointed at his compatriots. “Wir…Ungarn….” he said, doing his best to keep calm.

Istvan tried a smile. He waited eagerly.

“Gut!” said the stranger. He waved them onward. “Komm mit mir!” The stranger pointed at the beer garden. “Frühstück!” he said.

Istvan patted his stomach. “Ja, Frühstück!” he said.

Istvan and his friends followed the stranger to the beer garden. Their first taste of freedom would be breakfast at an Austrian beer garden.

 

The Problem with “Waiting in Line”

My grandfather was one of the bravest and most decent men I ever knew. He was also an illegal immigrant. He didn’t wait in line or apply for a visa. For my grandpa and others who believed in liberty and democracy in mid-1950s Hungary, that wasn’t a real option. Applying for a visa meant exposing his family to danger. The countries that bordered the Iron Curtain, such as West Germany and Austria, recognized the resource of asylum-seekers like my grandpa, and did their best to help them. Talent and Youth were escaping Communist countries, and it was the duty of democracies to bring them in and light their path. The losses of Hungary, Poland, and East Germany were victories for the West.

After his escape from Hungary, my grandfather built a life. He served in the military, training service dogs near Freiburg, Germany. He eventually found his way to Canada, where he raised a family and had a prosperous career selling appliances. His friends on that treacherous night created lives for themselves in Arizona, and their children and grandchildren are prosperous and productive American citizens.

My grandfather died a few years ago, surrounded by friends and family. His life was a testament to the man he was, and his legacy lives on in each of the lives he touched. As I said at his funeral service, his life was a triumph of the human spirit. I do my best in my own life to honor his memory, treat people with kindness, and pass on the lessons he taught me.

Here in the United States in 2018, we face a crisis of identity. Are we the beacon of hope that lit the path for my grandfather’s escape to freedom? Or are we a country that separates asylum-seekers from their children? Are we a country that creates “tender age” detention centers, where babies and toddlers scream for their mothers? Are we a nation that abandons its position and leadership role on the UN Human Rights Council, just as we’re committing human rights violations? Are we a nation that turns away battered mothers and their children from entering the country as asylum-seekers, along with victims of gang violence? Are we a nation that invokes Scripture as rationale for building de facto internment camps for modern poor and huddled masses, yearning to breathe free?

It is very easy to sit on our sofas and callously demand folks to wait in line and apply for visas. It gives us the emotional rationale to shift the blame from our government to the asylum-seekers for the separation and internment of children and babies.

That rationale is flawed. I think about my grandfather and wonder about the humanity in making such a demand. Would a police officer in Mexico who refused to accept a cartel bribe in Mexico have the luxury of waiting in line when he was threatened with torture and death? Should a journalist in El Salvador be told to apply through the proper channels and wait 18 months after he publishes an article exposing government corruption? What about an informant whose testimony led to the arrest of a cartel member, who discovers that his entire family is now on a hit list?

Defending this separation policy is callous and inhumane. We can treat people with dignity during the asylum process and keep them together during the duration of that process. The President can end this brutality with an executive order and a phone call. Instead he’s content to use thousands of children as a bargaining chip for his immigration policy goals, which include a border wall.

This shouldn’t be who we are as a nation. We shouldn’t cheer the President when he uses the brutality of Mexican cartels and MS-13 as a political punchline, and then hands a death sentence to those fleeing that exact brutality in Mexico and Central America. We are a nation of immigrants and can enforce our laws with a measure of humanity. I wouldn’t exist today if my grandfather and his friends found a 30-foot concrete wall on the other side of that muddy moat on the Austrian border. The correct response to tyranny and brutality is to stand as a beacon of liberty and strength, providing those escaping oppression a pathway to become the next generation of Americans. It certainly isn’t callousness, inaction, internment camps, and ripping children from their mothers’ arms.

We can enforce the law. We can continue to deny entrance and deny asylum to those with criminal records. We cannot continue to claim to be the leader of the free world when we abandon our history and march down the path of authoritarianism, blindly parroting the positions of the President and vigorously defending everything he does, even when his Administration defies our foundational principles.

Modern versions of my grandfather are making their own journeys to freedom right now. They should be given breakfast instead of bondage when they arrive at the asylum office.

 

Dr. Rudolph Lurz holds a doctorate in Administration & Policy Studies from the University of Pittsburgh. He lives in Virginia with his wife and cat.

 

Thoughts, Prayers, Sound, and Fury

May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor

 

As a teacher, hearing the news of last week’s massacre in Florida hit me hard. All school shootings affect me in a similar manner. Even lockdown drills create a crippling feeling in the pit of my stomach. As I huddle with my students against the wall in the dark, contemplating oblivion, I wonder how we have fallen so far as a society.

I wrote a blog post almost two years ago under my semi-anonymous pseudonym, the one I use mainly for political commentary. I discussed how much better life has become in the 21^st century, despite the uptick in domestic terrorist attacks. I offered some practical solutions, and called for civility in policy discussions.

I had a semblance of optimism then. After another two years of pain, vitriol, and random terror, I don’t have that optimism anymore. As dozens more cities and schools have become hashtags, and more dates on the calendar have been stained black, stoic fatalism has replaced that hopeful naivety.

There are practical measures we can institute to reduce the casualty count. However, it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to stop the violence completely. In American society, these events will continue to take place. When I sit with my kids in the dark during lockdowns, I pray that our number never comes up.

That helpless feeling haunts me.

My despair is not assuaged by policy statements from the right or left. Well-meaning people who haven’t set foot in a school have put forward ideas, imagining them to be panaceas. As someone who has studied education policy for six years earning a doctorate, and spent a decade in classrooms, it’s annoying to see people claiming to solve our nation’s problem of school shootings with a Facebook meme. Let’s break down these basic arguments, moving right to left on the political spectrum.

A.) Arm the Teachers

Argument: Gun free zones invite lunatics armed with guns. If these lunatics knew their teachers had guns, they wouldn’t try to shoot up their schools. Allow teachers with concealed carry licenses to carry in schools. Or offer teachers a stipend to carry a pistol. Throw that gun-free zone sign into the trash, because recycling’s for pansies. Counter force with force. You bring a gun to school, and your calculus teacher will end your life.

Breakdown: Do me a favor. Imagine your 11^th grade math teacher. Now imagine your school librarian. Now imagine your 9^th grade English teacher.

Imagine a hallway filled with screaming kids, running from a lunatic with an assault rifle. Is old Mr. Fuddlesticks going to step into that hallway and win that firefight with his .38 special? How about Laura the Librarian with her 1911?

Unlikely. This is a bad idea. In the firefight described above, CSI would have the gruesome task of figuring out which holes in the bodies came from the AR-15, and which came from Mr. Fuddlesticks’s  .38. Additionally, a nervous teacher would kill an unarmed kid before one would heroically prevent a massacre.

Arming teachers would increase the body count without preventing a single tragedy.

Well, what if we just arm teachers with military experience? They’re trained!

Great. If we limited the arming option to veterans, they’d be much less likely to draw and fire on an unarmed student. But would they win the firefight described above? No. They’d have the discipline to duck back into their classroom and realize they didn’t have a shot. Or, on a vast open campus like Douglas High School, they might be in a different building 3 acres away from the site of the carnage.

This option assumes that the only place a lunatic would fire is in the classroom with a clear line of sight for the teacher to draw that .38 and end the threat. But that’s not where these massacres usually take place. It’s in the hallway before school starts. It’s in crowded cafeterias and libraries. It’s outside the school after the fire alarm has been pulled.

ANALYSIS: This is a bad idea all-around. Body Count: unchanged, maybe even higher.

B.) Beef Up Security

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was one of many who wrote in favor of additional security measures at schools. Using familiar rhetoric of “good guys with guns” and denigrating “Gun-Free Zone” signage, he pushed for a hybrid system of a few teacher “air marshals” who’d carry, and an increased uniformed police presence on school campuses.  He believes that these additional security measures would serve as a deterrent to school shooters, and keep students safe.

I think Mr. Gingrich is half-correct. More security on campus would keep students safer. It would also bring the first rapid-response officers much closer to the scene, because they would be on campus instead of at the local PD.

It wouldn’t stop the body count. As stated before, those teacher “air marshals” would have problems in a firefight in a crowded hallway against AK-47s and AR-15s. As for the additional police on campus, Mr. Gingrich acts as though Douglas HS and Columbine were defending their campuses solely with Gun Free Signage, and didn’t have SROs (School Resource Officers).

They did.

How many more would have stopped the massacres from happening? If a school has a 7-acre campus with over a dozen buildings, are you going to put uniformed police officers in each spot? Even if you do, if a kid is willing to die in the massacre (and most wind up killing themselves after they’re cornered; the Douglas HS shooter was one of the first I’ve seen who managed to evade the initial police dragnet), all you’ve done is bring the police closer to the scene of the massacre.

Even if a school has officers in each building, a student can draw and open fire in a crowded hallway between classes, or on kids outside during fire drills, or in the middle of a packed cafeteria, or in the library, or in the bus loop before school.

ANALYSIS: More cogent proposal. Expensive. Body count reduced, but not eliminated.

C.)Fortified Campuses with Security Measures at Building Entrances

Do you love TSA lines at the airport? Well, let’s bring them into schools. Radically restructure open campus schools nationwide into single-building entities with a security checkpoint at the entrance(s). You’ll probably have to spend billions creating covered connections between buildings. Along with billions more for hiring screeners and equipment for them to monitor each backpack and student entering the building.

I hope you enjoy getting to school at least one hour early. For schools as large as my alma mater (Sarasota High School) or Douglas HS, you’re going to have lines. 2,000-5,000 students/faculty will take a long time to get screened. Creating walkways to connect 12-18 buildings over 7 -15 acres, and then constructing checkpoints, will be crazy expensive.

Have you made the school safer? Maybe. During school hours, once everyone’s entered the fortress. But you have created a giant target outside the fortress, as all those students and teachers line up to get through the checkpoint every day. And what are you going to do for football and basketball games? You going to set up TSA checkpoints outside the stadiums as well? Or are sports and concerts and any after-school activities going to be the next sacrifices?

ANALYSIS: Expensive as holy heck. Body Count- Unchanged. Schools-radically altered. Those who tout this plan must picture a high school as it appeared in Back to the Future’s depiction of 1959. One building, one entrance, three stories. They should do research before spouting nonsense.

D.) Patriot Militia on Campus

This is a popular idea I’ve seen pop up on right-leaning social media. For no cost, veterans and former police officers will patrol our country’s schools and protect our children. They’ll volunteer on their own time and instead of the expensive uniformed security presence proposed by Mr. Gingrich, we get trained, local, free patriots to protect children. They’ll volunteer for background checks, of course.

Sounds awesome.  It’s filled with American can-do spirit, which rises to the challenges faced by modern society, and preserves 2^nd Amendment freedoms. Matter of fact, it takes those 2^nd Amendment freedoms and shoves them in the face of the bad guys! It just makes you want to fist pump and start singing Toby Keith songs.

But we’ve got the same problems we had with Mr. Gingrich’s proposal. The patriot militia will likely be faster than local PD’s rapid-response teams, since they’re already on campus. But they won’t stop the hallway shootings between class, the bus loop before and after school, crowded cafeteria and library, etc.

Reduced body count, but it still happens. Also, when the police do arrive, they have the added difficulty of differentiating between the school shooter(s), the patriot militia members, and terrorized students running in fear.

As a teacher, I also worry that some members of this patriot militia, especially if they’ve got kids on campus, could turn into vigilantes. What if they hear that someone is bullying their kid? Instead of scanning their zones for security threats, they’re cornering some 8^th grade boy in the bathroom to put the fear of God in his heart, while showing off their .44 Desert Eagle. As a teacher, I sometimes deal with helicopter parents who flood my inbox asking about their kid’s missing work, or schedule a lot of parent teacher conferences to express issues with test and quiz grades.

I’d get a lot more nervous if an armed patriot militia mom or dad just “dropped by” my classroom to “have a chat” about little Johnny.

ANALYSIS: Similar to Mr. Gingrich’s proposal but cheaper. Likely a reduced body count. But doesn’t eliminate school shootings. Also adds the complication of vigilantism/reprisals against students and teachers.

Let’s move on to the proposals coming from the Left.

A.) Ban Assault Rifles (and maybe more?)

Many mass shootings are committed with assault rifles. During the 2012 and 2016 Republican primary debates, no event or person other than 9/11 was mentioned more than Ronald Reagan. Republicans elbow each other out of the way to claim the title of Reagan’s successor.

Ronald Reagan supported expanded background checks, waiting periods, and a ban on assault rifles. Joe Biden recently noted that the US Government already limits 2^nd Amendment freedoms, by restricting access to weapons of war like grenade launchers and bazookas. Wouldn’t assault rifles be the next logical step? Aren’t those also weapons of war? If Joe Biden and Ronald Reagan are on the record agreeing on something, shouldn’t we be able to get that bill through Congress?

Let’s assume you can. Let’s say we get a reprise of the 1994 Clinton-era assault weapons ban passed. Let’s say the Freedom Caucus in the House has a come to Reagan moment and joins forces with moderate Republicans and Democrats to get it done.

No assault rifles means no school shootings, right?

Doubtful. The Columbine massacre of 1999 happened in the middle of Clinton’s assault weapons ban. Some of the weapons used during that slaughter could be classified as conventional. The Virginia Tech mass shooting, one of the deadliest in US history, was committed with a humble 9mm handgun.

Ok. Let’s repeal the 2^nd Amendment and ban all firearms, unless you’re retired military or police.

Let’s assume you can actually do that. Would that completely stop the violence? In 2015, we passed a dark milestone in the US. There are more guns in this country than there are people. Over 357 million of them. Any weapons ban that doesn’t involve confiscation is toothless. Any confiscation attempts would require significant re-interpretations of the 2^nd Amendment, or its outright repeal.

Good luck with that.

Ok, how about issuing a buy-back program? Heck, make it mandatory if you have any felony on your record! If we can restrict felons’ rights to vote, we can certainly restrict their access to firearms, right?

Make the price high enough, and you might get 50% of them. Maybe. But are you going to get them all?

It worked in Australia!

Australia didn’t have 357 million guns. Australia didn’t have a 2^nd Amendment that most conservatives can quote more readily than Scripture.

Give people $5,000 for assault rifles and $2,500 for handguns and you might reduce the number to around 100 million. Refurbish the guns you receive and give them to National Guard units and local police departments, and you might be able to justify that cost.

You’re not going to get them all. 100 million is still a lot of firearms. Are you going to go door to door to confiscate them all and turn every 10^th house on the block into Ruby Ridge or Waco? I don’t want to be in this country when you try to do that. It’s going to be awful.

The toothpaste is out of the tube on this one. While I like the idea of an assault weapons ban, and I think stopping production on all new AR-15s will be useful, it won’t stop the violence.

It will slow it down, but it will continue.

ANALYSIS: Sound and fury. Brothers grabbing brothers’ throats on Facebook feeds and blocking Grandpa on Twitter. Record levels of vitriol in political process. Maybe violence in the streets if you try the confiscation angle.

Body count in schools-slightly lower. Weapons of choice might change, but kids will still die.

B.) Raise the Age for Gun Purchase, Expand Background Checks, Close Gun Show Loopholes, Restrict High-Capacity Magazines (30+), Fund Mental Health Facilities, Raise Taxes on Ammunition, Restrict Access to Firearms for Everyone with History of Domestic Violence and/or Status on No-Fly Terrorist Watch Lists, Charge Parents of School Shooters with Negligent Homicide if They Allow Their Firearms to be Taken by Underage Children

These are the ideas that have a chance at denting the violent epidemic of school violence. They are supported by Democrats and even a few Republicans who aren’t getting their talking points directly from Dana Loesch.

As President Obama said last year, it’s lunacy that American citizens who’ve been on ISIS websites and have been identified by the FBI as risks to public safety…can simply walk into a gun show and buy a weapon of war. Everything else on the Bill of Rights has limitations. Why is the 2^nd Amendment regarded as ironclad? Why is everyone who suggests any of these measures instantly portrayed as tyrannical as King George III?

Perhaps the tide is finally changing. Maybe we’ll get a few of these reasonable measures passed. If President Trump can serve as a broker and absorb some political heat from his base, perhaps GOP legislators will follow.

The NRA will offer a ban on bump-stocks. That’s nothing. They want this to go away. They want the Douglas HS Students to go away. They want people to “stop politicizing” tragedy. As in, just shut up, accept your fate, and die if your number is selected. If people are loud enough, and persistent enough, some of these measures could get passed.

It won’t be enough. The numbers will be moderately reduced, but to me, it’s a math equation that can be done on a napkin. 320 million Americans. 357 million firearms. Let’s assume that just one in a million is deranged enough to shoot up a school. Or a theater. Or a McDonald’s. Or a church.

That’s 320 people with at least one gun and the desire to kill random people. We’ll still have at least 1-2 school shootings a year.

ANALYSIS: Body count moderately reduced. Incidence Number=reduced. Best ideas on paper that we have so far.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The moments after school shootings feel like an American rendition of the dystopian Hunger Games. We are all glued to our TV sets. We hear stories of the carnage. We admire the heroes. The faces of the fallen are displayed on CNN and Fox News.

And we do it all again next time.

As a teacher, I used to be filled with righteous anger at the callous nature of American society. This volume of school shootings doesn’t happen anywhere else in the civilized world. Western democracies look at us with horror. Canada looks down at us and wonders, wtf, eh?

French philosopher de Maistre noted that every nation has the government it deserves. As I stated previously, the toothpaste is out of the tube. This is what we are. This is what we’ve accepted. Every morning when I show up to work, I play a twisted lottery game, and hope my number won’t be selected at the next American Reaping.

During the moment of silence each day, I pray for my students. But my thoughts aren’t enough. My prayers aren’t enough. My words aren’t enough. It’s going to continue to happen. And I have no faith in my leaders to change anything, because as a policy analyst, none of the options I’ve seen can stop this carnage.

After the Las Vegas massacre, Bill O’Reilly callously opined that mass shootings were “the price of freedom”. As much as it pains me to say it, at this moment, he’s right. That is what we’ve chosen to accept as a nation. It’s disgusting. It’s also disgusting when policy actors like Ben Carson blithely tell students to attack the guy with the rifle, as he did after the Oregon community college shooting when he said, “I would not just stand there and let him shoot me.”

No, Mr. Carson. You’d be running in terror, like any normal human. Or frozen in place, which is also a natural reaction. When someone has the drop on you, there isn’t much you can do. When given time to prepare, maybe you have a chance. But you’re also going to die. As I’m putting the finishing touches on this blog post, I’m presently sheltering in place at my own school, first in line in the corner of the room, armed with a kettle of boiling-hot water and a pair of scissors. If that door is opened by anything other than an administrator or police officer with a key, 80% of us are likely to be cut down, and I’ll be the first to die.  But I guess 80% is better than 100%, right?

We’re sheltering in place because there’s a rumor a kid brought a gun to school, and the police are investigating. Yesterday, at another school in the district, a 7^th grade boy actually did bring a loaded gun to school, ‘on a dare’.

How sick are we as a society? One of the most triumphant talking points that the far-right brings up is the fact that the commonly quoted figure of 18 school shootings in 2018 is misleading. In actuality, it’s three or four, depending on your interpretation.

So, experiencing at least one deadly shooting a month, perhaps two, is supposed to put my mind at ease? Would my anxiety be soothed if I was wounded by an “accidental discharge” from the firearm of a 12-year-old girl, who gravely injured a number of her peers in California a few weeks ago? Is it supposed to be heartening that some of the school shootings reported are actually students committing suicide in bathrooms? Thank God! Students are so depressed that they’re just killing themselves instead of others. Darn those liberals who count those in their stats of shootings committed on school campuses.

Whether you are left, right, center, or somewhere on the fringes, we all have to face the realization that there is something seriously wrong with our country right now. You can’t just repeat one or two of these common talking points and triumphantly sit back in your chair and believe you have the answer. Or maybe you can.

I can’t. I’ve got to play the Hunger Games every day. The music from those films plays in my ears every time I step on campus in the morning.

I hope that the odds are in my favor, and that today isn’t the day that my kids and I are chosen as tribute to this madness.

 

Dr. Rudolph Lurz is a teacher and education scholar living in Roanoke, Virginia. He received his doctorate in Administration & Policy Studies from the University of Pittsburgh in 2017.

 

 

 

 

 

This is CNN?

“This…is CNN”.

The booming bass voice of James Earl Jones was a fixture in my living room during my childhood. When I heard that declaration, I knew that the news on TV would be reported without bias or exaggeration.

Or excitement, for that matter. CNN was reliable, but it was also really boring. When I saw CNN on TV in the family room, that was my cue to retreat to my room and play Sega Genesis.

Who would want to watch the news for fun? The only time the news was interesting was when events were interesting.

I vividly remember the family gathered around the television during the Gulf War. Colin Powell and Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf pointed at maps to illustrate military strategy. Green and black images of bombs exploding in Baghdad showed the American people what modern warfare looked like. When the war ended, CNN turned the camera to George HW Bush arguing about tax policy with members of Congress. I went back to my room. The news was boring again.

In recent years, all that has changed. On cable TV, the news became THE NEWS! Fox News led the charge. They put bells and whistles, along with a sense of urgency and right-leaning slant, on each of their news stories. “Breaking News!” would flash on the screen, accompanied by music. The network’s banners and graphics would project intense messages, no matter how mundane the story was.

During prime time, the network would ditch the premise of neutrality entirely. Pundits like Bill O’Reilly invited left-leaning guests on the air, and then made them look foolish while attacking their positions with ruthless efficiency.

The message Fox News projected was clear. The Left was destroying the country. The News was important. And America had to tune in.

America did. Traditional media outlets looked at them with disdain. Many felt that the network lacked basic objectivity. Their stories failed to meet the objective standards of journalism that my father learned at Ohio State a half century ago.

But by God, they did well in the ratings. Few outside the political right respected them, but that didn’t matter. The Right revered Fox News. Fox didn’t just have viewers, they had followers.

Putting a political slant on the news stories of the day was not invented by Fox. It was common practice in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Print media outlets on opposing sides of the political spectrum were denigrated as “rags” by their opponents. Insults of “fake news” are a recurrence of that theme. We’re leaving the neutrality of Walter Cronkite behind and re-entering a new era of yellow journalism.

Over the past five years, and especially in the 2016 election cycle, CNN got tired of getting their asses kicked. They added flair and excitement to their reporting. They put up provocative headlines and titillating banners on-screen while anchors reported the news. Primary debates were promoted like boxing matches. Talking heads of opposing viewpoints sat around a table screaming at each other. The hosts frequently joined in the shouting matches that took place on the air.

Unnecessary.

The 2016 campaign was always going to be dirty. CNN turned it into a brawl. It should come as no surprise to the American public that Donald Trump, the most unpolished brawler of them all, emerged victorious in the arena that CNN built. Over $2 billion in free media coverage, much of it from CNN, helped Mr. Trump in that cause.

Now we have a President who is openly bellicose with the media.  In a previous article I wrote on another blog, I predicted that Trump as President would be the greatest threat to the 1^st Amendment since President Adams and the Alien & Sedition Acts of 1798. Sadly, that prediction was accurate. During his first six months in office, Trump has restricted access to the White House Press Briefing and openly denigrated respected journalistic outlets like the Washington Post, New York Times, and CNN as “Fake News”.

Where does America’s flagship cable news network stand? They’re furious. Jim Acosta and others at CNN consistently complain about the indignities they endure at the hands of the Trump Administration.

Yet they are at fault for their present status. CNN became Fox News to overtake them in the ratings, and now they’re upset that they’re being treated like them.

There’s still time to turn it around. The hour is late. The free press is standing on the precipice of destruction. The country needs CNN to become boring again. Deliver the news without the sensationalism. Drop the overt glee on-camera every time the Trump Administration does something unpopular. Drop the O’Reilly-esque “gotcha” interviews that devolve into shouting matches. America doesn’t need to see endless replays of the following script:

TRUMP SUPPORTER: “Thanks for having me on, (insert first name of reporter, here)”.

CNN: “President Trump said this today. Let’s go to the clip” (intense whooshing sound effect).

(CLIP OF TRUMP SAYING SOMETHING STUPID)

CNN: “Do you think Trump sucks now? Do you regret your previous support? Explain how you can still support this garbage fire of a president”.

SUPPORTER: “Trump’s not garbage. He’s awesome and you’re Fake News”.

CNN: “That’s outrageous!”

(Talking over each other, yelling, name-calling, etc.)

It is unproductive to have Chris Cuomo yelling at Kellyanne Conway on New Day every week. It’s playing right into Trump’s hands. Look, the President will attack stories he doesn’t like. That’s who he is. Don’t respond or become indignant when he does. I learned a phrase when I was a football coach in rural Polk County, Florida. When you’re wrestling a pig in the mud, sooner or later, you’re going to discover that the pig is enjoying it.

President Trump revels in the brawling atmosphere of modern media, because he can paint a picture of himself as the victim. When you get in a shouting match with a fool, from a distance, you can’t tell who the fool is. The President knows that he can get the desired brawl by goading the media, and he can therefore flip any story that portrays him unfavorably.

The response to such actions? Just roll the cameras. Trust the American people to come to the correct conclusions on their own. If you try to push them in that direction, they’ll inevitably run into Trump’s arms.

Follow the example of the Washington Post, which continues to do solid investigative journalism, and doesn’t brawl with Trump every time the President tweets at them. NPR (National Public Radio), in a brilliant move, just tweeted the entire Declaration of Independence one line at a time.  Trump supporters rallied to the defense of the tyrant, King George III, and accused NPR of politicizing a national holiday. Those types of stories make Trump look bad without making the network look bad.

The Germans have an expression- Der Ton macht die Musik. The tone makes the music. Right now, CNN’s tone is strident, and it needs to be neutral. CNN doesn’t need to be a participant in Trump’s downfall; it only needs to be its recorder. Keep the cameras on him and he’ll create the mess himself that results in his removal from office, whether that removal comes from the 25^th Amendment, impeachment, resignation, or electoral defeat.

If they continue on their sensationalist path, CNN will drive the American Center and Center-Right directly onto the Trump Train in 2020.

Objectivity is boring, but in this age, it’s essential. Let Fox win the ratings, and CNN will win back respect.

Until CNN is boring again, I will be watching PBS. The news is sensational enough without the additional urgency CNN pumps into each broadcast. In an era of noise, CNN should return to its roots as the voice of reason.

{RWL}