Justified in doing real crimes to expose the imagined ones

I finished the book The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See. The story begins in 1988 when Li-Yan is a young girl of the Akha people in the mountainous tea growing region of China, a bit north of where Burma (Myanmar now) and Laos meet. These are a people who still protected themselves from evil spirits. Her mother is the region’s midwife and does things to protect newborns from those spirits and also handles situations that are taboo, like children of unmarried women and twins (animals have litters, people shouldn’t). Li-Yan shows great promise as a student. She has a boyfriend and they sneak into the woods for love. Not surprisingly, young couples are encouraged to test things out before marriage, but if the girl gets pregnant it’s her fault. Li-Yan gives her infant girl to an orphanage and later learns the girl was adopted and taken to Hollywood. Mr. Huang comes to town to help the villagers increase and improve their tea, because the market for it is booming. And Li-Yan gets into a school to become the tea equivalent to a wine sommalier. Yes, tea is spoken about in the same types of language as wine. This got me thinking. I drink tea. I definitely don’t follow the brewing procedures I’ve heard are done in England. A Chinese tea person would be appalled at what I do with it. The finer grades of tea would be lost on me and I’d probably have to avoid them because of the caffeine. I also don’t drink wine. So we learn a lot about tea and the ups and downs of the tea market. There is also a lot about how higher income and modernization affects these mountain communities. Because there are so many more men than women in China – during the one child policy more girls were aborted than boys – pushy mothers would try to get single Li-Yan to take an interest in their sons. And we hear about the daughter in America and what it is like to grow up with an ethnic Chinese face and white parents. I enjoyed this one. Hunter of Daily Kos reported on a Republican crime spree: tampering with election systems – the equipment and the way votes are handled – and also stealing election data. Hunter wrote there are three things driving these crimes: * It’s all based on conspiracy theories. In particular the QAnon or similar claims. The people doing the crimes are in or aspire to local party power positions. * They show the brazen Republican disregard for law. They assert they are justified in doing real crimes to expose the imagined ones.

It turns out that having a "president" willing to break laws regularly, alongside party-devoted lawmakers who are eager to simply scrub out enforcement of whatever rules he breaks, may result in more widespread party beliefs that Criminality Is Good Now.

* The criminal efforts are actually coordinated.

The crimes are all committed due to a belief in a handful of nebulous, nonsensical conspiracy theories that came from top Trump propagandists and which continue to be repeated now as core movement beliefs. The reason those beliefs continue is because there's a whole lot of Republican money being poured into making them continue.

Alisa Chang of NPR held an 11 minute discussion of people whose job it is to certify an election at the county and state level. The jobs are pretty straightforward and routine. She spoke to Republicans who had those jobs. Their integrity made sure Biden got into the White House, but that integrity also meant they are out of a job because they were replaced. Chang also had a 7 minute discussion with Justin Roebuck, the county clerk of Ottawa County, Michigan and with Teresa De Graaf, the clerk in Port Sheldon Township of Ottawa County. Both are Republicans. Roebuck is now including in his training of township clerks and poll workers what to do if a poll worker goes rogue. He hadn’t done this before. At a last resort, they call the police. One politician, who believes the 2020 election was stolen, has called for people to volunteer to be poll workers. He says that if something looks strange with the voting machine, pull the plug – which will just switch it to battery power. De Graaf said that part of her job is to work through poll worker applications and turn down those who are radical. She said:

They come in, and they want to be part of the process. But then they start spouting their beliefs and how the election was rigged and how they want to be part of the process because of that. But you can actually tell that their ultimate goal is maybe to create some chaos and to prove their point.

Roebuck added that a couple rogue poll workers can’t affect the outcome of the election, but ...

I think it's massive ripple effects of distrust in the process, intimidation, misunderstanding of what the process even is. And again, I think that's why it gets back to the heart of our training is so that we project the system in a way that voters can trust and feel comfortable and feel like they can come without disruption, without intimidation and participate.

Aldous Pennyfarthing of Kos reported the Department of Homeland security is increasing efforts to counter disinformation coming from Russia and elsewhere. They say such lies affect border security and public trust in democratic institutions. So they have created a board to monitor and counteract disinformation threats. Republicans, especially the insurrectionists among them, didn’t take long to brand the head of that board a “speech czar” and the board itself as the Ministry of Truth. Don’t get that reference? Go read some Orwell. David Neiwert of Kos reported that Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas went to Fox News and talked about the invasion that Texas is facing on its border. He tried to compare it to Russia and Ukraine. McCaul isn’t the only one using that word for the current immigration situation these days. Neiwert pointed out that “invasion” has long been used to describe the immigration of those that are not white and Christian. But with Russia actually invading Ukraine, and Americans can see what that looks like every day Americans can also see this current Republican talk is wildly overheated. I’ve written several times about Republicans banning books. Tennessee has now passed a law that said a textbook commission (and we know who appointed them) has the last say on challenged books and their decision applies to all school libraries in the state. As for the step after that, state Rep. Jerry Sexton would like to burn them. He’d also like there to be a state book and have that be the Bible. To abortion rights again and the developments to the story I wrote such a long post about yesterday. Justice Alito wrote that opinion and a lot of commentary is appropriately aimed in his direction. Rebekah Sagar of Kos reported one of the things Alito wrote in the draft opinion is this about pro-choice activists:

Some such supporters have been motivated by a desire to suppress the size of the African American population. It is beyond dispute that Roe has had that demographic effect. A highly disproportionate percentage of aborted fetuses are Black.

Yeah, while the statistic is likely correct he is accusing activists of being racist and practicing eugenics. But that ignores the realities of black lives that supremacists like Alito make worse. Such things as: Because disparities in prenatal and birth health care it is more dangerous for a black women to bring a baby to term. A black woman is three times more likely to die of a pregnancy related cause than a white woman. There are also disparities in wealth, employment, food security, and the availability of child care. She may not be able to afford the child. Pennyfarthing quoted Jezebel who noted Alito cited Pleas of the Crown by Sir. Matthew Hale, published in 1736, 60 years after Hale died. Referencing a text about 350 years old is of interest to us because of what Hale did. First, he had two women executed for “witchcraft.” Second, he originated the idea that no matter what a man does to his wife it cannot be described as rape, an idea that still hangs around. Third, he described abortion as a “great crime.” Fourth, he though capital punishment should extend to kids as young as 14. Which means in an attempt to prove his point Alito had to reach for some mighty unsavory characters. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported that the decision that Alito’s draft represents is what Moscow Mitch has been working towards since he refused to hold hearings for Obama’s nominee to the Supremes six years ago. He is acting like the dog that caught the car. Now that he has it he can’t deal with it. The reason: midterms. The state that has the highest support for banning abortion has only 30% support. And that’s a problem for Republicans. The other part of the problem is though Republicans set up the court for this purpose a large majority of the public didn’t believe the court would actually go through with it. So Mitch is scrambling to tell is caucus to talk about the leak, not the contents of the leak. One giant criticism of the pro-life movement is their support for life ends at birth. I mentioned yesterday that if the pro-life movement actually valued life we would see free medical care before and during birth, generous maternity and paternity leave, basic income, income to buy food, and free high quality education starting with pre-K. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that with forced birth soon upon us Republicans realize they need to pay lip service to the idea they should be concerned about the child after birth. So some are talking about social services in a wishy-washy manner. And others are making sure we know they will never support any program that helps children. Eleveld reported that five Democratic governors from swing states have taken up the cause of women’s autonomy. One of them is Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. This state is one where the vote for president is usually pretty close (though it went for Biden in 2020), yet because of gerrymandering Republicans have control of the legislature. Whitmer is doing two things. She called on the state Supreme Court to rule whether then 1931 law that bans abortion in the state is constitutional. And she is calling on Congress to approve a law that legalizes abortion. Other Democratic governors in swing states also calling Congress to protect the right of abortion are Steve Sisolak of Nevada, Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, and Tony Evers of Wisconsin.