Cognitively unsettling

A cognitively unsettling weekend. John Lewis was my congressman for the three decades I have lived in Atlanta. I happily voted for him as a gentleman, a good man, a happy Christian. I only met him a couple of times and only peripherally. But always a warmth and genuineness for those with whom he was meeting.

In his later years, and with the descent of the Democratic Party into philosophical madness, I occasionally questioned whether to vote for him one more time. But I always did. Partly because of who he was as an individual and partly because I felt it important to celebrate and reward one of those individuals who did the right thing, at the right time, and with everything to lose. Congress must have been a better place for his presence no matter how old.

I am sorry to see his passing and in one fashion thought it highly appropriate that we as a nation take note of his remarkable life.

But there have been two other aspects which I have taken note of and find it hard to reconcile.

One was tangential to Lewis. On the day of John Lewis's funeral service, July 30th, Herman Cain also passed away. His life story was as strikingly dramatic as John Lewis's but in a completely different fashion. He also grew up in poverty and in an age of segregation. But what a path he carved. From Wikipedia.

Cain grew up in Georgia and graduated from Morehouse College with a bachelor's degree in mathematics. He then earned a master's degree in computer science at Purdue University, while also working full-time for the U.S. Department of the Navy. In 1977, he joined the Pillsbury Company where he later became vice president. During the 1980s, Cain's success as a business executive at Burger King prompted Pillsbury to appoint him as chairman and CEO of Godfather's Pizza, in which capacity he served from 1986 to 1996.

Cain was chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Omaha Branch from 1989 to 1991. He was deputy chairman, from 1992 to 1994, and then chairman until 1996, of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. In 1995, he was appointed to the Kemp Commission, and in 1996, he served as a senior economic adviser to Bob Dole's presidential campaign. From 1996 to 1999, Cain served as president and CEO of the National Restaurant Association.

In May 2011, Cain announced his 2012 presidential candidacy.

Whereas Lewis was of the Ministry and then politics, Cain's accomplishments were both more diverse and more objective. No legatee of affirmative action, he was something of a Renaissance Man excelling in many fields. Elaine Carmen has a charming remembrance of Herman Cain the man, not the media caricature.

And he was absolutely brilliant. Forget the caricature you’ve come to know from political life. I know who he was – a Morehouse man, a mathematician, a computer scientist, a rocket scientist (really!), a business tycoon, ‘the turnaround artist’ who saved so many jobs by saving companies, the treasured friend to Jack Kemp, a father/brother/grandfather… I could go on and on.

He was the product of the segregated south, a man whose father worked three jobs to survive and a mother who was a domestic worker (NEVER “a maid”). He grew up in a three room house until his parents could afford more, and before he and his brother were given the luxury of bedrooms, they used to fight over who would get to sleep on the cot or who had to sleep on the floor. It is a level of poverty and discrimination few alive can ever understand.

Oh, and he survived stage IV liver and colon cancer, too.

I was never an especial fan of Cain's as a politician. He was in my realm of awareness but I just didn't focus on him all that much.

John Lewis was a moral man who helped our nation right a terrible wrong of history. But Herman Cain lived the reality of, and provided the example for the proposition that skin color doesn't matter. If you are bright, hard working, and ethical, it can be amazing what you achieve.

So two good men passing within a two weeks of one another. Two men who gave much to America. Two men who were, in different fashions, estimable and examples to be emulated.

And what has troubled me the past few days is the disparity in how the press has treated the memory of these two. One deservedly celebrated (Lewis) and one disparagingly and minimally acknowledged (Cain). It just feels wrong.

The second sense of discomfiture has been a very obvious implication which I abhor. I celebrate that we are a nation founded on the rule of law and importantly that we are a nation which practices equality before the law. We are all in this together and all equally worthy.

And with John Lewis's funeral services, entailing a lying in state in the Alabama State Capitol, a lying in state in Congress in Washington, D.C., and then finally the lying in state in the Georgia State Capitol followed by a crowded church service, it was unavoidably clear that there is one set of law's for the Mandarin Class and quite another for everyone else. We could not have had a more striking demonstration of the fact that there is no equality before the law. The establishment insiders live under different rules.

There is no dispute that these honors were richly deserved and there would be no issue under normal circumstances.

But we have lockdowns and social-distancing across the nation with greater and lesser punishments depending on jurisdiction for gatherings of 10 or more people. People are arrested for breaking these laws. Children are unable to visit dying parents in the hospital. Family members are unable to bid farewell at funerals. My youngest son was to have served a couple of weeks ago as a pall-bearer of an elderly friend whom he admired. In the event - not possible. Lockdown restrictions.

We are seeing a lot of this and it is profoundly alarming. If you want to protest lockdowns which seem increasingly to have been a mistaken and costly policy, prepare to be arrested. That is not a sanctioned activity by the Mandarin Class.

Want to do a BLM protest or Antifa riot? AOK. That is sanctioned by the Mandarin Class. One law for some, a different law for others.

If the Mandarin Class wish to celebrate the life of one of their own, such as John Lewis, then all the stops are pulled out, lockdowns and social-distancing can be abandoned. Washington, D.C. even extended a blanket exception (aka pardon) post facto to all those who attended Lewis's funeral.

But for ordinary Americans? No, you cannot attend worship services; no you cannot bid farewell to your parents; no you cannot find solace with one another at a funeral.

Americans are not stupid. The hypocrisy is writ large and is a slap in the face. Within the Mandarin Class there is virtually no discussion of the hypocrisy and anyone pointing it out is an uncouth barbarian.

But civilization rests on trust and it is the Mandarin Class who are barbarously betraying that trust, treating themselves as special and subject to dispensations while they instruct and force everyone else to do things which are often unwise and mistaken.

Cognitively unsettling. Trying to reconcile equality before the law, a desire to celebrate John Lewis, and the missing respect for a near peer of John Lewis's and a man with a very broad range of superior achievement.