Commentary

Last week’s Democratic rally in Rockville, headlined by President Biden and featuring an all-star cast of party luminaries, was a big hit, a rollicking show. It gave the party faithful the red-meat rhetoric they were looking for, and just as important, it gave them hope. Maybe the midterms won’t be as disastrous as the Democrats once feared. As I sat in the press section of the raucous gym at Richard Montgomery High School, penned in by the camera riser and some temporary fencing, I found myself wondering, why Maryland and why now?

In May, literary critic Christian Lorentzen published a Substack newsletter about being bored. “Hollywood movies are boring. Television is boring. Pop music is boring. The art world is boring. Broadway is boring. Books from big publishing are boring,” he wrote. Since I have been rather bored, too, I paid $5 to read the entire piece, but was unconvinced by his conclusion, which lays the blame for artistic stasis on the primacy of marketing. The risk aversion of cultural conglomerates can’t explain why there’s not more interesting indie stuff bubbling up. I had hoped that when the black hole of the Donald Trump presidency ended, redirected energy might allow for a cultural efflorescence. So far, that hasn’t happened.

The big news this week regarding Baltimore’s economic future is the announcement that DLA Piper, the international law firm with city roots, is moving its local office back downtown after two decades in the suburbs. The move from Mount Washington just over the line in Baltimore County to the heart of Harbor East is minimal in terms of distance, just 8 miles down the Jones Falls Expressway. But in terms of reasserting the city’s importance to Maryland’s economy, it’s enormous.

Outside the Arundel Center, the headquarters of Anne Arundel County government in Annapolis, a POW-MIA flag proudly flies. If the county adopts Bill 74-22, it will have to be taken down. The flag honoring those still missing and unaccounted for from the Vietnam War would also be banned from any other county-owned flagpole, nor could it be displayed inside or outside any county building. Under the ordinance filed by County Councilman Nathan Volke, only the national flag of the United States, the state flag of Maryland and the official flag of Anne Arundel County could be displayed anywhere on county property.

The right to vote, Dr. Martin Luther King taught in his famous “Give Us the Ballot” address, is one of the “highest mandates of our democratic tradition.” Democracy is founded on the right of citizens to decide via popular, free and fair elections who should represent them. Across the world, the U.S. champions democracy. Yet at home the right to vote is embattled.

Our cities are in peril. We can and must save them. Here in Baltimore, police report more than 665 shootings so far in 2022. That’s an average of 88 shootings a month, up 12% from last year at the same time. Across the country, the story is the same, and we fear the public has become numb to the vast number of shootings and homicides. Each victim of violence is a person with a family. Gun violence often alters a person’s life forever as well as that of their families. Our clinical staff at the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore fight to keep people alive, while the violence only intensifies. Imagine having to tell a family they’ve lost a loved one.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s persistence paid off last week with a milestone in his ambitious toll lane plan to expand portions of the Beltway and Interstate 270, two of the most gridlocked highways in one of the nation’s most gridlocked metropolitan areas. After years of study, the Federal Highway Administration approved a massive environmental review, thereby clearing the way for federal funding. Now Mr. Hogan, a Republican, has less than five months in his term to get further approvals. He’ll need it.