It needs rebranding after every decade or so

I finished another book by Ivan Doig. Many of his books are about life in Montana. The book I just finished is the third in a series about Morris Morgan. Four years ago I read The Whistling Season, in which Morgan is a side character, though a quite interesting one. Morgan and his sister-in-law had to flee Chicago in 1909 and end up in rural Montana. Rose became a housekeeper for a man and his three sons and Morgan became the teacher in a one-room school, teaching grades 1-8. Two years ago I read Work Song. In this one Morgan, the narrator, is in Butte in 1919. Though he is nominally the assistant to the head librarian (the guy who owns all the books), he gets involved in the disputes between the mining union and the Anaconda Copper Mine Corporation. The emphasis on that part of the story is helping the union unite the Italians, Welsh, Serbs, Irish, and all the rest into one cohesive group. The book I just finished is Sweet Thunder. It is now 1921 and Anaconda is playing rough again. This time Morgan is writing editorials for the startup newspaper the Butte Thunder, definitely not owned by and propagandizing for Anaconda. A lot of what the company’s editorials in its own newspapers were about then are the same reasons big corporations are saying now to keep all the profits in the owner’s pockets and their workers poor. Morgan is quite a cultured character, even in a rough town, an enjoyable guy to spend time with. The other major characters are also enjoyable. I recommend the series. Alas, the last 15 pages of this book tied things up a bit too neatly. Also alas, there is no fourth book. Yeah, Republican Glenn Youngkin was elected governor of Virginia. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported on other races with good outcomes: Michelle Wu will become the first Asian woman mayor of Boston. Erick Adams will become the second black mayor of New York. Ed Gainey will become Pittsburgh’s first black mayor. Aftab Pureval will become the first Asian mayor of Cincinnati. Abdullah Hammoud will become the first Arab mayor of Dearborn, MI. Dearborn had a racist mayor, Orville Hubbard, who served 36 years, 1942-1978. He was so racist his statue was removed from City Hall in 2015. Now the city is almost half Arab and will have an Arab mayor. Bill in Portland, Maine added more election results in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos: Maine residents voted against cutting a path through the woods for an electric transmission line from Quebec to Massachusetts. Phil Murphy, Democrat, won a second term as governor of New Jersey, a rare achievement for Democrats there. Democratic local candidates won in Kansas by big margins with a pro-mask, pro-vaccine platform. I’m sure I’ve written about “Constitutional Sheriffs” before. These are county sheriffs who claim to be the top tier of American government with the ability nullify federal laws they don’t agree with. Hunter of Kos, referring to an article in the Washington Post, discussed them in more detail. Mostly, it’s about “freedom” and guns. And an intentional misreading about what the Constitution actually says.

It is a conspiracy theory developed and held by a very specific set of anti-government, arch-conservative rural western believers, and all of it, of course, was invented as justification for why rural western arch-conservatives should be able to take federal lands for their own purposes; fire off whatever guns they want at whatever fellow Americans disagree; and generally ignore whatever environmental, financial, or other laws government attempts to impose on them. ... It's just the same damn militia movement as always. It needs rebranding after every decade or so after the then-top organizations become so notorious through the violent actions of their members that recruiting becomes difficult.

Rebekah Sager of Kos reported on a study (which she didn’t identify) that in our education system it is better to be rich and white than smart and poor. If one is white and from the top quarter of family income one has a 71% chance of being in the top half of family income by one’s late 20s. If one is from the bottom quarter of family income one has only a 31% chance of being in the top half of family income by one’s late 20s. One reason for all that:

The cost of college has increased by 169% in the past 40 years, while wages for young grads have only increased by 19%, according to data from the U.S. Census, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and National Center for Education Statistics.

Sager also reported that the Ohio legislature is working on an abortion ban modeled on the one in Texas and more stringent. It sounds like there is no grace period in the first six weeks of pregnancy (which is well before many women know they’re pregnant). There is also no exception for rape or incest. Gotta protect those babies. Like Texas, the bill shifts enforcement from the state to any person who wants to collect the reward. Sumner reported that ProPublica created a map of factories that release toxins that are known carcinogens into the air. The map also shows the health of the people who live around them, especially areas where over a hundred factory plumes overlap. The map was developed from data from the EPA, which is public. Some of these hotspots have a long reputation, such as Cancer Alley in Louisiana. Some had not been previously identified. Sumner suggests we think about the people who tend to live near these factories – they’re not the rich white people. I went to the map and looked at parts of Michigan. In the areas I looked, the hottest spot was Midland. One wouldn’t think a prosperous town like Midland would have this kind of problem, but the city is well off because it is the home of Dow Corning. There are very few air pollution hotspots in Detroit. Those few are in the southwest corner and in the suburbs near and along the Detroit River. They’re not very hot. There are a couple kind of warm spots in the western suburbs, a few on the northern suburbs, and a pretty warm spot south of Ypsilanti. Yeah, the air around me is fairly clean – of factory toxins. Auto exhaust is another matter. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed that Rome fell because of uncontrolled immigration and Europe went into the dark ages that lasted a very long time. David Perry, journalist and historian with a new book out on Medieval history, disputes Johnson’s drivel. He also notes some aspects of history we tend to teach wrong. Rome didn’t fall in the 5th century. The city remained a vibrant imperial presence on the Mediterranean with several states claiming it as their source of political legitimacy. There were no dark ages, only a lack of surviving source material in some parts of northwestern Europe for a few centuries here or there. There were changes in the 3rd – 7th centuries, but not because of unchecked immigration.

I'm also interested in the assumptions embedded in Johnson's quote, that the Roman Empire was "good" and its "fall" was "bad." And of course that UK = Rome = good.

That last bit reminds me of traveling around Germany a couple years ago with Brother and Niece. As we looked at the buildings left behind by this princeling or that Niece usually found some indication that the area prince was trying to invoke some aspect of ancient Rome. And a lot more of that when we discussed 19th and 20th century figures.