Constantly be tested on what it means to be a man

My Sunday movie was Drive Back Home. It is set in 1970 Canada. Weldon, in a small town in New Brunswick, gets a call from Toronto police saying his brother Perley was caught having sex with a man in a park. If family picked Perley up and took him home he could avoid jail time, as much as five years. Yes, this is a way to out a man to his family. Weldon, definitely a blue collar type, refuses to do it, but his mother demands that he go. So he does. He “borrows” his boss’s old truck and loads up with gas and sandwiches so that he doesn’t need to stop in Quebec – he doesn’t know French – and does the 800 mile trip to Toronto. He collects his brother. The purpose of a road trip is so the two people, through the adventures they experience, begin to understand each other. That takes a while because Weldon is quite annoyed he has to do this and with Perley’s insistence on bringing his taxidermied dog. There’s also some homophobic violence along the way. Thie IMDb page says the writer and director Michael Clowater based the story on true events involving his grandfather and grandpa’s partner. Though this is Clowater’s first film, he has enough friends in the movie business he was able to get Alan Cumming to play Perley. The actor who played Weldon isn’t someone I know. Overall, it’s a pretty good story about a time when being gay was dangerous. I was amused that whenever we see the truck crossing the rural landscape there is no other vehicle in the frame. But when we see into the truck to watch the characters interact, we can see out the back and there are always two vehicles following. Bob Berwyn, in an article for Inside Climate News posted on Daily Kos reported on the political consequences of the series of deadly heat waves that hit Europe this summer. One part is elected leaders facing constituent scrutiny because their response to the heat has been significantly insufficient. The other part is far right parties are “blaming governments they oppose for failing to protect people from the impacts of global warming, while denying that human activity is driving it.” In that first part a Green Party official said leaders know what to do. Meteorologists know how to forecast extreme heat. Public health experts know what things to do to reduce deaths. Yet, large numbers of people still died. That implies the known things to do weren’t done, but could also mean even if they were done well they couldn't handle the magnitude of the problem. Last week I wrote that perhaps four billion might die from the effects of global warming by 2050. Include in that tally 10,000 from the first heat wave this year, 63,000 in 2024, 51,000 in 2023 and so on back through the years. In Linz, Austria there is a department to make the city more resilient to climate shocks. They took “climate” out of the name of the department. Support of climate mitigation is tenuous. The far right parties complain that trees, which offer shade and lock away carbon, take up space that should go to roads and parking spaces, things that contribute to the heat. They also have a propaganda campaign to confuse the causes of the climate crisis and undermine the shift to renewables, such as wind. As for the general public, the heat has removed the political apathy. That comes as the media is covering climate change less. Kelcie Moseley-Morris, in an article for Stateline posted on Kos, reported a federal court ruling in Idaho could send abortion to the Supreme Court again, this time in a way that is beneficial to women. The ruling says there is a narrow right to an abortion if the pregnancy could be a risk to their health and, key phrase here, including their mental health. Maybe this could be the start of a slow erosion to Dobbs in the way anti-abortion advocates chipped away at Roe. The problems of an abortion ban that doesn’t have exceptions for a woman’s health – there are states with such bans – are becoming well documented. I’ve written about a few cases. They center on the issue of how sick does a woman have to be before an abortion is allowed to be done. I’m glad to see a court decision saying such abortions must be allowed. In this ruling anti-abortion advocates are concerned about what constitutes a pregnancy causing mental harm. What if a woman comes to an emergency room and threatens to harm herself if not given an abortion? Of course, I believe that if a woman wants an abortion she should get one. Dion Nissenbaum, in an article for Votebeat posted on Kos reported that the US Census Bureau released a report showing an analysis of the 2020 election that has “high confidence” that 24,000 noncitizens voted that year. The nasty guy said that proved he won the 2020 election. The Census Bureau said they examined 128 million voters to come up with their 24,000 figure. Election experts say there are some big flaws in this report, and that itself is concerning because the Census Bureau is usually meticulous in getting all the details right. Some of the problems: 24,000 is only 0.019% of 128 million, statistically minuscule. In no state election in 2020 would the number of noncitizen votes assigned to that state in this report have changed the outcome. This report does not list authors. It does not detail the reliability of the data nor the method of analysis. That makes them look like they’re hiding something. Of course, the nasty guy will use this report in his cry of voter fraud. NPR host Danielle Kurtzleben spoke to political reporter Elena Moore and producer Marc Rivers about how manhood is portrayed in movies. This is a part of their weekly series discussing various aspects of cinema. Yeah, there are whole genres of films that portray manhood – Westerns, gangster films, and movies like Top Gun. Rivers discussed two in particular.

In both of these films, we see that to be a man, living as a man means to constantly be tested on what it means to be a man. And so in "Carnal Knowledge," it's what kind of woman you can get. It's - and how many women can you get with? What kind of job can you get? In "Wake In Fright," it's - how strong are you? How many drinks can you guzzle? The screenwriter for "Carnal Knowledge" has talked about how he pitched his movie as a film about heterosexual men who don't like women. ... They think of women as objects that kind of project their own fantasies about how their life is supposed to be. So yeah, both of these films, I think, it presents masculinity as a constant performance and a fear of being humiliated by other men.

Moore said:

Some of the big themes that I've heard talking with young voters for years now, and especially young men out of the 2024 election - I'll go even more specific - is this feeling of feeling forgotten, this feeling of buying into a system that has not worked for them and this feeling of not meeting expectations that have been set for them. And I think for many people, in the political sense, that's translated to disaffection. That's translated to distrust in the system. And those are themes that have been reflected in movies forever. But, you know, not going too far back. I think a prime example is David Fincher's 1999 "Fight Club." ... The whole movie kind of explores this idea of, like, men realizing they are not alone in that anger and that frustration.

Then there are films like “Moonlight” of 2016 which is about a man who is gay and black. It shows how a man can break from the community expectation of what a man is.

We’re sick of corporate- and billionaire-aligned solutions

After Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic primary for US senator from Michigan, Thom Hartmann of the Daily Kos community wrote that a win by a Democratic Socialist seems to have broken the brains of Republicans.

Donald Trump’s pathetic bleats notwithstanding, people voting for progressive Democrats and “democratic socialists” aren’t voting for communism or even socialism; they’re trying to get America to the same sort of economy and form of government that works for everybody — a system somewhat like the one a majority of us had before Reaganism —that most other developed countries enjoy right now.

That includes: A healthcare system that doesn’t bankrupt families. A K-12 education system that works for everyone. A college system that is available to everyone that can handle the work. A political system where foreign governments, corporations, and rich people can’t buy elections, legislators, and judges and where there is no barrier to voting. An environment with clean air, water, and food, and where strong actions are taken to reduce climate change. An immigration system that embraces diversity and isn’t cruel. A tax system in which the extremely rich pay their fair share. A respect for international law and human rights. An economy like 1981 when two-thirds of us could buy a car and home, take a vacation, put kids through college, and comfortably retire. A country not rigged by the rich. Those aren’t impossible demands. Canada has all of those things, as does England, France, Germany, Spain, and dozens more, down to Costa Rica.

The problem we face today is that a large cohort of our billionaire and CEO class are suffering from the mental illness commonly known as hoarding syndrome, a subset of obsessive-compulsive disorder. There’s never enough for them, no matter how much they have, so they don’t care how many people must die or live in poverty for them to maintain their (tax-deductible) islands, palaces, bunkers, yachts, and private jets. It’s like that popular meme you find these days all over the Internet: “If a monkey hoarded more bananas than it could eat while most of the other monkeys starved, scientists would study that monkey to figure out what was wrong with it. When humans do it, we put them on the cover of Forbes.”

Hartmann then reviewed how we got here. There was the infamous Powell Memorandum, written by “notorious tobacco lawyer and sociopath” Lewis Powell. It urged rich people to develop the think tank and media infrastructure to convince Americans that oligarchy was the way to go. For that Nixon put Powell on the Supreme Court. And in 1978 Powell delivered with the Bellotti decision, that included a couple phrases that have plagued us ever since: Corporations are people. Money is free speech. And Reagan was elected on a tsunami of oil money. That industry still has control of our politics and their grip became even firmer with Citizens United. Less than 0.0001% of Americans supplied about 17% of all money spent in all of the 2024 federal elections and 44.5% of all the money spent on electing the nasty guy. That is what Americans are voting against this year. Even the corporate Democrats can’t stop it.

Americans know they’ve been screwed over the past 45 years since the GOP’s Reagan Revolution stopped seriously taxing the morbidly rich, killed off our unions, and sent our jobs overseas. And they’re rapidly waking up to exactly who it is who screwed them.

Hartmann extended these ideas in a second post.

The problem corporate neoliberal Democrats, the heirs to Clintonism and Obamaism, face is that a majority of Americans are now clear that it simply doesn’t work. We’re sick of partial, corporate- and billionaire-aligned solutions to large problems that should best be handed by our government as part of the commons.

The people see it isn’t working because the Middle Class was about 66% of the population when Reagan took office and it is now at 41%. Fully 60% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck. The last time that was that high was the 1930s. Inequality in this country has never been this high. Americans tell pollsters they believe one man, Musk, could spend $290 million to elect the nasty guy is obscene. In addition to the list from the first article, add that Americans want wages high enough to live on, affordable utility bills, and an end to expensive wars with no purpose.

Every single one of these issues are on the progressive agenda, whether you call it that or “democratic socialism” or just point out that it aligns with traditional Democratic Party traditions prior to the Clinton presidency.

$40 trillion of debt and all we got was rich people

I finished the book Queer as Folklore, the Hidden Queer History of Myths and Monsters by Sacha Coward. It is a discussion of many beings and monsters from the queer point of view. Coward says folklore is a great source of historical perspective because it is created by the people, not the people in control who write history. In each chapter Coward delves into quite a bit of history of each creature. Some of the things I learned from the book: One will see a lot of mermaid symbolism at Pride events. Some of it is because mermaids have to give up something to live in the human world, as many queer people have to give up something to live in the straight world. Hans Christian Anderson, bisexual, wrote his The Little Mermaid (far darker than the Disney version) after he had been turned down by a guy he had fallen in love with, quite likely because the other guy was straight. Unicorns are another creature featured in Pride events because they are always seen as the outsider. These were originally not the gentle creatures that cavort with virgins. Early versions were more sexual and dangerous. When one talks about feeling horny, it is the unicorn’s horn that gave us that term. Queer people understand demons because through history the reason for our queerness was frequently attributed to being possessed by demons. The book also covers the queer side of fairies, vampires, werewolves, witches, aliens, and supermen. Many times Coward wrote that a writer of an important story about one of these creatures was queer. An example is Bram Stoker, author of Dracula. An intriguing idea: What if the wolf that Red Riding Hood encountered didn’t kill Grandma, instead Grandma was a werewolf? One can read history and folklore and totally miss the queer details. But those details are frequently there. Even the author had to educate himself in the finer points of some cultures to know that certain details were actually coding a queer meaning. An example is reading about two nuns who “spoiled” themselves. I enjoyed the book. Yesterday I wrote about Natalie Harp, the woman who seems to be a constant companion to the nasty guy. In a campaign speech Sen. Jon Ossoff said the phrase, “travel with Natalie,” without defining what role she plays for him. The White House and Republicans freaked out. Kos of Daily Kos discussed what all this might mean. The nasty guy having an affair with Harp would be a good story for Republicans. To them an affair is a sign of manliness and an 80 year old having an affair signals he’s still got it! If that’s a scandal, they’d gladly defend it.

The reality is much harder to spin. This looks like the opposite of the virile, macho image Trump has spent his entire life constructing. This isn’t a powerful man attracting younger women. It’s an increasingly diminished old man apparently unable to tolerate being separated from his emotional support aide. Maggie Haberman of The New York Times has an even better term for it. She described Harp as a “human binky” for Trump. That’s not macho. That’s not virile. That’s dependency. And that’s why the details of Trump’s dependence on Harp are so politically dangerous. She offers a window into the version of Trump that Republicans have spent years trying to keep out of view.

The American national debt has passed $40 trillion. That’s two trillion higher in the last year (or is it since the start of this year?). There has been a string of stories this week in the NPR show Marketplace on what it all means. The biggest affect is that as the national debt rises and looks to be harder to pay back (just paying interest on that debt is now $1 trillion a year) the higher investors demand the interest rate to be. To attract money to finance mortgages banks now have to pay a comparable rate. That raises rates on mortgages. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tried a maneuver to lower the interest rate. The maneuver was to buy back long-term government bonds by issuing short-term bonds. The market was pleased. For a day. Then the market said spending billions to fix a problem that is trillions in size isn’t going to work. Bessent also said we’ll grow our way out of it. Yeah, Treasury Secretaries have been saying that for decades as the debt has gotten larger. And as Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal said, growing an economy at 2% a year (which is a robust economy) can’t overcome a debt that is growing at 6% a year. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported Bessent pulled out the old standby of the nasty guy and his minions: Blame Biden. At least Biden had a reason for increasing the debt – the pandemic and pulling the economy out of the chaos it caused. That’s an important use of a deficit and resulting debt. But the nasty guy doesn’t have that excuse. Thom Hartmann of the Kos community discussed where that $40 trillion debt came from and the implications of it. Hartmann started off with a chart of the national debt that goes through 2020, so doesn’t show what the nasty guy’s crew has been doing over the last two years. The chart shows the debt as percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Since GDP has been increasing translating the amount in dollars doesn’t work. The debt was high at the end of WWII, another good reason for a government to go into debt. After the war Congress and presidents were good at reducing that debt. Until Reagan and his voodoo economics. The debt went down under Clinton. By the end of Bush II the debt was $14 trillion. Obama had to deal with the Great Recession, another good use of debt. Then the debt took off again during the nasty guy’s first term. Before Reagan the top tax rate was 70% to 91%. People could become rich, but not so rich as to buy politicians and the Supreme Court. In that time we built the Interstate Highway system. College was cheap to free. The GI Bill offered cheap mortgages. We created Medicare and Medicaid, built schools and hospitals, and sent men to the moon. Reagan followed Jude Wanniski’s strategy:

Cut taxes on the rich and spend like a drunken sailor when a Republican is in the White House, and then scream about the national debt and demand cuts to social programs when a Democrat comes into office.

The purpose of that was to reduce the size – and power – of the middle class, so they didn’t have the political power to challenge rich people. Oppressing the poor was also a goal. Hartmann makes another critical point. I noted that the US government now pays $1 trillion in interest. Who does that money go to? Rich people. We went from the rich paying into the US treasury to the rich receiving an extremely safe revenue stream from the US treasury. Who pays all that interest? Poor people, though not directly. This is another policy to get money flowing upward, from poor to rich. Japan’s national debt is nearly twice ours, at 237% of GDP to our 121% of GDP. The difference is what that money was spent on. They have universal health care, bullet trains, almost no homelessness, and a life expectancy 5 years longer than ours. We have billionaires. And a health system that can bankrupt us and college tuition that can put us into debt for life. Hartmann rightly calls this a scam. What are Democrats doing about this scam? Not much of anything. They get too much money from rich people. What could Democrats do? Teach us what the scam is doing to the country. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did that for a while. But much more needs to be done.

When Republicans loudly and self-righteously proclaim that America can’t afford Medicare for All or tuition-free college, we all need to be clear about what they’re really saying. They’re telling us that they’ve already spent that money, on themselves and their rich buddies, and stuck you and me with the debt and the interest payments. ... After all, we paid down most of our national debt once before following the most expensive war in world history, and we did it while building the world’s first more-than-half-of-us middle class because we taxed great wealth at rates requiring the morbidly rich to contribute to society like the rest of us. It worked then and it will work now, if we can just squeeze the political and moral courage out of our elected representatives.

I get the feeling the rich want to make sure the poor stay poor, that there are few to challenge (or even join) them at the top of the social hierarchy.