Following History's Rules (to win)

Anger, heartbreak, frustration, indignation. These are the emotions trapped in oscillation as I watch the very real news. Add disgust and embarrassment for good measure. I am embarrassed to live in a government that would allow such a hollow, racist, mean-spirited, megalomaniac to even have a shot at being the leader of a professed Democracy. The left is handling it as best they can, although I am not sure how much control they initially had over the situation in 2015. I see the potential for the worst re-visited events of history happening, coming haltingly to light. But they are for the most part at the end of the tunnel. I listen to my father, a German-Jew who escaped to America with his parents in 1939, tell me of the similarities, of the slow-burning away of Jewish rights that amounted to the Holocaust. To me, it is unimaginable. To him though, it must me all too real. He was an eyewitness to its tempered progression, beginning with Jews' exclusion from society and ending with Kristallnacht. With the recent ICE raids, and certainly with the call for active military not American born to leave, as much has happened. I must agree that all the ingredients for a Holocaust, or at least forced removal of an ethnic group are there. But I also tend to think there is some bias in my father, a proud and politically active citizen of these United States since 1945. A smaller part of me says it is foolish to doubt him, the rest says he is exaggerating things, and in a Democracy we will always have a fighting chance, always have an impartial day in a court, however appellate it is. And, I am pleased to say, so far this administration has been on the losing end of many issues, beginning with the poorly executed Muslim ban.

To the Front of the Bus: Movement toward a Fair Democracy began as a knee-jerk reaction to this administration. Its words, I hope, echo from where we've come as a nation, the tremendous hurdles minority groups have overcome in the courts and on the streets. I take great care, as did the likes of Truman and King, in tendering narratives that went toward a fair Democracy. I looked back at what I'd written with an overwhelming sense of pride, not for my writing, or the way I chose to tell it, but for the people involved; the Quakers, the abolitionists, the African-Americans, the women, presidents who chose to be on the right side of history, and the disabled who finally saw their chance for civil rights and took it. It was a pride in a democratic system at work, one that struck down unconstitutional state rulings, allowed federal enforcement of laws when needed, one that yielded acts and amendments that could be challenged even 50 years down the road. Back before real time could be altered, when all that was available to citizens was a court, a first amendment right and newsprint. When politicians had values, certain constants that were not blurred by the homogenizing effects of wire taps, and later, tweets. In To the Front of the Bus I briefly turn attention to the corruption of politics, the point in time where I feel warping doors were inconspicuously being planed down to be opened enough to let in someone with the vitriol and political ignorance, the obvious malicious intentions of Donald J. Trump. I point out the administrations that worked to normalize that sense of callousness, the irresponsibility, the self aggrandizing and lack of accountability.

Writing the book was a learning opportunity for me, with lessons that are applicable today. Democracy is amazing when it works, however it is tedious and painfully slow. When it does not work it is “back to the drawing board,” supplying the momentum to perpetuate itself again, again and again, until it does work. All the street and courtroom battles, protests, non-violent demonstrations I write about were carried out to the letter, honoring the words following WE THE PEOPLE. That's why they worked in the end, when they made it to SCOTUS or even a lower court. The current administration is recalcitrant with regards to constitutional law. They can't be bothered by such trivialities. This is why they lose. Court records are documented and hold up. A lawyer can argue a case and have even 20 year old statements, pronouncements, addendum or verdict to throw in the face of the opposition. I was dismayed at first, thinking “why is this dragging on and on while Trump is violating any number of clauses, getting richer every day.” It must be slow, precise, measured, to have a fair shot at winning in court. It is sometimes frustrating, agonizingly slow, but its the way a Democracy functions best. The victories are worth the effort. That is what I strive to reveal in To the Front of the Bus: Movement toward a Fair Democracy.