Joy is not a reward for success, but a way of living

Kos of Daily Kos discussed Latino culture and how it compares to American conservatism. Latino communities still put the church at the religious, social, and moral center. It is where they participate in community. Family is a lived reality and cultural expectation is a deep obligation to parents. There are still strong traditional gender roles (so stop with that “Latinx” nonsense). That is a part of why the nasty guy got 46% of the Latino vote in 2024. There was cultural alignment and many could assume his bigotry was aimed elsewhere and not at them. Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show depicted sugar cane fields to demonstrate Latinos are hard workers. The several small businesses showed their hustle culture. It showed extended families with children everywhere – when they party they don’t leave their children at home. Many images were highly masculine and highly feminine, but they were not sexualized. This was the only halftime show to feature an actual wedding. Even the moments of queer imagery showed them as belonging, part of the family. All of that (well, not the last one) depict conservative values promoted by American conservatives.

Where Latinos fundamentally break from American conservatism is joy. Joy is not a byproduct of success for Latinos. Unlike cultures that treat professional status or financial achievement as prerequisites for a meaningful life, Latino culture has long defined success more relationally than materially. To our occasional economic detriment, joy is not deferred until we have the house or the fancy car. It has nothing to do with bank balances. Joy is integrated into daily life and shared whether or not circumstances cooperate. That joy is not abstract or intellectual. It is physical. It lives in the body. It shows up in dancing that starts early and never really stops—children learning complex salsa steps, being twirled by grandparents right alongside them. Movement is not performance; it is participation. Joy is learned somatically, taught through rhythm, proximity, and repetition, embedded before it can ever be articulated.

Joy also shows up in touch – “affection is public and unembarrassed” – and in the music.

You did not need to speak Spanish to feel any of that radiating from that stage. The music, the movement, and the intimacy were the message. Joy was not a reward for success, but a way of living: collective, embodied, and freely offered to anyone willing to feel it. Even many MAGA conservatives begrudgingly admitted it spoke to them. Conservatism, by contrast, is dour, punitive, and obsessed with control. It treats pleasure with suspicion, happiness as frivolous, and celebration as weakness.

The joy on the stage was defiant and incompatible with American conservatism. I had written about AG Pam Bondi’s infuriating performance before the House Judiciary Committee that wanted answers about the Department of Justice’s obstructive release of the Epstein files. Walter Einenkel of Kos wrote about a couple bad moments. One of them was Bondi saying:

The Dow is over 50,000 right now. The S&P [500] at almost 7,000, and the Nasdaq smashing records. … That's what we should be talking about.

A record-setting stock market is terrible reason to not investigate pedophiles. Emily Singer of Kos wrote that Bondi’s performance was the “most dreadful” by any Cabinet-level official before Congress. She ranted and hurled personal insults at Democrats rather than answering fair questions. Anyone who tuned in to watch would have thought her antics embarrassing and wondered why she was doing it. Singer said Bondi was performing for an audience of one – the nasty guy. He gets pleasure when his enemies are insulted. Also, the nasty guy has dropped hints that she hasn’t been wielding her power as quickly as he would like, so this performance may have been an effort to save her job. The moment that proves the point was when Bondi demanded the Judiciary Committee apologize to the nasty guy for impeaching him. Jeff Danziger posted a cartoon of showing a cat labeled Bondi having spilled the trash, scattered papers, clawed up the furniture, and was now puling down the curtains. A guy in the doorway says to the nasty guy, “Sir... She’s getting more publicity than you!” He replies, “She must be stopped!” The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases job data monthly to get a quick, though maybe not so accurate, look at what the economy is doing. After the end of the year, they take time to go through more reliable statistics and revise the year’s numbers. Singer reported that on Wednesday the BLS announced their updated numbers for 2025. The estimates made during the year came up with 584,000 added jobs. The revised numbers say only 181,000 jobs were added in the year. That’s close to a 70% drop and a mighty small number. And tiny compared to 2024’s job gains of nearly 1.5 million. Yeah, the BLS is the agency that the nasty guy accused of lowering the numbers to make him look worse than Biden. So were these numbers falsified and the real numbers are worse? Singer also included statistics that show private education and health care added jobs and the entire rest of the economy lost jobs. Republicans are trying to save face by saying 130,000 jobs were added in January. That’s still low compared to the Biden years. And jobs haven’t really grown since April, when the nasty guy announced his tariff Liberation Day. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported that the House voted on a resolution to end the emergency that the nasty guy declared to justify tariffs against Canada. This was brought by Democrats and enough Republicans voted for it that it passed 219-211. This is a symbolic rebuke of the nasty guy. Of course, speaker Johnson didn’t want it to come to a vote. But enough Republicans were worried about the high prices their constituents are paying. The measure goes to the Senate and the nasty guy will surely veto it. Besides, it’s a resolution, not a bill. In Friday’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Ali Breland of The Atlantic talking about how Jeffry Epstein helped revive the idea of “race-science” or the false idea that there is a genetic reason why non-while people are supposedly inferior. I’ll bypass that discussion for Kev’s comments on the article.

~35% of the world’s population is either Indian or Chinese and I think that official number has been over the 30% mark for at least decades (and probably centuries). When you think about it, “white people” have always been a minority of the world’s population. If “non-whites” wanted to “slaughter” white people, we have the numbers to do so.

Óscar Gutiérrez of El País in English:

The Kiel Institute for the World Economy, founded in Germany more than a century ago, has been monitoring aid flows since the start of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In its latest assessment, published Wednesday, the think tank states that “Europe has almost offset the collapse in U.S. support.” Specifically, U.S. contributions plummeted by almost 99% last year; those from European partners increased by 59% in financial and humanitarian assistance, and by 67% in military aid. “As a result, total aid in 2025 remained close to previous years,” the institute notes. [...] With the numbers in hand, it’s clear that Trump has achieved his goal. The Republican leader reiterated in the first months of his presidency that it was Europe’s responsibility to defend Ukraine. He even demanded that Zelenskiy reimburse the money the United States had spent during the first three years of the Russian occupation, a demand he softened with the signing of the minerals trade agreement. […] The distribution... is uneven. The Kiel Institute points out that Scandinavian and Western European countries, with Germany and the United Kingdom leading the way, account for almost 95% of military aid, far ahead of the southern region where Spain is located — the Spanish government pledged €817 million ($970 million) last November, 75% of which was for military equipment — and Ukraine’s eastern neighbors.

In the comments Jimmy Margulies posted a cartoon of two workmen adding to the side of the Kennedy Center a sign that says “ICE Detention Facility.” One workman says, “Trump remains confident he can fill the seats here.” The nasty guy held up money for another tunnel under the Hudson River into New York, then said he would release it if Chuck Schumer would rename Penn Station as Trump Station and Dulles Airport near Washington as Trump Airport. RJ Matson of e pluribus cartoonum created a cartoon of “Chuck Schumer’s The Art of the Counteroffer.” It shows “The Donald J. Trump Memorial Long Term Parking Lot” at Dulles Airport and the “Donald J. Trump Taxi Stand at Penn Station.” A cartoon posted by paulpro and created by Jeffrey Koterba shows Bondi with a smile on her face at the doctor’s office as a nurse show her chest x-ray to the doctor. The nurse explains, “She redacted hear heart x-ray... So we don’t actually know if she has one...” Daniel Boris posted a cartoon of Bad Bunny saying, “Release the Epstein files in Spanish. Maybe then MAGA will get upset about them.” In today’s roundup Greg Dworkin included a pair of tweets about the six Democrats who recorded a video telling military personnel they had a duty to refuse to obey orders that were illegal. A grand jury refused to indict them. Kyle Griffin tweeted:

*None* of the D.C. grand jurors who heard the Trump admin's pitch on why they should indict the Democratic lawmakers who recorded that illegal orders video believed the Justice Department had met the low threshold of probable cause, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC.

Joyce Alene added:

I have never heard of a situation where every single grand juror rejected an indictment. Every single one.

Singer reported that Tom Homan, the “border czar” who was put in charge of ICE in Minnesota, said federal agents are already leaving the state and the rest will leave through next week. Homan said the reason was the operation was a “success.” Others say this was an admission the thuggish methods were hurting the popularity of the nasty guy and Republicans. Many people in this administration are very good at lying. Are they doing that now? Elliott Payne, the president of the Minneapolis City Council, said, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Meanwhile the community will keep up their patrols. Perhaps this is a way to get headlines to get people to think the problem is over so they look away. That way ICE can continue to violate people’s rights with less public attention. They did that kind of thing before when Homan took on oversight in Minnesota, giving the impression the brutality was ending, but nothing changed. Bill of Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted late night commentary:

"This whole culture war [against Bad Bunny] last weekend has demonstrated one thing: for all of MAGA's triumphalism, it's not a movement that seems confident in its position. These people, who control every branch of government, are so triggered by someone singing in Spanish for 20 minutes that they need to create their own 'safe space' alternative halftime show, where 'Trad Bunny' over here is singing songs about how he can't even enjoy sitting in his truck and drinking beer because knows that somewhere out there is a trans person. It's actually f---ing pathetic. The gap between the power you all wield, and the victimhood you all claim, is the real offense. If you didn’t actually have the power to do so much damage in our country, I think we'd all dismiss it as a weak and pathetic pity party." —Jon Stewart, on the fake MAGA tantrum over the Big Bunny halftime show

Randy Essex, retired journalist, wrote an opinion piece for last Sunday’s Detroit Free Press. Alas, the online version is for subscribers only. In it Essex described the vice nasty’s view of manhood is sad and absurd. The vice nasty called on white men to call the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to report incidents where they were passed over for a job that went to a minority person. Yes men face challenges – see the suicide rate. We tell boys highly mixed messages to be both tough and sensitive. Essex (a white guy) wrote that DEI made him better and appreciate a variety of experiences and perspectives, critical to complete news stories and being an empathetic human. He also grew up poor as the vice nasty claims to have done. There were jobs he wanted and didn’t get. He was told to get over it.

Diverse voices simply are needed for organizations to cope effectively with our dynamic society. Diversity of leadership is an even greater need to challenge institutional bias. ... To my fellow white men, I say that not getting a particular opportunity isn’t discrimination. It’s both a part of life and a chance to be better next time. Man up.

Drew Sheneman posted a cartoon on Kos showing a man looking at another man labeled Corporations sitting in piles of money. The corporation man says, “Congress let your Obamacare subsidies lapse? That’s odd, my subsidies came as scheduled.”