Refashion Jesus from his role as a humble teacher into a vicious fanatic

I didn’t watch an online movie last Sunday because I wanted to see one in a real movie theater on a big screen with a great sound system. What drew me wasn’t the new Spider Man flick, rather the new version of West Side Story the one directed by Stephen Spielberg. It has all the wonderful Bernstein / Sondheim songs, with expanded dialogue with more backstory for some characters by Tony Kushner. I’ve long been a fan of this musical and have seen it several times both on stage and on screen. The fondness is even with that ending. I think the first time I saw it was when a cousin was in her high school production – she played one of the Jet girls. The most interesting performance was when I was living in Germany and took a work colleague to see an English language production. But I haven’t seen this movie yet. In this past week it was showing in only one theater in the area and only one time each day. So I would check in the morning to find it was already sold out. I checked a couple days ahead and found the theater had only 35 seats. And no spacing between patrons. And soon sold out. Chances look better next week when this theater will show WSS three times a day. Or I may decide, because of the virus, to stay home. See ... I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data updated yesterday. I normally do this on Saturday but Friday is a holiday. Since this is the week between two holidays I’m sure the numbers will be adjusted and redistributed (which is why Michigan Radio has been reporting seven day averages, rather than peaks). Even so, that peak is huge! The state reported that on Monday there were 13,099 new cases that day. That’s 41% higher than the peak at the end of November and 56% higher than the peak last April. A pretty good clue the numbers will be revised is two days before the number new cases was only 2170. The deaths per day for the first three weeks of December have been in the range of 100-140. The numbers after that haven’t been fully posted yet. Rebekah Sager of Daily Kos reported that Sen. Rob Standridge of the Oklahoma Legislature is pushing two bills that would...

give parents the power to remove any book in a public school library they find objectionable. Meaning any book mentioning sex or the “study of sex, sexual preferences, sexual activity, sexual perversion, sex-based classifications, sexual identity, or gender identity,” or books “that are of a sexual nature.” ... Parents can also receive “monetary damages including a minimum of $10,000 per day” from school districts refusing to remove the book as demanded.

Though the article doesn’t say so, this sounds to me like the Texas abortion ban in which the state doesn’t enforce the ban, but the citizens do. Standridge says that parents should have a say in what books their kids are exposed to. However, his method (or any method of removing books) makes the decision for all parents. And some parents do want their kids exposed to such books. The comment section included this thread: cmax: “Almost any book could be found objectionable to someone.” drshatterhand: “If this crap went through and I lived in Okie, my first request for removal would be the bible. There’s some perverted s--- in there.” Youffraita: “Was just thinking that very thing. I would also object that it’s far too violent for children to read.” That book does talk about the creation of male and female. And multiple wives and concubines. And eunuchs. That fits somewhere in the list of things Standridge wants banned. Doesn’t it? The commenter certainot proposed a theory not appropriate for tender ears (besides it is quite a stretch), though there are a couple bits that make sense.

authoritarianism is one of the strategies used by humans to avoid/reduce/control uncertainty — and create certainty. ... denying global warming is much easier than contemplating the complexities. they can reject vaccines outright because, as uncertainty-fearing trumper sen ron johnson of wisconsin points out, they don’t work 100%!

libera nos added: “Those mathematics books make my child’s head hurt—and mine, too!” Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed a speech by junior nasty guy at the Turning Point USA conference on December 19. He ranted about the other side playing dirty while they played nice (which is a great deal of projecting) which has gotten them nothing (the presidency for four years is nothing?). They are an enemy who must be crushed. Dartagnan then turned to Peter Wehner, an evangelical Christian (hold on, he’s on our side) writing for The Atlantic:

This in turn justifies any necessary means to win. And the former president’s son has a message for the tens of millions of evangelicals who form the energized base of the GOP: the scriptures are essentially a manual for suckers. The teachings of Jesus have “gotten us nothing.” It’s worse than that, really; the ethic of Jesus has gotten in the way of successfully prosecuting the culture wars against the left. If the ethic of Jesus encourages sensibilities that might cause people in politics to act a little less brutally, a bit more civilly, with a touch more grace? Then it needs to go.

Contrast that with what Tyler Huckabee, writing for Relevant has to say about what Jesus taught:

Nearly every page of the Gospels has stories of Jesus refusing earthly power and exhorting his followers to do the same. In fact, there are few things Jesus talked as much about as the upside down Kingdom of God where “the last shall be first” and “blessed are the meek.” Moreover, he cautioned against seeking earthly influence, going so far as to proclaim “woe to you who are rich.” The most cursory reading of Scripture would leave anyone with the sense that this is not a manual for getting stuff.

Dartagnan wrote:

As The Washington Post’s conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin writes, the embrace of intolerance and exclusion by many of these purported “Christians”—as part and parcel of their political identity—is now a necessary and integral requirement to joining their ranks.

Rubin discussed the recent cruelty towards immigrants and the selfish refusal to vaccinate, then added:

If you wonder how so many “people of faith” can behave in such ways, understand that their “faith” has become hostile to traditional religious values such as kindness, empathy, self-restraint, grace, honesty and humility.

Dartagnan added:

In order for this “faith” to endure, however, it’s become necessary to refashion Jesus Christ from his previously understood role as a humble teacher into a vicious fanatic exhorting his followers to hatred, revenge for imagined slights, and even murder of others as exemplifying the “essence” of Christianity. Racism, bigotry, and intolerance have to become “Christian” virtues in order for this warped version of “faith” to sustain itself. ... Yet before Trump Jr.’s speech, no single voice—not even that of the elder Trump—dared to so boldly and directly repudiate the teachings of Christ himself. None but Don Jr. has so directly dared to rend the tattered fabric of morality that white evangelicals long wore, however much it annoyed or inconvenienced them. Never before had anyone so directly crumpled up the pages of the New Testament, wadded them into a ball, and proudly wiped his ass with it.

Thanks to junior for revealing the ugly core of fundamentalist belief. Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Kos community reported that an anti-vaxx crowd stormed a Burger King. I’m not sure all that went on and I certainly didn’t watch the videos Pennyfarthing posted. Eventually the police showed up. Pennyfarthing did get to the core idea:

But what really motivated this war on Whoppers? As the folks behind Patriot Takes note, they’re doing it for attention, and for street cred among Team Antivaxx.

In the case of both junior nasty and this war on Whoppers what they’re doing is a battle over their place in the social hierarchy, either fighting to keep their high position or trying to signal to those above them that they are worthy of inclusion in a higher status. While on the subject of the virus ... Hunter of Kos discussed the home test kits. He reminds is that if we get a positive test we should report it to the local health department. It is important even if one does not have symptoms.

You may be feeling fine, you may not have any symptoms at all, but if you've been exposed to COVID that means, by definition, that somebody spread it to you. And that “somebody” likely spread it to several other people as well; your own positive test means that in your county, in your city, there are new active cases. This is vital information for local health officials. If they know that local cases are rising, and know the rate at which they are rising, emergency plans can be put in place to free up hospital beds for the new cases that will become severe. Hospitals can cancel nonemergency procedures, freeing up staff. The now-familiar parking lot tents can be set up in preparation for a surge of patients. Hospitals can scrounge for additional staff, if possible, and make sure medical equipment is available.

The Capital and Main team of Kos posted a four part series on how corporations bust unions. The series looks at:

“The 50-100 Pay Gap” examines the crisis of income inequality in the U. S. A recent RAND study found that a full-time worker earning the median national wage of $50,000 would be making close to $100,000 if pay had kept up with worker productivity and economic growth.

The first post, by Jo Constantz, looks at the various ways employers use technology to spy on and intimidate their workers. This includes such commonplace things as ID badges that can be used to monitor movements and track who someone meets with and when. Technology hasn’t kept up with law. And even with existing law employees tend to not report (for a variety of reasons) and even when reported cases tend to not move forward. It is also difficult to prove the employer was spying. Management can claim they only check the data in an emergency. In the meantime employees endure the harassment and unsafe conditions while they wonder who is safe to talk to. The second post, by Marcus Baram, is about Martin Jay Levitt. He was a consultant that companies hired to show them how to intimidate their workers into not joining a union. Then in the late 1980s Levitt had a change of heart. He wrote a book, Confessions of a Union Buster. Part of it is an autobiography, part of it is to reveal tactics. Baram wrote:

“Union-busting is a field populated by bullies and built on deceit,” he wrote. “The only way to bust a union is to lie, distort, manipulate, threaten, and always, always attack.” He described how his former firm, Modern Management Methods, had developed a methodology for breaking down employee support for unions by using psychological tactics and turning managers into anti-union spokespersons.

This book has been a guide to union organizers and allies. Corporations are using the same tactics they’ve used for decades, though now with high tech help. The third post, by Baram again, documents how much corporations are willing to pay consultants to avoid paying more to their employees. One would think it would be cheaper to just pay employees more. These consultants earn an estimated $340 million a year. Baram included a list of what some corporations spend on consultants each year. I read through that and thought part of what the corporations are doing is protecting the social hierarchy – keeping poor people poor, making sure the rich stay rich, and the gulf between them stays wide. The fourth post, by Jo Constantz again, is about the shrinking field of labor studies in universities:

Researchers in the field have been the target of legal threats and lawsuits; onerous public records requests; and misinformation campaigns from union avoidance consultants, business executives, corporate lawyers, and conservative think tanks. It’s one aspect of the business lobby’s relentless war against unions in recent decades ...

Constantz worked through that list. An example is Kate Brofenbrenner of Cornell University. In 1992 she was on her way to a labor studies conference. When she opened the door of the car sent to pick her up she saw the CEO of a management consulting firm in the back seat. He demanded to know what she was going to talk about and demanded to see her data. She refused. He was furious. Later she was sued for libel, so a company could get her raw data through the discovery process. The lawsuit failed, but served to intimidate others who might consider entering the field.

The field of labor studies has often been lambasted by conservative lawmakers who consider it union advocacy education that indoctrinates students. ... Labor studies academics contend that the field can inform how we view everything from law, economics and history to music and literature by focusing on the perspective of the working class, which is often neglected in other disciplines.

The view from the management class and the view from the labor class are going to look quite different. Patricia Morgan, the first female Minority Leader in the Rhode Island House of Representatives, tweeted:

I had a black friend. I liked her and I think she liked me, too. But now she is hostile and unpleasant. I am sure I didn't do anything to her, except be white. Is that what teachers and our political leaders really want for our society? Divide us because of our skin color? #CRT

Lots of people tweeted their outrage at her racism – in Rhode Island!. I’ll stick to the rebuttal by George Takei:

I had a white friend. I liked him and I think he liked me, too. But then Pearl Harbor happened and whites became hostile and unpleasant. I am sure we didn’t do anything but they sent us to camps anyway. And now they don’t want to teach about this because it make kids feel bad.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column forKos started today’s post with a minute long demonstration of how a little action can have a big effect. The unnamed man in the video has a row of slabs standing on end like dominoes, each one 1.5 times larger than the previous one. The smallest is 5 millimeters high, 1 mm thick and placed in position with tweezers. The largest, the 13th, is 100 pounds and more than a meter tall. He knocked over the little one and soon the big one is knocked over. Bill got the video through the Twitter feed of Pascal Bornet. So I scanned it a bit. Here is a diagram of a measure of success I agree with: success = happiness. And another with a half minute video showing the difference between a boss and a leader. The boss wants to maintain his place high in the hierarchy. The leader cares for those under him. Harry Reid was Democratic Senate Majority Leader towards the end of the Bush II years and into the Obama years. He died this week at age 82. Joan McCarter of Kos wrote a remembrance of him.

We coups are a sneaky bunch!

Last Sunday’s Detroit Free Press had an opinion piece by Rex Huppke. He describes himself as a “noted hypocrisy enthusiast.” I didn’t find the piece online on the Free Press website. I did find it on Huppke’s home newspaper, the Chicago Tribune. I can get the link to the article, but can’t read it there because it is for subscribers only. I was able to see it online on the syndication site ArcaMax. In his column Huppke takes the voice of last January’s failed coup. This coup wonders why no one is afraid of him. He’s feeling ignored. One might fear him more if we knew him more. So take a look at the PowerPoint presentation that Mark Meadows gave to the Jan. 6 Commission. So why wasn’t the news and content of that presentation splashed across page one of every newspaper in the country? Very few, if any, did. The response was a yawn. Why isn’t the coup the topic of conversation in every diner in the country? From the article:

Democrats should be talking about me on 27/7 television ads, the media – folks who won’t fair too well once democracy crumbles – should be helping people understand just how serious I am. You notice I used the present tense at the end of that last sentence. We coups are a sneaky bunch! I say “how serious I am” because I ain’t done yet. You all might not be making me famous right now, but that just helps me prep for the next round. I came one malleable vice president’s unexpected moment of courage away from working. If you all keep downplaying me, next time there won’t be anything to stand in my way!

I also found on ArcaMax Huppke’s article pretending to be the COVID omicron variant introducing itself to the world. He wrote it just after omicron was discovered and announced. An excerpt:

I want to take a moment to thank my agent, my entire team at Pandemic Works Inc., the unwitting host who gave me the opportunity to mutate, the internet for allowing anti-science rhetoric to spread like a me, and the whole crew over at Fox News for darn near bending over backward to fan the flames of vaccine hesitancy. This was a team effort and I wouldn’t be standing here with more than 30 mutations in my spike protein if it weren’t for all of you.

Dr. Michael Mina, an epidemiologist, responded to the CDC’s new guidance on shortening the number of days a person must isolate after being exposed to COVID.

CDC’s new guidance to drop isolation of positives to 5 days without a negative test is reckless Some ppl stay infectious 3 days, Some 12 I absolutely don’t want to sit next to someone who turned Pos 5 days ago and hasn’t tested Neg Test Neg to leave isolation early is just smart I am 100% for getting people to drop isolation early. Heck, I formally recommended it to CDC in May 2020 and Published the recommendation in J of Clin Infectious Diseases in April 2020. But it was always with a negative test. What the heck are we doing here? This is the part that hurts the most. The reason they are doing this: "The change is motivated by science demonstrating... SARS-CoV-2 transmission occurs... generally in the 1-2 days prior to onset of symptoms and the 2-3 days after" That was BEFORE OMICRON. Today, it is OBVIOUS the situation has changed. Ppl are testing earlier b/c symptom onset is early - no longer two days after people are infectious. So now people are staying positive even longer after testing positive, because they find out earlier they are positive.

A couple weeks ago there was a minor scandal in Washington with the release of which members of Congress owned how much stock in many big corporations. Walter Shaub, former director of the Office of Government Ethics, quoted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saying one reason for owning stock is because members of Congress aren’t paid enough. They pay two rents, aren’t getting cost of living adjustments, and more. So they make up for it by trading stock. Shaub added:

She’s right. When they considered the 1989 Ethics Reform Act, congressional salaries were at issue. It’s an equity issue. Keeping salaries down is fine if you want to be ruled by the wealthy. But banning stock trades for members and raising salaries is the better answer. A member warned in the 1980s that, if they didn’t raise congressional salaries, the govt would be filled with Donald Trumps. Quite the prophetic warning. You can side with Trump if you want, but I’m with @AOC on congressional salaries.

In response to Pelosi saying it’s a free market and members and staff shouldn’t be prohibited from trading stock Shaub tweeted:

GOOD GRIEF! NO! She's wrong. She is 100% wrong. Nobody put a gun to anyone's head and said "you must be a member of Congress." Want to trade stocks? Do it. Want to be a member of Congress? Do it. But you have NO BUSINESS doing both! This is the opposite of government ethics.

James Connor added: “Fact Check: It's not a free market when Congressional reps are trading on inside information and making laws that impact stocks.” Darrell Lucus of the Kos community wrote about the Christian right’s support of the nasty guy. Yeah, it is something I’ve written about many times. The question Lucus ponders is “how could rolling back abortion and marriage equality be so important” that they are willing to make a Faustian deal with the nasty guy? Lucus wrote of Christian right they are ignoring Jesus’ command to care for “the least of these” (Matthew 25 in the Bible). They want to make America Christianist again. Examples of that mentality come from two books by James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family. In his 1983 book Love Must Be Tough he describes Laura who is in a horribly abusive marriage. Dobson, a psychologist, should know the solution is for Laura to get out now. Instead, Dobson suggests Laura move out, yet try to change her husband’s behavior. Ain’t gonna work. The other book, The Strong Willed Child, included how he took a belt to his dog for refusing to go to bed. We see who Dobson is. And Dobson is one of the powerful voices of the Christian right. So why do they like the nasty guy? Because he promised to restore their power in America. The right’s support was in full display when Brent Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court. All of Kavanaugh’s alleged abuse of Christine Blasey Ford was simply dismissed. And why does the Christian right want power? Demographics are moving against them – since 1984 white people have dropped from 80% of the population to 60%. I add that even many white people have moved away from the conservative Christian church and even from the church in general. I’ll add one more thing. The Christian right has moved away from the teachings of Jesus (see that bit about Matthew 25) to become a supremacist organization, demanding they be at the top of the social hierarchy. Many say the Southern church was always a supremacist church. And in the nasty guy, also a supremacist, they found one of their own. This fun post got lost in my browser tabs way too long. Rebekah Sager of Kos wrote about a video featuring the Detroit Academy of Arts and Sciences choir. This young group sang a version of “One Nation Under A Groove” written by George Clinton back in 1978. Clinton approves of this version. The video was sponsored by the Detroit Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau. It features the choir performing in the Rivera Court of the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Rosa Parks bus at the Henry Ford, at Eastern Market, and several other landmarks. The instrumentalists are also shown at the Charles Wright African American Museum and other venues. The music and visuals, definitely a professional job, brought a smile to my face. I had to watch three times. DAAS is small, just under 700 students. The school is 100% black and 80% of the students live in poverty. In 2001 the choir was a small after school club. In 2020 students enroll in DAAS for a chance to sing in the choir.

No one is coming to save us

In mid November I wrote about Pastor Craig Duke of Newburgh United Methodist Church in Evansville, Indiana who took part in a drag show as part of the HBO series We’re Here. Though I saw a follow up post three weeks ago I didn’t write about it. Another post brought it to mind (and provided a link). Marissa Higgins of Daily Kos reported that alas, after the episode featuring Duke appeared he was “relieved of his pastoral duties.” His wife resigned as youth pastor. He is living off donations to his GoFundMe page. Higgins reported there was discontent in the 400 person congregation when the episode was recorded in July. Though the congregation seems divided the discontent continued and the church leadership relieved him of duties. He wasn’t exactly fired, though will have to move out of the church supplied house by the end of February. Duke isn’t interested in another pastoral role and is considering building an inclusive camp for youth. Higgins wrote:

Folks connected to the show are calling out the cruelty in action. Shangela [one of the hosts], for example, summed up the situation as Duke basically being “bullied” out of his job because “he is a person who believes in love and acceptance and faith and inclusion.”

On to the good news that prompted me to go back to this bad news. Higgins reported that gay pastor (already a good thing) Aaron Musser of St. Luke’s Lutheran Church of Chicago did an Advent children’s sermon in drag. He called it “A Dress Rehearsal for Joy.” Higgins wrote:

In a video clip of the service as shared by the Post Millennial, Musser encourages children to gather around before he begins to read from Joy. “Have any of you ever seen a drag queen?” Musser asks the children. “No? So, is it everybody’s first time ever seeing a drag queen? Well, hello. I am also a boy most of the time when I’m here, but today, I’m a girl.” Thankfully, people are heard clapping and making murmurs of affirmation in the background. ... “Today, we consider what it might be like to have a dress rehearsal for the kind of joy awaiting us on the other side of Advent,” Musser wrote following the event, in which he wore a long white dress and a wig. “It’s been so hard to know what that joy will be, because it’s been so long since some of us have been joyful. It’s been a difficult and tiring couple of years,” Musser wrote in a Facebook post following the sermon. “And I decided instead of telling you, ‘This is how I want you to be joyful,’ as we prepare for this dress rehearsal,” he continued. “I figured I would instead put on a dress as so many who have inspired me have done. I decided to follow their example, showing that liberation from oppressive laws clears a path for joy.” Musser added that allowing yourself to feel joy can be “scary,” and that he wasn’t sure how people would react to him in drag.

Comments from the congregation to that Facebook post were mostly supportive. Alas, there were so many trolls he closed comments. Chrislove of Kos, who hosts a monthly discussion of LGBTQ books, wrote that today’s installment was only to ask for writer’s for the coming year. However, he did include a four minute video from Posten Norway titled “When Harry Met Santa.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa died this weekend at the age of 90. A Martinez of NPR spoke to Rev. Michael Battle, director of the Desmond Tutu Center at General Theological Seminary in New York. Some of what Battle said:

Well, I think one of the key things for him was that you have to understand what it means to be human. And he's famous for this concept called ubuntu, which means I am because you are, and because you are, I am. And he understood that just - not just for those that - people that he loved, but he understood that about his enemies, that his enemies are also a part of his identity. And I think Tutu is going to be well-known for that concept of ubuntu and his spirituality. He's going to be well-known for chairing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, giving the distinction between retributive justice and restorative justice. He's going to be well-known for ecumenism, or inter-religious dialogue, as one of his best friends was His Holiness the Dalai Lama. There's just so many things, I think, that are so profound about the arch. ... Well, you know, apartheid really is a religious worldview. It was a worldview that those who were from the Afrikaner ethnicity understood God was on their side. And so Tutu's brilliance and his genius was to tap into the core of spirituality, that God is not against anyone. And he helped to argue against apartheid spirituality and to get them to see, especially through ubuntu, that they cannot be sufficient human beings without those who - that he - they consider their enemies, as well.

Several news reports have said “the arch” is the common reference to the Archbishop. Back in 2017 I wrote about ubuntu as part of a discussion of the book Sundowner Ubuntu by Anthony Bidulka. It is part of a series that features private investigator Russell Quant of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. In this book clues take him to South Africa. While visiting a township a case of camera lenses is stolen. It is ubuntu that prompts the return of the case. Ubuntu means there is an emphasis on community, that we are a part of each other. Community is more important than a position in the social hierarchy. Stealing from the community cannot work. Cleaning out old tabs... Grorgia Logothetis, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Barton Gellman of The Atlantic, who wrote that American democracy has a serious risk of ending in 2024 and urgent action isn’t happening.

For more than a year now, with tacit and explicit support from their party’s national leaders, state Republican operatives have been building an apparatus of election theft. Elected officials in Arizona, Texas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and other states have studied Donald Trump’s crusade to overturn the 2020 election. They have noted the points of failure and have taken concrete steps to avoid failure next time. Some of them have rewritten statutes to seize partisan control of decisions about which ballots to count and which to discard, which results to certify and which to reject. They are driving out or stripping power from election officials who refused to go along with the plot last November, aiming to replace them with exponents of the Big Lie. They are fine-tuning a legal argument that purports to allow state legislators to override the choice of the voters.

John Stoehr, as part of an introduction to an article on his Editorial Board, quoted Don Moynihan, a professor at Georgetown University:

The partisan Covid gap is worsening. Research using careful causal designs show that media messaging, in the form of Fox News, is leading Republicans to take the pandemic less seriously, resist vaccines, get sick and die.

Stoehr added:

The midterms are going to be decided by swing voters who can’t or won’t figure out for themselves that the GOP is knowingly killing GOP voters for the purpose of prolonging the pandemic in order to blame the damage done on the Democrats.

I add that the weak response by Democrats at the federal level (Biden) and state level (Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan) is making that claim all too plausible. Moynihan’s full thread traced why messaging from Fox News is a big part of the problem.

It's bad that a lot of Americans are dying because they trust the bad public health messaging of Fox and other elites. Even if you don't care about Fox viewers, the nature of the pandemic means we are all in the same boat. Its just that some people are trying to sink it.

Leah McElrath tweeted:

If the GOP—now an overtly white supremacist fascist cult—wrests full control of the United States government, no one is coming to save us. The UK is also at risk. The EU lacks the power, as do states in the Global South. Russia will celebrate. China will exploit the opportunity. We’ve become overly accustomed to analogies involving Nazism and the Third Reich and—implicit in those analogies even if unconsciously so—is a belief that such a force for evil will eventually be defeated within a relatively short time span. That’s simply not the case. None of us can know the future. But I caution against the normalcy bias that has continually served to hasten us along this road as people have denied what is happening before them only to begin to speak out when it might be too late. We are living in an historical flex point.

I’ve been thinking a bit about that short time span. Nazis fell in 12 years. But the dictatorship in the Soviet Union lasted 70 years. And the one party rule in China has lasted 70 years and is tightening its hold (see: Hong Kong). Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei, the hosts of NPR’s history podcast Throughline talked to Nikole Hannah-Jones, the creator of the 1619 Project that researches how slavery has affected American History. The year in the title is when slaves were first brought to this country. I was going to quote a bunch of the dialogue, but it was about one host proposing a framework for looking at the Revolutionary War and Hannah-Jones saying that isn’t quite right. So instead of getting the wrong idea stuck in your head, here’s a bit of what she said:

For a long time, historians didn't even deal with slavery in a revolution that was largely led by slaveholders. But you have - for the last 40 years, have had historians who are really trying to excavate the role of slavery. And they have come up with scholarship that says that slavery played a prominent role.

To get more detail one would have to read the book that resulted from the project. Or wait for further research.

Dehumanization is built in to leadership training

Lauryn Ipsum tweeted images of Victorian era Christmas cards. From our perspective of 120 or more years later the images are quite bizarre. And some are frightening. They feature dead birds (they bring luck?), animals on the attack (birds with torches and worse), children baked into food, food on the attack (perhaps understandable when meat could be tainted), and violence close by. Brandi Buchman of Daily Kos shared some of the work by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a member of the Jan. 6 Committee. Lofgren compiled nearly 2000 pages of social media content in support of the Big Lie and the Capitol attack posted by current lawmakers. Buchman shared some of the tweets and other content from Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, and Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, and Rep. Madison Cawthorne of North Carolina. This is a long post with a lot of images of tweets from each person. It all leads to a question – why aren’t they in jail for participating in an attempt to overthrow the government? These tweets have been around for almost a year. Buchman had previously posted a summary of the major players under investigation by the Jan. 6 Commission. She includes a description of each. I haven’t read the whole long post and didn’t know some of these people. The major players are Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Meadows’ underling Daniel Scavino, Kashyap Patel who was chief of staff for Sec. Defense Christopher Miller, former White House strategist Steve Bannon, Assistant AG for the Civil Division of the Justice Department Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman who wrote the memo pressuring the vice nasty to overturn the election results, White House personnel director (and bag man) John McEntee, former national security advisor Michael Flynn, senior advisor (and architect of inhumane immigration policies) Stephen Miller, Bernard Kerik who was commissioner of the NYPD and Giuliani ally, vice nasty national security advisor Keith Kellogg, Jason Miller who was senior advisor to the nasty guy 2020 campaign, GOP operative Roger Stone, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander, Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio. Buchman also included a long list of minor players. I had reported on a poll that said 71% of young Democrats said they would refuse to date someone from the other party. Republicans are in a frenzy. Aysha Qamar of Kos asks, “That’s a problem because?” Qamar wrote:

Dating is tough. Having to navigate dating someone who has different political views is even tougher. Let’s be real: If we’re allowed to be “choosy” about what it is about our partner’s appearance that attracts us, why not their mind and views? Apparently to some conservatives, it’s okay to be “picky” when it comes to choosing a partner appearance-wise, but god forbid you have an issue with their political views. ... Sorry not sorry, but I am one of those people who avoids dating and befriending individuals who voted for Trump. I merely cannot understand how one could support someone who has contributed to so much hate across the country. I am sure there are some “nice” people who voted for Trump, but they are not compatible with me. ... While some may think befriending someone from another party or with different views allows one to have dialogue, that’s not always the case. Sometimes it can negatively impact one’s mental health or create further conflict. It shouldn’t be your job to defend your views to someone constantly, especially if you care about them. Just like you have the ability to have your own views, you should have the ability to choose who you allow into your circle.

In response to a tweet about the nasty guy deliberately undermining the COVID response, Leah McElrath tweeted:

A significant number of people exist who see mass death events as net positive phenomena. These types of people tend to aggregate in political leadership and consulting positions. Their presence and impact are not limited to right-wing administrations. Dehumanization is built in to leadership training. Dehumanization as part of governance includes weighing mass death against economic needs and use of deadly force by the state against its citizens. Here’s a UK article about early parts of this process...

I’ll discuss the article below.

I strongly encourage people to stop imagining the government is your friend. Governments would be better conceptualized as potentially deadly beasts focused on survival who can sometimes be made to do helpful work. Like such beasts, they must be reminded of who is in control. For the love of humanity, I beg you to stop having “faith” in political leaders. Even the good ones. Because you know who doesn’t? The entities who do not care if you live or die but care only about increasing their wealth and power. They pressure political leaders endlessly.

That UK article is by Conrad Duncan for Indy100, written back in September 2019. The article describes an Eton College entrance exam question, asked of 13-14 year olds. The question imagines in 2040 there are riots in London because of a petrol shortage. Police have died, buildings attacked. The Army has been brought in and killed 25 protesters. You, as the Prime Minister, must write a speech explaining why the Army shooting protesters was necessary and moral. Yep, Eton is asking quite young men to justify police brutality, to get away with murder. Yes, this is for real. Yes, many British are horrified their future politicians are trained this way and trained so young. And it makes them wonder how current politicians were trained. Ten days ago Walter Einenkel of Kos wrote a post that is still one of the most shared on the site. It is a story of Jimmy Carter, long before he became president. Back in 1952 he was a Naval officer working on the nuclear propulsion system for the Sea Wolf submarine. He was one of the few with clearance to enter a nuclear power plant. An accident happened at the Chalk River reactor near Ottawa, Canada. Carter was called to help with the situation. The damaged reactor was highly radioactive. Carter and his team set up a model in the parking lot to practice on, then worked on the real thing. Team members would dash in for the short time the exposure limits would permit. As they removed bolts from the core they did the same on the mock-up. And Carter is still alive at 97. Mark Sumner of Kos discussed something he noticed in watching reality TV shows. That something became clear in watching the Great British Bake Off. As the reality part of a reality show is happening cameras are all around the event site. They capture as much ambiance and detail as they can. Then the editing room has to choose from dozens to hundreds of hours of video to create a 50 minute show. Sumner then compares the Bake Off to an unnamed American show that has something to do with chocolate:

On this American reality show, like almost every American reality shows, the situation was framed, through editing, to make it seem as if the teams of chefs were seething with hidden rivalries, disrespect, and ambition at the cost of all else. The editors on Bake Off simply take a different approach: Everyone’s a hero. ... American reality shows sift the hours of recordings and write a narrative that’s not just centered on heroes and villains, it’s mostly villains. The focus is on conflict, on the potential for treachery, blame, and betrayal. They don’t just assume that’s what audiences want, they don’t think it’s possible to take any other approach. The Great British Bake Off also creates its stories in the editing room. But the theme of those stories is kindness, hope, and cooperation. Overlay that with contestants who are deliberately chosen for diversity in age, gender, background, religion, sexuality, and race.

Promoting a proven hoax

I had a quiet Christmas with Sister and Niece, who came to visit for a few hours. We had a simple meal and talked, and not much beyond that. Haggard Hawks, who enjoys language facts, tweeted a thread about tidbits related to the song the Twelve Days of Christmas. For example:

The ‘four calling birds’ in the Twelve Days of Christmas were originally ‘colly birds’. COLLY is a dialect word meaning sooty or stained with coal dust, and is recorded in the 18th and 19th centuries as a nickname for a blackbird.

Lucy Saunders tweeted a thread of photos of a team of Star Wars Storm Trooper action figures assembling an artificial Christmas tree. Be sure to check out what the dolls in the background are doing. I finished the book Playing the Palace by Paul Rudnick. Back in June, I wrote that my bookstore had a table of LGBTQ books for Pride Month I saw two books of gay romance in which one of the couple was an American and the other was the openly gay crown prince of Britain. I bought one – this one – and later saw reviews saying the other one was better. Not that this one was bad. It was an enjoyable, breezy read that took only a few days to get through. Carter is the American. He works as an “event architect” – setting up and running whatever sort of event a customer might want to hold. He’s at the United Nations building in New York installing all the decorations for Prince Edgar’s speech. Edgar shows up early to practice that speech and Carter, with some acting in his background, gives Edgar some tips on how not to be so bland and boring. It proceeds as romance novels do, including the expected mishaps and ending. What makes one romance novel different from another is the setting and how that affects the characters. So there is discussion of what it is like to be a royal in England and how said royal is affected. It seemed real enough to me and I assume Rudnick did research with actual royal watchers to get details right. But I think he got one important detail wrong. Carter is staying at Buckingham Palace as Edgar introduces him to what his job entails and to get England used to them as a couple. Of course, many of those events go wrong (as in let’s see how many roadblocks the author can throw up). The night before one of these events, which turns into a climactic scene, Carter sneaks out of the palace. My reaction was nope, can’t happen. I’m sure the palace, with both the queen and crown prince in residence, has very tight security. Someone near the building exits or on the grounds (there is a reason why tourists can see the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace) would have seen him and either detained him or became his security detail (and by this time Carter is on a first-name basis with the prince’s personal team). Even if that night’s incident is allowed to happen that security detail would have been a witness, gotten more info on the perpetrators, and given a report to the prince and queen in the morning. Beyond that it was a cute story. And the idea that the crown prince, and eventually king, of Britain could be gay and be a trailblazer for LGBTQ and human rights is refreshing. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos discussed something that Drewtoothpaste uncovered – one way to track this pandemic is to chart the number of reviews on Amazon for Yankee Candles in which the reviewer says the candles have no scent. Yankee Candles are known to be highly scented, though there is debate on whether those scents are pleasing. December, with omicron rising, brought a fresh batch of bad reviews. Hunter of Kos, prompted by a report on CNN discussed that the Republican Party is now a fully fascist movement. That CNN report says that Republican candidates have near-unversally adopted the Big Lie. Hunter wrote that CNN is good at identifying the claims are false and at noting if a candidate admits the nasty guy lost the race he will lose his primary. But Hunter wrote that CNN missed the larger context, which Hunter supplied. The second paragraph of my quote is important.

The only reason to demand fealty to an abject hoax even after it has been proven, proven for all the world to see, that the hoax has resulted in violence and an attempted coup is because you believe the same violence and sedition may prove useful in the future. It would have cost the party not a damn thing to reject Trump's criminal farce after violent insurrection proved the party could not serve both his whims and their country, but they did not. Across the country, they repeat it. They endorse it. They look to use it in their own campaigns. ... That is the context. A fascist coup. It is not a coup "in slow motion"—it is being carried out with the same speed that past versions were. A first attempt, an evaluation of what didn't work, a purge of those unwilling to go along, new laws passed wherever the coup supporters have enough power to do it, in order to dismantle the specific roadblocks that held things up, an absolutely rabid demonization campaign against whichever public officials foiled the attempt, and an unrelenting campaign to drill the same pro-coup hoaxes even deeper into the public brain. This is how it's done. These candidates are promoting a proven hoax, even after it led to violence, even after members of their party specifically used it to incite violence. There is no innocuous explanation. They are using a hoax intended to discredit democracy and replace it with something else. This is propagandism. It is specifically crafted to deceive. Call these candidates what they are: anti-American. Enemies of our Constitution. Cowards. Corrupt. There is no excuse for promoting, defending, or even staying silent on a hoax of this magnitude. The only reason to do it is a belief that your own political career is of more value than the peaceful transfers of power that America once held sacrosanct.

Darrell Lucas of the Kos community, quoted and discussed a tweet from Liz Harrington, a nasty guy spokesperson, who quoted the start of a nasty guy rant:

All the Democrats want to do is put people in jail. They are vicious, violent, and Radical Left thugs. They are destroying people’s lives, which is the only thing they are good at.

I note this is pure projection: One person accusing his opponents of doing what he feels constrained by society from doing. Lucas quoted former FBI Counterintelligence Chief Frank Figliuzzi who sees a bomb about to go off – a person who believes he is cornered by the House January 6 Commission and various other legal cases and is about to become violent. Melissa Block of NPR explored the Big Lie. The webpage for this radio segment is a news story rather than a transcript of the audio. Rich Hasen of the Fair Elections and Free Speech Center said he is scared about American democracy because of the metastasizing of the Big Lie. He feels he is sounding an alarm and no one is listening. Timothy Snyder of Yale said the nasty guy is exploiting an old tactic of inverting the lie. Snyder said:

Part of the character of the “big lie” is that it turns the powerful person into the victim. And then that allows the powerful person to actually exact revenge, like it's a promise for the future.

The original big lie is in Hitler’s Mein Kampf. He blamed Jews for all of Germany’s woes. Snyder said:

The lie is so big that it reorders the world. And so part of telling the big lie is that you immediately say it's the other side that tells the big lie. Sadly, but it's just a matter of record, all of that is in Mein Kampf.

The nasty guy’s big lie has now been firmly anchored in public opinion – 36% of Americans and 78% of Republicans do not believe that Biden legitimately won the election. That has driven new voter suppression and election control laws in red states. Snyder said the likely scenario for 2024 is the candidate who lost by every measure still becomes president. Yet, the Democratic controlled Congress hasn’t passed voting rights laws. Carol Anderson, professor of African-American Studies at Emory University said it is about devaluing black people. She said:

This is about, “My nation is about the real Americans. And all of those folks aren't real Americans.” It is so vile. It is so racist. And it works. That's the thing, it works.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the Jan. 6 Commission compared the Big Lie to a cancer eating the Republican Party. He said:

More importantly in my mind, what is the rot in the system that led up to Jan. 6? And where have we come since? And how do we stop anything like this from happening again? 'Cause even though Jan. 6 technically failed, there's a lot of areas where you can learn from, if your goal is to overthrow a legitimate election and potentially do it successfully next time.

A failed coup is practice for a successful one. Leah McElrath quoted a tweet from Bree Newsome Bass:

The most misunderstood thing about those of us who are always considered “alarmist” is that we don’t want to be right. We want to warn people in the hopes a different direction is taken.

McElrath added:

Many of us literally pray to be wrong. We also often self-censor and are selective about what we discuss publicly. We speak out NOT to fear monger but rather, as @BreeNewsome notes, to warn—in the hope of encouraging action to shift trajectory from the worst of what we foresee.

Joan McCarter of Kos reported on the need to expand the Supreme Court and began by saying:

If there is anyone in Washington, D.C. as stubborn, arrogant, and thick-headed as Sen. Joe Manchin this week, it’s Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer. The 83-year-old remains doggedly committed to the fantasy that if he says the judicial confirmation process should not be politicized, it won’t be. As if the last decade of Sen. Mitch McConnell flexing his power hadn’t happened.

Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Kurt Bardella of USA Today:

From Meadows to Manchin, absolutely nobody is afraid of this White House or of Democrats in general. Republicans, on the other hand, have taken the politics of fear and turned them into a Jedi-level art form. Fear is their weapon of choice, and they love nothing more than using it to bludgeon Democrats over and over and over again.

Michael Harriot tweeted:

After the ‘08 Recession, we gave trillions to the banking & auto industries. When COVID hit, we gave families’ stimmys & forgivable loans to businesses. Apparently, just handing out money can fix any financial issue & stimulate ANY economy. This tweet is about reparations.

In another roundup Dworkin quoted Dan Froomkin of Press Watch who commented on an article Nina Bernstein wrote for the New York Times in 1999. Bernstein’s article was about then-mayor Rudy Giuliani’s intention of locking the homeless out of shelters for minor violations and the effect that had on a family of eight.

Simply by describing the facts, Bernstein was making Giuliani’s plan look cruel. And that created problems for her in the newsroom. “Getting it in the paper involved overcoming lots of editor pushback,” Bernstein recalled. She and I spoke on the phone and exchanged emails. It was a problem she ran into with some frequency: “To write factually, up close, with what I like to call intelligent compassion about these people’s lives basically invited charges of partisanship.”

Alyza Michael Enriquez tells the story of their transition. They declared being transgender but didn’t feel right in a female body or a male body. It took a while to find the words and a while more to properly explain it to a doctor. They wanted something in between to express being non-binary. Instead of taking full doses of testosterone to fully transition they took microdoses.

They see a future in which their jobs have vanished

Kos of Daily Kos has been writing Anti-Vaxx Chronicles – posts about a person who promotes not getting the vaccine and then dies of COVID. This one is different. It is about a doctor and his encounters with an anti-vaxx family. A summary (which is a spoiler alert): Father is in the hospital and quite ill. Mother and daughters want to visit but refuse to wear masks, so are denied entry. Mother demands her husband be treated with all those miracle things that don’t work. The doctor refuses. Father dies. Mother accuses the doctor of murder and assaults him. The doctor won’t press charges, knowing that will make him an anti-vaxx target. But this was the final incident to prompt him to switch jobs to something adjacent to medicine where he never has to see another patient. Rebekah Sager of Kos reported that while at the far right Turning Point USA Conference Jesse Watters of Fox News called for stochastic terrorism – a kill shot with an ambush – against Dr. Anthony Fauci, our top infectious disease doctor. Fauci, who has 24/7 security, went on CNN to call for Watters to be fired. Fox hasn’t responded. I listened to another Gaslit Nation bonus episode (available to subscribers). I’ve been listening because I asked a question and I want to hear the answer. More of that in a bit. The first question was about billionaires. Host Sarah Kendzior said many billionaires are not acting to help alleviate climate change. Instead, they appear to be preparing to ride out the storm. They’re doing such things as hoarding resources and buying land. But why are they doing that? One billionaire bought a big chunk of land in Minnesota, perhaps to build a private bunker. But a fire swept through that land this summer. No place on earth will be safe. Besides, what kind of life would a billionaire, his family, and entourage have if confined to a bunker because the planet’s resources are stretched thin and the restless population is fighting over limited resources? That billionaire would be in a much more comfortable position if he spent a chunk of his wealth on efforts to reduce a climate catastrophe. So, why are they doing what they’re doing? This reminds be of something I wrote about in mid July. Many religious end-time stories say the world will go through hell, then after that a select number will enter heaven. Put another way, triggering a cataclysmic climate will get rid of the lower sections of the social hierarchy while preserving those at the top, or at least make the smaller number of them terrified and thus easier to control. My question wasn’t answered in the way I had hoped. Kendzior has said that many members of Congress, and certainly the leadership, know about Jeffrey Epstein and his sex trafficking of minors. Many of Epstein’s customers were members of Congress. Because of that Epstein had, and now the transnational crime syndicate behind him (see the current trial of Ghislaine Maxwell) has, leverage over those members. My question was what would happen if a member went public with which members were under the influence of this syndicate. The answer was a discussion of how the various news sources of Maxwell’s trial are talking about everything but that. So I reframed the question and asked again. Which means I’ll listen to more bonus episodes. Leah McElrath tweeted a quote from WikiVictorian, which included the photo:

Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, seated on cane chair, both smiling, on board the Imperial Yacht Standart, at Reval, Russia (now Tallinn, Estonia). Photographed in 1908. Royal Collection.

McElrath added:

A decade later, they were both executed by gunfire, and their bodies were disfigured, dismembered, and burnt. Income inequality at these levels does not historically end well. Just saying. Apparently this observation was too real, even for my battle-hardened, generously hearted followers. But it’s the truth. I don’t understand how those with the greatest wealth and power fail to understand that increasing overall well-being is in their best interests too.

They’re willing to give up some of their own well-being to maintain the gulf between themselves and those towards the bottom of the social hierarchy. Marissa Higgins of Kos reported that Jeff Green, CEO of The Trade Desk and in the billionaire league, sent a letter to the Mormon Church leadership saying he and his family were resigning their membership. The reason was, “I believe the Mormon church has hindered global progress in women’s rights, civil rights and racial equality, and LGBTQ+ rights.” Green had promised to donate 90% of his wealth (keeping hundreds of millions) at or before he died. As a step toward that he donated $600,000 to Equality Utah, which supports LGBTQ+ causes. Half of this money will go towards scholarships for LGBTQ+ students, especially those who need to leave the Mormon associated Brigham Young University, which has a ban on same-sex behavior. Joan McCarter of Kos reported more on what the United Mine Workers of West Virginia are saying about their senator, Joe Manchin, and his killing of the Build Back Better bill. McCarter wrote:

The United Mine Workers are telling Manchin it’s time he work for them and support this bill. “We urge Senator Manchin to revisit his opposition to this legislation and work with his colleagues to pass something that will help keep coal miners working, and have a meaningful impact on our members, their families and their communities,” Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America, said in a statement Monday. They see a future in which their jobs have vanished, and want help now. For example, Build Back Better includes tax incentives—which the industry is fighting—to encourage manufacturers to build new facilities at the coal site and hire unemployed miners. ... The bill “provides the potential for good jobs that our members who have been dislocated can get,” Smith said, adding that about 45,000 coal mining jobs have been lost in the past decade. “We’re likely to lose coal jobs whether or not this bill passes,” Smith told Sargent. “If that’s the case, let’s figure out a way to provide as many jobs as possible for those who are going to lose.” He said that the tax incentives in Build Back Better provide a “pathway to do that.” In addition to the job replacement possibilities the bill offers for coal miners, there’s an extension of a fee coal companies have to pay to fund benefits for miners with black lung. ... It’s not just Build Back Better that the union is trying to get Manchin to support, by the way. “I also want to reiterate our support for the passage of voting rights legislation as soon as possible, and strongly encourage Senator Manchin and every other Senator to be prepared to do whatever it takes to accomplish that,” Roberts said in the statement. “Anti-democracy legislators and their allies are working every day to roll back the right to vote in America. Failure by the Senate to stand up to that is unacceptable and a dereliction of their duty to the Constitution.

Several news outlets are reporting Pfizer’s paxlovid has been approved for treating COVID. It has the advantage of being in pill form, rather than IV, so can be taken at home. That prompted Tyler Albertario, an LGBTQ+ historian, to tweet:

Paxlovid contains protease inhibitors, a class of drugs that wouldn't exist without the tireless efforts of ACT UP in the 1980s and 90s. Their thankless activism that was routinely mocked in the media and pop culture is now saving humanity.

ACT UP was an organization that, during the AIDS epidemic, staged noisy and in-your-face demonstrations trying to get government and Big Pharma to pay attention to the needs of gay people. Dr. Ali Nouri explains how paxlovid works. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, reminded us that today is Festivus. As far as I can tell this unofficial holiday had its origins in a scene in the TV show Seinfeld. A part of the way the day is commemorated is an Airing of Grievances. I’ll summarize parts of Bill’s list (which is close enough I don’t have to create my own): * President Joe Biden is being treated more negatively by the press than his horrible predecessor. * Joe Manchin and his joy in watching people suffer. * We’re not into COVID so it should stop being so into us. * The anti-vaxxers. * The left is always asked to compromise with the right but the right is never asked to compromise with the left. Well, OK, one of my own: * The slowness of the Democratic response to the Capitol attack, the Big Lie, and voter suppression bills. Adam Sharp tweeted a long list of international ways of saying “I don’t care.” Warning, many in his list are not safe for tender ears. I’ll stick to the safe ones. * It’s sausage to me (German) * Narrate that to a tortoise (Filipino) * Even the dog is uninterested (Hungarian) * I don’t give a frostbitten onion (Romanian) * It bothers me like a cardboard duck (Danish) * I don’t give a cabbage (Italy)

He’s gotten rich off of obstructing

I was out this afternoon to duplicate my Christmas letter and pick up my Christmas photo cards. Both are different than previous years. For thirty years I’ve been making cards out of my best photo taken in the year. Not this year. I didn’t take many photos and none are appropriate for a card. So my card this year is of a photo from two years ago. As for the letter it is definitely not a full page. Afterward I treated myself to a visit to a good bookstore. There is still a great deal of reaction to Sen. Joe Manchin’s announcement he would vote no for all the great social and climate programs in the Build Back Better bill. Kim Kelly, who writes about American labor, tweeted an announcement from the United Mine Workers urging Manchin to reconsider his stance. Kelly added:

Manchin has lost the coal miners with this latest betrayal. As the UMWA notes here, BBB would’ve extended the fees coal companies now pay to fund benefits for black lung victims. Without it, that necessary burden shifts to the taxpayers. Once a coal boss, always a coal boss. This might not seem like the most strident statement, but given Manchin’s close relationship with the union, it’s a big step.

Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, tweeted:

So let me get this straight: 68 percent of West Virginia voters support BBB, but Joe Manchin decided to torpedo it?

Reich then included poll results to support his statement. Contrast Reich’s poll and the statement by the United Mine Workers with a conversation between NPR host Scott Detrow with Ken Ward who is a reporter for ProPublica and the founder of the Mountain State Spotlight newsroom in Charleston, WV. Ward was asked if he was surprised by Manchin’s declaration of no.

No, not really. I don't think a lot of people who've really followed Senator Manchin closely were. And the politics here, really, aren't that complicated for him. West Virginia is a deep red state, a Republican machine that's turned a reliably Democratic state into a GOP column. It's kind of lying in wait for Senator Manchin. And they're looking for anything. They're on the alert for anything that they can point to to frame him as being in league with the Democrats, you know? They call this a socialist spending spree and reckless. So it's really not that surprising that Senator Manchin made this decision.

It is amusing and annoying that Republicans are accusing a Democrat of being in league with Democrats. But that isn’t the only thing going on. Likely weighing the decision more is who Manchin’s donors are, where Manchin’s money comes from, and how much attention Manchin’s ego needs. To that last point, Georgia Logothetis, in a pundit roundup for Daily Kos, quoted Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post:

I doubt Manchin will switch parties and become a Republican, since he would instantly revert to being a bit player with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) running the show as majority leader. Manchin could conceivably become an independent and continue to caucus with the Democrats, but that wouldn’t materially change the situation.

Jeff Brady of NPR discussed the plans in the BBB bill for slowing down climate change, now likely dead because of Manchin. Laura Clawson of Kos reported:

Even as he postures about the cost of the bill in public—an issue that didn’t seem to bother him when voting for a one-year, $768 billion defense spending bill—Manchin “has told several of his fellow Democrats that he thought parents would waste monthly child tax credit payments on drugs instead of providing for their children, according to two sources familiar with the senator’s comments,” Tara Golshan and Arthur Delaney report.

Yeah, saying people will misuse the money given to them by the government so we should not give them any is a very supremacist statement. And, yeah, we knew that about Manchin a long time ago. In response to a story that Manchin declared his no vote because he felt slighted by Biden, Leah McElrath tweeted:

That’s what he says, but it’s just as likely he was looking for an excuse. I see no reason to extend him even enough good faith to believe he was having a tantrum. He exists to obstruct. He’s paid to obstruct. He’s gotten rich off of obstructing. To understand people like Manchin, listen to what they say they imagine other people will do. Manchin constantly asserts that others will cheat the system and act in bad faith. That’s projection. Occam’s Razor is that he’s just a deceitful mofo.

Joan McCarter of Kos summed up a post quite well in the title: “Democrats don’t have to play nice with Manchin anymore.” McCarter listed several examples of Democrats having a few things to say about him. She added:

That’s the frustration of being blindsided by Manchin showing. Manchin has consistently used media appearances to move the goalposts on Build Back Better, in his long game of delaying the bill until he could whittle it away to nothing.

Robinson of WaPo tweeted:

Be mad at Manchin, who didn't bargain "in good faith" as he claimed. Acknowledge that progressives were right about what would happen if infrastructure passed first. But save hottest ire for 50 GOP senators who'd rather deny Biden a win than help families and save the planet.

Robinson has a point. But Manchin could have been the last vote needed for passage. We knew the GOP senators would vote no. We could deal with that. It’s Manchin stringing us along for a year that is annoying. As for that bit about the infrastructure bill, for a long time the infrastructure bill and BBB bill were linked – we won’t pass the first until the second is also passed. When the link was severed a couple months ago quite a few people recognized what Manchin was now free to do. I was one of them and wrote to Biden and Congressional leadership to tell them to keep that link. Xay tweeted a photo of artist Jonathan Harris standing beside his painting “Critical Race Theory” which captures quite well what Republicans are doing.

Well, so much for those “Omicold” claims

Wesley Long, a doctor of microbiology at Houston Methodist Hospital, tweeted with a graph:

Sunday Update: The Omicron variant is now in Houston in full force, accounting for 82% of new symptomatic Houston Methodist #COVID-19 cases as of earlier this week. #Omicron became the cause of the supermajority of new Houston Methodist cases in less than three weeks. Compare the rise of #Omicron in Houston to that of #Delta over the summer, which took about 3 months to surpass 80% after initial detection. #Omicron in our data has a doubling time of 2.2 days.

Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Daily Kos, quoted Forbes:

Well, so much for those “Omicold” claims about the Omicron variant. The Omicron variant of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) is certainly not the same as the common cold. While the jury’s still out on how virulent the Omicron variant may be, this new variant is proving that it can hospitalize and kill people, which is not what the common cold does. Today, the U.K. Health Security Agency reported that there have already been seven deaths and 85 hospitalizations related to the Omicron variant in the U.K. as of December 16.

Dr. Tom Friedman, former director of the CDC, tweeted a thread. Here’s part of it:

Think of it this way. Omicron is 2-3x more infectious than Delta. 80% of people in the US have NOT received a booster dose—more than 250 million people. There are likely to be tens of millions of Omicron infections in the coming months in the US. Even if Omicron is less severe, unless it’s LOTS less severe, it could double the current already-high US death rate to 2,000/day or more by mid-February. There’s a major risk that hospitals will be overwhelmed in the next two months. Bottom line: Omicron is still Covid, it’s still capable of doing damage to your body. And it’s still capable of overwhelming our health systems. It’s shaping up to be a hard winter. Get vaccinated and boosted ASAP.

Ryam Struyk of CNN tweeted:

Latest CDC data by vaccine status: Unvaccinated: 451 cases per 100k Vaccinated: 134 cases per 100k Boosted: 48 cases per 100k Unvaccinated: 6.1 deaths per 100k Vaccinated: 0.5 deaths per 100k Boosted: 0.1 deaths per 100k

Blondish replied:

And the anti-vaxxers see 6 deaths out of 100,000 and shrug thinking their odds are really good so why bother getting vaccinated. This messaging won’t help us.

That messaging may not help us, though I add: 6 deaths per 100K in Michigan means 600 deaths (the state population is just over 10 million). And 45,100 cases in Michigan means overwhelmed hospitals so good luck getting good treatment for your heart attack. Dartagnan of the Kos community wrote that omicron is coming for Red America. The states with Republican leadership and low vaccine rates can’t to react to the speed at which omicron spreads. It is already too late. There is five weeks from the first vaccine dose to the first level of protection and another six months until the booster. Since omicron is still COVID and many have come down with long COVID ... McElrath tweeted:

I fear we are witnessing the largest mass disabling event in history. We are not prepared for this many people becoming chronically ill. Some will even become disabled for life. The potential impact is almost unfathomable.

El Arroyo Restaurant in Austin, Texas put on their marquee:

When U realize 2022 is pronounced 2020 too.

That prompted me to look up the name and I found their marquee and its changing one-liners is quite the thing in the area. Here’s a link to a collection of 50 of them. One of them is:

You smell great! What hand sanitizer are you wearing?

Any pattern to them other than as roadblocks

My performance group played our fourth and last Christmas concert this afternoon. It went well! We played at a big assisted living residence, so we were required to show our vaccine status when we arrived. For the size of the complex the attendance seemed small. Our equipment is now packed away until rehearsals resume the first week of January. Sen. Joe Manchin has been in the news – which seems to be his constant goal. On Friday Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos reported that a few Democratic senators, notably not ones on the left, have started discussing the filibuster. They haven’t agreed to end it, though they are talking about ways to make it harder. One idea is to force the filibustering party to actually continually hold the Senate floor. Another is to change needing 60 votes to end a filibuster to needing 41 votes to keep it going. Manchin is somewhat in favor of the reforms (his vote is critical, as it is for all things Democrats want to do). He seems to be convinced that the Senate is broken. He saw that in the voting rights bill and in trying to establish the commission to investigate the Capitol attack. So maybe we will get the voting rights bill passed. Also on Friday Laura Clawson of Kos reported Manchin put up more objections to the Build Back Better bill. Biden continued to be patient in negotiating with Manchin. Fellow Democrats said again how urgent the many programs in the bill are. And today, Hunter of Kos reported Manchin went on Fox News (!) to say, “I've tried everything humanly possible. I can't get there. This is a no.” Which effectively kills the BBB bill. The White House released a statement saying Manchin is a liar without actually using that word. Manchin had repeatedly expressed his commitment to Biden over the last few months and on Tuesday had been actively negotiating with the prez. The WH statement said in part:

If his comments on FOX and written statement indicate an end to that effort, they represent a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, a breach of his commitments to the President and the Senator's colleagues in the House and Senate.

Hunter added:

The White House, in other words, believes that Joe Manchin lied to both Biden and his colleagues about his intentions. That's not an outrageous supposition: Manchin has continually raised new objections to the framework, one after another, only to balk at something else each time his new demands are met. Manchin, who has heavy financial interests in West Virginia coal mining, the plan to directly attack climate change by modernizing American infrastructure to move away from oil, gas, and coal, has raised objections to everything from lowering the cost of insulin to the Child Tax Credit, but critics have suspected Manchin of acting in bad faith—or even corruptly—so as to defeat a climate change plan that likely threatens the Manchin family's own coal sales. The continual dishonesty with which Manchin has attacked the BBB framework, citing concerns as diverse as inflation and deficits while misrepresenting the bill's effect on both, supports this this theory. But Manchin has also repeatedly flipped back and forth on his stances seemingly spuriously, leading others to wonder whether many of those flips come from a need for showboating that has frequently lapped Manchin's understanding of the facts. ... Manchin's true intentions can probably best be gleaned from his actions. His unending series of new objections to the climate change-tackling package were introduced serially, each new dealbreaker coming immediately after negotiations succeeded in overcoming his objections. This delayed the bill interminably—but at no point did Manchin and negotiators seem any closer to finding the last of his objections, or any pattern to them other than as roadblocks that threatened to poison the legislation for others. ... It seems reasonable to suspect that Manchin's goals have always been the same: Delay the anti-climate-change bill as long as possible, using whatever arguments are required, only "killing" the bill outright after stringing his colleagues along until the last possible moment.

News Corpse of the Kos community summarized more of the WH rebuttal. This includes several points refuting comments Manchin has been saying over the last few months. This post also includes a video of Manchin’s appearance on Fox News and notes that Manchin’s words leave a little bit of wiggle room. So maybe some aspects of the BBB bill can be combined to form another bill. We switch from a Democrat behaving badly to a Republican doing something good (though don’t ever forget she is a Republican and supports all but one of the party’s goals). Eleveld reported that Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming is quite unlikely to be reelected in 2022. The reason is she is the vice chair investigating the Capitol attack and the nasty guy. So she has only a year remaining in office and she looks to make the most of it to bring about some justice. So Cheney is busy laying out the case the nasty guy and his minions committed the crime of obstructing Congress. She has also been pretty good at manipulating the press. She contrasted the on-air coverage of the attack by Fox News while behind the scenes their hosts were trying to get the nasty guy to intervene in the attack. But she isn’t out to score political points, instead justice remains her goal. She is in a race against time to gather enough evidence to force the Justice Department to act. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post:

The good news is that more detailed data shows not many Americans favor political violence as some previous surveys suggested. When the pollsters screened out “inattentive respondents” and provided definitions of various undemocratic behavior, they found “support is 9% for threats, 8% for harassment, 6% for non-violent felonies, 4% for violent felonies, 4% for violence if the other party wins the 2024 election, 4% for violence on January 6, and 5% for violence to restore Trump to the presidency.” The bad news is that still represents millions of people.

Clawson discussed the contrast between states and schools that have passed policies to ban Critical Race Theory (the catchall term for discuss anything about race) and actual incidents of racism. An NBC News report showed the number of schools with racial hate crimes went from 543 in 2016 to 1276 in 2018. Racism in schools is all over the place. Clawson then listed several schools, not all in the South, where students protested the racism. Many note the schools’ administrations support white students differently that students of color. Clawson noted:

All it takes is a small advance in anti-racism for an explosive backlash of white fury that swamps the progress.

Mark Sumner of Kos reported that conspiracy theories such as saying the government is trafficking young girls are not only wrong, but harmful. The theories prompt people to take actions into their own hands causing harm to innocent people. Those believing the theories overload police departments with false reports delaying action on actual crimes. A claim that a specific child has been abducted even though the child is safely at home threatens the child when no one believes she is really safe. Rates of sexual violence against children has actually fallen by more than half since the 1990s, yet to those who believe the theories it doesn’t feel that way.

It’s easy to understand why plotting against a government that you sincerely believe is engaged in this kind of behavior would seem not just acceptable, but admirable. That’s why claims of child sex trafficking are the perfect gateway drug, luring people in to QAnon and other conspiracies. People get hooked by their hearts. Snagged on their sympathies.

Even Pizzagate is making a comeback through young people posting on social media. They just want to help. Amy Coney Barrett of the Supreme Court has been justifying banning abortion by saying carrying a baby to term and giving it up for adoption is no big deal, just a temporary burden. Ashton Lattimore of Kos Prism replied that Barrett is wrong. She listed all the ways pregnancy can permanently change a person’s body and endanger their life. In addition, there are significant costs to pregnancy that are a burden to a person in poverty. So, even though the Court is likely to ignore the question, it is good that Justice Sonya Sotomayor asked, “When does the life of a woman and putting her at risk enter the calculus?” Michael Harriot tweeted a thread about copaganda – the propaganda of shows on television that portray cops in a favorable light. Most people don’t have contact with the police and when they do it is a traffic stop. So our perceptions are based on what we see in the media – on TV news and TV programs. Harriot listed studies that show TV programs make us more fearful of crime and more confident in police. This copaganda began in 1949 when a washed up radio actor wanted to get rid of the image of the bumbling Keystone Cops by portraying the rank and file officers. The LAPD signed on with the condition the officers were portrayed as heroes. They wanted to dispel the image of police as racist and violent. Dragnet premiered on TV in 1951 – just before 8 LAPD officers were indicted for corruption and brutality. The show became the template for every cop show since then. And that shapes how we see police. That perception leads to distortions. People believe crime is rising when it is actually falling. People also believe every crime is solved, that police are the only ones that can solve them, and that a policeman’s job is dangerous (though it really isn’t as dangerous as being a garbageman). People see that two thirds of the victims on crime shows are white but the thugs are always black. Cops shoot more black people more than anyone shoots at cops. And more white people shoot cops than black people do. Cop shows almost always have a “technical consultant” – a law enforcement officer advising the show. In 1974 the US government advised police departments to aggressively push this copaganda.

Why does this matter? Because it's hard to understand why police stop more Black drivers, search more Black drivers & patrol black neighborhoods more even though it is an UNEQUIVOCAL FACT that white people use more drugs and are more likely to have contraband... Unless you know about copaganda. You can't understand why that lady locked her door, grabbed her purse and called the cops to report a "suspicious looking" person in her neighborhood unless you watch copaganda and know that "suspicious" is a code word for "Black" And it's hard to explain how so many people can see videos, statistics, and evidence of police brutality and corruption but still resist reforming the police & the criminal justice system. Unless, of course, you know about the 60-year-old marketing campaign called copaganda.

They have a wide variety of ways to make life hell

I dowloaded the Michigan COVID data, accurate as of yesterday. The big peak in the number of new cases per day at the end of November (after Thanksgiving) is now set at 9246. The peaks in the weeks after then are 7164 and 7073. It’s too early to tell if this is a good downward trend. The rise in cases per day lasted five months, from the beginning of July to the end of November. Previous rises had been five weeks from low point to crest. Deaths per day are not yet accurate for the week just concluded – not enough data reported yet. For the week before deaths per day ranged from 87 to 127. Hunter of Daily Kos reported on Monday that the count of deaths in the US due to COVID has passed 800,000 (though sources differ on which day we passed that number). The number is certain to be an undercount. A few more things Hunter had to say:

That might go a long way towards explaining why hospital workers are quitting in droves. Those are wartime numbers, and will drive the same traumas that medical workers face in any other war. ... With each new pandemic surge, the virus is spreading most aggressively in Republican counties, the hospitals are still overwhelmed in Republican counties, and Americans are dying mostly in Republican counties. ... I don't know what I'm supposed to say here. Yes, it's another six-figure pandemic milestone, but it's one that will be inconsequential in both directions six months from now. The United States only reached the half-million mark through astonishing, blazing incompetence on a scale seldom witnessed—800,000 should have been a fantastical number. A twentieth of that was supposed to be a fantastical number. In another six months, we're more likely to hit 1 million deaths than not, and nobody will remember the 800,000 mark because it was just so bloody obvious at the time that higher numbers would be coming. Republican elected officials, conservative disinformation centers, and the Murdoch family have unified in attempts to discredit pandemic measures as they discredited our democracy; another quarter million deaths will make no impact on them.

Mark Sumner of Kos discussed what we know about the omicron variant of COVID. Whether omicron is milder than delta is not clear. Some studies say it is less severe than delta, but still many times worse than the flu. Other studies say there is little difference in severity between omicron and delta. Scientists need more time to tell. But don’t believe people who say it is milder and no big deal. What is known is how fast omicron spreads. The number of cases of delta doubled every two weeks. Omicron cases are doubling every two days. Even if omicron is milder, the speed at which it spreads means more will be infected. And more people will die. Stella Safo, a doctor in NYC, tweeted:

Are you still wearing cloth masks? Yes? Ok. Please take some time this weekend and buy yourself some surgical masks. And order some KN95s. But do not keep wearing your cloth masks w this latest surge. Omicron is unforgiving. Please up your mask game asap

bin Adamah tweeted:

A friend asked how "Omicron" is pronounced since I know some Greek. Greeks have three variant pronunciations for it: 1. Mask 2. Vax 3. Distance

I listened to another Gaslit Nation bonus episode (available to subscribers), in hopes of hearing the question I asked. I may have to ask again. The first question was: What is it like to live in an authoritarian state? Host Sarah Kendzior answered: Life will go on for most people as it does now. Many people won’t see a difference (though because Republicans are good at botching the economy and slashing government programs, maybe they will). The exceptions are those who discover the state is displeased with them. That displeasure might be because you are part of the minority groups the state has decided are its natural enemies (black people, LGBTQ, Muslims, women, and so forth), or you stood up to the state. But could be because you have something, like a business, that a member of the ruling party wants for themselves or their children. When the state is displeased with a person they have a wide variety of ways to make life hell, of destroying you without killing you (though they may do that too). The other aspect of such life is the elites are free to commit crimes and face no consequences. An example is a couple of children hit by a car. The driver, a party member, was protected from prosecution. The justice system works for them, not us. The podcast also discussed the urgency of passing voting rights laws and the complete lack of leadership from Democrats in making it happen. The final topic was Congressional corruption. People pull out the both sides do it argument as a reason to disengage from democracy. Yes, both sides do it. However, the squad has a lot of money dangled in front of them and they aren’t taking it. So support and vote for those candidates or do other acts of resistance. Just don’t give up. In a tweet Kendzior linked to a study about corruption in Congress. The study was done by Business Insider. Darren Samuelsohn tweeted about it and provided a link to the article. The study looked at the public financial records of each member of Congress. Each was rated by their potential conflicts of interest and commitment to transparency. The ratings were “Solid,” “Borderline,” and “Danger.” Danger means the member has multiple issues that could expose them to ethical problems. They have violated the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2012 because they failed to properly disclose financial trades. Many of their senior staff have also violated the STOCK act. Included in that list is Dem Sen. Dianne Feinstein. By party there are 214 Dems, 192 GOP, and one independent that are solid, 50 Dems, 63 GOP, and one independent that are borderline, and 5 Dems, and 8 GOP are danger. The website allows displaying members by state with their ratings. The Michigan delegation has no one with a danger rating. Two – Sen. Debbie Stabenow and freshman Rep. Peter Meijer (his family owns a big box chain in Michigan) – are borderline. In the tweets Samuelsohn noted that at least 75 lawmakers own stock in one of the COVID vaccine makers. 15 members of the House & Senate Armed Services committees own stock in the top defense and military contractors. 22 Democrats – all but one scoring high by the League of Conservation Voters – who, in the last year, reported holding or trading in oil, coal, and natural gas companies. 31 members hold stock in Facebook. Samuelsohn included a graphic showing the most popular stocks owned by members of Congress. He also linked to a list of the 25 wealthiest members, 15 of which have a combined wealth of $1.3 billion – which matches the combined wealth of the rest of Congress. Kendzior’s tweet added:

Currently the majority and minority leaders of both the Dems and the GOP are labeled “borderline”. Pelosi, Schumer, McCarthy, and McConnell are *all* in the danger zone. Americans deserve better than this. Corruption isn’t inevitable either. Every member of “the squad” got a solid rating, the highest rating possible. Sanders and Warren are solid. Jayapal and Porter are solid. Plenty of solid folks in wait to replace corrupt congressional leadership!

This study is all about who owns how much stock. It doesn’t discuss donations to their campaigns. So it doesn’t include this from Kendzior with data from the Federal Elections Commission.

Russian oligarch partner Len Blavatnik, who gave the biggest donation to the DCCC in its history in 2019, has ramped up his donations to the Dems again -- particularly Pelosi. Blavatnik is a business associate of sanctioned oligarchs Deripaska and Vekselberg. He is also a very close friend of Netanyahu. Blavatnik is part of the circle of oligarchs and corrupt international officials deeply tied to Trump and his crime cult. ... According to the FEC, Nancy Pelosi was the biggest individual recipient of Blavatnik money in 2021. He also gave heavily to the DCCC and to Schumer, Blumenthal, and others. It's worth looking at who Blavatnik gives to and why, and what he gets in return.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted some late night commentary:

CNN fired Chris Cuomo because he was caught giving secret political advice to a politician. Now it turns out that basically everyone at Fox News was giving secret advice to President Trump and his people during the insurrection. But I guess that's what makes it okay: if one person at your network has no integrity, that's a problem. If nobody has integrity, that's a company policy. —Trevor Noah After the tree outside the Fox News headquarters was set on fire by a homeless man, Fox and Friends host Ainsley Earhardt said, “This Scrooge is not gonna get away with it.” Nothing has ever explained Fox News better than a rich white lady calling a homeless man Scrooge. —Michael Che, SNL Saturday marked one year since the FDA authorized the Pfizer vaccine. Still, only 60 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated. That is nuts. I hate to say it, but it might be time to fight misinformation with misinformation. If a dozen of you went on social media and posted, “After I got vaccinated I got right back into my old jeans,” we would probably be done with this. —Jimmy Kimmel