To create permission, a rationale for committing acts of violence

My Sunday movie was the first episode of Tales of the City on Netflix. The ten episode series is based on the stories of Armistead Maupin. Many years (maybe a couple decades) ago I read the original set of stories of a house in San Francisco with several apartments, each with LGBTQ characters living there, a place where they could truly be themselves and create their own community. These stories were over several books and there were probably a couple books more after I thought I was done. I don’t remember much from the stories. In the same way there were several Tales of the City series – 1993, 1998, 2001, and this one from 2019. It looks like Olympia Dukakis played Anna, the matriarch of the house, through the whole series. Alas, in all of that, this is the only episode I’ve seen. While it was an enjoyable hour it presents a quandary. I obviously came into the middle of the story. I think I caught enough of the backstory so I could go on from here. But that’s another nine hours. I could start at the beginning – the 1993 series – to understand the full story. And that’s a lot more hours. While this episode was enjoyable I’m not sure it was enjoyable enough to go the full distance, or even another nine hours (even if this one ended in a cliffhanger). My schedule today had an unexpected addition, crowding into my evening viewing time. Since there are still news stories of Netflix perhaps cracking down on password sharing I wanted to focus my viewing there. Back in January I pulled some ideas from a list of LGBTQ movies on Netflix. My first choices for this evening I found are not actually on Netflix. By the time I got that sorted out a single hour of something was about all I had time for. So I chose this. I recommend the Tales of the City books to any LGBTQ person and ally out there. These series could also be an enjoyable companion (or substitute). I’m not so sure I want to tackle it all now. I have not watched the long-running reality TV show The Bachelor and from the description I have no desire to do so. It may then seem weird that I enjoyed the book The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun, very much based on the show. What makes it worth reading is that during this season Charlie, the bachelor, realizes he’s gay and very much attracted to his handler Dev, also gay. Of course, the book version has some differences (not many) from the TV version. The book version is called Ever After, the bachelor is called Prince Charming, and at the end of each episode he passes out crowns instead of roses. The book also shows how such a show can be manipulated – each woman has a handler who can suggest how she might proceed, such as coaching one of them to be a villain. Nearly every romance novel has the expected ending (which is why we read them). It is obvious from the start, with sections alternately focusing on Charlie and Dev, where this is going. I began to predict what the climactic scene would be like. Fortunately, the book’s ending was much better. The story was also much deeper than I expected with both men struggling with how their love affects the show (which means Dev’s job) and what they expected out of life. This is a good one. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated yesterday. It looks like the low plateau that started in mid January is holding. The peaks in new cases per day for the last few weeks are 863, 1046, 1011, 800, and 681. The number of deaths per day for the last few weeks has been mostly 15 and lower, down into the single digits. All good! Interested in the national divorce that Marjorie Taylor Green has been talking about? CyberMindGirl of the Daily Kos community wrote:

Turns out Russia has formulated a plan for “ideological immigration” targeting European and American Conservatives. Think your country is going too “woke”? Can’t stand all the rights and freedoms being granted to LGBTQ+ people? Want to find a safe space from all the “woke” liberals around you? You’re going to LOVE Russia, a place where “Don’t Say Gay” is enforced at gunpoint and where “woke” liberals are sent to die a violent death on the front lines.

There is now a Russian governmental office for the Coordinating Headquarters to assist immigrants from NATO countries. They hope 7 million people would accept the offer. Each migrant would get ten hectares of land. Hunter of Kos added:

You'll note that the enticement there is 25 acres of what Russia has the most of: land. You'll note that there's no promise that your new plot of land will come with a shelter, or electricity, or an outhouse. We've been seeing more and more of late that highlights the lifestyles of most Russians who live outside the major cities, but conservative Russia-backers may or may not be aware that in modern day Russia, toilets are considered a luxury item. There's a reason that not just toilets, stoves, dishwashers, and washing machines but even the most trivial of home appliances are being looted in bulk from Ukrainian homes "liberated" by Russia and delivered back to the homeland. It's because stealing those things is the only way for the average non-connected Russian to get them. If you're a Tucker Carlson conservative who's looking to emigrate to a place that oppresses all the people you want them to, you'll have either dig your own poop-pit or import your own toilet. You'll have to import a dozen, in fact, because the odds of any one of those toilets reaching you through the theft-rampant national postal service is something close to zero.

Russia is making this offer because of the large numbers of people they lost from COVID, from the war in Ukraine, and from people fleeing to avoid conscription. They’re not giving exact numbers (or even estimates). But will the new migrants be willing to be conscripted?

Getting rid of up to 7 million of the most authoritarian-minded cranks in the United States and Europe sounds like a deal Western governments could all get behind; if Russia was proven to be serious in its plans to court our most militant and racist dregs, our own government could likely arrange for 7 million toilets to be delivered free of charge. It doesn't look like 7 million people are going to take Russia up on that offer, though. It doesn't look like 7,000 will either. It's one thing to wave guns around and bellow about the indecencies to be found in library book collections; it's another to put yourself at the mercy of the sort of autocratic nationalist government you claim to want.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted an article from Bolts Magazine that says aspects of Obamacare implemented by the states is providing a way for women to sue to overturn abortion bans. For example, back in 2012 voters in Wyoming approved a Right to Healthcare Access amendment to the state constitution that says in part, “Each competent adult shall have the right to make his or her own health care decisions.” It is now a weapon against abortion restrictions. Joan McCarter of Kos wrote that, amazingly, when a government department is adequately funded it can actually do what the law says it should do. Her example is the IRS. It got a big boost in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act passed last summer and has been quick to put the money to work. This tax season the IRS is answering 90% of its phone calls (I don’t know what it was last year, perhaps less than 20%). It has processed 99.7% of returns filed already this year. It’s backlog of paper returns is down from 24 million (it rose that high during the pandemic) to 2 million. And it has enough money to upgrade its computers. Some of it’s current technology dates to the 1970s. Which is the way Republicans wanted it. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that Jon Stewart, on his program The Problem of Jon Stewart, hosted Oklahoma state senator Nathan Dahm, a Republican. Dahm wanted to raise his profile by saying the Second Amendment can never be infringed upon. There can never be any sort of law that that puts any sort of limit on gun ownership. It didn’t go as Dahm had hoped.

Stewart isn’t having it, pointing out that Dahm opposes getting rid of laws that might protect people from guns, while instituting laws that would ban drag show readings to children. Stewart gets Dahm to lock into the logic that Dahm says he believes, which is that the government has the right to protect children. Of course, as Stewart very deftly explains, there is one thing at the top of the list of things that kill children in our country, “And I'm going to give you a hint. It's not drag show readings to children.” Dahm responds, “I’m presuming you’re going to say it’s firearms.” And Stewart says, “No, I'm not going to say it like it's an opinion. That's what it is. It's firearms. More than cancer, more than car accidents. Angry Stewart is the best Stewart, and he finished Dahm off with true righteous vengeance. “And what you're telling me is you don't mind infringing free speech to protect children from this amorphous thing that you think of. But when it comes to children that have died, you don't give a flying f--- to stop that, because that shall not be infringed. That is hypocrisy at its highest order.”

A couple weeks ago David Neiwert of Kos wrote of the arrest of a Lost Angeles man who had been shooting people as they left their synagogues. Fortunately, only two men were struck and their injuries were not life threatening. The shooter was definitely motivated by hate. Which prompted Neiwert to write:

The whole purpose of eliminationist rhetoric, as I’ve often remarked, is to create permission: a rationale for committing acts of violence and intimidation against a targeted scapegoat. This is how stochastic terrorism—the kind we’ve seen directed recently at the LGBTQ community, for instance—has always worked. Someone with a megaphone demonizes the target group and encourages violent expulsion, and someone listening makes that their excuse for acting on it. So like night following day, the recent spate of eliminationist antisemitism spewing from cultural figures like Kanye West and enabled by social media moguls like Elon Musk is already generating a fresh round of terrorist violence directed at the Jewish community.

Mike Luckovich tweeted a cartoon with the caption, “Why a citizen needs an assault weapon.” It shows a man walking a dog in a park and seeing a rabbit, deer, squirrel, and goose each with guns.” Bill Bramhall of the New York Daily News tweeted a cartoon of a teen reading Best U.S. Colleges Ranked by Number of Mass Shootings. Mark Sumner of Kos reported that many Republicans fear Special Counsel Jack Smith and his investigation into the nasty guy. That fear is because Smith appears to be moving quickly and has subpoenaed the big names on the nasty guy’s team, such as Mark Meadows and the vice nasty. Many claim executive privilege, but those who talk face wide-ranging questions on the nasty guy’s election claims and his document stash. But others, who are not Republican, worry that those broad questions indicate a man trying to write a thorough report, not a special counsel called on to indict someone. Will Smith’s report have the same minuscule legal effect of the Mueller Report? Or the two impeachments? There appears to be plenty of evidence to bring charges. So far no one has and there is good reason to think Smith won’t either. An Associated Press article chosen by Kos staff reports that in the more than 35 years since the Chernobyl nuclear accident dogs have been living in the exclusion zone. Yes, they manage to survive, still find food, and to breed. Genome researchers have been doing DNA tests of the dogs. It is a great opportunity to examine what long term radiation might do. They can identify how far particular groups of dogs live from the power plant. Their analysis is now looking at DNA changes and trying to determine in the fifteen generations since the accident what changes are from nuclear mutation and what are from evolutionary adaptation. Einenkel wrote about a recent Republican pronouncement that is getting a lot of deserved snarky replies. The GOP Twitter account tweeted: “Government should be so small you don’t even realize it’s there.” Some of the replies: Katelyn Burns: “So small it fits in your pants” Steven Blum: “Except for book banning, taking away the rights of women and LGBTQ+, and Social Security and Medicare that we’ve paid for, right?” Tim Fullerton: “So small it can’t do anything about a rail derailment am I right?” Hanjaro: “You mean so small there’s no oversight to keep you frauds in line.” Machine Pun Kelly: “So when I call the police, or the fire department, I shouldn't know it's there? When I retire, I shouldn't know I have social security? The military should be invisible?” Hunter of Kos has a lot to say about a Washington Post article about Joe and Jill Biden going to a restaurant and both of them ordering rigatoni, the specialty of the house, though that seems to defy some unwritten rule that groups at a restaurant should order different things so everyone can taste a bite of each. That leads to Hunter asking such questions as: Why did WaPo spend time reporting on this when there are so many more consequential issues the paper – and American society – should be discussing? Guns? The demise of democracy? Train derailments? Well, maybe...

The problem, then, may simply be one of font. Our papers of record could instead put news of attempts to overthrow the United States government in Times New Roman, but analysis of a president's tan suit might be presented in Papyrus or Comic Sans. There'd be differentiation there; you would know, at a glance, whether the Post or the Times or Forbes meant this to be a serious story, bearing the full weight of their journalistic brands and histories, or a goofy story meant to cleanse the palate between fascist coup attempts. The font would set the tone.