Journal of the Plague Years

December 23, 2017

While we were watching the Republicans raid 99% of Americans to enrich the .1% in slack-jawed horror, we may have missed ominous signs that an emboldened administration was doubling down on its racist authoritarian impulses. This week, ICE leaked that it was considering a new policy of separating children from their parents in order to discourage illegal immigration (Source: “Trump Administration Considers Separating Families to Combat Illegal Immigration,” by Caitlin Dickerson and Ron Nixon, The New York Times, 12/22/17). What has come into frightening focus this week, though, is that Congressional Republicans have transitioned from Trump’s supine enablers to his enthusiastically sycophantic helpmates.

In the immediate aftermath of the Great American Tax Heist (h/t Charles Blow), we were treated to the sickening spectacle of Cabinet members obsequiously praising the narcissistic fraud for his greatness, followed by dead-eyed Puritan, Mike Pence, leading Senate Republicans in a prayer to their orange deity. As Masha Gessen pointed out, the revolting display is a worrisome sign that we are hurtling headlong into fascism without hitting a speed bump.

Continue reading “The Monster is in the House”

December 20, 2017

Last night, after a “process” that was secretive, slipshod and rushed, Senate Republicans passed their jerry rigged monstrosity of a tax bill.  This bill is nothing less than “legalized” theft from the poor, the sick and people who work for a living, to line the pockets of Congressional Republicans and their billionaire overlords.  This may sound like hysterical hyperbole, but just examine the evidence.

This bill, by repealing the individual mandate, will deal a body blow to the Affordable Care Act.  This will cause 13 million people to lose their insurance and in all probability, trigger cuts to Medicare, severely impacting the elderly and people with disabilities (Source:  “Q&A:  Tax bill impacts on health law coverage and Medicare,” by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, The Chicago Tribune, 12/5/17). Continue reading “Make them pay”

December 17, 2017

 

There has always been a stark contradiction between the soaring rhetoric and universal applicability of our country’s founding documents and the messy reality of our willingness to massacre one group of people and enslave another to achieve our country’s global dominance. We know, all too well, the staying power of the pernicious mythology of Black inferiority required to justify our continued subjugation. At every stage of our country’s history, far too many Americans have been comfortable ignoring the contradiction, treating the status of Black Americans like a footnote that can be overlooked without distorting the meaning of the text. Continue reading “The psychological wages of white supremacy”

December 15, 2017

As Zora Neale Hurston famously wrote, Black women are the “mules of the world,” carrying the burdens that no one else will bear.  In Alabama on Tuesday, 98% of Black women (along with 93% of Black men) made history and elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate for the first time in twenty-five years.  Although Black people are only 25% of Alabama’s eligible voters, they were 29% of Tuesday’s electorate.  Black organizations surmounted formidable voter suppression to organize an incredible GOTV operation.  The state NAACP endeavored to call every Black registered voter in the state that had failed to vote in 2016 and The Ordinary People Society registered 5000 people in the jails in the weeks leading up to the election (Source:  @AlGiordano, Twitter thread, 12/13/17).

In the days since, the hashtags, #ThankyouBlackwomen and #TrustBlackWomen have been trending on social media.  What if, rather than being empty slogans designed to garner “likes,” those statements represented an actual intention to recognize the leadership and the work of Black women?  Let’s conduct a thought experiment and imagine what that might look like in real life. Continue reading “#ThankBlackWomen”

December 12, 2017

Today’s special election in Alabama presents the starkest choice imaginable of what kind of country we’re going to be.  The question is whether voters will choose an exemplar of America’s id, a walking cauldron of seething hatreds, backwards lawlessness and predatory behavior, or an upstanding public servant with a reputation for integrity with whom voters have some policy disagreements.  Today will determine how many of us will choose white supremacy over everything else.

That may seem like a sweeping statement.  We’d like to think that this is just about those “backwards” people in Alabama and doesn’t implicate the rest of us.  The truth is that every article that pre-emptively lays the blame for a Democratic electoral loss at the feet of Black people, citing our lack of “enthusiasm,” while studiously ignoring the multi-faceted campaign of targeted voter suppression being waged nationwide, is blaming the victims of that disenfranchisement.  We need to understand that it is white supremacy that renders Black people invisible and overlooks the devastatingly consistent efforts to disempower us. Continue reading “White supremacy over everything?”

December 9, 2017

 

This past week members of Congress have been falling like dominoes, due to transgressions large and small. While Democrats were imposing a zero tolerance policy for sexual harassment, Roy Moore’s fervent supporters in Alabama were saying that many parents would have been “proud” for their teenage daughters to date him (Source: Vice News, HBO, 12/9/17).   The difference is that preying on women is a feature, not a bug, of patriarchal white supremacy. While we were transfixed by the bizarre tableau of Congressional misdeeds, we may have overlooked ominous signs that we are on the brink of sliding into a full-fledged autocracy.

 

First, evidencing the consequences of Merrick Garland’s stolen seat, the Supreme Court began the week by ruling, by a 7-2 margin, that Trump’s “revised” travel ban could go forward while the two court challenges made their way through the Ninth and the Fourth Circuits. Next, during Tuesday’s oral arguments in the Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission case, the nature of the questions led several observers to predict a 5-4 decision in favor of the bakery’s right to discriminate against LGBT people. Although cases interpreting the Bill of Rights frequently require a balancing act between competing interests, if the court holds that the free exercise of religion renders unlawful discrimination permissible, it has the potential to erase all of the hard won civil rights gained by people of color and LGBT people over the last sixty years. Then, on Thursday, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court granted a stay of the lower court order directing the Executive Branch to turn over internal documents and legal analyses related to the decision to rescind DACA (Source: “Supreme Court lifts order to disclose DACA cancellation records,” by Josh Gersten, Politico.com, 12/8/17). Continue reading “Be a patriot”

December 7, 2017

 

Many of us decried the chorus of calls for Al Franken’s resignation that came from Democratic senators yesterday.  Despite the fact that seven women reported that Franken groped or kissed them without their consent, we lamented the potential loss of a well-liked, consistently progressive champion, particularly as we endure the presence of an admitted sexual predator in The White House and watch Alabama poised to elect a serial pederast to the United States Senate.

Our ambivalence is understandable.  We are battle worn from the Right wing’s ceaseless assault on our economic stability, physical safety and fundamental rights and are loath to surrender any soldiers, let alone one as effective and intelligent as Al Franken.  We fear winning the battle and losing the war and we don’t want to forfeit anyone until Trump is held accountable for his far worse behavior.  Such a viewpoint suffers from a myopia that assumes that there are no other Minnesota Democrats who could be as progressive, intelligent and effective as Al Franken.  It tells women [AGAIN], that sexual harassment is the price we have to pay to fight the Right Wing assault on our democracy.  It assumes that women can’t take center stage in that fight.  It has no answer to the question of how a progressive party that countenances serial sexual harassment can call itself progressive.

The reality is that we need moral clarity, not moral relativism.  Our panic over Franken is the consequence of the continued tendency on the left to avidly court the leadership of white men at the expense of women and people of color.  There is an ugly tendency to silence women, by whatever means necessary.  Victims of sexual harassment were supposed to swallow their pain, for the “greater good.”  Although women of color saw the danger posed by Trump more clearly than anyone, we were bullied and attacked on social media, in an effort to silence us.  Progressive men need to understand, we are done being silent.  Our Republican opponents are marked by cupidity, criminality and hatred for every American who isn’t white, Christian, male and straight.  We can’t win by being more like them.

December 5, 2017

 

After last few days we have the clearest picture imaginable of the future that Republicans are working assiduously to create.  From the travel ban, to their tax bill, to the elimination of public land, to the candidates they support, it is evident that, from Trump down to the lowliest Congressional backbencher, they all endorse a predatory plutocracy, where the wealthy are free to increase their wealth by exploiting the poor and middle class, unfettered by any regulation ensuring basic fairness and honesty.  They seek to deport or imprison their way to a homogeneous society that has never previously existed in the history of this country.  They have abandoned any pretext of morality, other than to use their twisted interpretation of Christianity as a cudgel to deprive LGBT people of their rights. Most consequentially, they signal on a daily basis that they do not believe in the Rule of Law, an article of faith that underpins our democracy. Continue reading “People Get Ready”

December 3, 2017

 

News of Michael Flynn’s Friday plea deal has us salivating in anticipation of what new revelations will emerge. Numerous significant disclosures have already rapidly followed. We have learned that, contrary to White House assertions that Flynn acted alone, he was directed by a “very senior member” of the Trump transition team to reach out to the Russian ambassador and undercut President Obama’s imposition of sanctions as a penalty for Russian interference in our elections (Source: “A Onetime Senior Official Will Cooperate,” by Michael D. Shear and Adam Goldman, The New York Times, 12/2/17). An e-mail from Flynn’s deputy, K.T. McFarland, stated that sanctions, “could make it harder to ease tensions with Russia, ‘which has just thrown the election to him,’” (Source: “E-Mails Dispute White House Claims That Flynn Acted Independently on Russia,” by Michael Schmidt, Sharon LaFraniere and Scott Shane, The New York Times, 12/2/17).   As more and more of those in the Trump orbit nervously assess their legal jeopardy, we can expect a greater flow of damning revelations confirming our worst fears about the treasonous criminal enterprise currently running our country. Continue reading “For love of country”

November 30, 2017

 

Every day, the flow of corrosive poison from this White House continues unabated. From insulting the heroic Navajo code talkers, to barring Black White House correspondent, April Ryan from the White House Christmas Party for the first time in twenty years, to retweeting vile, Islamophobic garbage so extreme it earned a rebuke from Teresa May, there is no off switch to Trump’s splenetic attacks on every marginalized group of Americans.

Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress stand by, not uttering a whisper of reproach, as Trump ceaselessly stokes irrational fear and hatred in order to turn Americans against one another.  Of course, we know why.  With the constant drip of damning news coming from Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation, Republicans are racing to pass their tax cut before Trump is frog marched out of The White House in handcuffs. Continue reading “Destruction of democracy”