The right thing to do journalistically

Brother’s visit was a good one. While he was here we went to supper with Sister and two nieces, one bringing her wife, a pleasant time. It’s been a week since I last posted. In that time I accumulated more than 40 browser tabs of stories to share. That brings me to 187 tabs after recently saying I had never gone over 175. Maybe I’ll get to them over the next week and maybe I’ll decide they’re no longer worth discussing. So don’t keep count. More than a week ago I was in the midst of a debate with my friend and debate partner. He doesn’t actually debate me all that often. It is a friendship that has spanned 30 years. Many months can pass between “debates,” which is usually him sending comments by email (never an actual comment in the blog) in response to something I wrote. Sometimes I see it is important to whatever I wrote – usually a rebuttal – and worth sharing. There had never been three debates within ten days (with my reply now delayed by a week). That’s a long way of saying my friend responded to my post “Freedom to oppress...” I had written about GLAAD’s criticism of the New York Times for the portrayal of transgender people in some of the opinion pieces. Marissa Higgins of Daily Kos complained about one op-ed piece by Times columnist Pamela Paul. She wrote in defense of JK Rowling, who many call a transphobe. Part of what I wrote was that because of what I read in Kos I don’t trust the Times and how Paul’s article (as reported by Higgins) didn’t change my opinion. I scanned my posts and see I first referenced Kos back in 2008 shortly after I started this blog. I took a break from Kos in 2010-2013, but it has been a primary source of news for the last nine years. I’ve mentioned or discussed articles I read in Kos a few hundred times. My friend avoids Kos the same way I avoid the Times. He did venture into Kos in response to my previous post to read what Higgins wrote. From his perspective he sees plenty of reasons to keep avoiding it. He described it as, “Too many right answers, not enough questions. The basic mistake of nearly all religions.” I think he happened to visit the site at a time when the sidebar of recent and recommended posts included debate between atheists and believers written by the Kos community and not produced by Kos staff. I’m sure that bit of info won’t encourage my friend to visit again. Friend did list several things he hopes we can agree on: In the US and many Western European countries the attitude towards LGBTQ people has change dramatically towards one of acceptance as full humans. Even so, many religious groups locally and across the world keep their traditional condemnation of homosexuality and other kinds of sexual and gender variation. Because of that many families reject their LGBTQ family members and one political party is championing LGBTQ oppression. And these unchanged people have far too many guns. In addition, many other countries, especially Russia, still criminalize and oppress LGBTQ people and many remain closeted. Friend then said that because so many people (and the institutions and government they control) have not yet come to accept LGBTQ people and not yet understand our full humanity, we and our allies are engaging in destructive behavior. That is we – people like Higgins – “demand that our institutions ... behave as if the revolution is complete and in place, all controversies resolved, the doubts of all citizens erased.” This is “leftist bullying” as bad as conservative bullying. Friend also found Paul’s article on the Times website and sent the text to me. The text says to find it online here. He listed what he believes are the many assumptions Higgins wrote that he said are just not true. I’ll mention one example. The rest are incidental.

The Times failure to treat a topic according to Higgins' preferences constitutes the spreading of misinformation. That can only be true when you accept only one side of an incomplete revolution.

So I looked at the way the Times, in particular Paul, treated the topic. It is a lot milder than I thought it might be. Paul begins by quoting some of the pro-trans things JK Rowling has said. I’m glad Rowling said them. Then Paul wrote what is at the core of Higgins’ complaint.

So why would anyone accuse her of transphobia? Surely, Rowling must have played some part, you might think. The answer is straightforward: Because she has asserted the right to spaces for biological women only, such as domestic abuse shelters and sex-segregated prisons. Because she has insisted that when it comes to determining a person’s legal gender status, self-declared gender identity is insufficient. Because she has expressed skepticism about phrases like “people who menstruate” in reference to biological women. Because she has defended herself and, far more important, supported others, including detransitioners and feminist scholars, who have come under attack from trans activists. And because she followed on Twitter and praised some of the work of Magdalen Berns, a lesbian feminist who had made incendiary comments about transgender people. You might disagree — perhaps strongly — with Rowling’s views and actions here. You may believe that the prevalence of violence against transgender people means that airing any views contrary to those of vocal trans activists will aggravate animus toward a vulnerable population. But nothing Rowling has said qualifies as transphobic. She is not disputing the existence of gender dysphoria. She has never voiced opposition to allowing people to transition under evidence-based therapeutic and medical care. She is not denying transgender people equal pay or housing. There is no evidence that she is putting trans people “in danger,” as has been claimed, nor is she denying their right to exist.

Good to hear Rowling does not dispute gender dysphoria, that she does approve of transgender people’s right to exist, to approve of transition, to support equal pay and housing, and is not putting trans people in danger. Good to see Paul recognize that. But Paul, who does not say she is transgender or a part of the LGBTQ community, does not get to decide whether Rowling is transphobic. Transgender people do. That’s in the same way that white people do not get to decide whether they or other white people are racist – there are many things white people don’t recognize as racism that black people experience as oppression. And from the trans person’s point of view Rowling making a distinction between “biological” women and trans women and saying one needs space that excludes the other is transphobic. Denying self-declaration as sufficient to determine if someone is trans is transphobic. Supporting people who are transphobic is transphobic. Though I’m not transgender I am part of the LGBTQ community. Even with that deciding what is transphobic isn’t up to me. Alas, I don’t have a trans co-author, so I’m giving an idea what trans people likely think of what Paul wrote. Higgins’ point, and that of everyone else who signed the letter condemning the Times, including me, is that the Times and its columnist made an error in deciding for trans people what transphobia means. In other similar situations we call it “mansplaining.” What the letter is calling the Times to do is hire some actual trans people to avoid these sorts of errors in the future. Friend wrote:

It is foolish for its advocates to feel entitled to support and agreement from everyone else. That behavior is destructive – it prevents the winning of new allies.

I have a different take on this and imagine Higgins and other LGBTQ advocates do to. When a voice in the society speaks against us, or even speaks with incomplete knowledge, we demand they improve. This voice might be an influential news and opinion source, such as the Times, a celebrity with a platform that comes with being a celebrity, a corporate leader, a politician, or someone with a Facebook or Twitter account. Demanding they do better is how we improve the society’s perception of us. This is not bullying! It is not feeling entitled to support and agreement. Demands have been a part of the public protest language since protests began. When students were shot at Michigan State University they rightly demanded the Michigan legislature and the US Congress pass laws to stop these mass shootings from happening. Framing our complaints as a suggestion won’t get us anywhere. Constructive criticism will – especially when the letter sent to the Times includes details of what we believe is wrong with what they wrote and a list of ways to improve. I had written most of this post yesterday. During a break in writing I listened to yesterday’s All Things Considered on NPR. Host Michel Martin talked to their media correspondent David Folkenflik about this controversy at the Times. I think this story is balanced and without rancor. They mention the letter sent by trans activists, the support from within the ranks of Times journalists, and the response from senior editors, who are not backing down. Folkenflik, in his summary, said:

Yeah. I think it's, in some ways, about the Times present and some ways about how the Times will be looked back on in the role of journalism, right? So, you know, if you think back to how the Times covered gay rights and gay people, it was for decades dismissive, condescending, patronizing or antagonistic, hostile in a way that the Times ultimately had to grapple with a few decades ago and come to terms with and change the way they approached this. And a number of Times journalists said to me they don't want to have to look back on the way the Times has approached this now and think of this as a place that has cultivated a panic or contributed to a society that treats trans people as less than or less consequential than others. And yet the Times still wants to be able to say it's distilling these issues through a journalistic prism and not a political one. They don't want to take such care as a political stance or because of pressure. They want to do so because it's the right thing to do journalistically. Navigating that, I think, is going to be a very fine line for the Times as they see these voices inside and outside the newsroom raised in critique. ... The question of harm is an important one. You're hearing people who signed that letter, particularly people who are themselves trans people, say I'm being negated here because the overwhelming direction of coverage is raising questions about this kind of medical care without having an equal or greater amount of attention being given to, what are the repercussions if those youths are not given certain kinds of medical care? By the same token, I think there are a number of senior executives at the Times who are signaling they don't want to be intimidated from looking carefully at issues which are not yet settled, which do have implications even if the numbers are relatively small.

Note the phrase “not yet settled.” Trans people and their doctors say the issues and the science are settled. It is only conservatives, who want to demonize trans people, who say they aren’t. My Sunday movie was The Half of It on Netflix. The opening sequence describes the idea told by Aristophanes that at birth a soul is divided in two and many of us spend our lives searching for the other half to complete ourselves. Sometimes we find that half and experience love, sometimes we don’t. The story is a loose adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac. Paul, a high school jock not good with words, has a crush on Aster. But he want help to attract her attention. So he turns to Ellie Chu, a straight A student who writes other student’s papers for a fee. The complication is that Ellie also has a crush on Aster. Though Paul does send a few letters, a good deal of the help is through text messaging as Ellie monitors the date through the window. Aster may think she’s texting Paul, but it goes to Ellie’s phone, leaving Paul wondering what she said. There are some nice twists in the story, such as Paul and Ellie really caring for each other. All this takes place in the fictional town of Squahamish, Washington (there is a real town named Suquamish), though filming was done in upstate New York. It is is a sweet tale, well told. The ending is satisfying, but not what one expects.

People in the richest nation in the world should not be hungry

My Sunday movie was Circus of Books, a 2019 Netflix documentary about a gay porn bookstore in West Hollywood, California, run by Karen and Barry Mason. Karen had started as a journalist but got tired of covering death, though she had done a decent interview with Larry Flynt of Hustler and related magazines. Barry was mechanically minded and for a while worked in the movie industry on special effects, including on the original Star Trek series. One of his inventions helped dialysis machines and making that became his job – until medical insurance rules changed. Running short of money they answered one of Larry Flynt’s ads looking for distributors. Then one of their customers wasn’t paying bills, so they bought him out and had themselves a store. And that became a neighborhood gathering place for the gays of West Hollywood as a time when being gay was still criminal. Karen and Barry watched the AIDS epidemic unfold around them while not directly affected by it. Also in the Reagan era were people trying to protect others from obscenity – they were always (then and now) looking for someone to demonize – so they had to be careful who they sold to. The danger lessened only when Bill Clinton became president. Their lawyer said that if obscenity was no longer an issue those who were obscenity watchdogs would lose their jobs. This documentary was made by their daughter Rachel. As part of the story was how she and her brothers were affected by mom and dad running a porn store. At times the complications got personal. The farm bill, a huge thing, is renewed every five years. It contains support for agriculture – now mostly big corporations – and for nutrition programs, those who need support to get enough to eat. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported that, as happens during every renewal, Republicans are looking for ways to cut the federal budget. Of course, they’re not considering cutting corporate support. They are looking for ways to block poor people from getting the food they need. McCarter concluded:

[Rep. Glenn] Thompson is not talking so much about making people go hungry because usually the people who are responsible for getting this humongous legislative package out the door aren’t. They don’t want that fight messing up their ability to help out corporate agriculture. But an inordinate amount of time and energy and angst is going to have to be spent again by all of the groups united behind the principle that people in the richest nation in the world should not be hungry.

Since the MSU mass shooting last Monday there seems to be another mass shooting every day. There was a shooting in El Paso on Wednesday in the mall that’s adjacent to the Walmart where 23 people were killed in 2019. And the news on Saturday morning was of a shooting in Mississippi with six dead. As that is going on several House Republicans are wearing AR-15 lapel pins. They are being handed out by Rep. Andrew Clyde, who owns a gun shop and who panicked during the attack on the Capitol by “ordinary tourists” a couple years ago. Hunter of Kos says he knows Republicans won’t back bills to reduce gun violence. But we can fight for other kinds of bills that would help victims, even if it is to force Republicans to vote against them.

Can we not promote bills ordering that all funeral costs for gun violence victims be covered by the federal government? When children are gunned down in a Texas school, it is repulsive to ask grieving parents to beg for money to cover the financial costs of their child's death. Can we not promote bills expanding Medicaid so that medical costs for gun violence victims are covered by the government that refused to prevent their injuries? Why should victims be held responsible for participating, unwillingly, in the freedom that gun seller Andrew Clyde believes to be necessary to protect our "liberties"? Why are we naming government buildings after politicians, rather than shooting victims? What have politicians sacrificed that should count for more? ... Why are victims of gun violence paying for their own medical care, after they get shot for the sake of Andrew Clyde's liberties? Why isn't Andrew Clyde paying those bills himself?

My friend and debate partner responded to my previous post. I didn’t have time to write a full response. If I don’t within the next day or so it might be a while. I usually do most of my writing Wednesday through Saturday and that’s when Brother will be visiting.

Freedom to oppress. Freedom from oppression.

I don’t read the New York Times, and I’m not tempted to pay for a subscription to get behind its paywall. I also don’t trust their coverage based on what I read in Daily Kos. However, my friend and debate partner, who is originally from the Big Apple, does subscribe and does read it regularly. The NYT is known as the paper of record for its lack of bias and its balanced reporting. Because of that it is used as a source for a variety of topics by members of Congress. That is important. A couple days ago I got an email from GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (the organization was formed before society paid much attention to Bisexual and Transgender, back when Queer was considered a slur before it was reclaimed as a badge of honor). GLAAD does such things as monitor TV, movies, and print publications (whatever “print” means these days). They protest defamatory portrayals of our community and they present Media Awards each year to those TV shows and movies with the most positive portrayals. I’m on GLAAD’s email list, though I’m not a financial supporter. The email urged me to sign an open latter to the Times demanding they stop giving voice to people who mischaracterize and harm transgender people. Most of these voices are through opinion pieces, which don’t have the same requirements of accuracy. I read the letter and added my name. There are many important LGBTQ people and many celebrities who also signed. The letter listed demands, including no longer giving voice to anti-trans bigots and their hateful misinformation and hiring a few trans people to guide the paper’s coverage. I forwarded the GLAAD email to my friend, saying this is why I don’t trust the Times. We had lunch together to day. As part of our discussion of many things he said he saw my email and marked it for later reading. He also was surprised that the Times would allow such misuse of its impartiality, though he said he doesn’t read all of the Times. My friend wondered if I have any examples of this biased portrayal of trans people. Marissa Higgins of Kos provides an example. JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books (which I read and saw the movies too), has become notorious for being a transphobe. Rowling reasons that she is defending women. Higgins replies that trans women are women. The people women need defending from are men. Much of Higgins post is about an opinion piece by Pamela Paul, a Times op-ed columnist, who defended Rowling’s transphobia. I won’t go into every one of Higgins’ rebuttals to what Paul wrote, though it is good reading for those who want to understand transgender people. I will note that it matters because this is not the only transphobic opinion piece in the Times. And because they appear in the Times they are given an air of impartiality (when they clearly are not) and transphobic lawmakers are able to say, “See! The Times agrees that trans people are dangerous!” That gives cover to anti-trans laws they propose and pass. And that leads to harm and death of trans people. Higgins also provides a link to the letter and includes a response from the Times, which essentially says they stand by their reporting. Which increases my mistrust of the Times. Dartagnan of the Kos community what would be involved in blue (or red) states seceding from the country. He references the article These Disunited States by Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson that appeared in the New York Review of Books. Dartagnan begins by noting many of the reasons why the two sides may not want to live together, though the reasons come down to: Freedom to one group means freedom to oppress. Freedom for the other group means freedom from oppression. There are disagreements over gun availability and what to do with militia groups. Over being “woke” or “anti-woke” – whether we should acknowledge our oppression of targeted groups to stop being oppressive or ban acknowledging that oppression so that it can be perpetuated. Over whether America is a “Christian” nation that gives conservative Christians control of national laws. Over whether abortion is a right and women have control over their own bodies. Over whether the Supreme Court can rule from on high without considering a justice’s own ethics. Over whether rich people are taxed fairly and poor people are offered a meaningful social safety net. Over who gets a good quality education. Over who is allowed access to affordable health care. Over whether workers are left to the oppression of bosses. Over whether we should do something about climate change. I’m sure there are many other issues Dartagnan (and I) left out. Dartagnan wrote:

Given the seemingly implacable divisions that already exist in this country, it’s not particularly apocalyptic anymore to imagine a point where the majority populations in “blue” states simply refuse to bow to this court’s edicts and opt to go it alone.

Add to that the conservative introduction of violent intimidation and sense that they were ordained to rule. Because of all that America is already essentially binational, with two sharply opposed communities under one federal government in which each thinks the other poses a mortal threat to the country. If Congress remains divided after the 2024 election, no matter which party takes the White House states that are predominantly the other party may begin discussions of secession – amicable separation – and begin collaboration with other like-minded states. Since red and blue states are somewhat intermingled there won’t be a clear division as there was in the Civil War. There would also be a great deal of political migration. And violence. Perhaps the danger could be lessened with the federal government changed to handle the military and national infrastructure and leaving everything else to the states. However, most Democrats see the federal government as the most practical way of redressing injustice and protecting minorities. And most Republicans want the federal government to be the enforcer of oppression. There would be issues to work out – how to handle Social Security, national health, the distribution of energy, maintaining infrastructure, and how to keep the military from being used by one side against the other. Conservatives vow to step up their oppression and are doing so in Texas and Florida. They are showing exactly what they intend to do if they win the presidency. Splitting the country is an extremely unpleasant thought. But it is better to think about it now rather than when it is too late. Lean McElrath, quoting and linking to an article in the Daily Beast, tweeted:

“DeSantis Now Says Teachers Are Shelving Books to Make Him Look Bad” The only thing worse than a bully is a whining bully who plays victim. Oh, wait, that’s the entire current Republican Party. For a group who adhere to a belief “traditional” white culture is supreme, Republicans repeatedly reveal they see themselves as victimized weaklings. I’m as white as one can be by ancestral or aesthetic metrics and find it pathetic. I can only imagine how non-white people feel. “We’re white, cis, heterosexual men. We created the bestest most important strongest culture on earth and must defend it until death!” But also: “We’re being defeated and made to look bad by all those other mean icky people so they must be attacked! Waaaaah waaah waaah!” You can’t have it both ways. If you’re going to be a bigot, at least have some dignity.

Rob Rogers tweeted a cartoon of Ron DeathSantis writing “Don’t Say Gay!” at the front of a classroom and a black student asking, “Governor DeSantis, were you born a bigot or is that a lifestyle choice?” Jesse Duquette tweeted a cartoon of Goldwater (I think) of the 1960s saying “States’ Rights,” Nixon in the 70s saying, “Southern Strategy,” Reagan in the 80s saying, “Welfare Queens,” and DeathSantis in the 2020s saying “Woke.” The caption says, “Different code, same Klan.”

Earthquakes don’t kill people, badly built buildings do

My friend and debate partner responded to yesterday’s post as part of our ongoing debate about whether music can change the world. In that debate I had included a quote from Maya Angelou:

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

I had also talked again about the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra made up of Israelis and Arabs. My friend wrote:

I made a point of praising music's capability to convey emotion as one of its strengths, and I do value that. But notice that Angelou only claims that "people will never forget how you made them feel". There is no claim that said emotion(s) lead those feeling people to change their behavior. If music is to change the world to the degree we are discussing, it must change behavior in large numbers of people. I don't credit music with that, although I do seek music out and care about it. To return briefly to the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, I do not doubt that it has a great effect on those who participate in it and I'm happy it exists. But I doubt that it changes even its participants -- instead, I think appreciation for this politically charged music-making is a prerequisite for becoming a participant. These are people who are being the change they wish to create -- essential in creating change. But changing the world was our subject. Everything I know about Israel / Palestine says that the world around these musicians is not listening very much and, sadly, not changing. Instead, the Us vs Them cultures on both sides grow steadily more bitter. The Middle East is riven with "honor" cultures where people never forget and are committed to revenge. The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is not to blame for that, but it is also not an effective agent of change.

All excellent points. I confirm that my friend is an avid music lover, though of tastes different from mine, so we don’t attend events together. I’ll go back to one of the responses in my post from last Saturday that started this debate. Can music change the world? Hasn’t yet. And I’ll set this debate aside. Hunter of Daily Kos discussed a report by Asawin Suebsaeng and Patrick Reis of Rolling Stone saying the nasty guy has been talking in campaign meetings about expanding the federal death penalty to apply to less serious crimes and then turning the executions into flashy televised shows featuring the firing squad, hanging, and maybe even the guillotine. The nasty guy had wanted to do this during his firs term but was dissuaded by staff. No doubt they knew most Americans would be horrified. Most. But those in his base who shrug at an attempted coup would love to see such spectacles. On the one hand this is a reminder that the nasty guy is a stupid, malignant boor. On the other, he appears to be completely serious about it. Hunter concluded:

Trump's admiration for murderous authoritarian regimes remains quite real. His base's enthusiasm for maximum cruelty, whether it is aimed at refugees or schoolchildren, protestors or criminals, has only grown. A very large chunk of Donald Trump's base consists of Americans who like the idea of watching other Americans be executed on television. These are people who frothed for the capture of lawmakers during an attempted coup; there is no depth to which they will not willingly sink, so long as they have a leader willing to point the way. Trump is a sociopathic and seditionist would-be dictator, but the Republican base loves him for it. This malignant, poisonous presence could very well decide to turn "flashier state murders" into a major campaign theme so that he can bellow that all the other Republican contenders are too "soft."

Mark Sumner of Kos, in discussing the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria, noted that the city of Erzin had no major damage and no deaths. Osmaniye and Iskenderun on either side of Erzin were heavily damaged and many died. The mayor of Erzin explained:

Earthquakes don’t kill people, badly built buildings do. Not a single building collapsed in Erzin, Hatay, perhaps because the Mayor never signed off on unsafe or “kaçak” buildings. Residents were angry at him, he says. But he was saving their lives.

Erzin has a history of mayors that insisted on adhering to the earthquake resistant building codes. In other cities most of the buildings that collapsed were because of corruption. The builders did not build them according to earthquake codes. And that corruption goes all the way to Turkish President Erdogan. Sumner quoted NPR, which said Erdogan bragged about his zoning amnesty. He allowed contracts to ignore building codes that would make houses and offices more resistant to earthquakes. Then he gave amnesty to the unscrupulous builders. Sumner added:

As anger over both the response and the unsafe building increases, it’s very much worth noting that the area most affected by this quake is also the area that gave the heaviest support to Erdogan in the last election. Erdogan won that election with 52.6% of the national vote, but he carried those same areas around Osmaniye and Iskenderun and Erzin with over 70% of the local vote. Anger toward his government isn’t just growing, it’s growing in the area of Turkey he needs most to win reelection. That election is coming soon. A “snap” presidential election is scheduled for June 23. That election was already considered to be competitive. Now it will be taking place against the background of fallen cities and videos of Erdogan bragging about how he allowed contractors to skimp on safety.

Also, American Republicans want to get rid of government oversight. In a Ukraine update from last weekend Sumner reported the hottest area of fighting right now isn’t Bakhmut, the city that Russia has been trying to take for months (it is still in Ukrainian hands). The hottest area is Vuhledar. Unlike Bakhmut, Vuhledar actually has some strategic value – taking it would protect fragile Russian supply lines. The assault on Vuhledar and Bakhmut and other areas is not going in Russia’s favor. Sumner wrote:

Four days ago, it was big news when Ukraine reported 1,030 Russian soldiers killed in a day, with most of those losses taking place near Vuhledar or Bakhmut. That marked Tuesday as the biggest day for Russian losses since the invasion began. Then Russia lost over 900 more on Wednesday, and 900 more on Thursday as another catastrophic advance at Vuhledar was followed by that failure at Kreminna. The Friday number was something of a decline, with “only” 750 Russian troops eliminated — a rate that, if it continued, would still see more than 270,000 losses in a year. But then the astoundingly foolish assault on Avdiivka combined with more bad decisions at all of the above, and the end result is that on Saturday the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reported that Russia had lost an absolutely staggering 1,140 men in one day. There are estimates that Russia now has 320,000 troops in Ukraine. If they keep falling at the rate they were lost this week, all of them will be dead before the end of the year. It’s worth noting that those Russian losses haven’t come in the form we’ve become familiar with after watching months of activity near Bakhmut — small companies of men sent across fields or along streets between ruined buildings with little to no armor support. All week long the losses have come in the form of entire armored units blasted to smithereens along roadways. In part this has come because Russia has done what Ukraine refused to do: attempt to assault fortified positions in conditions that meant armor was restricted to traveling along a few narrow roadways. In part it’s because Russia seems to be replicating with its armored forces the tactics that it had “mastered” with infantry — if at first everyone gets killed, just send more. The result of this is that each of these days has come not just with astounding losses of men, but almost equally staggering losses of equipment. Since Tuesday, Ukrainian forces have destroyed 36 Russian tanks. Twenty five tanks were lost in two days. These are unsustainable levels of loss.

That prompted Sumner to chart out how quickly Russia is losing tanks compared to how quickly they can build new ones. At his computed rate they may have only 37% in working order at the end of the year. Sumner reminded us Ukraine cannot build its own tanks – an important manufacturing site was in Crimea and captured in 2014. So all of Ukraine’s tanks come from the West – and from Russia through battleground captures. Charles Johnson tweeted a page from “The KGB’s Magical War for ‘Peace’” by John Barron. It was written some time in the Soviet era. Johnson highlighted a paragraph that is a quote from Maj. Stanislav Aleksandrovich Levchenko, who fled the KGB and came to America. The quote is about how the KGB distorted reality (something Putin, a former KGB person, still does). Here’s part of it:

Almost everybody wants peace and fears war. Therefore, by every conceivable means, the KGB plans and coordinates campaigns to persuade the public that whatever America does endangers peace and that whatever the Soviet Union proposes furthers peace. To be for America is to be for war; to be for the Soviets is to be for peace. That’s the art of Active Measures, a sort of made-in-Moscow black magic. It is tragic to see how well it works.

Charles Jay of the Kos community told the story of Vladimir Romanenko, age 24. He had been working for the Russian propaganda site Komsomolskaya Pravda (KP). He had become disillusioned with the war and its propaganda. So as the one year anniversary of the start of the war approaches, he posted a series of ten articles on KP. For example, one was titled “The Russian Federation committed crimes in Bucha, Izyum, and Hostomel.” Of course, the articles were removed within ten minutes. Romanenko is physically safe. When the mobilization was announced in September he left Russia, even though media workers wouldn’t be called up. He won’t say in which country he is living. He had been working remotely and is now, of course, out of a job. There was another mass shooting in Michigan, this one on the Michigan State University campus. It happened on Monday. In a report on Tuesday Aysha Qamar of Kos discussed what had been learned by then. Qamar reported that Jackie Matthews is a senior at MSU. She had been a student at Sandy Hook Elementary when fellow students were gunned down. She said “The fact that this is the second mass shooting that I have now lived through is incomprehensible.” There is also a student described as having “witnessed the shooting” who is wearing an Oxford Strong shirt. The shooting at Oxford was only 15 months ago. Qamar included a quote by Dan Hodges:

In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.

That’s an important insight, but maybe it isn’t over. Since Tuesday Michigan Radio has reported on vigils on campus and rallies at the state Capitol, just a few miles from campus. There Democrats, now in control of the legislature and governor’s office, vow they will have bills to curb a bit of the violence. Rick Pluta reported:

House Democratic leaders said bills are still being finalized. But they said the legislation will almost certainly include universal background checks, red-flag rules that would allow guns to be taken from people who are deemed a threat to themselves or others, and a requirement that guns be locked up when not in use. Governor Gretchen Whitmer says she is ready to sign the bills.

Those laws will help, but won’t be enough. David Horsley of the Seattle Times tweeted a cartoon of a family lying on the ground as bullets zip overhead. The mother says, “I don’t know what to call this, but it isn’t freedom!” To that Amy Mader replied:

Exactly! Those bullets have the freedom to pierce human flesh but I can't go to the movies, concerts, bars, school, college, church, grocery shopping, etc. Guns in Walmart, guns in target, guns in Starbucks. Can't piss off a driver, might have a gun.

Neda Ulaby of NPR reported that an art gallery in Washington DC is displaying the work of Stephanie Mercedes. The art is bells cast from bullet casings and parts of old guns that she has melted down. She makes bells with the metal because they carry spiritual significance across cultures and they are tolled for mourning. She is gay and Latina and the project was inspired by the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. Many of these bells are not beautiful and some look like the weapons they used to be. Joan McCarter of Kos reported the White House has released a fact sheet on the federal budget and Republican hypocrisy. McCarter included this WH tweet that sums it up:

President Biden’s budget will cut the deficit by around $2 trillion over 10 years. Congressional Republicans are backing plans that will add more than $3 trillion to the debt over 10 years.

In a speech on Tuesday Biden said he told McCarthy they should meet to compare budgets, compare what gets spent where, what gets cuts, and who does and doesn’t get taxed. But McCarthy won’t raise taxes and just wants to cut. McCarter laid out why the budget will increase by $3 trillion under Republican plans.

It’s all true, and Biden proceeded to lay it all out in his speech, and the White House backed it up in that fact sheet: The $114 billion they would add to the debt in their bill to protect wealthy tax cheats (the first bill they passed this year); the $159 billion they’d add to the debt by repealing reforms that lower prescription drug costs from Medicare; trying to repeal corporate tax increases to the tune of $269 billion in debt increases; and their insistence that the Trump tax cuts continue, “a $2.7 trillion debt increase that would give the top 0.1% (with incomes over $4 million per year) a $175,000 annual tax cut, over 2.5 times a typical family’s annual income.”

McCarter titled the piece using the phrase “GOP deficit peacocks” which seems to be quite accurate. CameronProf of the Kos community echoed a story from Outsports that reported Jakub Jankto has come out as gay. He is the first active men’s player in international football (what we call soccer) to come out. His Czech team is fully supportive, as is UEFA, European football’s governing body.

America’s Chernobyl

My Sunday movie was No Straight Lines, The Rise of Queer Comics, a documentary by Independent Lens on PBS. I had known about this film for quite a while and had it in my list of films to watch, but I could not find which streaming service it was on. That’s because it was released only a month ago. The story started with the age of censorship. The first gay and lesbian comics were underground. For a while they had to create their own ways to publish. Then in the 1990s every state had its own LGBT newspaper and suddenly they had a big new market, enough to consider syndication. This was a golden time. But with the rise of the internet and those big shopping websites the publishing landscape dried up. Some authors turned to do it yourself zines. Many eventually turned to webcomics and graphic novels. The movie featured one I knew – Alison Bechdel – and another four I hadn’t. Howard Cruse submitted cartoons to an independent newspaper and the editor asked him to be the editor of Gay Comix. That featured his own stuff plus whoever else wanted to contribute. Cruse created Wendel – a gay young man falling in love with another. Wendel had never been closeted, but his boyfriend was. He also created Stuck Rubber Baby, a graphic novel about being gay in the South. Mary Wings started writing Come Out Comix in 1973. Rupert Kinnard, a black man, developed the Brown Bomber, a black and gay superhero. Jennifer Camper drew sexy comics for dykes. She also drew the AIDS epidemic because she was living through it and it was claiming people she knew. There were also appearances by another 17 queer comics, most of whom I hadn’t heard of before, though I had heard (and posted about) Maia Kobabe. Most of these are part of the younger generations. All of then were drawing art about their lives. Looks like I’ll have many new books to check out and perhaps buy. I watched this film on the PBS website, where they say it is free until mid April. Alas, it was not a smooth viewing experience. There was a short pause in the film about every five seconds. A movie that was 1:15 took about 1:30 to get through. I considered not watching because of it. I did shut down my browser and restart to eliminate as many background tasks from other pages as I could. It didn’t help. After No Straight Lines there was a ten minute documentary titled Senior Prom. This is a prom at a senior center where many of the residents are LGBTQ. Some of them weren’t allowed to attend their high school prom in the way they wanted, others went as part of a straight couple. So this was a chance to have a prom they way they wanted. One of them said they want the youngsters to know that LGBTQ relationships can last. My friend and debate partner has been doing his debate thing, which is good. In my previous post I included a variation on a Maya Angelou quote:

When someone shows you over and over and over again that they are a traitor, believe them.

My friend wondered about the original. I found it on AZ Quotes of Angelou, about a third of the way down the page:

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. People know themselves much better than you do. That's why it's important to stop expecting them to be something other than who they are.

I had heard the first sentence before, without the last three words. In that previous post I also discussed whether music can change the world. My friend offered a “no” and added:

I think that some uses of language – impactful, meaningful messages – can and do change the world. The U.S. Constitution is one example; I think I could offer many others. But music as a messaging language is too abstract and imprecise, too open to varying interpretation by diverse listeners, to provide a message that changes the world. Each listener has a different version of the language heard in music. That's not a weakness – it is that abstraction that makes music valuable as a conveyor of emotion.

He added that it isn’t only language that can change the world – actions can too. An example of that is the attack on Pearl Harbor. I reply that one shouldn’t discount the emotional power of music. Adding music to the language increases its emotional impact. That’s exactly what opera is all about. As for changing the world, which has more impact, the words “We shall overcome” or the Civil Rights song “We shall overcome?” I’m sure many in my generation and older probably now have going through their head. And I think that is an example of music that changed (or at least helped change) the country. Did that song by itself bring about the successes of the Civil Rights movement? Of course not. It also needed Martin Luther King’s soaring words of his “I Have a Dream” speech and the many marches and sit-ins and bus boycotts. But voices raised in singing “We shall overcome” added an emotional impact of determination that certainly helped the cause. My friend is skeptical about the music of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra I had mentioned that placed Israelis and Arabs side by side. My friend said it wasn’t the music,

it was the particular community created to make that music. A cooperative effort at governing likely would have a better chance of creating change.

I agree that a community was built as the Israelis and Arabs played together. However, I believe that community was strengthened through the emotional impact of the music and that the players were creating a thing of beauty together. Designing a cooperative government doesn’t have the emotional impact and beauty, even though it may have greater lasting consequences. Skeptical about emotional impact? Another Angelou quote I saw while scanning for the one above:

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

An Israeli feeling joy and other positive emotions with an Arab sitting beside him definitely helps. The Michigan COVID data, updated yesterday, show the peaks in new cases per day over the last few weeks as: 870, 889, 813, and 760. We’re still in a plateau, though heading in the right direction. As for deaths per day, this data takes much longer to post. The last two weeks show numbers 12 and lower. But three weeks before then is a day now reporting 37 deaths. Michel Martin of NPR spoke to journalist Josiah Daniels about the “He Gets Us’ ad campaign that has been around for at least a year and ran some of its ads during the Super Bowl. Here’s the narration of one of the ads:

A rebel took to the streets. He recruited others to join him. They roamed the hood and challenged authority. Community leaders feared them. Religious leaders abhorred them. We have to get them off the streets, they said. But they weren't part of a gang spreading hate and terror. They were spreading love.

Yes, it’s talking about Jesus. From this bit of text it sounds like a fairly accurate description of Jesus as I understand him. Martin said:

It's a riveting series of ads that place the biblical figure into current newsworthy situations, like being a refugee or isolated loner or condemned prisoner. And they all end with the line, he gets us, all of us.

Daniels said the ads resonated with him. But then he became skeptical, especially when one ad compared Jesus being crucified with being “canceled.” Being killed is not the same as having to deal with the consequences of something one has said or done. Most of the donors to this campaign are anonymous, though one has spoken out. That person is the co-founder of Hobby Lobby, the arts and crafts supplier. And that person is now a billionaire. He was behind the legal fight that went all the way to the Supremes that ruled companies don’t have to provide contraception care if it goes against their religious beliefs. The ad agency has also created spots for those who oppose LGBTQ rights. Daniels said:

For me, I think that it's a little bit of a situation where your treasure is, there, your heart will be also. ... they are telling us in no uncertain terms that while on the one hand, their messaging might be that Jesus accepts everybody, they are working with groups who certainly do not accept everybody. And so that makes me extremely suspicious.

One purpose of the campaign seems to be to redefine Jesus because he’s been damaged by Christian hypocrisy. Yet it is Christian hypocrisy that is paying for this campaign. Want to rebrand Jesus? Then make tangible commitments and steps to do the things Jesus did, such as include and take care of the marginalized and to promote social justice. When Jesus says whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me, it is both a theological and political statement. Rebekah Sager of Daily Kos added more detail. That Hobby Lobby co-founder is David Green and he declared his support for the campaign during a visit to the Glen Beck show. The budget for the Super Bowl campaign was $20 million. And that prompted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to tweet:

Something tells me Jesus would *not* spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign

The Critical Mind of the Kos community included some of the lines and images of the ads. This post also explores the hypocrisy then asks are these ads to promote the Biblical Jesus or the contemporary, hateful, conservative Jesus? There isn’t enough info to answer that question. Or this one: Who are these ads for?

Will ads that say “Jesus gets us” convince atheists to become religious? Are they intended to switch non-Christian believers to Christianity? Or are they directed at current Christians to deepen their faith and make them less likely to bolt?

Those who leave Christianity usually do so because of how badly they were treated. These ads are unlikely to bring them back. And is it worth spending $1 billion (the price of the whole campaign) to get them back or to try to convert people of other faiths?

Or is this campaign focused on wavering Christians who like Jesus’ message but hate the institutional bigotry of some denominations? The changing religious demographics of America support the last position. ... However, looking at how Christianity—especially the well-funded kind backed by zealots with an agenda—has operated over the last 100 years in America, the smart money would bet this is a Trojan Horse. Even the well-intentioned person of faith often succumbs to the howling of the mob. Especially if they attend mega-churches packed with ululating congregations, whipped into a righteous frenzy by a money-mad sociopath bent on buying a bigger house. To all the people of modest faith who try to live charitable lives as your savior wanted, I wish you well. And I hope that you stay true to your values. Especially if this “He gets us” campaign is a duplicitous cover for the usual sanctimonious bigotry of the rapine opportunist. Because God knows America should not be even more religiously execrable than it is already.

A train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio about ten days ago. The news stories told of the toxic chemicals onboard and that townspeople were evacuated. Unicorn Riot tweeted a ten minute video that discusses the how toxic the contents are. I didn’t watch the video, though did read through his thread. And that thread talks about how dangerous the chemicals are, how disastrous this is – and how it seems authorities are letting people back way too soon. The thread also talks about a “hot box detector” should have triggered the train to stop, but didn’t. It also mentions that the exhausted and overworked railroad workers were forced by Congress and Biden into a contract in December, a contract that sided with owners making huge profits. Those profits could have been spent on safety upgrades, but weren’t. There are dead animals and fish in the area and towns and cities along the Ohio River now need to monitor their water for these poisonous chemicals. This week’s Gaslit Nation episode was mostly about the East Palestine mess. This is the regular episode, so the hour of audio should be accessible. Hosts Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa don’t hold back. I thought I could listen while putting groceries away and doing general cleaning, but I had to stop every fifteen minutes or so to take notes. Andrea, whose family is from Ukraine and visited frequently in her childhood, calls this America’s Chernobyl. Yes, they say, it is that bad. Effects may extend fifty miles around the town – an area that includes Pittsburgh – and may last decades. The train company, Norfolk Southern, allowed this to happen because the safety mandates imposed by the Obama administration were weakened by the nasty guy. Some rich guys wanted to save money by reducing regulations (which also reduced safety) and his administration was happy to comply. It is these weakened safety regulations, even more than impending fascism, that will be the most harmful legacy of the nasty guy. These weakened safety regulations means we’re being ruled by American Oligarchs who have corrupted our political system. Chalupa said that much of the time after Ukraine became independent of the Soviet Union their country suffered under oligarch corruption. They are dismantling that corruption, but it has taken sacrifices by many people. Do we want to sacrifice a generation of Americans to root out our corruption, or will national leadership make that easier? We know Republicans thrive on that corruption and have no intention of ending it. But Kendzior and Chalupa look at the currently Democratic leadership and see no sign of them doing anything about it. There is so little effort to end corruption that Kendzior wishes Bernie Sanders would run against Biden in the primaries. Sanders isn’t great, but at least he talks about corruption. Many times Democrats get a pass for ignoring corruption because they can say, “Hey, it’s us or fascism,” an easy choice for many people. But people are watching this inaction (which seems to include a media silence on this train wreck) and concluding Democrats are no better than Republicans. Come election time they’re likely to sit out. And in Pennsylvania – very much affected by this disaster – that could make a big difference in who wins. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is one who has been slow to respond. I did a web search of him today. In the first page is a link to a story by the New York Post dated two days ago (more than a week after the wreck) with the title “Pete Buttigieg slammed for silence on Ohio train derailment.” And one a day later by Newsweek titled “Pete Buttigieg breaks silence after criticism over Ohio train derailment.” (I didn’t read either story.) Kendzior and Chalupa say that if Buttigieg doesn’t come down hard on the rail company it is a sign he has sold out. Biden and Buttigieg can show they haven’t sold out by first stopping the news blackout and being much more transparent about what is going on. Then they need to reinstitute the weakened safety regulations. Rail companies used the pandemic to cut staff and create what they call “precision scheduling.” When the railroad union contracts were before Congress last December the consequence of precision scheduling we heard about was that workers didn’t get sick leave or many other days off. However, another big consequence was they no longer had sufficient staff for adequate safety checks. Workers also say rail companies are now making the trains too long, making “hotbox” detection impossible to spot. During that time Biden could have sided with the workers – and didn’t. Yes, rail workers are saying this disaster could have been prevented if train crews were adequately staffed and allowed to do proper safety checks. Instead, the rail companies made whopping profits. Several times Chalupa referred to the genocidal corporate class. We need to be protected from those genocidal intentions and the people who should be doing that aren’t. Chalupa told us about Cop City. It’s a proposed area outside of Atlanta where a large area of forest will be flattened and $90 million will be spent on facilities where cops can live out their fantasies through war games. A big question is: Why do cops need to play war games? One person has already been killed protesting the destruction of the forest. Chalupa mentioned this for an important reason: A hefty chunk of the money comes from Norfolk Southern. Time for a grin or two. I’ve written many times about articles hiding in my browser tabs sometimes for many months. I don’t think I’ve ever had more than 175 tabs active at once. Even so I appreciate this Wumo cartoon. And this Candorville cartoon succinctly summarizes a lot of what those towards the top of the social hierarchy believe, which means it is a lot of what this blog is about. The Minnesota Department of Transportation has announced the names bestowed on its 2023 class of snowplows. The names include “Sleetwood Mac,” “Clearopathra,” and “Han Snowlo.”

A moment of beauty and that by itself is enough

I went to Ann Arbor last evening to attend an orchestral concert, something I haven’t done in three years. This time it wasn’t my beloved Detroit Symphony Orchestra (which I’ve been watching online). Instead, it was the visiting Brno Philharmonic from Czechia. This orchestra was started by Leos Janacek when he was in his 20s. He didn’t blossom into a national and world renown composer until his 50s or so. Naturally, the Brno orchestra specializes in Janacek’s music. In this concert they drew on the musical forces of the University of Michigan to perform two of Janacek’s works that need those extra forces. The first was Sinfonietta, which uses an extra dozen trumpets for the opening and closing fanfares. Alas, they sounded like college students. The second was the Glagolitic Mass, which uses the text of the Catholic Mass, but in Old Slavonic rather than Latin. This featured the University Choral Union. I mentioned all this partly because before the concert there was a pre-concert talk of the Society of Disobedient Listeners, led by Doyle Armbrust. Usually, pre-concert talks are about the music to be played. This one did that only a bit. Armbrust posed the question: Does music have the power to change the world? He included a poll, accessible to people with cell phones, with options “yes” (about 60%), “It’s complicated” (about 30%), and “no” (about 10%). Armbrust asked one of those who answered no to give their reasoning. The answer was essentially: Hasn’t yet. If it could it would have already done so. As a rebuttal Armbrust mentioned Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, in which Israelis and Arabs sat next to each other, read the same music, and used the same pencils. This orchestra was the inspiration for the movie Crescendo I saw and wrote about back in 2020. The chance of creating something of beauty with your enemy beside you does make a difference. But Armbrust, with the help of a musician or two, came around to saying we make music because it is the right thing to do. We make music because it is a moment of beauty and that by itself is enough. A few weeks ago my friend and debate partner went to a section of Ann Arbor near the university for lunch. Before then we had discussed choice of restaurant. I had suggested Madras Masala. He countered with Red Hawk, and I agreed. The way to the restaurant was blocked by traffic and a fire truck. Our chosen parking structure was closed. A block in one direction was closed off with police tape. So we endured more traffic and went to another structure. Yesterday I thought to go to Madras Masala before the concert, but Google Maps said it was out of business. I walked past it yesterday and saw why – the fire truck we saw a few weeks ago were there because that morning Madras Masala had burned to the ground. Earlier this week Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wondered if Russia’s big winter offensive against Ukraine was already fizzling out. To explain what is going on Sumner turned to video games, in particular the original version of Warcraft that came out in 1994. One of the innovations of the game was the tower defense. The human was to defend a particular part of the map against attacking orcs. That turned out to be fairly easy – place defensive weapons along the attack route and the orcs would be taken down as fast as they appeared. The plan worked no matter how many waves of orcs appeared as long as the weapons lasted – and the orcs kept attacking the same way each time. Russia seems to be playing the role of orcs quite well. That also explains why Ukraine has been sitting outside Kreminna for several weeks. If one method of attack doesn’t work they don’t keep trying that one method of attack. Starcraft, a much more recent game, also features characters that try to attack through sheer numbers. Here they’re called “zergs.” And Russian human wave attacks against Bakhmut, which still hasn’t fallen, are known as “zerg attacks.” FlannelGuy of the Kos community wrote that Minnesota has passed legislation moving the state’s energy to be 100% carbon free by 2040. In drafting the new law the state’s major utilities got on board. The law requires power companies to reach 55% renewables and 90% carbon free by 2035. The carbon free category includes nuclear and hydroelectric as well as renewables. All this sounds great (though maybe not fast enough). But North Dakota doesn’t think so and they plan to sue. They like their coal and they export about half their electricity to Minnesota. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos quoted David Rothkopf of the Daily Beast speaking of the nasty guy:

As the late great poet Maya Angelou might have said had she thought it was necessary, “When someone shows you over and over and over again that they are a traitor, believe them.” For further, completely appropriate emphasis, she might have elaborated: “When someone shows you over and over and over again, for their entire lives, in business and in government, that they are not only traitors, but corrupt, ignorant, pathologically dishonest, coup-plotting, racist, misogynist traitors, then seriously, I’m not kidding about this, believe them!”

To mark 90 year since Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933 Charles Jay of the Kos community reviewed his rise (as told by the BBC series Rise of the Nazis) and compared some events to what has happened in America over the last few years. Jay also quoted Richard Evans, an expert on the Third Reich, as in this description of Hitler’s campaign in July 1932:

Hitler realizes that if he tells a very simple message it doesn’t matter if they are true or not. The point is that you have to keep repeating them, keep hammering them in. Make Germany great again. Restore the economy. They are empty slogans but they are carrying a message that although vague is very powerful.

Jay added:

Just substitute “America” for “Germany” and you’ve got a pretty good description of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Conservative politicians Kurt von Schelicher and Franz von Papen had repeated opportunities to end the Nazi threat and didn’t. They were too focused on their own political interests and seeing the left as the enemy. In the same way Moscow Mitch had opportunities to take down the nasty guy and didn’t and for the same reasons. President Paul von Hindenburg had the power to appoint and remove the chancellor, He appointed Hitler to the role, thinking he could control Hitler. Hindenburg was wrong. Barely Speaker McCarthy made deals with far right members, perhaps thinking he could control them. We don’t know the outcome of that yet. Hitler’s first attempt at power was the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. The January 6 attack on the Capitol seems to be a more successful attempt to seize power. It’s immediate goals haven’t been realized, but Hitler went to jail – briefly – and key insurrectionists in America still sit in Congress. Jewish lawyer Hans Litten tried to tie Hitler to the street violence of the Storm Troopers. In court Hitler denied it, saying the Storm Troopers were a rogue unit. The Proud Boys trial is going on now and some of the Boys intend to subpoena the nasty guy so he could come and deny he had anything to do with them. Litten saw the legal system increasingly Nazified and closing in on him. In 1938 he hanged himself in Dachau. Jay concluded:

Nazism was about the ruthless pursuit of power by sowing hatred and division, finding scapegoats to blame for real economic problems, undermining free and fair elections, and exacting revenge on political opponents. Just consider what extremist MAGA Republicans have already done and say they’d like to do if they ever get full control of the federal government. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has already turned his state into a testing ground for an American-style brand of fascism.

I add: Biden had a masterful week. But the danger isn’t gone. Many insurrectionists are in Congress. And their funders are still handing out big checks.

A mild, temporary, and mostly performative scolding

Yesterday I titled my post, “Why do we need to know the gender of another person?” I used that title because I discussed the web comic Assigned Male and a scene where an adult asks the gender of a small child and an older child says it’s none of their business. My friend and debate partner said, “But, among adults... Really, can you think of NO reason that an adult might need to know the gender of another adult?” A doctor would need to know. Even a medical researcher, since males and females show disease symptoms and respond to medication differently. My debate partner then discussed gender expression as being vital to personal development. There I agree that people frequently use clothing and other gendered social signals to proclaim who they are. A great number of people will make their gender obvious. That’s good, but not what I was thinking of. Yes, a person should be allowed to express their gender any way they want. My question was more about do other people need to know a person’s gender. An employer? We’re in an age where women are trying to get equal pay for equal work. Maybe not knowing an employee’s gender will equalize pay. Are there any jobs that one gender can do and another can’t? Acting? Maybe. But the emphasis should be on who can play the role (which indeed may be gendered) and has the appropriate look, rather than the gender of the actor. A woman probably isn’t appropriate for a male role but a transgender man might. I’ve seen quite a bit of discussion about whether straight men can or should play gay roles. In a society soaked in patriarchy this is an important point. In a world where we don’t worry about gender, maybe not. Sports? We clearly have men’s sports and women’s sports. But I’ve heard biologists have a hard time precisely defining “woman.” There’s also a big issue with a lot of Republicans trying to ban transgender athletes. I’m not advocating for women to play on men’s teams. I am advocating for transgender athletes – actually all athletes – to play on the team that matches their identity. Dating? There are many stories where one person falls in love with another and finds they’re not quite how they originally portray themselves. The movie The Crying Game is one where this works out reasonably well. The play Consider the Oyster ends well too. The movie Boys Don’t Cry is one where it doesn’t. Gender should matter only to the people in the relationship. So I think my question still stands. There are a few situations where other people do need to know a person’s gender. But in most situations the gender of a person shouldn’t matter and it is up to the person to define their own gender as they wish, using a culture’s social cues as they wish. I didn’t listen to Biden’s State of the Union speech Tuesday evening. I did hear about parts of it the next morning and today I read various Daily Kos posts about it. Of course, Kos – definitely progressive – delighted in the way Biden controlled the room. And the big part of that was the part of the speech where he got the Republicans to agree by consent that trying to hold Medicare and Social Security hostage during the debt limit debate is off the table. Laura Clawson has a description and the video. Another important moment, according to Rebekah Sager of Kos, was Biden acknowledging that black and brown parents must have The Talk with their children, especially sons, saying the cops may not protect them and may attack them and this is how they have a better chance of keeping themselves alive. Biden then admitted it is a talk he did not need to have with his own children. This was part of his call for police reform. This moment is important because this is the first time a president has acknowledged and devoted time to The Talk in a State of the Union speech. Kerry Eleveld of Kos described the overall speech as masterful and a thing of beauty. It stopped any questions about Biden’s vigor. He bested Republicans in front of a national audience. He grew in stature as some Republicans were reduced to hurling insults. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted Rex Huppke of USA Today:

I’ve never seen anything like it in a State of the Union speech—they ran at him like a pack of lemmings and, with a wink and a grin, he politely directed them to the cliff.

There was a lot of reporting about the Chinese spy balloon that drifted over the US and which Biden ordered shot down once it was over the ocean and falling debris was not a threat to people. I’ll only mention a couple memes. First, Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution tweeted a cartoon of “America’s greatest balloon threat” – a clown balloon twisted into the shape of an elephant. Michael Harriot, who writes about black history, used the balloon to talk about race. He included a tweet by Roy Wood Jr., the guy who shot down the balloon. Then Harriot added:

Why is Roy Woods so anti-balloon? Most balloons are good balloons. Why not praise weather instruments, breast enhancements & birthday decorations? The “deflate the balloon” movement makes balloons feel uncomfortable & teaches kids to hate their own balloons All balloons matter

Liz Truss is remembered for having the shortest tenure of any British Prime Minister, a mere 49 days, after implementing policies that cratered her nation’s economy. She did some soul searching and concluded it was the liberal’s fault (she learned nothing). And, as Hunter of Kos reported, she came to visit Republicans. Will they learn anything from her quick exit? Hunter answered that question with a hard no. Truss was part of a system that has, on occasion, political consequences. American Republicans aren’t.

Say what you want about American democracy, but there's probably no other country where you can send an armed mob after your political opponents and confidently believe you won't get punched for it. We Are Unique. So then, the question again: Will Republicans be cowed into second-guessing their plan (again) to shutter government (again) and at least temporarily (again) default on the national debt? No, of course not. What a ridiculous question. If you can assist a coup, get citizens killed, and still be on handshake terms with fellow politicians who don't necessarily like the idea of rebellion but aren't invested enough in that belief to cause a scene or anything, there is little chance you're going to be worried that causing an international economic crisis will get you more than a mild, temporary, and mostly performative scolding. This isn’t Europe. There aren’t consequences for doing the transparently worst, most predictably catastrophic thing.

Dartagnan of Kos quoted Sahil Kapur of NBC News reporting about what the nasty guy said about the 2024 campaign season:

Two days after the poll results were released, Trump was asked in an interview whether, if he lost the nomination, he would support the GOP nominee. Trump answered, “It would have to depend on who the nominee was.” Translation: no.

My expanded translation: “It would have to depend on whether the nominee was me.” Dartagnan then discussed the growing realization within the Republican Party that they may be screwed in this election cycle. Many want to move on. But, run the nasty guy and he will lose in the general. Don’t run the nasty guy and he fractures the party, which loses in the general. Clawson reported on a hearing by the House Oversight and Reform Committee into why Twitter limited propaganda about Hunter Biden, including nude photos of him. Republicans were using their time to get a 30 second clip to be used on conservative media on how Twitter and other social platforms are being mean to conservatives. Democrats took the opportunity to look at other things Twitter was doing. Clawson wrote:

Let’s talk about the incitements to violence on Jan. 6. Let’s talk about Russian disinformation. And, since Republicans are insisting that Twitter was stacking the deck for Democrats, let’s talk about the relationship between Republicans and Twitter, especially since we’re talking about a time period before Donald Trump was banned, when he was using the platform to abuse his political opponents and encourage his supporters to reject the results of the 2020 elections.

An example: One of the witnesses was Anika Collier Navaroli, formerly the most senior member of Twitter’s content moderation team. The nasty guy had made nasty comments about the progressive squad, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. AOC asked Navaroli about it, who said yes, this was a clear violation of Twitter policy. But Navaroli was overruled my her supervisor – and then the rules were changed to permit that kind of attack. That’s Democrats making a fact-based case. Sure, go ahead and claim that Twitter is biased against conservatives. Which they’ll do because all they want out of this hearing is the soundbites. Luckovich with another cartoon of a speaker at a podium in the House chamber, saying:

... and to our Democrat colleagues calling us “clowns,” we are Jesters!

Clawson reported on a legal case that may have significant implications for medication abortions. The suit before a US District Court isn’t whether mifepristone, one of two drugs used to trigger an abortion, should be banned. It is about the FDA approval of the drug, which happened back in 2000. The claim is that the drug has too many side effects and should not have been approved. No doubt the “side effect” is that it assists in causing an abortion. However, using mifepristone before misoprostol has a 99.6% success rate, while using misoprostol alone is only 80% successful, requiring other interventions that are much riskier and much more of a burden on pregnant people. This medication abortion is far less dangerous than pregnancy and birth. The case is going before a very conservative judge – Republicans are very good a judge-shopping. He will likely overturn the FDA approval. If so, the consequences are much more severe than banning the drug. It doesn’t affect just that district. It doesn’t affect just the Circuit Court region. It bans the drug for the entire country. Any appeal – and the Justice Department says it will vigorously defend the FDA, though it will take a while – goes to the highly conservative 5th Circuit and any appeal from there goes to the highly conservative Supremes. Yes, this is scary, no matter where you live. Sager reported the story of the Urban Christian Academy, a K-8 school in a low-income neighborhood of Kansas City. For over a decade it has been quietly supporting its LGBTQ students. Its founder and director Kalie Callaway-George said, “As a Christian school, we believe that each of these beloved humans was made in the image of God.” A year ago Callaway-Geoge said it was time to go public about their support – to tell the community all people were welcome and celebrated. They didn’t want to contribute to the hurt and pain the queer members of the community were feeling. In response, all eight churches that funded the school pulled their support. Other sources of funding dried up. Each time the school gets some attention the hate flows again, distracting the faculty and staff from actual teaching. The school will have to close soon. Mark Sumner of Kos and who used to work in the coal industry discussed reports that say if the whole country switches to electric vehicles the electric grid won’t be able to handle it and we’ll always need electricity generated from gas. For example, an articles says a truck stop for electric trucks will need “as much power as a small town.” Sumner’s response is they’re thinking about it all wrong. One reply to these stories: Instead of building a smaller number of huge recharging centers, build a lot more small charging centers. Another: Think of that EV as “traveling energy storage.” When solar and wind can generate a lot of power it can be stored in vehicles. When the renewable generators aren’t producing enough or when the power goes out, pull the power out of the vehicles. This smooths out the demand and is a lot less susceptible to damage from terrorists.

Why do we need to know the gender of another person?

My Sunday movie was Dear Ex on Netflix. From the start the Chinese characters show it is set in Asia, though it took a while to confirm it is Taipei. The names are hard for me to spell, so I’ll use relationships. The story opens with Mother and Son at Lover’s apartment complaining that Lover has stolen the life insurance money that was to pay for Son’s college (preferably in Canada, a long way from Mother). It’s all complicated because this is the gay Lover. Mother is quite the shrew and quite manipulative so Son leaves home and, lacking anywhere else to go, wants to stay with Lover. But isn’t he supposed to be the enemy? Son keeps saying that to himself but doesn’t quite believe it. Along the way we see how Father and Mother met and how Father and Lover met. Father declares he must have a wife and child, then realizes being gay means that won’t work. We see Lover taking care of Father during the final illness. And we understand why Father made Lover his life insurance beneficiary. The story is told quite well, with fine acting all around. I enjoyed it. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated yesterday. The peaks in new cases per day for the last few weeks are 681, 852, 807, 717. The low plateau continues. The low level of deaths per day also continues. D’Anne Witkowski wrote for Between the Lines about the web comic Assigned Male (and I think also book or book series) and talked to the author Sophie Labelle. She is trans and the book is a series of comic panels about being trans and the situations they have to deal with. Labelle describes the book as “the adventures of a bunch of sarcastic trans and queer teenagers.” Which sounds like fun. The article describes a recent comic (which I found online):

A recent comic depicts an adult and two kids in a park, an older kid babysitting a younger kid. The adult asks if the younger child is a boy or a girl. The sitter responds, “We don’t know yet, they haven’t told us.” The adult, distressed, responds that this will surely confuse the child. The sitter responds, “The most confusing part of it is actually the amount of strangers who feel entitled to ask what’s in that kid’s pants.” This shuts the adult right up.

I add: Why do we need to know the gender of another person? It shouldn’t make any difference in how we treat them. Alas, since we live in a society soaked in patriarchy the gender of the other person matters a great deal in how we treat them. Here’s the text of the comic she posted after the Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs:

No matter how isolated a perpetrator of violence against our community is, they are never acting alone. They are emboldened by a society that allows our existence to be debated and questioned and by fanatics who see sexual and gender diversity as perverse and dangerous. Today we mourn. Tomorrow we shine the brightest and loudest we can.

Laura Clawson of Daily Kos reported that the House Oversight and Accountability Committee has abolished the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. This subcommittee used to focus on the stuff in its name, plus voting rights and criminal justice reform. Oversight committee chair Rep. James Comer insists that the parent group is still able to address all those issues. But they appear much more interested in Hunter Biden. Rebekah Sager of Kos that several House Republicans were seen wearing new lapel pins. The American flag has been replaced with a tiny AR-15 gun profile. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida is one of those seen with the pin. When asked a spokesperson for Luna says it “is about sponsoring a gun bill” though noticeably absent from that phrase is what kind of gun bill. Will it be one to add to or subtract from those already on the street? Strange that the only ones actually sponsoring gun bills are Democrats. We can tell what kind of bill they want to sponsor because the pins are being handed out by Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, who owns a gun store. These pins are a way to own the libs. Annoyingly, these pins are showing up during National Gun Violence Survivor’s Week. Back in 2014 Justice John Paul Stevens proposed a new version of the Second Amendment. His version would say:

A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms when serving in the Militia shall not be infringed.

Kimberly Mata-Rubio lost her daughter Lexi in the Uvalde shooting. She said, “Why we would choose guns over children is not something I can comprehend.” In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer:

But that’s the point, isn’t it? The lapel pins — like those Christmas cards of their adorable blond kids armed to the teeth with high-powered weaponry or the right’s new love affair with the toxic fumes of gas stoves — are meant to “trigger the libs” and sustain a career arc that generates prime-time hits on Fox News and fund-raising emails without ever having to get anything done. Yes, you could argue this column, then, is a perfect example of what these cons want. But what a choice: playing along, or remaining silent while America sheds the skin of humanity.

Laura Clawson of Kos reported on a case of a man who had stalked and assaulted his ex-girlfriend and their child. In February 2020 she got a protective order against him and he was banned from owning a gun. Less than a year later he was involved in five shootings. He was indicted for violating his gun ban. The case went before the Fifth Circuit Court (the most conservative of the circuit courts) who said the law used to ban the man from owning a gun was unconstitutional. Huh? Wrote Clawson:

Following the logic of Justice Clarence Thomas’ 2022 opinion in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a federal law banning the sale of guns to people subject to restraining orders in domestic violence cases. In striking down a New York law requiring proper cause for concealed handgun permits, Thomas explained that the law was illegitimate because it was not “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” In other words, if there was no such law in 1791, it’s unconstitutional now.

Of course, in 1791 there was no law against wife-beating. The first laws banning it were in Alabama and Massachusetts in 1871. There were no bans in 1791 because women were considered the property of their husbands. This case of banning guns of wife-beaters will likely go before the Supremes. What they will do with it no one is guessing. I had written that several participants in the Capitol attack had expressed regret for that participation when the judge was ready for sentencing. I wrote, as others noted, that they were acting like spoiled children and their only regret was they got caught. An Associates Press story posted on Kos, confirms that by noting several of these defendants, now safely outside the courtroom, have declared themselves to be a “J6 Patriot” and making statements “inconsistent with contrition.” That might make judges less likely to believe statements of remorse for those attackers whose trials are still ongoing. Kerry Eleveld of Kos looked at some of the recent Civiqs polling. Some of the things they looked at in the early part of this year was opinions on pro-science, pro-democracy, and pro-reality issues. It doesn’t look so good. Here are some of the poll results. Only 51% agree the vaccine actually worked. 45%, a plurality, believe Dr. Fauci lied to Congress about the origins of the pandemic. 45%, a plurality, believe the US might be corruptly funding Ukraine and should be audited. 47%, plurality, believe the Biden Justice Department has not been unfairly targeting conservatives. 51% believe Congress should investigate Hunter Biden’s laptop. Eleveld concluded:

If this poll accurately reflects voters' basic mindset on matters of science, sovereignty, and justice, then Democrats have a lot of truth-telling to do over the next year in preparation for the ‘24 presidential contest.

The Marketplace Morning Report for today discussed the book The Capital Order by Clara Mattei. The book is about how austerity is designed as a way to silence the working class because workers become too focused on simply living. Mussolini was at first praised because he used austerity to silence workers. Politicians can get away with enforcing austerity because it is seen as an economic issue, not a political one. From a report a few weeks ago Clawson told the story of Butch Marion, age 82, was able to retire from Walmart after TikTok donations raised over $108,000. Yeah, that sentence should make you think there are several kinds of wrong. These sorts of “inspirational” stories have been around for a while. Marion is just one of several who retired from Walmart this way. There have been stories of people walking long distances to work and being given a car, of kids paying off school lunch debt, and many more. Yes, it is great friends and colleagues, even strangers, are coming to their aid.

But celebrating those isolated events misses the point that 82-year-olds shouldn’t be on their feet eight hours a day working at Walmart because it’s their only financial option. People shouldn’t be walking more than 10 miles to then work all day and walk back home because they can’t afford a car and there’s no reliable public transit. These are signs of a broken system and reminders of how many people are not getting that successful crowdfunding campaign, not joyous occasions to be celebrated. ... Our seniors should be able to retire with dignity. Our workers should have access to reliable public transit or the money to live within actual walking distance of their jobs or buy a reliable car. Our children should be fed. The moments when these things happen shouldn’t be headlines and hashtags.

It's not just Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy or ballet

I finished the book Bewilderment, a novel by Richard Powers. This is the third novel by Powers I’ve read and enjoyed all three very much. The narrator is Theo, an astrobiologist trying to model how we might detect life on exoplanets, those outside our solar system. The other main character is his nine year old son Robin. One doctor says Robin is on the autistic spectrum, another says Robin is ADHD, and his school wants him medicated because of violent outbursts. Theo thinks it wrong to medicate a child so young. Robin’s mother Alyssa died two years before the story opens, though there are flashbacks so we can see who she was. Though marketed as general literature, this is science fiction. That comes through in a treatment of biofeedback offered to Robin that is beyond what can be done now and has side effects that unnerve Theo. The treatment allows Robin, always fascinated with nature, to become essentially Greta Thunberg’s more artistic little brother. Robin can’t fathom why humans are so destructive to nature. At times when Theo needs to calm Robin they take a mental journey to an exoplanet to explore what life might be like there. The description of one of them prompted me to think it was symbolic of the relationship between Theo and Robin, but the symbolism of other planets escaped me. This is the second novel in a row – the other being The End of Eddy – in which dialogue isn’t enclosed in quotes, instead it is italicized. Eddy used it for all characters. This one does it for Robin’s and Alyssa’s words while Theo’s words are put in quotes. In this case it might be appropriate, leading one to wonder whether Robin actually spoke out loud or Theo is imagining what his son is saying. This use of language is not one I would want to see catch on, though it is better than a few novels (the ones I can think of are Australian) where there is no separation of spoken text. There’s just things like this: It’s a cloudy day, he said. Robin is quite the intriguing character, frequently bewildering his dad. The language Powers uses is gentle and evocative. I recommend this one. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data updated Tuesday. We seem to be in a plateau, thankfully a low one. The peaks in the number of new cases per day for the last few weeks are 984, 844, 778, and 764. The number of deaths per day remains at a low level. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Daily Kos, quoted Alan Elrod of Arc Digital discussing the word “groomer,” among others, by the anti-LGBTQ crowd:

What I want to note is the way this idea invites a view of being trans as an illness and, by emphasizing it as a social contagion that can rapidly overwhelm a young person, one that is highly communicable. As to the supposed spreaders of this illness? Well, Libs of TikTok’s Chaya Raichik was unequivocal in her condemnation of LGBTQ advocates, calling them “groomers” and concluding “I think they’re evil.”

Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that a bill to ban children and youth from drag shows has been introduced in the Nebraska legislature. It is backed by Sen. Dave Murman, who said, “I think the vast majority of Nebraskans would agree that sexualized dancing and enhanced genitals is not appropriate for children to view.” I agree with Einenkel – “enhanced genitals?” Where is this guy’s brain? Einenkel note this bill may prevent youth from seeing the show “Hairspray” and perhaps a few of Shakespeare’s plays (and in Shakespeare’s time that would be all of his plays because women were banned from acting and men played the female roles). Sen. Megan Hunt added an amendment to the bill, showing two people can play this game. The opening text, likely mimicking the original, says,

The Legislature finds that there is a well documented history of indoctrination and sexual abuse perpetrated by religious leaders and clergy people upon children. Abusers within churches and other religious institutions often use events like church or youth-group-sponsored camps and retreats to earn children's trust and gain unsupervised access to such children in order to commit such abuse.

So kids should be banned from church camps and also from rituals where ceremonial alcohol is present. For my non Christian friends – in the Sunday service, the Mass, in the Catholic Church and in some Protestant denominations the high point is the Eucharist or Communion, which includes a sip of wine. Other Protestant denominations have replaced the wine with grape juice. So, yeah, Hunt’s amendment would ban youth and children from Mass. Einenkel discussed a study released by the Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center about 173 mass attacks that occurred between 2016 and 2020. Some of what the study showed: No community is immune from being a target. Guns were the cause of injury and death in three-quarters of the attacks. Less than a quarter of those gun attacks involved a gun acquired illegally. One-quarter of the attackers held a belief (that was important to the attack? Einenkel isn’t clear) that is conspiratorial, topic specific, or hate-focused. More findings:

96% of the attackers studied were male, 3% were female, and 2% were transgender. 57% of attackers were white. 34% of attackers were Black. 11% of attackers were Hispanic. 4% of attackers were Asian. 1% of attackers were American Indian. 72% of attackers experienced some kind of financial stressor sometime prior to the attack. Just under 20% of attackers had an “unstable housing” situation at the time of the attack. Bystanders intervened in about 10% of the attacks. When that happened, the attacker was killed by the intervening bystander only 2% of the time. (Think the mythic “good guy with a gun.”) While there was a large age range, the average age of an attacker was 34 years old. 41% of attackers had a history of “engaging in at least one incident of domestic violence.” And nearly a fifth of attackers exhibited “misogynistic behaviors.”

In a pundit roundup by Chitown Kev of Kos commenter Hugh Jim Bissell wrote:

We need a new metric: a number that describes how many are killed by gunfire in a given election district as a function of how much money the gun industry gives to public office holders and seekers in that district. Such a metric would help us know how much value each representative gives the lives of their constituents. If you take the amount of NRA funding received by each elected representative and divide it by the number of dead kids in their respective jurisdictions during their time in office, you’ll get exactly how much they earned for each killing.

That second paragraph is in an image and has a different font. I don’t know if it is original to Bissell or he pulled it from somewhere else. Leah McElrath tweeted a thread about US police traveling to Israel for training. Sometimes the Israeli trainers come to them. The Anti-Defamation League and American taxpayers fund these trips. This kind of training happened before the deaths of George Floyd, Freddie Gray, and Tyre Nichols. Police are also getting surplus military equipment. This is important because:

Our tax dollars are being spent to send US police officials to Israel to be trained to respond to Americans as though we are all terrorists within our own country.

McElrath got significant pushback for her thread.

If you question the activities of Israel, its government, or its security forces, you will be attacked as “antisemitic” or as engaging in “blood libel.” First time I’ve been called a “Nazi” though. FTR, I question the actions of *every* state, government, and security force.

The trolling got so bad she had to lock down her Twitter account for awhile, permitting no one outside of trusted friends to see it. I was one of those who tried to see her tweets during that time and was denied. Sweden and Finland have applied to join NATO. Turkey, already a NATO member, has been holding up Sweden’s approval over what Turkey says are anti-Islamic incidents. Recently there was a new incident of someone burning a copy of the Quran, upsetting Turkey again. Anders Åslund, who has written a book about Russia, tweeted a quote from a TV news report.

"Swedish journalist Chang Frick, affiliated with Russian propagandist channel RT, paid for Danish far-right activist Rasmus Paludan to publicly burn the Quran near the Turkish embassy in Sweden." To block Sweden from NATO...

Also, Alexander Stubb, former Prime Minister of Finland and now a professor at the School for Transnational Governance and a member of an organization promoting conflict resolution, tweeted:

This should come as no surprise. Russia seems to be behind the burning of the Quran in Sweden. This is what hybrid warfare of a rogue state looks like. In today's world everything can be weaponised.

Andrew Michta, dean of the College of International and Security Studies at the Marshall Center, tweeted a thread:

A word of advice for all those "realists" among Western elites who oppose support for #Ukraine: Finally, once and for all bury the Yalta mindset. Understand the Russia is no more entitled to a sphere of influence than a gangster is entitled to keep the spoils of a robbery. Time to set aside our double standard whereby when it comes to #Russia, we don't enforce the rules, but instead hope for a good tsar (Gorbachev, Yeltsin) with whom we can (to quote Lady Thatcher) "do business." We should also set aside the nonsense about Russian high culture. Russian culture must be seen in its totality -- it's not just Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy or ballet; it's first and foremost the Gulag, prisons, firing squads, rape and torture. It's the culture of violence and theft as a mode of governance. It's an empire awash in blood.

In a Ukraine update Mark Sumner of Kos included a video that appears to be put out by the Wagner Group, the mercenary group beating against Bakhmut for the last six months or so but not yet taking it (though they might now be close). The video appears to be recruiting Americans to join Russia’s fight, claiming only Russia is fighting against evil. Sumner wrote:

The video may or may not be an actual production of the Wagner Group. To quote pro-Russian bloggers when they’re pretending that Ukraine hasn’t just liberated Kyiv, Kharkiv, or Kherson … time will tell. But whoever put together this “true patriot” video did an admirable job of touching Americans right in the Q-center. From the footage of Jan. 6 “patriots” to the final scenes that crib part of the atomic blast from Terminator 2, it’s a love letter to anyone who ever thought it would be great to scream “Wolverines!” only while working for the Russians. Will this video actually send some Americans looking for the nearest Wagner recruiting station? Unknown. But it’s tempting to wish them success in this venture. Sending Americans to Ukraine who believe in Wagner’s idea of “the patriot” might be the best thing for both nations.

Jon Hawkes tweeted an image of a Full Width Mine Plough – a big device with a tarantula vibe that can plow up mines from fields and wherever else they might be. If I’m decoding the abbreviations right Germany facilitated getting a large quantity of them from a manufacturer in England into Ukraine by the end of the year. How the thing keeps from getting blown up from each mine it encounters is not explained. I’ve collected several cartoons and tweets that all have to do with racism. There is a famous 1964 painting by Norman Rockwell of a black girl being escorted by federal officers to a school in New Orleans to force integration. Two recent cartoons play on that painting. Mike Luckovich tweeted an image of a white girl being escorted by men with “GOP” armbands. She says, “But I don’t wanna be protected from black history.” Andy Marlette tweeted an image of a black girl carrying a Black History book. But instead of being escorted, she is stopped by a man with a “DeSantis” button. Ruben Bolling of Kos showed the covers of several popular children’s books reworked to meet the standards of DeathSantis. The titles include “Harry the White Dog and His Black Friend Who’s Never Experienced Any Racism” and “The Free Market Tree” by Shel Silverstein. Luckovich again, with a child walking through a detector that starts beeping. The cop say, “Halt, is that a book in your backpack?” Incognito Finito tweeted with a photo to prove it:

I bought a bag of M&M's and they don't have M's anymore. They all have W's... for woke.

Professor Bigfoot tweeted in response to Stewardship asking, “Why is the white man so deathly afraid of the black man and our culture?”

A desperate fear of being “ruled over” by their lessers. This cartoon is from the 1870s near the end of Reconstruction, a time when Black men were being elected to Congress. The pathological need to dominate and control stems from fear.

The cartoon shows a white man with a smoking gun with a small black child at his feet, “Ef I hadn’t-er killed you, you would have growed up to rule me.” Someone fearful of being ruled over by their lessers is someone highly invested in the social hierarchy and glad there is someone below him. I think the fear comes from the need to dominate, not the other way around. Their fear is of losing their position in the hierarchy to someone they feel should be below them.