Category: Social Cohesion

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:

Facebooklinkedinrss

The Covid Recession and American Capitalism

The Daily Escape:

Upper Buttermilk Falls, Ithaca NY – June 2021 iPhone photo by Wrongo

The following chart appeared in the NYT on Tuesday in an article claiming that the recession is over. The unfortunate reality is that the COVID recession was artificially induced by a shutdown of the economy. But it may now be transitioning into a longer, systemic recession caused by poor economic policy. Take a look at the chart:

While economists say that, by traditional definitions, the Covid recession didn’t last very long, we are still down 7 million jobs from pre-pandemic levels, even while personal income is back to pre-Pandemic levels. So, how can the recession be over?

And why are lawmakers in Republican states calling for an end to unemployment benefits when so many remain out of work? Zandar says we should start by looking at Tennessee’s official job posting website:

“There are more than 250,000 jobs available in Tennessee right now, but….Only 3% of the jobs posted — about 8,500 as of Friday evening — pay $20,000 [per year] or more. The federal poverty line for a family of three is just under $22,000.”

Of the 8,500 jobs on the state of Tennessee’s official job board, about 8,250 pay $10 an hour or less, which is a poverty level wage even in Tennessee. But Tennessee’s governor Lee has decided to stop accepting CARES Act money in July, saying he didn’t want to pay people to sit at home.

As Ezra Klein said in the NYT: America doesn’t fight poverty, it runs on it.

“The American economy runs on poverty, or at least the constant threat of it. Americans like their goods cheap and their services plentiful and the two of them, together, require a sprawling labor force willing to work tough jobs at crummy wages. On the right, the barest glimmer of worker power is treated as a policy emergency, and the whip of poverty, not the lure of higher wages, is the appropriate response…”

More from Klein:

“Vast numbers of Americans are kept poor for a reason. Any whiff of labor organization, or worker solidarity is ruthlessly annihilated in order to maintain millions of Americans working for single-digit hourly wages, or slightly higher wages, but no benefits whatsoever. We demand it, because we know corporations will just break our backs with higher prices if we give in. Either way, we’re the ones who pay, and it’s never the billionaires.”

Klein mentioned a report, “A Guaranteed Income for the 21st Century,” that would guarantee a $12,500 annual income for every adult and a $4,500 allowance for every child. It’s what wonks call a “negative income tax” plan — unlike a universal basic income, it phases out as households rise into the middle class.

The team estimates that its proposal would eliminate poverty while costing $876 billion annually.

To give a sense of scale, total federal spending in 2019 was about $4.4 trillion, with $1 trillion of that financing Social Security payments and $1.1 trillion supporting Medicaid, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. As Paul Campos says:

“$876 billion represents less than the growth in the personal fortunes of America’s 651 billionaires over the course of the 16 months of the COVID pandemic. Not, mind you, anything like those fortunes themselves, but merely the growth in the personal fortunes of 651 people over the past year and a third.”

A simple annual wealth tax on the incremental gain in wealth of obscenely rich Americans would by itself pay for somewhere between a third and half of the cost of eliminating poverty in this country, via straightforward wealth redistribution.

So why don’t we get rid of poverty by giving people without money, money? Because we haven’t adjusted psychologically and politically to the fact that the developed economies produce so much wealth that getting rid of poverty could be a minor problem of distribution, one that merely requires a social commitment to doing it.

Instead, we tell the people at the bottom of wage distribution: “This is America. If you don’t like being poor, you can always do something about it, like not being poor.” And many of us go back to eating our dollar menu cheeseburgers and thinking to ourselves “I don’t know anybody *that* poor”.

Except that if you think about it, you know plenty of people who ARE that poor. And apparently, many of us want to keep it that way, just in case we end up rich someday.

America’s $21 trillion American economy has been captured by its oligarchs and their political servants who say we can’t eliminate poverty because that would be socialism, and socialism makes the baby Jesus cry.

So, 50 million Americans continue to wake up dirt poor every day.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Like Lambs to Slaughter

The Daily Escape:

Camden, ME – June 1, 2021 photo by Daniel F. Dishner

From Eric Boehlert:

“If you were part of an amoral political movement, wouldn’t you want to attack free and fair elections in order to give yourself a permanent advantage? If you had no concern for democracy, wouldn’t you set out to make sure future Democratic victories could be invalidated? That’s what Republicans are now doing, without pause, and out in the open.”

Two snippets of news from over Memorial Day weekend. First, in Texas, Republicans held an all-night legislative session to try to pass one of the most stunning voter suppression laws in the country. According to the Texas Tribune, the law will:

“…cut back early voting hours, ban drive-thru voting, further clamp down on voting-by-mail rules and enhance access for partisan poll watchers…”

It’s designed to curb voter fraud that doesn’t exist in Texas. The bill didn’t pass because Democrats walked out of the legislative session just before it expired, in a form of walking filibuster. It is merely a temporary setback for Texas Republicans.

Second, in Maricopa County Arizona, the GOP’s “audit” continues unabated, as Republicans continue to  try to conjure up a different election result than the one that gave Biden a victory. The ballot review being conducted by a private company called Cyber Ninjas, has drawn widespread contempt for its lack of professionalism and poot control over the ballots, while also raising conspiracy claims that bamboo fibers were found in ballots supposedly shipped in from Asia.

Across the country, many Republican legislatures are moving swiftly to make sure that fewer people vote in upcoming elections.

Vote suppression was the Republican’s game in the late-2010’s. Now they’ve concluded it didn’t work well enough. So, they’ve gone to the next level, which is to simply put state legislatures in the position to nullify their voters’ wishes. That’s going to be their game in the 2020’s. Taken with the Republican vote to filibuster the Jan. 6 commission, the eyes of Democrats should be open to this change in GOP strategy. Republicans correctly perceive that the doors will quickly close to mount legal challenges to their electoral suppression.

Our democratic future will only be secured by ending the filibuster, which will allow HR-1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act to pass in the Senate. But that effort may not be successful despite Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s intention to bring them to a vote in June, since Democrat Joe Manchin (D-WVA) won’t vote for it, and Schumer can’t change his mind. As Charlie Pierce says,

“In the fight to save American democracy, Joe Manchin Is Neville Chamberlain”

Manchin wants peace in his remaining time in the Senate. He has defended the prerogatives of Republicans since the Democrats took control, by refusing to either reform, or nuke the filibuster. Instead, he insists that Democrats should be working across the aisle, despite McConnell vowing to block the entirety of Biden’s agenda. Now, Manchin’s excuses are finally becoming flimsy. He called the GOP filibuster vote on the establishment of the Jan 6 committee “unconscionable”. Yet, he’s still against eliminating the filibuster.

Shouldn’t the idea that partisan legislatures and handpicked Republican officials can actually reverse election results  be enough to move any Democrat on the filibuster question? Isn’t an unprecedented and dangerous assault on American democracy enough?

They even fail to see the continuing “coup” talk as a threat. As former national security adviser Michael Flynn said over the weekend, a Myanmar-like coup — in which the military overthrew a democratically elected government — “should happen” in the US: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Appearing in Dallas at a QAnon conference, Flynn was asked during a Q&A session that was shared in a Twitter video:  ‘I want to know why what happened in Myanmar can’t happen here?’

After cheers from the crowd died down, Flynn responded:  “No reason. I mean, it should happen here.”

One way or another, the Right thinks they deserve to be in power by whatever means necessary. Here’s Maggie Haberman of the NYT on Trump:

They want this so badly they can taste it, and so can tens of millions of Republicans. They’ve already tried once. They will absolutely try again.

The problem today is like that identified by Herbert Marcuse in his critique of liberal tolerance: How do you maintain a social compact with people who simply reject that compact whenever it becomes inconvenient, like when they lose an election?

The incredibly frustrating thing about the present situation is that Democrats could potentially defend against the “GOP game” if Manchin and Sinema just recognized (or cared) about the reality of the situation.

Historians certainly won’t be able to say the Democrats (and American democracy) were overwhelmed –  they just sort of sighed and put their heads on the chopping block.

Facebooklinkedinrss

The Disconcerting Truth About the Big Lie, Part III

The Daily Escape:

Moon rise, Whitaker Point, Ozark National Forest, AR – 2021 photo by mattmacphersonphoto. This is the sixth time we’ve featured a Matt Macpherson photo.

Reader Ben van N. says:

“I fail to see why the election rules are different in every state. The country should have the same rules for voting (and make them all as simple and accessible as possible) no matter where you live. Having a variety of methods, rules and restrictions opens the door to what you have now.”

Ben doesn’t live in the US, but he has analyzed the problem correctly. Our federalist system makes it fiendishly difficult to have standard rules in America for policing, education, or elections. And we need to make all three of them better.

Regarding elections, Roosevelt University political scientist David Faris was interviewed by VOX:

“You have anti-democratic practices at the state level that produce minority Republican governments that pass anti-democratic laws that end up in front of courts that are appointed by a minoritarian president and approved by a minoritarian Senate that will then rule to uphold these anti-democratic practices at the state level.”

And there’s no clear path for Democrats to overturn these state-level voting laws through the courts. The Supreme Court has already said it’s not going to touch gerrymandering. And so, there’s nothing left except Congress using its constitutional authority under the elections clause to regulate elections. That will require ending the filibuster.

More from Faris: (brackets and emphasis by Wrongo)

“Take the scenario where Republicans don’t have to steal the 2024 election. They just use their built-in advantages [where]…Biden wins the popular vote by three points but still loses the Electoral College. Democrats [get more votes for]…the House…but lose the House. Democrats [get more votes for]…the Senate…but they lose the Senate.

That’s a situation where the citizens of the country fundamentally don’t have control of the agenda and they don’t have the ability to change the leadership. Those are two core features of democracy, and without them, you’re living in competitive authoritarianism.”

His scariest comment is that, after Republicans steal the 2024 election:

“People are going to wake up the next day and go to work, and take care of their kids, and live their lives, and democracy will be gone. There really won’t be very much that we can do about it. Or there’s the worst-case scenario where the election is stolen and then we’re sleepwalking into a potentially catastrophic breakup of the country.”

As Ben v N. says, there’s certainly an opportunity to do something about all this at the federal level, but time is slipping away. And Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema continue to vacillate somewhere between concern and hostility, to taking effective action. Action, such as ending the filibuster.

If both can’t be swayed from their current intransigence, the remaining options for our democracy look poor.

The media would have you believe that Biden and the Democrats in Washington are the ones overplaying their hand. Not true. Look at what’s happening at the state level:

In Ohio, Republican legislators are pushing to ban all vaccine requirements, not just for Covid. They would prevent Governor DeWine’s incentive program for Covid vaccinations, and ban even requesting that people get vaccinated.

In Texas, Republicans are about to legalize carrying handguns without a license. Without a permit, without training, or a background check of any kind. Under current state law, Texans must be licensed to carry handguns openly or concealed. Applicants must submit fingerprints, complete four to six hours of training, and pass a written exam and a shooting proficiency test. That’s too restrictive for the GOP.

In Florida, Republicans just enacted a law that makes it illegal for large technology companies (Facebook, Twitter, Amazon) to remove the posts by candidates for office during election campaigns. It also makes it easier for Florida’s Attorney General and individual citizens to sue those companies. The law is certainly unconstitutional. Curiously, this is an example of the new GOP declaring that it wants more government control over speech.

In Alabama, Republicans are regulating yoga, because it originated in the Hindu religion. Along the way, they plan to ban the use of Sanskrit words such as “Namaste.”

Saving the worst for last: Arizona. GOP legislators have not only launched a farcical “audit” of voting in Maricopa County, but then they stripped the State’s Secretary of state of her authority over elections after she criticized their audit fiasco. Arizona, of course, is only one of the many states where GOP legislatures are pushing new laws to make it harder to vote, while trying for increasingly partisan control of the election process.

Democrats have allowed themselves to be lulled to sleep because American democracy dodged a metaphorical bullet during the November to January Big Lie barrage.

We can’t relax, because next time, the bullets won’t be metaphorical.

Facebooklinkedinrss

The Disconcerting Truth About the Big Lie, Part II

The Daily Escape:

Bodie Island Lighthouse, Outer Banks,  NC – 2021 photo by Greg Kiser

We’ve talked about the Big Lie but in truth, there’s more than one. The Reuters-Ipsos poll released last Friday found that 54% of Republican adults surveyed agreed with this statement:

“…the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol was led by violent left-wing protestors trying to make Trump look bad.”

Only 30% of GOP respondents said they disagreed. Another 16% said they were unsure.

This is another Big Lie, like the one that Democrats stole the election from Trump. But Republicans remain believers in both. They think, as George Costanza said, “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”

To help distance Trump and Congressional Republicans from the riot, GOP members of Congress began blaming the Capitol insurrection on Antifa, decentralized leftist activists with no national organization, who became a focus of Republicans during the 2020 riots surrounding George Floyd’s killing.

The reason why Republicans do not want an independent commission to investigate Jan. 6 is because many of the individuals who have already been arrested for their role in the riot explicitly said they believed that Trump had invited them to Washington to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Let’s set the record straight. Since the Capitol riot, 494 people have been arrested and charged with crimes. The vast majority of those arrested have ties to the Republican Party, not to Antifa or to Democrats. Why would anyone think that Democrats would attack the Capitol, trying to prevent their own candidate from being certified as president?

Congressional Republicans would have you believe that someone else decided to try overthrowing the government to make Trump look bad while Trump happened to be down the street telling his people to well, overthrow the government. Not credible.

This is the largest attack on our country since 9/11. And it came from within, not from foreign terrorists. Potentially, it was also more damaging. From Matt Sheffield at Flux:

“Following the 9/11 attacks, the main question on all Americans’ minds was who was responsible. Once it was determined to be al-Qaeda, the second question that demanded an answer was how U.S. intelligence agencies had failed to anticipate such a large-scale violent act. Shortly thereafter, both houses of Congress overwhelmingly approved the establishment of an official commission to investigate. In the House of Representatives, the bill containing the authorization passed overwhelmingly, 366 to 3.”

Contrast that with today when few, if any, Republicans will vote to investigate the riot.

Once again, as we said yesterday, if a majority of Republican voters continue to believe the Big Lie(s), it raises serious questions about the future of American democracy, including whether it’s possible to have a shared politics when a large percentage of citizens believe things are true that are easily proven to be untrue.

Democrats most likely will lose the Jan. 6 commission vote since there may not be 10 Republican Senators who’ll vote to bring the House-passed bill to a vote in the Senate. At this point, the Dems are more likely to have a big political hammer to hit Republicans with, than a commission to determine what really happened on that day.

In a last-ditch effort, the two Democrats who oppose changing the Senate’s filibuster rules begged Republicans on Tuesday to support the bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 riot. In a joint statement, Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) called the creation of a commission “critical” to prevent such an attack from occurring again:

“We implore our Senate Republican colleagues to work with us to find a path forward on a commission to examine the events of January 6th,”

If Manchin and Sinema are prepared to nuke the filibuster over this, Wrongo’s all for it. The commission and the voting rights bills hit directly at the GOP’s plans to weaken the electoral process and destroy our democracy. The Big Lie is the organizing principle of the Republican Party now. If this initiative by Manchin and Sinema fails, then perhaps the most effective way to save democracy is to continually tell the people the truth about January 6. Repeatedly using the subpoena power of the US House to investigate and provide the truth in the face of these Big Lies may be the only way forward.

And it may seem to be a fruitless task, but it’s worth the effort.

The Republican leadership must be made to confront their obvious lies. Because as George Orwell said:

“The most effective way to destroy a people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

And we can’t allow that to happen.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Saturday Soother – May 8, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Sunset at Old North Bridge, Concord, MA  – 2019 Photo by Kristen Wilkinson photography. Old North Bridge is where in April 1775, 400 American colonists engaged 90 British Army troops, routing them. The current bridge is a replica of the bridge that stood at the time of the 1775 battle.

Sorry for the long break.

Anyone else have the feeling that we’re in the beginning stages of a third revolution in America? Take a look at what’s happening in Republican-controlled state legislatures.

Arizona has outsourced an audit of its 2020 presidential vote in Maricopa county to a firm called Cyber Ninjas, a Florida company with no history in voting audits. One of the people helping coordinate the audit is John Brakey, who explained one of the tests that was being conducted as part of the review process:

“There’s accusations that 40,000 ballots were flown into Arizona and…stuffed into the box…And it came from the southeast part of the world….And what they’re doing is to find out if there’s bamboo in the paper…[because] they use bamboo in their paper processing…in southeast Asia.”

Thus, democracy hangs by a thread, possibly made of bamboo. But their audit isn’t about bamboo, it’s about bamboozling their base. It’s about keeping the contributions flowing and the outrage boiling. This speaks to a larger and growing problem. From The Bulwark: (brackets by Wrongo)

“Political sorting has created a country in which even local elections are highly polarized. In practice this means that divided government…[isn’t common]…even at the state legislative level. Forty-seven states have both branches of the legislature controlled by the same party….Of these, Republicans overwhelmingly dominate—meaning either complete control of both branches or veto-proof legislative majorities with a Democratic governor—in 25 states, giving party leaders carte blanche to set the agenda and pass bills.”

It’s been six months since the 2020 presidential election, and Trump’s lies about the election continue to corrode our democracy. Unfortunately, his lie is now a litmus test for Republicans. Republicans who spoke out against Trump’s lies are facing consequences as the Party coalesces around the former guy.

In Congress, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said:

“One-hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration”

In the House, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) is expected to be forced out of her leadership post because she called Trump a liar. The House GOP members will stand against her and behind Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). Why the unanimity? Because the House is different from the Senate.

McCarthy has 212 members who say to him, “your number one job is to get me re-elected,” while in the Senate, every senator is an island and has six years to reassure their voters that they’re ok with Trump, despite not all acting like his buddy. House members don’t run statewide. They only run for two-year terms, so they’re much more vulnerable to primary challenges.

The belief that the 2020 election was stolen isn’t amenable to fact-checking. The assertion of fraud has become an ideological statement that political opposition to the Republican Party and to Donald Trump is illegitimate. To oppose Trump is to be The Enemy, and The Enemy has surrendered any claim to fundamental political rights.

To paraphrase Norm from Cheers: “It’s a dog-eat-dog world and Democrats are wearing Milkbone underpants.”

We shouldn’t be surprised that most Republicans believe that the election was stolen. A majority of them believed the Obama birther lies. They believed Hillary killed Vince Foster. They believed giving tax breaks to the rich would “trickle down” to the rest of us. Most of them believe that universal health care, public day care, and free college will make America a communist state.

Biden has tumbled to the fact that he won’t be able to cut deals with the GOP. On Wednesday, he offered his least confident assessment:

“I don’t understand the Republicans.”

He now faces a basic question: What if Republicans have changed so fundamentally that they’ve become a rogue Party? The answer is, they have. So, what does that mean for Biden’s presidency? And for our democracy?

Enough, it’s time for our Saturday Soother. Time to get near a window and breathe in the pollen-soaked air in the Northeast. Our delicate fruit trees have made their annual journey outside for the summer, and the vegetable garden is planted. Now, like America, we await good results.

To help take your mind off how precipitously things have changed, spend a few minutes listening to “Kashmir”, by Led Zeppelin, in a symphonic cover version recorded live at the Epic Symphonic Rock show in Lima Peru in February 2018. The cello soloist is Ghislaine Valdivia. This is a real treat and a must watch:

Facebooklinkedinrss

Nomadland Is Best Picture

The Daily Escape:

Desert Lilies, Desert Lily Preserve, Desert Center, CA – photo by Bob Wick for BLM

The film “Nomadland” won best film, best director, and best actress at this year’s Oscars. Wrongo and Ms. Right kept our tradition, and didn’t watch the Oscars, but we have seen the film twice.

If you haven’t seen it , the film is worth your time. It offers a sympathetic view of what’s happening to the American working class in what’s becoming a de-industrialized America. It shows the hollowing out of middle America, and the growing regional inequality that stems from the US economy being concentrated in fewer and fewer corporate hands, and often, in fewer places.

Our changing economy has left wide swaths of rural America in decay. The movie’s story centers on Fern, an older widow. She worked in the US Gypsum plant in Empire, Nevada until the Great Recession reduced demand for drywall, and thus the mine and the plant were closed.

Once the factory went, so did the town. It became so de-populated that it even lost its zip code. Now, Fern, (played by Frances McDormand), sleeps in an old, converted van and works a seasonal job with one of the few employers left in the area: An Amazon shipping center.

But the film isn’t about Amazon. It’s about coping with downward mobility. Fern travels the southwest mountains, working a variety of gig jobs: In addition to Amazon, she’s kitchen help in a Wall Drug. She works at a beet processing plant throwing cases of beets into a hopper. She helps run a small RV park.

The film avoids clichés about the formerly middle-class, mostly White Americans it depicts. None of them blame Black people or immigrants or the left-wing media for their problems. They simply no longer play by the norms of an economy that ruined their lives.

Ironically, these characters don’t follow the usual White working-class stereotypes. Unlike Trump voters interviewed by the media in diners across America, they don’t turn to racism or blind acceptance of patriotism because of their economic uncertainty. Fern and the rest of the characters in “Nomadland” demonstrate dignity, decency, and stoicism in the face of the structural forces grinding them down. They teach each other how to survive while living off grid. They help each other when the chips are down.

Eric Cortellessa at Washington Monthly offers great insight:

“Unlike JD Vance’s flawed Hillbilly Elegy…this film does not blame the victims for their own downward mobility. It doesn’t point to bad habits (drugs and laziness), bad morals (racism and Trumpism), or bad attitudes (toxic masculinity and perverted Christianity). Instead, it shows humble men and women who don’t scapegoat others and who manage to preserve their dignity and, to a large extent, their own personal freedom in the face of systemic forces that are exploiting them.”

Let’s point out that since 1985, the average Wall Street bonus has increased 1,217%, from $13,970 to $184,000 in 2020. If the minimum wage had increased at that rate, it would be $44.12, instead of $7.25. And $7.25 equates to $15,080/year, nowhere near enough to make a payment on the US median home that’s priced at $301,000. It’s not even enough for a tiny dump of a house, like the one Fern left in Empire NV, which probably cost one-third of the median price.

Jessica Bruder, the author of “Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century,” that the movie is based on, wrote over the weekend about her exploration of this growing subculture. Bruder says a scene depicting Fern spending a night in her van when she hears “the knock” is chillingly accurate:

“No overnight parking! You can’t sleep here.”

The knock, Bruder explains, “is a visceral, even existential, threat,” one that nomads try to evade by hiding in plain sight: “Make yourself invisible. Internalize the idea that you’re unwelcome.”

Some places forbid overnight parking. Others outlaw living in a vehicle. Penalties can pile up fast. Unpaid, they can lead to the cruelest punishment of all: Your home gets towed. Failing to pay the impoundment fee means losing your home. Bruder says that people ask her what they can do for the nomads:

“Letting vehicle dwellers exist in peace would be a fine start. Individuals have the power to help. When you see someone living in a car, van, or RV, don’t call the police.”

Wrongo was struck by how the nomads helped each other. In our little New England town, people do the same, they try to help. The bystanders at George Floyd’s murder tried to help prevent Floyd’s death.

The only people who don’t seem to care about helping one another are corporate executives and Republican politicians. How did they get like that?

See the film.

Facebooklinkedinrss

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:

Facebooklinkedinrss

Saturday Soother – March 13, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Warwick RI – 2021 photo by Rick Bateman

The WaPo reports that a Georgetown University law professor was terminated and a second placed on leave after a video clip showed a conversation between them that included what a University official called “reprehensible” statements about Black students.

The conversation between adjunct professors Sandra Sellers and David Batson was shared on Twitter this week. It shows Sellers discussing student performance:

“I hate to say this. I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are Blacks,” Sellers said in the video. “Happens almost every semester. And it’s like, ‘Oh, come on.’ You get some really good ones, but there are also usually some that are just plain at the bottom. It drives me crazy.”

Full disclosure: Wrongo is a graduate of Georgetown University.

Context for the video: The professors held their conversation on a zoomed negotiations class on February 21. It was recorded so that students could view it later. Sellers and Batson stayed on the call after the students left, and their conversation was also recorded. It was saved online for about two weeks before students noticed the conversation between Sellers and Batson. Then it was reported by students to the administration. The university fired Sellers and issued a statement on Thursday after the video went viral.

Ever notice how racists always start with a comment that gives them away? They try blunting the racism with phrases like “I hate to say it” or, using weird phrasing like “a lot of my lower ones are Black.” Most White people know that they can say 90% of the same shit they’ve always said, if they preface it with a disclaimer:

  • “I’m not a racist, but…”
  • “I have black friends, but…”

But what we hear most since Trump is:  “(big sigh), I know it’s not politically correct (eye roll), but...”

That’s used when they want to make sure everyone knows that they’re political martyrs who are living dangerously.

Imagine reversing professor Sellers’s thought: “I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are Whites…You get some really good ones, but there are also usually some that are just plain at the bottom.” That shows how odd it is to divide your law students into racial groups.

Georgetown Law doesn’t have trouble finding top quality students. US News rates it as number 14 among American law schools. They receive more applicants than they can accept. They may not be getting the topmost Harvard and Yale candidates, but they can choose from among the very high quality law students. Logically, all of their admitted students should be able to perform at a high level.

Still, a normal distribution of performance should be expected because multiple factors go into creating a final grade. Think about a student’s commitment to studying, or their individual contribution in class. Sometimes, group assignments are graded, which are at least partially dependent on others. So, it should be common for grades to be normally distributed.

Every day, we learn again that racism is a norm, not an exception in America. One day, that may no longer be true, but that day isn’t going to get any closer by pretending it’s already arrived. So it’s good that Sellers was fired.

Finally, graduating at the top of your class isn’t necessary or sufficient to insure high-level future performance. Doubt that? Remember that Ulysses S. Grant graduated at the bottom of his West Point class and did just fine. While Mike Pompeo graduated first at West Point, so there you go.

It was a big week in DC, with the passage of the American Recovery Plan, and the one-year anniversary of the start of the pandemic. But now, it’s time for our Saturday Soother. We’ve started on the spring clean-up on the fields of Wrong. The deer fences have come down, and we’re starting to think about some new split rail fencing. Remember, Daylight Savings Time starts tonight, but the dog has no plans to “spring ahead”. He’ll still want breakfast at the same time on Sunday morning.

Let’s settle back near a window and listen to the” Flute Quintet in D Major, Op. 51 No. 1: III. Adagio ma non troppo”, by Fredrich Kahlau, Danish composer who knew Mozart, and died in 1832. Here it’s played by the Kodály Quartet along with soloist Ginervra Petrucci:

Facebooklinkedinrss

We’re Riding on a Slow-Moving Train Wreck

The Daily Escape:

El Matador State Park, Malibu CA – 2021 photo by stephencovar

It’s commonly accepted knowledge that it’s hard to look away from a slow-motion train wreck. We should note that it’s even harder when you are riding on the train. And it’s harder still when some of the people riding along with you would be totally happy to see it wrecked.

Let’s start by revisiting CPAC and Trump. He attacked the Supreme Court for not overturning an American election, and his supporters cheered. We can’t let ourselves forget how wrong that was, and if unchecked, its implications for the future.

Second, the Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans has decided that Catholics may take the Pfizer and Moderna coronavirus vaccines, but not the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine. They say the J&J shot is “morally compromised”, since it was developed using cloned cells derived from fetuses aborted nearly a half a century ago.

New York Magazine’s Ed Kilgore writes:

“It’s worth noting that another Catholic diocese not far away, in Tyler, Texas, has rejected all three vaccines as having been “produced immorally”….But….the Vatican itself is administering the Pfizer vaccine (with Pope Francis and his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, among its recipients).”

The faithful in New Orleans and Tyler, TX must decide whether they must be more Catholic than the Pope. Anybody else wonder how America can get the pandemic behind us when religious leaders won’t follow science?

Third, as Bill Kristol notes at the Bulwark, our democracy is in crisis. For the first time in our history, we failed to have a peaceful transfer of power, and Republicans want to ensure that fewer people can vote next time around. They’re supporting many new voting restrictions at the state level.

The Brennan Center has identified 253 bills to restrict voting rights in 43 states that would impose measures to make voting harder. They include reducing early voting, limiting the use of mail-in ballots, eliminating drop boxes, and imposing new voter ID requirements.

This is crucial to our democracy, since Democrats only control 15 states, none of which is a swing state like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. Republicans have compounded the Dem’s problems through aggressive gerrymandering in Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin.

It’s difficult to understand how in a democracy, there is any discussion of restricting the right to vote. Unless we protect this right, we’re heading down a slippery slope. So to help avoid this slow-motion train wreck, Democrats need to get as many people registered as possible right now.

Finally, secession is on the map again, exactly where you might have expected it to be. Bright Line Watch, in a study released in February, showed that one-third of Republicans said they support secession. And it gets worse: Half of Republicans across the former Confederacy (plus Kentucky and Oklahoma) are now willing to form a newly independent country. Here is Bright Line Watch’s map of secessionist support by Trump approval ratings:

The Texas Republican Party recently supported a referendum on Texas seceding from the union. While secessionist rhetoric is couched in claims about fiscal responsibility and burdensome federal regulations, it doesn’t take much to see ethno-nationalism lurking behind it.

Secession in Texas is a combination of nativism, xenophobia, and white grievance. Texas secession Facebook pages are saturated with fantasies of forcing Democrats to leave the state and seizing their property. Just like the Confederates of the 1860s, this modern secessionist push is rooted in large part in maintaining white supremacy and authoritarian governance.

The increasing marriage of secessionist chatter and GOP ideology should be cause for concern since it is widespread throughout the heartland of America. Of course, state-level secession is illegal in the US. Even Justice Scalia said:

“If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede.”

America has argued about secession since the days of John C. Calhoun, who worked to protect the south’s commitment to slavery from the 1820s until his death in 1850. Trump’s efforts to overturn an election in which Black voters did so much to defeat him in the south, recalls Calhoun’s efforts to deny them citizenship and the franchise almost two centuries ago.

We’re living in a moment when we will see whether American democracy survives these attacks on it by Republicans.

The ability to vote is central to our Democracy. It is at the core of our belief system and without it, all else is meaningless.

Facebooklinkedinrss