LGBTQ artists

I spent a few hours today seeing what I could of the Mighty Real Queer Detroit art display. The exhibit has been going on all month and (as I tend to do) I saw it on its second to last day. This is a display of art by LGBTQ artists, though as I saw today not all of it had obvious LGBTQ themes. The show was to launch for Pride month in 2020 (of course, didn’t happen). It happened this time in big style. While relaunching it the whole thing grew. The 2022 version has over 100 artists at 17 venues. Most of the venues are small galleries. And they’re not all close together. I didn’t bother with the one in Mt. Clemens (an hour from my home) or the ones in West Bloomfield. I thought about the ones in Hamtramck and the outer reaches of Detroit, but didn’t get to them. I did get to six venues in the Detroit Midtown area, all within walking distance. I tried for one more on the border of downtown, but a street was closed. These were the small venues. I could see a gallery’s MRQD display plus all their other art (if there was any) in about a half hour or less. I saw them all in four hours. That included walking time and lunch – one of the venues is a cafe. Some of the art was intriguing. Some of it left me thinking that’s art? Part of the problem was the venues displayed only the artist, title, and medium and in some of them that was on a sheet by the door. There was no attempt to describe what the artist was doing. Between the Lines ran an article about the exhibit, which is how I learned about it. Sheesh, I spend a few days writing a special post for this blog (see Tuesday’s post) that happens to coincide with big news, and I accumulate another 40 browser tabs. I had time to read (or skim) the articles, but not time to bring them to your attention. And today about all I have time to do is catalog the tabs. to make a list by topic. Actual writing will have to wait until tomorrow or later.

The opposite of hate

In the 14 years and 7 months I’ve been writing this blog the major overarching theme (perhaps not expressed in every post) is what I’ve been calling supremacy. That’s one person or group asserting, even enforcing, a high or higher position in the social hierarchy. This is done most visibly through making the lives of the target people worse. This shows up in politics, especially American politics. It also shows up in daily interactions between people. I consider this strive for social position and its corresponding oppression of those lower in the hierarchy to be the definition of sin. I’ve been thinking about writing a book about supremacy to pull all my thoughts together into a cohesive narrative. That would be an improvement over the scattershot mentions and explanations of this blog. Don’t look for that book any time soon. I’ve written three outlines and none of them satisfy. I wrote a series of short chapters and I don’t think they came out well. I tried to write something I could use as a church sermon, which I thought would be appropriate since some of the loudest voices upholding the social hierarchy claim their place in it is ordained by their god. Even though I made a list of Bible verses that show Jesus taught we should not take part in the hierarchy and died for challenging the hierarchy, the sermon remains unfinished. I went through about 10 months of this blog to gather up sources. This blog can supply lots of sources – I expect to reach 5000 posts by the end of the year. The sources cover 30 categories of ways American policy and politics asserts and enforces the social hierarchy. But just writing the list of those 30 categories felt like I was missing part of the narrative. And still I haven’t started the book. When I started reading the book The Opposite of Hate, a Field Guide to Repairing Our Humanity by Sally Kohn I thought this looks pretty good, maybe I don’t have to write my book after all. By the time I got to the end I thought, well... maybe there is still room for a book of my ideas. Sally Kohn first gained fame as the liberal commentator on conservative Fox News. She has since gone on to be the political commentator on CNN. She is Jewish and lesbian and has a wife and daughter. I think her book is wonderful! It delves into and explains a great deal of the hate in our country and our world. I highly recommend it. I urge you to read it. Alas, I think there were a few more steps she could have taken. There are a couple times she mentions supremacy has something to do with hate. I wish she could have discussed that connection in more detail. Let’s look at the good stuff of this book. In the prologue she talks about an incident in upper elementary school when she was the bully, making fun of another girl. Her point, which she repeated several times through the book, is that through her broad definition of the term all of us have hated. We may claim we’re not acting out of hate, but we do and Kohn explains why we do that through the book. In chapter one Kohn tries to find out what’s going on with internet trolls. Being the liberal commentator on Fox they responded to her a lot. So she had her Twitter replies analyzed to see which users most often posted derogatory comments. Then she asked several of them if she could meet them in person. A few agreed. And they seemed pretty nice in person. This discrepancy of nice in person and a troll online brought up the fundamental attribution error. When we read something fundamentally hateful online we believe the writer is a fundamentally hateful person. When we write something fundamentally hateful we believe we’re a nice person who was provoked – by them! – so are words are justified. You’re a liar and a hatemonger, I’m truthful and civil. Along with that we tend to divide people into in-groups and out-groups and direct the hate towards the out-group. Kohl found who is put into which group can change as the situation changes. Added to the attribution error is essentialism. That’s assigning attributes to everyone in the out-group. An example is traits that are thought of as “essentially male” which implies all males are like that. The next step in the logic is to say those attributes are “natural” and – of course – considered superior to “essentially female” attributes. This sounds like a polite way of calling these traits stereotypes. Some of the trolls admit they are responding as they do for personal entertainment and out of boredom. Or they’re working through low self esteem – a study showed people are more likely to troll after losing a video game. The internet – where everyone is at a distance and mostly unseen – make it seem the target of their trolling is not a real person. So no harm done. They would never do that when faced with a real person. The internet also means no one is monitoring behavior (unless it gets really bad) so users shed some of their inhibitions. Kohl describes a way out of trolling, which should also work with fact-free relatives. She says it is ABC. A stands for affirm – find a part of the statement your feelings can agree with – “I’m also worried about the economy.” B stands for bridge – and definitely not “but” as in “I agree, but...” Leave that word and similar words out of the conversation. C stands for convince where one adds a factual detail (and probably only one at a time) appropriate for the conversation. Yes, it is hard. It can also be effective. Another way forward is what Kohl calls “connection speech.” Instead of answering hate with hate try to forge a deeper connection. Say something nice. Turn it into a joke (but be careful there). Try to get to know the other person beyond their tweets. Work to see them as a person. In chapter two she looks at the Israeli/Palestinian problem, one of those situations that had gone on for decades and appears to have no solution. Her guide is Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian who became a terrorist, with understandable reasons, and has renounced that life to try to bring the two sides together. He left the terrorist life after seeing a documentary of the Holocaust. A driver of these intractable conflicts is “competitive victimhood” in which both sides believe they are the victims, that they are suffering more because of the other. In response each side tries to make the other suffer because of how much they are suffering. Palestinians say they were peaceful until the Zionists pushed their way in and took their land. Israelis say they have been persecuted all over the world and especially in Europe during the Holocaust. They need a homeland of their own. Each feels justified in their violence against the other. Alas, we’re all victims. And we’re all perpetrators of hate. We hate because we feel we’re under siege, and hate is the response. We’re back to the attribution error – our hate and terror is rational. Theirs isn’t. The way out is to have compassion for your enemies. Yes, they’re still enemies because they hate you. That does not mean you hate in return. The way to compassion is understanding. Chen Alon, an Israeli and co-founder of Bassam’s group, does that through a theater of the oppressed. They stage performances in public places to dramatize the violence. This is connection speech. They want each side to have knowledge of the other side. The goal is to say, I’m suffering, I want to use my suffering to understand your suffering. In chapter three Kohn has a discussion with Arno Michaelis a former white supremacist skinhead. He got involved in a skinhead group because he needed a place where he belonged. These types of groups know this and when they recruit they make sure the new people feel like they belong. The ideology comes much later. And when it does the recruit accepts it as a way to stay with people who make him feel like he belongs. He gets into violence to keep the approval of the group. Kohn says a lot of people in these hate organizations slide into it sideways. They search for belonging, a sense of purpose, and a sense of meaning, not for the ideology. Wrote Kohn, “Still, why not join a chess club?” We need to be a part of a group. But being a part of one group does not necessarily mean hating those not of the group. A couple things got Arno out of the skinhead movement. First he became a dad and the child’s mother split. Then one close friend in the skinhead movement went to prison and another was killed. He found another group to which he can belong. It’s the rave scene filled with every ethnicity and the whole rainbow of the LGBTQ community – people he as a skinhead would have hated. He loves his new group. Our need to belong, to be part of a community, can be harnessed for hate or for good. To build community for good we need connection spaces. These are places where we can encounter others not like us and build connections with them. Kohn warns that building connections is not the same as not seeing the color, the differences of others. That makes us blind to internal biases. Internal biases is the topic for chapter four. Kohn calls it unconscious hate. She says it is indeed hate. And we’re all guilty of it. It isn’t just a “few bad apples.” It is everyone. It’s us. Kohn discussed research done by Jennifer Kubota, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Chicago. Her research focused on the amygdala, an area of the brain. It is involved when we learn about important, threatening, or novel things. It is an efficient filing cabinet. When a situation arises the amygdala quickly recalls similar situations to help us decide if a threat is present. The amygdala soaks up every message around it – including all the ethnic, racial, gender, etc. stereotypes that saturate our families, education, media, and every other aspect of our lives. We breathe these stereotypes throughout our lives. And when we’re in unfamiliar situations these stereotypes are what our amygdala hands us. The news over reports black crime, so the amygdala absorbs links between black and crime and is ready to hand us that association when it feels appropriate – as when we see an unknown black man in front of us. Kohl wrote that she sometimes wonders to herself whether female colleagues are qualified. She never thinks that about male colleagues. This plays out in all sorts of ways. Black people are assumed to be more tolerant of pain so doctors underprescribe pain meds for them. Police treat black residents differently from white residents. Teachers devote less time to black students. An employer will be less likely to interview a candidate with a “black” name than a “white” one. Black doctors will have their credentials questioned if they’re first responders in an emergency. When the driver of a Mercedes is white we assume he’s a lawyer, if he’s black we wonder about theft or drug deals. A white student with a scholarship is thought to deserve it, a black student must have gotten it because she’s black. And that’s just a tiny way implicit bias causes us to hate. Since this bias is saturated in the culture, since the US has a racist and hate-filled history, we are all affected by it. We’re all guilty of it. No exceptions. Kohn examined the case of the black girl with a scholarship. Many white students think it is unfair because it means a white student didn’t get that scholarship. They don’t see the history of racism that benefit the white students. An example is the University of Tennessee. It was founded in 1927. Until 1961 they admitted only white students. They didn’t get in because they were better than black students but because they benefited from a racist system. Because black students didn’t get in they were blocked from the higher paying jobs and were much less likely to leave an inheritance to their children. So it makes sense to rework rules to to allow more black students to participate. To which the modern white student says, “Why is that my fault?” The problem is the story white people tell themselves. In this case it looks like the black person is cutting the line, jumping to the front as we all try to get to the American Dream. It looks like the white people are being punished for being white. But this story ignores how white people were already ahead of black people in the line. To which white people say their starting place in the line shouldn’t matter. And they resent being told that inherited advantage isn’t supposed to matter. And that resentment is what elected the nasty guy. So what do we do? The first step is to recognize those biases within you. You’ve lived in this society. I’ve lived in this society and have them within me. They’re there. But they can’t be counteracted until recognize they’re there. The problem is not in having them. The problem is not acknowledging them and counteracting them. Kohn says to counteract them we need to use “connection thinking.” That means to consciously create other kinds of associations with other kinds of people we can store in our amygdala. Though a good place to do it is in our connection spaces, it can be done where we are. The fifth chapter is about the Rwanda Genocide of 1994. Yeah, Kohn goes for the heavy topics. In the course of 100 days the ethnic Hutu majority killed 800,000 Tutsi minority. It is a lot of dead. It is also a lot of people, not just a few, doing the killing. This is described as the fastest genocide in history. Why did they do it? Why did friend murder friend? Short answer: because they were told to. That means obedience to authority accounts for a lot. They’re told to harm another. They’re told they should be happy about it. They’re told it is a celebration that this other person is killed. See the many times in the American South when a person was lynched and the town came out, bringing their kids, to this public celebration. Kohn told about an experiment done by psychologist Stanley Milgram. His subjects were told to apply an increasingly strong shock whenever a colleague (actually research staff not connected to anything) got a question wrong. He found 65% of the subjects applied what they were told was a lethal shock. People are quite willing to be obedient to authority. Some people say the Rwanda genocide was a spontaneous event. But the whole thing had been worked out far ahead of time. For a couple years before the attack the Rwandan authorities broadcast messages that said Tutsis are not human and are worthy of being killed. The population was primed for a particular way of thinking. There were, of course, Hutus who did not participate in the killing and some of those even tried to stop it (at least their local version of it). These tended to be on the margins of society, such as Muslims and those who were multiethnic. What to do about this, what to do to stop genocidal thinking, is a tall order. We need our connection spaces and connection thinking to forge links to those not like us. We need to see others not as stereotypes of a group but as people. We also need to learn to think independently, to not rely solely on the messages of society, to have our own well grounded ethics. Doing both together can be hard. A Tutsi survivor who had lost everyone else in a large family said he had forgiven the Hutus who had murdered his family. That prompted a discussion of forgiveness. If a guy forgives is he a hero or a sucker? Is forgiveness a weakness? Does this imply the oppressed have an expectation to educate their oppressors? Does forgiving others put a burden on the forgiver and let the killers off the hook? Or does forgiving remove the burden? Some who survived the genocide have taken steps to make sure the burden of hate has fallen away. The topic of chapter six is systems of hate. An example of that is the ability to vote. Grace Bell Hardison is a black woman born in North Carolina in 1916. She was four when women were allowed to vote. But in 1934, when she came of age, she still could not. The first time she could vote was after the Voting Rights Act of 1965. We’re good, right? In 2013 the Supreme Court began gutting the VRA and various states quickly tightened voting access. In 2016 Hardison was removed from the voting rolls and asked President Obama to intervene on her behalf. She did vote that year, at age 100. This is hate. It extends back to slavery when black people were not considered human with full rights of citizenship. It continues through whose vote is questioned (see the action outside Detroit’s counting room in 2020), who has a harder time fulfilling the requirements to vote, and who gets threatened with violence. It is a system that suppresses votes. Similar systems are embedded in education, health care, criminal justice, housing, and much more. But it is more than officials acting out of hate or just implicit bias in an incident happening today. It is a system that replicates and maintans the hate of the past. Yet, we look at the incident and rarely look at the system. Kohn wrote:

For example, the way that voting-rights laws, local elections-office practices, popular culture around voting, the history of violence against black voters, and the history of racism and white supremacy and black oppression in the United States all interact and interlock. The system not only shapes the individual voting patterns but the entirety of our democracy. Which in turn means that when we see problems like low voter turnout, it’s wise to widen our analysis to see not only individual behavior and factors but the systemic variables.

After another example Kohn wrote, “Systems that are shaped by hate produce hateful results. Unless we stop them.” We as a community can pull the levers to force change. But only if we see the levers. Kohn showed the example of Omaha Public Schools that was consistently underfunded compared to the school districts in the white suburbs around it – formed, of course, to avoid integration. Using a little known law plus a lot of discussion and cajoling the area school districts were able to unite to equalize funding. Both white and black students received benefits. Kohn discussed an incident at a preparatory school on the campus of the Air Force Academy. In 2017 racial slurs were found on message boards. The head of the Academy, Lieutenant General Jay Silveria denounced and condemned the slurs. That’s great! But Kohn said that didn’t go far enough. It didn’t address the systems within the Air Force (and the military as a whole) that perpetuate inequality and injustice. Patriarchy is embedded in the military hierarchy. The whole premise of the military is dehumanizing the other. A soldier is trained to overcome the disinclination to harm another human. The military encourages hate. In another example Kohn discussed broadcaster Glenn Beck. When broadcasting was deregulated in the 1980s and they no longer had to present opposing viewpoints the audiences of conservative stations became smaller. To attract the attention of a smaller audience they promoted the biases of that audience. That means the system had an incentive to be hateful. Beck was ousted because a large number of people changed the incentives in his case. They convinced advertisers to pull their ads. Beck’s show was canceled. To dismantle systems of hate we need to understand them. Then we need to make them visible and help others to understand them. These systems shape us and our society. And we can shape the systems. In the title of the book Kohn said there is an opposite to hate. She said it isn’t love, because it is possible to not hate, yet not love. The opposite is also not some mushy middle zone without passion. One must still have strong beliefs and can disagree with the strong beliefs of others. The opposite of hate is connection. We face and challenge the hate within ourselves – we all have it. We also go to connection places and use our connection speech to create connection systems. Yeah, a lot of easy slogans requiring a lot of hard work. As I said there is a lot of great stuff here. I appreciate her understanding of trolls and how many people slide sideways into white supremacy while looking for groups to which they can belong. Let’s work to make good connection groups happen. I especially appreciate her description of systems of hate. I admire her willingness to explore the Rwanda genocide and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I’m glad Kohn wrote the book and included much more than I could share here. I’m glad I read it and I strongly recommend it. And, as I mentioned at the top, I don’t think she went far enough. Here are some of my questions this book didn’t address: What about the trolls who aren’t so nice in person? I understand that might have been difficult to research because they likely wouldn’t want to give up their anonymity. What about those who operate troll farms that can attack a person’s online presence with swarms of hateful responses, rendering the target person’s account unusable (at least for a while) and sometimes driving a person off social media. These trolls don’t sound like lonely and bored people tossing vicious comments at a person who doesn’t seem to be really there. What about the leaders of white supremacist movements? Yeah, the underlings might slip in sideways, looking for a place to belong. What about the ones who develop the hateful ideology and make the effort to provide the place for the underlings to belong and then radicalize them for hate? What about the leaders of the Rwanda genocide, that for two years laid the groundwork for the hundred days of hate that killed thousands a day? Why did they do what they did? What about those who design and incentivize the systems of hate? They know full well the “side effects” of their rules and laws oppress people. They may claim they are for election security knowing full well their policies will more severely suppress the votes of a particular target group. What about the leaders in American politics who use hate to further personal goals? Why do they stir up grievances and a sense of victimization to advance a cause? Why do they not have any decency to condemn these actions in others, even in others in their own party? Why do they give every indication they want to end democracy in America? What about those political leaders who seem blind and unconcerned about the destruction of democracy, human rights, the country, and the environment going on around them? I see a great deal of We must do this! And when one person says no the response is a meek, Oh well, we tried. What about the members of the Supreme Court who seem to be doing all they can as quickly as they can to revoke rights and not caring of the pain, oppression, and death that result from their rulings? What about the owners of gun manufacturing companies? Are they, as any capitalist, truly in the business just for the profit? Why aren’t they embarrassed that their products are causing so much death and trauma across the country? Perhaps they want the death and trauma? What’s driving the richest men in the world? Why do they exploit their employees? Why do they buy politicians? Why do they drive competition out of business? Why do they work to hasten our global environmental collapse? Why do they demand laws that make themselves richer and poor people poorer? Why do they fund the end of democracy? Saying the answer is greed seems simplistic. Why has Russia invaded Ukraine? All that I’ve read indicates the war started and is happening because of one man, a man who doesn’t care at all about how his commands affect his soldiers, his citizens, the soldiers and citizens of Ukraine, and the rest of the world. Of course, if I really wanted to spend time I could come up with a much longer list of the types of leaders who promote or act out of hate. Kohn says many wise things about the underlings caught up in hate. But what about the leaders? What drives them? Is it just hate? Does hate describe it well enough? As I said at the top I look at a lot of issues from the viewpoint of supremacy. I define this as an idea or action in which one person claims, “I’m better than you.” Related sentences are: I can do this and you can’t. I’m going to heaven and you aren’t. My life is better than yours. I have this privilege and you don’t. I can do things I won’t let you do. I can remake my society so that you are oppressed (physically, mentally, spiritually, or economically). I can control you and make you dance to my tune. I can kill you and face little consequence. My position in the social hierarchy – above you! – is of high importance to me. I will give up a lot of money to maintain my position in the hierarchy. I would rather die than lose my position in the hierarchy. I can give you a middle position in the hierarchy and give you power to oppress those below you. Of course, most the actions of a supremacist will, to the target, feel a great deal like hate. The online troll responding to a post is making a supremacist move – I can make you feel bad by insulting you. The troll farms are also making a supremacist move – overwhelming a target to make them think twice about challenging a supremacist ideology. Skinhead leaders want white people to be the supreme race. The want to oppress others to prevent them from challenging the high spot in the hierarchy. The Hutu leaders of Rwanda are declaring their supremacy over the Tutsis, partly as payback when Tutsis were considered to be in a higher social position. The Hutus took it to an extreme point of declaring we’re so far above you we consider you cockroaches and we can kill you. American politicians have harnessed hate to keep people like themselves in a superior social position. They can do it by getting those lower in the hierarchy fighting those who are lower still. Other American politicians do little in response because of donations from those even higher in the hierarchy who tell them we’ll give you lots of status if you let us oppress these other people. And on and on. Supremacy plays a role in the actions of all the leaders I listed above. They make their lives look better by making the lives of others worse. Supremacy doesn’t just affect the leaders. Kohn got that part right. Supremacy affects every one from the guy who invaded Ukraine to show he’s king of the world, to the schoolyard bully. Kohn is also right in that it affects the actions of all of us through our unconscious biases. Did Kohn simply not go far enough? Or is there a working difference between supremacy and hate? Does supremacy explain things where hate does not? Since I think supremacy is the root of all sin I don’t think it is possible to have hate without supremacy. Is it possible to have supremacy without hate? I think supremacy drives the leaders I mentioned above and their actions show it to us as hate. I think supremacy is a better description of what drives them than hate does. As for supremacy without hate... Just at the start of the pandemic – when it was still possible to have 500 people packed into a room – I attended a five state handbell event. The 500 of us spent an evening and a day together to rehearse and perform a massed ringing concert. It’s an amazing sound, a wonderful experience. I didn’t take any bells, and didn’t travel with members of my community or church ensembles. I had arranged ahead of time to be placed in an open position within an ensemble who brought bells but not all their members. We had a good time in our short amount of time together – of course, bell people always have a good time when playing bells. Once home and with my community ensemble (our last rehearsal before shutdown) I commented to another member that I (with decades of handbell experience) played better with just a day with the music than those around me (with years of experience) who had spent a lot of time learning the music ahead of time. From the expression on my colleague’s I quickly realized I had made a supremacist statement. I’ve been thinking about supremacy long enough that I could recognize it as such – though that didn’t stop me from making the comment. But was it a hateful statement? One could argue either way. The people at the event didn’t feel the hate. On reflection, it probably was hateful. As Kohn wrote, supremacy and hate are in all of us. It takes self examination to root it out of our lives. I’ve been thinking about supremacy for many years and I still say supremacist things. I’ve got more work to do. And a book to write. Just don’t expect it soon.

Value the person, not their talents

I’m working on a more involved post for this blog that may take another day or two to finish. So Friday’s big news will have to sit for a while. While we wait here’s a bit of what I usually report on weekends. My Sunday movie was on Friday. My church held a family movie night and showed Encanto. It was a pleasant Disney movie with a good message – value the person, not their talents. For these family events a white sheet is hung on the side of the building and we sit on the parking lot in the chairs we bring. One of the men makes popcorn and offers drinks for sale. The movie, like this one, is family friendly. It is a pleasant experience to watch a movie with friends. Alas, this one wasn’t done quite right. The problem was the show was scheduled to start at 8:30 – but sunset wasn’t until 9:15.There is a conflict between the time of sunset and wanting to get children home at a reasonable hour. By the September movie this isn’t an issue. Even though we were on the opposite side of the building we couldn’t see anything projected on to the sheet until it got darker. This show was turned on at about 9:20, even then some of the early dark scenes couldn’t be seen. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data late last week. This dataset has a date of Tuesday, June 21, though I thought it was updated Wednesday. The number of new cases per day has dropped for seven weeks in a row. In the second week of May the peak was 4425 new cases in one day. This past week the peak as 1356 new cases, down from 1944 the week before. Looking good! The deaths per day is still in the 9-15 range (which is assuming not all cases in the week before the data was released have been reported to the state.

Building a paramilitary branch predicated on a right to violence and sedition

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported the Senate has come to an agreement on a gun safety bill that has little to do with gun safety. They left guns out of the title, calling it the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.” McCarter details what is in the bill. There is a good chunk of money for mental health. It is needed but should have been funded by Medicaid expansion rather than tying it to a gun law which connects mental health to violence and further stigmatizes it. There is better background checking and longer wait times for 18-21 year olds, though it sunsets in 10 years. There his help for states to pass red flag laws, in which courts can remove guns from the home of a dangerous person, though states that refuse pass such a law can redirect the money to drug courts and veteran courts. The boyfriend loophole is closed – guns can be taken from a recent dating partner convicted of violence as well as a spouse. All to the good, but not nearly enough. And it hasn’t actually passed yet. New York had a gun law that limited licenses to carry guns outside the home to sportsman and those who could prove a need, such as a messenger carrying cash. Nina Totenberg of NPR reported that had is the right word – today the Supreme Court struck it down. Clarence Thomas wrote the 6-3 majority opinion. He called the right to bear arms not a second class right and, as Totenberg wrote, “just as the First Amendment doesn't allow the banning of unpopular speech, the Second Amendment is not limited to people who can demonstrate a special need to carry a gun in public.” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said, “This decision isn't just reckless, it's reprehensible.” The insanity of gun culture has possessed everyone, even the Supreme Court. This is an Originalist view – if a regulation wasn’t around at the time the Bill of Rights was enacted, it isn’t permissible. So since there was no ban on high capacity magazines in 1789 there can’t be one now – except there were no high capacity magazines in 1789. There are limits to the ruling. A state may require a license to own a gun and that may require a background and mental health check. But many states have laws that say if a person asks for a gun license the state “shall issue” one. Unknown yet is what kinds of places can ban guns – stadiums, subways, New Year’s Eve on Times Square, where liquor is served? The ruling is an invitation for a do-over for the NRA. Don’t like a gun law, such as the one before the Senate? Come on back! McCarter wrote about another 6-3 ruling the Supremes issued last week. It was about the way schooling is handled in very rural Maine. If the state pays for students to attend a private school it must also pay for students to attend religious private schools. Justice Sotomayor wrote the dissent, calling the ruling “especially perverse” and saying the Constitution does not require this result and that it undermines the separation of church and state. Dartagnan of the Kos community said one of the cases yet to be handed down will likely attack how the Environmental Protection Agency works and may make it extremely difficult for the US to do much about climate change. Dartagnan then discussed the Federalist Society, which selected five of the six conservatives on the Supremes and another 241 federal judges confirmed in the nasty guy years. Their goal is to remake the judiciary into a tool for business. Over the last several years these Federalist Society judges have shifted from litigating individual rules from government agencies to choosing cases that can attack the ways the government does business. Tired of litigating every little rule the EPA hands down? Create a case that guts the EPA. The Federalist Society creates the cases and guides them through the federal court system. The way of doing this in the case now before the Supremes is to say Congress must pass each and every one of the rules developed by the EPA and other federal agencies. But Congress simply doesn’t have the time of expertise for that. The ruling could mean the conservative majority of the Supremes will take for themselves veto power over huge swaths of federal policy and making Biden the weakest president in over 80 years (that’s the number put out by Ian Milhiser – but 1942 was when Franklin Roosevelt was at the height of his powers, maybe he meant 100 years?). This theory that Congress can’t delegate the creation of rules to federal agencies would, as Dartagnan wrote, “automatically render the vast majority of consumer, worker safety, and environmental protection laws invalid.” It would overturn a great deal of court precedence – which this gang appears ready to handle with a machete. Back to guns, the main topic at the start of this section. From a post a couple days ago (before the ruling on guns by the Supremes) Hunter of Kos reported last week a man dressed in a tactical vest and having a semi-automatic rifle and a pistol attempted to enter several buildings in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Of course, just by being there, he terrorized the people around him. There were multiple 911 calls and the courthouse was locked down and store employees were evacuated. But, because of Oklahoma’s open carry laws – and this ruling by the Supremes – a guy can cosplay as a purveyor of violence and the police could do nothing until he pulls a trigger. Wrote Hunter:

It is obviously an asinine situation, the public is obviously right to presume a gunman walking toward a courthouse or store means trouble, because no citizen has a plausible reason to need an assault weapon inside those buildings and no reasonable citizen would try it. Only criminals and assholes parade semi-automatic rifles in public. There aren't exceptions. ... It is perfectly, 100% reasonable for any law enforcement officer to presume a man headed for a grocery store, a public building, a movie theater, or a public school carrying an assault rifle, handgun, ammunition, and other gear intends to do harm. It is transparently obvious that the man ought to be stopped, and with violence if necessary.

The police arrested the guy. Not for the guns or for the terror he caused. But for the brass knuckles he also carried. Hunter wrote that being arrested for having brass knuckles means the Oklahoma legislature can regulate guns – if they wanted to. Or with this ruling, could. Laws like this show contempt for law enforcement. They tip the situation away from police officers and towards vigilantes. Yet, when black Americans protest with banners they are met with a military response. And a black man would not have been allowed to pull the stunt this white guy did.

The practical effect of relaxed "open carry" laws, the erasure of licensing and training requirements, and other legislative promotion not just gun ownership but of guns as public accessories is the creation of a paramilitary force, in America, that is as or more heavily armed than law enforcement; that answers to no one, and is exempt from police harassment; that is almost exclusively conservative; that is almost exclusively conspiratorial and paranoid; and that is self-selecting for those most willing to resort to mass violence. The Republican legislatures are in essence building a paramilitary branch of their own movement predicated on a right to violence and sedition. It is not being hidden. The number of Republican lawmakers who now cite a right of rebellion as the reason for removing gun restrictions far outstrips the number of Republican lawmakers who oppose the seditionist premise.

From a post at the beginning of the month, David Neiwert of Kos reported that Liberty Alliance, a far right group in Missouri, has a website that shows a “Woke Heat Map.” It lists and identifies schools in Missouri allegedly promoting “crazy ideas” such as Critical Race Theory and grooming toddlers with sexually explicit books. Click on a school on the map and content explains why the school is classified as “woke.” The content is, of course, from far right groups. The purpose is to alert residents of the craziness in their own communities. Neiwert wrote:

Stochastic terrorism and the scripted violence that comes with it have become essential features of post-insurrection Trumpism and its unfolding strategy: claim your political opponents are literally satanic pedophiles conspiring to traffic your children and destroy America by replacing white people, and then tell your army of True Believers the names and identities of these fiends. Paint targets on them.

Then wait for the “lone wolf” to show up. A wolf that isn’t so lone because a large number of people have radicalized him, normalized the extremism, and encouraged the violence. That’s a large number of people quite content for the media to not connect from the gunman back to the encouragers.

What is left but violence to determine who should govern?

Yesterday was the fourth hearing by the January 6 Committee. This session focused on the people who were harmed by the relentless push to overturn the 2020 election. These were the people who stood in the way out of principle. Brandi Buchman of Daily Kos liveblogged the session, then she and others examined the testimonies of individual people. Rep. Adam, Schiff led part of the session. He started by saying the scheme didn’t end with the way the nasty guy treated the vice nasty.

It targeted every tier of election officials... The president’s lie was and is a dangerous cancer on the body politic. If you can convince Americans that they cannot trust their own elections and any time they lose it, it is somehow illegitimate, then what is left but violence to determine who should govern?

Buchman tweeted:

The Tump campaign spent millions running ads saying that fraud was widespread and urging people to call their governors and state officials. Protests became increasingly dangerous in battleground states as Jan. 6 approached with the help of those ads. We see a clip of Nick Fuentes saying "What else can we do but kill them" when talking about members of state legislatures if they wouldn't go along with Trump's push to install bogus electors.

Russell Bowers, Speaker of the Arizona House, was contacted by Rudy Giuliani with insistent claims of fraud in the order of thousands of votes. Giuliani eventually told Bowers, “We’ve got lots of theories just not the evidence.” Others called Bowers to decertify the election. He refused. In part 2 of the liveblog Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Secretary of State, and his deputy Gabriel Sterling discussed the phone call from the nasty guy begging to add close to 12 thousand votes to his tally. Shaye Moss testified that she and her mother Ruby Freeman loved their jobs helping people vote. Then the nasty guy targeted them, accusing them of fraud. They began to get threats. Moss said:

There is nowhere I feel safe. Do you know how it feels to have the President of the United States target you? The President of the United States is supposed to represent every American.

Walter Einenkel of Kos wrote more about Bowers, a staunch conservative Republican. He chose to honor his sworn oath to the country and refused to pretend the Big Lie had any legal validity. This year the stopped the AZ Republicans from claiming the right to overrule an election. Bowers faced an overwhelming number of threatening emails and calls. Trucks with display screens outside his office claimed he was a “pedophile.” Loudspeakers circled his neighborhood. This was while the family was dealing with the final illness of his daughter, who could hear what those loudspeakers were saying. She died while this was happening. April Siese of Kos gave details of Shaye Moss’ testimony. The attacks weren’t just from the nasty guy. They also came from Giuliani. A mob went to the home of Moss’ grandmother (who wasn’t an election worker) to make a citizen’s arrest. That isn’t legal, but it is menacing and terrifying. Moss had a difficult time coping and the stress has resulted in health issues. In a summary of the day Bachman described Bowers’ testimony in more detail. He confirmed the election had not been rigged. He repeatedly asked Giuliani for evidence of fraud. It never came. When he was asked to hold an official meeting to explore allegations of fraud he refused, saying he did not want to be used as a pawn. When Giuliani asked him about replacing electors, Bowers said he would not break his oath. When John Eastman asked about decertifying electors, which Bowers had authority to do, he said he would consider it if there was evidence of fraud. Gabriel Sterling, Deputy Sec. of State in Georgia “had enough” when a manager for Dominion Voting Systems received an online message of a noose with his name on it. Dominion was accused of cheating because their voting machines made it harder to cheat. Sterling demanded the nasty guy stop the inflammatory rhetoric. One guess how the nasty guy responded. The pressure was intense. Brian Dickerson of the Detroit Free Press talked about the five remaining candidates for the Republican nomination for Governor in Michigan. In a debate three of the five did say they would accept the results of the November election no matter who won. Only one said he would – if there were proper poll watchers. As for the fifth... That’s Ryan Kelly. The US Justice Department filed criminal charges against him for participating in the Capitol attack, to help block the certification of Michigan’s electoral votes. He’s allowed to campaign until his trial and his popularity went up after the charges came out. Dickerson wrote:

But the real problem with the paranoiac suspicion those assertions evoke is that it is contagious. In their unfounded but relentless attacks on the integrity of Michigan elections, Republicans risk providing unsuccessful candidates in both parties with a ready excuse for ignoring the popular will. If the electoral process itself is suspect, how will elected officials establish their right to exercise governmental authority? Why concede defeat if counting votes is only the prelude to litigation — or political violence? Forgive my melodrama. But isn't this where we're headed when the players can't even agree when the game is over, or that the team that's leading at the end of nine innings is the presumptive winner?

Mark Sumner of Kos wrote the biggest revelations from these hearings are that the nasty guy has one simple trick – the threat of violence.

The biggest revelations are about fear—the fear that Donald Trump spent months generating. Trump spent years grooming his followers to be angry, delusional, and pliable. He spent years creating a mythology around U.S. elections. He spent years gathering up white supremacist groups, cheering on militias, and collecting everyone he saw as a tough guy, from “Bikers for Trump” to the Proud Boys. What happened on Jan. 6 was unthinkable. But what Trump did in the months and years before not only made that day possible, he create a state in which people would bow to him simply out of fear over what his followers might do. ... The rallies that Trump held going back to before the 2016 election were never about creating support. They were always about demonstrating support—and about demonstrating the level of personal loyalty and frothing anger present among those who follow Trump. Trump wanted everyone to know what he had built. The comparisons between what happens at any Trump rally and what happened at Nuremberg are perfectly apt, because they were all about demonstrating a level of personal power that was intended to make people quake.

He used fear of what he might unleash on January 6 to try to get the Supreme Court to defend his takeover. And he still uses fear – that what happened on January 6 was just a taste of what his followers might do. Sumner soon posted again with an example of that fear. He quoted Sen. Lindsay Graham at a Faith and Freedom Coalition in Nashville:

At the podium, Graham made it clear what he really missed about Trump — the bullying. “You know what I like about Trump?” Graham asks the audience, before providing the answer. “Everybody was afraid of him.”

Sumner concluded, speaking of the nasty guy:

He’s a guy who thinks his ability to hate powerfully, is his best quality. He may even be right. The difference is … Republicans like it. They like being afraid. They want that bully at the bully pulpit. They want a “strong man” to tell them what to do, to yell at anyone who strays from the course, and to threaten everyone who refuses to go along with the fascistic flow. They don’t want to have to deal with facts and reason, much less justice and fairness. Republicans like being afraid of Trump. It’s no wonder that they are always making paintings and posters in which Trump is some muscle-bound action hero. Because admitting they enjoy being bullied by the actual Trump … is simply pathetic.

Republicans may want the nasty guy to bully them. What they want even more is the nasty guy to bully everyone who isn’t a Republican. Joan McCarter of Kos reported on Republicans who support the nasty guy and who won their primaries. There is a contradiction here. Most of them ran on saying there was fraud in the 2020 election, or that the election system is fraudulent, perhaps under the control of some deep state cabal. Yet, when they win the election system worked just fine – their election wasn’t fraudulent. Strangely, they can’t explain why such endemic fraud just happened to miss their own election. So, for the moment they’re silent. But they’ll be back to full voice in time to claim the November election is fraudulent – unless they happen to win. Biden has asked Congress for a federal gas tax holiday. Since that’s been discussed for a while and since Biden has attacked the oil companies for price gouging, last Saturday Brittany Cronin of NPR took a look at the situation. She mostly talked to Denton Cinquegrana of the Oil Price Information Service. The big problem is oil refinery capacity. The first hit to capacity was at the start of the pandemic when everyone stopped driving. Refineries were idled. Second was damage – Hurricane Ida took out one refinery. A fire took out another. And the third reason is we’re in the midst of an energy transition – championed by Biden. He has said he wants to phase out fossil fuels as fast as possible. Some refineries have been repurposed to make things like biofuels. And the rest, the ones that are operational, are running at capacity. To bring idled refineries back online is not quick or cheap. Cinquegrana said:

You're talking about a lot of money to get these refineries that are idled up and running. And when I'm being told, five years from now, we hope you don't exist, why should I help you?

Of course, given that, no company will want to build a new refinery in the US. So we can’t refine our way out of high gas prices. So let’s push for renewables. The high gas prices will accelerate the push to electric cars. But the auto industry doesn’t yet have the capacity to supply the need. High gas prices will be here for a while.

There is always an enemy, even if an imaginary one

We’re two-thirds of the way through Pride Month and a lot of posts about LGBTQ people have accumulated in my browser tabs while I wrote about guns and Ukraine. Alas, not all of these stories are uplifting. From two weeks ago Marissa Higgins of Daily Kos reported that Texas Republicans want us to know they’re right on the Uvalde shooting and have a solution – ban kids from attending drag shows. Higgins assures us this isn’t satire. Nothing can happen with this proposed bill until the state legislature returns in January 2023. Even so it sends a terrible, hateful message to all LGBTQ people. A couple days later Higgins reported that parents of trans kids are suing Texas. It is because of the new policy that says if parents permit their child to get gender affirming health care the parents can be charged with child abuse. Even though this policy is not law, merely AG Ken Paxton’s opinion, Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Department of Family and Protective Services to start investigations. Higgins told the story of a trans boy, age 16, who tried to commit suicide on the day Abbott issued the directive. He survived. He had been repeatedly misgendered at school. He was admitted to an outpatient psychiatric facility. They learned he was taking hormonal therapy. A week after the boy was discharged, DFPS was at the family’s door to investigate child abuse. That added trauma to the parents and the whole family. This policy makes marginalized people distrustful of adults. It pushes people into the closet – as intended. Leah McElrath, in writing about this story quoted a tweet by Eleanor Klibanoff, a women’s health reporter for the Texas Tribune:

Half of trans teens have considered suicide. All major medical associations recommend gender-affirming care to treat gender dysphoria. But what if treating suicide risk comes at the cost of treating gender dysphoria, which contributes to suicide risk? What then?

McElrath added:

• Transphobia • Anti drag performance • False “gr**mer” accusations • Anti marriage equality • Anti choice • Anti contraception ALL of these are regressive efforts to return the US to the days when it was criminal to exist outside the structure of patriarchal control. ... This child’s suicide attempt? The mass murder in Buffalo? These are outcomes the GOP is hoping for with their legislation and rhetoric. They want everyone not white, heterosexual, and gender-conforming not to exist or, at a minimum, to be too frightened to demand civil rights. ... Trans people need us. And we need trans people. Parents of trans youth need us. And we need parents of trans youth. All we have is each other.

Two weeks ago, Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included a chart of the percentage of Americans who say they support legal same-sex marriage. When polling started on this issue in 1996 those in favor were 27%. Approval has risen steadily, with a few dips along the way. Approval in 2022 is at a new high at 71%. Aysha Qamar of Kos reported Drag Queen Story Hour was in progress at the San Lorenzo Library in California. They were interrupted by men with clothes and logos of the Proud Boys, a white nationalist hate group. The men were extremely aggressive and had a threatening, violent demeanor according to Ray Kelly, a Lieutenant with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office. The incident will be investigated as a hate crime. Sheriff deputies were able to de-escalate the situation and no one was hurt. Even so the kids were frightened. The drag queen, Panda Dulce, has encountered protesters before, but this was another level. Dulce was able to finish the event and the library said they will continue hosting more Pride events. They were scared, but they won’t go away. Hunter of discussed the conservative effort to stoke terrorism against trans people. It’s working. Once again there is an entirely hoax-filled panic that, once again, targets another group persecuted by Actual Nazis. The demonization of trans people hasn’t ended, though the demonization of drag queens has begun. It is being boosted by conservatives “influencers,” including Fox News, where such action is a network decision. Examples of this targeting and the violence it encourages are the Drag Queen Story Hour attack I just mentioned and the group that planned to attack the Coeur d’Alene Pride event I discussed a few days ago. The perpetrators were thankfully arrested beforehand. Even the Buffalo shooting is an example – the shooter ranted against “pedophiles and groomers” the current accusations targeted at LGBTQ people. Hunter’s point is that it is a shift in targets. Those calling the targets and the groups like the Proud Boys serving at the thugs are flexible in who is the enemy.

This is a very intentional shift of Republican rhetoric, and there's simply no question that it's promoting violence against the chosen targets. You don't create hoaxes about the supposed dangers of marginalized groups for any other reason. And it's omnipresent. ... It's being used specifically to muddy the news cycle so that pro-Trump Americans and Republican allies have something to hyperfocus on while the rest of the nation hears daily new evidence about a Republican-backed attempted coup.

Hunter included a video of Mark Burns, running for Congress in South Carolina, calling for the execution of LGBTQ people. Claudia Tenney called Biden a pedophile. Hunter described their methods:

A hoax is created, claiming this or that group is a danger to your children, your family, or your very soul. The movement floods America with the new hoax, finding specific targets to use as supposed examples and publicizing them. The base is worked into a new froth, with no time given to recover themselves from the last froth, and some significant percentage of that base genuinely believes the hoax and believes the new danger to be real. And then one of those people picks up a gun and starts shooting at people.

But drag queens? Drag has been a stable of entertainment since long before Shakespeare. Even Rudy Giuliani put on a dress. Everyone now targeting drag queens grew up with them. Even so, the targets are planned. The violence is intentional.

It's entirely because Republicanism, now firmly a fascist movement, cannot function without singling out American "enemies" that can act as targets for base aggression. There is always an enemy. There is always, always, a group that can be blamed for all of the nation's ills, even imaginary ones. It is impossible to imagine a version of conservative that does not include these enemies—in the United States, it is the very foundation of the movement. Segregation was the rock on which the modern movement was built; contempt for non-white, non-protestant, non-straight Americans was at every point predicated on imagined futures in which those other Americans would run roughshod over the white race if white cultural masters relaxed, even for a moment, in enforcing necessary oppressions.

It is intended to be threatening. Oppression of the targets is the point, whether through laws or through terrorism. They didn’t suddenly decide to attack a group based on new strong feelings. “They did it because the news cycle needed a new enemy. Someone who could be paraded in front of the base as the problem." And there is no remorse over the damage to those caught in the crossfire. And when targeting this group has lost its usefulness a new target will be chosen. After that we need some good stories. Qamar reported on the graduation ceremony at Seattle Pacific University. SPU is a Christian school and has an Employee Lifestyle Expectations policy which, as we’ve seen before, bans full time staff from participating in same-sex sexual activity. The Associated Students of Seattle Pacific (ASSP) organized a sit-in protest of the policy outside the office of Interim President Pete Menjares. Hundreds of students participated in shifts. About the time the protests started the university voted to affirm that anti-LGBTQ policy. So the protests went on for three weeks. By the time graduation came along 50 seniors who had protested did not want to shake Menjares’ hand. So instead when they walked across the stage they handed him a small pride flag. Brandi Buchman of Kos wrote a personal story of her encounters with LGBTQ people while growing up. First was Betty, her boyfriend’s sister, who announced she was trans. That got her to find out more about us. She had been part of her high school’s Gay Straight Alliance, but still didn’t know much.

All I really understood for sure at that point was that I didn’t like it when people were cruel to others because of their sexual orientation or expression. It seemed really mean to judge someone for something they had no choice in deciding.

Later she met and became friends with drag queen Veronica, who demonstrated confidence and being uninhibited. Buchman learned so much about being a better woman from her.

I’m glad Veronica exists. I’m glad Veronica was out and proud. I’m grateful for all of the LGBT+ people who speak up and say, “I am me and I am proud of me.” The gay community has given me so much in my life, and as a cisgender woman, I often feel lost on how to return the favor. I am an imperfect ally, of that I am certain, but I also know I love this community so much and will defend it fiercely because it is full of wonderful human beings who are so often founts of strength and courage and above all, creativity and compassion. So, perhaps you are reading this and you are gay. Perhaps you have heard it a hundred times already in the last two weeks since this is Pride month. But, please, let me just reiterate: I’m glad you exist this month and all months. I want you to exist. The world needs you.

Commenter dmhlt 66 added:

If you think it’s weird for grown men to put on wigs, heels, rouge, and stockings... I have bad news for you about the founding fathers.

Art is needed because art heals the soul

I finished the book Under the Big Sky by S. Bryan Gonzales. This is the story of Cash McCollum’s senior year in high school in Miles City, Montana. When not in school Cash is an impressive performer in high school level rodeo events. When Cash was a sophomore a new kid at the school, Travis Hunter spotted Cash in a classroom and locked eyes. This year Travis, a well built football player, cornered Cash at his locker and made a big impression. Cash wondered why this big hunky football player was pursuing him when he could have anyone in the school. It didn’t take long for Cash to realize well, I guess I’m gay. Actually I thought that shift took way too little time. There was little homophobia. Cash’s mother was accepting. His older brother Clayton said a few embarrassing words and his father said little. Mom said just give them a bit of time to get used to Travis (oh, is that all it takes? – sometimes yes). It helped that Travis liked to come from town to the ranch and help with chores. Even with little homophobia Travis and Cash don’t want the strength of their relationship to be common knowledge at the school (though it sorta already is). I got annoyed with Cash because he usually looked at incomplete evidence and assumed the worst (I think that’s a teenager thing). The first big issue like that was seeing Travis with a stack of college catalogs and a lot of them were not in Montana. Then Lee showed up. He also performed in rodeos and was Cash’s nearest competitor, though from the other end of the state. Cash had a hard time saying no to Lee even though Travis made his jealousy well known. This book is over 500 pages. The last 100 set things up for the sequel, though this one did have a satisfying conclusion. The online description of the sequel (400 pages) fit nicely with the ending of the first one. There is a third book (500 pages) and the description of the second says there is a fourth, but I can’t find that one online. I was interested in the series because in the second book Cash is given custody of a young child. I’m interested in reading about gay couples as parents. But this setup sounds like Cash and Travis would spend a great deal of time arguing. So I’m not yet sure I want to buy it. As for the third... Barnes and Noble sometimes allows a shopper to read the first 20-30 pages of a book. This one has ghosts. No, thank you. One other small complaint of the book – Cash is described as having strawberry blond hair. So I was disappointed that the model whose photo was used for the front cover had brown hair. My Sunday movie was Viva Maestro! a documentary about orchestra conductor Gustavo Dudamel. He got his start in El Sistema, a music program for disadvantaged youth in Venezuela. He became an international sensation and at age 28 appointed musical director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He has kept ties with orchestras in Venezuela and has added the Paris Opera to his duties. El Sistema (The System) was started in 1975 by José Abreu with government support. He believed “music has to be recognized as an agent of social development in the highest sense because it transmits the highest values – solidarity, harmony, mutual compassion” and it had the ability to "unite an entire community and express sublime feelings.” Students were provided musical instruments and given training in music and in life. They learned that when they work together they could produce beautiful music. By 2015 there were more than 400 music centers across Venezuela and 700,000 young musicians (I think that is through its history). There are some wonderful videos online of Dudamel conducting the National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela. The kids definitely have the energy. An example is them doing the Mambo from Bernstein’s West Side Story at the BBC Proms (after the music much of this video is an interview with Dudamel and the BBC host). At the time the Simón Bolívar Orchestra was a youth ensemble. It looks like they matured together and became professional, so the youth ensembles had to be renamed. Here’s another video of the Simón Bolívar Orchestra after they could no longer be called a youth orchestra. This one is of Danzón No. 2, by Mexican composer Arturo Márquez. It is a style these young adults would be familiar with. I had heard of El Sistema and I’ve seen a documentary about one of the many partner organization in the US (perhaps Baltimore?). At one of the international handbell events I attended there were rumors that people from El Sistema attended to see how they might fit handbells into their program. I haven’t heard anything about that since. When the movie opens Dudamel is rehearsing the professional Simón Bolívar Orchestra ready to take all nine Beethoven symphonies on tour. A very large chunk of the group is still those who came through El Sistema. While they are on tour violence broke out in Venezuela because of an economic crisis. Huge crowds of protesters call for the fall of the government. Several people are killed, including a child in one of the youth orchestras. Dudamel’s actions and discussions with the camera show he is someone working to uplift those around him, to provide beauty for the world. From his success on the podium the world will agree he does it well. Of the violence he said the flowers could be cut off but the roots are strong and beauty will return. Art is needed because art heals the soul. Dudamel stayed out of politics considering music to be above such things. But after seeing the violence of his home country he had to speak out. He writes editorials in such papers as the New York Times. Now a spoiler alert for the rest of this section in case you want to watch it yourself. There were times the movie was a bit vague. It didn’t say whether Dudamel was barred from returning to Venezuela. However, soon we see him monitoring rehearsals of the youth orchestra from a remote location, adding comments to the young conductor on site. The youth orchestra’s international tour is canceled. The professional orchestra started losing a lot members, though again the movie was vague as to why. Some of them flee the country, such as the concertmaster who is able to get a job with an orchestra in Berlin. And their big tour is canceled. There are threats the government would end its support of El Sistema, which Dudamel decries as shutting down beauty. Others call on the government (and that should be all the governments of the world) to recognize musical training as a human right, not some elitist thing (I agree with that!). Dudamel organizes an international youth orchestra to assemble and perform in Mexico City with members from across the Americas. It includes a few from the Venezuela Youth Orchestra with their participation funded by the Dudamel Foundation. Then Dudamel’s mentor and dear friend Abreu dies. He isn’t able (allowed?) to attend the funeral. Again (because it is what conductors do) he assembles an international orchestra in Santiago, Chile for a memorial concert. This includes members of orchestras in Europe where he had conducted, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and professional and youth orchestras of Venezuela. A brief update on the war in Ukraine. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported that Ukraine is making progress around Kherson at the southwest end of the Russian held territory. But don’t expect the liberation of Kherson anytime soon. “At Kherson, Ukraine is working to retake a large city without doing to that city what Russia did in Mariupol or Popasna.” Let’s take a look at the progress of passing new gun restriction laws in the Senate. It’s going as well as it usually goes. Joan McCarter of Kos described the “Cornyn Con.” When something big comes up that Republicans want to make sure doesn’t pass, Moscow Mitch sends in Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. The phrase was coined by America’s Voice:

What’s the Cornyn Con? The silver-tongued, silver-haired Senator from Texas pretends he wants a breakthrough on immigration reform on his way to scuttling immigration reform. He positions himself as a conservative who wants to make common cause with Democrats, and after igniting hope and attracting positive press, he pulls the rug out on Democrats so he can blame them for failure.

In these situations the Democrats are desperate to get something passed so are willing to talk to anyone who will talk to them. In this case there were reports of “rapid progress” and “intense negotiations.” But even that signaled massive capitulation to Republican terms. Say goodbye to expanded background checks and restrictions on high capacity magazines. A couple provisions remained and there was an announcement of a framework with ten Republicans (amazing!) signing on, enough to break a filibuster. Then Cornyn moved the goalposts – he said he needed to attract 20 Republicans. And blaming the Democrats has begun. Along the way votes were scheduled and abandoned. On June 12, Lauren Sue of Kos reported the details of that framework. It includes money to help states pass red flag laws (notably not passing such laws at the federal level), money for school safety and to build community mental health clinics. It closes the “boyfriend loophole” so that guns can be taken away from an abusive boyfriend, not just an abusive spouse. There are provisions to prevent gun trafficking and enhanced background checks for purchasers under the age of 21 (though not a ban to selling to those so young – these background checks would have slowed the Uvalde shooter but not stopped him). It isn’t everything, but it is meaningful progress. At the time Mitch sounded positive. Which is worrysome. On June 13 McCarter reported that Republicans, Mitch among them, started saying, yeah, the framework is great. But we need to see the actual text of an actual bill. McCarter discussed what people outside of Congress are saying about the framework. Yeah, mental health clinics are great and needed but tying them to a shooting stigmatizes those who are mentally ill. Countries around the world have people with mental illness, but only the US has an epidemic of mass shootings. As for hardening the schools – more police in schools make black and brown students feel less safe and criminalizing kid behavior pushes them into the criminal justice system. These students see these cops arrest their friends. On June 17 McCarter explained the importance of the “boyfriend loophole.” And Republicans started arguing about the definition of “boyfriend.” One even said Democrats must use the Republican definition of the word or drop the whole provision (at this point who had which definition doesn’t matter). McCarter wrote Schumer should stop the negotiations and call a vote on the bill passed by the House plus hold votes on assault rifles, universal background checks, and high capacity magazines – everything voters want. He should get Republican votes on record. I suspect that won’t make much difference because voting no will delight a big chunk of the Republican base and the rest of them won’t vote for Democrats no matter what. Yeah, we’ve seen this theater before. Rebekah Sager of Kos reported a jump in gun sales since George Floyd’s murder in 2020. What is notable is who bought a big chunk of those guns. The National Shooting Sports Foundation reported gun sales to black Americans jumped by 58%. They feel the need to protect themselves and their families. The National African American Gun Association has gained a thousand new members a month since 2020. And there is a group called Black Guns Matter. Even so...

researchers at the Pew Research Center found that 75% of Blacks, 72% of Asians, and 65% of Latinos felt that gun laws should be stricter, compared to only 45% of white people surveyed. This is also no surprise; Black people are disproportionately affected by gun violence, especially when it comes to police brutality and homicide. According to research from Everytown USA, 68% of homicide victims in cities are Black.

In a segment from two weeks ago Sam Gringlas of WABE in Atlanta and NPR discussed advertising by gun companies and how that affects the policy debate. Much of this is about the company Daniel Defense, who made the gun used by the Uvalde shooter. Gringlas said Daniel Defense has been pushing the advertising envelope to stand out. They’ve been accused of targeting ads to teens and lawsuits about that have been filed. They’re also pushing fake machismo patriotism, the idea that one must own an AR-15 to be a good American. They glamorize the gun, battle style clothing, the whole tactical lifestyle. Now many times when Republican candidates for office, especially for Congress, talk to voters the top question is “What are your views on the Second Amendment?” Campaign contributions to lawmakers aren’t making the big difference in how a member of Congress votes. The big pressure comes from voters, soaked in the advertised tactical lifestyle, demanding candidates protect their gun rights or they’ll vote for someone else in the next primary. Greg Dworkin of Kos tweeted:

So officers in Uvalde didn’t want to shoot for fear of hitting a kid… but teachers are supposed to be Annie Oakley?

Hunter of Kos reported the Texas Republican Party is creating a new campaign platform at a convention attended by 5,000 delegates. Sen. Cornyn attended and was booed for pretending to be bipartisan in order to derail gun legislation. That’s how devoted this party wants to be. Hunter listed some of the provisions in this full fascist campaign platform: Biden is not a legitimate president. Texas has a right to secede from the union as it demands a rewrite of the constitution of the country it wants to secede from. It asserts homosexuality is “abnormal” and a “lifestyle choice.” It wants to punish providers of gender-affirming medical care. It bans teaching of “Critical Race Theory” as well as sex education and sexual health (no teaching what to expect during puberty or what molestation is). It requires teaching life begins at conception. It demands a provision in the state constitution that the legislature cannot enact any gun restrictions.

To you, this might sound like a document produced by child molestation advocates in conjunction with seditionists to encourage mass murders before turning full traitor, but this is just what Texas Republicans are now. Yes, even the ones that claim to be against these things while voting for the Republicans that support them. It's a party of conspiracy freaks and treason, a party in which even the most far-right members aren't safe from attack in their own convention if they dare, even for a moment, go against the militant seditionist base.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported that Republican colleagues of Rep. Liz Cheney are puzzled by her. She’s the vice chair of the January 6 Committee and serving on that committee is damaging her re-election bid in Wyoming. Mitch said her focus on taking down the nasty guy doesn’t help anyone. Cheney has said at campaign events has said her motivation is the fear that the peaceful transfer of power (and democracy) may come to an end. She wants her sons to live in a democracy. Wrote Eleveld:

What Cheney’s GOP counterparts are really marveling at is the concept of principled leadership—of placing the good of the whole above the immediate concerns of oneself.

Today is Juneteenth, a new holiday to celebrate the end of slavery. This is the day that slaves in Galveston, Texas found out the Emancipation Proclamation was signed 2½ years before. Michael Harriot tweeted:

If Twitter was around on June 19, 1865 you know someone would have tweeteed…

Here are some of the responses: Courtney McCain: “What was the June 19th 1865 equivalent to ‘What about Chicago?’ ” WeartheMask: “... two YEARS ago?!!” Cincy Sensi Star: “These white folk betta not be playing about our 40 acres and a mule.” Tasha Mack: “We can't find enough good employees. Nobody wants to work anymore.” JMon, replying to Mack: “Black people have been stereotyped as lazy ... Ever since they stopped working for free.” Craig: “What about Hunter Lincoln's Laptop??” Tanya Callendar Moncur: “Juneteenth brisket! 20% off with the Emancipation flyer while supplies last.” Howard Frazier: “Freedom night at Club Plantation. Ladies get in free. Bucks half price till 9. Sunday Best only no Field clothing allowed.” Kyle: “They weren't slaves. They were dependent contractors.” Kedrin Bell added: “Unpaid interns.” Mitchener Howell: “Under Jefferson Davis’s administration, blacks had the lowest unemployment rates in Confederate History.” Matthew Talicska: “ ‘Really though, weren't you happier not knowing you were free?’ - Jesse Helms”

Yeah, he knew it was illegal

I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated Wednesday. I get the data here. The current status chart on that page includes current totals. Through the full course of the pandemic (since cases started showing up in March 2020), over 2.5 million people have tested positive. The state’s population is 10 million. So a quarter of the state has tested positive (yeah, I know this ignores the people who have tested positive from two or more different infections). The number who have died is over 36,600. The peaks in new cases per day might be reaching a plateau. For the last few weeks the peaks are 3398, 3046, 2198, and 2331. Many numbers likely adjusted from previous reports. Deaths per day is not getting posted quickly. The data for last week shows deaths in single digits. But the week before is now in the range of 9-14. Thankfully, the ten weeks before then the deaths per day have been 22 or fewer. Brandi Buchman of Daily Kos liveblogged Thursday’s hearing of the January 6 Committee in two posts, here and here. The primary focus of this day of testimony was to show the pressure placed on the vice nasty to overturn the Electoral College vote counting. In late December and early January several people, lawyers, legal scholars, and lawmakers, told the vice nasty his role in the EC vote counting was a formality. He could not interfere in the counting. Some of the Committee’s proceedings documented who said that to the vice nasty. The proceedings also showed how much pressure the vice nasty was getting from the nasty guy and those supporting the insurrection. John Eastman was a lawyer for the nasty guy. In some of the photos of the speeches at the Ellipse before the march to the Capitol Eastman is standing to the side of the podium wearing a tan overcoat (an example here). There are also photos of him speaking at the event. On January 4th Eastman was one of those telling the nasty guy he could not recommend rejecting electors. On January 5th Eastman told the vice nasty about his plan to reject certain electors. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported a couple days after the Capitol attack Eastman asked to be put on the list of those seeking a pardon from the nasty guy. Yeah, he knew it was illegal. In a third post Buchman summarized the day. This included a discussion of how close – only 40 feet – the rioters were to the vice nasty as he was taken to safety and if the rioters were not distracted by a Capitol Policeman they would have killed him. This summary also includes a photo of the vice nasty at a place of safety talking on a phone while looking at another phone showing a tweet from the nasty guy praising the hordes as they chant “Hang Mike Pence!” Mark Sumner of Kos reported that Eastman claimed there was a “heated fight” among the justices of the Supreme Court about getting enough of them to hear one of the claims of election fraud. Eastman claimed insider knowledge (he had clerked for Clarence Thomas). Was this bragging? Threatening violence on the Capitol if the Supremes did nothing? Was he succeeding in getting some of them to join his plan? Another part of this is the revelation that the insider knowledge was coming from Ginni Thomas, wife of Clarence. We knew she was pressuring Arizona legislatures to submit a nasty guy slate of electors. We also knew she had sent a series of texts to nasty guy Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. And now we know there were a series of emails between her and Eastman about what’s going on with the Supremes. If Ginni was talking to justices to get their support for this scheme the resignation of Clarence should be only the first. Sumner also reported the January 6 Committee would like Ginni to come for a little chat. She agreed to come to “clear up misconceptions.” Joan McCarter of Kos reported that with these revelations the Supremes are now in the middle of the insurrection mess.

Eastman knew what he was pushing—with help from Ginni Thomas—was illegal. Following that to its logical conclusion, with the revelations of the last 24 hours, how does the committee not subpoena Ginni Thomas? Furthermore, how do President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer not demand that Clarence Thomas resign? How do the House and Senate Judiciary Committees not turn their attention to Clarence Thomas and investigating just what Clarence and Ginni Thomas were cooking up together? ... It’s time to begin the investigations leading to an impeachment of Clarence Thomas. No, this Senate would not convict with 50 Republicans, but after the work of the Jan. 6 committee and all of these revelations, they need to be forced to vote to protect him. They need to be making the case against Clarence Thomas, and then they need to start real work of reforming and expanding the Supreme Court.

Paul Waldman, opinion writer for the Washington Post, tweeted:

Whenever I see a news story that starts "A man with connections to a violent extremist group..." it's an even bet whether the next line is "was convicted in federal court today" or "won the Republican primary today"

Leah McElrath tweeted:

Trump is not done with his destruction. He will never stop on his own. He is fueled by envy, grievances, and a desire for revenge of what he perceives as ways he was betrayed. He will never stop on his own. Instead, he must be stopped by those with greater power.

So will these proceedings prompt someone with greater power actually stop him? Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos included an excerpt from Molly Ivins:

As an American living today, your one vote means you have more political power than 99 percent of all the people who ever lived on this planet. Think about it: Who ever had this much power? A peasant in ancient Egypt? A Roman slave? A medieval shoemaker? A French farmer? Your grandfather? Why throw power away? Use it. Leverage it. —November 2004

Actually, both my grandfathers were born in the US and voted quite consistently. As I was writing this the power went out – the third time this month. It likely happened because today has been windy. Fortunately, it was out for only a half minute. But that’s long enough for the computer to be shut down. So I rebooted the modem, then the computer. In the middle of rebooting the power went out again. And again for a short period – perhaps ten seconds. But this time the computer didn’t boot. Something about needing repairs, which it would attempt to do. So I let it repair. Ten minutes later it finished and said I should reboot. I did. Everything looks fine. Thankfully. I’m not ready to buy a new computer.

The longer you believe in the con, the harder it is to admit you’ve been scammed

I said yesterday I was relieved the forecast for my area predicted a high of 95F and my thermometer barely cracked 80F. That didn’t happen today. The prediction for today was 92F and my thermometer registered 90F. Last week I reported on a story by Mark Sumner of Daily Kos that said the COVID death rate for white Americans had risen higher than the death rate for black Americans, reversing a trend from early in the pandemic. Wrote Sumner about what he wrote:

However, that article was wrong. So was the source article. Both fell prey to a statistical phenomenon known as Simpson’s Paradox, in which “an association between two variables in a population emerges, disappears, or reverses when the population is divided into subpopulations.” I was wrong, both in my interpretation of the data, and in the commentary I drew from this conclusion. And in both cases, I forgot one of the most serious dictums of any form of journalism: Beware the story that is too friendly to your own beliefs. ... This article was incorrect on its core assumptions. You have a right to expect better. Apologies.

This willingness to admit errors and to explain why they are errors is a big reason why I trust Daily Kos as a primary news source. Yes, I quoted and linked to Sumner’s previous article. So I’m posting this correction. Here’s another example of why I trust Kos. It is again by Sumner and he discussed a new cancer drug and why he is skepical. He didn’t simply praise it and go on to another story. A week ago the New England Journal of Medicine published the results of how well that drug treated a specific form of cancer. There was “100% response” – in all of the patients their tumors were completely eradicated. That’s great! News outlets touted this is a cure for cancer. Sumner explained why that designation is premature: The study had only 12 patients. All that can be determined from a study that small is that a larger study is worthwhile. It was tried on patients with one particular form of cancer. The study is too small to understand side effects and how serious they may be. One side effect might be autoimmune diseases. If it works – if indeed it can be shown effective on a lot more patients, on other types of cancers, and without side effects worse than radiation and chemo – then it can be proclaimed as the new cancer wonder drug. We’d even praise it if it worked only for this one type of cancer. But we don’t know that yet. Joan McCarter of Kos reported Sen. Bernie Sanders held a debate with Sen. Lindsay Graham a couple days ago. Sanders said America spends twice as much on health care than other major countries. The reason is insurance companies are ripping off the system. McCarter wrote:

That’s socialism, said Graham. “And it’s not going to fix America. We are not a socialist nation. There is a better way, I promise you this.”

So if government provides a service that’s socialism and therefore bad. If there is a corporate layer that rips off the government and the citizens then it’s cool. As for Graham’s better way: Gut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. And, if Republicans retake the Senate, Graham, as head of the Senate Budget Committee, would be in a very good position to make that happen. This is part of a fight among Senate Republicans. The issue at the center of the fight isn’t the cuts, as devastating as they would be to millions of Americans. It’s that several senators insist on talking about the cuts before the midterm elections. I had written that five Republican candidates for governor on Michigan were removed from the primary ballot because they hired a company to gather signatures and too many of those signatures were fraudulent. Rebekah Sager of Kos reported there is a campaign in Nebraska to gather signatures to put a proposal on the November ballot to require voters to have an ID. Yeah, that’s a law adopted in many other states that suppresses black voters. So, yeah, a Republican effort. This campaign in Nebraska hired the same company that turned in fraudulent signatures in Michigan. Well, we don’t know if they’re fraudulent yet. But there have been so many complaints about the people gathering signatures (and being paid to do it) that law enforcement has started to investigate and the state Attorney General has heard about it. The primary complaint is they can’t explain what the proposal is about or they are lying about it. Sager wrote about Sen. Carol Blood, a Democratic nominee for governor.

“We have real fraud taking place in the streets in order to prevent fraud that is not happening in Nebraska. … It is a weird dichotomy,” Blood said.

If you were the victim of a con would you tell anyone about it? If you were well snookered and ripped off, would your pride let you admit it? What if it wasn’t a monetary con but a political one? What if the con was so complete you invested your identity into what the con artist told you? What if admitting you were conned meant expulsion from your tribe? Dartagnan of the Kos community explores those ideas. That’s why many followers of the nasty guy can’t admit their faith in him was misplaced or wrong:

That is a personal indictment of their own intelligence and self-worth, as well as an indictment of the people in whom they most commonly put their faith (usually friends and family); for that reason, their errors can never be acknowledged. The fact that those who presume to challenge their self-worth are their political opponents makes such an acknowledgment doubly impossible under any circumstances. ... Trump uses every opportunity to tell his supporters that such assertions [that the election was stolen] are the product of a “left-wing mob,” which stokes the same visceral fight-or-flight response in which Fox News regularly traffics. But the real kicker is the cloying implication that his supporters have special knowledge, that they’re smart, danger! And every assertion to the contrary by Democrats is simply perceived as an attack on their intelligence. “Of course the election was stolen, my tribe and a hundred social media sites confirm this,” they insist. And it makes no difference how much evidence is produced to the contrary.

This brings to mind something I had heard several years ago. A con man will frequently convince the mark that they as a team are conning someone else. Such as what Putin did to the nasty guy. Because the con man warns his marks what the official legal or Democratic response will be and defines what those responses are supposed to mean, when they happen the mark feels vindicated – my side was right. Dartagnan discussed why many “religious” people embrace the Big Lie:

An attack on Trump is viewed as an implicit attack on their faith, for which they’ve invested (some of them literally) practically everything they own. Their entire self-worth is predicated on the implicit assumption that they, and they alone, are “right.” In fact, that’s the comforting attraction of many religions: the need to be proven right. And as a corollary, anything espoused by “godless” Democrats—no matter how objectively rational—must be wrong.

Maria Konnikova has written books about how scams work. In a 2019 interview with NPR she said:

One of the things you realize when, you know, you study con artists is that we're conning ourselves all the time about who we are, about our stories. And con artists just pick up on that. They figure out how we're conning ourselves. That's one of the reasons why we're so susceptible.

Elizabeth Winkler, writing for Quartz in 2016 noted:

The longer you believe in the con, the harder it is to admit you’ve been scammed.

In a post of two weeks ago Marissa Higgins of Kos reported that Adam Tritt, an Advanced Placement English teacher at a high school in Brevard, Florida, is running a “banned book drive” to buy copies of books banned or challenged in Florida so students can read them over the summer. At the time of the post Tritt had raised $5,000. Moms for Liberty, a local chapter of a conservative group working to get books banned, is furious. They took to Facebook to claim Tritt was a sex offender, a “groomer,” and a provider of pornographic books. Those moms, in their fury, included a link to the fundraiser. Perhaps that put the link in front of more eyes and made donating a bit easier?