mardi 26 mars 2024

Easter past, present and future…

 

 

There is a French poem from the 15th century by a notorious poet named François Villon, who is also remembered for being an assassin and a thief. It is called “The Ballad of the Ladies of Yore” and has as its refrain a line well known in France: “Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?” But where are the snows of yesteryear?

We all feel that way sometimes. Things used to be better. The snow was whiter, in winter the storms were bigger, and when spring arrived, the tender beauty of the season blossomed quietly, taking us by surprise.

I remember frosty Easters when we covered our fluffy new dresses with winter coats and worried about slipping on patches of ice as we walked to church in our patent leather Mary Janes. I remember sun and warmth and springtime flowers as well. Back in those days of yesteryear, on Good Fridays, between 12 and 3 PM, all the stores in downtown Pottsville (and there were many) turned off their lights and locked the doors in respect for the Passion of Christ.


On Easter Sunday, after church, just like on Fifth Avenue in New York, Pottsville had its Easter Parade on Centre Street. Ladies strolled in pastel suits with matching hats. Back then, we girls and ladies were proud to wear our Easter bonnets on Easter Day, straw hats with ribbons and artificial daisies or cherries for the girls; for the ladies, hats that would have made the late Queen Elizabeth II proud.

When we sat down to Easter dinner, many of us ate the same meal: baked ham, potato salad, pickled eggs and other trimmings, according to family tradition. As our parents and adult guests drank their coffee after the meal, we children, unsupervised, ran out to play. 


The good old days, some might say, back when Pottsville was a real community. It was also a de facto segregated town. I don’t remember strolling in the Easter parade with African American families. Their community lived clustered around Minersville Street and the rest of us, well, we had the run of pretty much the rest of town. Back in those days, even Catholics and Protestants kept their distance. Some Catholic children on my block were not allowed to play with me. In my Protestant household, it’s true, we didn’t make it to church every week.

In my family both my parents worked. In the early 1960’s, my father did not have a good job. We depended on my mom’s salary as a teacher. When she began teaching in the 1940’s, elementary school teachers earned $1,000 dollars a year. My mother told me that when she was first hired, she was warned that having a baby was not compatible with the job.

By the 1960’s, many teachers did marry and it was a given that their husbands worked, a reason for keeping teaching salaries low. If they didn’t have a husband, their teaching was considered a vocation; they themselves, secular nuns. In general, in 1960, women earned 60% of what men earned for the same or comparable work.    

The snows of yesteryear may appear whiter, but were we really better off then?

Yes and no, would be my answer. Until the Reagan years, the wealthiest Americans paid 70% of their earnings to the tax man. Since that time, their share of the tax burden has plummeted while their overall wealth has increased by 140%. In contrast, over the same period, the poorest Americans have gained about 20%, this according to a study by the Center for Public Integrity published in November 2022 (https://publicintegrity.org/inequality-poverty-opportunity/taxes/unequal-burden/how-four-decades-of-tax-cuts-fueled-inequality/ ). As for the middle class, their tax cuts have been modest as have been their gains.

Before the 1980’s, when it came to wealth and taxes, the United States was a more equitable place. The middle class, today declining in number, and the poor, a growing segment of the population, had a better chance of getting ahead. With the passage of the Economic Recovery Act of 1981, President Reagan initiated a series of tax cuts for corporations and the rich that were supposed to have a “trickle-down” effect. Since then, such theories have been exposed as bunk. 

But tax breaks for the rich are not the only reason for changes in Pottsville. Many other factors came into play. Coal was dethroned as king a century ago. When the economy went global, it became cheaper to produce many goods overseas. First the mines, then the factories closed. There was also, there always has been, greed.

If I were going to “make America great again,” I would return to those days of fairer taxation, when rich and poor alike carried their fair share of the burden of making the United States a better place. I would not, however, do away with any laws or progress that have made life better and fairer for African Americans or for women. And I would certainly wish that everyone could receive good medical care at a fair and reasonable price. Society is close to rock bottom when insurance companies, and not doctors, can decide the life or death of policy holders through the rationing of care.

But we must not forget that Easter is a day of boundless hope. It is a day for laying aside fear. Pope John Paul II exhorted Christians, “Do not be afraid. Open, I say open wide the doors for Christ. To His saving power open the boundaries of states, economic and political systems, the vast fields of culture, civilization, and development.”

You do not need to be a Christian to be moved by these words. In the place of Christ, we could substitute “the common good,” bigger than any one individual.

When I was a child, I never saw a woman in the pulpit. Even in Protestant churches, men preached, women taught children in Sunday School, played the organ, sang or directed the choir.

In wishing for a better world on this day of boundless hope, I think of Mary Magdalene, the first to have seen the risen Christ. For so long, it’s been a man’s world. Might this not have been Christ’s way of saying, “Give women their fair chance and the world will be a better place.” 

Noli me tangere, Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614)

 

jeudi 22 février 2024

Strong Political Symbols on Both Sides of the Atlantic

 


On February 9, 2024, Robert Badinter died at the age of 95. In 2023, he published a book called “The Accusation,” a detailed account of the war crimes and crimes against humanity of Vladimir Putin. In 1981, as France’s Minister of Justice under President François Mitterrand, Badinter presented and defended a bill to abolish the death penalty, pushing it into law. Until that year, France’s guillotine was still in use.

Be it the abolition of the death penalty, rights for homosexuals, the territorial integrity of Ukraine, or the right to a sound defense for any man or woman accused of a crime, no matter how heinous, Robert Badinter fought for what he believed in. Though his name is probably unfamiliar to most Americans, he was honored as a “wise man” by President Macron at a public ceremony in Paris on February 14th. His life and example represent a moral compass for many in France.

Robert Badinter lived an exceptional life in that he got to live it at all. His father emigrated to France in 1919 from what is today Moldavia, fleeing pogroms and revolution. He settled in Paris and became a successful businessman. His son Robert went to one of the best high schools in the city. The 1940 surrender of France to Germany put an end to that.

In 1942, Robert Badinter’s maternal grandmother died in deportation to Auschwitz. The family fled south to Lyon. During a raid of their apartment, Robert’s father was arrested and then deported. He died at Sobibor, a death camp at the Polish-Ukrainian border. Robert was not at home at the time of the raid. He, his brother Claude and his mother survived, passing the war years under false names in Chambéry, France.

Robert Badinter knew war and loss. He experienced injustice. He devoted his life to the fight for justice and equality for all French citizens, and he put his legal acumen to use to combat crimes against humanity, as in Putin’s war against Ukraine.

Until 2011, Robert Badinter served in the French Senate. After that, he continued as a lawyer in private practice and as a consultant to other jurists and to the French government.

 

At age 13, the very age when Badinter was fleeing the Nazis, Garbiel Attal, France’s current prime minister, was in the streets of Paris, protesting against the presence of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the far-right candidate, on the ballot in the 2002 presidential elections. In 2006, Attal became a member of the French Socialist Party. In 2016, when Emmanuel Macron created “En marche” (On the move), a political party aspiring to transcend the boundaries of left and right, Gabriel Attal was among the first to step on board. In 2018, chosen as the government’s spokesperson during President Macron’s first term in office, he looked much younger than his 29 years.

On January 9th of this year, Attal, age 34, was named France’s Prime Minister, the youngest in the Republic’s history. The President he serves, Emmanuel Macron, 39 at the beginning of his first term, is the youngest president in French history. Born in December 1977, the president is today 46 years old. 


In both 2017 and 2022, Emmanuel Macron’s opponent in presidential elections was Marine Le Pen (age 55), the daughter of Jean-Marie. 

 

 

Today, in a French Parliament with 577 members, where 10 different political parties are represented, the presidential party, renamed Renaissance in 2022, holds 169 seats. Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (National Rally) comes in second with 88. Upon taking up his post as Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal declared he was ready to “work with everyone.” This was not the case of his predecessor Elisabeth Borne, for whom the far-right RN and the far-left France Insoumise (Defiant France) flout the core values of the French Republic.

President Macron and his new prime minister will be fighting an uphill battle in the three remaining years of Macron’s tenure in office. Many of the problems they face will sound familiar to Americans: inflation, immigration, the Israeli-Hamas war, and the war in Ukraine, its capital Kiev as far from Paris as Kansas City from New York.

President Biden, age 81, has also been battling on many fronts and his approval ratings are low despite impressive accomplishments: his management of the end of the Covid pandemic, his infrastructure bill, the largest investment in public transport in US history, and his leadership role against Russian aggression in Ukraine. He has governed in a steady, sober manner that goes unrecognized by many Americans.

Perhaps it has something to do with age.

Symbols are what they are: something that stands for or suggests something else.

In France, the president, age 46, the new prime minister, age 34, and the current deputies of the National Assembly, median age, 49, represent vitality and youth when compared to the US government: President Biden, age 81; the Senate, median age 64; House of Representatives, median age, 58. I can’t help noticing, at least when it comes to politics, that the United States is getting old.

2016 portrait of Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader, age 82 today

 

Again, symbols are what they are. They do not tell us whether France is better governed than the United States. They do seem to be telling us that, at the national level, older generations of American politicians are not making room for the new.

Another illustration of this is the upcoming presidential election of November 2024. I’ll say it point blank: the probable candidates are too old. President Biden, if elected, would be 86 at the end of a second term. Donald Trump would be 82. 


 

President Biden, from 1970 to the present, has led a life of public service to his country. Donald Trump, with no previous political experience before becoming president in 2018, has devoted most of his working life to real estate, entertainment and family businesses. Here too we could ask ourselves what each man symbolizes.

France’s “wise man” Robert Badinter, who remained an active and engaged citizen to the end, might say it’s time for both to step aside. In the case of President Biden, an able leader, not running could become the noble final act of a life of service. For Donald Trump, now is the time to lay personal revenge aside and return to the private sector he knows best. That’s what I call service to their country.