Turning Points: MJ, Mitt, NASCAR. Then What?

Surprising Solidarities: Jordan, Romney, NASCAR

Michael Jordan, Mitt Romney, and NASCAR have something in common: they have all said, in their own ways, “we have had enough” in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.

I felt there was change in the air when basketball great Michael Jordan, for years publicly mute on political issues, declared “we have had enough” in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

As recently as May 5th, Jordan defended his apolitical public persona by saying “I never thought of myself as an activist. I thought of myself as a basketball player.”

But following the murder of George Floyd on May 25th, Jordan said on May 31st: “I stand with those who are calling out the ingrained racism and violence toward people of color in our country. We have had enough.”

Those of us who have been puzzled by Jordan’s longstanding refusal to publicly address racism exclaimed, “Finally!”   . . . or words to that effect.

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A Real Chinese Invasion – a Thought Experiment

If they came in ships, it would be different – not so much

What if the Chinese, instead of  deliberately sending a deadly virus into our midst—the paranoid fantasy Trump is trying to sell—they launched an amphibious assault on the West Coast,  in an effort to establish a beachhead in North America from which they can conduct attacks deeper into the land. Trump cries foul, saying that the Chinese never warned us of an impending attack (whose imminence has been visible in the shape of ships gathering at the shore for a week), and goes on to assign the job of fighting off the attackers to the states of California, Oregon, and Washington, with whatever armaments and soldiers they have available.  He assigns Jared Kushner the role of coordinating the effort.  The federal government will act as a “backstop” for supplies as the need arises, but each state will have to stop whining about their predicament and make its own case to receive the supplies.  While asking, the states should demonstrably show their gratitude—whether or not they get what they are asking for. Just in case they might want something in the future.

The President will hold daily briefings to deny that the scale of the invasion is anything to worry about, and that if it gets much bigger the states should  get a Magic Potion that he knows of to slow down the aggressors . . . and wait until bad weather discourages the occupiers  (“like a miracle”) and sends them home—a victory for which Donald Trump will claim all the credit. Reporters’ questions about the administration’s response will be called too “nasty” to be answered. The nasty press will be accused of spreading “fake news.” People within government who express doubts about the administration’s response will be fired or reassigned to musty basements with no access to their colleagues.

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The Liberal Conspiracy Theory We’ve All Been Waiting For

[Note: by Liberal Conspiracy Theory I mean not a theory about liberals, but a theory held  by liberals about the Deep Right.]

Who’s dying of Covid-19?

To state the obvious—I know you’ve been thinking it, but are wary of seeming too paranoid—the Trumpian Right is getting just what it wants out of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Steven Miller goes home at night chortling at the latest death toll—OK, he may be sorry about some bigoted Trump fans dying (there’s always collateral damage in a righteous war), but not enough to suppress his glee at the bigger picture.

Those who are dying in the greatest numbers, out of proportion to their fraction of the population:

(1) People in big cities: New York; Philadelphia; Chicago; Detroit; Boston; Baltimore  . . .

(2) Minorities, African-Americans in particular: for example, in Wisconsin 40 percent of Covid-19 fatalities are blacks, and they represent 6 percent of the population.

(3) Prisoners, with blacks being imprisoned across the U.S. at five times the rate of whites.

(4)  The elderly—in the U.S. as of March 16, 80% of Covid-19 deaths were in people age 65 or older.

(5) People with serious underlying health conditions.

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Beethoven at Play: an Antidote to Gloom

Musical frolics, 1800’s Style

One resource to dispel the gloom that may descend upon us during such perilous times is music, particularly of the bright and sprightly kind. Those unacquainted with the whole body of Beethoven’s work may not know how much fun a lot of it is.  There follow here three examples of Beethoven at his most lighthearted.

 I.  This is one I introduced in an earlier post, but it bears repeating, particularly because you cannot watch the pianist (Valentina Lisitsa) without feeling tempted to bounce around yourself.  From the piano sonata Opus 10 Number 3:

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II.  In contrast to the first example above from early in Beethoven’s career, this next is a movement belonging to the great string quartet Number 14 in C-sharp Minor, composed when Beethoven was already deaf and had but a year to live.  Much of this piece has tragic undercurrents, but this is five sparkling minutes punctuated with musical jokes.  Watch from 25:05 to 30:13 for the fun part. Warning: if you opt to watch from the beginning you are in for a magical mystery tour.

(The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.)

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Bread and Circuses in the Trump Era: Part IV of Treading into Darkness

[“Bread and circuses” was a satirical term coined by Roman poet Juvenal to characterize how Roman rulers kept the masses compliant with the provision of bread (Roman agriculture was very wheat-intensive) and circuses—public entertainment such as chariot races in the Circus Maximus, and bloody spectacles such as gladiatorial combat in the Colosseum.  Here, the target of Juvenal’s scorn was a disengaged, passive citizenry. He also had plenty of scorn for other forms of decadence prevalent in the Rome of his time.]

Republicans grovel, Trump soars, democracy frays, and who cares?

Two days after the Republican-dominated Senate acquitted Donald Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, the President’s public approval ratings shot up to 49 percent. Stunning, until you look back on the week that was and saw that two events, external to the impeachment trial, had shaped the public mood: (1) the Superbowl three days before the acquittal, and (2) the Iowa caucuses, the day before the acquittal. The first drew a TV audience of 100 million (almost a third of the country’s population) and $10,000 per ticket.  In the second (the caucuses), some missteps by the organizers delayed the vote count, to the delight of the media who were all over the story like flies on a pile of horse droppings.

The Superbowl buildup during the previous week outshone the impeachment trial in the Senate (viewership less than a tenth of Superbowl-watchers), where the Democratic managers were proving that the President had clearly abused his power, and pointed out that, if he were acquitted, he would continue to do so with a sense of impunity (not just a sense of it, but with actual impunity). Part of the fallout from that week was the precedent set by the Senate refusing to call for witnesses and documents that in the normal run of things would be part of any trial. This pseudo-trial was not in the normal run of things—no run but more like a march toward the edge of a cliff.

All the time the managers were unintentionally proving that the American people care more about football  than the rule of law. If 100 million folks watched the Superbowl, you can be sure that at least 30 million of them were feeling a steady upward climb in football fever in the two weeks between the conference championships and the Big Event.

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Dumb and Dumber: the Iowa Caucuses

[Note: I began writing this post Monday night while the Iowa caucuses were still going on, and long before the debacle of the delayed count came into full flower. The “dumb” and “dumber” sections below do not refer to the disorganization of the caucus administrators; rather  they refer to things more basic. First, demographics, and secondly, timing. Both argue against kicking off a primary season to nominate a Democratic candidate for President in the Iowa cacophonies.]

Dumb: the irrelevance of the Iowa caucuses

The long delay in announcing the Democratic results of the Iowa caucuses Monday night gave pundits on MSNBC and CNN a lengthy opportunity to discuss the inanity of having the Iowa caucuses be the first and highly celebrated step in the Presidential primary process.

The result was music to my ears. On MSNBC, Claire McCaskill, Michael Steele, and Chris Matthews all sang variations on three themes: (1) the caucuses are not really an exercise in democracy but an exercise in local politics, although writ large by the national media;  (2) participation in the caucuses represents only 15% of all Iowa voters; (3) the racial breakdown of Iowa: 85.3% white, non-Hispanic and non-Latino; 6.2% Hispanic or Latino; 4.0% African American;  2.4% Asian; 2.1% other minority groups.

This racial demographic is particularly galling when Democrats like to claim that their ranks “look like America.”

Iowa does not look like America, at least not the 2020 version. 

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Senate Republicans 51, America 0 – Part III of Treading into Darkness

U.S. Senate casts vote for nihilism

9 p.m., January 31, 2020

Here I’ve been working intermittently for weeks on drafts of Part III of Treading into Darkness—researching the effects of social media—and now the Senate Republicans (almost all of them) have made easy work of this installment. One of the most ugly gifts that has ever been handed to me.

The impact of the vote not to allow witnesses or documents in the impeachment trial is far broader than a judgment upon the person of Donald Trump.  What the Senate has just done can be used henceforward by the executive branch to shield it from any investigation by Congress being performed in a timely fashion.  That’s because the task of taking the subpoenas through the courts while being continuously obstructed can take months or even years.  That’s exactly what the administration has been counting on with their refusal to turn over documents since last fall.

I can’t see the vote by the Republicans representing anything better than a descent into nihilism. Truth doesn’t matter, justice doesn’t matter, the checks and balances we thought were built into the Constitution don’t matter, the will of the American people (75% wanted witnesses) doesn’t matter, the idea that no one in America is above the law has just been completely trashed.  And government by a gang of thugs has been validated.

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Warren – Sanders: the non-handshake that shook progressives

Fundamentally, Bernie Sanders is another clueless male

When there was so much dust being kicked up around the contretemps between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, at first I thought – meh, she’ll get over it, or he’ll find a way to resolve it  that will bring her around; the dust will settle and things will go on as before . . . .  Such was his expectation after Warren charged him with calling her a liar on national television . . . then, when Warren refused his handshake and waited, looking him in the eye with clasped hands, as if beseeching him to admit a wrong, he said they should talk about it later and turned aside.

It doesn’t matter if “things will go on as before” on the surface, because at a deep level the damage has been done, and given what we saw, it will continue to get done.

Reflecting on my own version of male cluelessness, I have a good guess as to what must have happened to (1) elicit Elizabeth Warren’s fury over Sanders telling her a woman couldn’t get to be president, then denying it; and (2) explain his denial.

I think it comes down to Sanders just not getting it. Whatever his exact words, she took it as an aspersion back then, and in the heat of the Iowa race felt driven to spit it out. And Sanders, instead of taking her to heart, instead of conceding he may have made a mistake, flatly denied saying it.

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Tyrant in Your Pocket: Part II of Treading into Darkness

So much of dictatorial power comes from just showing up. Everywhere.

Soon after my return from Vietnam, I was living in Boston and saw a notice of an upcoming Black Panther Party meeting.  At the time I wasn’t sure just what they were doing, but I knew one of their primary objectives was protecting the black community from aggressive policing.

In the Army I had rubbed shoulders with enough African-Americans to understand what comes of being systematically oppressed. Although I was troubled  by the shootings of police on the West Coast, the Panthers’ Boston chapter had not been accused of violence, and was  ostensibly oriented toward helping blacks with food and education—it seemed like a positive move toward peaceful support of the black community.

I went to the meeting, curious to see what was up, and even considering helping them out. I also had a notion of showing that not all white people were clueless.

But I was greatly disappointed.  It was a small gathering of young black men in a windowless room (lacking windows made sense, but it was depressing nonetheless). While I, as the only white person there, was understandably greeted with suspicion, they seemed more curious than hostile. It was a good start. But then I began asking questions, and before answering, whoever I was talking to would consult the Little Red Book (“The Sayings of Chairman Mao”) which everyone possessed.  Where the book was not actually lying out in full view on a table or shelf, it would be in someone’s pocket—pants pocket, shirt pocket, out it came.

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Democracy’s Downward Slide and Totalitarianism’s Upward March – Treading into Darkness, Part I

Recession of democracy

On the day I began writing this (December 18), the depressing spectacle of the House of Representatives impeachment vote on Donald Trump occurred, and I happened to come across an even more depressing op-ed by Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post.  Zakaria described a trend toward repression of minorities, tribalism, and incipient totalitarianism.

    • The widening schism between Hindus and Muslims in India,  now being codified into laws that repress the latter. For a look at the rising persecution of Muslims in India, check out this in The New Yorker.
    • Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Trumplike attack on the Israeli justice system, together with an accusation that the police and prosecutors are attempting a coup.
    • Hungary’s  Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s moves to silence opposition voices, curtail the power of local governments, and throttle immigration with fences and razor wire and a limit of 10 asylum applications per day.
    • The massive government persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar.
    • White-hot partisanship in the U.S. political system (compounded by the resurgence of White Nationalism), whipped up by a demagogue whose bent is toward autocracy.

Zakaria refers to the human rights watchdog group Freedom House finding a worldwide decline in global freedom over the past 13 years. He quotes Stanford’s Larry Diamond, coeditor of The Journal of  Democracy, saying that we are seeing a worldwide “Democratic Recession.” Zakaria puts it more strongly: it may be a “Democratic Depression.”

Totalitarianism in the Information Age: the China model

To Zakaria’s list, we can add human-rights abuses in China, on the cusp of becoming a totalitarian surveillance state (more on that in later parts of Treading into Darkness).  The Chinese leadership’s actions to control its population is pulling it so far away from democracy that democratic aspirations are destined to become an illusion for the people of China (no matter what the outcome in Hong Kong).  The Artificial Intelligence-assisted mass surveillance system they have developed in the Xinjiang region to control, police, detain,  sometimes torture, and imprison minorities (such as the Uighur Muslims) serves as a model to extend throughout China going forward.

Continue reading “Democracy’s Downward Slide and Totalitarianism’s Upward March – Treading into Darkness, Part I”