His every twitch has commanded humanity’s attention

My Sunday movie was Rez Ball. It is described as fictional and based on a true story. The story takes place in Chuska, New Mexico (it’s not in Google Maps, where I’m shown Chuska Mountains so the town must be fictional too). It is part of the Navajo Nation. Nataanii is the captain of the high school basketball team. His best friend is Jimmy, also on the team. Even in their free time they play against each other. Nataanii lost his mother and sister the year before. Even though we think his prospects are bright, he doesn’t. One day he doesn’t show up for a game. After the game the coach tells the team he killed himself. Yeah, suicide on the Rez is high. Though Jimmy is struggling with the lost of his best friend, he is promoted to team captain. He is also struggling against his mother, an alcoholic. She’s not violent, just defeated, saying Natives always find a way to lose. Coach Heather (there are hints she is lesbian) brings in an assistant coach, a man who knows sacred Navajo rituals. Jimmy’s girlfriend begins to teach him the Navajo language, which he doesn’t know, and he pulls it into the game as a way for the team to talk to each other without their opponents understanding. They come up with a style of play they call Rez Ball. I was intrigued by this movie when it came out last September. I put off watching it because I realized it is probably another story of an underdog team going to the championship game. It is that. But the Navajo setting gives the old story a reason to watch. I enjoyed it. One reason for watching Rez Ball was it fits well with the book I finished just after watching. It is The Inconvenient Indian, a Curious Account of Native People in North America by Thomas King. It was published in 2012 and selected for the 2015 English Canada Reads program. I bought it in the Indigenous shop when I visited Stratford, Ontario last August. Canada Reads is put on by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public radio. It is a way to get the whole country to read the same small number of books. King is a Canadian Native, though he has spent considerable time in the US. In the Prologue he explains this is an “account” and not a “history” because first, a history is too scholarly and requires footnotes. Second, a history doesn’t tell a story well and King wanted to tell the story of Native-White interactions across both the United States and Canada. More accurately, it’s the story of Whites oppressing Natives – taking their land, killing or impoverishing them, trying to replace their culture, and generally being mean. Third, people (hopefully) learn more from stories than they do from history and King shows Whites haven’t learned anything in the 500 years since contact. Fourth, a history book would not allow him moments of humor, most of it snarky. Yes, King uses the term “Indian” throughout, mostly because the two countries call their Native peoples by different names. Also, children across the continent play Cowboys and Indians. All kids, even the Indians, want to play the part of the Cowboys (King describes photos of his own childhood) and nobody wants to play the Indians. King discusses many of the treaties the two countries made with their Indians. There were around 400 treaties – all of them broken by Whites. King is asked, “What do Indians want?” He says that’s the wrong question. Each tribe has its own answer. The better question is “What do Whites want?” The answer to that is simple: land. One big theme of the book is the myriad ways in which Whites have taken land away from Indians. The most frequently used is through a treaty, which always favored Whites. If Whites wanted more land the treaty is tossed (by Whites) and a new one written. I learned that when dams were built along the Missouri River every resulting reservoir flooded Indian land, and not White land. Even today some politicians talk about the Indian “problem.” Another big theme is how Indians are portrayed and thought about in both countries. There are Dead Indians, the type of Indians Whites revere. We use Indian images and names on a great number of products (such as Atlanta Braves), including wellness products that sell the idea of living like Indians do (or the promoter thinks they did). There are Live Indians, the ones walking around today. Whites ignore Live Indians because they don’t dress like the traditional Indian Whites recognize. King is frequently asked if he is a “real” Indian because to Whites he doesn’t look like one. So Live Indians are ignored. The third and last category is the Legal Indian. Both countries hate them. These are Indians with legal federal status. Many are the kind that insist on their rights. A third theme is Whites declareing they are culturally superior to Indians. That was behind the effort to assimilate and Christianize the Indians, including the residential school programs. The schools said, “Kill the Indian, save the child.” Considering the abuse, disease, and death in the schools of both countries King said the actual phrase came out to “Kill the Indian” kills the Indian. The book ends with a couple bright spots. In the US in 1972 (I think) and act was passed by Congress to turn over much of the land in Alaska to the Natives. As great as the act is there are still features the benefit Whites over Indians. In 1999 Canada passed the act that created the territory of Nunavut. Again, the Inuit had territory they could manage as they, not Ottawa, saw fit. And again, it wasn’t all it should have been – the funding to teach Inuit children their native language isn’t nearly enough. Though King doesn’t use footnotes and doesn’t document his sources, the book is well researched. I can’t say I enjoyed the book because I got tired of the constant stream of methods Whites came up with to oppress the Indians. However, I strongly recommend it. More Americans (and more Canadians) need to know this history and learn from it. Last Sunday Kos of Daily Kos surveyed the top ten single day stock market drops and noticed something in common. 1. March 12, 2020, 7. March 9, 2020, in response to the handling of the COVID epidemic. 2. Nov. 20, 2008, 4. Nov. 6, 2008, 5. Oct. 15, 2008, 6. Oct 7, 2008, 8. Oct 9, 2008, 9. Oct 10, 2008, 10. October 22, 2008, in response to the mortgage crisis. 3. April 4, 2025, in response to tariffs being imposed needlessly. Numbers 1, 3, and 7 were because of the nasty guy. All the rest were under the watch of Bush II. Other notable crashes: Black Friday, October 1929 under Herbert Hoover, Black Monday, October 1987 under Reagan, and the Post-9/11 crash under Bush II. The something in common: All happened while a Republican was in the Oval Office. Some drops were in direct response to his actions. Good to know Americans are finally giving up on the idea that Republicans are better at the economy. Emily Singer of Kos reported, with the help of NBC News, on the attack of the governor’s mansion in Pennsylvania. The perpetrator said he had a “hatred towards Governor Shapiro,” who is Jewish. The perpetrator broke into the mansion and set fire to the dining room. Shapiro, family, and guests fled in the middle of the night and are safe. The attack happened on the first day of Passover, which the family had begun to celebrate. Singer was much more interested in the response from the nasty guy. He had a lot to say after the attack – about other things. He was silent on what happened to Shapiro. Close to a day after the attack Attorney General Pam Bondi offered mild comment, quite a bit milder than what she had to say about people attacking Tesla properties. When the nasty guy attacks universities, students protesting the treatment of Palestinians, and quite a bit more he says he is doing it to eliminate antisemitism. Yet, a Jewish governor of an American state is attacked and he has no comment. Which sounds antisemitic. And that means that his claim that he is doing things to eliminate antisemitism is a lie. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian:

Last week, it was Trump as gameshow host in the White House Rose Garden, proudly unveiling his Price is Right table of import duties, listing each country alongside the percentage by which it was about to get whacked. He called it “liberation day”. This week, it was the 90-day “pause” – climbdown would be another word – for everywhere except China, which got hit with extra levies. Throughout, people in every ministry and trading floor on the planet held their breath, along with the boardroom of every company that buys or sells overseas, as they watched to see what Trump would do next to the global economy currently held hostage in the Oval Office. With a gun to the temple of the world trading system, Trump’s every twitch has commanded humanity’s attention. And, my, how he loves it. You could see his pleasure as he told a Republican dinner on Tuesday that the world’s nations were “kissing my ass” to negotiate a deal that would spare them tariff pain. For him, the uncertainty is all part of the fun. As the Economist rightly observed, he relishes “being the focus of a planetary guessing game”. Trump used to get his dopamine hit from a mention in the gossip columns of the New York tabloids; now he’s tasted the thrill of commanding an audience in the billions and he’s hooked. But consider the price we are all paying. I don’t (only) mean those trillions of dollars wiped out at a stroke through tumbling stocks, or even the investments put on hold as businesses decide that, amid all this uncertainty, now is not the right time to open that new factory or launch that new product, thereby delaying, perhaps for ever, the jobs or wages that would have found their way to people who need them.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo:

Here’s one thing that’s hardly been discussed as far as I can tell. We know about the Trump “deals” with various law firms. We know about the “deal” with Columbia University, which the administration has now violated to the extent it was ever actually a deal. But where are these deals? What are they exactly? I mean, have these agreements been committed to paper? In every one of these that I have seen each side has a general description of what’s been agreed to but there’s no document that you would have in the real world – or the real non-corrupt world – when two parties agree to something.

In another roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Noah Berlatsky of Public Notice discussing the incessant lying of the nasty guy and MAGA.

These lies are effective because they leverage anti-government sentiment and prejudice. They also work because opposition politicians struggle to recognize and call out fascist bad faith. If Democrats are going to defend Social Security, the social safety net, and even cancer research, though, we need to get accustomed to saying unequivocally that lies are lies, and comfortable recognizing them as a deliberate effort to confuse and demoralize people.

Paul Krugman discussed why Democrats should not support tariffs.

But shouldn’t we be trying to restore U.S. manufacturing? Let me make three points: 1. Trump’s tariffs will hurt, not help, manufacturing 2. If you want to promote manufacturing, you should use industrial policy, not tariffs 3. Good jobs don’t have to be in manufacturing, and manufacturing jobs aren’t necessarily good Trump’s tariffs will hurt U.S. manufacturing Trump’s tariffs will reduce, not increase, the number of manufacturing jobs in America.

Trump Hater Dan tweeted a cartoon showing Linus of the Peanuts gang in school saying to Peppermint Patty, “No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.” That’s why the nasty guy is attacking universities. AJ Duden tweeted:

You put your tariff on You take your tariff off You put your tariff on and you make 'em scream and shout You do the market hustle and you turn it upside down That's what it's all about