The goal isn’t accuracy; it’s power

My Sunday movie was again an afternoon showing at the Detroit Film Theater. The movie was Caught by the Tides, a Chinese movie released last year. It was directed by Jia Zhangke and the primary character is Qiaoqiao, played by Zhao Tao, Jia’s wife. The movie has a nominal plot – Qiao seems to love Bin (the portrayed emotion isn’t all that strong, according to what I’m used to) and when he leaves she follows him, or tries to. And that’s about it for plot. The other aspect of the movie is that it shows how China has been changing. The first location is a town in northern China in 2001, the year that Beijing was announced as the host of the 2008 Olympic Games. The interesting aspect isn’t that it was set in 2001, it’s that it was filmed in 2001. The next location was filmed in 2006, a town in the Three Rivers Gorge that has been dammed and the waters will soon flood the town. Perhaps Bin was not honest in his demolition contracts? The third portion was filmed in 2022, while everyone was still wearing COVID masks. I think there were multiple locations. Was there no big cultural event between 2006 and 2020 to add a step in between? So this aspect of the film shows how China changed over the course of filming. In the first section everyone we see is working class and don’t have much money left over to beautify their surroundings. In the last section the people are more middle class and the buildings are nicer. This is a movie in which I frequently wondered why I was being shown certain images. There isn’t a lot of plot. There’s very little dialogue – Qiao never speaks, though we do see some of the texts she sends to Bin, and the other characters don’t have much to say. The relationships between Qiao and Bin and other characters are not explained. So what does a particular image have to do with the story the director is telling? Or does “story” have a different meaning here? Alex Samuels of Daily Kos reported the nasty guy instructed the Department of Commerce to start work on a new census. This one would not count undocumented people. This is counter to the Constitution that says the census is to count all US residents with no regard to citizenship status. Is he giving the DoC instructions for the 2030 census (when he’ll be out of office) or is he planning a census before then. It probably can’t happen before 2027, so why bother. Does he expect the House to be reapportioned based on the results (which might take a year) and for each state to redistrict? Fitting all that in before 2030 would be difficult. If undocumented people are excluded from reapportionment, yeah, that would affect California, the state with the most undocumented immigrants. But Texas is right behind, followed by Florida. New York is a distant fourth. So would Republicans gain many seats in the House?

Whether Trump’s census plan actually materializes remains uncertain—but that’s almost beside the point. For Trump, the goal isn’t accuracy; it’s power. It’s another effort to manipulate the system so Republicans can win even when voters favor Democrats. Undercounting blue states, redrawing district lines, suppressing the vote, and altering the rules—that’s the GOP’s strategy. And when they can’t win honestly, they just change the game.

House seats aren’t the only things determined by the census. Many programs funded by the federal government are too. And states high in undocumented people (like Texas and Florida) would lose funding. There’s always the issue that the nasty guy is doing it just to be cruel to undocumented people. Emily Singer of Kos reported that the TV show South Park recently started its 27th season. I’ve known about the show and watched very little of it. Just not my style of humor. Singer wrote that the second episode of the season, which aired last week, strongly skewered the nasty guy and his immigration policy. All that is good to see considering how many media sources have already bent a knee to the nasty guy. I’ll let you read the details.