Auchtoon!

I just finished listening to a series on The Rest Is History podcast, “The Ku Klux Klan.” First, yes, this is not a normal thing healthy people do with their free time. But it was informative and, subject matter notwithstanding, entertaining.

The positive takeaway: The seeming uptick in various hatreds in our country (antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-immigration, racism, etc.)? We’ve been through this before. That’s not good, but it’s not unprecedented. After the Civil War, the first iteration of the KKK grew out of white southerners wanting to keep recently freed Blacks in submission. The second iteration that peaked in the 1920s was focused on oppressing immigrants, primarily Catholics and Jews. The third iteration post-World War II concentrated on vigilante violence against expanding civil rights.

Of course, the negative takeaway is exactly the same: We as a country cannot seem to stop these awful spasms that ruin real people and real people’s lives.

Our political parties don’t seem to help. In fact, they typically make things worse. In Michigan, for example, we have Republicans allowing, if not embracing, hatred toward our Muslim citizens. The Democrats seem to believe it can all be managed with a properly structured public relations plan. I’m not sure what can break the cycle, but I do know it’s not this.

Years ago I hurt a co-worker’s feeling when I loudly opined that I preferred the earlier music of the band Chicago because its later years were dominated by Peter Cetera and I found his power ballads to be whiny and annoying. Of course my exact wording was more colorful, involving many variations of “sucks” and allusions to ear bleeding.

But he was a big fan, so my unsolicited thoughts were unkind and unnecessary. And the fact is that there was (and is) lots of music that I enjoy which is hardly defensible as objectively good. So I’m not here to disparage Kid Rock‘s music. If you like it, you like it. If you don’t, you don’t. Although, the line from his song “Cool, Daddy Cool” — Young ladies, young ladies, I like ’em underage see, Some say that’s statutory (But I say it’s mandatory) — is something I think we can all agree to openly dislike.

And it’s not Rock himself that I necessarily have issues with. I’ve never met him. But he is an artist and a celebrity and lives a very public life freely sharing his opinions. So we are all free to have reactions to those opinions, especially the cruel and entitled ones.

Rock was born and raised in Michigan, a credential he has often burnished (especially when selling concert tickets here). But as demonstrated in the video he posted this past week on social media with a U.S. military helicopter hovering near his hilltop home, he has chosen to live in Tennessee. So I’ll be very happy to have him be associated with Tennessee, not Michigan, from this point forward.

Every week, I try to settle on a topic specific to Michigan. There certainly never is a lack of topics — especially in an election year — worthy of debate and discussion. Others are more just observations. For example, could the camera possibly pull in any tighter on those Perry Johnson ads?

But as it turns out, there’s a war going on. Actually, multiple ones. And if you are listening to the rhetoric coming out the Trump administration, there are more coming.

So even though I couldn’t come up with an angle on the Iran War specific to our state, I felt an overwhelming need to comment on it. And in case my point isn’t obvious, I’ll spell it out: We as a country appear to be completely incapable of learning lessons from our history.

I believe we can all agree that the office of Vice President of the United States of America is uniquely terrible. Other than being a tiebreaker vote in the Senate (which is in reality the President’s decision to make), it’s basically a forever on-deck circle waiting for a “batter up” that likely will never come. Consequently, vice presidents are often kept intentionally out of the loop and/or given jobs that nobody else wants, such as defending unpopular policies they may not actually agree with.

And thus did JD Vance find himself in Michigan this week giving a speech in a manufacturing facility. It was awkward to say the least. Of course Vance is famously not just a flip-flopper, but a shape-shifter. That is, he has no problem not just changing his mind on policy but totally reinventing himself to suit his ambitions.

So I don’t feel sorry for him. But I was very uncomfortable watching him try to put a positive spin on high gas prices when it’s pretty clear that he was against going to war with Iran, the singular cause of those high gas prices, which are taking money out of the pockets of the American worker audience. It was like when the Michael Scott character on The Office starts talking himself into a corner and it just becomes too unbearable to watch. But not at all funny.

Michigan is near (if not at) the bottom of ranking for transparency in state governments. Yes, there are seemingly larger issues in the world at the moment, but with Sunshine Week coming up next week, it felt appropriate.

Sunshine Week is a nonpartisan collaboration among groups in the journalism, civic, education, government, and private sectors that shines a light on the importance of public records and open government. If you want to affect positive change, I encourage you to join them in making sure public information is public. Stop shaking your tiny, angry fists at the so-called “the mainstream media” — help make it easier for journalists to accurately report what’s going on.

When she was first elected in 2018, Governor Whitmer made some very specific promises about just that. Now in her 8th year, she has not come near to delivering on formalizing open access to information for Michigan state government, such as expanding Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to her office.

House Speaker Matt Hall is newer to the game, but more audacious in flaunting his contempt for transparency — last year he proclaimed that he’s “not doing FOIA” for the time being, preferring his own “HEAT” (Hall Ethics, Accountability, and Transparency) plan instead. Good lord. A politician devising his own plan for accountability — that’s about as red flaggy as it gets!

We live in difficult, challenging times. Our nation is again at war. (Wait. What’s that? Oh, sorry: Our nation is again at major combat operations.) Closer to home, Michigan faces continued economic uncertainties. Affordability is a growing crisis. Reading scores for our children are abysmal. The calendar tells us winter is almost over, but we all know it isn’t.

But there is hope. From out of this somber backdrop, three brave heroes, Michigan State Representatives Joseph Fox (R-Fremont), James DeSana (R-Carleton), and Jay DeBoyer (R-Clay Township) — men of action! — stepped forward this week and … introduced legislation to repeal the state’s concealed pistol permit law so residents can carry a handgun without any identification showing they’re permitted to do so.

So, no more worries about jobs, budgets, healthcare, education — obviously not priorities. These guys are focused on cutting back on safety and accountability. Profiles in courage.

Sarcasm aside, in 2024, an estimated 1,200 people died from firearm-related injuries in Michigan. Meanwhile, a comprehensive post-election review by the Michigan Secretary of State found that only 0.00028% of the 5.7 million votes cast in 2024 were potentially ineligible (approximately 15–16 votes statewide).

Sensible gun laws are a solution for a problem. Voter suppression efforts like the SAVE Act are a solution looking for a problem.

It will help if readers are familiar with slapstick movies from the early 1900s — Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, Three Stooges, and the like. Specifically the classic bit with a guy carrying a long board on his shoulder and — as he navigates safely through a construction site — unknowingly and repeatedly clobbering people with the back end of the board.

That’s kind of how I see Trump — he’s carrying a board though our country looking out only for himself and either unaware of or uncaring about the collateral damage. It’s funny in a movie. Not so much when it’s happening in real life.

It’s natural for political parties to evolve. Over the course of time, they adjust to meet the realities of their current era. A century ago, the Democratic Party was primarily a combination of Jim Crow southerners and working-class northerners. Sixty years later it started shifting more toward the party of minorities and women. And today, it’s the neurotic, often self-defeating mishmash that we all know.

Of course, the Republican Party evolved over time, too. But these past couple of decades, it’s been not so much a shift as an astonishing, mind-bending leap. I think Ronald Reagan, and especially Gerald Ford, would find the current GOP absolutely unrecognizable.

Case in point, the willy-nilly, money-is-no-object acquiring and transforming of warehouses into detention centers for (let me check my notes) anybody potentially opposed to them! Their plan is to spend $38.3 billion. Give or take. (The modern GOP doesn’t seem to be all that concerned about budgeting.)

As part of this, there is a proposed detention center in southeast Michigan that is being marketed as a job creator and an economy stimulator. Where have all the fiscal conservatives gone? Where have all the strict constitutionalists gone? Where have all the rational adults gone?

Last week, President Donald Trump threatened to delay the opening of the new, $4.7 billion Gordie Howe Bridge that connects Detroit to Windsor, Ontario. Chalk this one up to “didn’t see it coming but not at all surprised.”

Most folks around here already know the backstory: The Detroit/Windsor crossing is the busiest international commercial border crossing in North America. The existing bridge, the Ambassador Bridge, has been privately owned (!) by the billionaire Moroun family since 1979, which has gone as badly as you might imagine.

So after many years and much negotiation, a new bridge was agreed upon — with actual, thought-through, legally binding plans. Canada financed the whole thing and will recoup costs over a long period of time through tolls. And so it was jointly built with materials from both countries, and it will be jointly owned.

To seal the mutual deal, it was named after Gordie Howe, a Canadian and a Detroit Red Wing hockey legend. He was a remarkable combination of talent and toughness, something both Canadians and Michiganders appreciate. It is said that Mr. Howe rarely started a fight on the ice, but was highly effective at finishing them. Trump is quite the opposite. I’m looking forward to the bridge opening very soon

We humans are wired to recognize patterns, which has come in handy. For example, being able to observe when and where a hungry bear or lion might show up, our ancestors were able to avoid them and survive long enough to become our ancestors.

So it’s always at least a little jarring when we cannot detect a pattern. It’s these instances that are an endless resource for political cartooning in particular and satire in general.

In Michigan, communities are coming together to figure out ways to prevent developers from building new data centers. Whatever you feeling may be about the data centers themselves, it is heartening to see people unite for a shared cause with the intention of ensuring the future health of their common community. That should be the expected pattern.

But at the very same time, there is a surprisingly strong counter-community current when it comes to vaccinations for our children. Despite overwhelming evidence of vaccines ensuring community health, an alarming number of people don’t seem to care at all about the future health of their common community. So despite measles outbreaks (a disease once thought eliminated in the United States), St. Clair County here in Michigan is trying to make it easier for parents to opt out of vaccines.

It kinda feels like they are leading their community right into the path of a hungry bear.