Thursday, December 16, 2021

A Person of the Year: Jamie Raskin How one politician devoted his fight for democracy to his lost son. (David Remnick, The New Yorker)

New Yorker Editor David Remnick pays tribute to heroic U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin.   We must reject the fascists among us and keep them from destroying our democratic republic with authoritarian demagogy. It is up to us.  

Here in Florida and St. Johns County, we're exposing the corrupt, craven, other-directed Dull Republican politicians who need to have their consciousness raised, or be replaced by the voters at their earliest opportunity -- willful reckless, reckless insurrectionist enablers like Florida Governor RONALD DION DeSANTIS.

From The New Yorker:


A Person of the Year: Jamie Raskin

How one politician devoted his fight for democracy to his lost son.


A Person of the Year: Jamie Raskin

How one politician devoted his fight for democracy to his lost son.
A photograph of Rep. Jamie Raskin working with fellow House impeachment managers and aides.
The congressman seems worthy of special note because of the unforgettable and tragic circumstances in which he has fought for individual and collective liberty.Photograph by Erin Schaff / The New York Times / Redux
A photograph of Rep. Jamie Raskin working with fellow House impeachment managers and aides.The congressman seems worthy of special note because of the unforgettable and tragic circumstances in which he has fought for individual and collective liberty.Photograph by Erin Schaff / The New York Times / Redux

Ninety-four years ago, the editors of Time magazine declared the transatlantic aviator and anti-Semite Charles Lindbergh their first-ever Man of the Year. This editorial gambit proved a winner on the newsstand, and a parade of Presidents, Prime Ministers, and other worthies followed. There have been a few odd choices along the way. In 1941, the editors tapped Dumbo, the Disney elephant, as Mammal of the Year. Alas, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, rudely relegating the animated pachyderm to the inside pages of the magazine. F.D.R. seized Time’s cover and the annual laurel in Dumbo’s stead.


This year, the wealthiest individual in the world, Elon Musk, was Time’s choice for Person of the Year. I speak for no one except myself, but is this the moment to valorize a supposed man of science who cast early doubt on the covid vaccines and told the world that “kids are essentially immune”? Might as well give the accolade to Eric Clapton. 

Others on Time’s list of “most influential people” for 2021 are distinctly more inspiring­­­–Stacey Abrams, for example, who is leading the fight against voter suppression in the U.S., or the Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who is languishing in a prison camp at the order of Vladimir Putin.

And yet one person of the year, an individual who embodies both the tragedy and resilience of our time, was missing: Jamie Raskin. A Democratic member of the House, Raskin is fifty-nine and represents Maryland’s Eighth District. He was at the Capitol with his colleagues on January 6, 2021, to witness what should have been the routine certification of Joe Biden’s election as President. Instead, he witnessed an insurrection. This bloody assault, which threatened constitutional democracy and the nation’s democratically elected leaders, came just one day after the burial of Thomas Bloom Raskin, the congressman’s beloved twenty-five-year-old son. At the Capitol, Raskin told me, he could still hear the sounds of the day before: the prayers of mourning, the clods of dirt shovelled onto the casket. Meanwhile, maniacs shouting deranged slogans and threats were storming down the hallways of Congress in search of enemies.

Tommy Raskin, by all accounts, was a brilliant, politically committed student, who had been attending Harvard Law School. He was an antiwar activist, a believer in justice for human beings and animals alike, a hungry reader, an avid writer—a generous, decent young man who, as a statement from his family described him, possessed “a perfect heart, a perfect soul, a riotously outrageous and relentless sense of humor, and a dazzling radiant mind.” Tommy Raskin also suffered from depression. And his condition deepened during the long months of covid. On the morning of New Year’s Eve, Raskin found his son dead in bed. Tommy had taken his own life and left behind a handwritten note for his parents and two sisters: “Please forgive me. My illness won today. Please look after each other, the animals, and the global poor for me. All my love, Tommy.”

When I first spoke to Jamie Raskin, early in the year, it was nearly impossible for him to talk about his son without weeping. This has eased somewhat. Now, whole minutes go by when his mind does not dwell on the loss and what he might have done­­ to save his “dear boy.” Raskin has also been consumed by a sense of mission. Not long after the insurrection failed, Nancy Pelosi tapped him to be the lead manager of Trump’s second impeachment trial, a task he performed with eloquence and organizational skill. Now, as a member of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, he is once more at the center of the struggle over the Trump legacy and the future of constitutional democracy.

The country is not lacking for committed democrats, yet Raskin seems worthy of special note this year because of the unforgettable and tragic circumstances in which he has fought for individual and collective liberty. As we finished our long conversation the other night, he said, “My book was a labor of love for Tommy and my family, but also for our country. I’m on a mission of hope. There are millions of hurting people in the country. We’ve lost more than eight hundred thousand people to covid-19—which means eight hundred thousand grief-stricken families. There are comparable numbers in the opioid crisis, the epidemic of alcohol and drug abuse, a staggering mental-health crisis. We have to bring people some hope. We have to make it clear that part of the solution to despondency is to engage in politics and to fight back.”


David Remnick has been editor of The New Yorker since 1998 and a staff writer since 1992. He is the author of “The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama.”

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