Category: Social Cohesion

Saturday Soother – July 31, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Rain on the way, Factory Butte, UT – May 2021 photo by armitage2112

It was a big week for political news, but the most explosive story of the week concerned Covid and the delta variant. On Friday, the WaPo reported that a scientific analysis of a Covid outbreak in Provincetown on Cape Cod, MA, showed that 74% of the people who became infected had been fully vaccinated.

Also, the infected but vaccinated people had received all the approved vaccines: Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.

Worse, the study found that vaccinated individuals carried as much virus in their noses as unvaccinated individuals, and that vaccinated people could spread the virus to each other. As of Thursday, 882 people were tied to the Provincetown outbreak. Among those living in Massachusetts, 74% of them were fully immunized. Officials said the vast majority also reported symptoms. But just seven people were hospitalized.

Also, officials tested specimens from 133 people and found the delta variant in 90% of them.

On Thursday, another WaPo story about a CDC internal document estimated that 35,000 vaccinated people a week in the US are having symptomatic breakthrough infections. This is out of a vaccinated population of more than 162 million Americans. That internal CDC document also reported that the delta variant is as transmissible as chickenpox.

So, it looks like it’s time once again to recalibrate our thinking about Covid.

The CDC report says that there’s evidence that vaccinated people can also spread the more transmissible delta variant, right along with the unvaccinated. That both groups can spread the virus is likely the key factor in the current summer surge of infections.

There’s a whole lot of finger pointing going on over this. The right is blaming the CDC for being inconsistent, and the Republicans in Congress are trying to make the possible instituting of a vaccine mandate along with re-instituting a mask mandate, into another political issue.

What House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) fails (purposely) to understand is that since the virus is changing, our response needs to also change. This variant is much more contagious than the original variants. We should all be working to defeat the virus, not trying to score political points on each other. And McCarthy is vaccinated, although 65 GOP members of the House are not.

Republican Congressman Roger Marshall (KS) is an MD. He said on PBS yesterday that masks do absolutely nothing to prevent the spread of disease. And he’s a Republican OBGYN, so he should know, right?

Nobody in the world, much less in the CDC, knew exactly how virulent these Covid variants would be. Epidemiologists hoped that people would get quickly vaccinated and help end the unchecked spread of the virus. That didn’t happen, in large part because right-wing media has actively stoked the culture wars, while GOP politicians run alongside, hoping to take control of the House in the 2022 mid-terms.

Once again, this means we’re dealing with a bad faith crowd that will scream about any contradictions. You’re not allowed to change your mind. You’re not allowed to admit you were wrong. You’re not allowed to accommodate new evidence.

Borrowing from driving your car, your mask is your seat belt. Your vaccination is your airbag.

On to the weekend and our Saturday Soother. We’re seeing an invasion of Japanese beetles on the fields of Wrong. Ms. Right went to the Agway and bought one of those old-fashioned beetle traps, a long green plastic bag topped by a lure with the scent of roses. It has captured a very satisfying number of beetles, but it’s difficult to say what percentage have not fallen victim to Ms. Right’s lures.

Friday marked the return of the summer session of the BBC Proms in London, after an 18+ month absence due to Covid. Friday night led off with Ralph Vaughan Williams’s “Serenade to Music”. It premiered at the Royal Albert Hall in 1938. Williams also wrote the piece for 16 vocal soloists and orchestra in 1938. He adapted the text from a discussion about music in Act V, Scene 1 of Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice”.

Vaughan Williams later arranged the piece into versions for chorus and orchestra and for solo violin and orchestra. Since Wrongo doesn’t appreciate the operatic singing of Shakespeare, this is the orchestral version, played by the Northern Sinfonia of England, conducted by Richard Hickox. The violinist is Bradley Creswick:

The video includes wonderfully atmospheric paintings by the Victorian era artist John Atkinson Grimshaw.

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Is Voting a Right, or a Privilege Granted by the State?

The Daily Escape:

Manzanita Beach, OR – 2021 photo by Taysian Photography

A new Pew Research poll asks whether voting is a fundamental right, or a privilege. Like most things in America today, the answer is that it depends on your age and political affiliation. Self-identified Republican voters skewed more toward “privilege” while self-identified Democratic voters said “right.” See this chart:

Overall, 57% of Americans over 18 say voting is a “fundamental right for every US citizen and should not be restricted.”

  • Younger adults are most likely to say voting is a fundamental right, peaking at 64% among 18-to-29-year-olds. Sixty percent of 30-to-49-year-olds agree. But for people aged 50 or older, only about 50% say voting is a fundamental right.
  • The biggest gap is by political party affiliation. Fully 78% of Democrats say voting is a fundamental right versus just 32% Republicans.
  • A 67% majority of Republicans say voting is a privilege that can be limited.

Isn’t it shocking that most Republicans don’t think voting is a fundamental right? Maybe that explains why they find it acceptable to re-litigate the 2020 presidential election, or to suppress the votes of those they think will vote against them.

Although the majority of Republicans view voting as a privilege that can be limited, younger Republicans and Hispanic Republicans are more likely than older Republicans to say that voting is a fundamental right for every US citizen:

44% of Republicans and Republican leaners under 30 say it is a fundamental right, compared with 37% of those ages 30 to 49, 29% of those 50 to 64 and just 22% of those 65 and older.

The Atlantic quotes historian Eric Foner, saying that since the country’s founding, Americans have been torn between: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“…voting as a right and voting as something that only the right people should do.”

Foner says that every step forward in human rights has given birth to a desire to “purify the electorate.” After the Civil War, Northern Republicans wanted to exclude “disloyal” pro-Southern Democrats and newly arrived immigrants from the ballot, while Southern Democrats were adamant that freed slaves should not vote.

The Constitution mentions “the right to vote” five times. But people on the Right often observe that the Constitution doesn’t explicitly say, “All individuals have the right to vote.” It simply rules out specific limitations on the right to vote. A right not guaranteed in affirmative terms isn’t really a “right” in a fundamental sense, they say.

But if the rule is that the Constitution must say, “here is a specific right and we hereby guarantee that right to every person” then there are few rights in the Constitution. The Constitution does more “rights-preserving” than rights-proclaiming.

States shouldn’t be able to pick and choose who gets to pick and choose our elected representatives. Taking away people’s right to vote would further increase corruption, simply because the government would have an easier time targeting those people. It isn’t inconsistent that states can make rules about conduct of elections, but they shouldn’t be able to decide who gets to vote. That should be unconstitutional.

This question has become a full-on political battle with Republican states pushing for more control over who gets to vote, mostly based on the Big Lie.

Let’s close today by remembering Dusty Hill, the bass player of ZZ Top, who died on Wednesday. He, along with the other two band members were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of fame in 2004.

ZZ Top probably has the longest-running unchanged band lineup in rock and roll history. Dusty told the Charlotte Observer:

“People ask how we’ve stayed together so long…I say separate tour buses. We got separate tour buses early on, when we probably couldn’t afford them. That way we were always glad to see each other when we got to the next city.”

And when they were playing, you didn’t take your eyes off Hill. Not just because of his luxurious beard. He was a great bass player, and his raw vocals were unforgettable.

This recording of their hit “Tush” says it was recorded in 1975, but they’re playing Dean guitars in this video. That didn’t happen until the 1980s. Still, it’s worth listening to Dusty live on lead vocals and the great guitar playing:

RIP Dusty.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 25, 2021

David Frum in the Atlantic:

“In the United States, this pandemic could’ve been over by now, and certainly would’ve been by Labor Day. If the pace of vaccination through the summer had been anything like the pace in April and May, the country would be nearing herd immunity. With most adults immunized, new and more infectious coronavirus variants would have nowhere to spread. Life could return nearly to normal.”

More:

“When pollsters ask about vaccine intentions, they record a 30-point gap: 88% of Democrats, but only 54% of Republicans, want to be vaccinated as soon as possible. All told, Trump support predicts a state’s vaccine refusal better than average income or education level.”

Wrongo’s patience is nearly at an end with these people. It will be fully at an end once vaccinations are available to the 12 and under crowd. Then, let the anti-vaxxers go one-on-one with the virus to see who wins. Wrongo will say to them, “mask up if you want to live, or don’t”. On to cartoons.

GOP tries on a new vax message:

And even Fox tries walking it back:

And it’s not just at home:

McCarthy rolls his ball of dung back to the GOP caucus:

Parties don’t see eye to eye on infrastructure:

Our weather’s out of control:

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Will We Ever Bring the Wealthy to Justice in America?

The Daily Escape:

Evening mist, Southampton, MA – July 4, 2021 photo by Kendall Lavoie

From Patrick Radden Keefe in the NYT:

“In 2016, a small-time drug dealer in Leesburg, Va., named Darnell Washington sold a customer a batch of what he thought was heroin. It turned out to be fentanyl. The customer shared it with a friend, and the friend died from an overdose….prosecutors have begun treating overdose deaths not as accidents but as crimes, using tough statutes to charge the dealers who sold the drugs. Mr. Washington had never met the person who overdosed. But, facing a mandatory minimum prison sentence of 20 years for distribution resulting in death, he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of distribution and is now serving a 15-year sentence in federal prison.”

Shouldn’t that same level of criminal liability also be directed at Purdue Pharma, the company that makes OxyContin? After all, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services:

“More than 760,000 people have died since 1999 from a drug overdose. Two out of three drug overdose deaths in 2018 involved an opioid.”

And OxyContin is an opioid. It should be clear that the members of the billionaire Sackler family who own a controlling stake in Purdue, must also face the music. But, that isn’t happening. The Sacklers are likely to receive a sweeping grant of immunity from all litigation relating to their role in helping precipitate and prolong America’s opioid crisis. From NPR: (brackets by Wrongo)

“As part of the bankruptcy talks, they’ve [the Sacklers] offered to give up control of the company and pay roughly $4.2 billion. In exchange, under the current deal on the table, the Sacklers would keep much of their wealth, admit no wrongdoing and be sheltered from future opioid lawsuits.”

It’s interesting that state DAs and DOJ attorneys can charge dealers with drug induced homicide in overdose cases and yet can’t (or won’t) charge the executives or owners in the Purdue/Sackler case.

In October 2020, during the dying days of the Trump administration, the Sacklers reached a settlement agreement with the US DOJ. Forty states have now agreed to this plan, although significant holdouts remain. Connecticut has filed an objection to the bankruptcy exit plan and has been joined by eight other states: California, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.

According to the formal objection:

“…the attorneys general oppose a provision in the bankruptcy plan that would grant the Sacklers lifetime immunity from all liability, which would prevent the states from bringing consumer protection lawsuits against the family. And they highlighted a recent New York Times editorial that showed the Sacklers will continue to earn interest on their $4.3 billion as the settlement is paid out over nine years, thus ensuring they will be wealthier than they were when they started.”

In response, the Sacklers threatened a motion for sanctions against five of the dissenting states for allegedly false statements in the states’ proofs of claim, only to withdraw their 201 page motion the next day. That big memo probably cost a fortune for the lawyers to produce, but hey, it’s the Sacklers! More than anything, it shows that the Sacklers have no sense of contrition for their role in the OxyContin debacle.

There is still some reason to hope that the Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain won’t agree to the blanket immunity for the Sacklers. This week, the DOJ made two separate court filings that raised Constitutional and other concerns about the settlement. From NPR:

“US Trustee William Harrington….accused the Sacklers and their associates of using the bankruptcy system to avoid liability for ‘alleged wrongdoing in concocting and perpetuating for profit one of the most severe public health crises ever experienced in the United States’”

Their argument is technical, and the saga is far from over. In the light of Harrington’s objections, and the arguments made by the state AG holdouts, it may be difficult for Judge Drain to sign off on the immunities as they now stand, especially since the Sacklers are retaining the bulk of their fortune, and that no individual executives were charged, even with misdemeanors.

Where’s the justice? What people really want, more than compensation for harm done to them, is justice. They want proof that the rich and their corporations can’t just commit crimes that harm or kill people on a massive scale, and then use their wealth and political connections to evade the consequences.

Worse, the victims won’t blame Purdue or the Sacklers if/when they’re betrayed. People expect companies or the wealthy to defend themselves to the best of their ability.

They will blame the government, for feigning helplessness in this case, just like they did with the banks in 2009.

And for allowing a separate standard of justice for the wealthy to prevail. Again.

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Monday Wake Up Call – July 19, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Morning Glory Geyser, Yellowstone NP, WY – 2021 photo by Edwin Buske Photography. The geyser used to be blue, not green. Tourists throwing things into it have changed it’s color. The debris affected water circulation and lowered the geyser’s temperature. That caused a bloom of orange and yellow bacteria.

The Republicans won’t stop fighting Critical Race Theory (CRT), which examines the history of institutional racism in America. From Roll Call:

“…on Monday, GOP Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) sent a request to the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee asking the panel to prohibit funding for instruction in critical race theory for service members in its fiscal 2022 defense spending bill. He argued that service members “should not have to be subjected to discriminatory intersectional exercises that try to politicize our military.”

It’s worth remembering that The Former Guy issued an executive order in September 2020 that restricted the federal government and its contractors from teaching CRT. And that Biden rescinded that order on the day of his inauguration.

This represents a widening of the Republicans’ war on CRT. In recent weeks Republicans have passed legislation in Florida, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Iowa, Idaho and Texas, placing significant restrictions on what can be taught in public school classrooms and, in some cases, in public universities.

We’ve seen this before. The CRT insanity is reminiscent of 2010 when Fox News and the GOP went berserk condemning the so-called Ground Zero Mosque being built in New York City.

Today, it’s the same thing all over again with CRT. Eric Boehlert via his indispensable “Press Run”:

“When Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis moved to ban critical race theory from classrooms in the Sunshine State, the Miami Herald reported, ‘Superintendents across the state have said they do not teach critical race theory in their schools’. But that did not stop the State Board [of Education] from considering the rule to ban it.”

It’s the same everywhere: Republicans are saying they must make moves to protect students from CRT. But Republicans can’t find examples of it actually being taught in high schools. Once again, we’re seeing conservatives pushing a concocted claim and the entire Republican Party playing along.

Let’s not mince words about what Republicans are doing. They’re passing laws that amount to speech codes. They’re trying to control public education by banning the free expression of ideas. Education is by its nature political. To try and “cleanse” it from politics will give us citizens who lack civic knowledge and the civic responsibility that comes with it.

Censoring information makes informed choice impossible. It takes away the opportunity for people to learn and become mature and caring citizens.

When Christians were trying to add “Intelligent Design” into public school science curricula as an alternative theory to evolution, they often said schools should “teach the controversy“, implying an equivalence between the two. That failed, not because Creationism was debunked, but because it didn’t belong in the same category of knowledge as science.

At the time, nobody argued that Intelligent Design should be banned, just that it be discussed in its appropriate context: In comparative religion, not in biology class.

We can learn from the Christians this time though. If we frame America’s origin story as “teaching the controversy“, it might well be the best approach. It’s the only one that retains the nuance, contradictions, and complications necessary to provide an understanding of America and the experiences of its peoples.

There will always be disagreement about our nation’s history. We should welcome that debate in our public schools. It would be a violation of our shared vision of America as a nation of free and open debate if we resort to using state governments to wall off that discussion.

It’s impossible to create a neutral, non-controversial curriculum because real education aims to develop critical thinking. Critical thinking requires us to understand controversial viewpoints on the one hand, and the arguments for and against them on the other.

People have the right to get the education that they want for their kids, but that doesn’t mean legislating CRT out of existence. Instead, why don’t we teach kids how to spot and critique propaganda?

Time to wake up America! We can’t let one political party control our curricula. To help you wake up listen to Nina Simone perform “Backlash Blues” live at the Montreux Jazz Festival, 1976. The lyric of this song is the poem, “Backlash Blues” by Langston Hughes:

Resentment over the pace of the civil rights movement in the 1960s came to be known as white backlash, and it’s still with us today.

Lyric:

Mr. Backlash, Mr. Backlash

Just who do you think I am

You raise my taxes, freeze my wages

And send my son to Vietnam

You give me second class houses

And second class schools

Do you think that alla colored folks

Are just second class fools?

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 18, 2021

The Summer Olympics start next Saturday in Tokyo. Nobody knows how they will go, but the Olympic village just reported its first case of Covid. And Tokyo reported a six-month high in cases.

That doesn’t sound like an auspicious start for an event that has already been postponed for a year.

The reason it’s taking place at all is money. NBC and the International Olympic Committee agreed to a $7.75 billion rights deal in 2014 that’s designed to keep the Olympics on NBC through 2032. And there are hundreds of sponsors signed up for commercials during the more than 7,000 hours of coverage scheduled across its variety of networks from July 23 to August 8.

As Felix Salmon writes, the Olympics haven’t made financial sense in decades. Host cities spend billions preparing for the games. They inevitably suffer massive cost overruns, and go deep into debt, with a lasting legacy of little more than a group of buildings that are a monument to failure.

The 2008 Beijing summer Olympics cost $45 billion; its revenues were $3.6 billion, most of which went to the International Olympic Committee. Russia’s Sochi winter Olympics in 2014 cost about $50 billion and had even lower revenues.

The Tokyo Olympics will cost about $28 billion and the decision to ban spectators means foregoing another $1 billion in ticket sales. So, while winning an Olympic medal represents the pinnacle of athletic achievement in most sports, the edifice that supports standing on the podium is crumbling. On to cartoons.

Biden may need to choose his words better:

Biden’s tune is nice, the words are true:

GOP’s attacks on culture wars hit a new low. It’s always the one on the left:

Recent books say the Former Guy attempted a coup. Republicans say not so:

Most Republicans are happy to excuse TFG’s behavior:

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Saturday Soother – July 17, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Ruby Beach Overlook,  Olympic NP, WA – 2021 photo by Erwin Buske

COVID-19 cases in the US have soared 121% in the past two weeks. Hospitalizations have jumped 26%.  and deaths are up by 9%. Infections have more than doubled in 22 states, DC, and Puerto Rico in the past 14 days. The counties with the biggest jump in new cases are overwhelmingly in Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, Georgia, and Louisiana. The delta variant is alive and well, and on the move!

We should now be calling it the plague of the unvaccinated.

Ignorance is going to ruin this country. Look at what so many conservatives believe: The coronavirus vaccine is either harmful, useless, or a government plot to control our bodies; that the 2020 election was rigged and the Former Guy won; and that the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was mostly a stroll by tourists through the building. Here’s conservative Fox News person Tomi Lahren tweeting about Covid:

Like most anti-Covid conservatives, she didn’t bother to check the facts. Perhaps she thinks that just stating what she believes makes it true. She’s wrong.

Yes, Covid has “a high survival rate for most people,” but that doesn’t mean what Lahren thinks it means. The attitude of conservatives, that Covid is only a little worse than a bad case of the flu, ignores the reality that more than 624,000 Americans have died from it so far.

Lahren contends that, “Lawlessness and thuggery in our streets” doesn’t have a high survival rate. She’s wrong again. There were 462 murders in New York City last year, but 30,000 New Yorkers died from Covid.

Despite what conservatives would have us believe, taking or not taking a Covid vaccine isn’t about personal freedom. It’s not about a tyrannical Big Government forcing people to accept an awful fate. In a world where nearly 99% of new Covid deaths are occurring among the unvaccinated, it doesn’t take a PhD to figure out what the unvaccinated should be doing.

It turns out that confidence in science is split heavily along party lines, according to a Friday Gallup poll. The survey found that Democrats are very confident in science, with 79% saying they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence, compared to just 45% percent of Republicans who said the same.

This also has to do with the Christian Right, which has been hostile to science ever since the Scopes trial. It’s fine if they don’t believe in evolution. But it’s a big problem when we’re trying to put Covid in the rear view. Science is true whether you believe in it or not, and their ignorance is lethal.

Conservatives like Tomi Lahren, go through life angry and suspicious of most things. It’s their brand to be anti-government and anti-science. It’s on brand for them to assume the worst of others. To the contrary, the bottom line is simple: We have a tool that can lead us out of the pandemic, but some people are too arrogant, ignorant, or suspicious to use it.

What makes this so terrible is that there are many, many times in our history when Americans have pulled together to defeat a common threat. But we no longer trust each other enough to pull together for the common good.

Americans really should be better than this. We used to be.

Time to forget about dickheads like Lahren. Time to leave voting rights, infrastructure bills and fires in the West behind. It’s time to take a beat and have a Saturday Soother! In northwest Connecticut, we’re recovering from unusual amounts of rain, precisely when it is really needed elsewhere in the country. This weekend brings trimming of the crabapple trees, attending to our tomato plants and spraying weed killer on the fields of Wrong.

But before all of that starts, let’s kick back and brew a cup of Baby Dragons coffee ($28/12 oz.) from San Diego’s Nostalgia Coffee Roasters. A review says that you should taste the resonant, long, flavor-laden finish with notes of lychee and chocolate.

Now, put on your wireless headphones, take a seat by a window, and listen to Frederic Chopin’s “Fantaisie Impromptu in C sharp minor”, Op. 66. This piece was written in 1834, but was first published posthumously in 1855, despite Chopin’s wishes that none of his unpublished works ever be published. We’re lucky his wishes weren’t followed!

Here, it’s played by Anastasia Huppmann, a Russian-born Austrian concert pianist, live in Vienna:

Watch her absolutely amazing technique! You will recognize the melody of the Fantaisie-Impromptu‘s middle section as the music in the popular song “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows“.

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Two Nations Means the Death of One Country

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Portland Head Light, ME – June 2021 photo by Rick Berk Fine Art Photography

It’s a sign of the times: 66% of Republicans in 13 Southern states including Texas and Florida are in favor of seceding from the US to join a union with other Southern states. This is what a new YouGov survey conducted on behalf of Bright Line Watch found. Half of independents surveyed in the South agreed, while 20% of Southern Democrats were on board.

And secession is gaining support among Southern Republicans: back in February, 50% told Bright Line that they’d support such a proposal. This bodes, very, very poorly for the future of American democracy if the trend continues.

Below, the survey results are laid out geographically:

Bright Line Watch tabulated responses from 2,750 Americans from  June 16 to July 2, 2021. The survey has a confidence limit of 95%, but they caution that these findings reflect:

“…initial reactions by respondents about an issue that they are very unlikely to have considered carefully.”

It probably makes sense to read the results more as statements of ideology and political identity (e.g., “I’m a proud Southerner and I don’t like Joe Biden!”) than as signs of intent to secede. Nevertheless, the sheer number of Americans willing to “blow America up” as a sign of their partisan loyalty is very troubling.

Secession gets polled frequently, usually in the context of Republicans angry at a Democratic president or vice-versa. But there seems to more going on: This time, a major difference is that Republican elites are now much more active in stoking secession passions.

In the past year, GOP officials and lawmakers in Texas, Wyoming, Florida, Mississippi, and Michigan have publicly discussed the possibility of seceding from the Union. Conservative media voices often cheerfully amplify their arguments.

Wrongo is having difficulty seeing where America goes from here.

It’s clear that there are people pushing very hard to create two separate communities within the US. And it isn’t clear whether democracy is possible in a society based on two communities who see the world in opposite ways.

It’s unclear what secessionists think is the upside in splitting up. Government exists to identify and solve the common problems confronted by its citizens. Trying to solve common problems with fewer resources is a very steep price to pay for living in a more ideologically pure country.

Make no mistake, this is about ideological purity. Linda Greenhouse wrote in an NYRB article “Grievance Conservatives Are Here to Stay” that many conservatives think that the secular state itself must go to bring about God’s kingdom on earth. These people are known as Christian Nationalists.

Some like Katherine Stewart, who’s book “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism” was reviewed by Greenhouse, think that the culture wars that are dividing us politically are a false flag operation designed to distract mainstream America from understanding what Christian Nationalism is after:

“It does not seek to add another voice to America’s pluralistic democracy but to replace our foundational democratic principles and institutions with a state grounded on a particular version of Christianity….This is a political war over the future of democracy.”

If you doubt this, consider that Pew Research examined 12,832 sermons in Christian churches during the 2020 election campaign. It turns out that 67% of those sermons mentioned the 2020 election at least once. About 20% of them just encouraged voting, but 46% discussed issues, candidates, or parties (which is a violation of their status as tax-free institutions):

From Pew: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Roughly half of all evangelical Protestant sermons mentioning the election discussed specific issues, parties or candidates (48%), the highest share among the four major Christian groups. And, in discussing the election, evangelical pastors tended to employ language related to evil and punishment at a greater rate, using words and phrases such as “Satan” or “hell” at least twice as often as other clergy did.”

Of course, this is against the law (the Johnson Amendment, sponsored by LBJ), but Stewart heard pastors getting advice from lawyers on how to get around the Johnson Amendment.

Replacing American democracy with a Christian theocracy may not be the only thing that’s driving the secessionists, but the rhetoric of the Christian Nationalists is driving our politics. In particular, their narrative that government is stomping on the rights of Christians and their churches.

Surely, it’s a good thing that there are no troubling historical precedents for what happens when large numbers of Southern conservatives, motivated in large part by grievance and victimhood, want to break away from the Union.

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More Republican Anti-Vaccine Consequences

The Daily Escape:

Monument Valley, AZ – 2021 photo by Patrick Lanzing

If you had said in 2016 when Trump got elected, that by 2021, America would lose more than 600,000 people to Covid, Wrongo would have been shocked.

Worse, that after 34 million US Covid cases, about a third of our adult population would refuse to take an effective (and safe) vaccine, developed under a Republican administration? To both, Wrongo would have said, “America won’t ever get that screwed up”.

Wrongo was well, wrong. And it’s worse than that. Axios reports that Republican state lawmakers around the country are pushing bills that would give unvaccinated people similar protections as those that protect race, gender and religion.

“These bills would tie the hands of private businesses that want to protect their employees and customers. But they also show how deep into the political psyche resistance to coronavirus vaccine requirements has become, and how vaccination status has rapidly become a marker of identity….On a national scale, well-known GOP figures have recently escalated their rhetoric about the vaccination effort, comparing it to Nazi Germany and apartheid.”

This movement is widespread and growing. Many Republican-led states have already enacted restrictions on vaccine mandates, or on vaccine “passports.” Some states are trying to make it illegal for governments or private businesses to treat unvaccinated people any differently than vaccinated people, by using the same language that exists in the federal civil rights law.

The states with restrictions on vaccine requirements tend to have lower vaccination rates than those without such laws, and in many of them, Covid cases are on the rise.  For example, Montana has made it illegal to “discriminate” on the basis of vaccine status, with a few exceptions in the health care sector.

This isn’t a civil rights issue in the modern sense (race, color, creed), but Republicans are trying to frame it as an economic rights issue. The original Civil Rights Act of 1866 involved mostly economic issues such as the right to enter a contract. However, back then, the basis for the statute was racial discrimination despite the fact that the right being protected was “economic”.

The Montana Republicans aren’t trying to protect a “right” based on a traditionally recognized status. They’re simply saying that businesses can’t refuse service to anyone. It’s like saying that a Montana business can’t refuse service to someone with no shoes or shirt.

You would think that this means Republicans are saying that they’re fine with businesses being heavily regulated by the government regarding who they choose to have as customers. But what they’re really saying is if people are unvaccinated for Covid, they must be served.

But if the customer wants to purchase a gay wedding cake? No way in hell!

The national vaccination effort is increasingly dependent on partnerships with various institutions, like schools and employers, to encourage more people to get vaccinated. This is an effort to undermine those partnerships.

The Economist reports on more evidence of Republican denialism about Covid, saying that after the November election, Covid cases rose faster in counties with high in-person voting.

In total, about 85 million people voted in person. The share of ballots cast by mail jumped to 46%, from 21% in 2016. The counties where a higher share of votes were cast in person on election day, also had higher Covid case rates: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Holding other variables constant, the gap in in-person voting on election day between the state with the highest rate in our data (Alabama, at 41% of the population) and the lowest (Arizona, at 6%) was associated with an extra 173 cases per 100,000 people. This implies that if no one had voted in person on election day, 220,000 fewer people would have been diagnosed with Covid-19”.

The Economist says that from mid-October to early November, Covid cases in counties in states with the  highest in-person turnout were no higher than in areas with the lowest in-person voting rates. But a week after the election, positive tests became more common in places with the largest in-person turnout on Election Day. The conclusion is that many people caught the virus while standing in line to vote.

We know that the states which prevented, or limited vote-by-mail were largely GOP-controlled. They  tended to have people with relatively low levels of income and education. They also tended to have those votes in 2016 for The Former Guy.

Republicans! Why is there an almost direct correlation between those who voted for The Former Guy, and those who won’t get a COVID vaccination?

Their narrative goes something like this: Covid was a weaponized virus leaked from a lab in China. It was designed to kill Americans, but we shouldn’t defeat their nefarious scheme by taking the vaccine the Trump administration developed, because Covid is a hoax. It’s a harmless virus, and the vaccine isn’t safe.

How do you argue with that?

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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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