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.