A regular old, boring, wonderful, can't-live-without-each-other marriage

I finished the book The Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers. This is the fourth and final book in her Wayfarer series and I enjoyed it as much as the other three, which is quite a lot. Gora is a planet near the entrance to five wormholes that allow spaceships access to other parts of the galaxy. Even though Gora has no life of its own the wormhole portals mean there will be weary travelers who will need a chance to get out of their ship to rest and resupply. One of the lesser quality rest stops on Gora is run by Ouloo and her child Tupo. They are of a shaggy species with long necks. The child hasn’t matured yet and so hasn’t chosen a gender and uses pronouns xe/xyr. Tupo very much acts like a preteen even as xie is given the task of welcoming each landing shuttle. On this particular day three shuttles arrive. One holds Roveg, who is a male of a species with a hard shell and many legs. Another is Speaker, who breathes methane instead of oxygen so roams the ground sealed in a mechanized suit much larger than she is. The third is Pei, who has scales instead of skin. We soon learn she is the secretive cross-species lover of Ashby, the captain of the ship we met in the first book, and she is on her way to meet him. As they settle in the garden eating desserts prepared by Ouloo they see explosions in the sky. A communications satellite has exploded and the shrapnel from it took out nearby satellites and the shrapnel from those took out more. By the time all is done three-quartes of the communication network is gone and the sky is so full of junk flights off the surface are not safe. The authority over the portals needs time to clear the junk. What was expected to be a layover of a few hours now extends to five days. The five beings spend time talking and getting to know each other. And that’s essentially the plot. But the discussions are fascinating. How does on describe tickling to a being whose outer surface is a shell? How does lifespan affect what one does? – Speaker expects to live only eight years while Tupo is far from mature at seventeen. How does reproduction work and who cares for the offspring? How has the species been affected by joining the Galactic Commons? How does having a species homeworld, even if one has never seen it or can’t go back, affect a person? How does the idea of a homeworld affect those who don’t have one? What is the affect of loving a person of another species when it is taboo by both cultures? And much more. Along the way we see that Roveg is quite the gentleman. Ouloo is good at interrupting heated discussions with the offer of more cake. And Tupo has intriguing ideas about the history of Gora xie displays in xyr natural history museum. Chambers is a marvelous storyteller and builds an intricate galaxy in these books. I recommend them. As I was reading the book DrLori of the Daily Kos community posted a discussion of the whole series as part of her weekly series of science fiction and fantasy (which I’m just now finding). That included her link to her discussion of this book. I didn’t read it until I had completed my own review above. Here is a bit of what she wrote:

The Galaxy’s set-up is a classic: a handful of strangers marooned in a saloon, or diner, or a tavern at the end of the world, or a hotel, while outside a storm rages, one that keeps everyone from leaving. With nothing else to do, the strangers talk — prejudices are encountered, mutual dependence develops, there’s a crisis that brings everyone to work in common purpose, and all depart much the wiser.

Even if it seems to follow a formula DrLori agrees it is done quite well. In the comments DrLori added:

One thing to mention is that none of the characters are human, so we can’t call it an exploration of human nature, but of universal sapient values. Correction: there is a human who is a very minor character and who arrives very late in the narrative. Still, how much of the behavior is human and how much is humane?

A week ago Aldous Pennyfarthing of Kos wrote, based on reporting from the Washington Post:

As Donald Trump sat with some of the country’s top oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago Club last month, one executive complained about how they continued to face burdensome environmental regulations despite spending $400 million to lobby the Biden administration in the last year.

They spent $400 million and got nothing? Poor dears. But it’s a sign that they believe money should get them what they want.

Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation. ... The Washington Post reported that according to those Mar-a-Lago attendees, Trump said the it would be a “deal” for those Big Oil executives because of all the taxes and regulations they’d be spared under another Trump presidency.

Yes, the nasty guy is soliciting a bribe. The oil industry is now writing executive orders for the nasty guy to sign, should he win a second term. They’re doing it because the nasty guy is likely to forget to draft something to their liking as he campaigns (and hopefully spends time in courtrooms) this summer and fall. Considering all the steps Biden has taken to help the environment and all the steps the nasty guy took to undo actions that would help the environment one can easily conclude the nasty guy would gladly destroy the environment for $1 billion. As for those billionaires... Mark Sumner of Kos discussed a New York Times article that reported billionaires are returning to support the nasty guy. They had turned away because of his fascism. The reason for the return is quite simple: taxes. Though the economy is humming (which includes more people having money to buy what the billionaires are selling) billionaires see a stark and simple choice. The nasty guy’s tax cuts cost the nation $1.9 trillion. This money went straight into their bank accounts. Those tax cuts expire next year. The nasty guy has promised to renew them. In contrast Biden has vowed to not renew them and has proposed additional taxes on the super rich so their share of taxes is the same for average workers. The billionaires response is: The horror!

The wealthy Trump donors aren’t worried about Wall Street, and they’re not worried about what’s best for the nation’s economy or even what drives the stock market. They’re facing a choice between a man who wants to give them trillions of dollars, and a man who wants them to pay their fair share. What’s a little fascism next to an offer like that?

A week ago Sumner looked at a Congressional Budget Office estimate of the nasty guy tax cuts. When it was signed Republicans claimed the tax bill would generate so much growth it would lead to $1 trillion in additional revenue. The CBO now estimates the cuts will actually cost the government $1.9 trillion.

Now the CBO is back with a new estimate of what it would cost to keep Trump’s tax cut in place over the next decade, and that estimate is more than double the original cost. Keeping Trump’s tax cuts would cost a whopping $4.6 trillion and send the nation on a path to a level of deficit only seen during the Great Depression, World War II, and … Trump’s bungling of the pandemic.

Back in 2017 Republicans made one set of claims about the cuts. Brookings, in 2018, also predicted what would happen. Not surprisingly, the Republican prediction was not the correct one. The American Enterprise Institute looked at Biden’s tax plan. That plan would increase government revenue by $3.8 trillion and make the tax system more fair.

There are many reasons to reelect Biden in the fall; so many that tax policy may not be getting as much attention as it usually receives. But that $8.4 trillion difference in revenue over the next ten years is the difference between a government that is capable of responding to issues like the climate crisis and other new threats as they arise, and one that is designed only to set back and provide a constant stream of cash for those who need it least.

Also a week ago Mary Louise Kelly of NPR talked to Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic about her cover story, “The New Propaganda War.” At the start of their discussion Kelly reminds us of the repressive tactics of the 1989 killings at Tiananmen Square in China, where protesters were calling for democracy. China’s response was to kill lots of people in an attempt to eliminate the ideas that had motivated the protesters. China, with growing help from Russia, is now switching the conversation from getting rid of the discussion of democracy (which they saw they can’t do) to describing the dangers of democracy. They’re talking about those dangers within China and also in Africa, Latin America, and inside the United States. And they’re spending billions to get that message out. The core of the message is, “authoritarian countries are safe and secure, that democracies are divided and degenerate, and above all, that the United States is a special danger to the world.” Russia added, and China is amplifying, that Ukrainians are Nazis. One would think young Africans would see the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a colonial war. As former colonies they should be on Ukraine’s side. But all they’re hearing in the news is the Russian side amplified by China. They don’t hear counterarguments and they don’t hear the US view. Inside the US this authoritarian propaganda is being spread by Republicans. And they are attacking democracy in this way because they want to get rid of democracy. China’s talking points about democracy being degenerate (how many minutes have passed since you last heard a Republican talk about the decline in American values?) and leading to chaos will serve nicely. To protect democracy in America we could be doing things such as: Recognize this is a problem. Recognize democracy is not automatic. Start spreading narratives promoting democracy, which we tend to assume is a given. Regulate social media (which starts with conversations about how bad it is). On the same day as that NPR discussion there was a segment on Marketplace with host Kay Ryssdal talking to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. A transcript is at this link. This is what caught my attention:

I think it’s important for Americans to understand how critical democracy is to economic performance. Of course, democracy is important in and of itself. But I thought what I can add is to elucidate the relevance of democracy to good economic performance and to fight back against the idea that democracies just aren’t an efficient way to help people get ahead. And you sometimes hear this in countries like China that say, “Well, you know, we have an authoritarian government. We decide to do something and we can move quickly. And look how slow it is for, sometimes, democracies to move.” But the research suggests that democracy is actually critical to high living standards, on average, other things equal. Income is 20% higher in democracies, and there are very good reasons. And it’s important for Americans to understand that.

Billionaires don’t want “high living standards, on average.” They want high living standards for themselves. There is an anniversary worth marking, even though I’m a couple days late. Twenty years ago just after midnight on May 17, 2004 same-sex couples were able to fill out marriage licenses at city hall in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This story by Steve Inskeep of NPR included the phrase that brought me chills and tears when I first heard it twenty years ago and still does. Someone captured a wedding officiant saying “By the power vested in me by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts...” That was followed by a big cheer. Inskeep then talked to Michelle Coleman and Pam Waterman, who married later that year (a big wedding needed some planning). Waterman said:

I don't feel like our hardships or our joys, even, have been any different than any other marriage that I saw growing up - you know, the heterosexual couples - except that we might get some drama because we're same-sex, which I think has lessened considerably over the years. But it's just been a regular old, boring, day-to-day, lovely, she gets on my nerves, I get on her nerves, wonderful, can't-live-without-each-other marriage.