Linda Lyon was a blogger until two years ago. She stopped because she realized the country was too divided to listen to different views. Fake news proliferated. A military veteran, she decided to step back for a while. This is her return column. She was a school board member and president of the Arizona School Boards Association.
She writes:
Hello. Let me reintroduce myself. Linda Lyon. Retired Air Force Colonel, school board member, very happily married to my best friend, who is also a woman. Previously married to a great guy. Enthusiastic fly fisher, own a gun, love to camp. A patriot who believes in our Constitution and progressive policies but also that our system works best when we have a balance of power between two parties so they must compromise to get things done. In other words, please don’t write me off with just one label. You’d be wrong.
I’ve been blogging on RestoreReason.com since 2013, with a hiatus since mid-2019. There are multiple reasons for my break to include some hard-fought political losses that were near and dear to my heart. More than anything though, I think there was just too much craziness in the news and I didn’t think I had anything constructive to add. Whatever I had to say would just be drowned out, and even if anyone was listening, it was probably only the people who agreed with me.
The last post I wrote on in 2019 titled “Teachers are the Real Patriots”, was written in response to a letter to the editor in the Arizona Daily Star. In it, a veteran made the point that “Now all enemies are Democrats and liberals” and he went on to say, “There are many retired military who will protect our president. He has only to say where and when, we will be there and the wrath of Hell will descend. We will take our country back.”
At the time, I had no clue what was to come, and in my response as an ardent public education advocate, I focused on teachers as patriots.
Please read the rest and think about what patriotism is.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I don’t have high hopes. As far as I can tell, tribalism is increasing and the rate of increase is increasing. It’s very alienating.
It’s hard to heal and have some kind of reconciliation when we have millions who support a liar and fantasist demagogue who continues to insist that he really won the election. How do you compromise with gun toting knuckleheads who stormed the Capitol and the Michigan state building, for example? Oh wait, haven’t you heard, the insurrectionists were really just innocent tourists doing no harm.
I agree. Apparently, if you don’t reconcile with people who don’t want democracy and don’t recognize any truth except what they are told by a lying demagogue, you are just as guilty of “tribalism” as they are!
The answer to healing is “TRUTH and reconciliation”. Not just reconciliation alone. It isn’t “tribalism” to demand truth — it is the foundation of democracy. It isn’t “tribalism” to oppose those who lie — it is the foundation of democracy.
“Is it possible for Americans to achieve unity when they cannot agree on their common humanity?”
We need to keep trying for the good of the country. Despite our flaws and failings, our nation still has great potential to do better. We are stronger collectively than we are divided. Russia and China would like nothing better than for our country to implode and dissolve into weakened factions, and that is why we must not allow it to happen. We have to continue to find common ground on which we can agree.
Public education is a key element in helping to unite our nation. Community public schools promote mutual understanding by offering access and opportunity to all. I have always considered public education an incubator of democratic principles. We need to return to teaching civics in order to produce future voters that will be able to discern fact from fiction. As educators our mission is to prepare our young people to be active, responsible citizens.
Yes.
Reblogged this on dean ramser.
Good essay. It is unfortunate that the right wing of American politics will cancel her after her self-identification with the LGBTQ movement. Identification with a group other than my klan [sic] is the reason she is up against it when it comes to reconciliation.
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains…
The silent dog whistle/sugar plumb DEMOCRACY
The mask that effectively serves to conceal
US imperialism and to maintain the fiction
of democracy at home.
Blowing that demo-whistle, has yet to change the interests
being served, or reduce the deep-seated and intensifying disenchantment with a political system rigged for monied interests.
Indeed we’re gazing into the abyss. Caught between a
rock and a hard place.
Many “are desperate to put the mask back on the system, to shore up its deceptions, so that political stability can be restored – a stability that is waging war around the globe, that is escalating the threat of super-power tensions and nuclear annihilation, and that is destroying the planet.
Or keep the mask off, and work with those elements that share a commitment to human liberation, in the hope that through open debate we can expose the current rule by an unaccountable, authoritarian technocratic class and its corporate patrons masquerading as “good guys/gals”.
exciting and extremely scary to live in that moment when the mask is being pulled away
Personally, I’m not remotely interested in “healing” with people – of either party – who don’t think that every single human being deserves healthcare, especially during a pandemic, who don’t believe that we need drastic action to pass on a habitable planet to our children regardless of cost, who believe that invading, occupying and regime changing sovereign nations and engaging in and supporting brutal bloody wards for resources is remotely acceptable, who don’t believe housing is a human right or who think that it’s okay that tens of millions of Americans are forever mired in debt that forces them into lifelong debt slavery. If those positions make me divisive and problematic, then I’m proud to be divisive and problematic.
I agree with you, Dienne, about human rights and consider myself a civil rights activist, but I also believe in civility rights. And I respect both sides. I could burn a flag at a demonstration one morning, and wave a flag at a barbecue that very afternoon. I refuse tribalism, unless the tribe is all living creatures great and small. Except for house flies. House flies can suck an egg. Oh, and that guy from Virgin Atlantic who wants to beat Jeff Bezos into space. Weird. Him too. With the egg. Him and flies. But everyone else, friends indeed.
Yes.
I don’t respect both sides, but I respect any side that speaks with honesty. I respect those who believe in the truth, not lies, not demagoguery.
Everyone has the right to defend their point of view using truthful arguments, but those who prefer to twist reality or imply there are easy solutions that they never quite get around to explaining do not get my respect regardless of their “side”.
For example I can’t think of any Democrats who “think that it’s okay that tens of millions of Americans are forever mired in debt that forces them into lifelong debt slavery.” In fact, I suspect all Republicans would say that it’s not okay that “tens of millions of Americans are forever mired in debt that forces them into lifelong debt slavery.”
But the problem is that saying that “it’s not okay” is worthless. A right wing racist Republican could say “it’s not okay”. But that doesn’t mean that they are offering any reasonable solution to deal with it.
Just look at what happens when people talk about college debt. How much agreement is there even among readers here about:
Do we forgive all college debt regardless of family income? If not, what is the income level under which debt is forgiven?
Do we forgive 100% of college debt for 100% of students regardless of whether they took out high cost loans to attend a costly private university or attended the perfectly decent low-cost community college that they chose specifically because they understood that they could not afford to accumulate $200,000 worth of debt for the more privileged experience?
Do we not forgive college debt for any private universities with enormous endowments that should be using those endowments to cover the cost of tuition for students who can’t afford it?
Do we forgive college debt for the for-profit universities that spend a lot of resources marketing to naive students who get fooled into believing their “investment” in tuition was money well spent? What about for-profit vocational colleges that may overcharge but do train working class students in fields like hair cutting or car mechanics? What about proprietary schools like DeVry, with courses in Hospitality Management and Human Resources? I just checked and a student in Queens, NY could be a full time student at one of the local CUNY colleges for less than $8,000/year, or a student at the Queens DeVry campus for over $16,000/year. (This cost is just tuition and fees). Do we just pay for whichever the student prefers?
Do we forgive college debt from decades ago? Do the people who scrimped and saved to pay off their college debt for 20 years get something, too?
The solutions are complicated. One side genuinely wants to figure out solutions that are possible to get the public to support. One side doesn’t care whether there are or are not solutions. And yet another side just gets angry at the side that genuinely wants to figure out how to address this problem and makes it harder for them to address this problem by accusing them of secretly wanting to keep this problem going and with their demonizing rhetoric help to empower the side that has no interest in addressing the problem.
AOC was asked about disagreements with Biden on the Green New Deal by a news anchor who clearly set her up to hit a home run bashing Biden as someone who just doesn’t want solutions. Instead, AOC spoke the truth. (I’m paraphrasing here): She said she much preferred to lobby Biden because he wants to do something about this issue, than to lobby a right wing Republican president who does not.
I don’t think that it’s okay that tens of millions of Americans are forever mired in debt that forces them into lifelong debt slavery – I suspect no one, regardless of their party affiliation would say that it is okay. But I wonder what the “right” answers to my questions above are — maybe those who think that the right answers are obvious can tell me what they are.
Agree completely, Dienne77!
Thank you for giving me this to meditate on today, Diane. I want to go fly fishing with Col. Lyon after reading it! Her column appeals greatly, as it was beautifully written. And correct. We must respect one another. We don’t have to agree, but we have to be neighborly. We must grow to be more understanding. Let my words be still sometimes funny, but less venomous. And yes, it’s ancient wisdom to remind us not to be too upset when we don’t agree: “There is nothing new under the sun.”
I agree with much of what d-seventy-seven said, today, but not all. At least there are some in the Democratic party who want Medicare for all, a Green New Deal, debt relief, tuition-free university and curtailing US militarism around the world. As for the GOP, nope, nada, zero for any of those progressive issues. Quite the opposite; the GOP wants to go in reverse and destroy Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the ACA. The GOP plan is: you’re on your own, don’t get sick or die, die, die already. No to mention that the GQP is the party of Trump that believes in wild conspiracy theories and spawned the insurrectionist jerks who tried to overthrow our democracy and an election. There are some on the right who actually believe that Trump will be restored to the presidency in August. And when their fantasy goes unrealized, will we have another insurrection?MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is continuing to push the claim that Donald Trump will return as president in August, saying there is a “clear path” for him back to the White House. Mike Lindell has set August 13 as the day that former President Donald Trump will officially be the leader of the United States.
How we can heal our divided society?
Violate the laws being passed in red states to prevent teaching of the truth about race in America. Teach the next generation of kids to loathe the racism, sexism, classism, xenophobia, authoritarian tendencies, war mongering, homophobia, and worshiping of the rich of their parents.
In other words, continue the change that is underway by giving the Repugnicans what they fear most. We are in a phase transition, like a pot of water just before it boils, and the Repugnicans are desperately trying to stop this. A better, more beautiful world is being born.
In other words, we replace the troglodytes, There is no reaching them. Reach their children instead.
Gandhi was reverently respectful toward the British people while he broke the laws of the British Empire.
So let’s all just shout slogans and slurs at each other and see where that gets us.
Widening gyre.
“So let’s all just shout slogans and slurs at each other and see where that gets us.”
Who is suggesting that? Right wing Republicans?
We have one side that shouts slogans and slurs and lies at everyone who disagrees. We have another side that believes in facts. The side that believes in facts also believes it is important to point out when people are lying.
I mentioned this above — when South Africa had a reckoning, they had TRUTH and reconciliation — not just “healing”. There needs to be truth to heal. It doesn’t matter what one side does if the other side continues to shout lies at it and disputes facts.
Reconciliation in South Africa wasn’t perfect, but it would never have worked if the white population just kept saying “we acted perfectly, never did anything wrong, shut up shut up shut up.”
Look at the US, where Nikole Hannah-Jones is so virulently attacked. Historians often have disagreements — Princeton historian Sean Wilentz disagreed with Harvard historian Jill Lepore about the weight she placed on one colonial leader’s letter about the passing of anti-slavery legislation in England. But when Nikole Hannah-Jones expressed the same opinion as Jill Lepore, she had to be discredited and destroyed in a way that Wilentz never tried to do to Lepore.
I think George Washington as a patriot was and still is a role model.
This is the dedication page of my next novel, The Patriot Oath, which will be out soon. But, before someone can defend the U.S. Constitution, they have to know what it says and means, every word of it.
This novel is dedicated to everyone that has taken the Oath to defend the U.S. Constitution and meant it.
On April 30, 1789, when George Washington became the first president of the United States, after being received by Congress, he stepped from the chamber onto the balcony, where he was followed by the Senators and Representatives. Before the assembled crowd of spectators, Robert Livingston, Chancellor of the State of New York, administered the oath of office prescribed by the Constitution:
“I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Later, George Washington wrote James Madison, “As the first of every thing, in our situation will serve to establish a Precedent, it is devoutly wished on my part, that these precedents may be fixed on true principles.”
Since George Washington took that oath, every new Federal employee, including the President, is required by law to take an oath to support and defend the Constitution. The Oath of Office is administered on their first day of employment.
Today, this is the oath officers in the U.S. military take:
“I ___, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”
“Healing” is going to be tough if it is expected to occur simultaneous with democracy’s stabbing by lawless, power-mad Republicans wielding as knives, their form of Christianity.
Attempt to overturn the election-
“SC’s AG strategized with big-wig conservative lawyers in suit to overturn election, records show” (TPM 7-8-2021)
Advice came from a former N.C. Chief Justice who heads a Christian legal group.
Correction- TPM reports that advice came from both a former N.C. Chief Justice and also from the head of ADF.
When we damn Fox and Charles Koch, we should curse ADF and James Bopp too. Until 2012, ADF was the Alliance Defense Fund. Oligarch Charles Koch brandishes the word “freedom” while wealth and power concentrate. Similarly, ADF embraced the word freedom, renaming themselves the Alliance Defending Freedom. Conservative religious power brokers don’t want women and the LGBTQ community to make the choices for themselves that would make them free. Evangelicals, the USCCB, and powerful conservative Catholic lay organizations are gaslighting the American people.
A patriot who believes in our Constitution and progressive policies but also that our system works best when we have a balance of power between two parties so they must compromise to get things done.”
Lyons is just confused.
In the Constitution, the “balance of power ” has to do specifically with the different branches of government, NOT with “two parties”.
And “balance of power” between just two partiess has produced our current dysfunctional government. If that is our system at its best, then there is no hope.