An overall miserable place to get an education

I finished the book Horse by Geraldine Brooks. As I read this novel I wondered how much of it was historical. Her Afterward explains a great deal is. I became interested in the book when I heard it was about a black horse trainer before the Civil War. The primary character is Jarrett. His story is almost all fiction. Jarrett was born into slavery at a racing horse farm near Lexington, Kentucky. Since the boy was owned by Mr. Warfield he was known as “Warfield’s Jarrett.” He pretty much grew up in the stables and came to understand horses quite well. In 1850, when he was 13 a colt was born, named Darley. Horse and boy bonded and Jarrett did most of Darley’s training for his first race, even suggesting a few innovations. But slaves and horses that valuable tend to get sold and in 1853 boy and horse were sold together. The horse was renamed Lexington, in honor of the city where he was from. Lexington the horse is historical. He was the fastest horse during his racing years. During his years as a stud he sired more winning horses than any other American thoroughbred before or since. One of them was the winner of the first Kentucky Derby. Jarrett was so good at his job as a trainer of fast horses his life as an enslaved person was much better than most slaves. He job was one he very much wanted to do. His lodgings and clothes were decent and he was well fed (though not the high quality food of his owners). He managed groomsmen and other trainers. He could even talk back to his owner when he felt the needs of his horses were being ignored. One reason why Brooks wrote the book was to acknowledge the work of black horsemen – grooms, jockeys, and trainers – in the success of horse racing in the South. After the Civil War most of those black workers were shoved aside and their jobs given to white workers. Another character is the painter Thomas J. Scott. He is also historical. When we meet him he is trying to sell his painting skills to horse owners. Before cameras owners needed paintings of their horses to attract buyers. And to hang on their walls. Over the course of the story Scott painted Lexington three times. One painting of Darley the colt was given to Jarrett, another was made of the mature horse, and a third was made after his racing career and in this one Jarrett is depicted as the trainer. That’s the only historical record of Jarrett. The stories of Jarrett and Scott alternates with the stories of Jess, a white woman from Australia, and Theo, a black man, son of diplomats who grew up around the world. Their story takes place in 2019 and is fictional (some real aspects of their stories happened in 2010). Theo’s neighbor includes one of the paintings of Lexington in the mound of stuff she puts at the curb after her husband dies. He grabs it and decides to write an article for The Smithsonian on how paintings are restored. That prompts Jess, a Smithsonian researcher, to find Lexington’s skeleton in a museum attic and to try to get it properly remounted. Then there is effort to track down the other two paintings and what happened to them in the years since they were created. The painting now owned by the Smithsonian is here. Another painting is displayed behind the skeleton, now on display at the Museum of the Horse in Lexington. One reason for this modern part of the story is to show the life of a black man in modern America is still precarious, especially if they haven’t absorbed the rules of racial interaction learned by American black boys while growing up. I very much enjoyed the story and recommend it. The author is a fine writer. Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize for her book Marsh, which is the imagined story of the missing father in Alcott’s Little Women. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported Speaker Mike Johnson has joined the list of VP wannabees in refusing to commit to the results of the election. He insist it depends whether it is “free and fair.” Which leads to the question: What does he mean by “free and fair”? Does he mean the same thing the nasty guy means? That would be: If the nasty guy wins it was fair. If the nasty guy loses it wasn’t. Johnson says the meaning is: An election where there is no fraud, there are no illegals voting. “Look, we’re the rule of law team.” And, golly, a lot of work is being done to ensure voting is free and fair. First: to state the obvious, by quickly declaring the nasty guy’s trial was a sham, you’ve already declared you don’t believe in the rule of law. Second: I’m highly suspicious of any Republican who claims they’re doing a lot of work to make elections free and fair. Einenkel included stats from the Brennan Center on how much voter fraud there was in the 2016 election – “improper noncitizen votes accounted for 0.0001 percent” across 42 jurisdictions that had a combined 23.5 million votes. Johnson voted against certifying the 2020 election. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported Biden has added a line to his campaign speeches, saying of the nasty guy, “Something snapped in this guy, for real, when he lost in 2020. He can’t accept loss.” That’s why he will be a greater threat in a second term.

"Biden’s framing of this is politically savvy," remarked The Bulwark writers in their "Morning Shots" newsletter. "Biden provides a kind of permission structure for voters who might have supported Trump in 2016 or 2020 to leave him now." Trump being driven to madness by being "a loser"—a status he notoriously can't stand—is entirely believable given what voters already know about his biography.

I’ve spent a lot of my writing time on the nasty guy, so I need to update the other scandal, the one around Justice Alito and his wife’s insurrectionist flags. A week ago Einenkel reported Sen. Richard Blumenthal complained to CNN that Alito was destroying the credibility of the Court. He proposed a few solutions (which Republicans would not approve) and called on Chief Justice Roberts to show some spine in dealing with corruption in his court. Also last week Kaili Joy Gray of Kos reported on what Roberts said to Alito’s refusal to recuse himself from the insurrection cases before the Supremes. Roberts told Democrats essentially: Alito sent a letter explaining why he isn’t recusing. That’s good enough for me. And since no Republican has said anything about the issue a meeting would be “inadvisable.” Wrote Gray:

In other words, since Senate Republicans have no interest in investigating the corruption of Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court, Roberts doesn’t consider the request of the chair of the Judiciary Committee, Dick Durbin, and his fellow Democrat-therefore-not-really-reason-enough colleague Richard Blumenthal sufficient.

So perhaps Democrats should stop asking and start doing. Mark Sumner of Kos wrote that for decades Republicans have wanted to destroy public education. Gov. DeathSantis of Florida is getting close to accomplishing it. Public schools are shutting down for lack of students. Private school enrollment is up 50K, charters are up 68K, and homeschooling up 58% (and would be higher if more vouchers were available).

So why are Florida Republicans so successful in reducing public school enrollment? Because they did their homework. They spent decades draining public school funding, making them poorly staffed, poorly run, and an overall miserable place to get an education. Then they created a voucher system that offers parents unmatched goodies for joining in the enterprise of keeping children ignorant while making right-wing “education” providers rich.

Barbara Miner of Rethinking Schools has a list of reasons why Republicans don’t like public schools: 1. Corporations want to get their hands on the billions spent on education. 2. They believe private is inherently superior to public. 3. Shrinking public education furthers the goal of reducing the public sector. 4. Privatization undermines teacher unions, good by itself, though also unions support Democrats. 5. Privatization rhetoric can woo African American and Latino voters to the Republican Party (why this works is not explained). Sumner adds another reason. Most private schools are Christian and propagate a conservative view that Republicans like. Many homeschool curricula are also highly conservative. I’ll add one too. There are many groups of people – poor or black are at the top of the list – Republicans don’t want educated because they might learn they’re not supposed to be oppressed. As part of that, private schools don’t have to accept students with learning disabilities, the types of students public schools have to help through a long and expensive list of services. Eliminate public schools and these children don’t get educated. That reason is why Republicans consider private superior to public. A private service doesn’t have to help all people while a public service does. And Republicans don’t want some types of people to get that service. Tennessee is watching all this carefully. Their plan didn’t pass this year. Many of the comments noted that private and charter schools are rarely better than public. The teachers tend to be poorly paid (no union) and have less training in how to teach. Pride season is here, with the celebrations beginning last weekend. So a couple queer articles. Alas, they aren’t good. A couple weeks ago Shauneen Miranda, in an article on Michigan Advance, reported:

Twenty-six GOP-led states are suing the Biden administration over changes to Title IX aiming to protect LGBTQ+ students from discrimination in schools. Less than a month after the U.S. Department of Education released its final rule seeking to protect against discrimination “based on sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics,” a wave of Republican attorneys general scrambled to challenge the measure. The revised rule, which will go into effect on Aug. 1, requires schools “to take prompt and effective action when notified of conduct that reasonably may constitute sex discrimination in their education programs or activities.” ... [One] lawsuit claims that under the updated regulations, teachers, coaches and administrators would have to “acknowledge, affirm, and validate students’ ‘gender identities’ regardless of the speakers’ own religious beliefs on the matter in violation of the First Amendment.”

Though twenty-six states (more than half) are suing, there isn’t one lawsuit. Some states filed their own. Others formed small groups. Also from weeks ago an Associated Press article posted on Kos reported that foreign terrorist organizations or their supporters might target LGBTQ-related events during Pride Month. The announcement is from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security. The announcement did not specify any location and the agencies were not tracking any specific threats. Happy Pride!