What We Can Learn From Immigrants

I wrote last month about the Supreme Court's impending decision in the Dobbs case, after a draft of the majority opinion had been leaked to the press.  Sadly, and expectedly, that opinion is, as of last Friday, the law of the land, and the inevitable backlash against it has already begun. I expect to have more to say about both in a later post, as well as the mass murder of elementary school students in Uvalde, Texas, and recent developments in the hearings conducted by the January 6th House Select Committee.  On a more positive note, the ongoing recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic has (knock on wood, pu pu pu!) reached the point at which my wife and I are able to travel, which has made our summer months busier than they have been in three years.  Which is by way of explanation for why this space has not been as filled as it has been in past months, and as I feel it should be in any case.  Time to catch up.  History has not ended; if anything, it's hit the accelerator pedal.

But I'm going to start discussing none of these things, as worthy as they are of discussion.  Rather, and for reasons that hopefully will become clearer in a few paragraphs, I'm going to discuss a story that hasn't gotten as much media attention as the others, certainly not in relation to what I and many of my wife's colleagues think of as its importance.

This.

Stories such as this one are a testament, perhaps no longer fully deserved, to the fact that our dysfunctional, disintegrating nation is still treated as a powerful beacon of hope for the world's hopeless.  People such as the victims and survivors in this story are routinely dismissed as threats to the American way of life.  Stories such as this one, however, expose the reality that these people put themselves in mortal peril to exercise one of the most ancient rights in the history of the world, a right that is the foundational fact of the nation we all take for granted:  the right to travel, and in particular, the right to travel in order to find sanctuary from danger.  It's worth noting, in light of recent public discussions in a different context about the common law and 19th-century legislatures, that the recognition of this right dates all the way back to the Pharaohs.

And the need for millions of people all around the planet to exercise that right has perhaps never been greater.  Tyranny is rising.  The planet itself is on fire.  Whole economies are, as a part of that fire, falling to pieces.  Diseases are rampant and multiplying, perhaps beyond the ability of medical science to control them.  Never, in the entire history of the United States, has the immigration system on which its growth and power depend needed to be as strong and as adaptable as the nation itself has proven itself to be in the past.

But therein lives the proverbial crux of the problem.  We are no longer as strong as we used to be, because we are no longer as adaptable as we once were.

The history of America has been a history of adaptation.  In the process, adaptation would lead to failures, but those in turn would lead to renewed efforts toward success.  European settlers adapting European ideas about individual freedom, and later democracy, to the needs and limitations of a frontier society.  Making commitments to the peoples they found on their arrival, and then breaking those commitments, leaving to later generations the need to make good on those commitments.  Treating later arrivals to these shores not as a window of national opportunity, but as a spigot to be turned on and off as the short-term demands of the economically powerful dictated.

And yet, as time passed, we continued to adapt, to do what we could to address the problems we helped to create.  We are a long way from making up for our failures to Native peoples, but, in our better moments, we recognized the commitments we have made and attempted to honor them.  We may not have always been a nation that responded to the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breath free with an open heart and an uplifted torch, but we have reaped economic, cultural, scientific, and even political benefits from those moments when we willingly opened the golden door and added to the size and diversity of the American family.

Putting it simply, we understood that change was not a threat to stability.  We understood that true stability depends on making change an ally in the process of ensuring that stability lasts.  Change is a fact of life.  Adapting to it is the only way to go on living.

But today's America is a nation in which only half, perhaps a bit more, are willing to do so.  The other half, rather than tacking to the wind, would prefer to spit into it and not worry about getting wet.

It is composed of people (and their badly misguided followers) who would twist not only the Constitution, but medical science, in order to create a world in which women can be placed under the thumb of men (or another appendage, perhaps), but people cannot be required to abide by common-sense health procedures that equally benefit us all.  It is composed of people who would rather regulate a woman's body, but not the guns that can be and are being used to take her life as well as the lives of her children.  Perhaps worst of all, although there's room for disagreement about this, it is composed of people who claim the mantle of small-government advocates, yet freely admit to using the power of the State solely to persecute their political opponents, while protecting their allies from their obvious and multiple infractions of the law.

They are brazenly "adapting" the truth to conform to the only reality that matters to them, and that is preserving a world in which while, male, "Christian" property-owners are in charge of everyone else.  They are attempting to hijack the meaning of our history to pretend that it only supports the structure of our society as of its beginning.  And there are, quite literally, no limits to what they are willing to do in order to make all of this happen.

Which brings me back to the tragedy of the poor souls in the tractor-trailer seeking a better life in what they hoped would be a welcoming society.

For the folks in the half of America I've just been describing, those victims are not welcome additions to the strength and vitality of a free society.  They are job-grabbers at best and murderers at worst.  How does this half of America know this?  Well, it doesn't.  Not really.  Decades of accumulated evidence about the social and economic benefits of immigration simply don't matter.   For one-half of a nation of immigrants, the Golden Door of Emma Lazarus is now a barbed-wire barrier.

And, as it does in so many other areas of public policy, our national political debate mirrors this ugly reality.  I'm not sure any incident does a better job of reflecting this reality than this ugly post on Twitter from Greg Abbott, whose day job as governor of Texas is a masquerade concealing his full-time identity as a greedy bigot.  You may or may not have seen the post; if you haven't, I'll give you a moment her to pause and take in its vile content so you can follow along with me after that.

I'll leave aside the transparently obvious point:  if President Biden or anyone else had created "open borders," the people in the tractor-trailer, and the literally thousands of other potential migrants who have died attempting to enter the United States without documentation, never got the memo.  Neither have the people responsible for border enforcement:  the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency (and note that more people are coming from outside the Western Hemisphere).   Abbott's post proves a point that sometimes gets lost in the Internet gabfest:  it actually is possible to be stupid and corrupt at the same time.  Then again, he's a Texas Republican; the point shouldn't even need to be proven.

Instead, let's consider some aspects of this nation's history that might shed some light on a point that may be less obvious and, in any case, needs to be discussed if we are ever to fully understand the unique debt we owe to those attempting with increasing desperation to come here.

For starters, since most of the restrictionist crowd in the immigration debate is obsessed with migrants coming from Latin America, let's talk a little bit about the role the U.S. military, at the behest of the U.S. government, on behalf of the U.S. investing class.  Our economic interests south of the Rio Grande were not the product of arms-length negotiation between people, and even governments, with equal bargaining power on both sides.  What your history textbooks referred to as "gunboat diplomacy" was in fact gunboat capitalism.  Our military resources were used and abused not to protect the vital interests of American citizens, but the less-vital need of the investing class to prop up governments that would make it easier to make millions of dollars by exploiting the misery of their citizens, who often had no legal recourse to assert their interests.

Take a look at the first post here, for a description of what I'm talking about.  Just to reinforce its point, I'll share here the quote from the post that everyone should read, whether you click on the link or not:

I helped make Mexico, and especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba decent places for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in 3 city districts. We Marines operated on 3 continents.

—Major General Smedley D. Butler, US Marines, awarded two Congressional Medals of Honor, the highest medal given by the US government for bravery in combat. In 1938, in bitter reflection on his military career, more than two decades before President’s Eisenhower’s warning against the military-industrial complex, Butler described his military career in War is a Racket.

Welcome to the high human cost of low prices and easy access to consumer goods, folks.  I'm going to let you take it from here and do the additional reading that's out there.  Maybe, just maybe, you'll come away from it thinking a little bit more about what we might owe the folks in Latin American for the harm we did to their ancestors, to their countries, and to our own reputation for fairness and justice.  I think we do.  I think that the sanctuary from the governments these people are fleeing, governments that owe not only their position with respect to their people, but their very existence, to American arms on behalf of American dividends.

And it doesn't stop there by any means.

Remember what I said a few lines back about the increase in potential migrants from the other side of the globe?  To be sure, they're not the ones that immigration restrictionists are obsessed with, at least not routinely.  But the increase in numbers is due in no small part to the environmental harm is being done by our appetite for low-cost purchases produced at high cost to the globe, a cost that is being borne increasingly by poor Third-World counties without the resources to fight climate change.

Even in the case of China, a nation which has the resources to fight climate change on a large scale, it is not doing so.  And from its perspective, which is focused purely on short-term profits, why should it? The U.S. is supposedly the nation doing the most to fight climate change, but it's not doing the one thing it could do to make an enormous difference:  stop subsidizing China's destruction of the global environment by allowing Americans to purchase Chinese goods.  Most of those purchases are of items that can be made, and used to be made, here in the U.S.

If we were genuinely concerned about reducing the flow of potential migrants, we could do so simply by promoting economic policies that stopped giving domestic companies to ship jobs overseas to workers who, apart from working in substandard conditions for less-than-living wages, are watching their world literally crumble down around them.  We could, to borrow a phrase that has unfairly fallen into disrepute, "build back better" here and abroad.  But it's going to take time in any case, even if we elect a government with a majority of politicians willing to make the tough choices that such a path forward would necessarily entail.  And there's no prospect of a government like that emerging anytime soon, especially if the pundit class is correct in forecasting a red wave for this fall's midterms.

Which means that, for at least the short term, we'd better be prepared to accept a lot of climate refugees from all around the world.  Desperate people will do anything, will find a way against the greatest odds and the toughest enforcement policies, to find a safe haven.  As long as this nation looks like that haven, people are coming here.  No wall will stop them.

One would think that, given the need to address the increasing influx of migrants attempting to escape the consequences of our nation's past sins, our elected representatives would want to do something about it.  But, as is the case with other needs we all face, one party is willing to do something about it, even to compromise deeply in order to do so, and one party is not.

I have mentioned this before, but it's worth mentioning again .

In 2013, on the heels of Barack Obama's re-election and an expanded Democratic Senate majority, representatives of both parties in the Senate--the so-called "Gang of Eight"--put together a comprehensive overhaul of our immigration laws and enforcement.  It required compromises from both sides that each side hated--hated--to make.  They made them in good faith, however, because they recognized that a major problem needed to be solved, and they had been sent to Washington by the voters to solve problems like this one.  In the end, they came up with a bill that passed the Senate with 68 votes, a more-than-two-thirds majority.  This was, in other words, the sort of goo-goo bipartisan moments for which most of the Washington media circus lives.  Everybody was happy, right?

No.

The then-Speaker of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, John Boehner, was having a problem keeping the more rabidly-right-wing members of his caucus happy, and thereby keeping his rather cushy job in Congress.  And some of the more rabidly-right-wing members of the aforesaid media circus argued that Congress should wait until after the 2014 midterm elections, which would be likely (and did, in fact) give Republicans complete control of Capitol Hill, thereby increasing the chance that a more conservative-friendly immigration bill could be negotiated.

Result?  Immigration reform died.  And, nearly a decade later, there is no hope of reviving it, not in a Congress where Democratic control of each house is by a paper-thin margin, and the prospect (once again) that the upcoming midterm election will lead to a Republican Congress.

Nothing could better illustrate the cancer that has taken hold of our political life than this.  While we have one party that genuinely cares about solving problems. we have another party that is locked into a permanent political campaign, because it doesn't see problems as requiring solutions.  They only care about power, and they only care about manipulating problems, and the debates surrounding them, in order to hold onto power and to gain and keep more of it.

And, from their perspective, the effort has paid off.  They now have a Supreme Court that effectively operates as a kind of super-legislature to destroy anything a Democratic President or Congress might accomplish.  That, combined with gerrymandering, dark money, and a filibuster rule that appears to be going nowhere, and you have a recipe for permanent minority government.

And, if you're an immigrant trying to come here for any reason, you are coming to a country that not only doesn't care about your dreams, but also doesn't care about your life.  In truth, it doesn't care about any lives.  Not immigrants. Not public school students.  Not the women whose lives may depend on a therapeutic abortion.  Not even, based on a decision today from the aforesaid Supreme Court, the right to clean air and water, something that each one of us needs whether they're in power or not.

But immigrants are especially vulnerable.  They are largely invisible and anonymous to most people.  Yet they perform essential services across the entire nation.  Like it or not, they perform jobs that American citizens are not willing to perform.  There is no huge line forming to the right to work in or on the farms, the hotels, the office buildings, the nursing homes, the hospitals, the public schools in the jobs that immigrants take.  Both because of the work environments they are willing to enter, and because they are often undocumented as a consequence of our broken immigration system, they routinely put themselves in physical danger.

Ask yourself this question:  why would anyone do anything like that, unless the alternative was even far worse?  For most if not all of these people, it is.  And, as noted above, we bear no small amount of responsibility for that fact.

We're in one hell of a mess.  We've got a large number of existential problems, and no clear way forward on how to solve them.  But, if there's one thing we can learn about the tragic lives that were lost in their attempt to find the American Dream, it's this.

If people fleeing disaster still haven't given up on coming here, we shouldn't give up either.  On ourselves.  Or on them.  We owe them a lot.  They're willing to give us a lot.  They represent the best of this nation's history, and we will need them to be a part of our future.  As we try to find light in the present darkness so that we can move forward, we need to bring them into the light, and bring them with us.  They have much to teach us.

Especially when it comes to the need to adapt.

Whither Abortion And America After Dobbs?

When a ruling from the Supreme Court in a case engenders nearly five decades worth of political controversy, controversy that has even forever altered the nature of the nomination and confirmation process, it should probably not be surprising or even startling that a new array of justices on the Court would overrule that ruling.  Such, it appears, is now going to be the fate of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling by the court that recognized a woman's constitutional right to abort a pregnancy.  Then again, given the direct impact of the subsequent ruling on over half the population of this country, and the related impact on all of us, that fate cannot and must not be shrugged off.  It must be dealt with and discussed, a process that has gotten well under way in the more than three weeks since we have all learned that Roe is going to be a dead letter in the Court's jurisprudence.  

I'm not sure I can say anything on the subject that either adds or alters the debate, given the scale of the debate now ongoing, but the magnitude of losing Roe, for me at least, demands entering my proverbial 25 cents.  That, and two other things.  Two other "firsts."

The first of these is the leaking of what appears to be a final draft of a majority opinion in the Roe-killing case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.  Outcomes of Court cases have been leaked to the press in the past (Roe itself was leaked in this fashion), but never has an entire opinion of the Court been made available for public consumption prior to being made official.  Republicans, proud of their handiwork in reshaping the Court's personnel, have made attempts to reshape this news to focus public attention on the leak, as opposed to what was being leaked.  I'll have more to say about that in a paragraph or two.  For now, the greatest significance of the fact of the leak is the way it illustrates how much the losing side in Roe has done to politicize that which should be the most neutral of umpires in the game of American life (h/t to Chief Justice Roberts for supplying the baseball metaphor during his confirmation hearings).  And I say that regardless of the leak's source.

Second, there is the end result of the Dobbs opinion, if as now seems likely that it becomes official.  As has been pointed out by Lawrence O'Donnell on his MSNBC program, "The Last Word," this will be the first time in the lifetimes of most of us that a right recognized as constitutional in nature has been taken away from the American people.  No one should assume, based on what will apparently be the language of the Court's now-ultraconservative majority, that other rights so recognized by the Court are safe.  

That is in no small part of the functioning of the language and reasoning of the opinion itself, by Justice Samuel Alito, to which I will now turn.  Putting aside the sharpness of portions of the opinion's language, the law as it relates to abortion and otherwise are very badly mispresented by Alito in Dobbs.  

The basis for the Roe decision was a constitutional right to privacy, emanating from other rights stated in various constitutional amendments.  The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had observed that this was a somewhat constitutionally weak basis, suggesting instead that a stronger basis lay in the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.  Rather than relying on that argument, the respondents in Dobbs focused on the reasoning in Planned Parenthood v Casey, an earlier effort by the Court to ground the right to abortion services in something stronger than a non-explicit right to privacy.  Casey relied on the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause to recognize a right to have an abortion, holding that overruling Roe would be a blow against the substantive due process rights that women have come to rely on through the period in which Roe has been the law of the land.  

Alito's rebuttal to all of these arguments is a lengthy, at times rhetorically florid, and in any case one-sided view of the law that ultimately rests on four bases:  common-law commentaries, nineteen-century statutes, the absence of the word "abortion" from the text of the Constitution and its amendments, and, finally, the peculiar and extra-constitutional notion that, if an existing right can be regulated, it amounts to no right at all.  Here is a brief summary of the problems with each base.

Common law, by definition, refers to that portion of initially British, and eventually American law as well, that evolved from judicial decisions that were meant to fill in the gaps in existing law or revise prior decisions based upon changed circumstances.  Put simply, it is literally judge-made law--the very thing that conservatives supposedly despise as unconstitutional (despite its incorporation into American law by reference in the Constitution's Seventh Amendment).  Common law, therefore, is by definition a moving target.  One can pluck out of it various portions that might seem to absolutely prove one point, but, considering it as a whole, the truth proves to be more complex.  So it is with the common law of homicide:  specifically, the requirement that the victim be "born alive."  That requirement would preclude a common-law treatment of abortion as an act of murder.

Next, the argument that unenumerated rights must be, in words cited by Alito from another case, "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition."  The case in question makes references to rights that can be supported by way of the Fourteenth Amendment.  However, Alito makes little or no reference to two other amendments, neither of which contain the "deeply rooted" language.  These are the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, which, taken together, explicitly acknowledged the existence of non-enumerated rights reserved to the States and people.  And, though Alito took pains to obscure it, the fact remains that every colony in pre-independence America allowed abortion up to the point of quickening, thereby making it "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition."

Alito also leans heavily on the nineteenth-century promulgation of state statutes criminalizing abortion practices.  So enamored is he of these as a way of bolstering his argument that he has devoted one-third of the opinion to describing the language of these statutes in detail.  That, all by itself, should be a tell that these laws are being used here to prove more than their language permits.  In fact, that is the case; as the criminalization of abortions in the nineteenth century had nothing to do with the fetus and quite a bit to do with a reason as ancient as it is contemporary:  sexism.

The opinion also leans rather heavily on the view that, because abortion practices have been regulated for centuries prior to the existence of the United States, they cannot truly be said to be rights.  Carried to its logical conclusion, this would lead us to regard the rights stated in the First Amendment in absolute terms as non-existent, as the Supreme Court itself has made ruling after ruling regulating them in both substantive and procedural ways.  Once again, the "proof" does not relate to the reality. On the other hand, and despite an explicit denial to the contrary, Alito reveals more than he perhaps intended in raising the question of whether "viability" is even necessary in regulating abortion, thus laying the groundwork for banning it altogether.  

Finally, there is or has been the political process by which the new anti-abortion majority on the Court has been assembled.  As shamefully as the process has been conducted in the Senate, specifically and deceitfully by Mitch McCONnell, the behavior of the majority apparently ready to vote the Dobbs draft into law has been even worse.  Every one of them was asked for their views on the status of Roe as a precedent. Every one of them stated, unambiguously, that it was settled law.  Which means that every one of them knowingly lied under oath.  People willing to do this should not even hold a law license, let alone serve on the highest court in the land.  

It's worth remembering that the country went through the divisive and prolonged process of the impeachment and trial of a President of the United States based on his alleged lying under oath in a civil trial.  How quickly conservatives, on and off the Court, manage to forget certain things.  I have no illusions about any of these now-Justices being impeached for perjury, given the constitutional threshold for conviction.  But no one should lose sight of the irony and disgrace embedded in the fact that perjury is part of the price tag for destroying a constitutional right.

In this context, Alito's assertion that Roe should be overruled because it has failed to unify the country around its holding is especially galling.  Does he really imagine that laying the groundwork for 50 different sets of abortion regulations is going to be more unifying?  Especially when red states are racing against each other to see whose regulations can be the most anti-woman?  His assertion has no more integrity than does his confirmation assertion that Roe is settled law.

Nor should we have any confidence in Alito's confidence that Dobbs should not and will not serve as the basis for overturning other non-enumerated rights previously recognized by the Court.  The opinion, contrary to Alito's own words, could in fact serve as the basis for overturning other rights.  Indeed, ultimately serve as the basis for turning our non-sectarian republic in a fundamentalist Christian state.  Look no further than the footnote in Alito's opinion where he chillingly discusses the domestic supply of infants.  It's a very tiny leap from that type of thinking to living in a world in which women are no more than incubators for childless fundamentalist couples.

As it turns out, and perhaps in part thanks to the leaked Alito opinion, we are already living in a world in which church leaders feel comfortable using their ecclesiastical power to intimidate elected officials, even when they expose their own hypocrisy in doing it.  Take, for example, the recent announcement by the Archbishop of San Francisco that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would no longer be allowed to take Communion, because of her pro-choice stance.  Though his announcement was couched in a concern for her soul, it was nevertheless delivered with the level of publicity and the lack of subtlety one usually associates with the exercise of political power.  The Archbishop did this not as a sheppard tending a member of his flock, but as a public official attempting to shape public policy.

Which is why Pelosi's public response was spot-on.  Why, indeed, not deny Communion to politicians who favor capital punishment?  Why not deny it to politicians who deny aid to the poor, or to immigrants, or victims of domestic violence?  Why is there this relentless political obsession with a single issue, one that is not even mentioned in the Bible? What does turning a sacrament of the Church into a political cudgel do to advance the spiritual message of the church?  Indeed, in light of its willingness to do this, what is the message of the church?

It's the raising of questions like this that makes it important to remember how conservatives reached this moment of triumph in its war against Roe.  They did it by playing a long game, a willingness to move not in great leaps, but in tiny steps all aimed toward this moment, and taken without pause or pity for the short-term consequences.  They are willing to dismantle democracy one right at a time, and have now demonstrated the ability to do it.  There is no reason to doubt that, in very short order, they will begin to work on others.  The fact is that, like all aspects of American conservative politics, the war on Roe began with a major setback for them in the war on race.  This war is in fact decades older than the Roe decision.  It's important for me to say at this point that victory for our side will probably take many decades more.

In the short term, what are the likely political effects of overturning Roe?   

Republicans are attempting to pooh-pooh any political effects at all.  They are banking on inflation concerns to carry them back into power.  At least some Democrats, at this stage, seem to share that grim outlook.  But not all.  Some are banking on the idea that abortion as a political issue is of such paramount importance to women that it may outweigh the cost of living as a decisive factor in how they vote.  Even Alito's opinion seems to concede as much.  In turning the issue of abortion over to the states, he notes, women are not without power; indeed, they tend to vote in greater numbers than men.  For that matter, since the opinion lays the groundwork for overturning other rights, might not the blockback from Democratic voters be even greater for that reason alone?  

And if Dobbs is not a political problem for Republicans, why haven't Republicans been openly celebrating the draft opinion?  Why, in the absence of evidence, are they blaming liberals for the leak in the first place?  It's because they know that the politics of abortion in a post-Roe world aren't good for them.  In fact, polling already suggests that this is a political problem for them:  Even one conservative columnist has pointed out that the effect of this ruling damages both conservatism and America.

And there's evidence that the leak may have come from conservatives instead, once again illustrating the politicization of the Court by the right, not the left.  Why conservatives?  The speculation seems to be that one of the five conservative votes for Alito's draft opinion may not be completely solid, and the leak is an attempt to back the Justice in question into a corner from which there is only one escape:  voting with the other four.  Even with a solidly conservative majority, the Court is still, as it has in the past, looking over its institutional shoulder at the court of public opinion.

As far as public opinion is concerned, it is most definitely not on their side.  Even though Alito's draft is still a draft, protesters have been organizing and conducting peaceful demonstrations outside of the Justices' houses.  At least one conservative commentator has objected to this, but these protests may show more political savvy than the violent conservative attacks on abortion clinics carried out over decades.  This might be especially true in the case of the protests outside of Alito's house, which happens to be located in a neighborhood built for the privacy of the few at the expense of the many.  What better way to illustrate, or at least call attention to, the link between Republicans as the party of the privileged, able to afford rights they systemically deny to everyone else?

Another political problem for Republicans here may be simply the rank hypocrisy of Republicans denouncing the leak, when it is entirely possible that the leak may have a conservative source, aimed at shoring up a weak vote on the Court, or even motivating Republican voters.  It's not as if Republicans have been steadfast at sticking to tradition when it comes to the Supreme Court, and particularly to the process for approving nominees.  Particularly galling is the rank hypocrisy of Justice Clarence Thomas and his insurrectionist wife, Ginni.  How dare he lecture the American people on accepting outcomes they don't like?  It's not as if he holds his wife that that "lofty" standard.  [Side note:  don't expect anything to come from Chief Justice Roberts proposed investigation into and proposed punishment of the source of the leak; don't forget that we are talking about a Court with no enforceable standards for regulating its own conduct.]

But we don't have time to contemplate the state of the souls of the Court's majority, or Republicans or conservatives in general.  We have a nation to save from the damaging consequences of the Alito draft as an actual decision of the Court, once that has the force of law.  You have only to look at the history of Romania under Communism, with its overcrowded orphanages and back-alley abortions, to see what might lie ahead of us in a world governed by Dobbs.  Or look right now at states where a maximum effort has been made to suppress abortion access, where child poverty rates are intolerable.  Or at statistics which show that being denied access to abortion services sends women plummeting into poverty.  Or consider what Dobbs will do to men's attitudes more generally toward women, to treat them as an accessory and not as a human being.

And despite a lot of naked propaganda to the contrary, don't expect Christian charity to fill the compassion void.  The only such charity that will be available will be the "thoughts and prayers" variety.

Nor should any find solace in the thought that blue states will ensure that some level of abortion access will remain in the country.  Some states are, in fact, already preparing to handle an increase in requests for abortion services.  But these states will be in the minority and, in many cases, far away from the women who need abortions.  And too, many of these women will be without the means to travel to those states.  Their home states may go out of their way to prevent them from travelling; this could become more than just a commercial before very long.  

And, in the end, it may not matter.  Some are calling for a national law banning abortion.

At the same time, there may be some unintended adverse consequences as well for red states, ones that may make the polarization of the country's politics even worse.  Consider this, for example.  If I were a college-age woman, I would only be looking at schools in states where my ability to get an abortion if I needed to do so was not in question.  For that matter, if I were a young woman out of college and ready to start a career, I would only be looking for opportunities in those states.  In fact, I'm not sure I would even want to travel to a red state, and take a chance on an unplanned pregnancy with no alternative for ending it.  I think it's more likely than not that the "brain drain" from red to blue states that has been going on for the past several decades is about to get much, much worse.  Good for red states, a yawning disaster for red ones (though its politicians would never be caught dead admitting it), and, overall, an increased fracturing of what's left of our national politics.  Hard to imagine?  Just watch.

Whither abortion and America after Dobbs?

For those of us who truly care about women AND children, staying at home and hoping our absence at the polls will somehow outweigh our presence on social media is not an answer.  Now, as never before, everything that progressives have fought for is at stake.  Including democracy itself.

In this election year, there is a greater need than ever for the late John Lewis' "good trouble."  It's the only antidote to the Samuel Alitos of the world, and a Court that is Supreme but not just.

A Few Words About Being Behind Schedule

I think it's fair to say that this has been an overwhelming month for all of us.  Certainly, a lot has happened, much of it tragic or at least horrendous.  And you would have heard a lot about it from me a lot sooner.  But, as it turns out, this has been an overwhelming month for me on a personal level as well.

On Sunday, May 8, my wife and I discovered that we were both COVID-19 positive.  I had developed some symptoms during the previous week and, that weekend, my wife began to develop them as well.  We self-tested on Sunday, and both tests were positive.  We sheltered in place at home for the following week, working electronically with our law office, and were both able to keep the business running (with the help of our staff) during that time.  We were then cleared through the state department of health to return to the office after the end of the week, once we were no longer symptomatic.

That does not mean, however, that she and I are completely out of the woods.  Both of us are concerned about the possibility that we may be experiencing so-called "long COVID" effects--fatigue in my case, congestion in hers.  We are both in our mid-60s and concerned about the possible long-term effects of the virus on our health and life span.  We were both vaccinated and boosted, and we have at all times strived to abide by applicable COVID restrictions in various settings, so we were both surprised, and not a little bit nettled by finding out that, despite our best efforts, the pandemic had finally come home (literally) to both of us.

There is no doubt, however, that both of us would be facing much greater challenges had we not both been vaccinated and boosted.  This is especially true of my wife, whose lungs are scarred from a serious earlier bout with pneumonia.  She does not doubt, and I do not doubt, that, without the vaccine, she may very well have been hospitalized.  Or worse.

And both of us can assure you that, even with a mild case, this virus is nothing to fool around with.  It is not a case of "the sniffles," as some right-wing bloviators have tried to suggest.  It is not just another version of the cold, or flu.  The symptoms can genuinely be overpowering, to a degree that most common respiratory ailments are not.  In my case, I went through a twenty-four hour period in which I could not even raise my head, let alone get out of bed.  Literally.  In my wife's case, she went through a twenty-four hour period where her congestion and coughing were serious enough that we both thought she might need to be hospitalized.

I am not detailing all of this in a bid for sympathy.  But I do want everyone to know, understand, and act upon the reality that the vaccine, while not a guarantee against being infected with COVID-19, does have a significant impact on the experience you will have with being infected, and may very well save your life.  This is especially important right now for two reasons.  First, there are and will no doubt continue to be for the foreseeable future a series of COVID-19 mutations, each one more more infectious and deadly than the preceding ones.  Getting vaccinated, and then being boosted on a regular basis, may very well be the best protection our lives have against those mutations, even if they do not offer complete protection.

And second?  There is a lot of nonsense now part of the public conversation to the effect that we are "over" the pandemic, nonsense that is based not on any sort of medical evidence but rather on the understandable desire of people to somehow get back to a pre-COVID world.  However understandable that desire may be, however, it doesn't change the reality that people in the United States and around the world are still getting infected, still getting sick, still dying at alarming rates.  COVID is not something that can be willed away by a positive attitude, or even by frustration with personal inconvenience.  Nor is it something that will be stopped by adherence to a particular political ideology.  When it comes to whether you are red or blue, the virus doesn't give a right royal damn.  It's a virus.  It will look for a human host regardless of whether you watch Fox or MSNBC.

So, get vaccinated.  Get boosted.  Stay boosted.  Wear a mask when necessary.  We have no alternative when it comes to getting through this than doing it together.  If that bothers you, get over it.  The people you don't infect will thank you.  And, one day, you just might come to the conclusion that you are one of those people.

And, with that as prologue and without further ado, let's get to the events of May.

What's Happened To Our National Sense Of Humor?

In our as-fast-as-the-Internet culture, it's hard to believe that it's been less than a month since people have been talking non-stop (online, at least) about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Academy Awards ceremony.  The conversation seems to have died down, at least for now, with Smith having resigned from the Academy and accepted a 10-year ban from Academy events (although not from nominations).  And I don't have much to say about the incident itself when it comes to the who's-right-and-who's wrong question.  But I have a few thoughts about what this incident says about the nature of American comedy at this point, and, beyond that, about the state of comedy reflects the state of American political culture.

First, just to be clear about the incident, which shocked me as much as it did anyone, I hold no brief for either Smith or Rock.  I do, however, feel greater disappointment regarding Smith's behavior, not only because of my up-until-then respect for him, both as a performer and a person, but also because his failure here was both as a performer and as a person.  As a person, he initially laughed at the joke Rock made at the expense of his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, and the medical condition that took her hair from her.  His opinion of the joke changed only after he saw how she reacted to the joke, and decided to get ahead of any confrontation he might otherwise have had with her about it.

But here's where he really went wrong.  He's a stand-up performer.  He doesn't need a script.  Instead of turning the Oscars into a crime scene (something the Academy did not handle well, for that matter), he could have gone up to Rock and found a way to critique what he was saying that would have put the mean-spirited nature of the joke front and center.  A rap.  A joke.  Even a short monologue.  The Will Smith I had previously come to admire over the past several decades could have done this easily.  That Will Smith, who belatedly made an appearance later in the ceremony accepting the Best Actor Oscar for "King Richard," was missing in action at a point when, for everyone's sake, having him there was absolutely essential.

And Rock?  Well, in this instance, he's the victim of a crime.  And there seems to be a consensus that he did not know that Pinkett Smith was suffering from alopecia.  On the other hand, Pinkett Smith has talked publicly about her condition, and Rock knew about the existence of the disease and what it does to hair.  Judge for yourself whether or not he should have suspected that the joke might have been over the edge of public respect, if not good taste.  Legally, it doesn't matter; verbal provocation is not a defense Smith would be able to assert in court, should this ever come to that point.  Nor should it be; society rightly expects people, especially those in the public eye, to take the occasional misspoken word. 

But over the edge of both respect and taste is where a lot of contemporary comedians live.  And, at least in my mind, Rock is a notorious example, which is why I mentally rolled my eyes when I heard him being introduced that night.  I knew something bad and potentially embarrassing (if not worse) was going to happen.  That's what Rock does.  In previous years on the Oscars, even when I agreed with the basic point he was making (e.g., referring to Elia Kazan as a "rat"), I cringed at the way he did it.  The viciousness of the style overwhelms the truth that makes the observation funny in the first place.  And, statistical probabilities in life being what they are, you can only sail over the edge so many times before the trouble you're looking for shows up and says "Hi there."

Putting aside the culpability of either man in this fracas, both of who lost something in the process, the question that jumped out at me here is this:  what's happened to our national sense of humor?   Perhaps it would be easier to answer that question with a few observations about the nature of humor itself.

Good comedy is comedy that laughs at everyone, even itself.  By which I mean, not all humor is so-called "insult" humor.  The history of comedy, especially prior to the mid-point of the last century, is filled with comedians who found ways to laugh at themselves every bit as much, if not more so, than others.  You can probably think of examples within your own experience.  For me, my personal favorite will always be Groucho Marx.  One minute in a Marx Brothers film, he will be deflating one or more of the pompous/clueless characters around him; the next minute, he will allow Chico to set him up as the butt of a joke (and, sometimes, even still comeback after that with a wisecrack).  For that matter, this is why ethnic humor is only funny when the comedian telling/performing it is a member of the relevant ethnic group.  By definition in this instance, the comedian is laughing at himself/herself/themselves.

Good comedy is about universal truths, about things we all agree upon.  People shouldn't be unfair.  Or lie. Or cheat. Or steal. Or pretend to be something they're not.  Comedy that not only works but lasts across time does so because the objects of its aim are things that are basic to the human condition, not a particular person, place, or moment.  This is demonstrated by the fact that our comedy culture, like the rest of our society, is made up of people from all other the globe.  At its best, comedy makes all of us laugh at the same things.

Good comedy, by virtue of its universality and self-deprecating nature, brings people together.  Audiences feel reassured and comfortable when they know that everyone is laughing for the same reason, and the laughter is being generated by someone who is not aiming to target a particular person or group in favor of another.

Here is where I need to allow myself the luxury of being explicitly political to make my point.  Perhaps above all, good comedy doesn't pretend to be something it isn't. Like, say news.  Just as news should not pretend it is entertainment, lest the line between fact and fiction be blurred to the point of obscurity.  I will confess that I have a nakedly political reason for mentioning this.  Fox News stays protected from defamation laws while producing patently defamatory material by classifying itself as "entertainment," while making sure that its presence in your cable subscription is ensured by calling itself a "news" network.  Fox should be forced to make a choice.  Either your cable bill will go down, or our political discourse will be polluted with fewer lies.  Either way, we win.

But it's no exaggeration to say that more than three decades of dishonest propaganda from the likes of the late Rush Limbaugh and his sordid professional progeny has done more to coarsen, polarize, and ultimately destroy the fabric of humor in our society.  Yes, there has always been satire, and sometimes pointed satire, and that is as it should be.  But, at its best, it has been produced by people who were open in their aims, and who understood that their targets had a right to fire back.  They didn't try to hide behind a lofty facade.  They could, to use a well-worn cliché, take it as well as dish it out.  And, as a result, conservative cowardice has infected, coarsened, and nearly destroyed the culture of our humor in the same way that it has destroyed the culture of our politics.

To come back to the Oscars for a moment, this is one reason why so many of the "jokes" written into the script of the show don't land.  They don't feel like jokes.  They feel like a series of punches in the nose.  The laughter in the live audience that those jokes do generate feel as nervous as they feel obligatory.  And that observation alone makes me wonder:  when was the last time any of us laughed out loud, because something was so funny you couldn't help doing it?  I can't in my case.  Can you?

Maybe Smith and Rock landed in the middle of this controversy because the rules of the road when it comes to comedy have been hijacked by people who see it as a weapon, rather than as a kind of balm.  Maybe, when the only rule of comedy is to bring your sharpest knife and assume a knife fight will break out, no one should be surprised when blood ends up on the floor.  I think neither man should have their career destroyed over this, and, as far as their relationship is concerned, I hope that they find a way to repair it.  We all would benefit if they do so.

But we would all benefit as well, if we could somehow find a way as a society back to the kind of humor that at its best is characterized by humility, by honesty, by universality, and, frankly, by inventiveness.  Yes, George Carlin and Lenny Bruce liberated our use of language, and bless them for doing it.  But their purpose in doing so was to expand the range of humor, not to make comedians slaves to pushing emotional buttons.

Our national sense of humor has traveled a long way down a bad road, and two of our most celebrated comedians have suffered as a result, along with the Academy, its audience, and movie audiences as a result.  Can we find our way back?

The answer to that question might actually say a great deal about whether our culture, and our nation, can survive.

The Midterms And The Media

In my haste to get last week's post published, I neglected to make a few additional points about the media's role in it, now and for the next several months.  In addition, there was one tragic story this past week with a media-related angle.  So I take this week's opportunity to blog to make the points, and reflect a bit on the story.

I've written more than once about the fact that the corporate media, including legacy publishers and broadcasters, exercise their freedom of the press not on behalf of their readers and viewers, nor by giving the full reign of that freedom to their employees on the front lines of the news, but solely to protect the property rights of the media's owners.  That is, not only their rights in the media itself, but the other assets they own in an age where 1% of the nation controls all aspects of our economy.  But, for the most part, they have done so on the proverbial QT, hoping that most of us won't notice.

That, however, may have changed recently.  CBS News, the former platinum standard of broadcast journalism that pursued the truth of what matters without fear or favor, announced that they were hiring a former Donald Trump henchperson, Mick Mulvaney, to provide commentary during the upcoming election season.  Why Mulvaney in particular?  Well, as it turns out, CBS is betting that the Republicans will win big, and they need to preserved their "access" to the powerful in the event that happens.  That's right:  it has nothing to do with any election expertise, or other journalism credentials, that Mulvaney might have.  It's all about making it easier to line up GQP talking heads to offer "puff pieces"--or, to be more candid, lies--in lieu of doing the job that the First Amendment supposedly protects:  the job of giving the public everything it needs to know about who is governing them.

Leaving aside the question of whether Mulvaney has the ability to do this at this point, given his own abrupt departure from the Trump administration, this brazen currying of favor with those who are only prospectively powerful would be laughable at best and a constitutional betrayal at worst if it came from a news organization with a lesser lineage.  That it comes from the network of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and Dan Rather is a disaster that will resonate for a long time.  Assuming, that is, that it isn't surpassed by something worse.  And, as former Representative and current MSNBC host Joe Scarborough is fond of remining his viewers, it can always get worse.

If you had any doubt that the media is not as "liberal" as conservatives are constantly screaming, the Mulvaney hiring should end them once and for all.  This brazen move by CBS was made openly, without any concerns about public backlash.  It's now up to all of us to ensure that there is one.

And all of us, as it turns out, includes at least some conservatives, such as the former contributors to the late "The Weekly Standard" who now publish thebulwark.com, a Web site devoted to salvaging our democracy and, in the process, beginning a saner political dialogue.  For that reason, they are in what is for them the uncomfortable position of rooting for, and providing guidance to, Democrats for the sake of bringing an end to Trumpism.  Here is an example of a post from that site by Mona Charen, a syndicated conservative columnist whose pieces have, in the past, provoked several letters to the editor on my part that, in hindsight, were far harsher than they should have been.  In her own way, by emphasizing the need for Democrats to stop dithering amongst themselves and focus on selling their accomplishments to date, she is reinforcing the point that the press is not going to do the Democrats' heavy lifting for them.  And Democrats absolutely need to have that point reinforced.  My thanks to her for doing so.

I will add one observation, regarding her post.  She notes the disapproval rates of both parties in the polls, and correctly points out that Democrats fare worse than Republicans in these polls.  I would just note that the difference between the two is exactly 4 percent--essentially a statistical tie.  This is consistent with what I have observed previously about generic congressional polls.  That hardly guarantees a Democratic victory in November, but it does make it clear that, no matter what CBS may think, the game is far from over.

Finally, and sadly, I note the untimely and devastating passing this past week of Eric Boehlert, a well-known media critic who, for decades, decimated the legacy media's coverage of Democratic presidential campaigns, exposing not only their falsehoods but also the craven and frankly unpatriotic motives behind spreading those falsehoods.  I can do no better, for his memory, for providing a measure of comfort to all those who were fortunate to know or work with him, and for reminding all of you that today's American press is not a friend to either you or democracy, than to provide this link to one of the many, many deserved tributes to him, his work, and his memory.

May we all honor all three of those by applying a line from the Terminator movies to what we do from now until Election Day:  no fate but what we make.  Everything good about this country is on the line this time; all of us need to act like it.

Let's prove them wrong.  Let's prove to ourselves that the people truly run this country.

Is It Too Late For Democrats In The Midterms?

Well, as everyone knows, the midterm elections are seven months away, which means that everyone interested in politics is either doing a lot of polling or poll-watching,  I'm no exception, except that I've already been at it for seven months.  I can't say that I'm surprised by the across-the-board expectation that the odds of victory in November favor Republicans over Democrats, both in congressional and state races.  But, while I'm not surprised by it, I'm not buying into it.  At least not just yet.

In the predictions game here, leading the charge in the legacy media is, of course, Chuck Todd of NBC's "Meet the Press."  Unlike the days of his predecessor, the late Tim Russert, Todd's hosting of the show has had a transparently obvious GQP to it, both in guest selection and interpretation of poll results.  Not surprisingly, his views on 2022 follow this bias, as he demonstrated in a recent MTP program.  He cited two reasons for believing that there will be a red blowout at the polls this fall:  Joe Biden's low standings in the polls, and what pollsters like to describe as the "enthusiasm gap"; that is, the net difference between respondents of each party, as self-reported, regarding their enthusiasm about the election.

Ever since the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, Biden's previously-high poll numbers have been crashing to earth.  There was a brief period after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and Biden's subsequent State of the Union message, where the favorability-unfavourability narrowed in Biden's favor.  But that period seems to be over, and, as of now, the President is doing well to climb a few percentage points above 40%.

But polling is, as much as anything, about analyzing trends as well as moments.  And, in this context, it's worth using as a starting point for discussion, the fact that Biden has had thus far, by many conventional standards, a successful Presidency.  Employment is up, the pandemic is winding down, infrastructure is being rebuilt, and our standing as an international leader has been restored to a significant degree, as witnessed by the unity of NATO in standing strong against Vladimir Putin's destruction of Ukraine.  And, yet, Biden--and, for that matter, the Democrats--seemingly get absolutely no credit for any of it.

But all of this begs a rather obvious question.

If Biden's low standing in the polls, combined with the "enthusiasm gap" those polls claim to measure, are real harbingers of Democratic disaster, then why do polls that measure a party preference for control--the so-called "generic congressional ballot"--consistently show a dead heat between Democrats and Republicans.  Because they do.  There's no "enthusiasm gap" to be found their, nor any evidence that whatever animates voters' current dislike for Biden moves them to reject his party.

And this is consistent with what happened during Barack Obama's first term, and the fight over enacting health care reform.  The longer that fight went on, the more compromised the legislation became, the more political and personal energy was sucked out of Obama's supporters, the more those supporters despaired of his ability to fight for the causes that had moved them to vote for him in the first place.  And so, when health care reform was finally enacted, it did not poll well at all.  Overwhelming majorities disapproved of what Obama's opponents derisively referred to as Obamacare.

But drilling down into those poll results shows something more complicated.  Many of the people who disapproved of the bill did so not because they thought if was a government takeover of health care, but because they thought that it didn't go far enough in getting the federal government to ensure health care for all.  And today, unsurprisingly, Obamacare polls well, as those who opposed it from the right begin to see its long-term benefits, while those who opposed it from the left correctly see it, as Obama did, as a base from which coverage can be expanded even further.

Is the real enthusiasm gap for Biden coming from the left, as those voters perceive him as operating has he has traditionally, as a moderate Democrat?  Does that lead them to view him as playing Charlie Brown to the GQP's Lucy, as they Obama did?  Is this based on the failure to enact the progressive infrastructure bill, the so-called "Build Back Better" bill, now unlikely to be enacted in any form prior to the midterms, even though that failure is based entirely on two self-dealing members of the Democratic Senate caucus?   I'm comfortable thinking, based on the Obamacare experience, that the answer to that is "yes."

Which means that it's important not to learn the wrong lesson from current polls, as Democrats and their supporters did in the 2010 midterms.  They need to reject the fantasy of tacking to some imaginary, non-existent "center" and understand that the pathway to success lies in reassuring their core supporters that neither they nor their goals are going to be abandoned.  They need to be not merely in the media, but in their states and communities, preaching that message and listening with respect to the frustrations of those supporters.  And when they come back to Washington afterwards, they need to fight in every non-violent way for the goals that got them sent there in the first place.

What is the likelihood of all that happening?  Well, I wish I could say it was great.  But, when I read think pieces like this one, I have a very hard time doing so.

The problem with the reasoning in this article, as is the case with so many like it, is that it treats progressive voters, who tend to be young voters, as disposable, as though it's possible for Democrats to win elections without them.  It also overlooks the fact that many progressive concerns are not merely concerns shared by a broader coalition of voters, but are also, in the case for example of climate change and voting rights, existential in nature, whether with respect to democracy, or life itself.  

Young voters are not simply the heart of the Democratic core now, but the leading edge of its not-too-distant future core.  They aren't motivated by caution, any more than their counterparts in earlier generations were.  They want what those counterparts wanted:  a better world for everyone, and not just for themselves.  They don't want to be told that the future is being held hostage by two Democratic Senators with a talent for presenting their self-interests as the interests of their constituents.  They want, and expect, Biden and the members of his party to work visibly night and day to find a way forward.  They don't want to be told that they need to get along with a party that wakes up every morning and finds new and more exciting ways to terrorize them, shoot them, call them perverts and take away their right to vote.  They need to feel that Biden and Democrats care because, right now, they see Democrats as looking for excuses for failure, and all that makes them do is want to stay home on Election Day.

And young voters understand much more clearly than the rest of us that the coming midterms are not a routine election, one where expectations can be measured against the past, or in the context of a nation where "normalcy" is the rule of the day.  Nothing is normal about this election, anymore than anything is normal about this nation right now.  One of our two major parties is at best operating as a criminal conspiracy, and at worst like a cabal of agents for a hostile foreign power.

What Biden is doing for the center is in fact what he should be doing to rally his base.  Start with termination of the so-called Title 42 expulsion program, to allow refugees to go forward with their asylum petitions here in the U.S.  It's hypocritical to talk about being "over COVID" and then use COVID to indulge in the great passion of the American right:  bigotry.  All the more so given the current news on the employment front.  Clearly, we need more workers than we have.  What have we done to address situations like this one in the past?  Hint:  It rhymes with "immigration."

There are any number of executive actions Biden could take.  Cancel student debt.  Declare climate an emergency under the National Emergency Act.  Offer temporary protected status to all undocumented non-criminally charged immigrants, and use that as leverage to force Congress to pass CIR.  Boost workers' rights.  Lower drug costs.  The Progressive Caucus in the House of Representatives has put together an entire list of possibilities, as has the progressive magazine The American Prospect. 

Why not do at least some of these things?  Because of fear that they may backfire?  Then, as FDR famously said, try something else.  Fear is a terrible governing strategy:  people may not understand the intracacies of legislation or regulations, but they can smell fear, and they will turn away from leaders who exude it.  Besides, surrendering to fear is worse than bad politics; it is a derogation of duty and one's oath of office.  Leaders are elected to lead, not shiver.

Is it time for Biden to declare war on the GQP, the way he has (up to a point) with Putin?  Don't take it from me, take it from AOC.

Is there the likelihood that it's too late for that to happen?

Biden and the Democrats hold the answer to that question in their hands.  But, to the extent that progressives can make them feel America's pain before November, so do we all.

What Does Interracial Marriage Teach Us About Us?

In my postings here, I have always strived to be honest about potential conflicts of interests between the contents of my posts and those of my personal life.  Where I might have an interest in something I say online, I have done my best to disclose that interest for the record and my readers.  I am about to do so again here, because I will be delving into a subject that had a significant--and painful--impact in my personal life, one that has also surfaced in several recent news stories that will subsequently be the focus of today's post.  

In my mid-20s, a painful period in my professional life, the pain was brightened for a time by a romantic relationship I had for several months with an African-American woman I had met at Oberlin.  I was forced to end the relationship due to circumstances beyond my control and hers, involving racism directed at us from a quarter I did not expect.  It was my decision, but one that I felt at the time was in the best interests of both of us.  Nevertheless, it has always remained a painful memory, and in any case not a proud one.  At the same time, whenever I meet an interracial couple, or see one in the news, I find a measure of solace in knowing that my own failure to do the right thing did nothing to dent the arc of history in this area to bend toward justice.

So, then, is interracial romance the subject of my post?  Well, yes and no.  I intend to use interracial relationships that are, in one way or another, a part of current events to underscore not only the hypocrisy of the modern/contemporary Republican Party, but its sole, unchanging purpose.  Without further ado, then.

Although it did not receive as much coverage as the other two stories I will be discussing, I was nevertheless fascinated by the recent decision, which you can read about here, by U.S. Senator Mike Braun of Indiana, a Republican, to say the quite part out loud when it comes to his stance on the constitutionality of interracial marriage.  True, like all politicians who let their mouths wander into trouble, Braun hastily issued a "correction" of his previous statement on the subject.  On the other hand, as with all cases of "corrections" that are issued only in the wake of substantial public blowback, the rest of us are free to evaluate its sincerity.

And this one fails that test on two accounts.  One, Braun was offered a chance to make a clarification during the interview in which he decided to torch any reputation he had for tolerance, and failed to take advantage of it.  Second, Braun is a member of a Senate caucus led by Mitch McCONnell, whose leadership is distinguished by a level of message and voting discipline that might make even a Prussian blush.  McCONnell doesn't gladly suffer any member of his caucus doing or saying anything that might stub a toe in his effect to regain his iron grip on the upper chamber of Congress.  So I think it's fair to apply the Maya Angelou test here and conclude that, when Senator Braun told the American people that he and his party are racist, the American people should believe them.

But what about Clarence and Ginni Thomas, then?  The current Supreme Court Associate Justice and his politically active spouse are an interracial couple.  If this is a rule, why are they the exception?

Because Republicans are willing to allow for exception of this sort if they are politically useful.  And, when it comes to political usefulness, for Republicans, Thomas has been the gift that keeps on giving.  First, there was his confirmation hearing, where he managed to turn a sordid episode in his professional life into a moment of unjudicial rage in which he got to accuse Democratic Senators of performing a "high-tech lynching" of him for being "uppity."  They were, in fact, investigating an allegation against him of sexual harassment, but that didn't stop the Senators in question, led by the now-President Biden, from dropping the investigation.  That was 31 years ago, and since then, Thomas' voting record has helped paved the way for a dramatic reversal of the Court's role in championing and advancing social justice.

And second, there was Mrs. Thomas, who has used the political connections forged by way of her marriage to create a power center of her own, in concert with various right-wing political organizations.  In fact, so powerful has she become in the process that it has opened up the question of conflicts of interest between causes she has advanced and their connection with cases before the Court.  This question, which has been previously explored in the press, exploded in news outlets this past week when it was learned that the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol has records of texts between Mrs. Thomas and then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in which she urged him to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.  Perhaps this explains why her husband was the lone dissenting vote in the Court's decision requiring the White House to hand over to the committee its records relating to the attack.

Both Thomases have denied the existence of any conflicts of interest, insisting that their personal and professional lives are completely separate.  These assertions, which should by themselves strain the credulity of virtually every married person in contemporary America (me included), are as phony as the Justice's attack on his Senate interlocutors.  You need look no further that this tweet from a former Heritage Foundation intern, whose recollection makes it clear that the Justice and his activist spouse are "a team."

And a mighty useful team they are.  This is why Republicans, in spite of the white nationalism that is their only institutional glue, are willing to tolerate them.  Republicans don't really care about people having abortions, as long as they're the only one who can afford them.  They don't really care about what kids are reading in schools, so long as their kids are the only one who can afford a decent education.  They don't even care about high taxes, so long as they're the only ones not paying them.  And they absolutely, positively, do not care about limited government in the roles of Americans.  After all, government can be a great way of controlling the people who don't support you.  This is why we have a criminal justice system that marches African-Americans to the electric chair, and lets white Wall Street thieves go back to their the thievery.  This is why we have a religious climate in this country that allows one religion to dictate what religion means for everyone else.  And this is why we choose to spend our public resources on making war rather than making wealth for all.  And by war, I'm not just talking about overseas conflict; I'm talking about violence against our fellow citizens, and disgusting attempts to joke about it.

Goodies for we, but not for thee.  That's the Republican philosophy, past, present, and future, reduced to the size of a bumper sticker in the hope that a majority of the American people can digest it.  And if the GQP can get away with hiding it by manipulating the racism of poor undereducated whites, then shame on all of us.  So why should they care about Clarence and Ginni Thomas' interracial marriage?  So long as they don't have to see them too often, and they're otherwise spectacularly useful, it's all good.

Contrast this with this past week's third story in which interracial marriage was a factor:  the confirmation hearings of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for a seat on the very Supreme Court where Clarence Thomas would be one of her colleagues.  The Republicans questioning Judge Jackson made every attempt to not merely question her patriotism, but to sexualize her public image by profiling her rulings in cases involving child pornography.  She did not rise to the bait even once, which merely underscored the demeaning behavior to which she, her white husband, and her biracial daughter were subjected, as well as the naked racism on which that behavior is based.

This, along with her other qualifications, is why she will make this country proud as the first African-American woman to sit on the highest Court in the land.  And it is one more reason why I am grateful for all of the multiracial families in America.  More than anyone else, you demonstrate our ability to become one out of many.  More than anyone else, you are the proof that this country and its people will not succumb to the base instincts of one political party, but will continue rising to the heights promoted by the Constitution, and those who not only advocate its ideals, but live them as well

Take Advantage of Biden's Sincerity

Is it too early to say "What a difference a State of the Union address makes?"

Well, perhaps.  There are still many intractable problems that Joe Biden, the Democrats, and the U.S. face:  inflation, lingering concerns about COVID, civil unrest of both sides of the political divide.  Plus Ukraine, which, even in a political climate without any other major problems to face, would be enough to absorb a President's attention and tip the balance of a party's political fortunes.

But no one outside of the right-wing echo chamber has any doubt that last week's SOTU was a major plus for Biden's standing with the American people.  According to an NPR poll, Biden received an "unusual bounce" in his standing with voters as a consequence of his speech.  Perhaps one perverse illustration of that point is that this time, unlike SOTU disruptions by Republicans in the past, the performance art of Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene was Biden's rubber to their glue.  If it's any consolation from me to the two of them, they can rest assured that no one could possibly have worked harder to earn that lack of respect more.

But it's worth taking some time to ask:  why did this happen?  There has not been much improvement with regard to the issues that have bedeviled Biden and the Democrats up to this point.  And the Ukraine-Russia conflict may continue for months without any path toward resolution, and nightly footage of horrors being inflicted on the Ukrainians, without palatable options for Biden to make a difference.

I think this is a question with a relatively simple answer.

Joe Biden, for all of his past (and probably future) verbal gaffes, is as sincere a person as you are ever likely to find in politics.  That comes in part from his religious faith, and also from being tested in his personal life in ways that would be devastating for many of us.  I think that latter point is one aspect of his makeup that his political opponents fail to take into account.  When you've had to bury a wife and two children, it's going to take a lot more than imbeciles chanting "Let's go Brandon" to get under your skin.

But I think that his sincerity is demonstrated mainly by one aspect of his personal and political style that no honest person, Democratic or Republican, would deny he possesses.  Biden genuinely believes that politics in a democracy and and should be a win-win process.  Some of us (you can recognize me here, if you wish) are frustrated by the fact that he often acts on that basic impulse even in the face of a mountain of evidence that his opposite numbers are utterly unwilling to return the favor.  But that fact simply affirms that his doing so is not an act of calculation.  It is, for him, a statement of principle.  To share a video I've shared before, can you imagine Lindsay Graham saying this about any other Democrat?

In a field that is dominated by insincerity like no other, Biden's candor, however much it makes him trip over his verbal shoelaces, is a quality that has made a huge difference in his political fortunes.  I have no doubt that, for a lot of voters, it made the difference in making a choice between Biden and the most insincere excuse for a human being ever to run for the presidency.  People may have disagreed with many of Biden's stands on issues, but they felt certain that he at least knew where he stood, and was willing to compromise.  That may well have been a big part of the reason why Biden did better at the polls than congressional Democrats did.

But, if all of this is true, why have Biden's poll numbers been a dumpster fire for the past several months?  The Afghanistan withdrawl turned those numbers against him, and that is understandable.  On the other hand, I suspect that people have largely moved on from Afghanistan as an issue, in part because, however chaotically it was done, it was essentially popular with most Americans.

I suspect this answer is relatively simple as well.

Biden has been largely invisible for those several months, except for brief snippets in mainstream media outlets of White House availabilities and stump speeches.  This effectively puts his messaging in the hands of people who have no interest in helping him or his party; if anything, their only real interest is profits for their corporate masters, which in the digital age boils down to clicks.  And this, sadly, is par for the proverbial course with Democrats, who imagine that the media is dominated by truth-tellers fearlessly taking advantage of their First Amendment rights.  In fact, it is dominated by property owners fearlessly protecting the property rights of their fellow investors.  The wry observation that freedom of the press belongs to the person that owns one exists for a reason.

In fact, this goes a long way toward explaining why public opinion has not only run against Biden and the Democrats, but frankly run against the truth.

Inflation the result of excessive public spending?  Wrong.

Republicans the defenders against thought control in schools?  Wrong.

Republicans the advocates of tax relief?  Wrong.

For that matter, Republicans the advocates of individual liberty?  Wrong.

In fact, Republicans working tirelessly on behalf of the American people?  Wrong.  (This, in particular, should be a campaign ad all by itself).

Or Republicans as good stewards of public money?  Wrong.  (She was the last person who should have been allowed to do a rebuttal to Biden.)

And, finally, USCIS failing to stop and deport people at the border:  Wrong and wrong again.

Fortunately, for Biden, Democrats, and their supporters (again, you can recognize me), the solution to all of this is relatively simple as well.

What Biden, his communications team, and their counterparts in the national and state Democratic parties need to do, with FDR and Reagan as their bipartisan role models, is to stop talking about the so-called "bully pulpit" of the presidency and start to actually use it.  Develop and implement a comprehensive communications strategy to get the truth to the American people, the truth that the press has been too intimidated to tell by decades of lies about "liberal bias."  They need a corrective, and you can supply it.

Such as strategy could have all or some of the following components:

Monthly town halls in different parts of the country;

Fireside chats by social media;

Weekly speeches in front of key Democratic constituencies;

Call-in or link-in events;

Fewer press conferences, more one-on-one interviews.

I'm sure that there are many more possibilities.  The main thing is to have the President of the United States come out of hiding and into the light of day, to shine the light about the truth between America's two major political parties:  one is a party of debating ideas, while the other is about advancing white nationalism through dishonest and violence.  Let the voters ponder those choices.  I'm still confident enough in them to think that most of them will make the right choice--indeed, what should be the only choice.

It's America's future, Mr. President.  Your future, as well.  Take advantage of the personal profile you've been gifted with, and use it to make a difference.  Before it's too late.

A Tale of Two Manchurian Candidates

In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, there were numerous reports that Vladimir Putin was interfering in the process on behalf of his preferred candidate, Donald Trump, because Putin perceived that Trump would be far more useful than Hillary Clinton in advancing Putin's geopolitical goals, both for the former Soviet republics, and Europe beyond, especially the former Warsaw Pact nations.  At the time, their was evidence that this was in fact happening, which is separate from the issue of whether or not this interference ultimately cost Clinton the election.  The mere fact that it was happening should have terrified people enough to take it seriously, and take steps to blunt its impact on both the campaigning and the voting.  We did not do that and, as a result, we may never know for certain if the election outcome was an honest one.

We do, however, know that it was a disastrous one.  Honestly or not, Trump was elected, and wasted little if any time in playing the interests of the U.S. and our NATO allies right into Putin's hands.  His vociferous and venomous attacks on our allies, combined with comments about Putin that suggested he viewed him as a potential date rather than a head of state, gave Putin all the cover he needed to begun advancing his plans to re-establish the pre-1989 status quo.  And, just as we may never know the extent to which Putin helped Trump to become President, there is still much we do not and may never know (as I recently wrote) about the extent to which, as President, Trump enabled Putin to advance the planning for the current fighting between Russia and Ukraine.

Well, perhaps not completely.  But now, we have a bit of an inkling from an unlikely source who can, perhaps, in this instance (although not generally) be trusted to be telling the truth.

John Bolton, my fellow Baltimorean, and a war hawk's war hawk back in the days when the second Bush Administration needed a national-security pretext to invade Iraq and secure oil profits for Republican donors, stated a few days ago, unequivocally, that Trump's actions made it "that much easier" for Putin to invade Ukraine.  Bolton also bolstered that revelation with specific details, describing how Trump complained about the harshness of actions taken by his foreign policy staff against Putin, and noting that Trump's praise of Putin for being "very savvy" was "embarrassing" for the U.S..  (No kidding, John.)  Anyway, you can read about this and a bit more right here.

Not the whole story, to be sure, but enough of it from someone who was in a position to know what was and wasn't going on.  Still begs the question, of course, of what we don't know, perhaps all the more so.  For example, in the conversations between Putin for which, contrary to standard security processes, their is absolutely no third-party verification whatsoever.  We will probably never know what was disclosed by Trump to Putin during those conversations.  Or, for that matter, what Putin instructed Trump to do.  And in exchange for unknown favors.

Back in 1962, at the peak of Cold War tensions, when the world came to the brink of a nuclear conflict during the Cuban Missile Crisis, "The Manchurian Candidate" was playing in American movie theaters.  It told the then-inconceivable story (or so it seemed) about an American POW being brainwashed by Communists to serve their interests as an assassin.  The movie was based on a book by Richard Condon, a novelist who is credited for a principle known as "Condon's Law":  "When you don't know the whole truth, the worst you can imagine is bound to be close."

It's a principle that the movie does a powerful job of illustrating.  But whatever consolation audiences could have taken in 1962 that the movie was just fiction can provide no comfort to Americans who now have to face the probability that the 45th President of the United States was, in fact, a Manchurian Candidate.

You think that's bad enough?  Well, it may even be worse than that.  We may, in the current state of national and international crisis, have other Manchurian Candidates to deal with.

Here is one example.

Marco Rubio, who will be running this fall for a third term as a U.S. Senator from Florida, was positioned for a long time by mainstream media as the next big thing in American politics.  A Cuban refugee from a theoretically "purple" state (and the third-largest state by population, in any case), with an initial reputation as a "moderate" Republican, he seemed to fit the profile of what legacy newspapers and broadcasters look for as the ideal presidential candidate.  And, to be fair, during the early part of his career, his actions lent some weight to that image.  Most notably, he was part of the so-called "Gang of Eight" that almost got comprehensive immigration reform across the finish line, before House Republicans decided that they didn't want to do Democrats any favors in an election year.  How many refugees, from Ukraine and elsewhere, might be better off today if the CIR bill hadn't been blocked?

Whatever the answer to that rhetorical question may be, Rubio apparently got the message from it.  He has spent much of his time since then flipping and flopping on issue after issue, and he did it well enough to make it to a second Senate term.  But, along the way, he decided to take a detour into presidential politics in 2016, which led to a verbal sparring match between Rubio and Trump that was conducted at roughly an eighth-grade level.  Trump won the nomination and the election, Rubio managed to return to the Senate despite his humiliation at the "little hands" (as Rubio called them) of the man who had described him as "Little Marco," and guess what happened after that?  Rubio became subservient enough to Trump to earn Trump's "Complete and Total Endorsement" for his current re-election bid.

And there seems to be no boundaries to that subservience, as Rubio has begun to act as though, like Trump, he too is a Putin "sleeper cell."  Today, I learned on Twitter that he posted a tweet in which he revealed an image from an Internet video conference between Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, and a bipartisan congressional delegation.  This conference, understandably, was supposed to be confidential; unfortunately, that consideration did not stop Rubio from attempting to leverage an image from it for political advantage.  Or, maybe, that didn't matter.  If, like Trump, he is now working on behalf of another country, maybe he saw it as a win-win proposition.

Well, I don't.  This only makes me wonder how many other members of the Republican Party, in and out of office, are "sleeper cells."  Or Manchurian Candidates.  How many of those "Candidates" will be candidates for office on the ballots this fall.  How many of them have been working in state legislatures this past year to "reform" voting laws in such a way as to put more "Candidates" into office at all levels of government?  And, as a consequence of all this, how close are we to becoming a client state of Putin?  How long will it be before we share what may at this point be the fate of Ukraine?

I don't have the answers to those questions.  But the answers matter.  To you, to me, to all of us.  And we'd better start getting the answers right now.  Just to make sure this election isn't our last one.