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Investigation

Dusty Leave a comment

There should be an investigation.

Sorry: I assume that I don’t need to give any more explanation than that of my topic here; but in truth, there are several things happening right now that could lead me to call for an investigation, so I should certainly give my audience a little more than that.

There should be an investigation into the accusation of sexual assault made against Brett Kavanaugh.

There. Is that clear enough? Mmm, perhaps not; I know this story has exploded into unavoidability, but I also know that many of my fellow citizens, and many interested parties around the world, make a point of staying away from the mass media and the political news cycles; those people may need more information. I don’t expect that any of them read this blog – not sure that anyone will read this blog once they have realized what my subject is – but in case they do, I should explain.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh, currently an appellate judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Washington D.C. District, has been nominated by President Trump for the seat on the U.S. Supreme Court vacated by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. Judge Kavanaugh is on the fast track to confirmation, partly because he’s a fine conservative judge with excellent experience and credentials, and therefore a good choice for the seat (if you don’t mind the fact that he’s a perfect fit for the mold of Republican Honky, having grown up wealthy and privileged and white, attending private schools and Yale, working for the Bush White House, et cetera, et cetera. He’s even married with two children whom he coaches in softball, for God’s sake. He’s a Republican Ken doll. Does that make him a good or bad choice for the Supreme Court? Honestly, I want to help my party stop playing identity politics, because identity politics are bullshit, and so I’m going to say we should let Judge Kavanaugh’s stereotypical markers go, and focus on his actual record of words and deeds), and partly because the Republican-controlled Senate wants to fill Justice Kennedy’s seat before the November elections, when the Democrats may win control of the Senate, and may then cast out any Republican judicial nominations while chanting “Merrick Garland! Merrick Garland!”

I have to say: I had this splendid and insane idea. What if the Democrats, should they win the elections in November and take control of Congress, could call Merrick Garland for a hearing, and then vote him into Kennedy’s seat? I mean, he was nominated for the Supreme Court by a President, and he wasn’t voted down by the Senate, simply never given a chance to be considered. Could they go back and pull his nomination out of the cold case files, so to speak, dust him off and put him through the process now?

The answer is no, sadly. His nomination officially expired when the 114th Congress closed in January of 2017. Too bad. Think how sweet that would have felt. It might even have precipitated the second civil war, and about time, I say. I don’t mean that.

Anyway. Judge Kavanaugh was going forward with his successful bid to become an entrenched 30-year bastion of conservatism, when suddenly the car went off the road and crashed down a hillside. It is currently flying, in super slow motion, over a cliff’s edge; it is not clear yet whether it will flip over, smash into the ground and explode in red-white-and-blue flames, or if it will glide perfectly onto another roadway on the other side of the narrow chasm it may currently be flying over. That is to say: Kavanaugh’s nomination has suddenly gone awry, but it may still straighten out and land him in a seat at the Supreme Court.

The reason the Kavanaugh car went off the road is a woman named Christine Blasey-Ford, Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford, who has stated publicly that, when she was a teenager known simply as Christine Blasey, she was assaulted at a party by a drunken 17-year-old boy who pushed her down, lay on top of her, groped her and kissed her, tried to take her clothing off, and when she tried to scream for help, he put his hand over her mouth to silence her. That drunken assault was committed, according to Dr. Ford, by Brett Kavanaugh.

Okay. Cue outrage. Cue insanity. Cue tens of millions of people all saying, “Oh, shit.” I know I certainly did, several times, when I first heard this story after it broke. But after the outrage and insanity and the Oh-Shits have passed, we now have to deal with this situation. And the question is, what do we do?

It’s not fair to treat this as a special case because of the political ramifications. If Dr. Ford’s story is true, then she was attacked by a drunken savage, who may quite possibly have raped her had his equally drunken buddy, a man named Mark Judge, not jumped laughingly atop the two while they struggled on the bed, knocking all three to the floor and enabling the young woman to get away. (I have to say, though maybe I shouldn’t, but I have to: that’s the part that makes me think Dr. Ford’s story might be true exactly as she said it. That is not the kind of act someone would make up, because it’s so absurd, so entirely dumb; it turns an attempted rape into a bad Three Stooges skit. It makes the rape attempt seem less serious, which would undercut the narrative if Dr. Ford wanted to invent an attack to use as a weapon. But it is also clearly something that a drunk-ass teenaged boy would do. I also think it is something that a guy would do if he thought his buddy was taking a joke too far, and he suddenly got disturbed that maybe this wasn’t a joke, to his buddy: according to the story Dr. Ford recounted, Mark Judge was laughing wildly the whole time, and he jumped on top of them twice, only knocking them off the bed the second time. I can quite easily see that young man doing that intentionally to make Kavanaugh stop, maybe after seeing Kavanaugh do something that wasn’t playful and funny in that Ha-ha-we’re-drunk-guys-assaulting-a-girl-but-not-really kind of jokey way. Maybe putting his hand over her mouth after she screamed? However: I also have to note that there is no indication other than Dr. Ford’s testimony that the two guys who carried out this, to me, realistic-sounding attack, were actually Brett Kavanaugh and Mark Judge. So I believe the event happened. I do not know for certain if Kavanaugh was the one who did it. That depends on whether we believe Dr. Ford. Is it believable that she would forget who did this to her? It is not; trauma creates strong memories, and she knew both boys’ identities at the time. Is it possible, since memory is often deceptive, that she has mixed up the identities of her attackers in the intervening years? It is possible, and it is also possible that Dr. Ford is lying intentionally. So I can’t be sure; there is a reasonable doubt. Forgive the ridiculously long aside.) Whether that savage would-be rapist is now a judge, or nominated for the Supreme Court, or if he was just some dude who drove a bus or sold insurance or ran a car wash would make no difference. Dr. Ford’s account should be considered carefully, and the reasonable next steps should be taken. We are well past the statute of limitations, so there cannot be any criminal or civil action taken against Dr. Ford’s attacker; but the purpose of acting on an accusation of assault shouldn’t be for the sake of punishing the attacker: it should be for the sake of trying to make things right, however that can be done. The truth is, of course, it can’t be made right, because Dr. Ford can never be relieved of the burden of what happened to her; but that makes it more important, not less, that we try.

At the same time, this case can’t be separated from the politics. The potential stakes have been raised, all the way to the highest court in the land. This may be important not only for those involved, but for the entire country. It doesn’t change the situation, but it changes the extent of it, and therefore changes the extent of our response to it. Howsoever far we might be willing to go for the sake of doing what is right for Dr. Ford – and I’d argue that that should be pretty goddamn far – we have to be willing to go much, much farther to do what is right for all of us.

So what is the right thing to do? Let me start by stating, as I think I’ve been doing all along, the obvious: we should not be playing partisan politics with this. And as is always the case, neither party is innocent of that crime, the crime of exploiting intense suffering, perhaps even causing intense suffering, for the sake of partisan political gain. It is utterly appalling that the Democrats, specifically Senator Dianne Feinstein, sat on the accusation for two months, revealing it only when it was the last bullet in the gun and could be used to delay Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination as long as possible. It seems likely that the political calculus here also sought to make it impossible for President Trump to nominate a replacement in time to get someone confirmed before the midterms if he and the GOP should decide to abandon Kavanaugh, which means they have little choice politically but to stick with the man accused of sexual assault, which will surely be used to make much political hay regarding the President and the rest of the privileged white dudes in power and their tendency towards sexual violence and misconduct. That’s a disgusting abuse of Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh and the entire political system. (Honestly, if I may be allowed another aside, I have to say that I think President Trump did nothing wrong here. I’m already seeing memes associating Trump with all of the sexual misconduct in the GOP, and though he certainly bears responsibility for his own alleged crimes and multiple verified instances of misogyny and sexual misconduct, he didn’t make the Republicans, nor the Democrats who have also committed crimes and sexual misconduct, into the scum that they are. He could not possibly have known about this assault accusation against Judge Kavanaugh, and so he should not be taken to task for picking a man who had this hidden in his past; it was hidden too well and too deep for anyone to know, which is why Judge Kavanaugh has the title and the position that he does. I saw Trevor Noah of the Daily Show making a comment about how Trump seems drawn to other sexual assaulters, and while that may be true, it also hides the truth that people who commit sexual assault are not always, not even often, clearly criminal in their demeanor. There is nothing to show, on the outside, that someone may have committed sexual assault in their past. The nicest guy you know might be guilty of sexual assault, and still seem like the nicest guy you know. There’s no particular reason to think that Trump could sense if Kavanaugh is guilty of this, and he couldn’t have known that Kavanaugh would be accused of it. That being the case, I actually think the honorable thing for the President to do is to stand by his nominee until and unless the truth is proven; and that’s what Trump is doing.) I don’t believe the cover story of protecting Dr. Ford’s anonymity; it wouldn’t even be hard to bring up the accusation without details but with enough information to scuttle the nomination before it went to committee. Senator Feinstein could have gone to President Trump’s advisors and presented the situation, and they absolutely would have steered the President to a different nominee; it’s not like Brett Kavanaugh is the only good Republican Ken doll in the judicial branch, and there were a dozen other possible names floating around for the seat. No, it seems clear that Senator Feinstein held this grenade until the very last second so as to inflict maximum damage, and that is simply gross.

On the other hand, the idea that the Republicans can push this nomination forward to a vote without properly pursuing the matter in a manner befitting the seriousness of the allegation, and the potential impact of putting a man guilty of sexual assault onto the Supreme Court for the rest of his life, for the sole reason that that man is also a conservative, is just as utterly disgusting. I can’t imagine being so cynical that I could do what the GOP seems to have done, which is to find a way to spin this that seems acceptable to enough of their base that they can then go ahead and do what they planned to do before this came to light: put a fifth conservative justice on the Supreme Court and start laying down precedents that will help them win the culture wars. But all I hear from them is, “Well, she’ll have a chance to speak, but we can’t delay this nomination. Don’t have time. Got to get this done fast.” Their reasoning is clear, and grotesque.

The right thing to do politically would be to go to a vote and vote Kavanaugh down, right now, and then get a second nominee through the process as fast as they possibly can; I would also argue that this would be the right thing to do for Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh, because it would take all of the ungodly pressure and scrutiny off of the case, and Dr. Ford could pursue it as she saw fit. It should be pursued, now that it’s out, both for her sake and because even if he is not headed for the Supreme Court, Kavanaugh is currently a judge on the Court of Appeals: he may not be one of the nine most powerful judges in the country, but he is one of the 188 most powerful judges. But bringing an accusation to light, proving the allegations, and potentially calling for Kavanaugh’s impeachment from the appellate court, none of that has the same insane heat as this does. And that way, the GOP could go ahead and get their fifth judge on the Supreme Court. Without inflicting a second justice, along with Clarence Thomas, who may be (is, in Thomas’s case) guilty of criminal sexual acts. (And Democrats worried about the long term effects in the culture wars should keep Thomas in mind. He is 70 years old, and he will not want to live out his last years as Ruth Bader Ginsburg is doing, working into her 80’s through ill health because she needs to keep her seat and do the right thing. Thomas does not have a hundredth part of Ginsburg’s strength, and his moral character is essentially nil. So make sure that Congress is Democratic, and Trump is out by 2020, and you’ll get a fifth liberal judge when Thomas steps down.)

But this is all beside the point. Because this is not a political issue. There are political issues attached to it, which change the dynamics of it; but they do not change the core issue. The core issue is that a woman has said she was attacked. And while there is no evidence beyond her word that Kavanaugh was the man who did it, there is evidence that it happened, both in her willingness to come forward with the accusation when there is little evidence that she gains thereby (I say “little evidence” because she might be using this allegation to hurt Kavanaugh and Trump, and her gain might be their loss. But there’s no evidence that Dr. Ford is a fanatic who would throw away her entire life for the sake of sticking it to Trump, just so he could nominate a different Republican Ken doll to the court after tossing out Kavanaugh. Also note that if her intent was political drama, she would have made the very same play that Feinstein made, coming out publicly at the most intense moment, rather than sending a letter to her congresswoman two months ago.), and in the fact that she recounted the attack to her therapist in 2012, long before she could have predicted she’d make an allegation against a Supreme Court nominee. It is not clear that she is telling the truth, because it is not clear that she definitely recalls the truth; that it happened seems likely, but that it was Kavanaugh is in some doubt. She took a polygraph test and passed it, but that isn’t good evidence; the therapist’s notes from 2012 differ from her story in critical ways (The notes say there were four males in the room when she was attacked. Kavanaugh is not named in them.); she can’t recall many details about the overall situation (though she has not had the opportunity to speak about this and answer questions, so we don’t yet know everything she recalls, only what her initial public statements describe); the other people in the room deny her allegations. That Kavanaugh denied it doesn’t show he’s innocent, because of course he has quite a lot to gain from denying it and nothing to gain from admitting guilt; the testimonials of his good character and the fact that there are many women whom he hasn’t attempted to rape do not, of course, mean anything at all.

So what do we do when there is a credible but not airtight accusation of a serious crime? It depends. What would be gained from pursuing the matter? What would the costs be? If this was just two people with an old trauma between them, then there wouldn’t be much for society to gain, and it wouldn’t be worth very much to pursue it; it would of course be worth the world for Dr. Ford to pursue it, and people who could help her would be, I think, honor bound to do so if they could, for her sake. But this is a 35-year-old crime, and if she brought it to a Maryland prosecutor, even if the statute of limitations didn’t exist (And by the way: it shouldn’t. The statute of limitations is that “Boys will be boys” bullshit made into law – “Well, shucks, he hasn’t raped anybody since then, so what’s the big deal?” – and it’s everything wrong with our justice system.), the prosecutor might not pursue it because there are other crimes and other criminals that pose larger threats. I think the story should be published, because there is not a better way to find out if other women might have suffered similarly; and if there is a pattern of behavior, suddenly there is much more reason to pursue charges against the assailant, to protect other innocents from harm.

I recognize that publishing an unproven allegation would ruin a man’s reputation. I face that possibility myself, all the time, because society believes someone like me, a man in his 40’s who spends all day with teenagers, is already probably 40% of the way towards child molestation; a credible public accusation would be more than enough to end my career forever, and prevent me from ever working in anything remotely like this field again. But the truth is that victims are destroyed by sexual assault, and it is the work of a lifetime to rebuild themselves; many can’t ever do it, particularly not if they are victimized more than once. Coming forward in our society with an accusation is even more dangerous than being accused: Brett Kavanaugh might lose his nomination for the Supreme Court; Dr. Ford has received death threats and has had to move out of her home, just in the last week. There isn’t an instance of public accusation that doesn’t go approximately that way: for all the grief that Bill Clinton (And Hillary Clinton, and Al Gore) got because of Clinton’s misconduct, it wasn’t a patch on what Monica Lewinsky went through. Laughing stock of the entire nation, for – well, for life, really, though she has done an admirable job of rebuilding herself since then. If I were accused of sexual misconduct, I’d be ruined; but the one who accused me, because I am a successful and popular teacher and a good guy, would be the target of every single bit of anger and hate that all of my friends and family could bring to bear. It would be bad. If someone were willing to do that to themselves, it would stand as reasonable evidence that the allegation were true. Proof? Of course not. But evidence. And because I recognize that, I work hard to make sure I don’t ever make it easy for someone to bring a false accusation against me, and I work even harder to make sure that no one could make a genuine complaint about my behavior, could accuse me of harassment or discrimination or something similar.

Plus, I’m not a rapist. Which makes it a lot easier to avoid accusations of rape.

I have to say, I got drunk as a teenager, more than once. Really drunk, sometimes. At parties, even. And I never even jokingly pretended to rape anyone. There is a difference between someone who will commit an act this heinous when their inhibitions are lowered, and someone who would never commit the act. That difference matters. And it has nothing to do with age and nothing to do with alcohol. People who say “Boys will be boys” about sexual assault, or who use a phrase like “drunken hijinks,” need to learn that.

So as I said above, what do we do when there is a credible but not an airtight accusation of a serious crime? We investigate. Of course we investigate. We ask questions. We send professionals in to interview everyone involved, and everyone who might know the truth, and we find out everything we can about it. Everyone should want this: Kavanaugh is already at risk from the accusation; if he’s innocent, an investigation is the best chance to prove it. If it were me, I wouldn’t be satisfied with being able to deny it – even if I categorically denied it, as Kavanaugh has – and then move on, I’d want someone who knew what they were doing to ascertain the truth, and make it known as an objective fact. Dr. Ford should want an investigation in order to prove that she’s telling the truth, and to bring herself one step closer to justice and the good rebuilding of herself from her trauma. And indeed, Dr. Ford has asked for, even demanded an investigation. Well, one out of two ain’t bad. The Republicans should want an investigation because it will be far faster than pursuing another nominee if Kavanaugh is innocent, and far better than either confirming an attempted rapist to the Supreme Court if he’s guilty, or abandoning a man just from an accusation, which is neither good nor politically savvy. For those concerned about how a mere accusation can do irreparable harm to a man’s reputation, an investigation would increase the penalty for those who make false accusations, and show that the accusation alone is not the end of the story.

For all the rest of us, an investigation would help ensure that we get a decent person on the Supreme Court (Partisan politics aside, please: a decent person who is a conservative is a decent person; many and many a conservative Justice have made decisions that have been good for the country. And remember that any decision does not have to be the end of the fight, because even the Supreme Court can be overridden by the will of the people. Even if we don’t get Kavanaugh, we are going to get a conservative: because even if the Democrats win in November, they won’t take control until January, and that’s plenty of time for a whole new nominee. So let’s get a decent one). An investigation would help us learn the truth, and help a victim work through a trauma, and those are both good things regardless of other considerations. An investigation would help us remember how seriously we have to look at sexual assault, and if Kavanaugh is guilty, it may help us start thinking seriously about how we can work to prevent similar things from happening, and also how we can’t assume that all sexual assaults happen in the same way, or that all those who commit sexual assault are the same kind of person, or that finding 65 women who think you’re nice shows that you couldn’t possibly have tried to rape a 15-year-old girl, and gagged her when she tried to scream.

Nobody knew about what happened at that party when it happened, because society has stigmatized victims more than attackers, and girls more than boys, for millennia. We have to change that. We should make sure we all know now what happened then. There should be an investigation, a complete investigation by the FBI, intended to help ensure the best outcome for our national interest, as well as do the best we as a society can do for the victim.

Christine Blasey-Ford has been silenced once before. Now she should be allowed to speak.

This is NSFW. And Trump is a POS.

Dusty 3 Comments

So I wrote a blog, 2000 words, about how I’m unhappy with the way things are going because some things are going well, and I don’t want Trump to get credit for that because he isn’t the reason things are going well, but if we give him credit, we may end up with more people like him doing the things he’s done, because they’ll point at Trump as a success story. And I do think that’s a problem.

But you know what? That’s not what I want to say right now. That’s not the blog I want to post.

What I want to say right now is

Fuck Trump.

 

Fuck him all the way out the door and down the steps, fuck him rolling down the street and around the corner, fuck him all the way to the sewage treatment plant: then fuck Trump into the collection tanks, and fuck him step by step through the process, with the rest of the chunky liquified shit until he has been treated, emulsified, centrifuged, disinfected, milled, filtered, diluted, and sprayed onto his own fucking golf course to make the greens grow. And then let a blind man tee off over and over until he has turned the entire green, watered with Liquid Trump, into broken divots. Then mulch those, feed them to free-range farm pigs, let them turn the grass into chunky liquid pig-shit: and then run him through the process all over again. Keep doing that until there aren’t any more Trump golf courses. If at any point we feel there isn’t enough Trump-taint in the gray water, then throw in his fucking kids. (The grown ones; I got no problem with Barron. Or Tiffany.)

I’ve tried so hard. I’ve realized in the past couple of years that my loyalty to liberal, progressive politics, and especially to the Democratic Party, has been unthinking and in some cases counter to my actual desires and values. Not a lot; I still agree with most liberal progressive ideas. But I think political correctness is a blight on the language and the culture; and honestly, while I love animals, passing laws and regulations to limit human progress or achievement in order to save a rare form of tadpole that lives in one stream in Wyoming is stupid – the world will not be a lesser place if the Greater Wyoming red-speckled spiral-tailed hovering-footed tadpole goes extinct. Mainly, though, there’s one thing – and only one thing – that Trump was right about: Washington is a swamp. Both parties are corrupt, incompetent, filled with narcissistic sociopaths who serve themselves and their cronies and not the American people. I’m not too far away from saying that all of our government should go into the sewage with the President.

I am still trying to decide where I should land politically. I want to remain an idealist, which would throw me all the way to the left; but I also want to be practical and realistic, and that pushes me towards the center. Choosing either one seems like a betrayal of the other: and that’s a result of our political morass, as well, that there are purity tests, that people on the same side turn on each other in a heartbeat if they can find a tender place to sink their claws. We saw it with Sanders supporters versus the DNC and the Clinton campaign, and we’ve seen it for years with the Tea Party and how it has destroyed what used to be the Republican party, resulting in – President Shit-spray. Part of me wants everyone to agree, so we can all move in one direction; but I realize – and this is my big epiphany of the last couple of years of learning how to think more about my politics – that when everyone agrees, it doesn’t lead to good results. We get the best ideas, the best policies, the best country out of a constant and honest debate. The worst thing that our two political parties have done is surrender that ideal in favor of winning. That’s why we have legal partisan gerrymandering, inculcated for decades by both sides; that’s why we haven’t gotten rid of Citizens United, or passed campaign finance reform or term limits or strict controls on lobbyists and corporate influence of politicians. They all stopped trying to do a good job, and focused on just keeping the job. I know that’s always been a factor, but it seems to have become the only factor. One of my biggest surprises of the last two years of the Feces Administration was the sudden onrush of respect for Jeff freaking Flake, a cardboard cutout of a Republican who nonetheless resigned rather than suck up to Trump. (I suspect that he is going to continue on in politics, using his resignation from the Senate as a stepping stone for his next ambition; but he hasn’t done so yet, so as of now, I still respect the man for his decision. Integrity over politics. When was the last time that happened?)

So how do I reconcile that? Practically speaking, the way forward is with a party; because I am not a piece of shit, that means I have to support the Democratic party.

I’m sorry for those that offends. I have actually gained quite a lot of respect for the GOP and the conservative ideals they have historically espoused; the attraction of the moderate political position for me is it allows for that honest debate I mentioned which leads to the best possible outcome, that pull between two poles, both with merit, but both improved by being pulled towards the other – liberal ideas are better with a strong inner structure of conservative reality, and conservative ideas are better with a leavening of liberal idealism. The Republican party has served that role, and for a long time, and in a lot of ways, it has done so honorably, and therefore made our country better. But right now, and for the immediately foreseeable future, the Republican party is the party of Trump. Which means it’s the party of shit. You can’t hold up a 300-pound piece of shit and not get your hands dirty, you just can’t. And I don’t even care if he’s having a positive effect, if the economy grows and North Korea disarms and all that jazz: shit makes flowers grow, which is lovely: but it’s still shit. The best thing I can say about the current state of the union is that I hope it makes the land fertile again. Actually, the metaphor might hold true, because confronting the truth of Trump has made us all look much more closely at our political situation, and it is possible that we will get some genuinely good results after this shit-storm has passed. But now is not the future, and now, Trump is shit, and that means the Republicans are shit, because they back Trump. Period.

Where was I? Oh, right. So, if I want to get results, I have to support Democrats. I mean, sure, I could try to become an anarchist, or a pure Socialist, or something along those lines; there’s an attraction in that, in the purity of the ideas. But in reality, there’s no chance of changing the political situation in any way without one of the two major parties. Ignoring reality means people get hurt. I don’t want to hurt people: it’s kind of my main thing. (Note: I recognize the seeming irony of my rant about grinding our President into gray water while saying I don’t want people to get hurt, but you see, shit isn’t people. I don’t mind if shit gets hurt. [Second note: I’m kidding. I don’t want any harm to come to Mr. Trump. I want him out of office and living in the disgrace that he deserves. I’d like him to live like that for a long, long time.]) I want practical solutions to our immediate problems, all of them chosen and thought out with a positive ideal in constant sight; for that, I need to be involved in actual practical politics with real people in this country. A perfect example of this is Bernie Sanders: who was a Socialist, and then an Independent (Which he only got away with because he represented Vermont, even though he’s from New York), and then ran for the Democratic party nomination for President. That’s an idealist working with practical reality, and that’s why he would have had my vote if I could have voted for him. Another perfect example of someone who creates practical solutions while keeping an ideal firmly in mind is Elizabeth Warren, who I would vote for over any other potential candidate in 2020 with the possible exception of Stephen King or J.K. Rowling. On the other hand, the Democratic party is also the party of Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and they, from what I have seen, either  stick to the ideals, but give very little in the way of practical solutions – this is how Schumer has handled Trump, and it’s honorable, but it’s not slowing down the spray of shit – or else they surrender the ideals for the sake of practicality, as happened with the ACA when they removed the public option, which was the whole freaking point of the thing, the loss of which has made it useless, and, eventually, a political liability.

Sorry if that got muddy: it’s hard to stay clear when talking about politics. My point is that the idealism is necessary: purely practical compromise ends up losing its way and accomplishing nothing of lasting value; at the same time, practicality is necessary, because pure idealism doesn’t accomplish anything in the first place. Everyone already has their own ideals, and they’re mostly not mine. It’s too hard to get everyone to agree with the same ideals – impossible, in truth, unless you go full Big Brother and set up the Thought Police. This is what upsets me about the struggles within the Democratic/progressive wing, that we are all fighting each other over our ideas, refusing to accept or support people who don’t have all – and I mean ALL – of the right ideas. The fact that the big criticism of Bernie Sanders during the primary campaign was that he didn’t have a lot of support from minorities shows two things: the important one is that the Democratic party has given up its ideals, which means it has ceased to do good work for minorities in this country, which has left them smothered under the shit this country has piled atop them for centuries (Though fortunately, they seem to have found their own power and are clawing their own way out of the shit of history) and therefore Sanders could not simply pull in minority support by virtue of running as a Democrat; the entirely unimportant one is that Bernie Sanders is a white guy from a white state, and therefore has not had a lot of connection with, or influence on, the situation facing minority Americans. And if that made anyone refuse to vote for Sanders, then it helped give rise to the Shitpile-in-Chief; and that is a travesty. (I’m not saying that Democratic infighting led to Trump’s election, just that any vote that was lost because of the infighting is a specific, individual travesty. People that don’t support the Democrats at all, who are Greens or Libertarians or Socialists and so voted according to their conscience, that isn’t a travesty. But it may not have been practical.) A travesty that happened because people hung too much on the power of their ideals, and ignored practicality; ideally, a President should have a strong connection with all of their constituents; practically speaking, Bernie Sanders was the best candidate in 2016.

So here I am. I can support my ideals, and allow the shit to continue polluting this wonderful country; or I can support a party that keeps electing poor leaders: and I do think, in retrospect, that Clinton would have been one of those bad leaders. She’s not a piece of shit, and so would have been a VAST improvement; but I think she has very little personal connection to the ideals of progressivism. She’s too practical to be really great. I still wish she had won. Man, wouldn’t it be nice if all we were dealing with was a president who wasn’t progressive enough?

But all right, here we are with the shit. And no matter who you are or what your ideals, accept this as gospel truth: Trump is shit. The way he attacks everyone he disagrees with, the way he lies about everything, the way every single issue becomes a reflection only and always of him personally – the man is a piece of shit vaguely in the shape of a human. The most recent outrage is the separation of families at the border – intentional and callous and unforgivably cruel, and we all know it – and his attempt to defend it by holding an Exploit-a-thon, where he paraded out the family members of people murdered by immigrants, like that changes the statistics (which clearly show that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes despite some terrible exceptions), like that has anything to do with the family separation policy, like that’s anything other than cheap, heartless sensationalism intended to stir up racist fears in Middle America.

He signed the pictures. Did you see that? He signed the blown-up photos of the goddamn murder victims. Look.

And look, another Trump signature.

Clear as day: Trump's signature.

[Source]

Think what your brain has to be like to let you make that conscious decision to do that. Repeatedly, because he seems to have signed all of them, and at no point did he think, “Jesus, what am I doing? Who the fuck would want my autograph on the picture of their dead loved one? Is this really a memento they want? Will they want to remember this hoopla at all?” No, I’ll tell you what he thought: he thought, “These people want to use their grief to win political points, just like I do; I should thank them for letting me use them. Then they can frame this picture and tell their friends how they volunteered to become ghouls for the sake of bolstering up a racist piece of shit.”

So that’s where we are, and the cold, hard truth is this: it isn’t over. Trump is still President. And he’s just going to get worse. And I think the Republicans are going to keep supporting him, because too many of the heartless conservative bastards in charge, the ones who have no connection to the ideals they claim to serve but think only of practicality – the counterparts to Pelosi and Schumer and Clinton and Reid, namely McConnell and Ryan and Lindsey Graham, and Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, and the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson and the rest of them – are willing to use Trump as their dancing monkey to distract us all while they pull the country all the way over to their side, strap us all to their pole, and whip us with a leather crop made from the tanned hide of Ayn Rand. (That is to say: break the federal government, give all of the money to the rich and let the poor die – unless they’re in the military. No, wait; they still die, then.) And the closer we get to that pole, to that extreme end of the spectrum where there is nothing but a red so deep it looks black, the faster Trump will have to dance and the louder he’ll have to scream and the more shit he’ll have to fling to draw our attention away from the straps being tied around us and the crack of the Rand-whip. I think that his final act will be a terribly protracted fight over his impeachment, which will probably finish breaking the political system – it will be a miracle, by the way, if the last pieces of the filibuster rule make it through this administration; and it is truly worth noting that the first attacks on the filibuster rule came from the Democrats – and which may end in Trump’s removal from office, but will also end with the final slate of conservative goals being checked off, one by one.

Not only do I want to get rid of the piece of shit, but I also want to stop the heartless money-zombies from fucking everything up that Trump doesn’t shit on. And therefore, I will be supporting the Democratic party, and voting for Democratic candidates, even if they choose the wrong ones. I hope they choose the right ones – but whoever they are, they won’t be pieces of shit, and therefore they get my vote.

Join me in voting against shit this November, and in every election until the final collapse of Trump.

And then after we finally manage that, we’ll have a lot of work to do. And a lot of thinking, as well. We have work to do now, but it doesn’t take any thought. Shit is bad. Let’s flush it away, and wash our hands.

Please.

Children in Cages

Dusty Leave a comment
People arrested for allegedly trying to enter the US illegally wait in cages inside a warehouse in McAllen, Texas. Picture: AP

People arrested for allegedly trying to enter the US illegally wait in cages inside a warehouse in McAllen, Texas. Picture: AP

 

CUSTOMS AND BORDER PATROL VIA REUTERS

 

Did you know we’re keeping children in cages?

 

I actually wrote a different blog yesterday, about how I fear that Trump’s success – or at least the positive things that are happening around him, even if they’re not because of him, like the unemployment rate going down – will encourage a cultural shift towards bullying. But I can’t post that one until I write and post this. Because this is the first thing that needs to be discussed. In fact, we should start every conversation with this until the answer can genuinely be, “No, we’re not; they stopped that.” Walk into Starbucks, and the barrista should say, “Hi, there are children in cages, but can I take your order?” And you should say, “Unnecessary family separation as a deterrent policy is a crime against humanity, and I’ll have a latte.”

So. Because of the attack on the media from Trump and the right (And because the corporate media has been sliding down into the muck for a generation at least), let’s establish facts.

First fact: when you type “children” into the Google search box, the first option is “Children in cages.” This is America. Childish Gambino released that video a month early.

Second fact: is this actually happening? Yes.

Federal officials said Tuesday that since May, they have separated 2,342 children from their families, rendering them unaccompanied minors in the government’s care.

(Source)

 

Third fact: are these children being kept in cages? Here’s a good explanation of the semantic argument.  If I may, the answer is: Yes. They are detention facilities, they do provide for the basic needs of the children, with the exception of the most obvious one: their parents aren’t there. But the essential point is: the children are held in enclosures made of chain-link fencing on concrete floors, and they are not allowed out of those enclosures. They are not able to see or communicate with their parents unless they can wend their way through an enormous bureaucracy.

Fourth fact: The children separated from their parents include infants and toddlers. Being kept in “Tender age shelters.”

 

 

Fifth fact: this is not, despite the administration’s stance, required by law, nor is it the fault of the Democrats. Unless we stop believing in free will. The administration has claimed – I heard White House spokesman Hogan Gidley reference all three of these elements during an interview with NPR – that the separation of families and the detention of children is the result of three things: the Flores Agreement from 1997, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, and the 2016 decision by the 9th Circuit Court which included accompanied minors in the previous laws regarding unaccompanied minors.

Here’s a good article from PolitiFact about this argument

If I may quote Inigo Montoya: “Lemme ‘splain. No, is too much: lemme sum up.”

The Flores Settlement agreement (Which settled a class-action lawsuit actually going back to the Reagan Administration) says that aliens in the custody of INS (now ICE) who are unaccompanied minors must be held in the “least restrictive setting” possible. Specifically, it says,

“The INS shall place each detained minor in the least restrictive setting appropriate to the minor’s age and special needs, provided that such setting is consistent with its interests to ensure the minor’s timely appearance before the INS and the immigration courts and to protect the minor’s well-being and that of others.”

Source

This means, to the Trump administration, that children can’t be jailed, and if their parents have to be, then the children must be separated from the jailed parents. I’ve seen various sources say that the settlement requires unaccompanied minors be released within 20 days, but I can’t find that passage in the agreement. If you’d like to try, look here.

The 2008 law applies because it says:

Except in the case of exceptional circumstances, any department or agency of the Federal Government that has an unaccompanied alien child in custody shall transfer the custody of such child to the Secretary of Health and Human Services not later than 72 hours after determining that such child is an unaccompanied alien child.

Source

This means that, once the children are separated from their parents (and therefore, according to the Trump administration, they are unaccompanied minors), they cannot be held by either INS, if the parents are being held pending an immigration hearing, nor by the U.S. Marshals, who hold the parents if they are being accused of a federal crime – which, under this administration, they are; that’s the “Zero Tolerance” policy that Jeff Sessions announced in April. Sessions’s memo to the state attorneys general is here,  and the law that he cites, the law against unlawful entry, is here.

Please note that the maximum penalty for a first offense is six months in jail, which makes this crime a misdemeanor. Most adult immigrants, once they reach a hearing, are released with time served.

Finally, the 2016 decision from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals broadened the Flores Settlement to include accompanied minors, meaning that they, too, had to be held in the least restrictive setting available, and, as with the 1997 settlement, the government had to prioritize release of children in custody to family members over any other solution; the decision says that this was also the case with minors detained with their parents, though it does also make clear that this does not require the government to release the parents in order to provide a custodial parent for the children. It does require, as the Flores Settlement did, that parents be released with their children if they are not a legal or flight risk. 

Text of the Decision

 

So what does all this mean? It means that the Trump administration is arguing that they must uphold the law, and they must do something drastic to reduce the crisis of immigration across the southern U.S. border. They claim that those who cross the border have committed a crime, and therefore they must be prosecuted. If those people brought their minor children with them in the commission of this crime, those children have to be separated from their parents as they cannot be held in a prison with their parents, but must be remanded to the custody of Health and Human Services, as per the Flores Settlement, the 2016 decision by the 9th Circuit, and the 2008 Wilberforce Reauthorization Act. HHS then places those kids into tents and warehouses, wherever they have facilities that meet the standard of the Flores Settlement (Which says that they have to have the basic needs, and also opportunities for exercise, entertainment, education, and contact with their parents. Well.). This, they say, is all required by law, and at various times, various members of the administration from President Trump on down have all claimed that this is the fault of the Democrats: first they claimed that Democrats passed the laws (They didn’t), then they claimed that this has been going on since either the Obama administration or the Clinton administration (Neither is true; both administrations detained unaccompanied minors in similar settings, but neither intentionally separated accompanied minors from their parents and then treated them as unaccompanied minors. Generally they released families. It should also be noted that there were not nearly as many families trying to immigrate with their minor children in the past. Source), and then they claimed that the Democrats could end this any time by passing legislation to change the laws or the policies – their preference, apparently, is for the alteration of the Flores Settlement, so that they can detain children, accompanied and unaccompanied, for as long as necessary. This is also untrue in that the Republicans control all branches of government; it is true that they need Democrat votes to pass a law through the Senate, but the first obstruction to any legislation is and has been the President, who just will not say what he is willing to support; the two bills currently being debated in the House, one more conservative without a path to citizenship for the DACA recipients, one more moderate (but still Republican/conservative) with a path to citizenship (along with limiting legal immigration and funding the Trump border wall) have BOTH got his support, whatever the hell that means.

But please, in this era of lies and exaggeration and political spin, let’s just get down to brass tacks. This policy of family separation is. Fucking. WRONG. It is vile and appalling and inhumane and cruel and everything that this country is not supposed to be. Regardless of whether the parents of those children have committed crimes (and in the case of asylum seekers, some of whom have also reportedly been separated from their children because the asylum seekers stay in the custody of ICE while awaiting their hearings and the children have to be remanded to HHS according to Wilberforce, literally no crime has been committed, as seeking asylum is legal.), the children have not, and the children have rights. They have the right to be with their parents, and they have the right to not be jailed. That doesn’t imply that you put them into chainlink-partition-spaces in tents in Texas; it implies that you find a way to ensure that the parents can be released from custody without violating the laws you are trying to enforce.

Now let’s talk about that. Because there really is an obvious solution here, even though it is one that Trump finds untenable because it makes his base froth at the mouth: he calls it “Catch and Release.” This is the policy that previous administrations have used with most families (Not, as Obama’s Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said, in cases where there might be some doubt as to the child’s familial relationship to the adult; thereby rebutting current DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s argument that children must be separated in all cases because the families have no documentary evidence of familial relationship and therefore ICE has to assume the adults are human traffickers) and with many other immigrants seeking asylum or going through legal processes. You set up a court date, and then you release the people on their own recognizance, with the understanding that they will show up for their court date.

Here’s the thing. This is how our system works. Our Constitution requires the provision of bail that is not excessive, and that everyone receive a fair and speedy trial, and that anyone accused of any crime is innocent until proven guilty. Unlawful entry is a misdemeanor. The maximum fine is $250. Reasonable bail for that crime would be, what, maybe $100? Public intoxication, also a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of 6 months (Varies by state – I’m using Indiana because it came up first on Google) and a fine of a whopping $1000, has a bail around $200-$500, according to the Bail Bonds Network. So I would think that bail for the parents should be something that most of them should have access to, especially if they have friends or family in the U.S. Once bail has been granted, then the question is whether or not the accused will show up for court; President Trump, of course, argues that they won’t, that the illegal immigrants are intending exactly this: showing up with their kids so that if they get caught, they will be released and then they will vanish into the Heart of Darkness inside the U.S. and never be seen again until they get arrested for rape or murder.

But here’s the thing. Immigrants show up. They don’t miss their court dates.

Moreover, studies show that asylum seekers—like many of the thousands of Central American families fleeing violence and arriving to the U.S.—are likely to appear for proceedings, because they have such a strong incentive to avoid returning to persecution. Indeed, as United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) researchers found in 2013, asylum seekers have a natural “inclination towards law-abidingness,” and view making a refugee claim as “a manifestation of faith in legal process.” U.S. research bears this out. A Vera Institute study, from 1997 to 2000, of asylum seekers in expedited removal proceedings found to have credible fear, found that 93 percent with intensive supervision complied with all court proceedings; 84 percent complied with minimal supervision; and 78 percent complied even if simply released without supervision. These compliance rates were so high that Vera concluded that “[a]sylum seekers do not need to be detained to appear…. They also do not seem to need intensive supervision.”

Source

And if that rate doesn’t appeal, there are certainly ways to improve it. Immigrants with legal representation, for instance, attend hearings at an even higher rate. Solutions like allowing immigrants to check in via phone call or smartphone location apps create higher response rates. Even ankle bracelets (like the two that Paul Manafort has to wear ) would allow a tough-on-crime sort of stance, while allowing families to stay together, and reducing the burden on government resources to house all of these people.

In other words: there are alternatives. Even if you accept the claim that the administration is enforcing immigration law, it has to be pointed out that there are also 11 million illegal immigrants currently residing in the U.S., who are not currently being rounded up, separated from their children, and housed in federal lockup. So apparently the Trump administration is actually choosing and prioritizing which laws it enforces to what extent. Which is, indeed, the whole goddamn point of an executive branch. And this executive is choosing to prosecute people accused of first time illegal entry – a misdemeanor with a lesser penalty than some states impose for jaywalking – and therefore choosing, as a matter of intentional, proactive, object-oriented policy, to separate families and put children in cages. This is our government, and our country. It is us, unless we do something about it.

It is fucking wrong. It has to stop. It has to be the first thing we say, and the first thing we act on, in our current opposition to the abuses of our government. And I don’t care if you are a progressive liberal or a libertarian anarchist: this is what you should be talking about. This is what you should be fighting. Call your representative, call the White House, write letters, march, protest, donate, do anything and everything you can. Fight this. Fight it now.

We are keeping children in cages.

Not Another War

Dusty Leave a comment

You know what? I just don’t want a war.

It saddens me – no; it horrifies me that my students who are 14 and 15 and 16 years old have never lived in a United States that wasn’t at war. It’s a good swath of my adult life that this country has been at war; but almost all the years before that – I was born right around the end of the Vietnam War – I have known a country that has been relatively peaceful. We had the Cold War throughout my youth, of course – the Russians were the bad guys in pretty much every movie I saw until I was in college – and we sent troops to Panama and Grenada, Africa and Serbia; and there have been troops stationed all around the globe throughout my life; but we hadn’t invaded a country and torn down its government until I was a teacher. Until after 9/11.

I remember it well. One of my strongest memories is of hearing that we had invaded Iraq, two years later, on a pretense that I didn’t begin to understand, let alone believe; when we did, I remember writing angrily in my journal that I was afraid we would colonize the country, that Bush the Younger had brought us back because Bush the Elder hadn’t finished the job, and now we would never leave. I was almost right: we left, eventually, but because we did so, now we will never do that again. Because as soon as we left Iraq, ISIS rose, and became the new villain in every movie from now until – well, probably forever.

That’s why I don’t want a war. Because mark my words: any country we invade, from now until the end of this country’s reign as the world’s most violent nation, will become a permanent victim of this nation’s military colonialism. Because we need to “stay until the job is done.” Because we need to “ensure stability.” Because we need to “prevent the rise of terrorism.” You know: all the reasons why we still have troops in Afghanistan after seventeen goddamn years of occupation. Because something has to justify the continued expenditure of trillions of dollars to feed the military-industrial complex.

The same reason why the military wants to keep our forces in Syria. To ensure stability in the areas not controlled by Bashar al-Assad. To prevent the resurgence of ISIS.

And may I just say: god damn that group for giving our military the only justification it will ever need, forever. But I also have to say that I understand their motives. After all, we are invaders. We are colonizers. We attack governments that are not our enemies, under the thinnest of pretexts, devastating every inch of infrastructure in the country, and then we occupy and act exactly like the tyrants we are supposedly removing from power: we paint the nation black with corruption and graft, we put our cronies into positions of power regardless of their suitability for the role, we act with complete impunity while arresting hundreds if not thousands of “insurgents” and “terrorists,” many of whom are surely innocent, and plenty of whom are thrown into dark holes from which they never escape, where they are brutalized and often tortured. You know where ISIS started, right? Right: in American-run prisons.

Some country did that to my homeland, I’d fucking be a terrorist, too. Well: I wouldn’t. I’m a pacifist. But I’d probably get arrested by the CIA for the things I’d write, and the things I’d teach my students. I might even end up in Guantanamo Bay.

They’re still there, you know. 45 prisoners, some of them detained since 2002. Sixteen years in prison thousands of miles from home, many if not all of them victims of torture; none of them given due process according to our own nation’s laws, let alone the laws of their various home countries. Because we call them terrorists, and prisoners of war. A war older than my students.

I do not want another war.

It’s hard for me to say that, because the two impending wars (assuming John Bolton and Mike Pompeo don’t get their way and lead us into a war in Iran), in Syria and North Korea, would both, in some ways, be “good” wars. Both those regimes are guilty of unspeakable crimes. The North Korean dictatorship has killed millions of people, mostly through starvation, over the last seven decades; 500,000 Syrians have been killed and 100,000 more are missing under the Syrian regime and the civil war that has ravaged the country since 2011, when a dozen young men were arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and executed for painting anti-government graffiti on a wall in Damascus. Syria especially frightens me, because the steps leading to the current atrocities have all been ones that I could see our government taking in this country: it began with people talking about overthrowing the government, which led to arrests; the arrests led to protests, which led to a police and military crackdown; and then the revolution started. After that, the arrests turned to a machine: tens of thousands were detained, imprisoned in terrible conditions, beaten regularly, hung from manacles, starved and mistreated, and then executed. I have trouble thinking that American soldiers would emulate Nazis, with cattle cars and death camps and gas chambers and ovens; but I can certainly see them beating people, holding them without trial, even executing them; all of those things have happened in CIA and military prisons over the last seventeen years of this current war. Could they happen in this country, to our people, if those people were deemed enemies of the state?

I’d say yes.

That scares the hell out of me. Particularly when I listen to stories about Bashar al-Assad responding to accusations of war crimes with, essentially, “Fake news!” When he dons a suit and carries his briefcase to work the day after the U.S. targets his chemical weapons facilities, because bluster and bluff are how he has managed to hold onto power – along with his backing from Russia.

It just keeps getting scarier, doesn’t it? You know Assad’s been reelected twice? Sure. He wins around 98% of the vote, every time. Biggest electoral victory in history. And the biggest crowds at his inauguration. Huge crowds. Beautiful inauguration. The best. Believe me.

I don’t want us to go to war in Syria because if we do, we’ll never leave. We’ll keep troops there forever, the same way we’re keeping them in Afghanistan, because we somehow think that our troops are maintaining stability: even though, as a foreign invasive force, I have no doubt we are creating the same instability, the same violent resentment of our presence, that we have to stay in the country in order to suppress. See how perfect that is? As long as our troops stay there, there will always be a need for our troops to stay; and as long as our troops stay there, there will always be attacks that stoke up the dogs of war back home, so they keep supporting those troops, supporting those troops. Look at how the Republican party, the party of fiscal responsibility and small government, was happy to sign away the biggest budget and one of the biggest deficits in history, a budget which expands government in every possible way – because that same budget increased military spending. That’s it, that’s all they got: more money for the military. And did you listen to them talk about it? “We have to make sure we handle our readiness issues,” I kept hearing. Because apparently the largest and best-equipped army in the world is not quite ready enough to do violence, should they be called upon to do so. We have to be ready just in case. To protect our freedom.

I don’t want to go to war in Syria because doing so will cause some further instability somewhere else in the region: the Syrian civil war was at least partly caused by the rise of ISIS, which wanted to conquer Syria for its caliphate; and ISIS was partly created by our invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, which broke al Qaeda and then created a power vacuum to give the remnants of al Qaeda room to grow into ISIS. Of course, al Qaeda was partly created by our support of the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan, because they resisted the Russian invasion; and also by our support of Iraq in the 80’s because Iraq opposed Iran – which was our enemy because the Ayatollah Khomeini blamed us for installing the Shah, after we overthrew the Iranian government in the 50’s. Because that government opposed our support for Israel. It never stops: it’s an unbroken chain of broken countries, broken governments, broken people turned into refugees, and then into terrorists and extremists, by us and our allies, simply because we won’t. Fucking. Leave.

I don’t want a war in Syria because if we are in another ground war when 2020 rolls around, then President Trump will get reelected just like Bush did in 2004, because Trump’s not any less popular than Bush was in 2004 (And I heard today that Joe Biden is thinking of running for the Democratic nomination, and all I could think of was John Kerry in 2004, and Al Gore in 2000, and to a lesser extent Hillary Clinton in 2016: because when we run these same kinds of Democrats, we get – Bush and Trump. And even if he won, well, Biden certainly supports the military, doesn’t he? Sure.), and because Trump will pull the same bullshit that Bush did: you can’t change commanders in the middle of a fight, and those Democrats don’t support our troops and aren’t willing to bankrupt the entire nation in order to ensure our troops are entirely, eternally, apocalyptically ready for any battle at any time in any place, including every battle at once. Just in case North Korea gets uppity while we’re suppressing Syria and Iran. Even though clearly the Democrats are just fine with bankrupting the nation in order to feed money to the military-industrial complex, because they signed that budget, too.

I can’t stand it any more. My former idealism, believing in the essential goodness of the government, especially the American government, is gone now, shattered by the eagerness with which all of our elected officials beat the war drums and spend, spend, spend, to send Americans into danger and to kill thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians in other nations, in drone strikes, in air strikes, in strikes designed to degrade the enemies’ capability to cause damage. My love for my country is gone, because what kind of country is this to love? The only nation to use nuclear weapons – also on a civilian populace. The only nation to prefer carpet bombing to putting “boots on the ground,” because we’d rather cause collateral damage (read: dead innocents) than put our precious soldiers at risk. Don’t get me wrong, our soldiers are precious – but so are the innocent people we bomb. So are the soldiers we kill, even if they aren’t innocent; they aren’t our enemies. When was the last time we fought a nation that was actually, actively, the enemy of this country? 1945, wasn’t it? Al Qaeda was an enemy and a threat, and I suppose ISIS is, as well; but the nations where they live are not. Nor was Vietnam. Nor was Korea. And look how well those worked out. And while we’re talking about Southeast Asia and incessant airstrikes: you realize our years of carpet bombing Cambodia in the 1970’s helped give rise to the Khmer Rouge? Killed 1.5 millions Cambodians, that group did.

That’s my nation. It has always been my nation, because right now I live in a city that used to be a thriving metropolis for the indigenous people of the Southwest, the Hopi and the Navajo and the Pueblo peoples. We killed them, too. And then used their desperate attempts to resist our invasion and slaughter of innocents to justify increasing the size and aggression of our military, so that we could keep our people safe while our people were stealing the lives and the land of other people.

And then people say that the military protects our freedom. Holy crap. Tell me: what threat to our freedom existed in Afghanistan in 2001? Sure, there was an existential threat to some number of our people, no doubt; but we have lost more soldiers in the war than people who died on 9/11. Afghanistan has lost – well, everything, really. And maybe that’s al Qaeda’s fault. But we were the ones who invaded. In order to protect our freedom. It amazes me that people can even say that with a straight face. I suppose now our freedom is somewhere in Aleppo, and sometime (before the election in 2020), we’ll have to put boots on the ground in order to protect it. We really should stop letting that freedom roam around like that. Especially in the Middle East.

I don’t want a war in Syria even though Bashar al-Assad is guilty of war crimes, even though he has used chemical weapons – because I can’t for the life of me understand why the chemicals sarin and chlorine are absolutely forbidden, but when the chemicals are gunpowder and lead, and TNT or phosphorus or napalm or any of the thousand other incendiaries and explosives that burn down entire nations, are no problem whatsoever. Assad has killed thousands with chemicals, and hundreds of thousands with guns and bombs and starvation; and we attack him for using the chemical weapons? It makes no sense. But even though his atrocities demand justice, I do not want a war. Because there is no possibility, none at all, that a war can create justice. It has never happened and will never happen. The “best” war I know of, World War II, which stopped the Nazi death machine, still did not create justice, because there can be no justice for 6 million victims of the Holocaust, and because the war against the Nazis gave them the cover to hide their actions for years, and because we were the ones who firebombed Dresden and used atomic weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and because our alliance with Stalin allowed him to retain power and kill 10 million of his own people, which also helped give rise to Mao and the Cultural Revolution that killed millions more. That’s not justice. That’s not a better outcome. I can’t say we shouldn’t have fought the war, because I can’t say anything other than the Nazis had to be stopped: but I can’t say that and not also say that the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur, and Cambodia, and North Korea, and China, should not also have been stopped. We didn’t fight those wars. So have we really saved people with our wars?

I don’t think we can. I don’t think that anything good can come of war. I think that we don’t really grasp the quintessential truth of the phrase “War is hell.” Especially not because we never think what that makes us, every time – every time – we start a war. We make hell. Every time.

And we call ourselves saviors. But we’re not: we’re the devils.

I don’t want another war. Not ever again. Not for any reason. Not even a good one.

Letter To My Congresswoman

Dusty Leave a comment

I’m an American high school teacher, so as you can imagine, this last week has been a time of turmoil. And for the first time — a fact which I find shameful– this latest school shooting has actually driven me to do something. I wrote my representative in Congress, Martha McSally, who is currently running for the Arizona Senate seat that will be vacated by the retiring Jeff Flake, about gun control.

I should have done this many times in the past, and I can’t justify my own inaction. I’ve argued about this topic for years, but to say that I’ve never voiced my opinion to the people who can actually do something — well. I’ve done it now. Sent the email ten minutes ago. I will also be sending a version of this to every candidate who runs for McSally’s seat — one which will probably be hotly contested, considering the political climate in this country and the fact that this is a Democratic area with a Republican representative — and I welcome anyone who wants to use this as a framework for their own letter. Steal it, steal a paragraph, steal everything you want. Do more than I have done. Let’s see what we can make happen.

February 23, 2018

To Representative McSally:

I am an independent voter living in Tucson, in the 2nd Congressional District for Arizona. I am an educator: I have taught high school English for eighteen years, for the last four at Sonoran Science Academy, one of the premier STEM charter schools in the state – the only high school in Tucson which Governor Ducey visited this past year. I am writing to you despite knowing that you are currently very busy, seeking a new job in addition to performing the duties of your current position, because you should know that I will also be seeking a new position, and quite possibly a new profession, unless you and your fellow Congresspeople can do the right thing. Unless you bring some sense to the debate over gun control, and specifically firearms in schools, then Tucson, and Arizona, and this country will lose thousands of outstanding teachers and educators. Like me.

The sense I seek – the sense I demand – in this debate has three elements, one positive change, one negative stance, and a general direction. The positive change is simple: Congress must repeal the Dickey Amendment of 1996, which prohibits the Centers for Disease Control from performing any research into gun violence in this country if said research “may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” I find this law appalling, entirely apart from my stance on gun control, because it is nothing more than enforced ignorance: it is a law passed by our government intended solely to limit and suppress knowledge. It flies in the face of science because it presumes an outcome and refuses the research for fear of that outcome – but it is entirely possible that the outcome of that research would be evidence against gun control! There is absolutely no reason to prevent the CDC from investigating the causes of gun deaths, and 30,000 reasons to allow that research to go forward, every year. I say that as an educator, not as an advocate for gun control; the truth is always better than ignorance, and I for one would gladly change my stance on gun control if the evidence supported such a change. Congress must allow the CDC to dispel our ignorance, to teach us why this problem is unique to the United States. That knowledge, suppressed for twenty years, is why this debate is still so acrimonious: because we do not know the facts behind it. We do not know if the right to bear arms is a cause of those 30,000 annual deaths, or if it prevents even more deaths while contributing to none. We are left searching for reasons, for answers, while the body that could provide us with several of those answers sits with its hands tied. Please: make this the first action you take regarding this debate. Jay Dickey himself regrets his namesake law and argued for its repeal in 2012, after the shooting in Aurora, Colorado. Strip away the veil of ignorance, and let us know the truth. Repeal the Dickey Amendment.

The negative stance I would ask you to support has to do with a common reaction to the atrocity of school shootings. I have been a teacher since 2000, and I was in school to become a teacher when the massacre happened at Columbine; I have watched, again and again, as maniacs with firearms have devastated communities by targeting our children. Every time this happens, whether the debate remains local or expands to include the entire nation, at some point, someone will suggest arming the teachers. This time the suggestion came most clearly from our president, Mr. Trump. He Tweeted that “Highly trained, gun adept, teachers/coaches would solve the problem instantly, before police arrive. GREAT DETERRENT!” Allow me to state, unequivocally, that this is false. Highly trained teachers is what this nation already has, but we are, as we should be, highly trained in education, not in combat. I would never presume to lecture you, who have been in combat, on what that experience means and what training and preparation went into making it possible for you to fight for our country, but I am entirely and absolutely sure that I do not have what you had. I do not have the training, I do not have the preparation, I do not have the will to fight. My classroom is not a battleground, and I am not a warrior. What’s more, I will not become such. Turning me from an educator into a fighter would destroy too much of what I need to be successful in my profession: it would change my relationship to my students, it would change my view of myself and my role, it would change the priorities for my continuing professional development and the allocation of resources. It would make my position untenable for me, and if it ever becomes policy, I will quit. I will quit immediately and without reservation, and I will not be alone: please recognize that thousands and thousands of teachers feel as I do. The country already has a teacher shortage, and a longstanding problem with hiring and retaining quality educators; do not make it worse by misunderstanding who we are and what we do. I will never carry a weapon in school, and I will never fire on a student. Don’t ask me to.

Lastly, I would ask you to join me in moving the gun control debate in a general direction that I hope you will be able to support. I recognize the right to self-defense and the concomitant right to keep and bear arms. I oppose authoritarian government, and applaud the democratization of physical force through the private ownership of firearms. But the reality is that the ready availability of firearms, particularly of weapons that have uniquely destructive properties, allow for the unequal and devastating use of force in a way that reduces individual rights: one 19-year-old man’s ability to purchase an AR-15 and “countless” magazines has taken the right to life, the right to liberty, the right to pursue happiness, away from thousands of students. While of course such simple measures as a waiting period for semi-automatic rifles, or an age limit of 21 on the purchase of long guns, or a limit on magazine capacity, or a universal background check system, would not stop all massacres and would not affect the majority of gun deaths, the simple fact that such measures would stop some massacres, and would reduce gun deaths, without materially affecting the right to bear arms or the ability of Americans to defend themselves, makes these measures requisite. It makes them necessary. It makes their continued absence a failure and a dereliction of duty. I myself was inspired to write you, an action I have not taken in the past, by the political will and activity of the victims of the Parkland shooting; I consider myself to be derelict in my duty in not having taken up this cause in the past with the same vigor and determination that these teenagers are showing us now. I am a teacher; I am an adult; I should have been fighting this fight, not waiting for children to fight it for me. Had I fought for these measures in the past, had everyone who agrees with me done so, had all the congresspeople and elected leaders in this nation done what we all (I hope) know to be the right thing, then this particular massacre would not have occurred. That weighs on me, and though I don’t hope it weighs on you, I hope you can empathize with me about it. I hope you can understand the determination that I now have, that this situation not continue as it has in the past, that we not let this moment sink back into oblivion and change nothing and do nothing. I will not take up arms and fire on a student: but neither will I be silent while madmen do exactly that.

I hope you can agree with me on these three actions: to repeal the Dickey Amendment and allow the CDC to investigate the causes of gun violence; to oppose the absurd idea that our schools should encourage or require teachers to carry arms as a means of defending students from attack; and to press for some common-sense gun safety measures that would help to regulate arms without removing any citizen’s inalienable right to self-defense. Please believe that my vote, and my support, depend on that agreement.

Sincerely,

Theoden Humphrey

Compromise

Dusty Leave a comment

I think I have a solution. To one problem, at least.

I don’t have a solution to most of them. The antifa started violence today in Berkeley, which is only going to increase tensions as it gives more weight to the victimization narrative that drives much of the right-wing/white supremacist movements; “Look at those violent leftists, attacking innocent Trump supporters.” I keep wanting to tone down tensions around Mr. Trump himself: the man will surely go down in history as one of our very worst presidents, but we will survive this, nevertheless; until and unless he commits an actual crime, we should not call for his impeachment, a process that should never be used for partisan purposes. But then Trump himself keeps doing the stupidest shit imaginable, and he keeps driving everyone around the bend. Why the hell is that guy holding campaign rallies? And pardoning Joe Arpaio? Are you kidding me?

So I can’t fix that. I can’t fix the eternal war in Afghanistan – not because I don’t know the solution, I do: it is GET THE HELL OUT OF AFGHANISTAN – but for some reason, that is an untenable answer to the majority of Americans, who seem to believe this bullshit about “not pulling out before we get the job done,” because doing so will leave a power vacuum which will lead to the rise of terrorist groups. Somehow we never take it to the next step in the logic, which is: that means that WE are the power in Afghanistan, and we expect to remain the power in Afghanistan because as long as we are there, nobody else can have power. I heard a former soldier on NPR today saying that he expected we would have a military presence in Afghanistan for decades to come. Decades. Decades that we will be the power in Afghanistan. Which means we are an invading, conquering force, and if you don’t think that that makes more terrorists than any power vacuum ever could, well, you’re just not thinking.

I wish I could solve that one. However, not all hope is lost, because I do have a possible solution to at least one problem: the problem of Confederate monuments.

The inspiration is this.

Can’t take down that ridiculous bull? Build another statue that makes that bull seem pathetic. Or that at least gives people an opportunity to see the bull in a new light.

Now, I realize that both sides in this debate believe they already have the perfect solution: one side thinks we should leave all of the monuments up, and the other side thinks we should tear them all down. And both sides have very simple arguments that they find convincing. I don’t want to say that either side is right or wrong; not because I don’t have an opinion, but because trying to argue that way has gotten us – here. To marches and murder in Charlottesville and fights and arrests in Berkeley; and I don’t want to know where else it will lead. We’re not going to settle this by yelling at each other. We have to find a way to compromise.

So here’s my idea. Leave up the monuments. And build more.

For every statue of Robert E. Lee, add a statue of Frederick Douglass, or Harriet Tubman, or the soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts. For every Stonewall Jackson, a Nat Turner. For every statue honoring the Confederate soldiers, add another statue honoring the victims of chattel slavery. Match Confederate tombstones with tombstones for the victims of lynchings – and state on the tombstones that the bodies that should be at rest under those tombstones are lost, thrown into unmarked graves or burned to ash or sunk in the swamps. People on the right want to remember our history? Okay, let’s remember every part of our history: let’s commemorate the four hundred years of murder and torture that this country is founded on.

How could anyone complain? I’m not suggesting we do anything to the monuments that already stand; if they have plaques that paint the Confederacy as a legion of honorable men fighting for justice, then fine, that can represent one side of the argument. We can word a plaque that shows the other side of the argument, and put it on a nice twenty-foot-tall bronze Malcolm X. White supremacists can pretend the new statues don’t exist, but they certainly can’t argue that they should be taken down; any person who feels oppressed by the presence of racist memorials can take solace in the simultaneous presence of anti-racist memorials, side by side with the racists.

Why stop there? I keep hearing arguments – mostly straw man arguments, but still – about Washington and Jefferson, who both owned slaves. I think both of those men should be commemorated for what they did for this country, but I can’t disagree that their ownership of slaves makes their legacy troubling. So how about every statue of Thomas Jefferson has a statue of Sally Hemings? Maybe a taller Sally? Looking over Jefferson’s shoulder? Or maybe a full family portrait of all of their children, all six of them lined up right in front of the President. How about we take the portraits of George Washington and add an image of every slave he owned into the background? Imagine that on the dollar bill: George’s sour puss surrounded by tiny, tiny portraits of thousands of African and African-American slaves. Think that would make the point? It would sure make a hell of a watermark, wouldn’t it?

I understand the argument that we shouldn’t try to forget our erase our country’s history. I understand the argument that remembering our history shouldn’t include commemorating it with statues and monuments and schools named for men who defended chattel slavery. But I think we need to remember that the Civil War was fought by the Union not to free the slaves, not to end slavery – but to keep this country together. This is also, I think, a pretty troubling legacy; it’s actually pretty hard to understand how defending a political entity is worth slaughtering half a million of its citizens. But I do think this country is essentially good, and that it is better if it is united, rather than a house divided against itself.

So let’s unite: the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of our history, all together, all immortalized in bronze and marble, for everyone to see, for everyone to be proud of, and also, if not ashamed, then – humbled. This is who we are, after all. We shouldn’t forget it.

Come on, think of it this way: if we do this, then everybody gets a trophy.

30-Day Slump

Dusty Leave a comment

(Alternate Title:

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Today – Presidents’ Day – is the 30th day that President Lump has been in office. It’s the end of our free trial, our money back warranty period; now we can’t return the product any more.

So. How’s it going? Let’s check in.

I think that President Sump got elected on the back of an unlikely coalition of monied interests and angry Americans. His lack of a background in politics, which would have told us where his interests lay and where his votes have been cast, and the fact that he is a reality television star in every sense of the word (By which I mean: he purports to represent himself completely honestly, but we all know he’s edited and scripted and molded, folded, spindled, and mutilated, until he’s actually the furthest thing from reality.), have allowed various groups to color him in according to their own imagined scheme. Anti-Islamists dreamed he would eliminate radical Islam (or even better, ALL Islam); Republicans hoped he would put a stop to the Liberals taking over the country; wealthy people believed he would help make them even wealthier. They all hoped he would be a good choice, and enough (just barely enough) of them voted for him that now we get to find out what happens when people stop being polite – and start getting real.

I see Mr. Rump, then, as an experiment. It’s an experiment I wouldn’t have chosen personally, but it is one I am participating in; and I, too, had my hopes about what he would and would not be like as a President. I’m sure we’ve all seen the memes about giving him a chance, and hoping that he fails is like hoping that your pilot crashes the plane; that’s all well and good, as far as it goes. The question is: how far does it go?

That’s the point of this blog. We’ve gone 30 days. Has it been enough to see what has happened to our hopes and dreams? What do you say we give him a progress report?

The Republican establishment: The Republicans in Congress, who opposed him, waffled about him, and then supported him, had a very specific plan in mind, I think, when they decided to back Clump. And they did back him, whatever people think about Stump’s intention or capacity to oppose Washington institutions and “drain the swamp.” The standard Republican strategy is to use social wedge issues to get elected, and then completely ignore those same social issues in favor of cutting taxes and regulations as part of sweetheart deals with various industries who lobby them, and then hire them as lobbyists. (Thomas Frank’s excellent book What’s the Matter with Kansas? explains this lucidly and completely) So since they have gerrymandered a lock on the majority in Congress, what did they need Plump for? Easy: he’s a distraction. He’s the dancing clown we’re all staring at while McConnell and Ryan et al tear apart the regulatory state and the tax base.

How’s it working for them? Well, they’re tearing apart the regulatory state and the tax base, and Crump’s getting the majority of the heat. They are not forgotten, though; the curtain hiding the man in the corner of The Great and Powerful Oz’s chamber is not really covering them very well. They need Grump to allow a few more pipelines, nominate a few more paper men to head important bureaucracies. Hold a few more manic press conferences. Overall, though, they’re probably pretty satisfied. Let’s see what they do to Obamacare.

Republican voters: The vast majority of people who would identify themselves as Republicans are probably not happy with who he has become. They wanted him to champion their specific causes, and he’s not been doing much of that; he’s been championing mostly himself. But this is not news: generally speaking, candidates quickly become a disappointment to the voters who got them in there. I voted for Obama in 2008 because I wanted him to end the war, close Guantanamo, regulate Wall Street, and create an effective single-payer health care system. So I guess one out of four ain’t — fuuuuuck.

Same thing here. Two minor differences: Mr. Chump has disappointed people more quickly, I think, than most presidents do; witness the rally he felt a need to hold in Florida this past weekend, trying to stir up some excitement. 30 days and people are already drawing away, hissing in breath between their teeth. And two: most of the time, candidates who become Presidents disappoint because they moderate their stances: once they’re in and they no longer need to fire people up, they start looking to compromise with the establishment. Gump (Sorry, Forrest) hasn’t moderated at all: he’s just shown that his more extreme stances will meet resistance. I don’t know if that shows his voters that he can’t get things done, or if it shows them that the rest of the government isn’t on board the Gump-Train.

The Democratic establishment: Could not be more miserable. Lost the entire government to a Three Stooges skit. Also couldn’t be much weaker about it. I mean, Jesus: they’re already talking about approving Gorsuch for the Supreme Court? When it should have been Merrick Garland almost a year ago now, and we all know it? What kills me is they don’t want to use the filibuster against a Supreme Court nominee for fear the Republicans will change the rules and take it away. Right, because Lord knows you don’t want to lose a weapon YOU WON’T EVEN USE. That would really suck.

Hey guys: the GOP got credibility by opposing everything the Democrats did under Obama with an almost religious fervor. What you need now is an equal credibility. Peace and negotiations come later, once you discover some strength. Suck it up and do your job, okay? And don’t tell me how much it sucks: mine sucks too, and I make less than a fifth of what you make, NOT counting bribes from lobbyists.

Democratic voters: In some ways, ecstatic. I mean, heartbroken after the actual election; but then they got determined, and they have stayed that way. Since the Democrats have largely been sitting on their laurels since the Clinton who won, it’s good that they are willing to get to work. I think it’s been good for them to do it, too, to actually take to the streets, to recognize what it is to build coalitions rather than simply imposing an orthodox viewpoint and ostracizing those who don’t conform. Let’s be clear: it’s not enough to be right, you also have to get enough people to agree with you. Listen to Hamilton sometime.

Moderates: Hoo boy: you thought Republican voters were upset. Always, ALWAYS, the candidate moderates when they get into office. Compromise is the only way things ever get done in a government built on checks and balances.

But nobody told Dump that.

If anything, he’s gotten more extreme as his attempts to follow through on his campaign promises have been stymied by the courts or the Congress or the public or the media or — is there anyone still on his side? I mean, I guess the First Lady. And Bannon. So I figure moderates who voted for Slump hoping that he would be a good middle-right statesman once he got into office? Not real happy with how it’s gone.

Libertarians: Well, I mean, libertarians hate everything anyway.

People who thought he had to be better than Clinton: HAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAhaaaaaa.

Start with the accusation that Clinton is a liar. Now: alternative facts. Then go to her ties to Wall Street and to billionaire donors with shady politics. Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, (fortunately withdrawn) Labor Secretary Andrew Puzder, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Then how about that email thing? Right: I give you reading classified documents on an open air terrace at a golf resort, not to mention the Twitter Feed Heard ‘Round the World. And her apparent lack of personal charm and class?

Come on: that was shot before the election.

Frankly, I hope you people are unhappy.

People who were so angry over Bernie Sanders’s treatment that they wrote in his name or didn’t vote at all: Well, principles are important. But maybe a little less so now, hmmmm? “Voting for the lesser evil is still voting for evil.” Right: so is voting in such a way that you enable evil to win. I’m not saying that voting for Clinton wouldn’t have been evil: I mean, I don’t think it would have been, but I’m not in this group; those who are in this group may not have been able to stomach a vote for Clinton, and I get that. But when you literally throw away your vote — I don’t mean the people who voted for Stein or Johnson or another legitimate third party — you are making it more likely that either evil is going to win. Which means you’re voting for evil. And you got it.

Does it feel better to help evil when you have your back turned to it while you help?

Probably not.

Big business: 

Billionaires’ — Hold on a second — go back and watch that last one again. That video is priceless.

Right, where was I?

Billionaires’ Boy’s Club:

(By the way: did you know the last verse of that song is from the point of view of the President? Hm. Interesting.)

Speaking of presidents…

Vice President Mike Pence: Every time somebody mentions impeachment, I think his heart skips a beat. He signed onto this dog and pony show as the rational one, and that will stand him in good stead if the Mump ahead of him finally gets yanked out by the big hook. So considering how the first 30 days have gone, I assume he’s quite happy, indeed.

The Military: I assume they like how he keeps talking about increasing the military budget and buying newer, better equipment. If my job put me in harm’s way, and I could do it better with newer equipment, I’d want the same thing. Hell, if we didn’t have an unConstitutional standing army that has made us into the most war-like, invasive, intercessionist nation in history, I’d want the men and women of our military to have more money and better equipment. (Someday we will have the greatest National Guard in the world, and will offer hefty support to our allies and the UN — and nothing. Else. Think how far our military budget could go if we weren’t supporting hundreds of redundant bases around the world. But anyway.) They probably approve of his naming so many generals to his staff and cabinet. But they can’t be happy that he seems to be systematically alienating our allies and cutting off all lines of communication. I don’t believe our military wants to fight World War III, let alone start it.

The Alt-Right: I mean, Bannon, right? On the National Security Council, like Pennywise working in a daycare? And an attempted ban on Islamic immigrants? And a big ass wall?  Here y’go, fellers.

Fundamentalist Christians: So he’s not very Christian. But he’s opposing the Muslims, and he’s supporting the Israeli one-state solution. Along with all of the warmongering and hedonism, he certainly seems to be bringing about Judgment Day all the quicker.

And that’s . . . good, right? Right?

America’s Actual Enemies: If they’re crazy, then I assume they are planning to rise to the challenge, and see if they can out-loon President Grump. If they’re not crazy, surely they see how easy he will be to manipulate. Hell, any troll on Twitter can rile the guy up in 140 characters. This is, of course, lovely news for those who actually understand the importance of image politics and the cult of personality. I don’t really think that I do —  but I have no doubt that our enemies do, and they are probably doing this:

Everybody else in the world: All I can say is, I’m sorry. I don’t know if you had any hopes left in you after the election went how it did, but if you did, well — I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what my country has become.

Let me be clear: I actually still have hope. I am still hopeful that Mr. Trump (Yes, fine, sure I can use his actual name. President Donald J. Trump, okay? Bah, humbug.) will do no lasting harm to this country, and that he will satisfy a large number of people who have felt left behind by the progressive swing of the pendulum over the last few decades. That would be a good thing. In some ways, I think that’s all that can be hoped for with any president. I don’t know how much President Obama really accomplished –really — other than this: he did no harm. He didn’t hurt our international reputation, he didn’t break our government or our economy. The debt he created was already coming because of previous administrations and our Congress’s willingness to create new spending without finding ways to pay for it, and because of the financial crisis initiated by Wall Street. The wars he failed to stop, and the one he exacerbated by dealing weapons and flinging drones around like Rip Taylor chucking confetti, are all part of a quagmire that we were already in up to our tits. Jesus: do you realize that we propped up the Iranian government under the Shah, who came to power after the Allies invaded in 194-fucking-1? It goes that far back. So in the grand scheme, Obama did no harm. The problems of this country, the real ones, were not his fault, and I don’t think he made them worse, overall.

I hope I will be able to say the same for Trump. And if he makes people feel like they have a voice, like their vote counts, then that is all to the good.

And if he shows us all that what we really need to do is find a way to listen to each other so we can never, ever, EVER elect another jackass like this one — then I think his legacy will be complete.

I hope.

But that’s only good for my country, and our internal democracy. For the rest of the world? This must really be like looking down the barrel of a gun. And not because of Trump himself: but because 63 million Americans voted for him.

That’s the scary part.

Never Stop! Never Stop Fighting Until the Fight Is Done!

Dusty 1 Comment

Hey. HEY!

Stop being sad. Stop it.

I know: I feel the same way. This was not the result I was expecting. I was growing more and more stunned all last night as I watched  the results come in, and in, and in. I watched the commentators on CNN and then on BBC being just as stunned.

We didn’t think this was possible. We didn’t think this was our country.

It was possible. It happened.

And this is still our country.

It is not The Donald’s country. He did not win us. I know he thinks he did, and at some point today I’m going to have to watch a victory speech from that smug  asshole that is likely to make me vomit. He is going to have to start lying —

Wait. I honestly can’t believe I actually wrote that.

His lies, ongoing and ever more egregious, will now focus on trying to convince people he hates that he doesn’t hate them, right before he begins working to enact policy to prove that he hates them. The hypocrisy, and the assurance of our gullibility, will be infuriating. I’m already annoyed that my Republican friends are crowing over the victory. And I know I’m going to be mad a lot over the next four years, at least.

But this is still my country. And like it or not, that rotten son of a bastard is going to be my president.

My wife says he’ll never be her President. She said she may not be able to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance for the next four years.

Good.

We all know exactly what happened: millions of people looked at their options, and chose what was, to them, the lesser of two evils. Millions more of us think they chose wrong. And millions of us are racists, and sexists, and xenophobic bigots who want walls built, refugees interned, and immigrants deported.

Not everyone who voted for him. Not everyone. Millions, yes. But not everyone.

The thing that makes this worse is that we didn’t expect it. We didn’t realize this was coming. Neither did the media. This should tell us something: the discussions I have  seen of late that say that our world is turning into an echo chamber, where we only hear what we want to hear, where we only communicate with people who agree with us  and share our views, are correct. If you settled the election based on my  own Facebook feed, then Bernie Sanders would be president. If not Cthulhu.

This,  then, is our task. Tasks. There are several.

First, we have to start listening to each other. Even to people we disagree with. We have to be better than the hypocrite that just got elected, who will ignore the needs of millions of people who were not in the demographics who supported him, whom he campaigned against. We have to understand that there are millions of people who thought Donald Trump was the lesser of two (or four) evils. Millions. Those people must be heard, because the biggest reason that they voted for Trump was, I think, that they believe they have not been heard.

So listen. Take them seriously. They are people, and they are important. Not the racists and sexists and xenophobes: fuck them. But listen to the millions of rational, genuine people who believed Trump was the best choice, or at least the least-bad.

Second, we have to fix this government. Millions who voted for Trump, and millions who voted for third party candidates, and many, many millions who did not vote, believe our government is broken. It is. We have to fix it, because Trump won’t. He will take advantage of the breaks to break it more — for one thing, he’s going to nominate a hard-right pro-life conservative to the Supreme Court, and then perhaps another, since the liberal justices are aged and unwell. That means all three branches of government will be Republican, behind Donald Trump. So we must work. We must be vigilant. We must read the news — unbiased sources, if we can find them, because if the surprise on the newsmen’s faces last night says anything, it says that the liberal media bias has some validity, that the news channels, too, are become something of an echo chamber — and we must speak out, and we must organize, and we must march, and we. Must. Vote. 59,000,000 some odd votes  for Clinton, 58,000,000 some odd votes for Trump. 330 million people in the country. 219 million eligible voters.

This is broken. We must fix it. We can fix it.

Last,we have to deal with the worst part of this. Millions of Americans are sexist and racist and bigoted xenophobes. We have, it seems, spent too long considering them anachronisms and harmless cranks, and sweeping them under the rug. We pushed them out of the echo chamber. And then they found a  candidate who was just racist enough, but not too racist — “He was talking about illegal immigrants, not Latinos! He meant Syrian refugees that might be terrorists, not all Muslims!” — and sexist enough, but not too sexist — “He was just talking. He wouldn’t actually sexually assault anyone! He’s got a beautiful wife! He hires women!” — that millions of other people could stand to vote for him.

Remember that. Not everyone who voted for Trump is racist or sexist.

But there are millions who are. And we must deal with them. Not simply demonize and push them away: deal with them. Educate them. Argue with them. Fight them, if necessary: but we cannot continue to ignore them.

 

We can do this. We can. I mean it. We were hoping that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party could save us, and they failed. They failed. Not us. Not those of us who voted for her, and not those of us who were too disillusioned to vote for her. We did not fail.

The only way to fail is to give up trying.

So don’t give up. Fight. Fight for the country you want, and you believe we can have. Be active: learn, and speak, and act, donate, protest, canvass, join a third party and run for political office. Always oppose Trump’s plans, if he ever actually makes any real ones. Listen to the people who voted for him, who aren’t terrible people. Fix our government. Fight the evil that has reared its head all the way into the White House: the evil of racism and sexism and bigotry.

Do something. Don’t be sad: be determined.

We  can do this.