Monthly Archives: December 2020

Of all the surprising things that 2020 has brought to us so far, number one has to be watching Mitch McConnell pushing to defund the police. I don’t know about you, but that was definitely not a square on my “2020 Apocalypse Bingo Card.”

I sense skepticism: are you skeptical about Mitch manning the barricades alongside BLM? Hear me out. But first, let’s talk about money.

State and city budgets are remarkably like the budgets you and I have to live with: when either one of us runs out of money, we have to stop spending it. (Unlike the Federal government, which can run at a deficit—and often does.) Also, just like with our own budgets, states and cities have two immediate actions they can take when they are confronted with an unbalanced budget: they can spend less, or they can earn more. When you or I are faced with the need to earn more we do things like pick up extra shifts or start driving Uber. When states and cities need to earn more, they raise taxes.

If for some reason we can’t (or won’t) take those steps (such as lack of time or taxpayer anger), we spend less. We stop going out to eat, we cancel HBO, we put off the next oil change. States and cities, however, don’t really have the same number of options. Things that many people might consider “luxuries” such as arts funding and highway beautification projects are typically funded through voter approved programs, meaning they can’t be halted until they are “unvoted.” Other expenses have been allocated through budgets that have needed to pass through multiple layers of public oversight, debate, and votes for approval, meaning those expenses would also require the same level of attention and time to undo.

That leaves discretionary spending. And one of the areas that are most dependent on discretionary spending? State and city services, like the highway patrol and the local police.

What this means is that as revenues (taxes) fall (and when people are staying home for nine months, revenues are most certainly falling), spending needs to fall as well. A recent survey of police chiefs around the nation shows that a majority of them have seen revenue shortfalls necessitating budget cuts of around 10-15 percent, with the promise of more on the way. Remember all of those scary attack ads featuring an unanswered 911 call in “Joe Biden’s America”? Well, they might have to be rewritten with the tagline of “Mitch McConnell’s America” instead.

This is because in all of the many different pandemic relief bills that have been put forward since the first one passed in March the one thing that has stayed constant is Mitch McConnell’s refusal to support states and cities. Enhanced unemployment is on the table for Mitch. So is a second round of checks, small business grants and loans, and school funding. Heck, he’s even said he’s willing to remove the liability shields protecting his corporate overlords. But he refuses to budge on helping out states and cities. In other words, he refuses to fund the police—a move that has made people on both sides of the defund the police debate equally unhappy, since the type of defunding McConnell is advocating is hectic and unplanned, and will most likely lead to the cutting of the services and hires who are most likely to help marginalized communities. Which, come to think about it, might be McConnell’s plan all along.

The bottom line is that if you support defunding the police, you should be actively working to strip McConnell of his senate majority. And if you don’t support defunding the police, then you should be doing the same. In fact, let’s make “Ditch Mitch” the center square on everyone’s “2021 No More Apocalypse Bingo Card.” Who knows? Maybe it will be the year we all experience winning again.

(Want to help dethrone Mitch McConnell? Go to one of the many organizations that are actively working to win the senate runoff in Georgia—such as fairfight.com—to donate and volunteer, and hopefully we will all be shouting Bingo! come January 5^th.)

This holiday season, in kitchens and Zoom rooms all around the country, there is one topic that will almost certainly be brought up over and over again: Forgiveness.

This would be true even without the looming threat of Coronavirus Christmas hanging over our heads; the last four years of acrimony and accusations have been exhausting, and many, if not all of us are eager for a chance to just have everything “go back to normal.” And for most people, “normal” means not being so damned angry all of the time. Or if not angry, then fearful and sad. Hence the national call to forgive. To move on. To start fresh. To let it go, even if there never is an actual “sorry.”

It sounds noble, doesn’t it? Taking the high road. The problem is, it’s never going to work if we are the only people up on the high road, and the people we are trying to forgive are still down in the ditch.

When you forgive people without them doing anything that makes them worthy of forgiveness you are not holding them accountable. You are keeping them comfortable, and as everyone knows, no one ever changes when they are comfortable.

I am thinking of what happened with the Wayne County Board of Canvassers. For those not familiar with the story, two of the board members initially refused to certify the election results. (In case you were wondering, this process is almost always a routine formality.) Unfortunately for them, the next meeting was public (on Zoom), and the resulting hours worth of public acrimony and disgust encouraged the two recalcitrant members to take the less incendiary route, and approve. As soon as the cameras were off, however, they attempted to rescind their votes.

While they were being held accountable for their actions (which included such egregiousness as actually suggesting that they only certify the results from the white areas of the county), they seemed to show the potential for change. As soon as the pressure was off, however, they relapsed.

Less immediately, and more terrifying, I am also thinking of what’s happening in Rwanda. Thanks to the movie “Hotel Rwanda,” even Americans are familiar with the massive genocide that occurred there in the 1990s, as well as the national Reconciliation Boards that followed. It was, everyone thought, a model for how to forgive. One that I am sure will be cited around holiday tables all over the country (it certainly was four years ago). But four years ago we didn’t know that even after Paul Rusesabagina (the man profiled in the movie) publicly forgave the president of Rwanda, he would one day be taken back to Rwanda against his will and arrested. (This happened three months ago—he is in jail still.)

Forgiveness is important. I get it—I recently celebrated my twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and as someone once said, the secret of a long marriage is a union between two good forgivers. But even more important than forgiveness is communication—it is vital that both the forgiver understand what they are forgiving, and the recipient understand what they are being forgiven for, not to mention the fact that these two items need to be the same.

In a perfect world both parties come to realize the exact nature of the transgression, and agree wholeheartedly on the best way to make amends. In a more realistic world, both parties simply agree that “mistakes were made” and move on. In the “Groundhog Day” world we are currently living in, however, we ignore the underlying problems over and over again and repeat our mistakes every day (or every four years) until we hopefully one day learn our lessons and move on. In this instance, the lesson that needs to be learned is to not forgive people who haven’t made any effort to earn that forgiveness. No matter how uncomfortable that makes our family dinners.

I’m hoping that this year will be the year we finally learn that lesson. For all of our sakes.