Keeping democracy is a constant, high-stakes battle

My weekend movie was Saturday afternoon when I went to the Detroit Film Theater (and enjoyed some of the Detroit Institute of Arts) for the documentary Secret Mall Apartment. In the 1990s Providence, Rhode Island was getting rather run down. The mills that had provided its wealth had closed. So the city decided to build a shopping mall, Providence Place, at the edge of a good neighborhood where people on the other side saw it more as a barrier than a benefit. Many artists and musicians had taken over the old mill buildings not far from the new mall. They were quite annoyed that city planners saw their area as the next place to gentrify, and evicted them. One of those was the artist and art teacher Michael Townsend. As Townsend watched the mall being built, a place with unusual planes and angles, he saw a space that he identified as unusable. In 2003 he crawled through the in-between spaces of the building and found it. He and seven friends turned the space, about 750 square feet, into an apartment. They hauled furniture up there (through a route a bit more direct than crawl spaces, but still difficult) and turned it into a place to stay. They used a palm size camera to film their work and those films were an integral part of this movie. I think they had residences elsewhere, but that was never specifically said. They managed to live in the mall undetected for four years. This was an act of defiance against gentrification, their private clubhouse, and a place to plan their art. Townsend and his team were also working artists, and generous with their art. One of their big things is tape art – using rolls of blue and green painter’s tape to construct outlines of figures on walls. They were regular visitors to a children’s hospital, decorating rooms and hallways with whimsical figures and helping the little patients create their own ideas. These were intentionally temporary, easily pulled off the wall when no longer wanted. Here’s their tape art website. The main page of the site includes a photo of Townsend. Check out their murals page. The team also took their tape art to Oklahoma City for the tenth anniversary of the bombing there and to New York to commemorate those who lost their lives in 9/11. These people have their hearts in the right place. Townsend was the only one known to the public when their hideaway was discovered. The mall banned him for life for trespassing. When this documentary was premiered it was at the cinemas in – Providence Place. I’m sure Townsend was the guest of honor. I quite enjoyed this one. I read through the transcript of the June 10, 2025 episode of Gaslit Nation titled How a Christian School Kid in Indiana Saw the Fall of Democracies Coming. Gaslit Nation is hosted by Andrea Chalupa. Her guest in this episode is Chrissy Stroop. Chalupa introduces her this way at the top of the webpage:

Chrissy is a leading voice in exposing the Christian nationalist movement, the exvangelical uprising, and the growing marriage between the American and Russian far-right. She also happens to be a trans woman with a PhD in Russian history and a wild journey that took her from a fundamentalist Christian school in Indiana to teaching in Moscow.

And like this during the episode.

[She is] an analyst on global affairs as well as the American Ex-vangelical Movement, as well as Christian Nationalism and Russia. She's an advocate for religious deconstruction, LGBTQ+ rights and social justice.

The episode begins with the story of a woman who came to the US as a fetus. Chalupa reminds us that the media sees immigrants as a hostile invader rather than an individual human story of someone seeking a better life. Chalupa describes the bill the nasty guy just signed (still in process when this episode was recorded) as the “concentration camp” bill. It allocates “a staggering $160 billion to expand state terror and intensify their anti-immigrant crackdown.” The current ICE budget is $8 billion. The new bill keeps that funding and adds $15 for deportation and $45 billion for new camps. That increases ICE’s power by 20 times. This is how MAGA plans to stay in power. Stroop got her PhD in Russian History. After the Cold War there wasn’t much use for it, which is why she taught in Moscow for a while. She noticed that in Florida the big education push was to make sure everyone related to colleges and universities are on the same page. Not said so loud is that the same page is the state ideology. It’s what the Nazis did when they came to power. Now Linda McMahon, Secretary of Education, is using the term. A goal of dismantling public education is so that students would be funneled into Christian education (which implies conservative Christian views). These same Christians are a big supplier of resources for homeschooling. Stroop discusses her own conservative Christian education. As a student she was constantly told liberals are evil because they kill babies (allow abortion). Gay people want special rights. If a country disobeys God it will be punished. If it follows God’s will it will flourish. To get God’s blessing abortion must be banned, the queers must be kept at bay, and the political system must align with God’s will. There is a world of Christian broadcasting and Fox News carries similar ideas. Stroop tells the story of recognizing she is trans. She had hints, but didn’t figure it out until she was living in Moscow at age 33. She stopped going to church and began to have a few queer friends. That journey is what helped her reject the teaching of her youth. Her time in Moscow also helped her see the similarities between Russia and far-right Americans. Chalupa said Putin’s 2013 anti-gay laws were pivotal in the global fascist war against democracy. Because of the law Madonna and other superstars began to boycott Russia. There was one notable exception – the nasty guy held his 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. By his actions the nasty guy was telling Putin I’ve got your back and I know you have mine because my businesses depend on you and Russia. Putin invaded Crimea in 2014 and the nasty guy was elected in 2016. Christopher Steele (of the Steele dossier) noted something must have happened to the nasty guy during that pageant. Stroop reminds us that the nasty guy is currently targeting immigrants. But they won’t do that forever. You say the wrong thing, such as praise the Palestinians and condemn Israel, and they arrest you. They’re trying to Christian Nationalize the universities as well as the K-12 education system. They may not be able to get rid of all public schools, but they’ll try to Christianize what’s left. Since they think public education should not exist that remnant will be as bad as they can make it. Conservative Christian schools and conservative homeschool programs resist government standards because the parents have certain things they don’t want their children to learn, such as evolution and comprehensive sex ed. And human rights. They say that’s a secular concept. Human rights aren’t to be used for things that don’t contribute to human flourishing. Human dignity means one is not gay and not trans. If one is those things one is doing dignity wrong. Yeah, that very much depends on ones definition of “flourishing.” The gay and trans people I know flourish when they are allowed to be gay and trans. As a child getting a Christian education, Stroop felt out of sync a lot of time. One thing that guided her out was a subscription to Ranger Rick Magazine given to her by her moderate grandmother. That magazine is pro environment. At the end of the episode, starting at minute 45, Chalupa discusses the Gaslit Nation Action Guide, which has its own page.

Donald Trump is not the cause of America's fascism crisis. He's a symptom. Trump reflects a deeper disease of corruption, institutional failure, and widespread indifference. We can no longer afford to look away. We're in a moment that calls not just for outrage, but for action.

So study the action guide. The June 24 episode of Gaslit Nation has guest Anne Applebaum. She’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author of Gulag, Iron Curtain, Red Famine, Twilight of Democracy, and Autocracy Inc. Host Andrea Chalupa’s grandfather, a Holodomor survivor, is cited in Red Famine. In 2023 Poland ousted the far right Law and Justice party. By razor-thin margins they retook power this year, only 18 months later. “Democracy isn’t a destination. It’s a constant, high-stakes battle.” We will all be in this struggle for the next few decades. Neither side will achieve a definitive victory. Applebaum commented on the nasty guy’s attack on Iran. The regime in Iran is waging two wars. One is against the US and Israel and has been going on for four decades. The other is against its own people. About the same time the bombs fell there was a crackdown on the opposition. Even though the bombs cause death and destruction and the crackdown causes more, the opposition is delighted with the mess. The nasty guy did not have Congressional approval for his attack. He did not explain why he did it nor convince the public for its need. There is no groundswell of opinion (well, there is... against him). He didn’t say whether uranium had been moved before he struck or what the bombs really accomplished. He hasn’t defined any strategy for Iran, the Middle East, or the world. That’s all a red flag. Perhaps he engaged in war because it is war. Perhaps because he likes the Fox News reporting. Perhaps he thinks he’ll look strong. Chalupa asked how the strike in Iran might affect Russia. As part of her reply Applebaum said:

Putin thinks a lot about other autocracies, and he's concerned about the survival of other autocracies because he thinks of himself as being part of a global war of ideas against liberal ideas, against democratic ideas, but also against the rule of law, against accountability and a win for the other side. In other words, the fall of a sister regime would be interpreted in Moscow is bad for them.

Maybe propping up the Iran regime is in Russia’s interest. But Syria fell because both Iran and Russia have been weakened. And Russia would not be taken seriously if it tried to be a broker in the Iran-Israel war. Even so, Russia maintains ties with and offers help to autocrats in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba in addition to Iran, China, and North Korea. Turning to the situation in the US, Applebaum said we can’t ever be completely lost into autocracy. One dictatorial family ruled Syria for 50 years, then it collapsed. Nothing is irreversible. What happens tomorrow depends on what we decide today. The US has has autocratic periods in the past, such as the rise of the Klan and Huey Long ruling Louisiana in the 1930s as an autocrat. An autocrat at the federal level at this scale is new. One type of corruption is financial. The only purpose of the nasty guy’s cryptocurrency is being a pathway to bribe him. He can’t do anything else with it. The other type of corruption is taking over government institutions and making them loyal to himself and not the Constitution. Right now American politics isn’t about discussing policy it’s about the nasty guy’s taking over institutions, the nature of the state. It’s about do we and the candidate believe in democracy or not? Is government to help or harm? We have to think differently to organize to stop that. In 1945 in Europe most Communist parties tried to take over with minimal violence. In Hungary this was known as salami tactics. Make a little change. Let the opposition adjust. Make another little change. Do it until the opposition is squeezed out. Many people won’t notice the individual steps. Orbán, Hungary’s current dictator, is doing the same thing. This is the most common way democracies fall. That’s not the method the nasty guy, with the help of DOGE, has been using in the US. His method makes progressives feel overwhelmed. The Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe was also all at once. Their takeover focused on education and culture, in hijacking the way people think. When they captured Berlin in May 1945 their first step was to take over the radio station, moving in German communists. Another early step was replacing kindergarten teachers. The nasty guy isn’t particularly interested in this. But the people around him are. American science is admired around the world. So why attack scientific institutions? It’s to hijack the way people think, to mold culture in their own image. That didn’t work in the Soviet Union, nor in Poland and Hungary. They didn’t win people’s minds. People assumed what the government said was a lie. They got their information from other places. Destroying institutions is easy. Getting people to change their thinking to conform to government ideas is quite hard. They can do a great deal of damage, but they won’t win. Those in the government will completely believe their ideology. When it doesn’t work they’ll blame spies and traitors. In the Soviet Union there were waves of harsh repressions. Those didn’t work either. So they would liberalize a little bit and that would prompt a popular uprising. Somebody began to see the value of obeying the law, of following the regime, wasn’t worth the low returns. Protests would be organized. The fall of communism in Poland was negotiated. There were already people who could take over the functions of government. In each of those countries by the 1980s few people believed the ideology or accepted the government, which had little legitimacy. Orbán faces his strongest opponent in the next election. He has massaged the system rather than smashing it. Has he made enough changes to the Constitution that he can’t be defeated electorally? Will he allow himself to lose? How far would he go to prevent a loss? What happens to the companies, the dominant ones in Hungary, connected to himself and his family and friends? Once Orbán is gone all the government institutions will have to be examined to see how to make them neutral again, how to make them belong to the nation rather than the party.

No more intellectual than two rams knocking their heads together

My Sunday viewing was episodes 3 and 4 of the series Cosmos hosted Neil DeGrasse Tyson. This may seem like I jumped into the middle of things, but I did watch episodes 1 and 2 back in September last year. I have this series on DVD, likely a gift back in 2014 when it was released. Episode 3 is about comets. Back when humans first began to watch the sky they learned that from the positions of stars they could keep track of the year – when to plant, when to harvest, etc. So something strange, like a comet, interrupted the order of the sky. And that could only mean bad things were coming. We get a bit about the Oort cloud, where comets originate. Then the story turns to Edmund Halley and Isaac Newton. The story is that Halley sought out Newton to codify the motions of things acted on by gravity into mathematical equations. It was Halley that got Newton’s book published. Then Halley put Newton’s equations to work. No, Halley did not discover the comet that bears his name. What he did was comb through all the historical accounts of comets and, using Newton’s equations, figured out their orbits, which were a long, thin ellipses. Then Halley figured out that several sightings were the same comet reappearing every 86 years. The predicted the comet would return in another 50 years. He included the time of year and the part of the sky where it would appear. And was proven right. And comets lost their meaning as a sign of doom. I saw Halley’s comet when it came in 1986. For nearly all of the month or so the comet was visible the night skies in southeast Michigan were overcast. Towards the end of that month I heard the University of Michigan astronomy department was opening their viewing facilities northwest of Ann Arbor. I went. The sky was clear. A lot of other people had shown up. Some people I knew also showed up so I waited in line with them. By this time the comet was far enough away that it was no longer visible with just the eye. After the sky got fully dark each person was allowed about 15 seconds to peer through the eyepiece of their telescope. I got my turn well after midnight. What I saw was a faint smudge of light. Episode 4 is about the nature of light, its spectrum, and the spectral lines created by different elements absorbing different wavelengths of light, leaving lines in the spectrum. Along the way there is a discussion of the rules of science, such as: Learn from the results of an experiment. The episode also discussed how science was prized in the Arab world and kept alive. Eventually Europe was ready to accept science as part of the Enlightenment. My feeling of the series (I’ve finished disc 1 of four discs) is that it explains its topics well. And its recreation of various phenomena (especially in space) is stunningly beautiful. Many visual effects companies are listed in the credits. So why do the animated sequences, such as scenes between Newton and Halley, look so primitive? I finished the book The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. The title is taken from the Bible in a story that appears in at least two of the gospels. Here is the version from Luke: 8-58:

A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the wayside; and it was trodden down, and birds of the air devoured it. And some fell upon the rock; and as soon as it sprung up, it withered away because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. And other fell on good ground, and sprang up and bore fruit a hundredfold.

Later verses explain the parable. Ideas are thrown about. Some are discarded immediately. Some are explored for a while but don’t take root. Some are beaten back by competing ideas. And some are carefully cultivated and bear fruit. No, the Bible doesn’t call the seeds “ideas.” The book was written 30 years ago. It is very much a dystopian story. Butler said she had taken the condition of the country in the early 1990s and projected the prevailing forces out to their logical end. She then set the story in ... 2024. As in next year. At the time it was published critics declared it to be farfetched, especially in such a short timeline. They said civilization can’t collapse that quickly. More recent critics, with the benefit of 25 years of history, said: Oh, that’s how. I’m not a fan of dystopian novels. But last summer NPR reported on an opera version of the story presented at Lincoln Center. And despite the dystopian setting it sounded quite hopeful. So I bought the book. At the start of the story Lauren is a black girl, 15 years old. She and her family live in a walled neighborhood of about a dozen houses somewhere north of Los Angeles. It’s walled because the world outside is quite brutal. She and the older children have lessons in how to use guns and a younger brother is quite annoyed he isn’t old enough for that yet. But this is a society in which protecting oneself and loved ones with a gun is vital. Her father, the neighborhood pastor, is also a college professor, so must go out every day. For those that do go there is always the fear they may not return and their body may or may not be found. They only call the police when the situation is worth the cost and even then getting actual help is unlikely. Some communities are opting for corporate ownership to keep them safe. Lauren’s dad refuses that opportunity, seeing the company doesn’t pay enough to afford company housing, so the people become indebted and enslaved. Lauren is smart enough to see her community’s situation is not tenable in the long term. She plans to escape, to head north. She wonders if she’ll be allowed to cross the fortified border into Oregon. In the time before she is 18 she prepares herself and tries to prepare her community. Close to her 18th birthday disaster strikes and she is forced to flee, and she starts her journey north. As she walks with the hordes of people fleeing the region she gathers a community of fellow travelers willing to help and protect each other. They search for a place to live and begin a new life. Lauren is a hyperempath. When she sees someone hurt she feels their injury. So when she has to shoot someone she wants it to be a quick kill, otherwise she’ll be overcome by their pain and no longer able to protect her companions. Lauren is also disillusioned by religion and creates her own, though she describes the process as uncovering. She calls in Earthseed. A primary understanding is God is Change, one can shape God, and through that one is also changed. One should be open to and embrace change. The theology is laid out in a series of sayings, like this one that matches my understanding of hierarchy and supremacy:

All struggles Are essentially Power struggles. Who will rule, Who will lead, Who will define, refine, confine, design, Who will dominate. All struggles Are essentially Power struggles. And most are no more intellectual than two rams knocking their heads together.

I don’t think the book describes this theology well beyond that it guides her to build a community. Perhaps her theology will be spelled out more in the sequel The Parable of the Talents and it looks like I’ll have to get that one. Silly Season 2023 is over as Silly Season 2024 continues (Republican debate this evening, which I’ll ignore). So there are election results with much to celebrate. In Michigan the two Democratic House members running for city mayor both won. That leaves the House membership tied between the parties. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will be scheduling special elections as fast as she can. David Nir of Daily Kos Elections has some national results. The big news is that Ohio voters approved an abortion rights amendment to their state constitution. When it was called with 36% of the vote it was ahead 59%-41%. That’s just under the threshold Republicans tried to impose in August, an effort that voters rejected. This amendment reestablishes the framework under Roe v. Wade and renders moot a six week ban held up in the courts. I think this is the seventh voter led protection of abortion rights to be put on state ballots and the seventh to pass. Efforts are underway for similar amendments in six other swing and red states. In Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin ran on getting a 15 week abortion ban passed. He hadn’t accomplished that yet because Democrats controlled the State senate. He and Republicans worked to flip the Senate to have the control they needed. Nir reported it was the House that flipped, putting both chambers in Democrats’ hands. That ban has no chance now. And Youngkin’s hopes of being a Republican candidate for president in 2028 now has little chance. Nir reported that in Kentucky Democrat Andy Beshear won another four year term for governor with a healthy margin of 53-47. He had highlighted his opponent’s support for a total ban on abortion. Being competent in the job and guiding his state through several emergencies (including COVID) helped too. I sense a trend here. Abortion rights still drive elections. And Republicans don’t get they’re losing because of it. Nir reported Democrat Dan McCaffery won a seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court with a healthy 53-47 margin. Democrats hold a 5-2 margin on the court. It’s important because the court heard a lot of election disputes and likely will again next year. Moms for Liberty, the far right group with a goal of banning books from schools, ran lots of candidates for local school boards. Laura Clawson of Kos discussed that MFL candidates may not be easily identified, though an MFL endorsement is a good hint. This year about 65% of their candidates lost. In an update Clawson included a tweet that linked to a spreadsheet listing a few winners and lots of losers. An Associated Press article posted on Kos on Monday talked about the heat in our national political struggles:

The principal flashpoint: school board meetings. And not just here. A long tradition of doing prosaic but vital work has sunk into chaos and poisonous confrontation across the United States. The lower rungs of democracy are cracking.

The article then discussed Virginia, where nearly 600 school board seats were open. The seats are officially non partisan, but political parties and their aligned groups have been aggressively involved, wanting a national say in local school decisions. An AP article reported Gabe Amo is the first black candidate to be elected to Congress from Rhode Island. This is a blue seat, so the battle really was at the primary, which he comfortably won. He’s the son of Ghanaian and Liberian immigrants. He served in both the Obama and Biden administrations and in the administration of Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo. He’s part of the state’s transition away from its Italian-American political hierarchy. He’s for preserving Social Security and Medicare, for abortion rights, and for a ban on assault-style guns. Sounds good. Alas, Democrats didn’t win everything. Another AP article reported Republican Tate Reeves won a second term as governor of Mississippi, though it was “unusually competitive.” Bill in Portland, Maine in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos included a few appropriate quotes from Franklin Roosevelt.

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.

Dartagnan of the Kos community compared two media articles. The first appeared in the Washington Post, written by Molly Hennesy-Fiske. It is yet another story written by a “journalist” going to a diner and talking to “real” people. This diner is in Speaker Johnson’s home town of Shreveport, Louisiana and the people all proclaim how wonderful he is. And the author assures us how down-to-earth these people are. Yeah, we’ve read similar articles many times. The second article is by Tom Nichols writing in The Atlantic. His focus: Why are we cherishing the knowledge of these people? Yeah, they have definite opinions about how foreign aid should be spent, but they’re way off on how much money that is. Most Americans think foreign aid should be no more than 10% of the budget. They think they are calling for a decrease in foreign spending. But foreign aid is actually about 1% of the budget, pretty much a rounding error. So getting to 10% of the budget would be a massive increase. Dartagnan concluded:

Still, Nichols expresses a viewpoint most of us can relate to: With foreign aid such a critical issue at a critical time, it would be far more useful for the media in this country to educate those diners rather than writing the same article endlessly.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Thomas Zimmer writing for “Democracy in America” on Substack and his look at the same WaPo article.

The reason to dwell on this piece is not that it is uniquely awful, or that the author is singularly inept and/or disingenuous. If only! On the contrary, this reporting is indicative of pathologies that characterize too much of mainstream political journalism and the political discourse in general: A tendency to launder and normalize extremism for a broader audience, an impulse to accommodate and naturalize power, no matter where it resides – and an inclination to perpetuate ideas that form the bedrock of the ethno-religious nationalism that has galvanized behind Trump.

Dworkin also quoted Ian Dunt, also writing on Substack and about Jewish philosopher Isaiah Berlin.

Berlin believed that the world is composed of competing values: Hedonism, tradition, freedom, control, equality, hierarchy, whatever. They exist in cultures, which prize certain values above others. They exist in people, who do the same. And they exist within the beating heart of each individual. We all want things which cannot be put together. Maybe we value family but we've fallen in love with someone they disapprove of. Maybe we're a Ukrainian who wants to fight for their country but whose father is sick at home without anyone else to care for him. Berlin warns you to be wary of those who say that there is a right answer to these questions. He warns you to distrust those who say there is a future utopia where these difficulties have been conquered. They cannot be conquered. Life is composed of inevitable tragedy: the tragedy of competing values. There will never be a happy ending. It will never be solved, because humanity cannot be solved.

Refashion Jesus from his role as a humble teacher into a vicious fanatic

I didn’t watch an online movie last Sunday because I wanted to see one in a real movie theater on a big screen with a great sound system. What drew me wasn’t the new Spider Man flick, rather the new version of West Side Story the one directed by Stephen Spielberg. It has all the wonderful Bernstein / Sondheim songs, with expanded dialogue with more backstory for some characters by Tony Kushner. I’ve long been a fan of this musical and have seen it several times both on stage and on screen. The fondness is even with that ending. I think the first time I saw it was when a cousin was in her high school production – she played one of the Jet girls. The most interesting performance was when I was living in Germany and took a work colleague to see an English language production. But I haven’t seen this movie yet. In this past week it was showing in only one theater in the area and only one time each day. So I would check in the morning to find it was already sold out. I checked a couple days ahead and found the theater had only 35 seats. And no spacing between patrons. And soon sold out. Chances look better next week when this theater will show WSS three times a day. Or I may decide, because of the virus, to stay home. See ... I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data updated yesterday. I normally do this on Saturday but Friday is a holiday. Since this is the week between two holidays I’m sure the numbers will be adjusted and redistributed (which is why Michigan Radio has been reporting seven day averages, rather than peaks). Even so, that peak is huge! The state reported that on Monday there were 13,099 new cases that day. That’s 41% higher than the peak at the end of November and 56% higher than the peak last April. A pretty good clue the numbers will be revised is two days before the number new cases was only 2170. The deaths per day for the first three weeks of December have been in the range of 100-140. The numbers after that haven’t been fully posted yet. Rebekah Sager of Daily Kos reported that Sen. Rob Standridge of the Oklahoma Legislature is pushing two bills that would...

give parents the power to remove any book in a public school library they find objectionable. Meaning any book mentioning sex or the “study of sex, sexual preferences, sexual activity, sexual perversion, sex-based classifications, sexual identity, or gender identity,” or books “that are of a sexual nature.” ... Parents can also receive “monetary damages including a minimum of $10,000 per day” from school districts refusing to remove the book as demanded.

Though the article doesn’t say so, this sounds to me like the Texas abortion ban in which the state doesn’t enforce the ban, but the citizens do. Standridge says that parents should have a say in what books their kids are exposed to. However, his method (or any method of removing books) makes the decision for all parents. And some parents do want their kids exposed to such books. The comment section included this thread: cmax: “Almost any book could be found objectionable to someone.” drshatterhand: “If this crap went through and I lived in Okie, my first request for removal would be the bible. There’s some perverted s--- in there.” Youffraita: “Was just thinking that very thing. I would also object that it’s far too violent for children to read.” That book does talk about the creation of male and female. And multiple wives and concubines. And eunuchs. That fits somewhere in the list of things Standridge wants banned. Doesn’t it? The commenter certainot proposed a theory not appropriate for tender ears (besides it is quite a stretch), though there are a couple bits that make sense.

authoritarianism is one of the strategies used by humans to avoid/reduce/control uncertainty — and create certainty. ... denying global warming is much easier than contemplating the complexities. they can reject vaccines outright because, as uncertainty-fearing trumper sen ron johnson of wisconsin points out, they don’t work 100%!

libera nos added: “Those mathematics books make my child’s head hurt—and mine, too!” Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed a speech by junior nasty guy at the Turning Point USA conference on December 19. He ranted about the other side playing dirty while they played nice (which is a great deal of projecting) which has gotten them nothing (the presidency for four years is nothing?). They are an enemy who must be crushed. Dartagnan then turned to Peter Wehner, an evangelical Christian (hold on, he’s on our side) writing for The Atlantic:

This in turn justifies any necessary means to win. And the former president’s son has a message for the tens of millions of evangelicals who form the energized base of the GOP: the scriptures are essentially a manual for suckers. The teachings of Jesus have “gotten us nothing.” It’s worse than that, really; the ethic of Jesus has gotten in the way of successfully prosecuting the culture wars against the left. If the ethic of Jesus encourages sensibilities that might cause people in politics to act a little less brutally, a bit more civilly, with a touch more grace? Then it needs to go.

Contrast that with what Tyler Huckabee, writing for Relevant has to say about what Jesus taught:

Nearly every page of the Gospels has stories of Jesus refusing earthly power and exhorting his followers to do the same. In fact, there are few things Jesus talked as much about as the upside down Kingdom of God where “the last shall be first” and “blessed are the meek.” Moreover, he cautioned against seeking earthly influence, going so far as to proclaim “woe to you who are rich.” The most cursory reading of Scripture would leave anyone with the sense that this is not a manual for getting stuff.

Dartagnan wrote:

As The Washington Post’s conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin writes, the embrace of intolerance and exclusion by many of these purported “Christians”—as part and parcel of their political identity—is now a necessary and integral requirement to joining their ranks.

Rubin discussed the recent cruelty towards immigrants and the selfish refusal to vaccinate, then added:

If you wonder how so many “people of faith” can behave in such ways, understand that their “faith” has become hostile to traditional religious values such as kindness, empathy, self-restraint, grace, honesty and humility.

Dartagnan added:

In order for this “faith” to endure, however, it’s become necessary to refashion Jesus Christ from his previously understood role as a humble teacher into a vicious fanatic exhorting his followers to hatred, revenge for imagined slights, and even murder of others as exemplifying the “essence” of Christianity. Racism, bigotry, and intolerance have to become “Christian” virtues in order for this warped version of “faith” to sustain itself. ... Yet before Trump Jr.’s speech, no single voice—not even that of the elder Trump—dared to so boldly and directly repudiate the teachings of Christ himself. None but Don Jr. has so directly dared to rend the tattered fabric of morality that white evangelicals long wore, however much it annoyed or inconvenienced them. Never before had anyone so directly crumpled up the pages of the New Testament, wadded them into a ball, and proudly wiped his ass with it.

Thanks to junior for revealing the ugly core of fundamentalist belief. Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Kos community reported that an anti-vaxx crowd stormed a Burger King. I’m not sure all that went on and I certainly didn’t watch the videos Pennyfarthing posted. Eventually the police showed up. Pennyfarthing did get to the core idea:

But what really motivated this war on Whoppers? As the folks behind Patriot Takes note, they’re doing it for attention, and for street cred among Team Antivaxx.

In the case of both junior nasty and this war on Whoppers what they’re doing is a battle over their place in the social hierarchy, either fighting to keep their high position or trying to signal to those above them that they are worthy of inclusion in a higher status. While on the subject of the virus ... Hunter of Kos discussed the home test kits. He reminds is that if we get a positive test we should report it to the local health department. It is important even if one does not have symptoms.

You may be feeling fine, you may not have any symptoms at all, but if you've been exposed to COVID that means, by definition, that somebody spread it to you. And that “somebody” likely spread it to several other people as well; your own positive test means that in your county, in your city, there are new active cases. This is vital information for local health officials. If they know that local cases are rising, and know the rate at which they are rising, emergency plans can be put in place to free up hospital beds for the new cases that will become severe. Hospitals can cancel nonemergency procedures, freeing up staff. The now-familiar parking lot tents can be set up in preparation for a surge of patients. Hospitals can scrounge for additional staff, if possible, and make sure medical equipment is available.

The Capital and Main team of Kos posted a four part series on how corporations bust unions. The series looks at:

“The 50-100 Pay Gap” examines the crisis of income inequality in the U. S. A recent RAND study found that a full-time worker earning the median national wage of $50,000 would be making close to $100,000 if pay had kept up with worker productivity and economic growth.

The first post, by Jo Constantz, looks at the various ways employers use technology to spy on and intimidate their workers. This includes such commonplace things as ID badges that can be used to monitor movements and track who someone meets with and when. Technology hasn’t kept up with law. And even with existing law employees tend to not report (for a variety of reasons) and even when reported cases tend to not move forward. It is also difficult to prove the employer was spying. Management can claim they only check the data in an emergency. In the meantime employees endure the harassment and unsafe conditions while they wonder who is safe to talk to. The second post, by Marcus Baram, is about Martin Jay Levitt. He was a consultant that companies hired to show them how to intimidate their workers into not joining a union. Then in the late 1980s Levitt had a change of heart. He wrote a book, Confessions of a Union Buster. Part of it is an autobiography, part of it is to reveal tactics. Baram wrote:

“Union-busting is a field populated by bullies and built on deceit,” he wrote. “The only way to bust a union is to lie, distort, manipulate, threaten, and always, always attack.” He described how his former firm, Modern Management Methods, had developed a methodology for breaking down employee support for unions by using psychological tactics and turning managers into anti-union spokespersons.

This book has been a guide to union organizers and allies. Corporations are using the same tactics they’ve used for decades, though now with high tech help. The third post, by Baram again, documents how much corporations are willing to pay consultants to avoid paying more to their employees. One would think it would be cheaper to just pay employees more. These consultants earn an estimated $340 million a year. Baram included a list of what some corporations spend on consultants each year. I read through that and thought part of what the corporations are doing is protecting the social hierarchy – keeping poor people poor, making sure the rich stay rich, and the gulf between them stays wide. The fourth post, by Jo Constantz again, is about the shrinking field of labor studies in universities:

Researchers in the field have been the target of legal threats and lawsuits; onerous public records requests; and misinformation campaigns from union avoidance consultants, business executives, corporate lawyers, and conservative think tanks. It’s one aspect of the business lobby’s relentless war against unions in recent decades ...

Constantz worked through that list. An example is Kate Brofenbrenner of Cornell University. In 1992 she was on her way to a labor studies conference. When she opened the door of the car sent to pick her up she saw the CEO of a management consulting firm in the back seat. He demanded to know what she was going to talk about and demanded to see her data. She refused. He was furious. Later she was sued for libel, so a company could get her raw data through the discovery process. The lawsuit failed, but served to intimidate others who might consider entering the field.

The field of labor studies has often been lambasted by conservative lawmakers who consider it union advocacy education that indoctrinates students. ... Labor studies academics contend that the field can inform how we view everything from law, economics and history to music and literature by focusing on the perspective of the working class, which is often neglected in other disciplines.

The view from the management class and the view from the labor class are going to look quite different. Patricia Morgan, the first female Minority Leader in the Rhode Island House of Representatives, tweeted:

I had a black friend. I liked her and I think she liked me, too. But now she is hostile and unpleasant. I am sure I didn't do anything to her, except be white. Is that what teachers and our political leaders really want for our society? Divide us because of our skin color? #CRT

Lots of people tweeted their outrage at her racism – in Rhode Island!. I’ll stick to the rebuttal by George Takei:

I had a white friend. I liked him and I think he liked me, too. But then Pearl Harbor happened and whites became hostile and unpleasant. I am sure we didn’t do anything but they sent us to camps anyway. And now they don’t want to teach about this because it make kids feel bad.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column forKos started today’s post with a minute long demonstration of how a little action can have a big effect. The unnamed man in the video has a row of slabs standing on end like dominoes, each one 1.5 times larger than the previous one. The smallest is 5 millimeters high, 1 mm thick and placed in position with tweezers. The largest, the 13th, is 100 pounds and more than a meter tall. He knocked over the little one and soon the big one is knocked over. Bill got the video through the Twitter feed of Pascal Bornet. So I scanned it a bit. Here is a diagram of a measure of success I agree with: success = happiness. And another with a half minute video showing the difference between a boss and a leader. The boss wants to maintain his place high in the hierarchy. The leader cares for those under him. Harry Reid was Democratic Senate Majority Leader towards the end of the Bush II years and into the Obama years. He died this week at age 82. Joan McCarter of Kos wrote a remembrance of him.

Not that big a deal

The marriage equality bill in Rhode Island sailed through its final House vote (getting more yes votes than the first time through). Gov. Lincoln Chaffee had a big signing ceremony on the Capitol steps. The law becomes effective on August 1.

The National Organization for Marriage, the big guys on the anti-gay side have been strangely silent and saying such things as "Rhode Island is not that big a deal." As in what would you expect from a solidly blue state in New England? Also strange, they are not calling down wrath on the various GOP legislatures who voted for equality. They are asking their donors for money to hold the line in the next state. Hurry, Delaware will act soon.

Rhode Island!

Today is a day for exclamation points. The Rhode Island Senate has approved marriage equality with a 26-12 vote! The measure has already passed the House by a wide margin, but must return there because the Senate changed a few details. Gov. Lincoln Chaffee promised to sign it. This is a big deal because all five GOP senators voted for it. Saying it another way: the opposition did not come from the GOP.

Marriage equality will soon be available across all of New England.

Special Rights

A protest sign that has been making the rounds…



A while back I wrote about Henry and Josh. Henry is not an American citizen and deportation proceedings had begun. Obama's refusal to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court (though he will still enforce it) put a wrinkle in Henry's case and others like it. It was getting down to the wire when Henry's hearing was postponed. The latest news is that deportation proceedings have been dropped entirely.



The Rhode Island legislature has passed a civil unions bill and sent it on to governor Lincoln Chaffee. All of the gay organizations are urging him not to sign it. The problem is exemptions for religious organizations. New York (just last week!) affirmed that a religious institution did not have to take part in a gay wedding or reception. Rhode Island took one more step. It is one thing for a church to say they won't officiate at a civil union ceremony. It is quite another for them to have the right to refuse to acknowledge the civil union. For example, a religious hospital can deny partner visitation. That has left gay groups wondering why do religious groups get special rights? And to think Fundies still accuse us of wanting special rights when we want government recognition of our relationships. Besides, the states around RI have full marriage equality and RI will recognize those marriages. Why not home grown equality?



Even with that disappointment in RI, we have made a lot of gains in just the last six months -- full marriage equality in New York and civil unions in Hawaii, Delaware, and Rhode Island. We now have six states, plus DC, with full gay marriage, five states with equivalent civil unions, another four with equivalent domestic partnerships, and another four with limited relationships. See the map here. It might look squished if your browser isn't at full screen.

Civil rights should not be election fodder

The New Hampshire gay marriage law went into effect at the start of this month. Of course, there is opposition. But NH makes it very difficult to pass a marriage protection amendment (I wish it was this hard in other states, like Michigan).

A commenter reports on analysis of why the gay-marriage vote failed in Maine. There are 4 reasons given:

1. Civil rights activists are weakest outside urban areas and the financial clout of Fundies can dominate rural politics.

2. Obama and the Democratic Party sat on their hands (or have been hostile to gays) rather than being the fierce advocate they said they were.

3. The state-by-state process of securing gay rights isn't working. It's time to get the prez. and Congress to live up to the national constitution that has an equal protection clause. No matter what states do, marriage will be unequal until enacted at the federal level.

4. Civil rights should not be election fodder manipulated by well-financed bigots. Why should we have to reassert our rights in every state and city when those rights are given in the federal constitution? If we wait for public opinion we'll wait a long time. People are hurt by the current system.

The Rhode Island legislature overrode Gov. Donald Carcieri's veto of some pro-gay legislation. The override vote was quite sizable, 67-3 in the House and 29-3 in the Senate. As the only New England state that hasn't made an attempt at gay marriage (with most succeeding) what did RI toss to gays that got the gov. so stirred up? The right for one to make funeral arrangements for a deceased partner. Yup, that's it. But apparently enough to start the slippery slope towards the destruction of marriage.


The New Jersey Senate voted on the gay marriage bill -- and defeated it, 14-20. Since the incoming governor will veto any future bills it could be a while before gay marriage comes through the legislature. It appears the incoming governor was able to convince several senators to switch votes during the lame duck session (probably applying the same kind of pressure I sometimes wish Obama would apply to certain federal senators). The vote is disappointing in a secondary respect -- many pro-marriage legislators were easily elected and gay marriage was so much considered a done deal that it wasn't an issue in the campaign.

Garden State Equality will go back to the NJ Supremes. In 2006 that court said the NJ legislature must enact marriage for gays or provide an equivalent structure. The legislature chose civil unions. And those are proving not to be equivalent. The case is boosted by gay marriage opponents have been saying instead of gay marriage they want to "fix" civil unions -- an admission they aren't equivalent. Now the only battle is to convince the court that the only way the two structures can be equivalent is for both to have the same name.