Civil Rights – Page 6 – The Wrongologist

Our National Trauma Wake Up Call – July 11, 2016

It didn’t take long after five dead officers in Dallas, victims of a racially motivated killer, for some on the right to say “Its Obama’s fault”, or “Its Black Lives Matter’s fault”.

Here is a sentiment that you would hope that all Americans can agree on:

FireShot Screen Capture #100 - EM Simpson-page-001

From Evan Osnos:

It is a vision at the heart of the modern gun movement: the more that society makes the threat of violence available to us, the safer we will be. In forty-eight hours this week, the poisonous flaw in that fantasy has been exposed from multiple angles…

Wrongo hasn’t seen the videos, and hasn’t checked deeply into the circumstances, but he can’t seem to keep these incidents at arm’s length:

The Baton Rouge incident seems to have been the result of panic among the police who shot the victim repeatedly, even though the victim was pinned down on the ground.
The Minnesota shooting of a man halted for a traffic violation, who informed the policeman that he was armed and had a permit for concealed carry of a firearm, again may have been the result of fear and/or panic by the cop. The victim was shot several times while trying to pull his identification from a pants pocket.
The attack on Dallas police, in which five policemen died, and seven were wounded, seems to be a racially motivated revenge killing by a black shooter.

Needless to say, we need people on both sides of the Black/Blue Lives Matter argument to stand down. Cooler heads need to prevail. There are probably many cops who are not in possession of the nerves of steel needed for their jobs in 2016. Policing America today is no cakewalk. Everybody has a gun, most people are angry, and many have very low points of frustration.

FWIW, these violent episodes are partly a reflection of the larger struggle reflected in our national politics. There is a palpable dissatisfaction with how our country operates. The accumulation of money and power by people controlling our institutions has brought us an elite that no longer operates in the best interests of the population at large.

Some of this frustration and anger is played out with gunfire, and guns are everywhere.

The past week shows clearly that America’s police and America’s black citizens are at odds. During the day or so after Baton Rouge and Minnesota, there was an opportunity to step back and perhaps discuss what we might have learned from these killings. But the shooter in Dallas muddied the bigger picture, making revenge the story in our national news.

Leonard Pitts, Jr. in the Miami Herald quotes former NYC Mayor John Lindsay at another time of racial division:

This is a drifting, angry America that needs to find its way again.

This week feels like a sea change. Until now, neither killings by police, nor killings of police have been happening at unusual rates. This feels completely different, but we won’t be sure for a while.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 10, 2105

Our Havanese dog Bandit lost his fight with an autoimmune disease at age 15 this past Tuesday:

DSCN5103

Gonna miss him terribly.

Turning to other news, what does the Dallas attack against police mean for the rest of this American summer? As Mark Shields said on PBS, “events are in the saddle”, and there is a distinct feeling that our leadership is not only not in control, but they have no answers.

No one knows what the reaction will be to New Orleans, Minneapolis and Dallas:

COW Dallas Reaction 2

Despite all we know, we can’t escape our need for Gunz:

Culture of Violence

Some truths demand an explanation:

COW Broken Tail Light

Our satellite in orbit around the giant gas planet Jupiter found something horrifying:

COW Gaseous Titan

The Brits waited seven years for the Chilcot report on Tony Blair’s role in the Iraq War:

COW Chillicot Report.gif

Really, is W. sorry? Maybe he’s sorry he got 4500 American soldiers killed, and another 32,000 wounded. And unknown numbers of American military damaged mentally. Or, that the Middle East is totally destabilized. Or, that our economy crashed. Or, that the country is totally polarized. Maybe he’s sorry, but that’s highly doubtful.

You know, it was OKAY because a Republican did it.

That’s the mission he accomplished.

We’ve Had Threats To Our Constitutional Rights Before

“The Past Is Never Dead, It Is Not Even Past” – Faulkner

Does this sound familiar?

They called for imprisonment of Americans who came from a foreign country. They called for shutting down immigration from certain countries and deporting the immigrants already here. They were for stifling dissent against a looming foreign war by calling the anti-war protestors traitors. They passed laws that curtailed several rights granted in the Bill of Rights.

An administration worked hard to “sell” a war to the American people.

This is not America in the post-9/11 period, it was during World War I, not during Iraq, or our current battle against ISIS.

And it occurred while a progressive Democrat was in the White House.

On April 6, 1917, Woodrow Wilson delivered his war message to Congress. The US, Wilson said, was to embark upon a crusade to “make the world safe for democracy“. Unfortunately, Wilson’s administration gave rise to the greatest attack upon civil liberties (up to that time) since the passage of the Sedition Act in 1798.

Wilson had two problems. First, the citizenry had to be mobilized behind a war effort that did not involve a direct attack on the US. Second, he felt a need to guarantee our internal security against both real and imagined enemies. To solve the first problem, in April, 1917, Wilson established the Committee on Public Information (CPI), under the leadership of George Creel, a respected progressive. The Committee’s job was to convince citizens that the war was righteous, and to educate all Americans about American war goals.

Writers turned out “true” stories concerning what the Germans planned to do to America; speakers toured the nation delivering anti-German talks. Movie audiences thrilled to “Pershing’s Crusaders” and came by the thousands to hate the enemy by watching dramas such as “The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin.”

Congress also enacted laws that curtailed our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of speech and press. Shortly after Wilson’s war message, in June, 1917, the Espionage Act was passed. This made it a crime to make false reports which would aid the enemy, incite rebellion among the armed forces, or obstruct recruiting or the draft. In practice, it was used to stifle dissent and radical criticism.

In October, 1917, another law required foreign language newspapers to submit translations of all war-related stories or editorials before distribution to local readers.

In May, 1918, the Sedition Act bolstered the Espionage Act. It provided penalties of up to 20 years imprisonment for the willful writing, uttering, or publication of material abusing the government, showing contempt for the Constitution, or inciting others to resist the government. Under this Act, it was unnecessary to prove that the language in question had affected anyone or had produced injurious consequences. In addition, the Postmaster General was empowered to deny use of the mails to anyone who, in his opinion, used them to violate the Act.

In October 1918, Congress passed the Alien Act, by which any alien who, at any time after entering the US was found to have been a member of any anarchist organization, could be deported.

Volunteer organizations sprung up, dedicated to discovering alleged traitors, saboteurs, and slackers. The volunteer groups were hyper-patriotic, and were often responsible for violations of civil liberties, although the government made no real attempt to discourage or limit their activities.

With the quiet consent of the Department of Justice, the American Protective League’s 250,000 civilian members—many of whom wore official-looking badges reading “Secret Service”—undertook vigilante actions against supposedly disloyal socialists, pacifists, and immigrants; they engaged in domestic surveillance operations; and raided businesses, meeting halls, and private homes in an effort to uncover pro-German sympathizers. As a result, force became the order of the day.

Somewhere during the fight to make the world safe for democracy, Americans lost their tolerance, compassion and mercy, and much of their democratic ideals.

Does this sound familiar?

The various Acts of 1917 and 1918 helped destroy what remained of the left wing in America. Victor Berger, the first socialist elected to Congress, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for hindering the war effort. Eugene V. Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison for making an anti-war speech.

On November 11, 1918, the Allies and Germany signed an armistice: the war was over.

The American public had shown a willingness to tolerate and even to participate in censorship, mugging, imprisoning, harassment, and forced deportation of Americans who didn’t agree with them.

Given where we are today, it could easily happen again.

Don’t bet against it.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 21, 2016

The preliminary results from the Nevada Caucus gives the win to Hillary Clinton, while the preliminary results from South Carolina say that Donald Trump has won, with second place too close to call at this point.

For the Democrats, the mainstream candidate now looks quite likely to take the nomination, while on the Republican side, the insurgent appears to be the one who will be the nominee. The Sanders Democrats will fall in line behind Clinton for the general election, because they know that no issue in this election trumps judicial philosophy, and the nation can’t survive another Scalia.

Here’s why: Federal judges have great power over our democracy. We could review many of Scalia’s decisions, but let’s just focus on three:

• The five Supreme Court judges (including Scalia) who decided the 2000 election by awarding the White House to George W. Bush.
• Or, the five judges (including Scalia) who decided Citizens United, saying that big corporate money was speech.
• Or the five judges (including Scalia) who gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The judiciary controls many, many aspects of our lives; therefore, the importance of having federal judges who reject far right-wing ideology cannot be overstated.

On to cartoons. Who will walk in Scalia’s shoes?

COW Scalia 2

Obama has about as much chance of getting a Supreme Court nominee approved by Senate Republicans as he does of convincing the average GOP voter that his Hawaiian birth certificate is genuine:

COW Scalia 3

GOP dilemma: Let’s honor Scalia by ignoring the Constitution:

COW Ignore the Constitution

Obama gets a lesson in the Senate’s Advise & Consent process:

COW Clarence Votes twice

Old Candidates, Young Voters

From Stu Rothenberg at Roll Call:

While the decision makers at news organizations…scramble to appeal to younger viewers, [the] Republican and Democratic voters in Iowa and nationally have embraced a remarkably “mature” handful of top tier candidates.

How mature?

• Donald Trump will turn 70 next year
• Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders will be 75
• Hillary Clinton will turn 69 a couple of weeks before the 2016 elections

There are younger Republican candidates: Ted Cruz is 45, and Marco Rubio is 44. The Democrat former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is 53.

According to a January 18-24 Quinnipiac University poll of likely Democratic voters, Sanders held a 78% to 21% lead among voters age 18 to 44 over Clinton. The younger O’Malley polls at just 2%.

On the GOP side, Trump and Cruz tied with voters age 18 to 44, each drawing 29%.

So, the networks are trying to attract the young voter demographic, while young voters overwhelmingly like a few of the older candidates. But, will younger voters actually vote? Their recent record isn’t reliable: Young voters turned out in big numbers in 2008 and then stayed home in record numbers in 2014. Did young Dems take a short nap in 2014 or have they turned their backs on democracy?

We don’t know for sure, but there is some bad news: Research by Roberto Foa and Yascha Mounk shows growing disillusionment with democracy – not just with politics or campaigns, but with democracy itself: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

This growth is worldwide, but it is especially strong among young Americans. Fewer than 30% of Americans born since 1980 say that living in a democracy is essential. For those born since 1970, more than one in five describe our democratic system as “bad or very bad.” That’s almost twice the rate for people born between 1950 and 1970.

Foa and Mounk wrote in the NYT that political scientists are well aware that poll after poll shows citizens to be more dissatisfied than in the past. Yet they resist the most straightforward conclusion: that people may be less supportive of democracy than they once were. This raises a strange question: Could the political system in our seemingly stable democracy be heading for a fall?

Think about it. People say they like democracy less than they used to. While most Americans still have a deep emotional attachment to the Constitution, respect for the rules of our democracy are also eroding. The rise of politicians who are critical of key aspects of liberal democracy, like freedom of the press, or universal voting, or the rights of minorities, is even more disconcerting.

Citizens are aware of this disconnect. When asked by the World Values Survey to rate how democratically their country is being governed on a 10-point scale, a third of Americans now say: “not at all democratic.”

Let’s hope that this is a transient phenomenon. What explains the down-tick? It’s probably related to:

• Lack of optimism caused by stagnating incomes. This disproportionately effects the young.
• Rising income inequality, which effects all citizens.
• Attempts by the rich to game the political system, often through Super PAC donations.

In fact, the rich are now more likely to be critical of democracy than the poor. According to the World Values Survey, in 1995, less than 20% of wealthy Americans (those in the top income quintile) approved of having a “strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress or elections”. Today, more than 40% support that view.

It’s not clear what young voters think is a better alternative to representative government, but who can blame them for not being enamored with their current political representation?

According to the US Census Bureau analysis of the voting population from 1964-2012 indicates a decrease in voting in all age groups, except for the 65 years and over group, who voted at nearly a 70% rate, while the 18-24 voted at 36% . But in 2008, 18-24 year olds did increase their numbers–the Obama factor.

Bottom line: If you want to make democracy work, you must get not only young people, but all the people who have given up on democracy involved again. But we cannot simply rely on charismatic individuals to help young voters awaken their political selves. We must restore their faith in democratic politics.

This is the very best argument for a Bernie-style political revolution.

Monday Wake-Up Call – January 25, 2016

Today many are still digging out from the big blizzard, and are getting off to a slow start, but today’s Wake Up is for those who think the answer to domestic terrorism is to get tough with American Muslims, to isolate them, to deport them, or to prevent them from getting gun permits.

Peter Bergen has an article in the current Wall Street Journal Weekend, “Can We Stop Homegrown Terrorists?” in which he reports on the threat posed by domestic Muslim terrorists: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

We found that American jihadists are overwhelmingly male (only 7% are women), and their average age is 29. More than a third are married, and more than a third have children. A little more than one in 10 has served time in prison, similar to the rate of incarceration for all American males, and around 10% had some kind of mental-health issue, which is lower than the general population. In everything but their deadly ideology, they are ordinary Americans.

Bergen reports that in 2015, the FBI investigated supporters of ISIS in all 50 states, and more than 80 Americans were charged with some kind of jihadist crime. It was the peak year since 2001 for law-enforcement activity against Americans who had chosen to join a group or accept an ideology whose goal is to kill fellow Americans. Bergen has assembled a data base of about 300 jihadists indicted or convicted in the US for some kind of terrorist crime since 9/11.

In analyzing the threat, Bergen says:

These individuals represent just a tiny fraction of an American Muslim population estimated at more than 3 million, but 300 homegrown jihadists is still 300 too many. Is the US intelligence and law-enforcement community any closer to knowing how to identify such would-be terrorists and stop them before they act? There has been definite progress, but the sobering truth is that…we are likely to be dealing with this low-level terrorist threat for years to come.

We have no way of knowing if we are at the start of a wave of domestic terror, but it sure feels ominous right now, like something could be coming. But we need to get one thing straight – domestic terrorism, whether by Muslims, Christians or others, can never be totally eradicated. As long as there are people with grievances who don’t believe they have a means to get those grievances addressed, there will be terrorists.

Bergen found that post 9/11, 45 Americans have been killed by jihadists in 15 years. That’s three per year.

But not all homegrown terrorists are Muslims. We had terror attacks by the Unabomber, the “Mad Bomber” and McVeigh at Oklahoma City. Ted Kaczynski, George Metesky and Timothy McVeigh weren’t Muslims, they were angry. Anger can transcend religion or even, the lack of a religion. And today, we have not only our general gun death epidemic, but more specifically, our homegrown red blooded Americans who like to shoot up schools, malls, theaters and churches.

Just last week, two Colorado teen-age girls were indicted for planning to replicate Columbine.

Can we stop homegrown terrorists? No, not even if we take all of We, the People’s Rights away (well, maybe not the Second Amendment). No free society can stop free citizens from doing whatever they freely decide to do, up to and including converting to Islam and blowing themselves up. So that’s our choice: are we going to continue to be a free society?

Our choice is between having the government acquire more power and spending money in the name of our safety. Or, keep what remains of our Bill of Rights and accept that lone wolf terrorist acts will happen on our soil.

All that can be done is to reduce the amount of terrorism to the absolute minimum. Bergen’s article talks about some of those techniques, but terrorism will always be with us.

And acknowledging that reality is not appeasement. Those who choose to be terrorists will become so, regardless of what the law requires or the people desire.

To help you wake up to the routine prejudice Muslims face in the homeland of the free, here is “Terrorism is not a Religion”, a poem by Hersi. He is a former US Marine and veteran of Iraq, and is by birth, a Somali Muslim. In this video he recounts his experience as a Muslim in the American school system and the US military:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 2016

Dr. King is one of Wrongo’s few heroes. He set an example for activism and success in the political arena that few other activists have matched, except for the founders of our Republic. Maybe that is why he is one of only two individuals (George Washington is the other) who have their names attached to a federal holiday.

In the 1950’s and 1960’s, MLK transformed America. In the ‘50’s , America was a place where you didn’t question why we did things the way we did, you just followed your parents. By the end of the ‘60’s we were questioning everything. We changed a few things, and by the 1970s, many of us were living under a very different set of social mores than those of our parents.

MLK, along with others in our churches and a courageous few politicians created a real “moral majority” (not the phony ideal espoused by Jerry Falwell 25 years later), comprised of people of all races, educational and economic strata who came together to support the Big Idea that Separate was not Equal. MLK gave voice to that Big Idea.

His presence, power and persuasiveness drove our political process to a place and to an outcome in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. These ideas were completely unthinkable 10 years earlier in 1954, when Brown vs. Board of Education was decided by the Supreme Court.

Wrongo participated in the Civil Rights movement from 1958 to 1962. That participation changed my viewpoint on race, religion and politics. Sadly, and wrongly, Wrongo left active participation in the movement, thinking that Dr. King’s Big Idea had taken hold, and that it permanently altered our political landscape.

Yet here we are in 2016, with all of the New Deal and Great Society reforms under attack.

Here is something Wrongo guarantees you have never heard. It is a 1986 recording by Eartha Kitt detailing Dr. King’s activism, his many, many arrests, and the few attempts on his life before he was killed in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Kitt made an album called “My Way: Musical Tribute to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.” with The Black Academy of Arts & Letters (TBAAL), the nation’s largest African-American cultural arts institution. Here is Ms. Kitt, not singing, but speaking about MLK:

Those of you who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

It is clear from that recitation that MLK paid a high price for his beliefs. Ms. Kitt also paid a price for hers. In 1968, during LBJ’s administration, Kitt made anti-war statements at a White House luncheon. When Lady Bird Johnson asked her about Vietnam, Eartha replied:

You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. No wonder the kids rebel and take pot.

She had trouble finding work after that. Whatever you may think of her talents, it is contemptible that she was branded “a sadistic nymphomaniac” by the CIA. This was in the late 1960s, not the 1940s.

Today, the mass movement type of activism is dead. In our current political climate, holding large rallies rarely results in political change. Most people just send a tweet, and think they’ve accomplished something. The failure of demonstrations today is a symptom of a failure in our democracy. And the way the Occupy Movement was forcibly removed from American cities makes it difficult for anyone to want to engage in civil disobedience.

Consider how quick the police are to shoot unarmed black men today. How long would MLK be able to demonstrate, or drive his car, or march to Montgomery before being shot, not by an assassin, but by the police on the streets of America today?

Our founders wrote the Constitution in a way that explicitly provides for “the right of the people peaceably to assemble”. Despite that protection, legislation in cities across America has chipped away at those rights in the name of public safety. Along with this erosion of rights, comes the military-style weapons and tactics, the pepper spray and temporary suspension of civil rights that we saw in NYC, Ferguson. MO, and Oakland CA.

Today America urgently needs a political movement with a forceful, charismatic leader.

Someone who can tie together the various threads of what is wrong in our society. Someone who can show us how these things are interrelated, and who can point us in a direction that could restore our now-fading civil rights and our middle class.

MLK remains the hero of a generation of Americans for whom activism was a building block of their personal journey to adulthood.

In most ways, our nation has never recovered that sense of can-do, or that all things are possible for your Big Idea. Today there is no one like MLK who can rally us to drive Big Ideas to reality.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – January 10, 2016

Quite the week. You thought that the Saudi/Iran blow-up would dominate the news, until North Korea’s claim of a Hydrogen Bomb test took over the front page, but then, global stock markets melted down, following China’s markets into the crapper. And for relief, we had the President’s Executive Order on Gunz, the Bundy Brigade in Oregon, and the presidential candidates.

Some Asian explosions look alike:

COW H Bomb

Trump’s idea on North Korea’s new toy:

COW Trump Strategy

Between Lil’ Kim and Trump, the Donald having his finger on the button is a LOT mo scary!

Obama’s tears were not the only ones last week:

COW Tears The logical conclusion of 2nd Amendment Absolutism:

Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press

Bundy Brigade take over causes momentary outrage:

COW Bundys Boys Saudi Arabia vs. Iran: Make sure we have no skin in their game:

COW Saudi Iran issue

Are the Bundys America’s Y’all Qaeda?

Off Topic: Here is your last Santa photo of the season. Santa dodges tear gas in Bethlehem, 2015:

Santa in Bethlehem

Source: The Economist

Everyone is following the story of the standoff in Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, waiting for the next ugly shoe to drop: Will the authorities shut down the Ammon Bundy crew? Will bullets fly? Will they wait them out? As Josh Marshall said: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

…we just confirmed from Oregon State police the Ammon Bundy and his crew, who appear to be running low on supplies (Fritos, beef jerky, pizza, etc.) are actually free to come and go as they please. So if they need more food they can just leave the standoff, drive off to the nearest grocery store on a food run and come back and keep up the historic siege.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 13, 2015

(This is the last column until Thursday 12/17. Wrongo and Ms. Right are in San Francisco. Talk amongst yourselves, keep hands inside the blog at all times.)

The hits keep coming! The San Bernardino killings continue to reverberate in our psyches. People are scared beyond what should be reasonable, given the statistics about killings by Islamic terrorists. The Paris climate agreement is signed, but what will it really do? The Supreme Court considered affirmative action again, with predictable BS from both sides. Trump continues, and Rahm Emmanuel looks to be on the wrong side of justice in Chicago.

Here come the same tired solutions once again:

COW Tom Tomorrow 2

It’s Trump’s world, but so few can live in it:

COW Trump World

Chicago’s mayor finally decides to get rolling on solving the problem:

COW Rahm Truck As mayor, he sat on that video for over a year. He had to know, because the $5 million payment to the victim’s family didn’t come from petty cash at the Chicago PD. He was the chief architect of the cover-up. And he needs to go.

Justice Scalia again covers himself with glory:

COW Scalia Bad Thing

Won’t matter what Paris says about climate change:

COW Climate Change

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Category: Civil Rights