Category: Culture Wars

Saturday Soother – Fourth of July Weekend Edition, July 3, 2021

The Daily Escape:

People in the Sun – 1963 painting by Edward Hopper. Notice that they are not dressed for summer.

(The Wrongologist will be taking a break for the July 4th weekend. Regular ranting will resume on Tuesday, July 6.)

As we head into the 4th of July weekend, let’s remember that in a remarkable coincidence, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the only signers of the Declaration of Independence who later served as presidents of the US, died on the same day, July 4, 1826. That was the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration. Four years later, James Monroe, also a president and founder of our country, but not a signatory of the Declaration, became the third president in a row to die on July 4th in 1831.

For many, Jefferson and Adams dying on the same day seemed too coincidental. After all, the chances of two people dying on the same day is 1 in 365, but dying on a significant date that was the historic anniversary of an event for which they had intimate involvement? That seemed suspicious.

Some suggested a conspiracy among both physicians and family members to help the patients make it to the 4th. Margaret P. Battin observed in a 2005 Bulletin of the Historic Society article, that Adams’ granddaughter reported their doctor gave her grandfather an experimental medicine which he said could either prolong his life by as much as two weeks, or bring it to a close within 24 hours. Others wondered if something more sinister had been afoot. In a letter, John Randolph mused that Adams’ death was “Euthanasia”, adding “They have killed Mr. Jefferson, too, on the same day.”

Americans love conspiracy theories. Today, none more so than the ongoing belief that Trump won the 2020 election. Or that Democrats are Marxists, or pedophiles. Or that Obama was from Kenya.

In 2021 America, politicians always seek to amplify their differences with the other side, regularly accusing their rivals of deliberately trying to harm the country. And these conspiracies have trickled down to the rest of us, so much so that we’ve become a country at war with ourselves.

People speak with complete contempt about others. Some express contempt for the president, and the entire US government. What we hear routinely today is a level of contempt that in the past, we have reserved for enemies in a time of war. But now, we’re continually contemptuous of our fellow citizens. Contempt is particularly toxic because it implies that the attacker has a position of moral superiority, and through that, has the agency to attack another, possibly even physically.

So, on our most patriotic day, put down that hot dog, and ask the question: How do we unify a secure, wealthy country that is playing a zero-sum political game?

Our true patriots are those very few who are fighting to preserve our voting rights.

They’re the people who are adding new jobs in our jobs-short economy.

They’re the military who return time and again to the front lines, enduring the unendurable. They’re the families of those military personnel.

They’re people who serve on school boards, zoning boards and town councils, who get mostly only a psychic return for their efforts, compared to national politicians who are working hard to become millionairess – assuming they weren’t millionaires when they were elected.

They’re average Americans who see the decline of our institutions and infrastructure, wondering where to turn if we are to reverse all of these bad trends.

Is anyone ever “High as a kite on the 4th of July” with patriotic feeling anymore?

Since it’s Saturday, and the start of our national summer holiday, let’s hit pause for a few days before jumping in to the second half of the year. Let’s spend these days enjoying the end of lockdowns, and the revving up of our economy. Here in northwest Connecticut, on the 4th, we’re looking forward to going to our first indoor performance, an afternoon concert by the Shanghai Quartet at the wonderful Music Mountain in Falls Village, CT.

But to start the weekend, we all should listen to Ray Charles’ “America the Beautiful“. His version of the song is spiritual, emotional, soul stirring and amazingly timeless. Here, Ray is performing it live on the Dick Cavett Show in September 1972.

 

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Monday Wake Up Call – June 28, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Thumpertown Beach, Eastham, Cape Cod MA – June 2021 iPhone photo by Wrongo

Today’s new Republican talking point is that the main reason violent crime is on the rise is that Democrats have “stigmatized one of the most honorable professions in America.”

How is it that the Party that wants to drown the government in a bathtub, that worships guns, and believes Americans must be armed against their government, holds on to its brand as the Party of “law and order”?

Murder is up all over America. The GOP wants to blame “defund the police”, the Black Lives Matter movement, and whatever Antifa is. Toss in the horror of Critical Race Theory, and in a way, they’re trying out another “Willie Horton” political argument on the rest of us. (hat tip to WaMo)

For those who don’t remember, GHW Bush exploited Willie Horton’s 1986 rape of a woman in Maryland that occurred while Horton skipped out of his furlough. He raped and stabbed her.

Bush used this to trigger voters’ conscious and unconscious racial biases about African American men in his 1988 presidential election run against Michael Dukakis, who was governor of Massachusetts, the state Horton fled after his early release.

No one really knows why murders are up, but surely, it’s a multi-factor problem. Last week, Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22.5 years for murdering George Floyd. That’s about 10 years above the usual sentence recommended by law. But Chauvin’s sentencing doesn’t begin to solve America’s problem with policing.

And it won’t do anything for America’s murder rate.

A few things are certain. The NYT reported on a survey of almost 200 police departments nationwide that indicated retirements were up 45% while resignations rose by 18% in the last year, compared with the previous 12 months. From the NYT:

“New York City saw 2,600 officers retire in 2020 compared with 1,509 the year before. Resignations in Seattle increased to 123 from 34 and retirements to 96 from 43. Minneapolis, which had 912 uniformed officers in May 2019, is now down to 699.”

This is happening while most cities are contending with a rise in shootings and homicides. It raises in Wrongo’s mind a certain aroma of White fragility among police specifically, and Republicans generally.

The idea that Republicans are now wringing their hands and cops are quitting the job because activists carry signs that say defund the police, seems a disproportionate response to what the police continue to do to minorities.

These topics are far too complicated for one column, but let’s touch on a few high-level concerns: Killings are a direct result of the prevalence of guns in our country. We know that in most countries, police are under significantly less stress because they are don’t fear that every encounter will be with someone with a gun. From the NYT:

“…officers said they were asked to handle too much; they were constantly thrown at tangled societal problems like mental health breakdowns or drug overdoses, they said, for which they were ill-equipped — then blamed when things went wrong.”

This leads to the deliberately misunderstood (by Republicans) “defund” concept, which wants to redeploy some public spending on better services and better outcomes for citizens. It does that by providing additional resources that remove cops from situations that they are neither well-trained for, nor well-suited to address.

Second, law enforcement culture must change. The militarization of America’s police forces must be reversed. The power of police unions to influence police department culture must end.

Third, Democrats are running a big risk by not also focusing on the public safety issues of minority voters. Too many five-year-olds have been shot on their front stoops this year, and their grandmas who vote know that.

Axios reports that the Democratic messaging group Future Majority has identified areas where Republicans hold a political advantage. Republicans outperformed Democrats on jobs and the economy, gun rights, and “keeping you and your family safe.” In addition, of the issues polled, “defunding the police,” “open borders” and “reparations for slavery” were by far the biggest turnoffs for independents and voters in general.

The question for Democrats is how to balance changing police culture while seeing that people are protected? There’s a growing cop shortage, and Democrats are scrambling to develop a more complete response on crime.

So far this year, 21,099 Americans have been killed by a gun, including 11,550 suicides. Another 18,596 people have been wounded. Of that number, 720 children and teens under age 18 have been killed by guns, and another 1,852 have been wounded. And there have been 298 mass shootings resulting in 334 deaths and 1,244 injuries.

It’s time for action Democrats! Stop letting the GOP define your policies for you. To help you wake up, listen to Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer”. The video is a time capsule of 1980s NYC. If you remember, in 1980, people said: The future will be awesome! In 2021 Republicans are saying: I want to go back to the 80s:

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Monday Wake Up Call, Thin Blue Line Edition – April 19, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Morning has broken, St. Augustine, FL – April 13, 2021 photo by Wrongo

What does the American Flag really mean to us? To quote Heather Cox Richardson:

“Flags matter. They are the tangible symbol of a people united for a cause.”

Today we’re going to talk about a flag that increasingly unites only some Americans, the Thin Blue Line Flag.

That Thin Blue Line refers to a black-and-white American flag with one blue stripe. It’s come to mean that the police are the line which keeps society from descending into violent chaos. The “blue” refers to the blue color of the uniforms worn by many US police departments.

But in addition to being a sign of police solidarity, it has appeared as a symbol of white supremacy. From the Marshall Project:

“Those who fly the flag have said it stands for solidarity and professional pride within a dangerous, difficult profession and a solemn tribute to fallen police officers. But it has also been flown by white supremacists, appearing next to Confederate flags at the 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. County officials in Oregon recently paid $100,000 to a black employee of a law enforcement agency there, after she said she was harassed by coworkers for complaining about her colleagues displaying the flag at work.”

A “Blue Lives Matter” movement grew in the wake of multiple killings of police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Brooklyn, New York; and Dallas. But the movement took off when Trump, as a presidential candidate, called police “the force between civilization and total chaos.”

Soon a few states passed laws to categorize physical attacks on law enforcement officers as hate crimes.

But it has come to be a symbol for many sides. By the 2020 presidential election, Trump often replaced the American flag with the Thin Blue Line flag as the centerpiece of his rallies. The implication was that he was the leader of the alt-right. It was not inadvertent: after a Wisconsin rally, then-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tweeted:

“The Thin Blue Line flag is flying HIGH at President Trump’s rally in Wisconsin!”

The Thin Blue Line flag was prominent at the January 6 attempted coup in DC:

The BLM movement sees it as anti-BLM, and a racist symbol. The Thin Blue Line flag is supposed to convey solidarity with the police. But isn’t it also saying that it’s us against them?

The first reference to a thin blue line is in the early 1950s from William H. Parker, then-chief of police in Los Angeles. He worked with a short-lived TV show called the “Thin Blue Line“. He said that the blue line is what separates different kinds of Americans: those who abide by the law from those who do not.

The use of the concept grew from our military abroad, where it meant that our troops were holding a line against a foreign enemy.

Now, with the emergence of a quasi-military focus of policing in the US, that has been modified: For the police here at home, the enemy is within. The police see themselves as holding the line against criminals and elements of disorder that in their view, are undermining our society. There are now other flags that are designed to show solidarity: a red lined flag for firefighters, a yellow lined flag for emergency responders.

The police and community should be working together to produce better public safety. But if you’re looking at the community as a potential enemy, or a threat, that’s never going to produce a positive relationship.

Does America need specific flags for specific groups? In America today, we’re no longer a homogeneous society under one flag. A significant percentage of us no longer even support one president! The American flag is used by many groups, often with diverging views and ideologies.

Why should the Thin Blue Line flag be allowed to co-op the flag that belongs to all of us?

Wake up America! We’re on a dangerous path. There have always been interest groups that had their own message, some with colors and uniforms, or yes, even flags. But the Thin Blue Line has come to represent an insidious subtextual message of us vs. them that is particularly evident when it is flown alongside the ongoing murders of black and brown Americans by police.

To help you wake up, watch the Nashville-based group BR549 perform their 2001 tune “Too Lazy To Work, Too Nervous To Steal”:

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Monday Wake Up Call, the Silents Strike Back Edition – April 5, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Red Hill, on the Haleakala volcano. Maui, HI – March 2021 photo by vikings201

Yesterday was Easter Sunday. On that day 53 years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. The day before, he gave his final speech to striking sanitation workers in Memphis:

“Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

At 39 years old when he died, Dr. King was an early member of the Silent Generation. Wrongo and Biden are also members of the Silent Generation.

The Greatest Generation preceded the Silents. They survived the Great Depression and won World War II. We’ve all heard quite a bit about their accomplishments. But they weren’t called the Greatest until Tom Brokaw invented the phrase in 1988 for marketing purposes. Prior to that they were known as the GI generation.

The Silents are sandwiched between them and the Boomers, and on the presidential level, we haven’t heard anything from my generation until Biden was elected. He is the first (and most likely, the last) Silent to be elected president. Clinton, GW Bush, Obama, and Trump were all boomers. Prior to Clinton, and after Eisenhower, they were all Greatests. As the first Silent to be elected, so far, Biden is hanging in there despite being an old guy.

Barkley Rosser at Angry Bear is the inspiration for today’s column. He quotes Robert Putnam, who says that there is an “I-we-I” pattern to our generational history that informs and motivates our political, social, cultural and economic activities: (brackets by Wrongo)

“….the “I-we-I” pattern, whereby there was an increase in solidarity and “we orientation,” cooperation, social capital, equality, and so on from the 1890s to roughly the 1960s, some variables peaking in the 1950s and economic equality peaking in the 1970s…[but] Since then we have basically gone downhill to an “I” orientation of greater inequality and polarization and unhappiness and low social capital…”

Barkley says that Putnam:

“…pinpointed cultural shifts as crucial and noted especially shifts in the mid-60s, even noting the contrast in themes of the early folkish Bob Dylan with his civil rights songs to the later electronic Dylan with his more personal emphasis, and supposedly a similar shift with the Beatles, especially when they broke up. This peak of “we” and the move towards “I” coincided with the rise of the Boomers.”

The quick conclusion is that the Greatests had lots of “we” orientation that drove much of their achievements. But they had a dark side: They were prejudiced, and many were racists.  By the time the Boomers emerge, we have the emphasis on the “I” that brings with it substantially lower levels of prejudice. One of the Greatests’ who worked for change was LBJ, who fought in WWII, winning a Silver Star, and then went on in the 1960s to sign into law the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

By Wrongo’s date of birth, he is a late stage “Silent”. But nothing about our growing up was silent. We helped lead the anti-war and pro-civil rights movements. We also were early but ineffective activists in the first stages of environmentalism. Along the way, we had to fight with many of the Greatests and a few of the other Silents who refused to hear the message.

The premise is that the Silents are a kind of golden mean, still following the “we” focus of the Greatests, while being the first generation to live through a substantial reduction in racism and prejudice. Being of the Silent generation may be part of the motivation that Biden is using to move the country back toward a less polarized “we” orientation.

But the “I” focus remains with us. Wrongo believes, however, that Covid has helped create more “we” forms of cooperation than we had at the start of the Trump era. But many people remain selfish. They refuse to wear masks, or to social distance, regardless of the outcome.

Republicans disparage Biden’s call for unity because they’re actively against his agenda, while having no agenda of their own. Time to wake up America, we need waay more “we” and a lot less “I”!

To help you wake up, listen to Santana perform George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” with help from India. Arie:

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – March 21, 2021

Welcome to the first week of spring. Last week, 12 House Republicans voted against a resolution to award Congressional Gold Medals to the Capitol Police, the DC police and the Smithsonian Institution in recognition of those who protected the Capitol when it was attacked by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6.

They said they objected to the use of the term “insurrectionists” in the resolution. On to cartoons:

March brings on Republican madness:

They’re mad at a few other things too:

The fearmongering never ends:

The only caravan at the border:

Jim Crow lives in the Party of Lincoln:

Cuomo needs to go:

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – March 7, 2021

With the Senate’s passage of the Covid relief bill along Party lines, Wrongo is certain that given the chance, the GOP will do to Biden precisely what they did to Obama: Obstruct nearly everything in the hope that it will help them return to control of House and/or the Senate in 2022.

There may be agreement on an infrastructure bill, but if the filibuster remains in place, that will be the only other thing that Democrats achieve before the 2022 midterms.

It’s important to remember that a family of four that makes $13.25/hour is living at the poverty level if they are working a 40-hour week. Few of those workers receive retirement, health benefits, or paid vacations.

Yet America is willing to provide many school-age children in this socio-economic segment three meals a day, often when school isn’t in session.  It’s analogous to America failing to provide health care to the neediest, while letting the most critically ill into a local emergency room. The case for increasing the minimum wage is overwhelming.

Rome is burning. We should be willing to overpay for more fire extinguishers. That means end the filibuster. On to cartoons.

Opinions differ based on viewpoints:

Elephant plans to update Seuss:

People are starting to think we might get back to normal:

But not in Texas:

Two presidents compared:

Cuomo looks to the future:

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Saturday Soother – March 6, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Castle Hill Lighthouse, Newport, RI – photo by Ray Dickson

A few random Saturday thoughts: The Capitol wasn’t invaded by hordes of Trump dead enders on Thursday demanding that their leader assume the presidency.  But the House of Representatives was fearful enough to take the day off. So mission accomplished!

Second, those dead enders were probably too busy digging through their mom’s basements looking for their old Dr. Seuss books. They heard that Dr. Seuss has been “cancelled” by Biden and the Democrats. According to Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade:

“The cancel culture is canceling Dr. Seuss….It’s out of control.”

There’s nothing like a culture war to distract the Republican rank and file from noticing that none of their House and Senate representatives voted for the Covid Relief Bill or for HR 1.

Dr. Seuss Enterprises is a private company. It made a private business decision about its private property, taking six Seuss books out of circulation. Republicans, those stalwart defenders of private property and free-market capitalism, of course, are going nuts.

OTOH, the Dr. Seuss tempest is capitalism in action. Dr. Seuss Enterprises is minting money off the conservative backlash to the sidelining of his six racist books: Nine of the top ten bestselling books on Amazon right now are Seuss books that aren’t being “cancelled”.

Third, on the economic front, we added 379,000 jobs in February, outpacing expectations. But we’re still about 9.5 million jobs behind where we were one year ago, before the pandemic hit. Even if we were to continue adding jobs at last month’s rate, it would take two full years just to get back to that level.

That should tell us that the only real answer to the jobs crisis is containing Covid. Too bad so many Republican governors are all about undermining that effort by refusing mask mandates. Here’s a map showing the states that have no mask mandate:

It shouldn’t be news that ALL these states have Republican governors, including WY and KS, who have limited mask mandates.

Fourth, here’s a great chart showing how many hours it took to pay rent back when the $7.25 minimum wage was new and how long people have to work for the same space now:

Source: WSJ

Back in 1968, no minimum wage worker had to work more than 20 hours/week to make rent. The chart makes it clear that even if a $15/hour minimum wage is passed, only workers in Toledo OH would be better off than they were in 1968. So, why can’t Republicans see this? Who are they afraid of? Certainly not their own economically distressed voters. Shouldn’t they get on board and say it’s time to pass the $15/hour minimum wage?

But enough of all that ails us, it’s Saturday, and time to take a break from the big questions of the day, and concentrate on smaller things, in other words, a Saturday Soother. Here at the Mansion of Wrong, we have finally taken down our Christmas tree. Since it’s a faux tree, we have zero dead needles on the floor.

We’re also looking forward to setting up our new treadmill today. Because of the pandemic, these babies are in short supply. The delivery team said yesterday that we were their 12th stop of the day. Should have bought stock in that company.

Today we’re brewing up your coffee from the Brooklyn Roasting Company in Dumbo, on Brooklyn’s coffee waterfront. Today, let’s pop the top on a 12 oz. can of their 3D coffee, ($15) with its notes of berry, dark chocolate, and honey. The roaster says it pops out and pulls you in.

Now take a seat by a window and listen to “Meditation” from Jules Massenet’s opera, “Thaïs”. It is based on the novel “Thaïs” by Anatole France and was first performed in Paris in March 1894. Here it is played by Nathan Farrington on Bass, and Allison Allport on Harp, not the more traditional violin or orchestral version:

BTW, Wrongo checked, and today is the fifth time he’s featured the “Meditation” on a Saturday. He must really like it. If you’ve never listened to it before, please try it today!

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 26, 2020

Possibly lost in the “Terrorist Antifa Moms” news out of Portland last week was the thought that we continually say things like this:

  • Another new low for Trump.
  • How dare he?
  • Trump flaunts the Constitution.

In the past, other presidents have used governmental authority for political ends, but no other president has used a combination of the FBI/DHS/ATF and private mercenaries to literally beat down our First Amendment rights. Who’s stepping forward to stop him?

Without a principled Congress, nothing will stop him. The Republican Party steadfastly remains unshocked by his behavior. The Democratic Party can hold all the hearings it wants. It will never make a dent in Trump’s behavior. The current national dumpster fire is 100% owned by the GOP.

From Trump’s perspective, he’s doing exactly what he’s certain that he can get away with as President. He’s moved the goalposts, because our system wasn’t designed to hold back a President without principles. On to cartoons.

Protection of your Constitutional rights is now in the hands of Portland’s mothers:

Here’s the true cognitive test for Americans:

Who’s behind these secret police masks?

Do Americans understand how close we are to Trump declaring Martial Law?

Can Trump win on this debate question?

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Monday Wake Up Call – Dixie Chicks Edition, June 29, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Delaware Water Gap, NJ – 2020 photo by Craig Conklin

OK, Wrongo was wrong, again. He said on Saturday that changing the name of the Dixie Chicks to the Chicks wasn’t going to do anything for them. Wrongo ignored the power of a great protest song, and what it can do for your career.

And the Chicks have such a protest song in the just-released “March March” which is featured below.

But first, a few words about the mostly-forgotten Dixie Chicks. They were country, but not the faux patriotic kind. Their name came from the song by Little Feat, “Dixie Chicken”. If you’ve never heard it, you’re in for a treat, so listen at the link above.

Despite the name, they were pretty progressive in their music and lyrics. And they got in trouble for it in the Bush II administration. From Wikipedia: (brackets by Wrongo)

“On March 10, 2003, nine days before the invasion of Iraq, the Dixie Chicks performed…in London, England. It was the first concert of their Top of the World tour in support of their sixth album, Home. Introducing their song “Travelin’ Soldier”, [Natalie] Maines told the audience the band did not support the upcoming Allied invasion of Iraq and were “ashamed” that President George W. Bush was from Texas.

Many American country music listeners supported the war, and Maines’s remark triggered a backlash in the United States. The Dixie Chicks were blacklisted by thousands of country radio stations, and the band members received death threats…”

This was a huge deal back then. The entire country music industry ostracized them. At roughly the same time as the Chicks were blacklisted, the House GOP pushed to rename french fries and french toast in their cafeteria to “freedom fries” and “freedom toast”. Freedumb!

But the Chicks were correct. It wasn’t simply the Iraq war, it was illegal torture, the rise of the unitary executive, the attacks on free speech, and the destruction of the Iraqi state, and how that destabilized the Middle East. The Dixie Chicks’ protest grew to include all of that.

Looking back, Nashville didn’t have a clue about how to respond after 9/11. In their simplistic view, we had WWII, a story about the good guys vs. the bad guys. We also had Vietnam’s multiple shades of gray. But from a marketing perspective, and based on their collective ideology, Nashville wanted Bush’s Iraq war to be perceived at the WWII end of the spectrum.

In retrospect, the Chicks were a lot closer to where most of America was on the Iraq war than their Nashville gatekeepers. If you have any doubts about their political bona fides, listen to their anti-Vietnam song, Travelin’ Soldier, written by Bruce Robison in 1996.

So onward to the Chicks’ new song. Watch it full screen, it’s worth it.

This is protest music at its best. There have been protest songs all along, but the last time they were truly relevant was in 1970, with the CSNY song “Ohio” memorializing the Kent State shootings.

In 2020, it’s taken a pandemic, a maliciously negligent government, and disgusting abuses of authority to maybe slap us wide awake. Time to wake up America! Listen to the Chicks do “March March”:

Full Lyrics:

 [Chorus]
March, march to my own drum
March, march to my own drum
Hey, hey, I’m an army of one
Oh, I’m an army of one
March, march to my own drum
March, march to my own drum
Hey, hey, I’m an army of one
Oh, I’m an army of one

[Verse 1]
Brenda’s packin’ heat ’cause she don’t like Mondays
Underpaid teacher policin’ the hallways
Print yourself a weapon and take it to the gun range
(Ah, cut the shit, you ain’t goin’ to the gun range)
Standin’ with Emma and our sons and daughters
Watchin’ our youth have to solve our problems
I’ll follow them, so who’s comin’ with me?
(Half of you love me, half already hate me)

[Chorus]

[Verse 2]
Tell the ol’ boys in the white bread lobby
What they can and can’t do with their bodies
Temperatures are risin’, cities are sinkin’
(Ah, cut the shit, you know your city is sinkin’)
Lies are truth and truth is fiction
Everybody’s talkin’, who’s gonna listen?
What the hell happened in Helsinki?

[Chorus]

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

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Saturday Soother – May 30, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Cactus flowers, Devils Bridge, Sedona, AZ – May 2020 photo by sooperb4d

It’s hot and muggy at the Mansion of Wrong. Today we received our usual daily visit from a momma turkey and her eight chicks. Some are already able to fly for short distances, while the smaller ones just jog along.

This morning, Wrongo was thinking that he’d never expected to have to live through something as tumultuous and dangerous as 1968, but here we are. We’ve got:

  • A Plague killing people in every state
  • Economic collapse (potentially on the scale of the Great Depression)
  • An incompetent incumbent president who will say anything in order to win re-election
  • Heavily armed yahoos complaining about having to wear masks, or that they can’t get haircuts

But rather than talk about those four things, America’s talking about a racially based killing in Minneapolis that has morphed into an urban dystopia. Hennepin County finally brought charges against a cop who murdered a man in public with dozens of witnesses. That has incited urban violence. Second, Trump called for the looters in Minneapolis to be shot, tweeting:

“Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts,”

We will assume control? Does Trump think he has the right to invade Minnesota? And that wasn’t the worst of his tweet.

You may know by now that the other phrase was notorious in the civil rights movement. It was used in 1967 by Miami’s police chief at the time, Walter Headley, after he sent police dogs and officers armed with shotguns into Miami’s black neighborhoods in what he called:

 “…a crackdown on…slum hoodlums….We don’t mind being accused of police brutality.”

Headley claimed that Miami had not experienced “racial disturbances and looting” because he had put the word out that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Headley thus elevated stealing to a capital crime punishable by death without due process. And now Trump is advocating the same thing.

Some are saying that Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter has taken a courageous stand against Trump, that Dorsey is standing up for all of us. CNN reports:

“…Trump has angrily complained this week about social media companies, repeatedly accusing them of censoring conservative voices and going as far as to sign an executive order Thursday seeking to limit their power. But data from Facebook, the world’s largest social media company, pours cold water on the assertion that conservative voices are being silenced.”

Here’s the data:

The red bars represent conservative sites. CrowdTangle, the company that made the chart, says that in the last month on Facebook, Trump has captured 91% of the total interactions on content posted by the US presidential candidates. Biden has captured only 9%.

Trump and the Republicans repeatedly accuse Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms of bias, saying that they are the villains in the culture war the GOP uses to excite the conservative base.

The dispute is about whether Twitter has the right to disagree with and respond to the president. As a private company, it obviously does have that right. The chilling part is that the president and his advisers think otherwise.

Wrongo started by talking about 1968, the year that Nixon won the White House, running on a law and order message. He split the vote with George Wallace and Hubert Humphrey. That was 52 years ago, and a few things have changed. From Paul Campos:

“For one thing, the current president is somebody who makes George Wallace look like a statesman. For another, the country is much less white. (As a percentage of the total population, white non-Hispanics have declined from about 85% of the population to 60%).”

Nixon in 1968, like Trump in 2020, clearly exploited racial tensions, but a crucial distinction: Nixon wasn’t in power at the time of the 1968 elections. We’ll have to see whether Minneapolis helps or hurts Trump in November.

Time to take a break from our worst year in 52 years, and calm ourselves with a Saturday Soother. There is more yard work to do on the fields of Wrong, but we’re starting with a cold brew coffee from Greater Goods roasters in Austin TX. Food & Wine named them the best coffee in Texas in 2019. Their cold brew is called “Connections” ($15/12 oz.) and features the sweet, chocolatey goodness of beans sourced from Colombia and Brazil.

Now settle back and listen to the Tedeschi Trucks Band play a stunning live version of “Midnight in Harlem“, written by Minnesota band member Mike Mattison. Stay for the fantastic slide guitar solo by Derek Trucks:

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

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