Get Up! Eat Something! Christian Fundamentalism and Trump

AMERICAN CIVIC LIFE

By Regan Burke NOVEMBER 14, 2024

Kenosha, WI. Aerial View. (Paola Giannoni/Getty Images)

Hal Lindsey’s doomsday prophecies in “The Late Great Planet Earth,” stoked the born-again Christian fundamentalists in the cult I surrendered to in the early 1970s. One hundred disparate spiritual seekers in Toms River, New Jersey, accepted Jesus Christ as a personal savior, a necessity for inclusion in the Fellowship.

Churchmen directed every aspect of the lives of their blue-jeaned outcasts. Husbands were the heads of the household, women didn’t work. We lived in separate homes but were discouraged from socializing outside the Fellowship, lest we be influenced by 1970s secular humanist ideas — like having credit cards. The proliferation of credit cards, one of Satan’s tools to create a global economy, was a sign of the end times. We boycotted the Bank of America because the bank sought to legalize interstate branch banking, thereby centralizing all the country’s money into a single entity, another Satanic plan, a.k.a. globalism.

Based on his interpretations of the Book of Revelations in the Christian Bible, Hal Lindsey in “The Late Great Planet Earth” sensationalized end-of-the-world Biblical prophecies. He connected them to current events as proof of the coming Rapture where Christians would be plucked from the earth and taken right to heaven, thus avoiding Armageddon. Satan’s plans to form a one-world government and religion, as prophesied, were triggered by the establishment of the state of Israel and the World Council of Churches — both in 1948. Everywhere I looked in the 1970s, I saw signs of the end times: an increase in the divorce rate, recreational drugs, new technology, the gasoline shortage, religious ecumenism, and the birth of the European Union.

When my son joined Little League in the first grade, I sat away from the other parents in the bleachers. I feared the wrath of God if I talked to anyone outside the Fellowship. Church members accepted my volunteering for Jimmy Carter for President in 1976 only because my husband supported Carter. They doubted his born-again bona fides because of his family policy.

After four years, I extricated myself from the Fellowship, left my abusive husband, and drove my nine-year-old son 800 miles west to a new life in Chicago. A group of Christians at La Salle Street Church who had experienced similar religious cults nursed me back to spiritual and emotional health. The ideas of Hal Lindsey dissipated into the ether of bad dreams. After a few years, I no longer looked for signs of the end times.

Until now.

Donald Trump, in a 2017 speech to the Joint Congress, announced he was not the President of the world. Instead, he stated he was the President of America. These words and those of Trump apologist Steve Bannon announcing a nationalistic government free from links to other countries sent a signal to anti-globalists around the world. Alexander Dugin, a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, commented on Trump’s 2024 presidential victory, proclaiming that traditionalism won and globalism lost. Alex Jones uses globalism interchangeably with the New World Order and the Deep State. Are these guys aware they’re heeding Hal Lindsey’s warning to resist Satan’s plans for a global economy and one-world government?

In Kenosha, at the door of a new white house in a new white neighborhood with curvy streets, low trees, and developer-landscaped gardens, I knocked on the storm door, bang, ba-bang, bang. A huge white Old English Bulldog slid around the corner from the kitchen. He ran to the front door and barked as loudly as his docile voice would allow. His owner barely held him back.

I shouted through the door, “I love dogs. It’s ok. Can I pet him?” We all smiled, including the dog. He came out to greet me and gently pushed his massive stubby body against my legs.

‘Hi, I’m with the Kenosha Democrats. Have you voted yet?”

“No, we’re voting tomorrow.”

“What’s his name?”

“Arnold.”

“Arnold? Like Schwarzenegger?”

“Yes.” We both cracked up as Arnold dutifully looked one to the other, pleased to hear his name.

“You know, Schwarzenegger just endorsed Kamala Harris.”

Thus, I established my purpose in knocking on her door on a bright white Saturday afternoon.

“I know!” she said. Then she mouthed the words, “I’m voting for her.”

“Oh great,” I whispered, “Thank you.”

As I crossed the street to my next house, a white SUV suddenly sped out of Arnold’s driveway. It stopped in front of me. She rolled down the window and shouted, “I’m for Kamala! Going to vote right now!”

I thought back to her open door and realized someone else had been rattling around in the kitchen. A husband? She couldn’t let her husband know she was voting for Kamala Harris? Is this a sign of renewed influence of Christian fundamentalism?

Anthropologists say that authoritarianism, old-age anxiety, border disputes, memory disorder, pandemic uncertainty, virtual reality, environmental issues, and gender trouble put society in a self-protective liminal state. We now stand in the doorway between the Biden and Trump administrations. The entire Trump presidency may turn into a self-protective liminal state.

Liminal, from the Latin, “threshold,” puts time and space betwixt and between. On liminal days, we often wander aimlessly, unsure where to go, what to do, stare out the window, quiet down. Hush. The past and the future dangle off the edge of time. Do you feel it?

“Why did God dump Trump on us again?” a friend asked, squirming in her liminal state.

“God didn’t do this,” I said. “We did it.”

It began long ago. The anti-globalist cult surrounding Trump follows bunny trails through the woods of end-times literature, movies and evangelists that we have derided, failed to understand, take seriously, refute or diffuse.

Pastor Tom Are of Fourth Presbyterian Church Chicago says, “The church is not always lost in wonder, love, and praise; sometimes, it’s just lost.”

When we step over the threshold, away from our involuntary liminality, into the perfect, friendly, and loving world created for us, we’ll find the wisdom we need to activate our role in the future. Some will join the opposition party. Some will move to Costa Rica. Some will run for office. Some will hide immigrants. Some will help women. Some will march with the saints. And some will find a no-news thin space to wait it out.

While we wait, we can practice letting go of the obsessive hope that the built world of institutions will save us. It won’t. Let it go. Instead, lean on the unseen, the un-built, and the natural world. Eat and sleep.

In the Hebrew Bible, God said to a self-pitying Elijah, “Get up! Eat something!” And after Elijah spent forty days indulging in self-care, God came back and said, “Why are you still here? Get back to it. You’ve got work to do!”

And so we do.

______________________

Reprinted from Interfaith America Magazine, November 14, 2024

Arnold the Bulldog: Politics at the Doorstep

In Kenosha, at the door of a new white house in a new white neighborhood with curvy streets, low trees and developer-landscaped gardens, I knocked on the storm door, bang, ba-bang, bang. A huge white old English bulldog slid around the corner from the kitchen to me, the stranger, barking as hard as his docile voice would allow. His owner appeared looking as if she could barely hold him back.

I shouted through the door, “I love dogs! It’s ok. Can I pet him?” We all smiled, dog included, and he came out to greet me with a gentle push of his massive short body against my legs.

“Hi, I’m with the Kenosha Democrats. Have you voted yet?”

“No, we’re voting tomorrow.”

“What’s his name?”

“Arnold.”

“Arnold? Like Schwarzenegger?”

“Yes.” We both cracked up as Arnold dutifully looked one to the other, pleased to hear his name.

“You know, Schwarzenegger just endorsed Kamala Harris.”

Thus, I established my purpose in knocking on her door on a bright white Saturday afternoon.

“I know!” she said. Then she mouthed the words, “I’m voting for her.”

“Oh great,” I said, “”Thank you.”

Canvassers use a handy cell phone app, Minivan, to record voters’ responses. The drop down menu lists Strong Democrat, Lean Democrat, Undecided, Lean Republican and Strong Republican. Since my voter didn’t give it her all, I decided she was a Lean Democrat, punched it in and moved on to the house across the street.

As I came back to the sidewalk, all of a sudden a white SUV sped out of Arnold’s driveway and stopped in front of me. She rolled down the window and shouted, “I’m for Kamala! Going to vote right now! Good luck!”

I thought back to her open door and realized someone else had been rattling around in the kitchen. A husband? She couldn’t let her husband know she was voting for Kamala Harris?

This gave me hope. I changed her in Minivan to Strong Democrat. Voting Harris.

Perhaps she represented a political ad where Julia Roberts voiced, “in the one place in America where women still have a right to choose, you can vote any way you want, and no one will ever know,” suggesting women can lie to their husbands about their vote. Apparently Fox News went berserk over this ad, as if spouses never lie to each other.

Today, the day before election day, it hit me how different life will soon be. No matter who wins, I’ll have no more reason to hope — for the vote, for my candidates, that the country will be at peace, or that democracy survives. It-is-what-it-is acceptance will necessarily move in to care for me.

Saturday afternoon trips from Chicago to Kenosha, stopping in the bustling Democratic headquarters then out to canvass voters will halt. My calves will never forget the two-step entrances to every house in Kenosha County. But memories of coffee and sandwiches at The Buzz Cafe on Sixth Avenue will fade.

I do have something to hope for.

Incoming texts and emails will be reduced to a trickle.

Schadenfreude Radio

The radio. How I love the radio!

Transistor radios first appeared on the shelf behind the cashier at Walgreen’s, alongside the cigarettes, in the 1950s. The purchase price was cheap enough for my mother. I can’t imagine what my life would have been had it not been for the radio.

In our teens, we lay on the floor, smoking pot and singing to the Beatles on the radio. A friend once mused, “our lives would be more manageable if it weren’t for the radio.” Every half hour DJs stopped spinning records and announced the news. Radio news. It stirred me up for life.

The radio these days is an Amazon Echo. It is set to turn on NPR at 7:00 am in my house these days. On Sundays, I usually ignore a 7:00 am show called Hidden Brain. A neuroscientist interviews interesting enough people, but I just want to hear the news at 8. Recently I put off walking the dog and making coffee when I heard the voice of Dr. James Pennebaker on Hidden Brain. He talked about how people’s language, written and vocal, signals what’s happening inside their heads.

James Pennebaker is a social psychologist at the University of Texas-Austin. He taught me that chronic pain can be healed through expressive writing. His recipe, grounded in scientific research, consists of writing it down. Just write it down. It’s cheap, easy. And it works. My writing teacher Beth Finke and I used to call it bibliotherapy. Pennebaker’s books are sweet old friends. The same goes for Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Full Catastrophe Living, John Sarno’s Healing Back Pain, and Howard Schubiner’s Unlearn Your Pain. Thinking of these now butters my memory with gratitude. I write because these authors taught me words can heal. And, for the most part, they have.

I’m not particularly interested in interpreting the language of my friends. I don’t want to know what’s happening in their noggins as Pennebaker does with his research subjects. No, what’s tasty lately about Pennebaker is what he says about Donald Trump.

He examined Trump interviews from 2015 to 2024 and found a whopping 44% increase in words plated in the past. What’s that mean? Well, usually presidential candidates dish out rhetoric about the future. Pennebaker says Trump whips up such simple words and sentences that he can only be described as “an incredibly simplistic thinker.”

“I can’t tell you how staggering this is,” he told Stat News. “He does not think in a complex way at all.”

I loved hearing this. And there I was again, glomming on to any tidbit that humiliates and demeans Trump. It’s called schadenfreude. I love that word but ashamed how I delight in its meaning: the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, pain, suffering, or humiliation of another.”

Schadenfreude is one of the delicious habits I metabolized, after using Pennebaker’s and others’ writing exercises to relieve chronic pain. Obviously this is not a vice easily kept at bay. Availing myself of some form of spirituality, like meditation, helps. And the writing, of course.

But for now, it’s back to the radio.

Great Craic at the Democratic Convention

On day two of the Democratic National Convention, I came face-to-face with a tall, long-haired, familiar beauty outside my local coffee shop in downtown Chicago.

“Hi! Are you Caitlin?”

“I am.”

“You’re at my coffee shop!”

“I love this place; come here every morning,” Caitlin said.

“Oh, gosh, I wish my friends were here to meet you. We’ve all been gathering for coffee in the Ritz Hotel lobby looking for you!”

“I wish I could meet them too!” She said.

“Well, I can’t speak for them, but I love you. My whole family loves you.”

And so went my encounter with Caitlin Collins of CNN. Neighborhood friends and I camped out in various hotel lobbies during Convention week hoping to spot famous people. We’re political junkies, more likely to screech at Mitch Landrieu, former mayor of New Orleans, than Golden Globe winner Greta Gerwig. Oh, there are exceptions. I longed to see Billy Porter. Why him? As soon as President Joe Biden announced he was stepping aside for Vice President Kamala Harris, Billy Porter jumped out of the starting gate to endorse her. Also, I love his outfits.

In January 2024, Convention organizers declared they needed 12,000 volunteers. Unenthusiastically, almost reluctantly, some of us registered on the convoluted DNC volunteer website in February, March, April, never receiving acknowledgment or confirmation. My constant refrain to anyone who asked (or didn’t ask) was: sign up—you never know what will happen. When the Biden-Harris Handover came down, the volunteer pool immediately swelled to 30,000, a nascent signal of unabashed support for Kamala Harris for President. Would-be volunteers came from around the country thinking they’d grab a plum “slot” from the AI-driven robot volunteer organizer. A few days before the Convention started, I was called to the basement of the United Center with about 100 others to “unfurl” flags as they rolled in from the loading dock. We were gleeful. Some were called back for various duties at the Convention. Not me. I never did secure a volunteer gig to check credentials, or sort the garbage for recyclables, or greet people at hotels, or direct delegates to buses.

On the afternoon of Convention day four, I received a text, “I’m leaving a pass for you at the desk of my hotel,” from a lovely I’d known thirty years ago in the Clinton Administration. I hiked up my skirt, jumped on my three-wheel ADA electric scooter, and navigated my way through the exterior United Center maze of Secret Service, Chicago Police, Cook County Sheriffs, metal fencing, magnetometers, hawkers, protesters, volunteers, and a mile-long line of faithful ticket-holders. Vivienne from County Cork and Mark from St.Louis in section 202 texted every few minutes with updated instructions on how to squeeze through the crowds and get to the seat they were defending for my grateful butt.

“I just got in a fight,” texted Mark. “Standing firm. I told them you were waiting for the elevator. Viv meeting you.” Finally, from my cherished seat, I texted David, who I passed outside on the pedestrian line. “No seats.”

*Vivienne–great craic at Democratic Convention*

Lucky doesn’t begin to describe how it felt to be in Section 202 of the United Center on August 22, 2024, for Kamala Harris’ acceptance speech—the most blessed hurly-burly hoopla in memory.

Or, in the words of Irish Vivienne, “Best craic a’ me life.”

___________

Irish Craic Explained

“Craic is laughing at cellular level, finding the humour in everything and making yourself laugh when thinking about it all.”

Me & Pete Buttigieg

Never have I felt so valued at church as I did last Sunday. Presbyterians I hardly knew tugged at my sleeve or grabbed my elbow or those less buttoned-up screeched in my face — all congratulating me on getting to meet Pete Buttigieg. I’d posted a photo of Pete and me on FaceBook that week. A well-heeled Democratic couple in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood scrambled a party together that raised $700,000 for the Presidential campaign of candidate Kamala Harris six days after she chose Governor Tim Walz as her Vice Presidential running mate. A friend bought two tickets he couldn’t use and asked if I’d like to have them.

Gulp. Yes. Yes. Yes. I said. Pete Buttigieg is the most poplar Democrat in the United States. He’s the youngest person ever to serve as US Secretary of Transportation, was the mayor of South Bend, ran for president in 2020, is married with two children and oh, he’s gay. When he kicked off his campaign for President in 2019, I traveled to South Bend with Amy, Peter and Mark in the pouring rain to be at his announcement in the leaky old Studebaker factory. Pete was on Kamala’s short list for Veep, but, well, he’s gay. The US electorate can stretch its collective imagination to accept only one major cultural shift at a time. I guess. Democrats like me are giddy over the historic candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris, a black woman, running at the top of the ticket. We would have been rapturous if she’d chosen Pete, but honestly, we’re not far from that in her choice of Tim Walz, a funny smart former high school football coach who loves state fairs, teaching, sitting on Congressional committees, governing Minnesota, serving in the National Guard and traveling to China.

I just love campaigns. I love candidates, campaign organizers, campaign volunteers, campaign consultants, campaign buttons, campaign events and campaign offices. My high school held a student-led Democrat-Republican combined mock convention in 1964. I was assigned to be Republican candidate Nelson Rockefeller’s campaign manager. I wrote to Rockefeller’s campaign office in New York requesting his platform in order to write my nominating speech for the mock convention. The campaign responded by sending me free stuff: crates full of campaign buttons, posters, leaflets, scarves, ties, cufflinks, bracelets, position papers, and even a suggested stump speech. I plastered the school with Rockefeller posters and made sure every student had some sort of paraphernalia with “Nelson” on it. The students chanted “Nelson! Nelson!”, I delivered my nominating speech and Rockefeller won the student endorsement by a wide margin.

I had already been steeped in soda-shop debates rebutting a freshman classmate’s anti-government racist diatribes. I read the boy’s constant companion, the 1958 publication The Blue Book of the John Birch Society ( a precursor to Trumpism and Project 2025) in order to prove him wrong point by point.

In the eighth grade my class was bussed to the airport and given hand-held American flags to wave and cheer as President Dwight Eisenhower deplaned from Air Force One.

Sixty-five years later, I’m still at it.

It’s not lucky to be almost assassinated

She came to me at nine years old with an incomplete backstory. No longer a viable breeder after age five or six, the owners kept her way past her financial contribution to the family. She’d delivered two litters a year, about 100 puppies. “We just liked her,” they told me. My inquiry, “I’m an old lady dog-lover, looking for an old-lady dog companion,” hit just the right tone. “You’re an answer to our prayers.” And so I got Elsa.

The day after the attempted assassination of the former president, I hungered for Sunday air. You know, the first day of the week kind of air, where everything starts over. Air that requires nothing. No lofty thoughts, no reflection, no opinions, judgments, or conclusions. Sunday air. I breathe Sunday air when singing a well-known hymn like “It is well with My Soul”.

When peace like a river, attendeth my way

When sorrows like sea billows roll

Whatever my lot

Thou hast taught me to say

It is well, it is well, with my soul

And when the preacher elevates my being with no effort on my part, I breathe in the Sunday air of love.

Sunday air was unattainable at church last week, though. It was not well with my soul. Right off, the preacher prayed “for former President Trump, grateful he did not succumb to political violence. This world is in love with violence, a violence that threatens the best in us, so renew in us a commitment to the Christ, who calls us to turn the other cheek, to love our neighbor, to love our enemies.” On receiving this, I sucked in a big chunk of we’re-gonna-lose and couldn’t seem to exhale.

The sermon choked off any puff of relief— a parable about prayer that meant nothing to me. My diaphragm would have swelled during hymn-singing, but the tunes were unfamiliar yawns.

And so, airless, I vamoosed to the outdoors, home to fetch Elsa for a trip to the park to watch tennis players sweat it out. She was too hot to sniff around the edges and lazed in the shade instead. Until a tennis ball bounced toward her behind the chain link fence. She bolted for it and dug into the wire to try to slay that green fuzzy rodent stunt double. She would have broken her teeth to get to it. A tennis player picked up the ball, a good ball, and tossed it over the fence with big Sunday air to Elsa, who received it with the gusto of a kid catching bubbles. She flaunted her prize using all the primal dog moves that delight dog-loving humans. I never knew she was a ball dog.

Echoing Bill Maher, Bulwark podcaster Tim Miller asked his spirit guide and Managing Editor, Sam Stein:

“Can I say Trump is the luckiest dog on the planet?”

“No! You can’t say that.”

“I can’t?” Asked Miler.

“No! It’s not lucky to be almost assassinated.” Said Stein.

But Elsa. She’s a lucky dog.

The Big Freak Out

Metaphors have frittered away from me. To be fair, they hadn’t much choice. In conveying messages to contemporaries over the past few years, whether speaking, emailing, texting or DM’ing, I’ve developed a necessary plain spokenness, lest the meaning be misconstrued, misunderstood or confusing. Fallout from this mind-bending prosaic language is living at a level of plain thinking, another aspect of old age (I’m 78) that I wish I’d been warned about.

While watching Joe Biden perform at the now-famous CNN debate in June, I came unstrung in the grip of knowing that Biden’s plain-thinking, plain-speaking style was killing any chance of beating Trump in the November election.

“Oh. my. god. He’s like my neighbor Ray,” I thought. Ray, who used to converse like a college professor and remember your name like you were his student, but now he talks only sports and weather. Ray, who cannot grasp metaphors unless they’re baseball sayings he’s used all his life, like “on the ball” or “step up to the plate” when he motions for you to exit the elevator before him.

On an unsually quiet afternoon, that is to say, no sirens, no gas-powered lawn mowers, no garbage trucks beep, beep, beeping as they backed out of the alley, I was studying David Montero’s new book, The Stolen Wealth of Slavery: A Case for Reparations. My book group decided to read two chapters at a time in order to absorb a history none of us had ever known. The premise that the intellect is stimulated through awe and wonder has proven true in this group, with this book. Montero’s research thoroughly tracks how the free labor of Black people in the South became the basis of the entire US economy and her dominance over world markets. His writing is loaded with similes and metaphors.

“The energies of three million enslaved people were organized into an industry, industrial enterprises were increasingly fertilized by slavery, and the output of the system was shipped across the world.”

(All of a sudden, a swift “click-clum” in the room interrupted my reading. I turned and saw a ragged chunk of dried-up old paint on the floor, fallen from the ceiling. Surely there’s a metaphor here. Chip off the old block? Chip on your shoulder? Paint the town red? Naw. Nothing. I got nothing.)

In the chapter, “The Union Must Perish,” Montero included a white abolitionist’s account of his travels to the slave market of Virginia. Published in the New York Daily Tribune in 1850, part of it reads:

“…this was the most heart-sickening sight I ever saw. I involuntarily exclaimed, “Is it possible that this is permited in my own native country—the country I have loved so well, and whose institutions I have exultingly pointed to as an example for the world. If this is Christianity, don’t call me a Christian.”

The emotons expressed are precisely what I feel now that the Trump-appointed United States Supreme Court ruled that the President is unbound from the rule of law and can freely engage in criminal activity. Our Christian Nationalist Supreme Court looks forward to the next president closing the borders to anyone but White Christian Europeans, slashing gay rights, civil rights, and women’s rights, and requiring biblical education in public schools. Echoing the 1850 abolitionist, if this is Christianity, don’t call me a Christian.

There ain’t no metaphor for that.

Falsely Accused

Fresh off a Zoom webinar titled Midwest Reparations, I rushed to my local coffee shop for a takeaway to sip during my upcoming current events group.

“12-ounce coffee in a 16-ounce cup?” The White barista asked. That’s my usual, with room for cream.

“Yes, please. What are all these new pastries? Chocolate cake? Key lime pie?”

“Yep, they’re new. All from different bakeries” said the barista.

“I’ll be back later with friends. They. Will. Love. These.” I said.

The Blackroots Alliance webinar that morning enlightened me on reparations projects in the Midwest. These are nascent activities reviving the 159-year-old “40 Acres and a Mule” policy for emancipated slaves that was promised and then revoked during Reconstruction. The initial focus of current reparations projects is research to uncover the descendants of enslaved people and how they’ve been impacted. Non-Black allies join at the end of the process when it’s time to distribute funds. Research is conducted by the harmed community, Black Americans, particularly African descendants, who look through the eyes of the tortured generations of chattel slavery. Non-Black Americans cannot be trusted to do this research since they see through a different lens: the eyes of the colonizers, the enslavers, the guardians of the dominant culture.

With this new information, I was wondering how I, an old White woman, could fit into the reparations movement as I filled my coffee with half and half and rushed over to my current events group.

The group discussed the news of familiar territory: TFG, the former guy, and his latest legal shenanigans, immigration, climate change, gun control, and the ever-evolving White Christian Nationalism. Afterward, a small group sauntered over to the coffee shop where I’d spotted the new pastries. Six of us pulled up around a small table, coats draped over our chairs, rising one by one to fetch our drinks.

I was the last one to the counter.

“I’m sorry, we can’t serve you.” said the barista.

“What?”

“We can’t serve you. The manager wants to talk to you.” I joined my friends and announced what happened. The manager appeared and asked to speak to me privately.

“We can’t serve you because there’s been a report of you using a racial slur this morning.”

“What? What racial slur?

“The “N” word.”

“Well, there’s a mistake. I’ve never used that word in my life.’

“You understand we have to investigate when something like this is reported?”

“Wait. Are you accusing me of this?

“We have to investigate. Meanwhile, we cannot serve you.”

“For how long?”

“For the unforeseeable future.”

“You’re kidding. Look at me. I really don’t have an unforeseeable future.”

My friends were incredulous. ‘You? Boy, have they got the wrong person.’ They were ready to mount a protest in front of the building, signs and all.

In the following days, I connected with the company’s Chief Operating Officer. She apologized and emailed me a store voucher for $150. That’s a lot of coffee.

The coffee reparations, however, failed to dispel the lingering notion that I’m not a credible witness to my own story, that I’m not sufficiently worthy to be believed. How can we expect descendants of enslaved Africans to automatically manifest self-worth after enduring generations of false accusations, lynchings, and pressed-down powerlessness?

We owe them a lot.

Love and Hate

A member of my writing group recited the following essay the other day. I asked permission to post it here because I was moved by how two different Chicagoans address the current influx of migrants.

Conversation on the Bus

Last week I rode the bus and noticed a migrant family near me. The mom was pregnant, her youngest son was fussing, and her other son, maybe three years old, was playing with the window. The father was looking out the window, and the daughter, about ten years old, was sitting next to me. I don’t usually start a conversation on the bus, but she was asking her parents about a bus and their destination. So I said, “Hi, I’m Annette, do you speak English?”

“A little,” she said.

“Where are you going? Could I be of help?”

She looked down and said, “I’m not sure.”

We were quiet, and then I said, “I’m going to my church to a class. Do you go to school?”

She shook her head and said, “We’re new to Chicago.”

“Oh, welcome. Where are you from?”

“We are from Venezuela.”

“I hear your country is beautiful. Nice and warm.”

“Yes, but I miss my grandmother.”

“Of course,” I said. “Your English is quite good.”

“Thank you,” she said. “My dad helps me.” I smiled at him. He smiled back.

Looking at him, I added, “My church supplies clothing and food to immigrants. It opens at nine on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I’m going there now. “

As we neared my stop I said, “I wish you the very best. I’m getting off at this stop.”

I bundled up and walked along thinking these were gentle people who needed help and hadn’t done anything wrong. I wish everyone had a better understanding of their plight.

People’s problems need a “face” because the mindset changes once you become engaged in conversation with them. I believe most people would want to help, but the housing issue is so severe. I don’t know how to begin to solve the not-in-my-neighborhood problem.

I went to morning prayers and mentioned this encounter to the group and one of them said. “We need to help our homeless first; after all, they are Americans.”

I bit my tongue and simply asked the group to pray for the migrant situation.

Afterward, I talked with my friend Carol. She said, “It’s a complex problem. We desperately need more workers and they’re hard workers.”

“This is a classic social work problem,” I said. “The people on the lowest rung of Maslov’s triangle are fighting for limited resources, and the “scarcity” principle is at work.

The United States has great abundance. Congress has done nothing about immigration for twenty-five years. The situation in South America, with no democracy and lawlessness, makes this a five times bigger problem than it was. People want to escape. I certainly would leave my country if my life and my family’s lives were in danger.

A. Baco 1/18/2024

Surviving Amnesia

God! How I love WebMD! This online ingenious, comprehensive, and reliable health and medical source has saved me from many time-gnawing trips to the Emergency Room.

Last week I found myself at the bus stop on State Street near the Hilton Hotel with a “Netroots Nation” Convention credential swinging from my neck. I have no memory of the previous four hours. Zilch. I’d planned to attend the Netroots Nation Convention at the Hilton; the swinging credential assured me I’d at least registered.

Are you thinking I may have experienced an alcoholic blackout? Nope. Those days are long gone. I haven’t had a drink in forty-five years. Arriving home around 9:30 pm, I dove right into my laptop and searched for “lost memories”, which returned a description of something I’d hoped hadn’t happened to me:

“Losing time, or having large blocks of time for which one has no memory is a symptom of Dissociative Identity Disorder. Sometimes a person will lose so much time that they “wake up” in an unfamiliar town or place. This is called Dissociative Fugue.

Uh-oh. That sounds like the multiple personalities portrayed by Sally Field in the horror movie, “Sybil”. I’d hoped I didn’t murder anyone, or go to some stranger’s hotel room whilst in a fugue state. I searched further—typed “sudden memory loss”:

“Transient global amnesia, TGA, is a sudden loss of memory. It’s an alarming but harmless condition. Symptoms usually last for hours and then memory returns. It has no lasting consequences. Doctors aren’t sure what causes it. It’s more common in people over 50 and with a history of migraines.

Whoa! That’s me! Thank you WebMD and for the good news:

“TGA …is not caused by a neurological condition like epilepsy or stroke. With TGA, you remember who you are and recognize the people you know well.

Netroots Nation’s mission is “to bring together online citizens across America, inject progressive voices into the national conversation, and advance the values of justice, equality, and community in our nation’s politics.” Their annual convention in my hometown came at the right time for my aging activism. Chicago had just elected a progressive, smart, kind-hearted new mayor, Brandon Johnson. I believe with my whole heart that within a few years, Chicago will be a role model of common solutions for all American cities. At the convention, I’d hoped to replenish my quiver’s rah-rah-cis-boom-bah that had fizzled since Mayor Johnson’s inauguration.

In the late afternoon of the TGA incident, I planned to attend an event in the Waldorf Room, “Solidarity Across Differences: Organizing When We Disagree.” There’s no evidence I was there. But I was somewhere. My little black-and-white pocket notebook has three new quotes in my handwriting:

“There’s a collective out there that wants to shrink the hope of the possible.” Emma Tai, Director United Working Families—the grassroots organization that helped elect Brandon Johnson

“Chicago is a town that’s gonna show the world what the future looks like.” Randi Weingarten, President American Federation of Teachers

“Safety is not blue lights.” Brandon Johnson, Chicago Mayor

My iPhone displays several close-up photos of Mayor Johnson giving a speech, two selfies at the food table, and one selfie with Heather Booth a long-time political activist from Washington, DC. With the exception of the food table, these are exactly what I would have photographed, had I been in my right mind, proving once again how competent my online doctor, WebMD, is.

“…in TGA the patient cannot acquire new memories but otherwise can function normally; personal identity is retained…”

Whew! What a relief; between the notebook inscriptions and my photos, I have proof I acted my best self, and confirmation I had all the symptoms of an episode of TGA, Transient Global Amnesia.

Do I feel safe? Absolutely. Dr. WebMD tells me there’s rarely more than one occurrence. And no one has come forward to tell me I acted like Sybil.

At least not yet.

Regan Burke

Author "In That Number" from local booksellers or Amazon

Tag: politics