We do not let other humans suffer alone

Michigan’s COVID data, based on numbers from yesterday, are bad. The peak in new cases per day in the past week is 9198. I think the peaks usually happen on Mondays because data doesn’t get reported on Sunday. This new peak is 48% higher than the 6191 new cases from seven days before. It is also 40% higher than the 6580 cases from three days before. This peak number is likely to be revised. And the revised number will still be bad. Even more troubling this past week’s peak is 10% higher than the peaks in April, at 8378, and in November a year ago, at 8337. The deaths per day in the week before last hit 60 and above three times. This is below the death per day of last April, though not by much. The data for this past week is still being gathered. All I hear from state officials is they are monitoring the situation very closely. No new mitigation measures are being considered at this time. Our government – state and federal – is failing us, beaten by Republicans. Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos reported that Republican donors are furious at the Republican members who voted for the first big infrastructure bill. That’s 13 in the House and 19 in the Senate. Many of the members helped negotiate the deal. Wrote Eleveld:

Again, infrastructure is a bill supported by nearly two-thirds of the American people, but Republicans have become such a bona fide cult that making common cause with Democrats to benefit the country is grounds for expulsion.

Donors being furious means that members are getting death threats (though I can’t say the threats are coming from the donors).

Indeed, the House GOP campaign chief, Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, simply shrugged off the death threats some of his colleagues have endured since they cast a vote for the bill. "Unfortunately, in the world we're in right now, we all get death threats, no matter what the issue is," Emmer told CNN this week. Get used to it, America. Death threats are the new norm, courtesy of the Grand Old Party.

I see no recognition (and, alas, didn’t expect any) from Emmer or anyone else in the Republican Party that their actions and those of the nasty guy has greatly increased the death threats against public officials. There is also no mention of how they might change what they’re doing to reduce the death threats. Perhaps they didn’t expect the threats to be made against themselves? The Build Back Better human infrastructure bill is on its way to the Senate. It includes money so that low income families can afford child care. Laura Clawson of Kos reported that religious child care providers are howling about being left out (as Republicans claim). Wrote Clawson:

So it’s not that religious child care providers couldn’t take federal subsidies under the Build Back Better proposal. It’s that they couldn’t do that while also discriminating against staff or families and their children for any reason attributed to faith.

Yeah, the important aspect of their faith they want to protect is the ability to discriminate. From a post last Monday Joan McCarter of Kos discussed Joe Manchin’s current objection to the Build Back Better bill is because it will contribute to inflation. McCarter pointed to several economists who dispute what Manchin is claiming. Then McCarter turned to that inflation. She quoted a Wall Street Journal report that some of the biggest corporations are making inflation happen on purpose. Since many consumers are now resigned to price rises these corporations are raising their prices by more than what would be necessary to cover their own rising costs. Nearly two thirds of US publicly traded corporations have fatter profit margins this year than they did in 2019. What is driving inflation is corporate greed. One way out of that is to raise taxes on corporations. Another is with the kinds of investments in the BBB. Kyle Rittenhouse is the 17 year old (at the time) who went to Kenosha, Wisconsin to help white people protect local businesses during protests following the death of a black person. He ended up killing two white men and wounding a third. As the jury at his trial started deliberating whether he was guilty of murder or some lesser charge, I thought he probably wouldn’t be convicted of murder, but surely there would be an appropriate lesser charge. He wasn’t old enough to buy the gun he was toting. I doubt he had been properly trained in its use, including the proper way to keep from shooting people. What was this kid doing with that gun? The jury announced he was acquitted of all charges, the murder charges and whatever the lesser ones were. I’ll let your look elsewhere for details. Instead, I’ll let Leah McElrath explore another side of the aftermath. In one thread she quoted Imani Perry:

This case is a reminder that throughout US history white people, who reject white supremacist thinking, have been subject to white supremacist violence.

And replied:

Here @imaniperry perfectly describes how rage against “race traitors” is part of the systemic dynamics of white supremacy.

Then she quoted Olayemi Olurin:

Verdicts like the Rittenhouse case are meant to discourage white people from being allies in the fight against racism. It’s how the system tells them if they choose to be an ally, they are in danger and won’t be protected. It’s meant to scare people into slowing the movement.

And replied:

Exactly, @msolurin. The system of white supremacy and those who are its foot soldiers target white people engaged in anti-racism purposefully to try to keep non-white people isolated.

A quote from Renée Graham:

Perhaps more white people will now recognize that white supremacy is an existential threat to their lives, too.

McElrath replied:

And even when it doesn’t threaten our lives, it robs us of our humanity to the extent that we invest ourselves in its defense.

And a quote from Hannah Drake:

And please know this verdict was a message to White people, White people that dare defend Black lives. This verdict was a message to you.

And replied:

This verdict was a judicial manifestation of the particular rage felt under white supremacy toward those perceived as “race traitors.”

In a second thread McElrath wrote:

We are feeling anger because we feel love for one another. Our challenge now is to act out of that love. Love is not just a feeling. Love is a verb. Acting from a place of love rather than hatred distinguishes antifascists from those we fight. This is a call to action: action from a place of shared humanity and solidarity rather than perceived superiority and divisiveness. Love as a verb is not sentimental. It is constant, fierce, protective, and—often—self-sacrificing. Why am I talking about love? Because things are going to get worse. Rooting our actions in love enables us to fight for a lifetime without becoming the abyss into which we stare. I am humbled to know many courageous people around the world who fight from a place of love and who have sacrificed for the greater good.

McElrath then linked to a thread by Linda Tirado. Here’s part of it:

But it all comes to this: When they warn us, when they tell us what they’ll do to us for what they consider betraying the race We have to laugh at them. Because they are Lilliputians and they know that they’re dying out and they are terrified of a level playing field. And if they do hurt you, which is a non-zero chance Wake up in the hospital and laugh at them some more because they failed again. The point, the whole entire point Is that we do not let other humans suffer alone. Not when we can stand with them and in front of them. Not when we could help shoulder the burden and the risk. Black lives matter, to borrow a phrase, and we with faith in humanity know that. It is important on days like today to stand and be counted. So that those who are threatened by white supremacy, those who have no choice but to fight or die, know that they do not face this alone. And so that those who would uphold white supremacy see white faces against them.