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12:53

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The Monday Book will return next week.

I’ve watched it multiple times, the video of 12:53 Wednesday Jan. 6, when a group trying to get into the capitol heaved broken security fencing at five officers trying to keep them out.

You can find it everywhere online. Since FOX, CNN, Politico, and NY Post all have it, one can safely believe it actually happened.

Watch the right-hand corner. As the people trying to get in shake the fence to break it, and as enough of them get their hands on it to be able to literally pick it up and hurl it at the officers, one officer falls down. And he stays down. The only word that accurately describes his body language is “cowers.” (No judgement here.) He curls on the steps, covering his face. His shoulders are heaving. Based on body language, the officer on the stairs seems to be a young man. Can’t tell for sure.

The bulk of the guys trying to get in continue toward the other four officers, and their efforts seem to divide into two parts. Some want to crush the officers under the fence, push them against the steps with the metal until they… what? Leave it there. Others are done with the fencing and the police the instant they can get through; they rush up the stairs into the building.

But in the right-hand corner, as the camera (iPhone?) swings left to see the violence, a guy in a red ball cap (one assumes it is a MAGA hat) reaches his hand toward the cowering officer. It is a “here let me help you up” hand.

Everybody was making decisions in that moment. None of us can know what MAGA said to Officer as he extended that hand, but his offer of help signals one thing: for that guy, not all his decency was lost yet, because he recognized the moment when “protester” turned into “terrorist.” In that moment, he was not so caught up that he could not see through anger to reality. He had participated in trying to hurt people, and now he chose not to.

Where did integrity enter his decisions? Did he know ahead of time, and think that violence was merited because it was for a good cause, then back out when he saw the actual person curled against the concrete? Did he believe that he and his fellow patriots could never devolve to a level of violence reserved for inferior countries (put quotes around several of those words, please)? Did he not think about it too hard; he had time off work, bus tickets were cheap, his friends were going and yeah, he had some vague unease about the sanctity of the election? Was it supposed to be the trip of a lifetime, a steam valve for anger, or a coup?

We’re all making decisions. They will get harder to parse in the coming months. And believe me, they are coming from both sides. That hand will be characterized by his friends as “aiding the enemy.” It will be characterized by the left as “too little, too late. You shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”

We are all making individual decisions. They add up to our collective future.

Ode to Joy – or Despair

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Jack makes it over the line with time to spare for a change – –

Although I’m not directly affected very much by Brexit it saddens me to see Scotland dragged out of the EU against the will of nearly seventy percent of her population. What’s particularly annoying is that Northern Ireland (part of the UK) has been granted special status as a ‘semi-member’, continuing in the customs and trading rules of the EU, while Scotland has been denied that. One result is that young people will no longer be able to study in Europe under the ‘Erasmus’ scheme.

Back in the 1990s when I was a Head of Department in a Scottish community college, I managed three environmental education projects funded by the EU through an initiative called ADAPT. As part of that focus I set up student exchange schemes with a college in Denmark and another in Slovakia. My college was in an ex-coalmining area and most of my students had very narrow horizons. They had very limited interest in the wider world and low expectations of their likely success in being chosen to participate. In fact, out of a student population of around four hundred each year I had to twist arms to get fifteen applicants. This despite the fact that there was no cost to them.

What made me persevere, though, was that I had already been touring around Europe with my folk band and wanted my students to have a similar experience – I wanted them to feel ‘European’ and meet young people like themselves who might speak a different language and eat different food, but had much the same outlook on life, It turned out that it actually was the language and food that most scared my students. Of course most of them had never been abroad before except maybe a family vacation in Spain where everyone would speak English and they’d get fish n’ chips.

The other reason I kept at it was that from the very beginning the returning groups were completely transformed by the experience. Many of them kept in touch with the friends they made and when the reciprocal visits took place with young Danes and Slovaks coming to Scotland these ties were reinforced.

To get the funding for these exchanges I had to show that the purpose was both educational and not covering part of the regular curriculum, so the focus was on environmental issues which were just becoming a ‘hot topic’ at the time. The idea was that when they finished their studies and went into employment they would have the knowledge and enthusiasm to affect policy in their places of work.

None of this would have been possible without the support of the EU and that has now gone for students from England, Scotland and Wales. The good news is that young people from Northern Ireland will be able to continue in the Erasmus program, but that just makes me more frustrated. Scotland can’t because we were dragged out of the EU alongside England and Wales—and against our majority will.