Auchter's Art

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Michigan's Upper Peninsula has a lot similarities to Greenland: It's way up north, not easily accessible, and often described as "arctic."