Show your willingness to do actual harm to people’s lives

An update to my post yesterday about being kept in the dark: In today’s news I heard the winds for the 2:45 am storm hit 70 miles per hour. One of the electric companies said damage is likely when winds are over 40 mph. This was their 10th worst storm. While the strength was enough to rouse me from bed to check windows it didn’t affect my power because it was already out. A friend lost power about the same time I did. He emailed me to say the electric company estimated his power should be restored by the end of Saturday (which would be more than 72 hours without electricity). One of his friends was given an estimate of Monday, or 120 hours without power. Yeesh! I’m way behind in reading the news. So some of this is from a few days ago. In Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbot is determined to tilt the election laws in the GOP favor (while making it harder for people to protect themselves from COVID), he renewed his call for a special legislative session to pass his voter suppression bills. House Democrats have fled to Washington, DC to prevent a quorum and to lobby Congress to pass national voting rights bills. Abbott ordered those missing Democrats could be arrested and compelled to attend state House sessions. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported the state Supreme Court has given that arrest order their blessing. In the meantime Texas House Republicans would have a hard time maintaining a quorum because so many of them need to quarantine because of COVID. So no quorum possible in this second special session. Hunter of Kos reported that Dade Phelan, Speaker of the Texas House, has signed arrest warrants. Any members still in Texas can now be hunted down and taken to the House chamber by force. The state in such a big surge of COVID that the hospital system is collapsing is not an emergency. But making sure the wrong people don’t vote … is. Wrote Hunter, “Incompetent fascism can survive a pandemic; it's a lot harder to survive an election.” Leah McElrath tweeted that there are zero pediatric ICU beds in the Dallas – Fort Worth area. That prompted Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins to order a mask mandate for the county. As part of his order Jenkins said:

We have zero ICU beds left for children…[If your child needs an ICU bed] your child will wait for another child to die.

Gov. Abbott is suing Judge Jenkins to end that mandate. Ashton Pittman of the Mississippi Free Press reported that classes in the Pearl Rivers school district began a week ago. The school board made masks optional in hopes of a more “normal” school year. After one week Central High School has quarantined 40% of the student body. The entire school district switched to virtual. After three days of watching the case rate soar the School Board called an emergency meeting. By a vote of 3-2 they adopted a mask mandate. Detailed census data has now been released, a few months later than usual. Redistricting efforts will begin. I heard Ohio has about three weeks to complete its new maps. Kerry Eleveld of Kos discussed the Republican efforts to gerrymander.

To be perfectly honest, it's not pretty. As Mother Jones' Ari Berman reported, Republicans stand to gain anywhere from six to 13 seats in the House through their control of the redistricting process in just four states alone: Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and Texas. In other words, Republicans could literally gerrymander their way to a majority by redrawing the lines in four states—to say nothing of the other states they control.

Stephen Wolf of Kos Elections discussed gerrymandering in detail. And I do mean detail. For every state he lists who is in control of legislative maps, the likely partisan intent, and the likely outlook. He even reviews states with just one representative in the House because there are also state legislative maps to draw. I’ll let you peruse the list on your own. This list reminded me of something that was in my presentation when I spoke for the independent redistricting commission in Michigan while campaigning for it three years ago. Both Republicans and Democrats will gerrymander in their favor, given the chance. This really is a case where both sides do it. The only way around that is to put redistricting in the hands of a citizen commission. And the one in Michigan, now that they have census data, will be quite busy in the next couple months. Wolf wrote in his introduction to his list:

This marks the third straight cycle where the GOP will enjoy a huge advantage in carving out new maps, an edge almost as extreme as the one Republicans chalked up after the lopsided 2010 elections, when they won the power to craft just over half of all House districts and Democrats just one-tenth. That huge disparity helped Republicans win the House in 2012 despite the fact that Democratic candidates won more votes that year. The same story also played out in several legislatures in key swing states multiple times over the past 10 years. A repeat of GOP minority rule is now a strong risk for 2022 and beyond. And in an era where most House Republicans have shown their openness toward overturning Democratic victories in the Electoral College, a House where Republicans win a majority in 2024 due to gerrymandering could spark a constitutional crisis over the outcome of the next presidential election. Republican minority rule is a risk in the states as well, since control of legislative redistricting will also heavily favor Republicans.

Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Paul Waldman of Washington Post speaking of Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida:

Any politician can be an Internet troll concerned with nothing so much as Owning the Libs, and many in DeSantis’s party think that’s their most fruitful path to success. But to really capture the hearts of the party base, you have to show your willingness to do actual harm to people’s lives as you wage war against the other side. And that’s where DeSantis is excelling.

Yup, cruelty is the point, as I’ve quoted a few times before. An aspect of supremacy, of making oneself look better, is to make the other people look worse by making their lives be worse. And that includes the ability to inflict pain and hardship. I was caught by the phrase “harm to people’s lives as you wage war against the other side.” This accurately does not say “harming the lives of the people on the other side.” They are harming lives and don’t care whose lives are harmed. In much of Florida the lives being harmed are fellow conservatives, people who are refusing to be vaccinated. Dworkin also quoted Dana Milbank, also of WaPo. He disputed the adage that history is written by the victors. His first example is the South, the losers in the Civil War, who successfully reframed the war as the Lost Cause with gallant heroes trying to protect states rights rather than about slavery. His second example is the current telling of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. It is being portrayed as a similar Lost Cause. Julia Shiplett tweeted:

2020: omg we’re entering hell 2021: ok so how do we make hell cozy

A minute long video about how to love your child unconditionally. It includes this exchange: Mom, my name is Jesse. OK. Hi, Jesse. Mom, I’m a boy. OK. Hello, my son. Mom, I want blue hair. OK. Hello, blue hair. Thank you for trusting me with who you are.