Can The Mothers Save Us From Ourselves?

"Irrelevant agencies" are distracting us with drag queens and book bans while the state stumbles and fails at its basic duties. It will take the mothers to get us back on track.

Welcome to another installment of Life Its Ownself. In the upper right corner of your email is a link to open its in a browser. Do me a favor and go to the browser. It is free to subscribers. If you enjoy reading it, please by 1) hit the Like button at the bottom, 2) subscribe to this newsletter, and 3) share it with others. Also, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. 

Friday, May 12, 2023

         The American Political Philosopher and Indicted Felon Steve Bannon once described the challenges of advancing, or impeding, public policy in an age of media oversaturation and partisan gridlock: “The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

         Bannon’s Brainstorm was conceived as a way to handicap the media in its efforts to inform and educate the public – not that the media was doing such a good job of it in the second decade of the 21^stcentury. But it explained – or more likely, retroactively justified – the Trump Administration’s complete reliance on disinformation and outright lying to advance its policy goals.

         But, today in Austin, we are seeing the Abbott Appendix to Bannon’s Brainstorm: Flood the legislative process with so much shit that the Legislature, and the people of Texas, never make progress on solving any of the state’s actual problems. Consider some of the issues, taken from Lite Guv Dan Patrick’s Top 30 Priorities for the 2023 Legislative Session, that have preoccupied the Texas House and Senate during the last 120 days:

Restoring Voter Fraud to a Felony

Empowering Parental Rights – Including School Choice

Banning Children’s Exposure to Drag Shows

Protecting Children from Obscene Books in Libraries

Ending Child Gender Modification

Protecting Women’s College Sports

Banning Critical Race Theory (CRT) in Higher Education

Banning Discriminatory “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI) Policies in Higher Education

Eliminating Tenure at General Academic Institutions

Removing District Attorneys Who Refuse to Follow Texas Law

Removing Judges Who Refuse to Follow Texas Law  

Creating A New Business Specialty Court  

Banning Local COVID-19 Mandates

         Patrick has gotten his Stockholm Senate to pass many of these bills and to foist them, like so many dumpster fires, on the Texas House and all the staffers, lobbyists and advocates who are actually working to improve the quality of life for average Texans. As a result, real solutions to real problems fall by the wayside. Here are just two examples:

         A) There’s been no serious discussion of expanding Medicaid coverage in Texas, as 41 states have already done. Doing so could restore health coverage for the 1.6 million Texans temporarily protected by Medicaid during the pandemic and kicked off it this spring. Or, Medicaid funds could be used to shore up the precarious state of rural health care in Texas, where 26% of hospitals are in danger of closing and health care professionals are moving out. Heck, we could even use Medicaid expansion funds to raise the reimbursement rates for mental health professionals, Gov. Greg Abbott’s favorite piece of magical thinking for the gun violence epidemic we face!

         B) Imagine you’re the CEO of a large tech company, and one day a subordinate tells you, “Boss, we’re hemorrhaging programmers and software developers.” You’d consider it an existential threat to your industry and take immediate steps to fix the problems, wouldn’t you?

         Well, no one can accuse Greg Abbott of acting like a CEO. Beginning in the mid-2010s and aggravated by the pandemic, Texas schools have been losing teachers in alarming numbers. Two years into the pandemic, Abbott created the Teacher Vacancy Task Force to study the problem and make recommendations to the Legislature. The task force’s number one recommendation? Better pay, better benefits and better working conditions for teachers.

         And the Texas Legislature leapt into action. After all, they had an unprecedented $32 billion surplus to work with. Funding a major pay raise for teachers was a no-brainer!

         As of today, the Texas Senate has approved a one-time $2,000 bonus for the state’s teachers. Oh, and they’ve also created a program to pay teachers an extra $25,000 a year if they’ll pack heat in the classroom. There are House bills to provide significant pay raises to teachers, but they face an uncertain future in the Senate.

         So, here’s the deal: There will be no expansion of health care access for low-income Texas. There will be increase in funding to help the crisis with our rural health care system. There will be no teacher pay raise that teachers themselves think is sufficient.

         You will not hear much about these things as the session wraps up. Instead, there will be multiple news stories about book bans and drag shows and health care for transgender human beings.

         This is because the political leadership of this state is flooding the zone with shit that will not affect the quality of life of average Texans. They’d rather have us talk about (nonexistent) voter fraud or “wokeness” in schools than do anything about the chronic problems in our education, health care and criminal justice systems.

         In fairness to Abbott and Patrick, they are not the first state leaders to distract us with trivial issues and kick the real problems down the road. But they are the first to insist it is more important to win ideological and partisan victories on behalf of their most reactionary constituents at the expense of even the illusion of addressing the problems of all Texans.

         I am sure some readers will object to such a bold accusation. Fine, bring it on. I’d love to hear your comments.

What can be done?

         My friend Marfawitz and I visited the Black Gap Wildlife Management Area the other day. We checked in at the Stillwell Store and saw the museum there, then wandered into the 103,000 acres of the WMA. The Texas sky was immense and bright blue over our heads. The temperature gauge on David’s dashboard read 104 degrees. The road wandered between mountain ridges and alongside canyons and arroyos. Down by the La Linda bridge, we stared across the green Río Grande into Mexico. We drove all afternoon without seeing another person or vehicle.

         We ruminated, as we often do, about how the state’s leadership is increasingly unhinged from the opinions and wishes of ordinary Texans. We have one-party government, driven by the most extreme elements of that party. They have not been held accountable at the ballot box. The business community holds less sway than before. The usual political pressures have no effect on them. Will anything ever change, we wondered, and if so, how?

         Suddenly the clouds above us parted and we saw God in a heavenly vision before us. The pickup truck slowed to a crawl as we gazed up at the wondrous apparition filling the sky. Finally, She said,

         “It’s the mothers. The mothers will lead you out of the darkness.”

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         This Sunday will be Mother’s Day in the USA. Mother’s Day was originally conceived in 1870 as a day for all the mothers of the world to come together and advocate for peace and an end to war. Julia Ward Howe, the author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” issued the Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1870:

Arise, all women who have hearts,
whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!
Say firmly: 
We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. 
Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, 
for caresses and applause. 
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

         Noble words, ignored then as now by the men in irrelevant agencies who are the decision makers and power brokers. Howe and others kept lobbying for a worldwide Mother’s Day for Peace. Eventually, Anna Jarvis, the daughter of one of Howe’s colleagues, succeeded in getting Mother’s Day declared a national holiday in 1914, just in time for the Great War.

         From the get-go, Mother’s Day was co-opted by the commercialization endemic to American society, to the point where by the mid-1920s Jarvis was actively working for its repeal.

         Mother’s Day has become a huge celebration of pale carnations and wilting roses and mediocre dinners at Applebee’s, a one-day pause so we can celebrate our mothers, then get back to being late-stage America. Maybe we’ll even pause the mass shootings for that day, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

         This weekend, in the spirit of the original Mother’s Day Proclamation, let’s honor the mothers who are fighting for their husbands to be free of carnage and their sons steeped in charity, mercy and patience – and for the men who fight alongside them. Let’s honor:

         The March of Dimes – was founded by President Roosevelt to raise money for the eradication of polio. In Phoenix in 1950, 2,300 mothers knocked on doors to raise money for polio research, the first March of Dimes Mothers March. Since the eradication of polio, the organization is still going strong, broadening its focus to furthering maternal and infant health.

         Mothers Against Drunk Driving – their Texas affiliate has secured profound changes in Texas law that have reduced the frequency of impaired driving and accidents significantly.

         Texas Women’s Foundation – advocates for social and economic change for women and girls in Texas.

         Moms Demand Action – national organization advocating for gun safety; it has a Texas affiliate, too, that raised some hell in the Capitol last week to fight for raising the age to purchase assault rifles from 18 to 21.

         The Mothers (and Fathers) of Uvalde – in their quiet dignity that can not mask their pain; in their persistence, traveling to Austin almost every week of the session; in their determination that the death of their 19 children should mean something in the story of Texas, the parents of Uvalde have embodied a moral force that sweeps aside all objections to sensible gun reform. The most moving moment of the session was when Uvalde Mother Kim Mata-Rubio, forced with her companions to wait 13 hours to testify on the “raise the age” bill, gravely asked the committee, “Did you think we would go home?”

         They have not won the battle, but they have changed the terms of the war.

         UPDATE:^[i] I had initially left this group off my list because they are explicitly partisan. But in a conversation last night with a longtime friend and wise observer of the Texas Legislature, she encouraged me to include them because Texas politics is so warped by the extremists controlling the Texas GOP that the heavy lifting of making Texas better has to be, for a while at least, partisan. Mothers Against Greg Abbott has built a statewide grassroots movement, released a series of ads that quickly went viral, and put clever and colorful messaging (an “Abbott Out” Advent calendar, a “Come and Take It” yard sign with a silhouette of someone reading a book) in the hands of its members.

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         Of course, the mothers are not alone. Dozens of legislators, staffers, activists and advocates work alongside them to build a fairer and more inclusive Texas. The going is slow and progress is stymied at every turn. Perhaps the mothers will lead the way. Let’s celebrate them this Sunday, and then get back to work.

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         Your weekend reading … speaking of Uvalde Mother Kim Mata-Rubio, do not miss Skip Hollandsworth’s profile of her in the new Texas Monthly …

         Willie at 90 … Austin Renaissance Man Turk Pipkin celebrates his golfing buddy’s 90^th birthday concerts at the Hollywood Bowl.

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^[i]           Tip of the hat to Loyal Reader Nicki Prevou, who reminded me about MAGA after I forgot to include them in my rush this morning.