Black Americans outnumbered white Americans among the 29,500 people who lived in Selma, Alabama, in the 1960s, but the city’s voting rolls were 99% white. So, in 1963, Black organizers in the Dallas County Voters League launched a drive to get Black voters in Selma registered. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a prominent civil rights organization, joined them.
Your piece today gave me chills as I recalled those tumultuous days. The horrors of those days was impactful even for an eight year old boy from Washington state. I didn't fully grasp the importance, but the violence was shocking, coming on the heels of JFK assassination. The images are forever etched in my memory.
We need to protect the rights of all people. We have to vote this fall like our lives depend on it, because for many this may be the case.
I remember too. My mother gathered us to march down the main street of Portland, Maine ending at City Hall where speeches were given. A huge number pf people assembled. Perhaps that was the day my young self sparked the activist in me. I’m also struck by the fact that the news coverage during that was huge. Unlike today when Trump’s appalling crimes, like exposing government documents to anyone and everyone, is glossed over with a shrug.
Your point about the NYT is being noticed, Jennifer and someone finally wrote about it. See below for article "There Is Something Wrong At The New York Times" from Salon two days ago. Worth the read.
BK thank you for the link. I agree and have been saying to friends and family, it seems as if the media is covering Biden’s age just as they did “oh my goodness what about Hilliary’s emails!” While glossing over or not even talking about a man who was found guilty of basically forcing himself on a woman by ramming fingers in her body, frauded ordinary Americans with his fake university, gave the rich and corporations tax breaks, costing again, the ordinary American tax payers, and with lots more criminal activity he is being charged with and telling us exactly what he will do to our country… yet people don’t even know!! Without further ado, I will stop. Have a great day! 🙂
Lucian K. Truscott IV, who wrote that Salon article, has a wonderful Substack that I've subscribed to almost since it started. His take on politics is insightful and well informed, and he's better at demystifying military matters (esp. about the war in Ukraine) than anyone else I've read. Plus he tells great stories about his younger days working for the Village Voice. https://luciantruscott.substack.com/
I will read this for sure. Robert Hubbell’s substack is excellent too. He keeps calling out the bias, esp NYT. Every time he does he speaks for me. I canceled my NYT subscription. Am trying Washington Post for now.
The media is walking a tightrope between not giving trump any oxygen or reporting his outrages.
I don't need to hear every screed trump spews, and the media (obviously not FOX or RSBN or Newsmax et al) has to decide what to say. An unenviable position.
I would like to never hear from trump again but I'm not sure a total blackout of him is the right move for the rest of the country.
We need to stay energized and focused on getting out the vote. Now more than ever.
The media is not walking a tightrope. They are driving eighty miles an hour in all four lanes of the highway with their mostly non-critical coverage of trump while coverage of Biden -- mostly about his age -- is left to peddle its bicycle on the berm.
Especially the NYT consistently disses Biden. His age etc. Then prints polls that show Trump favorably. We don’t need a blackout we need honest reporting. The public needs to decide if they want to deport foreign born citizens? Want a president who will turn the military against the people? Etc. End Medicare and Social? Think it’s okay to scorn POW’s? Co-opt the American flag as a Republican symbol while pleading to the republic but trying to take it down?
The news media is letting us down and it’s dangerous.
During her campaign, Trump called her a bird brain and other disparaging names and said no donor or supporter of hers would ever be welcomed by MAGAs. Today, he's inviting her supporters in. The king of hypocrisy and chaos.
At the tender age of 14, I boarded an Amtrak overnight train from CT to Washington to participate in the huge anti Vietnam war March in 1967. I guess my parents were concerned about where I was but I don’t recall.
To this day I remember exactly that moment , Bob, Jennifer, my political interest was groomed by the Kennedy’s and many of the ‘aura of people’ surrounding them. While I took in the world both immediate and growing encompass I realize everyone had their strengths and weaknesses . That progress and a consensus of a good walk or drive was key …that sentence entails a double if not triple entendre.
The fights picked in today’s political arena are either trivial distractions , con games , or the real stuff that makes the difference needed….only those who understand ..not an easy ‘game’ we HERE all admit .
These are etched in our memories as our personal history and have contributed to our outrage now— but how do these contribute to the younger generation who grow up without a sense of what is at stake? They may see the present political class as clowns, as inept and old. They long for a healthy earth and sense of peace, if not comfort and escape. There is so much to divert their attention! Many won’t bother to read such stellar posts as HCR’s, and some are too busy with daily life. If it all comes down to gas prices and some stirring of conscience and angst over wars, forgetting to vote may well be their go to position. I want to be optimistic, but there could be sooo much more pain coming.
I think the best way is to get involved ourselves. Show activism. Speak up (not pontificate, so deadly to conversation ). The younger voters are very aware that their reproductive rights have been taken away.
I met Amelia Boynton (Robinson) in 1993, during a series of D.C. protests against the statue of principal Ku Klux Klan founder Albert Pike, which was finally toppled during the "Black Lives Matter" protests. She and also many local leaders from the SCLC endorsed Lyndon LaRouche's 1992 run for President from his prison cell, recognizing LaRouche as the heir to Martin Luther King's vision of economic and social justice for all people. I remember the Rev. James Bevel (LaRouche's running mate in 1992) saying, "We all went to jail, too."
My brother still lives there Fredrick,in the family home, we walk the beaches at Willard and love the cozy knit of neighbors , businesses, friends. Scratches is our favorite morning walk😉
You MUST have seen our daughters Jack Russell "screeching" around Willard Beach in the early mornings, between 2002 and .... 2013 +/-. Izzy tried to herd then together, as is their predisposition. Then Izzy moved to AZ, then to her final move ..... We still come down to AZ, at this time of the year.
I also have to say, we were regulars at Barbara's Cafe, on Cottage Road, for breakfast AND dinner. She was THE best chef, with her signature breakfast sandwich with sauteed spinach, garlic, seasonings and melted gouda (she named it after .... me!! cuz I asked for it) .
I KNOW your walks very well, cuz it is CLASSIC coastal Maine community living. Classic. But we left.
We're in the mid-coast now, where it is quiet ... as our Rte 1 here is only two lanes. everything else is appropriately sized and scaled, for quiet life and quiet people 😂. 😂
I felt the same, even though I was very small. Re the media, we had limited access to just a few newspapers and channels, and the radio. Each of those had "gatekeepers" - owners and mostly Editors who decided what was "above the fold," or made the evening news. I believe for the most part if Was more "liberal" than much of it is today. If liberal means respecting of the guidelines of journalistic integrity. Most people knew which papers were full of "real" news.
I think.
But there was so much the gatekeepers never covered, or never even saw from the positions of white male privilege. Now it's just chaos.
They say trump sucks the air out of a room. Conversely, he overwhelms the press with his antics. I wish all coverage was stopped unless it says that he is convicted or not. No more hypothetical speculations of what might happen. "The just the facts, ma'am," We want the final product.
The fat orange rapist goon provides sensationalism, Karen.
The fictions, lies, epithets, mean labeling, and more lies all have human elements, however, and thus provide deliberate contrast with elites schooled to be docile, careful never to offend any group labeled orthodox by HR, and void of any reference to any humanities.
U.S. working classes got their jobs by the millions offshored by other elites, their kids' schools gutted by standardized testing, public universities taken over by the banks and other corporate profiteers, and information perverted by the algorithms of mainstream media and social media billionaires.
In such a dehumanized world, Karen, plenty of room for the fat, orange-make-up-encrusted, diaper-waddling rapist whose racism, need for attention, and vulgarity shows the only residual humanity where our other elites have none.
The problem is that people seem to like the gossip and scandals, the criminal acts, the outrageous loud behaviors (i.e. trump's debate with Biden-total disregard for the rules). People feel obliged to look at the dead animal in the road even if it is horrible. That's how it is with trump. As they say, he sucks the air out of the room. The loud bad boy gets the attention.
Biden is quiet, seems to play by the rules, doesn't feel obliged to make call and demean his opponents. Check out his little cuts at the republicans in the State of the Union speech. His problem he is not loud and outrageous like trump.
Maybe now, however, Karen, prominent Dems can give the extra voice Biden needs.
His State of the Union should have energized the party -- his, theirs -- sufficiently for the back-up initiative that can sweep the land until November -- get out the vote with passion, strength, overwhelming the mediocrity and vulgarity stinking the fat, caked-on orange, diaper-guy's base.
I just read this from Robert Hubbell and he speaks very poignantly about the bias so glaringly evident in the press. Also, Hubbell will moderate a session with NC’s Jeff Jackson who is presently a congressman. Jeff gives me great hope for the future.
It fills me with gratitude that people like HCR and Hubble work so hard to keep us informed. Because we’d be in the dark if they didn’t. There is always light.
I am also re-shocked by this piece. Born in 1956, white and in southern New Jersey, I remember. As an 8 year old I watched the news on our black and white and only TV in our kitchen. It was not something I really understood but I knew it was deeply wrong.
It has only been since the George Floyd murder that I have truly understood what my being white means. It means that everyday even the really bad ones, I have had a pass to not be challenged in my everyday life as a driver, as a voter as a shopper and a person walking down the street.
We are now living in a time where hatred blooms anew across our nation. I came of age in the 70’s and so much had been accomplished by then. Now as a 68 year old I have watched much of what was accomplished by my 18th birthday erased.
We are now in an election that will decide between a man that believes in America and another that wants to strip us all of our right to vote and our right to assemble.
Thank you Heather for writing so succinctly about our nation and its history and the current events that somehow have come to pass.
We have not been paying attention and we have not taken care of our nation as we should. There is now a new George Wallace in town.
It seems the rich ‘s jist is to monopolize what resources are available , take little care of the waste, utilize the underlings , the local people for their gains, and control/support local legislation for any needed advantage. I would assume this has been modus operandi forever.
The wealthy must maintain to remain so
Our -America’s constitutional goal is equality. To spread wealth,safety, comfort, and care out well enough for the majority’s happiness.
That is the ongoing and forever’fight ‘.
Those two roles as the population increases /decrease define life’s ambitions and whys.
This 2024 voting cycle depicts the rise and fall history documents well . Getting to a critical balance point takes constant effort for both the roles..long years between when one or the other has the most advantage.
My own perspective is a Democratic majority ‘feeds’ more people and I believe ,by far , the majority of this HCR community feels the same.
Balance , a tipping point, is on the line and will be as critical for 10 years including all that voting cycles, then to maintain. Educating the public to see that fact , relative factors safe,comfort, rights are all necessary .
Notice how much extreme effort my old party put in to having power in state legislatures immediately following census years. To me, aimed at every big or small advantage in Gerrymandering such that states like North Carolina could have 10 seats filled by Republicans and the other 3 (at the time), going to Democrats, 77% of the seats, despite about 0.5% advantage in the popular vote.
Truer equal representation would have been 7 R seats and 6 D seats as far as the voters who turned out. I often wondered about one uncontested seat (no Democrat running, since it would surely go to whatever Republican ran). My speculation was on what the total popular vote percentages would be, say if the R votes with no D votes would add more to the total for the whole state's R votes than just the difference between R votes and D votes (if the Democrats ran any candidate in that district). I could see where it could have made the difference less than half a percent, maybe even giving Democrats a higher Popular vote total since the Gerrymandering concentrated so many D votes in just 3 or so districts.
To me, we need honest agent, neutral, redistricting like some states have done. A simple look at the percentage balance of popular vote totals would seem a good start on evaluating how fairly districts are redistricted (once every 10 years,though it now seems to take half a decade to get districts reasonably fair with out the pre-clearance requirements for problematic states, counties and towns.
It has been said,’well, they did it too’…lacks credibility as is their ‘brand’, from even before ‘trickle down’ .
That the eloquence of a writer captures truth, factual comparison -accomplishments as well as correcting their mistakes , and brings that across poignantly are the books , is such these letters, and great journalism ( thank you Dan #1 , no slight to the few others) I love .
To establish a love for reading (so important ) are the cuddle times with our children , our grand children. But ,equally to subtly cherish what civil times brings …safe , cared for, worked at peace and the chance to develope our gifts.
I know …we don’t protesteth much… as Simon says…” I’d much rather be us than them”… and do so love to sell its ‘essence’.
The "well they did it too" excuse got me to leave my old party about the same time Elizabeth Warren did (though she became a Democrat and I became independent/no party preference, NPP, as I think California called us at that time).
It was set up for me by the disgusting Newt Gingrich/Frank Luntz GoPac memo, "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control" which didn't stop growing as I thought it would when rational and ethical members rejected what sounded so much like what I seem to recall a Cato Institute memo suggesting the party use "Leninist" tactics of persistent negative comments/propaganda on anything the opposition was doing or proposed doing (even if it was exactly what they would do if they could rename it and get the credit for it, Infrastructure Projects, for example even though they vote against it while taking some credit for it).
They also implied softer sabotage of projects and policies (compared to Lenin) though the sabotage now seems far stronger and even more deadly in impact on rights, health, inequality of opportunity, education, debt forgiveness favoring the richest while ignoring the inequalities hampered by not doing the same for student debt, and endangering our security with our traditional and new allies.
The ones who stopped so much of that in the past were the southern "conservative" Democrats that put new cloaks on as the Southern Strategy welcomed them as what I prefer to call real RINOs compared to what my old party used to be.
I waited to see how long the tactics would be used but finally left when a prominent fund raiser for them invited a few of us to join in "fighting dirtier than Democrats" in what seemed a minor league of what ALEC was recruiting. I believe my old party had roughly 6 times as many operatives convicted of election related crimes as the Democrats at the time.
I refused to do, or tolerate, any dirty fighting, not 1/6th as much, and certainly not 6 or more times as much.
The 2016 Bernie campaigners I joined were scrupulous, and without any prompting from me, rejected any volunteers who said they were willing to fight as dirty as the opposition.
This year, we have won a special election for a FL and a PA state house seat, AND the vital congressional election to turn a NY seat blue, by electing a Democrat! Republicans have won nothing!
Why vote - "To save Democracy and your rights to your own personal freedoms and choices - and to save the planet"
TWO REASONS - "SAVE DEMOCRACY"
SAVE THE PLANET"
then, know how to aomplify - but start with the simple overacrching frame ->
1) Democracy
2) our Mother Earth
end of story. And stories, they tell everything. Share your story!
My wife and I, both Northerners, lived in GA for 7 or 8 years, and I worked in a small town. It’s important to keep in mind that there are plenty of good, generous Southerners. I’m not in any way excusing racism or the terrible history HCR’s newsletter describes. My points are 1) What we see (or saw in 1960s) on the news is only a keyhole view, and 2) We should not flatly categorize all Southerners as evil, deplorable bigots.
IMHO, your reminder that “not all Southerners should be flatly categorized as evil & deplorable bigots” is a gracious sentiment.
Simpatico with those gracious sentiments, where I live, in solidly & reliably Democratic Denver, I have numerous acquaintances & “frenemies” who aren’t vociferous Trump supporters, but will be casting their ballots for him in November.
These people are wonderful friends and the best of neighbors, often more “like-able” than many of my kindred spirit liberal friends.
However, for many complicated reasons, among those reasons, perhaps a deeply ingrained family of origin Conservative bias (which I recognize can incorporate many good values & beliefs), which also unfortunately contains support for some “evil & deplorable” positions, which they cling to (to paraphrase Obama’s statement [gaff] during his campaign for President in 2008).
Hilary Clinton took that candor to another level in her 2016 Presidential campaign, referring to Trump’s supporters as “Deplorables.”
It is with the preceding context in mind, that “not all Southerners and not all Trump supporters are evil & deplorable,” that I feel it is necessary to be clear in labeling their support as “providing aid & comfort” to an evil & deplorable agenda that is ultimately corroding & dismantling Democracy.
Similar to your gracious sentiments, not all Germans in Nazi Germany were evil & deplorable.
However, as Hannah Arendt theorized and attempted to explain the unexplainable, the Nazi Germany atrocities were aided & comforted by “the banality of evil.”
Alas, in my view, many of the “good & gracious Southerners,” and my wonderful Denverite Trump supporters, are analogous to Arendt’s “banality of evil.”
The extra layer of that banality we see nowadays, is that these “good & gracious” people often cloak themselves as being in the good graces of God; more specifically, a white Christian God.
Understanding Red & Blue relationships nowadays, has become a complicated, messy, and smelly onion, which has a seemingly infinite number of exhausting layers to be peeled away.
I’m pretty confident that the “HCR Community” understands all of this at least as well as I do, is more gracious than I am, and understands better than I, that “good & generous” people hail from even the deepest of Red states.
I just wish with all my heart, that so many “good & generous” (and God fearing) people weren’t fooled by the MAGA Big Lie.
If just a small percentage of them could see the light, our nation’s legacy of Democracy (the principle on which it was FOUNDED, for God’s Sake!) wouldn’t be in such unprecedented jeopardy.
Thank you, Steve, for this excellent post. I understand that people can be basically good and yet, and yet, vote for death star. I'm afraid that I am beyond cutting them slack. Don't call yourself a Christian and then vote for the antiChrist is how I feel about it. Look carefully at the characters of the two men. How can anyone who is really a decent person vote for death star. He is everything Jesus spoke against. I was raised by a good and decent family, yet they were racist as hell. My cousin and I went to a family reunion some years ago in rural Indiana near Wabash, Huntington, and Andrews. Those people were very nice and welcoming, but once again biased, this time against Hispanics and Indians (from India). Everywhere Fox was on as well. I had my next door neighbor defend his racist friends by telling me that they would give you the shirt off their back. Him maybe....but a black or a Native American, I doubt it.
Michele, to your point, during Civil War times, there were many Southern church leaders who preached that slavery was God’s choice, and that abolitionists were evil. Amazing how effectively we humans can rationlize!
I wholeheartedly agree with what you’ve written here. I grew up in various parts of the south- but remember the nice folks who wanted no trouble but accepted the terrible Jim Crow laws and substandard schools blacks were forced to deal with.
Steve Blumberg, you’re right. My post ignored Hannah Arendt’s critical observation. People are complex, and most of us are occupied with family and meeting food-and-shelter needs. I’d add that we feel powerless. We can post on social media, vote, donate, or even join campaigns, but we don’t feel capable of redirecting glaciers (i.e., national political outcomes).
You asked a question that’s been raised innumerable times, especially since 2016: How can good, honorable people support Trump or fill-in-the-blank? I wonder if an algorithm that would approximate the answer is complex with many variables of simple with just a few.
Agreed. I did a long stint in Montgomery, AL, working at the Air Force base there, just before the town got that Hyundai plant. I was a little leery of taking on the contract, but found so many lovely people, across the board. It is a whole different vibe.
The whites need to step up right now, decide if they want old South or a new young South, and lean in hard to counter vile people who like to pretend they are the 'real' South. Reclaim the South from MAGAs who want another Civil War.
Interestingly, that Hyundai plant changed the feel in the city--more young people, more opportunity, restaurants that verge on hipster, a slight blue tinge in political leanings. The whole belt of new factories down there is raising wages. With the increased wealth and low cost of living, young people are hanging around more.
The majority in that area are just people hoping for a better future, and the dysfunction Republicans have brought on doesn't seem to impress them much. Young people in particular are tired of the drama and artificial angst and just want the damn place to work well for them.
Civility is and HAS BEEN the focus- would another word fit our (even)worldly fight any more accurate?
THANKS for pointing this out SC! We’re never going to right all the wrongs, mistakes points this out …let it be known I KNOW😉
And so ‘the civil war’ is so perfectly named , and UNPERFECTLY taught ..something we , the common folk , should ( and many DO) live passionately , the way we could hope to live,love,teach, and uphold.
Such a privilege to reach these eloquent comments and be able to underscore their importance.
The ugliness caused by the newer Republican, MAGA followers, outright haters of others different from themselves is a definite call to return to civility and return to politically working as our country is meant to work.
I don't think any kind of "going back" is possible. We need to go forward (gee, where did I hear that tonight?) We need more than the civility that masqueraded the hate that trump allowed out. We need to move on to living the equality that we espouse with our words and ignore with our actions.
A.better future for White people means maintaining White supremacy-anyone who votes for Trump accepts racism, misogyny, lies, theft- I won’t go on-the list of things that prove the Rs intent is too long.
That's what a frightening number of whites believe (and with history, it shamefully worked out just dandy for whites to maintain as much white supremacist order as they could). Trump's popularity proved this, much to the shock of America. His rise made it impossible to deny the residual buried resentments from the Civil War never really went away, we can't ignore it.
I agree, anyone who votes for Trump or his enablers, especially from 2020 on, must own the fact they believe in white supremacy. They don't really believe in one person, one vote. They don't believe in Democracy. No excuses, no gaslighting, no pretense that 'the other guy is worse'. Own it.
Sobering, and very interesting. Thanks for sharing.
I have been following Jess Piper's Substack The View from Rural Missouri lately, and there's a somewhat similar problem there--she has been listing absolutely abysmally bad Republican characters who are running uncontested for local and state seats, because Democratic Party can't be bothered to run anyone against them. Jess insists there are people who would love to choose an alternative candidate, but they are stuck with MAGA guy who posts his picture on Facebook brandishing an AR-15 with the caption "The grin when you hear there is a Chinese balloon crossing your state". She's right, the very least we can do is offer an alternative. People won't feel abandoned, at least, even if MAGA guy wins.
This echoes stories I heard of many younger candidates who said the Democrats wouldn't fund them at all, showing zero interest in certain districts. These 'lost cause' districts have been abandoned to become red ghettos. Whether white or black, Hispanic or Asian, people living there are stuck with stupid.
Very valid point. I have been saddened by the number of uncontested races I commonly see in Georgia ballots. For example, The Speaker of the House has never faced an election opponent.
Systematic Curiosity, exactly! People are complex beings. I moved to GA to work in the largest manufacturing operation in the area. It was a northern company which moved operations to rural GA in the early 1960s. In building their facility and managing personnel, they had to make an ethical choice: segregated or integrated bathrooms and dining? They chose integrated, and from what I was told, never had a single racial incident. I worked in the factory with people of different races and experienced no conflicts.
Still, I'm white, so unlikely to experience or even spot racially motivated incidents. People who are racist tend to hide their racism rather well, along with their misogyny. They know it is wrong.
Alabama has always had some of the worst problems, but in my spot (on an Air Force base, but I got to know a variety of locals), people worked together well--locals and fly-in contractors--despite obvious differences and some pretty strong biases. When the work was the focus, the rest of the nonsense dissolved away. This encouraged me.
Somehow the voter suppression laws enacted in Georgia recently must have escaped your notice. Having had family in Statesboro and Albany, Georgia I can tell you that racism is alive and well there.
“All” was not my intent. A state that can elect Warnock and Green does point out differences in rural vs. urban voters. My father-law retired from the Marines Corps in Albany, one of my best friend’s dad was CO. The General was a good man. My FIL and his extended family? Not so much.
Gail, I didn’t say there isn’t racism in the South. My point was that it would be inaccurate and a disservice to us to paint everyone there with a single, monotone brush. When we moved back North, we saw racism here too.
Racism is not a southern thing-it’s an American invention that’s infected the whole world. It’s rooted in our society and it’s the thing we don’t want to talk about as the cause of our divisions.
Racism is bringing America down as our stated ideals don’t measure up to our realities. It’s more than 60% of White people (from every state) who are anxious for Trump to take office. The Republicans are more than 90% white, the J6 insurrections were 90% White, yet we ignore or talk sparingly about racism.
Gina, it isn't just an American invention: This country was founded by genocide of the Native Peoples and built on the backs of enslaved Black people. Until we can answer that foundational bias, and do our level best to both resolve and ameliorate it, (along with the belief that men are better than women) we really cannot go forward in equality.
Agreed, Ally. Racism, misogyny and religious hatred are endemic throughout the world. Our earlier settlers were White English families escaping religious persecution and then turned around and imported slaves, persecuted Catholics and Jews, burned women as witches and slaughtered Indians. When did racist British emigres become racist Americans?
Not that the British Empire was ground zero for racism either. It is a sickening fact that people are generally hardwired to think in terms of “us” and “them.” It may have been a survival instinct many many generations ago, but it never went away. You can be a “them” due to the color of your skin, how you worship, who you love and whom you vote for.
Marge, agreed. As Abe Lincoln said (paraphrasing), if you base your hierarchy on lightness of skin, beware of the person who is lighter than you. If you base your position on intellect, beware…
Amen, Ally. This is my sentiment also. I could write a book about how this country was built on slavery and genocide. Ah, yes, and your last sentence which those of us who are women can speak about from experience and did yesterday in the blog. Just gobsmacked that someone had to go to court to get custody of her daughter when her husband died and I think this was the early 70s.
Michele, since you mentioned a book, consider UNION, by Colin Woodard. To give an overview of American thought, Woodard looks deeply into 6 thought leaders from 1800 through 1920.
Actually, Americans didn't invent racism, but they have been good at perpetuating it. Racism has occurred and continues to occur around the world, because of human beings' tendency to divide people into us and them categories, and obvious visual differences are the first line of bigotry. The irony is that we are all only a few gene mixtures apart from one another with our shared ancestry. We can be so primitive so aptly depicted by those who beat the Selma Marchers. The bigot doesn't tell us anything about those they target, but quite a lot about who they, themselves are.
We met the woman that sat next to Jill Biden tonight when we visited Selma and walked on that bridge. She was a kid when she walked with Lewis and King. gave us a tour of a little museum next to the bridge that had been set up with little or no funding. I wonder if that museum is still there? We were there in February of 2012.
I would say that Europeans made racism a part of slavery where before it was mainly about conquest and then business with a religious flavor in some cases. I am thinking here about slavery in Eastern Europe, the Steppes, and that practiced by the Ottomans. And yes, the irony. I have just finished two books about biochemistry and the beginning of life and now I am reading one about microbes. We are a few gene mixtures different from each other and other life on earth. And oh, those bacteria!
Don't forget the ancient Egyptians, who used slave labor to build their monuments to the dead, and the Japanese strict immigration and ethnic cleansing policies to preserve the "purity of the race" even into the present. As I said, racism of course tinged with religious superstition has been ubiquitous probably since humans emerged from their own ancestors. We continue to exhibit really primitive tribalism on a regular basis around the globe. Our group is better than their group seems to be the norm, and of course, our god is better than their god even into the 21st century, continuing to plague the world.
I agree. I was stationed in Albany Ga for the better part of 1977.. Southern hospitality is real. I was going to hitchhike around Georgia for a fortnight but when the weather showed two weeks of rain my friend's mother wouldn't let me leave. She said she hoped someone would do the same for her son.
I was amazed at how "Southern hospitality" could exist right next to "The south will rise again".
Bob Lewis, my experience too. My car was old and broke down once or twice. People stopped to help! Not everybody, but some, and we still visit friends down there.
"My points are 1) What we see (or saw in 1960s) on the news is only a keyhole view, and 2) We should not flatly categorize all Southerners as evil, deplorable bigots."
There was a time when I thought that might be becoming true. But After the Supreme Court destroyed the Voting Rights Act because somehow racism in the south had been cured, I can no longer believe that. Those southern states that passed laws to allow them to stop Black people from being full citizens of the U.S. after the Civil War went right back to passing the same kinds of laws as soon as they were released from Federal supervision. If I can't categorize all southerners as evil, deplorable bigots, I'm left categorizing them as deplorable idiots with no morals and no sense of responsibility.
Could it be a powerful few dominate their state’s political systems? I can’t fully answer the conflict you raise, but it seems undeniable that there are good people mixed in with the bad.
Our lives do depend upon it! Here in Georgia, even after Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger refused to accommodate Trump's "request" to find almost 12,000 votes, he subsequently worked with "moderate" (not) Gov. Brian Kemp to craft legislation to suppress the vote of Democrats (many of them Black).
Now, they are aligned with Trump's attorneys to utilize recently-enacted legislation targeting "rogue DAs" to be investigated and removed from office. This legislation came on the heels of Fulton County DA Fani Willis announcing a RICO investigation into Trump acolytes and fake electors for election interference, and now they're doing their best to have Willis removed from office for having an affair with her lead investigator. While the optics are not good, it is so hypocritical to use it as an excuse to target Willis and save the day for Trump, Len Wood, Rudi Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and other stellar actors, who all tried to overturn the election. So much for being a Never Trumper, Kemp!
The newer generation of racists has refined its tactics, and seldom beats their adversaries into submission (unless you're counting the frequent police violence against Black citizens). They simply rig the vote, gerrymander voting districts, and target elected Black officials to achieve their goals.
Unless we elect Democrats in huge numbers, both locally and nationally, we will all be under the collective thumbs of the Republicans, and Trump will unleash his own Cracken!!!
'Black women are the face of America’s ugly Gaza policy' (WAPO, Opinion By Karen Attiah)
'For Black women, the liminal space in which Black History Month becomes Women’s History Month feels like the time to reflect on our progress — and how far we have to go.'
'The Biden administration has deployed Black women as both velvet gloves and iron fists in respect to Israel’s latest assault on Gaza, in which more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. They are both enforcing U.S. complicity in this atrocity and attempting to soften its appearance.'
'On Sunday, Vice President Harris was in Selma, Ala., marking the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the 1965 march to protest the police killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson and to demand the right to vote. At the Edmund Pettus Bridge, White officers attacked the marchers and severely beat a number of them.'
'The bridge, the violence and the Black sacrifice they represent lent an air of moral authority as Harris delivered the latest administration message on the plight of the Palestinians. “As I have said many times,” she declared, “too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.” Harris rightly acknowledged that “we have seen reports of families eating leaves or animal feed, women giving birth to malnourished babies with little or no medical care and children dying from malnutrition and dehydration.” She called for an immediate cease-fire at least through the coming month of Ramadan, for hostages to be released and for Israel to allow humanitarian aid to surge into Gaza.'
'But what she did not say was every bit as important. Harris did not criticize Israel for its deliberate blockade and assault. She did not call for questioning the transfer of weapons to Israel. Instead, she referred to what has befallen Gaza’s Palestinians as some nameless “catastrophe,” as if a bomb- and bullet-saturated hurricane blew in from the Mediterranean Sea. And what is needed is a permanent cease-fire and an end to Israel’s brutal occupation.'
'The death and deprivation in Gaza is caused by the actions of specific people acting through systems of power. Black people have known this for centuries, forced to survive and resist a machine that was scared of, and actively suppressed, their economic, social and political autonomy. Beatdowns, lynchings and massacres of Black people were systematic and deliberate weapons of white supremacy, not inexplicable storms of random' “chaos.”
'Harris’s speech was limpness masquerading as strength. The so-called “humanitarian airdrops” that she promoted have been roundly criticized as an ineffective and pathetically insufficient. What’s more, they are signs of U.S. weakness, underscoring the fact that President Biden’s team won’t leverage weapons transfers to force Israel’s cooperation. Or if she was not the face of Biden’s weakness, then she was the face of continued U.S. cruelty toward Palestinians — with a spoonful of #BlackGirlMagic to make the poison go down a little easier.'
'Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is unlikely to be moved by Harris’s velvety civil rights costuming, which feels aimed less at persuading him than at calming the pro-Gaza, anti-ethnic cleansing base of the Democratic Party.'
'After all, the administration has relied on another Black woman to send a very different message to Netanyahu — an iron fist to hammer down the growing calls for an end to the mass killing.'
'U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield has voted not once, but twice to block calls for an Israeli cease-fire. For many Black observers, the optics of these votes recalled memories of the first Black secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, using his prestige before the United Nations to argue in favor of an invasion of Iraq. In the eyes of the world, Greenfield, like Powell, is a Black face providing cover for America’s direct and indirect brutality in the Arab world.'
'Compare them with Black women who embody the spirit of the original Selma marchers — including a willingness to be attacked for doing the right thing.'
'In October, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) was among the first American leaders to call for a cease-fire and humanitarian relief. Imagine how much suffering and death could have been avoided if she had been listened to as she placed the responsibility squarely on Israel'. “Let me be clear,” she wrote, “the collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza is a war crime. … My commitment to ending violence, brutality, and oppression is not conditional. It’s universal.”
'Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) has also been outspoken about the brutality against Palestinians and introduced a resolution to block weapons sales to Israel. The pro-Israel lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee has pledged to spend millions of dollars to try to unseat these Black women from office.'
'#RepresentationMatters only goes so far. Ultimately, it matters little who walks the corridors of power if the decisions made there don’t change. The vice president’s invocation of Black America’s bloody struggle against racial apartheid, while she is a face of an administration enforcing oppression abroad, feels so dark. Especially when we know that, at the end of the day, it is the White men of the administration calling the shots.'
'Can we really celebrate Black women in power who can’t use said power to prevent death and starvation inflicted on a stateless people? I — like an increasing number of voters — don’t think so.' (WAPO) This Opinion by Karen Attiah, 'a columnist for The Washington Post and writes a weekly newsletter. She writes on international affairs, culture and social issues. Previously, she reported from Curacao, Ghana and Nigeria.' Her Opinion was copied in full.'
Except there is one big problem with what was posted here. We change the laws of our country. Israel is not our country. Right now, our country is trying to help Israel get rid of its crazed head of state. Netanyahu is the Governor Wallace of his country, wanting what he wants and not what his country wants. Then and only then will Israel be able to stop the killing and devastation. It is a difficult situation and the Biden administration is doing what it can. If a different person was currently president, he would probably be congratulating Bibi. If you blame Biden, you are blaming the wrong person. Wake up.
I don’t see how anyone can expect this administration to fix something that has been going on for centuries. Religious Righteousness is the real underlying cause of this horrific situation. The people involved don’t want to fix anything…they want to be right and winners. To accuse Biden of condoning or supporting genocide is a really disgusting viewpoint when the people involved in the region and surrounding geography aren’t doing much to rise up and say “Enough!” Israel is not our country. We don’t govern it or any country surrounding it. I don’t disagree that the U.S. should change some of its policies, however, that is easier said than done. The House GOP and Trump remind me of Netanyahu and Israel.
Christine, I agree with you. The hubris of Europe in the early 20th century, then the US in attempting to assuage the holocaust by magically creating a nation in 1948 is not a solution, it is the problem.
As long as we were permitted by conquering nations, we remained in our homeland. Even under antisemitic authorities. We never forgot Zion. The impetus to recreate our nation predated the Holocaust. Eastern European persecutions accelerated it. At that time, those living in mandate Palestine willingly sold land to Jews returning from exile. Britain did its typical worst to make transfer of their power as divisive as possible. Other forces, for their own political purposes, encouraged Palestinians to military attack on the UN sanctioned Jewish state. Within Zionism there has always been tension between the right wing and left wing. There still is. This is certainly not the whole story - it is the part of the story which Leftists elide. They elide the existence of
proPalestinian Israeli Jews in the Israeli polity and just as they marginalize progressive Jewish Zionists in the American Left.
This in no way excuses the crimes of the Netanyahu regime.
The US did not create Israel. It was the League of Nations who offered 2 states - Palestina and Israel. The Arab states wanted it all, so the day after Israel accepted the offer and declared itself a nation, all the surrounding nations attacked it. Everyone was shocked that Israel won that war. And so it has been ever since ("from the river to the sea").
It’s true. Bibi thinks as long as war is raging he will not be held legally to account on his charges and politically to account for his failures. He is raging--personally, and not just at Hamas. Who else do we know who would be most motivated by retaining power, exacting vengeance, extension overreach, and legal immunity? Imagine how Trump would have handled this business. My guess would be not even to try to mitigate the conflict, rather he would’ve fanned the flames.
Biden is just the current in a long line that caters and to the American Jewish lobby demands for full support even when full support means ethnic cleansing.
Right now, Biden has thrown his support behind a challenger to get Bibi OUT. It's about time for the PEOPLE of Israel to rise up and get rid of Bibi. This is on them. Biden has been working with everyone in the area, such as dropping food out of airplanes and getting food into Gaza through Egypt. Sure, he caters, but the GOP doesn't care. Those are the choices we have.
Money talks. The Jewish lobby formed our historic green light to allow the New Jewish Facist State to ethnically cleanse and if anyone dared to criticize we were all antisemites. Also another truth is that the ultra orthodox community uses their women as baby factories and within a generation or two, a minority becomes a majority.
Holy Crap Bill Katz. Hook Line and Sinker. Next you'll be trotting out the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
There are many valid critiques of Christian and Jewish right wing religious extremists who've disastrously appropriated Zionism for their own purposes. But you are not making those arguments.
Lunatic. Who was Israel’s best friend, getting their wish list fulfilled by moving the Capital to Jerusalem and ignoring aggressive settlements? Jared Kushner’s family were great friends with Bibi. The American JDL is just one of many of the diverse lobbying powers politicians accept campaign funds from.
Israel was a challenge to human rights from the getgo, sanctioned by the UN in 1948, engaged in already long term running gun battles with local palestinians. since then there was never been much light of day in that inherent mutual hostility. Israeli use of catastrophic force in Gaza now, triggered by Hamas' horrific acts of terrorism, is the pie that is now served up to all. We shouldnt be surprised that the citizenry of a modern technologically based Israel looks down on a confined and developmentally arrested population of Palestinians is participating in and likely largely sanctioning Netanyahu's policy of massive retaliation and punishment. Hamas terror has made it all too personal for Israelis. If the Biden administration has made a mainly unsuccessful show of trying to restrain Netanyahu, imagine things under Trump. Let them "finish it"
American mideast policy has long been influenced by AIPAC and even stronger Evangelical lobbyists. Biden is going further than any American president to change that. Despite being caught between those who cry antisemitism at any criticism of Israeli policy and those who cry genocide at any support for Israel.
'Biden admin carefully ramps up criticism of Israel over the Gaza war but stops short of cutting off military aid' (NBC News) (Excerpt)
'The White House has asked the Pentagon for more options to get additional humanitarian aid to Gaza's hungry civilians by air, land and sea.'
'President Joe Biden is trying to ramp up political pressure on Israel’s government to allow in more humanitarian aid and rein in its offensive in the Gaza Strip but has stopped short of cutting off weapons deliveries to America’s main ally in the Middle East, current and former officials say.'
'Reluctant to enter into a full-blown confrontation with Israel, the Biden administration instead has airdropped humanitarian aid for Palestinian civilians and held talks in Washington with a political rival of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Benny Gantz. It has also stepped up public criticism of Israel’s tactics in Gaza — though, as NBC News has reported, apparently not as much as Vice President Kamala Harris would like.'
'Dismayed at the plight of Palestinian civilians and with no letup in the Israeli campaign, the White House National Security Council asked the Pentagon in recent weeks for possible options to get more aid into Gaza by air, land and sea, two administration officials told NBC News.'
'The administration’s “soft power” approach emphasizing humanitarian relief is shaped by both the domestic political pressure Biden is under at home to help stop the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, as well as a pragmatic belief that focusing on aid is the president’s best option while delicate negotiations continue to secure a six-week cease-fire deal, current and former officials said.'
'The U.S. military has carried out airdrops in other conflicts over the decades, helping Kurds facing attacks from Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, Bosnian Muslims besieged by Serb forces in eastern Bosnia, and civilians under assault by Islamic State group militants in Iraq and Syria. But the airdrops over Gaza were unusual, with the U.S. launching the operation to assist civilians affected by a military offensive carried out by an ally armed by Washington.'
'Harris delivered blunt criticism of Israel on Sunday, marking the latest in a series of critical comments from the White House over the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Gaza. NBC News reported that the original draft of her speech contained much harsher language before it was softened by the White House National Security Council. Yet her public condemnation was still notable, and it foreshadowed what will likely be more criticism from the president in his State of the Union address later this week.'
“People in Gaza are starving. The conditions are inhumane, and our common humanity compels us to act,” Harris said at an event marking the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Alabama. “The Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid. No excuses.”
'A maritime corridor?'
'Apart from more airdrops, the administration is looking at other options to move more food and aid into Gaza, including possibly building a floating dock or makeshift causeway off the coast of the enclave to enable ships to deliver humanitarian supplies, a U.S. official said. Such an undertaking likely would require other countries or international agencies to secure the area and ferry aid to shore, as the administration has ruled out any presence of American troops in Gaza.'
'Expanding humanitarian access to Gaza will be at the top of the agenda when Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets Gantz on Tuesday, with the secretary planning to appeal for the opening of the key Erez crossing, Miller said.'
'The distribution of aid within Gaza, especially in the enclave’s north, continues to pose a challenge after civilians were killed as they rushed an aid convoy. The U.S. has told Israel that the security situation must be addressed and Palestinian civilians cannot be allowed to starve.'
“We will be happy to work with Israel and with the United Nations to find the best alternative to ensure that those trucks can safely deliver their food, their water, their medicine,”' Miller said,' “but an unacceptable answer is leaving those trucks just sitting in warehouses and not getting the aid distributed to the people who desperately need it.”
'Opening the door to Netanyahu’s rival'
'Some administration officials say the Israeli government is starting to listen to the administration’s view that the way the war is unfolding is damaging for Israel over the long term.'
'Israeli officials say they remain grateful for the support of U.S. officials as they continue to try to destroy Hamas. Privately some of them have said they are worried by the criticism from the Biden administration.'
“The Americans are not being very nice to us,” 'a senior Israeli government official said.'
'Netanyahu in his public statements has been adamant that he is not taking orders from outside of Israel on how to continue the war.'
'Many Democrats in Congress and foreign governments say the administration needs to bring more pressure to bear on Israel. They argue that only a threat to cut off military aid or to withdraw diplomatic support for Israel at the United Nations will persuade Netanyahu to scale back the offensive in Gaza and open up access for humanitarian convoys.'
“What remains is we’ve got a profound contradiction that we have to face directly: We have a situation where the U.S. is airdropping aid on day one, and Israel is dropping bombs on day two,” 'Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., told NBC News.' “And the American taxpayer is paying for the aid and the bombs.”
'Welch added that' “essentially what you’ve got is the prime minister (of Israel) asking us for money and rejecting our advice.”
“And the big question is, from my perspective, whether the president needs to get more aggressive with Netanyahu,” 'he said.'
'Another senator from Biden’s party, Chris Murphy of Connecticut, said there was a growing risk that Israel’s and America’s national interests were diverging, unless Netanyahu shifted course.'
'Murphy said,' “There has to be a rapid serious change in direction of Israel’s policy, or our national security interest and Benjamin Netanyahu’s interests are going to clearly be in fundamentally different places.”
'Although it has refrained from issuing ultimatums to Israel, the Biden administration on Monday welcomed to Washington a member of Netanyahu’s war Cabinet, Gantz, a centrist seen as the prime minister’s main political opponent. Opinion polls show Gantz’s National Unity party gaining ground against the prime minister’s Likud party.'
'A Netanyahu ally, Dudi Amsalem, a minister from the Likud party, slammed Gantz for traveling to Washington.'
'Writing on the social media platform X, he said Americans likely view Gantz as the person' “to lead the process of a Palestinian state and the cessation of fighting in Gaza.” 'He added:' “You entered the emergency government to create a consensus during wartime ... not to stop the [Israel Defense Forces] from winning the war.”
'But the administration sees maintaining a channel with Gantz as a way of possibly shaping Israel’s decision-making and keeping options open for the future, former officials said.'
“We have been dealing with all members of the war Cabinet, including Mr. Gantz,” 'White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said.' “We see this as a natural outgrowth of those discussions. We’re not going to turn away that sort of opportunity.”
'The State Department said Monday that the U.S. continues to supply weapons to Israel because the Hamas leaders behind the Oct. 7 terror attacks, the worst in Israel’s history, are still at large.'
“They would relaunch the attacks of Oct. 7, today, tomorrow if they had the capability to do so,” 'Miller, the State Department spokesperson, told reporters'. “So we support Israel’s legitimate military campaign consistent with international humanitarian law.”
'Aiming for a cease-fire deal'
'Despite the mounting friction with Netanyahu, Biden remains an ardent supporter of Israel, shaped by his long career in the Senate and his emotional connection to the Jewish state and its history, former officials and analysts say.'
'Biden has faced fierce criticism from younger progressives in the party and from Arab Americans for his handling of the Israel-Hamas war, with more than 100,000 voters in Michigan’s Democratic primary choosing “uncommitted” instead of Biden.'
'But Biden’s team also is wary of providing any ammunition to Republicans or pro-Israel hawks that the president has in any way abandoned Israel.'
'Most importantly, the administration believes that withholding military aid could prove counterproductive as the main objective now is to clinch a six-week cease-fire deal designed to stop the fighting and secure the release of dozens of hostages still held by Hamas, according to Aaron David Miller, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank.'
“The main reason in my view is Biden understands he needs to make a difference, not a point,” 'Miller said.' “And the difference is this: Without an Israel-Hamas cease-fire — which would allow surging humanitarian aid into Gaza; a suspension of Israeli military activities; the release of the women, the elderly and the sick hostages — you might as well hang the ‘closed for the season’ sign on American policy. This is the only way to even begin to start to de-escalate.” (NBCNews By Dan De Luce, Carol E. Lee, Julie Tsirkin, Courtney Kube and Allie Raffa) See link of article below.
Lynn, the following by Harold Myerson in the American Prospect, 'The Incoherence of Our Gaza Policy', struck the mark in my mind concerning Biden's policy with reference to Israel's invasion of Gaza:
'We provide Palestinians life’s necessities by air and sea, and provide Israel the arms to deny them those same necessities.'
'It’s been quite some time since I took my first-year algebra class at Paul Revere Junior High (Euclid, as I recall, had only recently died), but I still remember one problem we were asked to solve. It concerned a bathtub that a faucet was filling with water at one end while an open drain was removing that water at the other end. We were supposed to figure out at what point the water would reach a certain level, or at what point the person filling and draining the tub would be committed to an institution, or something like that.'
'I’ve remembered this problem lo these many years because it sometimes serves as the perfect metaphor for a policy so self-contradictory that its formulators need to be, at minimum, seriously questioned. And so it was that the mystery of the tub popped into mind when I read earlier today that in his State of the Union address tonight, President Biden will announce that the United States will build a floating pier off the shore of Gaza from which humanitarian aid will flow to the Palestinians, a great many of whom are in dire need of food, water, and medicine. Whether the pier will supplant or merely complement the airdrops of aid that the U.S. has already commenced is not yet clear.'
'In another part of the forest, The Times of Israel reported today that the U.S. has made more than 100 arms sales to Israel since October 7th—all of them just under the threshold which would require the administration to seek congressional approval for the sales. These sales have doubtless helped the Netanyahu government pursue its not-quite-openly-stated policy of immiserating the Palestinians and making life so impossible in Gaza that many are compelled to move elsewhere. That’s clearly not the preferred policy of the Biden administration, but the more it provides arms to Bibi, the more it looks like Bibi’s useful idiots.'
'Now that it’s floating the floating pier idea, administration policy resembles even more closely that filling, draining tub. We giveth and we taketh away, but we sure ain’t the Lord.'
'U.S. floods arms into Israel despite mounting alarm over war’s conduct'
'Washington has approved more than 100 separate military sales to Israel since its invasion of Gaza, even as officials complain Israeli leaders have not done enough to protect civilians' (WAPO)
'The United States has quietly approved and delivered more than 100 separate foreign military sales to Israel since the Gaza war began Oct. 7, amounting to thousands of precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms and other lethal aid, U.S. officials told members of Congress in a recent classified briefing.'
'The triple-digit figure, which has not been previously reported, is the latest indication of Washington’s extensive involvement in the polarizing five-month conflict even as top U.S. officials and lawmakers increasingly express deep reservations about Israel’s military tactics in a campaign that has killed more than 30,000 people, according to Gaza’s health authorities.'
'Only two approved foreign military sales to Israel have been made public since the start of conflict: $106 million worth of tank ammunition and $147.5 million of components needed to make 155 mm shells. Those sales invited public scrutiny because the Biden administration bypassed Congress to approve the packages by invoking an emergency authority.'
'But in the case of the 100 other transactions, known in government-speak as Foreign Military Sales or FMS, the weapons transfers were processed without any public debate because each fell under a specific dollar amount that requires the executive branch to individually notify Congress, according to U.S. officials and lawmakers who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive military matter.'
'Taken together, the weapons packages amount to a massive transfer of firepower at a time when senior U.S. officials have complained that Israeli officials have fallen short on their appeals to limit civilian casualties, allow more aid into Gaza and refrain from rhetoric calling for the permanent displacement of Palestinians.'
“That’s an extraordinary number of sales over the course of a pretty short amount of time, which really strongly suggests that the Israeli campaign would not be sustainable without this level of U.S. support,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior Biden administration official and current president of Refugees International.'
'The Israeli government did not immediately offer comment.'
'State Department spokesman Matt Miller said the Biden administration has' “followed the procedures Congress itself has specified to keep members well-informed and regularly briefs members even when formal notification is not a legal requirement.”
'He added that U.S. officials have' “engaged Congress” 'on arms transfers to Israel “more than 200 times” since Hamas launched a cross-border attack into Israel that killed 1,200 people and took more than 240 hostage.'
'When asked about surge of weapons into Israel, some U.S. lawmakers who sit on committees with oversight of national security said the Biden administration must exercise its leverage over the government of Israel.'
“You ask a lot of Americans about arm transfers to Israel right now, and they look at you like you’re crazy, like,' ‘why in the world would we be sending more bombs over there?’” Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.), a member of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees, said in an interview.'
“These people already fled from the north to the south, and now they’re all huddled in a small piece of Gaza, and you’re going to continue to bombard them?” 'Castro said, referring to Israel’s planned offensive in Rafah, where more than 1 million displaced Palestinians have sought shelter.'
'U.S. officials have warned the Israeli government against waging an offensive in Rafah without a plan to evacuate civilians. But some Democrats worry that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will disregard Washington’s pleas as he has other U.S. demands to allow more food, water and medicine into the enclosed enclave, and to dial back the intensity of a military campaign that has leveled entire city blocks and destroyed huge numbers of homes across the strip.'
'Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said in an interview that the Biden administration should apply' “existing standards” stipulating that the United States “shouldn’t transfer arms or equipment to places where it’s reasonably likely that those will be used to inflict civilian casualties, or to harm civilian infrastructure.”
'Crow, also a member of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees, recently petitioned Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, seeking information on “any restrictions” that the administration had put in place to ensure Israel was not using U.S. intelligence to harm civilians or civilian infrastructure.'
“I am concerned that the widespread use of artillery and air power in Gaza — and the resulting level of civilian casualties — is both a strategic and moral error,” 'wrote Crow, a former Army Ranger who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.'
'A senior State Department official declined to provide the total number or cost of all U.S. arms transferred to Israel since Oct. 7 but described them as a mix of new sales and' “active FMS cases.”
“These are items that are typical for any modern military, including one that is as sophisticated as Israel’s,” 'said the official.'
'The dearth of publicly available information about U.S. arms sales to Israel leaves unclear how many of the most recent transfers amount to the routine supply of U.S. security assistance to Israel as opposed to the rapid replenishing of munitions as a result of its bombardment of Gaza.'
'Israel, like most militaries, does not routinely disclose data about its weapons expenditures, but in the first week of the war, it said it had already dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza.'
'The lack of public information about arms deliveries has prompted some arms experts to push for changes.' “The arms transfer process lacks transparency by design,” 'said Josh Paul, a former State Department official who resigned in protest over the Biden administration’s Gaza policy.'
'The vast number of transfers since Oct. 7, largely financed by the more than $3.3 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds Washington provides to Israel every year, “is something we deserve to know as citizens of a democracy,” 'he said.'
'Republicans have largely opposed efforts to rein in U.S. arms provisions to Israel and earlier this year introduced legislation to provide an additional $17.6 billion to Israel on top of the $3.3 billion the U.S. provides annually. The Biden administration also supports additional military aid to Israel, but a package has been held up due to infighting in Congress over border security and aid to Ukraine.'
'What is clear is Washington’s deep involvement in the conflict, even if it isn’t the entity dropping the munitions or pulling the trigger, said Konyndyk, the former administration official.'
“The U.S. cannot maintain that, on the one hand, Israel is a sovereign state that’s making its own decisions and we’re not going to second-guess them, and, on the other hand, transfer this level of armament in such a short time and somehow act as if we are not directly involved,” 'he said.' (WAPO By John Hudson) This report was copied in full.
'John Hudson is a reporter at The Washington Post covering the State Department and national security. He was part of the team that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He has reported from dozens of countries, including Ukraine, China, Afghanistan, India and Belarus.'
"“Auditing the Department’s $3.8 trillion in assets and $4.0 trillion in liabilities is a massive undertaking,” said Michael McCord, the DoD Under Secretary of Defense and Chief Financial Officer, “but the improvements and changes we are making every day as a result of these audits positively affect every soldier, sailor, airman, marine, guardian, and DoD civilian.”
Call me cynical, but it is mostly propaganda or as Dana Carvey would say, "buncha fuckin' bullshit."
Auditing the DOD would be like filling your house with paperclips, straight pins and 4 penny nails and requiring them to be accurately counted each year. No wonder equipment goes missing. The US is the largest arms dealer in the world, so we are the bad guys much of the time.
And then there's the CIA and other secret US sponsored organizations.....
I was trying to remember the name of a movie about US arms dealers and several entries came up. One of them was "100 best movies about arms dealers." I had no idea. The movie I was trying to recall is "Lord of War" with Nicholas Cage, but I was surprised at how many movies there are about arms dealing. The US wasted $300 million per day in Afghanistan and in the end, got nothing out of it. But, I'm sure the arms dealers were sad to see the conflict end.
Hopefully Europe can supply Ukraine the arms they need to beat back the Russian invasion until the do nothing Speaker figures out that he works for the American people not TFFG.
I'm not trying to glorify or condone arms dealers or the actions of the US government, because we all know how many awful acts the government has committed especially beyond our borders.
With respect to Ukraine, that was a war that didn’t need to be fought if only we had said no NATO to Putin. Then deal with the issue after he dies. But no, we only love war. We feast on it generation after generation. There is always a new justified reason. Think Tonkin Gulf. Think Sadamn’s weapons of mass destruction. We the US of A are the original destroyers of life only to rebuild and make pretty.
Fern, you always bring the knowledge. Biden should be using any methods at his disposal to stop supplying arms to Israel and increase humanitarian aid to Gaza until there is a cease fire in place and a plan for the day after. Our tax dollars are funding this war on Palestine. We are complicit in the carnage. Israel has responsibility for the reprehensible rampaging revenge it is wrecking on a whole population for the actions of a few. Much like our Iraq invasion.
Heather, thank you for you attention to the life and death aspects of Israel's invasion of Gaza. Protecting the lives and safety of the Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs and all calls upon us to understand the policies, positions and actions being taken in that regard.
It also has to do with how we glorify war and "serving" in the military which is part of the propaganda and in which a lot of us join. Every time I hear someone thank a soldier for their "service" I wonder who did they think the person served, since I never asked anyone to 'serve' me in that way. The US hasn't fought a "necessary" war since WWII, and even that might have been avoided. But the military industrial complex grinds on. But as long as we accept the propaganda as truth, we help continuing to enrich the death merchants. It is a source of deep frustration that my hard earned tax dollars pay for this immoral activity.
And isn't it the case that Israel doesn't have the cash to pay ....... they pay with the " foreign aid " that they receive from America...In other words, it is a U.S. taxpayer subsidy to the weapons industry.
Your post causes me to breathe deeply and be more relaxed in the process of going towards the trouble, a way of life required by these times. Thank you.
Joan L., HCR's Letters , our assembly and exchanges are an example of the democracy we value and support. Thank you for your response and encouragement.
Be wary of “intersectionality,” where all the oppressed link arms agains the oppressor. It assumes a linearity that doesn’t exist. People oppressed by one group are, sometimes, oppressors of other groups. For example, in some Arab states, LGBTQ+ choices are punishable by death, while they generally are accepted in Israel.
Fern, the post I replied to was very long, so I did not intend to reply to every specific. My broad takeaway was that your post seemed to describe a sisterhood and brotherhood between African Americans and Palestinians, based on the harm both peoples have experienced.
Fern, no it’s not necessary to ignore similar forms of oppression. Did I misunderstand your post? I thought it suggested a sisterhood/brotherhood based on the similar forms of oppression.
I recall seeing the news coverage of the march to Selma. And I strongly recall my absolute bewilderment (as a 12 year old) - how could anyone who professed to being a Christian think it was okay to treat other human beings in such a manner, as if they were "less than," as if they weren't human, as if they had no feelings or thoughts or wants or needs. I was horrified and disgusted and learned my first hard lesson about the depths my fellow man could stoop to when faced with anyone who was "other." The dichotomy between what religion preached and what was actually practiced was overwhelming.
It’s not fair to criticize all southerners as bigots we know this. I’m reminded of the time 20 plus years ago that as I drove back from New Orleans to CT, I stopped and paid homage to the little hamlet of Avalone, Mississippi to visit the Mississippi John Hurt Museum. He was always my musical mentor. After visiting I went to eat lunch at a little luncheonette and as I sat there at the counter, I watched these young staff behind the counter working; both Black and White and being genuinely friendly with each other. It challenged me on my long ago old feelings from a bygone era. Just two weeks ago, that little former home of John Hurt was burned down to the ground. It only took one person not the whole community. However, his granddaughter had complained for a year how the little community graveyard land had been sold and the bones possibly of John Hurt had been disturbed or destroyed. So someone or two got revenge and burned the museum down. Do I want to find the whole community guilty of being racists? It’s easy to do but I will resist. It was the work of those affected by the cemetery or those who just wanted revenge and got it. The home will be rebuilt we will see to that. But this is the complexity of our society. The residual of unfairness and racial disparity. There is history to cemeteries of Black folks being desecrated and this is the most recent in a long line.
Bill, did you watch the 1619 project on Hulu? It was a reminder of who we are as Americans and what we have done to people of color since 1619.
I've been fortunate enough to have visited 49 of the 50 states. I try to have conversations with the natives when I visit somewhere. I truly enjoy talking to most Americans. But when you meet someone one time like that, most people put their best foot forward. And I certainly don't ask questions that I think will piss them off. If I wanted to do that, I would have been a journalist instead of a computer programmer.
I hear you Bill. It does depend on how the conversation is going and how long it is. I haven't started your book yet, but I assume when you talk to people about politics you word your questions in as non-threatening a way as possible.
When I was working in Sioux Falls, SD, I would hang out at a sports bar in the evenings. I was there for five weeks so I met a lot of "one time friends." I did bring up Trump a few times. This was in the Spring of 2016 before Trump had won the Republican nomination and I never thought he would even win the nomination at that point. Anyway, almost everyone I talked to about Trump thought he would be a "decent" President.
Not that it matters, but I was on a team of 29 programmers when I was in Sioux Falls and I was the only one that wasn't born in India. I was in my early 60's at the time and they were all under 40. They treated me with such respect. It was kind of embarrassing. I assume it was cultural rather than personal. Whenever I came into a meeting where they were speaking Hindi they would immediately switch to English. This was different than my experiences working with Indians in the mid-1990's. I'm not sure why they don't speak Hindi around Americans but it seems pretty universal as I have worked with three other mostly Indian teams since then.
Appreviate your intellexual integrity on this minor mistake that his eminent brilliance (i.e., me) did not notice. Poignant essay, Ma'am; heaterfet thanks.
lol thank you Heather Cox Richardson. I had counted out the paragraphs to ask if you meant gap over cap on paragraph 18. I can no longer get to you on FB which is disappointing. I enjoyed the comments and discussion for the past 2-3 years. Have a great day…
Instead of writing/saying/thinking/abstracting that "states have made it harder to vote" since Shelby, perhaps we should say that specific, bigoted governors, legislators, politicians and law enforcement leaders of all stripes, and judges--naming names--have made it harder to vote. Let's call these people out. Let's make it personal.
It would be a very long list, and I'm not sure that it would inspire us. Instead, let's follow John Lewis' example and do as he urged us on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965: “Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and redeem the soul of America.” The struggle continues, so it is up to us now to protect the vote, to speak truth to power, and to never give up.
Gregory, Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton and their friends in the legislature made sure that “Drive through” voting instituted in 2020 in Harris County was outlawed by Senate bill 1 in 2021.
I think they also eliminated boxes where ballots could be deposited in rural counties and limited the time for early voting. What a S-show they have made of Texas (and they and their ilk keep get voted in).
Colette, yes, Governor Abbott limited absentee ballots drop boxes to one per county. Harris County (Houston) had 12 (the population of Harris County is more than that of 22 states) and Travis County had 4. He cut early voting back to the 2 weeks it had been before COVID.
The fact of the matter is that too many Republicans, who rarely have a moral leg to stand on, resort to cheating to advance their agendas. This in itself should show the world that the GOP is in trouble. But as we now live in a world of carnival mirrors, morality holds little sway as the carnival barker DJT represents this castle of sand. The big question is, will it ever collapse? It's doubtful as too many extremists suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome. It's like a really bad sci-fi movie. The 2024 election must be one by voters of conscience, one vote at a time.
Randy, in September, we can urge 5 of our friends to check their voter registration. This gives them plenty of time to get it fixed if they’ve been purged. Then suggest that each of them contact 5 friends to make sure that they’re registered. The week before early voting, do it again in case there’s been a late day purge and urge them to vote during early voting. Again, ask them to contact 5 friends. People respond much better to a friend urging them to vote.
Additional suggestion: check the last day to register to vote in your jurisdiction. Then remind people to check their status 2 weeks or so before that date. This last midterm election, I found that I wasn't on the rolls about a month ahead of the final registration date. No one knew how it had happened (I have a guess, but it involves honest error rather than anything nefarious), but at that point the easiest solution was to re-register.
Abbott considers himself a good Christian, but his words and his deeds prove otherwise. There ain’t no place in Heaven where he belongs, and he’ll be crowded with others of his ilk in Hell, preferably node-deep in the mare excrementium.
Jeri, The Billionaire Bully Who Wants to Turn Texas Into a Christian Theocracy. The state's most powerful figure, Tim Dunn, isn't an elected official. But behind the scenes, the West Texas oilman is lavishly financing what he regards as a holy war against public education, renewable energy, and non-Christians.
Texas Oil tycoons Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks have donated to state politicians and political action committees for decades. Long-time Texas reporter Bud Kennedy breaks down their influence on the far-right movement in Texas.
These are the modern day Robber Barons . Once again the battle is the majority of Americans vs a few ultra wealthy who have used their money, power, and greed to amass more money and power at the expense of others. Kleptocracy has been growing for the past 40 years till ow we face possible fascist rule.
Yes. Has been true throughout the history of our species. You’d think we would learn, but cons, flimflamers, deceivers, wolves in sheep’s clothings always have a new angle. This latest version of christianity is particularly repulsive.
Like it or not, specializations produce elites. That includes your medical doctor. Like it or not, politicians are specialists, so far many if not most businessmen or ago heads etc etc. Politics these days is a menu of organized parties. Pick your poison, right! I know my own preferences.
Thank you for that. I have heard of Tim Dunn, but not Farris Wilks. Sort of like Art Pope in NC, who funded the right idiots when McCrory was governor. True, they never need to be on the ballot to destroy our government.
I remember a time when equal treatment for blacks was. LBJ explained it well when he tried to make societal changes.. It's a real ego boost when you can find somebody to look down on. Don't have the quote handy, but same idea.
Unlike TFFG who says, "everyone is saying," "people tell me" "most of the people crossing the border are criminals" etc.
Even when he put down McConnell's and Cruz's wife it isn't by name, but to him they are mere possessions of their husbands.
TFFG is the master of not naming names, except for his bros Putin, Orban Kim Jon Un and every other dictator. Then the adjectives come out like "brilliant".
Yes Gary, it's really sickening to see and hear. It's obvious that he has mental issues but what's wrong with his supporters? I feel they have been brainwashed. It's like they're in some sort of trance and they're being led to destroy themselves and our country.
Most of the Trump voters I know, and sadly, I know quite a few, are hardworking good people that for some reason believe Trump is someone most of us here realize he isn't.
If any of them try to talk to me about Trump, my usual response is, that we need to agree to not talk politics or something like that. There is nothing I can say to convince them to dislike TFFG, and it would just strain our relationship, so I refuse.
Thank you for the invitation to name names of the many who persist in denying others the precious right to vote. Ready? The many Southern governors and states who delight in cancelling our deeply troubled history of voting rights, “CRT” being only the latest incantation of racial bias. Charlottesville rabble rouser Trump himself, no further explanation required. Key Trump enablers, most prominently: (1) “Big Lie” propagandists The Heritage Foundation/Heritage Action, the Trump-controlled RNC and its Red state counterparts, which led Red states to adopt a new brand of vote-suppressing laws; and most recently, (2) the dark money-funded monolith - The Conservative Partnership Institute, led by former Heritage Foundation executive and former SC legislator Jim Demint. It perniciously launched election-denier Cleta Mitchell’s so-called “Election Integrity”Network, which daily advises Red swing and other states how to disenfranchise voters (including college students and minority opposition voters) by a keystroke, via the debunked Eagle AI(Eye) system (which outrageously has displaced the bipartisan ERIC system of voter validation in election-critical Red states). All of these efforts are fueled by the same bias that Martin Luther King, Jr, gave his life to end. All the more reason, in his memory and for sake of our Republic and civil society, to vote and, importantly, to support grassroots’ efforts to get out the vote. Deny Soul-less Donald Trump shameful efforts to define MLK’s political legacy and to anoint his spiritual successor.
Why doesn't the court recuse Thomas. It shouldn't be voluntary.
I remember him during his Senate hearings when Anita Hill was there. Thomas should have been disqualified when he referred to the process as "A circus".
I remember sitting in my living room here in Columbia South Carolina watching every minute of that hearing, and proclaiming that he would never be seated. He was.
Strom Thurmond leading the way and then Fritz Hollings voted for him. South Carolina once again was at the forefront of American history.
South Carolina is literally a thorn in the side of the United States of America.
Not to mention the Supreme Court. Republicans have effectively shut down the Congress, the President is very limited in what he can do without them, and the only functioning branch of government is the corporate whores on the Supreme Court, busily taking away individual rights.
Alright, let's make it personal! But I'm going to include the names of every person who voted for or appointed those "governors, legislators, politicians, and law enforcement leaders of all stripes, and judges" And isn't this exactly what is going on in Israel? Netanyahu was elected by people.
Matt Huffman of the OH GOP legislature, OH Sec of State Frank Larose, and Gov Mike DeWine who disregarded the will of over 70% of Ohio voters in 2018 against gerrymandering, and refused to share drafts or otherwise work with OH Dems on the state district reapportionment committee. 3 different drafts were declared unacceptable by OH Supreme Ct as gerrymandered, and the final draft submitted, an already disqualified "retread" map, was also rejected but submitted too close to allow for revision before the 2022 election. Ohio was forced to vote on unfair, unconstitutional districts because of their disrespect and trickery.
We didn't forget, even though the corrupt OH Statehouse also voted to disallow both student ID and utility bills as voter ID, though these were previously allowed for quite some time. Ohio is awakening and rising, voting down minoritarian rule last August, and voting in a reproductive rights amendment last November. I love purple, especially if my state keeps wearing it. 💜
“The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” - Fearless Leader
Hopefully when Biden is reelected either Garland or someone with some kahunas will charge Clarence Thomas with income tax evasion for not reporting the write-off of the Crow loan. Talk about having total immunity. Appointment for life as well.
Someone needs to take a page from Grisham's "The Pelican Brief" regarding the Supremes. /S
Actually, giving Biden an obvious opportunity to clear the decks and replace Merrick Garland is reason enough to vote Biden into a second term, isn’t it?
In retrospect, there are many good choices for AG -- Kamala would have been awesome, but she ended up with a pretty good gig. And Fani Willis is amazing. I'm sure there are many others.
I don't dislike Garland, but he doesn't move very fast on things.
Yes. Women are losing the right to their own body. I’m really afraid they’ll take the rest of our rights too… a different form of slavery…subjected to the whims of sometimes violent men. Remember… it wasn’t that long ago that women had no voice, no freedom and no way to help themselves.
DMS - in my lifetime women were unable to open a credit card account, but a mortgage, etc with a male’s permission or co-sign. I my lifetime a teacher must resign if she marries (and especially if she is pregnant and the pregnancy starts to show). I think we are profitable now, so that’s not likely to recur…. Unless women and stuck being “barefoot and pregnant” and unemployed!
The more I understand what Citizens United has done to US the more Roberts’s tenure looks abysmal. Between that and the meddling with the Voting Rights Act for which so many died, he has shown himself a totally unsympathetic human.
Virginia- I call them MAGAnazis because they long to return to the 1960's and before when the white racists in the South could lynch, beat, kick and maim with impunity.
They were Fascists then and they are Fascists today. It make my blood boil to see the MSM call them conservatives.
Virginia, I recall reading sometime (maybe 5 years in to his term as Chief Justice) that he was concerned about how the "Roberts Court" would be judged based on its body of judicial work. I cannot help but thing that what the Roberts Court has done in creating personhood for corporations, dismantling the voting rights act, and overturning the settled law of Roe v. Wade (and I am limiting myself in their horrific decisions) will be judged as the worst SCOTUS in history, should we have a history going forward from the white Christian Nationalist nation they want to create for their oligarchy.
It requires some thought on the ones that were certainly worse for mostly minorities, but Citizens United does seem at least the worst for modern times by having such a negative effect on everyone who doesn't go along with the type of paternalistic rule by unanswerable wealthy interests who can now more easily trample over the rights and opportunities for all of us commoners that have come to cherish them (for ourselves and all others). See https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/supreme-court/13-worst-supreme-court-decisions-of-all-time/
Long story short, it increases inequality, reversing, the progress we have made since our Declaration of Independence set the goals, and the first rough bargaining to get our initial, promising but imperfect, Constitution.
I live every day looking at the “Old Courthouse” in downtown St. Louis where the Dred Scott decision was heard--it is #1 for worst EVER. Yes, the Citizens United decision is the modern equivalent 🤬
I agree Ally. The last thing I want for the US is to be a theocracy. Regular church attendance in New England is now under 30% and in VT and ME under 20%. And I think that's a good thing. For too long non-theists have had to stand at public events while someone says a prayer to their invisible god or say the pledge of allegiance to a piece of cloth. And then we give these churches breaks on their property taxes, etc.
That's why Scientology chose to become a religion (Church of Scientology), instead of a philosophy like Confucianism, according to one of its former member's opinion. An easy way to become free of taxes. Looking it up, I see it was originally a therapy called Dianetics.
All the people I've met who were knowledgeable about or practicing adherents of Confucian beliefs, insist it is a philosophy, not a religion. I appreciate their acting in accordance with their sincere beliefs, no matter what type of civil government they have to live under. Types of government and dynasty seem to come and go throughout China's history, but Confucianism always seems to be a bedrock of ethics that endures in so many, no matter how hard any try to eliminate it.
Looking it up, I see it was originally a therapy called Dianetics.
I remember that concern of Roberts and wonder if it’s the money his wife collects that binds (or blinds) him to these terrible decisions. He’s a plague, not a cure.
Citizen’s United, ruling that a corporation should be considered a person, is really an astounding act of judicial malpractice, isn’t it? I am not a lawyer, so I can claim naïveté here- how does one twist reality and common sense into such a pretzel? A corporation exists to shield the liability of its members from harm caused by the activities of the corporate entity, doesn’t it?
It creepily interesting how many things that start with the best of intentions, yet go off the rails with the lust for unaccountable power. The most shameful side of the Democratic Party became the prize that would transform the Republican Party, which had it's own shameful side but still could claim the legacy of Abolition, into the demagogic monster it has become today.
LBJ forced the Southern Democrats to rethink their politics. Reagan was the beneficiary of the Southerners renouncing their political affiliation. He pretended to be a devout Christian who supported their racist ideology. It worked.
Ironically, they love them some Trump for most of the same reasons as they loved Reagan even though Trump often disparages Reagan.
Reagan was a better actor than I ever gave him credit for. Of course, he had Peggy Noonan for script writer and Michael Deaver for PR. All he had to do was read the teleprompter and hug the flag. Still, he looked presidential. Try as I might, chump NEVER looked presidential. Just a carnival barker in better clothes. Although not much better. That tie should be used to dispatch his evil, ugly excuse for a human.
If my memory serves, I saw Peggy Noonan (I think) on some PBS round table years ago. One of the speakers (I think I recall he was a Rabbi) tried to compare the teachings of Jesus favorably to liberalism, and she completely lost her fecal matter. She shouted him down and would not let him speak. I don't recall her getting stopped.
My laugh for the day. From what I know of the Bible (and it seems quite different from the prosperity crap spewed today), the quotes by Jesus in the gospels would have aligned with Dems way more than Repubs. Jesus pitched the money lenders out of the temple as I recall. Repubs just pick a line or two to use, but don’t actually take to heart the message of love and taking care of thy neighbor. Since it was bastardized by rulers, it has been a useful tool for ruling the fools.
As to Peggy, we know that she has spewed lies with the best of the cretins. She must be orgasmic these days.
The more I look at today's SCOTUS the more I'm convinced it is a Thomas court. That he was still there to contribute to the decision on the 14th Amendment despite his wife's active participation in the insurrection says he's running the show. Roberts is just a figurehead.
The final statement references a phrase that can also be applied to democracy, a "relay race" and we must successfully pass the baton on all government levels to maintain our freedoms.
The Republican legal team that stole the White House from Al Gore included then-little-known lawyers John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, and Brett Kavanaugh. Maybe you’ve heard of them?
And Rehnquist, the Chief Justice who presided over Bush v. Gore in December 2000, campaigned for Goldwater in 1964. He gave literacy tests at predominantly minority districts and sent people home. It was called Operation Eagle Eye. From Wikipedia:
"Future Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist was a prominent figure during the years of Operation Eagle Eye. He was a poll watcher with direct involvement in challenging voters at the polls as early as 1958.[3] Years later during Rehnquist's Senate confirmation hearings to become Chief Justice, a US District Attorney in Phoenix at the time testified that he had seen Rehnquist challenging black and hispanic voters at precincts in South Phoenix.[5] Rehnquist denied any such involvement.[4] However, his association with OEE remained a stain on his reputation despite being confirmed as Chief Justice in 1986.[4]
And today election-denier Cleta Mitchell sells Red States on the debunked voter validation system called: Eagle AI (Eye), an initiative to disenfranchise college students, minorities and other likely opposition voters. History rhymes, as HCR says, sometimes in ways dissonant to the harmony of our Republic.
I feel like the victim of a long con. Here’s something from Noah Feldman author of ‘Takeover” great book about SCOTUS.
“Beginning in the early 1980s, when it was not exactly ‘cool’ to be a conservative law student, a small group of students started a club, named in honor of The Federalist Papers, where they could safely discuss their right-of-center views. They asked Antonin Scalia, then a professor at University of Chicago, to be their advisor and got to work advocating for an originalist interpretation of the Constitution. Over the past 40 years, members of the organization have included Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Ted Cruz, Orrin Hatch, and Josh Hawley, among many other prominent politicians, public servants, and elected officials.”
“Originalist is just another way of saying a return to the past is the direction we want to go. Where white men rule. Damn, Ginni must have painted Clarence white, or bleached him a bit. Or she just made him see the rewards of her convictions.
I look have looked upon them as the "Con-Federalist Society" for many years for their concern for property rights over human rights, much like the many southern Democrats slaveholder mentality types that became Republicans as the Southern Strategy welcomed them after they felt LBJ abandoned them.
These facts also make me weep but the facts also push me to vote for a country for each and all of us.
Because of people of color, we are who we are as a nation! There are those persons of color who were stolen from their homes and lives and language and customs to labor for those who "owned " them. They were given "the left overs" from the animals and they grew strong .... they grew wise in learning the ways of plants and animals and birds and how to survive with little to nothing and they stood together!
People of color have given us music...music from deep in their souls that only could be born within them.
Some have taken on faith and made it theirs with prayers and music that cannot be duplicated by the white man...no matter how we may try.
We have the Chinese people who came to us on the west coast and impressed those who built our railroad systems, using them as laborers, amazed by their power and strength and tenacity.
American Indians ...inspite of our brutal inhumane treatment....gave us a special code to send messages to our troops which helped us win in war.
We are America and that means all of us. When we act as if we are above another human being because of the color of our skin, I want to know why. Is it fear? Is it guilt for past or present sins? Are we envious ?
As a Christian, I want to say that maybe the "evil one" wants us to fail...to be jealous and envious of one another...wants us to lust for power without responsibility.....wants us to be so self-consumed....major on the minors....that we miss out on who we are...and who we have been called out to be! TOGETHER!!!
President Joe Biden has told us who we are..."We are the United States of America and there is NOTHING we can not accomplish IF we work TOGETHER!!!!
When I listen to my favor news from many who are invited to contribute and attempt to explain the chaos along with their concerns....I am also encouraged that there are still those among us of all colors who love this country and what we stand for.
I am also reminded that we have strong enemies who would like to take away the precious freedoms we of all colors , have fought for. We each and all...no one is too small or old or young...etc. to stand up for the best that our country represents....BUT WE MUST STAND!!! We must NOT allow ourselves to be stolen by a few coins .....WE MUST WAKE UP AND ACT ...NOW!!!!
Emily-thanks for your comment about the issue in HCR’s letter today. I find it interesting that most of the comments are about things other than racism (e.g. scotus, wars, how nice southern whites are etc.). It’s so hard for most White people to see racism for what it is-very few want to do something about it. White supremacy is insidious.
Thank you so much following HCR’s detailed post today. I wonder how to we might drain testosterone from mostly white men who think & act as if only they can dominate? Jail’s too lenient for them.
If you learn the truth about white supremacy in America you’ll see that White women are complicit too-even when they couldn’t vote they were exclusionary and promoted white supremacy. Just learn about the Daughters of the Republic or white protestors in Boston when school desegregation was a thing.
I hope our grassroots efforts lead to a Blue Wave in November. Expand the Court! History will not be kind to the Roberts Kangaroo Court and the malignancy of their decisions.
But can you go beyond 12? 12 Circuits, 12 Supreme Court positions. Or are you talking districts? That would get totally out of line! 89 in the US, 94 if you count territories.
The Dems can expand to 13, say, but I don't know what would stop Republicans, if and when they get power again, from going to 17 or 21 or whatever they wanted.
The expansion of the court should reflect that we have 13 Appellate Courts; with only 9 Justices, that means 4 need to oversee two courts. I believe that 13 would be a justifiable number; I'd also suggest a maximum 10 year term for a Chief Justice, and a 20 year limit of service.
Agreed. 5, 0 yrs max, and... is there something to be done about the inherent bias of legal organizations which do the choosing. Eg we have the Federalist Society, then the American Bar Association. How polarizing is that?
I’m old enough to remember Selma. I’ve walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. I served in Vietnam. And I vote. I know which side of history I will be on when the stories of this moment are written.
I was in such marches about age 20. I understood why we fought we WWII. I still cannot grasp why we traded so many lives and so much social discord for whatever there was to gain there. I think it figured in the social discord we suffer with today.
Did you watch the film Selma, made several years ago? What'd you think of it, if so? I found it compelling, having no personal experience in my neck of the woods.
Back when TV was transitioning to digital, there was a "documentary" channel that just ran documentary video continuously as a sub-channel of a local PBS station. They ran several Civil Rights era documentaries and I was taken aback to take another look at events I'd seen "live" or close to it, when they were occurring. THAT was a part of America? I knew it, but it was something else to go back and look at it.
But often we are lulled into thinking that the enemy is still our friend, when that was never true. Or the few friends were overwhelmed by a pile of green. Green that signified power, as it always has…
I suspect had Halfwit Hitler not grown up on a mountain of money, he would just be considered a self-serving, garden variety jerk. Maybe not even such a self-serving garden variety jerk.
I remember the Brooks Brother's Riot and my disappointment with a relative who was a poll worker a little too happy to not let a full recount be allowed. The 537 vote margin of "recognized" victory (without fuller recount) happened to be the same number as Electoral votes cast (one abstained if I recall correctly).
So this has been in the works for a long, long time. And apparently, they have been rewarded. They are just the spawn of evil, pretending to be good. Well, not really pretending to be good anymore.
Thanks! We can't be reminded too often of the ongoing struggle for voting rights. I remain in awe and deeply appreciative of the many ordinary citizens, both black and white, who literally risked their lives marching from Selma (and in many other voter rights actions). Their self-sacrifice and bravery has been essential in marching all of us to a better Democracy. We owe it to them to continue their struggle. Lots more to be accomplished.
Steve, you've voiced what I always think when I teach Ava DuVernay's SELMA, a brilliant depiction of this turning point in history. The bravery and commitment of the organizers and marchers is awesome—the very best of human expression. I know it was a coalescing of factors that made this march so powerful but I so admire the filmmakers' choice to present MLK as a great general, conducting a war campaign against forces of evil, and inspiring his army to march into battle despite the personal cost. I feel we are so hungry for that kind of leadership—but I remind myself that MY personal commitment, and all of ours, is just as important.
Alexandra -- Teaching is an. essential part of "carrying on" so I applaud you for teaching anything Ava DuVernay has created! -- Everyone in his/her/their own way contributes to educating each other as well as our future generations. HCR provides us with a daily example of the power of information, context, and knowledge. I can't aspire to be as effective an educator as HCR in promoting Democracy, but her example really does inspire me.
Why is the right to vote, the share of democratic power and responsibility, divided among all citizens, one the most unalienable rights of all? why is it not a crime in the eyes of the public whenever someone, though careless error or malice, is denied that right? What do societies look like without a universal vote?
I'll assume that these rhetorical questions are meant to emphasize the point that representative democracy (imperfect in the US right now!) is SUPPOSED to give a voice to the less powerful in proportion to their number. -- Of course, one's voice in a democracy is amplified if one has the $$ to pay for that amplification. Exactly why we need to relegate Citizen's United to the dustbin of history.
We pretty much universally acknowledge that how much money a candidate or proposal collects in a major determinant of electoral and legislative success. Certainly MSM causally reports that to be the case, and in a past presidential primary my local paper even had a front page chart of how much $$$ each candidate had collected. How is this NOT a serious problem for democracy and equal human rights? Yes, money is how we get things done is this society. Motor vehicles are how we long-distance travel. But we don't allow 100MPH though a school zone. There is such a thing as too much. Unlimited money for affecting politcal outcomes is de facto bribery, and some of the givers and receivers make no secret of it; and they would not pay so much if it did not bring the desired result.
"At the resort, Thomas gave a speech at an off-the-record conservative conference. He found himself seated next to a Republican member of Congress on the flight home. The two men talked, and the lawmaker left the conversation worried that Thomas might resign. Congress should give Supreme Court justices a pay raise, Thomas told him. If lawmakers didn’t act, “one or more justices will leave soon” — maybe in the next year. "
(...)
"At the time, Thomas’ salary was $173,600, equivalent to over $300,000 today. But he was one of the least wealthy members of the court, and on multiple occasions in that period, he pushed for ways to make more money. In other private conversations, Thomas repeatedly talked about removing a ban on justices giving paid speeches."
(...)
"Congress never lifted the ban on speaking fees or gave the justices a major raise. But in the years that followed, as ProPublica has reported, Thomas accepted a stream of gifts from friends and acquaintances that appears to be unparalleled in the modern history of the Supreme Court."
Wow I got here early tonight. Your ears should have been today professor I shared with friends how your daily letters brought insight, historical perspective and glimmers of our best America and lasting hope the the best inclination for a free and equal land of opportunity exists in our America. Thank you again for those images tonight. I was lucky to grow up in a working class family that shared those dreams all my life. I was 10 years old in 1965 when these events happened and grew into teenager through such turbulent times of expansion and development of equity and opportunity in our country. Now more than ever is our time to fight for them. A retired marine shared the other day his perspective that we fight with guns to protect our American values and and I told him I was retired AFNG and we didn’t need guns to fight we need the power of education and communication and the right to be represented fairly in our elections to protect our American values . I am educating and communicating and will be committed to getting out the vote this year. Thank goodness for this community you have inspired I have hope in these challenging times.
Thank you Dr. Richardson, your letter brings back memories of watching those events you described, on the television. The images of the brutality were so powerful , it brought my mother to tears. Although I was a kid in high school I knew that something big was sweeping the land. I was proud to live in a country where the government would not allow such injustice. And now I think many of us are ashamed to have seen the SCOTUS undo the good that was done by the voting rights act. We cannot allow things to move backward anymore.
I never would have connected it to that decision that should never have been overturned. Great comparison, just listened to the song, my favorite band!!
A Dead Head are you? A great band that had a cult like following. Roe v. Wade was finally overturned and now the MAGA GOP will have to live with it in November. They deserve whatever destruction happens to their “party”. It was an outrageous decision.
Jack, I recognized your "nom de plume" (or "nom de guerre") months -- years? -- ago. I want to brag -- my first Dead show was in San Francisco in the summer of '68 -- but I was in the Army at that time. I was extremely impressed by how I was treated by the people at the show -- it was obvious that I was a GI, but the love was in the air, and I couldn't avoid falling in love with the band and the music, and the scene. I attended several shows around the country over the years. Whenever they played at Alpine Valley (near Milwaukee) I tried to attend every show. I am grateful for the experience.
Such a nice story. And what a shame how the war vets were treated by some when they came home. Their country called and they answered, they did not choose their mission, the commanders and the politicians did that. It was unfair to place the blame on the vets. I saw several Dead concerts and the experience was like no other. They carried the Summer of Love with them wherever they roamed. I bought a Dead video, “ So Far” and played it over and over. They are missed by many.
I just returned from a weekend with the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery that included marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge last Sunday in commemoration of the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. We also visited the Legacy Museum. In the Legacy Museum there is a table listing all the opinions by the Supreme Court related to civil rights. It was very sobering to discover that a significant majority of these opinions impeded civil rights. I had thought of the current Supreme Court as a despicable aberration of the institution, but now realize that it is actually a return to its tradition of being an agent to keep Blacks and other minorities down. In "Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America," Nancy MacLean reports how the radical right realized that in order for a minority to take over America, they had to take over the judicial system. They have the upper hand now and will probably accomplish this take-over if Trump is elected. Trump and his MAGA cult must be stopped!
Perhaps this would be a good time and place to remind about the Powell Memorandum.
Lewis F. Powell Jr. served on the US Supreme Court from 1972 to 1987. His Memo urged American businesses to work hard to make sure that the government should serve the interests of business, instead of the people.
In this Wikipedia article, scroll down to the section titled Powell Memorandum, 1971.
This link is on Rhode Island Senator Whitehouse's web page. It contains much of the same information (and the page is done in a gray low-contrast font which makes it more difficult for old eyes to read easily).
Lewis Powell was the only SCOTUS judge I met. It was before he went to SCOTUS and at dinner at his home in Virginia. He was a rude cold fish. Thank you for more details of his role on the court.
I have had a very adversarial attitude toward Justice Powell ever since I read about his memorandum many years ago. But after reading the Wikipedia article yesterday I found my attitude relaxing a bit, perhaps in the "Old School" tradition that many of us wish would make a comeback. Apparently he employed more gay people as clerks than any Justice before or since. He is quoted in the article, saying that upon reflection he might have made a mistake in his ruling on a case involving illicit sex between consenting adults of the same gender. From that we might be able to infer that he was not hopelessly hidebound. I always try to find some good in a person -- but I have struck out thus far on the orange menace. I may find something good to say after his bio lists a second date after his date of birth.
I wonder if we could apply the concept of greed to things like regenerative agriculture, and sustainable energy, and detoxification of the natural environment. As in: I want more more more, I just can't get enough of that stuff!
A paradigm shift for sure. I approve as environmental and wildlife were causes that got most of my donations - before the republican insanity. I really resent that these things have to take back seat to surviving the political idiocy.
It's like the Rs are a theater company putting on a farce, and they have been rehearsing and performing for so long that they have lost sight of the fact that it's just theater, and they have real lives to go back to.
If there is justice in this world, we will be able to inflict majority rule on that small minority who wish to inflict their will on the majority of us.
We can only hope all those new judges are grounded in the law and in facts, not alternative facts. I can live with conservatives but not extreme radicals.
You also have to remember that rule by privileged minorities is a tradition as deep as civilization itself, in fact "civilization" however constituted, is the result of organized minorities. $$$, arms, religious sanction.
On January 6, as I watched the insurrectionary rampage at the Capitol, I thought of scenes about an isolated, armed individual in the documentary, Home of the Brave.
There's also an excellent biography of Viola Liuzzo, From Selma to Sorrow by Mary Stanton. I saw it on Amazon last week.Had J. Edgar Hoover not planted a spy in the Klan, she would have never been shot.
I was in a writers' group with Mary Stanton while she was researching that book. Barely anyone knew who Viola Liuzzo was. The FBI also spread rumors about her underwear after she was dead, and her family was impacted for years.
I do not recall her name. Hoover's despotic behavior is no secret but not, I think, widely known. His behavior was criminal. I think that those who commit crimes having accepted an official role as protector commit a double crime against society , but with the exception of traitorous spies (and even then) their power tend to shield them the more highly placed their responsibility by a government that would rather cover up than be embarrassed. That, of course only compounds the crime. I think it has a lot to do with why much that is broken in our system of justice seems to stay that way.
When an airliner crashes, the wreckage is investigated with a fine tooth comb and a plan put in place to reduce the chance of a reoccurrance. When the right to justice crashes, lives can be profoundly harmed and even ended, but there is an impulse to cover up and smooth over, with predictable results.
It applies to repairing anything; obviously including human relationships. Cruising though space-time with poor visibility, bad charts and whacked instruments, odds are way up of encountering something very nasty.
about her underwear.. Surely not. The J Edgar crew knew no bounds. I remember when they produced a "pic" of MLK and a known communist or two. I was old enough to be the skeptic that I have remained... I will have to tell my grand girls this story... They need to know so much...
When Trump speaks of "Making America Great Again" it is simply code to a return to the times in which only a white man had a vote. It is a time before the national voting rights act. It is an America that is divided and readily conquered by racists like County Sheriff James Clark. It is a time in which racist white police departments could kill Jimmie Lee Jackson, George Floyd, or Philando Castile with the same immunity Trump desires for the multitude of his crimes against the United States. It is a United States where fear is omnipresent and hate is bubbling under the surface and in the shadows waiting to break out in a gun violence fueled riot. It is a "United" States where women are regulated and business is not.
Professor Richardson's LFAA's are a stark reminder that if we fail to unite and express our vision for an America shifting toward equity, justice, and democracy at the ballot box, future generations may only earn back human rights, women's rights, voting rights, LGBTQ rights, in a river of their own blood. We will doom our children and grandchildren to violence, fear, and hatred -and an America too weak and divided to be a stable trading, diplomatic, or defense ally of any other nation. And Trump's vision for Mexico paying for Trump's monument to willful ignorance, hate, and fear will be fulfilled -Mexico will construct a wall to prevent caravans of Americans seeking healthcare, reproductive freedom, and fundamental rights will be heading south. And quietly unnoticed by the willfully ignorant hate-fueled Putin/Trump/MAGA party will be the construction of Canada's wall, precluding caravans of Americans seeking healthcare, reproductive freedom, and fundamental rights flowing to the north.
As US Senator Cory Booker once said "Indivisible we are invincible." As independents, democrats, moderates, liberals, progressives, progressive-liberals, liberal-progressives ... let's be indivisible and bend the long arc of the universe back toward justice.
You can check and if necessary change your voter registration at USA.gov especially if you’re in a red state that has changed its voter laws. Be sure your name, address and signature correspond with those on your driver’s license or ID. You might want also to ask others to check theirs there or even to register if they haven’t yet, especially young people who will be able to vote by November. Save the site and pass it on later when we get closer to the election. If you’re a teacher, getting people to register or to see how might be a very good lesson. Another useful site is Vote411.org which is hosted by The League of Women Voters.
We need more than one. One can be thwarted, as we have seen.
We need hundreds, thousands -- millions? All making the same arguments, with easily-remembered catch phrases that even small children can remember and say out loud.
We know what's right. We who tend to support the Democratic Party know the difference between right and wrong. Voter suppression is wrong, it's not the American way. We don't want to make it more difficult to vote, we want to make it easier to vote, and we wish every citizen would vote.
In the long term, we want to do a better job of educating -- and protecting -- our children, and encourage them to follow their dreams, which one would think is the very essence of the American way. We want everyone, every little kid, no matter how poor or difficult their young life is, to grow up and know the real difference between right and wrong, and to know how to be kind and generous toward other people, even to strangers.
I want to hear President Biden say "When we Americans work together there is nothing we can't accomplish." I love it every time he says that. I believe it's true. We can build a better society to live in. The richest nation on Earth should be able to lift all of our fellow citizens up out of poverty. It will be an investment in our future, a better world for all.
Be sure to tune in to hear President Biden's State of the Union address.
When asked to describe the State of the Union Mike Johnson replied "in decline". Of course this is not so, but any "decline" is due to Mike Johnson refusing to take up aid to Ukraine and the Senate border bill!
We tuned in to hear the SOTU address this evening. In my three quarters of a century I think it was the best State of the Union address ever. The President is a good Democrat.
And yet he could have accomplished little without ardent collaborators. That said, that level of leadership is an extension of a very coherent and inspired person.
The feelings of white supremacy and voter suppression have been energized in recent years! Seems an entire segment of our population leans in that direction! “We’re not gonna let them take over our country” is a familiar sentiment among them! Evidently, white supremacy didn’t go away, it was just smoldering beneath the surface!
Mr. Wilkins, back in the year 2009 i made the mistake of thinking that white supremacy was dead and gone, and remained confident throughout President Obama's 2 terms that i was correct in assuming that, but my gosh i found out just how wrong i was when the criminal ,corrupt con man DJT took over in 2017 and the riot in Charlottesville, VA happened. Just as exactly as you stated, white supremacy didn't go away, it was indeed just smoldering beneath the surface! DJT is a disgusting, despicable, evil, racist, embarrassment to our once great nation! In all of my life, i have never despised a human being any more than i have DJT. He is a total disgrace!
I never paid any attention to DJT until his colors were vividly shown by his treatment of the Central Park 5, then again when his treatment of women was exposed.
I actually thought it was a ridiculous joke when he announced his run for President in 2015. I honestly thought there was no way the unqualified cretin could win an election here, but to my shock, the despicable SOB won, (with Putin's help). I was utterly shocked and bitterly outraged when that happened.
As far as i am concerned, he is lower than the dog excrement i stepped in my yard a few days ago. I can't stand the site of him, or hear his crackly voice when he speaks. I wish he would do all of us a favor and DROP DEAD!
His treatment of women is, in my opinion, is his worst trait of them all, and i am dumfounded that any woman would vote for that horrible monster or even think about voting for him.
Remember, the "Tea Party" most embodied what White, often Fundamentalist America stood against with Obama: black, liberal / "socialist" The Affordable Care Act set off a movement of intractable opposition in the GOP, under Trump, the amoral opportunist, the transformation has reached a new height. 2024 has almost become the new armageddon, thanks to fundamentalist apocalyptic believers.
Trump is truly a cult leader who opened the Pandora’s Box containing age old racism! He used it as a tool to enhance his political ambitions! It’s a really sad chapter in US History! Thank goodness for those of us who can see through his facade!
I'd reword that. Those in the North have no delusions about the South. The South's greatest accomplishment was the first losing generation of Southerners passing on to each successive Southern generation the FALSE myth their cause was noble, their character rightness and their prior lives glorious, as opposed to being poor stooges used by the upper class in a losing insurrection to protect slavery.
In plain view at the southern border (all those brown people) and in their hatred of Kamala Harris. The idea of her being President terrifies them and Trump doesn't. Shows how screwed up they are.
Voting GAP, not voting "cap." Sorry about that. Fixed.
Your piece today gave me chills as I recalled those tumultuous days. The horrors of those days was impactful even for an eight year old boy from Washington state. I didn't fully grasp the importance, but the violence was shocking, coming on the heels of JFK assassination. The images are forever etched in my memory.
We need to protect the rights of all people. We have to vote this fall like our lives depend on it, because for many this may be the case.
I remember too. My mother gathered us to march down the main street of Portland, Maine ending at City Hall where speeches were given. A huge number pf people assembled. Perhaps that was the day my young self sparked the activist in me. I’m also struck by the fact that the news coverage during that was huge. Unlike today when Trump’s appalling crimes, like exposing government documents to anyone and everyone, is glossed over with a shrug.
For me the activism began when Bobby Kennedy was shot. I was 12.
The tidal wave of trumps criminal behaviors overwhelms the media. It's intended to be so.
I think the media ignores Trump’s behavior. The NYT especially
Your point about the NYT is being noticed, Jennifer and someone finally wrote about it. See below for article "There Is Something Wrong At The New York Times" from Salon two days ago. Worth the read.
https://www.salon.com/2024/03/05/there-is-something-at-the-new-york-times/
BK thank you for the link. I agree and have been saying to friends and family, it seems as if the media is covering Biden’s age just as they did “oh my goodness what about Hilliary’s emails!” While glossing over or not even talking about a man who was found guilty of basically forcing himself on a woman by ramming fingers in her body, frauded ordinary Americans with his fake university, gave the rich and corporations tax breaks, costing again, the ordinary American tax payers, and with lots more criminal activity he is being charged with and telling us exactly what he will do to our country… yet people don’t even know!! Without further ado, I will stop. Have a great day! 🙂
Lucian K. Truscott IV, who wrote that Salon article, has a wonderful Substack that I've subscribed to almost since it started. His take on politics is insightful and well informed, and he's better at demystifying military matters (esp. about the war in Ukraine) than anyone else I've read. Plus he tells great stories about his younger days working for the Village Voice. https://luciantruscott.substack.com/
I will read this for sure. Robert Hubbell’s substack is excellent too. He keeps calling out the bias, esp NYT. Every time he does he speaks for me. I canceled my NYT subscription. Am trying Washington Post for now.
This should be read by everyone!!!
Thank you!
here's a link to NYT opinion piece that is encouraging:
Trump’s Conquest of the Republican Party Matters to Every American
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/06/opinion/trump-republican-party.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Interesting read, thanks for sharin
Thank you for the link, BK.
Yes - Hubbell provided this link - it's a great article!!!!
The media is walking a tightrope between not giving trump any oxygen or reporting his outrages.
I don't need to hear every screed trump spews, and the media (obviously not FOX or RSBN or Newsmax et al) has to decide what to say. An unenviable position.
I would like to never hear from trump again but I'm not sure a total blackout of him is the right move for the rest of the country.
We need to stay energized and focused on getting out the vote. Now more than ever.
The media is not walking a tightrope. They are driving eighty miles an hour in all four lanes of the highway with their mostly non-critical coverage of trump while coverage of Biden -- mostly about his age -- is left to peddle its bicycle on the berm.
Especially the NYT consistently disses Biden. His age etc. Then prints polls that show Trump favorably. We don’t need a blackout we need honest reporting. The public needs to decide if they want to deport foreign born citizens? Want a president who will turn the military against the people? Etc. End Medicare and Social? Think it’s okay to scorn POW’s? Co-opt the American flag as a Republican symbol while pleading to the republic but trying to take it down?
The news media is letting us down and it’s dangerous.
During her campaign, Trump called her a bird brain and other disparaging names and said no donor or supporter of hers would ever be welcomed by MAGAs. Today, he's inviting her supporters in. The king of hypocrisy and chaos.
I believe the media is bought!
I am thinking the same.
At the tender age of 14, I boarded an Amtrak overnight train from CT to Washington to participate in the huge anti Vietnam war March in 1967. I guess my parents were concerned about where I was but I don’t recall.
To this day I remember exactly that moment , Bob, Jennifer, my political interest was groomed by the Kennedy’s and many of the ‘aura of people’ surrounding them. While I took in the world both immediate and growing encompass I realize everyone had their strengths and weaknesses . That progress and a consensus of a good walk or drive was key …that sentence entails a double if not triple entendre.
The fights picked in today’s political arena are either trivial distractions , con games , or the real stuff that makes the difference needed….only those who understand ..not an easy ‘game’ we HERE all admit .
More of us are needed…matters most
…HOW YOU ARE TURNED…
🫶🤝👏
These are etched in our memories as our personal history and have contributed to our outrage now— but how do these contribute to the younger generation who grow up without a sense of what is at stake? They may see the present political class as clowns, as inept and old. They long for a healthy earth and sense of peace, if not comfort and escape. There is so much to divert their attention! Many won’t bother to read such stellar posts as HCR’s, and some are too busy with daily life. If it all comes down to gas prices and some stirring of conscience and angst over wars, forgetting to vote may well be their go to position. I want to be optimistic, but there could be sooo much more pain coming.
I think the best way is to get involved ourselves. Show activism. Speak up (not pontificate, so deadly to conversation ). The younger voters are very aware that their reproductive rights have been taken away.
I met Amelia Boynton (Robinson) in 1993, during a series of D.C. protests against the statue of principal Ku Klux Klan founder Albert Pike, which was finally toppled during the "Black Lives Matter" protests. She and also many local leaders from the SCLC endorsed Lyndon LaRouche's 1992 run for President from his prison cell, recognizing LaRouche as the heir to Martin Luther King's vision of economic and social justice for all people. I remember the Rev. James Bevel (LaRouche's running mate in 1992) saying, "We all went to jail, too."
I remember this period Jennifer. Lived in Cape Elizabeth. It apparently was a spark that set my future too.
Ah, I spent many years in SoPo, now quite a groovey mix of oldsters and hipsters 😁
My brother still lives there Fredrick,in the family home, we walk the beaches at Willard and love the cozy knit of neighbors , businesses, friends. Scratches is our favorite morning walk😉
You MUST have seen our daughters Jack Russell "screeching" around Willard Beach in the early mornings, between 2002 and .... 2013 +/-. Izzy tried to herd then together, as is their predisposition. Then Izzy moved to AZ, then to her final move ..... We still come down to AZ, at this time of the year.
I also have to say, we were regulars at Barbara's Cafe, on Cottage Road, for breakfast AND dinner. She was THE best chef, with her signature breakfast sandwich with sauteed spinach, garlic, seasonings and melted gouda (she named it after .... me!! cuz I asked for it) .
I KNOW your walks very well, cuz it is CLASSIC coastal Maine community living. Classic. But we left.
We're in the mid-coast now, where it is quiet ... as our Rte 1 here is only two lanes. everything else is appropriately sized and scaled, for quiet life and quiet people 😂. 😂
I felt the same, even though I was very small. Re the media, we had limited access to just a few newspapers and channels, and the radio. Each of those had "gatekeepers" - owners and mostly Editors who decided what was "above the fold," or made the evening news. I believe for the most part if Was more "liberal" than much of it is today. If liberal means respecting of the guidelines of journalistic integrity. Most people knew which papers were full of "real" news.
I think.
But there was so much the gatekeepers never covered, or never even saw from the positions of white male privilege. Now it's just chaos.
They say trump sucks the air out of a room. Conversely, he overwhelms the press with his antics. I wish all coverage was stopped unless it says that he is convicted or not. No more hypothetical speculations of what might happen. "The just the facts, ma'am," We want the final product.
The fat orange rapist goon provides sensationalism, Karen.
The fictions, lies, epithets, mean labeling, and more lies all have human elements, however, and thus provide deliberate contrast with elites schooled to be docile, careful never to offend any group labeled orthodox by HR, and void of any reference to any humanities.
U.S. working classes got their jobs by the millions offshored by other elites, their kids' schools gutted by standardized testing, public universities taken over by the banks and other corporate profiteers, and information perverted by the algorithms of mainstream media and social media billionaires.
In such a dehumanized world, Karen, plenty of room for the fat, orange-make-up-encrusted, diaper-waddling rapist whose racism, need for attention, and vulgarity shows the only residual humanity where our other elites have none.
The problem is that people seem to like the gossip and scandals, the criminal acts, the outrageous loud behaviors (i.e. trump's debate with Biden-total disregard for the rules). People feel obliged to look at the dead animal in the road even if it is horrible. That's how it is with trump. As they say, he sucks the air out of the room. The loud bad boy gets the attention.
Biden is quiet, seems to play by the rules, doesn't feel obliged to make call and demean his opponents. Check out his little cuts at the republicans in the State of the Union speech. His problem he is not loud and outrageous like trump.
Maybe now, however, Karen, prominent Dems can give the extra voice Biden needs.
His State of the Union should have energized the party -- his, theirs -- sufficiently for the back-up initiative that can sweep the land until November -- get out the vote with passion, strength, overwhelming the mediocrity and vulgarity stinking the fat, caked-on orange, diaper-guy's base.
https://open.substack.com/pub/roberthubbell/p/supporting-joe-biden-is-hard-doing?r=el5mn&utm_medium=ios
I just read this from Robert Hubbell and he speaks very poignantly about the bias so glaringly evident in the press. Also, Hubbell will moderate a session with NC’s Jeff Jackson who is presently a congressman. Jeff gives me great hope for the future.
It fills me with gratitude that people like HCR and Hubble work so hard to keep us informed. Because we’d be in the dark if they didn’t. There is always light.
I am also re-shocked by this piece. Born in 1956, white and in southern New Jersey, I remember. As an 8 year old I watched the news on our black and white and only TV in our kitchen. It was not something I really understood but I knew it was deeply wrong.
It has only been since the George Floyd murder that I have truly understood what my being white means. It means that everyday even the really bad ones, I have had a pass to not be challenged in my everyday life as a driver, as a voter as a shopper and a person walking down the street.
We are now living in a time where hatred blooms anew across our nation. I came of age in the 70’s and so much had been accomplished by then. Now as a 68 year old I have watched much of what was accomplished by my 18th birthday erased.
We are now in an election that will decide between a man that believes in America and another that wants to strip us all of our right to vote and our right to assemble.
Thank you Heather for writing so succinctly about our nation and its history and the current events that somehow have come to pass.
We have not been paying attention and we have not taken care of our nation as we should. There is now a new George Wallace in town.
It is time to wake up America.
It seems the rich ‘s jist is to monopolize what resources are available , take little care of the waste, utilize the underlings , the local people for their gains, and control/support local legislation for any needed advantage. I would assume this has been modus operandi forever.
The wealthy must maintain to remain so
Our -America’s constitutional goal is equality. To spread wealth,safety, comfort, and care out well enough for the majority’s happiness.
That is the ongoing and forever’fight ‘.
Those two roles as the population increases /decrease define life’s ambitions and whys.
This 2024 voting cycle depicts the rise and fall history documents well . Getting to a critical balance point takes constant effort for both the roles..long years between when one or the other has the most advantage.
My own perspective is a Democratic majority ‘feeds’ more people and I believe ,by far , the majority of this HCR community feels the same.
Balance , a tipping point, is on the line and will be as critical for 10 years including all that voting cycles, then to maintain. Educating the public to see that fact , relative factors safe,comfort, rights are all necessary .
💙💙VOTE💙💙
Notice how much extreme effort my old party put in to having power in state legislatures immediately following census years. To me, aimed at every big or small advantage in Gerrymandering such that states like North Carolina could have 10 seats filled by Republicans and the other 3 (at the time), going to Democrats, 77% of the seats, despite about 0.5% advantage in the popular vote.
Truer equal representation would have been 7 R seats and 6 D seats as far as the voters who turned out. I often wondered about one uncontested seat (no Democrat running, since it would surely go to whatever Republican ran). My speculation was on what the total popular vote percentages would be, say if the R votes with no D votes would add more to the total for the whole state's R votes than just the difference between R votes and D votes (if the Democrats ran any candidate in that district). I could see where it could have made the difference less than half a percent, maybe even giving Democrats a higher Popular vote total since the Gerrymandering concentrated so many D votes in just 3 or so districts.
To me, we need honest agent, neutral, redistricting like some states have done. A simple look at the percentage balance of popular vote totals would seem a good start on evaluating how fairly districts are redistricted (once every 10 years,though it now seems to take half a decade to get districts reasonably fair with out the pre-clearance requirements for problematic states, counties and towns.
I recommend this editorial from GA since we have seen the same Republican gerrymandering. https://cocondebor.biz.id/missouri/2024/03/06/i-doubt-biden-can-win-georgia-without-a-miracle-in-2024/
It has been said,’well, they did it too’…lacks credibility as is their ‘brand’, from even before ‘trickle down’ .
That the eloquence of a writer captures truth, factual comparison -accomplishments as well as correcting their mistakes , and brings that across poignantly are the books , is such these letters, and great journalism ( thank you Dan #1 , no slight to the few others) I love .
To establish a love for reading (so important ) are the cuddle times with our children , our grand children. But ,equally to subtly cherish what civil times brings …safe , cared for, worked at peace and the chance to develope our gifts.
I know …we don’t protesteth much… as Simon says…” I’d much rather be us than them”… and do so love to sell its ‘essence’.
GOTV 💙🫶
The "well they did it too" excuse got me to leave my old party about the same time Elizabeth Warren did (though she became a Democrat and I became independent/no party preference, NPP, as I think California called us at that time).
It was set up for me by the disgusting Newt Gingrich/Frank Luntz GoPac memo, "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control" which didn't stop growing as I thought it would when rational and ethical members rejected what sounded so much like what I seem to recall a Cato Institute memo suggesting the party use "Leninist" tactics of persistent negative comments/propaganda on anything the opposition was doing or proposed doing (even if it was exactly what they would do if they could rename it and get the credit for it, Infrastructure Projects, for example even though they vote against it while taking some credit for it).
They also implied softer sabotage of projects and policies (compared to Lenin) though the sabotage now seems far stronger and even more deadly in impact on rights, health, inequality of opportunity, education, debt forgiveness favoring the richest while ignoring the inequalities hampered by not doing the same for student debt, and endangering our security with our traditional and new allies.
The ones who stopped so much of that in the past were the southern "conservative" Democrats that put new cloaks on as the Southern Strategy welcomed them as what I prefer to call real RINOs compared to what my old party used to be.
I waited to see how long the tactics would be used but finally left when a prominent fund raiser for them invited a few of us to join in "fighting dirtier than Democrats" in what seemed a minor league of what ALEC was recruiting. I believe my old party had roughly 6 times as many operatives convicted of election related crimes as the Democrats at the time.
I refused to do, or tolerate, any dirty fighting, not 1/6th as much, and certainly not 6 or more times as much.
The 2016 Bernie campaigners I joined were scrupulous, and without any prompting from me, rejected any volunteers who said they were willing to fight as dirty as the opposition.
Excellent points , Jim
Thank you
The chills I feel are combined with the terror I feel for us.
hopiumchronicles.org is the elixir for you, Marj.
Simon Rosenberg, a Dem strategist from the 1980s, is the host. Last night's geust was CA Gov Gavin Newsom, and old friend
You may be getting far TOO MUCH hyperbole from MSNBC, PBS, the NYT etc.
Simons presents the facts that we have won elections since ... 2018. We WILL WIN
Yes Frederick, thank you.
I follow SR.
I only watch 1 hour of PBS news.
I canceled NYT and never had MSNBC.
On good days I force myself to believe we have a few smarter voters than unsmart voters and they will turn out in Nov.
When I asked a 25 yo Tuesday if she voted and she replied 'for what'? I hung my head again.
It feels like playing whack-a-mole.
hopiumchronicles.org
This year, we have won a special election for a FL and a PA state house seat, AND the vital congressional election to turn a NY seat blue, by electing a Democrat! Republicans have won nothing!
Why vote - "To save Democracy and your rights to your own personal freedoms and choices - and to save the planet"
TWO REASONS - "SAVE DEMOCRACY"
SAVE THE PLANET"
then, know how to aomplify - but start with the simple overacrching frame ->
1) Democracy
2) our Mother Earth
end of story. And stories, they tell everything. Share your story!
My wife and I, both Northerners, lived in GA for 7 or 8 years, and I worked in a small town. It’s important to keep in mind that there are plenty of good, generous Southerners. I’m not in any way excusing racism or the terrible history HCR’s newsletter describes. My points are 1) What we see (or saw in 1960s) on the news is only a keyhole view, and 2) We should not flatly categorize all Southerners as evil, deplorable bigots.
Mr. Goodman
IMHO, your reminder that “not all Southerners should be flatly categorized as evil & deplorable bigots” is a gracious sentiment.
Simpatico with those gracious sentiments, where I live, in solidly & reliably Democratic Denver, I have numerous acquaintances & “frenemies” who aren’t vociferous Trump supporters, but will be casting their ballots for him in November.
These people are wonderful friends and the best of neighbors, often more “like-able” than many of my kindred spirit liberal friends.
However, for many complicated reasons, among those reasons, perhaps a deeply ingrained family of origin Conservative bias (which I recognize can incorporate many good values & beliefs), which also unfortunately contains support for some “evil & deplorable” positions, which they cling to (to paraphrase Obama’s statement [gaff] during his campaign for President in 2008).
Hilary Clinton took that candor to another level in her 2016 Presidential campaign, referring to Trump’s supporters as “Deplorables.”
It is with the preceding context in mind, that “not all Southerners and not all Trump supporters are evil & deplorable,” that I feel it is necessary to be clear in labeling their support as “providing aid & comfort” to an evil & deplorable agenda that is ultimately corroding & dismantling Democracy.
Similar to your gracious sentiments, not all Germans in Nazi Germany were evil & deplorable.
However, as Hannah Arendt theorized and attempted to explain the unexplainable, the Nazi Germany atrocities were aided & comforted by “the banality of evil.”
Alas, in my view, many of the “good & gracious Southerners,” and my wonderful Denverite Trump supporters, are analogous to Arendt’s “banality of evil.”
The extra layer of that banality we see nowadays, is that these “good & gracious” people often cloak themselves as being in the good graces of God; more specifically, a white Christian God.
Understanding Red & Blue relationships nowadays, has become a complicated, messy, and smelly onion, which has a seemingly infinite number of exhausting layers to be peeled away.
I’m pretty confident that the “HCR Community” understands all of this at least as well as I do, is more gracious than I am, and understands better than I, that “good & generous” people hail from even the deepest of Red states.
I just wish with all my heart, that so many “good & generous” (and God fearing) people weren’t fooled by the MAGA Big Lie.
If just a small percentage of them could see the light, our nation’s legacy of Democracy (the principle on which it was FOUNDED, for God’s Sake!) wouldn’t be in such unprecedented jeopardy.
Thank you, Steve, for this excellent post. I understand that people can be basically good and yet, and yet, vote for death star. I'm afraid that I am beyond cutting them slack. Don't call yourself a Christian and then vote for the antiChrist is how I feel about it. Look carefully at the characters of the two men. How can anyone who is really a decent person vote for death star. He is everything Jesus spoke against. I was raised by a good and decent family, yet they were racist as hell. My cousin and I went to a family reunion some years ago in rural Indiana near Wabash, Huntington, and Andrews. Those people were very nice and welcoming, but once again biased, this time against Hispanics and Indians (from India). Everywhere Fox was on as well. I had my next door neighbor defend his racist friends by telling me that they would give you the shirt off their back. Him maybe....but a black or a Native American, I doubt it.
Michele, to your point, during Civil War times, there were many Southern church leaders who preached that slavery was God’s choice, and that abolitionists were evil. Amazing how effectively we humans can rationlize!
Yes, there are good and generous people everywhere. it is a crime that they have been swallowed into a hateful cult.
I wholeheartedly agree with what you’ve written here. I grew up in various parts of the south- but remember the nice folks who wanted no trouble but accepted the terrible Jim Crow laws and substandard schools blacks were forced to deal with.
Steve Blumberg, you’re right. My post ignored Hannah Arendt’s critical observation. People are complex, and most of us are occupied with family and meeting food-and-shelter needs. I’d add that we feel powerless. We can post on social media, vote, donate, or even join campaigns, but we don’t feel capable of redirecting glaciers (i.e., national political outcomes).
You asked a question that’s been raised innumerable times, especially since 2016: How can good, honorable people support Trump or fill-in-the-blank? I wonder if an algorithm that would approximate the answer is complex with many variables of simple with just a few.
Agreed. I did a long stint in Montgomery, AL, working at the Air Force base there, just before the town got that Hyundai plant. I was a little leery of taking on the contract, but found so many lovely people, across the board. It is a whole different vibe.
The whites need to step up right now, decide if they want old South or a new young South, and lean in hard to counter vile people who like to pretend they are the 'real' South. Reclaim the South from MAGAs who want another Civil War.
Interestingly, that Hyundai plant changed the feel in the city--more young people, more opportunity, restaurants that verge on hipster, a slight blue tinge in political leanings. The whole belt of new factories down there is raising wages. With the increased wealth and low cost of living, young people are hanging around more.
The majority in that area are just people hoping for a better future, and the dysfunction Republicans have brought on doesn't seem to impress them much. Young people in particular are tired of the drama and artificial angst and just want the damn place to work well for them.
Civility is and HAS BEEN the focus- would another word fit our (even)worldly fight any more accurate?
THANKS for pointing this out SC! We’re never going to right all the wrongs, mistakes points this out …let it be known I KNOW😉
And so ‘the civil war’ is so perfectly named , and UNPERFECTLY taught ..something we , the common folk , should ( and many DO) live passionately , the way we could hope to live,love,teach, and uphold.
Such a privilege to reach these eloquent comments and be able to underscore their importance.
Thank you again🫶
The ugliness caused by the newer Republican, MAGA followers, outright haters of others different from themselves is a definite call to return to civility and return to politically working as our country is meant to work.
I don't think any kind of "going back" is possible. We need to go forward (gee, where did I hear that tonight?) We need more than the civility that masqueraded the hate that trump allowed out. We need to move on to living the equality that we espouse with our words and ignore with our actions.
Amen🫶
A.better future for White people means maintaining White supremacy-anyone who votes for Trump accepts racism, misogyny, lies, theft- I won’t go on-the list of things that prove the Rs intent is too long.
That's what a frightening number of whites believe (and with history, it shamefully worked out just dandy for whites to maintain as much white supremacist order as they could). Trump's popularity proved this, much to the shock of America. His rise made it impossible to deny the residual buried resentments from the Civil War never really went away, we can't ignore it.
I agree, anyone who votes for Trump or his enablers, especially from 2020 on, must own the fact they believe in white supremacy. They don't really believe in one person, one vote. They don't believe in Democracy. No excuses, no gaslighting, no pretense that 'the other guy is worse'. Own it.
Not this white person who sees only hate and ugliness in the Trumpers out to destroy our country.
You may be interested in. Carolyn Bordeaux 's essay on voting in Georgia by color. https://cocondebor.biz.id/missouri/2024/03/06/i-doubt-biden-can-win-georgia-without-a-miracle-in-2024/ She points out that we must make both white and black Democratic voting possible. She implies that Democrats will lose if democrats focus solely on black voting, sad as the history of black voting is.
Sobering, and very interesting. Thanks for sharing.
I have been following Jess Piper's Substack The View from Rural Missouri lately, and there's a somewhat similar problem there--she has been listing absolutely abysmally bad Republican characters who are running uncontested for local and state seats, because Democratic Party can't be bothered to run anyone against them. Jess insists there are people who would love to choose an alternative candidate, but they are stuck with MAGA guy who posts his picture on Facebook brandishing an AR-15 with the caption "The grin when you hear there is a Chinese balloon crossing your state". She's right, the very least we can do is offer an alternative. People won't feel abandoned, at least, even if MAGA guy wins.
This echoes stories I heard of many younger candidates who said the Democrats wouldn't fund them at all, showing zero interest in certain districts. These 'lost cause' districts have been abandoned to become red ghettos. Whether white or black, Hispanic or Asian, people living there are stuck with stupid.
Very valid point. I have been saddened by the number of uncontested races I commonly see in Georgia ballots. For example, The Speaker of the House has never faced an election opponent.
Systematic Curiosity, exactly! People are complex beings. I moved to GA to work in the largest manufacturing operation in the area. It was a northern company which moved operations to rural GA in the early 1960s. In building their facility and managing personnel, they had to make an ethical choice: segregated or integrated bathrooms and dining? They chose integrated, and from what I was told, never had a single racial incident. I worked in the factory with people of different races and experienced no conflicts.
Still, I'm white, so unlikely to experience or even spot racially motivated incidents. People who are racist tend to hide their racism rather well, along with their misogyny. They know it is wrong.
Alabama has always had some of the worst problems, but in my spot (on an Air Force base, but I got to know a variety of locals), people worked together well--locals and fly-in contractors--despite obvious differences and some pretty strong biases. When the work was the focus, the rest of the nonsense dissolved away. This encouraged me.
Same for me, but I found Southerners were more straightforward than Northerners about their biases. Northerners are more polished.
Somehow the voter suppression laws enacted in Georgia recently must have escaped your notice. Having had family in Statesboro and Albany, Georgia I can tell you that racism is alive and well there.
As an Atlantan, I must say that anti-racism, social justice, and inclusivity advocates also live here.
Atlanta has led the anti racism charge for decades. Jackson, Young, Bottoms, leaders all.
You may be interested in. Carolyn Bordeaux 's essay on voting in Georgia by color. https://cocondebor.biz.id/missouri/2024/03/06/i-doubt-biden-can-win-georgia-without-a-miracle-in-2024/ She points out that we must make both white and black Democratic voting possible. She implies that Democrats will lose if democrats focus solely on black voting, sad as the history of black voting is.
As it seems to be among many of the good and generous people of AZ.
No they haven't.
But painting all Georgians as racist isn't fair to the good people there.
“All” was not my intent. A state that can elect Warnock and Green does point out differences in rural vs. urban voters. My father-law retired from the Marines Corps in Albany, one of my best friend’s dad was CO. The General was a good man. My FIL and his extended family? Not so much.
Gail, I didn’t say there isn’t racism in the South. My point was that it would be inaccurate and a disservice to us to paint everyone there with a single, monotone brush. When we moved back North, we saw racism here too.
Racism is not a southern thing-it’s an American invention that’s infected the whole world. It’s rooted in our society and it’s the thing we don’t want to talk about as the cause of our divisions.
Racism is bringing America down as our stated ideals don’t measure up to our realities. It’s more than 60% of White people (from every state) who are anxious for Trump to take office. The Republicans are more than 90% white, the J6 insurrections were 90% White, yet we ignore or talk sparingly about racism.
Racism is America’s death knell.
Gina, it isn't just an American invention: This country was founded by genocide of the Native Peoples and built on the backs of enslaved Black people. Until we can answer that foundational bias, and do our level best to both resolve and ameliorate it, (along with the belief that men are better than women) we really cannot go forward in equality.
Agreed, Ally. Racism, misogyny and religious hatred are endemic throughout the world. Our earlier settlers were White English families escaping religious persecution and then turned around and imported slaves, persecuted Catholics and Jews, burned women as witches and slaughtered Indians. When did racist British emigres become racist Americans?
Not that the British Empire was ground zero for racism either. It is a sickening fact that people are generally hardwired to think in terms of “us” and “them.” It may have been a survival instinct many many generations ago, but it never went away. You can be a “them” due to the color of your skin, how you worship, who you love and whom you vote for.
Marge, agreed. As Abe Lincoln said (paraphrasing), if you base your hierarchy on lightness of skin, beware of the person who is lighter than you. If you base your position on intellect, beware…
Exactly so, Marge.
Amen, Ally. This is my sentiment also. I could write a book about how this country was built on slavery and genocide. Ah, yes, and your last sentence which those of us who are women can speak about from experience and did yesterday in the blog. Just gobsmacked that someone had to go to court to get custody of her daughter when her husband died and I think this was the early 70s.
Michele, since you mentioned a book, consider UNION, by Colin Woodard. To give an overview of American thought, Woodard looks deeply into 6 thought leaders from 1800 through 1920.
Actually, Americans didn't invent racism, but they have been good at perpetuating it. Racism has occurred and continues to occur around the world, because of human beings' tendency to divide people into us and them categories, and obvious visual differences are the first line of bigotry. The irony is that we are all only a few gene mixtures apart from one another with our shared ancestry. We can be so primitive so aptly depicted by those who beat the Selma Marchers. The bigot doesn't tell us anything about those they target, but quite a lot about who they, themselves are.
The Edmund Pettus bridge should be renamed The John R Lewis memorial bridge. Or maybe The John R Lewis Freedom bridge.
Oh yes.
We met the woman that sat next to Jill Biden tonight when we visited Selma and walked on that bridge. She was a kid when she walked with Lewis and King. gave us a tour of a little museum next to the bridge that had been set up with little or no funding. I wonder if that museum is still there? We were there in February of 2012.
I would say that Europeans made racism a part of slavery where before it was mainly about conquest and then business with a religious flavor in some cases. I am thinking here about slavery in Eastern Europe, the Steppes, and that practiced by the Ottomans. And yes, the irony. I have just finished two books about biochemistry and the beginning of life and now I am reading one about microbes. We are a few gene mixtures different from each other and other life on earth. And oh, those bacteria!
Don't forget the ancient Egyptians, who used slave labor to build their monuments to the dead, and the Japanese strict immigration and ethnic cleansing policies to preserve the "purity of the race" even into the present. As I said, racism of course tinged with religious superstition has been ubiquitous probably since humans emerged from their own ancestors. We continue to exhibit really primitive tribalism on a regular basis around the globe. Our group is better than their group seems to be the norm, and of course, our god is better than their god even into the 21st century, continuing to plague the world.
Gina. American as in Old Testament??
I agree. I was stationed in Albany Ga for the better part of 1977.. Southern hospitality is real. I was going to hitchhike around Georgia for a fortnight but when the weather showed two weeks of rain my friend's mother wouldn't let me leave. She said she hoped someone would do the same for her son.
I was amazed at how "Southern hospitality" could exist right next to "The south will rise again".
However, you are a white male.
Correct but that has no bearing on the fact that my friends mother showed me kindness.
Bob Lewis, my experience too. My car was old and broke down once or twice. People stopped to help! Not everybody, but some, and we still visit friends down there.
"My points are 1) What we see (or saw in 1960s) on the news is only a keyhole view, and 2) We should not flatly categorize all Southerners as evil, deplorable bigots."
There was a time when I thought that might be becoming true. But After the Supreme Court destroyed the Voting Rights Act because somehow racism in the south had been cured, I can no longer believe that. Those southern states that passed laws to allow them to stop Black people from being full citizens of the U.S. after the Civil War went right back to passing the same kinds of laws as soon as they were released from Federal supervision. If I can't categorize all southerners as evil, deplorable bigots, I'm left categorizing them as deplorable idiots with no morals and no sense of responsibility.
Could it be a powerful few dominate their state’s political systems? I can’t fully answer the conflict you raise, but it seems undeniable that there are good people mixed in with the bad.
You may be interested in Carolyn Bordeaux 's essay on voting in Georgia by color. https://cocondebor.biz.id/missouri/2024/03/06/i-doubt-biden-can-win-georgia-without-a-miracle-in-2024/. She points out that we must make both white and black Democratic voting possible. She implies that Democrats will lose if democrats focus solely on black voting, sad as the history of black voting is.
Our lives do depend upon it! Here in Georgia, even after Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger refused to accommodate Trump's "request" to find almost 12,000 votes, he subsequently worked with "moderate" (not) Gov. Brian Kemp to craft legislation to suppress the vote of Democrats (many of them Black).
Now, they are aligned with Trump's attorneys to utilize recently-enacted legislation targeting "rogue DAs" to be investigated and removed from office. This legislation came on the heels of Fulton County DA Fani Willis announcing a RICO investigation into Trump acolytes and fake electors for election interference, and now they're doing their best to have Willis removed from office for having an affair with her lead investigator. While the optics are not good, it is so hypocritical to use it as an excuse to target Willis and save the day for Trump, Len Wood, Rudi Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and other stellar actors, who all tried to overturn the election. So much for being a Never Trumper, Kemp!
The newer generation of racists has refined its tactics, and seldom beats their adversaries into submission (unless you're counting the frequent police violence against Black citizens). They simply rig the vote, gerrymander voting districts, and target elected Black officials to achieve their goals.
Unless we elect Democrats in huge numbers, both locally and nationally, we will all be under the collective thumbs of the Republicans, and Trump will unleash his own Cracken!!!
A dystopian future vision pinpoints the issue.
My first memories of TV, besides Saturday morning cartoons, were of the war in Vietnam, and the Watergate trials.
Amen!
AMEN!
“because for many this may be the case” . Eventually for all this is the case especially for our moral lives.
Heather- my initials are GAP -thank you for fixing. I'm going to need every vote I can get. :)
'Black women are the face of America’s ugly Gaza policy' (WAPO, Opinion By Karen Attiah)
'For Black women, the liminal space in which Black History Month becomes Women’s History Month feels like the time to reflect on our progress — and how far we have to go.'
'The Biden administration has deployed Black women as both velvet gloves and iron fists in respect to Israel’s latest assault on Gaza, in which more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. They are both enforcing U.S. complicity in this atrocity and attempting to soften its appearance.'
'On Sunday, Vice President Harris was in Selma, Ala., marking the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the 1965 march to protest the police killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson and to demand the right to vote. At the Edmund Pettus Bridge, White officers attacked the marchers and severely beat a number of them.'
'The bridge, the violence and the Black sacrifice they represent lent an air of moral authority as Harris delivered the latest administration message on the plight of the Palestinians. “As I have said many times,” she declared, “too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.” Harris rightly acknowledged that “we have seen reports of families eating leaves or animal feed, women giving birth to malnourished babies with little or no medical care and children dying from malnutrition and dehydration.” She called for an immediate cease-fire at least through the coming month of Ramadan, for hostages to be released and for Israel to allow humanitarian aid to surge into Gaza.'
'But what she did not say was every bit as important. Harris did not criticize Israel for its deliberate blockade and assault. She did not call for questioning the transfer of weapons to Israel. Instead, she referred to what has befallen Gaza’s Palestinians as some nameless “catastrophe,” as if a bomb- and bullet-saturated hurricane blew in from the Mediterranean Sea. And what is needed is a permanent cease-fire and an end to Israel’s brutal occupation.'
'The death and deprivation in Gaza is caused by the actions of specific people acting through systems of power. Black people have known this for centuries, forced to survive and resist a machine that was scared of, and actively suppressed, their economic, social and political autonomy. Beatdowns, lynchings and massacres of Black people were systematic and deliberate weapons of white supremacy, not inexplicable storms of random' “chaos.”
'Harris’s speech was limpness masquerading as strength. The so-called “humanitarian airdrops” that she promoted have been roundly criticized as an ineffective and pathetically insufficient. What’s more, they are signs of U.S. weakness, underscoring the fact that President Biden’s team won’t leverage weapons transfers to force Israel’s cooperation. Or if she was not the face of Biden’s weakness, then she was the face of continued U.S. cruelty toward Palestinians — with a spoonful of #BlackGirlMagic to make the poison go down a little easier.'
'Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is unlikely to be moved by Harris’s velvety civil rights costuming, which feels aimed less at persuading him than at calming the pro-Gaza, anti-ethnic cleansing base of the Democratic Party.'
'After all, the administration has relied on another Black woman to send a very different message to Netanyahu — an iron fist to hammer down the growing calls for an end to the mass killing.'
'U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield has voted not once, but twice to block calls for an Israeli cease-fire. For many Black observers, the optics of these votes recalled memories of the first Black secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, using his prestige before the United Nations to argue in favor of an invasion of Iraq. In the eyes of the world, Greenfield, like Powell, is a Black face providing cover for America’s direct and indirect brutality in the Arab world.'
'Compare them with Black women who embody the spirit of the original Selma marchers — including a willingness to be attacked for doing the right thing.'
'In October, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) was among the first American leaders to call for a cease-fire and humanitarian relief. Imagine how much suffering and death could have been avoided if she had been listened to as she placed the responsibility squarely on Israel'. “Let me be clear,” she wrote, “the collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza is a war crime. … My commitment to ending violence, brutality, and oppression is not conditional. It’s universal.”
'Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) has also been outspoken about the brutality against Palestinians and introduced a resolution to block weapons sales to Israel. The pro-Israel lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee has pledged to spend millions of dollars to try to unseat these Black women from office.'
'#RepresentationMatters only goes so far. Ultimately, it matters little who walks the corridors of power if the decisions made there don’t change. The vice president’s invocation of Black America’s bloody struggle against racial apartheid, while she is a face of an administration enforcing oppression abroad, feels so dark. Especially when we know that, at the end of the day, it is the White men of the administration calling the shots.'
'Can we really celebrate Black women in power who can’t use said power to prevent death and starvation inflicted on a stateless people? I — like an increasing number of voters — don’t think so.' (WAPO) This Opinion by Karen Attiah, 'a columnist for The Washington Post and writes a weekly newsletter. She writes on international affairs, culture and social issues. Previously, she reported from Curacao, Ghana and Nigeria.' Her Opinion was copied in full.'
Except there is one big problem with what was posted here. We change the laws of our country. Israel is not our country. Right now, our country is trying to help Israel get rid of its crazed head of state. Netanyahu is the Governor Wallace of his country, wanting what he wants and not what his country wants. Then and only then will Israel be able to stop the killing and devastation. It is a difficult situation and the Biden administration is doing what it can. If a different person was currently president, he would probably be congratulating Bibi. If you blame Biden, you are blaming the wrong person. Wake up.
I don’t see how anyone can expect this administration to fix something that has been going on for centuries. Religious Righteousness is the real underlying cause of this horrific situation. The people involved don’t want to fix anything…they want to be right and winners. To accuse Biden of condoning or supporting genocide is a really disgusting viewpoint when the people involved in the region and surrounding geography aren’t doing much to rise up and say “Enough!” Israel is not our country. We don’t govern it or any country surrounding it. I don’t disagree that the U.S. should change some of its policies, however, that is easier said than done. The House GOP and Trump remind me of Netanyahu and Israel.
Christine, I agree with you. The hubris of Europe in the early 20th century, then the US in attempting to assuage the holocaust by magically creating a nation in 1948 is not a solution, it is the problem.
As long as we were permitted by conquering nations, we remained in our homeland. Even under antisemitic authorities. We never forgot Zion. The impetus to recreate our nation predated the Holocaust. Eastern European persecutions accelerated it. At that time, those living in mandate Palestine willingly sold land to Jews returning from exile. Britain did its typical worst to make transfer of their power as divisive as possible. Other forces, for their own political purposes, encouraged Palestinians to military attack on the UN sanctioned Jewish state. Within Zionism there has always been tension between the right wing and left wing. There still is. This is certainly not the whole story - it is the part of the story which Leftists elide. They elide the existence of
proPalestinian Israeli Jews in the Israeli polity and just as they marginalize progressive Jewish Zionists in the American Left.
This in no way excuses the crimes of the Netanyahu regime.
Thank you, lin
The US did not create Israel. It was the League of Nations who offered 2 states - Palestina and Israel. The Arab states wanted it all, so the day after Israel accepted the offer and declared itself a nation, all the surrounding nations attacked it. Everyone was shocked that Israel won that war. And so it has been ever since ("from the river to the sea").
It’s true. Bibi thinks as long as war is raging he will not be held legally to account on his charges and politically to account for his failures. He is raging--personally, and not just at Hamas. Who else do we know who would be most motivated by retaining power, exacting vengeance, extension overreach, and legal immunity? Imagine how Trump would have handled this business. My guess would be not even to try to mitigate the conflict, rather he would’ve fanned the flames.
Biden is just the current in a long line that caters and to the American Jewish lobby demands for full support even when full support means ethnic cleansing.
Right now, Biden has thrown his support behind a challenger to get Bibi OUT. It's about time for the PEOPLE of Israel to rise up and get rid of Bibi. This is on them. Biden has been working with everyone in the area, such as dropping food out of airplanes and getting food into Gaza through Egypt. Sure, he caters, but the GOP doesn't care. Those are the choices we have.
Money talks. The Jewish lobby formed our historic green light to allow the New Jewish Facist State to ethnically cleanse and if anyone dared to criticize we were all antisemites. Also another truth is that the ultra orthodox community uses their women as baby factories and within a generation or two, a minority becomes a majority.
Holy Crap Bill Katz. Hook Line and Sinker. Next you'll be trotting out the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
There are many valid critiques of Christian and Jewish right wing religious extremists who've disastrously appropriated Zionism for their own purposes. But you are not making those arguments.
Lunatic. Who was Israel’s best friend, getting their wish list fulfilled by moving the Capital to Jerusalem and ignoring aggressive settlements? Jared Kushner’s family were great friends with Bibi. The American JDL is just one of many of the diverse lobbying powers politicians accept campaign funds from.
Israel was a challenge to human rights from the getgo, sanctioned by the UN in 1948, engaged in already long term running gun battles with local palestinians. since then there was never been much light of day in that inherent mutual hostility. Israeli use of catastrophic force in Gaza now, triggered by Hamas' horrific acts of terrorism, is the pie that is now served up to all. We shouldnt be surprised that the citizenry of a modern technologically based Israel looks down on a confined and developmentally arrested population of Palestinians is participating in and likely largely sanctioning Netanyahu's policy of massive retaliation and punishment. Hamas terror has made it all too personal for Israelis. If the Biden administration has made a mainly unsuccessful show of trying to restrain Netanyahu, imagine things under Trump. Let them "finish it"
American mideast policy has long been influenced by AIPAC and even stronger Evangelical lobbyists. Biden is going further than any American president to change that. Despite being caught between those who cry antisemitism at any criticism of Israeli policy and those who cry genocide at any support for Israel.
There fixed it for you.
'Biden admin carefully ramps up criticism of Israel over the Gaza war but stops short of cutting off military aid' (NBC News) (Excerpt)
'The White House has asked the Pentagon for more options to get additional humanitarian aid to Gaza's hungry civilians by air, land and sea.'
'President Joe Biden is trying to ramp up political pressure on Israel’s government to allow in more humanitarian aid and rein in its offensive in the Gaza Strip but has stopped short of cutting off weapons deliveries to America’s main ally in the Middle East, current and former officials say.'
'Reluctant to enter into a full-blown confrontation with Israel, the Biden administration instead has airdropped humanitarian aid for Palestinian civilians and held talks in Washington with a political rival of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Benny Gantz. It has also stepped up public criticism of Israel’s tactics in Gaza — though, as NBC News has reported, apparently not as much as Vice President Kamala Harris would like.'
'Dismayed at the plight of Palestinian civilians and with no letup in the Israeli campaign, the White House National Security Council asked the Pentagon in recent weeks for possible options to get more aid into Gaza by air, land and sea, two administration officials told NBC News.'
'The administration’s “soft power” approach emphasizing humanitarian relief is shaped by both the domestic political pressure Biden is under at home to help stop the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, as well as a pragmatic belief that focusing on aid is the president’s best option while delicate negotiations continue to secure a six-week cease-fire deal, current and former officials said.'
'The U.S. military has carried out airdrops in other conflicts over the decades, helping Kurds facing attacks from Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, Bosnian Muslims besieged by Serb forces in eastern Bosnia, and civilians under assault by Islamic State group militants in Iraq and Syria. But the airdrops over Gaza were unusual, with the U.S. launching the operation to assist civilians affected by a military offensive carried out by an ally armed by Washington.'
'Harris delivered blunt criticism of Israel on Sunday, marking the latest in a series of critical comments from the White House over the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Gaza. NBC News reported that the original draft of her speech contained much harsher language before it was softened by the White House National Security Council. Yet her public condemnation was still notable, and it foreshadowed what will likely be more criticism from the president in his State of the Union address later this week.'
“People in Gaza are starving. The conditions are inhumane, and our common humanity compels us to act,” Harris said at an event marking the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Alabama. “The Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid. No excuses.”
'A maritime corridor?'
'Apart from more airdrops, the administration is looking at other options to move more food and aid into Gaza, including possibly building a floating dock or makeshift causeway off the coast of the enclave to enable ships to deliver humanitarian supplies, a U.S. official said. Such an undertaking likely would require other countries or international agencies to secure the area and ferry aid to shore, as the administration has ruled out any presence of American troops in Gaza.'
'Expanding humanitarian access to Gaza will be at the top of the agenda when Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets Gantz on Tuesday, with the secretary planning to appeal for the opening of the key Erez crossing, Miller said.'
'The distribution of aid within Gaza, especially in the enclave’s north, continues to pose a challenge after civilians were killed as they rushed an aid convoy. The U.S. has told Israel that the security situation must be addressed and Palestinian civilians cannot be allowed to starve.'
“We will be happy to work with Israel and with the United Nations to find the best alternative to ensure that those trucks can safely deliver their food, their water, their medicine,”' Miller said,' “but an unacceptable answer is leaving those trucks just sitting in warehouses and not getting the aid distributed to the people who desperately need it.”
'Opening the door to Netanyahu’s rival'
'Some administration officials say the Israeli government is starting to listen to the administration’s view that the way the war is unfolding is damaging for Israel over the long term.'
'Israeli officials say they remain grateful for the support of U.S. officials as they continue to try to destroy Hamas. Privately some of them have said they are worried by the criticism from the Biden administration.'
“The Americans are not being very nice to us,” 'a senior Israeli government official said.'
'Netanyahu in his public statements has been adamant that he is not taking orders from outside of Israel on how to continue the war.'
'Many Democrats in Congress and foreign governments say the administration needs to bring more pressure to bear on Israel. They argue that only a threat to cut off military aid or to withdraw diplomatic support for Israel at the United Nations will persuade Netanyahu to scale back the offensive in Gaza and open up access for humanitarian convoys.'
“What remains is we’ve got a profound contradiction that we have to face directly: We have a situation where the U.S. is airdropping aid on day one, and Israel is dropping bombs on day two,” 'Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., told NBC News.' “And the American taxpayer is paying for the aid and the bombs.”
'Welch added that' “essentially what you’ve got is the prime minister (of Israel) asking us for money and rejecting our advice.”
“And the big question is, from my perspective, whether the president needs to get more aggressive with Netanyahu,” 'he said.'
'Another senator from Biden’s party, Chris Murphy of Connecticut, said there was a growing risk that Israel’s and America’s national interests were diverging, unless Netanyahu shifted course.'
'Murphy said,' “There has to be a rapid serious change in direction of Israel’s policy, or our national security interest and Benjamin Netanyahu’s interests are going to clearly be in fundamentally different places.”
'Although it has refrained from issuing ultimatums to Israel, the Biden administration on Monday welcomed to Washington a member of Netanyahu’s war Cabinet, Gantz, a centrist seen as the prime minister’s main political opponent. Opinion polls show Gantz’s National Unity party gaining ground against the prime minister’s Likud party.'
'A Netanyahu ally, Dudi Amsalem, a minister from the Likud party, slammed Gantz for traveling to Washington.'
'Writing on the social media platform X, he said Americans likely view Gantz as the person' “to lead the process of a Palestinian state and the cessation of fighting in Gaza.” 'He added:' “You entered the emergency government to create a consensus during wartime ... not to stop the [Israel Defense Forces] from winning the war.”
'But the administration sees maintaining a channel with Gantz as a way of possibly shaping Israel’s decision-making and keeping options open for the future, former officials said.'
“We have been dealing with all members of the war Cabinet, including Mr. Gantz,” 'White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said.' “We see this as a natural outgrowth of those discussions. We’re not going to turn away that sort of opportunity.”
'The State Department said Monday that the U.S. continues to supply weapons to Israel because the Hamas leaders behind the Oct. 7 terror attacks, the worst in Israel’s history, are still at large.'
“They would relaunch the attacks of Oct. 7, today, tomorrow if they had the capability to do so,” 'Miller, the State Department spokesperson, told reporters'. “So we support Israel’s legitimate military campaign consistent with international humanitarian law.”
'Aiming for a cease-fire deal'
'Despite the mounting friction with Netanyahu, Biden remains an ardent supporter of Israel, shaped by his long career in the Senate and his emotional connection to the Jewish state and its history, former officials and analysts say.'
'Biden has faced fierce criticism from younger progressives in the party and from Arab Americans for his handling of the Israel-Hamas war, with more than 100,000 voters in Michigan’s Democratic primary choosing “uncommitted” instead of Biden.'
'But Biden’s team also is wary of providing any ammunition to Republicans or pro-Israel hawks that the president has in any way abandoned Israel.'
'Most importantly, the administration believes that withholding military aid could prove counterproductive as the main objective now is to clinch a six-week cease-fire deal designed to stop the fighting and secure the release of dozens of hostages still held by Hamas, according to Aaron David Miller, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank.'
“The main reason in my view is Biden understands he needs to make a difference, not a point,” 'Miller said.' “And the difference is this: Without an Israel-Hamas cease-fire — which would allow surging humanitarian aid into Gaza; a suspension of Israeli military activities; the release of the women, the elderly and the sick hostages — you might as well hang the ‘closed for the season’ sign on American policy. This is the only way to even begin to start to de-escalate.” (NBCNews By Dan De Luce, Carol E. Lee, Julie Tsirkin, Courtney Kube and Allie Raffa) See link of article below.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/biden-increases-criticism-israel-gaza-still-provides-military-aid-rcna141775
As Trump said, let them "finish it" ...
Hmmm? , Cage Match, huh? How Entertaining. “You’re fired, You’re Dead, pass the Ketchup”
Lynn, the following by Harold Myerson in the American Prospect, 'The Incoherence of Our Gaza Policy', struck the mark in my mind concerning Biden's policy with reference to Israel's invasion of Gaza:
'We provide Palestinians life’s necessities by air and sea, and provide Israel the arms to deny them those same necessities.'
'It’s been quite some time since I took my first-year algebra class at Paul Revere Junior High (Euclid, as I recall, had only recently died), but I still remember one problem we were asked to solve. It concerned a bathtub that a faucet was filling with water at one end while an open drain was removing that water at the other end. We were supposed to figure out at what point the water would reach a certain level, or at what point the person filling and draining the tub would be committed to an institution, or something like that.'
'I’ve remembered this problem lo these many years because it sometimes serves as the perfect metaphor for a policy so self-contradictory that its formulators need to be, at minimum, seriously questioned. And so it was that the mystery of the tub popped into mind when I read earlier today that in his State of the Union address tonight, President Biden will announce that the United States will build a floating pier off the shore of Gaza from which humanitarian aid will flow to the Palestinians, a great many of whom are in dire need of food, water, and medicine. Whether the pier will supplant or merely complement the airdrops of aid that the U.S. has already commenced is not yet clear.'
'In another part of the forest, The Times of Israel reported today that the U.S. has made more than 100 arms sales to Israel since October 7th—all of them just under the threshold which would require the administration to seek congressional approval for the sales. These sales have doubtless helped the Netanyahu government pursue its not-quite-openly-stated policy of immiserating the Palestinians and making life so impossible in Gaza that many are compelled to move elsewhere. That’s clearly not the preferred policy of the Biden administration, but the more it provides arms to Bibi, the more it looks like Bibi’s useful idiots.'
'Now that it’s floating the floating pier idea, administration policy resembles even more closely that filling, draining tub. We giveth and we taketh away, but we sure ain’t the Lord.'
~ HAROLD MEYERSON
Thank you Lynn.
Until we can clean up our own house do not try to fix another!
'U.S. floods arms into Israel despite mounting alarm over war’s conduct'
'Washington has approved more than 100 separate military sales to Israel since its invasion of Gaza, even as officials complain Israeli leaders have not done enough to protect civilians' (WAPO)
'The United States has quietly approved and delivered more than 100 separate foreign military sales to Israel since the Gaza war began Oct. 7, amounting to thousands of precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms and other lethal aid, U.S. officials told members of Congress in a recent classified briefing.'
'The triple-digit figure, which has not been previously reported, is the latest indication of Washington’s extensive involvement in the polarizing five-month conflict even as top U.S. officials and lawmakers increasingly express deep reservations about Israel’s military tactics in a campaign that has killed more than 30,000 people, according to Gaza’s health authorities.'
'Only two approved foreign military sales to Israel have been made public since the start of conflict: $106 million worth of tank ammunition and $147.5 million of components needed to make 155 mm shells. Those sales invited public scrutiny because the Biden administration bypassed Congress to approve the packages by invoking an emergency authority.'
'But in the case of the 100 other transactions, known in government-speak as Foreign Military Sales or FMS, the weapons transfers were processed without any public debate because each fell under a specific dollar amount that requires the executive branch to individually notify Congress, according to U.S. officials and lawmakers who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive military matter.'
'Taken together, the weapons packages amount to a massive transfer of firepower at a time when senior U.S. officials have complained that Israeli officials have fallen short on their appeals to limit civilian casualties, allow more aid into Gaza and refrain from rhetoric calling for the permanent displacement of Palestinians.'
“That’s an extraordinary number of sales over the course of a pretty short amount of time, which really strongly suggests that the Israeli campaign would not be sustainable without this level of U.S. support,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior Biden administration official and current president of Refugees International.'
'The Israeli government did not immediately offer comment.'
'State Department spokesman Matt Miller said the Biden administration has' “followed the procedures Congress itself has specified to keep members well-informed and regularly briefs members even when formal notification is not a legal requirement.”
'He added that U.S. officials have' “engaged Congress” 'on arms transfers to Israel “more than 200 times” since Hamas launched a cross-border attack into Israel that killed 1,200 people and took more than 240 hostage.'
'When asked about surge of weapons into Israel, some U.S. lawmakers who sit on committees with oversight of national security said the Biden administration must exercise its leverage over the government of Israel.'
“You ask a lot of Americans about arm transfers to Israel right now, and they look at you like you’re crazy, like,' ‘why in the world would we be sending more bombs over there?’” Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.), a member of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees, said in an interview.'
“These people already fled from the north to the south, and now they’re all huddled in a small piece of Gaza, and you’re going to continue to bombard them?” 'Castro said, referring to Israel’s planned offensive in Rafah, where more than 1 million displaced Palestinians have sought shelter.'
'U.S. officials have warned the Israeli government against waging an offensive in Rafah without a plan to evacuate civilians. But some Democrats worry that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will disregard Washington’s pleas as he has other U.S. demands to allow more food, water and medicine into the enclosed enclave, and to dial back the intensity of a military campaign that has leveled entire city blocks and destroyed huge numbers of homes across the strip.'
'Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said in an interview that the Biden administration should apply' “existing standards” stipulating that the United States “shouldn’t transfer arms or equipment to places where it’s reasonably likely that those will be used to inflict civilian casualties, or to harm civilian infrastructure.”
'Crow, also a member of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees, recently petitioned Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, seeking information on “any restrictions” that the administration had put in place to ensure Israel was not using U.S. intelligence to harm civilians or civilian infrastructure.'
“I am concerned that the widespread use of artillery and air power in Gaza — and the resulting level of civilian casualties — is both a strategic and moral error,” 'wrote Crow, a former Army Ranger who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.'
'A senior State Department official declined to provide the total number or cost of all U.S. arms transferred to Israel since Oct. 7 but described them as a mix of new sales and' “active FMS cases.”
“These are items that are typical for any modern military, including one that is as sophisticated as Israel’s,” 'said the official.'
'The dearth of publicly available information about U.S. arms sales to Israel leaves unclear how many of the most recent transfers amount to the routine supply of U.S. security assistance to Israel as opposed to the rapid replenishing of munitions as a result of its bombardment of Gaza.'
'Israel, like most militaries, does not routinely disclose data about its weapons expenditures, but in the first week of the war, it said it had already dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza.'
'The lack of public information about arms deliveries has prompted some arms experts to push for changes.' “The arms transfer process lacks transparency by design,” 'said Josh Paul, a former State Department official who resigned in protest over the Biden administration’s Gaza policy.'
'The vast number of transfers since Oct. 7, largely financed by the more than $3.3 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds Washington provides to Israel every year, “is something we deserve to know as citizens of a democracy,” 'he said.'
'Republicans have largely opposed efforts to rein in U.S. arms provisions to Israel and earlier this year introduced legislation to provide an additional $17.6 billion to Israel on top of the $3.3 billion the U.S. provides annually. The Biden administration also supports additional military aid to Israel, but a package has been held up due to infighting in Congress over border security and aid to Ukraine.'
'What is clear is Washington’s deep involvement in the conflict, even if it isn’t the entity dropping the munitions or pulling the trigger, said Konyndyk, the former administration official.'
“The U.S. cannot maintain that, on the one hand, Israel is a sovereign state that’s making its own decisions and we’re not going to second-guess them, and, on the other hand, transfer this level of armament in such a short time and somehow act as if we are not directly involved,” 'he said.' (WAPO By John Hudson) This report was copied in full.
'John Hudson is a reporter at The Washington Post covering the State Department and national security. He was part of the team that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He has reported from dozens of countries, including Ukraine, China, Afghanistan, India and Belarus.'
Remember the money for arms actually stays here, as the US is the biggest arms dealer in the world. Americas full employment program.
Fern, your point is to show how the US government is aiding the Israeli government in killing Palestinian civlians??
I suspect we are also arming Ukraine and Taiwan and dozens of other countries "under the table."
This is from the DOD -
https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3590272/dod-completes-annual-department-wide-financial-statement-audit/
"“Auditing the Department’s $3.8 trillion in assets and $4.0 trillion in liabilities is a massive undertaking,” said Michael McCord, the DoD Under Secretary of Defense and Chief Financial Officer, “but the improvements and changes we are making every day as a result of these audits positively affect every soldier, sailor, airman, marine, guardian, and DoD civilian.”
Call me cynical, but it is mostly propaganda or as Dana Carvey would say, "buncha fuckin' bullshit."
Auditing the DOD would be like filling your house with paperclips, straight pins and 4 penny nails and requiring them to be accurately counted each year. No wonder equipment goes missing. The US is the largest arms dealer in the world, so we are the bad guys much of the time.
And then there's the CIA and other secret US sponsored organizations.....
Gary, the point of article was the level of military arms sales from the US to Israel since its invasion of Gaza.
Thanks Fern.
I was trying to remember the name of a movie about US arms dealers and several entries came up. One of them was "100 best movies about arms dealers." I had no idea. The movie I was trying to recall is "Lord of War" with Nicholas Cage, but I was surprised at how many movies there are about arms dealing. The US wasted $300 million per day in Afghanistan and in the end, got nothing out of it. But, I'm sure the arms dealers were sad to see the conflict end.
Hopefully Europe can supply Ukraine the arms they need to beat back the Russian invasion until the do nothing Speaker figures out that he works for the American people not TFFG.
I'm not trying to glorify or condone arms dealers or the actions of the US government, because we all know how many awful acts the government has committed especially beyond our borders.
With respect to Ukraine, that was a war that didn’t need to be fought if only we had said no NATO to Putin. Then deal with the issue after he dies. But no, we only love war. We feast on it generation after generation. There is always a new justified reason. Think Tonkin Gulf. Think Sadamn’s weapons of mass destruction. We the US of A are the original destroyers of life only to rebuild and make pretty.
BS.
Self criticism is healthy.
With respect to Ukraine, that was a war that didn’t need to be fought if only Putin had not invaded Ukraine.
Fern, you always bring the knowledge. Biden should be using any methods at his disposal to stop supplying arms to Israel and increase humanitarian aid to Gaza until there is a cease fire in place and a plan for the day after. Our tax dollars are funding this war on Palestine. We are complicit in the carnage. Israel has responsibility for the reprehensible rampaging revenge it is wrecking on a whole population for the actions of a few. Much like our Iraq invasion.
Heather, thank you for you attention to the life and death aspects of Israel's invasion of Gaza. Protecting the lives and safety of the Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs and all calls upon us to understand the policies, positions and actions being taken in that regard.
The US has a long history of invading countries. Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan.
Each time we invade a country Americans die and arms dealers get rich.
Who doesn't know someone who has PTSD from being sent to one of these places? But I guess it's ok, because of capitalism.
It also has to do with how we glorify war and "serving" in the military which is part of the propaganda and in which a lot of us join. Every time I hear someone thank a soldier for their "service" I wonder who did they think the person served, since I never asked anyone to 'serve' me in that way. The US hasn't fought a "necessary" war since WWII, and even that might have been avoided. But the military industrial complex grinds on. But as long as we accept the propaganda as truth, we help continuing to enrich the death merchants. It is a source of deep frustration that my hard earned tax dollars pay for this immoral activity.
And isn't it the case that Israel doesn't have the cash to pay ....... they pay with the " foreign aid " that they receive from America...In other words, it is a U.S. taxpayer subsidy to the weapons industry.
Your post causes me to breathe deeply and be more relaxed in the process of going towards the trouble, a way of life required by these times. Thank you.
Joan L., HCR's Letters , our assembly and exchanges are an example of the democracy we value and support. Thank you for your response and encouragement.
Thank you for sharing.
Be wary of “intersectionality,” where all the oppressed link arms agains the oppressor. It assumes a linearity that doesn’t exist. People oppressed by one group are, sometimes, oppressors of other groups. For example, in some Arab states, LGBTQ+ choices are punishable by death, while they generally are accepted in Israel.
We wary as well, Stanley Goodman, of applying 'intersectionality' to the points
made by writer Karen Attiiah. I do not see that you have connected your point to those made in her Opinion.
Fern, the post I replied to was very long, so I did not intend to reply to every specific. My broad takeaway was that your post seemed to describe a sisterhood and brotherhood between African Americans and Palestinians, based on the harm both peoples have experienced.
The Opinion, Stanley, was indicating some similar forms of oppression. Is that recognition something to be way of?
Fern, no it’s not necessary to ignore similar forms of oppression. Did I misunderstand your post? I thought it suggested a sisterhood/brotherhood based on the similar forms of oppression.
Thank you.
I recall seeing the news coverage of the march to Selma. And I strongly recall my absolute bewilderment (as a 12 year old) - how could anyone who professed to being a Christian think it was okay to treat other human beings in such a manner, as if they were "less than," as if they weren't human, as if they had no feelings or thoughts or wants or needs. I was horrified and disgusted and learned my first hard lesson about the depths my fellow man could stoop to when faced with anyone who was "other." The dichotomy between what religion preached and what was actually practiced was overwhelming.
It’s always been this for me. Christians must see the imago deo in everyone.
It’s not fair to criticize all southerners as bigots we know this. I’m reminded of the time 20 plus years ago that as I drove back from New Orleans to CT, I stopped and paid homage to the little hamlet of Avalone, Mississippi to visit the Mississippi John Hurt Museum. He was always my musical mentor. After visiting I went to eat lunch at a little luncheonette and as I sat there at the counter, I watched these young staff behind the counter working; both Black and White and being genuinely friendly with each other. It challenged me on my long ago old feelings from a bygone era. Just two weeks ago, that little former home of John Hurt was burned down to the ground. It only took one person not the whole community. However, his granddaughter had complained for a year how the little community graveyard land had been sold and the bones possibly of John Hurt had been disturbed or destroyed. So someone or two got revenge and burned the museum down. Do I want to find the whole community guilty of being racists? It’s easy to do but I will resist. It was the work of those affected by the cemetery or those who just wanted revenge and got it. The home will be rebuilt we will see to that. But this is the complexity of our society. The residual of unfairness and racial disparity. There is history to cemeteries of Black folks being desecrated and this is the most recent in a long line.
Bill, did you watch the 1619 project on Hulu? It was a reminder of who we are as Americans and what we have done to people of color since 1619.
I've been fortunate enough to have visited 49 of the 50 states. I try to have conversations with the natives when I visit somewhere. I truly enjoy talking to most Americans. But when you meet someone one time like that, most people put their best foot forward. And I certainly don't ask questions that I think will piss them off. If I wanted to do that, I would have been a journalist instead of a computer programmer.
I do probe a bit because while I’m not a journalist, I do write and it’s my nature to probe.
I hear you Bill. It does depend on how the conversation is going and how long it is. I haven't started your book yet, but I assume when you talk to people about politics you word your questions in as non-threatening a way as possible.
When I was working in Sioux Falls, SD, I would hang out at a sports bar in the evenings. I was there for five weeks so I met a lot of "one time friends." I did bring up Trump a few times. This was in the Spring of 2016 before Trump had won the Republican nomination and I never thought he would even win the nomination at that point. Anyway, almost everyone I talked to about Trump thought he would be a "decent" President.
Not that it matters, but I was on a team of 29 programmers when I was in Sioux Falls and I was the only one that wasn't born in India. I was in my early 60's at the time and they were all under 40. They treated me with such respect. It was kind of embarrassing. I assume it was cultural rather than personal. Whenever I came into a meeting where they were speaking Hindi they would immediately switch to English. This was different than my experiences working with Indians in the mid-1990's. I'm not sure why they don't speak Hindi around Americans but it seems pretty universal as I have worked with three other mostly Indian teams since then.
Appreviate your intellexual integrity on this minor mistake that his eminent brilliance (i.e., me) did not notice. Poignant essay, Ma'am; heaterfet thanks.
Oh the shame!
lol thank you Heather Cox Richardson. I had counted out the paragraphs to ask if you meant gap over cap on paragraph 18. I can no longer get to you on FB which is disappointing. I enjoyed the comments and discussion for the past 2-3 years. Have a great day…
Instead of writing/saying/thinking/abstracting that "states have made it harder to vote" since Shelby, perhaps we should say that specific, bigoted governors, legislators, politicians and law enforcement leaders of all stripes, and judges--naming names--have made it harder to vote. Let's call these people out. Let's make it personal.
It would be a very long list, and I'm not sure that it would inspire us. Instead, let's follow John Lewis' example and do as he urged us on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965: “Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and redeem the soul of America.” The struggle continues, so it is up to us now to protect the vote, to speak truth to power, and to never give up.
I agree with you!!!John Lewis was a great man in so many ways!!
Gregory, Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton and their friends in the legislature made sure that “Drive through” voting instituted in 2020 in Harris County was outlawed by Senate bill 1 in 2021.
I think they also eliminated boxes where ballots could be deposited in rural counties and limited the time for early voting. What a S-show they have made of Texas (and they and their ilk keep get voted in).
Colette, yes, Governor Abbott limited absentee ballots drop boxes to one per county. Harris County (Houston) had 12 (the population of Harris County is more than that of 22 states) and Travis County had 4. He cut early voting back to the 2 weeks it had been before COVID.
The fact of the matter is that too many Republicans, who rarely have a moral leg to stand on, resort to cheating to advance their agendas. This in itself should show the world that the GOP is in trouble. But as we now live in a world of carnival mirrors, morality holds little sway as the carnival barker DJT represents this castle of sand. The big question is, will it ever collapse? It's doubtful as too many extremists suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome. It's like a really bad sci-fi movie. The 2024 election must be one by voters of conscience, one vote at a time.
Randy, in September, we can urge 5 of our friends to check their voter registration. This gives them plenty of time to get it fixed if they’ve been purged. Then suggest that each of them contact 5 friends to make sure that they’re registered. The week before early voting, do it again in case there’s been a late day purge and urge them to vote during early voting. Again, ask them to contact 5 friends. People respond much better to a friend urging them to vote.
Yes! Practical, doable. Just added a reminder to my calendar for September.
Additional suggestion: check the last day to register to vote in your jurisdiction. Then remind people to check their status 2 weeks or so before that date. This last midterm election, I found that I wasn't on the rolls about a month ahead of the final registration date. No one knew how it had happened (I have a guess, but it involves honest error rather than anything nefarious), but at that point the easiest solution was to re-register.
Abbott is a disaster. It’s as if he will summon from his wheelchair all the malign power he can.
Abbott considers himself a good Christian, but his words and his deeds prove otherwise. There ain’t no place in Heaven where he belongs, and he’ll be crowded with others of his ilk in Hell, preferably node-deep in the mare excrementium.
Damnit - nose-deep. I wish the mobile substack app would let us edit.
The man is a monster.
Colette, he obviously doesn’t care about his fellow man —shipping people in shorts and flip flops to snowy cities.
The man and his criminal attorney general are monsters!
Texas has passed more voter suppression laws than any know or would believe. They mean to stay in power, voters be damned.
Jeri, The Billionaire Bully Who Wants to Turn Texas Into a Christian Theocracy. The state's most powerful figure, Tim Dunn, isn't an elected official. But behind the scenes, the West Texas oilman is lavishly financing what he regards as a holy war against public education, renewable energy, and non-Christians.
Texas Oil tycoons Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks have donated to state politicians and political action committees for decades. Long-time Texas reporter Bud Kennedy breaks down their influence on the far-right movement in Texas.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2022/06/24/texas-donors-with-influence-vpx.cnn
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/24/politics/texas-far-right-politics-invs/index.html
These are the modern day Robber Barons . Once again the battle is the majority of Americans vs a few ultra wealthy who have used their money, power, and greed to amass more money and power at the expense of others. Kleptocracy has been growing for the past 40 years till ow we face possible fascist rule.
Follow the self interest with the money!
Yes. Has been true throughout the history of our species. You’d think we would learn, but cons, flimflamers, deceivers, wolves in sheep’s clothings always have a new angle. This latest version of christianity is particularly repulsive.
Like it or not, specializations produce elites. That includes your medical doctor. Like it or not, politicians are specialists, so far many if not most businessmen or ago heads etc etc. Politics these days is a menu of organized parties. Pick your poison, right! I know my own preferences.
Thank you for that. I have heard of Tim Dunn, but not Farris Wilks. Sort of like Art Pope in NC, who funded the right idiots when McCrory was governor. True, they never need to be on the ballot to destroy our government.
Yes, that is their mantra stated very bluntly: Voters be damned!
Sometimes, it takes having an ugly truth boiled down to its core to hit home. Thank you!
Said out loud, bullies are brazen these days
Notice how voter suppression is always targeted against mostly Black people? Yet eliminating racism is never on the list of America’s priorities.
I remember a time when equal treatment for blacks was. LBJ explained it well when he tried to make societal changes.. It's a real ego boost when you can find somebody to look down on. Don't have the quote handy, but same idea.
Naming names is always a good idea!
Unlike TFFG who says, "everyone is saying," "people tell me" "most of the people crossing the border are criminals" etc.
Even when he put down McConnell's and Cruz's wife it isn't by name, but to him they are mere possessions of their husbands.
TFFG is the master of not naming names, except for his bros Putin, Orban Kim Jon Un and every other dictator. Then the adjectives come out like "brilliant".
Yes Gary, it's really sickening to see and hear. It's obvious that he has mental issues but what's wrong with his supporters? I feel they have been brainwashed. It's like they're in some sort of trance and they're being led to destroy themselves and our country.
Most of the Trump voters I know, and sadly, I know quite a few, are hardworking good people that for some reason believe Trump is someone most of us here realize he isn't.
If any of them try to talk to me about Trump, my usual response is, that we need to agree to not talk politics or something like that. There is nothing I can say to convince them to dislike TFFG, and it would just strain our relationship, so I refuse.
They are the people that used to show up at lynchings, or to scream and throw things at the Black folks just trying to go to school, etc.
They've been hiding, hating, and licking their wounds for years until the Orange Colostomy Bag showed up and freed their true (ugly) selves.
Thank you for the invitation to name names of the many who persist in denying others the precious right to vote. Ready? The many Southern governors and states who delight in cancelling our deeply troubled history of voting rights, “CRT” being only the latest incantation of racial bias. Charlottesville rabble rouser Trump himself, no further explanation required. Key Trump enablers, most prominently: (1) “Big Lie” propagandists The Heritage Foundation/Heritage Action, the Trump-controlled RNC and its Red state counterparts, which led Red states to adopt a new brand of vote-suppressing laws; and most recently, (2) the dark money-funded monolith - The Conservative Partnership Institute, led by former Heritage Foundation executive and former SC legislator Jim Demint. It perniciously launched election-denier Cleta Mitchell’s so-called “Election Integrity”Network, which daily advises Red swing and other states how to disenfranchise voters (including college students and minority opposition voters) by a keystroke, via the debunked Eagle AI(Eye) system (which outrageously has displaced the bipartisan ERIC system of voter validation in election-critical Red states). All of these efforts are fueled by the same bias that Martin Luther King, Jr, gave his life to end. All the more reason, in his memory and for sake of our Republic and civil society, to vote and, importantly, to support grassroots’ efforts to get out the vote. Deny Soul-less Donald Trump shameful efforts to define MLK’s political legacy and to anoint his spiritual successor.
Iowa under the GQP tri-fecta has been clawing back rights of all sorts, and that includes access to voting. It's as discouraging as it is outrageous.
OK. Let's start with John Roberts. Personal enough for you?
Agreed.
Why doesn't the court recuse Thomas. It shouldn't be voluntary.
I remember him during his Senate hearings when Anita Hill was there. Thomas should have been disqualified when he referred to the process as "A circus".
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas told his law clerks in the '90s that he wanted to serve for 43 years to make liberals' lives 'miserable'
He's nothing more than a vengeful d**kwad.
That Thomas sits in Thurgood Marshall's seat is the grossest insult to Marshall's legacy imaginable.
A midget replaced a giant.
Which is putting it mildly
Bob-And called the questioning a “high tech lynching.”
I remember that too. He has proven worthy of every insult I can think of, and I have a spectacular list of invectives.
I remember sitting in my living room here in Columbia South Carolina watching every minute of that hearing, and proclaiming that he would never be seated. He was.
Strom Thurmond leading the way and then Fritz Hollings voted for him. South Carolina once again was at the forefront of American history.
South Carolina is literally a thorn in the side of the United States of America.
Not to mention the Supreme Court. Republicans have effectively shut down the Congress, the President is very limited in what he can do without them, and the only functioning branch of government is the corporate whores on the Supreme Court, busily taking away individual rights.
Shelby made it possible to enact those voting restrictions.
Alright, let's make it personal! But I'm going to include the names of every person who voted for or appointed those "governors, legislators, politicians, and law enforcement leaders of all stripes, and judges" And isn't this exactly what is going on in Israel? Netanyahu was elected by people.
Matt Huffman of the OH GOP legislature, OH Sec of State Frank Larose, and Gov Mike DeWine who disregarded the will of over 70% of Ohio voters in 2018 against gerrymandering, and refused to share drafts or otherwise work with OH Dems on the state district reapportionment committee. 3 different drafts were declared unacceptable by OH Supreme Ct as gerrymandered, and the final draft submitted, an already disqualified "retread" map, was also rejected but submitted too close to allow for revision before the 2022 election. Ohio was forced to vote on unfair, unconstitutional districts because of their disrespect and trickery.
We didn't forget, even though the corrupt OH Statehouse also voted to disallow both student ID and utility bills as voter ID, though these were previously allowed for quite some time. Ohio is awakening and rising, voting down minoritarian rule last August, and voting in a reproductive rights amendment last November. I love purple, especially if my state keeps wearing it. 💜
The legacy of the Roberts Court is a relentless rollback of freedom. And it’s far from done.
“The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” - Fearless Leader
Hopefully when Biden is reelected either Garland or someone with some kahunas will charge Clarence Thomas with income tax evasion for not reporting the write-off of the Crow loan. Talk about having total immunity. Appointment for life as well.
Someone needs to take a page from Grisham's "The Pelican Brief" regarding the Supremes. /S
Speaking of Garland, his dilly dallying in appointing a Special Prosecutor in 2021 has us racing against the clock to bring Trump to trial.
Actually, giving Biden an obvious opportunity to clear the decks and replace Merrick Garland is reason enough to vote Biden into a second term, isn’t it?
Biden should have appointed Sally Yates and can rectify his error after he (hopefully) wins re-election. She's hard-nosed and relentless.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/24/politics/sally-yates-trump-investigations-axe-files/index.html
In retrospect, there are many good choices for AG -- Kamala would have been awesome, but she ended up with a pretty good gig. And Fani Willis is amazing. I'm sure there are many others.
I don't dislike Garland, but he doesn't move very fast on things.
It's hard to know how much of that is trying to make cases airtight. I'm a fan of Jack Smith.
Wonder if Luttig would.
Hmm good question. He certainly dislikes the current Republican members of SCOTUS.
Or "The Republican Brief"
So wish it had been so.
Yes. Women are losing the right to their own body. I’m really afraid they’ll take the rest of our rights too… a different form of slavery…subjected to the whims of sometimes violent men. Remember… it wasn’t that long ago that women had no voice, no freedom and no way to help themselves.
I'm glad that I'm well past childbearing age, but still... Never thought that we'd be threatened by this crap again during my lifetime.
DMS - in my lifetime women were unable to open a credit card account, but a mortgage, etc with a male’s permission or co-sign. I my lifetime a teacher must resign if she marries (and especially if she is pregnant and the pregnancy starts to show). I think we are profitable now, so that’s not likely to recur…. Unless women and stuck being “barefoot and pregnant” and unemployed!
BUY a mortgage …
WITHOUT a man…
(It’s not possible to edit a post on a smartphone)
DMS agree…
That was exactly what I was going to post. Glad I read your message first.
I shudder to imagine what they will do if trump is put back in office. Notice I didn't say elected!
Chief Justice Roberts has a long history of supporting voter suppression! I feel that in his actions he demonstrated that he is against democracy.
The more I understand what Citizens United has done to US the more Roberts’s tenure looks abysmal. Between that and the meddling with the Voting Rights Act for which so many died, he has shown himself a totally unsympathetic human.
Virginia- I call them MAGAnazis because they long to return to the 1960's and before when the white racists in the South could lynch, beat, kick and maim with impunity.
They were Fascists then and they are Fascists today. It make my blood boil to see the MSM call them conservatives.
Virginia, I recall reading sometime (maybe 5 years in to his term as Chief Justice) that he was concerned about how the "Roberts Court" would be judged based on its body of judicial work. I cannot help but thing that what the Roberts Court has done in creating personhood for corporations, dismantling the voting rights act, and overturning the settled law of Roe v. Wade (and I am limiting myself in their horrific decisions) will be judged as the worst SCOTUS in history, should we have a history going forward from the white Christian Nationalist nation they want to create for their oligarchy.
It requires some thought on the ones that were certainly worse for mostly minorities, but Citizens United does seem at least the worst for modern times by having such a negative effect on everyone who doesn't go along with the type of paternalistic rule by unanswerable wealthy interests who can now more easily trample over the rights and opportunities for all of us commoners that have come to cherish them (for ourselves and all others). See https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/supreme-court/13-worst-supreme-court-decisions-of-all-time/
Long story short, it increases inequality, reversing, the progress we have made since our Declaration of Independence set the goals, and the first rough bargaining to get our initial, promising but imperfect, Constitution.
Thanks for the link!
I live every day looking at the “Old Courthouse” in downtown St. Louis where the Dred Scott decision was heard--it is #1 for worst EVER. Yes, the Citizens United decision is the modern equivalent 🤬
Great link, thank you!
I agree Ally. The last thing I want for the US is to be a theocracy. Regular church attendance in New England is now under 30% and in VT and ME under 20%. And I think that's a good thing. For too long non-theists have had to stand at public events while someone says a prayer to their invisible god or say the pledge of allegiance to a piece of cloth. And then we give these churches breaks on their property taxes, etc.
Exactly so!
That's why Scientology chose to become a religion (Church of Scientology), instead of a philosophy like Confucianism, according to one of its former member's opinion. An easy way to become free of taxes. Looking it up, I see it was originally a therapy called Dianetics.
All the people I've met who were knowledgeable about or practicing adherents of Confucian beliefs, insist it is a philosophy, not a religion. I appreciate their acting in accordance with their sincere beliefs, no matter what type of civil government they have to live under. Types of government and dynasty seem to come and go throughout China's history, but Confucianism always seems to be a bedrock of ethics that endures in so many, no matter how hard any try to eliminate it.
Looking it up, I see it was originally a therapy called Dianetics.
I remember that concern of Roberts and wonder if it’s the money his wife collects that binds (or blinds) him to these terrible decisions. He’s a plague, not a cure.
Citizen’s United, ruling that a corporation should be considered a person, is really an astounding act of judicial malpractice, isn’t it? I am not a lawyer, so I can claim naïveté here- how does one twist reality and common sense into such a pretzel? A corporation exists to shield the liability of its members from harm caused by the activities of the corporate entity, doesn’t it?
It creepily interesting how many things that start with the best of intentions, yet go off the rails with the lust for unaccountable power. The most shameful side of the Democratic Party became the prize that would transform the Republican Party, which had it's own shameful side but still could claim the legacy of Abolition, into the demagogic monster it has become today.
A historical feat that has plagued generations. I came of age when LBJ was fighting this battle. I signed on to that Democratic ideal.
LBJ forced the Southern Democrats to rethink their politics. Reagan was the beneficiary of the Southerners renouncing their political affiliation. He pretended to be a devout Christian who supported their racist ideology. It worked.
Ironically, they love them some Trump for most of the same reasons as they loved Reagan even though Trump often disparages Reagan.
Actors, both.
B at best. No oscars or GOATs
Late night infomercials. Is there an award for that?
Reagan was a better actor than I ever gave him credit for. Of course, he had Peggy Noonan for script writer and Michael Deaver for PR. All he had to do was read the teleprompter and hug the flag. Still, he looked presidential. Try as I might, chump NEVER looked presidential. Just a carnival barker in better clothes. Although not much better. That tie should be used to dispatch his evil, ugly excuse for a human.
If my memory serves, I saw Peggy Noonan (I think) on some PBS round table years ago. One of the speakers (I think I recall he was a Rabbi) tried to compare the teachings of Jesus favorably to liberalism, and she completely lost her fecal matter. She shouted him down and would not let him speak. I don't recall her getting stopped.
My laugh for the day. From what I know of the Bible (and it seems quite different from the prosperity crap spewed today), the quotes by Jesus in the gospels would have aligned with Dems way more than Repubs. Jesus pitched the money lenders out of the temple as I recall. Repubs just pick a line or two to use, but don’t actually take to heart the message of love and taking care of thy neighbor. Since it was bastardized by rulers, it has been a useful tool for ruling the fools.
As to Peggy, we know that she has spewed lies with the best of the cretins. She must be orgasmic these days.
He was never a "real" president, but he played one on TV.
Me too! Wholeheartedly and I will not give up!
We may be the ones called to sacrifice as others have who had no idea of the future
Me also! And I’m pushing this aging body out there still to fight.
all about racism, then enlisted with the evangelicals non white x white, evangelicals x secular americans
The more I look at today's SCOTUS the more I'm convinced it is a Thomas court. That he was still there to contribute to the decision on the 14th Amendment despite his wife's active participation in the insurrection says he's running the show. Roberts is just a figurehead.
He's a corporate attorney.
This was particularly beautiful and needed today. Thank you.
The final statement references a phrase that can also be applied to democracy, a "relay race" and we must successfully pass the baton on all government levels to maintain our freedoms.
The Republican legal team that stole the White House from Al Gore included then-little-known lawyers John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, and Brett Kavanaugh. Maybe you’ve heard of them?
And Rehnquist, the Chief Justice who presided over Bush v. Gore in December 2000, campaigned for Goldwater in 1964. He gave literacy tests at predominantly minority districts and sent people home. It was called Operation Eagle Eye. From Wikipedia:
"Future Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist was a prominent figure during the years of Operation Eagle Eye. He was a poll watcher with direct involvement in challenging voters at the polls as early as 1958.[3] Years later during Rehnquist's Senate confirmation hearings to become Chief Justice, a US District Attorney in Phoenix at the time testified that he had seen Rehnquist challenging black and hispanic voters at precincts in South Phoenix.[5] Rehnquist denied any such involvement.[4] However, his association with OEE remained a stain on his reputation despite being confirmed as Chief Justice in 1986.[4]
Wow! I did not realize he did this! But it makes perfect sense given his history. A louse in a robe. Actually, the 6 justices are too.
And they are theocrats following the doctrine of the Catholic Church instead of the US Constitution.
Good Lord, had no idea. The SC had it’s cretins long before the current crop…
And today election-denier Cleta Mitchell sells Red States on the debunked voter validation system called: Eagle AI (Eye), an initiative to disenfranchise college students, minorities and other likely opposition voters. History rhymes, as HCR says, sometimes in ways dissonant to the harmony of our Republic.
It makes me weep.
I feel like the victim of a long con. Here’s something from Noah Feldman author of ‘Takeover” great book about SCOTUS.
“Beginning in the early 1980s, when it was not exactly ‘cool’ to be a conservative law student, a small group of students started a club, named in honor of The Federalist Papers, where they could safely discuss their right-of-center views. They asked Antonin Scalia, then a professor at University of Chicago, to be their advisor and got to work advocating for an originalist interpretation of the Constitution. Over the past 40 years, members of the organization have included Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Ted Cruz, Orrin Hatch, and Josh Hawley, among many other prominent politicians, public servants, and elected officials.”
Revolting.
“Originalist is just another way of saying a return to the past is the direction we want to go. Where white men rule. Damn, Ginni must have painted Clarence white, or bleached him a bit. Or she just made him see the rewards of her convictions.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for this list. I blame our current gun situation on Scalia
as much as the NRA. As for the rest of the list: names that should be remembered in infamy.
Should have been called "The Fascist Friends". That's pretty much what they've all turned out to be.
I look have looked upon them as the "Con-Federalist Society" for many years for their concern for property rights over human rights, much like the many southern Democrats slaveholder mentality types that became Republicans as the Southern Strategy welcomed them after they felt LBJ abandoned them.
Cruz and Harley…the Despicables!
"I feel like the victim of a long con." Ditto
Well I say, Victim No More!
the ideological roots run deep. by their names you shall know them.
Alexandra Sokoloff,
These facts also make me weep but the facts also push me to vote for a country for each and all of us.
Because of people of color, we are who we are as a nation! There are those persons of color who were stolen from their homes and lives and language and customs to labor for those who "owned " them. They were given "the left overs" from the animals and they grew strong .... they grew wise in learning the ways of plants and animals and birds and how to survive with little to nothing and they stood together!
People of color have given us music...music from deep in their souls that only could be born within them.
Some have taken on faith and made it theirs with prayers and music that cannot be duplicated by the white man...no matter how we may try.
We have the Chinese people who came to us on the west coast and impressed those who built our railroad systems, using them as laborers, amazed by their power and strength and tenacity.
American Indians ...inspite of our brutal inhumane treatment....gave us a special code to send messages to our troops which helped us win in war.
We are America and that means all of us. When we act as if we are above another human being because of the color of our skin, I want to know why. Is it fear? Is it guilt for past or present sins? Are we envious ?
As a Christian, I want to say that maybe the "evil one" wants us to fail...to be jealous and envious of one another...wants us to lust for power without responsibility.....wants us to be so self-consumed....major on the minors....that we miss out on who we are...and who we have been called out to be! TOGETHER!!!
President Joe Biden has told us who we are..."We are the United States of America and there is NOTHING we can not accomplish IF we work TOGETHER!!!!
When I listen to my favor news from many who are invited to contribute and attempt to explain the chaos along with their concerns....I am also encouraged that there are still those among us of all colors who love this country and what we stand for.
I am also reminded that we have strong enemies who would like to take away the precious freedoms we of all colors , have fought for. We each and all...no one is too small or old or young...etc. to stand up for the best that our country represents....BUT WE MUST STAND!!! We must NOT allow ourselves to be stolen by a few coins .....WE MUST WAKE UP AND ACT ...NOW!!!!
Emily-thanks for your comment about the issue in HCR’s letter today. I find it interesting that most of the comments are about things other than racism (e.g. scotus, wars, how nice southern whites are etc.). It’s so hard for most White people to see racism for what it is-very few want to do something about it. White supremacy is insidious.
Brava Emily. Beautifully strongly said.
Thank you so much following HCR’s detailed post today. I wonder how to we might drain testosterone from mostly white men who think & act as if only they can dominate? Jail’s too lenient for them.
If you learn the truth about white supremacy in America you’ll see that White women are complicit too-even when they couldn’t vote they were exclusionary and promoted white supremacy. Just learn about the Daughters of the Republic or white protestors in Boston when school desegregation was a thing.
Emily, a barnburner for sure, there've been quite a few today.
I do too, Alexandra.
Me toooooo!
I hope our grassroots efforts lead to a Blue Wave in November. Expand the Court! History will not be kind to the Roberts Kangaroo Court and the malignancy of their decisions.
Expanding the court is not the answer. There should be term limits on the Supreme court. A lifetime appointment is the killer.
I agree. Two can play the expand-the-court game.
But can you go beyond 12? 12 Circuits, 12 Supreme Court positions. Or are you talking districts? That would get totally out of line! 89 in the US, 94 if you count territories.
The Dems can expand to 13, say, but I don't know what would stop Republicans, if and when they get power again, from going to 17 or 21 or whatever they wanted.
Go back to a bipartisan concurrence of justice nominees in the Senate. Simple majorities are proving to be extreme extreme in nature
The expansion of the court should reflect that we have 13 Appellate Courts; with only 9 Justices, that means 4 need to oversee two courts. I believe that 13 would be a justifiable number; I'd also suggest a maximum 10 year term for a Chief Justice, and a 20 year limit of service.
Agreed Angelica. Lifetime appointments does not fit for the Supreme Court. Times change and SCOTUS needs to change too.
Agreed. 5, 0 yrs max, and... is there something to be done about the inherent bias of legal organizations which do the choosing. Eg we have the Federalist Society, then the American Bar Association. How polarizing is that?
Agreed. But who wants to have to wait for history.
I’m old enough to remember Selma. I’ve walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. I served in Vietnam. And I vote. I know which side of history I will be on when the stories of this moment are written.
Thank you for your presence. I marched in Medford, Oregon's first (and as far as I know, only) demonstration against the Vietnam war at age 9.
I was in such marches about age 20. I understood why we fought we WWII. I still cannot grasp why we traded so many lives and so much social discord for whatever there was to gain there. I think it figured in the social discord we suffer with today.
Did you watch the film Selma, made several years ago? What'd you think of it, if so? I found it compelling, having no personal experience in my neck of the woods.
Back when TV was transitioning to digital, there was a "documentary" channel that just ran documentary video continuously as a sub-channel of a local PBS station. They ran several Civil Rights era documentaries and I was taken aback to take another look at events I'd seen "live" or close to it, when they were occurring. THAT was a part of America? I knew it, but it was something else to go back and look at it.
We have A LOT of work to do.
We are always on the leading edge of history.
But often we are lulled into thinking that the enemy is still our friend, when that was never true. Or the few friends were overwhelmed by a pile of green. Green that signified power, as it always has…
I suspect had Halfwit Hitler not grown up on a mountain of money, he would just be considered a self-serving, garden variety jerk. Maybe not even such a self-serving garden variety jerk.
so true
Until we are not.
There you go! (I didn’t know this.)
Really? I did not know that.
I never knew that. What a team!
I remember the Brooks Brother's Riot and my disappointment with a relative who was a poll worker a little too happy to not let a full recount be allowed. The 537 vote margin of "recognized" victory (without fuller recount) happened to be the same number as Electoral votes cast (one abstained if I recall correctly).
So this has been in the works for a long, long time. And apparently, they have been rewarded. They are just the spawn of evil, pretending to be good. Well, not really pretending to be good anymore.
Thanks! We can't be reminded too often of the ongoing struggle for voting rights. I remain in awe and deeply appreciative of the many ordinary citizens, both black and white, who literally risked their lives marching from Selma (and in many other voter rights actions). Their self-sacrifice and bravery has been essential in marching all of us to a better Democracy. We owe it to them to continue their struggle. Lots more to be accomplished.
Steve, you've voiced what I always think when I teach Ava DuVernay's SELMA, a brilliant depiction of this turning point in history. The bravery and commitment of the organizers and marchers is awesome—the very best of human expression. I know it was a coalescing of factors that made this march so powerful but I so admire the filmmakers' choice to present MLK as a great general, conducting a war campaign against forces of evil, and inspiring his army to march into battle despite the personal cost. I feel we are so hungry for that kind of leadership—but I remind myself that MY personal commitment, and all of ours, is just as important.
Alexandra -- Teaching is an. essential part of "carrying on" so I applaud you for teaching anything Ava DuVernay has created! -- Everyone in his/her/their own way contributes to educating each other as well as our future generations. HCR provides us with a daily example of the power of information, context, and knowledge. I can't aspire to be as effective an educator as HCR in promoting Democracy, but her example really does inspire me.
I've seen that film very recently. I agree with you absolutely.
Why is the right to vote, the share of democratic power and responsibility, divided among all citizens, one the most unalienable rights of all? why is it not a crime in the eyes of the public whenever someone, though careless error or malice, is denied that right? What do societies look like without a universal vote?
I'll assume that these rhetorical questions are meant to emphasize the point that representative democracy (imperfect in the US right now!) is SUPPOSED to give a voice to the less powerful in proportion to their number. -- Of course, one's voice in a democracy is amplified if one has the $$ to pay for that amplification. Exactly why we need to relegate Citizen's United to the dustbin of history.
Yes! To the dustbin of history with Citizens United asap and the shaming of John Roberts.
We pretty much universally acknowledge that how much money a candidate or proposal collects in a major determinant of electoral and legislative success. Certainly MSM causally reports that to be the case, and in a past presidential primary my local paper even had a front page chart of how much $$$ each candidate had collected. How is this NOT a serious problem for democracy and equal human rights? Yes, money is how we get things done is this society. Motor vehicles are how we long-distance travel. But we don't allow 100MPH though a school zone. There is such a thing as too much. Unlimited money for affecting politcal outcomes is de facto bribery, and some of the givers and receivers make no secret of it; and they would not pay so much if it did not bring the desired result.
"At the resort, Thomas gave a speech at an off-the-record conservative conference. He found himself seated next to a Republican member of Congress on the flight home. The two men talked, and the lawmaker left the conversation worried that Thomas might resign. Congress should give Supreme Court justices a pay raise, Thomas told him. If lawmakers didn’t act, “one or more justices will leave soon” — maybe in the next year. "
(...)
"At the time, Thomas’ salary was $173,600, equivalent to over $300,000 today. But he was one of the least wealthy members of the court, and on multiple occasions in that period, he pushed for ways to make more money. In other private conversations, Thomas repeatedly talked about removing a ban on justices giving paid speeches."
(...)
"Congress never lifted the ban on speaking fees or gave the justices a major raise. But in the years that followed, as ProPublica has reported, Thomas accepted a stream of gifts from friends and acquaintances that appears to be unparalleled in the modern history of the Supreme Court."
https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-money-complaints-sparked-resignation-fears-scotus
Or sham elections. As Stalin reportedly said, it matters not who votes, it matters who counts the votes…
Or attacking the results if you didn't win.
I had forgotten those murdered in the time of this struggle. Thanks to HCR for giving us their names again.
Wow I got here early tonight. Your ears should have been today professor I shared with friends how your daily letters brought insight, historical perspective and glimmers of our best America and lasting hope the the best inclination for a free and equal land of opportunity exists in our America. Thank you again for those images tonight. I was lucky to grow up in a working class family that shared those dreams all my life. I was 10 years old in 1965 when these events happened and grew into teenager through such turbulent times of expansion and development of equity and opportunity in our country. Now more than ever is our time to fight for them. A retired marine shared the other day his perspective that we fight with guns to protect our American values and and I told him I was retired AFNG and we didn’t need guns to fight we need the power of education and communication and the right to be represented fairly in our elections to protect our American values . I am educating and communicating and will be committed to getting out the vote this year. Thank goodness for this community you have inspired I have hope in these challenging times.
The retired marine must think that guns are our American values. Hence the problem. Guns are not on my list of values, no way, no where
Bless you, Ellen!!
Thank you Dr. Richardson, your letter brings back memories of watching those events you described, on the television. The images of the brutality were so powerful , it brought my mother to tears. Although I was a kid in high school I knew that something big was sweeping the land. I was proud to live in a country where the government would not allow such injustice. And now I think many of us are ashamed to have seen the SCOTUS undo the good that was done by the voting rights act. We cannot allow things to move backward anymore.
Is your name a reference to the Dead’s song?
Yes that and Roe v. Wade.
I never would have connected it to that decision that should never have been overturned. Great comparison, just listened to the song, my favorite band!!
Lots of folks have to use pseudonyms, because of how toxic political discourse has become and it can lead to threats and sometimes violence.
A Dead Head are you? A great band that had a cult like following. Roe v. Wade was finally overturned and now the MAGA GOP will have to live with it in November. They deserve whatever destruction happens to their “party”. It was an outrageous decision.
Jack, I recognized your "nom de plume" (or "nom de guerre") months -- years? -- ago. I want to brag -- my first Dead show was in San Francisco in the summer of '68 -- but I was in the Army at that time. I was extremely impressed by how I was treated by the people at the show -- it was obvious that I was a GI, but the love was in the air, and I couldn't avoid falling in love with the band and the music, and the scene. I attended several shows around the country over the years. Whenever they played at Alpine Valley (near Milwaukee) I tried to attend every show. I am grateful for the experience.
Such a nice story. And what a shame how the war vets were treated by some when they came home. Their country called and they answered, they did not choose their mission, the commanders and the politicians did that. It was unfair to place the blame on the vets. I saw several Dead concerts and the experience was like no other. They carried the Summer of Love with them wherever they roamed. I bought a Dead video, “ So Far” and played it over and over. They are missed by many.
I just returned from a weekend with the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery that included marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge last Sunday in commemoration of the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. We also visited the Legacy Museum. In the Legacy Museum there is a table listing all the opinions by the Supreme Court related to civil rights. It was very sobering to discover that a significant majority of these opinions impeded civil rights. I had thought of the current Supreme Court as a despicable aberration of the institution, but now realize that it is actually a return to its tradition of being an agent to keep Blacks and other minorities down. In "Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America," Nancy MacLean reports how the radical right realized that in order for a minority to take over America, they had to take over the judicial system. They have the upper hand now and will probably accomplish this take-over if Trump is elected. Trump and his MAGA cult must be stopped!
Perhaps this would be a good time and place to remind about the Powell Memorandum.
Lewis F. Powell Jr. served on the US Supreme Court from 1972 to 1987. His Memo urged American businesses to work hard to make sure that the government should serve the interests of business, instead of the people.
In this Wikipedia article, scroll down to the section titled Powell Memorandum, 1971.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_F._Powell_Jr.
This link is on Rhode Island Senator Whitehouse's web page. It contains much of the same information (and the page is done in a gray low-contrast font which makes it more difficult for old eyes to read easily).
https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/speeches/the-scheme-1-the-powell-memo/#:~:text=Powell%20recommended%20a%20propaganda%20effort,%2C%20political%20science%2C%20and%20sociology.
Lewis Powell was the only SCOTUS judge I met. It was before he went to SCOTUS and at dinner at his home in Virginia. He was a rude cold fish. Thank you for more details of his role on the court.
Have you read his "confidential memo"? There was a reason he wanted it confidential and we see the results now.
I have had a very adversarial attitude toward Justice Powell ever since I read about his memorandum many years ago. But after reading the Wikipedia article yesterday I found my attitude relaxing a bit, perhaps in the "Old School" tradition that many of us wish would make a comeback. Apparently he employed more gay people as clerks than any Justice before or since. He is quoted in the article, saying that upon reflection he might have made a mistake in his ruling on a case involving illicit sex between consenting adults of the same gender. From that we might be able to infer that he was not hopelessly hidebound. I always try to find some good in a person -- but I have struck out thus far on the orange menace. I may find something good to say after his bio lists a second date after his date of birth.
Greed is good, made into America’s core value
I wonder if we could apply the concept of greed to things like regenerative agriculture, and sustainable energy, and detoxification of the natural environment. As in: I want more more more, I just can't get enough of that stuff!
How about "I'm greedy for green"?
A paradigm shift for sure. I approve as environmental and wildlife were causes that got most of my donations - before the republican insanity. I really resent that these things have to take back seat to surviving the political idiocy.
It's like the Rs are a theater company putting on a farce, and they have been rehearsing and performing for so long that they have lost sight of the fact that it's just theater, and they have real lives to go back to.
Outdoes Jonathan Swift, except he was a genius. These fools are just fools
As i just commented earlier, minority rule is a "time honored" tradition.
If there is justice in this world, we will be able to inflict majority rule on that small minority who wish to inflict their will on the majority of us.
We can only hope all those new judges are grounded in the law and in facts, not alternative facts. I can live with conservatives but not extreme radicals.
Michael-thanks for this post. All Americans need to recognize how white supremacy has been (is being) enshrined in America since the beginning.
You also have to remember that rule by privileged minorities is a tradition as deep as civilization itself, in fact "civilization" however constituted, is the result of organized minorities. $$$, arms, religious sanction.
On January 6, as I watched the insurrectionary rampage at the Capitol, I thought of scenes about an isolated, armed individual in the documentary, Home of the Brave.
Documentary on the civil rights activist, Viola Liuzzo, who was murdered in 1965 as she campaigned for black suffrage in Selma, Alabama, and its effect on her family. https://www.amazon.com/Home-Brave-Stockard-Channing/dp/B00CMUU100
There's also an excellent biography of Viola Liuzzo, From Selma to Sorrow by Mary Stanton. I saw it on Amazon last week.Had J. Edgar Hoover not planted a spy in the Klan, she would have never been shot.
Old J Ed’s Rep has taken more than one hit. When I was younger, he was the undisputed hero. Thank you for that. I didn’t remember her name.
I was in a writers' group with Mary Stanton while she was researching that book. Barely anyone knew who Viola Liuzzo was. The FBI also spread rumors about her underwear after she was dead, and her family was impacted for years.
I do not recall her name. Hoover's despotic behavior is no secret but not, I think, widely known. His behavior was criminal. I think that those who commit crimes having accepted an official role as protector commit a double crime against society , but with the exception of traitorous spies (and even then) their power tend to shield them the more highly placed their responsibility by a government that would rather cover up than be embarrassed. That, of course only compounds the crime. I think it has a lot to do with why much that is broken in our system of justice seems to stay that way.
When an airliner crashes, the wreckage is investigated with a fine tooth comb and a plan put in place to reduce the chance of a reoccurrance. When the right to justice crashes, lives can be profoundly harmed and even ended, but there is an impulse to cover up and smooth over, with predictable results.
Good analogy. My psychologist friend is a master diagnostician. Her code is find out what the cause is before you try to fix it. It matters.
It applies to repairing anything; obviously including human relationships. Cruising though space-time with poor visibility, bad charts and whacked instruments, odds are way up of encountering something very nasty.
about her underwear.. Surely not. The J Edgar crew knew no bounds. I remember when they produced a "pic" of MLK and a known communist or two. I was old enough to be the skeptic that I have remained... I will have to tell my grand girls this story... They need to know so much...
Thank you as always Heather.
When Trump speaks of "Making America Great Again" it is simply code to a return to the times in which only a white man had a vote. It is a time before the national voting rights act. It is an America that is divided and readily conquered by racists like County Sheriff James Clark. It is a time in which racist white police departments could kill Jimmie Lee Jackson, George Floyd, or Philando Castile with the same immunity Trump desires for the multitude of his crimes against the United States. It is a United States where fear is omnipresent and hate is bubbling under the surface and in the shadows waiting to break out in a gun violence fueled riot. It is a "United" States where women are regulated and business is not.
Professor Richardson's LFAA's are a stark reminder that if we fail to unite and express our vision for an America shifting toward equity, justice, and democracy at the ballot box, future generations may only earn back human rights, women's rights, voting rights, LGBTQ rights, in a river of their own blood. We will doom our children and grandchildren to violence, fear, and hatred -and an America too weak and divided to be a stable trading, diplomatic, or defense ally of any other nation. And Trump's vision for Mexico paying for Trump's monument to willful ignorance, hate, and fear will be fulfilled -Mexico will construct a wall to prevent caravans of Americans seeking healthcare, reproductive freedom, and fundamental rights will be heading south. And quietly unnoticed by the willfully ignorant hate-fueled Putin/Trump/MAGA party will be the construction of Canada's wall, precluding caravans of Americans seeking healthcare, reproductive freedom, and fundamental rights flowing to the north.
As US Senator Cory Booker once said "Indivisible we are invincible." As independents, democrats, moderates, liberals, progressives, progressive-liberals, liberal-progressives ... let's be indivisible and bend the long arc of the universe back toward justice.
Agreed. Indivisible when it comes to liberty and justice for all. For real.
You can check and if necessary change your voter registration at USA.gov especially if you’re in a red state that has changed its voter laws. Be sure your name, address and signature correspond with those on your driver’s license or ID. You might want also to ask others to check theirs there or even to register if they haven’t yet, especially young people who will be able to vote by November. Save the site and pass it on later when we get closer to the election. If you’re a teacher, getting people to register or to see how might be a very good lesson. Another useful site is Vote411.org which is hosted by The League of Women Voters.
Good advice.
Thank you for the reference. Hope to find there the list of judges for Chicago.
We need someone with great moral authority and a compelling speaking style like Dr. King today. I’d love to see him take on Trump and his followers!
We need more than one. One can be thwarted, as we have seen.
We need hundreds, thousands -- millions? All making the same arguments, with easily-remembered catch phrases that even small children can remember and say out loud.
We know what's right. We who tend to support the Democratic Party know the difference between right and wrong. Voter suppression is wrong, it's not the American way. We don't want to make it more difficult to vote, we want to make it easier to vote, and we wish every citizen would vote.
In the long term, we want to do a better job of educating -- and protecting -- our children, and encourage them to follow their dreams, which one would think is the very essence of the American way. We want everyone, every little kid, no matter how poor or difficult their young life is, to grow up and know the real difference between right and wrong, and to know how to be kind and generous toward other people, even to strangers.
I want to hear President Biden say "When we Americans work together there is nothing we can't accomplish." I love it every time he says that. I believe it's true. We can build a better society to live in. The richest nation on Earth should be able to lift all of our fellow citizens up out of poverty. It will be an investment in our future, a better world for all.
Be sure to tune in to hear President Biden's State of the Union address.
Agreed. The middle class should not be shrinking. Past time for a public performance review of "Reaganomics".
When asked to describe the State of the Union Mike Johnson replied "in decline". Of course this is not so, but any "decline" is due to Mike Johnson refusing to take up aid to Ukraine and the Senate border bill!
We tuned in to hear the SOTU address this evening. In my three quarters of a century I think it was the best State of the Union address ever. The President is a good Democrat.
Only one Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was given to us unfortunately.
And yet he could have accomplished little without ardent collaborators. That said, that level of leadership is an extension of a very coherent and inspired person.
A majority of us voters will suffice, right?
The feelings of white supremacy and voter suppression have been energized in recent years! Seems an entire segment of our population leans in that direction! “We’re not gonna let them take over our country” is a familiar sentiment among them! Evidently, white supremacy didn’t go away, it was just smoldering beneath the surface!
Mr. Wilkins, back in the year 2009 i made the mistake of thinking that white supremacy was dead and gone, and remained confident throughout President Obama's 2 terms that i was correct in assuming that, but my gosh i found out just how wrong i was when the criminal ,corrupt con man DJT took over in 2017 and the riot in Charlottesville, VA happened. Just as exactly as you stated, white supremacy didn't go away, it was indeed just smoldering beneath the surface! DJT is a disgusting, despicable, evil, racist, embarrassment to our once great nation! In all of my life, i have never despised a human being any more than i have DJT. He is a total disgrace!
I never paid any attention to DJT until his colors were vividly shown by his treatment of the Central Park 5, then again when his treatment of women was exposed.
He’s lower than than the dirt under my shoe.
I actually thought it was a ridiculous joke when he announced his run for President in 2015. I honestly thought there was no way the unqualified cretin could win an election here, but to my shock, the despicable SOB won, (with Putin's help). I was utterly shocked and bitterly outraged when that happened.
As far as i am concerned, he is lower than the dog excrement i stepped in my yard a few days ago. I can't stand the site of him, or hear his crackly voice when he speaks. I wish he would do all of us a favor and DROP DEAD!
His treatment of women is, in my opinion, is his worst trait of them all, and i am dumfounded that any woman would vote for that horrible monster or even think about voting for him.
White supremacy has never been under the surface for Black people. It’s been evident and literally deadly for more than 240 years…
Remember, the "Tea Party" most embodied what White, often Fundamentalist America stood against with Obama: black, liberal / "socialist" The Affordable Care Act set off a movement of intractable opposition in the GOP, under Trump, the amoral opportunist, the transformation has reached a new height. 2024 has almost become the new armageddon, thanks to fundamentalist apocalyptic believers.
Unfortunately armageddon, is what the fundamentalist apocalyptic believers want…..
i see you got my point.
Remember well!
Before that it was the Moral (really, Amoral) Majority.
Gerry Falwell & Co.... for sure!
Trump is truly a cult leader who opened the Pandora’s Box containing age old racism! He used it as a tool to enhance his political ambitions! It’s a really sad chapter in US History! Thank goodness for those of us who can see through his facade!
“The South’s greatest accomplishment was convincing the North that it lost the Civil War.” (Not sure who said this, but it’s true.)
I'd reword that. Those in the North have no delusions about the South. The South's greatest accomplishment was the first losing generation of Southerners passing on to each successive Southern generation the FALSE myth their cause was noble, their character rightness and their prior lives glorious, as opposed to being poor stooges used by the upper class in a losing insurrection to protect slavery.
Read Heather's How the South Won the Civil War.
In some parts of the country it wasn't "beneath the surface" but right there in plain view.
We can see from recent votes for the Rs that racism is in plain view and in every state!
In plain view at the southern border (all those brown people) and in their hatred of Kamala Harris. The idea of her being President terrifies them and Trump doesn't. Shows how screwed up they are.
Agree! It’s part of the mental health crisis in the US today! Really “sick” people with no obvious cure!
Beautifully written (as always). Thank you for the important reminder of a critical part of our history.