We must and can save democracy ourselves

I read 45 books this year. Well... One that I counted I skimmed parts of, but another I didn’t count I started last year and finished this year – it took a while because I kept it in the car and read only while waiting somewhere. And there’s another book now in the car I started but haven’t finished. So I think 45 books for the year is fair. That’s at least 9000 pages, likely over 11,000. I wrote about many of them, but not all (in case you were keeping count). Books that didn’t have something significant about them I just quietly put them on the shelf when I was done. I usually wrote about the ones that featured LGBTQ issues or characters. Those were 19 of the 45. I probably wouldn't have bothered writing about the book I just finished but for it being a national bestseller. It is The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams. I started reading with high hopes because from the start is does a lot of fun playing with language. I thought this is quite well written! But as I got going there isn’t a whole lot of story in its 265 pages. The chapters alternate between Peter Winceworth and Mallory. Winceworth (a name surely chosen to describe the character) is, in 1899, part of a team in London compiling Swansby’s Dictionary. By the time it is printed sometime in the 1920s it isn’t finished. It might be hard to tell whether a dictionary is finished if words are left out, but this is more obvious – they didn’t get to Z. Winceworth becomes disenchanted and rebellious and starts including made up words. Mallory, in the present time, is the sole employee under the founder’s great-grandson David Swansby, who wants to digitize the family dictionary. In the third year of them toiling away David realizes the existence of these made up words and asks Mallory to figure out which they are. She is soon helped by her same-sex partner Pip. And the story isn’t much more than that. Yeah, there are various events along the way, but neither Winceworth nor Mallory show much personal growth. The language, as wonderful as it is, doesn’t make up for the lack of story. Even so, here’s an example. It is taken from the Preface, in which the author expounds on the perfect dictionary and how it gets used.

Perhaps you have encountered someone who browses a dictionary not as a reader but as a grazing animal, and spends hours nose-deep in the grass and forbs of its pages, buried in its meadow while losing sight of the sun. I recommend it. Browsing is good for you. You can grow giddy with the words’ shapes and sounds, their corymbs, their umbrels and their panicles. These readers are unearthers thrilled with their gleaning. The high surprise at discovering a new words’ delicacy or the strength of its roots is a pretty potent one. ... For some, of course, the thrill of browsing a dictionary comes from the fact that arcane or obscure words are discovered and can be brought back, cud-like, and used expressly to impress others in conversation. ...

I enjoyed it enough to not stop reading. I didn’t report on Michigan’s COVID data last week, though I did download it. I downloaded the data that was updated yesterday and can report. Over the last few weeks the peaks in new cases per day are 1467, 1295, 2066, 1777, 2047, 1834, and 885. I’m pretty sure the last one hasn’t been fully updated because of the holiday. Before then the data shows a jump at the end of November and a plateau since then. The deaths per day has been holding steady. A couple weeks ago Nicholas Grossman, an International Relations professor at University of Illinois, tweeted:

Antivaxxers witnessed the biggest, fastest mass vaccination program in history, saw that various widespread negative side effects they feared didn't happen at all, and instead of breathing an epic sigh of relief, decided to pretend those negative things actually happened. Over 13B COVID shots worldwide. If antivaxxers were right, there should be millions of vaccine deaths, so many it couldn't be hidden. Most people should personally know someone who died of vaccines or was at least hospitalized, like with COVID itself. But, you know, there aren't. A bigger triumph of ideology and feelings and over science and evidence you will not see. The antivax theories got a massive, robust real world test, and definitively failed. That's why it often turns into media criticism—not the thing, but what someone else said about the thing.

Over the last few days I’ve posted stories of communities organizing counterprotests when far right groups come to town. Each is an example of people realizing the government isn’t going to save us and our democracy. We must do it ourselves – and we can and we have and we will. The most recent story is a report by Phillip Martin of NPR about the community response in Danvers, Massachusetts when a neo-Nazi group displayed a banner falsely accusing Jews for the September 11 terrorist attacks. The residents decided that banner would not be the last word. And Danvers is one of many places pushing back. Hunter of Daily Kos discussed a report from the New York Times that puts numbers to how far astray this particular Supreme Court is going. Here’s a summary and another reason why it is a problem:

Yes, the conservative Court is "revisiting" long-established precedents at a historically unprecedented rate. Yes, a peculiar new habit of the court's conservatives is to use the so-called shadow docket to force preferred outcomes in cases without arguments or even an explanation of why the rules have changed. And no, while the Court has had little patience for allowing the executive branch to interpret rules and regulations the executive branch was tasked with writing, the Court isn't deferring to congressional, state, or lower court opinions, either. If you're a lower court trying to determine which United States laws are still real and which have been upended due to new conservative rulings favoring the Republican Party's selected polluters and religions, you're reduced to guesswork, not law books. A common thread among even the current Court's most-explained reversals of precedent has been an inability for lower courts to deduce how the hell they're supposed to apply those rulings going forward; the reason for the confusion is that so many of the conservative decisions appear to contradict even what the same justices declared just a few decisions back.

Last week the House Ways and Means Committee voted to release info on the nasty guy’s 2015-2020 tax returns. Mark Sumner of Kos discussed them. In half of those years the nasty guy paid no taxes because, though he campaigned as a successful billionaire, he says he lost money. In the years he declared income he paid only 4% and 3%. A lot of the deductions are reported as “cash” and there doesn’t appear to be documentation. A lot of other deductions look rather dubious. The other big issue I heard about (but don’t have links to) is that the IRS did not provide enough manpower to properly audit these returns as they are required to do (though consider who was boss over the head of the IRS). These were voluminous returns and a small number (perhaps just one?) of auditors would have been overwhelmed. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Yvonne Abraham of the Boston Globe referring to the nasty guy and Elon Musk:

Boy, do people in this country have a thing for the very rich. Americans seem to worship them, convinced they got that way because they’re smarter, and work harder, than anybody else. That’s no coincidence: Our up-by-the-bootstraps gospel — preached for so long, and leveraged by trickle-downers trying to avoid regulation and fair taxes — helps keep the very rich very rich. But even the most devoted fans have had their commitment tested lately, as two of the country’s most celebrated rich people have further revealed the pathetic clowns behind their myths.

Rebekah Sager of Kos reported the US Postal Service announced it has ordered 45,000 electric trucks from defense contractor Oshkosh to replace its aging delivery vehicles and another 21,000 trucks from other manufacturers. The USPS will spend $9.6 billion on the trucks. $3 billion came from Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. The trucks being replaced are 30 years old, don’t have AC or airbags, and only get 8.2 miles per gallon. Perhaps such a big shift to electric in the USPS will prompt a quicker switch by the rest of the government. And perhaps prompt a quicker switch by USPS competitors UPS, FedEx, and Amazon. This report only briefly mentions that not very long ago USPS head Louis DeStroy was putting in orders for gas guzzling replacement trucks. Yes, he’s changed his tune. What did Biden do to make him sing differently? And why is he still there? April Siese of Kos reported a project to cover a portion of a canal in the California Central Valley with solar panels will begin next year. It is expected to be operational in 2024. Covering a canal with panels both generates clean electricity and reduces evaporation from the canal. Covering less than two miles in a canal system of 4000 miles won’t do all that much to generate electricity, reduce evaporation, slow the Central Valley from becoming more arid, or slow climate change. But enough of the negatives. This is a great start. And covering the other 3998 miles will happen in good time. Michael de Adder tweeted a cartoon. It shows traditional nativity set characters, including a sheep, wearing MAGA hats gathered around the nasty guy in a recliner watching TV while behind them the baby Jesus in his manger says, “What is wrong with those people?”