When they talk about freedom, they mean freedom from empathy

A couple weeks ago I listened to an episode of Gaslit Nation hosted by Andrea Chalupa. It was sufficiently worth discussing that instead of trying to take notes from the audio I decided to wait until the transcript was available, which it was a few days later (as in a couple weeks ago). Some of the main points: Merrick Garland is the worst choice for Attorney General, head of the Department of Justice. He let two years go by before getting serious about bringing cases against the nasty guy and this accomplices. In the meantime coup plotters are free, enriching themselves and working how to complete the coup that started with the Kremlin’s help in 2016. That the nasty guy still walks free and maybe getting only probation is an absurdity that has disillusioned America. It erodes faith in our institutions, which are crumbling and complicit. Paul Manafort, a Kremlin asset, had worked to destabilize Ukraine as he had done here in America as part of the nasty guy campaign and administration. The difference is that Ukraine removed the traitors from power and in America we gave them power. Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon (who will soon be spending four months in jail) are getting the storm troopers ready should the nasty guy go to prison. These troops will intimidate and terrorize poll workers in close precincts. The precincts important only because of the Electoral College,which is a major national security vulnerability that makes election stealing too easy.

So what do we do? Round up all the traitors and throw them in prison as Ukraine did? Ban all disinformation TV networks and media, like Fox News, like Ukraine did. I wish. That's one of the many reasons MAGA hates Ukraine because Ukraine forces accountability. Ukraine stands up to the Kremlin and exposes it for the terrorist state that it is, and has the moral courage to stand up to their traitors. Whereas we're continuously getting steamrolled by ours. And I've been saying for years now, what's long hurt Biden's approval ratings is worthless Merrick Garland and the impotent DOJ enabling all this.

President Ford pardoned Nixon to keep the national tranquility that had developed. But that tranquility was there because people knew the wannabe dictator Nixon had been indicted and faced trial. Proceeding with the trial would have kept that tranquility, not broken it. Ford established the precedent that criminals that threaten our democracy could go free.

So the warning is loud and clear. Trump must go to prison. No accountability leads to larger and more dangerous crimes. Trump and his crime machine are worse than Nixon because Nixon escaped prison. Nixon crawled so Trump could run. That is why Trump must go to prison, for the safety of our future of every American, the world. This isn't complicated.

There’s a question: Is America better off to avoid the violence that will happen if the nasty guy is put in jail with the certainty that if he regains the Oval Office, with violence to help him get there, he’ll become a dictator? Or is it better to put him in jail and be ready for the violence?

The thing Trump fears most is accountability. Getting away with crimes is a literally Trump's brand. That's what he's campaigning off of. His supporters throw money at him, even to pay his legal bills because they all get off on seeing him live above the law because that's what they want to do. That's why they support him. It was the same with Hitler. They got a surge of pride and power, feeling invincible, feeling free of societal norms. That's the appeal. When they talk about freedom, they mean freedom from empathy, freedom from the collective good freedom from having to care about others. ... That is the entire appeal of Trump and that is why he must go to prison to show consequences for trying to live above the law.

No, house arrest isn’t good enough. Manafort committed crimes under house arrest. Also, Mar-a-Lago is a pretty big house with a lot of visitors, including foreign adversaries. Once in prison the nasty guy should not get the big suite. He needs to be treated like everyone else. “You don't coddle criminals or you end up with more criminals in the White House.” Perhaps the nasty guy will flee? Great. Make sure the ticket is one way. And goes to Russia. All that grievance the nasty guy spews is being fed by the Kremlin. Prison is the only option. It also tells Putin the Hague is waiting. The talk turned to a third member of the transnational crime syndicate (Putin and the nasty guy being first and second), Israel’s Netanyahu. Protests in Israel are demanding he accept Biden’s cease fire deal. But if he does the far-right members of his governing coalition threaten to leave, bringing down his government. Netanyahu would rather cling to power than end the war. And yet Netanyahu may soon be speaking to the American Congress. That leaves many Democrats with a dilemma. Boycott the speech or use it as a time to confront Netanyahu? One way to confront is to stand with their back to the podium. Bernie Sanders issued a statement explaining why he won’t go. While Israel does have the right to defend itself against Hamas, it does not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people, killing huge numbers and destroying massive amounts of housing and infrastructure. Netanyahu’s speech was scheduled for a week ago and hasn’t happened yet. Towards the end Chalupa said:

Congratulations to Mexico for electing your first female president as well as the first Jewish president, climate scientist Claudia Scheinbaum, a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors who was part of the intergovernmental panel on climate change that won the 2007 Nobel Prize for its research into the climate crisis. Scheinbaum brings with her a master's degree from UC Berkeley, a progressive agenda and a mandate to stand up against the brutal corruption across Mexico where a female mayor, Yolanda Sanchez was just gunned down after facing death threats and kidnapping.

That’s good news! In the comments of a pundit roundup on Daily Kos are a few good cartoons. One by Ted Littleford shows Justices Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito with Thomas saying, “I don’t see why Trump shouldn't have total immunity. After all, we do.” Below Thomas are bags representing four million dollars in gifts and three million behind Alito. The comments include a tweet my Rev. Benjamin Cremer in response to a new law in Louisiana.

“When I was hungry” you put up posters of the Ten Commandments in my classroom while making sure I didn’t get lunch at school. “Whatever you do for the least of these, you do unto me.” –Jesus

Just below it is a tweet of a new ad by the Lincoln Project showing that the nasty guy has broken five of the Ten Commandments. This is the guy the Christian Nationalists, the ones putting up posters of the Ten Commandments, are supporting.

The nation can afford to take care of everyone

I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data on Saturday. In new cases per day the state hit 4990 This is the highest number of cases since June (peaks in April and November are above 8300). The CDC reports that cases across the country have been falling since early September, including in such hard hit states as Florida and Texas. Michigan is one of five states where cases are still rising (I don’t remember the other four and didn’t look for them). In contrast to previous surges in cases, this one has been a slow and steady rise over three and a half months. The peaks in deaths per day for the last five weeks (some of which have been adjusted) are 41, 47, 42, 42, and 33 (the last one likely to be adjusted). Joan McCarter of Daily Kos titled a post with “Biden’s Supreme Court commission proves to be the farce we all expected.” Her opening paragraph:

The “blue ribbon” commission appointed by President Joe Biden to study the problem of Republican court packing, particularly at the U.S. Supreme Court, has gone beyond being an ineffective and useless body (as most blue ribbon commissions usually are) to being downright dangerous. It released a draft report Thursday, ahead of a scheduled Friday meeting, full of Federalist Society narratives and Republican lies.

Since the commission was created in April the court has allowed the Texas abortion ban to go into effect, and blocked Biden’s extension of the eviction moratorium and his end of the “remain in Mexico” policy. They did this and more through the shadow docket where there is no formal argument and opinions are unsigned. In regular business they gutted the Voting Rights Act and made it harder to unionize. All that since the commission was created in April. Some of the things in the report: * Doubting that ideological balance should be a goal. * Justices aren’t partisan because they don’t always rule along partisan lines. * Saying that refusing to confirm Merrick Garland to the Supremes in Obama’s last year is standard practice. * Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh lacked “evidentiary support” (wrong – her testimony was evidence, besides the FBI botched its investigation of Kavanaugh). McCarter quoted a tweet by Southpaw, who quoted Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s statement on the commission’s report. Whitehouse said the report left out several things, some of which are: * During the last three nominations and confirmations the Federalist Society received enormous anonymous donations. * Anonymous checks, up to $17 million, funded advertising related to the confirmations. * There is a fast lane of cases of politically loaded cases that get to the Supremes through deliberate losses at lower courts. * There have been 80 cases with evident Republican donor interest and all 80 were won on a 5-4 vote (before Barrett joined the court). Much of Whitehouse’s complaints of the court are because of the power of the Federalist Society. So there is one thing Biden should do with this report: trash it. I listened to this week’s bonus episode of Gaslit Nation, the one I can listen to as a donor to Gaslit Nation on Patreon. I did not read the transcript of this week’s regular episode. I listened to the bonus because hosts Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa answer listener’s questions and I had asked a question (though I’m not sure how one goes about asking a question, so maybe they didn’t see the one I posed). My question wasn’t included. Before Kendzior got to the questions she discussed Merrick Garland. I didn’t take notes while I listened, so I won’t go into details. Here’s the general idea: Merrick Garland got the reputation of being a warrior against GOP because the GOP controlled Senate refused to consider him for the Supreme Court. But that reputation is not true. Garland was put in charge of the Department of Justice because he is a friend of the nation’s criminal elite and his job is to protect them. One of those friends is Jamie Gorelick. She’s been a friend since he was in college and she hired him as her assistant when she was deputy attorney general under Bill Clinton. She is also (as stated in the episode’s description)

an exemplar of the Big Law corruption we discuss so much on this show, that nexus where state corruption, organized crime, and corporate corruption meet under the protection of a broken system of lawyers and lobbyists.

Gay CA Democrat of the Kos community discussed (mostly quoted) a report by CNN about the cuts Sens. Manchin and Sinema are demanding be made to the $3.5t human infrastructure bill in Congress. First, Sinema was in a snit over a “breach of trust” because Pelosi didn’t call a vote by the end of September for the bipartisan infrastructure bill already passed by the Senate. Pelosi didn’t because there was also an agreement the two bills would be advanced together. Sinema is using this as an excuse for her bad behavior. On to the bill itself. Both Manchin and Sinema say it is too big. They want something below $1.9t. Then the article got into Manchin’s specifics. He doesn’t want Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing (and Bernie Sanders and other progressives say removing that coverage is a red line). He doesn’t like the enhanced paid family/medical leave. And ... Manchin, coal man that he is, rejected aggressive climate measures. He justified it saying Biden’s target of reducing emissions by 50% by 2030 won’t happen. Besides, he said, we’re in the midst of an energy crisis (no, we’re not, said those of us who lived through the energy crisis of the 1970s). Rebekah Sager of Kos reported that a new poll shows Sinema is loathed in her home state of Arizona. If she was running next year she would face an incredibly tough Democratic primary. Her current antics are putting her on a path out of office. Joan McCarter of Kos reported Manchin and Sinema, plus a few conservative Democrats in the House, are trying to force a choice between Medicare vision plans and extending Medicaid to twelve GOP states that refused to do so under the Affordable Care Act. McCarter, who noted that conservative Democrats again pit vulnerable communities against each other, wrote:

It’s an unnecessary trade-off. Because the nation can afford to take care of everyone, it should be the number-one principle of elected Democrats: no person left behind.

McCarter quoted Mark Pocal, who again made the point about how the cost of this bill is less than half of the Defense budget already approved. Rep Pramila Jayapal, head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which is holding firm, said:

A lot of people have asked: “Isn’t something better than nothing?” And the answer, quite simply, is no. Because when it comes down to something rather than nothing, it’s the same people who are forced to settle for nothing over and over and over again.

Meteor Blades, Kos staff emeritus writing the Climate Brief, wrote:

Without passage of a bill containing aggressive programs, Biden’s team is going to have a devil of a time in Glasgow at the climate summit persuading China, India, and Brazil that he can even deliver the U.S. pledges on emissions cuts, much less that their nations should do better than they are. ... It’s actually easier to respect a numbskull like Sen. James “Snowball” Inhofe, who wrote an entire book calling climate change a hoax and seems to truly believe it, than Manchin, who pretends he’s down with the science even as his bank account gets ever fatter feeding off the teat of the fossil fuel industry.

Some good climate news: Laura Clawson of Kos reported Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced plans to have seven, maybe more, lease sales for offshore wind farms. The areas for lease will be along the East Coast, in the Gulf of Mexico, and off the coasts of California and Oregon. This is a step towards Biden’s pledge of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. No movie tonight. I watched the Detroit Symphony Orchestra livestream last evening, then spent this afternoon teaching handbell techniques. So the two felt like my escape from daily stresses.

What we need is a public display of leadership

I read through and took notes from the transcript of another episode of the podcast Gaslit Nation by Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa. This episode is titled GOP to America: “You don’t live in a Democracy.” They begin “Welcome back to another newscast of the apocalypse.” It was recorded June 1. The big news is Israel may have a new Prime Minister. After twelve years they may be getting rid of Benjamin Netanyahu. He’s been a topic of the show for all of its three years because he’s a key node in the transnational crime alliance that is the focus of the show. But the potential replacement, Naftali Bennett, is just as far right. He criticized Netanyahu for not being violent enough. Bennett has said he wants control of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where the Al-Aqsa mosque is. And that gets us into the Christian evangelical beliefs about the Rapture, which ushers in the End Times. I really don’t want to go into the details. But it is important because former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo structured foreign policy around making conditions (according to evangelical beliefs) ripe for it to happen. Israel having control over the Temple Mount means getting one step closer. The pandemic prince is back in the story. He and his pal Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia (the guy accused of making Jamal Kashoggi’s murder happen) planned to overthrow the government of Jordan. One reason for the plan is because Jordan is custodian of the Temple Mount. Kendzior reminded us several foreign powers wanted the nasty guy in the White House because then the prince would be there too. Back to Pompeo, who made a visit to Israel as part of what might be a farewell party for Netanyahu at a time the current Sec. State Antony Blinken was there. It sounds like Pompeo was there to make corrupt deals. Senators Ted Cruz and Lindsay Graham also visited Israel to support Netanyahu. Strange. But it also shows Netanyahu is desperate. When he’s desperate he’s dangerous. Such as stir up his followers into their own attack on the government, now that they have the US Capitol attack as a model. Chalupa put it into a global context. The far-right Animal Farm is global – they are in the US, Canada, Britain, the EU, New Zealand, Australia. It is fed by evangelical Christians, conservative Catholics, and Orthodox Jews. As the climate gets worse and climate refugees increase the Animal Farm is going to push their ideology. They’re going to justify horrific abuses to stay in power. Chalupa said:

These forces, they know the planet's fucked, or they want it to be fucked because of some religious, far out there belief. A lot of these guys, especially in the American Republicans like Pompeo, believe in an apocalyptic doomsday death cult.

For many it is “a White patriarchy at all costs” case. They don’t see mass death as a problem (as we saw over the last year). Even the end of the world isn’t a problem because they believe the Rapture will insulate them from it. This coalition to oust Netanyahu is a deal with the devil. Part of the deal is Bennett will turn over the Prime Minister post to his opponent. Will he? Netanyahu didn’t, which is one reason why he is hated by so many. Under Netanyahu democratic institutions in Israel were eroded as the nasty guy and the GOP did here. Netanyahu and his followers are similar to the nasty guy and his followers. They may be loyal to Netanyahu, not Israel. The focus shifted to American Democrats. The previous week’s show discussed how little they are doing to protect the country from the GOP onslaught (I didn’t read that one). Yes, there are Democrats wanting to do something but appear to be held back by the leadership – Pelosi, Schumer, and Biden. There is little public pressure being applied to Sens. Manchin and Sinema who insist bills must be bipartisan. Kendzior said:

We have warned you many times that when people look like they're not doing anything, they're probably not doing anything.

Kendzior gave a salute to the Texas House Democrats who walked out, depriving a quorum ahead of a voter suppression bill. That was a cry for the federal government to do something. Chalupa reviewed the voting rights bills before Congress.

If we lose our voting rights, if Biden and Democratic leadership allow us to become a voter-suppressed country, it's game over.

Chalupa then discussed an article Sen. Mike Lee wrote and posted on an influential conservative Catholic site. He said in America power isn’t just in majorities, but in a balance of power. The House may reflect current majority views, but it must also pass the Senate where each state has equal power and where a super majority is typically required. The Senate cools the House passions. Chalupa then went into what Lee left out. Many House seats are severely gerrymandered, where the more extreme voters win. As for the Senate it was designed to benefit slave owning states. And those states normalized the abuse of the filibuster to impede progress for black people. Because of the imbalance it is elites selling and purchasing power, to create a growing imbalance of power. These conservative Catholic websites (and, yes, liberal Catholics exist and are vocal) have articles about protecting humanity from the black and brown hordes. They believe they are justified in what they are doing. Of course, they are also enriching themselves, so the cycle perpetuates. I mentioned the letter from 100 scholars saying we had better get serious about voting rights or we’ll lose our democracy. That letter said both bills – the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act – are necessary to preserve democracy. Chalupa said:

Two damn bills need to pass in Congress. How are we going to get that passed if Manchin and Sinema refuse filibuster reform? How are we going to get those two important bills passed into law if Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer refuse to go public in making appeals and pressure on Manchin and Sinema? ... What we need right now is a well thought out public display of leadership, letting the American people know and going on an education tour, if need be, Joe Biden at the helm of it saying pass these two bills, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the For the People Act—two, not one, two—to ensure our democracy has a fighting chance. Anything less than that drives us further down the road of Republican authoritarianism.

As for the criticism that pressure will prompt Manchin and Sinema to jump to the Republican Party, Kendzior said:

So yes, all this timidity surrounding them, like, “Oh dear, we must not upset them, or they might do things that are really reprehensible and actually fatal to our democracy.” It's like, yeah, they're already doing that, and it might as well just have it all out on the table.

Pelosi, Schumer, and Biden don’t seem to care that the GOP is driving towards minority rule. If Kendzior was in any of those jobs she would do everything possible to retain democracy and for people to retain their rights. Last November in a pandemic, with the dismantling of the Postal System, and general voter suppression we voted anyway and voted an aspiring autocrat out of office. Then we worked to get two more senators from Georgia. Amazing achievements! And we should feel betrayed by how the Democratic leadership is behaving. For all those Democrats who understand what’s going on they need to band together and either oust the leadership or work around them. You owe the country that. Another Biden failure is Attorney General Merrick Garland. He has protected the nasty guy and his cronies and done very little about the corrupt institution of the DoJ. He’s protecting the institution that has been guarding elite criminals that took over the government. Kendzior said she thinks he doesn’t have the guts to stand up to powerful criminals and to examine the flaws within the DoJ. Which means he’s helping the nasty guy cover up brutal crimes. Alas, that is similar to Obama deciding to let go the people who created the global financial crisis in 2008. Which means inequality has gotten wider. Chalupa said:

What matters now is not to give away your power. It's scary using your power. It's scary sticking your neck out and demanding accountability and standing up to people. It's not ever comfortable. But look at the people who are putting their lives on the line. Look at an activist in Belarus who just slit his own throat in a court to protest Putin's little Lackey, Lukashenko, the dictator of Belarus, and all the human rights abuses he is carrying out there. If Biden and Merrick Garland and the rest of that White House do not stick their necks out now, they are sentencing future children on American soil of having to put their lives literally on the line to reclaim our democracy.

Insufficient training

Shortly after the insurrection in January several corporations said they would not give campaign donations to seditionists. A lot of people wondered, yeah, how long is that going to last? The answer turned out to be less than ten weeks. Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos reported no, they aren’t donating directly to seditionists. They are instead donating to the National Republican Campaign Committee. About two thirds of the people the NRCC supports are seditionists. Or they donate to a candidate’s PAC, not to the candidate. Eleveld concluded:

Only one party in this nation's two-party system spent over a month systematically stoking distrust of election results without being able to produce a shred of evidence of voter fraud. Only one party in this nation's two-party system is now systematically working to disenfranchise the kinds of voters it doesn't like. Only one party in this nation's two-party system is systematically working to undermine American democracy—Intel, AT&T, and Cigna now enthusiastically support that Republican party. Other corporate PACs will soon follow suit—that's one way to lead.

The New York Times published a lengthy report on the police tactics in response over protests of police racism. The conclusion: “Insufficient training.” Dartagnan of the Kos community isn’t buying.

Thirty-eight paragraphs into a story examining law enforcement’s heavy-handed overreaction to these protests—protests with the very purpose of highlighting racial disparities in policing— and The New York Times “in-depth” report on the police response includes one small, oblique snippet containing the word “racism” or “race.”

The reviews did not examine protesters’ complaints of racial bias in policing. But activists in Indianapolis told reviewers they wanted an acknowledgment by the department that systemic racism exists. The Portland Police Bureau said it was planning anti-racism training for all officers.

Gosh, you’d think that racism might be a factor in the way these protests were handled. You’d never know it from this report. Not one word about how the nature of the protests themselves may have impacted law enforcement’s response. No, it was all just poor planning. The cops will do better next time.

Darrell Lucus of the Kos community discussed Johnny Enlow, a pastor in Atlanta, who has called for a military coup to get rid of that usurper Joe Biden. Enlow has repeated a claim that other insurrectionists have been making: They weren’t carrying out a coup, they were trying to stop one. Lucus wrote such an argument, if it went before a judge, would declare it “frivolous” or “ridiculous.” He explained:

Cliff Notes version: When a judge says your argument is frivolous, he’s saying that you have no argument, no case, nothing. Claiming that you’re mounting a violent coup in order to stop a coup is the very definition of frivolous.

That’s why a lot of these lies are being presented in the court of public opinion and not before a judge. Georgia Logothetis, in her pundit roundup for Kos, included a couple interesting quotes. First from Jeffrey Rosen at The Atlantic, writing about the insurrection and the distinction between mob violence and political protest.

As it happens, this was a question the Founders thought about extensively. Their political and moral philosophy was based on what they considered a self-evident truth: Only by using our powers of reason to moderate our selfish, ego-based passions and emotions can we achieve the classical virtues—prudence, temperance, justice, and courage—necessary for personal and political self-government. A mob, by contrast, is animated by vices: rashness, self-indulgence, vulgarity, vanity, ambition, boastfulness, buffoonery, and envy, as listed by Aristotle. These are just the sort of traits inculcated online, with likes and clicks rewarding the worst of human instincts.

David Rohde of The New Yorker discussed what approach AG Merrick Garland should take when investigating the nasty guy. Crack down or be more centrist to avoid stoking conspiracy theories? Rohde reminds us:

A core part of Trump’s political project was the discrediting of the idea that nonpartisanship is even possible. In his dark vision of public life, nonpartisan public servants, from public-health experts to prosecutors, were politically biased, incompetent, or corrupt.

When Garland was confirmed he vowed to pursue leads wherever they take us. Close to a year now I’ve been going to a restaurant for takeout for Sunday lunch. It provides a nice change of diet (much tastier than the food I make myself) and it supports restaurants. I wish I could say I support local restaurants, but the good ones in my area (generic suburbia) are chains. The package I take home usually comes with a little packet with utensils and napkin – even when I specifically uncheck the box so they would be left out (though once when I did check the box – because I was going to eat lunch in a park with friends – there were no utensils). So now I have a pile of utensil packets. Laura Clawson of Kos says all these takeout meals in their plastic boxes over the last year are causing a big trash problem. Clawson talks a bit of what can be done about it. Brother, who lives in Germany, told me he sometimes takes his own containers to a restaurant for them to fill. My immediate response was how would a restaurant know the container is clean? Do they handle things properly if the customer has COVID and hands over a container with COVID all over it? There are places that turn that concept around. You take their container of food and bring it back for them to clean. GO Box offers that service in Portland, OR. They supply containers to restaurants and food carts. When you’re done eating you return the container to a GO Box drop site. So far they’ve kept 200,000 containers out of the trash. Other places have or are considering similar services. From the personal end we can nudge our favorite places into more eco friendly choices – like leaving out the utensils (see above) and switching to better packaging. The first comment to this post was from Bender Rodruguez who asked:

Unless you have a medical reason, once you hit 8 years old, why are you using a straw?!

Since I don’t buy drinks I’m not given a straw (though when back to indoor dining I should remember to refuse straws with my water).

Fear that they got away with it

Last evening I watched the movie And Then We Danced. It was suggested by GLAAD media awards, so going in I knew it was an LGBT story. The story takes place in Georgia – not the one next to Alabama, the one next to Russia. Merab is a dancer training in the folk dance traditions (somewhat similar to the Cossack style of Ukraine). He’s been partnered with Mary since he was a pre-teen. They’re good friends, but it doesn’t go any further than that. The dance instructor complains that Merab’s dancing is too soft. It needs to be more masculine. Irakli joins the class and he is quite good. Soon after he arrives the instructor announces the professional showcase company has lost a male dancer and auditions would be held soon. We see a lot of Merab’s home life – he lives with his mother and grandmother, his father has his own place. His brother comes home drunk at dawn and misses dance rehearsals. With Mary and friends he has a good social life. At one of their away weekends he falls in love with Irakli. The brother seems to be doing all the wrong things, so a tender moment between him and Merab towards the end seems both a bit off and quite welcome. I enjoyed the film. While watching the film and seeing the quickness of the dance steps I wondered whether they director looked for dancers he hoped could act or actors he hoped could dance (though now that I write it that seems improbable). It seems he was able to find a few who could do both. Since this is Merab’s story the combination would be much more critical for that role than for the others. Spoiler alert (this paragraph): Both Irakli and Merab are among those invited to audition. When the day comes Irakli declines. Merab dons the traditional tunic (that nicely flares at the waist when he spins) for the audition. Once he works through the standard steps he ups the difficulty and intentionally does the “soft” had gestures, disgusting one of the judges. On his way to the exit he takes off the tunic. I read the transcript of another Gaslit Nation episode by Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa. This one is titled Texas Republican Massacre. Chalupa began by stressing in dark times – such as during a pandemic and after an insurrection – one should make art. Any kind of art. It doesn’t have to be good art. Just making art is therapeutic. Chalupa then recounted what Taylor Swift and an ancient Mesopotamian Goddess had to do with the making of her film Mr. Jones. Kendzior reminded us we’ve been through a lot as a nation and a world. There is a lot to grieve and we haven’t done it yet. People feel guilty about not feeling optimistic about the future. To many people want us to pretend to be optimistic and if we aren’t we might be replaced with a team player. The rest of the world is watching us plaster on a happy face in fear of not being happy. But why should we need that mask? Grieving is normal, even if it is for people you don’t know. Kendzior said:

And I think while everyone knows this—they see the senseless brutality of this, they know how many of these deaths could have been prevented—the gut reaction deep inside is just astounding fear; fear that people can be that cruel and that powerful at the same time; fear that they got away with it, which so far, they have; and fear, of course, that they're going to come back …

Even though Biden has shown his empathy, Kendzior is troubled. Will those in office now not punish the perpetrators? She again laments the two Georgia senators campaigned on $2000 relief checks, yet the checks coming out are only $1400 – yeah one is supposed to remember to add in the $600 checks authorized in December. Besides, these should be monthly relief checks. She said:

I'm sorry, $1,400 is not $2,000 any more than two plus two is five. This is gas lighting, and it's abusive, and it shows how disconnected our officials are from the reality of everyday life. … I'll just say, everyone will remember how they felt when they saw Democratic candidates come in and tell them that they were going to get a $2,000 check, and everyone is going to remember how they felt when that check did not come and then, assuming it does come, was actually for $1,400. They're going to remember that $600 and it's beyond just an election mistake or a partisan mistake. It's a moral mistake. It's breaking a promise.

As for the valued unity – that starts with trust. And this breaks that trust. Chalupa said that in a manner similar to Putin in Russia the GOP is trying to rewrite history. The half million dead was deliberate, as was turning masks into a culture war. The nasty guy incited mass murder. And the GOP is trying to say it was an amorphous phenomenon. Kendzior repeats a long list of people who should be prosecuted. People are going after Andrew Cuomo for some of his mistakes, such as policies contributing to deaths in nursing homes. If you can go after Cuomo, why aren’t you going after the pandemic prince and princess and all these other people? They are much worse than Cuomo. On to Texas. It’s understandable residents there haven’t insulated their homes or have few winter clothes. They’re not at fault. It is the fault of the government of Texas. Kendzior said Sen. Ted Cruz is trapped. He was a holdout in 2016 but has thoroughly joined the Trump train, fully contaminated. Perhaps he thought he would be rewarded. But he’s now tainted as an accomplice to the Capitol attack and to organized crime. Perhaps he’s now trying to implode? In contrast to Cruz, Beto O’Rourke, who lost to Cruz, worked to organize a variety of grassroots effort to help out Texans. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, even though she represents New York, also went to Texas, raising five million in aid. And she was attacked from all sides. However, helping each other is how we should view ourselves. Both Texas and New York are part of the same country. This is how we unite. The Sunday new shows had on a string of Republicans still pushing the Big Lie. They weren’t challenged. Kendzior concluded:

Those shows are just PR operations for organized crime and for white supremacy and white supremacist violent groups at this point. So you should absolutely not be watching them.

The reaction to suffering Texans was you voted for it, you deserve it. Kendzior said no. There was rampant voter suppression. And no one deserves to freeze to death, no matter who they voted for. That should not be a controversial view. Chalupa said there should be many lawsuits over every death. As a way to help, tackle the corruption in your own city and state. Because of climate change we’re entering a time of pandemics and increased deadly weather. We need good public servants to make government work for all of us. We need people who understand why we need government and why it is important to civilization. We need to flush out the people who keep creating humanitarian crises by destroying government from within. Kendzior said the younger generation of Democrats need more support. They and their ideas are not on the fringe. Their ideas are mainstream, ideas like Green New Deal and healthcare for all. Why are people like convicted felon Michael Cohen welcomed on TV to spew what they want and AOC is treated like the wild and crazy one? They’re treated that way because media sees it as a horse race. But this isn’t for our entertainment. Lives depend on what our leaders do (see Texas). Because media normalizes bad GOP behavior they are complicit in the humanitarian crises and in mass murder. One way to stop that is to diversify newsrooms. Kendzior has hope that Merrick Garland, in the approval process for Attorney General, will properly investigate the Capitol attack and the people (all the people) who were responsible for it. Her hope is tempered by the whole system that for over 40 years of attorney generals has turned a blind eye to organized crime and white supremacy. And now we have the collision of those things in the nasty guy. Cy Vance is Manhattan District Attorney and just got the nasty guy’s tax returns. Vance hired the prosecutor who brought down John Gotti, so a lot of people are hopeful. Chalupa says don’t expect much. Vance has a Democratic primary coming up in June. His campaign bank account is down, though he could refill it overnight by calling a select few people – such as people who want his investigation into the nasty guy to disappear. What Vance is doing now is teasing us with the prospect of justice to get reelected, even though he has an abysmal track record and is very much part of the problem. Kendzior adds details about their disappointment in Vance. He has failed to prosecute Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Dominique Strauss-Kahn (all sexual predators), and also the princess and Don Jr. Is Vance brave enough to take on a transnational crime syndicate? History says no. In addition, Vance is getting the tax returns since 2011 and the ones from his years in the Oval Office will be nicely doctored. The really interesting returns will be from the 1980s and ‘90s. One more disappointment is that Vance is showing no inclination to release those returns to the public. Vance isn’t going to save us. We’re going to save ourselves.