Pure Beauty

.The second tenet of Distilled Harmony is Enable Beauty, which is a bit slippery on a couple of fronts.  Sometimes it simply means go out, or go online and replenish art supplies - stock up on paper, paint, markers, etc. Get frames to frame pieces I have printed out. Hang stuff on my “gallery walls.” Very prosaic stuff. Literally gather the tools necessary to create works in whatever genre I am playing with at the moment. Baseline “enabling.”  But obviously just having the tools creates only the most tenuous path to beauty - along the lines of get a huge chunk of marble, a hammer and a chisel and hammer away all the marble that doesn’t look like The David. Ta da. That there, that’s yer beauty.

A few rungs up the ladder of sophistication, brings us to the notions of environment and permission. Making most art is messy, which is why artists of all stripes try to claim some type of "studio". A place where the tools of the trade, as it were, can spill out. Do a search on “Video of Jackson Pollock working” for some glimpses of a messy studio on steroids.  But even an artist who works primarily digitally needs a space that can contain post-it notes, print outs of rough drafts, trays for snacks, etc.  I remember, many years ago, stumbling across a potter’s studio during a sort of touring art show somewhere in northern Michigan. And the only thing I remembered the entire “tour” is this awesome studio. Huge space, almost all windows looking out on a stream winding into a forest. I remember thinking “anyone could create here!”  Silly, I know, but that was my thought at the time.

I was ignoring the vital aspect of permission. It's not just about having the space in which to create. Not only is art messy, but it requires large chunks of uninterrupted time. “Doing Art” regardless of the medium is all about flow. You really cannot “hold that thought” or “save that line” “wash your hands and come here for a minute.” Artists do those things, and may be able to come back to the “moment of interruption” and move forward, but the piece created “post-interruptus” will be different from that which would have been created without the interruption. It is not necessarily a case of better or worse, just different. So, it is probably best for an artist to try to create a personal and professional environment in which the permission to spend large amounts of uninterrupted time “doing art” is acknowledged. Where stepping out of your "creating space" is not necessarily seen as an invitation to be set another task.

Yet, all that being said, - with obvious apologies to my better half - the stickiest issue lies ahead. The whole Beauty thing.  I was watching a video the other day about a well-known New York art figure, Ann Freedman, former president Knoedler & Company Gallery, who had been widely acknowledged as selling forgeries of paintings - literally "made in China," that she steadfastly contended were authentic.  When asked what her initial impression of a forged Rothko that she had sold, she replied, “I thought it was just beautiful!” I pick on Rothko for a couple of reasons. First, the “gallery forger” did acknowledge that while she still maintained that her Rothko was “real,” he was “easy to fake.” Secondly, some of my best friends are Rothko lovers. And some Rothko lovers are art experts with impeccable credentials. Rothko is unquestionably an artist of significant stature.

Now, let me sidetrack for one of my favorite stories about my Dad.  When he was in his early 90s Christine and I took him to lunch in Long Grove, which, at the time, was a lovely little town northeast of Chicago. While it has fallen a bit on hard times, there was - and still is, I think - a neat art gallery cum gift shop. Maybe called "The Studio"? Anyhow we were walking around the place, which was “gallery-ish” enough that you keep your voice down. Well, most folks did. However, Dad had been studying an abstract piece hanging on the wall for several minutes before declaring in a definitely non-lowered voice, “Why, I wouldn’t hang that in my toilet!” We quickly decided it was time for lunch and scurried out the door.

Point is, with his expertise fully acknowledged, I feel the same way about Rothko. It mattered naught to me that our purveyor of forged Rothkos, Pollocks, etc., thought her Rothko was “beautiful,” I would have to side with what I think Dad’s assessment of Rothko's work would be, and it would not be "My, that is just beautiful."  The point lies in this aphorism: beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or in the case I would like to explore a little further; in the ear of the listener.

I am addicted to music. I am trying to think of a time during a normal day when I am not listening to music, and I’m having trouble.  “How about right now?” you may ask. Well, right now I am typing on my Mac while listening to a classical piano track on Pandora which is, simultaneously, being accompanied by a rain storm track on Naturespaces. “OK,” you say. “How about when you are asleep?”  Same blend. Pandora and Naturespaces, all night long. And I’m sure that has nothing to do with the fact that I either sleep with my headphones on, or in the guest room. So I guess that the only time I am not listening to music is when I am watching some type of video - which usually has a sound track. Sigh.

All of which has led to consider what characteristics in music do I find most beautiful. While realizing that my characteristics will probably differ from yours I thought it would be fun to share those thoughts and some of that music with you.

I suppose it is not strange that often the music I find most beautiful shares a close relationship with tenet number three, Distill Complexity. It is not that I am unacquainted with complex musical forms. In high school I sang, competitively, in an octet. We had a brilliant conductor who had previously worked with Johnny Mathis and the Young Americans. He was quite demanding and it was largely because of his expertise that we won statewide contests several times. In college, I sang one of the leads in the opera based on James Thurber's children's book Many Moons. So, yes. I am familiar with complexity in musical forms. And occasionally I quite enjoy them. A couple of concerts in Venice; one Vivaldi and unique version of Rossini's Barber of Seville, are among my all time favorites.  But I don't always enjoy complex works.  Singing in the Thurber opera was genuinely terrifying, as the two female leads, both of whom could read music, possessed a couple of the sweetest voices I have ever heard. Which may in part explain my preference for pure "distilled" vocals.

I encountered one such piece, which remains in my top five, while sleeping. Well, not actual asleep but not really awake either.  The clock radio was set to NPRs This Country in the Morning, and as they often did, they were featuring some musical selections.  Today it was Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and I waited, just a tad apprehensively for Judy Garland's iconic rendition.  But only a few notes in I realized that whoever was singing this was better than Garland - much, much better.  If you haven't heard Eva Cassidy's version, I'll paste a link in here. Realizing that - like my perhaps minority take on Rothko - "beauty" is subjective, you may still prefer the Garland version. But do give Eva a serious listen: 

https://youtu.be/2rd8VktT8xY

It is the purity of the sound - the "non-complexity" if you will, that captures me. It is music that just floats you away. You fear that the vocal support, will drop out, fade out somehow, but it never does, and you wonder how she can do that, and then you wish she would never stop. And it is that purity of sound that comes through on this next piece. 

Amazing Grace/My Chains are Gone  was recommended to me by a student in one of my media classes. This version is done by a woman's group from Brigham Young University called Noteworthy. I think this link is the cleanest path to them, but they too are worth the search: https://byurecords.lnk.to/HowSweetSoundID

Those works, among a few others brings me to this thought: “Beauty induces a spontaneous inhalation.” And yes, at first glance that may seem to say the same thing as the old saw; “I don’t know much about art, but I know it when I see it.”  But version one uses bigger, albeit fewer words, hence you would use the second version if you were being paid by the word. However, word count is not really the only difference. Let’s break it down a bit - a close reading if you will.

“Induces.”  According to the Oxford English Dictionary, when something “induces” something, it acts upon the will to lead us to a specific behavior. So in our brief version beauty “acts upon the will.” We don’t choose to take a deep breath, beauty "induces" the behavior.

"Spontaneous." Coming freely and without premeditation or effort.

"Inhalation." The act of inhaling or breathing in.

Put them together and what have you got? Bibity, bopity, Boo? You have something - in our immediate context, a piece of music - that literally takes your breath away, leaves you gasping. And while at the moment we are talking about music, beauty can arise from any stimulus. It can be found in something created by an artist in any medium or genre. It can be, and often is, found in the natural world - from microscopic particles, to the latest high resolution images of a black hole currently making its way across the internet. So can anything be beautiful if beauty is defined by a spontaneous subjective reaction to some external stimulus? Was Ann Freedman's declaration of the forged Rothko as "beautiful" legitimate? Possibly. But other aspects of her assessment give me pause.

For me to be party to "enabling beauty," the created stimulus to which I am reacting, and which I wish to enable, must manifest some combination of three other characteristics: awareness, honesty and intention. And it important to note that notion of "created stimulus." Awareness, honesty and intention applied to occurrences in the natural world take us into the world of theology and metaphysics - is there intentional beauty in a sunset, a rose, in a baby's smile, in your lover's eyes? You can see why I don't want to go there. But those notions certainly can be brought to bear on works created specifically to engage the mind - and the pocketbook - of an audience, be they a patron or a target demographic.

Let me simplify. Ann Freeman's declaration of the "beauty" of her forged Rothko loses credibility because most of the evidence implies that she was aware that the work was dishonest and was created with the sole intention of defrauding wealthy collectors.

Problematically, while that simplification resolves most of the ethical complexities in The Case of The Lady and the Forger, it leaves the "beauty" of the forged painting in limbo. The artist, Pei-Shen Qian, is apparently somewhat of a genius [see https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/nyregion/struggling-immigrant-artist-tied-to-80-million-new-york-fraud.html?] able to forge a number of contemporary artists at a level that fooled a number of "experts." 

 So what of the works themselves? If upon seeing one of these works I experience a spontaneous inhalation. Is that work - for me - truly beautiful? Do I have to be aware that a work - in any genre - is a fraud to remove a created work from my personal realm of the beautiful? Can the work itself somehow be questionable - less beautiful - because of the fraudulent chain of creation and ownership that led to its existence? I'm inclined to believe not. Can a work of art be held responsible for the motivations of the hand that created it? Again, I choose not to go there.

And if that wasn't bad enough, welcome to the world of non-fungible tokens - NFT's - a type of digital image file one of which sold at Christie's for about 70 million dollars on March 11. No actual physical "painting" changed hands, nor is the general public barred from downloading the file and printing their own version of the file. No, I do not understand. Feel free to google "JPG file Sells for 69 Million." However, I did search for the image online. I experienced no spontaneous inhalation. So for me, for the immediate future, beauty appears to be safe from the attack of the NFTs.

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The Illusion of Identity

 My father, the only centenarian I have known personally, used to tell the story of when he first took my mother home to meet his family on the family farm down in a very rural corner of southeastern South Dakota. They all thought Mom was very nice, but the betting had run high on a local gal. And someone, I was never sure just quite who, did point out that Mom was “Nicht von unserer.” Not one of ours. When my first wife and I moved to Raleigh back in 1980 many of our neighbors invited us to attend church with them. The fact that she was Jewish and I was “unchurched” (a new word for me) led to some awkward moments.

We apparently set large store by identity, there seems to be great comfort in it. Philosophical, religious, political, racial, gender, clan, whatever. The common mindset is always “us and them.” Our people. Those others. There is a great hue and cry regarding identity around the globe today. Whether the focus is hyper-local squabbles within the homeowners association, the school board, town planning commission, etc., or national, Republican versus Democrat, conservative versus liberal, or global, East versus West, 1st World versus Developing Nations. It all boils down to “us versus them.”  I am incredibly tired of all the bickering. As the old 1961 musical put it, Stop The World, I Want to Get Off.

As a long-time fan of science fiction I like to consider a galactic perspective. I’m not quite sure I am ready to buy the veracity of the of the former Israeli Space Security Chief who asserted in a December 9, 2020 Wall Street Journal article that a “galactic federation” has long been in touch with “earth leaders” but the aliens are denying us membership because we “aren’t ready.” Still, as I look at “the news” I am inclined to seriously consider that notion. Or as Groucho Marx put it, “I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have me for a member.”

We do, as earthlings, spend a mind-boggling amount of human lives and treasure squabbling over immature political, social, and philosophical issues - which at the core are all the same issue: “We are better than you, nah, nah, nah.” This where you stick out your tongue, put your thumbs in your ears and waggle your fingers.  “My candidate, my religion, my age group, my gender, my athletic team, my genetic heritage, my ancestors, my, my, my! Nah! Nah!” Meanwhile, the planet upon which we all, regardless of our cherished identity, must live, is going to hell in a handbag. We really, really, need to just grow up. We need to put aside our petty differences and realize that we “humanity” is singular, with only one identity. Otherwise there is no hope that the galactic federation will warn us when the asteroid is going to hit, or provide us with the space transports necessary to get us all to Earth II. 

Without coming to that realization that we are a singular identity and act like cooperating adults, well, grab your handbag ‘cause we are going to hell and taking the planet with us. For the more hopeful, that just leaves us with Elon Musk and terraforming Mars. OK. He is brilliant. A little more fine tuning on the batteries, the self-driving gizmo, and some reasonable pricing, and well, there might be a Tesla in our future. But are you really comfortable with Elon’s Mars as the only option for the future of our singular identity?

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Dreaming of the Hundred Acre Wood

.One of the great fallacies that we pass on to our children is that they can be anything they want to be. I am not talking about a unique fallacy that has dogged the children living under the age old shadows of discrimination based on race, gender or class. This fallacy of unfettered possibilities touches all children regardless of socioeconomic status, and we, their parents, their teachers and mentors are, in large part, to blame.

I suppose if there was an era when “you can be anything” came even close to being true it would have been for a tiny cluster of privileged children during the Renaissance, when the gentry were supposed to study history, art, philosophy, sport and science - as those pursuits then existed. But as we well know that was the privileged path of young males seeking to become “a Renaissance man.”  Emphasis on privileged and male. But even those favored few lived under a fallacy that is simply more obvious today.

Here is the fallacy as I see it. Our world has become so specialized that the time when a child comes even close to a truly unfettered future is reasonably measured in a mere handful of early years. Past that time the subtle slide toward specialization begins. Playgroups morph into classes - perhaps an unintended, or unrealized echo of the Renaissance model - a little bit of art, a little bit of sport and science; youngsters shepherded from class A to class B, C, D and E by parents who only 5 or 10 years previous had shared the fallacy that they too could be anything they wanted to be.

But now, as glorified chauffeurs,  they shuttle their kids from pillar to post closely watching for any indication of unique interest or ability - “Doesn’t she color well?” “See how well he uses those scissors!” - that should be encouraged by advanced classes, summer camps, and perhaps enrollment in special K-12 schools known for smoothing the way to special avenues of higher or professional education.

The, perhaps strange, image I have in my head is a bunch of young’uns jostling around on the top of a humongous water slide, dozens and dozens of slides spiral down from the top.  A sign at the top says “Take Any Slide You Want!” And the kids do. And it is often the last real choice they make, as the slide swirls them down and around until they splash down into a landing pool filled with others who made the same or very similar choices up top. You choose STEM (Science, technology, engineering and math) slides and you ended up in the big STEM  pool. Arts and music? Splash, there you are!  The Arty pool. Splash e vous! Agricultural? Splash! FFA pool. Education? Splash. Philosophy? Splash.  And so on and so forth.  

The notion is that yes, you can be anything you want. However the slippery slope is that once you step onto one of the slides - and sometimes unintentionally and at a very early age, perhaps nudged by others  - “She has a great backstroke for a six year old!” “Boy, I hope his voice doesn’t change too much!” “She can do long division in her head!” - it grows increasingly difficult to pull yourself off one slide and find your way to another. And suddenly, well if you can call 50 or 60 years "suddenly", you find yourself at the end of a long career humming that old Peggy Lee song, “Is that all there is?”

I point to myself as a sort of example. At some single digit age, not really sure exactly when, I began to demonstrate interest and tolerable competence in what we would now call “the performing arts.”  Without boring you with the related steps, that inclination led me through various high school productions, a BA in theater, MA in what was then called Radio-TV and Film, a Ph.D in Mass Communication and finally, a 45-year career teaching similar stuff in University classrooms and on the Internet. 

I'm not really complaining. It was a nice ride for the most part. Met and worked with some wonderful folks along the way with more than ordinary buffers from the inevitable jerks. However, I must admit that in my last few weeks before retirement I had cause to go over to the Design School to return a DVD.  As I walked through the halls I looked at the very cool projects the students and faculty had created, "Hummm." I thought, "Maybe I should have .  .  .  nah."

Anyhow, here in the early months of retirement I find myself at the top of another water slide. "You can do anything you want!"  Well, I probably need another, more mature analogy. You could break something on those slides. But the point is I don't have to go to work, go to meetings, publish or perish, defend the value of my disciple to my colleagues, deans, and other administrati. And there is great freedom in that reality. But there is also a sort of "option-phobia." When you are a kid poised atop the "You can be anything you want" waterslide, the water seems smooth and welcoming. It isn't until the end of the ride that you come to know the rocks and rapids that needed to be negotiated.  So, off you leapt.  Retirement, on the other hand, comes with the opportunity for reflection - although "opportunity" may not be the right word. Necessity maybe?

Once, many years ago, I asked my "musey room" buddy what his notion of heaven was. His reply was "A comfortable room with an inexhaustible supply of novels." If I were treat retirement as a prelude to heaven and ask myself what my notion of a heavenly retirement would be I would probably respond along the lines of : "A huge studio with an awesome view, an inexhaustible supply of paper, markers, large format printers and scanners, clay, sculpting tools, a kiln, powerful computers with excellent and totally intuitive imaging software, cameras, a bed that didn't hurt my hips, and the ability to sleep whenever I wanted and never having to get up in the morning. We can talk about food after my nap.” The fact that neither his heaven nor my imagined retirement are realistically feasible may explain the necessity for, and evolution of, religion.  OK, where was I? Drifted a little off track there.

Oh, yeah. The intimidating notion of retirement.  Here is, strangely, where I am at the moment: looking for The Hundred Acre Wood.  And in my mind reaching the Hundred Acre Wood means to reach a state of childlike Harmony. Not childish - self-centered, whining - harmony; no, childlike Harmony. And there is a world of difference. No, that is not quite right. There is a lifetime of difference. Let me explain. Childlike harmony is synonymous with with inner peace, with enlightenment.  It is not a foregone conclusion of a life lived. It is a goal. It is, perhaps strangely, for me the essence of the Hundred Acre Wood as depicted in Winnie the Pooh.

The Pooh stories, and here I mean the original versions as opposed to the “Disneyfications” which do bother me. But that is another issue. So, the Pooh stories are obviously entertaining tales for kids and need not be taken any further. But if you do choose to take them further, Pooh is a rather enlightened Bear, blessed with the ability to live in a gently curious perpetual present. Tolkien’s Tom Bombadil strikes me as a uniquely parallel character, a cheerful gentle soul, yet one whose home serves as the locus of a unique, insightful power.

Bombadil would be comfortable in the Hundred Acre Wood. He and Pooh would stroll along - to quote the Loggins and Messina tune House at Pooh Corner - “counting all the bees in the hive, chasing all the clouds from the sky.” More precisely looking for enlightenment in the simple things in life. I would like to join them. I can think of no better way to spend my retirement. But I am uncertain of the path.

How far do we have to go before we find the place that allows us to turn inward? That does not mean “the end of the road.” Rather the idea is that we find a spot for reflection; one that expresses what we have learned to this point, and points a path to refinement. A stepping back from the easel, closing the journal, looking away from the sculpture in its current state. A distanced deciding of what all should remain and what gets smoothed away. This insight is, perhaps, what I hope to find in the Hundred Acre Wood of my retirement.

Silly old bear.

Illustration by EH Shepard @ 1926

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Racist Art on My Desk?

I don't really think so.  Here is the image that sits there.  I have talked about it before here on the Wall, but if that post predates some of you let me give you its history.  Like millions of folks around the world, my folks read Dr. Seuss books to me as a child and I read them to my kids.  The "Ran Lab" image above resulted from a bit of correspondence I had with the good Dr. Seuss.  One of his many books is "If I Ran the Zoo."  Which begins:

"Its a pretty good Zoo,"

Said young Gerald McGrew.

And the fellow who runs it

Seems proud of it too.

But if I ran the zoo,

Said young Gerald McGrew,

I'd make a few changes,

That's just what I'd do . ."

Dr. Seuss, 1950

And Seuss goes on to describe and illustrate those changes.  Well, with imitation being the most sincere form of flattery, and cloning being all the rage at the time.,  I wrote "If I Ran the Lab" around 2000. It began:

“It’s a pretty good lab,” said weird Harold McNab,

“Though the egghead who runs it is really a crab.

And the work that they turn out’s not quality work,

‘Cause the Project Director’s a bit of a jerk.

But if I ran the lab, said weird Harold McNab,

I’d splice up some genes not halfway so drab

As the genes they’ve been splicing ‘round here up ‘til now.

When it comes to strange genotypes, I’d show them how!!

    Dr. Schrag @ 2000

And I go on to describe those "strange genotypes." At the risk of offending someone somewhere, I would be glad to send you a copy of the full manuscript. But anyhow, I sent a copy off to Dr. Seuss's publisher and a few weeks later the image above arrived in the mail. I thought it quite cool. I also sent a copy to Gary Larson asking if he would like to do the illustrations. Alas, without similar success. In his defense he was in is "retired phase" at the time. No doubt if I sent it to him now . . . anyhow.

So you can imagine, I am not among those applauding the recent announcement that several of the Seuss books will be pulled from  publication for containing racist images.  My objections do not spring from my brief contact with the author, but rather from a Distilled Harmony view of art and culture in general.

Let me explain. Again a brief synopsis of Distilled Harmony. It is a world view that rests on four tenets of descending dominance. First, foster harmony the dominant tenet which demands that we seek the most harmonic path in our lives, decisions and behaviors. Second, enable beauty, which calls upon us to create, or support the creation of, beautiful entities in the traditional realms of the arts. Third is distill complexity, seeking the clearest view of and or explanation of the issues we confront in our lives. Einstein once asserted that if you could not explain something clearly to a child, you did not truly understand it yourself. This tenet admonishes us to seek that clarity. And fourth, oppose harm. In 1867 John Stuart Mill opined, " Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing" Or in the version often attributed to Burke and Churchill; "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Either way you get the idea - when harmony is attacked by evil, one is compelled to act.

The current Seuss kerfuffle is simply the latest touch point among many which, I believe, result in large part from differing perspectives of cultural history. What one group sees as an offensive reminder of long standing cultural abuse, another group defines as a precious, or at least insightful, cultural artifact. One group's Foster Harmony confronts another's Oppose Harm.

You see, I am confused. I don’t quite understand the rules of contemporary cultural sensitivity. And to stretch it a bit if we try to eliminate all the “negative” depictions of cultural differences from all cultures in all eras, don’t we eventually arrive at a “Stepford Wives” cookie cutter model of humanity and culture? Like the Roswell big-headed grey entities with big eyes who sit in as a model for all aliens? And who gets to decide what is “a cultural artifact” and what is “demeaning stereotype”? Why does a young Dolly Parton get away with choosing the town tramp as her role model - as she tells it in her autobiography - when a girl growing up now with that model in mind would be seen as the tramp? So is “cultural legitimacy” merely code for commercial success?

Apparently not. I did some reading regarding the purging of the Dr. Seuss books. Talk about commercial success! Wikipedia cites 600 million books in 20 different languages. Furthermore, his Butter Battle Book and The Lorax are both books with pro-social messages from which all kids would benefit. So do we just get to pick the low-hanging fruit? If I go back over the 20-odd year history of the Wall, I can find a bunch of bits I'd like to change or edit out. But ethically, I feel obligated to leave them in. They are who I was then - if that make sense.  They reflect my history.

And speaking of history, I'm thinking this whole debate would benefit from a consideration of history. Consider a cultural "truism." This one is attributed to a variety of sources - Santayana, Burke, Churchill - and goes something like this,  “Those who do not learn from their history are doomed to repeat it.” It seems to me equally true that those who are kept in ignorance of their past are likely to repeat it. If we keep scrubbing away all evidence of the cultural wars and social differences in our history, it will be as if they never happened, and hence there will be nothing left from which to learn. What Civil War? Who was this King guy? Timothy McWho? Neil Armstrong? Wasn't he a quarterback for the Browns? Ada Lovelace? Wasn't she some porn star?

Let us consider a couple of "texts:" The images that led to rescinding the "sullied six" Seuss books and the beloved hymn Amazing Grace. The first were written and illustrated by Theodore Seuss Geisel in the early days of the 20th century (1937), who later went on to write and illustrate, throughout the century, various sensitive, prosocial books (e.g. The Butter Battle Book (1984), The Lorax (1971), Oh, The Places You'll Go, (1990). Amazing Grace was written in the late 1700s by John Newton, a notorious slaver who sold hundreds, if not thousands of Africans into slavery, and continued to do so for a while after the famous "conversion" that lead to his penning the single hymn.

Perhaps you can sense the source of my confusion. Three self-proclaimed guardians of social visual purity take it upon themselves to pass judgement on a decades long career that did far more to foster harmony among the young people of the world than the relatively unknown works of the artists who called for the cancelling. Yet, the racist author of Amazing Grace gets a pass, one assumes because of the work's religious affiliation and widespread popularity.  Wouldn't it seem more logical to ban all performances of the racist penned hymn Amazing Grace and leave Seuss alone? Realistically both restrictions, on the "sullied six" and a proposed ban on Amazing Grace are foolish manifestations of the divisions currently strangling our nation.

We need to reign in some of the excesses of the current culture police, for it is their supercilious over-reaching that gives comfort to radicals like Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who attacked the Capital, and who - with x-president Trump leading the way - are already using the banning of the "sullied six" to "prove" their claims that left-wing radicals want to chip away at "real American freedoms." 

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