THIS GUY AGAIN

 After almost a year of the Joe Biden presidency, it's easy for a progressive to feel a sense of whiplash: on the plus side, the mere exiting of Donald Trump and all the corrupt and incompetent people he surrounded himself with  was a cause for relief and celebration.  Sanity was restored, with Biden cutting an elderly but good natured figure who would bring common decency back to the White House.  And while at first it appeared that the Republican party, other than Trump, did well in the 2016 election (they actually gained seats in the House of Representatives), when the Democrats pulled off a post presidential election upset by winning two senate seats in Georgia, giving them a narrow control of the Senate, things were looking up. Shortly after taking office, Biden passed a stimulus plan that cut child poverty in half.  He also just passed an infrastructure bill, something that Trump tried to do in vain for years.  Plus, even though the Supreme Court appears to be lost to progressives for decades, he's managed to appoint more lower court judges in his first year than Trump did.  

But, on the negative side, Biden's promise to put the pandemic behind us has proven hollow.   While this can be blamed on both the variants of covid and the conservative resistance to vaccines, it still makes him look bad, as a weary country about to face another deadly pandemic winter takes its anger out on him.  Add to that the fallout from inflation (especially in gas prices), the rise of violent crime and the general perception by the public that the economy is doing poorly (it's actually doing quite well) and it's easy to see why his approval ratings are low (although not lower than Trump's were at the same time in his term).

But from a progressive perspective, there has been nothing more frustrating from this presidency as the Build Back Better Bill.  First proposed almost a year ago, this was a bold multi trillion dollar package that would nationalize child care and paid parental leave, while also working to transition this country away from fossil fuels.  In its initial form, it would have been the most progressive bill passed since the new deal, and by raising taxes on the rich to aid the poor, it would have been the first genuine attempt to even this country's shameful class imbalance since Ronald Reagan's massive tax cuts for the rich and gutting of social programs drastically increased that imbalance back in the 1980's.

But then the Democrats discovered that a slim majority in the Senate meant that these welcome changes couldn't pass without serious revisions to the bill.  Not when every Democratic vote would be needed, and one of those Democrats was Joe Manchin of West Virginia.  From the beginning Manchin has demanded cuts to the bill before he would vote for it.  For months those cuts were made with a meat axe, with the cost of the bill sliced by more than half, muting the positive effects of it. Barely a week would go by in the past year without Manchin preening for the press while demanding more and more spending reductions in the bill. For a while, it almost appeared that Manchin had been placated, but just yesterday, in an interview on Fox News, he said he still opposed it, citing national deficit and inflation concerns.  He did this even after Biden had reached out to him personally, and even after every study of the bill found that any impact it would have on inflation would be minimal.  None of that mattered, Manchin shot the bill down.  It's a bit hard to understand just what Manchin's game is here: is he showing off for the Republicans before switching parties?  Is he killing the bill because he's afraid that the climate change provisions might hurt his coal rich state?  His national deficit concerns are really ridiculous, given that the bill's spending would take place over a decade, making its yearly amount a mere fraction of our nation's defense spending. (Congress just passed a $768 billion defense bill for this year, and that number won't be going down in the next ten years!)

So is it all over for the bill?  Hopefully not.  There's still a chance that a reduced version will be introduced that will win him over.  At this point, it would probably be best to let Manchin himself write the bill, which will probably be a hollowed shell of its former self, and sullen progressives in congress will have to support it just to avoid a total loss.  And once again, the concerns of the poor and middle class will be ignored in this country, as they have been for decades.

ANOTHER DESPICABLE ACT

 

Ever since Donald Trump left office there has been a stream of terrible stories about just how corrupt and incompetent our former president was.  Most have dealt with just  hard he was pushing to overturn the twenty twenty election (from verbally pleading with election officials to considering calling a state of emergency), and while those are all upsetting (especially given that Trump will probably run for the presidency again in twenty twenty four),  another kind of recent revelation has really stunned me.

Recently, Trump's former chief of staff Mark Meadows released his book about his time working in the White House.  At first, it appeared to be a standard issue tome that would sell well with conservative readers. Trump himself even gave a positive blurb to the book.  But then Meadows went and mentioned an important, unknown detail: that the former president had tested positive for covid three days before his debate with Joe Biden and that he openly exposed Biden to the virus during the debate without any kind of warning.  This ran counter to the administration assertion that Trump's positive test came after the debate. The host of the debate, Chris Wallace of Fox News, later said Trump was not tested before the debate because he arrived late.  He added that they relied on the honor system (always a mistake when Trump's involved).  And, of course it wasn't just Biden that was exposed, the Washington Post has found that Trump came in contact with five hundred different people without warning any of them of the possibility of infection or taking any precautions.  Perhaps most appalling, the day after that positive test he met with military families, putting all of them and their loved ones in danger.  This from a man who claims to love the military!

Trump has responded to this revelation by doing what he usually does; lying.  He called the reporting on the book "fake news", and Meadows himself now appears to agree with him, contradicting his own book.  But, because the timeline between  when Trump first tested positive and when he publicly admitted it has always been hazy, it stands to reason to assume that our former president avoided telling the public about his positive test.  Former New Jersey Governor Chis Christie, a former Trump supporter who now seems to be the only Republican willing to openly challenge him, has said that he definitely believes that it was Trump himself that gave Christie covid while he was prepping the president for the debate.  And, in classic Trumpian sociopathic style, Christie also says that Trump called him when Christie was near death from the virus to make sure that he didn't tell other people that it was Trump who spread the virus to him.   

Ever since Trump entered the presidential campaign in twenty fifteen, pundits have compared his popularity with the Republican base to a cult, with his passionate supporters attending rallies and cheering his every word.  After his June twentieth rally last year in Tulsa Oklahoma, in which thousands of supporters stood next to each other maskless and screamed at the height of the pandemic, I said that the Trump cult could now be called a death cult in which followers risk their own lives to express their adulation.  To me, it couldn't seem to get any worse.  But now,  once again, he's hit a new low, openly endangering the lives of military families and possibly thousands of others because he didn't want to admit to the world that he himself had contacted the same virus that he had been downplaying since it first arrived.  And, as always with Trump, this new information will do little to shake his popularity with his base, who will shrug off the threat he placed on innocent people by echoing his cry of fake news.  Truly, this man's ability to get away with despicable behavior without consequence is utterly depressing.  And the fact that he very well may run for the presidency again in twenty twenty four despite this latest news shows just how far our country has sunk since he first threw his hat in the ring, in what seems like an eternity ago. 

RESPONSIBILITY

 With the rise of another covid variant, the Supreme Court poised to overturn Roe Vs Wade, and more news coming out about how much Donald Trump tried to steal the last presidential election, it's almost easy to not notice that there was another horrific school shooting in our country which resulted in the death of four teenagers.  Sadly, these kind of shootings  have become so common that news coverage of them end quite quickly.

But this shooting seems different,  oh sure, both sides have already put out their usual talking points, with Democrats pushing for tougher gun laws and Republicans making a few vague comments about the need for better mental healthcare without offering any way to expand such care.  Same as usual.

But this shooting has,  raised the possibility of charges for the shooters parents, and questions about whether or not the school acted responsibly issues that are rarely brought up.  Today, the fifteen year old shooter's parents were booked on four charges of involuntary manslaughter, to which they pleaded not guilty.  The charges were based on the fact that not only did the shooter's parents purchase the gun for him, they were also warned by the school about some disturbing, violent drawings that he had made at school.  (he had also searched on his phone for ammunition at school, which the parents shrugged off.  His mother even seemed to encourage it.) Amazingly, they did nothing about their child's dark thoughts, and, according to the woman prosecuting them, didn't even lock up his gun after hearing about them.

This case raises some interesting questions about responsible gun ownership and parental responsibility.  Now, I do have some sympathy for them in that parenting teenagers can be very difficult.  I remember from my own teen years that I had several male friends (and even a couple of female ones) that were obsessed with violent movies and music, and sometimes they would draw pictures not unlike the ones that this boy drew, and, of course, none of them every actively acted out on those dark obsessions.  Really, embracing a dark view of life is a common thing that many teens go through.  It's not entirely unreasonable to believe that this shooter's parents just thought that he was going through a phase.

But the fact that they never even tried to hide the gun that they had bought for him as a present makes it hard for me to completely exonerate them.  Even though their purchase of the gun was legal, surely the fact that their son was going through a potentially violent stage should have convinced them to at least lock the gun up, if not keep somewhere out of the home.

And what about the school?  A few hours before the shooting, the school requested that his parents take him out of the school and to immediate counseling, but they strongly requested that he be allowed to stay, and so he did, with tragic results.  Really, this seems to be almost as much the school's fault as the parents.  This was a student who was exhibiting violent thoughts and who was potentially armed.  Surely there are times when the safety of all the children in school is more important than the desires of one set of parents.  In other words, I think it's reasonable that a child to be not allowed to remain in  school, even if his parents really want him to stay.  When you hear stories about how other high school students are suspended or expelled for less disturbing behavior than this, it seems tragically absurd that the school didn't do more to prevent this tragedy.  The case will probably come to court sometime soon, and we'll see if a financial settlement to the parents of the children that were killed is possible.  While similar lawsuits in the past have failed, it's possible that this time the school's actions will seem so irresponsible to a judge that the lawsuits may be upheld.

Let's face it , tougher gun laws are not going to be passed anytime in the near future in this country.  That's because, even though a majority of Americans support the passing of such laws, most of them do not feel strongly enough about them to vote for politicians that would pass them.  Gun control just isn't a big issue in most elections, and with Republicans poised to retake the House of Representatives next year, there's no chance of anything changing on that score.  So I'm glad to see at least that the parents in this case are being held responsible, and hopefully there will be some criminal consequence for them.  Even the most pro gun people accept the notion that gun ownership is something to take seriously and responsibly.  Surely, keeping a firearm out of the hands of a potentially dangerous teenage boy is criminally negligent.  

THE REAL SCHOOL CRISIS

             

The Southern Strategy was a conservative political strategy that began in the presidential campaign of Richard Nixon in nineteen sixty eight.  Put simply, it was a way to scare Southern white voters, many of whom were still angry about Democratic President Lyndon Johnson's  signing of the Civil Rights Voting Bill in nineteen sixty five, into voting for Republicans.  This was done by peppering Nixon's speeches with racially coded words like "war on crime", knowing full well who that war would be waged on. In this way, Nixon flipped the Southern states, which had been strongly Democratic for years, into Republican states.  While some Republicans claim that no such strategy was ever used, conservative commentator (and former Richard Nixon staff member) Pat Buchanan defended it in twenty thirteen by writing: "After Richard Nixon cobbled together his New Majority, the GOP carried 49 states in 1972 and 1984, 44 states in 1980 and 40 in 1988."  In other words, the Southern Strategy worked in Nixon's campaign, and versions of it helped Republicans win in later years.

The latest version of this strategy worked again last Tuesday when Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin won the governor's race in the state of Virginia.  While there were a number of factors in his victory (like Biden dipping popularity), one of the big ones was the relatively new issue of Critical Race Theory.  Building on the frustrations of public school parents who are weary of the pandemic and the fights over mask mandates in schools, the Republican party has seized on the issue of Critical Race Theory as a new thing to scare white voters with, to imply that poor little white children are being taught to hate themselves.  The fact that CRT is not being taught in k through twelve schools in Virginia (or any state) and that it was a term first used in law schools is irrelevant, it just sounds scary to white parents and gets them to vote for Republicans, (Youngkin repeated the words over and over in debates and interviews) which is all that matters.  In a way, it's the perfect boogieman for conservatives; Youngkin can say he will ban CRT from schools, and he isn't lying in that it isn't taught there anyway.  Such is the low nature of politics that our country has fallen.

The thing that frustrates me the most is that there is a crisis in our public schools that is not being addressed: wildly uneven funding.  The whole idea of public schooling in this country is based on the common sense notion that every child born here is given the opportunity of a quality education.  But our current public school funding system makes a mockery of that idea.  According to the funding for public schools website, about forty four percent of public school funding  comes from local property taxes, and not surprisingly, the wealthier the neighborhood, the higher the property taxes and the more money that goes to public schools.  Put simply, our current system results in the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

And these differences in spending are often dramatic even within the same state.  In Mississippi for example, a school in Brookhaven spends about six thousand dollars per student a year, while  the neighboring Natchez spends about three thousand dollars more per student.  While this disparity has lasted for years, attempts to address it have been controversial (like school bussing, which lasted a few years in the seventies but is no longer used).  But whatever the remedy, it is a national disgrace that winds up hurting all of us. Poor children who go to schools like jails often wind up in real jails, something for which we all pay.  So, instead of being scared of the words Critical Race Theory, I wish voters were more concerned by another far more real educational problem: the school to prison pipeline.  Although there has been some movement away from our country's desire to fill our jails, America still has the highest prison population in the world.  Fulfilling the promise of our public school system and making them more equal is one way that we can even the playing field for the poor in this country.  Sadly, it will still be a problem long after conservative media has moved on from Critical Race Theory to some other way to scare white voters.

THE TROUBLE WITH TESLA

                                                                         

I drive a two thousand and eight Toyota Prius.  Over the years, I've been very happy with it, but it's about to reach the hundred and fifty thousand mile mark, so I'm starting to think about replacing it.  I know I don't want another Toyota, because they've been donating to Republican congresspeople who deny the twenty twenty election results and climate change (which is a real shame coming from the same company that popularized the fuel efficient hybrid engine).  So I would like to buy an electric car.  And these days, that usually means a Tesla.

Recently Tesla became a trillion dollar company after the Hertz car rental company agreed to buy thousands of them.  This is the crowning achievement of a company that seemed at first to only be catering to wealthy progressives who wanted to show the world that they care about climate change (and drive a flashy, attention getting car at the same time).  

Founded way back in two thousand and three, Tesla is the first auto company  to sell exclusively all electric vehicles.  One of the keys to the company's success was that it laid the groundwork so well: there are now over twenty five thousand Tesla charging stalls all across the US, Canada and Mexico.  Add to that the fact that each car comes equipped with onscreen maps showing the nearest charging center and information that tells the driver how far they can on their remaining battery energy, and you have an effective way to make sure that drivers don't get stranded.

All the Tesla models have a sharp, sleek design, and the ability to go from zero to sixty in mere seconds seems to excite a lot of macho car owners (not me so much). Plus, it not only saves money on gas, it also has fewer moving parts than a normal car, so there's less to have to replace.  Yes, the Tesla has made electric cars cool and has built up an often rabid fan following while doing it.  

If that's the case, why would someone like me considering buying a different brand of electric car?  Two words: Elon Musk.  While not one of the Tesla company's founders, Musk was a primary share holder and he  took over as CEO in two thousand and eight.  He is also  currently the world's richest man.  As the company's figurehead and primary spokesman, Musk had said and done some things over the years that I find objectionable.  While I don't mind his ego or showmanship (those are to be expected) there are other things about him that are troubling.  His behavior as a boss has been described as unstable and sociopathic by former workers who said that he engaged in "wild firing rampages."  In twenty eighteen he tweeted out a claim about the Tesla company that was considered false by the Security and Exchange Commission, which wound up fining him twenty million dollars for it.  That same year, Musk tried to help out the rescue of Thai schoolboys stuck in a flooded cave by building a small submarine.  When the children were saved without it,  he angrily tweeted out that one of the rescuers was a "pedo guy", although he later apologized.  

When the pandemic hit, he claimed that the danger of it was overblown, promoted chloroquine as a cure for Covid, and tweeted in March of twenty twenty  that "Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April."  He was also mad about having to temporarily shut down his factories during lockdown.

And he seems determined to promote the so called "Full Self-Driving Capability" in the Tesla cars, even though this self driving mode still requires the driver to pay attention.  Not surprisingly, some Tesla owners have tried just letting their car drive itself, and have even gotten out of the driver's seat while the car is going.  This has lead to some high profile accidents; so many, in fact, that the government is currently investigating the company.  Which hasn't stopped Musk from still offering the feature, along with inflated claims of its effectiveness that, according to the New York Times, the company's own engineers disagree with.  You would think having a successful company that produces only electric cars would be enough, but Musk also wants to start a self driving revolution, even if that means using the American public as "beta testers".

And being the richest man in the world hasn't tamped down Musk's greed; he recently tweeted out "Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you" in regards to a proposed wealth tax.  Is there anything more pathetic than a man worth hundreds of billions of dollars complaining about having to pay a reasonable tax rate?  How about if that same  man also once took billions of dollars in government subsidies.  Yes, that's right, over the years Tesla and Musk's other companies have received billions of tax dollars.  It's entirely possible that Tesla would never have survived the recession of two thousand and nine without the low interest loans it got from the Department of Energy. You'd think that a guy who knew that wouldn't begrudge paying a fair tax rate on his hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth.  But that's Elon Musk for you.  He's the single best argument against buying a Tesla, no matter how good they are as cars. 

ASHLAND OREGON: A TOWN IN CRISIS

 Located just a few miles from the border with California, Ashland Oregon is a lovely little town of around twenty thousand people.  With beautiful mountainous views and nearby state parks, it's a great place to visit.  Although the city has a college, its main attraction is the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the oldest Shakespeare festival in America.  Founded in nineteen thirty four, it has thrived over the years, expanding from just one outdoor theater to two more indoor ones.  With an average of four hundred thousand people visiting each year, the festival is the driver for the town's economy, with hotels, stores, cafes and restaurants lining the streets outside the theaters.  Warm summer nights are usually very lively in the town, with tourists milling around the crowded sidewalks near the theaters while live music plays.  

I have been going to the festival for over twenty years, and I have seen some wonderful productions there, not only of Shakespeare plays, but of many others too. (They started performing non Shakespeare plays back in nineteen sixty). In recent years  the festival has  even started  embracing new plays by young authors, along with performing many of Shakespeare's lesser known plays and the results are often striking.  Despite the high quality of shows the festival has provided over the years, I think the future of the festival, and the town of Ashland itself, is in doubt.

The pandemic has obviously hit Ashland hard, with the Shakespeare festival all but cancelled for over a year except for some online shows.  But the pandemic will eventually subside. Unfortunately, there is something else affecting the town that is not going to subside: climate change.  In the last few years, increased heat and drought conditions have led to forest fires all over the state of Oregon.  Sometimes these fires threaten the town itself (as one did in 2020), but even when they don't, they lead to smoke from the fires pouring into the city.  At times the smoke is so bad that health regulators recommend that people should avoid going outside entirely.  Not surprisingly, these conditions can wreak havoc on the festival, especially in the open air theater, which is the largest of the three.  Even in the days before covid, the festival had to cancel precious shows due to the poor air quality.   And shows being cancelled means less people visiting the town.  To make matters even worse, the fire season happens during the Summer, which is also the height of tourist season.

Now, the festival has been trying to adjust, with some outdoor shows being moved into different venues, and there's even been some talk of putting some kind of retractable dome over the open air theater.  But, these just seem like stopgap ideas that don't deal with the real problem ahead.  Even if they can still perform the shows, people are not going to want to travel to a town that's sometimes surrounded by fires and that has poor air quality.  You can't blame tourists for staying home when your town is inside a so called "heat dome", as Ashland was earlier this year.  And when the tourists stop coming, the economy of the whole town will suffer.  I hate to say this, but in a few years this charming, seemingly vibrant city could become a ghost town.

In many ways, the sad story of Ashland is one that is being echoed in many small towns all over the world.  Climate change has gone from something that naysayers could dismiss into a horrifying reality, with millions of people facing drought, fires, floods and other natural disasters on a scale unseen in human history.  It's a tragedy that will make future generations wonder why we did so little to stop it.

"NEVER BEEN MORE DIVIDED"

                             

It has become fashionable in the media to say that America has never been more divided, or at least, not so divided since the Civil War.  Some have even ominously said that they can see our political divide leading to another Civil War arising in our country sometime soon.  While it is certainly hard to argue with the truth that red states and  blue states want very different things for this country, and often seem to live in different worlds (much less a country), to me the idea that America could ever again wind up in a violent conflict between different states seems outlandish.

The important thing to remember about the American Civil War is that the Southern states were all united in their desire to leave America and form the Confederacy.  While there has been some rumblings about states succeeding recently (Texas leaders flirted with it during the Obama presidency, and California leaders during Trump's) the idea that eleven states would join together to leave the country all at once like the Confederate states did back in eighteen sixty is crazy.  There is no way of knowing just how to even begin that process in our modern world.  And forming a whole new country in this day and age would be a massive undertaking that would displace millions of people.  I just don't see that happening.  Also, it should be pointed out that the Southern red states that might want to split off from the rest of the country would flounder without the federal government dollars that flow to their states every year.  While Southern politicians can score political points when they rail against California, losing the shared revenue that comes from a state that has the fifth biggest economy in the world would be devastating to them, and they know that.

What happened on January sixth is a good example of what I'm talking about; yes, it was a disgrace, but it was also utterly ineffectual as any kind of power grab.  It (thankfully) resulted in only a handful of deaths and injuries, and did nothing to change the election.  It was hardly the start of any kind of civil war, it was just a bunch of fools committing foolish acts of vandalism.

If you really want to see a country divided, look at what went on in the nineteen sixties as the Civil Rights movement and the anti war movement often ripped this country apart.  Here are just a few examples: the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. sparked riots all across the country, lasting days and resulting in forty three deaths, thousands of injuries and tens of thousands of arrests.  The assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy just as he was likely to win the Democratic nomination for president, was  another shocking blow to the nation.  In Chicago, the Democratic convention saw pro and anti war delegates in shouting fights on the convention floor while outside thousands of anti war protestors were subjected to a heavy handed police force that resulted in days of rioting and thousands of injuries and arrests.  The election of Richard Nixon saw him successfully use the so called "Southern Strategy" of racially coded words exploiting the divisions in our country.  The amazing thing about all the events I just listed is that they all happened in a single year!  Yes, nineteen sixty eight saw more violent, divisive events happen in this country than Trump, for all the strong feelings he's inspired,  brought out in the four years of his presidency.

And nineteen sixty eight was just one year from that era when the country seemed mired in violence and chaos.  Earlier years saw big riots in places like Watts, while later years saw the rise of The Weathermen, a left wing anti war terrorist group that carried out bombing attacks against government buildings.  And somehow, despite all the craziness of those times, with Southern states openly defying the federal government's desegregation and voter's rights laws while the younger and older generations fought (both verbally and physically) over the Viet Nam war, the country was not torn apart.  It held together, just as it will continue to now.

So yes, saying that America is on the verge of all out civil war is an easy way  for newscasters and pundits to scare viewers and get them to keep watching, but it will never happen.  Oh sure, I'm as scared as anybody that some Trump supporters might try to get violent again, but it couldn't rise to the level of sparking a war.  America will continue to muddle along, with deep political divides but little actual physical political violence, just like we always have since the end of the Civil War. 

COMPROMISE, PLEASE!

 

Are the Democrats stuck?  Mired in limbo?  Will Biden become a failed president before his first year is over?  Anyone following the media in the past week has heard these questions asked several times.  Because our competitive news networks deliver political news in a way much like sports broadcasting (focusing on who's up and who's down), you'd think the entire party was going to be destroyed sometime soon.

The reality of the situation is this: there are two bills working their way through congress, one's a bipartisan infrastructure plan that will cost a trillion dollars, and the other is  a spending plan that will cost three and half trillion dollars.  Progressive congress members want both bills passed, and are willing to hold up voting for the smaller one if it looks like the larger one won't pass.  But the larger bill is being held up in the Senate (where the Democrats need every vote) by two moderate Democratic Senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.  Manchin has said that he thinks the spending bill is too big, and Sinema's motives are oddly mysterious.  A vote in the House of Representatives over the infrastructure bill was cancelled last week when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi realized that she did not have the votes.   

One of the annoying things about the way that the media has covered this is that they talk about the three and half trillion dollar plan without mentioning that that spending will take place over a period of ten years.  This would put the annual spending at about three hundred and fifty billion a year, which is less than half of what we will inevitably spend on defense.  In other words, it's not the budget busting proposal that it sounds like.  It's also important to remember that the various provisions of the spending bill are popular in polls: national daycare, paid family leave, expanding medicare to include vision and dental, dealing with climate change.  It's not only progressives who want these things, they  are popular with Democrats, independents and some Republicans. A July poll USA Today poll put the infrastructure plan at sixty three percent positive and the spending bill at fifty two percent. (In contrast, the twenty seventeen tax cut passed by the Donald Trump administration had only a forty percent rating).

The future of both bills are in doubt, and it's sad to think that this may be the last chance to really deal with climate change, given that the Republican party will very likely retake congress in twenty twenty two.  The hope is that the progressives will give in (like we always seem to have to) and agree to lower the spending in the second bill so that both bills will pass.  The fight going on here reminds me of the similar battle that raged in congress during the passage of the Affordable Care Act; and while that bill was also watered down by Democratic moderates, its passage was still a good thing.  I'm thinking that we'll get the same result here, seeing as how not passing either bill would be such a blow to the party.  While it's upsetting that we have a process in which popular bills can be blocked by just two members of the senate, that's the system we have.  Not losing the good while fighting for the perfect seems to be the sad cry of the progressive in this country these days, and here it is once again.  And once again, congress should do the right thing, which means pleasing Manchin and Sinema by cutting the spending down until they're willing to vote for it, so that both bills pass.  Compromise is necessary.

PARTISAN HACKS

Recently the Supreme Court made a definite step in the direction of overturning the nineteen seventy three Roe Vs Wade decision when they allowed a law banning abortions after six weeks in Texas to stand.  Considering that most women do not even know that they are pregnant within six weeks of  pregnancy means that this is essentially a ban on abortions completely in the state of Texas.  The oddness of the law allows private citizens to enforce the ban, who can then collect bounties on anyone who aids a woman who gets an abortion after that six week period.  And in a particularly cruel twist, there is no exception for women who have been raped.

While this is upsetting to people like me who do not want Roe Vs Wade overturned (and we are still in the majority in this country), I can't say that I was surprised by it.  I knew way back in twenty sixteen right after Trump won that this day was coming.  As much as I disagree with them, you have to kind of hand it to the anti abortion people on the right, who have spent decades of singleminded devotion to this issue, working hard to elect Republican presidents who will put conservative judges on the court.  

Now to add insult to injury, one of the judges who voted  to uphold that law, Amy Coney Barrett, recently gave a speech defending the court, saying that they are not "partisan hacks", and that “judicial philosophies are not the same as political parties.”  This is patently absurd.  One of the things that makes this so laughable is that she made these remarks after being introduced by Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, the man who brazenly shoved her confirmation through the senate after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, just weeks before the presidential election.  And who had done the complete opposite years earlier when he blocked then President Barack Obama from filling a vacancy ten months before the election.  If Barrett really holds herself as something other than a partisan hack, she should have turned the appointment down, seeing it for what it was: a blatantly hypocritical and  partisan power grab by the Republican party, who know that their racist voter suppression laws (among others) will be upheld by a sympathetic court. 

The notion that the Supreme Court is beyond politics, even as the appointments are an inherently political process, is plain silly.  Oh sure, they can windily pontificate about "judicial philosophies" and precedents and such, but at the end of the day Republican appointed judges are expected to rule in favor of conservative causes, and vice versa for the Democrats.  And the outside political world can definitely effect rulings, which is not always a bad thing, since the legalization of gay marriage was clearly made because a changing world has come to see same sex marriage as something that should be legal.  

So, with Roe more than likely to be directly overturned sometime soon, what are progressives to do?  Sadly, there isn't much.  While there has been some talk of appointing more judges (which is called packing the court), that would be the kind of  bold and unprecedented move that Joe Biden wants no part of.  So, the only real recourse is for progressives to do what conservatives have done so well and focus on the Supreme Court (and lower courts) working hard to get out like minded voters and pushing abortion rights as an important issue.  Yes, this is a bitter pill to swallow given that Trump's three(!) Supreme Court choices will probably be ruling on our laws for decades to come, but that's the system we are stuck with. Political hack or not, Barrett isn't going anywhere.

AMERICA THE STUPID?

 Calling someone who disagrees with you politically "stupid" is an easy trap to fall in for both sides of the political fence.  As a progressive, I try to choose my words carefully, realizing that lapsing into childish name calling doesn't change any minds or do any good.  After all, there are smart people on both sides.

And yet, what is happening in red state America right now appears to be, well, downright stupid.  In the past few months, four different right wing talk show hosts who ridiculed vaccines have died from Covid-19.  While I feel sad for their friends and family, it is hard to mourn someone who so clearly had a way to avoid death and openly, proudly, chose to ignore it.  And the fact that all of these men had a media influence that they used to promote dangerous lies about vaccinations, which has surely led to the loss of other lives, makes them even less sympathetic.  And yes, stupid.

And the stupidity continues: right now in red states there has been a rash of people taking the drug Ivermectin in a misguided belief that it can effectively defeat the covid virus.  There is not one study that shows  this to be the case, but because the drug has been mentioned positively by right wing Fox News hosts like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, their followers  have started taking the drug, which is normally used for deworming horses.  It's gotten so bad that the drug has run out in some places, with prescriptions numbering in the thousands and calls to poison control centers from people who have taken the drug skyrocketing.  There's a word for people who reject a vaccination that is the product of months of intensive research and testing, and which has been fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration, to instead take a  horse dewormer because their science denying heroes have recommended it.  That word is stupid.

And then there's the school board meetings.  Somehow, the common sense precaution of having children who are too young to get vaccinated wear masks at school has become a political issue.  Board meetings to discuss the matter have often degenerated into screaming matches and death threats.  As someone who has worn a mask quite a bit in the past year myself, I can't possibly see how something as simple as a cloth face covering has become an object of such anger.  I've never seen anyone get angry about  restaurants that enforces a "no shirt, no shoes, no service" policy.  Because that would be stupid.  

The American stupid response to the pandemic is utterly depressing when contrasted with the rest of the world: the official statistics show that in raw numbers the US leads the world in Covid cases by millions, and in deaths by tens of thousands.  Even when adjusted to a per capita basis, the country does poorly.  Even worse, our rate of fully vaccinated people lags behind nearly every other first world country, and the number of people getting vaccinated daily has lately been stuck at only around a million, a far cry from the over three million per day rate that occurred back in April.  And according to a July Forbes poll, around forty percent of Republicans plan to never get vaccinated, needlessly prolonging the pandemic because they are too stubborn to do the right thing to protect themselves and others around them.  Stubborn and stupid.  

This is certainly not the first time that conservatives in this country have believed in a stupid thing: during the presidency of Barack Obama, large numbers of Republicans doubted his birthplace.  A majority of Republicans currently believe that Donald Trump won the twenty twenty election.  But these beliefs are mostly harmless ones that are more about a desired belief than a strongly held one.  Vaccine denial is entirely different and deadly.  As America weathers our fourth wave of the virus, with hospitals overflowing and death counts rising, it's hard not to get angry at the proudly unvaccinated people that are still spreading the virus.  The proudly unvaccinated and stupid. 

THE END OF THE TWENTY YEAR WAR

 Well, it's been a mess but it's finally over.  The last American troops have withdrawn from the country of Afghanistan, bringing the longest war in American history to a close.

Given the chaotic pullout, and the tragic death of scores of people (including thirteen members of the American military) in a suicide bombing just a few days ago, many political pundits are wondering if the American public will blame President Joe Biden for what's been going on.  Today he made another direct address to the world asserting that he has done the right thing, despite the difficulties that have arisen.  Interestingly, his approval ratings have taken a hit even as most Americans still support the withdrawal.  But then, that's where I am; I think after twenty years and two trillion dollars, it was time to end the war, but I also think that that ending certainly could have been handled better by the Biden administration.  Obviously he was wrong when he asserted that the American trained Afghani army wouldn't be overrun by the Taliban.  He was also wrong about not evacuating Afghan refugees earlier when he had the opportunity.

So Joe Biden deserves some blame for the violence in Afghanistan.  But then Donald Trump also deserves some blame for negotiating a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban that released thousands of Taliban soldiers and mandated no Taliban attacks on American soldiers while saying nothing about preventing ones on the Afghan military, allowing the Taliban to say they were following the agreement while overwhelming the Afghan military.  And Barack Obama also deserves some blame for having a surge of American troops enter Afghanistan back in two thousand and nine, which did nothing to quell the violence.  And of course, George W Bush must take some blame (most of the blame in my opinion) for getting us into the mess of Afghanistan in the first place.  As the New York Times recently reported, the Taliban were ready to negotiate an American withdrawal as early as two thousand and one, but Bush refused them.  So, just like the mess of Viet Nam could be blamed on both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, the mostly disastrous Afghan war that has endured through four presidencies can be blamed on all four presidents.  (And both political parties for that matter!).

Honestly, my cynical nature about the American public makes me think that most Americans will stop even thinking of Afghanistan much now that all the American troops are home.  Although there may be a few stories about the Taliban's mistreatment of women and the refugees arriving in the coming months, I imagine that in about a year or so our longest war will already be forgotten by most of the public, and things like the economy and covid will be given much higher priority.

If there's one good thing that can come out of what has happened in Afghanistan, it this: hopefully, the country will realize that, even though we have the biggest military in the world, invading and occupying hostile foreign countries is not something that can be done lightly.   The last successful American war was way back in nineteen ninety one when America attacked Iraq,  drove their forces out of Kuwait, but decided not to completely force Saddam Hussein out of power.  However you may have felt about that war, it was done quickly with a clear mission, something that our last two messes in Iraq and Afghanistan have never had.

THE MESS IN AFGHANISTAN

   "I was the fourth President to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan-two Republican, two Democrats.  I would not, and will not, pass this war onto a fifth."-President Joe Biden

The longest running war in American history has come to a tragic, and sadly fitting end.  Fulfilling a promise that he made on the campaign trail, (and one that was supported by a large majority of the country), President Joe Biden has pulled American troops out of  Afghanistan.  By doing so he held to a withdrawal bargain that the Donald Trump administration negotiated with the Taliban fighters of Afghanistan before he left office.  The  result has been an overwhelming show of force of the Taliban, who have taken over all the country's major cities in a surprisingly short period of time, as the American trained Afghan soldiers fell or fled without American support.  Over the years our country has spent tens of billions of dollars trying to train an independent Afghan army, and yet the Taliban was able to topple them in a matter of days, a powerful example of what a difficult conflict this has been.

The whole situation with Afghanistan has always been a complicated one: I still remember how after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 the country was filled with understandable anger and rage.  Surely, striking back at the people who organized the attack made sense, and their headquarters were in Afghanistan.  But once the invasion was made and the Al Queda organization there was smashed, how much obligation did the US have to stay and try to stabilize the country? The goals of the war were met within a few years, with the war becoming more of a violent occupation than an outright war, one with no easy endpoint.

  The first president to deal with Afghanistan, George W Bush, seemed to lose interest in it when he prioritized the invasion of Iraq in two thousand and three.  Barack Obama, on the other hand, ran on ending the war in Iraq, and he did.  But he doubled down on the conflict in Afghanistan, surging in thousands of more American troops in two thousand and nine, along with trying to train and build both a native army and the country's infrastructure.  His intentions were good, but the results were mostly more failure, with much of the money intended for infrastructure building being lost because  the country's centralized government was weak and corrupt.  The continuing difficulties of the war  led Trump to run on a campaign of withdrawal, which Biden has continued.

It should be noted that not all of the effects of the American invasion of Afghanistan have been bad: the New York Times recently noted that in the twenty years of the war, the infant mortality rate has been cut in half, and far more of the Afghani people have access to electricity.  And of course, things have gotten better for the women of the country, with girls being allowed to go to school and adult women being allowed into the workforce on a wide scale for the first time.  So far, the Taliban has pledged that they will not force girls out of schools and women out of their jobs in their new regime, but the history of the Taliban does not bode well for the Afghani women. 

 Although I essentially agree with the withdrawal of American troops, the handling of it has been a chaotic mess, with the Taliban retaking power far faster than the Biden administration expected, leading to a horrifying refugee situation that's led to terrible images of desperate people clinging on to departing helicopters (a grim reminder of a similar situation that happened at the end of the Viet Nam war).  The best thing the country can do is help as many refugees as possible relocate here in the US or in other countries.  The Republican party will scream over an influx of Muslim immigrants, but it's the least we can do for all the people who allied with our country in this decades long war. 

THE BIDEN BUDGET BLUEPRINT AND A CONSERVATIVE CONTRADICTION

Way back in nineteen seventy one, congress passed the Comprehensive Child Development Bill, which would have created a public childcare program for all American parents.  Sadly, a program  that would have been a great benefit to poor and working class households was vetoed by President Nixon.  The reason he gave was that he didn't want  a "communal approach to child-rearing."  He also added that it would have "family-weakening implications."

Last February, Utah Senator Mitt Romney proposed a universal monthly payment of three hundred and fifty dollars per child to families with children.  His proposal went nowhere, as members of his own party attacked the idea, calling it  “welfare assistance”.

 Recently Democrats in congress unveiled a three and half trillion dollar spending bill that would, if passed, be the biggest social spending plan since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs of the nineteen sixties.  Along with trying to fight climate change, a significant portion of the bill is reserved for spending on a national childcare program plus a generous paid leave program for new parents.  The bill will have to pass through reconciliation in the Senate, which means that it will probably have to undergo some cuts before all the Democratic Senators will support it.  The support of all the Democrats is necessary because the Republican party will inevitably unanimously vote against it. 

Equally relevant is the fact that recent population studies have found that Americans are having fewer and fewer children in the past few years.  While there are a number of reasons that American fertility rates are down, from better sex education, more birth control choices and more women wanting to focus on their careers, one of the main reasons is that having children in America is expensive.  And it's an expense that Republicans (except for Romney)  have done nothing to relieve in years.  Yes, the party that wraps itself in family values refuses to do anything to help poor and working class families and those families have responded by having less children.

I find it amusing that some conservatives have responded to the country's lowering birth rate with alarm, failing to see that it's the inevitable result of their anti-family policies.  Just take a look at our lack of paid national maternity leave: the US is one of the few countries in the world to not have any national maternity program.  Instead, we allow twelve weeks of unpaid leave for women who work at companies with more than fifty people, and no mandatory leave at all for women who work at companies with less than fifty workers.  Oh sure, women who work at high paying jobs often get paid leave, but women in poor or low paying jobs have little or no choice but to go back to work just a short time after giving birth.  So it's no surprise that so many women are saying no to motherhood or having less children.

Why do conservatives fail to understand this contradiction?  Part of it may be that they're still stuck in the fifties mentality that dictates that the most successful families are ones in which dad goes to work and mom stays home with the kids.  The fact that the country's growing income gap and stagnant wages for the middle class means that many families can't even afford to live this way anymore doesn't seem to enter into their thinking.

A more cynical reason is that conservative politicians oppose these programs because the wealthy corporations that pay for their campaigns don't want them to exist.  And, as long as the Republican party is able to convince middle class white voters to support them while doing nothing to help the middle class, they can just keep right on doing nothing to make child rearing a little less expensive for our families.  They just shouldn't be so surprised when those families respond by having fewer or no children.

ANDREW CUOMO AND REPUBLICAN HYPOCRISY

During the pandemic, New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo became a media darling as he tried to handle being the governor of a state that was the epicenter of the pandemic.  For a while there the tough talking New Yorker was poised to become the next Rudy Giuliani, and even a presidential run didn't seem out of the question.  What a difference a few months can make.

When the first sexuall assault charges were made against Cuomo, his denials seemed somewhat reasonable.  Perhaps he was just an overly affectionate guy from a different era when it was alright for a boss to be so.  But now that a through investigation has been made, it's clear that the man went beyond mere friendly affection.  Eleven different women detail stories of him making creepy comments and groping them, and there is one clear case that he retaliated against one of the women after she spoke out about it.  Add to that reports that he openly lied about his success battling covid, and it's easy to see why President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have both called for him to resign.

Right now the governor is fighting back, releasing an odd video in which he defended himself by showing pictures of him being publicly affectionate with other people in the past, as if that explains the behavior that many of these women claimed happened in private.  To me, there's no question that he should step down, both for the good of the state and his political party.  But it is possible that he could successfully hang on to office and finish his term.  In other words, he could pull a Donald Trump.

In October of twenty sixteen, which seems like a lifetime ago, the infamous Access Hollywood tape hit the Trump presidential campaign like a ton of bricks.  Along with the tape, twenty five different women claimed that he had sexaully assaulted them in the exact manner that he had bragged about on the tape.  It's so hard to believe now just how finished Trump's political career looked, as numerous Republican party members withdrew their endorsements of him and Vice Presidential candidate Mike Pence considered dropping off the ticket.  Trump, like Cuomo, just plowed onward, dismissing the words he spoke on the tape as "locker room talk" and shrugging off all  the sexual assault charges, claiming that he would eventually sue all the women making them (something he still hasn't gotten around to doing). 

It appears that Cuomo, just like Trump, seems to think that blanket denials will work for him.  But the Democratic party is not like the Republican party in that they do not just worship power.  Even if Cuomo does stay in office, his career as a Democratic leader or spokesperson is over; I can't imagine that the party will ever embrace him again.  This stands in sharp contrast to Trump, who's time as a pariah in the Republican party only lasted until election day.  Once he somehow eked out a victory, everything was forgiven, and some of his biggest critics, like Senators Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz, became some of his most toadying lackeys.   Things like yet another woman coming forward to say that Trump once raped her in a dressing room were completely ignored, as absolute loyalty to him became the standard for nearly every member of the party.

It seems hard to believe that the same Republican party that once forced Senator Bob Packwood to resign because of sexaul assualt charges back in nineteen ninety five could now continue to support Trump even as he is out of office, but those are the depths that the Republican has sank to ever since they turned a TV celebrity into a demagogic cult leader.   No, the Democratic party isn't perfect, but they certainly hold the higher moral ground when it comes to punishing deplorable behavior from a party leader. 

THE UNVACCINATED

"99.5% of deaths are among the unvaccinated." US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy on recent coronavirus deaths.

The anti vaccine myth first took hold in the world back in nineteen ninety eight when former British surgeon Andrew Wakefield published a poorly researched study claiming that there was a link between certain vaccinations and autism in the medical paper The Lancet.  Although the article was later retracted by that paper, the damage was done; propped up by celebrities like Jenny McCarthy, lies about one of the greatest scientific advances in the history of the world were spread all over the media.  The one good piece of news is the anti vaccine belief never hit the mainstream in the US, with it mostly staying on the fringes of society.  

Sadly, the same cannot be said about the anti vaccine movement that has arisen during the covid crisis.  Recently, the European Union exceeded America in the percentage of its people being vaccinated, and with recent polls showing a whopping forty seven percent of Republicans saying that they do not plan to get the vaccine, these depressing trends appear to be ready to continue.  The reasons people give for not getting vaccinated range from reasonable sounding (the vaccines are too new) to insane (magnetism!).  It is truly upsetting to consider that while other countries are begging for more vaccinations, many parts of America are running a surplus!

So why are so many Americans turning away from a vaccine that  has been used on  billions of people around the world, even as a more contagious strain of the virus is spreading around the nation? It appears to be a unique brand of American stubbornness, combined with anti intellectualism.  Now while there is some distrust of the vaccine in African American communities (who's basis for distrust of the government regarding health has historical precedent) it is mostly in politically conservative, mostly white communities that the anti vaccine attitudes run the strongest.  Most of this is due to the downplaying of the virus that the Donald Trump administration did almost from the beginning of the pandemic: from him calling the coronavirus a "liberal hoax" to his claims that it will disappear when the weather gets warmer, Trump shrugged off the threat for a long time before finally starting to care when it kept getting worse.  Even then, he seemed to support anti mask protests going on in places like Michigan.  And, taking their cues from the president, the right wing media fell in line with him, shrugging off the virus for far too long  even as cases soared.

To be fair, both Trump and the right wing media have equivocated on this issue: Trump got the vaccine himself, but allowed no photography of the moment and defends people who don't want to get it.  Conservative commentator Sean Hannity spoke out for vaccines, before just seconds later when he condemned universities that have vaccination requirements.  Obviously, coming after months of misleading covid statements coming from both the former president and Fox News, this is all a little too little and a little too late. 

While Joe Biden has admirably tried to encourage people to get the shot, the sad fact of the matter is that the more he talks about it, the more conservatives are digging in, just to defy him. To them risking their own lives and the lives of people around them means less than admitting that they're wrong.   (Anyone who's ever argued with a Trump supporter knows how hard it can be to change someone's mind).  And everything from offering free marijuana to lottery tickets hasn't moved the needle enough. Right now Biden is considering requiring all civilian federal employees to either be vaccinated or regularly tested, and I absolutely think that that is the right thing to do.  And I hope that private businesses and universities join in on vaccine mandates.  Sure, the right wing media will howl, and there will be protests (a similar decision made by the French government was recently protested) I still think it's the right thing to do (the decision in France  also led to a big increase in people getting vaccinated).  We need to show the unvaccinated that life will be much harder for them until they finally give in and just get the same shot that hundreds of millions of other Americans have already gotten.  Putting it simply, some people's desire to "own the libs" is not more important than a return to normalcy. 

TRUMP'S RECKONING?

Back in the nineteen eighties, president Ronald Reagan was often called the "teflon" president, because no matter what happened around him, it never stuck to him.  From the Iran Contra scandal to ignoring the deaths of people with AIDS, Reagan always seemed able to emerge unscathed from problems that might have sunk another president.  His amiable (if absent minded) persona always seemed to win enough of the support of the American public to keep him popular.

A few years ago, people started calling then president  Donald Trump "teflon Don", implying once again that we had a president who never seemed to have to pay for the various terrible and corrupt things going on around him.  That certainly seemed true, as Trump shrugged off sexual assault and rape charges from twenty six women, ignored the emoluments clause of the Constitution, and was impeached by the House of Representatives, all while saying and tweeting utterly offensive ("Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are the co founders of Isis") or downright stupid (the sound from windmills can give you cancer) things that should have ended his political career but didn't.

And now, after seventy five years of always getting what he wants, Trump may finally face some level of retribution:  on July first, the Manhattan district attorney’s office announced charges against the Trump Organization and its chief financial executive, Allen H. Weisselberg.  This could possibly lead to charges being leveled against Trump himself.  Like a mob boss, Trump has always demanded complete loyalty from those around him, and lives in fear of someone turning on him, which Weisselberg may do. That said, given all the various accusations made about Trump and his organization over the years, these do not seem to be particularly strong accusations;  they allege that over the past fifteen years the Trump organization  gifted Weisselberg things like a free apartment, a car, or school tuition, adding up to millions of dollars, without declaring any of these things on his taxes.  The good news is that this may be just the beginning of the investigation, with more serious charges in the offing, depending on whether Weisselberg flips on Trump in order to reduce his own sentence or not.

So, will Weisselberg flip?  That's a big question: on the one hand, his former daughter in law Jennifer Weisselberg recently told the New Yorker that, concerning Allen Weisselberg, "His whole worth is 'Does Donald like me today?' It's his whole life, his core being. He's obsessed. He has more feelings and adoration for Donald than for his wife."  On the other hand, she also remembers Trump coming to visit Alan Weisselberg's home and blurting out "This is where my C.F.O. lives? It's embarrassing!", he then showed off naked pictures of women he had claimed to have slept with and hit on Jennifer Weisselberg.  The fact that all of this was done while the family was mourning the death of a loved one makes it all the more repulsive (and par for the course for Trump).  Could such boorish behavior come back to bite Trump now that his former C. F. O. is in the legal crosshairs?  Let's hope it does.

One crazy thing is Trump and his son Donald Jr. have both publicly admitted to the crimes by shrugging them off, implying that somehow they were just being nice to Weisselberg, not seeming to realize that millions of dollars in gifts are still taxable no matter how well meaning their intention.  One thing is sadly true, these charges will not change the unshakeable faith of the core Republican voters who have stood by Trump ever since he first announced his candidacy and who want him to run again in twenty twenty four.  Heck, he may be the first American politician to run for the presidency while in jail.  All bets are off with this guy.

ALMOST SACRED

 

Yesterday, the Republicans in the Senate shot down both versions of the voting rights bills that the Democrats were trying to pass to counter the literally hundreds of voter suppression laws that Republican state governments have passed recently.  Although the death of the bills were always inevitable (no one expected Republicans not to filibuster bills that would stop them from having an electoral advantage), it's still heartbreaking to see how one political party has no problem in trying to prevent people, especially people of color, from exercising their right to vote.  

The late John Lewis, a congressmen and early civil rights protester, one described the right to vote in America as "almost sacred".  He was right.  Sadly, extending that right to African Americans has been a serious problem since the end of slavery.  It's hard to believe, but in the post war civil reconstruction era, thousands of former slaves were elected to public offices.  Sadly, this ended when federal troops enforcing civil rights laws were withdraw from the South and the Jim Crow era of segregation and lack of voting rights began in the South.  It wouldn't  end until Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Voting Act into law in nineteen sixty five.   After signing the bill, according to Johnson aide Bill Moyers, Johnson sadly admitted that "I think we just delivered the South to the Republican party for a long time to come."

It is amazing to think that, decades later, Johnson's words still ring true.  Oh sure, courting libertarians and fundamentalist Christians has been a big part of the Republican party's appeal in the decades since that bill was signed, at the end of the day, their  plan of using racially coded words ("war on crime", "war on drugs") in political speeches,  a plan developed during the ninety sixty eight Nixon presidential campaign (and named "The Southern Strategy"), has been a part of every Republican presidential campaign since.  (Although to be fair, Mitt Romney's and John McCain's campaigns mostly avoided it).  

Donald Trump, of course, just threw out the coding and openly made racist remarks in his twenty sixteen campaign.  Even worse, since his public refusal to accept his loss in twenty twenty has lead a majority of Republican voters to believe that that election was stolen, Republican state legislators have passed laws making it harder to vote by claiming that their constituents were concerned about "voter fraud".  Of course they don't mention the fact that the only reasons  they have those concerns is because of Trump's lies.  And these laws are targeted at making it harder for African American voters to vote, by shutting down polling places and limiting early voting.  A twenty twenty article in The Washington Post pointed out that African American voters already are seventy four percent more likely to have to wait half and hour or more to vote than white voters.  Somehow this obvious  impediment to voting isn't enough for the Republicans.

And if that weren't bad enough, conservatives on the Supreme Court have also helped out the Republican cause: in the contested two thousand election they stepped in and handed the White House to George W Bush.  In two thousand and nine, after Barack Obama set records for small donations from supporters, they decided that money equaled speech in the Citizen's United decision, opening the floodgates for the rich to donate to campaigns, a clear advantage for Republicans.  And  then, after Barack Obama won reecletion in twenty twelve, one year later the court gutted the Civil Rights Voting Act which had forced Southern states to get federal approval for any changes in voting laws.  This, of course, lead to the flood of voter suppression laws being passed right now. 

It really is a sign of just how gutless the Republican Party is that they killed the voting rights bills without even allowing them to be debated; they knew full well that one Democratic Senator after another would give examples of how the voting suppression laws were openly targeted at African American voters, and that their counter arguments were weak.  When it comes to the modern Southern Strategy, most Republicans like to just pretend that it doesn't exist even as they pass laws proving that it does.

GOOD NEWS IS NO NEWS

    

 There is a truism that says that much of the way that the media covers politics is not unlike how it covers sports; there are winners and losers, and polls showing who's up and who's down, with analysts often asking which political side scored a victory with each new development.  It's understandable that the media would use this quickly digestible style of coverage, but it leaves out all sense of nuance.  Obviously, there has never been a sports team where certain members of one team decide to play for the other side "for the good of the country."

    But bipartisanship is dead, right?  If you listen to the media, it sure is; the country is deeply divided, both sides are dug in, Biden will get no Republican help for his agenda, etc.  And yet, a recent bill to make it easier to investigate and prosecute hate crimes against Asians sailed through congress, passing with ninety four votes in the Senate and three hundred and sixty four votes in the House.  Ok, you might say that voting for a bill against the terrible spate of crimes being carried out against Asian Americans is a no brainer.  No sane person could possibly be opposed to such a thing.  But another recent bill was also passed with overwhelming (sixty eight votes) support in the Senate, and it's the kind of big spending bill that you would think the Republican party would never go for, but they were willing to cross the aisle for this one.  Designed as a counterbalance to China's growing influence in scientific research, it would spend nearly a quarter-trillion dollars over the next five years on research into things like superconductors.  While the bill has yet to pass the house, given its popularity (heck, even Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell voted for it!) and Joe Biden's willingness to sign it, its passage is assured.

    So a bipartisan bill designed to help the country in the future will soon be passed.  This would seem to be a good news story, which may explain why there has so little media coverage of it.  Our competition driven media, so obsessed with winners and losers, barely seemed to have time for something that drew the two parties together.  No they'd rather talk about how gridlocked congress is, and how much Senator Joe Manchin's refusal to end the filibuster is killing Biden's agenda.

    Look, I complain about the filibuster and our divided nation as much as anybody, but as these two bill show, bipartisanship for the good of the country is not always an impossible dream.  Hopefully, there will be more of it in the future. 

WHY QANON?

“I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate.”-Donald Trump on QAnon

It's official.  QAnon is popular enough to almost become mainstream.  That's according to a recent poll released by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Interfaith Youth Core which found that fifteen percent of Americans (and twenty five percent of Republicans) now claim to believe in QAnon.  Which means that there are tens of millions of Americans who believe in  the baseless claims of an unknown online poster who says that there is a global ring of Satanic, cannibalistic pedophiles  (that includes pretty much every Democratic leader) that will be exposed any day now by Donald Trump.  There was a hope that this crazy theory would end with Trump leaving the White House, but, as with most cults, the true believers have just doubled down.  Sadly, once people join a cult, shaking their faith is very difficult; just look at the Jehovah's Witnesses, who have been steadily pushing back the date of the end of the world for decades now.

The story of QAnon beliefs gets even more scary when you look at the number of Republicans who don't call themselves believers but who refuse to dismiss it (the QAnon curious?).  Adding them pushes the number of QAnon friendly Republicans to over fifty percent of the party.  And it gets worse, QAnon friendly candidates are already lining up to run for office all around the country, while infamous QAnon believer Marjorie Taylor Greene already is in the House of Representatives and is a major fund raiser for the Republican party.  Yes, it appears that QAnon, just like the idea that Trump won the twenty twenty election, is now a common, accepted belief in the Republican party. And the QAnon faithful appear to be willing to even break the law for their beliefs, as the high number of QAnon signs and shirts at the January sixth riot showed.

The inevitable question is why would so many people believe something so insane?  Even the most out there cults usually have a charismatic leader at the top, but  with QAnon nobody even knows who the person who first started this craziness is. But it has benefited from timing.  While there have always been people willing to believe in outlandish things, from bigfoot to psychics, the rise of QAnon seems to me to be linked to the global pandemic.  Oh sure, it existed before covid, but it really seems to have taken off in the past year as the pandemic has raged.  This seems to make sense; putting it simply, people staying at home  have more time to fall into the QAnon rabbit hole, to spend hours absorbing one Youtube video or social media posting after another, which has sadly helped it to flourish.  It seems like common sense that people getting out and doing things would have less time to start following a cult that is almost entirely online.  Add to that the fact that the whole world has felt on edge since the pandemic started, plus the usual conservative conspiratorial mindset combined with our deeply polarized country and you have all the makings of  a successful modern cult.

So what can the Americans who choose to live in the real world do?  On a personal level, people can try to talk to friends and family members wrapped up in the movement in an understanding, non judgemental way that will hopefully pull them back to reality. But on a national level?  Not a heck of a lot; elected Republican officials seem to accepting QAnon believers in their party while not openly saying that they agree with them (which is the same weak kneed trick they pulled with the birthers).   And of course Trump himself has issued statements like the one above that continues his pathetic streak of failing to condemn anyone who praises him, be it David Duke, The Proud Boys or QAnon.  The best case scenario for the future is that I'm right about the pandemic having an effect, and that as more Americans go back to their normal lives, many of QAnon's believers will stop following it.  Otherwise, we may continue to have a major political party made up of people who think the worst possible thing about the other side (Satanic cannibals!), which is no way to run a democracy.

REWRITING HISTORY

 

The assault on our nation's capital on January sixth of last year was one of the most disgraceful moments in our nation's history.  Never before had violent American insurrectionists openly attacked a national government body with the intention of overturning a democratic election.  Several people died in the attack, and at least eighty one members of the Capitol force and sixty five members of the Metropolitan Police Department were injured. This is how it should be remembered from not only a historical perspective, but also a preventative one; we must never let such a shameful event happen again.

While at times the riot itself seemed like the case of the dog that caught the car, with rioters a bit stunned at how easily they got into the building, then finding all the members of congress gone, decided to mill about aimlessly, engaging in childish acts of theft and vandalism.  Still, it could have been so much worse; if any of those members of congress had not been evacuated in time, they could easily have been overrun and harmed or killed.  And while it may sound like a movie plot, what if those rioters had taken members of congress hostage?  And what if they demanded that they would only release those hostages if Donald Trump were declared the winner of the election?  And what if then president Trump had openly said that they were right?  It's a terrifying thought.

You would think that calling that riot an utter disgrace would be common sense, and maybe it was in the immediate aftermath.  But now that time has passed, the Republican party, still following orders from its deposed leader, has mostly decided to oppose having a congressional committee study how, why and what happened on January sixth.  A bill to create such a committee just passed the House of Representatives,  but only thirty five Republicans voted for it and over a hundred voted against it.  During the debate, some Republican house members made outrageous statements that downplayed the danger of the riot, like when representative Andrew Clyde said that it looked like a "normal tourist visit." (Even more outrageous, pictures have emerged from that day showing Clyde helping to barricade a door to keep out those "normal tourists"!)  After the bill passed the house, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell formally came  out against it.  Yes, the same man who said on the floor of the senate on February thirteenth that "January 6th was a disgrace. American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like. Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the vice president."  also adding that "There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day."  But that was then and this is now.  An April fifth poll of American voters found that over half of registered Republicans do not accept the verified fact that conservative protesters, supporters of former President Trump, attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, with many of them believing that the riot was started by left wing protesters (like that all purpose boogeyman Antifa) in an attempt to make Trump supporters look bad, even though the FBI has said that there is no truth to this rumor at all.  Since McConnell takes his orders from the still popular in his party Trump, he too had decided that the riot is something to forget about.

It has become fashionable for media pundits to say that we know live in a post truth society, and it's hard to dispute that when tens of millions of Americans believe something to be true because they want it to be true without any basis in fact.  Although it's easy to blame Trump and his thousands of lies, his ascendancy was really built on decades of the same kind of  lies spewed by right media figures like Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.  Sadly, there really isn't anything that can be done about this situation, as anyone who has ever argued with a Trump supporting friend or family member can attest, changing someone's firmly held belief is very hard.  Really, all we can do is accept that some people are hopelessly caught up in the right wing media bubble, and hope that there aren't enough of them to put  Trump (or someone like him), in the White House.