It takes leisure & money to join a militia

Again, cleaning out browser tabs. This is a bit from a few days ago, tweeted by Elena Schneider of Politico:

Scoop - Biden campaign raised more than $12M yesterday, timed with Kamala Harris' VP debate & marking another watershed cash day. The fly helped, too. Campaign sold out of its fly swatters already, 35K at $10 a pop.

In response to tweets hoping the nasty guy succumbs to COVID-19 Twitter announced:

Tweets that wish or hope for death, serious bodily harm or fatal disease against *anyone* are not allowed and will need to be removed.

Aysha Qamar of Daily Kos reported that The Squad – Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib – is annoyed at the double standard. The Squad is all women of color and two are Muslim. Banning wishes of death, and actual death threats, is great. But they have been getting death threats since they won their elections in 2018 and came to the House. It is a double standard to be instituting that policy now when those wishes are directed at the nasty guy. And when domestic terrorist groups such as the Proud Boys also violate the policy. Where was the policy two years ago? Devin Shaw, a philosophy professor, tweeted a thread:

Looking at the discourse today, and it's good time for a reminder from Sakai: "Fascism hasn’t come from working class poverty or oppression. That’s a deliberate capitalist intellectual confusion we have to get rid of." "The oppression that colonial workers had to endure in Asia, Afrika, Latin America and the Mideast didn’t produce fascism but hopeful, radical left movements of liberation... that also contained the constructive efforts of hundreds of millions of ordinary working people." The Black Nation "however poor, however held low, were predominately working class and at the productive heart of the U.S. empire. A working class culture that had a lived belief in the importance of justice for everyone." "So don’t be thinking that fascism just comes from poverty or recession, because it’s not that way at all. In Euro-America ... the growth of white fascism has nothing to do with poverty but everything to do with the crisis of white settlerism."

My summary: Fascism comes from those at the top of the social hierarchy wanting to ensure they stay there. Dr. Sarah Taber tweeted a similar idea. She was responding to a tweet saying one of the men in the plot to kidnap the Michigan governor lived in poverty and that’s why he was radicalized. She disputed the photos showed poverty. There are two trucks that look only a couple years old. It’s a recent house, not a trailer home. The person she is responding to included a photo of a big house with pool and tennis courts and wrote, “Ever seriously consider why people who live like this aren’t the ones who take up arms against the government?” Taber replied these people do take up arms against the government. She provided a list:

-Ammon & Cliven Bundy: rich men who took up arms against their own gov't -Donald Trump: rich man deploying armed forces against his own people in contravention of the rules of his own gov't -Vast majority of militias: it takes leisure & money to collect that many guns my dude -The whole entire Confederate States of America: snotty rich kids' club -Not to mention the DeVoses, the Kochs, the Mercers, & every other white moneyed dynasty actively pillaging the rest of the US. They don't use guns bc they don't NEED to. Not bc they're nice. Rich, propertied white folks are the single most militant demographic in the United States. And you know what they love? When journalists & "thought leaders" buy into their bullshit about how "poor whites are violent & the solution is to throw $$$ at rural areas [that we own]." To be clear: poor white folks living in trailer homes are very real. They're too broke, tired, & sick to overthrow the government. That's what economic oppression does. It keeps you down. IDK how to explain the obvious fact that it takes MONEY & LEISURE to join/run a militia.

Yeah, this revolution is by the people at the top protecting their position. The principle purpose of OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, is to protect the safety and health of workers, to be their advocate in complaints against employers. Meteor Blades, as part of his Night Owl column for Kos, quoted Bryce Covert of The American Prospect, who wrote that since the start of the pandemic OSHA has been missing in action. Blades also included a tweet from Adam Best:

Let’s get something straight: Republicans have ALREADY packed the Supreme Court. They stole the 2000 election and Merrick Garland’s seat, and now they are trying to push a confirmation through during an election. Biden and Democrats have every right to unpack it if they win.

Sam Berger, VP for Democracy and Government Reform, tweeted conservative court packing in one chart. It shows the number of federal judges that were confirmed in four different two-year periods. GW Bush, 2007-8, 10 judges, Obama 2009-10, 16 judges, Obama 15-16, 2 judges, nasty guy 2017-8, 30 judges.

Conservatives’ stealth court-packing plan Step 1: Steal seats by blocking confirmation of judges until WH and Senate are under conservative control. Step 2: Change the rules to appoint the most partisan conservative judges at breakneck speed.

Berger then included a video of Moscow Mitch bragging about just that on Fox News. It was the first day of the new term of the Supreme Court. Beloved Ruth Bader Ginsburg was no longer there. The big news item was that extreme conservative Amy Coney Barrett would be nominated to take RBG’s place. Kerry Eleveld reported that before the Court was an appeal from Kim Davis, a former county clerk in Kentucky who used religious beliefs to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The Court unanimously refused to hear the appeal. However, justices Thomas and Alito issued a statement calling Davis a “victim” and suggesting that same-sex marriage might be on this more conservative court’s chopping block, just like Obamacare and Roe v. Wade. Wrote Eleveld:

In other words, based on the ruling, Christians will be increasingly persecuted because they can't openly discriminate against same-sex couples—including those serving in an official governmental capacity. Back to the special rights of Christians to discriminate against anyone they don’t like for any particular reason. … The justices made clear that, in their view, devout Christians are now being actively discriminated against based on the fact that same-sex couples have been afforded the same right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that heterosexuals have enjoyed.

Yup, feeling persecuted because they can’t persecute – feeling persecuted because their spot at the top of the social hierarchy isn’t upheld. A statement like this from the justices is inviting a state to enact such a law and litigate it all the way to the Supremes when someone challenges it. And we will challenge it. My sister’s widow heard that news and sent me an email saying she’s scared about her survivor benefits. Alas, I could not say she had nothing to worry about. When I was in college there was a big discussion about nuclear fusion as a source of clean energy. This isn’t the nuclear reactor we all know which splits atoms, such as uranium, to generate heat to generate electricity. This is pushing two atoms of hydrogen together to make helium. It also generates heat and thus electricity. This is the reaction that powers our sun. It doesn’t have the radioactive waste and danger of the other kind. I remember including fusion in a paper I wrote for a class (on environment? – not sure, it was one of those 8:00 am classes). The problem at the time was that it took more energy to force the atoms together than was generated by the heat of the fusion. Projections kept saying we should be able to invert that equation in 20-30 years. Even 40 years later (yeah, I’ve been around that long) the projection was still for 20-30 years. Meteor Blades, in his spotlight on Green News, quoted skralyx of the Kos community who wrote that the new estimate for a working demonstration is now projected for 2025, just five years from now! Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that a MacArthur Foundation genius grant went to playwright Larissa FastHorse. A primary reason for the grant is her work The Thanksgiving Play. It is now in the top ten most produced plays. FastHorse is half Lakota and is a strong advocate for inclusive and accurate portrayal of the Lakota people. I went looking for more about this play. A Google search suggested the Wikipedia page for the play. That begins with a warning the page is written like an advertisement. Even so, one can get an idea of what was going on. FastHorse was told theaters didn’t want plays with Native American characters because they would have such a hard time finding Native American actors. She responded with a play about white characters trying to create a play (yeah, a play about writing a play) that was culturally sensitive without actually consulting Native people. Yes, it is satire. Bruce Norris of the American Theater website interviewed FastHorse. They talk about the play and many other things.