America’s Chernobyl

My Sunday movie was No Straight Lines, The Rise of Queer Comics, a documentary by Independent Lens on PBS. I had known about this film for quite a while and had it in my list of films to watch, but I could not find which streaming service it was on. That’s because it was released only a month ago. The story started with the age of censorship. The first gay and lesbian comics were underground. For a while they had to create their own ways to publish. Then in the 1990s every state had its own LGBT newspaper and suddenly they had a big new market, enough to consider syndication. This was a golden time. But with the rise of the internet and those big shopping websites the publishing landscape dried up. Some authors turned to do it yourself zines. Many eventually turned to webcomics and graphic novels. The movie featured one I knew – Alison Bechdel – and another four I hadn’t. Howard Cruse submitted cartoons to an independent newspaper and the editor asked him to be the editor of Gay Comix. That featured his own stuff plus whoever else wanted to contribute. Cruse created Wendel – a gay young man falling in love with another. Wendel had never been closeted, but his boyfriend was. He also created Stuck Rubber Baby, a graphic novel about being gay in the South. Mary Wings started writing Come Out Comix in 1973. Rupert Kinnard, a black man, developed the Brown Bomber, a black and gay superhero. Jennifer Camper drew sexy comics for dykes. She also drew the AIDS epidemic because she was living through it and it was claiming people she knew. There were also appearances by another 17 queer comics, most of whom I hadn’t heard of before, though I had heard (and posted about) Maia Kobabe. Most of these are part of the younger generations. All of then were drawing art about their lives. Looks like I’ll have many new books to check out and perhaps buy. I watched this film on the PBS website, where they say it is free until mid April. Alas, it was not a smooth viewing experience. There was a short pause in the film about every five seconds. A movie that was 1:15 took about 1:30 to get through. I considered not watching because of it. I did shut down my browser and restart to eliminate as many background tasks from other pages as I could. It didn’t help. After No Straight Lines there was a ten minute documentary titled Senior Prom. This is a prom at a senior center where many of the residents are LGBTQ. Some of them weren’t allowed to attend their high school prom in the way they wanted, others went as part of a straight couple. So this was a chance to have a prom they way they wanted. One of them said they want the youngsters to know that LGBTQ relationships can last. My friend and debate partner has been doing his debate thing, which is good. In my previous post I included a variation on a Maya Angelou quote:

When someone shows you over and over and over again that they are a traitor, believe them.

My friend wondered about the original. I found it on AZ Quotes of Angelou, about a third of the way down the page:

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. People know themselves much better than you do. That's why it's important to stop expecting them to be something other than who they are.

I had heard the first sentence before, without the last three words. In that previous post I also discussed whether music can change the world. My friend offered a “no” and added:

I think that some uses of language – impactful, meaningful messages – can and do change the world. The U.S. Constitution is one example; I think I could offer many others. But music as a messaging language is too abstract and imprecise, too open to varying interpretation by diverse listeners, to provide a message that changes the world. Each listener has a different version of the language heard in music. That's not a weakness – it is that abstraction that makes music valuable as a conveyor of emotion.

He added that it isn’t only language that can change the world – actions can too. An example of that is the attack on Pearl Harbor. I reply that one shouldn’t discount the emotional power of music. Adding music to the language increases its emotional impact. That’s exactly what opera is all about. As for changing the world, which has more impact, the words “We shall overcome” or the Civil Rights song “We shall overcome?” I’m sure many in my generation and older probably now have going through their head. And I think that is an example of music that changed (or at least helped change) the country. Did that song by itself bring about the successes of the Civil Rights movement? Of course not. It also needed Martin Luther King’s soaring words of his “I Have a Dream” speech and the many marches and sit-ins and bus boycotts. But voices raised in singing “We shall overcome” added an emotional impact of determination that certainly helped the cause. My friend is skeptical about the music of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra I had mentioned that placed Israelis and Arabs side by side. My friend said it wasn’t the music,

it was the particular community created to make that music. A cooperative effort at governing likely would have a better chance of creating change.

I agree that a community was built as the Israelis and Arabs played together. However, I believe that community was strengthened through the emotional impact of the music and that the players were creating a thing of beauty together. Designing a cooperative government doesn’t have the emotional impact and beauty, even though it may have greater lasting consequences. Skeptical about emotional impact? Another Angelou quote I saw while scanning for the one above:

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

An Israeli feeling joy and other positive emotions with an Arab sitting beside him definitely helps. The Michigan COVID data, updated yesterday, show the peaks in new cases per day over the last few weeks as: 870, 889, 813, and 760. We’re still in a plateau, though heading in the right direction. As for deaths per day, this data takes much longer to post. The last two weeks show numbers 12 and lower. But three weeks before then is a day now reporting 37 deaths. Michel Martin of NPR spoke to journalist Josiah Daniels about the “He Gets Us’ ad campaign that has been around for at least a year and ran some of its ads during the Super Bowl. Here’s the narration of one of the ads:

A rebel took to the streets. He recruited others to join him. They roamed the hood and challenged authority. Community leaders feared them. Religious leaders abhorred them. We have to get them off the streets, they said. But they weren't part of a gang spreading hate and terror. They were spreading love.

Yes, it’s talking about Jesus. From this bit of text it sounds like a fairly accurate description of Jesus as I understand him. Martin said:

It's a riveting series of ads that place the biblical figure into current newsworthy situations, like being a refugee or isolated loner or condemned prisoner. And they all end with the line, he gets us, all of us.

Daniels said the ads resonated with him. But then he became skeptical, especially when one ad compared Jesus being crucified with being “canceled.” Being killed is not the same as having to deal with the consequences of something one has said or done. Most of the donors to this campaign are anonymous, though one has spoken out. That person is the co-founder of Hobby Lobby, the arts and crafts supplier. And that person is now a billionaire. He was behind the legal fight that went all the way to the Supremes that ruled companies don’t have to provide contraception care if it goes against their religious beliefs. The ad agency has also created spots for those who oppose LGBTQ rights. Daniels said:

For me, I think that it's a little bit of a situation where your treasure is, there, your heart will be also. ... they are telling us in no uncertain terms that while on the one hand, their messaging might be that Jesus accepts everybody, they are working with groups who certainly do not accept everybody. And so that makes me extremely suspicious.

One purpose of the campaign seems to be to redefine Jesus because he’s been damaged by Christian hypocrisy. Yet it is Christian hypocrisy that is paying for this campaign. Want to rebrand Jesus? Then make tangible commitments and steps to do the things Jesus did, such as include and take care of the marginalized and to promote social justice. When Jesus says whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me, it is both a theological and political statement. Rebekah Sager of Daily Kos added more detail. That Hobby Lobby co-founder is David Green and he declared his support for the campaign during a visit to the Glen Beck show. The budget for the Super Bowl campaign was $20 million. And that prompted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to tweet:

Something tells me Jesus would *not* spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign

The Critical Mind of the Kos community included some of the lines and images of the ads. This post also explores the hypocrisy then asks are these ads to promote the Biblical Jesus or the contemporary, hateful, conservative Jesus? There isn’t enough info to answer that question. Or this one: Who are these ads for?

Will ads that say “Jesus gets us” convince atheists to become religious? Are they intended to switch non-Christian believers to Christianity? Or are they directed at current Christians to deepen their faith and make them less likely to bolt?

Those who leave Christianity usually do so because of how badly they were treated. These ads are unlikely to bring them back. And is it worth spending $1 billion (the price of the whole campaign) to get them back or to try to convert people of other faiths?

Or is this campaign focused on wavering Christians who like Jesus’ message but hate the institutional bigotry of some denominations? The changing religious demographics of America support the last position. ... However, looking at how Christianity—especially the well-funded kind backed by zealots with an agenda—has operated over the last 100 years in America, the smart money would bet this is a Trojan Horse. Even the well-intentioned person of faith often succumbs to the howling of the mob. Especially if they attend mega-churches packed with ululating congregations, whipped into a righteous frenzy by a money-mad sociopath bent on buying a bigger house. To all the people of modest faith who try to live charitable lives as your savior wanted, I wish you well. And I hope that you stay true to your values. Especially if this “He gets us” campaign is a duplicitous cover for the usual sanctimonious bigotry of the rapine opportunist. Because God knows America should not be even more religiously execrable than it is already.

A train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio about ten days ago. The news stories told of the toxic chemicals onboard and that townspeople were evacuated. Unicorn Riot tweeted a ten minute video that discusses the how toxic the contents are. I didn’t watch the video, though did read through his thread. And that thread talks about how dangerous the chemicals are, how disastrous this is – and how it seems authorities are letting people back way too soon. The thread also talks about a “hot box detector” should have triggered the train to stop, but didn’t. It also mentions that the exhausted and overworked railroad workers were forced by Congress and Biden into a contract in December, a contract that sided with owners making huge profits. Those profits could have been spent on safety upgrades, but weren’t. There are dead animals and fish in the area and towns and cities along the Ohio River now need to monitor their water for these poisonous chemicals. This week’s Gaslit Nation episode was mostly about the East Palestine mess. This is the regular episode, so the hour of audio should be accessible. Hosts Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa don’t hold back. I thought I could listen while putting groceries away and doing general cleaning, but I had to stop every fifteen minutes or so to take notes. Andrea, whose family is from Ukraine and visited frequently in her childhood, calls this America’s Chernobyl. Yes, they say, it is that bad. Effects may extend fifty miles around the town – an area that includes Pittsburgh – and may last decades. The train company, Norfolk Southern, allowed this to happen because the safety mandates imposed by the Obama administration were weakened by the nasty guy. Some rich guys wanted to save money by reducing regulations (which also reduced safety) and his administration was happy to comply. It is these weakened safety regulations, even more than impending fascism, that will be the most harmful legacy of the nasty guy. These weakened safety regulations means we’re being ruled by American Oligarchs who have corrupted our political system. Chalupa said that much of the time after Ukraine became independent of the Soviet Union their country suffered under oligarch corruption. They are dismantling that corruption, but it has taken sacrifices by many people. Do we want to sacrifice a generation of Americans to root out our corruption, or will national leadership make that easier? We know Republicans thrive on that corruption and have no intention of ending it. But Kendzior and Chalupa look at the currently Democratic leadership and see no sign of them doing anything about it. There is so little effort to end corruption that Kendzior wishes Bernie Sanders would run against Biden in the primaries. Sanders isn’t great, but at least he talks about corruption. Many times Democrats get a pass for ignoring corruption because they can say, “Hey, it’s us or fascism,” an easy choice for many people. But people are watching this inaction (which seems to include a media silence on this train wreck) and concluding Democrats are no better than Republicans. Come election time they’re likely to sit out. And in Pennsylvania – very much affected by this disaster – that could make a big difference in who wins. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is one who has been slow to respond. I did a web search of him today. In the first page is a link to a story by the New York Post dated two days ago (more than a week after the wreck) with the title “Pete Buttigieg slammed for silence on Ohio train derailment.” And one a day later by Newsweek titled “Pete Buttigieg breaks silence after criticism over Ohio train derailment.” (I didn’t read either story.) Kendzior and Chalupa say that if Buttigieg doesn’t come down hard on the rail company it is a sign he has sold out. Biden and Buttigieg can show they haven’t sold out by first stopping the news blackout and being much more transparent about what is going on. Then they need to reinstitute the weakened safety regulations. Rail companies used the pandemic to cut staff and create what they call “precision scheduling.” When the railroad union contracts were before Congress last December the consequence of precision scheduling we heard about was that workers didn’t get sick leave or many other days off. However, another big consequence was they no longer had sufficient staff for adequate safety checks. Workers also say rail companies are now making the trains too long, making “hotbox” detection impossible to spot. During that time Biden could have sided with the workers – and didn’t. Yes, rail workers are saying this disaster could have been prevented if train crews were adequately staffed and allowed to do proper safety checks. Instead, the rail companies made whopping profits. Several times Chalupa referred to the genocidal corporate class. We need to be protected from those genocidal intentions and the people who should be doing that aren’t. Chalupa told us about Cop City. It’s a proposed area outside of Atlanta where a large area of forest will be flattened and $90 million will be spent on facilities where cops can live out their fantasies through war games. A big question is: Why do cops need to play war games? One person has already been killed protesting the destruction of the forest. Chalupa mentioned this for an important reason: A hefty chunk of the money comes from Norfolk Southern. Time for a grin or two. I’ve written many times about articles hiding in my browser tabs sometimes for many months. I don’t think I’ve ever had more than 175 tabs active at once. Even so I appreciate this Wumo cartoon. And this Candorville cartoon succinctly summarizes a lot of what those towards the top of the social hierarchy believe, which means it is a lot of what this blog is about. The Minnesota Department of Transportation has announced the names bestowed on its 2023 class of snowplows. The names include “Sleetwood Mac,” “Clearopathra,” and “Han Snowlo.”