Category: Anger in Politics

Normalizing Violence Will End Democracy

The Daily Escape:

Bodie Island Lighthouse, Nags Head, NC – June 2022 photo by Jordan Hill Photography

America’s in a dark period, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to see how we can come out of it.

Writing in Foreign Affairs, Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way say:

“The Republican Party…has radicalized into an extremist, antidemocratic force that imperils the US constitutional order. The United States isn’t headed toward Russian – or Hungarian-style autocracy…but something else: a period of protracted regime instability, marked by repeated constitutional crises, heightened political violence, and possibly, periods of authoritarian rule.”

They say we’re heading into a period of protracted instability. They aren’t saying we face a civil war. It’s more subtle: a future of intermittent armed conflict, something like “The Troubles” in Ireland.

You’ve probably seen the campaign ad by Missouri Republican Senate candidate Eric Greitens, where he struts into a home after some camo-clad associates have broken in, saying their purpose is “RINO hunting”. After the team busts into the house, Greitens walks in through a cloud of smoke and says:

“Join the MAGA crew. Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.”

Hunting down one’s political enemies with guns hasn’t been the American way, but it sure is becoming so now. It’s only a matter of time before racial, sexuality and politically-based violence occurs at scale in America. The Brennan Center found that 17% of America’s local election officials have been threatened during the 2020 election cycle. There’s a growing domestic terror threat to civil servants.

But it was only two weeks ago that Republicans found it easy to have moral clarity when authorities arrested a man and charged him with the attempted murder of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The suspect turned himself in before anything happened. However, Republicans were outraged and questioned why Biden and other Democrats did not condemn what happened.

Candidates say outrageous things all the time in the heat of the moment and lately, hitting below the belt is often rewarded. But that is a far cry from a call to hunt down your political enemies in order to “save the country.”

The GOP is normalizing violence, and it became clear after the Republican response to J6. From Robert Hubbell:

“The Republican National Committee described the events of January 6th as ‘legitimate political discourse.’ Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde said that video of the attack on the Capitol looked like ‘a normal tourist visit.’ Mike Pence, whom rioters wanted to hang, said on Monday that Democrats were using the January 6th hearings ‘to distract attention.’”

Republicans try pretending that they have no idea what’s happening (“I haven’t seen the ad, so I cannot comment”). But the right thing is to take the risk that someone will yell at them on Facebook and Twitter and condemn it by saying loud and clear, “This isn’t the way for a candidate to conduct himself.”

Unless Republicans change their act, the normalization of violence will move toward its logical conclusion — election officials and politicians will be wounded or killed by someone who believes that violence is a legitimate political tool.

GOP candidates are posting ads about killing us in our homes. The Texas state GOP party wrote a campaign platform calling for the repeal the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and seceding from the US, while saying that gay people should get back in the closet. They passed a resolution declaring that Biden’s election was illegitimate.

This is the platform of the governing party of the nation’s second largest state, and no non-Texas Republican has complained.

Pundits keep saying that Democrats have no chance in the 2022 mid-terms because of Biden’s low approval ratings. Wrongo has repeatedly said that there are “persuadable” voters who can be reached before the Fall. Proof of that is in the 6-point increase in public support for indicting Trump since the start of the J6 hearings.

If pundits argue that Biden’s unpopularity will affect the 2022 races despite Biden’s absence from the ballot, they must also agree that other issues not on the ballot— the J6 conspiracy, the Supreme Court abortion decision, Texas secession, and yes inflation, will also affect the 2022 races.

The 2022 election (not the 2024) will determine our future. Will people vote this Fall based on the price of gas? Or the threat of a recession? Or, will they understand that there’s a real possibility that democracy as we know it in the US could vanish?

Democracy is what’s on the ballot in 2022. Inflation comes and goes. Recessions come and go. If we lose our democracy, it won’t be returning any time soon.

Americans understand democracy. They’ve fought and died for it. Dems can make voters see that democracy is on the ballot this year, while inflation and other issues sadly need to take a back seat.

Let’s not make the mistake of selling Americans short. Democracy is more important than our pocketbooks. People will vote for democracy.

The slogan should be “Vote Democratic And Save Democracy”.

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Monday Wake Up Call – June 13, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Safety Harbor, FL – June 2022 photo by Jacqueline Faust Photography

A new study by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (IREHR) shows that 875 state lawmakers (11.85% of all state lawmakers in the USA) representing all 50 states, have been engaging with far-right Facebook groups:

“After insurrectionists tried to overthrow the presidential election on January 6, 2021….Several state legislators took part in state-level efforts to undermine the results of the 2020 election.…Forty-eight state and local officials, including ten sitting state lawmakers, were outed as members of the far-right paramilitary group, the Oath Keepers.…”

IREHR has identified 789 different far-right Facebook groups, ranging from militia and sovereign citizen groups, antisemitic conspiracy groups, militant COVID Denial groups, Stop the Steal groups, and others:

“These 789 groups were joined 2,115 times by the 875 legislators identified in this report, an average of 2.4 groups per legislator. Some legislators are members of as many as 24 different groups.”

When will we decide that Facebook must be reined in? This is a clear sign that extremism is making its way into elected office everywhere in the country. And that extremism is thriving due to the role played by the internet and social media.

But this didn’t all begin with Jan. 6. We’re dealing with a challenge that began 60+ years ago with a group we rarely hear about, the John Birch Society (JBS). From James Mann in the NY Review of Books:

“The John Birch Society may be little remembered today, but in its time it had a dues-paying membership of at least 30,000, a staff of 240 people, and more than 400 bookstores across the US.”

The JBS was founded by Robert Welch in 1958, along with a group of 11 conservative business leaders. They had been complaining that America was moving toward socialism and that President Eisenhower, the first Republican president in a quarter-century, was doing little to reverse the drift. But the JBS went further than earlier anti-New Deal activists. They portrayed them as the result of foreign conspiracies.

Mann, reviewing Edward H. Miller’s new biography of Welch, A Conspiratorial Life, says that many of the issues, themes, and causes the Birchers seized upon six decades ago are still alive and well on America’s political right today.

Welch complained that department stores didn’t have enough “Merry Christmas” decorations, saying that they were trying to take Christ out of the holiday. The Birch Society called for defending the police against charges of brutality. They opposed water fluoridation with the same fervor as today’s anti-vaxxers. They vigorously fought efforts at gun control, which they said was a preliminary step for confiscation of guns and a Communist takeover of the US.

Sound familiar?

Birchers opposed FDR’s New Deal reforms. Mann says that when Nixon signed into law the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Welch called it “the worst piece of tyranny ever imposed on any people by any government.”

Maybe a bit over the top? They opposed the Brown v. Board of Education decision integrating US public schools. Welch wrote about Brown:

“The storm over integration….has been brought on by the Communists.”

Welch also enlisted doctors who were opposed to the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. His conspiracy theories suggested either that Communists had orchestrated these changes in American society, or that the changes were themselves a form of creeping communism.

For the Birchers, “communism” became a term used to smear liberalism and Democrats. Doesn’t this sound familiar 64 years later? For example, Trump spokesperson Liz Harrington said this on Friday about the J6 Committee:

“This is a communist committee that has shown that there’s nothing they won’t do.”

Much like Trump’s base, the Birchers refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of political opposition, suggesting that those who disagreed with them were acting in bad faith, or were part of a conspiracy. And like Trumpists, Birchers had considerable influence upon Republican politics. Republican politicians worried about alienating the Birchers in much the same way that Republicans today worry about running afoul of Trump.

Back then, Republicans used the same type of evasion as do today’s Republicans. Barry Goldwater called the Birchers “the finest people in my community” and said they were “the kind [of people] we need in politics”, something very much like when Trump said that there were “very fine people on both sides” after the 2017 riots by neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Time to wake up America! In many ways, J6 was the coming-out party for a new coalition of far-right groups, aimed, as was the John Birch Society, at undermining our democracy.

To help you wake up, listen to U2 and Mary J. Blige perform “One”, their song about the search for unity. We featured a 1997 version of this tune in 2021, and this one is from 2009:

Bono told the BBC:

“The concept of oneness is of course an impossible ask….Maybe the song works because it doesn’t call for unity. It presents us as being bound to others whether we like it or not. ‘We get to carry each other’ – not ‘We’ve got to carry each other’.“

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Florida State House Changes School Curriculum

The Daily Escape:

Cape Cod evening – 2022 photo by Alan Hoelzle

(This is the last column for this week as Wrongo and Ms. Right are heading to France for ten days. It’s our first international trip since 2019. Posting will be light and dependent upon internet connectivity.  Try to behave yourselves and keep your tray tables in the upright and locked position until told otherwise).

Bullies always complain that they’re the victim, not the ones who got the beating. We see this with Putin and Trump.

Another example of that is what Republicans in Florida are doing with public school curricula. Gov. Ron DeSantis says that he’s saving kids from imaginary indoctrination in their schools, but this week he issued a government edict that requires school indoctrination. From the Miami Herald:

“Public school teachers in Florida will soon be required to dedicate at least 45 minutes of instruction on “Victims of Communism Day” to teach students about communist leaders around the world and how people suffered under those regimes.”

DeSantis’ bill makes Florida one of a handful of states adopting the designation. More from the Herald:

“It is, however, the first state to mandate school instruction on that day, as Florida Republicans continue to seize on education policy while placing school curriculum at the forefront of their political priorities ahead of the 2022 midterms….It would require teaching of Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro, as well as “poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence, and suppression of speech” endured under those regimes.”

So kids, we learned today that teaching Florida students about authoritarian fascist slavery in other countries is necessary and mandated. But teaching Florida kids about authoritarian fascist slavery in this country is nothing but divisive critical race theory (CRT) that makes white kids feel bad. It must never, ever be mentioned.

This is a part of the Republican Party’s effort to make public education their top campaign messaging issue in the 2022 Midterms. Despite the reality that all of the education-related “issues” they are focused on are non-existent — like claiming that the teaching of CRT is everywhere, or that teachers who educate students about LGBTQ+ issues are “groomers”.

Normally, local school boards would be left to decide what is taught in the schools under their control, including curriculum, and health and safety standards. But under Republican radicals like DeSantis, the local community isn’t able to do that, because it might interfere with his goal of becoming America’s next Trump.

The irony of dictating school policy from the capital isn’t lost on anyone. It proves that DeSantis understands the basic concept that got the very regimes he hates going in an authoritarian direction in first place. They play up the victimhood — I’m the one being oppressed! — and then get their voting base, those who carry grudges against the Other, to go along with it.

The only “critical race theory” that DeSantis cares about is the race he’s running in to be president one day.

Since Wrongo is leaving you without any musical interludes for a week or more, let’s have a travel-appropriate tune to help propel you forward into the news jungle.

Listen, and watch for sure, Dierks Bentley do his 2014 song ”Drunk On A Plane”. If only airplane rides were really like this! The video won Music Video of the Year at the 2014 CMA Awards:

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Tuesday Wake Up Call – May 3, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Ocean City, NJ – April 2022 photo by Sri Reddy

Jennifer Rubin’s article in the WaPo says that the GOP is not a political party anymore. It’s become a movement dedicated to imposing White Christian nationalism:

“The media blandly describes the GOP’s obsessions as “culture wars,” but that suggests there is another side seeking to impose its views on others. In reality, only one side is repudiating pluralistic democracy — White, Christian…who are becoming a minority group and want to maintain their political power.”

These are the people driving the Republican bus. Any progress is soon followed by their claims of victimhood. From Rubin:

“No one should be surprised that the “big lie” has become gospel in White evangelical churches. The New York Times reports: “In the 17 months since the presidential election, pastors at these churches have preached about fraudulent votes and vague claims of election meddling.…For these church leaders, Mr. Trump’s narrative of the 2020 election has become a prominent strain in an apocalyptic vision of the left running amok.”

America was founded as a Christian nation, by (White) Christians; and its laws and institutions are based on “Biblical” (that is, Protestant) Christianity. As Georgetown’s Phillip Gorski says about Jan. 6:

“Christians waved Trump flags. The “Proud Boys” kneeled and prayed. One man, decked out as a cosplay crusader, clutched a large leather Bible to his chest with skeleton gloves. What looked like apples and oranges turned out to be a fruit cocktail: White Christian nationalism.”

Widening out to society at large, the Republican Christian Right is successfully walking a line between two seemingly contradictory notions: That our nation is the greatest nation on earth precisely because it is a Christian nation; and at the same time, that our nation is overrun with evil forces.

The precepts of Christianity were meant to make us more accepting and humane towards others. Today,  these people are about doing the opposite of that.

The BJC’s (Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty) report on the Jan. 6 coup includes survey data from February 2021, showing that Christian nationalist ideology (specifically, belief that the founding documents of the US are divinely inspired, or that the federal government should declare the US a Christian nation) were strongly associated with the belief that Black Lives Matter and Antifa started the violence on Jan. 6:

Source: Public Discourse and Ethics Survey, Wave 7 (February 2021) Fielded by YouGov. Survey design by Joshua B. Grubbs and Samuel L. Perr

The graph shows that the more White Americans agree with Christian nationalism, the more likely they were to believe conspiracy theories about the involvement of Black Lives Matter or Antifa.

Since the founding of the country, we’ve gradually gained a panoply of rights; rights which could not be infringed by federal, state, and municipal governments. Now, the six Christian conservatives on the Supreme Court plan to gut many of those decisions.

The effort to blur the lines between church and state in America may be reaching its zenith. On April 25, the Supreme Court heard Kennedy v Bremerton School District, the first case involving prayer and public schools to reach the high court since 2000.

America’s Constitution promises the “free exercise” of religion; but it also prohibits the “establishment” of religion. Recently the Supreme Court has been strengthening the first guarantee: the right to live your faith free from government meddling, while chipping away at the wall separating church from state.

The issue in the Kennedy case was whether a public school district had the authority to prevent a high school football coach from continuing his practice of leading student-athletes in midfield prayer immediately after games.

Four justices had previously supported Kennedy when the case first came to the Supreme Court in 2019. At oral arguments this time, both Justice Coney Barrett and Chief Justice Roberts also sounded inclined to join the four in favoring free exercise over religion-state separation.

The decision in this case may change our long-held First Amendment rights into something less than they were designed to be.

Time to wake up America! The Culture Wars are the tip of the Constitutional threat iceberg. We’ve all shrugged and walked away from people who think the worst about non-White, non-straight Americans. We can’t do that anymore.

To help you wake up, listen to The Judds’ “Love Can Build a Bridge”. Naomi Judd died over the weekend. Here it’s sung by Naomi and Wynonna on April 11, 2022. This was Naomi’s last public performance:

Sample Lyric:

When we stand together, it’s our finest hour
We can do anything (anything)
Anything (anything)
Keep believin’ in the power

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DeSantis vs. Disney

The Daily Escape:

Sea glass, Provincetown, MA – April 2022 photo by Nancy Kaplan

Today we continue discussing the growing Republican culture wars, this time in Florida against Disney. NBC News reported:

“The Florida Senate passed a bill Wednesday that would dissolve the special taxing district that allows the Walt Disney Co. to self-govern in its theme park area.”

Walt Disney World has effectively operated as its own municipal government in central Florida since a 1967 state law established what’s called the Reedy Creek Improvement District, an area encompassing 25,000 acres near Orlando. The law grants Disney a wide range of authority, including the power to issue bonds and provide its own utilities and emergency services, such as fire protection.

That law is in large part what convinced Disney originally to come to Florida. It has since become the state’s largest private employer with 80,000 jobs.

On Wednesday, the Florida senate passed a bill that would dissolve all independent special districts established before 1968, including Reedy Creek. Lawmakers voted 23 to 16 in favor of the bill during a special session of the state Legislature.

This is part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) and the Republican-controlled  legislature‘s escalating culture war with Disney over the company’s opposition to recently passed legislation in Florida that Disney considers to be anti-gay. Disney’s leadership has criticized the legislation that prevents classroom discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in kindergarten through the third grade.

Disney later said it would pause making campaign donations in Florida and also said it hoped that the law would either be repealed or struck down by the courts.

Wrongo is old enough to remember when the GOP believed that corporations had free speech and should be pretty much immune from regulation. But it now seems that corporations can be harassed or investigated unless they fall in line with the goals of the Republican culture war.

Targeting Disney only became a thing after the company spoke out about the “don’t say gay” law. Charles Cooke in the National Review notes that:

“Until about a month ago, Walt Disney World’s legal status was not even a blip on the GOP’s radar. No Republicans were calling for it to be revisited….”

Cooke says that Florida’s legislature has had five opportunities over the past 50 years to remove Disney’s sweetheart deal and didn’t. But context is everything. After the DeSantis effort to punish Disney, the legislature piled on, pretending that it’s doing so out of a concern for “good government”.

The fun part is that Disney’s status is not unique. Florida has 1,844 special districts, of which 1,288, like Walt Disney World, are “independent.” Charlie Sykes at the Bulwark offers up examples of a few more of these districts:

  • The Villages (where Governor DeSantis announced his review of Disney’s status)
  • Orlando International Airport
  • The Daytona International Speedway

Wrongo isn’t defending Disney’s right to special treatment, despite he and Ms. Right having a granddaughter who works for Disney in CA.

Wrongo would be fine if Florida took away all special breaks from these large corporations.

The Disney special district is really a form of corporate welfare. And no Republican with serious national ambitions wants to be against corporate welfare. So instead, DeSantis tries punishing Disney as part of his red-hot culture war. If this move was really about good public policy, then Republicans would have done it through their regular legislative process. But that clearly wasn’t their intent.

Overlooked in the anti-Disney hype, was that this bill was attached to other legislation approved by the Florida senate, a Congressional redistricting map that eliminates two predominantly Black Congressional districts and tilts the balance of the Florida delegation even more to the Republicans. Democrats were especially critical of an amendment added Tuesday that requires all lawsuits challenging the redistricting map to be filed in Leon Circuit Court. This is an attempt to sidestep the federal court in Tallahassee where in the past, most election law cases have been challenged and found to be unconstitutional.

The new map is expected to boost Republicans’ current 16-11 Congressional advantage to 20–8. Republicans would likely own roughly 71% of the state’s Congressional seats in a state where Trump won with 51.2% of the vote in 2020. Florida also gained a seat during the most recent census.

The Party claiming to be against “Big Government” is using the government to punish a private company for permissible business decisions. As Heather Cox Richardson says:

“The Walt Disney Company delivers to the state more than $409 million in sales taxes for tickets alone, employs more than 80,000 Florida residents, and supports more than 400,000 more jobs. Today, the Miami Herald reported that repealing the company’s governing authority would raise taxes on families in the area by $2,200 each.”

Anyone else getting really tired of Republicans telling us we can’t say certain words, we can’t read certain books, we can’t teach certain things, or that we can’t talk about certain history? And why are they taking away our freedom to vote?

What’s Conservative about any of that?

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What to Do When You’re Called “Pedophile”

The Daily Escape:

Western Rosebud, Red Rock National conservation area, NV – April 2022 photo by David Frederick

We’ve reached a point in our political discourse where Republicans are tossing around lies about their Democratic opponents, including saying the Democrats are pedophiles. And they’re doing it without fear of reprisal from the establishment Democrats.

One Democrat, Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow was accused by Lana Theis, a Republican state senate colleague, of being a “groomer” of young children in a recent fundraising appeal. Theis also said McMorrow wanted to teach 8-year-olds that they are responsible for slavery. McMorrow didn’t stay silent after the accusations against her. She gave her Republican accuser a rhetorical bloody nose:

Her speech is inspiring. You should definitely watch it. Here’s a quote:

“I am a straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom who knows that the very notion that learning about slavery or redlining or systemic racism somehow means that children are being taught to feel bad or hate themselves because they are white is absolute nonsense…No child alive today is responsible for slavery. No one in this room is responsible for slavery. But each and every single one of us bears responsibility for writing the next chapter of history….we are not responsible for the past. We also cannot change the past. We can’t pretend that it didn’t happen or deny people their very right to exist.”

The Dem’s typical “that doesn’t deserve a response” is out of date. It doesn’t work on hateful Republican rhetoric. McMorrow shows us how it’s done.

We need to get used to this, because it’s going to be a main talking point for Republicans through the 2022 mid-terms and beyond. In response, it isn’t enough for Democrats to “just go high”. They need to start attacking Republicans for how weird and abnormal they are.

You probably saw the many humorous takes on Tucker Carlson’s weirdo testicle-tanning video. Really, these guys get to accuse others of sexual problems?

And there’s Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) who may actually soon be a convicted pedophile. You remember Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) was implicated in allegations of sexual misconduct against the Ohio State wrestling team’s former team doctor. Or Rep. Lauren Boebert’s (R-CO) then-future husband who was arrested for exposing himself to two young women at a Colorado bowling alley (she was present), and he was later arrested for domestic violence against her while they were dating.

These are the people who are screaming “pedophiles” at Dems.

Wrongo doesn’t often suggest paying attention to James Carville, but on MSNBC over the weekend he said: (brackets by Wrongo)

“[Republicans] have learned over a period of time it doesn’t matter” what they say or do, Carville complained. “[Democrats] are weak and all they’re gonna do is talk bad about each other.”

Carville pointed out how little pushback Democrats made against the pedophilia-obsessed GOP Senators during the Supreme Court Justice confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown-Jackson.

Charlie Pierce reminds us of how there is a straight line from the McMartin case in 1990 to where we are today. McMartin showed how hysteria over purported sexual abuse of children in schools can grip our society. Despite a complete lack of reputable evidence against the teachers and workers at McMartin Preschool, the McMartin trials took over six years and cost more than $13.5 million without a single guilty verdict resulting from the 208 charges.

Today these accusations are again rampant across the country, only with much more paranoia and way more firearms. America is on the cusp of a revolution, but it’s too early to see exactly what it is coming, or what it will become.

We now live in a world where it’s perfectly acceptable for a politician to demonize those who don’t share their belief system. Someone can take to Twitter or send out a fundraising email and savage a person either to score cheap political points or add a few bucks to their political war chest.

The Republicans are essentially a new Party since its hostile takeover by Trump. Democrats have to look all the way back to FDR for a takeover model. He overthrew the old political order with the New Deal.

We’re seeing a well-organized, well-funded, (and effective in its way), Republican assault on democracy itself: They have willed into existence a Supreme Court supermajority that cares about its social agenda as much as it cares about the “law”. The GOP’s Senate and House ranks are filled with adherents to that same agenda.

Nearly half of America agrees with them because they promise revenge against people they despise. We face a risk in 2024 of Trump winning a filibuster-proof trifecta [House, Senate, White House] with a minority of the national vote.

We can no longer afford to “go high”. Everyone knows the stakes.

What will Democrats do to win?

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 10, 2022

Jonathan V. Last had a thoughtful essay that asked the question, “What if Democrats do everything right and still lose?” He’s speaking about the Dems’ poor mid-term polling. Last describes polls showing that people who benefited from the Child Tax Credit passed by Democrats nonetheless favor Republicans going into 2022:

“Inside the Democrats’ American Rescue Plan was the most substantively pro-family agenda item in a generation: A child tax credit that put real money into the pocket of just about every family….The child tax credit was the ultimate kitchen-table issue. Then Republicans killed it. They own…the act of taking this money away from working families.”

Last feels that the current political moment isn’t actually about kitchen-table issues. He points to the Ohio Senate race between Democrat Tim Ryan and Republican Josh Mandel:

“The Ohio Democrat is running on jobs, healthcare, infrastructure, and national security. The Ohio Republican is running on Trump, abortion, Christian nationalist identity, guns, RINOS, the Bible, and bitcoin.”

If Tim Ryan loses this race, it won’t be because Dems are blowing off working-class voters by refusing to focus on the real, kitchen-table issues that affect their lives. It’s looking like the electorate has become entirely untethered to policy concerns and have reached a point of nihilism.

Despite this environment, let’s not impose arbitrary timelines on achieving success. Just ask newly minted Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. On to cartoons.

Same as it ever was:

Palin runs again:

Ukraine gives Putin a few new stories:

The definition of Red State has changed:

Will the Russian Army really fit in the smaller dolls?

Tiger returns:

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Saturday Soother – April 9, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Perhaps the most important selfie ever? Via POTUS

A few items for today. First, the Senate confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court on Thursday, making her the first-ever Black woman and former public defender to serve on the nation’s highest court. Every Democrat voted for her, plus three Republicans: Sens. Lisa Murkowski (AK), Susan Collins (ME) and Mitt Romney (UT). When the vote was over, the Senate chamber erupted with applause, but not by most Republicans.

Here’s a video of the many Republican Senators walking out amid applause for the new Associate Justice:

It was a bad moment for the White Nationalists of the GOP. Is it Wrongo, or has the Republican Party turned itself into a fountain of sexual innuendo and legal intrusion into our lives? Robert Reich agrees:

“…it’s part of their culture war, and culture wars sell with voters (and the media) eager for conflict and titillation. A culture war over sex sells even better. It lets Republicans imply that Democrats are somehow on the side of sexual “deviants” who endanger the “natural order…a culture war over sex allows Republicans to sound faux populist without having to talk about the real sources of populist anger — corporate-induced inflation at a time of record corporate profits, profiteering and price gouging….[and] stagnant wages…and by focusing on pedophilia, gender identity, gay people, and abortion, Republicans don’t have to talk about Trump and January 6.

Hate, whether against Justice Jackson or aspects of American culture, is like a hard drug. It’s destructive to the users and to everyone around them. And they will always need bigger hits of it.

Second, Tim Snyder posted about the Russian policy guiding its war in Ukraine: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Russia has just issued a genocide handbook for its war on Ukraine.  The Russian official press agency “RIA Novosti” published last Sunday an explicit program for the complete elimination of the Ukrainian nation as such.  It is still available for viewing, and has now been translated…into English.”

Snyder says that since the war began, “denazification” in Russian usage simply means the destruction of the Ukrainian state and nation.  A “Nazi,” as the genocide manual explains, is simply a human being who self-identifies as Ukrainian. According to the handbook, the establishment of a Ukrainian state thirty years ago was the “Nazification of Ukraine”.

The genocide handbook explains that the Russian policy of “denazification” is not directed against Nazis in the sense that the word is normally used. The handbook grants, with no hesitation, that there is no evidence that Nazism, as generally understood, is important in Ukraine. It operates within the special Russian definition of “Nazi”: A Nazi is a Ukrainian who refuses to admit to being a Russian.

The money quote from Snyder:

“As a historian of mass killing, I am hard pressed to think of many examples where states explicitly advertise the genocidal character of their own actions right at the moment those actions become public knowledge….Legally, genocide means both actions that destroy a group in whole or in part, combined with some intention to do so.  Russia has done the deed and confessed to the intention.”

Perhaps then it isn’t a surprise that Russia quit the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday shortly after it was suspended for atrocities in Ukraine. The UN General Assembly voted 93 to 24 to suspend Russia on Thursday, with 58 abstentions. What Snyder has reported deserves a global audience. It seems that throwing Russia out of the UN should be the next step.

Enough of this week’s news. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, a precious few moments when we avoid the political yelling and focus on gathering ourselves for the coming week.

We’ve finally heard the peepers on the Fields of Wrong. The lawns are greening up, buds are on most trees and bushes, and it’s turkey romance season. We have a resident group of seven female and two male turkeys. This week, the males are preening around and spreading their tail feathers while the females run in the opposite direction. We expect that will turn into fraternization next week.

To kick off your Saturday, take a few minutes and brew up a mug of Two Dog coffee ($17.50/lb.) from Clearwater, FL’s Blazing Bean Roasters. Now grab a seat by a window and watch and listen to another arrangement of classical music by the Korean group LAYERS who we have featured before. This time, listen to their take on Bizet’s “Fantasy” from his opera “Carmen”. Here it is arranged for two cellos, violin, and piano:

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Dog Whistles in the Senate

The Daily Escape:

Poppy bloom, Lancaster, CA – March 22, 2022 photo by Matthew Mactaggart

There are many urgent issues that the Supreme Court is considering, but whether a children’s book should address racism isn’t one of them. At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the qualifications of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for the Supreme Court, the curriculum at a private children’s day school in Georgetown was among the questions Republican Senators felt she needed to address.

This is more than simply a performative effort by a few Republicans to dog whistle to their supporters. It’s part of a decades-long effort by conservatives to control public education.

Bob Oakes of Boston’s WBUR had a report about how local Massachusetts school boards, like school boards across the country, have been facing angry questions about everything from Covid restrictions to the way schools teach about racism:

“WBUR found dozens of districts have faced criticism over how teachers discuss race and diversity in the classroom, as well as sex education.”

Oakes reported on the school committee at Dudley-Charlton, two small towns that share a school district and a high school. For years, local school committee meetings had focused on routine items such as staffing and trips by the marching band. More from WBUR:

“….that all changed last July when dozens of parents and residents packed a committee meeting to protest the school’s efforts to combat racism, including the hiring of a new diversity consultant.”

That led some residents to push unsuccessfully a recall of five school committee members over issues including Covid mask requirements and the hiring of the diversity consultant.

Jill Lepore has an article in the New Yorker about the history of efforts to control public education stretching back to the 1880s. She notes that for more than a century, from the teaching of evolution to anti-racism, parents have clashed over who gets to tell our origin story. She points out that community control began in the 1880s with the move to mandatory public education:

“Some families objected, citing “parental rights,” a legal novelty, but courts broadly upheld compulsory-education laws, deeming free public schooling to be essential to democratic citizenship.“

By 1916, nearly every state had mandated school attendance.

We have generally accepted that local and state school boards set curricula with the intention of having our students absorb a consensus-approved range of subjects which collectively tell a story about how we want our children to develop into adults.

This means teaching math and science, history and civics, the novels of Steinbeck and Toni Morrison in English class, along with the foundational myths we feel are important to the American story. All of this – the curriculum and the teaching – cohere to mold young citizens.

As Lepore notes, some Americans keep their children out of public schools because they don’t believe in a community of interests. That isn’t what they say of course. They put their children in charter and private schools, because they prefer their “quality.” What they won’t admit is how their search for a “quality” education also implies a question: What kind of information and what kind of child will their private school keep away from their children?

From Lepore:

“A few parents around the country may not like their children learning that they belong to a much bigger family—whether it’s a human family or an American family—but the idea of public education is dedicated to the cultivation of that bigger sense of covenant, toleration, and obligation. In the end, no matter what advocates of parents’ rights say, and however much political power they might gain, public schools don’t have a choice; they’ve got to teach, as American history, the history not only of the enslaved Africans who arrived in Virginia in 1619 and the English families who sailed to Plymouth on the Mayflower in 1620, but also….everyone. That’s why parents don’t have a right to choose the version of American history they like best, a story of only their own family’s origins. Instead, the state has an obligation to welcome children into that entire history, their entire inheritance.”

Parents trying to bully school boards into changing the curricula to suit their worldview is inherently wrong. The argument that “parents have the right to control what is taught in public schools because they’re our kids” is un-American. The Supreme Court found that to be true in 1943 in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, when the Court struck down a statute that required schoolchildren to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, saying it was a violation of the First Amendment.

The purpose of public school is to teach kids what society needs them to know. It’s the parents’ job to teach them what they WANT them to know.

Listen up Republicans: the “customer” of the public school system is the entire community, not individual parents or specific political parties. Those parents aren’t harmed, and they haven’t lost any “freedom” when curricula are set by school boards.

They still have the right to send little Jason and Janey to the private school of their choice at their own expense.

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Judge Says Jan. 6 Was a “Seditious Conspiracy”

The Daily Escape:

Sandhill Cranes, Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge, CO – February 2022 photo by Rick Dunnahoo

Most of us had few expectations that the organizers of the Jan. 6 insurrection would face any legal consequences. Indeed, we’ve had almost zero confidence that the truth about what led up to that day would ever be known.

That just changed. Politico reported that:

“Joshua James, one of the 11 Oath Keepers militia affiliates indicted earlier this year on a charge of seditious conspiracy alongside the group’s founder, Stewart Rhodes, on Wednesday became the first person to plead guilty to the sedition-related charge in connection with the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.”

James admitted that he tried to disrupt the peaceful transfer of presidential power and that Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes had a “plan” for accomplishing that disruption. The plea deal statement describes planning that occurred in November 2020 in the DC area and VA:

“On November 14 and 15, 2020, James met with Rhodes and others in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and at Caldwell’s Virginia farmhouse and learned about the start of their plans to oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power.”

The November planning meetings are important, because they suggest broader coordination with “others” at the Jan. 6 March. Perhaps the most interesting detail of the statement describes a plan to report to White House grounds and secure the perimeter:

“In the weeks leading up to January 6, 2021, Rhodes instructed James and other co-conspirators to be prepared, if called upon, to report to the White House grounds to secure the perimeter and use lethal force if necessary against anyone who tried to remove President Trump from the White House, including the National Guard or other government actors who might be sent to remove President Trump as a result of the Presidential Election.”

This begs the question of who is suicidal enough to plan to meet as an armed group at the White House grounds, unless they believed they were invited there and cleared for entry by Trump. Absent that, they should have expected to be arrested or shot on sight.

We’re looking at a plea of seditious conspiracy. From the WaPo:

“Federal law defines seditious conspiracy as two or more people who “conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States,” or act “by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States.”

This means we can now legally describe Jan. 6 as a conspiracy to commit sedition. For those among us who were wondering what Merrick Garland’s DOJ has been doing for the last year, it’s this: January 6 was officially a sedition, at least for Joshua James.

That says things are getting very interesting, particularly when we add to it this from the WaPo:

“The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said on Wednesday that there was enough evidence to conclude that former President Donald J. Trump and some of his allies might have conspired to commit fraud and obstruction by misleading Americans about the outcome of the 2020 election and attempting to overturn the result.”

In a court filing in a civil case in California, the Committee’s lawyers said they had accumulated evidence demonstrating that Trump, the conservative lawyer John Eastman, and others could potentially be charged with criminal violations including obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the American people by illegally obstructing the counting of Electoral College ballots.

The Committee made the statement in a court filing to force Trump’s lawyer, John Eastman, to turn over documents to the Committee. Eastman is the attorney who advised Trump that Vice President Mike Pence could reject the electoral ballots.

The Committee also released an email written in the middle of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, to Eastman from Greg Jacob, a Pence advisor:

When you read the email above, don’t gloss over this sentence: “I share your concerns about what the Democrats will do once in power.” That shows he is a hard-right partisan. But he closes with the big point:

“…thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege”.

Short-term, despite the way the media is breathlessly talking about the Select Committee’s court filing, the Joshua James guilty plea is more interesting.

He connects the dots with the Oath Keepers’ leader, Stewart Rhodes. James was also in contact with Roger Stone, which begs the question of what Stone knew about their plans, or more troublingly, what Stone might have directed them to do.

Let’s not get too excited, but it seems that it’s now remotely possible that Trump, Roger Stone, and others will discover that in America, it’s true that no one is above the law.

Cook up some popcorn and watch the show.

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