Spitting in the Wind Part 1, 6.26.22
Sound and Fury
Greetings from newShrink as we close this drink-from-a-firehose of a news-week:
The topics and issues are monumental if not cataclysmic in importance and impact: From God to guns, the autonomy of women to insurrection against our government itself by its elected leaders.
The settings and scope are immense: From within highest institutional bodies of all three branches of our federal government, and yet also profoundly personal for every American.
Images in the above illustration-guide to today’s newShrink are more overlapping, interconnected and non-linear than usual because that’s the nature of all of these stories.
title themes
The Spitting in the Wind image in the title is a nod to a wry-humorous reference from early pre-launch discussions and in the Welcome/About descriptions of newShrink’s purpose of tracking the Soul of America (and us) through its news. With news of late the phrase seems a bit more shadow-subtext than facetious humor!
The title phrase Sound and Fury, of course, comes from the 1929 novel by William Faulkner — who had adopted it from the original dramatic conclusion of Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Macbeth (Act 5 Scene 5).
#1. The Macbeth passage is excerpted in the above visual.
#2. The tone-setting take on Lady Liberty’s mood this week is included thanks to a share by friend and reader Nancy Gardner.
A note about images in all of today’s illustrations: Specific mentions of photos in the text include numbers and location reference information. Other images more generally illustrate topics discussed in text and should be self-explanatory.
process
Not only has the news-week been a fire-hose, but the thing requires a lot of untangling! Beyond “receiving and sorting the incoming” I am just past the images-quotes-and-lists stage — barely into complete sentences yet, much less complex connections and ideas.
That’s why this week’s edition is Part 1. And the look and feel of it may more closely resemble crisis-communications from my corporate years, or stages of a psychotherapy process, than an article or essay. There’s even an acronym 5-R process, each with its own visual illustration. The stages are:
🔷Receive Incoming! (This is the News Notebook, sampling of Stories)
🔷Reactions
🔷R&R: Research & Report (for more facts and information)
🔷Rallying of Resources and Supports; and
🔷Respite
Then the Part 2 next edition along psychological themes and deeper connections will fall around the July 4 weekend, which tends to be a more reflective time of year and summer for me.
With this week’s culmination of so many news events and issues, not only the volume, scope and speed but the many aspects of the content require more settling, and perhaps sleeps and dreams, to get at the more psychological dimensions both clinical and depth/soul level. Words like marinate, ruminate, incubate, or chew-on come to mind. Now I chuckle, for this is where stepson Nick (now 36) or I would be saying “maybe it just needs longer to fester.” Somehow we started this at some point when he was in the pre- or early- school-age years of delighting with hysterical laughter at gross-sounding things and words. Ever since, the occasional funny fester will pop up — usually in some food prep process. (And as I think of it, fester is pretty accurate for absorbing some of the nature of this week’s news…)
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Now to share some of that Incoming…
News Notebook: The Stories
The usual navigating details for accessing all links and references on the newShrink website are at the bottom of this post after closing comments.
#3. U.S. House Hearings on Jan. 6 Insurrection
(Committee photo at top left by Oliver Contreras of The Washington Post)
Jan. 6 Hearings Day 4: Panel Ties Trump to False Electors Plan (NYT)
Donald J. Trump was personally involved in a scheme to put forward fake electors, the House committee revealed at a hearing that highlighted the pressure that state officials faced to overturn the election results.
#4 .What It Means to Be Targeted by the President (From The New Yorker)
(Center left-column photo of poll workers Shaye Moss (on left) and her mother Ruby Freeman by Tom Williams/Getty Images)
Witnesses at the latest January 6th hearings share an experience that, since Donald Trump, has become a hallmark of politics: being terrorized by the full modern machinery of American hate-mongering.
Mother-daughter election workers say there is “nowhere they feel safe” after being targeted by Trump (NBC News)
Now our norm, Republicans are the threat (Miami Herald Columnist Leonard Pitts in The Charlotte Observer)
Jan. 6 panel names five Republicans who allegedly sought Trump pardons (From the Washington Post)
The only reason I know to ask for a pardon is because you think you’ve committed a crime,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.)
Echoes of Watergate: Trump’s appointees reveal his push to topple Justice Dept. (WAPO)
With raw emotion, former Justice Department officials described to the Jan. 6 committee how close the department came to catastrophe.
#5.Home of Jeffrey Clark, Trump DOJ official, searched by federal agents (WAPO)
(Photo at bottom left by Susan Walsh/Associated Press)
Clark, a lawyer, was deeply involved in efforts to get the Department of Justice to embrace President Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud.
Analysis | 5 takeaways from the Jan. 6 hearing on Trump’s Justice Dept. plot (WAPO)
The committee debuted new evidence of Trump allies seeking pardons, while building out key elements of its case and linking Trump lawyers' plot to the Justice Department.
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Guns
Senators Pass Bipartisan Gun Safety Bill (NYT)
How stricter gun laws could have made a difference in these mass shootings
Meanwhile, however, the U.S. Supreme Court hands down a ruling making it easier than ever to carry a concealed gun in the most densely populated parts of the nation.
#6. Key excerpts from the Supreme Court gun ruling written by Justice Clarence Thomas (NYT)
(Photo by Allison V. Smith of the New York Times)
The Supreme Court just made a monumental ruling on gun rights. Here's what it means (USA Today)
Opinions | The Supreme Court’s gun ruling is a serious misfire (By moderate conservative columnist George F. Will in The Washington Post)
By overturning New York's concealed-carry law, the justices effectively removed from public debate the essentially legislative choice of balancing the competing values of self-defense and public safety.
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Religion
Supreme Court Rejects Maine’s Ban on Aid to Religious Schools (NYT)
The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that Maine may not exclude religious schools from a state tuition program, the latest decision by a conservative majority that has increasingly favored the role of religion in public life.
The vote was 6 to 3, with the court’s three liberal justices in dissent.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said the ruling did not require states to support religious education. But states that choose to subsidize private schools, he added, may not discriminate against religious ones.
In separate dissents, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Stephen G. Breyer expressed dismay at the direction of the court in taking up matters of religion in the public sphere. Justice Sotomayor said the decision was another step in dismantling “the wall of separation between church and state that the framers fought to build.”
Of course, later in the week many and multi-faceted matters of religion and separation of church and state would further arise with the Court’s monumental Roe v Wade overturn decision on Friday.
And meanwhile, in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, massive conflicts and controversy have escalated involving both legal accountability and women’s autonomy. The Southern Baptist Convention — which strictly forbids women in pastoral or leadership roles among the 12-14 million members it claims — already has an abysmal and institutionally entrenched establishment of women’s second-class status.
Southern Baptists Elect New Leader Amid Deepening Divisions (The New York Times)
The nation’s largest Protestant denomination, a bellwether for conservative Christianity, chose a rural Texas pastor and approved actions to address its sex abuse crisis.
Baptists, Battling Divisions, Gather for ‘Historic’ Convention (The New York Times)
Southern Baptists consider response to sex abuse report (Observer at Anaheim annual conference)
More Baptist ministers linked to sexual abuse in NC (Observer)
The Charlotte Observer - Southern Baptist Convention sets up hotline for sex abuse victims
Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting June 12-15 Anaheim, CA
Some back-story: an explosive and comprehensive report on sex abuse and coverup at the convention’s most senior leadership levels, over decades, was released just a few weeks before the denomination’s enormous annual Father’s Day week conference of its thousands of “messengers.”
Southern Baptist Sex Abuse Report Stuns, From Pulpit to Pews (The New York Times)
Top Southern Baptists stonewalled sex abuse victims (AP in The Observer)
Southern Baptists to release list of accused abusers (AP in The Observer)
NC pastors among those on secret list of Southern Baptist leaders accused of sex abuse (The Charlotte Observer)
And here’s the list (Reported by News & Observer of Raleigh in The Charlotte Observer)
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Roe v Wade
The Supreme Court on Friday overruled Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion after almost 50 years in a 6-to-3 ruling. New York Times reporters are reading the majority opinion and continually providing analysis below.
Thomas’s concurring opinion raises questions about what rights might be next. (NYT)
In many countries, abortion is protected by law, not court decision (The Washington Post)
In some countries, rulings similar to Roe opened the door to legalizing abortion. In others, governments passed key legislation expanding access.
Reactions
President Biden: Roe decision “a tragic error”
Trump privately for weeks called a Roe v. Wade reversal “bad” for his party…(NYT)
But in an interview that Fox News published after the decision on Friday, Mr. Trump, asked about his role, said, “God made the decision.”
Besides its staggering hypocrisy on many levels, this is in stark contrast to his predecessor President Obama’s Friday Tweet illustrated above.
Rage, despair, tears fill streets nationwide Friday night
Thousands protest end to right to abortion (New York Times)
Abortion ruling divides America (CNBC)
Please note that the omission of “balanced/other side” coverage of celebrations or confrontations by anti-abortion activists in the wake of the Friday Court decision is intentional, at least for now. Too many broadcast media outlets in particular are presenting to the public a glaring false-equivalency that belies the thoroughly grounded facts about Americans’ large and consistent majority-support for reproductive rights, choice and privacy.
This is also true of majority-support for much more extensive gun-safety and responsibility measures than the bipartisan compromise bill passed this week. Small minorities are increasingly controlling and governing large majorities of the American population on many issues. It’s important that media not perpetuate and exacerbate that by falsely presenting it.
The decision to overturn Roe clashes with the views of a majority of Americans. (From the New York Times)
This brings me to the next phase of processing. (Given my particular wiring this one tends to be a go-to panic-reducing crisis-coping tool, good at least for illusion of some control!)
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R/R — Researching/Reporting (For More Facts and Information)
(Reading left-to-right in two rows above):
#7. THE best 3 charts — and clear story — showing what Americans really believe and want regarding abortion. (From VOX.)
#8. These are especially interesting if you zoom them and then compare each to the row of 3 New York Times Maps in the row below them.
5 misunderstandings of pregnancy biology that cloud the abortion debate (From Science News)
With the Roe news breaking only Friday, there’s much reaction still underway along with immediate effects and chaos in the several states with “trigger” abortion-banning laws activated by the overturn of Roe. But it’s heartening that some constructive response and mobilization is already beginning.
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Rallying of Resources and Supports Begins
Beyond voter-turnout and political mobilizing, business and corporate engagement I’ve been seeing includes massive increases in donations to Planned Parenthood, and including it as an Amazon Smile recipient with each purchase for the many of us using Amazon Prime. An excellent segment Friday evening on NPR Marketplace highlighted the significant and societally sweeping negative economic impacts of the reversal of Roe rights. “Reproductive rights are economic rights” was the lede to the interview with the Texas A&M economist-researcher whose extensive study was an amicus brief in arguments before the Court when the Dobbs case was heard last fall.
Support efforts include the above “underground railroad” idea, a nod to the historic Janes groups who helped women needing abortions before Roe. Kudos and thanks to friend and reader Barbara Barnett of Virginia (like North Carolina, still so far a legal-abortion state) for her great idea that might be adapted to some of our respective states. She posted this alert on Facebook:
If you need a “vacation” in Virginia, contact me. You have a place to stay. #Jane
And, whew. It is still dizzying and disorienting, with both the House hearings on Trump and the Roe decision within this single June week, to be thrust so completely by our national news back to the 1973 I remember quite well. The 7-2 Roe decision that January enshrined women’s body-autonomy as federal law, and the Watergate hearings later that summer ultimately exposed Nixon’s corruption and ended his presidency.
Just, whew.
So I am especially grateful this week to friend and reader Ann Ahern Allen for sharing this collection of solstice-week smiles.
Respite
And, that is all I have! Talk to you next week.
🦋💙 tish
•🌀🔵🔷🦋💙
… it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
— William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”
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