Looking for Heroes

Under threat: the Bill of Rights (Image: original
Joint Resolution passed by Congress
on September 25, 1789, from National Archives.) 

I've been traveling, and then adjusting to getting home. I had one week on a boat in Peru without any internet or news, which was relaxing. Since regaining media access, I've read about lots of outrages, but I've seen very little evidence of new ideas for effective push-back.

I'm aghast at several ongoing trends, such as the horrific outbreak of antisemitism, the lack of appropriate response from politicians at the top, and attacks on virtually every provision of the Bill of Rights except the one about guns. But I don't see much new leadership in how to resist.

At least I found a couple of surprises on the part of usually right-leaning (or extremist) politicians:

• In the matter of persecution of transgender children by denying them bathroom access, the surprise came last week from the Secretary of Education: "Ms. DeVos initially resisted signing off and told Mr. Trump that she was uncomfortable because of the potential harm that rescinding the protections could cause transgender students, according to three Republicans with direct knowledge of the internal discussions." Of course she quickly caved in to President's decision, but "Ms. DeVos’s unease was evident in a strongly worded statement she released on Wednesday night, in which she said she considered it a 'moral obligation' for every school in America to protect all students from discrimination, bullying and harassment." (source)
• And former President George W. Bush spoke out in favor of the media, which has been under constant attack by the President: "We need an independent media to hold people like me to account," Bush said in an interview with the Today Show's Matt Lauer. "Power can be very addictive and it can be corrosive, and it’s important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power." (source)

Paul Krugman's latest column advocated the cultivation of outrage. I hope we -- as a society that voted only in a minority for the current administration -- can live up to this goal. Krugman's clear and important conclusion:

"I’m sure many readers would rather live in a nation in which more of life could be separated from politics. So would I! But civil society is under assault from political forces, so that defending it is, necessarily, political. And justified outrage must fuel that defense. When neither the president nor his allies in Congress show any sign of respecting basic American values, an aroused public that’s willing to take names is all we have."