Erosion of democratic norms

Adam Peck of ThinkProgress reports that the Republican National Committee and pro- nasty guy super PAC America First plan to intimidate and harass journalists who report facts considered critical of the White House. Materials are ready to attack their “ridiculous claims about collusion.”

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville adds:

Those are the sorts of reports that we *must* understand as an erosion of our democratic norms. This is a recognizably authoritarian tactic. It's intimidation of the free press. It's a deliberate strategy.

And that gets lost in the frustratingly ubiquitous rhetoric about Trump being "stupid." The erasure of his cunning and deliberate malice will, quite literally, be the death of this republic.

At a recent rally the nasty guy said in part:

The Democrats have to now decide whether they will continue defrauding the public with ridiculous bullshit. … Partisan investigations, or whether they will apologize to the American people and join us to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure.

Again, McEwan has something to say:

That's...quite the framing. Democrats have defrauded the public and now need to apologize and capitulate to Trump, who wants nothing more than to Make America Great Again. Shiver.

We need to be aware of and understand where this is headed, as every last vestige of potential accountability for Trump falls away. The more unfettered power he knows he has, the worse this is going to get.

Album to musical

I attended a delightful evening of theater yesterday. The show will take a little bit of explaining. In 1991 musician Matthew Sweet created the hit album “Girlfriend.” I don’t know Sweet and had never heard of the album (my tastes are classical, not pop). Recently Todd Almond wove a story around the love songs of the album to create a musical with the same name. Yeah, this is backwards to how most musicals are created, but it sounds similar to shows like Mama Mia (which I haven’t seen).

There’s one more detail that attracted my attention. The story Almond wrote is about gay love. I don’t think that was Sweet’s original intent – the original album title is Girlfriend, after all – though he would have had to give permission for his songs to be used this way.

There are only two characters – Will, a bit of a nerd, and Mike, a jock. The story begins the day Will and Mike graduate from high school and lasts the summer. The two young men are very awkward with each other at first, then growing closer. A big problem is that at the end of the summer Mike leaves town to go to college.

We were told the two actors are recent graduates of the UM School of Music, Theater, and Dance. They did a fine job in both singing and acting. For such a small theater I was disappointed that they used microphones, though I suppose with the band behind them that was the only way they could be heard. The rest of the production was quite well done.

The Max and Marjorie Fisher Music Center in Detroit has three performance spaces. There is the outstanding Orchestra Hall where I go listen to the Detroit Symphony Orchestra perform 15-18 times a year. There is the Cube (formerly the Music Box) where less formal concerts and events are held. The third space, much smaller than the other two, is Allesee Hall. The Detroit Public Theatre uses that hall for its productions.

The whole Music Center was busy yesterday. An orchestra from Oakland County, just north of Detroit, had rented Orchestra Hall for a performance. So there was a huge crowd waiting to get in with their line snaking in front of the box office. But since that wasn’t a Music Center run event, their ticket sales were handled separately. But those of us attending the play had to slip in and out this line to get to the box office.

This time I didn’t see the show the last weekend of its production. It will run two more weekends.

Radicalization and Big Tech

A bit of news that I didn’t post a week ago: This was delightfully swift! New Zealand has banned the military-style semiautomatic and assault guns used in the mosque massacres. They can no longer be sold. There will soon be a buyback program of existing weapons. Owners who don’t comply will be fined. Many gun shop owners had already refused to sell what they had to people wanting to stock up before the ban went into place. Many owners have already turned in these kinds of guns.

NPR had a segment speculating on the difference between American and New Zealand gun culture. Second Amendment! A potent gun lobby! Yeah, but I think there is another component. America has a much stronger level of white supremacy. Our country was built on slavery.

Yes, there is white supremacy in NZ. Just ask any Maori.



The *Marketplace Tech* program on NPR is about five minutes long every weekday. Last week they did a series on how people get radicalized online and what Big Tech can do about it. Before I get into that here’s some sobering and scary statistics reported as part of Tuesday’s episode.

The gunman in the NZ massacres wore a helmet mounted camera to record his carnage. It got posted online. YouTube worked to find and removed tens of thousands of copies of the video. YouTube said the video was being uploaded every second. Facebook said it removed or blocked 1.5 million copies. I later heard they missed 20% of them – or 300,000 copies.

Wow! My heart goes out to the content moderators who were traumatized as they encountered this violence again and again.

So we have a guy so into enforcing social hierarchy that he videos while killing 50 people. And we have perhaps tens of thousands more so into enforcing social hierarchy that they want to make sure the world sees (and is repeatedly terrorized) by this violence. The message is clear: This is what one of ours just did. Submit or you’re next.

Back to what Big Tech is doing. On Tuesday Host Molly Wood talked about it with Becca Lewis of the nonprofit Institute Data & Society.

The extremist communities use humor both as a recruitment tool and because it offers plausible deniability (it’s just a joke!). Lewis’s group learned this from a leaked style guide. Extremists know how to stay just inside the lines by masking real meanings and using dog whistles.

There is definitely a playbook these groups use. They target disillusioned men who feel left behind by the system. They provide a community. They feed explanations on who is to blame for their situation. Then they shift into blaming particular groups.

What can Big Tech do? Treat it as a serious issue. In the same way they tamped down ISIS propaganda videos they need to tamp down supremacist videos. Adjust their operations so that a person watching one extremist video isn’t offered more under the guise of recommending something similar. There are consequences, some unintended, of the way they do business.

As I understand it these white men are disillusioned because they’ve been told all their lives that they are at the top of the hierarchy. But they look at their circumstances and that doesn’t look like the top of the hierarchy. These men are also missing other things – such as being an integral part of a community. They are radicalized by others saying you’re not at the top because those other people stole your spot.

On Wednesday Wood talked to Fathali Moghaddam, a psychology professor at Georgetown University. Radicalization takes place within online echo chambers (or media that acts like echo chambers) where the only voices are those of the group reinforcing each other. An attempt to simply shut it down will prompt users to use a different platform. The reinforcement can be disrupted by refusing to amplify extreme content, instead point users to positive content. Perhaps they can also suggest offline help.

On Thursday Wood talked to Dipayan Ghosh who used to work for Facebook and now is a researcher for the Harvard Kennedy School. Yes, it is hard for Big Tech to block or minimize radicalizing content. But not that hard. They’ve invested dollars into AI to better target ads. They should invest the same number of dollars into AI to identify supremacist content. They already sort out junk mail because they have an economic incentive to do so. But for other content they have an engagement model – what keeps the viewer engaged. Usually that’s more of what was just shown. That business model needs to change. If they don’t do it themselves Europe may force them to do it.

Gerrymander red herring

There is a gerrymandering case before the Supreme Court. I believe the case covers two states, one gerrymandered by the GOP, the other by Dems. Justice Neil Gorsuch has talked about the case. Mark Joseph Stern of Slate explains what’s wrong with those words.

Gorsuch said he’s heard the Court must act because nobody else can. But states have already provided remedies (such as what Michigan did last fall). So why should the Court act?

Stern builds on comments by Tierney Sneed of Talking Points Memo. First problem: in at least 24 states citizens cannot circumvent the legislature and get proposals on the ballot. That’s the method we used in Michigan. No remedy is coming. Second, the Court may strike down citizen redistricting commissions.

When Arizona voted on citizen redistricting, the Supremes upheld it 5-4. Kennedy, that fifth vote, is now gone. If the new commissions in Michigan and Colorado are challenged the Supremes might overturn them. Thankfully, the GOP in Michigan has made no move in that direction.

Gorsuch might also refer to the requirement in HR 1 (the Democrat’s election reform bill) that mandates citizen commissions. See! The Court doesn’t have to handle it! But HR 1 is going nowhere in the Senate. And even if it passed, there is a precedent that says Congress can’t force states to adopt federal law. I don’t know the details of this precedent, but it could be enough of an excuse to invalidate all or part of HR 1.

It is plausible Gorsuch and the Supremes could refuse to police gerrymandering and then refuse to halt it through the democratic process. So Gorsuch’s words are a red herring.



There are 83 ethics complaints filed against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh from his time before he got to the Supremes. The 10th Circuit Court ruled we can’t deal with that. The conduct rules for federal trial and appeals judges don’t apply to the Supreme Court, even if the complaints were filed for incidents while the rules did apply to Kavanaugh.

Elie Mystal of Above the Law says that leaves one thing: impeachment. These ethics complaints are serious. Future nominees need to be told that such ethical breaches will not be tolerated. So it is the job – a Constitutional requirement – of Congress to impeach. If you don’t want to impeach, why did you run for office?

As with impeaching the nasty guy, Mystal says don’t worry about whether the GOP controlled Senate will convict. Impeachment is how the House investigates wrongdoing. Enforcement of laws shouldn’t be based on whether the GOP will agree. Besides, lay out all the ethics violations and a few GOP might flip votes.

Cave but not cross

Tal Kopan is the Washington correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle. She tweeted about the William Barr summary of the Mueller Report:

Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland calls Barr’s memo the story “as told” by Barr. Says he wouldn’t want to read Macbeth “as told by the witches.”

Sarah Kendzior comments on the Mueller Report (which hasn’t been released yet). She said she has pointed out mistakes of the Mueller probe, some of which were fixed.

This was never a well-planned probe. Doesn't make it illegitimate, just poorly done.
...
It would have been an uphill battle even if Mueller had been good at his job. That the criminal groundwork was laid for several decades, including while Mueller headed the FBI, should have tampered expectations. He understood the threat well, but didn't fight it well then or now.

Bill in Portland, Maine, as part of his Cheers and Jeers column for Daily Kos has his take on the Barr letter.

Dear America,

According to the letter released Sunday by Attorney General William Barr, the still-hidden-from-view Mueller Report concludes that President Trump didn’t collude with the Russians.

Perhaps not. But if I may calmly carve out a cache of confirmed concurrent conclusions:

He did (and still does) canoodle with the Russians, cave to the Russians, carry on with the Russians, canonize the Russians, cater to the Russians, cowtow to the Russians, connect with the Russians, cuddle the Russians, coddle the Russians, cackle with the Russians, cling to the Russians, cower before the Russians, caress the Russians, coo at the Russians, click with the Russians, compliment the Russians, congratulate the Russians, carry the Russians' water, cotton to the Russians, converse over a cuppa covfefe with the Russians, clap for the Russians, capitulate to the Russians, and confide to Vladimir Putin: “You complete me.”.

However. we can concede that he doesn’t criticize the Russians, clash with the Russians, curtail the Russians, complain about the Russians, contradict the Russians, cross the Russians, combat the Russians, cajole the Russians, condemn the Russians, curse the Russians, confront the Russians, or constrain the Russians.

Clear? Cool.

Courteously, Bill in Portland Maine

Cumberland County

Olga Lautman shares her take on the Barr letter:

2 years for a “very brief” report is not being transparent. DOJ is whitewashing Trump and GOP’s crimes. If Trump is “not exonerated” then why are him and his kleptocratic family walking around unchecked free to continue committing more crimes.

This is what a coverup looks like. Except this is a slap in our face because Trump and his criminal children are publicly committing crimes with zero care. This is what an Authoritarian state looks like.

Garry Kasparov tweeted:

Nothing Trump did with Putin before the election could be as treasonous as what he's done for Putin since being elected.

He's been colluding right out in the open. The difference is that once you become president, it's nearly impossible to stop, or even investigate properly, especially with GOP help & cronies in key posts.

Utterly absurt, ridiculous, and straight-up gaslighting

The big report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been delivered to the Justice Department. All we know about it at the moment is the four page summary by Attorney General Robert Barr. Since he’s known as a party loyalist there is a lot of skepticism of his summary. But that’s all we have unless and until Democrats can get their hands on the full report.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville has some thoughts.

The collusion between the nasty guy and Russia has been out in the open since the nasty guy’s campaign began and is still right out there.

Trump has been so brazen that the people charged with holding him accountable, including the press, keep looking *past* what he says and does in public, searching for "evidence" of what is already evident. They've convinced themselves that a president can't be a brazen traitor.

In the same way people told us to wait for the Muller Report (it will save us!) the chant has become, “Wait for SDNY!” That’s the Court of the Southern District of New York, prosecutors from which are looking into the nasty guy’s finances.

McEwan isn’t interested in waiting. It seems all the Mueller Report did was allow the GOP to consolidate power. Besides, SDNY had a few decades to act before the nasty guy became president and did nothing.

McEwan has said many times over the last two years she doubts the Mueller investigation would get us very far. The case lacked urgency (a treason case shouldn’t take two years). The vice nasty guy knew (he was the head of the transition), yet he was never considered a person of interest. Just two flags.

About the full report:

That Mueller has reportedly found no evidence of collusion is utterly absurd. Any suggestion to the contrary is straight-up gaslighting. It's fundamentally ridiculous to come to the conclusion that there's no evidence of Trump and members of his circle colluding with Russia.

And it's only slightly less ludicrous to find there isn't actionable evidence that Trump committed obstruction. But here we are.

McEwan isn’t telling she called it two years ago to do a victory lap. She is warning us again so people don’t put their hopes in some other savior (like SDNY) while shouting down the women who have been right all along.

On to some thoughts by Sarah Kendzior. She has studied authoritarian regimes. These thoughts are from a post on Daily Kos.
From what she wrote in January – two months ago:

I’m trying to figure out why those with power haven’t done anything to at least slow autocratic consolidation. I don’t mean obviously complicit GOP actors. I mean Mueller, the FBI or anyone with the capacity to indict. A forceful legal solution was always the only one that would work. It’s a transnational crime syndicate acting as a government. There’s no shame or norms or checks or balances involved here. There never was. And they refused to do it. I keep looking at all these leaders and resourceful people and wondering what they’re thinking, because this is heading to a familiar and VERY bad ending.

When the issue is treason one must act fast.

Because of course they’re going to rewrite the law, pack the courts, and purge you, and censor evidence. This is so basic that I can’t believe they don’t grasp it.

Because it’s so basic, I now think the Mueller probe is essentially fake. It’s designed to get rid of a few inconvenient people and prosecute those who the US can’t really touch (i.e. Russians). It’s not a real investigation and I’m not sure ever was. Barr is there to suppress it. The tactic was to run out the clock and consolidate power as Mueller plods along. That way the public has the illusion of a probe and possible justice, but there was never going to be any. He was never going to do anything that mattered for national security, like indict Kushner much less Trump.

Back to now Kendzior was asked if she finds peace in being so consistently right:

No, it sucks to be right. I want justice, people's suffering to end, freedom and rights for all, and for the American public to quit getting played like a bunch of passive suckers. Maybe after this latest fiasco I'll finally get that last one.

In a Twitter thread Walter Shaub reminds us of all the other things the nasty guy has done that would have gotten a Democrat president impeached. Campaign finance violations, inaugural committee accepting foreign donations, firing FBI director and AG for allowing him to be investigated, asking the DOJ to block the AT&T – Time Warner merger as revenge against CNN, Jared Kushner illegally working around email protocols – the same thing for which the nasty guy has his followers chant “Lock her up!”, nepotism, conflicts of interest, monetizing the presidency, and a lot more.

Yeah, the nasty guy declares himself to be totally exonerated (which is not what Barr’s summary said). But he is being told there will be no consequences for his crimes. He is emboldened. He started talking about revenge. McEwan offfers a few details.

He is preparing to call for organizations to fire members of the media and former government officials who he believes made false accusations about him.

He has circulated talking points to surrogates, sent a memo to TV producers listing his critics who should not appear as guests on various shows. That list includes Reps Adam Schiff, Jerrold Nadler, and Eric Salwell, the heads of various House committees who are starting to investigate him.

And he is turning the whole thing on its head. White House Spokesperson Sarah Sanders:

They literally accused the President of the United States of being an agent for a foreign government. That's equivalent to treason. That’s punishable by death in this country.

I gasped when I read that for the sheer chutzpah (from an administration known for its chutzpah). Sorry, Sarah, accusing the president is not treason. Even so, we see where this is heading.

Healthy masculinity

The radio program 1A hosted by Joshua Johnson on NPR had an episode that talked about How to Raise Boys. This discussion was prompted by the Gillette ad, “Is this the best a man can get?” The show says the ad calls on men to try to shut down the toxic masculinity displayed by men and boys. Some people praised the ad. A few complained about demonizing masculinity. An aspect of the ad that got a lot of attention was fathers interacting with sons – because the definition to be a man is changing, as is the way parents are raising boys. So who sets the standard? Are there traditional elements of masculinity worth keeping?

It is easy to find the Gillette ad online. YouTube says it has been viewed close to 30 million times. 782K gave it thumbs up, 1.4M gave it thumbs down, 421K left comments. I thought Gillette did a fine job with the ad. But I have a beard and haven’t shaved in 43 years.

Rami Chiaviello is a junior at School Without Walls High School in Washington, DC. He gave the perspective of a boy learning the new ways to be a man. He says he learned about manhood from parents, teachers, other public figures, and movies. The learning begins around 2nd-3rd grade. A big influence was gym class. A boy learns to not cry after a skinned knee because other boys laughed at him. He learned to have tough skin.

Gary Barker is the CEO of the organization Promundo. The organization is 20 years old and is worldwide. Their purpose is to engage men and boys in healthy discussions on masculinity after school and after sport. They teach boys to be healthy and full hearted man, not a harm causing man. The phrase toxic masculinity is not an attack on all aspects of masculinity. Healthy masculinity is about honor, empathy, being responsible for actions and children. Most of us get it.

A worldwide view is of man as the provider. Men who can’t meet that feel angry and frustrated. We’ve spent a lot of effort rewriting the scripts for women and girls. We need to do the same effort to rewrite scripts for men and boys.

Rami says a big part of the script handed to him is be emotionally strong. When bullied, learn from it and move on. He disagrees with the script requiring physical strength. He tries to understand what another is going through and be encouraging to others.

Rami is a member of Club MOST: Men of Strength, sponsored by the Men Can Stop Rape organization. The group meets at school on Fridays at lunch to talk about current events and how they relate to being masculine. Meetings start with a check-in. How is each guy doing and feeling? The rest of the session is a discussion of a topic for a week, usually based on recent news.

Rachel Giese is the author of the book Boys: What it Means to Become a Man. She was asked do we know which aspects of masculinity are worth preserving? She replied, Yes, be tough and strong. But there is a danger – boys told to push their emotions away and that’s not good. They’re taught to be tough even at the expense of their emotional well being.

Humans are divided into two groups, one defined with strength, power, violence, competitiveness, the other defined with softness. We have not yet discussed what this definition does to boys and men especially those who don’t live up to the norms.

Listener comments: A father has thrown out the stereotypes and tries to teach his son through that example. A mother wants to teach her sons to treat girls as equals.

Rachel said her son is a child of color. Such boys are seen as having an excess of masculinity – more aggressive. Values that are prized in white boys are used against boys of color who are more likely to be punished in school or by police. Boys of color are seen as more dangerous.

Gary said masculinity has a social aspect that varies by country. But men in all countries chafe under the restrictions placed on them by their country’s rules of masculinity. Men need a space to talk about how the definitions aren’t working – they cause harm to himself or sister or partner. Men need to be able to talk about dissent. Some men have already been living this, speaking out for equality of women.

Rami was asked what top idea of masculinity he would like to eliminate. He replied: single provider – that the man has to be the breadwinner and the woman takes care of the house.

Joe Rogan, on his podcast, reacted to the Gillette ad. He objected to the perception that masculinity (men) is being equated with evil. Rachel responded: There are norms for men that cause them to do damage to themselves and to others. Comments like this one by Rogan shut the conversation down. We need conversations about how to change behavior around sexual violence.

Host Johnson said male energy exists and I need a healthy outlet for it. Gary responded, but there’s a difference between energy, physicality, and violence. Channeling that energy into sports is good. Don’t vilify that part. Vilify the part about dominance, aggression, and violence.

Rami commented that sharing feelings is not a girly thing.

Listener Kyle commented that he had been injured by violence. We need to talk about boys being violent to each other. Gary replied that boys need to be able to say: I felt pain, I felt fear. But the only outlet boys are allowed is more violence. Men don’t know how to deal with trauma. They need to be able to say I can seek help, I can encourage others to do that too.

A clip featured President Obama saying being a man isn’t to dominate, he is to support.

Shouldn’t we simply be talking about raising better humans? Is discussion by gender important? Johnson, who is gay, found the masculinity issue vital. Where to LGBT people fit in the discussion? Don’t we not only need to revise the curriculum, but to also pull pages out? Rachel added but we can’t ignore gender any more than we can ignore race, class, sexual orientation, or gender identity. GBT boys are bullied a lot for not conforming. A homophobic slur is the most common way to put a man down. The assumption is that men who aren’t straight aren’t real men. We see that in gay boys have higher rates of depression and suicide. Masculinity is tied to heterosexuality, a big problem for boys who aren’t straight – but also for straight men who have feminine mannerisms.

Johnson asks but what about the gay boy attracted to masculine men, and then told such a concept is outdated? That gay boy feels screwed.

Gary added yes, this is confusing. So let’s get beyond the binary. Let’s embrace the gay and straight, male and female. Let’s get away from the gender norms. That’s the freedom we’re after.

To sum up the session Rachel said see your children fully. Kids need to express their full selves. Allow boys to live full lives.

Gary’s summary: Sons need to connect and need to practice empathy. Boys need male nurturing, need to see men not dominating.

Count calories no more

Peter Wilson, in a long article in The Economist and its 1843 Magazine, says it is time to declare the Death of the Calorie. Nearly all diet programs follow some variation of counting calories, saying reduce the number of calories going in and increase the calories burned through exercise, and one will lose weight. Except those of us who have struggled with dieting know that doesn’t actually work.

In 1887 Wilbur Atwater popularized the idea of the calorie as a unit of food energy. He conducted experiments, such as burning foods in device that could measure the heat given off. Groundbreaking stuff – for the time.

Wilson lists these problems with counting calories:

Atwater popularized the idea that a calorie is a calorie, no matter the food it is from. So the most calorie dense food – fat – must be bad for you and carbs and sugar must be good. But that kind of diet has made people fatter. As more people became fat various government agencies doubled down on calorie counts. Only recently was it required on menus in America.

Calorie counts listed on food packaging probably aren’t accurate. Regulations allow understating calorie counts by 20%. In some cases they are off by as much as 70%.

A calorie of carbs and a calorie of fat may give off the same amount of heat when burned in the lab, but in a human body there is a lot of difference between the two. There’s also a big variation between human bodies and how well they absorb calories from one food or another. For example, a person with longer intestines absorbs more food.

Calories from sugar and simple carbs are absorbed quickly and can play havoc with insulin regulation. Calories from complex carbs are absorbed much more slowly. And proteins and fats more slowly still.

The amount of calories we absorb from food also depends on preparation. Both chopping and heating aids absorption.

The amount of calories burned by a body also varies. More calories are burned when a person needs to keep warm from cold weather or from drinking calorie free iced tea.

So, what’s a person to do? Eat real food. Listen to your body – eat when hungry and stop when not.

If count calories doesn’t work, why is the idea still promoted? Because the idea is simple. Because there is little momentum to change. Because the idea is entrenched in the diet industry. Because it lets food producers off the hook in justifying their unhealthy products. Because the sugar lobby is strong.

It is time to lay the calorie to rest.

Let us be angry and afraid together

A couple days ago Melissa McEwan of Shakesville started her day of blogging by listing one thing in each category of corruption, malice, authoritarianism, and all of the above that the nasty guy had done just the day before. It doesn’t really matter what those items are. McEwan explains:

Any one of the above items would be a scandal in any other presidency. But Trump's indecency is so colossal, so unfathomable, so relentless that we barely have time to contemplate one horror before the next dozen appear, threatening to crush our capacity to even understand all that is wrong, no less effectively resist all of it.

There’s an important reason why this isn’t an ever mounting scandal. Members of the GOP like what the nasty guy is doing. Every one of them is also corrupt. American news media is controlled by conservative or corrupt people who also like what the nasty guy is doing.

But what I want to do, and will keep doing, is validating your feelings about how f***ed up all of this is. In an age of official and endemic gaslighting, the one thing I can do is tell you: You are right about how terrible s*** is. This is happening. And it monumentally sucks.

Let us be angry, and afraid, and whatever else we need to be together. Chiefly, let us not pretend that this isn't real.

We have a president who is very corrupt, and very cruel, and very dangerous. And sometimes the cost of shoving down our feelings about that just to survive is too great to bear, so we need to be able to take it out and examine it and stare at it.

It's okay to not feel like everything will be okay. Remember who you were before he came around. Remember who you are. Have your feelings about it.

When I am low, like I was after reading the news this morning, I remind myself: He can change a lot of things, but he cannot change me.

And you are beloved by us

I was surprised and pleased by a half page ad that appeared in last Sunday’s Detroit Free Press. The rainbow background caught my attention. It is “A letter to our LGBTQIA+ siblings and their allies from Michigan United Methodists.” A bit of what they wrote:

We grieve the actions taken by the recent global gathering of The United Methodist Church. … These actions do not reflect our own hopes and dreams for The United Methodist Church. Our resistance to this injustice is based on Biblical teaching and our membership vows to “resist evil, injustice an oppression in whatever form it presents itself.” … We commit to advocating and working for the full inclusion of all people in God’s Church. And we humbly ask for your prayers and forgiveness. We say to you our LGBTQIA+ siblings: you are beloved children of God and you are beloved by us.

Most of the space of the ad is taken up by 1700 names, by my estimate, in print a bit too small to read without aid.

I’m pleased some group got the names together to do this.

Anything that helps all the people

The Haka is a ceremonial chant/dance done by the Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand. There are versions for all kinds of occasions. The version performed these last few days is in memory of those who died at the Christchurch Mosque shootings. It may look rather threatening (versions of Haka are to inspire warriors), though it is also an act of solidarity and defiance.

In this Twitter thread Leah McElrath links to three performances of Haka, each less than two minutes. The first one is done by a single guy.

The second is most impressive, a large group doing the Haka in unison. In this one there is a shirtless guy in front. To our right and a bit behind is a man with a child in a green shirt. The first few times we see them the child is on the man’s shoulders. At the end the man is clutching the child. Quite a ride for the child.

The third is a mass Haka in a park near one of the mosques. It is impressive for the sheer number of people, though, alas, many of the white students don’t know what they’re doing. Even so, I’m glad they showed solidarity.

Yeah, I watched all three. Hint: Twitter videos start when the video is in your browser window, but the sound defaults to off.



Robert Reich, who used to be the Secretary of Labor in a Democratic administration and is now a progressive rouser, tweeted a quote from President Harry Truman from 1952. That brought a response with the full quote from user Harry S Truman giving ‘em hell:

Now that is the patented trademark of the special interest lobbies. Socialism is a scareword they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.

Socialism is what they called public power.

Socialism is what they called social security.

Socialism is what they called farm price supports.

Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance.

Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations.

Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.

Scroll down the Twitter thread to see a cartoon of the meaning of socialism since 1790. The ignore the rest of it because it’s all pushback.



Last week Joe Balash, Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management, speaking to a group of fossil fuel industry leaders, said:

One of the things that I have found absolutely thrilling in working for this administration is the president has a knack for keeping the attention of the media and the public focused somewhere else while we do all the work that needs to be done on behalf of the American people.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville pounced:

Hey, Joe — if opening the ocean to oil and gas drilling is really something that "needs to be done on behalf of the American people," then why do you need the president to distract us from noticing that you're doing it?

Commenter carovee adds:

Oh dear. Someone in Trump's white house said the silent part out loud again. I wish this would get a lot more attention.

For two years now McEwan has been saying limiting illegal immigration is only the first phase. Next will be limits legal immigration. And now that’s a step closer. From the Washington Post:

The Trump administration is preparing to shutter all 21 international offices of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a move that could slow the processing of family visa applications, foreign adoptions, and citizenship petitions from members of the military.

McEwan responds:

Should the State Department approve this proposal and the plan moves ahead, it will feel very much to me like the Trump Regime is rolling down the shades on documented immigration and communicating to the world that America is closed.

And an authoritarian who mounts a successful bid to keep people out will next turn his attentions to keeping people in.

Shiver.

Ryan Knight describes himself as a Democratic activist who fights for LGBTQ equality, racial justice, women’s rights, and environmental justice. He posted a video of a wonderful epic rant by Arkansas State Senator Stephanie Flowers, a black woman. The Senate was debating a bill for a stand your ground law. There are such laws in several states and the one in Florida allowed George Zimmerman to be acquitted for the murder of Trayvon Martin. So when it is her turn to speak against the bill she rants, “This is about my son!” Eventually the senate timekeeper says she needs to stop. She replies, “I will not! What you gonna do – shoot me?”

The video ends with some statistics.

A study found that stand your ground states have more gun deaths and white people who kill Black people in those states are 250% more likely to go free. Arkansas’ stand your ground bill was defeated by a slim margin.

A couple of Knight’s recent tweets:

Roxanne Witing tweeted:

Thank you Ryan for the eye opening posts. Being Canadian we don’t see all of this in print.

He replies:

We don’t see it in print in America either. Corporate media’s chosen to “both sides” & normalize the Trump presidency. The only place to find the TRUTH these days is amongst the activists, the truth tellers & the resistance—and we won’t stop until this fascist presidency is over.

And in the second tweet:

Republicans are inaccurately labeling Democrats “socialists” while Democrats are not labeling Republicans fascists. That is the difference between the 2 parties. Republicans win the propaganda war by attacking with lies while Democrats play nice, which normalizes Trump & the GOP.

Act now or swim later

On Friday students around the world went on a Climate Strike. They skipped class to protest inaction on doing something about global warming and the environment. In an article on The Guardian there is a summary and then a whole lot of pictures. From that summary:

This student movement was inspired by Greta Thunberg, who started sitting outside the Swedish Parliament last August. Thunburg is now nominated for a Nobel Prize.

There were likely more than 1 million protesters taking part in more than 2,000 events in 125 countries on six continents. The biggest protest appears to be in Sydney with 30,000 protesters. Melbourne might be second with over 20,000. And in Melbourne students are calling the local member of Parliament and chanting into the phone, asking him to step up and do something. Australian Education Minister Dan Tehan complained that the student should protest after school or on weekends. And they should join the National Action Day Against Bullying. They shouldn’t be encouraged by green political activists. Student reaction: He’s clueless.

During the same day US diplomats watered down agreements to eliminate single use plastics.

The link above is to the first of fourteen pages of pictures and commentary of protests around the world. I looked at the pictures on all of those pages, though didn’t read all the commentary. A second link is to a page with some of the best signs. A selection:

I’d be in school if the earth was cool.

Sorry, I can’t clean my room, I have to save the planet.

I am missing science class for this.

A quote from Albert Einstein, “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”

The climate is more hopeless than my high school graduation.

Act now or swim later.

Love Too much CO2 is in the air.

I want a hot date, not a hot planet.

And from some of those fourteen pages:
Why the actual f*** are we studying for a future we won’t even have?

Choose between Green or Greed.

I learnt science unlike the clowns in Parliament.

It’s so bad even the introverts are here.

How many people does it take to change the globe?

I cannot fit all my concerns on one sign.

Climate action is like my homework: overdue.

Impeach to protect us

As part of their podcast Gaslit Nation, Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa lay out the case for impeachment. This is in response to Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying she’s not for impeachment. I quote sections from the transcript.

Trump has committed these crimes in plain sight and confessed to some of them, like obstruction, on television. These are not merely constitutional violations but severe threats to national security and public safety that require immediate action – investigation and indictment as well as impeachment.
…
Any possibility of bipartisan support for impeachment, for the GOP to put country before party is a myth. The Republicans created this situation: they long ago abdicated their duty through corruption and capitulation. If the GOP were to impeach Trump, they would effectively impeach themselves, since they are caught in Trump’s web of criminality.
…
All Trump cares about is money, power and being immune from prosecution. Impeachment hearings actually threaten all three of these things.
…
We have heard from younger voters and voters from marginalized groups who no longer want to vote for the Democratic candidate because her flippant dismissal of impeachment as an outcome has led them to believe that the two parties are the same. They are not the same: one party is an existential threat, and one party is deeply flawed. We encourage you to support the Democratic candidate in 2020. But we demand that the Democrats confront our grim reality head on – that there may not be a 2020, that there may not be free and fair elections, and that every day is damage done. It may be a partisan game to you, Speaker Pelosi, but for the rest of us, and for this country, it is a matter of life or death.

It is critical that the stakes are made clear. Refusal to impeach sends the message that the situation cannot possibly be that dire – it if were, the Democrats would move to impeach, right?
…
Let us be clear: we do not think that, if the House impeaches Trump, the GOP-dominated Senate will convict. We also do not think that if the Senate, by some miracle, impeaches Trump, that he will leave. Trump has made it clear he will not leave office even if the will of the people demands it in an election, and even if the will of Congress demands it in impeachment. Trump is an aspiring autocrat, and the GOP is seeking a one-party state.

So what is the point of the House impeaching Trump? An informed public is a powerful public, and hearings are the best way of informing the people on what the White House has done.
…
The House must begin impeachment proceedings to help restore America's standing in the world and because it is their constitutional duty.

Impeachment sends a message about who we are as a country and what we will accept and abide. The rule of law demands action. Refusing to take action is normalizing atrocity. Lawlessness must be confronted regardless of the outcome, as a matter of principle and conscience. Fighting only the battles that you know you will win is a sure way of ensuring you lose; preemptive surrender, in a rapidly consolidating autocracy, is permanent surrender. The American people have suffered enough under Trump; they should not have to suffer due to Pelosi’s capitulation as well. We all deserve better than this.

In a tweet Kendzior quotes Cholpon, an Uzbek poet killed in Stalin’s purges. Kendzior says we Americans should embrace these ideas. She adds, “Do not submit to those who abuse you; do not obey in advance.”

Part of what the poet wrote (translated from Russian):

You are alive, not dead,
You are a man, you are a human,
Don’t be in chains,
Don’t beg,
Because you also are born free!

A tweet from LOLGOP. The first part is from Ron Fein, the second from Kendzior.

It's about protecting us, not punishing Trump.

Jamal Khashoggi might be alive today and hundreds of kids might not be orphaned if Congress did what it should.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville adds to the discussion, first responding to Pelosi saying impeachment is “divisive.”
http://www.shakesville.com/2019/03/nancy-pelosi-im-not-for-impeachment.html

And, yes, it is. Except the country is already divided — into people who support a vile authoritarian bigot whose agenda is undiluted malice and who is subverting our democracy to turn the country into a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Kremlin, and people who are resisting this relentless nightmare with everything we've got.
…
And if I still believed we had free and fair elections the outcomes of which Trump would respect, or unbiased courts through which we could seek legal remedies, then I would be advocating against impeachment for all of those reasons.

But I don't see whence will come relief anymore. The longer we wait, the longer Trump and the Republican Party has to consolidate their power. And they are exploiting every second for maximum gains.

Meanwhile, people are dying — in the United States, along the southern border, in Syria, in Somalia, in Yemen, and elsewhere around the world — because of the Trump Regime. Pelosi may be right that Trump really isn't worth the potential costs of using every tool in the drawer, but they are.

Fernand Amandi, in a tweet, says that soon after Pelosi made that statement

thousands of accounts mushroom out of the nowhere with the exact same somnambulistic mantra, “Relax, she’s playing chess.”

Kendzior she got lots of those too. She adds:

An authoritarian mindset is not only about accepting abuse of power. It's about unquestioning submission to authority, period, even that which seems benign. It's conformity, complacency, and capitulation.

So … Don’t be lulled into complacency.

Go Green!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! From long ago genealogy research that my mother did I knew one branch of my father’s ancestors came from County Antrim in Northern Ireland. So on St. Patrick’s Day I knew I was supposed wear orange. I may have done that once in my youth, but mostly I wore green.

My research over the last year or so shows that another branch of Dad’s ancestors came from the South – County Meath, County Cavan, County Wexford, and Dublin. The two branches began to intermarry in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in 1725.

So, I and my siblings have a right to wear green.

Though from what I saw today at the grocery store lots of people wore green that looked like they didn’t have a drop of Irish blood in them.

When I was in Northern Ireland in 2001 I visited some of the museums where I learned some of the history of the area. The English took over the six counties of the North in 1604 (I don’t remember the method). These English nobles cleared out much of the native Irish and brought in some Scots to do the labor on these estates. And this included some of my ancestors. James Moore was born in Glasgow in 1612. His son James Jr. was born in County Antrim in 1650. Junior’s son Andrew and his son James III moved to Pennsylvania sometime between 1717 and 1725.

Praise of “us” and condemnation of “them”

A couple things to share with you from the March 1 edition of The Washington Spectator.

Patricia Roberts-Miller is a professor of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Texas at Austin. She says rhetoric is an old and universal art. She defines it with a quote from Aristotle (yeah, that old): as the “art of finding the available means of persuasion.” Those who study rhetoric have described and cataloged the various methods of persuasion and can point out which methods various speakers use.

So professors of rhetoric aren’t surprised at what methods the nasty guy is using. Actually, method – he appears to be using only one: demagoguery:

Demagoguery displaces policy argumentation with praise of “us” and condemnation of “them,” an it is as prevalent now as it was in Weimar Germany.

Alas, we now live in a culture where demagoguery is considered the normal way for people to argue. Note that this form of rhetoric means the speaker isn’t actually talking about policy.

For those a bit rusty on German History, the Weimar Republic existed just after WWI and its desperate economic situation gave rise to Hitler. Kenneth Burke studied the rhetoric of Mein Kampf and saw that Hitler projected all of Germany’s problems on the Jews. If you didn’t agree with Hitler you were declared to be Jewish, or at least “Jewified.”

If you don’t support us, we’ll declare you to be one of them.

Burke discusses “inborn dignity,” the idea that all humans are born to God and thus automatically have respect and dignity. That idea is behind a lot of movements of liberation.

Burke argued that Hitler bastardized the principle of inborn dignity by asserting that such dignity was born only to certain people. That same bastardization surfaces in the notion of Christianity being racially determined and is behind the rhetoric of Christian identity, conservative Christian defenses of slavery and segregation, and the kind of of right-leaning Christian groups that support Trump.

Yeah, they’re saying some people are not of God, they don’t naturally have dignity, they’re not human. That’s an essential part of the “us v. them” argument.

Roberts-Miller says the nasty guy isn’t Hitler.

But does he use Hitler’s rhetoric? Yes. That doesn’t make Trump unique or even unusual.
…
What happens in a culture of demagoguery is that people think in zero-sum terms about politics: whether our country ends up with a good policy matters less than ensuring the winner is “us” (our faction) – or at least that we can make “them” lose.

That is the objective of Trump’s rhetoric and the rhetoric of this loyal media. Anything that makes “them” (“libruls,” government employees, low-income recipients of support) angry is a win. This is his single most important strategy. And he can count on it being repeated. He thereby dodges policy argumentation, turns every issue into a question of belief in him, scapegoats relentlessly, projects his failures onto the out-group (anyone who disagrees with him is a librul), openly invokes racism, and has a media that will support him.

Trump isn’t Hitler, but he has put the rhetorical strategies of modern history’s most galvanizing and villainous demagogue to effective use.

In the other Washington Spectator article, Steven Pressman, professor of economics at Colorado State University, discusses the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 that ended WWI. He does this through the objections of economist John Maynard Keynes, who was a member of the diplomatic support team from Britain. Keynes resigned in protest when he saw how the negotiations were going. Then he wrote the book “The Economic Consequences of Peace” to explain his reasons. These were:

* The reparations demanded of Germany were too harsh. Germany couldn’t possibly pay them. The attempt would put the German economy into a tailspin (see Weimar Republic above). The falling German economy would also affect the United States, France, and Britain, the winners in the war.

* The German people, faced with imposed austerity, would become increasingly angry (see Hitler above).

This peace treaty, wrote Keynes, would make another war more likely. War resumed 20 years later.

The way out, wrote Keynes, was less punishing reparations, a different way for the Allies to pay off war bonds, and the promotion of international trade.

That last idea caught on after WWII and became the European Union.

Pressman says we didn’t learn the lessons of this disastrous peace treaty.

* In the last decade or so, the European Union – led by Germany, no less – imposed austerity on Greece and Spain. Britain imposed austerity on itself. Their economies stagnated.

* Workers around the world see their standard of living fall and they are becoming angry. We get Brexit, Americans blaming the Chinese, the election of the nasty guy and the rise of far-right politicians in France, Hungary, and Italy.

* The nasty guy declares he is “Tariff Man” – trying to destroy international trade.

If only we could get rid of that “us v. them” mentality.

Don’t blame it on being drunk

Yesterday I went to the town of Chelsea to attend a performance at the Purple Rose Theatre. Yeah, this is the one started by Jeff Daniels in his hometown. Chelsea is far enough away that I get to the theater about every other year. The play’s subject matter must really be appealing.

The play was Never Not Once by Carey Crim and these performances were the world premier. The appeal was it was about a lesbian couple and the daughter they were raising. Even better, that the couple is lesbian isn’t the focus of the story. The focus is the daughter, now in college, wanting to find her biological father.

It’s also a #metoo story. The man does what he always does in these sorts of stories. He lies. His version of the story differs in key ways from hers. He uses euphemisms for what happened. His apologies are vague, and to the women unconvincing. He is more worried about his reputation than the harm he has caused. He blames it all on being drunk and on being a frat boy. The daughter’s boyfriend calls out that last excuse and the women insist on an honest confession.

The show was, of course, excellent in its acting and all its details. One expects it from the Purple Rose and I’ve never been disappointed.

Yesterday was a rainy day, though I did get in an afternoon walk to enjoy the warm temperature. I went to Chelsea in time to pick up my ticket, walk a block to a restaurant for supper, and have plenty of time before the show started. After supper, with 25 minutes until the show started I considered walking around Chelsea’s small downtown even with my umbrella up, but there were flashes of lightning. I thought it best to walk straight to the theater.

As I came up to the theater I saw no one in the lobby, which I thought rather odd. Once in the door the staff said, there’s a tornado watch in effect. Please join us in our basement until it is over. Staff were posted along the route to guide us to the Green Room. There were already lots of people there. The staff offered water, soda, and snacks (I had just eaten) and brought in more chairs. Some people had phones out following the course of the storm.

After a half hour (and a bit after the scheduled show time) we were invited back upstairs. The show started 20 minutes late.

After the show I saw my friend and debate partner. Without consulting each other we had chosen the same night to see the show. He was there with his girlfriend and brother’s family, all of whom I’d met before.

Bulldoze competition

Elizabeth Warren made a big splash with her proposal to split up tech giants Amazon, Google, and Facebook. Some of her points:

* Monopolies in general stifle innovation. An antitrust case against Microsoft allowed Google and Facebook to emerge.

* These big companies have too much power over out economy, society, and democracy. They bulldoze competition.

* They use mergers to limit competition. Warren would appoint regulators to undo some of the latest mergers, such as Amazon and Whole Foods.

* They create proprietary marketplaces and use those to limit competition. If a company is a marketplace platform it should not also do business on that platform. When it does business on the platform there is incentive to skew the platform to favor its business.

* Monopolies don’t compete. One area where they don’t compete is in protecting privacy.

Slavery reparations

Reparations to descendants of slaves has come up again. I think I’ve heard people are annoyed at Bernie Sanders because he keeps adding, “Don’t forget the poor white people.” Pushback from other people prompted Ida Bae Wells to write a Twitter thread to counter some of the ideas tossed about, such as “all slaves are dead.”

* Jim Crow laws, the successor to slavery were legal until 1968. Racial discrimination, though supposedly illegal, still exists. That is a significant cost to people who are still alive.

* A lot of the New Deal programs were not available to black people.

* If a loved one died because of medical malpractice, should the family be denied compensation because the actual victim is dead?

But, as always in this country, start talking about treating black people fairly and everyone loses their minds.

Commenter Champignon Papi adds that since descendants of slave owners profit from intergenerational wealth, some of that should go to slave descendants.

Money and power paper over every sin

Paul Manafort was recently sentenced for one batch of crimes. The sentence for another batch will come soon. In this first batch the prosecution asked for 19-25 years in jail. The judge gave him four. That prompted Jasmin Mujanovic to tweet:

The Manafort sentence should be further proof that the Mueller probe & its accompanying activities will not “save” constitutional & democratic governance in the US. Only the will of elected officials & civil society mobilization can ensure that (cf. South Korea).

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos, in a post written before the Manafort sentencing, explains justice as it relates to the nasty guy and his cronies.

The real revelation of the investigations into Trump and his foreign connections isn’t even that the man occupying the White House is a crook, and the man who ran the Republican convention three times and acted as an adviser to a half-dozen presidents is a crook, and so is his partner, and so is *his* partner, and so are they all. The real revelation is that *it took a special counsel* to see any of these men face serious prosecution no matter what they did, or how often they did it, or how “bold” their crimes might be.

That being a “winner” in America appears to be synonymous with being not just a crook, but a monster, isn’t exactly a new theory, but we’ve been reminded of it via the day-by-day results of the investigation into Trump. Threats, abuse, bribery, lies, extortion, and above all the blatant assumption that money and power will paper over any sin aren’t the exception for men like Trump and company. They’re the air they breathe.
...
The shocking thing to them is not that crimes were being committed, or are being committed. The shocking thing is that anyone, anywhere, is getting in the way.

What Trump knows, and what should be the most sobering discovery to emerge from the entire investigation, is that, barring the extraordinary circumstances of a special counsel or someone with similar authority, men like him will not face justice for crimes. And in fact, they will go on lying, cheating, stealing, with impunity.
...
What the special counsel investigation has revealed is that there’s not one justice system in America, or even two. For those with enough money and power, there’s no justice at all.

The budget through his eyes

The nasty guy has submitted his budget to Congress. Congress usually ignores this document and the Democrats in the House will continue that tradition. Even so, it is useful to see what the nasty guy has in mind. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos has the highlights (so you can skip this 200 page tweet to his base).

Trump’s budget would wildly inflate the military, plow billions into his “Space Force,” drastically cut many domestic programs, funnel huge amounts of money into an emergency-declaration friendly slush fund, and still leave the budget wildly out of balance for decades.

And that slush fund? The nasty guy wants $175 billion without any Congressional oversight.

What’s not in the budget:

Trump’s budget has a major target for cuts—poor people. Programs to fight poverty would see huge cuts under claims that they “discourage people from returning to work.” What would encourage them? Cuts to food assistance. Cuts to public housing. Cuts to Medicaid. Because nothing gets people up and working like being starving, sick, and homeless.

Programs that are supposed to guard the public health and environment would also see massive cuts—though since the last two years have seen a reduction in the number of criminal prosecution by the EPA to a level not seen since there has been an EPA, it’s not clear that these program cuts would make much difference under Trump.

Overall, Trump’s budget would do the same thing he’s already done—steal from the poor, give to the wealthy, inflate the military, and provide even more money that he could use as he wills, no matter what Congress says. Which is why, on this proposal at least, Congress will say no.

At least Trump wouldn’t have to fret another infrastructure week, because his budget also makes draconian cuts to transportation budgets.

Lifetime appointments

This afternoon I saw the movie How to Train Your Dragon, the Hidden World. I enjoyed the two previous movies in the series. I quite enjoyed this one as well. I think it had the charm and depth of story that was missing from *Mary Poppins Returns* which I saw last week.



Just another day in America … NOT!

Since migrants wanting to seek asylum in the United States near San Diego now have to stay in Tijuana, Mexico until their turn comes, American lawyers, as well as immigration activists and journalists, have to frequently cross the border. Customs and Border Protection have compiled a list of dozens of these helpful people with a directive to stop them for questioning. The list describes them as “Suspected Organizers, Coordinators, Instigators, and Media.”

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville reminds us:

This is rank authoritarian intimidation right at the intersection of the Trump Regime's wars on the press, immigrants, and dissidents.
…
This administration's vile nativist agenda treats migrants, refugees, and their advocates as the collective canary in their coal mine.

The targeting and intimidation of journalists, lawyers, and immigration activists under the auspices of "national security" is intolerable on its face, but understand that whatever the Trump Regime is doing to people at the southern border, they will expand to the broader population eventually.

We must resist these authoritarian strategies not only because they are cruel and indecent and unjust, but also because if we fail to resist them, they will proliferate.

Time to make some noise. Call your Senators and rep.

Jennifer Bendery, reporting for The Huffington Post has been following the nasty guy’s judicial nominees and their approvals by the GOP majority in the Senate. A couple things Bendery found:

Some of these nominees are really young. Allison Jones Rushing is only 37. And this is for a lifetime appointment.

Before being nominated for the Circuit Court, Rushing worked for Alliance Defending Freedom, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has classified as a hate group. A lot of nominees are recommended by ADF or the Federalist Society.

Many of these nominees, such as Rushing, have little experience.

1 in 6 seats on the US Circuit Courts is now filled by a judge nominated by the nasty guy.

McEwan adds:

The primary — indeed only — qualification is being a conservative ideologue who will limit the rights of marginalized people and protect privilege (and the people who enjoy it).

The nasty guy has been able to move so many nominations so quickly is because gravedigger McConnell refused to confirm judges during Obama’s presidency, leaving well over 100 vacant seats the nasty guy is rapidly filling.

The Circuit Courts are important. They hear more than 7,000 cases a year. The Supremes review less than 150 of them.

McEwan again:

The Republican Party, led by Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump, and Mike Pence — and let us never forget the contributions of erstwhile Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan — are reshaping the judiciary to ensure that it has little power or wont to provide checks and balances on the executive branch.

Right now, with the exception of newly-empowered House Democrats, the courts are We the People's only possibly remedy to Trump's attempts to subvert our democracy *permanently*. The courts are where we turn to deliver checks and consequences on a president who has zero respect for the rule of law or democratic norms.

The GOP knows that. And they want to remove that barrier to their goal of unfettered power. Chillingly, it's working.

There was an oil spill from a damaged ship near the Solomon Islands, threatening an environmental gem and a UNESCO Heritage Site. That allowed Bill in Portland Maine to change a few words and make an interesting point on his Cheers and Jeers post on Daily Kos.

A sunshine spill in the Pacific Ocean's Solomon Islands after a solar energy's cargo ship ran aground is threatening an endangered environmental gem.

"The impact of this sunshine spill will have a devastating effect on the surrounding environment … ” Australia's High Commissioner to the Solomon Islands Rod Brazier said in a statement.
…
Press reports said that 75 tons of solar energy have spilled into the ocean already…

I'm sure that by now you know it wasn't really a "sunshine spill," because that would be nonsensical. I was, of course, just making a point by changing a key word to demonstrate what could never happen with solar energy. … I just hope they figure out how to safely dispose of those 675 tons of wind.

Be yourself

Reading Between the Lines yesterday, beyond the article about the United Methodist Church and a discussion with the bishop of Michigan, I came across a little blurb about the documentary Making Masculine. Knowing that a great deal of what is wrong in the world is a result of toxic masculinity I thought this would be a good one to see.

But there was a problem – it was being shown on the Oakland University campus at noon on Saturday. It takes me 45 minutes to get there. Now, I would go that far for an interesting reason, but alternatives should be explored.

I found the alternative. The movie is online on the streaming service Vimeo. Paying $3 to watch it at home (where I could take notes) was better than driving all that way. I didn’t get the panel discussion with the filmmaker, but I did get to see the short “making of” video.

The movie is a discussion with three people. We see Nicholas Swatz, the filmmaker who turns the camera on himself. He is a gay man. Justin is also gay. The third one is Dakota, a drag queen. We see her only in drag. There are a few occasions where psychologist Farah Ali has a few words.

Swatz made the film to start a discussion about masculinity in the gay world. Towards the end he says the same issue plays out in the straight world. So the discussion isn’t as broad as I had hoped. Even so, it is important.

The film begins with little text blocks supposedly from gay dating apps. Barely into a conversation and one of the men says “no fems.” The movie will delve into that later.

But on the surface: There is fear among gay men about appearing too feminine because of the culture’s emphasis on masculinity. So we’ll start the exploration there.

And we start with some examples. A man complementing another man is seen as a threat to masculinity. But a woman can complement another woman. Men are insulted by being compared to a girl. Parents interact differently with male and female children. Boys don’t have flexibility with what toys they play with. When a boy plays with feminine stuff dad and mom will yell at him.

Our country is rooted in religion. Many religion have prohibitions on homosexuality. The movie included excerpts of sermons in which pastors urged parents to come down hard on any hint of femininity in their boys.

Dakota said she grew up religious. I think I remember Nicholas saying the same. Both of them prayed hard not to be gay. It didn’t work.

Justin tried not to act gay. He didn’t want people to immediately see him as gay.

Nicholas doesn’t like a lot of things about himself – his voice is to high, he’s too skinny and too small. He doesn’t like those things because lots of people would say they don’t like those things about him. He doesn’t have to come come out – he looks gay. It took him a while to see that as an advantage.

Dakota said that coming out is an obnoxious thing LGBT people have to do – they have to declare themselves not to be normal.

Dakota also said that gay men do something called splitting. They show three different people to the world – one for the gay bar, one for the family, and one for work. They learn how to be chameleons. In the gay man’s mind there’s nothing wrong with that, they’re not lying. For example, Dakota has a corporate job and wears suits at work. No one at his office would know he does drag. But it takes effort to be three different people.

Justin doesn’t want to be associated with the word effeminate. He has a masculine body and wants to be seen as that. Yet he has an effeminate manner. So people know he’s gay. And when people are surprised he’s gay he is pleased. But that pleasure is troubling. He doesn’t want to care that people see him as effeminate.

Nicholas says he pulls back his feminine side when with other men so they don’t feel comfortable. But why should he care? He’s being himself.

The psychologist says it is exhausting to try to fit in. A person who is outside what is considered normal gets a lot of feedback from others about not fitting in or fitting the norm. That feedback can lead to anxiety and depression.

A quote from the movie: “Femmephobia is rife within the LGBT community, usually as a form of respectability politics in which effeminate, twink, camp, etc., men are held as responsible for the ‘bad’ image of the gay rights movement.” We masculine gay men would fit into the wider world much better if it wasn’t for these feminine gay men.

Back to those dating apps. Dakota says declaring “no fems” is writing off people before meeting them. That is marginalizing them. It can mean missing out on a partner who matches all other traits you might be looking for.

Nicholas adds that a person who says “no fems” can justify it by saying it’s called as a preference – I’m gay… I’m attracted to men. But that can be taken to an extreme. It is also meaningless because everyone has their own definition of masculine. This comes from not being comfortable in your sexuality. You don’t want to be the token gay best friend. Or it makes our community look bad. Or it is the idea the feminine equals bad or weak.

Justin wants a partner that embraces both sides of his personality. The emphasis on masculinity doesn’t make sense because all men have a sensitive side. They’re hiding behind a word. He doesn’t like to choose between feminine and masculine. He’s just being himself.

Masculinity is a construct we’ve created. It has attracted all these other describing words around it and all those words really point to macho or manly. But men have more to them than just being masculine. We’re much more complex than that.

Justin likes to challenge the boundary between masculine and feminine. A big way he does that is to wear boots with heels. It’s just a touch of drag. Once he put them on he realized how good he felt, though he wonders whether he is wearing them for the attention they bring or because they fit his personality.

Nicholas says people are still crying when they’re alone because they want to fix themselves, and that is because the world keeps telling them they need to be fixed. But they don’t realize they’re not broken.

Justin is now thankful he is gay. He says gay people bring back as sense of balance to straight people. It shows them another way of being.

Dakota says being gay (being yourself) is the hardest thing to go through. But it’s not a curse. Nicholas quotes Judy Garland: Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else.

Nowadays people don’t want labels. They just want to be themselves.

A day of discussion and healing

Yesterday I went to a discussion of General Conference with one of the clergy delegates, then to a service of healing for hose who felt hurt by GC. You can read details on my brother blog here.

Dreaming a new church

One more post about the United Methodist General Conference to share. There’s a look at a few scruffy things behind the scenes and hopes of dreaming a new church. Details on my brother blog here.

Authoritarian theater

A lot of my blogging time over the last week has been taken up by the United Methodist General Conference. So now to go through browser tabs and see what’s interesting.

Before I get to that… I went off to a movie yesterday afternoon. I saw *Mary Poppins Returns*. I enjoyed it, but think it suffers a bit in comparison to the original. Yes, it has been decades since I saw the original, so I don’t remember all the details. The new one has two big problems: 1) It’s the same story. Yeah, the details are different as are all the songs. Jack is a lamplighter where Bert was a chimney sweep, but he and his colleagues still get their big production number. The fantasy land Mary Poppins and the children enter are through a ceramic bowl instead of a sidewalk chalk picture. They visit a cousin whose shop turns upside down (literally) every second Wednesday so she stands on the ceiling instead of the uncle who loves to laugh who floats near the ceiling. The end features balloons instead of kites. 2) It seems short on charm and long on spectacle.

On to other things.



I got a letter from my city’s mayor recently, one sent to all residents.

My city has been a leader in recycling. For ten years I’ve been putting recyclables into the big blue bin (which stands over 4 feet tall) and take it out to the street every other week. I’ve even toured the facility that separates the various materials – paper, cardboard, plastic, metal, glass – to be formed into bales for companies to reuse.

The mayor’s letter says this company has raised what it charges the city from $18 a ton to $80 a ton. Yes, a whopping big difference. The reason is that in 2017 China announced it was no longer accepting the world’s recyclables because it was generating enough of its own. So instead of recycling all this stuff the city will be taking it to a landfill, where it is charged $28 a ton. The mayor says this switch is temporary until another affordable processor can be found, so he would like us to maintain the habit of putting our recyclables in the big blue bin rather than with the trash. Alas, the recent news suggests finding an affordable processor could be close to impossible. Without China our recyclables market has collapsed. A lot of cities are facing the same issue. And not recycling all this stuff means big environmental problems.



The nasty guy went to Hanoi to meet North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un. The talks broke off without a deal and even without a final lunch. A lot of people are saying that’s OK, no deal is better than a bad deal. But Melissa McEwan of Shakesville sees something different – authoritarian theater.

Trump is seeking to normalize Kim and authoritarianism more broadly; Kim is seeking legitimacy on the global stage. Both of them are hoping to further destabilize the region and create a power vacuum that can be exploited.

Michael Cohen, who was the fixer for the nasty guy for ten years, testified before Congress for three days this week. McEwan thinks this is theater as well. Cohen is “turning” against the nasty guy to protect him.

And it's a strategy: Cohen is testifying to things that are offensive — and embarrassing and implicating Trump's low character — in order to give the appearance of telling all, while leaving out things that are explicitly criminal.

And all that offensive stuff we already know.

I’ve heard there was a stark difference in the way the two parties acted during the hearings. The GOP continuously called Cohen a liar, but ignored what Cohen said about the nasty guy.



There’s been a lot of news how Jeffrey Epstein, a rich person, could sexually assault so many women and get such a low sentence. I won’t go into details. Instead, I’ll share why Sarah Kendzior says these men are either treated favorably by the media or are ignored.

Media, with brave exceptions, fear Epstein and similar stories. Reasons:
1) Normalcy bias fallacy -- "If it were true, they'd be in jail!"
2) Fear of litigation
3) Fear of death threats
4) It describes people in their social circle
5) It describes acts they committed themselves

So don’t look to the media to give the straight scoop on the nasty guy or the GOP (and, yeah, I’ve been saying that for a long time, now we know why).



Rochaun MedowsFernandez, a community member of Daily Kos, wonders if her children will ever be free in a society founded on white supremacy. Yes, she and her children are black. The children are small now.

But our world doesn’t see black kids as “normal.” It sees them as future criminals.

In response to a news article about the extra profit big corporations are getting this year because of the 2017 tax scam law Public Citizen tweeted:

Things the GOP says we can’t afford:
-Medicare-for-All
-A Green New Deal
-A living wage for workers
-Universal childcare

Things the GOP has deemed affordable:
-Giving the big banks another massive tax break

Hunter, on staff with Daily Kos, discusses a big idea, that

it’s cheaper to give homeless people homes to live in than to let the homeless live on the streets and try to deal with the subsequent problems.

Those subsequent problems include things like policing, medical care, and waste cleanup. Those things are expensive – more expensive than actually providing a taxpayer-funded room and bed. That home also provides safety and an address for job hunting. So why don’t we?

The conservative view is that such an approach is coddling the unfortunate, reducing the desperation they ought to feel to get out of their dire straits themselves. In the conservative view, such circumstances are a winnowing-out of the weak—and if any such help is provided, it should be provided as religiously premised charity efforts, with restrictions crafted by each religious sect in accordance to its own judgments of the applicant. State-sponsored efforts are groused about as forced charitable acts, and are regularly denounced for not attaching the same religious and ideological restrictions to the help given.

Even progressives worry about aid to the “undeserving.” Sorry, no, they’re all deserving.

So why don’t we provide housing for the homeless? Because this isn’t an issue of money. This is an issue of supremacy – those at the top making sure those at the bottom suffer.