Racism also hurts white people

Tonya Mosley of Fresh Air on NPR spoke to Heather McGhee, author of the 2021 book The Sum Of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone And How We Can Prosper Together. Though the book is a few years old recent claims by the nasty guy that white people face a lot of reverse discrimination made a discussion of the book appropriate now. Some people believe the lie that anti-white bias is now more prevalent than anti-black bias. I’m working from a transcript of the hour long show. I haven’t read the book, though it is one I should get. The central idea of the book is that racism hurts more than the targets. It hurts white people too, including the perpetrators. The nasty guy’s administration has been masterful in declaring an underlying core narrative: “an us-versus-them zero-sum story.” That says there can me no mutual progress. If one group – women, people of color, immigrants – gets ahead, it’s at the expense of native-born white men. Therefore white men should fear progress and should fear people of color. This is a lie. Facts make that clear. Civil rights have clearly benefited white women, first-generation college students, and people of disabilities. White men have also benefited. Part of that is there is still a “long-standing deliberate and explicit bias towards them.” Part of it is they benefit when companies and institutions are more successful because of their diversity. The whole society benefits, including white men. Back in 2017-2021 as McGhee wrote the book she investigated where this zero-sum lie came from. It started when the continent began to be settled by Europeans – when Europeans began to codify slavery as based on race. They didn’t want white people at the bottom of the income hierarchy to find solidarity with black slaves. Preaching zero-sum made sure poor whites thought of themselves as above blacks and helping blacks would hurt themselves. Said McGhee:

When economic inequality gets really severe, people who are divided by race or color, language or origin start to realize that they actually have more in common than what sets them apart and that they shouldn't fear their neighbors or blame their neighbors for their economic status but should be looking up the economic ladder at the people who have the power to set the rules. And that's when you begin to hear the zero-sum story louder and louder from millionaires and billionaires, self-interested folks who want to keep the economic status quo just as it is.

Yes, the zero-sum lie also shapes our country’s economics. In the 1920s towns and cities created public swimming pools, a symbol of the common good. Many were drained and filled rather than shared with black neighbors. Social Security excluded the two job categories most black workers were in. The GI Bill excluded blacks. The big investment in mortgage support excluded blacks through redlining and racial covenants. White people saw government had a role in raising the standard of living, and all these programs were created. But white people were taught to disdain and distrust black and brown people, so they had to be excluded. When the book came out in 2021 white people across the country were waking up to understanding we’ve been lied to about our history, that we wanted to understand the country in its fullness. We wanted to know our heroes of all races, those who stood with the oppressed. And the nasty guy wants to erase that. McGhee thinks the erasure will be temporary. Too many people, too many white people, don’t want history whitewashed. White people have told her they were furious they were lied to in school history classes. Young readers, the most diverse generation and with phones to access all the info in the world, don’t want to be lied to. More importantly, the nasty guy hasn’t changed public opinion, our support for history without lies. We’ve seen the nasty guy pursue supposed (accused, not proven) black fraud, as in the Somali immigrants in Minnesota. But no one pursues white fraud, as in Brett Favre redirecting assistance to needy families into college sports facilities, including a million for himself. That doesn’t fit the narrative. The whole purpose of DOGE was to eliminate woke, slashing governmental budgets and causing chaos in their effort. That mostly affected black workers. Whenever we hear “states’ rights” in legal documents, think slavery and segregation. An example is the Roberts court, that Medicaid expansion should be up to the states. And the higher percentage of black people in a state the more likely Medicaid was not expanded. The current fight about the Affordable Care Act is in its core about racism. Dr. King said injustice in health is the most shocking and inhuman system in our society. If health care is not universal someone is left out. Black and brown people are disproportionately uninsured but there are more uninsured white people than black. Yet, a majority of white people are opposed to the Affordable Care Act. McGhee remains optimistic. Pull on and resolve the racism thread and a lot of our big issues – health, housing, education, environment, democracy, the things conservatives declare as too expensive – become easier. We need each other. There are too many things I can’t do on my own. Community can do some of them but government helps us do the rest of them. In a diverse society we need multiracial action. When a community rejects zero-sum thinking and embraces cross-racial solidarity they get higher wages, cleaner air, better schools. The whole community benefits. An example is Lewiston, Maine where African refugees helped revitalize the town. Which is why the nasty guy is targeting it. An important need is organizing. And, in a lot of cities targeted by ICE, that’s what residents are doing. A lot of people are becoming participants in their communities, working towards a common goal. This is King’s Beloved Community, the exact opposite of zero-sum thinking. That’s why the nasty guy is trying to make “activism” a dirty word. He wants us to be afraid, to “think that it is dangerous and socially undesirable to speak out and be active.” And Americans aren’t listening to that idea. For white people who continue to believe in zero-sum: When people are “sidelined due to debt, discrimination, disadvantage” they aren’t contributing to the economy the way they could. Citigroup found racism cost the US GDP $16 trillion over 20 years. A black college graduate has less wealth than a white high school dropout. Instead of spending a decade working through a mountain of debt, what if that black graduate could jump right in to contributing to the economy? Don’t think of reparations as zero-sum, of one group giving to another, or as an admission of white guilt. Instead, think of it is seed capital to a new America, a cushion of wealth for black people that benefits everyone. Before I give McGhee the final word, I’ve been thinking: While the white male benefits from the end or racism, he does lose something. That something is the sense of being higher in the social hierarchy. For many white people that is of primary importance. For those in the nasty guy’s administration that’s what they obsess over and what defines their lives. I can’t wait to be rid of it.

This is a country that is in fact, just as it has always been, warring between a faction that wants to keep wealth and power concentrated in its hands and a diverse, striving, agitating, often activist, multiracial population that is trying to figure out who they are to one another. But I think that the reason why the attacks have been so brutal and overreaching is because we are so close to a place where there is an enduring multiracial governing majority that wants this country to live up to the values that we were taught it was founded on and is ready to do the work to actually make it so.

Until we greatly reduce the power of the oligarchs

I have a Martin Luther King Day cartoon that didn’t get posted promptly. It is by MacLeod and shows an elephant saying, “Spare a thought for us Republicans on this difficult day when we have to dredge through everything MLK ever said to find something we can post that’s half acceptable to our racist supporters.” Brother recommended a post on Daily Kos that I would have found eventually. He also recommended a couple comments in the post that I would not have seen. So, thanks Brother! The post is by Dartagnan of the Kos community. His central point is that the nasty guy and his followers want one thing: revenge. Yes, a lot comes from the nasty guy’s use of revenge as his major campaign theme. It is more than that.

As Tom Nichols, writing for The Atlantic, observes, the Republican electorate has, for the most part, swallowed Trump’s fiction and internalized it. Republicans have transformed Trump’s embarrassments into an insult against their own personal identities and belief systems. It’s an offense that demands and necessitates revenge against those fellow Americans who dared to insult them.

Admitting one’s choices are wrong can be difficult to impossible. Those who can’t admit do a lot to save face. And to do that they have to ignore the nasty guy’s criminal charges. They have to invent and believe preposterous stories of the Biden family, and conjure up fake horrors, threats, and enemies. It’s a coping mechanism. They are now convinced that millions of Americans, including their neighbors, look down on them. They hear it through the attacks and critiques of the nasty guy. And revenge doesn’t respond to discourse or reason. In the comments is a meme by DoctorH showing Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka saying, “What could be more noble cause for a Second Civil War than a litany of IMAGINARY grievances?” Now on to the comments that Brother recommended. These confirm a lot of what I’ve concluded over the last few years that what is going on is these people are highly invested in the social hierarchy, in which they consider themselves rather high up. What they are doing is protecting their social position. A comment by Bring the Lions:

The Big Lie is there to cover the Big Truth: the MAGA/GOP base can’t accept losing elections and power to the Democratic coalition. They can’t accept that they are out-numbered by the rest of us (hence the fixation on the size of rallies and flags). They refuse to see members of the Democratic coalition as legitimate Americans, having equal standing to them. That’s the Big Truth that keeps being alluded to in so many ways. Better to have the Big Lie about “election fraud” to masquerade the blatant racism and bigotry behind the whole denial. Because if they didn’t have the Big Lie, the conversation would have to be about how one segment of America simply refuses to accept that they can lose elections to the other, and refuses to accept that the other side has the legitimacy to govern over them. Once the conversation moves there - and that’s exactly where it should be - you can’t “both sides” it. You’re effectively having the conversation that needs to be held: how do you run a democracy when one side has given up on….democracy?

Confirmation bias on my part? I see it as: I’ve come to this conclusion of how the world works and here is someone who has come to the same conclusion. Brother pointed to the response to Bring the Lions by theghostofjohndewey:

great comment, but I will posit that it goes deeper even than what you say—the MAGA crowd is simply NOT ABLE to accept what America has become and is turning into; specifically, a country where being a white Christian male does not automatically put you on top of the social hierarchy; a country where gays are free to walk around “flaunting” their “unnaturalness”; a country where women-folk are not kept barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen; a country where Blacks are free to vote and live outside “approved” neighborhoods and marry into “the white race”; a country that is increasingly diverse, increasingly non-white, increasingly non-Christian, and possibly worst of all, a country where people are increasingly tolerant of anything or anybody that is “different.” “Make America Great Again” is all about “restoring” that (mythological) utopian America where none of the above existed, where even the poorest white man living in a shack with no power or running water still knew that they were somehow better than an educated, well-to-do black man (to use the most obvious example).

Yep, it’s all about the social hierarchy and their (rather high up) place in it. Brother also recommended the comment by jsteve7:

I think the biggest reason for the size of Trump support is what they see as a defense against their biggest fear of all — being voted into irrelevance from a DEMOCRACY. Being voted into irrelevance by people that don’t look like them, pray like them, sexually orient like them, and intend to create a racial, gender, sexual, and economic level playing field in this country. Trump supporters see themselves as bunkering up in a mindless and existential fight against anything perceived as “left.” The biggest right wing enemy in this fight is federal government as it is now seen by Trump supporters as THE instrument of the left to implement their vision of equality and justice for ALL — the last thing the right wing wants. So, what better way to fight this enemy than a gigantic wrecking ball? And even if Trump fails to completely wreck our democratic institutions, as he did in his first term, he can be a block against the perceived inevitability of government by and for the people.

I also noted the comment by doncoolodge:

There’s no way to defuse that deep an animus. That it exists makes it imperative that we utterly defeat them at the polls; the only alternative is surrender, and that’s unthinkable. But when we eliminate that possibility of elective revenge, that is most likely to only increase their rage. And they’ll still take their revenge, in the only way that’s left. Sigh. I keep flip-flopping from hope to despair, with the events that might bring me hope also leading me to picture the horrors that are also likely to evolve from them.

Peter Olandt of the Kos community wrote about something I and others have recognized for a long time but others still get it wrong. Olandt rejects the common idea that if we just defeat the nasty guy the problem is over. The article above says no to that – the nasty guy’s followers won’t disappear quietly. Olandt says no in a different way.

Both Trump and corporate media are tools of American oligarchs. The Murdochs, Kochs, and Crows of the world are the real power, menace, and conspirators out to destroy America.

The current effort began as a response to Roosevelt’s New Deal when taxes on the wealthy were 70% and higher. Reagan tackled the discontent of the rich with the mantra “Government is the problem.”

The elected Republicans needn’t have solutions to make government better, they could just muck things up worse and use that as justification that even more government needed to be eliminated. Republicans are anarchists and nihilists. So over the years we have privatized some parts of government, downsized much of it, and in Red States essentially removed much of it all while oligarchs got richer on it. When the initial results came in and most of us saw no benefit to the downsizing of government, the oligarchs needed to up their game to keep the momentum in their favor. The oligarchs tied themselves to racism, guns, and abortion as the polarizing topics to keep getting their servants elected while weakening anti-trust statutes allowing for media consolidation to push their message. With Citizens United, they legalized bribery making the process more streamlined for themselves. ... We haven’t come close to defeating the Fascism arrayed against us right now. We’ve barely kept the first attempt from succeeding while addressing NONE of the conditions which led us here. Until we greatly reduce the power of the oligarchs and keep them in check, we will simply face a Trumpian threat again and again.

In the comments JaketheRake says the article missed an important piece.

The oligarchs have turned from trump because they don’t control his cult. They have been wanting a different candidate for a while now. Desantis has failed to shine for them, now Haley will probably fail as well. They are done with trump, but can’t control his mob.

For a while now I’ve had the wish the nasty guy would save the nation a great deal of trouble if he just died. Lots of commentary say he’s ripe for a heart attack. But ... His base won’t believe he died in the same way they don’t believe a lot of other obviously true and well documented things. Also, the oligarchs are still there, making yachts full of cash. Peter Schickele has died at the age of 88. He is famous for his classical musical comedy. The biggest part of that was his invention of P.D.Q. Bach who he claimed was “the youngest and oddest of Johann Sebastian’s 20-odd children.” He would claim he had found another work by P.D.Q. which would be a parody of some aspect of classical music. An example is the “1712 Overture,” a parody of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.” I became acquainted to Schickele in high school. Brother had bought a double vinyl album “The Wurst of P.D.Q. Bach” and I very much enjoyed it. A few more albums appeared after that. I saw Schickele live three times. The first was in the 1970s at a concert in Kalamazoo. I greeted him after the concert as was amazed at the number of food stains on his tux shirt. The second was in the 1980s when he did a concert with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. During that concert he wanted to point out an error in the program – at the end of the previous week’s concert description the period was missing from the last sentence. The third was a few years ago when Schickele was guest composer at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival. I likely attended more than one concert. By then he was walking with a cane and didn’t do any playing. But he definitely made his presence known – a pianist was playing one of his pieces and between movements Schickele came on stage. The laughter of the pianist showed he did not know that would happen. Schickele made some appropriately funny comment, then left to let the pianist continue. I also remember an appearance or two on Prairie Home Companion when it took up brief residencies in New York. Schickele would come up with compositions featuring quite unusual combinations of instruments. This article on ClassicFM has an obituary of Schickele and also a video of one of his biggest jokes – narrating the first movement of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony as a sporting event. In doing so he taught a lot about how that piece is laid out. When I taught music theory at a small college in Detroit (now out of business) I played an audio version of that joke. My Detroit student’s didn’t get it. Classical music wasn’t their thing. Of course, there are a lot of his fun stuff on YouTube. I wouldn’t be able to find or link to them all. I’ll end with a link to Al Hirschfeld’s caricature of Schickele.

So the white man can feel superior, which he has confused with freedom

I finished the book The Burden, African Americans and the Enduring Impact of Slavery, edited by Rochelle Riley. This book is over 20 essays by various black authors refuting the claim that slavery is long gone, just get over it, nobody alive has been enslaved. These essays speak from experience that the reasons why there was slavery still exist and that the effects of slavery live on. People living today very much continue to suffer from it. I won’t list all of the topics discussed, though here are a few. I have taken up my parents’ interest in genealogy and have traced most family lines to their villages in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Germany. A few lines I and my brother have traced back to the beginning of village record keeping. I know where I come from. But for many black people slavery has erased those records and those links. For Paula Williams Madison the best she could do was a DNA test that says her father’s family came from Ghana. In contrast, her mother’s father was Chinese and once connected to her Chinese family she found its known history is 3000 years long. But for many black people they don’t know their roots, they don’t know where they came from, and they don’t know who they are. And that affects them. Kevin Blackstone discussed modern sports. Even though some black athletes are paid millions, it is still a plantation mentality that white owners can do what they want with black bodies. Tamara Winfrey-Harris wrote that on a plantation a black child didn’t have a childhood and many modern black children still don’t. That’s especially true of black girls who, when they approach puberty, are seen as budding Jezebels ready to wield their sexuality as a weapon. Vann Newkirk talked about the school to prison pipeline. T’Keyah Crystal Keymah discussed black women’s hair. White society looks at natural black hair and assumes the person is dirty, and black women assume they need to mimic the hairstyles of their oppressors for their own protection. Michelle Singletary wrote that her grandmother taught her that debt is a form of slavery. Others talked about redlining and the poor quality of schools with black students. Tonya Matthews wrote about Beyoncé’s album Lemonade and pondered why do black men not return home and why do black women continue to wait for them? Part of that might come from the slavery practice that black men were rented out to area plantations to get black women pregnant to produce more slaves. He was taught not to be faithful. An excerpt from the essay by Patrice Gaines:

When the Emancipation Proclamation freed me, it wasn’t the physical bodies and imaginative minds that those white people with economic power feared, it was the possibility that I might rise and be powerful too. That I might be as powerful as them. That they might have to share power and wealth. And so fear said: Make these darker people into monsters roaming the earth, untethered. This is the legacy of slavery. I must be a monster so the white man can feel superior, which he has confused with freedom.

This book presents its arguments quite well. I agree this is a book that white America needs to read. Another book on slavery is The Underground Railroad, Authentic Narratives and First-Hand Accounts by William Still. I bought it at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati when I visited a year ago. The book was first published in 1872. The author was a leader in the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society which was a major link in the underground railroad that got slaves out of the South and (after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed) got them through to Canada. When passengers got to Philly Still recorded their stories, their reason for escaping and method of doing so. This book is about five dozen of those stories. Alas, I didn’t finish it. The stories are important and show a great deal of determination and ingenuity. But this telling was boring. Still had filled out his notes, but with a recitation of facts and very little drama for these dramatic stories. Earlier this week was the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King gave his famous “I have a Dream” speech. I happened to be in Washington for the 50th anniversary event and heard part of President Obama’s address to the crowd. Back to this year’s event. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos included a video and transcript of Sacha Baron Cohen’s speech. Cohen started by asking the obvious question of this speaker at an event promoting black liberation: “Now, many of you are probably wondering, ‘What the hell is a white Jewish comedian from England doing here?’ ” Short answer: he was invited. Though he is known for some mighty raunchy comedies with some highly racist segments, he did a college thesis on the civil rights movement and spent time at the King Center in Atlanta. Here are excerpts from his speech:

There I learned about how Black Americans and Jewish Americans and people of many faiths linked arms together, went to jail together, sacrificed their lives together, and achieved historic victories together for civil rights. The brave alliance teaches a lesson that we can never forget: When we are united, we can hasten the day, as Dr. King proclaimed, when all of God's children will be able to walk the Earth in decency and honor. The power of unity is exactly why those who stand in the way of equality and freedom seek to divide us. They appeal to the worst instincts of humanity, which often simmer just below the surface. ... And so it pains me that we have to say them out loud again. The idea that people of color are inferior is a lie. The idea that Jews are dangerous and all powerful is a lie. The idea that women are not equal to men is a lie. And the idea that queer people are a threat to our children is a lie. ... So as others fuel hate and division, we choose the empathy and unity that allows us to make progress together for equality, for decency, and for democracy. Especially here in the U.S. today.

A drag show is not a foreign threat

Just three days after finishing one book I’ve finished another. This one is Dear Martin, by Nic Stone. The main character is Justyce. (Only three books back was another with a character named Justice – a trend?) This Justyce is black, 17 years old, and getting through his senior year at an elite preparatory school in Atlanta. He lives on campus and is one of eight black students. And he’s dealing with a whole lot of racism. In the opening chapter he’s come to the aid of his ex-girlfriend who can pass for white and is quite drunk. After he gets her into the back seat of her car so he can drive her home he’s arrested and handcuffed. The cop won’t tell him the charge and won’t let him speak. In his Societal Evolution class, which discusses issues of the day, Jared blathers on about how racism is over and affirmative action is now reverse racism. And the racist incidents pile up from there. Not all is bleak – he does have enough successes to keep the reader cheering for him. To help him sort through the racial issues he writes letters to Martin Luther King in his notebook. He also studies King’s letters and sermons. But as the racial incidents pile up and get stronger he wonders: King was a good man. They still shot him. So why be good? He does all he can to do what he’s supposed to – study hard and make good grades – and people still see him only for the color of his skin. Youthful missteps are turned against him. He feels he can’t win. So why be good? As the incidents pile up I began to wonder if the author was trying to cram all the racial situations faced by black male teens into one book, perhaps making them more relatable by having them all happen to a character we get to know and root for. But having them all happen to one guy in one year doesn’t really happen. Does it? That’s when I reminded myself I’m not black. I don’t experience racism. This could very well be what young black men go through every year. This isn’t exactly a book one enjoys, though there are plenty of enjoyable moments. I kept going to see how Jus would answer the question he posed. I’ve talked about Michigan’s barely Democratic majority, 56-54, in the state House and what they’ve been able to do with it, including gun control laws. So it’s disappointing, but not surprising, that, as David Nir of Daily Kos Elections reported, conservative activists have launched recall campaigns against five House Democrats. Petitions are being filed with the State Board of Canvassers to soon start to collect signatures. Since there was record turnout last November to keep Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in office the number of required signatures has gone up. And – oh, look here! – the window to gather those signatures is only 60 days, thanks to the previous Republican majority who thought they would be in power forever. The reason why activists want to recall these representatives is they voted for the new red flag law that allows courts to removed guns from those who might endanger themselves or others. Well, also the activists think they’re vulnerable. Another aspect of this effort is that the Michigan Republican Party is essentially broke. There is a great deal of infighting and donors have closed their wallets. As part of a pundit roundup for Kos Denise Oliver Velez posted cartoons in the comments. A few of them are about RFK Jr. I’m old enough to remember his father who was his brother’s Attorney General and helped get the Loving v. Virginia case to strike down bans on interracial marriage before the Supreme Court. I also remember when RFK was the hope of the Democratic Party in 1968 – until he was assassinated. We were all asked to “Pray for Bobby.” His son is ... quite different. Yeah, he’s running for president in the Democratic Party, but he’s much more pleasing to Republicans. His big thing seems to be vaccine conspiracy theories. On one cartoon Taylor Jones showed a famous line from the father and a line the son might say.

RFK: Some men see things as they are and ask, “Why?” I dream of things that never were and ask “Why not?” Junior: I see things that don’t exist and ask, “Why not twist them into bizarre conspiracies?”

Adam Zyglis drew a cartoon of Camelot, where JFK wears a crown and RFK Junior Joker wears a jester hat. Velez included a tweet from Laurie:

Kerry Kennedy is denouncing the antisemitism espoused by her brother Robert Kennedy Jr., and does not represent what his father stood for. RFK Jr’s family does not support his bid for the presidency either. Time to drop out of the race!!

More comments say Joseph Kennedy III and perhaps a couple other cousins have also condemned Junior’s run. Hmm ... Is Junior suffering trauma from his father’s murder 55 years ago? Not that I’m an armchair psychologist. Mark Sumner of Kos posted a Ukraine update that answered some of my questions. A couple days ago I wondered exactly what was meant by Putin declaring he was pulling out of the deal that allowed Ukrainian grain to travel through the Black Sea to feed the world. Putin has shown us what he meant: * There have been several waves of missile attacks on Odesa, the primary grain port. Much of the attacks focused on those grain ports. * Putin declared any ship in the Black Sea heading towards Ukrainian ports will be assumed to carry military cargo and will be treated accordingly. That’s not just ships with Ukraine’s flag, but all ships. Is attacking all ships all bluster? Someone might like to test that. But Turkey is much less likely to risk ships to escort Ukrainian ships. And because insurance companies won’t insure ships going to or from Ukraine other countries are less likely to test for bluster. Also, I wondered whether Putin would go to the BRICS conference in South Africa in August and risk arrest for war crimes. The word now is he won’t attend. One item to be discussed at that conference is how to undercut the dollar as the world’s default currency. The decline of the Russian economy makes progress on that goal less likely. The replacement currency certainly won’t be the ruble, with the way it has been falling lately. Aldous Pennyfarthing of Kos reproduced a debate between Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan, who is gay, and Florida Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart. They were at House subcommittee debate on defense spending and topic was drag shows at a military installation. I had mentioned this a few days ago. This is part of the defense funding debate because Republicans, especially Sen. Tommy Tuberville, have attached a whole bunch of culture war things to the defense bill. Part of that is this drag queen issue and part is because the military pays for service members and family to travel out of state if the state where they are posted has banned abortion. First Pocan established that the drag shows cost $21K in an $850 billion budget. They also paid for a few $25 pride flags. Then the fun part: During WWII the movie This Is the Army, with Ronald Reagan – the Republican St. Ronnie – in the cast. The movie was about soldiers putting on a show and some of them are in drag. It raised $10 million for the Army Relief Fund. That’s three times what the Wizard of Oz had earned by that time. Pocan concluded:

Now, so, for all the worries about, I think you said, the focus on foreign threats that we’re dealing with. A Pride flag is not a foreign threat. A drag show is not a foreign threat. Ronald Reagan is not a foreign threat. But having this kind of rhetoric on the floor so you can get people who want to pander and fundraise to certain aspects of your base is a threat to this democracy. So I just want to put it out there. I didn’t plan on debating, but every time you put this stupid crap up that has nothing to do with appropriations, I’m going to stand up and say something.

Of course, I looked up the movie. One can watch it online. I watched a trailer and think I’ll skip it. It was the highest grossing movie musical until 1954 when White Christmas beat it out. It’s still in the top 40.

Non-violence is a sword that heals

My Sunday movie was the 1988 film Stand and Deliver. It is a true story of Jaime Escalante (Edward James Olmos) hired to teach computers in East Los Angeles in 1980. But the school couldn’t afford to buy computers, so he ends up teaching math in a place where his students have Spanish surnames. We follow one class of students through to graduation in 1982. He has to convince them an education matters. If all you can do is add and subtract you’ll spend your life pumping gas. Some of the boys in the class swagger like gang members and don’t want to be seen as smart. He has to convince fellow teachers that students will rise to expectations and these students are worth teaching. He has to convince parents that their children can have a better life. And he has to battle the Education Testing Service who accuse his students of cheating. I think a few of the actors playing the students went on to decent movie careers, though the only name I recognize now is Lou Diamond Phillips. Looking up the movie on IMDB didn’t help in identifying actors because it shows how the actors look now (or perhaps in the last 10 years), not how they looked when the movie was made. The IMDB trivia page noted Olmos shadowed the real Jaime Escalante for many days and Olmos wrote dialogue based on what Escalante actually said. So it is good Escalante said the movie was 90% truth and 10% drama. I enjoyed this one. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated yesterday. While there are stories in the national news about the possibility of being infected by COVID, flu, and RSV all at the same time, Michigan is doing well on the COVID front – at least in the reported COVID cases. The peaks in the new cases per day over the last few weeks are 1233, 1002, 852, and 555 – heading in the right direction. The number of deaths per day remain at their ongoing low level. The Martin Luther King holiday happened since the last time I posted. So here are a few things that were discussed about the day. Charles Jay of the Daily Kos community called us to continue King’s dream of economic justice. A few quotes from King:

“God never intended for one group of people to live in superfluous inordinate wealth, while others live in abject poverty.” “There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we have the resources to get rid of it.” “And one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?’ And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth.”

Jay then discussed how it was that the rich acquired more than a trillion dollars during the pandemic. Paul Fell, as part of his Daily Felltoon, tweeted a cartoon about economic equality:

Did you see how much the university is paying its new coaches?! Meanwhile, our professors make a fraction of that for turning out doctors, teachers, engineer, and Nobel Prize winners. Big Deal! Not a one of ’em can throw a 70-yard touchdown pass and win the Superbowl!!

Aysha Qamar of Kos wrote about King’s influence around the world. Nelson Mandela of South Africa was highly influenced by King as he worked to end Apartheid. In Northern Ireland Catholics used King’s teachings to challenge the discrimination they experienced from the Protestants. King’s vision was a part of the social movements in Eastern Europe in the 1980s that finally swept aside Soviet rule. And in India the Dalits, the “untouchables” in India’s caste system, used King’s non-violent teachings to challenge that system. David Fitzsimmons of the Arizona Daily Star tweeted one of King’s central messages:

If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in your struggle unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness and your chief legacy will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included a King quote:

When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. When evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love. Where evil men would seek to perpetuate an unjust status quo, good men must seek to bring a real order of justice. Non-violence is a powerful and just weapon which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.

YoursINegritude stole an image we can use when conservatives quote MLK. Remember Clippy, the paperclip help character from a long ago version of Windows? The image is of Clippy asking:

Hi! It looks like you’ve quoted Martin Luther King, Jr. out of context instead of engaging with the complex reality of white supremacy in America. Would like some help with that?

This one isn’t directly about MLK, though appropriate for his life’s work. A few weeks ago during the children’s time at my church the presenter talked about the book The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss. She didn’t just talk about it, she had the kids act it out. The story is about one group of sneetches who have a star on their bellies who look down on another group of sneetches who don’t have stars. So those without get stars and the first group takes them off and proclaim the better sneetches don’t have stars. And round and round they go. The kids would go into a tent where the presenter’s husband would attach or take off the stars. At the conclusion the kids, at least the older ones, got the point. Laura Clawson of Kos wrote about a teacher of the Olentangy Local School District in Ohio reading that book to students. The reading was being recorded for the NPR Planet Money podcast. Yeah, I didn’t think that book was about economics. But apparently the book, with all that activity to add and remove stars, is about open markets. Or something. This is one of several books discussing economics for kids on that podcast. After they got into the book a ways, a third grader made a connection, “Like, white people disrespected Black people, but then, they might stand up in the book.” A moment later, Amanda Beeman, the district’s assistant communication’s director, stopped the reading. That halt and the children’s confusion are are now a part of the podcast. Ohio does not have a law preventing teachers from discussing race. Well, not yet. Republicans have introduced such a bill. Even without such a law the political climate has teachers and school officials already censoring what goes on in a classroom. And even if the book says nothing about white people and black people students can’t be allowed to figure out the topic is racism. A book published in 1961 during the Civil Rights era is now too risky for a classroom. I recently wrote about the protests in Lützerath, Germany trying to stop an open pit coal mine from eating the town. The protesters didn’t reoccupy the village. But... Leah McElrath quoted FaggotsForFuture, who wrote, “It was a political victory: we showed the greens that anyone who tries to screw the #climate movement will get hurt politically. We are not to be messed with!” McElrath also wrote the police inflicting violence against the climate activist seemed to be having fun. Laura Clawson of Kos wrote about a feature of the Inflation Reduction Act signed last year. There will be a variety of rebates and tax credits to help households shift away from fossil fuels. States need to enact laws to get the money to their residents, so the money may be available by the end of this year. So start thinking about it now! Money will be available for such things as: weatherization materials such as insulation and window upgrades; heat pumps to replace the furnace, air conditioner, and water heater; and solar panels. Hunter of Kos discussed the latest silliness from conservatives. Another major scientific study shows that gas stoves are not a good idea. The emissions of that flame in the house can lead to asthma in children. That prompted many conservatives to proclaim that Biden was coming after their stove and that the only way he’ll get it is to pry it out of their cold dead hands (extra points if you remember the last thing they insisted their cold hands would grasp). Hunter noted two things related to this tempest. First, there is regulation:

If all washing machines came with optional robot-arm attachments that would spontaneously rip the livers out of a small percentage of passing toddlers, we'd regulate those washers pretty darn quick. Robotic vacuums cannot be shipped with optional spinning knife attachments just because it would look cool. You can no longer put cocaine in your old-timey bottled cough syrup even if it does really perk your patients up, because reasons. There are some things we're good at regulating, and some things we're not. The "not" parts tend to coincide with very particular lobbying efforts.

See the fights over tobacco, lead in gasoline, and now fossil fuels in general. The second thing is that the loudest conservatives…

are catering to a crowd that very much believes mundane aspects of our modern American life are causing nationwide illness and death. That's their thing. It's their whole personality, in fact. They just believe the dangers are always coming from the opposite direction of whatever our nation's top experts are currently warning about.

See COVID vaccines and the latest generation of broadband infrastructure. So, yeah, the tempest over gas stoves will continue to be a thing. Hunter also discussed the latest blather from Sen. Mike Lee of Utah. Lee, surely working for ways to gut the federal budget, asked:

Please (1) name any federal regulatory agency whose elimination would negatively impact your life, and then (2) specify whether that agency’s necessary functions couldn’t be performed at least as well at the state or local level, or by a non-governmental body.

Lee then suggested that states would step up and handle food safety and while there would be variations from state to state this won’t be a problem. Hunter then asked Kos readers for their lists of necessary federal departments and agencies. The discussion was lively. Mother Mags: Food safety, work safety, etc. would get watered down in red states. hijean: see the meat industry during COVID. tmseattle: Texas electricity isolated themselves from the national grid to avoid following national regs. That was a disaster a couple Februarys ago. RO37:

Do I like having a single national currency instead of needing a book of exchange rates on hundreds of private and state run currencies (DoT) Do i like drugs that I know work when I take them, and food that won't poison me? (FDA) Do I like breathing clean(er) air? That my asthma prone family hasn’t triggered for my children? (EPA) Do i like that the DOJ can crack down on the most racist police departments? Do I like reading novel, watching TV shows, and listening to music (Dept of Commerce—patent office) Do I like that China or Russia can't just march to my door and there's acoordinated national defense? Dept of Defense

Katwoman added:

Do I like having an independent organization investigating mass casualty accidents and recommending changes regardless of profit impact? (NTSB) Do I like knowing the resources entire country will help my state in the event of a natural disaster? (FEMA) Do I like preserving our natural landscape for the animals who live in it? (NPS and BLM) Do I like having one exceptionally trained organization in charge of search and rescue on and around my country’s ports? (USCG).

And several noted that corporation want one set of regulations, not fifty. See the complaints that California has much more stringent car exhaust regs than the rest of the country. So, yeah, they want the federal government and it various agencies to regulate and not the states.

Could we interest you in a lively debate about the gender of M&Ms instead?

I downloaded the Michigan COVID data, updated as of Friday. In new cases per day the large peak at the start of January has been revised upward to 26,786. Thankfully, the peaks in the two weeks after that are at 22,065 and 17,043. In the last two weeks the deaths per day dropped from 95 to 62, then rose over three days to 116, then dropped to 52. There are only 11 undated deaths. I don’t know what happened to the 1100 undated deaths shown in the previous report. Public Citizen tweeted:

Imagine this: The wealth of you & your friends doubled to $1,500,000,000,000 during Covid. If those gains were taxed by 99%, you all are STILL richer than 99% of the world. That revenue could vaccinate the planet & save lives. This is the power of the world’s 10 richest men.

Archaeologist Dr. Sarah Parcak tweeted:

Archaeologists: Here's exactly how pandemics have played out in the past w 10 top examples Historians: Here's how the 1919 pandemic played out blow by blow w masks surges deaths Sociologists: Here's how people react to vaccines+ masks w 100 papers Politicians: THIS IS ALL NEW

It seems all new to the media too. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Daily Kos (from almost three weeks ago), included a tweet from Bob Wachter which shows a plot of states positioned according to the percent of population fully vaccinated and deaths per million people since July. The plot shows a pretty high negative correlation – as vaccination rate increases the death rate goes down. Dworkin also quoted Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer, discussing schools that are always underfunded.

“What use would a carpenter have for biology?” asked [John] Krill [a lawyer for a Republican lawmaker], questioning the need for learning for learning’s sake in a locale where many of the available jobs don’t require a college degree. In stating so plainly the modern conservative philosophy that public schools exist solely to develop a workforce — one in which not everyone need be a rocket scientist or a philosopher — the Harvard Law-educated Krill didn’t stop there.

Carpenter and biology? Wouldn’t it be good to understand where the wood comes from? In addition to learning for learning’s sake is the need to educate people on how to be responsible citizens in a democracy. Clearly, Republicans don’t want that, either. The NPR program It’s Been a Minute with host Sam Sanders is on Michigan Radio on Saturdays. I usually don’t listen, though today’s episode sounded intriguing and important. It was a repeat of an episode from last June in which Sanders talked to Sarah Schulman. She had written the book Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 and she had been a part of the group for much of that time. This link is for last June’s show with the 50 minute audio, a few photos, and interview highlights. Here’s a bit from what I remember from the audio. The AIDS pandemic started in 1981. Gay men and allies organized to take care of their own. By 1987 they realized – prompted by Larry Kramer – that caregiving wasn’t enough. COVID is a very public pandemic. AIDS wasn’t, so one goal of ACT UP was to get the mainstream media to pay attention. Those who lived through that era will likely remember their slogan “Silence = Death.” Another goal was to change policy. So this large coalition would study an issue, create an alternate policy, then make noise so the institution would pay attention. One of their most successful actions was against the Food and Drug Administration who were being mighty slow in approving drugs to treat AIDS. One part of the alternate policy was to say don’t test a drug against a placebo because the person who gets the placebo will die. Instead, test against the best known treatment. They didn’t protest on the weekend when no one would be in the building. Instead, they protested during a weekday so the workers inside would feel a bit uneasy and no work would get done. The FDA changed their policy. One of their most famous actions was at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. Cardinal O’Connor started demanding the city restrict HIV related materials from being available in public schools. The ACT UP team felt he had overstepped his authority, resulting on more deaths. So on December 10, 1989 they came into a mass and did a quiet die-in. That was effective. Then one man, defying agreed action protocols, stood on a pew and repeatedly shouted, “Stop Killing Us!” Things got a bit chaotic after that and police were called. Even with that deviation from the plan the action was considered a success. They definitely got media attention. And the perception of gay men shifted from weak to strong. Schulman wrote the book to both give an account of her time in the group and to give a training manual to those needing to protest today. And groups like Black Lives Matter and those who support immigrants are following ACT UP’s example. Ruth Ben-Ghiat quoted Hugo Lowell of the Guardian:

Sources tell me Jan. 6 committee may only subpoena GOP members of Congress if it can overcome one major recurring worry raised in conversations: fear of Republican retaliation in the future.

Ben-Ghiat added:

Hello from: lessons from authoritarian history. Fear of retaliation=old school democratic frame. Realism= knowing they will go after everyone they can anyway. Only bold and fearless action works w/ppl who thrill at breaking the rules and see caution as weakness.

Professor Crystal Marie Fleming tweeted (almost three weeks ago):

We have a dynamic wherein Republicans know our “democratic” institutions aren’t actually democratic and would like to further undermine them with open fascism while Democrats are invested in pretending our civic institutions work. The latter position is very easy to manipulate. Because Democrats refuse to publicly admit the problem — that our core institutions are weak and undemocratic — the opposing party can get away with almost anything, including open coup attempts! while Dems scramble to keep pretending that everything is still legitimate and okay. Republicans and foreign adversaries alike know that the party line from Democrats will continue to be “Everything is fine actually” no matter how s---ty things are. I personally believe that even if the coup had been successful, Dems still would have asked to form a committee.

Leah McElrath tweeted:

Fiction tells us families come together after a death, but, in reality, they usually don’t. Instead, what often happens is previously existing toxic dynamics become more intense, not less. Sometimes family ties break altogether. I feel like that’s happening now, with humanity. We are facing multiple, literal existential crises. A pandemic has killed millions. Climate change is causing us to face the increasing uninhabitability—in real time—of many areas in which we live. One would imagine the natural response would be for us to become more united. Instead, we cannot help but notice the pronounced fragmentation. As is the case within families, some benefit from the pre-existing fragmentation. Accordingly, in response to a threat of systemic upheaval, they endeavor not only to ensure splits remain but also to widen them. Because of our own sense of urgency, we can feel compelled to focus on those invested in maintaining division. It can feel necessary that they change. The need for them to change can even feel like a survival need as, over time, engagement evolves into repetition compulsion. My fear is that our continued focus on trying to “fix” the divisions is inadvertently serving to strengthen them.

McElrath quoted ContextFall who tweeted:

At what point does the general public realize that there is a major PR effort pushing the normalization of mass death?

McElrath added:

We’ve seen a 3-year-lag between when MSM journalists mock those of us who observe patterns to when those journalists finally start writing about the patterns as obvious truths—and a 2-year-lag until the public consumes enough MSM coverage to create a body of common knowledge.

I heard a bit of news that the makers of M&Ms candy have given the animated candies used in commercials a makeover. It looks like Tucker Carlson of Fox News ranted about the brown candy character appearing to be non-binary. That prompted Ken Klippenstein of The Intercept to tweet:

Sorry you don’t get a say in the distribution of resources, could we interest you in a lively debate about the gender of M&Ms instead? Note: You will now be paid in M&Ms

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted late night commentary.

Republicans are being criticized for blocking the voting rights bill. But, of course, Republicans don’t want voting rights because if voting was fair they'd lose. It's the same reason I keep my basketball hoop lowered to eight feet: because with the help of a small ladder, I can dunk. —Colin Jost, SNL Republicans are afraid that if more people get access to voting, they’re gonna lose elections. So, instead of coming up with policies that are more popular, they make it harder to vote. Basically, Republicans believe in the free market for everything except themselves. —Trevor Noah, The Daily Show

I haven’t heard much about Thich Nhat Hanh, a peacemaker who died this week. Bernice King, daughter of MLK, tweeted a bit of background. He was a friend and ally with MLK and urged opposition to the Vietnam war. That opposition meant he was exiled from his home country. When MLK was nominated for the Nobel Peace Price in 1967 he said Thich Nhat Hanh was more worthy. The prize wasn’t awarded that year. Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg tweeted:

“To be loved means to be recognized as existing." —Thich Nhat Hanh To see one another. Honor the dignity of one another. Fight for justice for one another. Build a world that recognizes the full existence of everyone. That’s our work.

The real Dr. King cannot be commodified, homogenized, and white-washed

The big voting rights bill has been blocked. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported a coalition of civil rights groups declared it wasn’t a defeat. It wasn’t a useless exercise. It shone a bright light on anti-American senators. McCarter wrote:

They added: “Democracy’s foes have not had the last word. As civil rights leaders and as patriotic Americans we will never stop fighting to preserve and defend the rights for which our predecessors bled and died.”

And Schumer said:

While tonight’s vote was disappointing, it will not deter Senate Democrats from continuing our fight against voter suppression, dark money, and partisan gerrymandering. With no support from Senate Republicans, many of whom deny the very existence of voter suppression, we faced an uphill battle. But because of this fight, and the fact that each Senator had to show where they stand, we are closer to achieving our goal of passing vital voter protection legislation. Now that every Senator has gone on record, the American people have seen who’s on the side of protecting voting rights and it will only strengthen our resolve as we work to ensure that our democracy does not backslide. The Democratic Caucus pledges to keep working until voting rights are protected for every American.

As for Sen. Sinema, who voted against ending the filibuster, Kerry Eleveld of Kos noted her favorability rating from the Kos/Civiqs polls. 27% of Arizonans in general have a favorable opinion of her. It’s also 27% of independents, 44% of Republicans, and only 8% of Democrats – though since she skipped out on the vote for the January 6th Commission last May her favorability by Democrats has been under 14%. Alas, the next time she’s up for reelection is 2024. Eleveld also reported several progressive organizations who have declared they will no longer support her. Cameron Joseph, senior political reporter at Vice News, tweeted:

I talked to more than a dozen volunteers and former staff who worked hard to elect @SenatorSinema in '18. Now? They feel "betrayed," "livid," "crushed." "People need to know she sucks," one former campaign staffer told me. Many were big fans of her in '18, but they feel like she's been intentionally sticking her finger in their eyes ever since, and some said the past week has been the "last straw" for them. And this isn't just progressive activists. These were her own supporters.

As for Sinema’s sidekick (or maybe she’s his sidekick) Sen. Manchin, McCarter reported he declared the big Build Back Better bill that he killed will have to start over from scratch. After Congress gets its financial house in order and pushed inflation down. And gotten COVID out of the way. Yeah, he’s the one who has been moving goalposts and reneging on agreements, so this isn’t a surprise. Maybe some of the individual pieces can get passed. Maybe he’ll block those too. Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos, had a couple interesting quotes. First from Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post discussing the vote on voting rights:

A funny thing about those votes: They put the best and the worst of the Senate on full display… Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday shredded the “never before changed the filibuster” argument. Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.) gave one of the most stirring speeches, making clear that while John Lewis gave blood on the Edmund Pettus bridge, this Senate couldn’t bring itself to “bridge” a procedural rule. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who bent over backward to accommodate Manchin’s concerns on voting reforms, blasted the gamesmanship: “I think by voting this down, by not allowing us even to debate this, to get to the conclusion of a vote, that is silencing the people of America, all in the name of an archaic Senate rule that isn’t even in the Constitution. That’s just wrong.” When Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) insisted it was unfair to equate voting restrictions to Jim Crow, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) let him have it. “Don’t lecture me about Jim Crow,” Booker declared angrily. “I know this is not 1965. And that’s what makes me so outraged. It is 2022, and they are blatantly removing more polling places from the counties where Blacks and Latinos are overrepresented.”

Dworkin also quoted Dan Froomkin of Presswatch:

A Quinnipiac poll out this week found that a significant majority of Americans – by a 58 to 37 margin – believe “the nation’s democracy is in danger of collapse.” Some of that is right-wingers who think the 2020 election was stolen, but it’s 56 to 37 percent among Democrats, too. Over half of Americans also consider it very likely (19 percent) or somewhat likely (34 percent) that there will be another attack in the United States like the one at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. And while people who follow me on Twitter are hardly a representative group, I was struck by how many people responded to this tweet by telling me that not only are they terrified, but that everybody they know is terrified, too. I don’t read about people who feel that way in the news, though.

Brendan Fischer of the Campaign Legal Center tweeted:

Not enough attention has been paid to how powerful dark money interests mobilized to pressure Manchin and Sinema to maintain the filibuster—and, in turn, to maintain the power of those wealthy special interests at the expense of voters. For example, last April, the dark money group Heritage Action described a $24M plan to “block federal legislation & tackle state based reform." A key part of that anti-voter effort was blocking filibuster reform: “It’s an all-hands-on-deck moment," said a top Heritage official. ... As part of that $24M campaign, Heritage Action organized a rally in WV urging Manchin to oppose filibuster reform. Heritage claimed to be “stand[ing] up for WV values,” but had to bus in activists from hundreds of miles away, across state lines. ... McConnell’s dark money group, One Nation, also spent millions on ads targeting Manchin on the filibuster The Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity mobilized against filibuster reform, too. AFP spent at least $500K on ads opposing filibuster changes in states like WV, organized astroturf rallies, and set up the website The US Chamber also fought against voting rights legislation and filibuster reform. As @andrewperezdc reported, the Chamber has sway with Manchin & Sinema, and the pair echoed Chamber talking points when describing their opposition to filibuster changes. Ultimately, the Freedom to Vote Act would have taken power from wealthy special interests and returned it to voters, and that was a huge threat to dark money interests like Heritage Action, the Kochs, and the US Chamber.

Yesterday marked the start of Biden’s second year. Rebekah Sager of Kos thought it was a fine time to list his first year accomplishments. That list would help us feel a little less glum about the defeat of the voting rights bill. Before getting to the actual list (which I’ll let you read) Sager wrote:

As former President Barack Obama before him, Biden entered office with a deep hole to climb out of. Former President Donald Trump left a trash fire of sick, conspiratorial Americans doubting their own election, as well as the science that could lead us out of the pandemic and climate change. He opened the door and invited in white supremacy, gave tax breaks to the ultra-rich, and broke an already broken country further apart. Let’s not even get started on the country trying to heal from an attempted coup on the U.S. Capitol.

Sager also wrote about the first year accomplishments of VP Harris. Again, I’ll let you read the list. Sager wrote:

Although her first year in office has been impressive, Harris has been scrutinized in a way that’s unlike so many of her predecessors in the role. Talk around D.C. has ranged from petty, with comments about her being “difficult” to work with, to Republicans and Democrats sparring about her being “too radical” and “not radical enough.” Her approval ratings equal President Joe Biden’s; a recent CBS News poll found that Americans have given her a 44%.

Eleveld reported that during Biden’s two hour press conference he said:

What are Republicans for? What are they for? Name me one thing they are for?

Moscow Mitch responded (“it” being the Senate):

That is a very good question and I'll let you know when we take it back.

Eleveld repeated the story of GOP Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire being asked to run for a seat in the Senate. When he heard the entire Republican goal was to keep Biden from accomplishing anything for two years he declined. Marcus Johnson tweeted an answer to Biden’s question, “Name me one thing they are for?” The answer: “Jim Crow.” Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote The 1619 Project about slaves arriving in America with the first settlers. She says every aspect of this country has been touched by slavery. Lauren Sue of Kos reported Hannah-Jones, a black journalist, was invited to speak at an event to honor Martin Luther King. Yet some people opposed her, calling her “unworthy of such association with King.” So she scrapped her original speech. The first half of what she did say was all excerpts from King’s speeches, though she replaced the N word with “black” so the audience wouldn’t catch on to what she was doing. Sue included many of those excerpts, then linked to Hanna-Jones’ Twitter thread that told the rest of the story:

Oh, the uncomfortable silence as I read Dr. King's words at a commemoration of Dr. King's life when people had no idea that these were his words. When I revealed that everything I said to that point was taken from his speeches between '56 and 67... Can you say SHOOK! Then I read all the names that white Americans called King: charlatan, demagogue, communist, traitor -- and brought out the polling showing more than three-quarters of Americans opposed King at his death while 94 percent approve of him now. I left them with this: People who oppose today what he stood for back then do not get to be the arbiters of his legacy. The real Dr. King cannot be commodified, homogenized, and white-washed and whatever side you stand on TODAY is the side you would have been back then. In fact, most white Americans in 1963 opposed the March on Washington where Dr. King gave the "I Have A Dream Speech" with that one line that people oppose to anti-racism like to trot out against those working for racial justice. ... This is why the 1619 Project exists. This is why the decades of scholarship that undergirds the 1619 Project exists. Because if we do nothing, they will co-opt our history and use it against us. Dr. King was a radical critic of racism, capitalism and militarism. He didn't die. He was assassinated. And many, including Reagan, fought the national holiday we're now commemorating. If you haven't read, in entirety, his speeches, you've been miseducated & I hope that you will.

News reports have said there is now a website to which one can go to order COVID tests and get them for free. That prompted Dr. Thrasher to tweet:

The Democrats seem as intent on making getting at-home Covid tests as complicated as Republicans want to make voting I can’t stress enuf that tens of millions of Americans can’t read. There is an unspoken consensus in news media and both major political parties that these ppl should be left for dead every time “Go to the website” or “Google it” are evoked to fight COVID If you can’t read enough to work, you can’t Google where to find a test and fill out a form for reimbursement. They should be freely available everywhere. Ppl who can’t read are no more deserving of contracting or dying of COVID than anyone else, but they’re ignored when pols say Let Them Google Cake. I think at-home tests should be mailed to everyone (create a culture of at home tests) AND available via schools, libraries etc. But if you must request them, why a website? Why not a phone #? It costs more to staff a call center, but... Covid affects older ppl a lot. And if you watch ads on TV that are targeting the elderly, they have phone numbers, not websites. Everything abt this pandemic ought to make getting help easier for the ppl most affected—& they might not read (English or at all) or use computers.

Ana Cabrera, of CNN, tweeted this morning:

The WH has opened a hotline for those who can't order their 4 free COVID tests online. The number to call is 800-232-0233

Doug Mack bought the fonts used by the Park Service, and with them created some signs for alternate national parks. A few of examples:

Welcome to Everything is Fine National Park. Quiet Sobbing Area Next 1,000 Miles Welcome to Twitter National Wildlife Preserve. Home of Bad Faithful Geyser. Welcome to Meh National Park. Welcome to Yes, We Have Bears National Forest. Stop Trying to Take a Selfie With Them OMG. Welcome to Stay on the Damn Path National Forest. You’re Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.

A chance to become a truly multiracial democracy

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos explained why the tax season that is about to start is going to be a mess. It will be so much of a mess that officials at the Treasury are talking to reporters to lower expectations. The IRS has about 15,000 employees, about the same as in 1970, even though the population has grown by 60% since then. Those 15,000 employees will be faced with 240 million phone calls this season – you will be on hold a long time if you speak to someone at all. That’s because Republicans keep forcing budget cuts on the agency. Their reasoning is simple. An understaffed IRS can audit some working class and poor people with straightforward returns but just don’t have the staff to audit the complicated returns of rich people, the ones whose tax bills are six figures and up and who have accountants and lawyers to litigate each step. The Build Back Better bill, the one that hasn’t passed yet, allocates money to beef up the IRS. This could bring in another $400 billion in taxes. That whole bill is blocked by Sen. Joe Manchin – who is likely one of those rich people with a big tax bill he doesn’t want to pay. Historian Kevin Kruse tweeted a thread about the uses of the filibuster. He included images of newspapers of the time. He started with the filibuster against a civil rights bill in 1874. There are filibusters against confirming a black official, anti-lynching bills, bills to end discrimination in employment or housing, and more civil rights bills. This definitely shows the purpose of the filibuster was racism. Kruse added the list is not exhaustive. I mentioned yesterday that Reagan came up with a way for conservatives to rewrite Martin Luther King’s legacy. Laura Clawson of Kos wants us to remember the full scope of MLK’s message, which was not popular at the time. She mentioned a couple areas: He spoke out against the Vietnam War. That prompted major newspapers to declare he had diminished his usefulness. He focused on poverty. He recognized integrating a lunch counter didn’t really cost the nation. But ending poverty would cost billions. Clawson concluded:

There were of course those who brutally opposed integrated lunch counters and hotels and the right to vote—one major party is still committed to limiting voting rights, though with less personal violence than in King’s lifetime. But as King saw, those changes, however important they were, threatened fewer people’s complacent comfort than calling for the nation to fix the economic results of centuries of slavery and segregation. That’s a fight we’re still having, and that’s one reason why if he had lived, King would likely still be a controversial figure today rather than a depoliticized saintly figure.

Godwin’s Law is “as an online discussion grows longer the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1” – meaning it becomes more certain. Mehdi Hasan, host of his own show in MSNBC, has now created Mehdi’s Law:

As a discussion on racism grows longer, the probability of a Republican quoting one out-of-context line from MLK approaches one

. A few days ago I wrote the new conservative buzzword is “transparency.” A bill in the Indiana legislature proposes that schools must put all curriculum materials on the internet so parents could decry the use of this text or that. Walter Einenkel of Kos described the bill in more detail with a piece titled, “New Indiana GOP bill allows everyone except teachers to decide what is actual history.” Speaking of the bill’s lead sponsor Sen. Scott Baldwin, Einenkel wrote:

If it almost feels like they are trying to codify a certain, very narrow set of fascist, conservative, white-power rules, that’s because they are. Like virtually anything coming from the right wing of the country resembling a “policy” these days, this one is yet another projection of Baldwin and his own political party’s sins. These attempts at trying to quash “divisive” subjects are simply attempts to actually cancel education. The claim that Baldwin and other Republicans are trying to keep “politics” out of our schools by allowing partisan voting committees to supersede educators on what they can and cannot teach is the equivalent of letting voters decide on whether or not the sun is at the center of our solar system. ... This bill, this pretend “transparency,” is the poison pill that conservatives have been searching for to kill public education forever. The adage that “reality has a liberal bias” is not simply true. It is the fundamental issue facing the Republican Party in regards to our democracy.

Michel Martin of NPR talked to Steven Levitsky, a co-author of the book How Democracies Die. They talked about the filibuster and how undemocratic it is, then about other things authoritarians do to gain power. Levitsky said if American democracy dies it won’t because of another attack like a year ago.

Elected autocrats - almost always, the first thing that they do, the first thing they try to do is capture the referee, is place loyalists in the courts, in the attorney general's office, the prosecutor's office, in the electoral authorities, in the intelligence agencies, in all the places that allow the law to be used as a partisan weapon both to protect the government from the investigation and to investigate and punish rivals.

Levitsky asked if anything that encourages him:

I think that the United States has an opportunity to do something that is really unique in world history, and that is become a truly multiracial democracy. We became a multiracial democracy on paper in 1965, but we will not be a truly multiracial democracy until individuals of every ethnic group get treated equally by the state. We've made enormous progress in that direction. We're becoming a much more diverse and more racially egalitarian society. It's precisely that movement towards multiracial democracy that Trumpism is pushing back against. But I think we're going to get there because the multiracial Democratic coalition in this country is a majority, it is growing and it's particularly pronounced among younger generations. But I actually think we stand a good chance of getting there. And when we get to the other side, the U.S. has a chance to become a multiracial democracy that can be a model for the world.

Andee Tagle of NPR’s Life Kit spoke to Nadia Craddock of the Center for Appearance Research in the UK about diet culture. That can go by a lot of different names, such as wellness or healthy lifestyle. Craddock said:

But it's just a rebranding. There's that very common error of equating health and fitness as one and the same and that you can tell how healthy someone is by their body size.

Tagle added:

Thinness and health are not the same, and fatness does not necessarily equate to being unhealthy.

Telling someone they look great is a good thing. Adding, “Did you lose weight?” is Diet Culture speaking. Also be careful how you talk to yourself, that you don’t reinforce Diet Culture.

The vote counter is more important than the candidate

My Sunday movie was Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner released in 1967. Yeah, I chose it because Sidney Poitier is in it. The high power cast includes Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. The plot is simple: On a trip to Hawaii Joanna Drayton, a white woman played by Katharine Houghton in her film debut, fell in love with Dr. John Prentice, a black man (Poitier). They fly to San Francisco to tell her parents. Because of his schedule her parents have only that afternoon and evening to decide whether they’re going to give their blessing. John calls his parents and says he has fallen in love but doesn’t say his girlfriend is white before they’re invited to come to dinner as well. So the movie is about whether they will bless their children or not. I was surprised about one character interaction. Tillie is the black housekeeper who helped raise Joanna. She thinks this Dr. Prentice has gotten above himself, has way overstepped what a black man should be, and she does not want to see Joanna hurt. I’m amused that the page my streaming service has for this movie it has pictures of young Tracy and Hepburn and an old Poitier. After watching a movie I frequently go to IMDB and look it up to see what trivia, quotes, and goofs might be mentioned. In the trivia I learned when filming started Tracy was already terminally ill and Hepburn and maybe the director had to put their salaries in escrow in case Tracy died before his scenes were filmed. Hepburn watched over him and called a halt to his scenes when he began to look tired. The director and cast had to shift to other scenes or play to an empty chair. Tracy died just 17 days after filming completed. Hunter of Daily Kos discussed the latest hoax from the nasty guy. That NG held a rally and during it said, “If you’re white, you don’t get the vaccine or if you’re white you don’t get therapeutics .. In NY state, if you’re white, you go to the back of the line if you want help.” Yeah, that’s a lie. Hunter says it also makes no sense. The Republican base does not want the vaccine and they work hard to make sure no one can make them get it. Hunter had quoted a tweet by Ron Filipkowski who had added, “Trump says white people are being discriminated against on covid treatments.” So why did the nasty guy say it?

The best way to rile a crowd of ignorant racists to take action to "save" America is to fill their heads with claims that the nonwhite Americans around them are taking something from them. Nonwhite Americans are taking the vaccines and the treatments meant for white racists, and not letting white racists have any. It is enraging—or would be, if anyone in the crowd intended to seek out either.

Leah McElrath quoted the same Filipkowski tweet and added:

He’s saying more than that: “Denigrating white people to determine who lives and who dies…” He’s implying Democratic leaders, Black people, and Jewish people (that’s who the “New York” reference is meant to evoke) are killing white people. This type of rhetoric is separated from overt “race war” incitement by only a hair’s breadth. Very dangerous stuff.

Back to Hunter’s post and a second quote from the nasty guy (again through Ron Filipkowski):

Trump tells PA GOP why he is placing an emphasis on Supervisor of Elections races in 22: “We have to be a lot sharper the next time when it comes to counting the vote .. Sometimes the vote counter is more important than the candidate. They have to get a lot tougher and smarter.”

Yep, he’s bragging the Republican strategy is to replace election officials with partisans willing to overturn a result they don’t like. That is exactly the plan Republicans are carrying out. No one in the party is objecting to that plan. Also, no one is hiding the plan. No one is under any illusion whose votes will be declared improper.

This is the context in which two Democratic senators continue to insist we honor the filibuster, this exact version of the filibuster and none of the historical others, rather than take action to bar anti-democratic efforts to strip Americans of their voting rights. They are accomplices, not fools. They know what is at stake, but each imagines themselves a figure of such great import that the future of the nation hardly matters in comparison.

Dartagnan of the Kos community wrote about a new thing among Democrats seeking to become candidates for the US Senate. They are pledging to vote to eliminate the filibuster. This is true for candidates in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin who have a chance at reclaiming a Republican seat. Support for ending the filibuster has shifted from being a consensus position to being foundational. The filibuster used to be used to block progressive legislation. Now it is being used to block all legislation. Michael Harriot responded to a question about why the voting rights bills are necessary. He gave his top ten reasons: The combined bill restores a part of the Voting Rights Act, which was gutted by the Supremes. It closes loopholes exploiting prohibitions of voter suppression. It restores preclearance – states used to have to get permission to change voting laws so the DOJ could verify they don’t suppress the vote. It allows the identification of new racist places, such as Wisconsin. It recognizes suppression isn’t just in the law – a new tactic is to close polling places in minority precincts. It requires claims of ballot insecurity be proven. It makes gerrymandering harder. It doesn’t depend on the Attorney General (who happens to do very little these days). It accounts for new suppression tactics that will be developed in the future. Harriot wrote another thread confirming that yup, voter suppression is about racism.

When SCOTUS decided Shelby v. Holder, the court's most virulently anti-voting rights justice just happened to be Chief Justice John Roberts. He basically said: "Because the preclearance formula successfully stopped racists from being racists, we can't say they're still racists. "Let's get rid of the formula that stopped racists from being racist. And since the DOJ won't have anything to judge racism (except the ENTIRE HISTORY OF AMERICA), they should stop judging racists until Congress creates a new racism formula" He wrote that down on paper! But of course, maybe they were right. Maybe those places had changed. Maybe racism was over and poll taxes were a thing of the past. So, what happened? Within 24 hrs, Texas passed a voter ID law that constitutional scholars called "racist AF." ... By the time next national election in 2016, guess which places had new voting laws? The "formerly" racist places. Now, here is the thing: The Shelby v. Holder (and a lot of other rulings) are based on widely-held assumptions: 1. That a thing is only racist if its INTENT is to discriminate–the EFFECT doesn't matter. A lot of people believe this (It's John Roberts's entire legal philosophy) ... The EFFECT of the actions is what matters. The second concept is: 2. Racism is a thing of the past. Maybe you can name an example where this country achieved racial progress because white people collectively said: "Let's do better." I can't. ... See, the Shelby v. Holder (and many other recent SCOTUS rulings on racial discrimination) were decided on the concept that the EFFECT of a law can be racist as long as it wasn't created with racist INTENT They have literally redefined racism by making it unprovable

. From another Harriot tweet: The Texas GOP tweeted “If you can wait in line for hours for testing... you can vote in person.” Others pointed out the image used in that tweet is from a testing site in New York City, not Texas. Also, many who are eligible to vote can’t wait in line for hours. Harriot added (and provided evidence):

BTW: this tweet by @TexasGOP is SPECIFICALLY aimed at Black people. White people don’t wait in line to vote.

Forrest Wilder of the Texas Monthly quoted Asley Huseman of Vote Beat:

Travis County Clerk's office says that as of today, their office "has rejected about fifty percent of applications for ballot by mail that have been received for the March 1, 2022 primary election," due to changes to ID requirements made by Texas' new voting law.

Wilder added:

About 11% of Texas voters cast their ballot by mail in 2020, so if this rejection rate holds, we are talking a pretty significant number of voters who could be disenfranchised.

Alexandra Martinez of Kos Prism discussed the state of abortion clinics in Oklahoma and Kansas. They have gotten a big influx of patients from Texas after that state essentially banned abortions. But now, in addition to more patients, they are having to deal with staff out with COVID. Some clinics have had to close, which they work real hard not to do. I mention this post because of this little bit showing the size of the problem:

In 2017, Texas provided about 55,000 abortions, meaning there are about 1,100 Texans per week now who are no longer able to get care and have to travel to surrounding states.

On this Martin Luther King Day, Lauren Floyd of Kos reported on a database created by the Washington Post that identified which members of Congress owned slaves. There were 1,700 of them. This was at a time when the Senate had fewer than 100 members and the House had a lot fewer than the current 435. An example is a speech about slavery that Sen. Daniel Webster gave in 1850. Of the 106 members listening 45 owned slaves. Between 1789 and 1807 more than half of the members owned slaves. Slavery and racism were present at the foundation of our country and lawmakers wrote it into our laws. Judd Legum, who writes Popular Information about politics and power, discussed Ronald Reagan and MLK Day and something conservatives continue to do.

Reagan assured [New Hampshire Gov. Meldrim] Thomson that the King holiday would be based on "an image" of King and not the "reality" of King. Reagan proceeded to use a false image of King to justify defend his attacks on anti-poverty programs, and civil rights enforcement

Legum quoted an excerpt from a previous column in Popular Information:

In the years that followed, Reagan crafted a false image of King, claiming that King would have supported policies that he stridently opposed. In a 1986 radio address, Reagan invoked King to defend his attacks on affirmative action, anti-poverty programs, and civil rights enforcement:

We are committed to a society in which all men and women have equal opportunities to succeed, and so we oppose the use of quotas. We want a color-blind society. A society, that in the words of Dr. King, judges people not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Back to Legum’s thread:

Republicans falsely claim that King advocated for a "colorblind" society by ignoring everything he's said, save for 35 words in August 1963. The idea that King did not want people to talk about racism or address racial inequality is absolutely absurd

Kos of Kos had such fun with a post full of pro-vaccine memes that he created another and will turn it into a weekly post. Warning, because of the recent promotion of piss as an antidote to COVID there are a lot of references to it in this collection. Of this bunch my favorite shows an image of a smartphone and a needle and syringe. The caption:

One of these things changes your behavior. It contains a microchip which constantly records wherever you go and everything you do or say. The other is a lifesaving vaccine.

Just that dedicated to protecting life

My performing group gave a concert Saturday evening, the first of four before Christmas. This was our first concert in front of a live audience in two years. All of the performers and all of the audience wore masks. Of course, much of it was Christmas music. It went well and our audience told us how much they appreciated hearing live music. My Sunday movie was Scenes from an Empty Church. It is the story of two Catholic priests in a church under lockdown at the start of the pandemic. Since parishoners are not allowed in the building the two men have little to do. And one of them is paranoid about the virus. When I heard about the movie and saw the trailer I thought the movie was about how the priests figured out how to provide all sorts of services for their neighborhood. Well, not exactly. A friend of Father Andrew wants to visit. Soon they figure out how to allow people to come in to pray and to give confession. So the story is about how people are handling life with the virus, how to understand and deal with an upended world. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data as of December 3. This past week there was a day with 11,189 new cases. Yes, a scary number that is 32% above the peaks of under 8400 last April and November a year ago. However, I suspect much of that is a recording artifact because four days before – I’m sure it was Thanksgiving Day – recorded only 1837 cases in that day. I suspect both numbers will be revised. From two weeks ago to six days ago (after which the data hasn’t been fully posted yet) the deaths per day have been in the range of 67-95. On Friday a high school senior I know came to do some yard cleanup to earn a bit for his college fund. I was surprised he said he would be there before 2:30. I thought he didn’t get out of school until 3:00. When he arrived he explained. His school was closed for the day, but not because of COVID. After the school shooting in Oxford, Michigan a few days before there have been dozens of copycat prank threats to high schools in Michigan. School officials, police, and the FBI have been stretched way thin trying to track down each threat. Many schools closed out of precaution. The day before at my young friend’s school rumors were flying fast from phone to phone and by the middle of the school day half the students had left. My friend said he had received more than one messages saying, “Dude! Get Out! Now!” It was a tense day. So the next day the school closed. We are traumatizing our kids. In response to that shooting Michael Harriot tweeted:

Remember: Guns don’t kill people The cowards hiding behind thoughts, prayers, gun manufacturers & a 200-yr-old sentence written by bitch-ass white boys who needed muskets to stop their throats from being slit by the Africans they enslaved…THAT’S who kills people …Using guns.

A couple days ago I wrote about a woman who filed a complaint to get books banned under Tennessee’s new law banning teaching Critical Race Theory. That prompted Harriot to tweet:

They’ll NEVER allow their kids to learn what MLK REALLY stood for. If he came back today & ONLY said the 5 quotes they cherrypick & regurgitate, they’d shoot him in the face again. It’s not that they love the distorted, whitewashed version of MLK… They love the dead version.

One more from Harriot:

We shouldn’t teach kids how the gov’t killed leaders of protest movements & slaughtered infants because of their race. They shouldn’t learn about historical figures just because of the circumstances of their birth Cancel all Christmas displays in schools Technically, it’s CRT

Also referring to the Oxford school shooting and its original count of the dead (one later died in hospital) Fred Wellman tweeted:

You know what didn’t murder 3 children today? Critical Race Theory.

beguiling bus bug tweeted, though I don’t think “love” is the right word:

i love how the "fight for $15" has been going on for so long $15/hr isn't even remotely a livable wage anymore and the federal minimum wage is still like $7

To check is stats one will need to scroll down a ways. Hunter of Daily Kos discussed the situation of COVID patients showing up at hospital emergency rooms and their family demanding they be treated with horse dewormer, one of the fake cures promoted by the anti-vax crowd. And when the doctors and nurses refuse the family gets mad, threatening legal action or calling on the Republican state Attorney General to harass the hospital. Which leads to a question: If you were going to reject the treatment the staff thinks is appropriate, why come to the hospital? Hunter wrote:

All I can propose is that hospitals just leave out a basket of horse dewormers in the emergency room lobby. Want to be treated by medical professionals? Sign your name and take a seat. Want to get the treatment you saw posted on Facebook, the one all your archconservative pandemic disbeliever friends say is the Real Deal, For Sure This Time? Grab a tube and leave us alone. Our health care system is already a dystopian hellscape, it's not hard to imagine us adding this one to the mix. ... If there's just a basket of farm supplies at the hospital entrance with no instructions and no treatment implied, though, maybe that would take everybody's stress levels down a few notches. Reducing the potential for patient-on-doctor violence is nothing to cough at, you know.

Hunter included humorous dialogue of how such a scenario might play out in the emergency room. Mark Sumner of Kos reported at the request of Gov. Mike Parson, the Missouri Department of Health analyzed the infection and death rates in counties that implemented mask mandates compared to the rest of the state. The analysis showed that masks work very well. Sumner included one of the graphs from the report. As is done by many Republican governors, Parson received the report – and buried it. The Missouri Independent had to invoke the state’s Sunshine Law to get a copy. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted some late night commentary. Here’s one of them.

It looks very likely that Roe v. Wade will soon be overturned. The truth is, this is the culmination of a 50-year plan for the conservative movement to reshape the courts for this very purpose. Say what you want about it, but you gotta admit the conservative movement is just that dedicated to protecting life. I mean, not protecting life from coronavirus. Or school shootings. Or lack of health care. Or climate change. Or poverty. Or homelessness. Or… —Trevor Noah