Why is cruelty not a disadvantage, but an allure?

In the 7 stories to know post from last week Mark Sumner of Daily Kos included a video by a historian (I didn’t catch the name). The video posed and answered a question: If the Romans in Britain had such sophisticated culture, why was Britain after Rome departed so unsophisticated? Why did this Britain have huts and not villas, chamber pots instead of good sanitation? The time period of this discussion is about 410 CE to about 1066 CE. Before then many residents did live in huts. Only the rich lived in villas. Huts tend not to last a thousand years. Consider what happened when the Romans withdrew. Lots of groups then competed to be the ruling class, so the locals experienced almost constant war. That meant most effort in the society went towards basics like farming and pottery. There was little need for poets. Most documents were in Latin and those who could read and teach Latin were either only in the church or were gone. Trade links were severed. Craftsmen who relied on exports now only had local sales, so they became scarce and their knowledge lost. With such a large need for farming London was mostly deserted for a few hundred years. There was no need to build big monumental buildings. I finished episodes 5 and 6, which is the last of Absolute Beginners. This is the story of Lena and Niko and their parents at a resort on the Polish coast. Lena and Niko are making a movie to get into film school. The rest of my discussion should be seen as spoilers of earlier episodes. So if you haven’t and want to see them, jump to the next section of this post. The end of episode 4 was filming the sex scene Lena thought was vital to their movie. It got rather steamy between Igor and Niko. Now Igor doesn’t want the scene to be used. So Lena and Niko have to figure out how to convince him to let them use it or figure out how to recut the film without it. In the meantime Igor, who was there for a basketball camp, is preparing for the big game. His coach takes him to meet a scout – who starts by saying the many ways life on even a low level pro team will be hard. No sleeping in, up every day at 5! As Niko’s parents’ marriage continues to fall apart Niko realizes this is the end of their time in the cottage jointly owned by them and by Lena’s parents. Niko is saying goodbye to childhood. Episode 6 includes Igor’s big game and whether Lena gets into film school. Alas, there is little room to explore the new relationship between Igor and Niko. There isn’t much beyond big smiles. Overall, I enjoyed the six episodes. It is more unusual than the typical coming of age, first love, and discovering your orientation movie. I finished the book Tyrant, Shakespeare on Politics by Stephen Greenblatt. Several years ago I read his book The Swerve, How the World Became Modern about the shift in thinking that brought about the Enlightenment. I wrote about it back in 2012. This book looks at several of Shakespeare’s plays to understand the nature of a tyrant. He finished writing it in 2018 while the nasty guy was in the Oval Office. Back then I wrote about hearing the book described on NPR. It took a while to buy the book and a few years to get around to reading it. Greenblatt begins his discussion with:

“A king rules over willing subjects,” wrote the influential sixteenth-century Scottish scholar George Buchanan, “a tyrant over the unwilling.” The institutions of a free society are designed to ward off those who would govern, as Buchanan put it, “not for their country but for themselves, who take account not of the public interest but of their own pleasure.” Under what circumstances, Shakespeare asked himself, do such cherished institutions, seemingly deep-rooted and impregnable, suddenly prove fragile? Why do large numbers of people knowingly accept being lied to? How does a figure like Richard III or Macbeth ascend to the throne? Such a disaster, Shakespeare suggested, could not happen without widespread complicity. His plays probe the psychological mechanisms that lead a nation to abandon its ideals and even its self-interest. Why would anyone, he asked himself, be drawn to a leader manifestly unsuited to govern, someone dangerously impulsive or viciously conniving or indifferent to the truth? Why, in some circumstances, does evidence of mendacity, crudeness, or cruelty serve not as a fatal disadvantage but as an allure, attracting ardent followers? Why do otherwise proud and self-respecting people submit to the sheer effrontery of the tyrant, his sense that he can get away with saying anything he likes, his spectacular indecency? Shakespeare repeatedly depicted the tragic cost of this submission – the moral corruption, the massive waste of treasure, the loss of life – and the desperate, painful, heroic measures required to return a damaged nation to some modicum of health. Is there, the plays ask, any way to stop the slide towards lawless and arbitrary rule before it is too late, any effective means to prevent the civil catastrophe that tyranny invariably provokes?

Shakespeare could not answer these questions through discussing his current monarch, Elizabeth I, though there were troubling aspects of her reign. So he had to look at tyrants from a few to many hundred years before: Henry VI (a trilogy), Richard III, Macbeth, Leontes of The Winter’s Tale, daughters Goneril and Regan of King Lear, Saturninus of Titus Andronicus, Julius Cesar, and Coriolanus. I’m not going to discuss all of these plays – the book is worth reading and the plays themselves are worth watching or reading. Instead, I’ll mention a few things that caught my attention. The Henry VI plays are about the Duke of Somerset and the Duke of York and the struggle that became the War of the Roses. Henry is a youth who doesn’t know how to rule and the dukes step into the vacuum. These dukes are wrangling over a point of law – which law is not mentioned and doesn’t matter. The dispute needlessly escalates into war. Three plays later many are dead, much has been ruined, and another tyrant – Richard – is waiting. Greenblatt notes a few conclusions about this series of plays: + Rising chaos makes the struggle for power unpredictable. York appears to fan the chaos, yet he and his heirs die because of it. + The dream of absolute rule isn’t one person’s goal. The dream is of a dynasty. + When wanting to seize power at any cost enemies can become friends. + A legitimate, moderate leader cannot count on popular gratitude or support. The people are no longer outraged by treachery, nor do they praise virtue. + At the end of the struggle the restoration of order may be an illusion as another tyrant watches a monarch whose power has been reduced. That Richard is Richard III. He has contempt for the law, because it implies public good, and he delights in breaking it. In discussing this tyrant Greenblatt lists those who respond to him: + Those who believe Richard at face value, yet have too little power to do anything. They are merely victims. + Those who feel frightened or impotent by the bullying and violence. + Those who forget how awful the tyrant is and try to normalize his actions. + Those who believe the tyrant can’t get too out of control, that there will be enough adults in the room to keep the tyrant confined to the way things normally work. + Those who believe they can take advantage of the tyrant’s rise to power, that they can profit from his evil. They’re likely to be among the first to die. + Those who help the tyrant. Some help so that spoils come their way. Some help because they enjoy the downfall of those high in the social hierarchy. The genius of Shakespeare is these ideas are embodied into real characters. This play shows that many times a tyrant who knows how to connive to reach the top of power doesn’t know how to actually make the country run. The tragedy of Macbeth is that Macbeth is content to be loyal to the king until his wife prods him into wanting to be king. She does it by insulting his manhood. Soon he can trust no one and the outcome is madness and death. In The Winter’s Tale Leontes appears to be a legitimate and good ruler of Sicilia. He then gets into his head that the child his wife is carrying is not his. The more this notion is challenged, the more he descends into paranoia. With the powers of a king, and with no one to check him, he easily turns into a tyrant. The plot of Julius Caesar is about preventing a tyrant, Caesar, from arising. Yet the act of preventing one brings another, Antony, to power. And he is worse. Coriolanus was raised by his mother to be a warrior. Against the Volsces he does quite well. That’s enough to recommend him for a position of power, but what makes him a good warrior does not make him a good ruler. He doesn’t know how to be a politician and his attempt is a disaster. He is banished. He tries to lead the Volscians against Rome and is rebuffed. Then Volscians accuse him of treason. In this story the leaders of Rome are able to rouse the people into action and prevent a tyrant from taking over. A couple quotes from the Coda:

It was Sir Thomas More, from whom Shakespeare borrowed so much of his portrait of Richard III, who put the matter most clearly almost a hundred years earlier, “When I consider any social system that prevails in the modern world,” More wrote in Utopia, “I can’t, so help me God, see it as anything but a conspiracy of the rich.”

And...

The playwright repeatedly depicted the chaos that ensues when tyrants, who generally have no administrative competence and no vision for constructive change, actually get possession of power. Even relatively healthy and stable societies, he thought, have few resources that enable them to ward off damage from someone sufficiently ruthless and unscrupulous; nor are they well-equipped to deal effectively with legitimate rulers who begin to show signs of unstable and irrational behavior.

This is a good book. The author explains his ideas quite well. The nasty guy isn’t mentioned, but is always in the background. I don’t think I’ve ever discussed two books in the same post. I’m doing it now because I happened to finish the book I keep in my car (above) about the same time I finished the book I read in the house. This book is Alabama Grandson, A Black, Gay Minister’s Passage Out of Hiding by Cedrick Bridgeforth. I had heard Bishop Bridgeforth speak at the Reconciling Ministries Convo last October and was impressed by his message. That prompted me to buy the book. I was a bit confused towards the end because he is offered a chance to be bishop in 2016 and turned it down. Some online looking showed he was offered it again in 2022 and accepted. This was less than a year after the book was published. Yes, he’s a United Methodist bishop. And he’s gay and married. Which, until this year, was something that could result in a trial and removal from being a pastor. But by 2022 much of the American denomination was ignoring the prohibitions against gay clergy and there was already a married lesbian bishop. One reason why he turned down the offer of being bishop in 2016 is a complaint was filed against him, accusing him of being in a same-sex marriage, which was against denomination rules. He felt he couldn’t both fight the charge and be elevated to bishop. He also felt the time was not right. The book begins with the first part of what happened in 2016. Then it goes back to his childhood to tell his life story. The title is because he starts and ends the book with letters to his deceased grandmother. He tells her how much he loved her and that he knew how much she loved him. But he never trusted her enough to show her all of himself, to say he is gay. When young he describes some of the risky and legally dubious things he got into. He later realizes he did them because he was so conflicted about being gay and about who his father is – he had long noted he looked distinctly different than his siblings. He served in the Air Force while Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was still in effect. He didn’t fly planes, but did help monitor the nuclear arsenal near Cheyenne. It was his supervisor who guided him to the local gay hangouts. He had a long relationship with another airman, then another with the pastor of the church he attended, which stopped when the pastor announced he would soon marry a woman. Before and after the Air Force he mentions some of his boyfriends, though by first name only. He does not mention the guy he eventually married, which I thought odd, though he likely wants to protect his privacy. He mentions the various jobs he had, from high school onward, to show how he got involved in church work and eventually into being a pastor. His story is a good one and I enjoyed reading it. However, I felt he left important things out. His marriage is one of those. Another is whether he grew up in the United Methodist Church and if not, what prompted him to join it. Also, I sometimes got lost in his timeline. He sometimes jumps ahead to show the consequence of an event and doesn’t always say that’s what he’s doing. An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos includes:

The median pay package for CEOs rose to $16.3 million, up 12.6%, according to data analyzed for The Associated Press by Equilar. Meanwhile, wages and benefits netted by private-sector workers rose 4.1% through 2023. At half the companies in this year’s pay survey, it would take the worker at the middle of the company’s pay scale almost 200 years to make what their CEO did. ... The gap between the person in the corner office and everyone else keeps getting wider. Half the CEOs in this year’s pay survey made at least 196 times what their median employee earned. That’s up from 185 times in last year’s survey. ... The disparity between what the chief executive makes and the workers earn wasn't always so wide. After World War II and up until the 1980s, CEOs of large publicly traded companies made about 40 to 50 times the average worker’s pay, said Brandon Rees, deputy director of corporations and capital markets for the AFL-CIO, which runs an Executive Paywatch website that tracks CEO pay. “The (current) pay ratio signals a sort of a winner-take-all culture, that companies are treating their CEOs as, you know, as superstars as opposed to, team players,” Rees said.

What happened in the 1980s that prompted the big rise is CEO pay? The Reagan tax cuts for the rich. Mark Sumner of Kos wrote that this year Republicans are tending to run congressional candidates with immense personal wealth. In one sense that’s good because the Republican National Committee won’t be giving them much money because so much is funneled to the nasty guy. In contrast Democrats believe self-funded candidates aren’t good because it prevents them from raising money, also known as actually meeting constituents. Self-funded Republican candidates can meet the real Republican base just fine – the billionaires are hanging out with Elon Musk or at Mar-a-Lago. These are people who don’t like democracy. They also don’t like Biden’s proposed wealth tax and want a continuation of the nasty guy’s tax cuts and efforts to cut consumer protections. So this will be an election between the billionaires and everyone else. Marcus Baram, in a post for Capital & Main posted on Kos, reported the Kansas legislature is considering a bill to give rich people a tax cut. This is after the “Brownback experiment” of 2012-2013 in which Gov. Sam Brownback cut taxes for the rich, decimating the state budget and leading to massive cuts in education and vital services, such as road repair and Medicaid. It also hurt the economy. The same people, led by Charles Koch, who pushed for the tax cut in 2012 are behind this effort. Trickle-down economics is back. Thankfully, Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly has said she would veto the effort. In response Republicans said she is “being a bit of a dictator.” They’re also describing the tax bill as tax relief for 3 million people, when it is a tax cut only for those at the top. I checked – the population of Kansas is about 3 million. In Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves has already pushed two big income tax cuts. He’s now pushing to eliminate the personal income tax and replace it with a regressive consumption tax. Alas, residents aren’t good at connecting tax cuts that benefit them a bit but mostly benefit the rich with the decline of public education. Also in Kansas... Another AP article reported the Kansas Supreme Court found that voting is not a fundamental right in the state Constitution’s Bill of Rights. The lawsuit was over a ballot signature verification measure in the 2021 election law. The decision could embolden state lawmakers to enact more restrictions on such things as advance voting, mail-in ballots, and drop boxes. Voters are already confused because of the rules around elections keep changing. Southern Sister Resister posted a photo of what looks like a church sign. It says:

The Church of the Latter-Day Dude Evangelicals, God here. The voice calling DJT ‘The Chosen one’ isn’t Me. Take your meds.

A whole nation under threat from Supreme Court justices

A week ago Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported that for a time just after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack there was an inverted American flag outside Justice Samuel Alito’s home. This inverted flag was originally a signal of an emergency. It became a symbol for supporters of the nasty guy who wanted to overturn the election. Also at that time the Supreme Court was considering whether to hear a case involving the 2020 election results. Alito blamed the flag on his wife Martha-Ann, who he said put it up on response to a neighbor’s anti-nasty guy sign.

Like Thomas, whose wife was directly involved in Jan 6. events, Alito isn’t just conservative; he’s committed to eroding government power to help his billionaire friends. Any pretense that Alito has a judicial philosophy in election matters other than helping Trump is exactly that—pretense. ... As it turns out, an upside-down flag still signals an emergency. In this case, it’s a whole nation under threat from Supreme Court justices putting their support for Trump above the law.

Also last Friday Walter Einenkel of Kos wrote that Rachel Maddow criticized Alito on her program. She doesn’t buy the attempt to blame the wife. Maddow said:

Everybody has different marriage rules, but 'it's my wife's fault' is probably never within the marriage rules, when you are talking to The New York Times about something that you've done that has brought enough scandal upon you and the institution you represent, that it's on the front page of The New York Times. ... Justice Alito has become increasingly unembarrassed about displaying himself as a partisan, as a consumer of partisan narratives and media, and in ruling in ways that are just kind of out loud, all caps disdainful toward a majority of the country, in some cases. And certainly against people who disagree with him. And this fits with that. ... I think Chief Justice Roberts has a problem on his hands in terms of the behavior of some of the more aggressive justices, and those who are really flouting ethics concerns and equanimity concerns with their behavior.

Congressman Jamie Raskin tweeted:

Justice Alito turned the flag upside down. Donald Trump turned the Bible upside down. MAGA turned the Capitol upside down. The Roberts Court turned the Constitution upside down. Let’s set America right side up in November.

Wednesday, two days ago, Kaili Joy Gray of Kos reported there was a second occurrence of Alito flying a “stop the steal” flag. This on was the “Appeal to Heaven” flag and was seen over the Alito’s New Jersey beach house during the summer of 2023. When this one came to light at least Alito didn’t blame his wife. This flag is white with a green pine tree and the words “An Appeal to Heaven.” It was created during the American Revolution and recently adopted by far-right religious fanatics. It also was seen at the Capitol attack. Gray asks the question: How many far-right flags does Alito need to fly before we see it as a problem? Is two enough? In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Dahlia Lithwick of Slate. Here’s a bit, which explains what the flag means.

That flag is not merely another January 6 signifier but also rooted in John Locke’s “appeal to heaven,” meaning “a responsibility to rebel, even use violence, to overthrow unjust rule.”

I found the full quote to be: “The people have no other remedy in this, as in all other cases where they have no judge on earth, but to appeal to heaven.” But I’m not linking to the page where I found it. Down in the comments is a cartoon by Dennis Goris. It shows a building with two flags, the inverted American flag and the “Appeal to Heaven” flag. A boy asks, “What are those?” His father replies, “Red flags.” In the comments of another pundit roundup are a couple cartoons worth sharing. Joe Heller posted one of a flag outside the Supreme Court. The man says, “The flag is upside down and at half-staff?” The woman replies, “Yeah. Ethics is dead.” Much farther down is a cartoon from the Dallas Voice related to the United Methodist Church removing its bans on what LGBTQ people were allowed to do. The senior pastor says:

In accordance with new Methodist church policy, I will, if asked, agree to perform same-sex weddings. But I will draw the line at becoming a gay pastor myself.

Back to the Supreme Court. Also on Wednesday Sumner reviewed what Republicans had to say about Alito’s flags. Many blamed the press and Democrats for making a story of the flags. Those who had an actual comment gave Alito as much slack as they could or they commented on how bad it looked. Yeah, what we now expect from Republicans.

The depth of the Supreme Court’s corruption needs to be exposed, and the consequences need to be real. So far, no Republican appears ready to take that step.

On Thursday Einenkel reported a discussion Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of RI had with Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC. Whitehouse gave some history. When Bush I had a seat on the Court to fill he chose his own legal counsel Harriet Miers. Bush’s choice was attacked by Leonard Leo, the guy who founded the Federalist Society. Part of his efforts are to influence the Court. It is funded by bllionaires. He proposed Miers be replaced by the billionaire’s choice: Alito. Einenkel reminds us this is Alito’s third scandal in the last twelve months. Alito possibly being the leaker of the draft decision to overturn Roe was more than a year ago. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that pressure is building for Sen. Dick Durban, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to do something. Those two senators, who would love to take over Durban’s job, are Whitehouse and Sen. Richard Blumenthal of CT. So far all Durban has done was to issue stern demands that Alito recuse himself from cases involving the nasty guy or the Capitol attack. And Alito knows he can ignore Durban’s demands. Which is why Whitehouse and Blumenthal are applying more pressure. I had a scary thought...

Alito famously declared himself and the rest of the justices just that in an interview with The Wall Street Journal last year, in which he made a startling assertion of constitutional power: “No provision in the Constitution gives [Congress] the authority to regulate the Supreme Court—period.” That interview was with David Rivkin Jr., a regular contributor to the WSJ who also happens to be a lawyer who was about to argue a major tax case before the court. ... [Blumenthal said] “Justice Alito says the Congress can't regulate, to use his term, the Supreme Court. But the Congress set salaries. It sets rules of procedure. It sets the numbers of justices. The founders didn't want the United States Supreme Court to be above the law.”

One of the duties of the Supreme Court is to examine laws passed by Congress and decide if they are unconstitutional. Consider this scenario: Congress passes a bill that specifies a code of ethics with consequences for violating it and a way to enforce it. The president signs it. And then Alito and colleagues declare the law to be unconstitutional. What happens then? Stephen Wolf of Kos Elections described a recent Court ruling that shows why an ethical court is necessary. The Court had previously ruled that they will do nothing about gerrymandering for partisan purposes, though they could demand maps be redrawn if gerrymandering was for racial purposes, as in limiting minority members of Congress. The just issued ruling from the conservatives on the Court was for a South Carolina case of gerrymandering. It sure looked like a case of districts drawn for racial purposes. But in much of the South party affiliation is very much aligned with race. That allows Alito to reinterpret the motives of those who drew the maps to say, nope, this was for political purposes and we can’t touch it. The effect is to mostly remove race as a reason for a gerrymandering remedy.

We are all going to hell with you

I had a minor annoyance today. Two birds, one at a time, attacked my windows, fluttering against and pecking at the glass. I’m sure they saw their reflections and were fighting the bird they thought was invading their territory. I could wave something inside near the glass and they would fly away. But soon they would be at it again. Both birds were about the size of my fist. One was yellow and white, the other yellow and black. Midday they were at the south-facing windows. In the afternoon they shifted to the west windows. I suppose I could have just let them do their thing since they weren’t damaging the glass, but they were rather noisy about it. My Sunday viewing was two films, each less than an hour. The first was Hans Zimmer, Hollywood Rebel. He has written the music for 150 films and won Oscars for The Lion King (yeah, Elton John wrote the songs, Zimmer wrote all the rest) and just recently for Dune. He was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1957 and moved to England as a teen. He rebelled against strict discipline in school and the discipline to learn to play the piano lasted about two weeks. So his music is self taught. He started a recording studio with Stanley Myers in the 1980s. In that time he explored how to use synthesizers and computers, both fairly young, to create music. He branched out on his own in 1987 and was on his way to Hollywood with Rain Man in 1988. With that his rebel sensibility was back. Rain Man is a road movie and he didn’t follow the usual instruments used in road movies. In writing the music for the opening scene for Lion King he forgot he was told to limit it to 20 seconds. He was surprised when the director said they didn’t want him to change the music, they would reanimate the opening to fit what he wrote. After several big films, such as Interstellar, he could have lived off big films for the rest of his career. But he wanted variety and practically volunteered to score 12 Years a Slave to do something different. He doesn’t read the script for the movie. Instead, he has a long conversation with the director, which some say is almost like psychoanalysis. He also brings his assistants to meetings so they get exposure and learn how to navigate such meetings. Younger composers talk about how he influenced them. Lately, he has been filling arenas with live performances of his film music and is greeted like a rock star. Retire? Not anytime soon. The second movie was Elephant Whisperers, which won an Oscar for best short documentary. It’s a simple story. Bellie and Bomman, a couple who are grandparents, work at an elephant rehab camp in southern India. During the film baby elephants Raghu and Annu are rescued. Raghu was badly injured and they nursed him back to health, then cared for him for a few years. They said he was like their child. They loved him and saw he loved them back. Care included feeding, bathing, and sometimes decorating him for religious festivals. They are pleased that younger generations are willing and learning to become elephant caretakers. I was delighted when the service this past Sunday at my United Methodist Church started with the good news out of the just concluded General Conference. Our congregation’s song leader talked about the elimination of language harmful to LGBTQ people and explained what a big deal that is. She also talked about the globally centered revised Social Principles, which passed, and the regionalization proposal that lessens the colonization aspects of denomination structure. That bit passed GC and now has to be ratified by subregions (like Michigan). Then the praise choir sang “Draw the Circle Wide.” The big part of the harmful language was the phrase that homosexuality is “incompatible with Christian teaching.” After 52 years of it being part of the denomination rulebook and 40 years of effort to repeal it that is now gone! A lot of other rules were built on that phrase, rules such as an LGBTQ person could not be ordained, pastors could not officiate at same-sex weddings, those weddings could not be held in denomination churches, and money can’t be given to organizations “promoting the acceptance of homosexuality” (like funding programs to reduce LGBTQ suicide rates). All of those are now gone! I talked briefly with a delegate yesterday. She said she was amazed how quickly these proposals passed and that they passed with such high margins. She expected a struggle and there just wasn’t. The congregation song leader later said the denomination still has work to do. One is the healing of those who were hurt in the 40 year struggle. I am one of those. I went to the 2012 GC to urge the vote for removing the incompatibility clause and felt burned by the experience. Another place needing work is the difference between passing legislation and actually getting local congregations to fully accept LGBTQ people. Another proposal that caught my attention was an “Apology for the Illegal Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom” in the 1890s. It passed. Yes, the Hawaiian Islands had their own monarchy and it was doing quite well for the people. But the United States conquered the islands and eventually allowed it to become a state. If one is curious the Love Your Neighbor Coalition is putting together a legislative summary. On the page already are the three main areas of regionalization, revised social principles, and removal of harmful language. LYNC is the LGBTQ caucus joined with various ethnic caucuses and other groups working towards an inclusive church. Over the last couple weeks the United Methodist Church made a big step towards being an inclusive church. I feel a lot better about being a member. The latest edition of Between the Lines and its online presence at Pridesource included an interview of David Archuleta by Chris Azzopardi. Yes, Archuleta won American Idol back in 2008. Last month he was back on the American Idol stage as a guest and he sang a song he would not have dared to sing when he was a contestant. In the intervening years Archuleta felt stifled by the Mormon Church and left it. He also came out as gay. And the Mormon Church has a very different stance on being gay than the United Methodist Church just passed. Some time after coming out to his mother she texted, “If you’re going to hell, we are all going to hell with you.” She also left the Mormon church. That prompted him to write the song, “Hell Together.” It’s what he sang on the family friendly American Idol stage. He hopes it inspires other parents to to be wholehearted allies to their queer children. The official video of the song is at the bottom of the Pridesource article and is dedicated to his mother. Here’s a bit of what Archuleta said in the interview that matches something I strongly believe:

I feel like, as human beings, we need community. And that's what was so beautiful about religion: it's community and you're there for each other. And so when you leave religion, people think, "Oh, you've lost the meaning of life." It's like, "No, I just have to find community elsewhere," and I have meaning for life again. So I think that's something else, to be encouraging to people who haven't left religion and haven't come out, because they're afraid of losing their community, and feeling like they'll lose their purpose to live. It's like, you know what? There is a community elsewhere and it's beautiful, and it'll give you a whole new sense of meaning to live, and it's wonderful.

Another important article from Pridesource is about the people awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Biden just handed out 19 of them. And one new recipient is Judy Shepard. She’s the mother of Matthew Shepard, who was killed in 1998 in a hate crime that was in the news quite a bit when it happened. Judy and her husband Dennis created the Matthew Shepard Foundation to raise awareness about violent hate crimes committed against LGBTQ people. Judy “was instrumental in working with then-President Barack Obama for passage of the landmark Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in 2009.” TrueWordsRSpoken posted a cartoon that explains Free Speech in a way that my friend and debate partner would approve. The first couple panels:

The right to free speech means the government can’t arrest you for what you say. It doesn’t mean that anyone else has to listen to your bull----, or host you while you share it.

I’ll end today with a cartoon for music nerds posted by Ron Carter. It shows a car in a repair shop and scratched on the doors is a bit of a musical staff, complete with a clef and a couple sharps. The technician tells the owner:

Your car has been keyed. The good news is that the damage appears to B minor.

A mass release of joy

My Sunday movie was Dumb Money. It is based on the true story of the Game Stop stock price runup back in 2020 and into 2021. The term “dumb money” refers to money from regular people, not those guided by investment advisors or investments made by investment companies – people supposedly investing without their emotions. The story is primarily about Keith Gill who uses the online name Roaring Kitty. His job has been shut down because of the pandemic, so he switches to stock analysis and trading from home, where he puts a video of his analysis on the web. He chooses to invest in Game Stop because he feels it is undervalued. A part of his reasoning is that some big investors have shorted the stock, which is a bet that the company is worth a lot less than the stock price indicates and the price will drop. That video arouses the feelings of other ordinary people and we follow a few of them through the movie. Some lost their jobs in the pandemic and are hoping for a source of income. Some have experience with corporate raiders, people who buy out a company, suck out its value, and file for bankruptcy on the remains, which leaves employees dry. The Game Stop price heads up. We also see the big guys, the ones who shorted the stock, whose net worth is in the billions. They ignore the situation for a while, but the higher the price climbs the worse their position. And they get worried. The situation shifts to become the little guys against the big guys. Can they push the stock high enough to cause financial damage to the rich? The little guys find the rich have other rich people to bail them out. With a high stock price the little guys face a dilemma of whether and when to cash out. Hold on too long and the price might fall, leaving them with nothing. And many of them had little cash to invest and negative net worth from student loans and credit cards. That causes family tensions. At the end of the movie we’re told that Wall Street doesn’t ignore dumb money like it used to. This is a good story and good movie. It explains the situation as well as a lay person might want. It reminded me of the movie The Big Short, which dramatized and explained the mortgage collapse of 2008. While in my bed not sleeping I was thinking about the protests at many universities around the country where students are demanding their schools divest from corporations that directly or indirectly support arms sales to Israel. Students want to stop what has the appearance of Israel, with the assistance of the US, committing genocide on the residents of Gaza. What I thought about was how I think the situation should be handled. They are at an institution of education, so educate! The administration should challenge the students to carefully justify their position – essentially write a term paper or thesis on why they are making their demands. This should be complete with sources and footnotes. Interested professors can assist and can make sure there are no attacks on people without sound justification (as in no derogatory comments about Jews). From the paper the students also create a presentation appropriate for an educational symposium. The school’s financial managers, the ones who do the investing, do the same. They explain what companies they invest in and why they believe those investments are important to the college. And then both make their presentation at the symposium, each responding to challenges from the other side and from the audience (presumably all the other students, the faculty, the administration, and the board). I’m not sure what to suggest should happen at the end of the symposium. A vote? Who votes? Do they discuss until there is consensus? That may not happen if one side or the other is obstinate. Does the school’s board decide? The school should also lay out guidelines. Students are welcome to their encampment or other means of protest as long as they want. But they must not damage school property nor interrupt school functions. They must not threaten other students. I feel this will at least accomplish an important goal of the students – they want to be heard. Right now they can easily conclude the administration does not want to hear them. When I got up this morning and turned on NPR I heard: At Columbia University on Monday night students had left their encampment and had occupied Hamilton Hall. And Tuesday night the New York police staged a massive show of force to retake the hall and arrest the occupying students. Students were frightened by the show of force. The administration justified the raid by saying the protesters frightened other students, especially Jewish students. I wonder how much both the students and administration were equating the actions of the Israeli government with the Jewish religion. Portland State University closed its campus after protesters took over a library. At UCLA police arrived on campus wearing riot gear in response to overnight clashes between rival protest groups. Last Friday Dartagnan of Daily Kos listed several Republican members of Congress who have been calling for the National Guard or the military to clear the protesters. These statements seem to take their cues from the nasty guy, who has previously called for violent responses to protesters he doesn’t like. Dartagnan lists several times that call was made. Also, Russell Vought is a primary author of Project 2025, the plan to enable the next Republican president to be a dictator. His far right conservative think tank Center for Renewing America has submitted plans for invoking the Insurrection Act on the first day to “quash protests.”

As Adam Serwer, writing for the Atlantic, observes, these reflexive calls by Republicans for a military response to protests seem to be less rooted in genuine concern that the protests pose a serious danger to the public or Jewish people than “because these powerful figures find the protesters and their demands offensive.” Serwer points out that school administrators have, when necessary, called in local police to address potential violence, harassment, and property damage, and thus far, the protests do not evince the kind of “mass violence and unrest” that would normally suggest the need for federal involvement. He also notes that such a deployment of federal troops would likely escalate the protests. ... In other words, thus far we have seen a markedly asymmetrical, political response by Republicans to campus protests this week. But we are also witnessing something else: an explicit acceptance of a militarized solution to protests where Republicans find it politically advantageous.

One thing I learned a dozen years ago is that a show of force – violence – is an enforcement of superiority, an upholding of the social hierarchy. The administration, in calling the police, is declaring they are superior to the students. That’s especially true if the administration is acting this way because of their rich donors or well connected politicians. Jen Sorensen of Kos Comics asks: Where’s the crisis? Famine in Gaza is a crisis. A peaceful encampment in response to Gaza is not a crisis. College administrators corrupted by right-wing donors and activists is an actual crisis. News orgs demonizing protesters is a never-ending crisis. I’ve written about Sarah Kendzior’s articles for Gaslit Nation. She also has a newsletter, which is more about some of the things she thinks about and connects to while going about her life. An example is visiting Death Valley with her children as part of an effort to visit every national park and encountering a lake made possible by climate change. Her latest story is a reflection on seeing a sniper on the roof of the student union where she got her master’s degree and seeing police beat students at the school where she got her PhD.

At each school, I studied authoritarian regimes and how they brainwash people into believing that state brutality is not only expected, but deserved.

She got her master’s at Indiana University. Her thesis was on the Uzbekistan government and their invention of a terrorist group to justify killing seven hundred protesters in 2005.

I spent my time at IU studying liars. Most of the liars worked for the authoritarian government of Uzbekistan, but some worked for American think tanks. ... It is young people who are leading the protests against Israeli war crimes and US complicity. Their demands are straightforward. The US government is funding Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian civilians. Student protesters want them to stop. They want their schools to reveal their finances and divest from companies producing weapons and providing aid for Israel’s war crimes and apartheid policies. These are reasonable requests. They are prompted by the horror and sympathy created when one watches videos of Palestinian children being murdered for seven months while IDF soldiers brag about killing them.

She earned her PhD at Washington University, St. Louis. Her dissertation was on dictatorships and dissent in the digital age (well, the digital age of 13 years ago). She has a deep understanding of the authoritarian regimes, here and around the world, that she talks about. Back in 2016 I followed the United Methodist General Conference through Twitter. I did the same during the short GC in 2019. But Twitter and its replacement X are not available to me this year. So I’ve had to rely on short updates emailed to me from progressive coalition partners and from stories in the media. Fortunately, the big stories show up in the media, such as this one by Jason DeRose of NPR. And it is wonderful news! The Conference has voted 692-51 to repeal the ban on LGBTQ people becoming clergy and to repeal the ban on clergy officiating at same-sex weddings. That’s 93% approval! Yay! The changes were so popular they included them in a bulk package with 22 other petitions and didn’t bother with a floor debate. And delegates broke into songs of joy when the tally was announced. This is quite different from the 2019 GC in which those restrictions were upheld by a majority. The difference between then and now is simple: The reaction to the traditional position in 2019 was many congregations – and bishops – refusing to enforce the bans. And that prompted many conservative congregations to leave the denomination. I went to the United Methodist News site for this story. In addition to lifting the bans mentioned above GC has also eliminated the ban on using funds to “promote acceptance of homosexuality.” in 2016 that ban meant not supporting suicide prevention efforts for LGBTQ youth. As for removing those bans:

Many hugged and more than a few cried, in a mass release of joy for those who had pushed, some for decades, to make The United Methodist Church fully inclusive.

Though I’m not at GC this year I have been a part of the group pushing for this change since at least 2007. I am delighted!

Whatever they find to scream about loudest, do more of

The General Conference of the United Methodist Church is underway. This is the first GC since the one scheduled in 2020 was canceled. GC is the legislative body of the denomination and has the power to revise the denomination rule book and to set budgets. Delegates come from the US, Africa, the Philippines, and a few from Europe. The 2020 GC was supposed to approve guidelines for congregational disaffiliation, a way for those that disapprove of better treatment of LGBTQ people to exit gracefully. The guidelines were not approved. About a quarter of US congregations left anyway. That gives those who remained an opportunity to make the denomination more welcoming to LGBTQ people. The first vote to help that happen came sooner than I expected. My friend and debate partner found an article by Peter Smith of Associated Press that reports on the vote. Up to this point the United Methodist Church was structured so that local regions, such as Africa, could adapt the rulebook to their local situation. Congregations in the US could not. The worldwide delegation voted on US pensions – and the way US churches were allowed to treat LGBTQ people. That has meant restricting what we could do. This vote was to make the US its own region with the ability to adapt the rulebook to our needs. It passed by 78%, which is good because this is a constitutional change and needed 66% to pass. It now goes to conferences in each subregion (such as Michigan) for approval over the next year. Over the next week there will be two more important votes. One is accepting a rewrite of our Social Principles. This version was led by the global church, not by the US. It is a way of decolonizing the denomination, avoiding the US view being imposed on other countries. The other vote is to remove language harmful to LGBTQ people. The LGBTQ caucus is not (yet) promoting adding pro-LGBTQ language, which could be voted down by the more conservative African churches. Once the harmful language is gone then the US as a region could adapt the rulebook to local needs and add pro-LGBTQ language for US congregations. The investigation into attempting to find impeachable crimes committed by Biden has been led by House Oversight Committee Rep. James Comer. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported that after 15 months of trying Comer just wants the whole thing to end. He’d even accept divine intervention. Comer is done because they have found no evidence of impeachable crimes. All of their “witnesses” were nothing. And they’ve been well played by Democrats and even Hunter Biden, one of their targets. McCarter wrote, “There’s just so much humiliation one man can take, I guess.” On to other stupid things Republicans have been doing. A year ago a gunman killed three children and three adults at the Covenant School in Nashville. Charles Jay of the Kos community reported that now Republicans in Nashville, learning nothing, have approved to allow teachers to carry concealed handguns. The protests from the galleries was loud enough that the Speaker ordered them to be cleared. Rep. Justin Pearson, one of the two black men expelled a year ago and voted back in by their district, wrote a protest piece for CNN:

Arming teachers increases the likelihood of shootings in schools, increases the chance that students will have access to guns and erodes trust in educators. A teacher with a handgun is unable to stop a shooter with a military-style weapon, and teachers aren’t able to respond in the ways trained law enforcement agents can. Adverse impacts — including fatal outcomes — will disproportionately fall on already marginalized populations such as disabled and Black students.

Jay wrote:

The bill would require any school employee who wants to carry a handgun to have an enhanced carry permit, obtain written authorization from both the school’s principal and law enforcement, clear a background check, undergo a psychological evaluation, and complete 40 hours of handgun training. One point of contention with the legislation is that parents would not necessarily know or be notified if their child’s teacher was carrying a handgun.

Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed the Republican response to the likelihood of an abortion rights proposal being placed on the Arizona ballot in November in response to the 1864 abortion ban being ruled enforceable.

According to a leaked PowerPoint presentation prepared by Arizona House GOP general counsel Linley Wilson, Republicans’ best course is to deceive Arizonans by forcing them to wade through one, two, or even three competing anti-choice initiatives in order to “dilute” support to amend the state constitution in favor of abortion rights. ... The Arizona GOP has reacted to the backlash against the resurrection of this grotesque “zombie” law by doubling down on the same strategy that has always served them. It begins and ends with the premise that anyone who becomes pregnant is simply unfit to decide these issues for themselves. That assumption is more than just offensive and insulting: It’s fundamentally dehumanizing. Democrats should take special care to underscore that aspect as the 2024 election approaches.

Gloria Rebecca Gomez, in an Arizona Mirror article posted on Kos, reported the Arizona House managed to pass a repeal of the ban. It took three tries to get enough Republican support to get past the procedural vote that allowed voting on the bill. It now goes to the Senate where they might take action on May 1. Nadra Nittle, in an article for The 19th posted on Kos, reported that many times to get a book pulled from a library it is labeled “obscene.” Getting tagged that way are books about sexual assault, about violence against women told by the female survivors. These make up 19% of banned books. Survivors need to have their literature reflect their experience. If they think they’re the only victims they will likely blame themselves. And no, this isn’t an adult topic – about 27% of girls and 5% of boys 17 years old have experienced sexual abuse. The numbers are much higher for LGBTQ youth. Scott Berkowitz of the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network he founded and leads said that these bans play into the common misconception that sexual assault is about sex when they’re really about power. Mokurai of the Readers and Book Lovers community on Kos discussed the book Why We Can’t Afford the Rich by Andrew Sayer and published in 2015. Here’s a quote from the book:

How can it be claimed that we can’t afford the rich? Here’s a short answer. Their wealth is mostly dependent ultimately on the production of goods and services by others and siphoned off through dividends, capital gains, interest and rent, and much of it is hidden in tax havens. They are able to control much of economic life and the media and dominate politics, so their special interests and view of the world come to restrict what democracies can do. Their consumption is excessive and wasteful and diverts resources away from the more needy and deserving. Their carbon footprints are grotesquely inflated and many have an interest in continued fossil fuel production, threatening the planet.

The book says real development means allowing everyone to have a good life. That includes having enough food, shelter, health services, security and freedom from violence, being able to participate in political decisions, and being able to interact without coercion or neglect. Mokurai lists a way we might get to this. Make taxes more fair. There are alternate ways of doing things, such as cooperatives instead of corporations. Some things, such as public transportation, education, energy, and water should be run by the government or by tightly regulated companies. There should be basic income, help for the disabled, and pensions. And remove the political dominance of the rich. And one last quote from the book:

Whatever they find to scream about loudest, do more of.

George Packer of The Atlantic discussed the ongoing protests at Columbia University and other schools. He said what we see now is a consequence of the protests back in 1968 when students were upset with the Vietnam War and used tactics far more severe than they are using now. Some of his major points: A university is a special place whose legitimacy depends on recognition of reason, openness, and tolerance. That can’t thrive in an atmosphere of constant harassment. Packer quoted Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter’s 1968 commencement address at Columbia:

“A university is a community, but it is a community of a special kind,” Hofstadter said—“a community devoted to inquiry. It exists so that its members may inquire into truths of all sorts. Its presence marks our commitment to the idea that somewhere in society there must be an organization in which anything can be studied or questioned—not merely safe and established things but difficult and inflammatory things, the most troublesome questions of politics and war, of sex and morals, of property and national loyalty.” This mission rendered the community fragile, dependent on the self-restraint of its members.

It didn’t work that way. Universities did not remain neutral. Radical students claimed they were oppressed. Radical ideas in the 60s, such as decolonization, were folded into reading lists and core curriculum. Which means now students take decolonization for granted and don’t actually think about it. The university leaders call the cops on students for practicing what they’ve been taught. What universities haven’t done is train their students to talk with one another. After October 7 Jewish students were harassed. They responded in the way they had been instructed to respond to hurt, by saying they were “unsafe.” In 1968 Republicans exploited the campus takeovers and the protests at that year’s Democratic Convention and we got Nixon. Republicans are already exploiting campus protests and activists are promising to show up at this year’s Democratic Convention. A few months ago I wrote about Rep Elise Stefanik and her questions to university presidents, including Harvard. The president of Harvard muffed the question and she soon had to resign. At the time I was suspicious because Stefanik is very hard core Republican and doesn’t really care about how minority students are treated. Why weren’t media outlets also suspicious? Packer’s reporting suggests I was correct in my suspicion. Stefanik’s question was whether calls for genocide violated their universities’ code of conduct.

If they said yes, they would have faced the obvious comeback: “Why has no one been punished?”

Which means Stefanik’s question was a gotcha question with no answer that would please her. I didn’t know and had no reason to find out that diva Bette Midler tweets. And she can be delightfully snarky. I found her because a pundit roundup included one of her tweets. The nasty guy’s election corruption trial is in progress and he has been sleeping on occasion (the thing he accuses Sleepy Joe of doing). So Midler tweeted an image of “My Pillow, Court Room Edition.” Another of her notable tweets (and I see them only the ones that get a huge response), this one from 2022, includes a list of incidents where there is a minor threat but it changed the way we do things. Here are the last two entries:

2001 – One person attempts to blow up a plane with a shoe bomb. Since then, all air travelers have to take off their shoes for scanning before being allowed to board. Since 1968 – 1,516,863 people have died from guns on American soil. Gun violence kills an average of 168 people every two days! Now, the problem apparently can’t be solved except with thoughts and prayers.

And another:

Planned Parenthood isn’t killing children. You’re thinking of the NRA.

A weak sauce of climate half-measures

My Sunday movie was C’mon, C’mon. It’s the story of Johnny, a single middle aged man suddenly having to care for his nine-year-old nephew Jesse over several weeks. This could have been about the clueless guy stepping into being a parent and making a mess of it. There is a bit of that, but the story is so much more, which is why it got a lot of rave reviews. One reason for the depth is that Jesse’s father is mentally ill and his mother has to travel to where Dad is and get him into a treatment program. And that isn’t easy. While she’s doing that also taking care of Jesse would be too hard. So Johnny steps in. Johnny is frequently on the phone with his sister to get insight into what Jesse is doing. Jesse is very good at asking uncomfortable questions. Because of his dad, Jesse’s mother has been teaching him techniques for understanding his feelings. Johnny needs time to understand to do that too and he reads articles on how to effectively communicate with a child. By the end Johnny and Jesse get along pretty well. Johnny works with an organization that interviews kids about what they think of the future and how they’re feeling. The kids like it because here’s an adult actually interested in what they have to say. When the movie opened I saw a scene from the sky. In just a moment I realized, hey, that’s Detroit. Yes, Johnny was in Detroit for the first round of kid interviews. Johnny goes to Los Angeles to stay with Jesse. But work must happen, so they’re off to New York, then New Orleans. I enjoyed this one a lot. It’s a great story and is well acted. I am puzzled about one of the director’s artistic choices – the movie is in black and white. The big LGBTQ news of the moment: An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos reports Pope Francis issued a document that approves allowing priests to bless same-sex couples. The document reaffirms opposition to same-sex marriage and civil unions and the blessings should not come near the time of the wedding or formalizing the union. It also says the request for a blessing should not cause an “exhaustive moral analysis” which should not deny the blessing. I think I see a distinction that the blessing is for the people in the union, not a blessing of the union. Mark Sumner of Kos discussed the pope’s action. Over the last several years several churches and several politicians have equated recognition of LGBTQ people with an attack on Christianity. On the same day as this news from the Pope the New York Times placed beside it news of the huge number of conservative congregations leaving my own denomination of the United Methodist Church. The NYT article says about a quarter of the nation’s 30,000 UMC churches have disaffiliated over LGBTQ issues (wouldn’t have been better to report three-quarters of the churches that stayed?). Hopefully, in April the UMC will get rid of the prohibitions over what LGBTQ people can do in the denomination, rules that aren’t being enforced anymore. Other mainline Protestant churches – United Church of Christ, Presbyterian Church, Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, and others have already declared their support for LGBTQ people. There’s even an Alliance of Baptists that have split from the conservative Southern Baptist Convention. And yes, when denominations welcomed LGBTQ members, people and congregations left. That SBC has essentially purged its progressives and even moderates. And while every religious group is losing members the SBC is falling fastest. Alas, the media still equates the “Christian perspective” with the religious right. I’ve been collecting global warming articles waiting for the end of the COP28 meeting (and waiting for time to write). From December 3 an AP article said the big topic of the day at COP28 was how a warming climate affects human health. The problems come from pollution and from diseases that spread more widely as global warming upends weather systems. Also on December 3 Meteor Blades, in an Earth Matters column for Kos reported that Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan signed a bill that mandated a switch to 100% clean energy. State electricity utilities must get 50% of their power from clean sources by 2030 and 100% by 2040. That’s a quick jump, though climate activists say it should be faster. Utility engineers and Republicans say the speed of the mandates are unworkable, which will further increase energy costs and make it less reliable. There are several other provisions in the package. One problem with the package is the definition of “clean.” It can include natural gas if 90% of its carbon dioxide emissions can be captured. That may rely on corporate self-reporting that doesn’t account from leaks from wellheads and pipelines. So by 2040 calling natural gas “clean” is BS. Blades also wrote that GM, Ford, and Stellantis (current owner of Chrysler) are pulling back on their conversion to electric vehicles. That implies the whole EV market has slowed. But while demand for Big Three EVs has slowed, the overall market hasn’t. Tesla is doing quite well. Back before Thanksgiving Charles Jay of Kos discussed a report by the Guardian that determined:

The richest 1% of humanity is responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%, with dire consequences for vulnerable communities and global efforts to tackle the climate emergency.

More quotes from the Guardian, the first from Greta Thunberg:

Either we safeguard living conditions for all future generations or we let a few very rich people maintain their destructive lifestyles and preserve an economic system geared towards short-term economic growth and shareholder profit.

That elite group of 77 million people includes those paid more than $140K US per year, which seems like a low entry point, but 99% of the world’s residents earn less than that. One possibility is a high income tax or a wealth tax. But, the Guardian quoted an Oxfam report:

This elite also wield enormous and growing political power by owning media organisations and social networks, hiring advertising and PR agencies and lobbyists, and mixing socially with senior politicians, who are also often members of the richest 1%, according to the report. In the US, for example, one in four members of Congress reportedly own stocks in fossil fuel companies, worth a total of between $33m and $93m. The report says this helps to explain why global emissions continue to rise, and why governments in the global north provided $1.8 trillion to subsidize the fossil fuel industry in 2020, contrary to their international pledges to phase out carbon emissions.

On December 6 Bill Laurel of the Kos community posted one of his updates of the health of the planet. At the top of the post is the chart of daily surface air temperature that caused a lot of consternation when it showed a big jump at the start of July. The chart now has data through November and since July the daily temperature has remained noticeably above the lines for every year since 1979, sometime as much as a half degree Celsius above. Also on the 6th Blades reported on an investigation by Drilled that showed that in major trusted news sources stories about the climate crisis frequently have alongside sponsored material. “Known as advertorials or native advertising, the sponsored material is created to look like a publication’s authentic editorial work, lending a veneer of journalistic credibility to the fossil fuel industry’s key climate talking points.” This is a partnership between the media companies and the fossil fuel industry and is essentially greenwashing the fossil fuel companies. On December 11 Camila Domonoske of NPR explained why the big oil companies are not big energy companies that supply energy from all kinds of sources, not just oil. Yeah, some companies are dipping toes into diversification. But the return on investment (I think that’s the measurement used) is 20% to 50% for fossil fuels and 5% to 10% for renewable energy. Renewables have the advantage of reducing the huge economic costs of climate change and save millions of lives. But those don’t appear in a company’s financial spreadsheet. Also, those companies are well established and have lower risk. Companies pushing renewables are newer and have higher risk. Yeah, wind and solar companies make profits, but oil companies make big profits. In another Earth Matters article Blades reported during the COP28 conference that Kamala Harris pledged $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund. This is the fund to help developing nations adapt to a warming climate. It has been significantly underfunded since it was created. Good to hear Harris made the pledge. Good luck getting it through the US House. Blades also reported on an article by Sara Miller Llana and Stephanie Hanes of the Christian Science Monitor who interviewed young people around the world. These young people have unprecedented children’s rights, such as a safe home and the ability to go to school, yet this Climate Generation is facing unprecedented challenges. What they found is the youth are stepping up to meet those challenges and pushing back on the way things are done now. Back on December 8 Kos of Kos wrote about the dispute between Venezuela and Guyana. Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro declared he was annexing a big chunk of Guyana, known as the Essequibo region. Kos explains what is going on, starting with the history of colonization. There’s a big reason why Venezuela wants the area – lots of potential for oil and mineral wealth. There’s also a big reason why Venezuela’s claim won’t get far – the disputed region is wilderness. Guyana very intentionally created no roads between itself and it’s greedy neighbor. In the December 17 edition of Earth Matters Blades included reactions from the end of COP28 and the report it issued. Bob Berwyn of Inside Climate News reported the good news is the final consensus report actually named fossil fuels as the major contributor to global warming. The bad news is what to do about it is “a weak sauce of climate half-measures” that are not anywhere near adequate to do anything. One reason why it is weak is COP28 president Sultan al-Jaber, an oil executive, gavelled through the report when the representatives of 39 small island states most affected by global warming were out of the room. A tweet from Peter Kalmus:

Everyone is celebrating the first ever inclusion of “fossil fuels” in a COP stocktake, whereas I feel this is shameful. 28 years? To simply mention the cause of this global heating nightmare? Shows just how the entire COP process has been co-opted. This is how we lose a planet.

Brad Johnson of Hill Heat noted the final agreement includes the phrase “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems” and that it has “a flurry of caveats and loopholes.” One of those loopholes is the word “transitioning” is way too vague. David Wallace-Wells of NYT wrote that the report is an endorsement of the status quo. Yeah, there is movement in the right direction...

Global sales of internal-combustion engine vehicles peaked in 2017. Investment in renewable energy has exceeded investment in fossil fuel infrastructure for several years running now. In 2022, 83 percent of new global energy capacity was green. The question isn’t about whether there will be a transition, but how fast, global and thorough it will be. The answer is: not fast or global or thorough enough yet, at least on the current trajectories, which COP28 effectively affirmed.

Kate Aronoff of The New Republic said nearly 200 countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels. But countries most adamant the final report should say “phaseout” rather than transition are the ones planning to increase their extraction of fossil fuels. The top countries planning an increase are the US, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Umair Irfan of Vox reported one big omission from the final report – the methane from the food we eat.

From tilling soil to planting crops, to fertilizer, livestock, manure, harvesting, shipping, and waste, food systems produce 34 percent of overall greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture is the single-largest anthropogenic, or human-driven, source of methane, and most of that is from our appetite for meat. Animals raised for food account for 32 percent of human-driven methane.

Bill McKibben of Common Dreams wrote about the word “transition”

If the language means anything at all, it means no opening no more new oil fields, no more new pipeline. No more new LNG export terminals. And by itself it will accomplish nothing. ... But it is—and this is important—a tool for activists to use henceforth. The world’s nations have now publicly agreed that they need to transition off fossil fuels, and that sentence will hang over every discussion from now on—especially the discussions about any further expansion of the fossil fuel energy.

Asad Reman of The Guardian wrote:

The UK, US and the EU not only point-blank refused to discuss cutting their own emissions in line with both fairness and science, but their agreement on “fossil fuel phase-out” has more loopholes than a block of Swiss cheese. It comes without acknowledgment of historical responsibility, or redistribution, or the remaking of a financial system of debt, tax and trade that has been rigged to keep developing countries locked into exploiting resources simply to fill the coffers of rich countries. Our movements, our frontline communities, know these are lies. Scientists know they are lies, and so do many developing countries. Those already living the realities of unjust climate breakdown know that 1.5C will result in a death sentence for the poorest, yet we remain on track for 3C global heating.

Naveena Sadasivam of Grist wrote about how the nasty guy and the Republican Party will trash any efforts to reduce emissions. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act that has a large number of green goodies in it is being rebranded as “Irresponsible Reckless Alarming.” Patrick Blower has a cartoon about the conclusion of COP28. Two men are walking toward the waiting airplanes. One has a document “Yet Another Climate Deal” and the back of his shirt shows a COP World Tour from Bonn in 2017 to Baku next year. The other says, “See you next year, man...”

Reconciling Ministries Network Convocation

I finished writing my notes from the Reconciling Ministries Network Convocation. This is the group trying to make the United Methodist Church more inclusive. I posted it on my brother blog for Dedicated Reconciling United Methodists.

If it were harder to buy a senator

In this week’s bonus episode of Gaslit Nation (available to donors) hosts Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior talked for 51 minutes about the disaster CNN Town Hall with the nasty guy. I mentioned this yesterday. The hosts called this a “snuff film” or a Klan rally. It’s a snuff film in that it was all about supremacists (the audience) watching another supremacist (the nasty guy) beat up someone (the female host Kaitlan Collins) they believe should be beneath them. CNN knew exactly what they were doing and very much intended the result they got. Collins isn’t an innocent lamb led to slaughter – she has a background in Fox News and knew her job in this disaster. Yes, CNN leadership did it for the money (though TV viewership was low). They also did it because they want the supremacy the nasty guy is peddling. This means CNN isn’t all that different from Fox News – well, there is a little difference in that CNN occasionally does real reporting. Chalupa and Kendzior also discussed how this whole mess could have been prevented if the leaders of the Capitol attack were brought to justice. They haven’t because Attorney General Merrick Garland was installed to run out the clock to make sure they aren’t. In some cases the statute of limitations (I have no idea for which crimes) has or is about to run out. Bringing them to justice should be important because it will be very easy to stage a second coup in January of 2025. Republicans know they can’t win on votes and they’re working to make sure they don’t need to win on votes. The hosts have been saying over several years that Biden and Congressional Democrats had two years to protect democracy. They didn’t. And now we see they can’t. Sigh. As much as I appreciate the warnings that Chalupa and Kendzior put out I had enough and stopped listening at 39 of the 51 minutes. In a tweet from three weeks ago Ben Franklin quoted Cheri Jacobus:

There is only one reason why Merrick Garland hasn’t indicted Trump, his insurrectionists in Congress, and his thug allies. And it’s not because he’s still dotting i’s and crossing t’s. The truth is too horrible to accept and his cheerleaders lulled you into complacency. #gullible

Franklin added:

In the weeks after the Jan 6, when nothing was done to punish the high level plotters, the nature of the Biden administration became clear. There was no sense of danger, no sense of urgency, ultimately no meaningful action. Everything since has been a variation on this theme. Merrick Garland is giving Trump all the space and legal protection he needs to continue the authoritarian takeover, just like everybody else, and he’s doing it because that’s what Biden wants him to do.

As much as I like what Biden has done, it is the things he hasn’t done, like this, that cause me to be suspicious of him. Back at the end of April I discussed a report from the end of March about the money companies make in administering the Republican rules that one must work to get food assistance benefits. That report was reported by Krissy Clark on the NPR program Marketplace. Yesterday, Clark was back with another segment on the rich getting richer through administering work requirements laid on the poor. Much of the segment repeated the points made earlier, though it started off with a new one: Those companies have been lobbying Republicans in other states and at the federal level (see the demands around the debt limit) to institute work requirements so their business will grow. This is a case where the rich have yet another an incentive to keep poor people poor. Adam Jentleson wrote a book about the racist history of the filibuster and why it needs to be eliminated. He is now Chief of Staff for Senator John Fetterman. He recently tweeted about hearings of one of the recently failed banks.

John Fetterman just asked the Silicon Valley Bank CEO if there should be work requirements for CEOs who crash banks and dear reader, I almost fell out of my chair.

He almost lost his seat because Fetterman added that line on the spot. It wasn’t a part of hearing prep. Ryan Burge is an American Baptist (not Southern Baptist) pastor and creates graphs about religion. White Evangelicals (those Southern Baptists) are seen as a big force behind conservatives and the Republican Party. But Burge has the graphs to show the group most active in politics, most likely to donate to and volunteer for campaigns is atheists. They are closely followed by Jews. Also towards the top are Agnostics, Buddhists, and mainline Protestants. Then there is a gap before we get to the next bunch, which includes White Evangelicals. Michael Harriot tweeted:

All 10 largest Protestant denominations in America are the result of schisms within their denominations Nine of the schisms were over racial issues

The 10th, the Lutheran Church, split over LGBTQ issues in 2009. The United Methodist Church is currently undergoing a split over LGBTQ issues. The predecessor denomination, the Methodist Church, did split over racism, though I think that was back in the 1840s. The two parts reunited in the 20th century (I don’t remember when) though the black churches and black pastors were treated separately until the United Methodist Church was formed in 1968. Harriot mentioned all that at the end of a thread. I had long known that many churches use “First” in their names. When my family lived in Ohio we attended “First –” churches (though I just found out the one we attended in Cleveland has closed). When we moved to Michigan we attended a “First--” church, though it renamed itself after the community. There have been several others I and my siblings attended in various cities. But why did so many churches in so many communities named themselves that way? And why does Detroit have Second Baptist and Second Grace United Methodist? Harriot explains it all. The “First” church is the white church, the “Second” church is the black church. Sometimes one is across the street from the other. Black people knew this and when moving into a city knew to look up “Second” church. And Harriot contends most white people don’t know that. I didn’t. Signe Wilkinson tweeted a cartoon showing a young man with several guns holding a sign that says “2nd Amendment.” A woman with a toddler says:

I so agree! To which well-regulated militia do you belong?

The Hoarse Whisperer tweeted a meme:

It would be harder to buy a gun if it were harder to buy a senator. The real ‘concealed carry’ is half the senate being in the NRA’s pocket.

A couple days ago Joan McCarter of Daily Kos wrote about debt ceiling hostage situation. I mention it not so much of the status of the negotiations (which would be pretty much out of date two days later), but on the discussion of the consequences of default. First, payment to people – federal employees would not receive a paycheck. Neither would our soldiers. No Social Security benefits. No payment for health care services for Medicare. No food assistance, no housing assistance. Those with savings or pensions funded by US Treasury bonds (which is many of us) would miss payments. With these people losing income they stop buying and have trouble with rent or mortgage. Here comes a recession. There is another aspect McCarter only touched on. The federal government has always paid its debts. Defaulting means Treasury notes will no longer be seen as a safe investment. Investors, domestic and more importantly foreign, will turn elsewhere. That will ripple through the world markets and turn an American recession into a global one. And too many Republicans are just fine with that.

Letting us sit like fish in a barrel with AR-15s aimed at us

I’ve been avoiding writing about George Santos, the newly elected member of Congress from Long Island who lied about every aspect of his personal biography, though that didn’t come out until after the election. Lots of voices are calling for his resignation – lots, except for McCarthy, the one voice that matters. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos explained why. Republicans have a slim majority in the House and Santos is a Republican. She also reported that before the elections several other Republicans knew some of the parts of his story that were false. And they chose to be complicit in the lies. Because all they care about is power. Joan McCarter of Kos wrote:

One element of that secret deal Kevin McCarthy made with the Freedom Caucus for his speakership has emerged, and it is absolutely bonkers. The plan is to allow the debt ceiling to be breached, and then to direct the Treasury Department on how to prioritize debt payments. The GOP has been promising since before last fall’s midterm election that they would make debt ceiling a fight, and would demand those cuts. They followed through with new House rules to reinforce that. What they hadn’t said out loud was that they were willing to do the unthinkable: Force a debt ceiling breach. ... Prioritizing servicing the interest payments over running the government is not a good look for the GOP. “Any plan to pay bondholders but not fund school lunches or the FAA or food safety or XYZ is just target practice for us,” one senior Democratic aide told the Post. But there’s no indication that this crop of House GOP leadership actually gives a damn about the politics of it. They are all in safe seats and the fact that the minority is tiny and dependent on a bunch of vulnerable members doesn’t deter them. A larger problem for the nation is reality: We were here before in 2011 and 2013 and the Treasury Department was very clear in explaining that it doesn’t work that way—you can’t juggle the payments around when you are making literally millions of separate payments every single day. Then-Treasury Secretary Jack Lew explained that the computer systems that issue those tens of millions of payments simply can’t be updated and reshuffled on an emergency basis, and that “prioritization is just default by another name.”

My friend and debate partner asked a couple weeks ago why don’t a few of the saner Republicans join with Democrats to pass a bill to raise the debt limit? (At least that’s what I remember him asking.) The big problem is the House Rules Committees, now well stocked with maniacs, controls what comes to the House floor. If they don’t approve it then it doesn’t happen. There is a way around that committee, called the discharge petition, but it requires a great deal of work and a great deal of time. Meaning if they don’t start now it won’t happen before Treasury is out of options in June. In a pundit roundup for Kos, Greg Dworkin quoted a bit of Ezra Klein of the New York Times discussing three reasons why the Republican Party is falling apart. I’ll skip the quote and go straight to Dworkin’s summary of the three reasons:

* Republicans are caught between money and media. * Same party, different voters. * Republicans need an enemy.

McCarter summarized what House Republicans accomplished between their week trying to elect a Speaker, and their long break this week and part of next for Martin Luther King Day. I won’t list all the horrors (which won’t get past the Senate), and jump to McCarter’s conclusion:

The House GOP started the week with a plunging favorability rating, and they sure didn’t do anything in the ensuing days to halt that plummet. What they’ve got planned for their return is no less cruel and no more popular than what we’ve seen so far. So, you go guys?

When Marjorie Taylor Greene got to Congress and we saw how obnoxious she was, Pelosi stripped her of committee assignments. But Pelosi isn’t Speaker anymore and McCarthy needed to make deals to get the Speaker job. During that Greene was his vocal supporter. Clawson reported she was rewarded with some plum assignments. One was the Oversight Committee, the gang that will be falsely targeting Hunter Biden. Greene should fit right in. The other is the Homeland Security Committee. That’s a problem, because Homeland Security was created after the 9/11 attacks. And Greene has a record of denying those attacks actually happened. Greene has gone from the maniac fringe to mainstream Republican. Marissa Higgins of Kos wrote Republicans around the country are starting the year with a slew of anti-trans and anti-queer bills. She listed some of these bills. Most are such things as banning trans kids from sports or banning trans kids from getting gender affirming health care. Then there are the bills banning LGBTQ books from libraries. And the worst version of that (no doubt we’ll see copies introduced in other states) is to define “sexually explicit” to include depictions of gender identity and sexual orientation – and imprison librarians who don’t take them off their shelves. Higgins also reported that DeathSantis has been asking some questions that are definitely invasions of privacy and quite vile. Such as: Asking schools and athletic associations about the menstrual cycle of students assigned female at birth to see who might be pregnant and who is receiving gender affirming care. That info is nobody’s business. Asking who is receiving gender affirming care at college campus clinics, even if just to get mental health support, and threatening government funding if he doesn’t get it. Higgins wrote:

“We can see cuts in funding for universities to treat students with this condition,” House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell said, according to the Associated Press. “And I think an all-out elimination of services is certainly on the table.” Driskell went on to say she’s worried about a possible “brain drain” of folks leaving Florida for out-of-state education in response to this clear invasion of privacy and overreach.

That’s enough about Republicans for now. While on the topic LGBTQ people here’s a story of something good happening. The United Methodist Church in Michigan presented a program at the denomination’s North Central Jurisdiction meeting in November. This jurisdiction includes the upper Midwest – roughly Michigan to the Dakotas. The program told stories of the impact of homophobia, transphobia, and heterosexism on individuals. The impact was because of the official denomination policies barring LGBTQ people from becoming pastors and barring same-sex weddings from taking place in denomination churches. Rev. Angie Cox told of being rejected by her family because she and her partner are lesbian. Later a non-denominational church refused to baptize her. She found a reconciling United Methodist congregation and was welcomed. She began to study to be a pastor but each year as fellow students were commissioned by the church her candidacy was not recommended. Kiri Ann Ryan Bereznai isn’t a man and isn’t a woman either. But they insist is a person loved by God. They told the story of having a job within a United Methodist Church and afraid to be authentic. They got tired of hiding. Thankfully, the church leadership was understanding and they kept the job. They now wants to be a model for young queer people, to say there is a place for all of us. Thirty years ago Rev. Mary Ann Moman led a commitment ceremony for Michael and Allen. The church is the closest to Boystown, Chicago, the gay neighborhood, and has always been progressive. This was before an explicit denominational ban on such ceremonies. Even so, she got a deluge of letters saying she had desecrated the altar of her church. Thirty years later we’re still talking about it. After each speaker the audience was asked to think about and discuss such questions as: Are there examples of your congregation participating in or countering homophobia? Is your church addressing the problem of LGBTQ youth being four times more likely to attempt suicide? What could the church learn from transgender people? The Bible tells us to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God, so how does that inform your LGBTQ allyship? What are examples of how the privileges of heterosexism affected your life? Yes, the stories spoke of pain, of being harmed by the church. But this is something good that happened – the church leadership agreed to let the stories be heard and asked the audience to ponder how to make sure all people really are welcomed. X Gonzáles (formerly Emma) is a survivor of the shooting in Parkland, Florida that happened almost five years ago. They wrote an essay for New York Magazine, which is online at The Cut. The essay is about juggling time as an activist for March for Our Lives and student and how draining that was physically, emotionally, and mentally. They had to absorb the stories of other survivors and parents of victims while grieving their own loss then see protests at events where protesters were armed with the same weapons that had cut down fellow students. They went off to college and had to pull away from activism for a while. It was at college they realized they are nonbinary. They are living with parents after college, which means still living in Parkland and all its reminders. Last summer they offered to speak at another gun protest.

I directed my speech at members of Congress. I spoke to the fact that in my time as an activist trying to protect this country from itself, the only thing standing in the way of a life without headlines about mass shootings or the news that a loved one was taken by a gun had been Congress. Those who are currently in office are the only people who can make this change, and it is the sole purpose of their job to pass the laws that the people want them to. I let myself insult, scream, and curse at Congress in this speech for the simple reason that it is unfathomable to me that there would be people in this world who ran for office with the intention of making the world a better place, are presented with the facts about gun violence, and choose to ignore them in favor of making money from gun manufacturers. We are dying. And the people whose job it is to stop it work on Capitol Hill and sit around all day doing nothing, letting us sit like fish in a barrel with AR-15s aimed at us from every direction.

Keep them poor and they won't have time or strength for politics

A week ago I wrote about an article posted by Thom Hartmann of the Daily Kos community. In that one he wrote that we are in the final stages of Reaganism – the course set in motion when Reagan significantly cut the taxes on the rich, coupled with the Supreme Court of the time loosening donations to political campaigns. Hartmann posted again, this time asking whether the rich are weakening our democracy just to amass more money, or is there a deeper issue. When an article begins that way the logical guess is to say, yes there is something deeper. However, I think there is something even deeper that Hartmann missed. Back in the 1950s conservatives began to write about America having too much democracy. Yeah, that’s telling. Conservatives – mostly the rich – were becoming alarmed at the growing size of the middle class. The previous article said that the middle class had reached two-thirds of the population. The fear was that the middle class was growing faster than the rich class and when people reached the middle class they would have enough leisure time and financial cushion to be politically active. Hartmann reviewed some of the influences of conservative thinking. One was the book The Conservative Mind by Russel Kirk. His first chapter discussed Edmund Burke of close to the turn of the 19th century. Burke’s book (not named) discussed Britain’s restrictions on democracy – who could vote and run for office, and the British maximum wage. No, that’s not a typo. Limit how much a person is paid, keep them on the edge of poverty, and they wouldn’t have time or strength to get involved in politics. The middle class certainly did have time to get involved in politics. In the 1960s there was women’s liberation, campus protests against the Vietnam War, black people demanding Civil and Voting Rights, and the labor movement flexing its muscles and calling frequent strikes.

The Republican/Conservative “solution” to the “national crisis” these movements represented was put into place with the election of 1980: the project of the Reagan Revolution was to dial back democracy while taking the middle class down a peg, and thus end the protests and social instability.

Hartmann then listed many things Reagan did to attack the middle class. I’ve already mentioned the tax cuts on the rich. Reagan also raised taxes 11 times on the middle class, plus adding taxes on Social Security income, unemployment benefits, and tips. He disallowed deductions for credit card, car loan, and student debt interest. He declared war on unions. His VP brought in his son George W. to build bridges with fanatical evangelical Christianity because they also opposed women’s rights and Civil Rights. And he attacked the idea that government should provide some amount of care for its citizens. Among his successes is an entire generation of students so saddled with debt they aren’t willing to jeopardize their future by “acting up” on campus. About the depth Hartmann missed. He said the goal of conservatives was to end “social instability.” So what does that mean? Hartmann didn’t clarify. So I’ll give it a try. Conservatives are highly invested in the social hierarchy with, of course, themselves at the top. “Social instability” is anything that might disrupt their position at the top or, even worse (for them), do away with the need for a social hierarchy. Hartmann says there is a way out from under conservative control: mobilize. He quoted a phrase both Sanders and Obama were fond of saying: “Democracy is not a spectator sport.” The comments to Hartmann’s post were indeed lively. One I thought was worth repeating is by Al B Tross, who wrote:

Capitalism knows no morality. Capitalism, an economic system, or society, where the only motivator is greed, and the only measure is money. We have become a transactional, not a civil, society.

I’ve written little about the United Methodist Church in the last couple years. Back in 2020, just before the pandemic hit the US I attended a gathering of progressives getting ready for the 2020 General Conference, the denomination’s legislative body. The major piece before that Conference was a carefully negotiated proposal for an amicable split – conservatives would get help forming their own denomination that would allow them to keep LGBTQ people out of leadership roles and the progressives who stayed would then have the majority to fully welcome LGBTQ people. Of course, that GC 2020 was postponed a year, then canceled. The next GC won’t happen until 2024. In the meantime the conservative denomination was formed, called the Global Methodist Church, and congregations began to disaffiliate from the UMC, many to join the GMC. All that was done without the financial help the big 2020 proposal would have supplied. So much happened the progressive parties who had negotiated it pulled out. And I haven’t paid much attention to it all. I occasionally look at articles Rev. Jeremy Smith writes for his blog Hacking Christianity, though it has been months since I’ve looked. A post from earlier this year is about Methodism 2.0. To describe it he uses the metaphor of the spider and the starfish. A spider has a head that makes all the decisions. Kill the head and you kill the spider. A starfish has a nervous system spread through the body. Chop off a limb and it will regrow. That comes from the book The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations. Change comes from the bottom up, not top down. Smith applies that to United Methodism. At the 2012 GC (which I attended as an observer and which did not go well – see blog entries from the end of May that year) the big push for an LGBTQ inclusive church was defeated, yet Bishop Talbert started a movement when he called for Biblical Obedience over the denomination’s rule book prohibiting LGBTQ pastors. His ideas spread in spite of the leadership. But as for the denomination...

In short, traditionalists required a super-majority to finally excise progressives from United Methodism, which they didn’t have. And progressives needed a majority to excise the sin of antigay polity from United Methodism, which they didn’t have. So, stalemate.

But within a span of three years the traditionalists, the spiders, lost their power. First, they won a draconian policy at the special 2019 GC, which led to considerable blowback. Second, by forming the GMC they lost credibility with the Judicial Council, the denomination’s court, which turned against them. Third, all of the traditionalist bishops have been replaced with the most progressive and diverse class. And fourth, with 2000 congregations having disaffiliated, traditionalist no longer have a majority in many state conferences. And now all five American jurisdictions – including the most conservative South East – have passed a statement supporting LGBTQ inclusion. Meteor Blades of Kos wrote the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court ruling that permitted a ban on bump stocks. These are devices that essentially turn a semi-automatic rifle into an automatic rifle. Yes, the case will go to the Supremes, where they will eventually rule in favor of death. My interest isn’t so much in the details of the case, and Blades provides plenty. Instead, I’ll look at Blades’ quote of Elie Mystal, written for The Nation:

But the legal wrangling about the technical function of how these things are designed to kill us highlights a larger problem: the legal futility of one-off weapon bans. It’s a bitter pill for people to swallow, because bans focused on specific weapons are practically effective and feel politically achievable. But legally, their impact is fleeting. They don’t offer permanent solutions to our problems. Gun bans are a temporary therapeutic, not a long-term cure to our disease of gun violence. That’s because the gun industry will always produce a newer, better bump stock. It will always make different, more deadly weapons. It will always refine the speed and killing power of firearms. And the plodding regulatory process simply will not, and likely cannot, keep up with whatever gunmakers do to murder people next. ... Our gun laws are a deadly joke. They will continue to be jokes as long as we try to solve this problem one weapon at a time. It’s folly to try to regulate which particular overcompensation machine aggrieved men are allowed to smuggle into their trousers. Instead, we should regulate the category of people allowed to purchase any weapon, of any kind, at all.

NPR posted a story about the history of abortion rights last June before Roe v Wade was overturned. I missed it then. They aired it again this morning. In it host A Martínez talked to Ramtin Arablouei and Rund Abdelfatah hosts of the NPR history podcast Throughline. Before 1860 there were no laws in America banning abortion. Horatio Storer didn’t think abortion was good, so he started his campaign by writing a letter pretending to be the president of the American Medical Association. In it he condemned abortion on moral grounds. At this point in the story I’m already thinking this has something to do with one group of people believing they are more superior than another. All abortion laws in the 20th century revolve around that. And I was right, though the reason was not just the oppression of women. Storer’s reasoning was fairly straightforward. The birth rate for Protestant white women had been declining over the 19th century. His fear was there wouldn’t be enough Protestant white babies to stay ahead of the babies by the incoming migrants, the Catholics, the newly freed black people, and the Chinese. So Protestant white women had better take one for the team and stay home and have babies. Along with criminalizing abortion Storer saw a chance to knock out the doctor’s competition – midwives, who he slandered as unclean. That required women to get their care from male doctors.