Category Archives: Political Rants

Political Rants

Stop hiding your light under that bushel.

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Well, Trump started channeling QAnon in a big way this week at an Ohio rally. I’m assuming anyone who reads this blog knows what QAnon is. It’s basically the blood libel, updated for the modern age. Some idiot posted some random shit on 4chan (which happens basically every second) claiming that s/he is a secret intelligence operative and was spilling tea on upcoming FBI raids on Trump’s political enemies. It was supposed to happen in 48 hours and, of course, it didn’t.

That failure, however, didn’t stop the true believers. These people must be total knuckleheads. Who would earnestly believe this crap? Of course, people have a tendency to believe whatever places them in a positive light. Whatever the case may be, QAnon has a lot of followers, and they are apparently laser-focused on the conspiracy theory. Trump is their greasy, corpulent pope. It makes total sense that he would pull those people close – they are the scrum who never left him.

What they think they’re running on

Trumpist conspiracy theories aside, the Republican party appears to have settled on their central issue for the 2022 mid-term elections: brown people are coming over the border to KILL you. Sure, they’ll carp about inflation, spending, taxes, etc., but when they really want to motivate their voters, nothing works better than a solid dose of bigotry/racism. DeSantis and Abbott are leading the way on this currently, but they’re all saying it, tweeting about it, and trying to fill the airwaves with it as hard as they can.

Our own Claudia Tenney, soon to be the ex-congressmember from NY-22, has been tweeting furiously about the “border crisis” and an unprecedented two million apprehensions of people crossing the border to sew together her garments, grow and harvest her food, care for her sick relatives, and so on, all at tremendously low pay. She’s running for the bright red 24th district seat, so I doubt she has to pander very hard, but she also wants to keep her beloved Trump happy, so it’s under the bus with the brown people. I’m sure her GOP colleagues in the House all have similar motivations for saying the exact same things at the exact same time.

What they’re actually running on

The fact is, the last thing the Republicans want to talk about is what they’re planning on doing if they return to power. The reason for that is simple: their policies are desperately unpopular – politically toxic, even. Unfortunately for them, Florida Senator Rick Scott mapped it all out for them in a very public fashion earlier this year with his 11-Point Plan to Rescue America. He seems to be soft-pedaling it a bit now for some reason, almost like he and his colleagues are afraid of blowing their own horn.

One of his 11 points involves rescuing more tax revenue from working people. It’s basically one of the biggest tax hikes in American history, hitting poor and working families hard. This should surprise no one – for all their complaints about taxes, Republicans have raised our taxes more than a few times in recent decades, particularly in the wake of their 2010 takeover of the House when the eliminated Obama’s Making Work Pay tax credit. Not sure why Scott would think this is a great political move. Is he as stupid as he looks? Perhaps.

Help the kids out, will you?

Hey – Republicans don’t want to say that they will, for instance, ban abortion nationwide if they win back the House, Senate, and Presidency in the next couple of years. So we should say it for them. Let’s get the facts out on their policy positions every chance we get, on social media, in conversation, and elsewhere. They should like that, right?

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

R.I.P., uber rich lady atop killer empire

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When the queen of England died last week, I felt bad for the 96-year-old human being that she was, a lady about the age of my late mother. I take no joy in the death of anyone, even people I’m not crazy about, so all due condolences to her family who, I hear, are planning a quiet little funeral. Did I say little? I meant large … in fact, six billion pounds worth of funeral. Such is the institution of the British monarchy – still crazy after all these years.

No, I’m not a fan of “The Royals”. I watched The Crown on Netflix or whatever, and it was mildly entertaining in a slightly nuanced gossipy kind of way. (They went way too easy on Thatcher and made Robert Kennedy look like a cheap wing man for his wife-beating brother the President.) But generally I avoid T.V. dramas about royalty mostly because it bores the living piss out of me. Then there’s that small matter of imperialism, but let’s try to keep our thoughts positive, eh, what?

They’re changing the guard at Thirty-Rock palace

I have to say, though, that I’ve been take a little aback by the degree of monarch worship on display on the purported left-leaning news channel MSNBC. I’m not sure if they’re drowning in their own tears or just drooling themselves to death, particularly on the set of Morning Joe, which is really just the Reagan/Bush administrations resurrected in the form of a talk show. It’s kind of ironic to hear them railing against the tyranny of Trump one day, then waxing poetic about the late Empress of the Realm.

If this is the reaction from the left-leaning news outlet, I can’t even imagine what the right-wingers are saying, other than Hunter Biden killed her or something to that effect. Still, it does make me wonder what the source of this royals adulation might be. I see it in friends and acquaintances, their attachment to this deeply problematic institution only deepened by the pomp and circumstance beamed at them from every television set, smart phone, tablet, etc.

No tears in Nairobi

Because Elizabeth II symbolically embodied the empire itself, she necessarily carries a great deal of imperial baggage. One of the more searing examples of British colonial thuggery was in Kenya, where as Caroline Elkins describes, the empire imprisoned more than 1 million Kikuyu in fortified villages, reminiscent of the strategic hamlet program in Vietnam and modeled after the Brit’s own murderous strategy in Malaya. These “native reserves” were the site of sickening abuse:

They used electric shock and hooked suspects up to car batteries. They tied suspects to vehicle bumpers with just enough rope to drag them to death. They employed burning cigarettes, fire, and hot coals. They thrust bottles (often broken), gun barrels, knives, snakes, vermin, sticks, and hot eggs up men’s rectums and into women’s vaginas. They crushed bones and teeth; sliced off fingers or their tips; and castrated men with specially designed instruments or by beating a suspect’s testicles “till the scrotum burst,” according to Anglican church officials. (Elkins, via The Nation)

This was under Elizabeth II’s watch, in a country that was of particular interest to her. Plenty of blame to go around, but …. really?

Sun never sets on something new

Kenya was nothing new in the British colonial enterprise. I feel I owe it to the victims of that centuries-long project to not join in the near-fanatical worship of this departed demi-god. Seems like the least we can do, really.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Riding Grievance all the way to armageddon

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Biden recently announced another $1.1 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, this on the heels of Nancy Pelosi’s bizarre-ass junket to the island / breakaway province. This, I think, is called tripling down, based mostly on a calculation common to most U.S. politicians that provoking China is a political winner, regardless of context. That may be true, but only if you’re cravenly pursuing popularity with no thought of human consequence. While that may sound particularly like Donald Trump, it also sounds like pretty much every other modern president.

We live in a time, once again, when criticism of American foreign policy is characterized as either foolishly alarmist or callously dismissive towards the victims of our official adversaries. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been called out for not being sufficiently critical of either China or Russia. It’s not enough to say that the leadership of both states is arbitrary and rapacious. You need to cheer on the weapons as they roll off the assembly line and into the waiting hands of our Ukrainian or Taiwanese allies.

The actual grievance narrative

What gets glossed over in this toxic discourse is a fuller understanding of history and motive. What is the power behind Putin? He presents himself as the protector of his people – the strong dude who’s going to rescue them from the ravages imposed by the west. This narrative resonates with many Russians because they lived through a catastrophe in the 1990s – an economic implosion born of the “shock therapy” doctrine pushed by the United States and Europe. Many, many Russians lost their livelihoods, their security, even their lives. They also lost any lingering sense that Russia was a great nation. Into that breach walked Putin.

There’s a similar dynamic with China. Xi Jinping and his cohort seek to present a strong, non compliant nation. While China is far from being a democracy, it’s likely that the Chinese people want to think of their country as consequential. That is probably founded in China’s history over the last 100+ years, which started with decades of humiliation at the hands of Europeans (the British especially), followed by civil war and a long, bitter occupation by imperial Japan. No question but that Xi is a tremendous dick, like Putin, but their grievance narrative is based on something real, unlike that of the Republicans.

Revisionist history 2.0

It’s kind of amazing how little understood this dynamic is. The public radio show On The Media did a story about competing historical narratives regarding Hong Kong and China (thanks to Best of the Left for clipping this). What fascinated me about this was that these narratives, which were presented as mythical, all had varying elements of truth embedded in them. There was this “King of Kowloon” graffiti artist who became notorious for claiming that his family owned the Kowloon Peninsula before the British claimed it. Well, maybe. It was something like a feudal society. Then, of course, there is the tabla rasa myth of British Imperialism – the place was empty when we got here.

But then this NPR reporter talked about how China was rewriting history books again to, in effect, erase British imperialism:

Now they’re claiming that Hong Kong never was a British colony. They’re saying that when the British took over Hong Kong, there were these series of treaties, which the Chinese call unequal treaties. They say they were forced upon them by gunboat diplomacy, by violence, and they never actually agreed to any of these treaties. So sovereignty was never ceded. It’s a crazy argument when you think of all those governors and the British administration of Hong Kong to claim that it was never a colony, but it also shows you the sort of mutability of history.

Is it crazy to say that China’s sovereignty over Hong Kong was taken from them by force? Really? It was a forfeit as a result of one of Britain’s opium wars. What do you call that?

No more gunboats.

We seem to be leaning into our imperial posture. And while it’s natural to empathize with the victims of Russia and China, let’s not forget that there are people directly in the cross-hairs of our policy as well. We need to spare them some concern and intervention as well. We also need to bear in mind that major power conflict in the modern age carries with it an insupportable risk of nuclear war.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

“The Improvement association” needs improvement

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I probably spend way too much time thinking about elections. I suspect you think so too, particularly since I’ve devoted so many blog posts to the subject. I even talked about it a lot on my short-lived political podcast, Strange Sound, though not so anyone would hear. The fact is, I kind of hate elections. They’re nerve-wracking as hell, they often turn out badly, and I’m not a big fan of suspense, especially when it runs all night long. But that’s just experience talking – long, bitter experience.

There are many things we can do that are more important than voting. Mutual aid, organizing, public service … all of these things make an immediate difference for people. But more than one thing can be important at the same time, and my contention has always been that voting is important enough to do, even if it isn’t as important as all that other stuff. For people like me – CIS-gender white males – the time commitment involved is negligible.

So, though I’m not a huge NPR fan, I was excited when I heard that a recent Serial Podcast had centered on elections in North Carolina and purported voter fraud. But after listening to it, I can only say that they kind of hid the ball. Or dropped it. Not sure which.

Organizing is the enemy

Without getting too deep in the weeds of the podcast, The Improvement Association – a co-production of NPR’s This American Life / Serial and the New York Times – talks about a political action committee in Bladen County, North Carolina that does get-out-the-vote efforts for black residents. They basically hand out a sample ballot with their recommendations and encourage people to support their list. In short, this is organizing 101, completely legal and above board, and a really effective way to drive turnout and support for Democratic candidates.

Naturally, the Association is under constant attack by white politicians, who accuse the organizers of voter fraud. They basically gaslight the organization, so that when an actual Republican voter fraud scheme is busted, somehow this black organization’s name is dragged into the conversation both on a local and a statewide level. The white people in this story – mostly Republicans – understand the power of this black voting block, and they’re using the tools available to them (i.e. baseless accusations of cheating) to undermine it. What is more of a threat to white power than organized black people?

Strange focus

What kind of astonishes me about this podcast is the degree to which the reporter, Zoe Chase, gets sidetracked by this internal power struggle within the PAC. Now, it should come as a surprise to no one that organizers and political agitators tend to have egos. It seems likely that the two lead organizers, Horace and Cogdell, push to get their own way in the context of the organization. But if the ultimate goal is more power and resources for black people in the sea of white people known as North Carolina, is this all that bad?

Chase follows Cogdell’s efforts to elect three black councilmembers in a little town named Elizabethtown – a majority black community run by rich, white people, where there is virtually no public investment in the black neighborhoods. Chase spends a lot of time on the critics’ accusation that Cogdell is doing this so that he will be able to control these three black women on the town council. In the end, Cogdell’s candidates lose, and his colleague Horace suggests that this was essentially because black people were voting against their own interests for one reason or another. This is Chase’s take on Horace:

“It’s always zero sum with Horace when it comes to politics. I’ve learned that. If you’re not with him, you’re against him. And if you’re against him, you’re wrong.“

The thing that must not be named

On the other hand, what I hear from Cogdell is a pretty reasonable economic, almost Marxist analysis of how power works in that little town. A minority of white people with money get all the benefits, while underrepresented black people get the shaft. NPR / NYT say little if anything about this dynamic. It’s really more about personal squabbles. That’s what makes a podcast go viral, right?

Am I surprised to learn that NPR / NYT reporters are constitutionally incapable of giving credence to this kind of analysis? Not at all. There was a similar issue with the podcast Nice White Parents which I talked about on my podcast, Strange Sound. They will twist themselves into knots trying to avoid it.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Getting the most out of your five minutes

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As anyone reading this blog knows, I come from a history of relative privilege. My parents weren’t rich; they were white working class during a time when being that meant a measure of disposable income that’s practically unheard of for working class people today. Dad worked, and his income was the only money we had coming in, whereas Mom ran the household and basically did all the menial work of cleaning, cooking, washing clothes, etc., etc.

One thing they always made time for was voting. And again, being white, working class in those days meant voting was relatively easy. I inherited that state of ease from them, apparently, because I seldom if ever have to spend more than five minutes on voting. I walk in, sign a paper, get my ballot, fill it out, and drop it in the machine. Easy as fuck, particularly since my employer is fine with me taking the time to do it. For lots of other folks, though, not so easy.

Calling all white people

Okay, so, if you’re like me, you’ve got even more of an obligation to vote in a way that counteracts rampant suppression of voters of color. Our congressional district has shifted significantly, as I’ve mentioned before, so my old classmate Claudia Tenney is moving on to a newly reddened 23rd district to avoid what would almost certainly be a crushing defeat in the 22nd, which she currently represents. She has been going through some wild political gesticulations, ensuring that she stays on Trump’s good side by underwriting his “stolen election” theory and various other bridges-too-far. Not pretty.

That’s not to say that the Republican contenders for the 22nd district aren’t as crazy as Claudia. There’s this dude Steven Wells, for instance, who’s been running about a million ads. Kevin McCarthy’s PAC dropped $300,000 in TV spending into his campaign at the last minute, according to Syracuse.com. He’s doing the full Trump Monty, crowing about Biden’s border crisis, the price of gas, inflation, crime, did I mention gas? He’s also trying to pull the businessman piece of it – only he can fix it. The dude is a tremendous waste of space.

Primary choices

I’ve wondered this year if people in the new 22nd district understand the character of this race. They settled on the lines very late in the game, and it’s more than possible that a lot of people don’t know what district they’re in let alone who’s vying for the House seat. Some Democrats may not know that there’s even an opportunity to win the 22nd. That opportunity existed before, of course – the two elections Claudia won even within the old district lines were real squeakers. That was when the district leaned Republican; now it leans more Democrat.

While there are more progressives in this district than before, like many other districts they were unable to settle on a single candidate. Sarah Klee Hood was a good candidate, but she was massively outspent by a more centrist Dem named Francis Conole, who took the race by about three or four points (less than a thousand votes). Trouble is, there were two other candidates who were more or less to the left of Conole, who between them took another 25 points. A similar thing happened downstate, in the 10th, where rich boy Dan Goldman very narrowly beat out Yuh-Line Niou, a sold progressive. It was another crowded field of leftists, including Mondaire Jones, Carlina Rivera, and freaking Liz Holtzman, all of whom took a substantial piece.

Organize, people

The only way to beat people like Goldman and Conole is for progressives to settle on a single candidate, if possible. That takes organizing, and that means spending more than five minutes on politics. Some have the bandwidth to do it, but at the very least, white people, take five to vote when it comes up. With margins this slim, it can really make a difference.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

When Losing starts to mean winning, we lose

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Democracy is always an approximation. The countries we describe as being democratic have systems that exclude some voters, make it hard to participate in one way or the other, and are otherwise imperfect. That’s to be expected. We don’t aspire to imperfection, of course. In many countries, people try to do the best they can with what they’ve got. In France, it’s the fifth republic. In Britain, constitutional monarchy. And right here, we have the U.S. constitution – penned by rich white men, for rich white men.

During the Bush administration, people around the president were fond of saying that the the constitution isn’t a straitjacket. (Of course, they were mouthing those words in defense of torture.) Still, we are kind of locked into certain interpretations of it, and as such remain firmly under minority rule – just as the founding fathers envisioned it. I know others have said this, but apart from 2004, the insurrectionist party (formerly called the Republicans) lost the popular vote in every presidential race since George Herbert Walker Bush was elected in 1988. And yet they “won” 3 out of those seven races. Minority rule.

Narrowing the halls of justice

It goes beyond just the raw numbers of presidential terms served. Republican presidents have had far greater consequence than their Democratic counterparts over this period. Nowhere is this truer than with respect to the Supreme Court. Between Bush Jr.’s two terms and Trump’s term, they have appointed five of the sitting justices – Democrats only three. And we are seeing the results in the form of more and more draconian decisions being handed down by a court majority that is openly contemptuous of the public will.

We are being forced, as a nation, to accept an extremist view of abortion, gun rights, regulatory agencies, and others things. The Supreme Court is like our version of the Supreme Islamic Council in Iran or the old Soviet Politburo. But really, more like the former – they tell us what laws will stand, which will not. They tell us who is a person with full rights and who isn’t. They are aggressively unelected and unconcerned with prevailing sentiments. And there really isn’t much of anything we can do except wait for their next decision. Sure, we can push for court expansion and other reforms, but we have to do so within the constraints their decisions establish, and there are many.

More election drama

With the fall elections approaching, one wonders if the results will be broadly recognized. You can bet that, wherever Republicans do badly, there will be challenges, particularly in states with GOP dominated legislatures and GOP governors. I would like to think that people on the leftward side will take this election seriously and show up in unprecedented numbers, but we shall see. The pro abortion rights vote in Kansas certainly came as a surprise, especially since the ballot measure was designed to be confusing as hell. But even with a massively lopsided majority, Republicans are forcing a recount.

This is what we can expect. We have to be willing to fight back, non-violently (though I understand the need for self defense in oppressed communities). Honestly, we have to get this right. Allowing them to continue to claim victory whether or not they win races is just a recipe for authoritarianism. We know where they want to go – they keep telling us. Viktor Orban is the model they prefer. We need to believe them when they tell us who they are.

Keeping your options open

I would admonish you to vote, but I’ve done that before and look where it’s gotten us. Suffice to say that I am voting, and I encourage you to do the same (and to encourage others to do the same). If only to keep the option to vote open for the years ahead.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

Political Rants

An unhealthy dose of imperial fetishism

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As I’ve mentioned more times than I should have, I have had very low expectations for the Biden foreign policy since the beginning. By “the beginning”, I mean well before his election, when you couldn’t find foreign policy positions on his campaign web site for love or money. Biden’s fifty-year track record on foreign affairs is not a particularly good one. I remember him saying he was “ashamed” of Reagan’s “constructive engagement” policy towards apartheid South Africa back in the 1980s. Um …. that’s about it.

These past two weeks have done little to change my mind on this. The drone assassination of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al Qaeda leader, prompted a lot of fist-pumping on the part of mainstream Democrats and some never-Trump Republicans. A similar amount of jingoism accompanied House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, as well. I’m not certain what the expected takeaway is for either of these decisions, but it the point was to demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that the current Democratic leadership is well vested into America’s imperial enterprise, they certainly succeeded.

A child of bad policy

Ayman al-Zawahiri was a terrible person, there’s no question. I think, though, as we are the one global super-power, it’s probably a good idea to consider how our policy may have contributed to his no-goodness. Al-Zawahiri started down the road to al Qaeda when he was imprisoned by the Mubarak regime, where he and his fellow prisoners from Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood were tortured, killed, and otherwise abused. Egypt, I will remind you, has long been a major recipient of U.S. aid, far beyond what nearly every other nation has received from us. If Egypt’s notoriously brutal prison system contributed to al-Zawahiri’s radicalism (which it most certainly did), we bear considerable responsibility for that.

Secondly, there likely wouldn’t have been an al-Qaeda for him to join up with if it hadn’t been for (1) the Afghan CIA operation during the 1980s, and (2) the first gulf war in 1990-91, when U.S. troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia for the first time, remaining there long after Iraq was driven from Kuwait. Again, these were policy choices, not forces of nature. Without multiple interventions in the middle east and southwest Asia, America might not have been such a big, attractive target for these people. Can’t be sure, but …. might have been worth a try.

Worst of the worst?

Then there’s the question of how many lives were lost at the hands of al-Zawahiri. I would argue far too many. As Rachel Maddow pointed out on her show last week, he had a long history of planning terrorist actions, including being one of the masterminds of the September 11 attacks, the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, and so on. So, thousands of live lost. Not a nice person, right?

Now, there should be some reckoning as to how that record stacks up to the record of his pursuers. All killing is intrinsically bad, so I’m not suggesting that the rapacious policies of the United States somehow lessen the severity and the cravenness of al-Zawahiri’s attacks. But if it’s bad when he does it, then it’s bad when others do it as well, right? And if others do a lot more killing than he did, well … that makes them particularly bad, right?

Let’s just stick to the wars that followed 9/11. How many people died as a result of our actions? Was it less or more than the number of al-Zawahiri’s victims? In all honesty, America’s victims through this period run in the high six-figures to perhaps seven figures. Several countries were destroyed essentially beyond recovery. Fist pump, anyone?

Unfair comparisons

Okay, I know …. it’s really not fair to compare nation states like the U.S. to non-state actors like al Qaeda or individuals like al-Zawahiri. Nation states have international obligations, responsibilities, and should at least formally be accountable to their populations. Terror networks are kind of a law unto themselves, though international law does bear on them. But honestly …. shouldn’t we expect more out of our own government then that they should be responsible for hundreds or even thousands of times the number of deaths caused by our most ruthless enemies?

Seems like kind of a low bar.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Why there’s a housing crisis and what we can do

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I should start out by saying that I have never been unhoused. There’s a good reason for that – I am a CIS-gender white male who grew up in a middle class / upper working class family. (In other words, dad didn’t have any college but made a decent living during a time when white men with no degree could do okay, not great.) The American economy is set up for people like me, and I benefited from my place of advantage.

That means that, even when I was broke, there was a home I could go to. That home had equity, and when my parents passed away, some of that equity was passed along to me. Poor Americans, Americans of color, non CIS gender American largely do not enjoy this level of privilege. When they run into money trouble, it’s for real, and a lot of them go without food, medicine, or a roof over their heads as a result. In a country as wealthy as this one, that’s worse than a scandal; that’s a crime. What can we do about this?

If it works in Austria, why not here?

We have public housing in America. It’s not much to write home about, though, and it’s been under attack for decades. In my home town, a fair number of the units have been bulldozed. They were substandard in a lot of ways, built on undesirable patches of land, some of them close to brown fields where lead smelting was done a century or more ago, leaving poisonous residue that persists to this day. It’s not that different elsewhere, and public housing tends to reflect the high level of contempt that wealthier Americans feel towards the less fortunate.

As Americans, we tend to get cynical about government’s ability to change things for the better. It’s only fair to point out that other nations have provided for housing rights much more effectively, and they are not countries that have anywhere near the resources we have. One good example is Austria, where socialists put an exceptional public housing system in place in the 1920s that somehow survived WWII and is still rolling. There are others, but I think the key is to treat housing as a right, not a privilege, and to direct public investment towards building livable communities, not just units.

The problem is the same damn one it always is

Of course, the housing crisis in America is a product of the craven for-profit industry that has grown up around real estate and rental properties. Just as a general principle, anything that is a necessity for a decent life should not be a commodity. People should be able to get the food, water, housing, fresh air, clothing, and health care they need to thrive. These necessities should not be contingent on your ability to earn large amounts of cash. People should not be dependent upon good fortune to keep a roof over our heads.

It’s not a question of not having enough money. Of course we have the money to solve this problem. We spend enormous amounts of money on military hardware alone, largely because doing so lifts the political fortunes of members of congress. It does nothing to keep “us” safe. What would keep more of “us” safe is investing that money into sustainable housing. The only real obstacle to giving people what they need is the blinkered way we tend to think about what others deserve. As Heather McGhee pointed out much more elegantly in her book The Sum of Us, white people would rather screw themselves than share resources with black people.

How about this – nobody gets a second home until everyone has a first one.

Zero dark bullshit

Everyone on MSNBC is fist pumping over the CIA’s killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian cleric who was Bin Laden’s right-hand man and later head of Al Qaeda. They’re pulling out the John Brennans, the Richard Engels, the John Kirbys. I will have more to say on this next week, but these people are no better than the Republicans on foreign policy. Al-Zawahiri was a horrendous person, but by sheer body count over the past thirty years alone, we make him look like a piker.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Knocking it out old-school in the fighting 22nd

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Unlike many past election years, I haven’t been keeping close track of the state of play in Democratic or Republican primary contests for my Congressional District. Part of the reason for this is the redistricting debacle that New York State recently put itself through. The short version goes like this: the Democratic majority tried to implement a kind of lopsided gerrymander that would likely have flipped three seats into the Democratic column. That map was struck down by a circuit court in Maryland, and New York went with a more “equitable” version.

I have made my opinion on redistricting clear in previous posts, but to summarize: I don’t believe in unilateral disarmament. Red states are gerrymandering the living hell out of their congressional and legislative maps, adding dozens of safe GOP seats nationwide, ignoring court orders that don’t suit them, etc. Democrat-led states, on the other hand, are acting like boy scouts, implementing non partisan redistricting commissions, deferring to the courts, etc. The result may very well be permanent Republican crazy-ass rule. But Democrats can take heart in having been good little girls and boys.

What’s my number?

Okay, so … for a while, my residence was in the 19th district. I was getting invited to meet and greets with Antonio Delgado, the incumbent in that district who has since been named Lieutenant Governor by Kathy Hochul. Then came the court decision, and now I’m back in the 22nd, currently represented by the inimitable Claudia Tenney, the only NY Republican in Congress to vote against the recent bill protecting marriage equality. As I believe I’ve mentioned before, Claudia has decided to run in another district, as the new 22nd is a bit bluer than the old one, now that it includes Syracuse.

With Tenney off trying to gain a seat in the new 23rd, a beet-red southern tier district that stretches to Lake Erie, I am not at all clear on who will be running for the 22nd on the Republican side. I mean, I can read Ballotopedia like anyone else, so I know that Brandon Williams and Steven Wells are vying for the GOP nod. What I don’t know is who the hell they are. Wells seems to be harping on immigration, the Biden Crisis at the border, etc., wheras Williams appears to be a COVID skeptic, anti-lockdown corporatist.

Party of Roosevelt, Jackson, Kennedy, and Wallace

The Democrats in the primary race have been shooting me postcards for a few weeks. I’ve heard from Francis Conole, a dude who looks to be seven feet tall, Sam Roberts, a guy who was particularly good at getting his picture taken with Democratic leadership, and Sarah Klee Hood, who actually stopped by my house when I wasn’t there. Hood may be the best organized one – she was going door-to-door, after all. I have no sense, though, that the party leadership has any preference between these three.

What about policy? Conole seems like one of those Dem party pragmatists, like Anthony Brindisi was – you know, “common sense” solutions, etc. He does pay lip service to universal healthcare, or “greater access” to healthcare – that’s more like what he’s claiming. Then there’s the campaign finance question – apparently a crypto billionaire is bankrolling Mr. Conole to some extent. Not a particularly encouraging sign. Roberts has some very thin details on his policy page – mostly generalities about jobs, conservation, supporting policing, and – yes – “access” to healthcare.

Sarah Klee Hood, on the other hand, appears to support single payer and has posted info-graphics to explain its merits. Not bad.

Divide and conquer

Primaries in New York State are always confusing. They break up some local races from federal and some state races, strangely. For instance, primaries for congressional seats and state senate seats are held on August 23; the gubernatorial primary was held in June. They probably do this to confuse voters, but whatever.

Make your voice heard … even when that means just voting.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Here’s the short take: Stokely was right

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I’ve probably told this story once or twice, but I’ll tell it again for good measure. Back in 1980 I was a student at S.U.N.Y. New Paltz and during the course of that year I had the opportunity to hear Stokely Carmichael speak on campus. He shared the stage with a Palestinian activist – sadly, I do not recall who that person was. In any case, a goodly portion of their talk centered on Israel/Palestine and the Palestinian liberation struggle.

There were several middle-aged people in the audience that day who challenged the speakers on Israel/Palestine. I can’t say that I recall the exact wording of some of the challenges, but one question they put forward – not an uncommon one at that time – was that with over a dozen Arab countries in the region, why isn’t there room for one Jewish state? This and their other questions were not going over well in the room, which was packed with students. At one point one of the middle aged men referenced the holocaust, and Stokely’s response went something like this:

“When you said ‘holocaust’, I thought you meant MY holocaust. But now I know you were talking about the Indians.”

First impressions

I was a leftist back then, pretty much as radical as I am today, though less knowledgeable (if you can believe it). When I heard Stokely say this, I felt I knew where he was going with it, but I thought it was kind of hyperbolic and incendiary. At some point, though, in the decades that followed, I came to understand what he meant. His people did experience a holocaust, as did first peoples in America. But instead of ending, the black holocaust has shape-shifted, adapted, and transitioned into the current reality – one where Black Americans have less than one quarter the wealth of white Americans on average, where Black mortality and morbidity rates are higher than whites, and so on.

What’s more, white people have never atoned or particularly regretted the holocaust perpetrated on African-Americans. There has been no de-Nazification, no reparations. New ways to extend the legacy of chattel slavery keep being innovated, like the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade, subjecting those who can become pregnant to forced gestation, one of the central pillars of American slavery.

The holocaust against first peoples is too similar to the Nazi mother of all crimes to be denied. For the longest time, it was minimized, justified as part of a civilizing mission, etc. But in the end, millions were here … and then they weren’t.

Increasingly hard lesson to learn

Of course, now we’re seeing Republican-driven legislation to bar any discussion in school of either holocaust (and to some extent, even the Nazi holocaust) for fear of making white kids uncomfortable. It seems like the overriding objective of this policy is to return education to where it was when I attended grade school. The teachers in my grammar school didn’t talk about anything that would make white people uncomfortable – that was their entire audience, I should add. New Hartford School District (New York state) is more diverse today, but back in the sixties it was white as a sheet.

Most of my learning about race took place outside of the confines of school, in any case. And at 63, I’m still learning. I think one of the most effectively educational pieces of media I have seen on this topic is The Underground Railroad – not because it is a factual account, but because it so effectively uses the tools of video storytelling to reproduce for white audiences some element of the terror that black Americans have been subjected to. It hits you like a boat paddle upside the head, frankly, and that’s what we need to shake us out of our stupor and acknowledge that this was a holocaust, pure and simple.

Stokely was right, man. It took me decades to get there, but better late than never, right?

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