HealthCommentary

Exploring Human Potential

Is Musk Writing His Own Super-Hero Story?

Posted on | February 17, 2025 | No Comments

Mike Magee

A lot can happen in the blink of an eye. You can lose everything. Your name, your reputation. But they can be replaced… by determination, strength, empathy, faith… A renewed sense of how blessed you are just to be alive. To have people who love you, care for you, but that only happens if you don’t leave before the miracle. When you realize that tomorrow is a new day. That tomorrow brings hope, and hope is where we find redemption. — Wally West (The Flash)

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Susan Kirtley PhD is the Director of Comic Studies at Portland State University. She says that comics “inspire many of us to believe in ourselves and our visions for the future, despite any naysayers. It’s not necessary to have a superpower to be a superhero, but rather faith and commitment.” 

Elon Musk clearly shares her religious zeal and is a true believer. His outfits alone deserve graphic novel treatment. Eight years before he showed up in the Oval Office in a long length, villain inspired, black overcoat hunched over with four year old “X” on his shoulder as he decimated the employee ranks of the federal government, he said, “I read all the comics I could buy or that they let me read in the bookstore before chasing me away.”

Aaron Day Lewis, author of “American Comics, Literary Theory, and Religion,” draws straight lines between 1980’s comic heroes and their stark attitudes on good vs. evil, science fiction, societal calamity, and visions of afterlife. The heroes are often “cutting-edge inventors and futurists” or “vigilante billionaires” that morph into “genius detectives…I have to imagine Musk absorbed this idea that there’s this heroism to being smart and innovative… Maybe that inspired him to envision himself as a potential superhero, to write his own superhero story.””

In comic world, science and science fiction confidently blend and blur. In ranking the most powerful super heroes of all time, comic book aficionado Maverick Heart (aka aeromaxxx 777)  lists “Flash” as the clear winner, stating “Not only does he have super-speed, but once he reaches terminal velocity, he has shown other incredible powers. During an attempt to measure his top speed, he strained every muscle in his body to run at about 10 Roemers, which is 10 times the speed of light.”

Roemers?” That’s a reference to Ole Roemer (1644-1710), a Danish uber-scientist, whose seminal discovery of the “speed of light” was celebrated on his 340th anniversary in 2016 with the Google doodle above. Details aside (the Earth’s timing of orbits around our sun were measured against Jupiter moon Io’s orbit around the distant planet), he detected a discrepancy in the measurements of the eclipses which amounted to 11 minutes. He attributed the lag to a speed of light he calculated to be 140,000 miles per second, not infinite as was commonly thought at the time.

Ole was the Elon of his day – tutoring France’s King Louis XIV eldest son one day, serving as Denmark’s royal mathematician the next, and still finding time to meddle in politics – getting himself appointed judicial magistrate, tax collector, chief of police, and mayor of Copenhagen. He was apparently as quick as Elon to downsize the manning table, reportedly firing the entire police force because “their morale was too low.” Not long on empathy, he was also known to target “beggars, poor people, unemployed, and prostitutes” – and not in a good way.

He was also science mentor of choice for up-and-comers in physics, astronomy, and natural philosophy. And that is why Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686-1736), a 22 year old equally ambitious scientist and instrument maker sought him out in 1708, two years before Ole’s demise and burial in the Copenhagen Cathedral. 

The road that led to that meeting however was bumpy. At age 15, Fahrenheit  lost both his parents to an accidental mushroom poisoning. His guardian then arranged a four-year merchant trade apprenticeship in Amsterdam. But when he completed the program at the age of 20 in 1706, he escaped an agreed upon further commitment with the Dutch East India company and his guardians sought an arrest warrant. When he arrived at Mayor Romer’s doorstep two years later, he was seeking business guidance and a pardon from further legal action. He achieved both. 

Ole Romer explained that there was currently intense interest in high quality instruments that could measure temperature. For nearly a century, everyone from Galileo to Huygens to Halley had been working on it. He himself had invented one in 1676 while convalescing from a broken leg, but there was great room for technical improvements.

 The challenges were threefold – physical construction, the creation of a standard measurement scale, and reproducible accuracy. He spent the next four years refining his glass blowing skills, discovered that mercury was a more reliable reference liquid than alcohol, and realized he could improve on Romer’s scale – which he did, renaming it the Fahrenheit scale in 1717 in a publication, Acta Editorum.

The famous scale was pegged on three different reference points. The first was the point at which a mixture of ice, water and salt reached equilibrium, which he identified as 0 degrees. The second was the temperature at which ice was just beginning to form on still water. This would be 32 degrees. And the final measure was the temperature when the thermometer was placed under the arm or in the mouth. This became 96 degrees. The span between 0 and 96 allowed Fahrenheit to create a dozen divisions with each subdivided into 8 parts. (12 X 8 = 96)

Fahrenheit thermometers were well-crafted and popular in their day. Their success carried  the Fahrenheit scale into two centuries of dominance. But in his day, the unpatented invention did not make him rich. He died at age 50, a virtual pauper. In September of 1736, he was granted a “fourth-class funeral of one who is classified as destitute” at the the Cloister or Monastery Church.

Just two decades later, in 1745, another scientist name  Anders Celsius arrived on the scene with a new scale. It would be a slow-burn, taking approximately two centuries to officially supersede the Fahrenheit scale everywhere in the world except (not surprisingly) the United States. Built on a scale of 0 to 100, the Celsius scale is also called the centigrade scale.

American scientific hubris has forced America’s math students to memorize conversion formulas and engage in what management guru, Tom Peters, would call unnecessary “non-real work.”.

A down and dirty one: F -30 /2 = C.

Or more accurately: (F-32)/1.8 = C

In the meantime, comic book fantasists with a taste for standard fare wild tales can purchase the “Trump Trading Card – Assassination Attempt- Gem 10 Graded – Trump Collectible Card” on Amazon Prime patna 17% discount for $19.99. 

But for you Trump voters with an unhealthy taste for the supernatural and unknown, Elon is the “Ole” unlikely to disappoint. As Jeffrey J. Kripal, Professor of Religion, Rice University, and reviewer of “American Comics, Literary Theory, and Religion” wrote, “We are not who we think we are. Like the superheroes themselves, we each have a secret identity (or identities). The conscious ego or unitary self is a useful construction, but also an illusion.”

Professor Kripal does leave us with some hope for redemption, with futures not yet fully determined or decided.  In fact, these comic circumstances may unveil “super-selves that can become an important part of a new soul-making practice that will result in future selves and future stories in which to live and flourish. Our afterlives… are constantly being rewritten, redrawn, and seen anew. By us, as super.”

In God we pray. Amen

Is Disruption The Same As Innovation? Check “X” for No and “XX” for Yes.

Posted on | February 13, 2025 | 2 Comments

Mike Magee

“The technological leaps of the 1900s — microelectronics, antibiotics, chemotherapy, liquid-fueled rockets, Earth-observing satelliteslasers, LED lights, disease-resistant seeds and so forth — derived from science. But these technologies also spent years being improved, tweaked, recombined and modified to make them achieve the scale and impact necessary for innovations.”    Jon Gertner, author of “The Idea Factory.”

The Idea Factory is a history of Bell Labs, spanning six decades from 1920 to 1980. Published a decade ago, the author deliberately focused  on the story inside the story. As he laid out his intent, Jon Gertner wrote “… when the drive to invent has become a mantra, Bell Labs offered us a way to enrich our understanding of the challenges and solutions to technological innovation. Here, after all, was where the foundational ideas on the management of innovation were born.”

One of the scholars Gertner likes to reference is Clayton Christensen. As a professor at Harvard Business School, he coined the term “disruptive innovation.” The Economist magazine loved him, labeling him in 2020 “the most influential management thinker of his time.”

A process thinker, Christensen deconstructed innovation, exploring “how waves of technological change can follow predictable patterns.”  Others have come along and followed his steps.

  1. Identify a technologic advance with a potential functional market niche.
  2. Promote its appeal as a “must have” to users.
  3. Drop the cost.
  4. Surreptitiously push aside or disadvantage competitors.
  5. Manage surprises.

Medical innovations often illustrate all five steps, albeit not necessarily in that order. Consider the X-ray. Its discovery is attributed to Friedrich Rontgen (Roentgen), a mechanical engineering chair of Physics at the University of Wurzburg. It was in a lab at his university that he was exploring the properties of electrically generated cathode rays in 1896. 

He created a glass tube with an aluminum window at one end. He attached electrodes to a spark coil inside the vacuum tube and generated an electrostatic charge.  On the outside of the window opening he placed a barium painted piece of cardboard to detect what he believed to be “invisible rays.”  With the charge, he noted a “faint shimmering” on the cardboard. In the next run, he put a lead sheet behind the window and noted that it had blocked the ray-induced shimmering. 

Not knowing what to call the rays, he designated them with an “X” – and thus the term “X-ray.” Two weeks later, he convinced his wife to place her hand in the line of fire, and the cardboard behind. The resultant first X-ray image (of her hand) led her to exclaim dramatically, “I have seen my death.” A week later, the image was published under the title “Ueber eine neue Art von Strahlen”  (On A New Kind of Rays).

William II, German Emperor and Prussian King, was so excited, he rushed the physicist and his wife to his castle in Potsdam for a celebrity appearance and lecture on these “invisible rays.” The New York Times was considerably less excited when they reported on January 19, 1896 on the lecture and Roentgen’s “alleged discovery of how to photograph the invisible” labeling the scientist “a purveyor of old news.” 

But one week later, on January 26, the paper had a change of heart, writing: “Roentgen’s photographic discovery increasingly monopolizes scientific attention. Already numerous successful applications of it to surgical difficulties are reported from various countries, but perhaps even more striking are the proofs that it will revolutionize methods in many departments of metallurgical industry.” 

By February 4, 1896, the paper was all in, conceding that the “Roentgen Ray” and the photo of wife Anna’s hand had “nothing in common with ordinary photographs.” The following day, the Times used the term “X-rays” but never spoke of it again until Roentgen’s death in 1923, when the Times obituary called it “one of the greatest discoveries in the history of science.” And in 1901 Roentgen received the Nobel Prize in Physics. Roentgen never sought a patent on his discovery, feeling to do so would be unethical. He donated the 50,000 Swedish krona prize to the University of Wurzburg.

And now to the other “XX” in the room. When Musk purchased Twitter, and renamed it “X”, he was focused on political domination not technologic innovation. He financially inserted himself into Trump World for a small (to him) investment of $300 million. In this oligarchal cocoon, he has been fast at work dismantling federal agencies, often with his 4-year old son (also named “X”) on his shoulders. His targets are laced with obvious conflict of interest. For example, the NTHSP (National Highway Traffic Safety Program) in the Department of Transportation (slatted for destruction) has been investigating Tesla’s high rate of auto-pilot fatal accidents; and the end of federal subsidies for widespread electric charging stations benefits Musk financially since Tesla already enjoys a prohibitive lead over his competitors.

But can Trump and Musk manage the surprises ahead? As Erik Brynjolfsson PhD (MIT), who currently directs Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab and teaches a seminar titled “The AI Awakening: Implications for the Economy and Society,” likes to preach, innovation that promises increased productivity not infrequently encounters paradoxical blowbacks. These come in many forms. For example, dramatic new chemicals that greatly expand crop yield may also be found to irreparably harm delicate ecosystems that hang by a thread. 

Or more relevant to Musk, powerful social media platforms, like “X” number 1, may be undermined by the very explosion of misinformation, hate messaging and foreign propaganda that they enabled. Just ask Kelly Ann Conway’s daughter, Claudia Conway, how her mother’s unleashing of “alternate facts” during Trump’s first term has impacted her family trajectory – big time blowback.

Lawless actions by the executive branch have energized city, state, and federal legal practitioners. And Musk’s appearances, with “X” number 2 purposefully poised on his shoulders in the Oval Office, drew a special Press introduction this week from the President. “This is X, and he’s a great guy — high IQ,” said Trump.  All of this has sent Musk approval ratings into the cellar along with Tesla sales in Europe and the U.S. In the latest poll of Republicans, 3/4’s do not want Musk to have “a lot of influence” in the Trump administration. And Tesla has experienced its first ever annual sales decline.

More “surprises” likely lie ahead. As legendary Tech Analyst, Kara Swisher, says the “bromance between Trump, Musk may be doomed by egos: There can only be one.”

Physician Says Aloud to House of Medicine: “Silence is not an option.”

Posted on | February 6, 2025 | 1 Comment

In 2018, during Trump’s first assault on Medicine’s compassion, understanding and partnership, The House of Medicine stood tall. Will they this time around?

Virginia Commonwealth University’s’s Steven H. Woolf MD, MPH asks that question today in JAMA. It deserves a careful read HERE.

Here is a taste of his insightful commentary (“How should Health Care and Public Health respond to the new US Administration”) directed at the House of Medicine.
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“During the transition period following the November 2024 presidential election, a lingering question was whether the controversial proposals floated during the campaign were merely rhetoric or serious policy intentions. The first week of the new administration erased any doubts that the candidates meant what they said. A flurry of executive actions sent shock waves through the scientific, medical, and public health communities….

“The profession—scientific, medical, and public health societies, journals, academic institutions, and advocacy organizations—must quickly decide how to respond or whether to respond. The profession is diverse. Some in the profession voted for Trump and undoubtedly support at least parts of this agenda, and their response to recent developments may be a thumbs-up….

“However, is there a bridge too far, a point where it is no longer appropriate for medicine and public health to accede? Under what conditions must the profession stand its ground and vocally oppose problematic policies or disinformation? The scientific community is expected to respect diverse viewpoints, but in the final analysis, all share a professional responsibility to oppose policies that threaten the health of patients or the population. To condone policies that the profession knows will compromise health—or to remain silent and look away—is to be complicit in putting population health at risk….

“In the end, politicians and the public are free to ignore medical advice and pursue policies that compromise health and safety, and they likely will, but this does not relieve the profession of its responsibility to make the dangers clear. At the bedside, respect for the freedom of patients to make their own decisions does not excuse physicians from the obligation to present adequate information to make informed choices and to advise against options that the physician believes will do more harm than good. The duty to the population is no different. Regardless of the popularity or powerful interests behind a policy, the responsibility of the profession is to speak out when the science is clear that it will threaten health or safety. Silence is not an option.”

“Fork” in America’s Road.

Posted on | February 6, 2025 | 4 Comments

“On September 9, 1966, around 200 people gathered in the White House Rose Garden as President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Motor Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act and the Highway Safety Act. President Johnson told them that nearly three times as many Americans had died in traffic accidents in the 20th century as died “in all our wars.”  U.S. Department of Transportation

 

 

Mike Magee

Trump and Elon Musk’s attempts to blow up the federal government have a “Ready, Fire, Aim” feel to them. But in actuality, their efforts are quite focused and highly calculated. Take for example the efforts to harass and eliminate the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

Musk’s interest in this regulatory agency within the Department of Transportation clearly has nothing to do with cost savings or efficiency. With 565 federal employees and a budget of $35 million, it is a minor blip on the federal budget.  Its’ mission is “to save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce economic costs due to road traffic crashes through education, research, safety standards, and enforcement activity.”

The NHTSA owes its existence to the 1966 Highway Safety Act signed in 1966 by President Lyndon Johnson. Congress took action after a disturbing 5-year run of escalating auto fatalities, amplified by national press coverage. At the center of that controversy was a young lawyer and professor at the University of Hartford named Ralph Nader who’s 1965 book, Unsafe at Any Speed,  argued that American cars were “generally unsafe to operate.”

Nader’s book especially focused on General Motors Chevrolet Corsair, with an in depth analysis of 100 lawsuits. GM CEO James Roche (channeling Elon Musk some 60 years later) set out to destroy Nader. His investigators taped Nader’s phone, hired prostitutes to compromise him, and followed him. Nader turned to his Connecticut state senator, Abe Ribicoff, for aid. Ribicoff’s under-oath Congressional inquiry resulted in Roche’s confession and ultimately a $425,000 settlement to Nader for invasion of privacy.

More importantly, it led Congress to support the creation of the National Traffic and Motor Safety Act, with Speaker of the House John William McCormack crediting the “crusading spirit of one individual who believed he could do something: Ralph Nader.”

That effort was a long time in coming. And a great deal has changed. In the 20th century, the number of cars and trucks on our roads grew 11-fold to 215 million. The number of drivers increased 6-fold. And yet, the annual death rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled declined over 90%  from 18 per 100 million VMT to 1.7 per 100 million VMT.

Over the last half century, this small federal agency has more than proven its worth. Their efforts delivered “new safety features, including head rests, energy-absorbing steering wheels, shatter-resistant windshields, and safety belts.”  Roads were redesigned including “better delineation of curves, edge and center line stripes and reflectors, use of breakaway sign and utility poles.” Public education and better licensing and laws curtailed drinking while driving, and enforced usage of safety belts, child-safety seats, motorcycle helmets, and penalties for texting while driving.”

On December 13, 2024, Trump and Musk signaled their intent to disable the NHSTB with a frontal attack on auto reporting requirements. As Forbes reported that day, “President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team wants to scrap a regulatory order requiring automakers to report crashes involving vehicles with automated driving systems, Reuters reported Friday, aligning with opposition to the rule by Elon Musk’s Tesla, which accounts for most crashes reported under the requirement so far.” 

How many Tesla crashes? 1,500 by that time. And crash reports were only the leading edge. “The recommendations ask the incoming Trump administration to ‘liberalize’ regulations on autonomous vehicles and enact ‘basic regulations’ that would enable development in the industry, the document said.”

Musk’s enemy number one in 2023 was the Acting Director of the NHSTB, Ann Carlson, who had the temerity to accelerate a probe into Tesla’s autopilot technology. Reuters reported that  the agency was investigating whether Tesla vehicles “adequately ensure drivers are paying attention.” A month earlier, Musk had directly challenged the authority throwing down the gauntlet on “X”. As Reuters explained, “A Dec. 31 tweet suggested drivers with more than 10,000 miles using Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving’ (FSD) software system should be able to disable the ‘steering wheel nag,’ an alert that instructs drivers to hold the wheel to confirm they are paying attention. Musk responded: ‘Agreed, update coming in Jan.’ “

Nine months later, Acting Director Carlson, was gone. Senate Republicans, led by Ted Cruz, strongly opposed her appointment, not only because Elon Musk was after her, but also because of her expertise in environmental law and interest in global warming. 

Cruz’s statement is rich, considering the recent unlawful actions of the executive branch, rubber stamped by the congressional controlled Republican Party. He wrote,  “In circumvention of the Senate’s constitutional responsibility to provide advice and consent on presidential nominations, you appointed Ms. Carlson to lead the agency after her nomination to be NHTSA administrator failed in the face of significant Senate opposition due to her extreme policy views, radical environmentalist record, and lack of vehicle safety experience.”

Signaling a desire to destroy the entire organization and not just its director, Team Musk also enlisted the help of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.  CEI, a conservative advocacy partner that “has spent the past 40 years fighting to reform America’s unaccountable regulatory state; to unleash innovation and allow mankind to flourish” tipped its’ hand. They stated, “The senators are right to be concerned with Carlson still leading NHTSA. There could be serious implications, including the possibility that many recent NHTSA rules could be invalid.”

As for the recent performance of the 565 employees of the NHTSA, the latest traffic fatality statistics for 2024 show a 4.4% decline compared to the prior year. Their most recent actions include requirements for automatic emergence breaking systems, new pedestrian protections, and advanced driver assistance technologies – all part of former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s National Roadway Strategy launched in January 2022.

These employees, along with all other federal employees, face Elon Musk’s “Fork” resignation deadline this evening. As NPR (also a target) reported today, “With just hours remaining for federal workers to decide whether to take the Trump administration’s offer to resign from their jobs now while keeping their pay and benefits through Sept. 30, a federal judge in Massachusetts issued a temporary restraining order and stayed today’s deadline.”

Hanging Up The Stethoscope. AI “Teammates” Enter Medicine.

Posted on | January 31, 2025 | Comments Off on Hanging Up The Stethoscope. AI “Teammates” Enter Medicine.

Mike Magee

“As machines become more intelligent and can perform more sophisticated functions, a new relationship between human and automation is dawning. This relationship is moving from master-servant to teammates…” NASA Langley Research Center/2019

“DeepSeek’s Breakthrough Sparks National Pride in China,” screamed the Wall Street Journal headline last week. In the age of Trump’s promise that crippling tariffs would “put China in its place,” the shot across the bow of Silicon Valley’s AI energized bro’s. It sent Nvidia and its allies (and even the reemerging Nuclear power industry) into the red this past week. 

For Nvidia, it was a tough way to start the week. As Forbes reported last Monday, “Nvidia lost $589 billion in market capitalization Monday, which is by far the single greatest one-day value wipeout of any company in history…” Of course, it rebounded 8.8% the following day, and by week’s end was near record highs. 

As the industry struggles to define just how much of a threat China’s Open-Source cut-rate AI effort is, there is no disagreement on the coming impact of AI on nearly every sector of society, not the least of which is health care. As the NASA report from 2019 suggested, human “master” control of machines is increasingly tenuous, and to succeed we must embrace AI technologic applications as fully enfranchised “teammates.”

Medicine has historically embraced, and even championed their machines, as superhuman extensions of themselves, and essential to “doctoring.” Consider the ubiquitous image of doctor with stethoscope hanging from the neck. It arrived on the scene roughly two centuries ago, in France in 1816. Its creation is attributed to Rene’ Laennec, and was little more than a wooden tube he incorporated as a hearing device after experimenting with rolled paper tubes. He likely got the idea after observing the effectiveness of “ear trumpets”, the hearing aid of its day. But it was modesty, according to some historians, that pushed the French doctor to action. He was apparently uncomfortable putting his ear on a woman’s heaving bosom to listen to her heart sounds. The device, an assist, offered better auscultation and at a safe distance.

Of course, we’ve come a long way since then. But if anything, health care professionals are more reliant than ever on machines. Consider AI-assisted Surgery. Technology, tools, machines and equipment have long been a presence in modern day operating suites. Computers, Metaverse imaging, headlamps, laparoscopes, and operative microscopes are commonplace. But today’s AI-assisted surgical technology has moved aggressively into “decision-support.” 

Surgeon Christopher Tignanelli from the University of Minnesota says, “AI will analyze surgeries as they’re being done and potentially provide decision support to surgeons as they are operating.”

The American College of Surgeons concurs: “By highlighting tools, monitoring operations, and sending alerts, AI-based surgical systems can map out an approach to each patient’s surgical needs and guide and streamline surgical procedures. AI is particularly effective in laparoscopic and robotic surgery, where a video screen can display information or guidance from AI during the operation.” Mass General’s Jennifer Eckoff goes a step further, “Based on its review of millions of surgical videos, AI has the ability to anticipate the next 15 to 30 seconds of an operation and provide additional oversight during the surgery.”

Surgical educators see enormous promise in AI-assisted education. One commented, “Most AI and robotic surgery experts seem to agree that the prospects of an AI-controlled surgical robot completely replacing human surgeons is improbable…but it will revolutionize nearly every area of the surgical profession.”

Johnson and Johnson, a major manufacturer of AI surgical tools, had this to say, “Surgeons are a lot like high-performance athletes. New and learning surgeons want to see how they performed and learn from their performances and how others performed… Now, surgeons can look at what happened during procedures practically in real time and share the video with residents and peers, offering valuable post-case analysis and learning opportunities.

Teaming up with AI in Medicine will likely transform well beyond the operating suite. Its population wide recommendations might guide us toward interventions that are more selective and effective, less biased overall, and less expensive. We might see fewer doctors, fewer drug ads, and fewer bills. But at the same time, that system might demand greater patience, greater personal responsibility and compliance with behavioral changes that ensure health.

Can we trust A.I.? That’s a question that AI master strategist Mark Minevich was recently asked regarding our new teammate status. His response was, “There are no shortcuts to developing systems that earn enduring trust…transparency, accountability, and justice (must) govern exploration…as we forge tools to serve all people.”

What are those AI tools? He highlighted four: Risk Assessment; Regulatory Safeguards; Pragmatic Governance; and Public/Private Partnerships.

Like it or not, AI has arrived, and its’ impact on individual health and that of our health systems in the U.S. will be substantial, disruptive, painful for some, but hopeful for many others. Tools like the stethoscope have served us well, and it is not surprising that they have earned our affection and loyalty over these many years. But AI generated tools have grown up and demand inclusion and respect if we wish to avoid becoming their servants.

Confronting American Apartheid – A Tale of Two Women.

Posted on | January 24, 2025 | Comments Off on Confronting American Apartheid – A Tale of Two Women.

Mike Magee

This past week, Bishop Mariann E. Budde drew the Episcopal Church into the national spotlight through a single act of courage. She is not the first, nor likely the last from this denomination to do so. There is a history. More on that in a moment.

The Episcopal Church is an offshoot of the Anglican Church of England which dates back to 1534 when King Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Pope who opposed his marriage to Anne Boleyn. Two-hundred and fifty four years later, in 1789, Anglican Church leaders who had helped settle colonies in North America gathered to form a united Episcopal Church, revising their Book of Common Prayer to exclude its blessing to the English monarch.

Though declining in modern times, missionary minded Anglicans spread throughout the British empire, and remain connected to the mother Church as members of the Anglican Communion. For example, British Anglican military chaplains were part of the force that occupied Cape Colony in South Africa in 1795. By 1821, they had established a formal religious foothold. Today, they claim 3.5 million members. In 2012, they elected their first female bishop, Ellinah Wamukoya of Swaziland. And yet, the most influential female Anglican from South Africa is arguably an immigrant to America, an emotional ally of Bishop Budde, and a retired Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court.

Her name is Margaret Marshall, and her place in American history dates back to June 6, 1966. That was the date this then 20 year old student, who was vice-president of the National Union of South African Students, was asked to stand in for the organization’s president, Ian Robertson (who was under house arrest for speaking out about Apartheid). She met and transported Bobby Kennedy to speak to over 1000 university students packed into the college auditorium at their “Day of Affirmation.”

Much like Mariann Budde last week in Washington, Bobby Kennedy caught his hushed audience by surprise that evening with these opening remarks:

“I come here this evening because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which was once the importer of slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America.”

Margaret Marshall, some six decades later, recalled that moment in a conversation with Doris Kearns Goodwin. She said, “There was great tension in the room. People were on edge…As soon as the audience realized what he said, there was laughter and a sense of total relief. It was simply fabulous.” 

After becoming president of the student organization the next year, the Anglican woman raised in a religious home in Newcastle, South Africa, emigrated to the U.S., and earned a masters in education at Harvard, and a law degree from Yale in 1976. Two years later, she was awarded U.S. citizenship.

She carried with her to her new country a prior interest in the law, and specifically American Law. In an interview in 2020, around the time of her prestigious Sandra Day O’Connor Award for “extraordinary service and commitment to justice,” she recalled her favorite American law case as a South African student:

“The Massachusetts case, decided in 1783, was a case decided under the new, then very new, Massachusetts constitution, which predates the federal constitution. The Massachusetts constitution opens, or started at the time, with the words, ‘All men are created equal…’ The case was brought by a slave in Massachusetts who challenged his servitude under that provision. . . In 1783, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled that slavery was inconsistent with the words of the new Massachusetts Constitution. That was the second case of which I knew while I was in South Africa.  A court had outlawed slavery. For that reason, the Supreme Judicial Court had always been a revered institution for me.”

It is fitting, therefore, that 20 years after becoming a lawyer, Massachusetts Gov. William Weld appointed her an Associate Justice of that very same Massachusetts Supreme Court. Over the next fourteen years, she wrote more than 300 opinions, most notably Goodridge v. Department of Public Health. The decision affirmed that the Massachusetts Constitution prohibits the state from denying same-sex marriage. In an unspoken link to her childhood beginnings, she wrote, “Massachusetts Constitution affirms the dignity and equality of all individuals. It forbids the creation of second-class citizens.”

Three years after the decision, Chief Justice Marshall had an opportunity to reflect on the broader law and order implications of her ruling as Trump prepared to overthrow the 2020 election. 

She stated on the Judgement Calls Podcast, “Judges are part of our the government. If the United States Supreme Court issues a decision, you can criticize it. Everybody can criticize it. The Massachusetts Governor criticized Goodridge. But the Governor never suggested that he would not obey the order…Think about Bush against Gore, which was one of the closest, most bitterly fought cases. The day after the court decided, was the court’s decision criticized? Of course, it was criticized. But…there were no troops out on the street. That is a privilege that we have in the United States. It is because I come from another country that I feel so passionately about what we have to protect here, what is so important here. But for me, an immigrant, for waves of immigrants, we know. We know.”

It is fair to say that this Anglican daughter of South Africa, who ushered Bobby Kennedy that evening in 1966 to a tense auditorium, exactly two years to the date before he would be assassinated in Los Angeles, has paved the way for another member of the Anglican Communion, Episcopalian Bishop Mariann E. Budde to exhibit her act of moral courage. 

With intelligence and conviction, seven feet above and 40 feet across from a figure reminiscent of South Africa’s P.W. Botha, she locked eyes with President Trump. She stood tall and erect, buoyed by the Washington National Cathedral’s limestone Canterbury Pulpit, whose central carvings portray the signing of the eight century old Magna Carta, and addressed the man who would later charge that “She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart.”

But her words in our nation’s Capitol were as powerful that evening as Robert Kennedy’s in Capetown. With Margaret Marshall at his side,RFK said, “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

Six decades later, these words of Bishop Budde created a flood of debate across America: 

“Let me make one final plea, Mr. President: Millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God.” 

“In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives.” 

“And the people, the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals, they — they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.”

“I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here, Mr. President.”

Moral courage chooses its own time and place. But when it presents itself, it is recognizable by all – including those in agreement and those who stubbornly descent. The final words from RFK enjoin each of us and all of us, across the ages:

“With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth and lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”

Remembering LBJ Who Died 52 Years Ago Today.

Posted on | January 22, 2025 | 2 Comments

 

Mike Magee

This is the 52nd anniversary of the death of Lyndon Baines Johnson from his 5th Heart Attack. And two days ago was the 39th anniversary of the first celebration of a new federal holiday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  In signing that original proclamation in 1983, President Ronald Reagan said, “The majesty of his message, the dignity of his bearing, and the righteousness of his cause are a lasting legacy. In a few short years he changed America for all time.” 

The MLK federal holiday was not so “Kum ba yah” (“Come by here”) this year. President Trump was in no mood to be tutored on this 60’s phrase derived from an African American spiritual made famous by Pete Seeger. Rather, he took advantage of the convergence of MLK’s day and his own coronation to trash all things DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion). 

Of those supporting the 2nd term President, from here and beyond, few could have had a broader smile on his face than dearly departed (July 4, 2008) former North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms. Helms led the opposition to the MLK bill, submitting a 300-page report that labelled King an “action-oriented Marxist” and a communist. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (NY) was so enraged at the time that he declared the report a “packet of filth”, threw it on the Senate floor, and then unceremoniously repeatedly stomped on it.

So, as a nation, we have been down this road before. As history.com reports: “On the day of Nixon’s second inaugural celebration, Johnson watched sullenly as Nixon announced the dismantling of many of Johnson’s Great Society social programs… The following day, while Lady Bird and their daughters were in Austin, Johnson suffered a fatal heart attack at his ranch in Johnson City.”

In yesterday’s Washington Post, George Will provided us all with a much needed reality check by quoting Stanford professor of government, Stephen Kotkin, who in the lead up to the election said, “Who’s the ‘we’? Trump is not an alien who landed from some other planet.”

“This is somebody the American people voted for who reflects something deep and abiding about American culture. Think of all the worlds that he has inhabited and that lifted him up. Pro wrestling. Reality TV. Casinos and gambling, which are no longer just in Las Vegas or Atlantic City, but everywhere, embedded in daily life. Celebrity culture. Social media. All of that looks to me like America. And yes, so does fraud, and brazen lying, and the P.T. Barnum, carnival barker stuff. But there is an audience, and not a small one, for where Trump came from and who he is.”

LBJ was 64 when he died. He would be 117 today. The Civil Rights Act that he signed on July 2, 1964, “altered the legal, political, and social landscape of America as radically as any law of the twentieth century,” according to presidential historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin. And yet, LBJ defined himself more as a pragmatist than in heroic terms. He said, “I know a lot of people around those Georgetown parties are saying that I wasn’t much of crusader for civil rights when I was in the Senate. On balance, they’re right about me. I wasn’t a crusader. I represented a southern state, and if I got too far ahead of my voters they’d have sent me right back to Johnson City . . . Now I represent the whole country, and I can do what the whole country thinks is right.”

His remarks on that July 2nd evening signing were lofty:

We believe that all men are created equal. Yet many are denied equal treatment.

We believe all men have certain inalienable rights. Yet many Americans do not enjoy those rights.

We believe that all men are entitled to the blessings of liberty. Yet millions are being deprived of those blessings-not because of their own failures, but because of the color of their skin.

But it cannot continue. Our Constitution, the foundation of our Republic, forbids it…Morality forbids it. And the law I will sign tonight forbids it.

We have come now to a time of testing. We must not fail. Let us close the springs of racial poison.”

That very evening, LBJ speech writers, Bill Moyers and Dick Goodwin, encountered their boss in a pensive mood. This was the anniversary of his massive 1955 heart attack. Asked what was troubling him, he replied, “I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come.”

Many years later, Dick Goodwin’s recollections of that night’s events were captured by his historian wife, Doris Kearns Goodwin. He said, “Who would have thought that the testing time that lay ahead would still be with us more than a half century later, that the springs of racial poison have still not been closed?”

Trump clearly wants his own Kennedy, if only a junior. But on this 52nd anniversary of his death, I’m “All The Way With LBJ.”

 

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