I will save democracy by wearing a suit

Over the last couple decades I’ve learned of the music of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a late 18th century French composer, yes about the time of Mozart. When my classical music radio stations began to play recordings of his music they would, of course, discuss that he was a black man and in addition to his abilities of composing and playing music, he was quite a good athlete, especially in fencing, and also a good soldier. The Detroit Symphony Orchestra has now played one of his symphonies. I didn’t go because the music of Mozart and his contemporaries is music I appreciate in small doses. When these stations began to talk about a movie of his life. I was, of course, interested. The movie is Chevalier, and was my Sunday movie. As with all of Hollywood movies one must not assume the whole thing is historically accurate, even though the frame probably is. A featured user review on IMDB says the movie is so historically inaccurate one would do better reading Saint-Georges’s Wikipedia page. Sticking to the what is historically accurate would have made a fine movie, so why muck it up with a fictional overlay? Alas, Wikipedia pages tend towards the dry side. Well, fine. Don’t watch this movie for the history. Instead, consider it as a fictional story. Does it do well at that? I think so and I enjoyed it. The acting is quite good, the movie is quite well made, and the story is a good one. The movie opens as Mozart and his orchestra finishes a concert and asks the audience what should be played as an encore. Joseph approaches the stage and proposes one of Mozart’s violin concertos – with Joseph playing along. Mozart agrees, no harm in humoring the guy. And Joseph begins to add another line to the solo part with the cadenza (usually improvised at the time) turning into a musical duel (though some of those riffs sound too bluesy for the 18th century). The audience is impressed. Then we see young Joseph being brought to a French music academy. His father is a white plantation owner on Guadeloupe, part of the French West Indies, his mother a slave. But Joseph already has good violin skills. This part is basically true. Once grown a fencing duel introduces him to Queen Marie Antoinette and she anoints him as Chevalier, the French equivalent of a knight. This gives him access to the high society circles and soon he is her guest in her box at the opera – and we pass from the historically dubious and on into the historically false. He hears that the job of director of the Paris Opera is open and he proposes to the queen that the one to get the job should be the one who writes the best opera. And he’s off and running. Then racism happens. And he has to figure out who he is. At the death of his father his mother arrives in France. She warns him about living in a white man’s world. As this is going on we get closer to the French Revolution, which Joseph begins to take interest in the people’s point of view – especially that égalité thing. It all comes to a satisfying (though not historically accurate) climax. At the end of the movie it says that when Napoleon came to power he banned Saint-Georges’s music because he was a person of color. It said that much of his music was destroyed, though consider this movie’s relationship with historical accuracy (I don’t know how much was lost). Napoleon’s ban is a big reason why this music was ignored for 200 years. We begin to wonder... Saint-Georges was called the “Black Mozart.” Perhaps Mozart should have been called the “White Saint-Georges?” I finished the book The Body Scout by Lincoln Michel. It’s a science fiction murder mystery. Kobo comes from a family so poor they lived in underground burrows. His burrow collapsed, killing his parents and mangling his right arm. The arm is replaced with a bionic version. And soon he is obsessed with getting the latest bionic body upgrade. Kobo is taken in by the family of JJ Zunz. Zunz is just a few days different in age from Kobo and they consider each other to be brothers. Kobo had a short stint in a baseball league that featured players with bionic body parts, but that league was banned. So he now works as a scout for the latest sort of baseball team, heavy with corporate ownership. His prospects include medical and genetic scientists as well as players. That’s because while bionic parts are banned chemical and biological enhancements are not. Then Zunz, now the star batter on another baseball team, is murdered by a biological agent during his last at-bat in the last game before the World Series, a very public death. Kobo is asked by Zunz’ team to investigate the murder in exchange for the hope of paying off his considerable medical debt. But only if he solves the crime before the end of the World Series. The plot has a great number of twists and turns and the ending is not anywhere near where one expects, which is good. Along the way are discussions of bionic enhancements and cloning. There are also discussions of inequality – if only the rich are able to afford bodily upgrades and perhaps long-term youthful vigor, where does that leave the poor? I enjoyed this one, though I tend to avoid murder mysteries because they start with a murder. Hunter of Daily Kos reported that the loudest noise coming from the Senate this week was about Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania routinely showing up at the chamber wearing a hoodie and gym shorts instead of a suit. To accommodate him Schumer told the Senate sergeant-at-arms to no longer enforce the dress code. Republicans promptly needed a fainting couch and pearls to clutch. They are mighty upset the Senate has lowered the bar on dress code. Hunter and many others noted Republicans are not at all upset about the lowered bar on behavior by members of Congress. That low standard includes things like Rep. Lauren Boebert and her date being booted from a theater because of vaping, groping, and being disturbing nuisances to those around them. Or the Pandemic Prince being awarded with $2 billion by the Saudis after departing the White House. Or it seems a frequent parade of Republicans caught in a sex scandal. Could you guess that Fetterman is a Democrat? Joan McCarter of Kos reported on Senate Republicans going “DressCon 1” over the relaxation of the Senate dress code. 46 of them signed a letter to Schumer discussing how casual clothing disrespects the Senate. Wrote McCarter:

They even pulled the war card. The Senate floor, they wrote, “is where we must make the gravest decision imaginable – whether to send our fellow Americans into battle to defend the freedoms we all hold dear.” Meanwhile, every one of the senators who signed that letter is standing by while Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville symbolically spits on our armed forces with his monthslong hold on military promotions and confirmations.

Mark Sumner of Kos reported that Fetterman, who had no tolerance for BS and is quick with humorous counterjab had a proposal to all those who don’t like his hoodies:

If those jagoffs in the House stop trying to shut our government down, and fully support Ukraine, then I will save democracy by wearing a suit on the Senate floor next week.

Fetterman’s campaign is now selling hoodies. Last June the Supreme Court handed down a decision that said colleges and universities could no long use race in the admissions process. That decision explicitly said it did not apply to the service academies – West Point and such. Nina Totenberg of NPR reported that the same organization that brought that suit against Harvard is now bringing a suit against West Point. Totenberg noted why the service academies are so invested in racial balance. During Vietnam black soldiers made up 25% of the enlisted men in the Army, but only 2% of officers of all branches. They determined lack of of minority officers “threatened the integrity and performance of the military.” So they consider race in admissions. The case will likely be before the Supreme Court some time next year. Sumner discussed the legacy of Rudy Giuliani. Once beloved for the way he seemed to handle the job of Mayor of New York after the 9/11 attacks (though Sumner reminds us that he was actually an awful mayor), Giuliani has fallen so far he was sued by his own attorney for about $1.3 million in unpaid legal fees. The more he associated with the nasty guy the worse things have gotten for him. And few people are shedding tears. McKay Coppins wrote a biography of Sen. Mitt Romney, to be published soon. Coinciding with Romney’s announcement that he will retire when his term is up next year Coppins published excerpts in The Atlantic. Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed a few excerpts, mostly those that focused on Romney’s views of other Republicans. A big part of that was even though in public they toadied up to the nasty guy in private they ridiculed him, one declaring, “He has none of the qualities you would want in a president, and all of the qualities you wouldn’t.” Yet, they voted to acquit at the impeachment trials. Coppins gets to why.

But after January 6, a new, more existential brand of cowardice had emerged. One Republican congressman confided to Romney that he wanted to vote for Trump’s second impeachment, but chose not to out of fear for his family’s safety. The congressman reasoned that Trump would be impeached by House Democrats with or without him—why put his wife and children at risk if it wouldn’t change the outcome?

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Michael Tomasky of The New Republic discussing why Biden isn’t getting credit for his accomplishments.

There is no one reason. But there is one overwhelming factor in play: the media. Or rather, the two medias. It’s very important that people understand this: We reside in a media environment that promotes—whether it intends to or not—right-wing authoritarian spectacle. At the same time, as a culture, it’s consistently obsessed with who “won the day,” while placing far less value on the fact that the civic and democratic health of the country is nurtured through practices such as deliberation, compromise, and sober governance. The result is bad for Joe Biden. But it’s potentially tragic for democracy.

A few days ago – before I saw this quote – I got to thinking about the media obsession with the campaign as a horse race. I’ve talked many times about a social hierarchy and how many, perhaps most, people pay a great deal of attention to their position in the hierarchy, annoyed by those above them and pleased there is someone below them. I’ve seen the higher one is in the hierarchy the more one is obsessed with maintaining their position near the top. Most media companies are also obsessed with the hierarchy. That’s why they report on who “won the day” and who is ahead. That’s all about who is higher in the hierarchy, who is moving up, who is falling down. Policy issues, especially many of the ones pushed by Democrats, aren’t about the hierarchy, or rather about policies that help people to move up the hierarchy. In contrast, most – likely all – policies proposed by Republicans are about maintaining the hierarchy or pushing those low in the hierarchy to even lower positions, to make those at the top look better. Because of that to a media company obsessed with hierarchy policy is boring. In another roundup Dworkin had a few interesting quotes. One is a tweet by David Pepper:

More traditional/“moderate” Republicans: 1) engaged in egregious gerrymandering, and/or stopped efforts to reform it at the federal level 2) bemoan the state of their extremist party. Guys—1) led to 2)! You created the beast. A true self-own! Get on board & help fix it!

Dworkin quoted MatthewContinetti of Commentary

The first thing to say about the New Right is that it can get weird. Its ranks are composed almost entirely of men. They inhabit a social-media cocoon where they talk a lot about manhood, and strength, and manliness, and push-ups, and masculinity, and virility, and weight-lifting, and testosterone. “Wrestling should be mandated in middle schools,” write Arthur Milikh and Scott Yenor in the collection Up from Conservatism. “Students could learn to build and shoot guns as part of a normal course of action in schools and learn how to grow crops and prepare them for meals. Every male student could learn to skin an animal and every female to milk a cow.”

And the second thing is the “flirtation” (though I would use a much stronger word) with racism and anti-Semitiem. Yes, they’re obsessed with the hierarchy. Dworkin also included a tweet from Archaeo – Histories that has a couple photos of a 2200 year old mosaics recently uncovered in Turkey. Down in the comments Denise Oliver Velez included lots of cartoons. One is from Jesse Duquette of Harriet Tubman holding up the finger with the caption:

On this day in 1849: Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery. Florida schools: Ungrateful helper rudely abandons her generous landlords.

And a cartoon by Paul Noth in honor of Constitution Day (Sept. 17th). The document is now 236 years old. The cartoon shows several founding fathers seated around a table working on our founding document and one of them says:

But what if a tyrant comes to power and no one’s able to stop him because the whole thing’s kind of funny?

And in a third roundup is a cartoon from Pat Byrnes. Two elephants are walking in the Capitol and one says to the other, “But won’t charging Biden with something only help his electability?”

The false notion that beauty determines worth and success

My Sunday movie was The Worst Ones, another movie from France. It is quite unusual. It’s a movie about making a movie. The film crew goes into the housing projects of a town in northern France to select four teens – Jessy, Lily, Maylis, and Ryan – to feature in the movie to be made. Using the local talent gives the movie gritty authenticity. The title comes from a comment someone else makes that it seems the director chose the worst ones to be in his film. What we see of the movie being made is minimal. Jessy and Lily do a sex scene (that doesn’t get past kissing). Ryan, barely a teen, is a kid with anger issues and is told he really needs to get angry during a fight with other boys. The rest of the time we see what being singled out to do a movie does to their lives. Ryan is facing custody issues because he’s not sure his mother has overcome her mental illness. Lily gets into a fight because she has a reputation of a slut. Gabriel the director has to counsel his charges. The scenes and their preparation are discussed with family and friends. Some of this feels invasive – the families sure put up with a lot to allow film crews to move in with them for the duration. It also feels tangential to making the movie. What’s really going on here? I very much enjoyed this one. If you are interested in unusual movies I recommend this one. Sandhya Dirks of NPR discussed affirmative action with Asian students starting college. Their opinions of it came down to two major points described by Rutvij Holay starting at Stanford University and Andrew Kang starting at Harvard. Dirks summarized:

Holay points to the personality portion of the admissions process at Harvard, where prospective students were rated. Asian Americans consistently scored lower than everyone else. They were seen as quiet, maybe even boring. In other words, they were racially stereotyped, Holay says. And this gets at how he understands racism. ... Kang doesn't think affirmative action was the use of racial stereotypes. He thinks it was an attempt to put a thumb on the scale for communities who have been historically marginalized to help combat the racism embedded in education. Without it, he thinks the system will do what it was set up to do - favor the white and the wealthy. And Kang fears that this is all part of something bigger - a war on diversity. ... Holay sees racism as rooted in stereotypes. For him, removing the use of race in admissions will remove the ability to use stereotypes, removing the racism. But Kang sees racism as reproducing through systems, limited access to generational wealth and education. Affirmative action opened up that access. Now those doors have again been closed. For these two students, the answer to the question of how to combat racism differs radically, based on how they define it.

Kos of Daily Kos discussed the situation in the schools of West Bonner County, Idaho. Yeah, nasty guy country. In the 2021 election they elected a far right school board (well, enough for a majority). They were overwhelmingly recalled last Tuesday. It seems they did what they were voted in to do. Some of those things: They lobbied for the defeat of a supplemental school funding levy and voters bought into it and rejected it. The district lost a third of its budget and improving anything with that size budget cut is impossible. The board hired superintendent Branden Durst who has no educational qualifications but plenty as a culture warrior. He was good at implementing a transphobic bathroom policy. Both candidates, while campaigning to keep their jobs, essentially said vote to keep me or the liberals and their woke agenda will take over again. And after their loss there was commentary was about the failures of the two members, not the MAGA ideology they pursued. And – we’re not at all surprised – there are claims the election was fraudulent with an attempt to overturn it. The whole thing comes down to the MAGA movement is supposed to hurt those people, not us. SemDem of the Kos community discussed beauty pageants. Not the ones we’re familiar with that feature women old enough to be in college (young adults), but teen, preteen, and categories down to infant. The parents of these tykes can get quite pushy and that push includes sexualizing the girls.

It’s also telling where these pageants are being held. The states that hold the most contests are Florida, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky. All of these states have passed anti-LGBTQ+ bills, including bans on adult drag shows, for the expressed reason that they are protecting children from “inappropriate sexualized conduct.” ... Child pageants are harmful, even for the children who want to participate, due to the oversexualized nature of these pageants. They are harmful in other ways, as well. Child pageants reinforce the false notion at a very young age that beauty is the primary determinant of worth and success, and children, particularly girls, are taught to prioritize external beauty over other qualities, leading to body image issues and low self-esteem.

Yet another problem: the sexualization of these girls attracts pedophiles. There are thousands of reported sexual abuse incidents each year. “Do you know where there hasn’t ever been a kidnapping or assault? A drag show.” Want to protect kids? Ban child beauty pageants. An antidote to, or maybe subversion of, child pageants is the movie Little Miss Sunshine. Clio2 wrote for the Kos LGBTQ Litarature series about the book Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam. It contains stories of people or groups that appear to fall between the genders before the time when the idea of transgender was known. Clio2 discussed six of them. Ahebi was assumed to be female when born about 1880 in what is now Nigeria. After growing up Ahebi became king (not queen) with all the male trappings of the role. That included multiple wives who would sleep with other men to bear children for him. During WWI some 20,000 British men of Germany ancestry were confined in internment camps at Knockaloe on the Isle of Man. A big thing was putting on plays for each other, with about a show a week, with over 1,500 shows by the end of their internment. Women’s roles were played by men. And some of them kept their female roles off the stage with devoted admirers. After the war they resumed their male identities and didn’t want reminders. In the early 1600s Mary Frith used gender nonconformity to facilitate petty crime and in general scandalize London. A millennium earlier in the late 600s in Medina on the Arabian peninsula was an individual called Tuways. This person led a group that was hired to provide music and “cheeky wit” for events. Tuways was categorized as male at birth but presented as female. They were seen as a third gender, neither male nor female. Around 1600 Thomasine Hall was christened in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Hall appears to have alternated genders through life. After accused of fornication there was an attempt to show that Hall was male or female. There was no consensus. In the late 1700s the Ktunaxa people lived along the Kootenay River near what is now the US-Canada border. One among them was born female, then took the name Kauxuma nupika to declare he was now a man with gender tied up with spiritual experience. He became a prophet though most of his prophesies were not welcome. After describing each person or group Clio2 then provides a bit of context (the book provides much more), which I won’t get into. Delving into the lives of people from other cultures reminds us that other cultures think about gender differently than we do, such as having different sorts of pronouns. Also, history tends to assume a person is cisgender until proven otherwise, and many records are sparse, which means queer lives, especially trans lives, tend to be erased.

Diversity hire through affirmative action doesn't mean unqualified

My Sunday movie was Broker, a Korean film from 2021. I was intrigued by it because it features two men taking care of a baby. No, they’re not gay. They deal in underground child placement. For a price. This particular case seems a bit sketchy from the start. A church has an orphanage and as part of that has a baby box by the door. One woman places a baby on the ground near the box. Then a woman (the same one?) shifts the baby into the box. The men retrieve the baby – and delete the video of the baby in the box. The men find a note saying the mother will come back. They disregard it because they see lots of those notes and never see the mother. But the next day she shows up and she joins the men on a trip to another city to meet a potential couple because she wants to approve who will raise her child. There are two women police officers trying to nail the men for infant trafficking. There’s also the widow of the baby’s father who sends goons after them. Along the way they stop at the orphanage where one of the men grew up and one of the boys hides in their van. The question is will the two men (or maybe one of them), the mother, the stowaway boy, and the infant form a family? There are a lot of hints they might and hints they might not. I enjoyed this one. Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Daily Kos community reported a bill has been introduced in the Ohio legislature would make some drag performances a felony. Penalties increase if a minor sees the performance and up again if a child under 13 sees it. The bill is part of a long list of Republican efforts in many states targeting the LGBTQ community. One of the sponsors claims it really isn’t about drag and insists the term “drag queen” isn’t in the bill.

As the Plain Dealer noted, the bill’s definition of “adult cabaret performance” instead identifies drag queens as “performers or entertainers who exhibit a gender identity that is different from the performer’s or entertainer’s gender assigned at birth using clothing, makeup, prosthetic or imitation genitals or breasts, or other physical markers.”

Which pretty much sounds like a drag queen. So, as in many other places, Republicans are not real good with honesty. Singer Tony Bennett recently died at the age of 96. I admire his long career, though he didn’t perform the type of music that I like (which is classical). Even so I appreciated this thread (on Threadreader) by Michael Harriot about Bennett’s big break. Most of the thread is about the rise of the Harlem Renaissance after WWI. His story ends with Pearl Bailey organizing shows at a white club in Greenwich Village in 1949. Every black entertainer would have been delighted to be a part of it, but Bailey wanted to make her show “diverse.”

So she hired a white opener, probably the least famous musician in the place So when Bob Hope asked who her opening act was, bc he wanted someone to take on the road, Pearl Bailey was like “Some local kid named Tony Bennett. You like him?” The rest is history. Now here is the moral of the story: Just because Tony Bennett was a diversity hire who got his job through affirmative action… It doesn’t mean he wasn’t qualified.

Tevye of the Kos community told the story of Shayden Walker of Amarillo, Texas. He’s 11 and has several conditions, including autism, ADHD, and bipolar. He gets bullied. A lot. On July 3, Shayden knocked on the door of Brennan and Angell Ray. He was lonely and in desperate need of a friend. He had met the couple before and knew they were kind. Shayden asked if they knew and kids his age. But the ones Brennan mention had become bullies. Brennan and Angell posted a video of the situation and started a fundraiser. They wanted to show how sweet Shayden was and how destructive bullying is. It went viral so fast Angell had no time to warn Shayden’s mother. Within 24 hours the fundraiser hit $37,000 and they shut it down. Some of the money went to Shayden for a vacation. There were several offers for travel destinations. Some money was donated to nearby tornado victims and towards relief for Ukraine. The video has topped 100 million views and Shayden now had friends around the world. Local residents created a “Shine Like Shayden” to offer their support and to take a stand against bullying. Attendance was quite good. There are bullies in the world. There are also a lot of wonderful people. Down in the comments rebel ga posted an image that says:

Coupon for: One Free Hug. Infinite uses. Redeemable at any nearby friendly person.

One that puts love of country above all else

My Sunday move was Cowboys from 2020. The setting is northwest Montana, beautiful scenery. Josie – Joe – is a preteen transgender boy. He tells his father Troy, who understands. His mother Sally does not. Mom is so insistent that her child is female that Joe runs away with his father. But Dad has mental health issues. Part of the story is Joe and Troy trying to get to Canada. Another part is Sally working with the cops, saying Troy kidnapped Josie. A third part is flashbacks to show how the situation got so critical, including Sally accusing Troy of being too much of an influence on their child. He uses male pronouns for their child, she uses female. Joe explains to his father that he feels alien in his body. When we see Joe in bed his stuffed toy is a green alien. I had written before of the saying that if a gun is shown in the first act it will go off by the third. I’ve since learned Chekhov was the one who said it. I thought of that because a gun is shown in the first few minutes of this movie. And yes, it is used. I thought the acting was well done, the story engaging, the scenery beautiful, and in all an enjoyable evening. Danny Feingold of Capital & Main posted on Daily Kos noted climate emergencies are affecting both red and blue states, so: “How can we forge a non-ideological consensus to take on the climate emergency?” We don’t have time to vote in a unified Democratic majority, and some Democrats, like Sen. Manchin, are in the pockets of (or co-owners of) fossil fuel companies.

So where does that leave us? Perhaps the answer is to reframe the need for urgent climate action in the most American of ways: as one that puts love of country above all else.

We are all under threat from a common enemy, one that doesn’t “distinguish between races, creeds, religions or political affiliations.” A solution, proposed by former Republican Reps. Ryan Costello and Francis Rooney in an op-ed for Politico, is for environmental organizations to actively engage in right-of-center communities. Get the citizens wanting climate action and their representatives might follow. Dartagnan of the Kos community wrote that the Supreme Court disallowing affirmative action in college admissions may not turn out as expected. The key passage in Roberts’ decision is how the student might write their essay and how it would be used by the college:

A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination. Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university. In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race.

All minority students have faced stereotyping and discrimination because of the way the appear to the white majority. Minority students have already been writing about this in their admissions essays. And college admissions officers and high schools counselors now know this is the way around the affirmative action ban. Many colleges will now suggest this as a topic for the student’s essay. A majority of white people believe discrimination against them exists. A much smaller percentage say they have actually experienced it. That reverse racism has been disproven makes no difference in people believing it is true. And hard right organizations have sent letters to those 200 highly competitive colleges threatening lawsuits of they don’t comply with the Supreme Court ruling. So even if white kids are discriminated against, they can write about it in their essays too. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quotes an article by Kate Shaw in the New York Times. Here’s part of the quote.

Since Justice Barrett replaced Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the court has sided with religious plaintiffs in every major religion case except a few exceptions on the shadow docket, representing an essentially unbroken streak of wins for Christian plaintiffs. This last point is significant. Where historically some of the court’s most important religious freedom rulings have protected members of minority religions from discrimination, the big winners in the recent cases have been practitioners of mainstream Christian religions.

I cleaned out a lot of browser tabs that are for things on Twitter I can no longer access and I don’t care very much if I never get the links back. Yeah, I’ve still got a few tabs for tweets that I might discuss without linking back to the original. Then there are tabs for threads I know I can get through the thread reader. Like this one by Michael Harriot from late April. He beings with a link to an article on ProPublica showing a stopped train with a black child crawling beneath it. When a train blocks a crossing for hours kids risk their lives by crawling underneath. The train could start at any moment. And ambulance and fire trucks are frequently blocked. Harriot explains that many towns historically segregated by race. His first example is train tracks. The less desirable housing was downwind from the noise and smoke of the trains. That’s where we get the expression, “wrong side of the tracks.” If a town with two high schools finds they have to close one, they aren’t going to send the white students to where the black people live. So a lot of black kids have to “cross the tracks” to attend school. Many had to face long walks and obstacles the white students didn’t have to face – like reservoirs that sometimes had high water or a ravine that didn’t have a convenient bridge. And in the 1950s many black neighborhoods in cities were wiped out through eminent domain so a freeway (for white people) could go through and become another barrier. Harriot takes on the false narrative that black people don’t value education. His rebuttal starts with black districts get about $2K less per student. White school libraries have more books. Yet, most black students attend these black schools. Another way this is racist is black people pay taxes too. Black people do value a good education. But that’s not what’s available to them.

“Independence” from accountability and honest self-reflection

On Independence Day for the last 35 years during Morning Edition on NPR the staff has read the Declaration of Independence. Last year they added a discussion of some of the racist phrases in the document. This year, instead of reading it, host Steve Inskeep spent 11 minutes discussing one phrase: “We hold these truths to be self-evident - that all men are created equal...” Historian Jill Lepore noted we usually indict the founders for proclaiming equality while owning slaves. But go easy on them. At that time the idea that even all white men were equal was quite radical. The country was putting that idea in a declaration saying they intend to take their place with the great nations of the world. That was bold. Annette Gordon-Reed wrote a book about the children of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, one of his slaves. Gordon-Reed said that by 1791 black people were quoting Jefferson’s words back to him to say this declaration has not been fulfilled. They recognized the importance of those words. In 1848 the convention of women at Seneca Falls, New York grabbed ahold of those words to form the foundation of the women’s suffrage movement. Frederick Douglass was at that women’s meeting. Through those words he saw his way forward was not to denounce the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. That would never give him what he wanted. Instead, he proclaimed the founding principles and showed how they were not being met. Of course, there was pushback. The Supreme Court, in the 1857 Dred Scott case, declared the meaning of “all men created equal” did not include black men. At the start of the Civil War Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens said that Jefferson was wrong to promote equality, that the federal government was founded on the “great truth” that the black man is not equal to the white man. Stephens was wrong about Jefferson promoting equality. But he was right that the government was founded on inequality. After the Civil War the 14th Amendment and its equal protection clause finally added Jefferson’s ideal to the Constitution. That was followed by the Supreme Court limiting the federal power to defend it as new groups added claims of equality. When Native people became citizens in 1961 they claimed Jefferson’s words. Martin Luther King did too during the March on Washington in 1963. Harvey Milk claimed them for LGBTQ people in 1978. Though Jefferson didn’t free his slaves, and it would have been good if he had, he did point a way towards the future. Inskeep said:

Many of today's debates turn on equality. What's it mean to have an equal shot at education? A Supreme Court case over using race in university admissions included arguments for equality on both sides. Other cases asked, what's it mean to have an equal chance to vote? Or how far can you push a demand for equal treatment by a business? And that's just in the last few days.

Most people accept as truth that all people are created equal. That accounts for the progress we’ve made towards making it true. This evening on NPR sixth or seventh generation descendants of Frederick Douglass recited the words of one of his speeches given in the 1850s inspired by that women’s conference and Jefferson’s words. “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?” You white people may celebrate your independence, but we black people haven’t seen it yet. In the comments of a pundit roundup on Daily Kos Denise Oliver Velez included some cartoons. One by Jesse Duquette shows Uncle Sam looking in a mirror and saying “Happy 4th of July, buddy.” and a Klansman saying from the mirror, “Backatcha, pal.” However, what is more interesting to me is the caption Duquette added:

In a nation that forces 10-year-olds to give birth and shields students from books about an uncomfortable history, “Happy Independence Day” can only mean “independence” from accountability and honest self-reflection.

In a cartoon by Kevin Frank, tweeted by Zack Hunt, a man is in a fast food hamburger joint and the young man behind the counter tells him:

I’m sorry sir, but gluttony is a sin and it would compromise my religious beliefs to enable your sinful lifestyle.

Rob Schmitz of NPR talked to Natasha Warikoo, professor of sociology at Tufts University and author of Is Affirmative Action Fair? The Myth of Equity in College Admissions. Since Warikoo tends to be wordy, I’ve summarized her important points. Asking if the admissions process is fair is the wrong question. Being fair is saying admission is a reward for achievement. But a college or university has a different goal of helping the next generation contribute to a shared society. So admission shouldn’t look at what a prospective student has done but what they will do. Allowing student to learn in a racially diverse college will improve them as leaders. That will benefit our entire American society. Yes, colleges should end legacy admissions. But doing so won’t compensate for the loss of affirmative action. Kerry Eleveld of Kos discussed that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg gave a master class in how to respond to Republicans. Highlight their strangeness and contrast that with what Democrats are doing. Eleveld says there’s a lot of strangeness to highlight and contrast: The Republican rush to defend the nasty guy, obsession with investigations that go nowhere, and attacks on bodily autonomy and equity. What Buttigieg was responding to was a weird homo-phobic/erotic ad by the Ron DeathSantis campaign. If you really wanted to find that ad I’m sure it’s online somewhere, as are several descriptions and deconstructions. But why would you want to do that to yourself?

"I'm going to leave aside the strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of you in between oiled-up, shirtless bodybuilders," Buttigieg said Sunday on CNN's “State of the Union,” "and just get to the bigger issue that is on my mind whenever I see this stuff in the policy space, which is, again: Who are you trying to help, who are you trying to make better off, and what public policy problems to you get up in the morning thinking about how to solve?"

I saved a few articles about DeathSantis so I could talk about them all at once. I’m pleased that I’ve been able to ignore him. So the things I have are more than a month old and I’ve lost a couple to the Twitter black hole. In a pundit roundup from the end of May Greg Dworkin of Kos quoted Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times discussing DeathSantis’ lack of policy initiatives.

But the press hasn’t begun to devote sufficient attention to the curious experiment DeSantis has launched, based on the hypothesis that it’s possible to win a presidential nomination, not to mention a presidential election, by appealing exclusively to a bloc of racists, antisemites, gun nuts and other nightcrawlers of the far right. An America led by DeSantis as he has portrayed himself thus far would be a dystopian hellhole. Let the examination begin. It would be proper to start with scrutiny of DeSantis’ positions on the most important geopolitical issues of our time, if they could be detected.

Dworkin added, “Well, that’s disqualifying.” Next was a quote by Mariano Alfredo of the Washington Post that can be summarized as DeathSantis saying once in the White House he would consider pardons for the January 6 offenders. Again, Dworkin responded, “That, right there, is disqualifying.” I have notes on another cartoon by Jesse Duquette (alas, the link is lost to Twitter). It is a cartoon from the beginning of May of DeathSantis saying something like, “How many trans kids do I need to bully before I’m taken seriously?” My notes also suggest Peggy Noonan had a great quote about DeathSantis. So I read one of her articles about what kind of candidate she thought he would be. I didn’t see anything special. Then I read an article by Ursula Few from mid March on PolitiZoom and the quote was right on top. The rest of the article is a rebuttal to the Noonan article I read. DeathSantis would not be a good leader, he’s not a good candidate, and Noonan was too gentle on him. But that Noonan quote is not at all gentle in describing DeathSantis:

He’s got a vibe like he’d unplug your life support for his cell phone.

Dartagnan of the Kos community posted an article last week that says climate change is finally being properly discussed in the mainstream media. They’re now reporting both the weather and the cause. What did it is the smoke blanketing the north and east and heat smothering the south. The articles are also being clear these weather patterns are caused by climate change. It seems the mantra “while it is not possible to attribute one event to climate change,” is finally on its way out. I listened to an episode of Gaslit Nation from a week ago, hosted by Andrea Chalupa. I think this is a regular episode and not a bonus restricted to donors. Her guest was Olga Lautman, an expert on the Russian mafia, also known as the ruling elite of the Russian Federation. The episode is titled Is Russia Headed Towards Collapse? Olga’s short answer: Yes. Well, at least Putin is finished and the rest of the oligarchs will be preoccupied with shooting at each other. The end didn’t start with Prigozhin’s little coup. It started last fall when Ukraine did that big sweep to liberate territory east of Kharkiv. At that time the oligarchs and the security service (which actually runs the country – for a cut of the action) realized Putin can’t win this war. It will only lead to Russia losing its gains, losing Donbas, and losing Crimea. Therefore Putin must go. The other big thing these oligarchs are concern about is the longer this war lasts the longer foreign governments and international agencies are going to be poking into their corrupt finances. All of this internal Russian turmoil is, of course, of benefit to Ukraine. The longer they’re focusing on shooting at each other the less they’re focused on Ukraine. While Russia probably won’t pull out – Ukraine will still have to push them out – once Russia is out there won’t be a time of rebuilding before attempting again. By the time Russia is ready for another attempt Ukraine will be in NATO. That turmoil is also a benefit to the US and the rest of the world. While Russians are focused on internal affairs they will be doing less interference in US elections. Though the 2024 election might be a last gasp of attempting to put a Russian asset in the White House. A user’s question got both Lautman and Chalupa talking about corruption in Russia and in the US. In addition to voting we should be encouraging our local news services in uncovering corruption in our own city, county, and state governments as well as in the national government. It was a private citizen looking into corruption in the Supreme Court that got ProPublica interested, which revealed Clarence Thomas’ sugar daddy. Alas, local newspapers are dying.

Still feeling the squeeze created by greedy corporations

My Sunday movie was Bros. When it came out last year it was billed as the first gay romance by a major studio given a wide release. Bobby is the director of the soon to open National Museum of LGBTQ+ History and Culture. He’s rather militant and intense (and talkative) about making sure our history is well represented and that people know about it. He also wants his independence. At a club he locks eyes with Aaron, who is super into working out. Aaron says he’s also not looking for a relationship. And it goes from there. Along the way there are a lot of references to queer culture. Debra Messing of Will & Grace plays herself. Harvey Fierstein plays a B&B host in Provincetown. There are a lot of references to Hallmark movies (though the name is changed), which is fun because Luke Macfarlane (Aaron) has made 14 Hallmark movies (thanks IMDB!). And, a plus, there is very little homophobia. I enjoyed it. While I’m glad this one was made I have doubts of another because IMDB says this one made back only about two-thirds of its budget. The straight audience stayed away. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported that Biden has embraced the term Bidenomics (hmm... we also have Obamacare and thankfully nothing named after the nasty guy). Biden is out campaigning on the word. He has good reason to claim it. McCarter reported there is still public resistance to that message. So she recommends another aspect of the economy be a part of what he tells voters, “Feel their pain, and blame it on corporate greed.” McCarter wrote that many of the largest general consumer companies have admitted to raising prices beyond the inflation of their costs to increase their profits. They say they will continue the practice in future years. One example is General Mills. It’s 2022 profits are up 16.5% with 2023 doing better. They spent over $2.12 billion rewarding shareholders. That’s money they took from customers.

All of this gives Biden a fantastic opportunity. He can tout the improving economy and the jobs and infrastructure projects he’s created, while at the same time acknowledging that people aren’t feeling better about it because their own wallets are still feeling the squeeze—a squeeze created by greedy corporations that are raising prices, driving inflation to justify raising prices more, and hurting consumers. There’s nothing like having a common enemy to help bolster your own support.

Now, will he actually do that? I still don’t have direct access to Twitter without signing up. However, I can still see some tweets of cartoons, though I can’t link to them directly. In the comments of a pundit roundup for Kos Denise Oliver Velez included a tweet by Richard Kadrey showing a frame from a Peanuts comic by Charles Schulz. He was reminded if it when the Supremes killed affirmative action. In this frame Linus tells Peppermint Patty, “No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.” Velez also included a cartoon by George Caballero showing a portrait of the Court. Three women wearing robes are on the left side, four on the left dressed as MAGA thugs with Barrett holding a cross, Alito holding an AR-15, and Thomas with a “Q” on his shirt. Kavanaugh is dressed in a toga with beer mugs attached to his hat. And Roberts has a robe off one shoulder showing a thug shirt underneath. Caballero added the caption, “SCOTUS just issued 200-page opinion whitesplaining why helping reverse 200 years of subjugation is unconstitutional.” And also a cartoon by Thomas Reese showing black hands holding a business card that says, “Congratulations! SCOTUS says the Constitution, written by slave owners, is colorblind! Go back 50 years...” Add in a comment by ranglinlover2 who quoted Bertolt Brecht, “Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again.” The commenter explained the “bitch” is white supremacy. I mentioned in a previous post that the case that led to the Supremes declaring businesses could discriminate against LGBTQ people was full of lies. The woman who brought the case is Lorie Smith. Brian Parker of the Kos community posed the question: Why isn’t Smith being prosecuted for lying to the Supremes? Chitown Kev, In a pundit roundup for Kos quoted Jill Lepore of the New York Times. She noted the Constitution hasn’t been amended since 1971 and the derailment of the Equal Rights Amendment, sent to the states in 1972, has meant the Constitution is unamendable (the quote doesn’t explain the reason and the rest is behind a paywall). Kev pointed out that the Constitution, after the Bill of Rights, had been amended every 40-60 years in clusters of two to four amendments. So we are due. Back to Lepore. Those amendments that failed have been on the right: amendments for balanced budgets, bans on flag burning, declaring fetal-personhood, and defense of marriage. Thankfully, all failed. Now Democrats are trying, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who proposed an amendment to regulate guns ownership.

Members of Congress first began proposing environmental rights amendments in 1970. They got nowhere. Today, according to one researcher, 148 of the world’s 196 national constitutions include environmental protection provisions. But not ours. Or take democratic legitimacy. Over the last decades, and beginning even earlier, as the political scientists Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky point out in a forthcoming book, “The Tyranny of the Minority,” nearly every other established democracy has eliminated the type of antiquated, antidemocratic provisions that still hobble the United States: the Electoral College, malapportionment in the Senate and lifetime tenure for Supreme Court justices. None of these problems can be fixed except by amending the Constitution, which, seemingly, can’t be done.

In a Ukraine update from last Tursday, a few days after the aborted insurrection in Russia, RO37 of the Kos community wonders if Russia might be decapitating its military. That happened once before. RO37 doesn’t name the triggering event that prompted Stalin’s Great Purge of 1936-38. By the time Stalin was done 1.2 million had died. That included many in the Russian military leadership. The purge took “4 out of 5 generals, 13 of 15 lieutenant generals, 50 of 57 major generals, and 153 out of 186 brigadier generals.” Stalin may have felt more secure – until Hitler violated the nonaggression pact he made with Stalin and invaded. And Stalin’s military, now without key leaders, was not able to protect the country from the invader. The initial battles were disastrous. Within three months Hitler’s army was outside Moscow and Leningrad – and the siege of Leningrad was horrific. Back to today. General Sergei Surovikin is believed to have known about the uprising in advance and may have participated in its planning. Though he has been the overall general in the war in Ukraine, he hasn’t had contact with his family since Sunday, the day after the uprising was halted. Will other generals now disappear? Mark Sumner of Kos reported last Friday that Russian workers and Russian military have been departing from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Russia has occupied the plant since early in the war, though Ukrainian workers continue to operate it, sometimes while being abused by the Russian guards. So are the Russians leaving because they are turning the whole plant back to Ukrainian control? Or are they getting their people out of the way before they cause a nuclear “accident”? One worrying detail – now that the dam above Kherson has blown and the reservoir is emptying the pipes that draw water to cool the reactor no longer reach the river. The plant might survive for a while without river water, but are Russians working out alternate sources of water? Or are they just leaving? I’d provide links and proper attributions to a couple cartoons posted on Twitter. The first features the Russian Matrioshka dolls. These are the wooden ones that nest one inside another. Open the biggest and another a bit smaller is inside. That one also opens revealing another even smaller. I have a set marking the first Gulf War of 1991. The biggest doll is Papi Bush, who in my opinion at the time was an OK leader until he got this huge approval rating for winning the war – and did nothing with it. Looking back now I probably wouldn’t have liked whatever he did. The next doll is Helmut Kohl of Germany, then Mitteran of France, Gorbachev of Russia, and the smallest is Saddam Hussein. The set of Matrioshka dolls in this cartoon are all of Putin. Each has a year and the doll’s size represents Putin’s power in that year. It shows over the years his strength has shrunk. The other cartoon is a reverse of Zelenskyy’s famous declaration early in the war. This one shows Putin under his long table saying, “I don’t need ammo. I need a ride.”

Let-them-eat-cake obliviousness

The Supreme Court year is over and in the last couple days they’ve been dropping two decisions a day, each with huge consequences. I got through one of them today. I heard a bit about the affirmative action ruling yesterday. This morning NPR got me up to speed. Steve Inskeep discussed the decision with Elissa Nadworny. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, said the admissions policies by Harvard and the University of North Carolina used race in ways the constitution does not allow. They may consider applicant's discussion of how race affected their individual lives, but not beyond that. This is a blow to colleges committed to a diverse campus. The University of California took decades and a complete redesign of the admissions process costing hundreds of millions of dollars to get their diversity numbers back up after the state banned affirmative action in the 1990s. Only about 200 schools and universities are highly selective and where this decision would apply. The rest are desperate enough for students this isn’t an issue. But those selective, elite institutions are the gatekeepers to power in America – eight of nine current Supremes attended Harvard or Yale. High school counselors are working with students to reframe their essays. But there is a lot of anxiety. Are some students relegated to HBCUs? Will others give up, saying college isn’t for everyone? Nadworny ended:

But, you know, over and over, research has shown that nothing is as effective at creating a racially diverse student body as considering race.

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos started with Roberts’ ruling:

Roberts seemingly ends the possibility of any meaningful racial considerations in admissions in his opinion, writing that the schools’ programs “lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points, those admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause.” “Many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin,” Roberts wrote. “This Nation’s constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.” This nation’s constitutional history on race is a problematic thing for Roberts to invoke in overthrowing this precedent.

I read the bit “touchstone of an individual’s identity ... but the color of their skin” and thought that for a great number of white people, especially cops, the color of a person’s skin is indeed the “touchstone of an individual’s identity.” Put another way, skin color is all they see. They are completely blind to “challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned.” That reminds me that being blatantly hypocritical is a way of declaring how much power one has. Part of Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent:

The Court cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter. The Court subverts the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by further entrenching racial inequality in education, the very foundation of our democratic government and pluralistic society. Because the Court’s opinion is not grounded in law or fact and contravenes the vision of equality embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment, I dissent.

Yes, Robert’s is saying he is upholding the 14th Amendment while Sotomayor is saying he is violating it. McCarter explains the history of the case and previous affirmative action cases that led to this one. I’ll let you read them. McCarter concluded, mentioning the Students for Fair Admissions, backed by conservative groups. The backers championed this case and the one that gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013.

Both Harvard and the SFFA hired economists to evaluate the 2019 class of Harvard to simulate what it would look like if race couldn’t be considered a factor in admissions. The Harvard economist determined that the class would have been 9% Hispanic rather than 13%, and 6% Black as opposed to 14% under affirmative action. In the arguments in the cases, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued for the universities, pointing out what ending the admissions process would mean for higher education. “When students of all races and backgrounds come to college and live together and learn together, they become better colleagues, better citizens and better leaders,” she said.

McCarter then turned to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent:

With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces “colorblindness for all” by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life ... No one benefits from ignorance. Although formal racelinked legal barriers are gone, race still matters to the lived experiences of all Americans in innumerable ways, and today’s ruling makes things worse, not better. The best that can be said of the majority’s perspective is that it proceeds (ostrich-like) from the hope that preventing consideration of race will end racism. But if that is its motivation, the majority proceeds in vain.

Jackson then added footnote to decry Justice Thomas for attacking her dissent without carefully reading it. As part of that she wrote: “JUSTICE THOMAS ignites too many more straw men to list, or fully extinguish, here.” McCarter added:

Both note a carve-out Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for military academies, which can still use race-based criteria for admissions. Jackson interprets that as the majority concluding “racial diversity in higher education is only worth potentially preserving insofar as it might be needed to prepare Black Americans and other underrepresented minorities for success in the bunker, not the boardroom.”

I was ready to insert a couple quotes from Twitter, but at the moment Twitter won’t let me read tweets without becoming a member. This is something new today. I haven’t signed up before now due to the way they and other social media sites collect information about me (I won’t be surprised if they do that when I read without signing up). But with Elon Musk in control of Twitter and watching the way he I trashing it there is no way I’m giving him anything. But back to the Supremes. One of those tweets was saying that Jackson, Sotomayor, and Kagan are writing their dissents not for the current time, but for a time when we can pull back from this conservative control. Those dissents will be useful in rebuilding the country. On Thursday Kai Ryssdal of the NPR show Marketplace talked to Peter Blair Henry, who has a string of business and economic credentials. Here is the main point of what they talked about: There’s a lot of data that shows diverse leadership teams at corporations perform better than non-diverse teams. This ruling removes one way in which universities produce diverse classes of graduates. That will make it harder for businesses to generate the diverse teams they need for higher performance and higher profits. This is a global disadvantage. Corporations will have to turn elsewhere to get diverse talent. They don’t know how to do that yet. Today on Marketplace Stephanie Hughes discussed one of the ways these corporations could create a diverse workforce. A corporation recruits at only a few colleges and universities. One place they tend to go is the CEO’s alma mater. Where they could go and where the administration would be delighted to see them are the HCBUs. They could also get rid of “weird” rules, like not interviewing anyone with a GPA below 3.2. They assume that’s a predictor of performance, and it isn’t. Meteor Blades of Kos wrote about another potential consequence of this ruling.

Environmental injustice comes from having situated waste dumps, chemical factories, mines, refineries, and other polluting facilities in areas where a long history of redlining has disproportionately forced Black people and other people of color to live. This is not to say that white people earning low incomes haven’t also wound up in such areas. But the racial disproportion is stark. If the Supreme Court majority were ultimately to apply its rationale in the affirmative action cases to this matter, implementing truly effective environmental justice would be next to impossible.

Laura Clawson of Kos looked at yet another potential consequence.

America First Legal, run by white nationalist former Trump aide Stephen Miller, started teeing up the next racist court decision before this one was even decided. The group has filed at least nine Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaints, The Washington Post reports, alleging that major companies like McDonald’s, Alaska Airlines, Hershey, Anheuser-Busch, and Nordstrom are “hiring people based solely on immutable characteristics, like race or sex, rather than qualifications or abilities.” If the EEOC doesn’t do what Miller wants, the next step would likely be a lawsuit. ... The U.S. economy continues to be shaped by the legacies of slavery, segregation, redlining, hiring discrimination, and discriminatory mass incarceration. But when it comes to deciding if someone gets into college or gets a job or promotion, groups like America First Legal have a lot of money and lawyers to argue that none of that can be taken into account, that applicants affected by those histories should be judged by terms that most highly value the type of qualifications accumulated by people whose ancestors were attending elite colleges at a time when those colleges didn’t admit Black people, and accumulating generational wealth at a time when that too was overwhelmingly off limits to Black people through a host of discriminatory practices, many of them written in law. ... The right-wing legal advocacy complex ... argument is that any effort to undo centuries of discrimination against Black people and other people of color is itself discrimination against white people.

These conservatives are demanding the right to oppress. Lalo Alcaraz tweeted a cartoon of Thomas looking down from a hole in the ceiling as he pulls up an affirmative action ladder, saying, “I’ll be taking this.” Mike Luckovich posted a cartoon on Kos. It shows a person labeled “Legacy Admission” climbing a ladder up to college. There is also a young black man staring at the court carrying his ladder away. The court says, “Your ladder’s unnecessary...” In a pundit roundup Greg Dworkin of Kos included a tweet by David Rothkopf (which I would have linked to directly if I could).

I think analyses pitting Trump v. Biden may have 2024 wrong. My sense is 2024 will be Democrats vs. the six GOP members of the Supreme Court. SCOTUS views on abortion, affirmative action, voting rights, guns, environment, LGBTQ rights will turn out a big anti-GOP majority.

To write dissents to stand as historical record

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has announced he will retire at the end of the court’s term in June. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos linked to a confirmation on NBC News, then discussed possible reasons for his decision. There is the obvious reason to retire while Biden and a Democratic Senate can choose another liberal to replace him. There is also annoyance at what the current conservative majority is doing – taking cases with the intent to overturn precedent, taking cases that haven’t yet been through an appeals court, and the increased use of the shadow docket to hand down rulings with no public argument or transparency. McCarter also reported that Breyer’s decision thwarts the plans of Moscow Mitch. Mitch has already threatened that if the Republicans take the Senate in 2022 he would make sure none of Biden’s nominees to the Supremes would be confirmed.. Yup, the ten month refusal he pulled on Obama would be stretched to two years. Various sources have reported that Biden has declared his nominee will be a black woman. Rebekah Sager of Kos reported there are some mighty fine choices for a black woman justice. Sager discussed Ketanji Brown Jackson and Leondra Kruger as worthy candidates, then lists several more. Leah McElrath tweeted some comments that apply no matter who the nominee is:

The specifics of the candidate’s views are less important than their ability to question and draw out the harms of the cases to be brought forth in the foreseeable future and to write dissents to stand as historical record saying: We saw. We tried. The judicial trajectory for the next couple of decades is all but pre-determined, barring a major disruption. The work of civil rights activists now is going to be VERY different than it was for my generation. The work now is largely to be the shoulders for those who come next. This isn’t what anyone wants to hear, but this is where we are—and where we were on the morning of November 9, 2016. The urgency of defeating Trump because of SCOTUS was always about MUCH more than Roe v Wade. It was always about saving a CENTURY worth of progressive gains. The regressive right is now positioned to dismantle it all. We will fight to minimize harm, but most of what we will be doing is fighting—and losing—because fighting is the right thing to do. Most of the fights of the next couple of decades will be about legacy, not progress.

This person would be named to the Court to write strong dissents against a regressive bulldozer to leave instructions for future generations while having little current effect. I hope she’s up to it. Bruce Hinze summarized on McElrath’s thread:

Important thread: the way ahead is hard. Many legal doctrines that have underpinned our lives for almost 100 years will be summarily discarded. Our fight is to grimly bear witness, to fight knowing we will lose, to make it possible for future generations to restore.

Erika Wilson, a law professor, saw the conversation about a black woman might be nominated to the Supremes and also saw the Supremes agreed to hear cases on Affirmative Action at Harvard and UNC. She tweeted a thread about enrolling at UCLA under their “race-neutral” admissions policy and being one of 14 black people in a schools with 1,000 students.

I felt immense pressure to perform. I was hit hard by stereotype threat. It felt like being in a fishbowl. It was weird discussing cases like Brown being the only Blk person in the room. The experience really taught me how much the stigma is BEING BLACK, not affirmative action. Meritocracy is a social construct undergirded by anti-blackness & white supremacy. The club or institution can't be as elite or exclusive if Blk folks are in it. I say all that to say Affirmative action is actually a conservative measure used to mitigate the realities of structural racism that lead to Black exclusion from "elite" institutions. Race-conscious measures are a legitimate & necessary form of reparatory relief.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included a cheer that San Jose, California has passed an ordinance requiring gun owners to pay a fee and to carry liability insurance. Mayor Sam Liccardo said the goal is to reduce the risk of gun harm and to relieve taxpayers the financial cost of gun violence. David Neiwert of Kos explained why citizen militias are not legal. The “well regulated” part in the Second Amedment is not about the members carefully training themselves. It is about permission and oversight by the state government for purposes the state deems appropriate. And all 50 states outlaw these militias. Increasingly these militias are not confined to one state. For example militia members from multiple states did their planning in Ohio and training in Michigan to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. These groups see themselves as adjuncts to the military and law enforcement. But they are accountable to no one. They declare they defend communities, bu their violent presence erodes communities and democratic institutions. If they are illegal in every state why aren’t they shut down? Neiwert wrote there are several factors. Law enforcement may not know the law since these militias have been tolerated for so long now. Though all 50 states have laws, they are all a bit different, leading to confusion. The militias themselves have been pushing the false idea they are protected by the Second Amendment. There is a lack of political will and “constitutional sheriffs” who are on the side of the militias. All those reasons are enough for Congress to act. There is a proposed bill with enforcement and the ability for the injured to sue. Alas, we know how likely it is for this Congress to act. April Siese of Kos reported that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (the big part that passed) includes $12 billion for carbon capture and storage (CCS). Fossil fuel companies like this technology because it gives them the ability to claim they are a tiny bit more green than they actually are. CCS is simply too expensive to get to the scale we would need and even then can’t reduce emissions to zero. We should stop development into the idea and stop prolonging the end of fossil fuels. A few days ago Moscow Mitch made a comment about “African Americans” and “Americans.” He was roundly scolded for the implication that the first group was not a part of the second. Chitown Kev, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Leonard Pitts on the issue:

But if you think McConnell is the only one who needs to be reminded that, as Black poet Langston Hughes once put it, “I, too, sing America,” you haven’t been paying attention. You missed Chuck Todd of NBC’s “Meet The Press” describing how “parents” are worried about critical race theory while “parents of color” might have a different view. You also missed CBS News’ tweet asking, “How young is too young to teach kids about race?” As if children of color don’t learn about race about the same time they learn about walking. Finally, you’ve missed all those news stories where reporters talk about “working-class voters,” “suburban moms” or “evangelicals” when they mean “white” — as if Black and brown people did not work, live outside the city or go to church.

Sager reported that Glenn Youngkin, new Republican governor of Virginia, has set up a “tip line” so conservative Virginians could rat out educators that might be teaching something about race. Monica Hutchinson, a parent of two black children, is outraged at Youngkin, but not surprised. Sager wrote:

When it comes to the topic of American history, which includes the subject of enslaved people and systemic racism, by the way, Hutchinson, who’s attended the recent explosive school board meetings, says “no one is trying to make your child feel bad. But, how do you think our children feel when you refuse to address the past and they’re forced to relive that trauma?” Hutchinson says she doesn’t think it’s even about white kids feeling bad; it’s about them coming home after learning about the history of white Americans and looking at their parents and grandparents and wondering where they stood in times of segregation. “It’s all about denying the truth,” she says, adding: “They talk about the rights of students, but, the rights of which students? And when they talk about how CRT will teach Black kids to be victims, I say it will not. It will teach them that after all of the barriers they’ve had, they’ve made it. They’re survivors.”

Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer tweeted a promo for one of his articles:

Banning civil-rights history and books from Maus to The Bluest Eye. Va. begging parents to reports teachers, like the Stasi Something terrible is sweeping across America at the start of 2022. What explains the frightening new McCarthyism?

I tried to look at another Inquirer article today. Now that I have a browser with a built in ad-blocker I got a message saying the Inquirer earns money through ads. Subscribe or turn off your blocker. While I understand their point of view at the moment, when faced with their choice, my answer is neither. Marissa Higgins of Kos reported that the school board of Mukilteo, Washington has downgraded the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee from required to optional. A teacher may teach it but no longer must teach it. The change isn’t because of the racism, but because it “perpetuates a ‘white savior’ complex, racial slurs (the N-word), and portrays Black characters as one-dimensional.” Those opposed to the change say the better way would be to keep Mockingbird as required and put alongside it a book by a black author, such as Invisible Man bu Ralph Ellison. In response to the news that a House committee in Florida passed a “Don’t Say Gay” bill, McElrath tweeted:

“According to the @TrevorProject, LGBTQ+ youth who learned about LGBTQ+ people or issues in school had 23% lower odds of reporting a suicide attempt in the last year than those who did not.” Which is the point. They don’t want LGBTQ people to exist. Literally. The research on the impact of positive impact of acceptance on the lives of LGBTQ youth is clear. You only promote policies that deny LGBTQ youth education—and even the ability to discuss their own lives—when you either don’t care if they live or die or if you want them to die.

McElrath also tweeted a half-minute advertisement from Field Team 6 for the upcoming show America Needs a Queen, Drag Queens do Democracy.

Profiting from misery

This one is scary: The Washington Post did a survey and asked would you support postponing the 2020 election if the nasty guy were to say it “should be postponed until the country can make sure that only eligible American citizens can vote.” More than half of Republicans – 52% – agreed.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville says to keep in mind the guy who would be making that call has consistently lied about widespread voter fraud.

Other numbers from that survey: 47% of Republicans believe the nasty guy won the popular vote, 68% believe millions of illegal immigrants voted, 73% believe voter fraud happens somewhat or very often.



Alison Parker of Shareblue reports that big GOP donors are annoyed with the collapse of the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and are withholding at least $2 million in contributions to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Democrats feel energized.



The incoming freshman class at Harvard University is 49.2% white. Yes, white students are not the majority. Asian Americans are 22.2% of the 2,056 freshmen. African Americans are 14.6%, Hispanic and Latino are 11.6%, Native American and Pacific Islanders are 2.5%.



What happens when a for-profit prison company doesn’t get a steady supply of criminals? What if it doesn’t have enough inmates to turn a profit? It threatens to lay off employees. It begs state and federal prisons to transfer inmates. It volunteers to be a deportation detention center. It tries to invent new crimes or increase punishment for existing crimes. All is a way of saying prisons should not be trying to make a profit of other people’s misery.

Honor voters wishes

When the Supremes had ruled that Michigan voters were allowed to ban affirmative action I wrote about whether Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette would use that same argument -- voters get to decide -- in the same-sex marriage case. One news commentator took one side, one took the other. The debate is over. Schuette has filed a brief in the marriage case making that exact claim. He says it's more important to honor voters wishes than allow gay couples to marry.

Several other states are factoring that affirmative action ruling into their same-sex marriage cases.

Wave it in front of their noses

A couple days ago I looked at the decision by the Supremes on permitting a voter approved ban on affirmative action and asked the question:

If it is permissible for voters to ban racial preferences is it also permissible for voters to ban same-sex marriage?

The blog Box Turtle Bulletin works to disprove anti-gay claims. I refer to its postings frequently. One of the site's features is a Daily Agenda. It lists important items for the day (such as a court case) and discusses sexual minorities in history through birthdays and anniversaries of significant events. At the end of each day's Agenda writer Jim Burroway invites readers to tell him and co-authors what is on our minds.

So after posting the above question I also wrote a comment to the Daily Agenda asking the BTB crew what they thought of it. A couple authors replied, a few regular commenters did too.

Commenter jpeckjr sees a distinction -- marriage is a fundamental right (as several court cases repeat). A college education is not. Commenter Billy Glover sees no connection then reminds us that laws and court rulings frequently have unintended side effect.

BTB author Rob Tisinai says I'm not the only one to think of that question. He included a link to an article in the National Review pondering it. So, on to the article.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Scheutte is highly involved in the affirmative action (AA) case (his name is on it). He was also active in the marriage case decided in Michigan a month ago. And the Supremes, in the AA case, used similar language that Scheutte used in describing the marriage case. He said voters can be deliberative and reasonable when deciding big issues. Voters are not necessarily guided by animus when they make those deliberations (though I find those pushing to ban same-sex marriage and those pushing to end affirmative action are indeed guided by animus). Because voters are deliberate, courts should defer to voters. (Yeah, there is that tyranny of the majority thing, but so many like Scheutte, and maybe a few of the Supremes, pretend that doesn't exist.)

Will the ruling in the AA case shape the marriage case? We won't know how the Supremes view that relationship until a marriage case gets to them. But many Circuit judges write their opinions trying to please the justices or at least knowing the justices might review their work. And we'll know real soon if the AA case influences their decisions. The 10th Circuit has heard the Oklahoma and Utah cases but has not yet issued an opinion. There is still time for those judges to consider what the Supremes wrote.

And you can be sure Bill Scheutte's fingers are typing as fast as they can to write an amendment to his filing of the Michigan marriage case with the 6th Circuit. He will (at least figuratively) wave the AA ruling in front of the judge's noses and say, "See what the Supremes said about voter approved bans!"

My question wasn't so idle or hypothetical.

A referendum of the voters

I've been hearing about the Michigan affirmative action case just decided by the Supremes. My regular (gay) news sources didn't discuss it, so I went to the source, that being SCOTUSblog. According to its reporting the 6-2 decision essentially says that voters have a right to determine issues related to race.

The race issue, Kennedy said, is not so sensitive that it cannot be made the topic of political conversation and submitted to a referendum of the voters.

I see so many things wrong with that statement. Yes, I'm saying a Supreme Court justice got it wrong (and it won't be the first or last time). At a time when so many people are freaking out about a black president Anthony Kennedy is saying race relations are not sensitive? And when have we had an intelligent political conversation about race? Certainly the GOP hasn't had that conversation since Richard Nixon pulled his Southern Strategy to win the presidency. And that bit about "submitted to a referendum of the voters" sounds like an endorsement of tyranny of the majority.

I'll let other legal minds ponder the racial and policy implications, such as this one that debates whether affirmative action is about upholding diversity or is reparative justice. I have a different burning question to ask.

If it is permissible for voters to ban racial preferences is it also permissible for voters to ban same-sex marriage?

Have the Supremes given us a hint on how they might rule in a marriage equality case when it gets to them? Bases on the rulings last summer court after court has been saying marriage is a fundamental right and using that as a basis to confirm same-sex marriage. So is education not a fundamental right? Did we miss something about the Constitution's inclusive language and now find it applies to sexual minorities and not racial minorities (and I'm very aware lots of people try to claim the Constitution indeed does not cover racial minorities -- and apparently a few justices do too). Are these two cases different? If so, in what way?

Surprise! its October

Lots of odds and ends:

Though her approval rating is dropping, might Palin pull off an October surprise? No, nothing involving the military (whew!). But she could accomplish much of the same thing with a big splashy wedding of her pregnant daughter and the girl's boyfriend. Shotgun weddings back in fashion? And Palin does know how to wield a gun.

When I've done training for programs that try to influence change (such as making my church denomination more gay friendly) the emphasis is on personal stories -- how a particular event made me feel, what I learned from it, and how it changed what I did. I can't say the training made me a spokesman for much of anything, but the premise is sound. People connect to stories. Sharon Begley of Newsweek says that people connect with Palin's story quite easily (or, given her dropping approval rating, did). There has always been a balance between voting your issues and voting your emotions with emotions usually winning. This year the emotional side is even stronger because with 24 hours news sources on TV and web we are bombarded with emotions and aren't able to take time to reflect on the issues. Enjoy this season of storytelling. The print edition of Newsweek has a drawing of Palin in a cluster of 10 eager listeners reading from the book "The Adventures of Sarah the Moose-Skinning Hockey Mom."

Sharon Begley has an article about the reliability of polls. At a time when one could say "another day, another 37 state polls" yet polls got some primary races quite wrong, there is a lot of discussion of poll methodology. Polls of "likely" voters tend to be more accurate, but to determine the likelihood of a voter are new voters, who tend to be for Obama, being excluded? Since it is illegal to do random-digit dialing to cell phones, are younger voters without landlines being undercounted? And back to the issue of balance between Dem and GOP respondents -- If your public is 30% GOP and your random-digit dialing gets you 45% GOP responses, a pollster might weight the GOP replies. But how stable is party identification? Do voters shift party allegiance when they switch candidates?

Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas has written with a great deal of passion that if one gets a start through Affirmative Action (as he did) one must always live with the shame and stigma that success, no matter how great, will always be suspect. Some people (including himself) say he got where he is only because he is black. The world mistrusts him and he mistrusts the world. The same stigma now seems to be at work in Palin. She got to be VP candidate because she is a woman, not because of her qualifications. The same mistrust appears to be playing out with Palin who sees everyone as a supporter or a hater.

Lionel Trilling was a English professor, literary critic, essayist and author who died in 1975. On the occasion of new publications of a few of his books, Jeremy McCarter of Newsweek took a look at some of Trilling's ideas. One of his books is "The Liberal Imagination" in which he shows fellow liberals a few blind spots. The problem is that liberalism, in explaining its goals, tends to simplify, producing lots of unintended consequences. To get the full story one should study liberal ideas through literature, because fiction doesn't (or doesn't have to) present the world in black and white, can present ideas in careful nuance with moral realism, and can teach sympathy and respect for variety. These ideas tend to get lost today because of our high-speed, always on media that tends to thwart imagination, attention span, and the willingness to read something with depth (gee, where have I heard that before?). Trilling highly recommends losing yourself in "The Princess Casamassima" by Henry James.

A new startup company is inverting the recycling equation. RecycleBank has trucks that rumble through suburban Boston, weighing and scanning the barcodes of recycling bins as they are dumped into the trucks. The weight and ID are sent to a website, where residents are given credit of 25 cents a pound which can be redeemed at area stores. Isn't recycling worth a latte? Offering a bit of incentive has shown recycle rates jump from 3% to 32% in Wilmington, Del. The company hopes to serve a million homes by the end of 2009. The Midwest might be hard for it to crack into because landfill fees are so cheap compared to the coasts.

If you allow me to be greedy, surely some of that money will trickle down to you. The last couple weeks showed up that lie. Greed does not get us to compassion, kindness, or social justice. It is time to eliminate it from economic policy.

The Mormon Church has a doctrine of Free Agency. An individual must determine the difference between good and evil and reap the benefits or consequences of those choices. This cycle of choice and consequence is the individual's own trial of faith, a piece of their plan of salvation. Amy Cox, the wife of the first counselor to a Mormon bishop condemns the church's meddling in the marriage protection amendments in Calif. and Arizona because such amendments restrict free agency. The church is meddling where it shouldn't. Mrs. Cox also says the Mormon Church has renounced its old belief that people with darker skins were cursed until they turned from their sinful ways, at which point their skin would supposedly lighten. Hmm. That never happened. The church should also renounce its belief that gays will become straight when they turn from their sinful ways. Perhaps all that Mormon sponsorship will mean those amendments will be linked closely with that church, causing a backlash and their defeat.