White America looks in the mirror

A lot of white people in America are looking in the mirror with dismay and confusion. "Not me!" they cry. Sorry, you, too. And me.  In fact, all of us white folks need to be far more humble about how white privilege works. Between the lying woman banker further undermining #MeToo (while exposing how race can and does override gender in an intersectionality moment) and the police killing of an African-American in Minnesota, we are really seeing how white privilege functions. White folks really should not be heard talking about "Well, I ain't rich like Oprah or Michael Jordan, so don't tell me about reparations!" for awhile (but we know it will come back again). That is not where white privilege is located, as that remark confuses highly unequal class stratification and general race related issues. Yes, there is a multi-relational aspect to race and class, both of which are relevant for African-Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. For white people, the privilege is firmly located in white people's relationship with their local police, and the criminal justice system in general. White privilege is located in where we are allowed to live, and the schools in which our children are educated.

In another look in the mirror, we see the way police have responded to the protests in Minneapolis and the way police handled the unauthorized and non-permit armed protests in Michigan, Wisconsin, and elsewhere, a few weeks ago. We really need to recognize what we are seeing there, too, which is it is far safer to protest what doesn't challenge economic royalty and white dominance, and how very dangerous it is to challenge economic royalty and white dominance. Just ask the Native Americans protesting a couple of years ago at Standing Rock.  Everyone who was even doubtful or the slightest bit critical about Colin Kaepernick owes that man a deeply heartfelt apology. Everyone who listens to Lee Greenwood's song about "Proud to be an American/Cause at least I know I'm free" should notice how this is a song that glorifies racial dominance. You can't really think you're free if you are African-American, Latino, Native American, or even Asian-American, and know how the law works against each of those groups, and how the dominant culture works against them. 

And despite the hypocrisies shown in the way Tara Reade has been received, and the woman in Central Park who clearly lied to police in claiming a black man was threatening her, women know how male domination and male violence works in a way us guys can never stop acknowledging and owing an apology to women. However, what we are learning again this week is how white women often choose race over gender as they recognize the protection they get from being white. Again, intersectionality can be a double-edged sword, which is why it is so important to evaluate and learn from.

Overall, this is a hard learning moment for white America, especially, all on top of the virus crisis and the economic crisis arising from, and exposed within, the virus crisis.

UPDATE: May 28, 2020: Over at FB, I was asked why I use the word "we" or "us" as a "white" person and why I am putting blame on myself, when I like to think of myself as not harboring racist assumptions. I provided this explanation, which I admit is kind because I can easily say, as a person raised "white," I may still have unconscious racial or ethnic biases that those of discriminated against minority groups may be able to see that I do not. What I said was this:

...I think we who been given, particularly since the New Deal, the designation of "white" have to acknowledge the system rewarded our grandparents and parents, up through the end of de jure segregation (meaning legal segregation), at the expense of African-Americans and Latinos. It was a wealth accumulation that changed the way we saw ourselves compared to African-Americans and Latinos, led to different assumptions in how we moved through life, and had important effects that stretched into how police viewed us; police who were of the same socially constructed ethnic and race as we were. My parents were able to buy homes and move to areas African-Americans and Latinos could not, and my Dad received benefits from FHA loans and GI bills that African-Americans and Latinos were too often denied. I think, too, of how many parties I attended in the 1970s where young people smoked pot or even snorted cocaine (I was known as a Milk and Cookies guy, who did not partake), where we did not worry about the police, and if the police came, there would be informal mechanisms to ensure our lives were not ruined. My father, who was in politics in the late 1960s through early 1970s, knew many of the cops in our area for years thereafter, and my relationship with the police was one where I had comfort in seeing them, and confidence I would be believed if there was something that happened.

The idea our nation should judge the issue of reparations or other economic issues vis a vis whites and blacks through Oprah compared to the white working class would be recognized as absurd if we honestly looked at these facts of life, as the wealth data consistently show much higher wealth median whites have compared to African-Americans and Latinos. That wealth disparity was the result of conscious policies we followed for many decades, even as white America was confronted with racial disparities it used to arrogantly deny. This is what I am trying to set forth when I say "we whites." Although my Dad joined the NAACP in high school in the early 1950s, when the NAACP was considered just barely a non-Communist organization, and although I was raised in a home which truly revered Jackie Robinson and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we benefited from having that status of "white" at the expense of those not granted that designation. That I am not really seen as "white" in certain quarters of American society is a recent consideration, but not as relevant vis a vis African-Americans and Latinos.

Felons who served their sentences, but who are unable to pay fines and costs, are able to vote in Florida

The Northern District (Federal) Court has issued a permanent injunction against the State of Florida's attempt to disenfranchise voters who have been convicted or a felony, served their time, and thought they had their rights restored by a strongly proposition, Proposition 4, only to have the Republican controlled legislature and governor slap a clever interpretation stating the felons can't vote unless they have paid all fines and costs surrounding the felony conviction. 

I had blogged about the Florida Supreme Court advisory opinion, which showed how the ACLU and other organizations were sloppy in writing the proposition, which left this loophole wide open to enact the legislation, but wondered about whether a court, federal or state, could be ready to directly attack the idea of depriving felons of voting rights.  I updated the post when the 11th Circuit (Federal) Court of Appeals started to move in my direction, holding if there is a genuine inability to pay, the felons who served their time should still be allowed to vote.

We now have a final and permanent injunction from the Northern District Court, using the 11th Circuit reasoning, and setting up a system for the State to follow, if it wants to review each and every felon's application.  The State is likely to appeal, knowing it will lose in the 11th Circuit, but it most likely keeps the felons from voting this November. The State obviously hopes the more complaint Supreme Court majority of right wing justices will come to their rescue, as the current majority in the US Supreme Court is very much inclined to disenfranchise largely poor and minority people.

Here's hoping, too, the ACLU and other groups go again before the voters and revise Proposition 4 to say there is no need to pay off any unpaid fines or costs to vote.  If a rich person is convicted of criminal fraud, and serves his or her time, and is out on the streets, the people who were defrauded don't need to be able have the fraudster not vote. They can go seek their restitution from the fraudster.  I truly think the time has come for a proper textural and historical reading of the Fifteenth Amendment, and to join Vermont, Maine, and other civilized nations in restoring rights to felons, whether they are still in jail or have completed their sentences (or been deemed to have completed their sentences).  Enough with this disenfranchisement.

No memoriam for Margaret Thatcher

As the hours drift down on Memorial Day, I found this by accident. The story goes Chumbawumba recorded this in 2005, and asked fans to pre-order it--with the promise to deliver it upon Margaret Thatcher's death. Thatcher died on April 8, 2013, nearly eight years later. The band dutifully sent out the extended play record (about 10 minutes total) though they had broken up. It is a compelling listen.

It is difficult for Americans not familiar with British history and politics to feel the abject and righteous hatred for Margaret Thatcher among those who have deep empathy and understanding of how destructive Thatcher was to entire communities, and how people there were set against each other. One connects the Brexit politics as rooted in Thatcherism, as well. If one is familiar with the various British films that deal indirectly if not directly with Thatcherism, her attack on the miners as an attack on the working classes, and her willingness to give succor to racism to further divide the working classes, one can begin to feel that again righteous hatred.

Britain's most respected modern writer, Hillary Mantel, wrote an essay she published only after Thatcher's death--due to obvious legal considerations--called The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher. In the first Kingsman film, the lead character, who learns how the Kingsman agent with whom he was speaking, had saved Thatcher from an assassination attempt, replied that may not have been a good thing after all. And then we have this EP from Chumbawumba. Thatcher was very smart, had important money and media backing, never won a majority, but won enough to govern, in a system where Great Britain suffers from overrepresentation from sectors that should not be so overrepresented (sound familiar?). With deep institutional support, and herding of the masses, she was effective in ruling. She is not like Trump in this manner, though the effects are similar and echo here and in Great Britain.

In the end, Thatcher was remarkably evil in both intent and action. I am not sure Great Britain has produced someone so terrible for its commonwealth and society in centuries. The effect of her rule is continuing to be felt and are dividing a nation forged together over centuries. It will be interesting to see how the Scots react in the next couple of years, and even how Northern Ireland reacts. I am also not sure if the post-Ian Paisley Orangemen and Orangewomen are wondering whether they are better off joining the rest of Ireland. 

As we say, we'll see.

Emily Davis and the way in which Obama destroyed youthful idealism

There is a young woman I found on YouTube who does her own compositions, but who began more just covering Bad Religion songs with her acoustic guitar.  In watching videos of various Bad Religion songs she covered, the young woman, Emily Davis, initially proved to me is why I have said Bad Religion was less punk than urban folk music.

What struck me, though, is this early 2009 video of her cover of the song, Walk Away, opens with her Obama for president 2008 button. There is so much hope in her voice and presentation that one feels for this young woman as to what will occur when this supposedly transformational candidate governs little differently than any another corporate banker.  Barack Obama, Inc. triumphed, and couldn't even bring himself to do anything for the people in Flint, Michigan suffering from an intentional decision from a Republican governor's administration to give these people leaded water.

Now, cut to February 2020, and an older, and clearly jaded Davis performing another Bad Religion song, Candidate.  She now knows.

For me, this is an adult failure of profound proportions.  It speaks directly to my rage at my fellow Boomers and Oldsters (which latter term is simply a contraction of "Old" and "Monsters"), for not standing with our children and grandchildren and not promoting their ideals with them. The earnestness of 2009 Emily Davis and the hardness of 2020 Emily Davis should be enough to make any concerned parent scream at our neighbors and friends of our age groups. But, no. We secretly seem to like Davis' jadedness, and say, Glad she grew up.  Nothin's gonna fundamentally change.  Vote Biden!  Vote Trump!

Ugh.

But, anyway, forget the despair and rage in this moment. For Emily Davis is a very talented young woman.  Here is a very recent song and video she and her band, The Murder Police, wrote and performed. The song is called Artificial Happiness.  And here is another one, a live performance, It Wasn't a Joke.  These are great and deserve our attention.  It is not all despair, ya know? 

Private universities reflecting the inequality and oligopoly that is the United States

Read this and weep--or at least be outraged. And note the UC president, who oversees nine separate and sprawling institutions, makes $570,000 a year. Here are three juicy graphs from the article from the Chronicle of Higher Education:

All told, the compensation of the 28 key employees reported to the IRS in 2018 amounted to over $29 million. That sum alone exceeds by nearly 50 percent the costs of the pay raises the university would have granted this year to all of its employees.

Then there is the issue of deferred compensation for top executives. According to the university’s latest audit, total liabilities related to deferred compensation amounted to over $130 million — or $30 million more than the institution will save by suspending contributions to its thousands of employee retirement accounts this year.

While a handful of top administrators will take a modest pay cut this year, the university has not said whether any of its executives will forfeit the sums accumulated in their deferred-compensation plans. I assume they won’t. There is a searing irony in the fact that these well-paid officers may keep their lucrative deferred-compensation packages even as staff and faculty sacrifice the value in their retirement funds — which are deferred compensation on a far more modest level. Altogether, these practices do not paint a portrait of an institution with robust mechanisms of oversight and accountability.

So, it's Memorial Day weekend

So, it's Memorial Day weekend. Here are the three duties we citizens owe to soldiers:

1. Do not send soldiers to wars unless you really, really, really have to do so. To ensure that, be skeptical of all claims to go to war, and put the burden of proof on those who want a war.

2. When sending soldiers off to war, make sure they are well prepared, and well protected as much as humanly possible.

3. When the soldiers are injured, physically or mentally, ensure soldiers are provided the care they need when returning home.

And please, let's dispense with the idea that our nation's soldiers fought for our freedom. Maybe one can say that about the few remaining living vets who fought in WWII. However, our nation's soldiers did not preserve our personal or national "freedom" in the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama, Iraq (twice), Afghanistan, and the interventions that were not quite full on wars. Those have all been wars of choice, and wars primarily designed to fuel munitions makers' and financiers' profits, and, with the pomp and circumstance designed to keep our nation's citizens confused and ultimately pacified. It is why duty #1 is so important to bear in mind.

So, yeah, it's Memorial Day weekend. Maybe, in between the beers many of us consume, we can figure out how to be better citizens and truly show our concern for those who serve in our nation's military.  And maybe, if we want to reflect about all the dead soldiers this weekend, we should start asking ourselves whether we have a better use for the 60% of the federal discretionary budget we spend on war-making.

The housing crisis response explained in one article

From this extremely well informed article in the NY Review of Books:

This is what the recovery from the 2008 crash looks like. People scrambling to pay rent for decrepit houses, houses that let everyone cash in except the occupants: the company that bought the home, the investors that financed that company, the bank that securitized the home’s debt, the bondholders who bought those securities, and the speculators who make bets on whether the bonds will pay out or not.

The article provides in very complicated (for those not familiar with the details of what went wrong in the housing bubble, and what went further wrong with the Bush II-Obama bailout of the rich), but very enlightening, detail, why I am so angry with Obama and hate it when people venerate this phony. And why I have no doubt Biden will handle the repercussions from this crisis in a similar way. I love the contrast drawn between FDR's approach, which was about saving mostly white people's homes during the Great Depression, and the way in which Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama took care of the investor and other wealthy classes.  For years, I said we could have, for $3 trillion, paid off every person's home mortgage, saved people from losing their homes, and probably incentivized people to lower, not raise, rents--with the stick being a national rent control act.*  But, no. Failure, and so people more and more fell toward fascism when socialism was not on the political policy menu.  

We see this playing out in the coronavirus crisis economic fallout, where we take care of big business and leave small business gasping for air, and the regular folks left behind, unless they are lucky yet to get the unemployment check with the $600 boost, which Republicans are working so hard to end. All we had to do was do what other nations have done, which is have the government pay the payroll departments of businesses and keep the check monies coming while we sheltered in place, and have a truly small business oriented program. But, again, no. And, again, failure. And the people become more and more enamored with hardline fascism.

Joe Biden will never save us.  Never.

* You may say, oh my!  That is so much money.  Well, here is Forbes to tell us the banks and financiers were given up to $16 trillion in support and subsidies.  The article helps us understand how risk was underwritten and guaranteed by the government, while profit was privatized.  And pray tell, how much would the economy have been boosted if people didn't have pesky mortgages to pay?  Think more consumer goods would have been sold? More vacations? More restaurant visits?  We know the dark answer, though.  This would have restored belief in our democratic/republican institutions, and would have caused people to wonder why there is not public housing in the first place, or other things that would impinge on rich people taking most of the money.  

FDR campaigned on the New Deal in 1932. He didn't wait until after the election to spring it upon the nation.

It is starting to be heard, even among historians I respect, such as labor historian, Erik Loomis, that FDR did not campaign on the New Deal. This is an argument that will be marshaled on behalf of Biden to justify his non-committal to anything specific that may sound like he is agreeing with anything Bernie Sanders has proposed.  Worse, it will be used to justify Biden not saying much of anything at all, other than "Get rid of Trump and restore our nation's sanity."

Here is Eric Rauchway to help us begin to understand why this belief about FDR's 1932 campaign remains so embedded among historians who should know better, and pundits who are just lackey employees for corporate executives' world views.  As I have viewed the evidence, when FDR talked about balancing budgets, it was primarily spoken before a couple of business groups, which was a time when politicians could say one thing one place and another thing another place--meaning before instant worldwide communication. FDR had his Brains (later shortened to Brain) Trust of largely more pro-business regulation and pro-works program in place well before his nomination, and the ideas being proposed had been percolating for quite some time. Yes, it is true the 1932 Democratic Party platform had balancing the budget as a priority, but that plank always struck me as a leftover from the 1924 John W. Davis candidacy for president, the most conservative Democratic nominee for president since before Grover Cleveland, and which led to a third-party campaign in 1924 from the saintly Robert LaFollette, a Republican progressive.  

I think it is important to push back against this historians' and pundits' error early and often.

Samuel Moyn's essay on historiography, historical analogies, and the Age of Trump

This is a much more intelligent analysis than we recently received from the old SDSers. It is not that I agree with everything Yale Law Prof and History Department prof, Samuel Moyn, says, though I do agree with most of it. What I find compelling was Moyn's ultimate historiography analysis.

For me, though, I have come to the conclusion the Weimar-modern America analogy works--but not for the reasons the SDSers, and other historians and political writers, think. Their version of the analogy is one most historians believe, which is the rise of Hitler in 1932-1933 was "the" fault of the Communists not joining the Social Democrats in a coalition government in the end days of the Weimar Republic.

My historically based analysis and conclusion is German President Hindenburg awarded Hitler his power in the Reichstag because the German business class, German monarchists, and German Catholic clergy threw in with Hitler, and pressured Hindenburg to give Hitler power. The Social Democrats had offered nothing to the Communists to join them, which was beyond insulting because of the experience the Communists had in the 1920s with the Social Democrats, when the Communists had significant political power inside much of Germany. At that time, the Social Democrats joined a coalition with the business class and right wing Catholic parties to destroy the Communist movement, undermining worker solidarity. In doing so, the Social Democrats ironically helped create the conditions which led to the rise of Nazism. There is also no showing a German Social Democratic government leadership, if they took over power in Germany, would have alleviated the suffering of German workers in the spreading Great Depression, which would have resulted in a likelier harsher pro-Nazi backlash within a year or two. This is why I think the Weimar era analogy works better than Moyn may think, though Moyn is more about taking down the analogy as usually used by most Cold War and post-Cold War historians, and those pundits inside the American corporate media orbit.

Moyn's essay is well worth the read, as he makes a far more important point that Trump is not an aberration, and it is a dangerous mistake for what remains of our Republic to treat defeating Trump as the main task in trying to solve our nation's structural problems. Moyn nails the fact the NeverTrumper Republicans, mostly neo-cons who gave us the Bush II administrations, have coalesced into the power corridors of the Democratic Party, and Biden is therefore emblematic of the DC consensus that led us to Trump as the reaction. It is another reason I am finding it more comforting for me to say no to Biden, at least through this summer. Yeah, I think people may want to read Moyn's essay.

My commencement speech to the Class of 2020: We are bad parents. We suck. I am so sorry.

Can you believe it? Obama and Oprah, the two African-American faces of corporate America, delivered national commencement speeches yesterday. Unbelievable in the hubris they show because they are so responsible, along with the majority of voting adults in this nation, for the rot the pandemic has exposed. Theirs is a continuous act of betrayal, while Trump, Bush I and Bush II, Reagan, and Republican politicians in general are truly reprehensible and destructive. Here is my commencement speech because I am an arrogant Boomer, too, but my speech is one where I am essentially saying, I'm sorry. We suck. You are fine. If anything, I don't understand why you young people are not more angry at us bad parents.

Hi, kids. I don't know how many of you know it, but you have the right to be angry at anyone still alive who was born at any time from 1910 forward. Each generation, from the Greatest Generation, the Silent Generation (my parents' generation), and Baby Boomers (my generation) screwed you and put you into the position you face today. We, your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, are the enemy of what is good. We are the enemy of what you need to live your lives. We have no right to lecture you. You are correct to say, "Ok, Boomer," or "Ok, Old Person," because the aforementioned generations won't give up any convenience to do anything to help you or the planet. We are the ones who voted for Clinton or Trump, while you voted for Bernie. We are the ones who keep voting for our own selfish, short term interests, and then have the gall to tell you how you are being selfish or lacking courage for rejecting our latest Democratic Party presumptive nominee, Joe Biden, or rejecting the most lazy, incompetent, appealing-to-ignorance, and hateful president nearly ever, Donald Trump.

So, yeah, kids, congratulations for graduating into a pandemic on top of the four existential issues of our time, of which you are right to see and fight against, and which your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents are so terribly wrong in continuing to allow to fester and grow. Just in case you may be wondering, to make sure we are talking about the same things, the four existential crises are: climate chaos, systemic inequality (where the rich literally got much richer while your stupid parents lost their jobs and listen to Trump tweets or whatever bullshit is spewed on MSNBC and CNN), no medical insurance for tens of millions after Obamacare was passed, and hundreds were dying every day for lack of medical care or insurance before the pandemic, and student debt, which will mean you will be servicing debt instead of accumulating capital--but oh, your parents will be demanding you pay more payroll taxes in the next ten years to fund their Social Security and Medicare. And now our Earth Mother has tired, too, of waiting for your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents to get their acts together.  So, Mother Earth gave us all a virus that our dogs and cats don't seem to get. It just kills us humans. There are more viruses and bacteria coming from Mother Earth, which some call Gaia.  And when we think about it, just saying Gaia and Mother Earth is really the only religion anyone needs. We don't need to go into the hate factories of organized religion at all.  In fact, just saying the Earth is a living organism, just as we are, is a better religion to believe in than the stupid, hateful, destructive Sky God religions, which essentially say, "Slash and burn away. For when you die, you ascend into the sky."  The sooner we realize every religion is an unnecessary people divider, the better.  As for me, I don't really know if there is a First Cause or anything resembling a god, but that is so much less important than how we treat each other, and so much less important than the failure of my generation and older to treat you and your siblings as if you are all our children.

Oh, and that last president, Obama, and his Internet commencement speech? Don't believe a word that guy says. He was part of the problem. Just watch on YouTube the portion of Michael Moore's film about Trump's election, and what led to it, and particularly the scene where Obama comes to Flint, Michigan, where the residents, mostly poor, and majority African-American, still have lead in their water.  You'll be amazed to see how this crisis was intentionally made against poor and African-American people, and how Obama not only didn't do anything, he lied to the people there, and told them it would be somehow okay to live with lead in their water. This on top of ordering the US Army to do bombing exercises on abandoned buildings there. The whole film is worth taking in, because it helps you see what I am leveling about with you--and how the ultimate enemy is corporate cable "news" of nearly any type. Anchorman 2 is right in so many ways that is worthy of 100 years of capitalist press criticism.  Obama speaks pretty words and soaring, elegant rhetoric, sure. But, he is as bad a parent to the young of this country as anyone who has held office since FDR died in April 1945. Obama is actually worse than any Democratic predecessor, and worse than Republicans like Eisenhower and Nixon. This is because, as the number of corporations owning media in our nation drifted down to four or five altogether, the window of acceptable discourse has become more exulting of selfishness, division, hate, and grifting, summarized in the twin, but related phrases, "I've got mine" and "Get off my lawn."

And let me say this:  I don't even blame you for not coming out to vote enough this year in the presidential primary, because, after all, you are just kids. We are the parents. We should have taken care of you. Instead, we suck. We suck like the parents of the 1960s "radical kids"--you know, the "radical" kids who were right back then about Vietnam and the need to confront and change racism in our society. And fun note: more of you, as a percentage, came out in 2020 than the Boomers who got the right to vote in 1972 or thereafter. So, yeah, funny to hear us lecture you about civic duty.

Notwithstanding all this ranting, I think it is probably best for you to not yell at your parents at the graduation party or dinner this evening.  Just ignore them. You can even tell them to screw off and be done with it all for the day.  Let them justify you by saying you had an emotional day. What you should consider doing is emailing Biden's campaign and the DNC and saying you won't vote for Biden or most any Democrat or Republican. If you want to lay it on them even more, you have the right to tell them they had better freaking listen and change their ways now. After all, your stupid parents who are Democrats--don't get me started about your stupid Trump supporting or Republican supporting parents--say they will vote "Blue no matter who." Tell the DNC and Biden they should accept a left, progressive labor leader like Sara Nelson, the flight attendants union leader, for VP. Even Forbes' magazine sees her as VP material. Go ahead, look her up.  You know how to do that.  Your parents don't.  In fact, your Democratic Party voting parents should pretty much accept Howie Hawkins coming over from the Green Party to be VP, and not care about the fact Howie doesn't wear a dress. Saying that is a way to start fighting back against the stupid lectures from old people who still don't understand what happened to them, let alone what they are continuing to do to you.  You are going to have to scare them, as that is the only language we older people understand.

Kurt Vonnegut, the writer, wanted us to be nicer to each other. But, this is not that time.  The truth is this: Your parents and up have been bad parents. They have not been nice to you. Not at all. In fact, they can claim they love you, but they hate you. You see it in their memes they send around on FB, and what they said at cocktail parties or bar-b-ques. They said how dumb you are. How entitled you are.  How selfish you are. All while sending around memes that are hoaxes, lies, and hateful statements, which, when you say they are wrong, they don't even know how to research the Internet to find out. They laugh at you for not knowing how to use a rotary phone, as if they know how to use an abacus or ride a chariot. And all this while not knowing how to use the Internet and coming to you to put up the wallpaper on their cellphones. 

You have a right to say to your parents, I'm tired of how you keep hurting me, our country, and our planet for your convenience. So, yeah, email Biden's campaign. Email the DNC.  Look up your local congress critter and US senator representatives and email them, too. You have the right to tell them you are sick of their bullshit. You are sick of their being bad parents, and you are not going to reward them with your vote.  Maybe that will wake them the hell up from their arrogant, ignorant, and, above all, selfish stupor. But, hey, once again. Congratulations. You are now free to start servicing your student debt.  Free to figure out how to pay for health insurance.  Free to be you and me.  Do your own thing.  My God.  I am so very sorry I didn't do more for you.

I suck, too.

What Digby doesn't say or in fact what Digby misses

In the liberal blogsophere, it is often said, "What Digby sez..."  And she even put that into the title of her blog in the last year, as she is often wise.  However, this post is one which is emblematic of where I disagree with Digby's worldview.  It is her commentary about the barber in New York State who re-opened, against the government's shut down order, and ironically, but not surprisingly, tested positive thereafter for the virus, and likely spread it.

Digby is wrong in her headline in terms of priority and she is wrong when she says it is "daft" for the barber to blame politicians for what is happening to his business.

First, the headline. She is right "a haircut is not essential." However, what the barber is yelling about is his right to earn a living. He is not longing to give someone a haircut. He is longing to be paid for doing a service so he can pay other bills.

Second, Digby's argument that the barbar is "daft" to blame politicians. This is Digby at her comfortable Santa Monica culturally liberal worst. It is actually proper to blame Establishment Washington, from Trump to McConnell, from Pelosi to Schumer, for not doing what other nations, whether it is Canada, New Zealand, or much of Europe, which is the paycheck guarantee program, and a robust small business bailout. I really wonder, Digby, who do you blame for his loss of income in his business when the government told him to shut down his business?

Oh well. It is why Digby was never a Bernie fan, and voted Warren this time. It is a limitation that, frankly, in this moment, is really disappointing. I get the guy is probably an asshole at one level or another. But to deny his pain and essentially erase his best argument is, well, worse than daft.  For it is an argument that erases the suffering of so many workers, whether non-essential or essential, and it is precisely where the small businessperson's interests and the workers' interests combine.  Digby, however, is content to just demonize the guy and obscure the point I just made here.

Why I so recall the Lakers' victory over the Philadelphia 76ers in the 1980 NBA Finals

I so remember this victory from 40 years ago as if it happened last night. I had moved to CA from NJ in June 1979 to start law school in San Diego. I had been a Lakers' fan since 1969, when the Lakers lost to the Celtics, and I fell in love with Jerry West. When the NBA season began at the end of October or thereabouts, I realized I could pick up the Lakers' radio station, KLAC 540 AM, if memory serves, on the radio in San Diego. For the opening game of that storied season, which was against the then-San Diego Clippers, I heard, for the first time, the legendary Chick Hearn broadcast a Lakers' game. I recall being completely knocked over by Hearn's fast, but clear, speaking, and precise, reporting of the game. I was laughing at all of his phrases he used that were literary in structure--Dribble-drive, Yo-yoing up and down with the ball, Put this game in the refrigerator, the butter's getting hard, or he faked that guy right into the popcorn machine, etc.(the Chickisms are listed at the Wiki page for Chick's biography). I recall being shocked at how he ripped the Lakers for not playing up to the level he had expected, and thought to myself, "Does this guy know he is paid by the Lakers' management?" It was so extraordinary, I recorded a portion of one of the early games and sent it to my longest known friend, a sports fanatic of the first order, in a cassette, and wrote, You have to listen to this sportscaster. He is unlike anyone you have ever heard. Hearn was always on the ball, and not behind the play--unlike nearly everyone I had ever heard, even the still outstanding Marv Albert. 

I listened to nearly every game that rookie season of Magic Johnson, and started getting the Los Angeles Times to keep up with all things Lakers. I was back at my folks' house in NJ for much of the Lakers-76ers finals, and was very concerned the Lakers would lose the series when Jabbar went down. This article shows how amazing Johnson was as a 21 year old leader, though it could have stressed Jamaal Wilkes' performance that night, scoring 37 points with ten rebounds. Wilkes had been a favorite of mine since his UCLA days, when he was known as Keith Wilkes. 

The personal thing I will always recall, and my parents do as well, is that night, while the game was ending and I was jumping up and down at this Lakers' championship win, my heart started palpitating. Badly. I had to sit down, and I was sweating. My parents and I thought it was only my being so excited. It wasn't. It was, in retrospect, the first manifestation of the condition I was born with, known as Wolff-Parkinson-White (WPW) syndrome, where I had been born with an extra, unregulated passage into and through the heart, and which would become more and more prevalent over the next eight years, almost killing me in my thirtieth year. I ended up in major, heart-stopping, heart-lung machine surgery, performed by Stanford affiliated doctors, to clip that passage in a six or seven hour microscopically performed surgery. From there, I either already had or developed atrial fibrillation and tachycardia, and it was from that time on, I lived in a world where I had to worry about having a group health plan, and deal with out of pocket costs that grew to an average of $20-25K a year for coverage for myself and my family. The WPW or electrical issues appear to be idiopathic, meaning they are not hereditary, as far as we can ever know. 

But, yeah, I will always remember that night of the Lakers' victory over the 76ers.

Proposed Solutions for Two Differently Situated States

California has been the economic powerhouse in the United States. It last stood as the fifth largest economy in the entire planet. New Mexico, meanwhile, though I consider it the Greatest Secret in the United States, lags at near the bottom in any number of economic indicators, owing to its status as a colony of the oil/gas industry (see this article calling next door, western Texas, an oil/gas "colony"), and cultural traits where people expect little from their state and local governments except cronyism and corruption.  

The coronavirus crisis' economic crisis is here, and will get worse--much worse.  The Congress and Trump will likely approve more state aid, but whether that is enough is a dream.  It will never be enough without the paycheck guarantee program which Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and US Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) are demanding, and even right wing Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) are calling for something very similar.  So, what can a state government do?

The two states I currently know best are California, where I lived for nearly forty years, and New Mexico.

California: California Governor Newsom has proposed batten-down-the-hatches cuts in response to the crisis. My take is the governor needs to re-review California's strengths and act accordingly. California's strengths include a largely well educated workforce (the linked-to article shows the least well educated in California are in a mini-agriculturally based colony of Central California), remains a beautiful location, and has a diverse economy. Instead of panic-driven and draconian cuts, California should pass a new initiative to modify its deeply constraining Balanced Budget Amendment, and allow the State to run a deficit of up to 30% of the State's Gross (Domestic) Product, which GDP last stands at $3.137 trillion, yes, trillion. This modification will allow the State to issue bonds, and engage in spending, that completes infrastructure redevelopment, invest in free-at-point-of-service tuition at all its public colleges and universities, cancel all student debt of those who incurred the debt while residing in CA, and currently residing for a year or more in CA), plus being a tax based single payer medical insurance system, which services will be limited to those who can prove they have resided in the State for at least one year (oh, and yeah, that will include residents who are not citizens, since those people often work, and it is time to join true civilization). This will almost completely avoid cuts in services. Yes, it is almost always a good idea to audit various programs, and find cost-efficiencies. However, with this modification, the State's governmental leaders would better inspire its residents to feel they are looking forward with confidence in themselves and the future. And trust me on this: Most other nations and businesses in other nations will invest in California's future, and purchase those bonds across California's diverse economic strengths.

New Mexico: This State could begin to put itself on the road to California level economic strength if it only invested its ridiculously high land grant and other grant funds into itself. The State is sitting on a total of $23 billion set of grants or funds, largely for education needs. The State's budget is a fraction of CA's massive yearly budget, and stands at its still highest level of $7.6 billion, that's billion with a B. For comparison, CA's budget for this year, before the crises, was $153 billion. New Mexico's gross state (domestic) product is only $105 billion, in other words a relatively tiny fraction of California's economic product. New Mexico Governor Lujan-Grisham is going to be told to make deep cuts in education and other services, similar to what Governor Newsom is proposing. As noted at the outset, New Mexico is already near or at the bottom  among states in the United States in most economic indicators, so that spending cuts will immediately and adversely affect the State's most vulnerable residents.

The solution for New Mexico is to not go on a spending cut spree for a state where too many of its residents are already impoverished. While New Mexico has a balanced budget requirement, I am not calling for that balanced budget requirement to be modified--as I think that is only something to do when our fellow citizens gain more confidence in the state governmental leaders. The proposed solution is three pronged:  First, use more of the land grant fund to fund the education budget over the next two years, so as to leave room to pay for other government services.  In return, I am fine with at least foregoing the teacher and staff raises passed at the start of this tumultuous year.  Second, use $1 billion out of the nearly $5 billion severance tax fund to prop up smaller businesses in the State, as a form of a mini-payroll guarantee act. I know there are limits, either legislatively or constitutionally, to how much of these funds may be removed at a given time.  However, the State can decide to use the political will of this moment, and openly have the existential argument we need over the way in which these funds have not been adequately used for investment in the State's residents, local businesses, and environmental protection. Third, if there are to be cuts, then concurrently restore the top marginal income tax rate from before 2004 for those who earn or gain more than $300,000 a year.  Remember, this is a marginal increase, so that the increase does not apply until earning or gaining the first dollar above $300,000, and only applies to those marginal sums above $300,000.  Poor people get asked to sacrifice by having less services provided.  Rich people get asked to pay more taxes to sacrifice.  Anyone want to guess who that still hurts more?  If you don't know, please put down Atlas Shrugged for a moment and look around.

And if we don't know how the oil/gas industry in New Mexico is already being bailed out of obligations and commitments, then read this article from the Santa Fe New Mexican, dated April 21, 2020.  This bailout is on top of the monies the federal government doled out to this industry, and on top of the subsidies, credits, exemptions, etc. the oil/gas industry receives each year to destroy our planet.  It is ridiculous to give these companies a further break from their obligations, as I see nothing in the article showing any give back to the workers who toiled for the oil/gas companies--and obviously, the land pollution in the ground is not going away without costs to the communities where the drilling had been occurring. I am not sure what New Mexico's otherwise liberal-minded Land Commissioner is up to here, but I hope I am wrong about the part regarding workers.  And if this does not show how New Mexico is a colony of the oil/gas industry, where the resources are depleted or at least abused, workers and communities paying the cost, while profits are subsidized at each step of the economic processes, then I am not sure what else can convince you. And maybe read this post about how colonialism works, from a sharp heterodox economics blog, known as Naked Capitalism.

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I offer these proposals in an effort to help us all think bigger than we are told to do in our corporate influenced politics and media. I admit I could be dead wrong, and am likely to be at least partially wrong, with respect to these proposals.  However, I offer these proposals because we need to look at each State in our nation, and recognize each State's strengths and challenges, and look at long range, not merely short range, interests of each's State's residents, for our nation, and our planet. If we simply panic, propose and enact deep spending cuts, and let people suffer, we are not preserving anything. Worse, desperate people are more likely to take power into their own hands, which will not be pretty. The true purpose of government has come into focus again, and it is time we speak to it and about it.  And maybe people who don't know what I mean by "true purpose of government," here and here are intellectual rants from the Funky Academic, Irami Osei-Frimpong, a PhD in Philosophy student at University of Georgia. He grew up in Baldwin Hills, CA, in Los Angeles County, CA.  He is perhaps the most brilliant person on the topics of governmental purpose, the social contract, and related topics, as I've seen in a long time.  He speaks with such fun excitement, and with true insight. It may also help to read Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton biography, because it helps explain how Hamilton, as a major Founder, viewed the purpose of government as investing in people, using natural resources wisely--and not being afraid of debt if the debt is geared toward human and other investments.

Wednesday night musing

I have been thinking about the Pelosi bill, and how inadequate it is--even as the most Republicans snarl they won't pass anything that helps individuals and small businesses. What I think Pelosi and the Democratic leadership don't understand is this lesson from history: If the liberals and soft left don't move immediately to have a written plan they unite behind that specifically and only helps individuals and small businesses, Trump and the Republicans will eventually move to pass that type of legislation, but do so in a way that predominately helps white people--focusing on Rust Belt and Southern States.* That is the political strategy of the fascist and the Nazis. Let's recall Mussolini and Hitler went to mass public works, all while scapegoating the "other" within Italian and German societies. Mussolini went after intellectuals and leftists. Hitler went after those same two groups, but focused German citizen attention on the Jews, who, often enough, fit those categories in sufficent numbers.

Instead of vote shaming young progressives, and dissenting intellectuals, it is time for the Democratic Party leadership to recognize the danger and act--not repeat the tragic and fatal error of the German Social Democrats and other Weimar Republic politicians and media outlets. Pelosi should revamp the HEROES Bill, cut the 1,800 pages to 100 pages, put in the Paycheck Protection Program and the small business program Jayapal and Sanders are pushing for.  Also, just as importantly, get rid of the lobbyists' bailout and the bailout of debt collection agencies. Let Republicans like McConnell try helping those truly undeserving interests.  I heard someone on the Internet say it simply: Shoot for the moon and reach the stars. What that person meant is, if the Republicans are going to reject a Democratic Party plan, let it be one independent and Republican working class voters want to see as much as Democratic Party working class voters.  And as Democrats gain people's trust, it will lead to more votes for Democratic Party candidates, and put pressure on McConnell as he never has had before.  It is worth a try as we see the usual Pelosi method doesn't work.

* This article in the Atlantic shows how Trump has pivoted to opening things up as he saw the numbers of minorities and poor who were being more infected, and more infected fatally.

Maybe a single payer approach may be less expensive, and cover more people?

Uwe Reinhardt sighs from The Great Beyond, as he hears people reading this article from The American Prospect, complete with a couple of handy charts, and asking why we can't have what he supported most of his adult life.

Henry Kissinger was a self-promoting war criminal, and part of the military-industrial complex

This New Yorker essay-review of a new book on Henry Kissinger is okay, but not nearly as great as it could have been. The essay-review backs into Kissinger's ambition, his phony "realism" in foreign affairs, and the monstrous things he did as a National Security Council adviser to Nixon, and later Secretary of State under Nixon and Ford. What the essayist never quite understands, however, is Kissinger's place in American foreign policy of the past sixty-five years. The writer thinks Kissinger's influence is overstated in our popular perceptions, and that there is some mythology at work, as much from Kissinger as both his detractors and sycophants. This is close to reality, but not nearly enough. What needed to be made explicit is Kissinger is overrated in terms of any real knowledge about European history, his abjectly ignorant and racist assumptions about "Third World" history and politics, and how Kissinger was simply a very public part of the American foreign policy establishment. The essayist is correct Kissinger styled himself a "realist," and he was--though in a most cynical sense of self-promotion. Kissinger lacked Hans Morgenthau's and George Kennan's integrity, and that is why he is still feted among the elite power corridors in American political life through today. 

The most insightful Kissinger biography remains Sy Hersh's 1983, The Price of Power, notwithstanding the New Yorker essayist's glib and highly inaccurate dismissal of Hersh's book. The essayist is wrong to dismiss Hersh's book as describing Kissinger as "an unhinged paranoiac." I read Hersh's book in its first release in 1983, and often used the book as a guide to which I returned again and again. In approaching Hersh's book for the first time, I did not come to the book as a newcomer on the subject, as I already had extensive knowledge about Kissinger, including reading various books on the Nixon administration, Nixon's foreign policy in Cambodia, Chile, Iran, and, of course, in Vietnam. In college, at Rutgers, I had read Kissinger's book on nuclear weapons, and had a professor at Rutgers who studied under Kissinger. The professor would tell us students stories about Kissinger, from the mundane, such as how boring Kissinger was as a lecturer, to more substantive information, including the details of the Nixon administration wiretaps on Kissinger's former subordinates at the National Security Council, including Roger Morris and Morton Halperin, who had naively joined Kissinger in working for the Nixon administration, thinking Kissinger was going to end the War Against Vietnam.

Other than the early life of Kissinger well told in this essay, not much dealt with in Hersh's book, it is Hersh's book which remains a powerful, wide-ranging, informative and exciting read. The essayist's description does no honest service in describing the book. There is information the essayist would have known had he truly engaged with Hersh's book. For example, Hersh had the goods on Kissinger playing double agent in advising the Humphrey and Nixon campaigns during the 1968 presidential election, making the supposition The New Yorker essayist makes about Kissinger likely getting a nod in a Humphrey administration more accurate than the essayist appears to know. Hersh also showed, contrary to Kissinger's denials, Kissinger went along with, and supported the wiretaps on his own aides. However, Hersh admits Kissinger had reason to believe Morris, Halperin, or Watts were the people leaking information about the Nixon administration's secret and illegal bombings of Cambodia to the New York Times reporters (Edwin Beecher and Hersh himself), though the wiretaps failed to show that. Hersh also understood, as did William Shawcross in Shawcross' book on Nixon's policies in Cambodia, that the idea for "Vietnamization" came from US Generals Abrams and Wheeler. The policy is not something Nixon or Kissinger thought up themselves. The idea was to increase bombings in North Vietnam, bomb the "sanctuaries" in Cambodia, and even bomb Laos--with the goal these peasants and their communist leaders would beg for peace on US terms. In pursuing this set of policies, these military and political leaders ignored our own military's analyses of bombings' effects on non-developed nations' civilian populations, which tends to be that such people become more entrenched, and feel they have nothing to lose by continuing the fight against a foreign invader. All of these men were highly overrated as military or political strategists, and operated from an assumption of racist superiority and cruelty.

The essence of Hersh's political-journalistic biography is that Kissinger was a player who rose to the top levels of the American military-industrial complex and establishment. Hersh also exposed Kissinger as overrated with respect to his historical scholarship, narcissistically arrogant, and an ass-kisser of those who held political power.  It is a terrible thing for the essayist to reduce Hersh's book to a partial sentence that makes Hersh's book sound dramatically ridiculous.*

Overall, I found the essayist to have been unaware of what Chomsky correctly sees as continuities in American foreign policies. The focus on Kissinger as a merely self-promoting individual is fine as far as it goes. However, the essayist failed to see how Kissinger knew how to envelop himself within the heart of the American post-World War II foreign policy establishment, almost from the start of his career. The American Empire is a machine, though it is a machine which does not operate cleanly or efficiently in the sense of a lockstep. Nonetheless, there is a clear pattern of duplicity from foreign policy spokespeople and leaders. There is a pattern of the promotion of sociopaths who populate the foreign policy establishment, and those who promulgate policies which thrive on cruelty and destruction, nearly always in an effort to enforce corporate power and "expanded markets." There is rarely any public understanding of the various foreign policy moves as anything other than mere "mistakes" or seeing our mayhem, death, and destruction as somehow occurring because we are too nice. One has to read the internal memoranda, and parse the words of our leaders and their advisers, to see the ugliness and cruelty beneath. The New Yorker could have had any number of more informed writers review the new Kissinger biography, and failed in its choice of essayists.

* The irony, too, is the essayist may not have been aware of the novelist Joseph Heller's acerbic, brilliant novel, Good as Gold (1979), which was as thin a veiled attack on Kissinger as could be. Heller was incensed at the mythology surrounding Kissinger, particularly Marvin and Bernard Kalb's (two then-major television news reporters) ridiculously fawning biography of Kissinger. Heller knew a lot of insiders at Harvard, DC, and elsewhere, and did his own research into Kissinger, which led to the novel, which exposed Kissinger nearly as brilliantly as Hersh did four years later. And yes, I read that novel when it was released. I remember reading the novel in its initial release, and was stunned at how well Heller had captured Kissinger as Bruce Gold, the book's protagonist. Good as Gold was a type of novel more prevalent in the early 20th Century than by the late 1970s or certainly today, where a novelist takes a major or even not so major cultural or political figure, and sharpens their pen to puncture the person. The legendary journalist, screenwriter, and novelist, Ben Hecht, wrote Count Bruga (1926) and A Jew in Love (1931), which were thinly veiled attacks on political and cultural figures, one in Europe, and one in the US. A Jew in Love has very ugly anti-Semitic overtones, though Hecht was himself Jewish in his religious tradition. Hecht later repented about this, and became a devotee of the most reactionary and militant strains of Zionism, which is itself a wild topic to pursue additional reading. Somerset Maugham wrote a darkly mischievous take on Paul Gauguin, in The Moon and Sixpence (1919), which also provided a brilliant understanding of a tormented artist at work on his art. Maugham later wrote a whimsically mischievous take on the then-high and mighty, but late, British Empire era novelist, Hugh Walpole, in Cakes and Ale (1930), though some thought there were elements of the then only recently deceased, Thomas Hardy, of whom I remain a great fan, having read every Hardy novel, and a couple of biographies. These examples of this type of novel are only the ones I have read. There are many, many more of this type of novel in the history of novels over the past two centuries.

Hypocrisy all around on the Reade-Biden matter

I have said from the start that this allegation from Tara Reade against Biden is about corporate media bias, and particularly CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, as the bastions of corporate media liberals and NeverTrump conservatives--elitists all. There is no doubt in my mind that, if Reade had made this allegation against Bernie Sanders, we would have seen Tara! Tara! Tara! at all these outlets--and every damning bit of information against Reade (fraud, Putin-love, etc.) would have been greeted with attacks on the person raising those issues, not poor Tara, the "victim."  I have consistently said we should be far more careful to examine circumstances, and to ask tough questions of the accused and accuser, especially after a number of years have gone by, and to ask for corroboration pro- and con regarding the accused and accuser.  But, that was not the standard the National Organization for Women, corporate media "feminist beat" writers, and politicians in the Democratic Party of recent vintage have given to any number of men. Suddenly, though, we have to defend Joe Biden with all the arguments we were previously told we should never make against any woman accuser.

When people say, What about Trump? I respond Trump is not relevant to this point made above.  We already know Trump, and Republican politicians, media, and voters have no credibility on this subject. Also, unlike Biden, Trump has a pattern of at least four women who have made the very type of allegation of grabbing women's private parts, and Trump's own admission on the Access Hollywood show tape (also contained as a link within the previous link).  

Again, though, what I am trying to focus on, and it is stunning to me how few understand me when I try to say this, is the hypocrisy from all these players in the Republican and Democratic Parties, and their media allies. Here is a very good National Review op-ed (I know, National Review and me have been sorta friendly lately for their great attacks against Trumpist lies regarding the coronavirus) regarding Reade's allegations and Democratic Party hypocrisy, especially compared to Dr. Ford's allegations against Kavanaugh. The op-ed reminded me how Dr. Ford could not recall, and was not consistent, about precisely when or where the incident with Kavanaugh and his buddy took place.  See this one sided take on Dr. Ford, but one that we can readily identify in style as to how Reade's allegations are being discussed among Democratic Party stalwarts, such as this ex-prosecutor writing in USA Today about Reade. Ford's inability to be consistent about where and when was on top of her having offered no corroborating evidence from any witness, other than her psychologist or psychiatrist starting in 2012, decades after the event. One may ask why Dr. Ford didn't come forward when Kavanaugh had sailed through to become a judge on the second highest court in the land, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. I know that is not the same as a Vice President, but surely she ought to have heard about that or heard his name, as that does make some news. The NR op-ed does a good job (not everywhere, but certainly on everyone but AOC, which was a stretch) of showing Democratic Party hackery in their rallying around Biden, who is rarely if ever questioned as to his lies over the years at the establishment media, as one tries to make sense of Reade's allegation.*

However, here is right-wing, Republican operative and partisan, Mona Charen, with an op-ed (which the NR article linked to, showing great integrity on the part of the NR writer) showing Republican mendacity and hypocrisy regarding the Tara Reade allegations. She, at least, is making a more consistent case because she was a vociferous defender of Kavanaugh, and has been a major opponent of the entire "believe women" premise, to a point where I have felt like more of a feminist than Charen for decades--I have read Charen for over a quarter century.  

I just wish people would stop trying to explain to me why we should not believe Tara Reade. I get that Reade's allegation merits skepticism. What these people don't get is how all these people who screamed for believing Dr. Ford against Kavanaugh, and continue to scream against Trump, are suddenly using the very type of arguments they said nobody should ever use against an accusing woman. I didn't buy into that standard then, and I don't buy into it now.  What I also consistently say is corporate media--whether FoxNews, AONN, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post, Washington Examiner, NY Times, NY Post, etc.--is elitist and corporatist, and that media is not our friend. That media can bury or exult us, depending upon whether the pooh-bah who run it like you or not.  The sooner we as citizens get this, the better off our Republic will be.

* And yet, regarding Dr. Ford's allegation against Kavanaugh, I ended up believing Ford because Kavanaugh had so pathetically lied about the meaning of the various sexual innuendos in his yearbook, and his drunken sprees and black outs, and showed no sympathy for Ford at all--or the one other woman, who was clearly seen by the football players as "loose"--and who had no idea she was seen that way, which hurt her terribly in a public spotlight.  Biden's responses included some word salad, par for his course, but he looked a lot better than Kavanaugh in his denials, and again, the Reade allegation is very different from every other woman, and Reade's own previous statements just last year, as to Biden. But those people who she confided the sexual assault story in the 1990s cannot be just ignored, either, unless one says, maybe she was making that up for sympathy back then. Also, while Biden lies about various issues and events, I don't see anything close enough to the allegations, unlike with Kavanaugh. It is, therefore, a house of mirrors--and it is why I am focused far more on the hypocrisy in standards and the way corporate media did its best to bury the story for so long. The difference between now and a decade or so ago is, but for, social media and YouTube, the story would have stayed buried. 

Biden or NotBiden?

There are two well written, but diametrically opposed, essays on whether to endorse Biden or not endorse Biden at this point, which I believe any concerned citizen who are not Trumpist should read.  The first one, which is saying endorse and vote for Biden, is from a former 1960s radical, Max Elbaum.  Elbaum sees Trump as an existential threat to the Republic. The second is from a Salon writer, Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla, who cites much more factual data, and comes to the conclusion Biden is not worth supporting, nor is the Democratic Party's national leadership worth supporting.  I stand with the latter strategically in May 2020 because it is ridiculous to me to endorse Biden without making him concede the moment, and without making the Democratic National Committee, and their enablers in corporate media, sweat with fear.  One may criticize both articles for not stating the best argument the other has offered, but I think lurking beneath Elbaum's essay is the historical analogy to Germany in the period of 1932-1933, as Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, and Germany was off to the races toward World War II and the Holocaust.

With respect to that analogy, I ask readers to look, once again, at the last footnote in my long post from a few weeks ago. I am more clear than ever that the whole "Don't be like the German Communists, who gave us Hitler" argument is wrongheaded, and is a reflection of a failure of historically-based reading comprehension and judgment that is being weaponized for the profesional-managerial and business classes. If we read that footnote at the end of my long post, we see it is German Social Democrats who failed, not the Communists. The German Social Democrats did not want a coalition. They wanted capitulation, and demanded the Communists trust them when, just a few years before, the German Social Democrats had stood with the business classes against the Communists at a time when the Communists had the upper hand in the general strikes pervading major cities in Germany. Yes, the Comintern, in November 1932, had told the German Communist Party not to coalesce with the Social Democrats, who they called Social Fascist (owing to that previous experience, one must say). However, if World War I proved anything, it was that people more often go with their nations more than an international ideology. Had the German Social Democrats offered real compromise to the Communists, there would have been a split among Communists, and the ones in the Reichstag who were elected would have likely and largely agreed to that coalition. 

Worse for those using the wrongheaded analogy, the reason Hitler gained power at the end of 1932 and the start of 1933 was because the business community coalesced with monarchists and leading Catholic clergy to demand Hindenburg put Hitler in charge, even though the Nazis, in the time between the July 1932 and November 1932 elections, lost 35 seats in the Reichstag and lost five percent of their already far less than majority of the vote (37% to 32%, in round numbers). Finally, does anyone think the Social Democrats were going to tell the Brits and French that reparations would no longer be paid, and use mass government investment to put Germans to work in the searing days of the Great Depression?  They were passive-defensive in their entire approach to politics.  Thus, I say we have the whole 1932-1933 German political history story backwards.  The German Communists were not free of blame, but certainly not the main causes for Hitler's rise. 

So, with that excursion into historiography completed, where are we today? I agree with the former 1960s radical we are potentially in a fascistic and perhaps Nazi-like moment with respect to Trump. However, I also agree with the Salon writer that Biden and the business class are completely failing to understand the moment, and must restore the social contract with fundamental reforms they continue to refuse to do. Elbaum misses the significance of Biden suddenly bringing on board Larry Summers as a top adviser, and how the VP short list includes only corporatists like himself. The corporate Dems are the Social Fascist/Social Democrats if one wants to use the analogy in any proper way. Further, as with the business class with Hitler, it is clear the business class has essentially thrown in their lot with Trump, as this article in The New Yorker shows (though the article makes Prescott Bush sound like a near "liberal," when he was an enabler of Hitler in the 1930s, and a supporter of fascist reaction through World War II and beyond). What The New Yorker article shows is the comfortable will almost always be more likely to side with fascists and Nazis for purposes of holding onto their personal wealth. However, when we look at the weak, passive-defensive worldview of the corporate Democrats, we see how the way in which I interpret the German political-historical period of 1932-1933 is playing out in a way which shows how the corporate Democrats and business class are coalescing in a manner which is leading to a second term for Trump. They hold the political power, and are not interested in broadening any coalition that would enact reforms to help regular people. They are the ones ignoring the cries of the people, and are content to have half of Americans not vote, as those are more often the poor and working class. They think they will be able to keep the comfortable comfortable, rather than focus on the needs of the working classes and the poor. These people have no respect for their children's future. They have no respect for people of color, other than hanging with the Oprah-Whoppi set, and virtue signaling with people like pro-white/anti-minority criminal justice system supporter, and corporate tool, Kamala Harris. They are the ones who work much harder to defeat the large progressive base in the Democratic Party, and would rather risk a second term for Trump.

If the corporate Democrats had any strategic political sense, and truly wanted to defeat Trump, Sara Nelson would be on the vice president nominee short list. Nelson is truly pro-labor to get labor voters out in Rust Belt states. And we already know minority voters are much smarter about not looking at superficialities as skin color for a candidate. The two top candidates African-Americans and Latinos supported were Biden (mostly older African-Americans) and Sanders (younger African-Americans and Latinos across ages). They will see very clearly how Sara Nelson is on their side.

I hope this is finally clear to Boomers and Oldsters. You want to protect your children's and grandchildren's future? Don't give in to the Biden Inevitability this early in the negotiations, especially as we see the rank hypocrisy with respect to the Tara Reade allegations. Stand up and with the Millennials and Gen-Zers. As I keep saying, the Kids are not only alright.  The Kids are right.  We Boomers and Oldsters are the ones who should be lectured, and, really, it is past time to bury the bad historical analogy about how Hitler gained power in Germany--or at least more properly apply it to the people in power, not the outsiders.

The murder of an African-American jogger in Georgia is the latest in the pattern of American institutional and cultural racism

I realize now how much I don't miss on FB my Trumpist high school classmates, now retired in Florida, and living on union pensions or accumulated wealth owing to white privilege as much as any individual gumption, who were all in favor of George Zimmerman, while telling me how Treyvon Martin was a "thug." With this latest killing of an unarmed young African-American male, we see white supremacist, anti-African American racism rearing its head from behind the shadows again. The stupid looks on their faces in their mug shots, where they seem to wonder why anyone would think they have done wrong, is coupled now with the classic white racist lie about motivation, i.e. "African-Americans coming into our neighborhood to commit crimes--so all African-Americans are suspected 'thugs.'" 

It may be interesting to compare how the Newark, NJ rebellion/riots started in 1967. An African-American taxi driver named John Smith was pulled over and beaten by white police officers serving the entire city of Newark. It seems someone in the white ethnic part of Newark had described an African-American as committing a robbery there, but had nothing else other than skin color to describe the person. The police, after beating the crap out of Smith, said, "Tell your (n-word) friends to stay out of our neighborhoods." I am going from memory here, as the wording was set forth in Tom Hayden's "Rebellion in Newark" (Hayden had been working in Newark and had an on-the-ground view of what was happening), so it is not an exact quote, but the circumstances are essentially correct. This beat down of John Smith, which was rather typical of the Newark police department (an audit after the rebellion/riot proved this), was enough for the African-American community in Newark. As spontaneous protests began, the police response was of course oppressive--and well, people familiar with the Newark riots know what happened next.  I should say, too, I learned from an elderly neighbor of ours in Avenel, NJ, where I grew up, who owned a movie theater in Newark, which was unharmed in the rebellion/riots.  He was an old Italian guy, who, ironically, knew my great-grandfather, who owned a nearby pizzeria in the 1930s.  Tony Feo was the movie owner's name, and he told me, without knowing a thing about Tom Hayden or Hayden's book, that what happened was African-Americans fighting back against racist cops, largely Italian and Irish heritage, he admitted. I asked him why his movie theater was not hit with the property based violence, and he replied it was likely because he treated the little black kids the same as white kids, and if they were a little short in money, he would let them in to see the latest films.  He said, during the near week of violence, there were black men with guns stationed outside his movie theater--he didn't ask for that, it was just done--and whenever he needed to go from his home or to the theater, there were armed black men to take him to and from the location.  This was true for his daughter, who was still living with him at the time.  This conversation I had with Tony Feo was around 1972, a year before we moved from Avenel to Colonia, NJ.  It was not until a couple of years later I came across the Tom Hayden book, and was stunned at how much of what Hayden said had been confirmed by Tony Feo, who, trust me, was no big liberal.  He just saw what he saw and reported it to a young man, me, willing to listen.

I bring up this example so we don't go completely "To Kill a Mockingbird" on the South per se, where we in the North and West get to go, "tut-tut" against white Southerners, as if "we" are the enlightened people. Yes, it remains true the American South is overall the most violent and virulent region in the United States History of racist violence against African-Americans. However, it is not as if the North or Western regions are so wonderfully enlightened, either. The truth we need to face and continually remind ourselves about is we live in a nation where there are embedded racist attitudes within institutions and in our culture. Our nation is not unique in this, of course. However, that racist culture and history remain a stain on any of our professed Fourth of July philosophical values.

This guy. The Funky Academic speaks!

Irami Osei-Frimpong.

He takes awhile to get to the point, but man, the points he makes along the way, and his quick recall of deep American history, is off the charts (Though The Wife said, Oh my, he sounds like you, Mitchell!). Yeah, he does, but I love his phrasing about what rights really mean, which is securing the social conditions to truly be free. And his inside information about what the Biden camp said to the Congressional Black Caucus is classic neo-liberal virtue signaling over real reform.  He makes one or two errors in his fast speaking, calling Trump Obama's predecessor, and says blacks have "superior" savings to whites, when he goes on in detail to show he meant "inferior."  He is asked at one point what he wants, and he gets it, federal jobs guarantee, as he knows how private sector employers don't often hire African-Americans, and the federal government is the employer of last resort, and often first resort for African-Americans, just as it was for Irish immigrants in northeast America in the late 19th Century.

The mask is off

William Barr on the abrupt dismissal of the charges against Michael Flynn, traitor: "History is written by the winners."

The thing I say about the Trump administration and the modern Republican Party is the mask is off. It is why I don't join in with the new found love for George W. Bush, and have no use for Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt, Nicole Wallace, and the NeverTrump Republicans who show up so often on MSNBC, and even on CNN. These people merely perfected a dog whistle for decades, and then finally lost control of that whistle when Trump said what people were thinking inside the Republican coalition.