Frank is Emptiness

October 7th, 2018

“The tears that heal are also the tears that scald and scourge.”
― Stephen King, The Shining

Karin and I watched a movie on Monday night. Just in time for Halloween, Netflix decided to offer “The Shining” from Stanley Kubrick. I hadn’t seen the movie since the early 1980’s. It freaked me out then, and the film’s power has not diminished since that time. The only difference is that I am now twice as old as I was when I first saw the film, and my perspective has changed. The movie is no longer just scary. It is also profoundly sad.

I read the book many years ago, before I ever saw the motion picture. The book is better than the film, although both Jack Nicholson and Shelly Duvall are excellent in the movie. The book has much more detail, and it maintains the suspense far longer. Stephen King manages to keep both the main character, Jack Torrance, and the reader unsure about what is real and what is not. That is terrifying and tragic.

In the story, Jack Torrance is a recovering alcoholic, and he is never quite sure if he is actually seeing ghosts or if he is hallucinating. His inability to recognize the truth is the thing that is most frightening. He really doesn’t know. In a way, it is a letdown when the book and the movie make it clear that the hotel is really haunted. The tension is more powerful when nobody knows for sure what is going on.

Drugs are a bitch. It is always scary to wake up in an unknown location, not remembering what happened earlier, and not wanting to know. There is a sickening sort of panic. There is also a deep feeling of shame. King writes from experience, and his description of Torrance is dead on. Jack Torrance is frightened and guilt-ridden and angry and fatally confused. He is going mad.

It’s a sad book/film because the Jack Nicholson character doesn’t want to be bad. He doesn’t want to hurt others. Well, I guess the fact that he is trying to slice up his family with an ax indicates that he does want to hurt them. However, even then, Jack is convinced that he is somehow helping his wife and son by turning them into hamburger. It’s the notion of “tough love” taken to its logical (or illogical) conclusion. In the book, before the end, Jack Torrance has a moment of lucidity and tells his little boy to flee for his life. That scene doesn’t happen in the movie, but even there, at the end, Jack begs for help. He seems to finally understand what he’s done. Then he dies alone and deserted.

It may be easy for someone to read the book, or to watch the movie, and say, “Thank God I’m not like that!”

We are like that, to some degree. I am like that.

Maybe we don’t try to murder people. Maybe we don’t struggle with alcohol or with smack or with coke. Maybe we don’t gamble all our money away. Maybe we don’t have promiscuous sex. But we are all hooked on something, and that something twists our minds and hearts. That something can make us into monsters.

Hitler was a teetotaler. He was a vegetarian. He was monogamous. By most standards, he should have been a model of moral rectitude. But he was a ruthless killer. What was he hooked on? Was it hate? Was it resentment? Was it power? Was it fear?

Do I see what is real? Do I recognize my ghosts and my demons?

I don’t know.

 

 

 

 

October 5th, 2018

“Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!” – Book of Ecclesiastes

I was at Lake Park Synagogue for a while last Saturday. The Jewish community there was still celebrating Sukkot, and because this Shabbat fell within the period of the week-long festival, the members of the Shul read the entirety of Kohelet, the Book of Ecclesiastes. It is not required that the text be read, so it is also not required that the book be read by only men, which is usually the case in an Orthodox synagogue. Both men and women took turns reading from the book in Hebrew. I liked that. I followed along as best I could, and spent most of my time reading the English translation.

Kohelet is traditionally attributed to King Solomon. It is a brutally honest and unsettling part of Scripture. Like the Book of Job, nothing is sugar-coated. Although Sukkot is a time of rejoicing, Kohelet often focuses on death. So, in some ways, the text seems out of place.

Rabbi Dinin gave his drasha prior to the reading of Kohelet. I always find the drasha (sermon) in the synagogue to be interesting. This is mostly due to the fact that the sermons in the Shul offer to me a very different perspective on the Bible than what I am used to getting. I sometimes sit there and think, “Oh, so that’s what it all means.” The drasha forces me to adjust my thinking, which is both exciting and oddly irritating.

In his talk, the rabbi focused on two words in the book: simcha שִׂמְחָה, which can be translated as “pleasure”, and hevel הֶבֶל, which can be translated as “vanity” or “absurdity”. There is an undeniable tension in Kohelet. The author encourages each person to enjoy the good things in life (food, drink, loving relationships), but he also emphasizes that all these things are essentially meaningless. God wants us to enjoy whatever we can in life, but He does not want us to cling to these things, because they are all transitory.

As a member of a Zen sangha, this tension feels very familiar to me. It is almost Buddhist in a way. Zen does not demand a world-denying sort of asceticism. A person should experience everything that this world offers. The problem is one of attachment. Can I enjoy something and not be attached/addicted to it? Can I let it go? As Kohelet makes clear, we will let go. In the end we let go of all of it. Do we let go voluntarily or do we have these things torn away from us at our death?

I walked home from our church yesterday morning. It was a seven mile walk, and it took me more than two hours. I gazed at the blue sky and the scudding clouds. I looked at the sumac leaves that blazed bright red. Maple trees looked like pillars of orange flame. I saw one or two stray butterflies, seeking food from the ragged wildflowers along the bike path. A strong wind from the north blew my beard back into my face at times. It was a good walk. I enjoyed it. Now it’s done. I enjoyed it, and now I am letting it go. It was simcha, and it was hevel.

And now, at 3:30 AM, I finish this post. This is also both simcha and hevel. 

I’m okay with that.

 

 

 

 

 

October 4th, 2018

“They make you sing karaoke?”

She replied, “Well, everybody does it, so I guess ‘yeah’ is the answer.”

The young lady was calling me from a halfway house. She had just been released from jail to live in this place with several other women. My wife and I had visited the halfway house. It was a dumpy duplex, in an iffy neighborhood. As our young woman pointed out, the home was rather exclusive, seeing as almost everyone in the house had been sent there by the Wisconsin Department of Correction.

Everybody in the house is in recovery. They are all trying to deal with a specific chemical addiction. During the week, they go to classes, and they have access to medical treatment. They don’t get out much. It seems like the residents of the house are all down to relying on caffeine and/or nicotine to deal with reality. Last week the folks there ran out of coffee. Karin and I brought them a can of Folgers, and these people thought we were like gods. We also brought our girl some dark chocolate. That, she did not share.

Apparently, weekends are relatively unstructured, and the women have to amuse themselves somehow.  Hence, the mandatory karaoke on Sunday evenings.

I asked her, “So, what are you going to sing? Any ideas?”

She verbally shrugged, “I don’t know.”

“You could do song from Nine Inch Nails.”

She wryly asked, “So you want me to hurt their ears and make them totally depressed?”

“Well, yeah. Or, you could do a Nirvana song.”

“Probably not.”

“Well, how about I’m Only Happy When it Rains from Garbage?”

She said dryly, “They only seem to have country CD’s here.”

“Oh.”

The girl called us again on Tuesday evening.

I asked her, “So, how did it go with the karaoke?”

“Okay.”

“What did you sing?”

“Wrecking Ball from Miley Cyrus.”

“Is that kind of redneck?”

She replied, “Miley Cyrus is not country.”

“Oh. But you said they only had country CD’s.”

“They went to the library and got a bunch of other music.”

“So, how do you do?”

I heard her smile over the phone.

“I got first place.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

October 2nd, 2018

“Dreaming of Mercy Street
Wear you’re inside out
Dreaming of mercy
In your daddy’s arms again.
Dreaming of Mercy Street.
‘Swear they moved that sign’
Dreaming of mercy
In your daddy’s arms…”

Mercy Street from Peter Gabriel

“When Ma died, my life ended.”

He stared in the distance as he said those words, eyes wet with tears.

“We were married all those years. I depended on her for everything. She took care of everything. Now what do I got left? Nothing.”

He sat back in his chair. Wisps of fine, white hair barely covered his head. He had a face with a prominent Roman nose, hollow cheeks, and eyes etched with pain. His eyes always looked around for somebody who was not in the room. Karin and I were there with him, but others were there too, unseen to us, but visible to this eighty-five year old man.

He said to me, “Frankie, look in that desk drawer. There’s some pictures.”

I reached into the drawer and found some framed photos. They were from the Honor Flight. The man had gone on the flight just a few months ago. I looked at the pictures and passed them on to Karin. In one picture the man was sitting with a pilot in a biplane. They were getting ready to take off.

He told us, “That flight was something else. That pilot, he thought that he was going to tell me all about the aircraft. Then he found out that I had worked on them back when I was in the Navy. So he asked me, ‘You tell me all about the aircraft.’ That was fine machine. You could see where they had stretched the cloth on the wing and doped it up. Then they must have sanded it.  It was smooth as a baby’s behind.”

I asked him, “When you went up, did you two just do traffic patterns?”

“No, no. We flew a ways out. Not just traffic patterns.”

He sat back and thought.

Then he said, “All those guys in my squadron, they’re probably all dead now.”

“I replied, “Yeah, they probably are.”

He nodded.

He spoke again.

“I always kept my whites from the Navy. That’s what I wore when I got out. I wore those home. Nobody cared. Nobody told me, ‘Good job’ or ‘Thanks for serving’. Nothing.”

His voice shook. “My ma, all she wanted to know was how much money I was making. My sister wanted to know when I was going to get a job. Nobody gave a damn that I was back home.”

He swallowed hard. He stared ahead in silence.

The ghosts in the room whispered.

 

 

October 1st, 2018

This letter from me was printed/posted yesterday by the Capitol Times of Madison, WI.

“Legal good, illegal bad”. That summed up Senator Cruz’s view on immigration during his debate with Beto O’Rourke. Cruz used a profoundly simplistic phrase designed to appeal to a population that thinks simplistically. I am not surprised that Senator Cruz used that slogan, and I have heard a number of other people say the same thing. I have even heard legal immigrants say something like that, which astonishes me.

That people who arrived here lawfully would make that kind of comment shows a total lack of empathy for other immigrants who, for whatever reason, have not been able to enter the U.S. through legal channels. The immigration laws and regulations of the United States are outdated, confusing, and unjust. Our current administration is doing its utmost to make these rules more ruthless and more racist. With each passing day, Trump and his associates do whatever they can to make it harder for the poor to enter, for Muslims to enter, and for refugees to enter the United States.

However, it appears that many people stop looking at the issue as soon as they see the word “illegal”. That one word makes an immigrant less than human. “Legal” does not mean the same thing as “moral”. Likewise, if an act is illegal, that does not automatically make it wrong. Also, just because something is legal does not make it right. The Nazis had all sorts of “legal” rules to justify monstrous actions. We  have laws that used to justify terrible things, like the tearing families apart.

We first need to make our laws just and fair. Then we can look at legal and illegal.

September 29th, 2018

Hans called.

He and Gabi are expecting their baby boy to arrive around Christmastime. Karin and I hope to visit them about a month from now. We want to make the drive down to Texas before the snow flies up here in the north country. We won’t be there for the birth of the child, but we will be there for the baby shower. That will have to be good enough.

Hans and Gabi have picked their son’s name. He will be called “Weston”. I am not sure why they picked that name, other than they like it. It sounds so redneck. I can totally imagine a boy growing up in southeastern Texas being named Weston. For me,”Weston” conjures up visions of pickup trucks, AR-15’s, and Shiner beer. It’s a natural.

Anyway, Hans called and slowly said, “Hey”, in his usual monotone.

I answered, as I always do, “What’s up?”

Hans drawled, “Oh…not much. Gabi and I wanted to know what y’all want Weston to call you.” (Note: Hans speaks like a Texan. Actually, he speaks more slowly than most Texans do. He’s a German kid from Wisconsin who found his natural habitat in the backwoods of the South. Go figure).

“I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“Well, you know…do you want him to call you ‘Grandpa’ or ‘Grandpa Frank’, or did you have some weird name that you want him to use?”

“Uh, yeah. Well, either ‘Grandpa’ or ‘Grandpa Frank’ is fine.”

“Okay, well, we just wanted to know. What do you think about Mom?”

“I’m pretty sure that she wants to be called ‘Oma’.” (“Oma” is how the Germans often refer to their grandmother. Karin is from Germany, and she definitely wants to be “Oma” to Weston).

Hans replied, “Yeah, Gabi and I figured that. Mom was always going to be ‘Oma’. We thought about calling you ‘Opa’, but somehow that just didn’t seem to fit.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

Hans asked, “Are you excited about being ‘Grandpa’?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t been able to wrap my head around that idea yet. I’ll be okay with it when it happens.”

Hans said, “I haven’t been able to wrap my head around the ‘dad’ thing either. It’s coming anyway.”

Hans went on, “I haven’t been able to go to all the doctor’s appointments with Gabi. The doctor says that Weston is all healthy. That’s what matters.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I remember you had a rough start.”

“Yeah, I don’t want Weston to start off life like I did.”

Hans got serious, “I’ve been thinking about how to raise Weston. I don’t want him growing up thinking that he’s all ‘entitled’ and such. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I think I do.”

Hans kept going, “I don’t want Weston to think that people should just give him stuff, not like some young people I know. I want him to learn the value of hard work, like I learned from you. You always made me earn the things I wanted. I mean you’d help me out some, but I had to save my money to get stuff. Remember those laser guns I wanted? I had to pay half for them. I learned nothing was free.”

“Yeah.”

Hans continued, “I want Weston to learn respect. Young people, they don’t understand that.”

I replied, “Well, you got to respect him too. That works both ways.”

Hans sighed, “I know. I just want him to learn to respect people, especially his elders.”

Hans switched gears. “I was planning to take a couple days off while y’all are down here. I thought, you know, you and I could do something together. Maybe go shooting…or something.”

“Yeah, whatever you want to do. We’ll do stuff. You and me.”

Hans replied, “Yeah, I just thought that the two of us, we could do something.”

“We will. We’ll figure it out.”

“Okay, well, I just wanted to tell you what was going on.”

“Thanks for doing that.”

Hans said, “I love you.”

“Love you too.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 26th, 2018

I had a couple beers with Mike and Taylor yesterday afternoon. We met at the Water Street Brewery once their work was done at the trucking company. Mike and Taylor run the early morning dock, the same shift I worked before I retired from that corporation nearly three years ago. Taylor starts his job as the planner at 1:00 AM, just like I used to do. It’s a hideous time to be at work. It’s so, so wrong. Mike starts a couple hours later, but he also stumbles into the office during the predawn hours. Both of those guys looked exhausted when we met at the bar, and, of course, they were.

We caught up on current events. I generally meet with Mike every month or so, but I hadn’t seen Taylor for well over a year. We talked about a variety of things: our families, politics, and my strange, twisted adventures. As time went on, our discussion focused on the workplace, because that is our strongest connection. It is also a connection that, for me at least, becomes more tenuous with each passing day.

Mike and Taylor sometimes spoke of people whom I have never met. They deal with dockworkers and drivers and managers who started at the company after I had abandoned the place. As time goes on, the number of people I know decreases, and the number of people who are unknown to me grows. As I expected, the corporation functions just fine without me. Some of the employees there might remember me, but memories are short. That is simply how things are.

I know of two men who retired just before I did, Chuck and Ken. They completely cut any connection between themselves and their former employer (and their former co-workers). Those two guys disappeared off the radar. They made an absolutely clean break. To a certain extent, their actions make total sense. I mean, “It’s over.” It’s done. Time to move on, and all that sort of thing. They were realists.

Or maybe not. The past is past. Zen practice reminds me often that I can do nothing about the past, and that the future does not yet exist. All I have is now. I get that. However, even if the past is gone, it still affects the present. Who I was makes a difference with regards to who I am. I always hear the echoes of my past. This means that I am extremely reluctant to sever ties with old friends, even when I should know better. I don’t hang on to things, but I hang on to people. I should let go of all of that.

A friend of mine retired just recently from the VA. He was an emergency room doctor at the local VA hospital. He called me two weeks ago, agonizing over his post-VA life. My friend is good at agonizing. I am not. After listening to him wallow in uncertainty and anguish for a while, I finally told him,

“You are a teenager again! You can do whatever you fucking want!”

I spoke the truth. If a person can retire (and I know that many people cannot), then that person has an opportunity that most inhabitants of this planet will never have. It is an opportunity and a duty. After retirement, I found out that my purpose in life was to discover my purpose in life. That may sound trite, but it is God’s truth.

For those who somehow manage to achieve retirement, the challenge is to forge a new identity. The fact is that I am not the person who was at the trucking company for twenty-eight years. That fucker is gone. I am now somebody else, and I really ought to get to know that person.

This is not necessarily a hopeless or useless struggle. I have had some fun (and some pain) during the last three years. I went to a Japanese Buddhist temple with my wife and youngest son. I stayed with my wife at a remote Benedictine monastery in New Mexico. I got busted for civil disobedience at an Air Force base near Las Vegas. I shot an AR-15 with my redneck oldest son. I learned all about immigration law at a class in Chicago, and now I will be more involved in helping immigrants than I ever thought I would be. I learned to kayak with an old friend from West Point. I walked through the country with a band of Indians. I have tried to help loved ones who struggle with PTSD and/or addictions. The last three years have been a wild ride, and I thank God for all of these experiences.

So, what is my point? I’m not sure. All I know is that I am much closer to death than I am to my birth. The clock is ticking. One part of my life is over. I know that. I have another part to live. My goal is to live. My goal is to make a difference, although I don’t know how. All I know is that I need to do and need to be.

Wish me luck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 23rd, 2018

I walked along the bike trail to church this morning. Well, most of my seven mile walk was along the bike trail. For some reason the trail abruptly ends at certain places, and then I have to walk along the shoulder of the Highway 32, near the onrushing traffic. The bike trail winds through meadows and wooded areas, and it is generally peaceful. Highway 32 is not. Cars fly past at speeds far in excess of the posted limit. I am never quite sure if the drivers are aware of my presence. The looks on their faces indicate to me that their minds are somewhere else.

As I walked south on Highway 32, I noticed a car sitting on the shoulder with its four-ways flashing. There was a young man standing at the side of his vehicle doing something, but I was too far away to determine what it was. I slowly came closer to him, and I became curious. Eventually, I was near enough to see that he was struggling to fill his tank with a red plastic gas can.

The odd thing is that I only noticed any of this because I was walking. If I had been driving, I probably would not have even noticed the car. Walking slowed me down enough to perceive what was happening.

I got up next to the car, and I asked him, “Are you okay?”

He looked up at me, and said, “Yeah…I mean no. I mean, yeah, I could use some help, if that’s okay with you.”

I came to him and noticed a small pool of gas on the ground next to the side of the car. I asked to see the gas can. He handed it to me.

He said sheepishly, “I am not from around here. I ran out of gas.”

I shrugged. The guy looked like he was maybe twenty years old. He was short and slight, and he was unsuccessfully trying to grow a goatee. He looked vaguely Asiatic, especially around the eyes. I ran out of gas once when I was his age. I felt like an idiot when that happened. I haven’t done that since then.

He had what looked like a brand new gas can. He must have walked to the nearest filling station to get it. It had some kind of fancy “child proof” nozzle. “Child proof” usually means “adult proof”. It had a spring-loaded valve that only worked when you lined up two rings on the nozzle. If the rings were not lined up properly, then gasoline slowly leaked all over everything. I found that out the first time I tried to use it.

I got gas on my hands, and promptly muttered, “Fucking goddamn piece of shit.” That didn’t solve my problem, but I felt a little better.

I took a moment to read the instructions on the gas can that were written in microscopic letters. I found out what I needed to do, but it still took me two more tries to actually get the gasoline pouring into the tank of the car.

As I fumbled with the can,  I asked the young man, “What’s your name?’

“Luis.”

“I’m Frank.”

“Where do you live?”

“In Milwaukee.”

“Where in Milwaukee? South side?”

“No man. More like downtown. Like Third and Mitchell.”

“Okay, Got it.” The gas was flowing by now.

Luis put his arm on my shoulder. “Thanks, Frankie. You’re a lifesaver.”

“Yeah…right.”

Luis asked me, “So, how do I get to Milwaukee from here?”

“The next light is Ryan Road. Make a left there. Take Ryan Road to the freeway. Then head north to Milwaukee.”

“Okay, cool.”

The gas can was finally empty. I asked him, “Hey, you got a towel or a rag? My hands are full of gas.”

“Yeah, here.” he handed me a small towel.

I wiped my hands. “This towel is going to stink.”

Luis smiled at me. “Man, thanks for the help. God bless you!”

I don’t know why I did it, but I did a gassho (I folded the palms of my hands together in front of my chest and made a little bow to him). Luis did the same to me.

He got into his car.

I walked away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 21st, 2018

“When I was a young boy
My father took me into the city
To see a marching band
He said, ‘Son, when you grow up,
Would you be the savior of the broken,
The beaten, and the damned?’

He said, ‘Will you defeat them;
Your demons, and all the non-believers,
The plans that they have made?’
‘Because one day I’ll leave you
A phantom to lead you in the summer
To join the black parade’.”

from My Chemical Romance, “Welcome to the Black Parade”

 

Karin and I went to Mass yesterday morning. That, by itself, is nothing unusual. We go to Mass together almost every day. It’s part of our daily ritual. Yesterday was different because the school kids from St. Rita’s were also there with us. The children from St. Rita’s school come to Mass every Thursday morning, along with their teachers.

When it came to distribute the Body and Blood of Christ (the bread and the wine), Karin went up to the altar to serve as a Eucharistic minister. At Mass, a number of lay people help the priest to give out the wafers and the wine. It’s rare for the priest to do it alone, unless there are very few people at the liturgy. Sometimes, not enough people volunteer to be ministers. That happened yesterday.

Karin was at the altar, counting the number of people near her. She decided that they were one person short. I was still standing in the pew, and she stared at me for a moment. I made no move to come toward her. Karin frowned a bit, and made a hand signal that said, “C’mon! Get over here!” So, I left the pew and stood near her at the altar.

Distributing communion is not a difficult task. The person who serves as minister stands at the front of the pews, and people line up in a queue to receive the Eucharist. Because the children were there, we had three separate lines. I was distributing the bread in the line that was made up mostly of little kids. Some of them were not old enough yet to receive communion, so they came up to me in the line with their arms folded in front of them, indicating that they could not take a host, and that I should give them a blessing instead.

A young girl came up to me with her arms folded in front of her. She had blond hair and intense eyes. I raised my hand to make the sign of the cross on her forehead. I felt a sudden pain. It was a deep, piercing ache in my heart. I had an overwhelming sadness. I could barely give the girl the blessing. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I said to her hoarsely, “God bless you.” She walked away, and the next child stood in front of me.

It was a little boy. He too had his arms folded over his chest. I blessed him, and my heart hurt again. My eyes welled up. I couldn’t understand why.

I was okay giving communion to the older students. But I felt this tremendous sorrow with the younger ones. They looked at me the way small children often look at adults. They had eyes that were trusting and innocent. They looked up to me.

Eventually, all the children had passed through the line. I calmed down a bit, but I was shaking. I felt exhausted.

As I took the ciborium (dish) back up to the altar, it occurred to me that I wasn’t really seeing those children for who they were. I was seeing other children; other children who are no longer children. I was seeing the faces of kids who went to war, or went to jail, or got hurt in a thousand other ways. I was blessing kids who maybe I never really blessed all those years ago. I was trying to look into eyes that are no longer innocent.

Are blessings retroactive?

 

 

 

Then I asked Juan, “So, what is ‘freedom of religion’ all about?”

Juan answered, “A person is free to practice any religion, or not to practice any religion at all.” Juan was proud of that answer, and he was right.

I wanted some more. “So, what does it look like? How would I know ‘freedom of religion’ if I saw it?”

There was an awkward pause.

I thought for moment. I had gone to the Lake Park Synagogue in the morning to worship with the congregation there. It was Yom Kippur. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the black yarmulke that Karin had knit for me years ago. I put the skullcap on my head and told them, “This yarmulke is ‘freedom of religion’. Jews wear it to pray. When a Muslim woman wears a hijab around her head, that also ‘freedom of religion’. What a person wears, or eats, or does can all be part of freedom of religion. Got it?”

Christobal and Juan nodded.

I asked them, “What about ‘freedom of assembly’? What is that?”

Christobal said, “When we get together?”

“Exactly. Frank and Christobal and Juan can sit here in this room without worrying about the cops busting in the door. We are assembled here. When Voces has its May Day rally, that is an assembly too.”

“What do you think about ‘freedom of the press’? What is that?”

Christobal said, “It is about the news?”

“Yeah. ‘Press’ is an old word. They used to make newspapers with a printing press. Now, the ‘press’ means anything with the news: TV, radio, Internet, newspapers, magazines. The media can say whatever they want to say, regardless of that guy in the White House.”

The Bill of Rights actually means something. These guys need to know that.

We all need to know that.