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Yes, I know, it’s no longer March…but some moments of March Madness linger, and I must write to bring them to some kind of order in my mind. This is not a blog about basketball, though who among us was not just delighted with the madness of the men’s basketball team from St. Peter’s University making it to the Elite 8? A twenty-first century David and Goliath story, if ever there were one. Bird walk….I wonder, are there any David and Goliath stories where David is a woman? I know…every single day, just ask any woman…a topic for another blog at another time….
Back to March. The war in Ukraine, the invasion by Russian forces into the country of Ukraine, dominated the airwaves. The absolute horror of it all. Captured by brave reporters, broadcasters, and photo journalists, the images are searing. I cannot forget the pregnant woman, carried on a gurney out of the hospital that had just been bombed, and the photo the next day of her and her just-born baby, followed by the news a couple of days later that both had died. I still see, and hear, the video of the woman, preparing to leave her bombed out apartment, but stopping to play one last piece of classical music on the grand piano, covered with dust and debris, but still standing. The masses of (mostly) women and children and elderly, standing in lines at border crossings, at train stations, leaving their homes and cities, hugging husbands and fathers who were staying behind to take up arms against the Russian soldiers. The utter devastation of blocks and blocks and blocks of homes and shops and schools and churches and hospitals in Mariupol. And now, in April, but killed in March, the civilians in Bucha, a massacre, a war crime.
And I know, peeling back all the layers and seeing this war for what it is, that this is what war always looks like. The weapons may have changed, but the death and destruction has not. This is what the Civil War, and WWI, and WWII, and the Vietnam War, and the wars in Syria and Afghanistan looked like. We see it now, because it’s on our screens, almost 24/7. Journalists who take life-threatening risks (and at least six have been killed), with technology that beams images and words to our screens large and small at all hours of the day and night, reveal to us the ugliness and pain and devastation that war always is.
And peeling back the layers still further, I look for what may be an end to this…and I can’t see it. The military and political leaders predict a war that lasts for a long time. I remember my friend, asking, in the early days of this war, “Can Putin just do this?” It appears he can…and the world really has no way to stop a bully with a high tolerance for pain and nuclear weapons in his arsenal. The images of this conventional war are terrible beyond description…and those of a nuclear war a thousand times worse. I admire the united efforts of the NATO countries, the EU countries, indeed, most of the countries of the world who have applied sanctions to the Russian economy, even at great cost to their own economies and to their leaders’ re-election chances, and to the united efforts to provide military support and humanitarian support to the nation and people of Ukraine. I just don’t know if it’s enough….or if anything is enough, to stop the slaughter.
In our own country, the madness of March played out in the Senate hearings on the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson for appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. These hearings are a relatively modern-day invention, not required by the Constitution. But they have become a tradition, and now seem to be an opportunity for the Senators to generate media minutes for their own re-election campaigns, and for nominees to demonstrate grace under pressure. This one, however, reached a new height, or depth, of absurdity. A senator, asking a nominee for the Supreme Court, in a nation whose constitution specifically says that Congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion, about her religious faith, and the depth of that faith. A senator, asking a nominee for the Supreme Court, about a book found in the library of a private school on whose board she serves, a book that dares to tackle the subject of racism, and bringing the book, in a larger size than any teacher ever needed to use to read to a group of students, to use as a prop at the hearing. More than one senator implying that there is something umseemly and disqualifying about serving as a public defender…seeming to ignore the Constitutional guarantee that all persons are entitled to legal counsel if charged with a crime. That public defender role is one that is essential in assuring the system of justice is indeed just…a requirement that some senators, even though they be graduates of schools of law, seemed to have forgotten.
Peeling back not many layers at all, it’s clear to me that we were watching racism and sexism in action…again. The nominee, highly qualified by every standard, including the evaluations of conservative organizations, subjected to irrelevant questions and uninformed opinions. Judge Jackson was harassed, shouted out, interrupted, and treated as the launchpad for some senators’ sound points. Seldom do I agree with Ben Sasse, but I think he was accurate when he said the presence of television cameras lead to a display of jackassery behavior. (Not sure that’s a dictionary approved word, but everyone who reads it knows exactly what he meant.) It was demeaning, insulting, belittling behavior; it was racist. And I have to wonder, in the years to come, when those senators (47 of them) who voted against her nomination are asked what it was like to be in the US Senate when the first African American woman was confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice, what will they say?
And then, of course, there was the slap heard ‘round the world, when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock for Rock’s comment about Smith’s wife’s hair at the Oscar’s award ceremony. I have nothing to add to the millions of words written about that, but the best words I read were those written by Leonard Pitts, columnist extraordinaire, and Marthaellen Florence, wise woman of Lincoln. Lots of layers on that incident; Pitts and Florence pull them back well.
The hopefulness of March madness, if I look closely enough, comes from looking for the very core of strength within those layers. President Zelensky is a sterling leader of his country under siege. He brings together the best of encouraging his people, organizing the military and the very human resources of the Ukrainian people, advocacy for Ukraine in the global community, strong and clear language about what is at stake, and relentless persistence in pursuing what the country needs to survive. His language is clear and compelling, and his is now a recognizable and face and voice around the world. And the world responds, from the billions of dollars of military aid given to Ukraine from the US, to the literally countless donations large and small to organizations aiding the now more than four million Ukrainian refugees. And it is my hope that those godawful images of war are such that as a human race we figure out a better way to live with one another, a better way to manage bullies.
The core strength of the Jackson hearings, of course, is Ketanji Brown Jackson herself. We witnessed a demonstration of knowledge of the law, commitment to the Constitution, resolve, patience, determination, and grace under pressure that certainly is what “judicial temperament” looks like. The sheer joy and admiration on her daughter’s face, seated just behind and to the left of her mom during the hearing, is an image that lives in my mind, also…and is one of strength for the moment and for the future. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson gave tribute to the sisterhood, her group of friends formed as first-year college students who remain her close friends today, for the role these women have played in her life…and by extension, the role that friends play in all our lives. Strength, indeed, to and through the core.
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