We are our own Calvary

My Sunday movie was The Boy and the Heron by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. It was released in the US almost a year ago and won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature, making Miyazaki the oldest person to receive an Oscar. It finally came to streaming at a good price. The boy of the story is Mahito. I would guess he’s in his early teens. The time is World War II. The movie opens with a hospital on fire. Mahito becomes frantic because his mother is there. A while later he and his father go to their estate in the countryside where Father owns a factory making war material. They are met at the station by a woman who looks a lot like Mahito’s mother and is pregnant. She says Mahito is to call her Mom. They settle into the estate where there are several elderly women who take care of things. They live in a very Japanese style house. Mahito is put into the Western style house nearby. A heron takes a big interest in the boy and its actions lead him to a nearby tower with lots of mysteries. Then the step-mother wanders away. Mahito tries to find her. And things get weird. The first bit of weirdness is the heron has teeth. Mahito goes from one fantasy world to another, each with symbols of life and of death and with beings who will help and who will harm. But he doesn’t want to return to his own world without his step-mother. By the end I wasn’t sure of everything that had happened and why. I felt the payoff wasn’t a match for all the difficulty Mahito went through. That feeling reminded me of Miyazaki’s Spirited Away from two decades ago. I didn’t get that one. In both cases I suspect cultural references that a Japanese person would get and I don’t is the reason. As with many Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli films this one was beautiful. For an animated film there were also many scenes that were quite complicated – such as a big flock of pelicans. However, I noticed the characters were usually more simply drawn than the intricate backgrounds of their environment. Even though it got weird and I didn’t get a lot of cultural references and I don’t care much for fantasy because its rules can be so arbitrary – even with all that I enjoyed it. I regularly read Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine and have just finished the November/December 2024 issue. I normally don’t write about it when I finish an issue because it can be twenty stories and articles and I’d have a hard time writing about all of them. One of them in this issue is worth mentioning. It is an Alternate View column written by Richard Lovett titled How the Science of Moral Understanding can Reduce the Polarization in Politics. That’s quite a claim for a three page article. I don’t see this article at the magazine’s online site (though there is an interesting second Alternate View article on mitochondrial DNA and aging and how there might be a way to slow aging down). First, Lovett discusses a study by Kurt Gray, director of the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His point is that people of both political parties vastly overestimate the degree the other side actually holds them in contempt. We’re less hostile and more willing to work together than we’re portrayed to be. Lovett turned to Jonathan Haidt of the New York University Stern School of Business, who says liberals and conservatives share basic values, though prioritize them differently. Haidt sees five core values: (1) protecting the vulnerable, (2) fairness, (3) the need to bond into groups for the common good, (4) respect for authority, and (5) “purity” – avoiding things that contaminate the body (examples are a vegan’s dietary code or a fundamentalists sexual code). Liberals emphasize fairness and protecting the vulnerable. Conservatives also emphasize respect for authority, also seen as preserving the social order (and I see as preserving themselves at the top of the social hierarchy). Gray thinks there are more than five basic values (they’re not named). He also says Haidt’s first value of preventing harm is the most important. How we weigh the different values comes with tradeoffs. And this is where disputes come. How do we handle competing harms? In the gun debate do we minimize harm to ourselves and loved ones or the harm to the whole community? In the abortion debate do we minimize harm to the mother or the potential baby? In both cases we can’t minimize both harms. Recognizing that is the first step to reducing polarization. From there Lovett gets into a discussion of “active listening.” There are likely sources elsewhere that explain it in more detail. Michael Harriot wrote a thread about the greatest black on black crime in US history. On May 23, 1861 three slaves were donated to the Virginia Confederate Militia. As soon as they could they ran to Union Gen, George Butler. These slaves were legal property. Butler saw their crime as stealing themselves. But now they were under Butler’s protection he saw them as a tool of war, in the same way as a rifle. He was allowed to confiscate them. The Confederates threatened to sue for the return of their property. Butler replied since the owners intended their use to be against the United States he didn’t have to return them. Want them back? Take an oath of allegiance to the United States. When slaves heard about it they stole themselves to Union forts, where they were placed in refugee camps. Lincoln wanted nothing to do with this situation. But there were so many fleeing slave Congress passed the Confiscation Act, backing up Butler. About 100,000 people unslaved themselves, arriving at more than 100 camps. These became known as Contraband Camps – the refugees were no longer property but not citizens.

These "Contraband Camps" were the origin story of many Black towns, HBCUs and neighborhoods. They produced 200 K-12 schools, 12 HBCUs, & 1000s of Black veterans. Harriet Tubman freed more people while living in SC's contraband camp than as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Black neighborhoods in KC, Nashville & St. Louis were contraband camps. Mary Peake, a free Black woman, held reading classes [illegal at the time] under a tree at the original VA camp until classes got too big. But no one calls it the "Grand Contraband Camp" anymore. They call it Hampton University.

Contraband camps were the focus of the push for the 14th and 15th Amendments defining citizenship, due process, and the right to vote. They invented the American education system we know today. Harriot, who is black, looked at the current political situation and asked, what if we again stole ourselves? What if we build a camp? What if black people declared independence from white thought and permission? So Harriot is announcing the building of a new online Contraband Camp, to open when Biden’s term ends. And with that it sounds like he is leaving Twitter. Malcolm Nance, writing on Substack, has recommendations to resist the coming tyranny. He came up with these through studying the French Resistance in WWII. Nazi Germany invaded Luxembourg, Netherlands, Belgium, and France on May 10, 1940. The three little countries were taken over within days, France capitulated after a month. Well, the French government capitulated. A large number of citizens resisted, organized, and fought back. We in America now face tyrannical rule. Even though only 31% of the electorate voted for the nasty guy, we must assume he will use all available powers, including the military, for evil. But we don’t have to and cannot wait until this evil begins. We can start resisting now. Choose a Resistance Posture. Secret or public? Either way it should be bland until you need to be openly defiant. The regime wants us swamped with disinformation and conspiracy theories. News media may participate. So help to collect and disseminate high quality news. Don’t be fooled by the lies. Pay your taxes. Don’t give the regime a reason to attack you. Law enforcement may see the tyrant will protect them. They may see abusing citizens as lawful. Be as careful interacting with officers as a black man needs to be. Do not argue or debate with a MAGA person. Just don’t. The nasty guy has perfected the simple slogans and his followers consider liberals to be “wordy.” So when you must interact with MAGA people ditch the logic and simple language. Example: “Trump is a tyrant.” Get off corporate social media and scrub your history. They own everything you posted there. Bluesky is not corporate owned. There are apps to transfer to it. Talk to your friends in person, not through social media, text, DM, or video chat. There is no corporate record and is actually beneficial to a relationship. Do not engaged in violent protests. If you own a gun keep it locked away and use it only in a direct threat (and know your local laws). The regime wants a violent response because that gives them extra permission to outviolence you. Be prepared for the economic hardship the nasty guy has been promising. Stock up if you can. Keep track of your family. If your resistance profile is defiant, put the number of a good lawyer on your phone. “Politically, no one is coming to your rescue in a dictatorship. You are your own Calvary.” Nance said in the opening that the French Resistance started as individuals that soon organized. He didn’t say anything in his suggestions for us. However, I see that as where our power will come from. Then it becomes “We are our own Calvary.” Back to that bit about getting off social media. I wonder if that includes this blog. It is hosted by Blogger, which is owned by Google. They’re not great with social responsibility. Perhaps I should stop writing and even delete all 5373 posts? One reason why I’m reluctant to destroy all that work (I do have copies on my computer) is in the last week there have been over 2000 views of this blog with 28% from Singapore and 16% from Hong Kong, both with restrictive or authoritarian governments. There are even a few readers in Russia. I hope my writings help them.

Media isn't reporting Helene hit Tennessee too

My Sunday movie was Heartstopper season 3, episodes 4-6. I’ll write about the plot, which could be a spoiler. Then I’ll write about my thoughts on what I saw. At the end of episode 3 Charlie admitted he needed help with an eating disorder. So episode 4 is about the start of treatment. But there are delays and his mood gets worse. Charlie does get into a residential program for two months. We see that time first through Nick’s eyes. He’s lonely without his boyfriend, especially at Halloween. Then we see the two months through Charlie’s eyes, working with a therapist, getting a care package from friends, and a visit from family and Nick. In episode 5 Charlie is home in time for Christmas. And it is his first big test. His extended family is there – including the people that are invited out of obligation. And some of them pull out the mental illness stereotypes. After a while Charlie escapes to Nick’s house because Nick doesn’t treat him as mentally ill. Nick is doing a good job incorporating all that his aunt taught him about how to be supportive. In episode 6 it is now spring. Charlie’s therapy is progressing well and his relationship with Nick deepens. Part of that is Charlie has more mental space to devote to his love. Ellie is doing well in art school and her art is getting noticed. She is offered a radio interview. The host wants to draw her into the controversies of being trans. Then the story shifts to Charlie’s 16th birthday party. Now my thoughts: This circle of friends is quite supportive in all the right ways. When I was a teen I didn’t know how to be supportive like that. Perhaps the author used the stories as a guide to teens in how to be supportive. Through the first two seasons most of the emotions were pretty happy. The actors had it rather easy. In season three we see much more difficult situations. And I can see the actors are quite good. The characters are supposed to be 15 and 16 but act more like they’re older than 18, and I’m sure the actors are well into their 20s. There is way too much alcohol for kids who are 16 (probably too much for kids who are 18). And it wasn’t just Charlie’s birthday party – there was too much alcohol at the Halloween party, which Nick attended alone, and at the New Year’s Eve party when Charlie was 15. For characters and intended audience this young I wish the book author and show writers had come up with a different way for them to party. Observers have noticed that over the last few months people have been leaving the nasty guy’s rallies before they were over. Kos of Daily Kos reported his campaign has found a way to make them stay. And, of course, it didn’t turn out well. The nasty guy held a rally in the desert in Coachella, California. This is the town of the famous music festival that draws a quarter million fans. But the nasty guy didn’t use that venue. He held it at a private ranch. A question I won’t bother answering: With California absolutely going for Harris why is the nasty guy wasting campaign time there? But onward. For this rally attendees parked in three designated locations and shuttled to the venue by bus. Some started showing up at 6am. The rally ended at 7pm, meaning the crowd, limited to 15K, had spent the day in the hot sun. Well after 10pm thousands of people were still waiting for buses to take them back to their cars. At the venue there is no longer food or water or restroom facilities. A walk to the parking lot would take two hours and many elderly can’t walk that far. Some said the busses ran out of fuel. Even if they did Kos showed several gas stations just a couple miles from the site. Kos said the crowd response got weird. Some posting about the situation blamed the mayor, who had nothing to do with the event. Others posted and felt they had to delete the posts because they were “causing drama” – they were making the nasty guy look bad and devotees objected. Kos wrote:

Having stranded thousands in the hot desert, Trump and his campaign can’t even be bothered to issue an apology to their own people. They were used, abused, and tossed aside.

But they didn’t leave the rally early. Oliver Willis of Kos reported:

On Saturday, federal agencies were forced to move employees assisting with hurricane recovery efforts in North Carolina following reports of a militia threat against the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The incident follows days of Donald Trump and his allies in conservative media promoting lies about Hurricane Helene and the federal response. ... “FEMA has advised all federal responders Rutherford County, NC, to stand down and evacuate the county immediately,” the Post quoted from the email, adding that recipients were advised that the National Guard “had come across x2 trucks of armed militia saying there were out hunting FEMA” and that the agency was “coordinating the evacuation of all assigned personnel in that county.”

Willis also reported Jake Tapper, host of The Lead on CNN, did a segment on the definition of fascism and that the nasty guy fit that description. Tapper quoted Merriam-Webster:

a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition

Tapper’s evidence included: + Declaring there is “the enemy from within” and that he said he would consider using the US military or National Guard to go after opponents. + Gen. Mark Milley, who had been chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the nasty guy, was quoted in Bob Woodward’s interview of saying the nasty guy was “fascist to the core.” + The Capitol attack. + His verbal attacks on FEMA leading to threats of physical attacks. In the comments of a pundit roundup is a meme posted by Ridin’ With Kamala: “All I want for Christmas is to never hear his voice again.” In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted David Faris of Slate, who would like to get rid of the Electoral College. The EC is bad in more than distorting democracy, but also the distribution of federal aid and even distorting news.

While it appears the Biden administration is treating the impact of this season’s hurricanes as it should, the media’s focus on the almost unfathomable catastrophe in the western mountains of swing state North Carolina is a stark contrast to the near-total absence of attention to what’s going on just over the state line in deep-red Tennessee—complete with the obligatory analyses of how the hurricane’s aftermath might impact the outcome in the Tar Heel State. As for the electoral impact of Helene in Tennessee, no one is asking and no one cares. That kind of coverage disparity is an almost inevitable consequence of swing-state mania, and we shouldn’t be surprised when it seeps into policy decisions.

Down in the comments are several cartoons noting Columbus Day. In the comments of another pundit roundup are several cartoons making the repurposing of Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day. Mark Fiore posted one of his cartoons from two years ago. It shows a girl writing a poem for class:

In 1492 Columbus Sailed the ocean blue. He tortured & killed the people he found, Brought slavery & genocide all the world around. An inept explorer who left thousands dead, it’s why we celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day instead.

A meme posted by Hugh Jim Bissell shows a native chief saying, “Let me get this straight. You’re afraid of refugees coming to America, killing you, and taking your property?” Bissel also posted a meme showing the Capitol attack and saying, “Catching people sneaking across the border won’t make us safer when these people are already here.” Sharon Lerner and Andy Kroll, in an article for ProPublica posted on Kos, reported:

Three investigators for the Heritage Foundation have deluged federal agencies with thousands of Freedom of Information Act requests over the past year, requesting a wide range of information on government employees, including communications that could be seen as a political liability by conservatives. Among the documents they’ve sought are lists of agency personnel and messages sent by individual government workers that mention, among other things, “climate equity,” “voting” or “SOGIE,” an acronym for sexual orientation, gender identity and expression. The Heritage team filed these requests even as the think tank’s Project 2025 was promoting a controversial plan to remove job protections for tens of thousands of career civil servants so they could be identified and fired if Donald Trump wins the presidential election.

There may be as many as 50,000 requests submitted over the past two years. They are asking for calendar dumps, team messages that include the designated phrases, and communications with civil rights and voting rights groups. The requests, which sometimes “come in at a rate of one a second,” do indeed interfere with the ability to do the regular job. Gumming up government functions may be a secondary goal. The primary goal is to identify the government employees that should be purged if the nasty guy gets back in the Oval Office and begins to implement Project 2025, giving him space to install loyalists throughout the government. Michael Harriot, in a thread now in Threadreader, wrote about the importance of black barbershops. They’re a combination of church, political headquarters, secret hideout, and gathering spot. They are one of “the most important, most revolutionary institutions in Black history.” Their history is as old as America. When a slave was about to be sold they needed cleaning up. A white barber wouldn’t do it, so they hired a black “barber boy.” They could earn enough to buy their freedom and open their own business. The barbershop was one of the few places where black people could talk freely without white people around. Black barbers were held in high esteem, which meant they could fund and be a part of the Underground Railroad. Having a barber in the effort meant a slave’s appearance could be altered before they were passed along the route. Black barbers also taught black people how to read. They could also become quite rich and important to a community. In the early 1880s Philadelphia was at the center of the Abolition movement. Black people built schools and the first HBCUs. The AME church was founded there. There was also an abolitionist newspaper. When a delegate was chosen fot the first National Negro Convention they didn’t send a leader of any of those institutions, they sent a black barber, Joseph Cassey, who was also the second richest man in the city. He had funded some of those institutions. Also during that time a black man was the barber to the president (which one is not named). He is reported to have influence over his customer. A network of barbers organized a National Slave Revolt. By 1860 they had 42,000 people trained and ready. The revolt didn’t happen because the Civil War happened instead. Barbers were instrumental during the Civil Rights era. If you are trying to influence the black community or want to get elected you need to visit a black barbershop.

They can’t stomach the implications of their own beliefs

Happy Pi Day! Today’s date (in America) is 3.14. Back in February I wrote Republicans absolutely would give a microphone to Robert Hur, the special counsel that added a bit about Biden’s age and memory into his explanation on why he wasn’t charging Biden for keeping official documents (which Biden promptly returned when they were found). A couple days ago that mic was given to Hur. And it didn’t go as well as Republicans wanted. Alas, in my regular sources I can’t find a decent summary article. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported that the House Judiciary Committee is realizing their previous methods of attacking Biden aren’t going to work. But that doesn’t mean they’ll stop trying. They are looking for other routes of attack. I had written that Republicans don’t seem to mind that their donations to the RNC and the nasty guy campaign are being diverted to pay the nasty guy’s legal bills. Sumner reported that a Civiqs poll puts numbers to that statement:

Fielded March 9-12, the poll finds that 63% of Republican voters say either that they want the RNC to cover Trump’s legal bills, or that they don’t care if it does. Only 26% of Republican voters oppose using the national party’s funds to cover the cost of Trump’s legal tab.

The poll shows 81% of Democrats disapprove of the RNC covering those legal bills. Sumner says we should be pleased with it.

If whatever cash the RNC can collect is going to Trump, then it’s not going to Republican candidates trying to gain an edge in the Senate. It’s not going to Republican members in the House, every one of whom has to defend their seat this fall. And it’s not going to races for governors, state attorneys general, state legislators, local officials, or judges. The consequence of having an authoritarian party ruled over by a single corrupt family at the behest of a single corrupt candidate is that all the money goes to one person. Trump is a money pit that the RNC can feed but never satisfy. Everyone else will go hungry. Republicans say they are okay with that. Democrats should be too.

Joan McCarter of Kos reported:

The blockbuster news Tuesday was Republican Rep. Ken Buck’s surprise announcement that he can’t bear to stick it out until November and is resigning next week. “It is the worst year of the nine years and three months that I’ve been in Congress and having talked to former members, it’s the worst year in 40, 50 years to be in Congress,” Buck told CNN. The Colorado conservative had already announced that this would be his last term in office, but now he’s decided he can’t tolerate any more. “This place has just devolved into this bickering and nonsense and not really doing the job for the American people,” he added. Buck had a parting shot for Johnson, just to keep him looking over his shoulder. “I think it’s the next three people that leave that they’re going to be worried about,” he told Axios on Tuesday.

Pat Byrnes posted a cartoon of a bunch of elephants in a conference room and one saying:

We have to shut it down. Every day the government is running, it is clearer we have no idea how to run it.

Hunter of Kos reported on another Civiqs poll, this one was asking about whether in-vitro fertilization should be banned. Overall only 6% of voters say IVF should be illegal. Even among Republicans only 11% say it should be illegal. This is not an issue people are “divided” over, as the far right insists. In looking at a couple more questions in the poll Hunter wrote:

And that’s the central problem with the Republican Party's extreme stance on when "life" supposedly begins. You can get almost (but not quite) half of Republican voters to parrot that hard-right line and say a clump of cells not even differentiated enough to have a single nerve or organ constitutes a "child." Only 20% of Republican voters oppose legal protections for IVF patients and providers. That's the difference between an ideological stance and a real-world one: The majority of Republican voters can’t stomach the implications of their own beliefs. Not if it means losing fertility treatments.

Charles Jay of the Kos community reported that a settlement has been reached in the lawsuit brought against Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. The law hasn’t been overturned, which will take more legal work and more time. The settlement will give some relief in the meantime. The law now applies only to some types of classroom instruction. Kids can talk about being LGBTQ and about their LGBTQ parents. Books can return to the library. Anti-bullying training can refer to gay kids. Classroom lessons that tangentially talk about LGBTQ kids is OK. I think what that leaves is such things as a teacher saying this is what homosexuality is. The tide is turning. The enthusiasm of anti-LGBTQ seems to be waning at least in Florida, now that DeathSantis is out of the presidential race. (Hmm.) A sign of low enthusiasm is the Florida legislature adjourned last Friday and left 21 of 22 anti-LGBTQ bills behind, effectively killing them. It’s been about a month since I’ve thought to look for threads by Michael Harriot on Threadreader. In this first thread he talks about becoming a “diversity” hire. Maybe that’s not the right word because he was hired to write for the Amber Ruffin Show where Ruffin is black and the writing room was majority black. Maybe it is the right word. That writing room was in sharp contrast to the usual writing rooms in Hollywood that are mostly to all white. My reason for including this is Harriot included a six minute video of the first thing he wrote for Ruffin. It’s an explanation of why home ownership is rigged against black people. That comes from the “redlining” instituted in a law enacted in the Great Depression to help white people buy houses. It didn’t specifically exclude black people, but it did exclude the areas, colored red on maps, that were majority black. That legacy lives on. The video is a good explanation. In a second thread Harriot poses a Black History Month challenge. Who are three people responsible for saving the most lives in history? Of course, Harriot names three black people who saved millions, maybe a half billion. The first is Henrietta Lacks. Cells from her were harvested without her consent. But the cells (alas not Henrietta) have proved to be immortal and have provided a standard way to test advancements in treating and preventing polio, AIDS, Parkinson’s, COVID, and many other maladies. The second is Dr. Charles Drew, who created the process for collecting and storing blood plasma. He also created the blood bank. He was appointed to lead the Red Cross Blood for Britain project during WWII. The third is Onesimus, an enslaved person, who brought the idea of vaccines to America. That prompted Dr. Edward Jenner to use the cowpox as a smallpox vaccine. Though some states had bans on vaccine mandates, George Washington required his troops to be inoculated, first in Morristown and then in Valley Forge. That was important to winning the Revolutionary War. No Onesimus? Maybe no America. The third thread is about black people and education. Europe was in the Dark Ages at the same time as the Islamic Golden Age. One important tenant of the time was sharing information. That meant information was not for just the privileged. And that meant everyone should be educated. That was helped by Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, head librarian at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. He authored one of the most important books ever, the “al-Kitāb al-Mukhtaṣar fī Ḥisāb al-Jabr wal-Muqābalah.” That got shortened as “Al-Jabr” and we now know it as algebra. By the time the slave trade began Islam, and the idea that all should be educated, had spread across the northern half of Africa.

Although we talk about the spread of Christianity, up to 40% of enslaved Africans came from predominately Muslim parts of West Africa, where education & knowledge were not restricted by wealth & class like in Europe. But because literate slaves were considered dangerous, reading & writing were FORBIDDEN, many enslaved people had to hide their knowledge.

Onesimus (see above) was an enslaved literate Muslim. Since Europeans tended to think education was for the aristocrats, literacy in the American South was quite low. Harriot doesn’t say it, but I wonder if many slaves off the boats were better educated than their masters. So it’s not surprising that by 1740 there were laws that slaves were not to be taught how to read or write and that writing by slaves was banned. Also banned was math. Harriot then looks at a modern math problem. Pundits have talked about the difference black people voting for the nasty guy will have. Yeah, that’s not going to happen. Do a bit of math. All those extra black votes would have made no difference in the nasty guy losing in 2020. So why are there so many stories about the difference the black vote would make when there are so many more white people? Or as Harriot put it:

Why aren't there any stories about how WHITE PEOPLE KEEP WHITE PEOPLEING?

Perhaps it is because about three-quarters of journalists are white? A bit of fun: Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos included, as a brief sanity break, a two minute video of the Boston Typewriter Orchestra.

The act of coming together to do what the American people want

Hunter of Daily Kos reported a story in two parts. One part is the news. The other part is how the news was reported. The news part: After the insurrection some corporations halted to political donations to GOP lawmakers who participated in the insurrection by voting to nullify a United States presidential election based on hoax claims of fraud. They did this even after the claims were proven to be false (all those losing court cases) and after the Capitol – their place of work – was attacked. In response these GOP lawmakers issued threats of banning the lobbyists of those corporations and PACs from their offices. The reporting part: The Wall Street Journal reported the story without any hint of the underlying problem. Wrote Hunter:

Republican lawmakers are issuing a plain threat to their corporate once-donors: Keep the checks coming or we'll refuse to take meetings with you. Keep paying us and we will keep listening to what you have to say; cut that money off, and we'll hang you all out to dry. … If nothing else it lays the heart of conservatism bare, yet again. You may have been under the impression that Republican lawmakers had earnestly held beliefs about business freedoms and other yada. In actuality, "aides for lawmakers" say, what they fight for depends on who's given them money and who hasn't. It is not bribery, no indeedy. It is just exchanging money for legislation, and it is so institutionalized that the most formidable business-centric newspaper in the country reports it with no particular fanfare. … In the end, nobody seems to be taking these threats very seriously. Institutionalized bribery via political coffers is so ingrained into our system that the system cannot function without it, and the Journal notes that lobbyists themselves believe that corporations will give up their attempts to distance themselves from Republican insurrectionists as new laws and policies are proposed that will affect them. The money faucets will turn back on, even for seditionists.

Hunter isn’t so sure those faucets will resume flowing. Cozying up to seditionists is not a good corporate look. Mark Sumner of Kos noted how quick Moscow Mitch fell in line behind the nasty guy the moment the nasty guy talked about starting a new conservative party. Yet, there are moderate Republicans who have talked about starting a new moderately conservative party. The first members could be the lawmakers who have already been driven from the GOP, such as Justin Amash and Jeff Flake. This effort could threaten the GOP as much as a nasty guy inspired effort. The effort has gotten little attention from leadership, even when that talk appears in various op-ed pieces. After filling in the details Sumner wrote:

So again, why aren’t they doing it? The biggest reason is … they don’t really mean it. Or at least they don’t mean it enough to put in more work that writing a guest column.

David Nir of Kos discussed the difference between unity and bipartisanship. Biden talked about unity a lot in his inauguration address and in speeches since then. He didn’t mention bipartisanship. Nir wrote:

So what exactly does unity mean? Biden and his team have defined it very simply: It’s the act of coming together to do what the American people want. In this way, it lays out a future guided not by whatever the largest number of politicians are able to agree on, but instead by the desires of the people those politicians were elected to represent. It reroots our democracy in the very soil that gives it life in the first place.

Doing what the people want makes a president popular (who’da thought?) and they don’t like popular Democratic presidents.

To prevent such an outcome, Republicans are pretending that unity is indeed an interchangeable synonym for bipartisanship and using it as a bludgeon to cow Democrats. By demanding that Biden only pass legislation acceptable to them, only the most watered-down measures could ever become law. More likely, nothing ever would. If Democrats were so weak-willed as to be fooled by this bullying, it would leave the party with no accomplishments to show to voters in two or four years’ time—precisely what Republicans dream of. But today’s Democrats, Joe Biden included, are far tougher and savvier than their easily intimidated forebears. They know precisely what game Republicans want to play and refuse to participate.

Do Republicans really want bipartisanship? They could vote for Democratic proposals. An Associated Press article posted on NBCNews reported that Sen. Chuck Schumer and Moscow Mitch have finally reached a power sharing agreement. Once it is voted on (soon!) the Senate committee chairs will be turned over to Democrats. This article says Mitch’s refusal to agree has been going on for a week. It’s actually been two – the two new Georgia senators who tied the Senate were sworn in on Inauguration day. And it is important that Dems are in control of committees. Sen. Lindsay Graham, the outgoing chair of the Judiciary Committee, has been refusing to hold confirmation hearings for Merrick Garland, Biden’s pick for Attorney General. You might remember Garland as the guy cheated out of a Supreme Court seat by Moscow Mitch five years ago. Jared Yates Sexton tweeted about a recent incident, though he did not name or link to it.

By saying something stupid, offensive, cruel, and misogynistic, the troll set off an outrage that grew his profile and undoubtedly raised disturbing levels of money from people who love it when people are rightfully outraged. This political economy is broken. … As long as people see a financial incentive to being cruel and racist and misogynistic and fascistic and in destroying shared society they’re going to take it and it’s going to continue to cost us lives and valuable, precious time. … Bad faith actors don’t care if you’re sharing or talking about something because you agree or disagree. In this attention economy it’s all the same. This is why media puts out shockingly bad faith op-eds and articles. Because it captures everybody and just results in more revenue. This system is currently working only to hurt discourse and shared society. Reject it and learn from our time with Trump.

There is a famous photo of four young black men sitting at the lunch counter at the Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina in early February of 1960. They sat there in defiance of the store’s policy to not serve black people. This sit-in was part of an effort to overturn that policy which happened a few months later. There is a fifth young black man in the photo. He’s working behind the counter. His name is Charles Bess, now 82. Sayaka Matsuoka wrote up his story for The Bitter Southerner. Bess is now a regular at the International Civil Rights Center & Museum in Greensboro, where that lunch counter is on display. Of that day in 1960 Bess watched the protesters but said nothing to them. Though he looks reserved in the photo he was ecstatic on the inside. This is a good read for Black History Month.

Getting off the ground (correction)

I posted an entry last Friday about black gays and lesbians, referring the interested reader to a list celebrating many such luminaries. Alas, I forgot to include the link. Here it is now. Thanks to my dad for pointing it out.

Getting off the ground

Though I am a bit late for honoring Black History Month, this link will take you to a list of black people who were also gay, lesbian, or transgender. There is also a quote with each name. Folklorist Zora Neale Hurston wrote, “Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to ‘jump at de sun.’ We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.”

Various commenters contribute more names to the list.