When the law says “sex” it includes LGBT

The Supreme Court ruled today that when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids discrimination based on sex it means that sexual orientation and gender identity are included. Discrimination against workers based on being LGBT is forbidden. The ruling was 6-3. That includes the four liberal justices plus John Roberts and, surprisingly, Neil Gorsuch. It was Gorsuch who wrote the opinion. Alito and Thomas dissented and Kavanaugh wrote a separate dissent.

Yes, Gorsuch is the first justice appointed by the nasty guy. However, a transgender person who heard the oral arguments is not surprised that Gorsuch took our side.

Some of the phrases Gorsuch used:

It is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating based on sex.

An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.

The limits of the drafter’s imagination supply no reason to ignore the law’s demands.

Nina Totenberg on NPR said Gorsuch added a little caveat at the end, suggesting that it might be OK to discriminate on religious grounds. That will make the Catholic bishops happy.

Selena Simmons-Duffin, also on NPR, compared this legal ruling with a rule change issued by the nasty guy’s Department of Health and Human Services last Friday. The ruling says that health care providers may refuse care for transgender people if it conflicts with their religious beliefs.

Simmons-Duffin said the ruling by the Supremes has no direct bearing on the health care rule because this decision affects only employment. But when the rule is challenged (and the ACLU says it will be) the Supremes now have placed a marker on how to decide. Alas, that means an actual court challenge. And this court challenge took seven years and two of the three plaintiffs have already died – Aimee Stephens just a few weeks ago.

Simmons-Duffin says the timing of the HHS rule was not a coincidence. One could wonder why the nasty guy administration want to issue a rule change when they know the supremes are about to issue a decision. Even so, HHS intentionally issued ahead of the Supremes.

The nasty guy is reversing Obama’s rules where Obama specifically said when the law says “sex” it includes LGBT. And now the Supremes are saying what Obama said.

Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos says this decision is a double blow to the nasty guy:

The ruling confounds the Trump administration both legally and politically. Not only did Trump and Co. argue in favor of perpetuating discrimination against LGBTQ Americans and lose, the fact that Gorsuch penned the majority opinion kneecaps one of Trump’s key appeals to religious conservatives—that he’s delivered them the perfect justices to the Supreme Court.

Joan McCarter of Kos adds that when Kavanaugh was confirmed by the senate he reportedly got the vote of Maine Senator Susan Collins by telling her he considered legal same-sex marriage to be settled law and implied he would protect LGBT rights.

Not only did Kavanaugh dissent, he felt he had to write his own dissent to adequately say what he thought.



Kennett High School in the White Mountains region of New Hampshire did have a graduation ceremony, though an unusual one. Graduates in cap and gown, along with parents, boarded a ski lift up Cranmore Mountain. At the top school staff greeted the graduate. The principal called the name. The graduate picked up the diploma off a music stand. A volunteer sanitized the chair. The staff gave an official goodbye. And the graduate went back down the mountain. One the way up and down the graduate had a chance to see classmates not seen in three months. It only took six hours to get all 160 graduates up and down. The class of 2021 wants to do the same even if there is no pandemic.

Testing unconstitutional practices

I read another transcript of an episode of Gaslit Nation, hosted by Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa. This episode is titled Protest Season. Here is some of what they had to say.

The protests in America, promoted by the Black Lives Matter movement, have spread internationally and have become general protests against supremacy. I had previously mentioned the protests in Bristol, England that removed the statue of a slave trader and in Belgium against King Leopold II.

Chalupa says this reminds her of the 2013-14 revolution in Ukraine. After Yanukovich, Putin’s puppet, was toppled the government passed a “decommunization law.” Statues were removed and places renamed to remove references to Soviet brutality and to bring back historical names. It was a declaration of independence from Russia and announce to the rest of the world that they must view Ukraine as its own place, not just a former Russia satellite.

There are two Americas. One is founded on genocide. The other is a beacon of hope to the world. Chalupa’s parents saw that beacon. They were born in German refugee camps in Ukraine at the end of WWII and sought asylum in the US. It is this beacon that prompted Ukrainians in US and Canada to create a website on how to talk about racism. See it here. I’ll explore it as I have time.

Chalupa notes that though her parents are from another country she is not black. And that made a big difference when dealing with the police. Her community needs to understand that. Black Lives Matter is a self-education movement. She can go into a Ukrainian community, where her last name is common, and feel protected. She feels uncomfortable to step out from that protection and say, yeah, we’ve been oppressed, but we’re seen as white and given white privileges. We need to talk about how we benefit. And we’ll probably need to keep talking about that for the rest of our lives.

One thing in particular that the Ukrainian community should talk about is how the US treatment of black people is similar to the Soviet treatment of Ukrainian people. Then teach people in their own community how to not be racist. Don’t think a public space is a white space. Don’t be anti-black to demonstrate how white you are. That’s something Irish and Poles had to deal with before being accepted as white.

Stop those who try to say there are “good blacks” and “bad blacks.” Those who are racist attack the good blacks too. An example is Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921. This was the “Black Wall Street,” a very affluent time and place for black people. Good people, right? White people burned the place to the ground.

Kendzior gets into the calls to defund the police. Over the last 40 years public education, healthcare, and other social services were steadily defunded. The police were not. They were militarized and given big budgets. So those calling for defunding police mean reallocating resources to drug counselors and social workers. The overall goal is to protect people – including from the police.

But supremacists – like the nasty guy and pandemic prince – have a different view of the police debate. Their goal is to make sure white collar crime, the kind they perpetrate, will not be punished. This may hide this under the guise of “criminal justice reform.”

Another danger is that police will quit when they are no longer allowed to brutalize people. They will be replaced by private militias whose only loyalty is to the company that hires them. One person eager to expand such a business is Erik Prince, brother to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Kendzior said:

The entire apparatus needs to be viewed as one interlocking system. If you're going to reform or abolish the police, you need to take into account how a crime will be defined, who will mete out justice, how the new system will be exploited by this administration, and so on. What we need to destroy is elite criminal impunity. That necessitates changing more than just the police, but the criminal justice system itself.

Chalupa reminds us this crisis doesn’t end when Biden takes over the Oval Office. Then she talked about our high levels of income inequality.

And as a result, you have the powerful police unions, the financially influential police unions, expanding their jobs because police are being sent into schools instead of guidance counselors and therapists.

Police are being sent to arrest addicts on the street. Police are being sent to arrest those suffering from mental illness on the street. So when we say “Defund The Police”, we're saying, “bring back the social programs to treat addiction, bring back the social programs to support students in classrooms. Pay your teachers more, make classrooms smaller, expand public schools, put that money into public schools.”
…
We're not going to get Black Lives Matter unless we take on income inequality, and that's the real test for people. So all those brands and all these leaders, Mitt Romney and so forth, marching and saying, "Black lives matter,"; it's about the rich paying their fair share in taxes. It's like Elizabeth Warren advocated for, which was that multi-millionaire tax. If you could afford to own several homes, please pay your taxes.

Jeff Bezos, please pay your taxes to support public schools, and education, and Medicare For All, and free college. That's what we need right now and that's the real test, not the black squares you're posting on social media.

Kendzior said that because the nasty guy and his minions are encouraging bad behavior in police we should now consider police to be foot soldiers of a mafia state. That’s another reason for defunding the police. Things at the local level should be viewed in the context of a narrow elite hoarding wealth and resources. That elite has also connected up with a transnational crime syndicate, a network of billionaires, as well as criminal and white supremacist actors.

Local and state governments are trying to put their power up against the nasty guy. They do it by declaring they’re a sanctuary city, by proposing to dismantle or defund police, and by refusing to act on national orders to open up during the pandemic. Even so, the danger from the nasty guy is overwhelming.

November won’t be a quick and easy solution no matter who wins. Said Kendzior:

And what we've been seeing in recent weeks, I think is to some extent, a dress rehearsal for that. They're seeing what the police will do. They're seeing what the consequences are for that brutality. They're seeing how the military reacts when the military is encouraged to fire on the American people.

This is Trump and Barr and the rest of them testing unconstitutional practices, trying to terrorize, and intimidate, and brutalize protesters into submission, trying to establish the court of public opinion on this issue, and they're going to exploit it in every possible way. But what you should never forget is that these are criminals themselves. Trump is Individual One.
…
We've said on the show many times that white collar crime is violent crime. That is why they call it blood money. And they're going to use that blood money for their propaganda apparatus. They're going to use it to build up private unidentified militias. They're going to use it to brainwash further the police and other just ordinary citizens into tearing this country apart. So that's where the danger lies.

Chalupa said we’ve already had a dress rehearsal for stealing an election. We’ve already has a dress rehearsal in William Barr spinning the Mueller report so that gullible newspapers report is says something other than what it said. He’ll spin the results of the 2020 election.

Chalupa reminds us what protesters are really demanding:

Defund The Police is an anti-corruption movement saying the police have gone too far, especially in New York City. We saw them beating people with impunity, and so let's put that money towards social strengthening and building a social safety net. That's it. It's that simple.

To those who declare defunding the police will return New York to the levels of crime in the 1970s and ‘80s Chalupa says a big reason for the high crime in that era was corrupt police.

This episode ends with a call to unsubscribe from the New York Times. Kendzior says they have been a mouthpiece of the nasty guy administration for some time. The reason for this renewed call is that the Times solicited an op-ed from racist Sen. Tom Cotton, who proposed using the military against American protesters. Yes, the Times does good stuff with their 1619 project (the year slaves first came to America). But Dean Baquet, the editor said he doesn’t want to cater to the resistance – which are people trying to keep democracy intact. Chalupa asks do you believe in human rights or do you not? She contends the Times does not.

Statues coming down

Another 2.25 million Americans filed unemployment benefits last week.



Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reports:

[Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin] says that where the more than $500 billion of taxpayer money authorized by Congress has been spent is "proprietary" and "confidential" information. In other words, the Chamber of Commerce and all the individual businesses like the Ritz-Carlton are unhappy that they had to answer questions about why they got billions when thousands of real small businesses got little or nothing. But he wants more of that secret money to go out now.

A lot of Confederate statues are coming down and its good to see it is black people taking them down. Also coming down are are statues to colonizers and slavers. Native Americans took down a statue of Christopher Columbus. Even other countries are joining the fun. Bristol, England took down a town benefactor who made his stash in the slave trade. Belgium took down statues of King Leopold II, for whose actions in Congo the term “crimes against humanity” was coined.

Alas, several Republicans don’t like the disappearance of Confederate heroes of racism. That prompted author Mikel Jollett to tweet:

Dear Republicans,

You can't call yourselves "the party of Lincoln" AND wave the Confederate flag.

Love,

History


A QUICK HISTORY LESSON FOR CONSERVATIVES CONFUSED BY THIS IDEA:

Lincoln was the President of the United States.

Racist people in the South wanted slavery more than they wanted the US to be a country.

Their symbol was the confederate flag.

They got their asses kicked.

Still Laurie One tweeted this photo.



As all this protesting is going on I’ve been staying home and working in my garage (which is proceeding nicely – I hope to get a lot done before the weather gets hot on Tuesday). At times I feel I’m not doing enough for the cause. My garage ceiling is not that important.

Aysha Qamar of Kos suggests other things one can do outside of protesting. You can educate yourself. Qamar lists several books, such as The Karma of Brown Folk by Vijay Prashad and Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements by Charlele Carruthers. There are movies, TV shoes, and videos, such as Dear White People. There are podcasts, such as Code Switch on NPR. The post contains lots more suggestions in each category.

You can fund racial justice organizations, such as Black Lives Matter and Unicorn Riot. You can follow The Movement for Black Lives and see what actions they have scheduled. You can join or fund organizations that protect and promote voting.

And you can continue to show up for difficult conversations on race.

Carolyn Copeland of Kos Prism says black people thank you for your statements of support. How about some sustainable action?

Solidarity and public statements of support can still be impactful, but if allies really want to make a difference, organizers say they should do more to mobilize friends and family to vote racist politicians out of office in November, familiarize themselves of the demands of Black Lives Matter activists, and reach out to the Black community to ask what they can do to help.

From Bill in Portland Maine’s Cheers and Jeers collection of late night commentary.

To the people still saying “but if you take down the statues, how will people learn their history?” Read a book, motherf*****. The bubonic plague was a major event in history, but we don’t go around putting statues of rats.
– The Daily Show

What a time this is to be alive. Two weeks ago we were on Instagram teaching each other how to make no-knead focaccia, and now we're dismantling systemic racism. I think that's progress.
– Jimmy Kimmel

Bill also lists actions this week taken to sweep away the Confederacy:

* Nancy Pelosi called for the removal of Confederate statues from the Capitol.

* Confederate statues pulled down in Richmond, VA and Jacksonville, FL.

* Senate Armed Services Committee voted to require renaming military bases named for Confederate generals.

* NASCAR banned the Confederate flag. US Marine Corps and US Navy did too.

Legal threats usually come from Venezuela

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah yesterday. Biden said his greatest concern is that the nasty guy will try to steal the election. He has thought about what would happen if the nasty guy refused to leave. Biden is heartened that several of the top military leadership have spoken out against the nasty guy and his desire to use the military against protesters. He is now convinced if necessary they would escort the nasty guy from the White House.

I’m so glad he recognizes the threat.

Yesterday I mentioned the possibility the disastrous Georgia primary was a practice run for November showing who is loyal when the nasty guy refuses to leave.

That fits with this news: Hunter of Daily Kos reported the nasty guy campaign showed their boss poll numbers showing he is losing by a lot. He was infuriated. To placate him the campaign threatened CNN with legal consequences. And then followed through, sending a cease and desist letter to CNN. Wrote Hunter:

The letter, which again is apparently absolutely real and demands a "conspicuous retraction, apology, and clarification,” claims that the poll was "a stunt" and "phony," to "cause voter suppression, stifle momentum and enthusiasm for" the White WalkerToChurch leader, reports CNN. And it uses numerous weird claims from perennially sketchy Republican pollster McLaughlin & Ass. to assert that well, CNN's pollster did it all wrong and Actually Dear Leader would be leading if they did it right, so everybody needs to shut up and apologize and I still cannot believe this is a real letter, are we serious about this insanity? Wait, I'm being told it really is.

Of course, the CNN poll is not the only one showing he’s losing and many news outlets are reporting these polls.

CNN tweeted their response:

To the extent we have received legal threats from political leaders in the past, they have typically come from countries like Venezuela or other regimes where there is little or no respect for a free and independent media.

Your letter is factually and legally baseless. It is yet another bad faith attempt by the campaign to threaten litigation to muzzle speech it does not want voters to read or hear. Your allegations and demands are rejected in their entirety.

I add: The nasty guy’s response to an unfavorable poll is an indication of what his response will be to an election result that doesn’t go his way. He won’t believe that either and will turn to the courts, or anyone who will listen, to punish those who try to embarrass him like that.



I watched another opera tonight. This one The Ghosts of Versailles bu John Corigliano, a composer still alive.

I had known The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart and The Barber of Seville by Rossini were two parts of the same story, perhaps more properly two connected novels by the same author, Beaumarchais. With this opera I find there is a third novel of the set. But this isn’t a simple adaptation of that third story. It serves as an opera within an opera. And that outer opera…

The characters in the outer opera are the ghosts of the French royalty killed in the Revolution. Marie Antoinette wants to forget the horror and turns to Beaumarchais to tell a story that will revise history so she will live again. That story is the third novel – sort of. The two stories end up intertwined. The scene at the Turkish Embassy when Figaro tries to prevent Almaviva (both characters from the earlier stories) from selling Antoinette’s necklace to the English ambassador is quite fun and funny. But Antoinette’s trial and the imprisonment of the aristocrats are quite serious.

This video is from a 1992 production. With an interest in what a new opera might be like I saw it on TV at the time. Alas, I don’t remember it (and it was 28 years ago). Though the composer uses a lot of modern techniques that most people don’t find beautiful, he doesn’t use them exclusively and there are many lyrical and beautiful moments.

An F in voting

This is a delicious dilemma. If Congressional GOP flee the nasty guy his base turns against them. If they cling to the nasty guy the rest of the country turns against them. Actually doing the right thing – protecting citizens from the virus, providing adequate financial protection during the lockdown, and doing something about police brutality for starters – doesn’t seem to have entered their minds.



Georgia had a primary election yesterday. It didn’t go well. Kristen Clarke of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law said, “If we view the primary election as a dry run for November, then Georgia gets an F today.” New voting machines didn’t work right. Back up provisional ballots ran out. Many precincts (the black ones) had hours long lines. One precinct ended voting after midnight. Many people weren’t able to exercise their right to vote simply because they couldn’t afford to wait that long.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (GOP) says the problems were with the counties. Voting rights advocates, such as Stacey Abrams, point to Raffensperger.

Greg Bluestein tweeted a thread with images and videos of the problems of voting in the state.

LeBron James tweeted:

Everyone talking about “how do we fix this?” They say “go out and vote?” What about asking if how we vote is also structurally racist?

Jenn Budd tweeted:

Okay. I’m just going to say it. I think this was a practice run for November to see which of his people and which law enforcement he can trust to fight for him when he refuses to leave. It’s just crazy to say that but I believe it.

Sarah Kendzior replied:

Not crazy at all. They have other horrific objectives along with it, but it is indeed a test run for Nov and a loyalty test.

It’s been a while since I’ve watched an opera stream from the Metropolitan Opera. I did this evening. The opera was Hansel and Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck. The basic plot is the fairy tale we know well.

This is the only work I know by this composer and it’s a good one. The most famous bit is the Evening Prayer. The children are lost in the woods and night is coming on. They pray that fourteen angels will guard them during the night. That is followed by orchestral music for the dream pantomime. In most productions one sees the angels arrive and take up position. The music of the prayer and pantomime are wonderful.

This production focuses on the reason why the children are in the woods – they’re hungry. So in this production instead of angels the children dream of a fabulous banquet with waiters uncovering all the dishes in a big flourish.

A couple other things about this production. It is sung in English instead of the original German. And the witch is sung by a tenor. If you want something to do Thursday look for the Met Opera free streaming.

I saw this opera live maybe 25 years ago in Toronto. It was a Sunday afternoon and the audience had a lot of kids – I think there were five children on either side of me. In that production the sets and costumes were designed by Maurice Sendak, the author of the children’s book Where the Wild Things Are. When the opera ended and the witch came out for her curtain call all the children booed. The actor reacted, mustered some dignity, and bowed anyway.

Protest art on the fence

Vidor, Texas is a place that fought integration in the 1990s. There used to be a Klan bookstore. A white person there could casually say racist things and get nodding heads from all the white people around them. Dan Solomon writes for Texas Monthly and tweeted a thread about a Black Lives Matter protest in town. Those casual racists felt outnumbered by white neighbors supporting the protests. Hopefully, they’ll be a bit more reluctant to voice their racism. That person in line with you at the store might have participated in the protest.



One result of the protests is voter registration is up.



josie duffy rice is a lawyer and hosts a justice podcast. She tweeted a thread about the current state of police:

we have encouraged and perpetuated a system that allows, and even incentivizes, police to be their absolute worst selves. their least empathetic. their least dignified. their most brutal. extremely unwilling to speak up against the powers that be.

policing also incentivizes failure. right now, as I and many others have pointed out over the past few days, we solve approximately 40% of murders in many major cities in america. 40%. and that's more than the percentage of rapes and other serious crimes we solve.
...
and, unsurprisingly, it isn't working. even if you take brutality and killing people out of the picture entirely - even if the cops were not explicitly harming people every day - we would still have to reckon with the fact that police don't even solve crimes!!!

so who is this system good for? if the police in this country drew up a public safety system from scratch, is this what they would draw? why can't we create better systems that incentivize the people involved to access their humanity?

Interesting and good points. However, I wish she had gone more into how the current system incentivizes police to be bad and who benefits from the current system.



Daniel Block wrote an article for Washington Monthly exploring what might happen the day after the election. I’ve mentioned several times that the nasty guy won’t willingly leave the White House if he loses. Block poses some scenarios.

Most autocrats rig the system well in advance. But our decentralized election system makes that difficult. Though I note it happened in 2000 in Florida, 2004 in Ohio, and perhaps in three states in 2016. Each was an election that was close. There has been talk of voter suppression and claims of voter fraud for a long time now.

Autocrats tend to have a politicized military, which would be hard to do with American military.

If the election is close (so let’s make sure it isn’t) and the nasty guy loses, he’ll claim fraud. Then it will depend whether GOP leadership and Fox News backs him up or simply remains silent. Then it would go to the courts. And the courts already gave us Bush II and have been stuffed with conservative ideologues over the last few years.

The GOP could play constitutional hardball by giving the state legislatures in key states the power to name electors in spite of how the people voted. The whole election could be thrown to Congress to sort out.

Whether the nasty guy wins or loses perhaps 35% of the country will believe the election was rigged.



The nasty guy is fascinated by nuclear weapons. It goes along with his desire to cause mass death (see his response to the virus). So he’s started talking about testing nuclear bombs. Eighty Congressional Democrats wrote a letter to the nasty guy, as well as Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Energy Secretary Dan Broulliette saying what a bad idea this is. Such tests are unnecessary and would be viewed as dangerously provocative. Adversaries would respond in kind. It would not improve America’s security.

It’s scary such a letter needs to be written.



I wrote about the fence the nasty guy put up around the White House to keep protesters away. However, the protesters are having their way with the outside of the fence – they have attached protest signs, memorial signs, and other art to the fence. Aysha Qamar of Daily Kos has gathered photos of the fence.

Guardians, not warriors

Sheesh, I spend two evenings writing a post on a Gaslit Nation episode and my browser tabs fill up. And I’ll only be able to get to some of them.


As far as the nasty guy is concerned the pandemic is over, Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reports. He’s done “a great job” and is moving on. It’s irrelevant (to him) that there are still a thousand deaths a day and the case count is increasing. Looks like if there is a second wave he’ll ignore it.



The ACLU tweeted a thread reviewing your rights while protesting. A few things from what they said, though all of it is worth reviewing:

The police's main job during a protest is to protect your right to protest and de-escalate any threat of violence.

If arrested, don’t say anything, don’t sign anything. Ask for a lawyer immediately. Don’t agree to anything without the lawyer.

Demand the right to a local phone call. If you call a lawyer police are not allowed to listen.

Police are not allowed to view your photos or video without a warrant.

Leah McElrath tweeted:

The police know they’re being recorded right now.

The police know that—literally—the whole world is watching right now.

And this is the level of brutality we’re seeing and experiencing.

Just sit with that for a moment and consider the implications.

Clarene Mitchell tweeted a quote from Sarah Kendzior

Back in 2014, the police feared their actions being captured. Now they are reveling in it. They know they can get away with it because of (the culture Trump has created).

To which Peter Merlin Cane replied:

Ah, but they are NOT getting away with it, because every video clip of their fascism recruits another thousand people to our cause.

I add: At least for now they are getting away with it because the Department formerly known as Justice has no intention of prosecuting them.

Laura Rozen tweeted:

Think it would be a service to the American public to use more accurate language to describe the extreme role Bill Barr has adopted for himself: He is the Interior Minister.

The several thousand federal armed prison riot squad, DEA, ICE etc forces Interior Minister Barr has brought to suppress protests in the American capital are not “law enforcement.” The US does not have a language for it. Interior Ministry forces? There is no “law” about it.

Deborah Roseman responded:

Plus, between the unmarked officers patrolling DC and the self-appointed "anti antifa" guys patrolling their towns, how are any of us to know who are legit law enforcement, who are paranoid white supremacist vigilantes and who's both?

From the nasty guy point of view this sounds like the point.




Jason Slotkin and Adrian Florido reported on NPR’s Morning Edition that the Minneapolis City Council has announced they intend to “dismantle” the city’s police department. They have enough votes they could override a veto. What replaces the police is still to be worked out.

Mayor Jacob Frey doesn’t like the idea. However, when he said so at a rally he was roundly booed. However, he does want a structural shift in how the police function.

Rep. Ilhan Omar agrees with the dismantling and said:

We've all seen what happens when good people of good conscience say, 'Let's invest in diversity training.’ Let's try to explain our humanity and make them see us as dignified people. Maybe that will stop them from killing us.

That sounds like diversity training has been tried and hasn’t made enough difference. George Floyd still died.

NPR Host Rachel Martin talked to Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender about how the city might work with a dismantled police department. Bender said there is already an Office of Violence Prevention and they have already made grants to community-based safety organizations. They’ve gotten lots of offers from around the world of expertise on how community safety works. Beyond that the will listen to their community. Many things the police are called to do don’t need to be handled by an armed police officer.

Bender says that Minneapolis already has a black police chief. This chief has done a lot, including expanding diversity. But the union continues to be resistant to change and it is a political organization.



Meteor Blades of Kos says the protests continue across the country. But that’s the easy part. The hard part is doing the work in coalition. He quoted fellow Kos contributor Denise Oliver-Velez, “If you're in a coalition and you're comfortable, you know it's not a broad enough coalition.” The he wrote:

Working in coalition in this instance requires listening to, respecting, and following Black leadership, which many Americans who aren’t Black have typically not been willing to do. Which is one big reason our policing is so messed up.

Transforming the system, rooting out the racism, fixing the police, healing the wounds cannot be achieved with a few new procedures, a few packages of legislation, a few changes of personnel at the top although it will require all these things. For people who aren’t Black, it will require intense reflection, self-education, action, and undoubtedly lots of squirmy moments for participants in that uncomfortable coalition. Nobody, especially people who consider themselves staunch allies, likes to be called on their s***. But if the transformation being demanded—the institutionalizing of “Black Lives Matter” as guiding policy and national morality—is really going to happen, then there will be plenty of those call-out moments.

The tendency for many people is to walk away in such circumstances. They want, as Frederick Douglass would put it, progress without struggle. They want to step over the hard parts of transformation. They want to get to the healing without the surgery. But, you can’t have reconciliation without first having the truth.

Laura Clawson of Kos looks at the calls to defund the police and what that might look like. A big part is assessing when someone other than police should handle a situation. Homeless and mentally ill people should be seeing people other than police. There shouldn’t be so many police in schools. The money should go instead to “social workers, healthcare emergency responders, violence interrupters, restorative justice, and more.” Even the response to burglary should be reconsidered. Most of that is driven by drug use and the response to that also needs to be rethought. As that is going on there are reforms that need to happen, such as banning chokeholds. Police are to be guardians, not warriors.



Joan McCarter of Kos reports Democrats in both the House and Senate are writing a Justice in Policing Act to significantly change federal law. Some of the things in it are “mandatory bias training, a national registry documenting police misconduct, required reporting on use of force, and a ban on practices like the chokeholds that killed Eric Garner and George Floyd.”

Something like this didn’t happen when Eric Garner died. However, public opinion is turning and a majority supports Black Lives Matter and condemns police brutality. So maybe enough GOP senators can be convinced. Alas, there is Moscow Mitch. And the nasty guy.



Because “Black Lives Matter” was painted on 16th St. in DC and the mayor erected a sign with a new intersection designation the nasty guy now has a new address: 1600 Black Lives Matter Plaza.

If they thought that the truth didn't matter

It’s been more than a month since I’ve read through and written about an episode of Gaslit Nation, However, the protests, nasty guy photo op, and police rioting made me want to see what hosts Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa had to say, since they study authoritarian regimes. This episode came out last Wednesday. I’m writing about it today so that I can work from the transcript. The episode is titled Reichstag Fire. A week ago I had written about that term, which refers to an authoritarian regime using an incident as a pretext for cracking down on its enemies.

I’ve been wondering – now that I’ve read about the protests over George Floyd’s death, including how many people, how many cities and towns, and how long they’ve gone on – whether this popular uprising will thwart the authoritarian efforts of the nasty guy, his minions, the GOP, and white supremacists in general. These are signs of hope.

Alas, Kendaior and Chalupa give us a grim view, with a bit of hope at the end.

Chalupa said it is disheartening that after three years of pointing out how the nasty guy is being authoritarian so many people still don’t believe them. The way he is implementing the authoritarian playbook is not at all creative.

Authoritarian history should be a part of civic education worldwide. Citizens should be able to spot the signs of rising authoritarianism.

As a dictator rises there is also a problem of self-censorship in the press. George Orwell wrote *Animal Farm* as a children’s book so that society would see what is happening. But in his time they took it as entertainment, not a warning.

Kendzior and Chalupa have been describing the authoritarianism of the nasty guy since before he was elected. They’ve been dismissed, yet what they’ve talked about is happening. They keep sharing what is painfully obvious to them so that the rest of us are prepared. Because it’s going to get worse.

Putin will help the nasty guy steal the election [amid talk of Dems having a very good chance taking over the Senate and most of the swing states going in Biden’s direction] because if Biden is elected it is accountability time.

Be prepared so that you are not demoralized. One of their tools is to take away our hope, to terrorize us. Stay engaged. Keep art alive. Don’t be cowered into silence. Don’t put a timeline on the end. This could take years. The war is first and foremost in your mind. For help go to the Gaslit Nation action and reading guides.

People, especially public officials, are saying they are surprised at what’s happening. They say that to avoid accountability. If it couldn’t be seen, then it couldn’t be prevented. This is a cover, to change expectations of what public servants are to do, to avoid the obligation to stop it. Kendzior says that includes Speaker Pelosi. Because so many are complacent they are complicit. That feigned surprise also happens over police brutality and white supremacy. White supremacy is the original sin of America and is the root of authoritarianism. That is now showing up as selective genocide through the virus and police brutality.

After reviewing the original Reichstag fire Chalupa said:

So, understand that peace, peace is protection, peace is solidarity, peace is resistance. That's built into the culture of the progressive movement. That's a very long tradition that we stand on.

What Trump desperately needs is us to rip each other apart. He needs a civil war. Putin needs a civil war. There is even documentation going around held up by Russian opposition leaders saying that part of Putin's chaos agents were pitching an idea of helping feed a race war in America to destabilize us, to rip us apart. They want America to break apart into separate states. They want the United States to be over. It's about divide and conquer. It's all been documented. We've been talking about this since the start of the show.

So, peace is protection, peace is solidarity, peace is resistance. That's what organizers are leading with on the ground.

Kendzior said the day after the fire the German constitution was suspended and with it several basic rights. She then talked about rioting in the midst of protests and that it was difficult to tell who the rioters were (though it was clear many were white).

Anyway, that's why it was so convenient for Bill Barr when he came out and announced that “the violence instigated and carried out by Antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly".

This is such a typical tactic of an authoritarian regime. They will take an amorphous group, they will expand the definition so that it is as wide as humanly possible. They will deem it a terrorist threat, and then they will use that as a pretext to round up anyone, to round up journalists, to round up activists, to round up protesters, to round up bystanders who nearly witnessed atrocities.

Which means anyone who opposes the nasty guy will be labeled as Antifa – and that fits, even though there is no organization by that name because the nasty guy is being fascist and we who oppose him are being anti-fascist or Antifa. Kendzior again:

So, if you've been online like me and Andrea and other scholars of fascism and other opponents of fascism–which you should all be because it's fascism!–then you are going to likely be targeted by this administration. I don't know in what form, but they're going to make this as expansive as possible, and it's just incredibly dangerous on so many levels, first, to have this scapegoat, but secondly, to just openly be declaring, "Yes, we oppose people who oppose fascism. We are fascist."

They are so blatant about this. They have been blatant the whole time. From the minute that Trump announced his platform, which had the classic hallmarks of fascism, of scapegoating minorities, wanting to use excessive military force, claiming that he himself is the government, saying he wouldn't accept the election results–he did that back in 2016, he's going to do it again now.

Because it was so blatant it is disgraceful that people still refuse to see it. And people suffer, including this time journalists.

Kendzior covered Ferguson because she lives in St. Louis. At that time most cops didn’t like being recorded (the rest flaunted their strength) because they didn’t want a DOJ investigation. But AG Eric Holder and President Obama are gone now. And AG Bill Barr and the nasty guy are certainly not going to investigate police violence. As with those at the top police don’t mind being caught, they mind being punished. And who’s going to punish them? That means by October the chaos could be so great the election is suspended automatically.

Chalupa said:

So, one point that we keep making on the show is that in authoritarian regimes, the police, the secret police, are recruiting tools for sadists. All of the sadists find each other. Who do you think was carrying out Stalin's purges? The chief of the secret police at the time was an infamous sadist who liked to torture people personally.

And the nasty guy’s base supports that and loves it.

The Reichstag fire allowed the Nazis to consolidate power. The first concentration camp, Dachau, was opened less than a month later. We already have a growing camp system on our border. Incarcerating migrants is likely a test run for a broader project. Being tested positive for the coronavirus could be an excuse to take people away.

From Chalupa:

So, it's not enough for us to tell everyone how so not racist we are. It's not enough anymore for us to do that. We have to now be anti-racist. We cannot politely condone confederate symbols anymore, considering that they're the equipment of Nazi symbols. We need to stomp out Nazism. We need to stomp out the fascists here on our soil. That needs to end now.

That's what we're witnessing. We're witnessing this confrontation and it's going to be painful. It's going to be scary. It's going to have moments of absolute terror, and it's going to take years. It's not going to go away any time soon, but it's a necessary process that we need to finally undertake. It's a process of healing. It's a process of understanding that black people have been extraordinarily patient. They've been extraordinarily patient, and that's also a theme throughout history.

To me it sounds like they are saying we may finally deal with white supremacy but that dealing with it will be a bloody horror.

When the Tsar was overthrown in early 20th Century it was because Russians had been pushed to the breaking point. The French Revolution happened because women had been pushed to the breaking point. It was the same thing recently in Ukraine.

And now black people in America have been pushed to the breaking point. Because of the economic collapse they have time to protest. Needing to wear a mask in public will help protest safely. Black people have been extraordinarily patient and now have no other choice.

The Reichstag fire (though I think more properly the response to the fire) is the nasty guy wanting to deploy the military into the states. Kendzior has studied authoritarian regimes, including Uzbekistan. In many of these countries there are the police, there are the military, and then there are those who aren’t quite either one. And this is the group the citizens fear.

From Kendzior:

But I'm so appalled, not just that this is happening, but by the lack of any kind of organized response from people who wield far much more political power than us, or more money like Robert Reich from the New York Times, he tweeted, "Where's congress? Where's the Supreme Court? Where are the mayors and governors, living former presidents? Where are the university presidents, foundation heads, religious leaders, corporate leaders, union heads, editors, and publishers? All must stand up to Trump's madness."

Chalupa complains about one particular publisher:

So, the latest from the newspaper of power, from the New York Times, the headline is "As chaos spreads, Trump vows to end it now." Trump IS the chaos. Trump desperately needs chaos in order to steal this election and stay power.

Putin, who helped bring him into power, desperately needs chaos in order for Trump to stay in power, in order to avoid sanctions from the US. So, again, the New York Times, another critical election with democracy on the brink, the New York Times is choosing to be not the newspaper of record, but the New York Times is the newspaper of power.

Kendzior:

So, if you're going to oppose it from within the bounds of Congress, you need to be creative in your own approach. If they're going to do things unconventionally, then you need to do it as well. To just tweet out these little statements like, "Oh, I'm deeply concerned," or "I'm so shocked," it's like, my God! Our country is going to die. We've been very clear about that for the last four years.

People are going to die while fighting for it. This was the point that we wanted to avoid. This is what happens when you have an utter failure of accountability and a failure to even identify reality as reality because you're so concerned with protocol or prestige or maybe there are darker agendas involving blackmail, bribery, donor money, loyalties to other countries above the US, what have you. It's a different situation for everyone.

What I know is you can't go by the book when the book is burning. That is a lesson that Congress has absolutely failed to learn, and they need to learn it now, and they need to learn it fast, because we're already past the bounds of too late.

Chalupa lists the things the nasty guy and Putin have in common:

There's organized crime, there's money laundering, there's attacks on the press, censorship, propaganda, they both incite violence–especially against opposition leaders and the press. They both want to stay in power. They purge. They consolidate power. They encourage sadistic police and law enforcement tactics, and they want a deep state police state, and there's something more.

That something more: They’re both highly racist.

Putin calls for the return of the Soviet Union, yet Russians don’t want to live alongside the people they once colonized. After Putin? Chalupa said:

Once Putin is gone, another autocrat will take his place. Fascism in Russia is not going away anytime soon. Russians will tell you that they need a strong leader. As one Russian-Ukrainian woman explained to me, it's because they fear a return to the volatility of the Yeltsin years when the collapse of communism plunged everything into chaos. They also fear, she says, ethnic minorities rising up against them, the "real Russians", and creating a civil war. Fascism has become a gravity holding Russia together.”

Chalupa urges us to donate to progressive causes. To be in a safer place ten years from now we need to invest in that now. Kendzior adds:

For those who think there's no point in going forward, all is lost, et cetera, et cetera, we still have not only a moral obligation, but an open demonstration that we still do wield some leverage that the people and their power collectively are still a threat. If they thought it wouldn't matter if you voted, they would not work so hard to prevent you from doing it. If they thought that the truth didn't matter, then they wouldn't work so hard to suppress it. If they thought that your right to assembly was no big deal and would yield no repercussions, they would not have these blatant abuses and arrests out in the street.

They fear a critical, independent-minded populous that is relentless, that is relentless in its pursuit of truth, that's relentless in its pursuit of justice, and that makes demands, that doesn't just roll over and lie dead. I don't know what the outcome of this will be, but I know that I'm not rolling over, and I'm not backing off. I know that Andrea isn't backing off either, and I know that our listeners aren't either.

So, if you're listening to this and you feel alone, you're not. There are millions. There are people out in the street. There are people in their homes who can't protest or are afraid to, but are very much of like-mind. We are living under the tyranny of the minority, but we are the majority. We are not the silent majority. We are the loud majority, and we need to keep it even louder in the weeks to come.

Elaborate costume for a very simple message

When the nasty guy turns the middle of your town into a fortress there are ways to respond. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser approved an overnight paint job on a city street. The phrase “Black Lives Matter” now fills a block and a half of 16th St. By fill I mean curb to curb. This is just north of St. John’s Church, the site of the nasty photo op, so also just north of Lafayette Square. If one stands in the middle of the White House and looks north, 16th St. is the street one can look down. The intersection where 16th St. meets Lafayette Square now has a sign declaring it “Black Lives Matter Plaza.”



Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reports on the violence at protests last night. He wrote:

In city after city, protests were peaceful … on the part of protesters.

But what happened most notably on Thursday evening was that in multiple locations police used curfews as an excuse to come after nonviolent protesters with violence of an extraordinary, and in many cases sickening, degree. The images left behind were of genuine riots—police riots—and an incident that may be the very definition of “depraved indifference.”

Warning: For those triggered by violence, there are no safe images, no safe videos, no acceptable moments to be found below. The violence displayed in each of these moments is at a level that would earn an R-rating for any film, and of a nature that would never be broadcast on the many television programs featuring “hero cops.”

Sumner included videos from Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Salem OR, and Buffalo. Then he included a video of a huge protest in Portland OR – that was peaceful.

Also in Portland, Marissa Higgins of Kos has photos of another protest, this one of thousands of people who laid down on the Burnside Bridge with their hands behind their backs and stayed there for 9 minutes, the length of time the policeman had his knee on George Floyd’s neck.



Kos of Kos reports since so much of this police brutality is captured on camera it is harder for white America to ignore. There doesn’t seem to be much of a white backlash to these protests, though the nasty guy might wish so.



Kerry Eleveld of Kos reports on the contrast between what the nasty guy is saying is going on in the country and what is going on in the country. I’ve already written about the military people around DC without insignias and how they put on a big show of force to clear Lafayette Square.

But that's not what's happening. Just like Trump hoisting a Bible over his head was pure stagecraft (as cringeworthy and poorly executed as it was), so is the amassing of unidentifiable federal troops in fatigues and riot gear.

In fact, the scenes of actual protest in D.C. ever since Barr's unwarranted Monday massacre don't resemble the fraught images that Trump and his allies are trying to advance. They are also a complete distraction from all of the truly positive and heartwarming moments that have emerged from the around the country this week, particularly before police began rioting against protesters Thursday night.

In short, Trump's reality is not America's reality.
…
Indeed, much of the imagery from across the country is a study in solidarity, rather than the division and mayhem Trump and Barr are trying to imprint on America.

Eleveld included photos and video of that show of strength, followed by images of 17 peaceful protests. The one in Boise, Idaho is 80% white. Missouri football players marched from campus to courthouse, knelt for 8 minutes, then registered to vote. A black lives matter protest was held in Harrison, Arkansas, headquarters of the Klan.

The first few comments offer ideas for more protests. Spancos suggests a six-foot spaced, single-file march around the nasty guy’s new fence. KGB hates US adds that marchers should take flowers and insert them in the fence. Axel Rod adds perhaps Mayor Bowser could lock the fence from the outside.



A lot of important people are saying these protests should be stopped because large groups could spread the virus – we are still in a pandemic after all. Shannon Palus of Slate reports infectious disease experts at University of Washington drafted a response and got support from a thousand health care colleagues. The key sentence:

Protests against systemic racism, which fosters the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 on Black communities and also perpetuates police violence, must be supported.

Might the protests spread the virus? Yes, they might. But racism is a stronger issue and also highly impacts what happens to people of color in this pandemic. For example, race can affect how difficult it is to get tested, whether the vaccine has been tested on people like you, whether you’re in a prison which is a virus hot spot, and whether you’re likely to have underlying health problems such as asthma. So, no, they are not going to condemn the protests.



Greg Dworkin in one of the editors of the Kos Abbreviated Pundit Roundup. I’d like to share a couple from today’s collection of quotes:

(1) The New York Times printed a highly inflammable screed from Sen. Tom Cotton calling for deploying troops against protesters. The NYT has been highly criticized for printing it and there are calls for James Bennet, editorial head, be fired for inviting Cotton to submit the screed.

Some say that such words should be printed, tossed into the marketplace of ideas, where it will have to fend for itself, be subjected to facts and logic, and if it is bad as they say it is, swiftly plummet. But Jack Holmes of *Esquire* says there is a big problem with that argument.

But this represents a comprehensive failure to grapple with the nature of fascism, which is not bound by concerns about what is true or even what was said five minutes ago. It cannot be defeated by Reason. It continually shape-shifts and changes form, rejecting previous bedrock principles in favor of their opposites whenever it is convenient. It is necessarily absurd, because it is just an elaborate costume for a very simple message: "Obey, or I will hurt you."

(2) The NYT reports that the nasty guy’s approval among Evangelicals is slipping. They used to excuse all sorts of his behavior because he was going to do great things for them. But they are now expressing concern over the way he has handled the pandemic and his belligerent tone over the black lives matter protests. He even got a scolding from Pat Robertson.



A couple quotes for Bill in Portland, Maine’s collection of late night commentary:

Take it upon yourself to be a leader and set an example of the kind of country you want to live in. That might mean going down to a protest or making a donation, or having a tense conversation about race. You're not going to get that from the White House. So we need to step up and provide it ourselves. Because America is officially BYOP: bring your own president.
—Stephen Colbert

[The White House] continues to insist [Trump's church stunt] was not a photo op. But let's review the facts here: he walked to the church, he stood in front of the church, never went in the church, never spoke to anyone from the church, didn't examine the damage to the church, held up a Bible upside down, didn’t read from the Bible, didn’t give a speech, posed for photos, and left. I dunno, that sounds like a pretty textbook definition of a photo-op to me. He treated it like taking your kid to see Santa at the mall: 'You got the picture? Okay, let's get the hell outta here.’
—Jimmy Kimmel

The photo-op he wanted

There were another almost 1.9 million new applications for unemployment last week. Meteor Blades, reporting for Daily Kos says there are two sets of numbers put out by the Labor Department, one set is for “seasonally adjusted” and the other not. He gets into why that matters, so I won’t. I’ll just say a lot more people are unemployed.



Senator Elizabeth Warren tweeted about the nasty guy photo op from a couple days ago:

Let's be clear about what happened this week at the White House. The photo-op Trump wanted was not just of himself holding a Bible—he wanted footage of Americans who disagree with him being scattered, of violence pushed upon them. That's the photo-op he wanted.

Warren has been at the Black Lives Matter protest in CD for three days. No other Senator has come.



There have been a couple more names proposed for the nasty guy – Bunker King and Bunker Baby. Before he had Lafayette Square cleared a few days ago he had been spending time in the White House bunker. Since then it looks like he is turning the area around the White House into part of his bunker.

Mark Sumner of Kos reports that first a fence was put up that enclosed Lafayette Square. Yeah, the White House already has a pretty significant fence. Then another fence was added a block farther out. And truckloads of fence have arrived in the area. This looks to last longer than the current round of protests. It looks like concrete barricades are also going up. Wrote Sumner:

Trump is so damned terrified of Americans that he is turning the White House into a medieval castle, protected by ring after ring after ring of hardware, and thousands of ranked, armed, and armored warriors, protecting him against … what? Hearing an unpleasant word? Seeing an unflattering sign? Hearing a less-than-supportive chant?

Betsy Klein has a couple videos of the fence. Replying to her Sideline Observer tweeted: “The White Hose is the world’s largest Chicken coop.”

Jake Godin tweeted an image from Google Maps showing where the fence is. It runs along Constitution, 15th St., H St., and 17th St. It encloses both Lafayette Square and The Ellipse.

I went to Google Maps and entered “White House fence” and didn’t get anything useful.



Hunter of Kos looks at the nasty guy’s campaign’s latest offering available for donation. In a letter for “Patriots only” it says:

The President wants YOU and every other member of our exclusive Trump Army to have something to identify yourselves with, and to let everyone know that YOU are the President's first line of defense when it comes to fighting off the Liberal MOB.

It’s one thing to offer “something to identify yourselves” and quite another to put it in such militaristic language. Lots of people are wondering if he’s looking to raise a brownshirt army. More here about brownshirts. Hunter says of the liberal mob:

By which they mean Black Americans and anyone allied with them—anyone who is currently defying Trump, on any street, for any reason.

Calling in the military to subdue protests prompted this quote of the day:

We don’t need police officers who are soldiers. We need police who are guardians.
~~Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2015)

Meteor Blades quotes a study by Maggie Koerth and Jamiles Lartey of FiveThirtyEight which says de-escalation of tension keeps both protesters and police safer. They looked at 50 years of violence at protests, including three federal commissions formed between 1967 and 1970.

All three concluded that when police escalate force — using weapons, tear gas, mass arrests and other tools to make protesters do what the police want — those efforts can often go wrong, creating the very violence that force was meant to prevent.
…
Escalating force by police leads to more violence, not less. It tends to create feedback loops, where protesters escalate against police, police escalate even further, and both sides become increasingly angry and afraid.

Yet police respond with force anyway.



If you’re going to be out on the street in a protest here are some videos on the way to do it – dance protests. In one even the police are joining in.

A whole herd of scapegoats

Last Sunday the protests in response to the death of George Floyd were still going strong, but the nasty guy had not yet cleared the square to get his photo op at the church. So I’ll take a moment to visit a story from before that has a couple more pieces since then. On Sunday the nasty guy declared he had an answer to violence by police on black and brown people, “The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization.”

Antifa stands for anti-fascism. There are stories of a group being opposed to and just as (or maybe more) violent than white supremacist militias.

Of course, every time the nasty guy opens his mouth there is something wrong with what he says. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos points out in this case:

* On that same Sunday the FBI briefed the nasty guy saying there was “no intelligence” that Antifa was involved or even present at those incidents of violence.

* The president doesn’t have authority to designate a terrorist group.

* The law says only foreign groups can be so designated.

Wrote Sumner:

Antifa isn’t a vast, shadowy organization. It’s certainly not a “major terrorist organization.” It’s not even an organization. But it is a scapegoat. A man who takes responsibility for nothing at all needs a whole herd of those.

That’s right. Antifa doesn’t exist. Except in the minds of white supremacists.

However, there’s another aspect to this that is scary. I saw a tweet about it this morning, but I can’t find it now, so can’t give credit. As I said above Antifa means anti-fascism. Which means against fascism. Which means everyone of us who is opposed to the nasty guy’s attempts to establish himself as dictator. Which means us. By declaring Antifa as a terrorist organization he is declaring that we – everyone who opposes him – are a part of that terrorist organization.



In another post Sumner reports that now with Lafayette Square cleared of protesters the nasty guy has expanded the cordon around the White House, even pushing into the side streets (too bad if your business is now behind the cordon). This seems to be a wall he’s always wanted.

The cordon has men in military gear – shields, guns, and all the rest – but their clothing has no identifying markings. When asked they will only say they work for the “Department of Justice.”

Sumner wrote:

These people are not the Park Service, they are not regular military, they are not National Guard. So … who are they? Are they guards from the bureau of prisons sent out to treat the public like criminals? Are they private mercenaries courtesy of Betsy DeVos’ family? Are they Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which Trump has seemed to groom for this moment? Are any of them, in any way, trained for dealing with civilians?

What are their standing orders? Under what authority are they operating? How can any of them be held accountable when they are wearing no identification whatsoever? What level of force are they allowed to use against the unarmed public?

This goes beyond “not normal.” Every newspaper, every representative, every senator should be demanding to know by what right Donald Trump believes he can wall off sections of the nation’s capital and fill the city with his own private army. Trump isn’t just going beyond the law—he’s ignoring it completely.

This isn’t a question of security, this is a reverse coup.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos adds a few photos and reports in addition to around the White House unidentified paramilitaries are also at the Lincoln Memorial to prevent protests there.

Eleveld includes a tweet from Edward Luce:

None of this is necessary. Their presence is meant to create the impression that the White House is under siege from domestic terrorists.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos has a quote from Theodore Roosevelt. Here’s a bit of it:

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Erika Baras of NPR’s *Marketplace* reports that several top selling books of the past week are about race. These books include “White Fragility,” “How To Be an Antiracist,” “So You Want To Talk About Race,” and “Me and White Supremacy.” Even children’s books, specifically those about how to be an ally, are selling well. Mahogany Books is a DC store with a black owner and mostly black customers. Lately, though, there are a lot of new white customers realizing they are unaware of racial issues.

This sort of thing happens after every time police kill an innocent black man. However, one store owner says this time it feels bigger.

The church was a sanctuary; he made it a battleground

More protests in many cities last night in response to the death of George Floyd from a policeman’s knee. The one that is getting the attention happened in Washington DC.

In late afternoon protesters were in Lafayette Square, which is across from the north side of the White House. About 6:15 federal police and national guardsmen began to clear the area. It wasn’t a cordial action, saying curfew is about to begin, please leave. No, it featured flash bangs, tear gas, and rubber bullets against peaceful protesters. People were pushed to get our of the area.

Shortly after that the nasty guy held a press conference in the Rose Garden. Lafayette Square is north of the WH and I think the Rose Garden is on the south side. So the cameras on the nasty guy didn’t see what was going on in the square (though cameras in the square certainly could). However, they might have heard the flash bangs and the shots – nicely dramatic sounds for the press.

And perhaps appropriate for a rambling speech in which the nasty guy declared he is mobilizing the military – “thousands and thousands” (not sure if that actually happened). He warned governors they need to “dominate” the protests. If they don’t he will.

Yes, “dominate” is a supremacist word.

The speech rambled and at times didn’t make sense. There were tidbits that did, such as an invocation of 2nd Amendment rights, that extreme right militias could take as his blessing for them to attack protesters. It was also enough that CNN host Don Lemon said, “We are teetering on the edge of a dictatorship.”

Once the nasty guy was done with his speech we learned why the square had been cleared. He walked across Lafayette Square and stood in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, which is just across from the north side of the square. The church says it is visited by presidents because it is so close to the White House. Now with the background he wanted he raised a Bible in his hand and posed for pictures.

Yup, his reason for standing in front of the church – his reason for violently clearing the square – was for a photo op.

The church did not invite him and considers he was trespassing. Accounts came out today saying that in addition to clearing the square the National Guard cleared the outdoor patio of the church and the building as well. They used the same violent tactics. The patio was being used as a respite for protesters under the care of the church’s priests. One priest wrote about being driven off.

For a photo op.

That drew sharp condemnation from Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of the Espiscopal Diocese of Washington. She had a discussion about it with host Steve Inskeep on NPR’s Morning Edition today. She said:

[This] I think expresses the dissonance and the tremendous disconnect between what churches are and what our sacred texts represent and the president's actions. He used violent means to be escorted across the park into the courtyard of the church. He held up his Bible after speaking a inflammatory, militarized approach to the wounds of our nation. He did not pray. He did not offer a word of balm or condolence to those who are grieving. He did not seek to unify the country, but rather, he used our symbols and our sacred space as a way to reinforce a message that is antithetical to everything that the person of Jesus, whom we follow, and the Gospel texts that we strive to emulate our lives...

But he seemed to use the Bible as an extension of his previous message in the Rose Garden. He - I mean, what preceded it is also contextually significant. He, with use of force, cleared the area so that he could walk across and hold that Bible up. It almost looked like a symbol of American military power. And I - that's a misuse of what the Bible represents. So that is deeply offensive to anyone who adheres to sacred Scripture.

Inskeep wonders whether the church was chosen as a backdrop because there had been a fire in the building a few days before, perhaps started because of the protests. It was quickly put out and there was little damage. Budde says if so chosen it was a misuse by the nasty guy. Loss of property should in no way be equated with loss of life.

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos summarized the events and concluded:

In a day and a situation when “unprecedented” seems far from adequate, Trump’s march to St. John’s stands out as a signal moment in American history—an image of total disregard for the rights of citizens, for the symbolism of the church, and for the genuine religious concerns of those who worked and worshiped there. The protesters were peaceful; Trump brought violence. The priests sought unity; Trump brought division. The church was a sanctuary; Trump made it a battleground.

On the basis of this single event alone, Trump should be removed from office. November is far too long to wait.

I’m sure a lot of you are scratching your heads. Why did the nasty guy go to so much trouble to stage a photo of him standing in front of a church sign holding a Bible? He isn’t religious. He gives no indication he knows anything about the Bible. Yeah, white Evangelicals already think he’s wonderful, so how does this help?

Jared Yates Sexton offers an explanation. He tweeted:

Trump's stunt with the Bible was a message to the Cult of the Shining City and the white supremacist Christianity that has taken over the American Right and how it endangers all of us in ways you can't even imagine.

I wrote about the Cult of the Shining City back in early April. With Sexton as a source I described it as a racist Christianity from the Confederacy now merged with capitalism and the GOP.

Back to Sexton’s current thread:

Since [the 1980s], Cult of the Shining City members have been taught that America, as God's chosen nation and champion, can only be harmed by Satan and people manipulated by Satan, including minorities and liberal traitors. They believe this, wholeheartedly.

When politicians talks about evil liberals, they're referencing the idea that liberals are in league with Satan in the New World Order conspiracy. They truly believe people like Obama and the Clintons are satanically evil and have to be stopped lest Satan will prevail.

The Deep State is just the New World Order with a new paint job. They're framing America as if it is the battleground for war between God and Satan, and believe they have to destroy Democrats and liberals to prepare for the End Times.

The Cult of the Shining City worships power and wealth as symbol's of both white supremacy and God's favor. Trump is their messiah and he talks to them through his surface-level religious utterances and phrases like "enemy of the people."

Trump standing in front of a burnt church among a riot with a bible was a message that he is their warrior and that they are entering a Holy War.

It's hinting at an End Times battle, and it'll doubtlessly escalate tensions and possibly lead to violence.

Please tell people.

This all sounds like madness unless you were raised in the community. It's their reality. They see this stunt with Trump and the Bible and these riots as the beginning of the end and the start of a Second Coming.

They'll support WHATEVER he wants.

Walter Einenkel of Kos says the nasty guy’s speech (at least) had the desired effect:

White vigilante groups around the country began the process of colluding with local law enforcement like an amateur brown shirt brigade. In Philadelphia, social media posts showed a group of white folks, armed with all kinds of blunt objects, all itching for a fight, all completely supported by the police around them.

Hunter of Kos describes the connection and timing of the effort to clear the square with the nasty guy’s speech. The link is clear when the nasty guy ends his speech by saying he would walk to the church. Hunter reports the Park Police are now lying about the connection.

Senate Republicans, who recently acquitted the nasty guy so he stays in office, seem to not have anything to say about the battle in the square.

Sumner reports that the nasty guy also drove people away from a Catholic shrine, though provides no details of the incident. Sumner does write:

It’s unclear what Trump means to do by driving people away from places of worship, claiming that space for himself and waving a Bible. It’s certainly not a Christian act, though it does appear to be Christianist: the appropriation of the trappings of Christianity for the purposes of holding power and justifying unjust actions by giving them a religious whitewash. William Barr has been a notable practitioner of Christianism, waving a Bible and religious justification over policies that are profoundly unjust, undemocratic, and absolutely antithetical to Christian beliefs and traditions.

Though Lafayette Square had been cleared protests continued elsewhere in Washington in spite of the curfew. It seems police started herding protesters to Swann Street. The police set up barricades to trap the protesters so they could be arrested. When police started with the pepper spray, Rahul Dubey, a resident in the area, invited 100 people to shelter in his house. He handed out business cards in case the protesters were accused of breaking in. The guests stayed overnight until the curfew was lifted the next morning. All made it home safely.

A wonderfully gutsy move in a pandemic.

I’m pretty sure the nasty guy didn’t read this part of the Bible he held up (I’m sure he read very little of the Bible): Matthew 25:35 – I was a stranger and you invited me in.

A mood ring for the plutocracy

From Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:

If you're trying to call for the end to unrest, but you don't believe healthcare is a human right. If you're afraid to say Black Lives Matter. If you're too scared to call out police brutality—then you aren't asking for an end to unrest. You are asking for injustice to continue and for your people to continue to endure the violence of poverty, the violence of lack of housing access, the violence of police brutality and not say a damn thing.

Political scientist Seth Masket tweeted:

I continue to be stunned by the restraint police showed when armed conservative mobs literally shut down a state legislature a few weeks ago.

It would be nice if people saying “I would like to not be murdered by police” received as much deference as people saying “The Constitution clearly says I’m entitled to a haircut.”

Interesting, though not surprising, that the guy acting presidential is not the occupant of the White House.



In response to a tweet about Nixon using law and order as a successful campaign theme (which I mentioned yesterday), Garry Kasparov tweeted:

The difference with 1968 is that Trump is the incumbent. Do not let him play savior to a catastrophe of his own making. Not on security, not on Covid-19, and certainly not on race relations!

Autocrats promise to fix everything once in charge. When things are still bad, or worse, they say it's because they don't have enough power. They demand ever more uncontested authority. Putin has had total power for 20 years and still talks this way.

I’ve mentioned a few times a saying from Sarah Kendzior that the nasty guy likes to cover up malice with incompetence. That seems to contradict Hanlon’s razor. That’s defined as: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. That prompted Michael Weiss to tweet:

People have been so brainwashed by Hanlon's razor that we insist on mis-recognizing actual malice as incompetence and related lesser vices.

Rick B added:

Not brainwashed; just not sufficiently cynical (yet). US media keeps humanizing and imputing normative intent behind Tr*mp’s actions. They cannot process that he isn’t *trying* to govern, only rule. That failure by media to see reality is the bigger error IMO.

As I mentioned perhaps weeks ago the nasty guy’s response to the coronavirus isn’t stupidity. If it were he (or his minions) had plenty of time to fix it.



Lindss_tastic tweeted:

Resistance is NOT a one lane highway. Maybe your lane is protesting, maybe your lane is organizing, maybe your lane is counseling, maybe your lane is art activism, maybe your lane is surviving the day. Do NOT feel guilty for not occupying every lane. We need all of them.

In the lane of surviving the day is the resolve to do physical distancing properly so the nasty guy doesn’t kill me off.



LOLGOP tosses this question out there:

What if there was an obvious great depression coming and Wall Street was happy about it?

Rev. Dr. William Barber tweeted:

Reporters need to stop saying the Trump economy was “strong” before COVID-19. No, it was not strong for 140 million poor & low-income Americans, and COVID-19 exposed how weak it really was.

Kevin Gannon, a history professor pulls in a discussion of the stock market, which plummeted about six weeks ago and seems to be doing just fine now.

The stock market is not "the economy." It's a mood ring for the plutocracy.

You want to know how "the economy" is doing? Look at:
-Real Wages (wages adjusted for inflation)
-part time employees as a percentage of total hours worked.
-total amount loaned by the payday loan industry
Look at those numbers over time, and tell me the economy is "strong" #nope

Anti-racism activist Jane Elliott said in a room of white people:

Every white person in this room who would be happy to be treated as this society treats our black citizens, please stand. … Nobody is standing here. … That says very plainly that you know what is happening. You know you don’t want it for you. I want to know why you are so willing to accept it or allow it to happen for others.

Dartagnan of Daily Kos discussed an article in Politico which says because the nasty guy has politicized the pandemic at least a dozen states, mostly GOP-led, are deliberately fudging coronavirus deaths and testing numbers. Dartagnan wrote:

It has resulted in millions of Americans selectively filtering what they choose to believe regarding their own vulnerability to the virus, based on disinformation intentionally fostered by the GOP to spur efforts to reopen the economy for its own political ends, despite the potentially disastrous health consequences.

A few items that have been in my browser tabs for a few days.

Kos of Kos notes a new Facebook ad from the nasty guy campaign. It shows him without a mask in front of the American flag. Beside him is “Sleepy Joe” wearing a mask and with the Chinese flag in front of his forehead. Kos wrote it looks like the strategy is to troll the libs. Which is good for us.

Kos reviews polling data, which shows the nasty guy’s numbers have been amazingly stable since he took the Oval Office. His designated opponent is a boring white guy.

And Trump’s campaign response? It isn’t to highlight Trump’s work or make substantive policy distinctions or in any way try to persuade Biden supporters or fence-sitters that Trump is the smarter choice.

No, they double down on the divisive “us vs them” strategy that gets their deplorable base all whipped up into a frothy frenzy, but does *nothing* to actually help Trump win the election.

So what’s going on here? Do they really think this is a path to victory?
…
So no, this can’t be a tactic predicated on winning votes. Rather, it’s predicated on selling his band of deplorables on the idea that any Democratic victory couldn’t possibly be legitimate, that it would be stolen, that it would be manipulated, that it would be rigged.
…
Nah, Trump doesn’t have any interest in or desire to persuade anyone to vote for him. His only tactic is to delegitimize the opposition in the eyes of his supporters, thus having an able and willing army to back him when and if he is defeated at the ballot box.

Benjamin Franklin tweeted his thoughts on the November election:

1) The nasty guy will do anything to stay in office. If they lose they face prosecution.

2) He has already attempted to sabotage the election (Ukraine and Biden).

3) They will cheat to win.

4) If he were to somehow lose they would reject the results.

5) The only possible scenario for Nov4 is a disputed election result.

6) Institutional mechanisms and Democratic leadership have failed to inflict meaningful consequences against Trump. Either because they are unable to or unwilling to. They will not save us from Trump on Nov4. There will be an effort to convince us the situation is under control.

7) In light of the facts laid out in the above six points, I am proposing that all organizations that are against Trump and for his removal from office begin planning for mass, sustained protests starting Nov4 and continuing until over.

In a second thread Franklin suggests how to prepare for Nov4

The biggest challenge is to convince people that our regular democracy procedures will not save us. Remember when we were told Mueller would save us, or impeachment would save us? Don’t fall for that again.

Between now and then we must remove lifelong GOP operatives who suddenly become “resisters.” They’ll screw us hard.

We’ll need a massive groundswell of social media to convince people we need to protest on Nov4. The window is 72 hours before and after. Miss it and it’s game over. That means joining lots of social media groups now and start softening the ground. A Nov4 protest must become the idea.

Media and politicians will be against talking about protesting. Others will say those talking of protests are “debbie downers.” Push through them.

We’ll have to unify competing visions of our progressive politics.

And, predictably, the first reply to Franklin was a complaint about the quality of the Dem candidate.

Those that want the nasty guy in power will also be preparing to enforce their side on Nov4.